AngeloComet TV

Fringe: S04 Ep10 – Forced Perspective

2012-02-24T07:27:00.001-08:00

What happened?

A girl with the power to foresee tragic events helps the Fringe department to stop a disgruntled father exploding a bomb at a courthouse. As a consequence the girl, Emily, dies.

Olivia is pre-occupied with her appearing migraines, and the message The Observer gave her. Nina tells Olivia she will give her some fantastic new drugs for her migraine, whilst Peter states that he cannot imagine how an Observer could be wrong about their predictions.

Thoughts

Given the serial-based, revelatory dynamics of recent episodes it felt like a weird step backwards to get this generally ‘standalone’ episode. Sure, the usual tricks of folding the case of the week into the ongoing concerns of the characters was present (Emily’s ability to see the future that she seemingly could never avert fed into Olivia’s pressing concern about The Observer’s prediction) but I can’t help but wonder why they continue with the conceit.

I understood the need in Fringe’s early days to have self-contained episodes that could snag new, casual viewers and get them interested in the show. But this is Season 4 now, off the back of a run of serialised episodes, so who on Earth is going to watch the show now and suddenly get converted? There’s bigger risk of alienating existing viewers than there is of gathering new ones, surely. I know I, for one, was rather blah about this one.

Besides, this episode did also contain callbacks to Nina’s duplicitous scheming against Olivia and remarks about The Observer that would invariably lose any newcomer to the show in an instant. So, fundamentally, I am baffled by the concession to these standalone stories that diminish the quality of the overall show. Like Emily dying at the end; a quick-fix resolution that looked and played like a tacked on afterthought to be able to put a lid on the whole plot and forget about it for next week.

All that being said, Emily’s ability did produce some wonderful moments. Perhaps the concepts were just so good the show creators couldn’t bear to not make the episode! Probably not likely. But the eye-catching opening scene with the man getting improbably skewered by a girder was deliciously unpleasant. Likewise the sequence where Walter hypnotised Emily and she drifted around a frozen moment of explosion was really cool.

It definitely felt like a cop-out that she died at the close. If they had made more of the idea that her having foreseen an event that never came to be somehow short-circuited her brain, as though breaking the laws of this reflecting echo of a horrible event meant she couldn’t continue, that might have worked. Instead Walter just remarked about some increased release of blood oxygen that had always been there and that explained that. Weak, if you ask me. A more philosophically, paradoxical ending was possible and yet eschewed.

Disappointingly the blood sample of September didn’t yield anything like the level of new information I anticipated. Aside from telling us that these beings were incredibly old there really wasn’t anything gleaned at all. And, really, after four seasons of the show pretty much everyone watching had kind of figured The Observers were hardly likely to be anything other than timeless!

Peter was on hand at the end to deliver more information to Olivia in a few glib remarks than this universe knew entirely, although his statements about how The Observers existed outside of time and human terms of experience (although hopefully correct) didn’t feel quite like something he could have known or explained in such a blasé fashion. The scene was really just working towards delivering its payoff line that only resonated with the previous statement September made: that Olivia had to die.

Again, this ‘news’ didn’t conjure any tension or drama for me. Just like the episode where The Observer hit her with the news the first time – there’s been no further development or explanation to qualify it and as such it just hangs like an empty threat.

More of a sinister threat to Olivia’s wellbeing is the betrayer with a kindly smile, Nina, the woman who Olivia considers as close to a mother as she has. Oh, when Olivia finds out what Nina has really been doing to her it’ll either be too late or it’ll be carnage – but either way the sense of betrayal will be crushing.

We’re still no closer to understanding what it is Nina is up to, though it’s a safe bet that the pills she is going to give to Olivia to help with her migraines are going to be part of phase two. (Indeed, the migraines will probably cease due to the phase one attacks being stopped. But Olivia won’t know that and instead just figure the drugs she is using are working wonders! It’s a cunning plan, really.)

Ultimately this was a filler episode, albeit one that did at least have the courtesy to acknowledge the bigger drama still at play. But filler is still filler no matter which way you dress it up and what’s fundamentally true is that I could have missed this episode and still tuned in the to the next one being completely aware of what’s going on so far. That’s not the mark of a great episode, not for a drama series, not this late in the game.

What was the best part?

Whilst the use of a standalone story was what made this a weak episode, it’s fair to say that it was within the story of Emily were the strongest moments. Whilst the pre-credit skewering was a cracking scene, the best sequence was with a hypnotised Emily exploring the exploding courthouse. It looked stylish and eerie and was far and away the most compelling part. Runner-up award goes to Nina paying Olivia a visit and being the all-caring mother figure harbouring shadowy intentions.

What do I think will happen next?

There’s a few plots at play. Nina plying Olivia with drugs for phase two. That plot dovetails into the ongoing mission to find and stop Mr. Jones, too, that everyone was all gung ho about last episode and has dropped like a hot brick for this one (I guess the other universe was picking up the slack!). There’s also Walter and Peter getting to work in earnest on making him compatible with The Machine and the ominous remarks of The Observer’s warning of certain death to Olivia.

All of these are big pieces on the board and any one of them could earn the status of season finale material. Right now it feels like they’ve been put in place but I have no idea where they’re going.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep08 – Nebraska

2012-02-21T02:50:00.001-08:00

What happened?

Rick is forced to venture into town in pursuit of Hershal who has taken to drinking following the slaughter of the barn zombies and a crushing sense of hopelessness. Rick eventually talks him round, but not before they encounter two survivors that also want to join them on the farm. Rick shoots them both before they get the chance to shoot him.

At the farm, Hershal’s wife has entered a catatonic state. Whilst some of the group bury the dead they knew and burn the rest, Dale tells Lori that he is certain Shane was responsible for killing Otis. Lori leaves in a car to find Rick but crashes en route.

Thoughts

The Walking Dead is back after its mid-season break and it’s returned with. . . well, more of a canter than a spring, let’s put it that way. Not that I’ve had any trouble with the pacing of the show but I know the internet is teeming with its detractors at how it seems to be dragging its feet. Yet without the more leisurely pace how would we ever get to know the characters? And how would scenes like the meeting in the bar carry so much tension and effect if The Walking Dead was quickly-edited and injected with the pace of, say, 24? It just wouldn’t be the show it is and I like the show how it is.

Events kick off immediately after the devastating gunshot that ended zombie Sophia. The episode was primarily concerned in dealing with the effects that had on the group. From Daryl’s withdrawal to Hershal’s despair, it’s fair to say the effects weren’t good. I didn’t quite buy Glenn’s remarks about how, because it was Sophia, her death had caused such upset. I mean, I get that was what the episode was stating but it didn’t quite feel earned with what we had seen before. I don’t recall the group all fondly hugging Sophia and loving her youthful presence as the life and soul for them in dark times. Up until she went missing I didn’t even know her name!

Shane’s sense of being perceived as the right man always viewed in unfairly negative ways only became more pronounced this episode, too. He has a case to defend himself with. Aside from putting a crosshair on Rick to rid him of his love rival, Shane’s actions have been brutal (killing Otis) but generally for a purpose. In principle emotional terms I do tend to side with the view that Shane is bad news, but at the same time his conversation with Dale, rebuking his moral authority stance and generally useless practical help, does make me realise where he is coming from.

It’s not so much that his behaviour is completely wrong but his hot-headed anger and unreasonable outbursts make it hard to consider him an ideal leader of the people.

The love romance between Glenn and Maggie continues, again not quite as good a sell as the show’s creators perhaps expect of the audience. Maggie’s sudden dependency and professed love for Glenn feels unearned and more a product of plot necessity than organic development. I buy that they have potential, and I get that Glenn being torn between Maggie and the group provides some dramatic meat, but as a real deal loving couple they’ve got some way to go. I expect that Maggie is willing to go with Glenn and his group as things stand – though when it comes to it I expect her and maybe one or two others from Hershal’s group will be hitting the road with Rick’s tribe before too long.

Lori hit the road in a more literal manner this episode, cementing her position as the show’s most unintentionally annoying character. Barely a week goes by without her doing something dumb. This time she decided it was of the utmost importance that she go and try and find Rick to tell him to hurry bringing Hershal back (as though without her prompting him he would just be kicking back taking his sweet time!). Along the way she takes her eyes off the road, mows down one walker and then flips the car. Terrific. In a world full of problems that’s the kind of problem you really need to avoid!

It seems unlikely that it would have been just one solitary walker she hit, which means her crash is bound to have alerted other walkers to her position. I can well imagine a scenario where she escapes, is chased, and leads a whole bunch of the undead back to the farm, if anything just to compound what a complete idiot she is!

Meanwhile Rick was in the bar with Glenn and Hershal. Their conversation was interesting; Hershal’s despair was countered by Rick’s sense of duty when it came to how they continued. But, of course, the real talking point and the highlight of the episode came about when the two survivors turned up in the bar and ushered in a dialogue-heavy few scenes that were thick with tension.

I liked how we stayed with this scene for lengthy periods. In fact, the naysayers that argue about the pacing of the show would do well to take a long sober look at how well this particular scene worked precisely because of the measure and stately pacing. The faux-friendly jostling of introductions gave way to the two survivors masking their smiles to hide the ruthless instinct that had got them so far. As they tried to pick up the clues about where Rick and his group were located an impasse was inevitable. The proverbial immovable object (Rick) meeting the unstoppable force (the two survivors).

The moment Rick shot the pair of them just jolted me with the abrupt coolness of it. In fact, once I watched the episode through, I actually rewound back to that moment just to see it happen again. It was so fast, so slight, so brilliant. Further demonstrating that Rick is the natural choice for leader (you can imagine Shane might have got out of that situation but would it have been as elegant, and would Hershal and Glenn both made it, too?). He has now crossed new boundaries – dispatching real people in the same manner as walkers. At least he let them make the first move; he’s not a mercenary murderer and still just a man trying to keep himself and his family alive.

What was the best part?

The entire scene in the bar with the two survivors. Interesting conversations with a constant tension and rising unsettling feeling. As it played out it was clearly reaching an untenable point between Rick stoutly rejecting to give the two shelter, and the survivors being unwilling to take no for an answer. The result was Rick being quicker on the draw and me on my sofa going, “Whoa!”

What do I think will happen next?

The previews clued me in a little to what I probably would have concluded needed to happen: it’s time to hit the road. It appeared that Hershal’s farm was getting besieged by walkers, perhaps attracted to the area after Lori’s crash, or all the gunshots Rick fired in the town, or just from all the gunshots at the barn massacre – possibly they just happened to be wandering by! Either way, their arrival should only usher in the necessity for our survivors to hit the road again. Quite how many of them will survive is another matter. If Hershal’s wife doesn’t snap out of things soon then I don’t see her making the journey. . .

Fringe: S04 Ep09 – Enemy Of My Enemy

2012-02-17T04:52:00.001-08:00

What happened?

Mr. Jones allowed himself to be captured by Fringe Division in order to reclaim a hard drive disk that Brandon held, a disk that contained information on where to mine necessary materials to open a gate between universes and potentially use the same principle as a weapon.

Fringe Division’s attempts to keep track of Mr. Jones fail but the two sides agree to unite against their common enemy, with Peter presenting himself as the wildcard element Mr. Jones won’t have factored for to give them the advantage. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Nina is in contact with Mr. Jones, and they discuss how phase 2, involving Olivia, is almost ready.

Thoughts

Another strong episode, and one that finally sees the key characters from both sides unite and start working together! I suspect there’s reluctance to have too many scenes that involve the key characters and their counterparts being in the same room because of the logistics of filming such things, but there’s no doubt that they are really cool to see.

Like that end scene in the boardroom, I could have spent so much longer with each character viewing their counterpart across the table – it makes you want to know what they think of how they look, get them talking about their differences. . . It’s actually a really fascinating concept that this show, in pursuit of its story arcs and cliffhangers, has seemed to largely ignore. I suppose it would be a rather frothy, superfluous concern but, you know, that still doesn’t stop it being fun to watch and, really, a little bit of fun is exactly the kind of thing that Fringe could use once in a while!

Hey, couldn’t we all?

Mr. Jones seemed relatively nonplussed, as ever. It seems that this Mr. Jones pretty much went through the same thing we saw him go through in Season 1, with the difference here being that Olivia and Peter had nothing to do with him and so he was able to achieve his ends without hassle. Somehow he found a way to stop the decay he was riddled with, albeit with residual scarring, and now he’s on track to complete his mission.

Unlikely as it seems, Nina Sharp is also in on it with him. I could wonder if this means Nina, as I suspect of Broyles, is a shapeshifter. I believe Mr. Jones mentioned there were 47 of them in existence so there’s plenty that are unaccounted for. Thing with Nina is that she’s always possessed a shadowy quality about her so you can believe bad things, duplicitous things, about her without the requirement of a proxy posing in her stead. I would presume she isn't a shapeshifter and, since she's in touch with Broyles, perhaps he actually isn't either.

The re-appearance of Mr. Jones does make me wonder what, if anything, there is of the Alternate Universe’s Mr. Jones. If there are always two of everything then there ought to be two of them, should there not? Yet there was never a sign of him in the old universe’s Over There and the same goes for this one. Not only is that a curious omission it’s also bizarre that no one from Fringe Division has raised the matter. I mean I remember one episode not so long back where they used an alternate from one universe to help catch his serial killer counterpart in the other, yet here it’s as if he’s the only one. . .

What is Mr. Jones’, and Nina’s, endgame? I can only assume they seek to destroy Over There to preserve their side. Mr. Jones did make that remark about how the air tasted sweeter when he was back on his home side, certainly positing a bias for one universe over another. Going back to the war between universes does feel like a backwards step, though, but I can’t really imagine what else it could be. He certainly seemed incredulous at the sight of Peter, so the ‘former’ universe doesn’t seem to be one that’s in his realms of plotting.

Peter is shaping up as an interesting proposition. I think he’s perhaps behaving with a tad too much cool and swagger considering his situation but in the same breath I can’t deny that it’s fun to see. He’s just an eminently more capable person. In the gunfight that occurred he was swiftly handed a gun (I recall there was once a big deal about ever letting Peter have a firearm!) and took out a guy with cool aplomb. He’s got to be right about his own sense of importance – indeed the reason he did bleed back through may entirely be due to this important function he has yet to fulfil.

Things are looking up for Peter all over the place, with Walter having now come around to leaving the lab and assist his boy. What’s the betting that Walter and Peter wind up living together sooner rather than later? As for whether or not it’s a good idea to let Peter start meddling with The Machine is another matter. My instinct tells me if it really does achieve the goal that Peter intends then it can only eradicate this current timeline and revert back to the old one. I don’t see that happening. It feels like we’re to be invested in this universe now and the only lingering sadness is that poor Olivia, Peter’s one true love, has been lost. It’s only that truth which gives me reservations in wholeheartedly believing these new dual universes are immutable.

Walter came around due to the conversation he had with Elizabeth. In the space of two episodes she has shown herself to be a remarkably wonderful woman. She knows Peter isn’t really her boy, and yet him being an approximation of the Peter she lost is enough for her love to exist. Like any mother, she will do whatever she can to help her child. And so she journeyed to another universe to persuade the man that kidnapped her boy, and decimated the universe, to forgive himself like she had forgiven him and help Peter.

It was a really tender, moving scene actually. The little details from Walter’s look of elation at first seeing Elizabeth to knowing how she liked her drink with honey sweetener; it was lovely dialogue matched by top performances. Certainly better-handled than Lincoln and Olivia's relationship, that once threatened to potentially emerge into something lovable but has been given short shrift. I guess there’s just not the room for it at the moment but, if Fringe does plan on making these two an item, it needs to work harder at selling them as a couple.

There was a little bit of business introduced that I can only hope will be revelatory in the next episode or two. Olivia handed Astrid a small sample of blood, presumably collected from where September sat bleeding, and asked her to go and check it. I’d be amazed if it came back human, anomaly-free, so I can just hope that whatever weird results are returned are the kind from which better estimations to what exactly The Observers are can be breached.

What was the best part?

Not often I’d plump for a scene that’s basically just talking and acting, but the moments between Walter and Elizabeth were really a cut above the already decent performances Fringe regularly showcases.

What do I think will happen next?

The universes’ united front against Mr. Jones would appear to be the driving plot at present (though with Fringe and its occasional standalone episodes there’s always the risk that big plots get inexplicably sidelined for a week whilst some one-off investigation takes priority!). I am guessing that Olivia is being drugged and primed for her innate capability to cross over between universes (a facet of herself this Olivia doesn’t know about) to be used in this ‘war’ I am figuring Jones and Nina are gearing up for. Outside that, blood results of September might hopefully yield interesting revelations about what he, and The Observers, are all about to move that big mystery forward some.

Fringe: S04 Ep08 – Back To Where You’ve Never Been

2012-02-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Peter travelled to the other side in the hope to appeal to Walternate for help in using The Machine to get himself back to his proper universe. Initially accompanied by Lincoln Lee, an attempt on their lives forced them to split. Alt-Olivia and Alt-Lincoln investigate the possibility that Walternate is behind the new shapeshifters, unaware that this universe’s Mr. Jones is behind them.

Walternate confides in Peter that he is not behind the shapeshifters and Peter’s opinion of him changes. Meanwhile Olivia, waiting at the gate, is confronted by The Observer who has been shot, apparently dying, and he tells her that in every possible future he has seen she must die.

Thoughts

Oh, that was especially nice in hindsight. I am thinking particularly of the remark Peter made to Lincoln just as they were stepping through the gate. Lincoln asked what would happen if the gate closed before he was all the way through and Peter remembered a time he had killed a man by cutting him in half in that same manner. That man was Mr. Jones and, lo, he did turn up at the end as the surprise reveal villain.

Well, it was a surprise to me anyway. Hence why I thought it was a clever bit of foreshadowing.

His face looked a little worse for wear. Possibly that’s because this version of Mr. Jones underwent similar ordeals like we saw during the first season, when he escaped from prison, only in this timeline he managed to not fall apart as rapidly and monstrously as he did that time. Hopefully that’s one of the many things on a growing list of things that will get explained in due course.

The bulk of the episode was all about maintaining the potential for Walternate to be the man behind the shapeshifters, to the extent that he was even keeping it from his own people (namely Altlivia and Alt-Lincoln). The scene where Peter finally met up with Walternate was really great at maintaining that grey area. It was very disconcerting how, whilst speaking, Walternate was constructing the strange looking stun gun. All the time I was thinking, What the hell is he going to use that for? And all the time Peter saw it and didn’t even mention it!

It transpired that Walternate was aware that higher positions in power had possibly been infiltrated by shapeshifters, and Alt-Brandon was the first one he took down. I liked that Walternate turned out not to be villainous – quite the opposite. It’ll potentially give Peter the ‘father figure’ to bond with in this version of the universe, and with his ‘mother’ around as well I can’t help but wonder if he may begin to feel like this world may be a place he values.

Of course, there’s still the matter of his Olivia, which is what is fundamentally driving him to get back to where he belongs. I still think it’s doing his character a dis-service that he seems too blasé about the fact that returning to his home and erasing this universe will, in effect, be eradicating the existences of billions of people. Perhaps, like his mother, he believes that all the universes we have seen, and more, remain in parallel existence and one doesn’t replace the other.

September’s remarks at the end of the episode did lend themselves to reaching that kind of interpretation. As he sat bleeding out from a gunshot wound (another one of those mysteries to be explained; add it to the list!) he made remarks to Olivia about all the many versions of consequences and worlds he had seen. The inference depends entirely on how many different versions of events he has observed. If, when he says Olivia must die, he is talking only of this current version of the universe that emerged when Peter was erased, then we’re back to the fact that Peter undoing what happened would eliminate billions of lives.

It’s a pickle, no doubt about it.

Altlivia and Alt-Lincoln’s investigation ultimately dovetailed into an apparent rendezvous with Mr. Jones for the next episode. That ought to be spicy. And there’s the extra revelation that Alt-Broyles is most likely a shapeshifter (failing that he’s a covert ally of Mr. Jones, but I am more inclined to believe the shapeshifter theory). If Altlivia and Alt-Lincoln don’t make it back that’s going to leave regular Lincoln Lee still stuck in the windowless room!

I definitely did enjoy the episode, although it was a shame that the surprise at the end of the previous episode, with Olivia being attacked whilst unconscious by Nina, was relegated to her moaning about having a headache. Again, yet again, another mystery on the ever-growing list. . . But finally going Over There in this universe for some proper show and tell was much-needed (and holding off all this time really seems to have just been to generate the mystique that Walternate was a bad guy when he appears to not be).

I liked the reveal of Mr. Jones. His was a menacing figure of the first season that has felt abandoned, so it’s good to see him back. Less interesting for me was The Observer’s remarks about how Olivia needed to die. It was too ambiguous to be dramatic for me. Since this Olivia isn’t really our Olivia then her having to die doesn’t slam home like I think the creator’s wanted it to.

Intrigued to know about how September got shot, though. A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or an act of murder by one of his fellow Observers following the infringement in meddling with what was supposed to happen regarding Peter. An Observer-centric episode would be very welcome to clarify it all!

What was the best part?

I have to go with the scene where Peter and Walternate talked alone, whilst he coldly constructed the shapeshifter killer gun without a word of explanation. Delicious stuff.

What do I think will happen next?

I’d imagine the matter that September brought to Olivia’s attention is one of those that gets dropped in the immediate next episode or two, at least. I would expect there to be more time spent Over There. I do wonder if maybe Mr. Jones and his shapeshifters isn’t something that gets tackled and ultimately resolved in an episode or two, allowing the two universes to start talking more and firm up some trust.

American Horror Story: S01 Ep06 – Piggy Piggy

2012-02-13T04:04:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A flashback to 1994 details how Tate stalked his school, shooting classmates. Many asked why he did it, including the armed police officer that was forced to shoot him dead at his home when he reached for his gun. Violet learns about this incident, and is then confronted by Constance who explains that Tate is a spirit that does not know he is dead and she hoped his counselling sessions would help him arrive at that truth himself.

Constance and Moira are also both involved in feeding Vivien various meats, to the extent of her eating raw brains. Vivien does go to see the nurse that saw her baby scan, and the nurse is terrified and warns she is pregnant with an evil beast. Meanwhile Vivien and Ben have split, but Ben is working at the house and still holding on for a reconciliation.

Violet struggles to handle being around Tate now she knows what he is. But he tells her he loves her and, eventually, she seems to relent after he saves her from a suicide attempt and they lie down together.

Thoughts

By this show’s regular standards, this was a more sedate episode in terms of pacing and frantic editing, but probably the most out there in terms of concept. I mean six episodes in and I am perfectly accepting of ghosts and living people interacting normally, and even how the leading lady can sit down and tuck into a bowl of raw brain!

There’s definitely a Rosemary’s Baby vibe being channelled with Vivien’s pregnancy, and whatever it is she is giving birth to, Constance and Moira are both aware of what it is and very keen on it to go ahead. Evidently they are feeding the thing raw meat because that’s what the beast wants – Mrs. Comet watching with me was very explicitly informing me that this kind of food was absolutely not what pregnant women are advised to eat. The nurse remarked that she had seen a cloven hoof in the pregnancy scan, but until the ‘baby’ emerges it’s impossible to know what it will be.

I actually expect it to come out looking normal. Vivien did have another scan after all, and that one appeared to occur without alarm, so in that respect it’ll probably be like The Omen. I anticipate references to that to be forthcoming!

Ben and his treatment of the man with a fear of Piggyman was a relative sideline this episode. Indeed, I was surprised to see that he had moved out already given how adamantly he was willing to fight for his family at the end of the last episode. There was that moment where Vivien held his hand during the pregnancy scan, however, so all isn’t lost for those two. Vivien has definitely turned her attentions to the hunky security man, of course. The way Ben was viewing him, too, made me think he might be next in line when the killing happens! Indeed, if Ben is demanded by the house (or whatever) to father the baby then security man might be considered a threat needing to be removed.

The big story here was about Tate. The opening scene, showing the frightened students getting picked off one by one, was a standout and terrifyingly all-too-real moment. The lack of music and coldness to it all made it so tense and stark it showed that American Horror Story has the capacity to deliver pure horror free of frills and gimmicks and weirdness.

I liked that Constance had the conversation with Violet early in the episode to clarify that Tate was a ghost that didn’t know he was dead, and that it was the fact he died in the house that was the important element that kept him around. As Addy, from beyond, would apparently state she was pleased her mother had failed to get her onto the grounds of the house when she was dying so she could avoid the same fate. Constance also showed more dimensions to her very complicated character in her heartfelt declaration of love and affection for Addy. It’s good that she had a little more humanising, though I wouldn’t want her to lose the vicious edge and sharp tongue we first saw in the Pilot episode.

Whilst neither Ben nor Vivien have yet to be convinced there are really ghosts in the world, Violet saw all the phantoms in the basement and, of course, has the all-too-vivid spirit of Tate madly in love with her. Emphasis on the ‘madly’. His arc, it seems, is to come to terms with what he is. I suspect he’s not going to take that well, and his unpredictable quality makes him impossible to gauge. Indeed, the central question about why he went on a killing spree remains a huge blank mark. As the teacher said, maybe he just wasn’t a good person and that’s all the reason there is.

Violet had her strongest performance here. I didn’t really buy that she would attempt suicide as she did – that seemed to come out of nowhere. But then the nature of a suicidal disposition is perhaps best summed up as an out of the blue psychological break. And the scars on her arm show she is prone to self-harming. I guess it’s just the act didn’t seem like something that was being built to – it just suddenly started happening.

Where do the two of them go from here? Well, Violet will either fall for Tate and then have to deal with the fact that he’s unpredictable, never going to age and not able to leave the house (apart from on Halloween). More likely she’ll be on hand to help him figure out what he is, but even when that happens I don’t think that necessarily means he will vanish and move on. Like Moira and the other ghosts, he might just be a part of the fixtures and fittings now!

What was the best part?

Without doubt the opening flashback showing the kids in the library getting picked off one by one by Tate. There was a stillness about the scene in terms of the lack of music, and how we never saw Tate’s face until the end. And the differing reactions of the kids before they all met their fate just kept the whole thing feeling shocking. In light of actual incidents of this kind of killing spree being true to life that made it all the more harrowing. Definitely American Horror Story’s most intense scene so far.

What do I think will happen next?

I expect this season is going to have a lot of focus on just what exactly is gestating inside Vivian. It’s surely going to be some form of devil-child, though maybe it will take the form of a regular-looking baby. Obviously they should call it Damien. Otherwise the weird romance between Tate and Violet will develop. Either she’ll help him discover what he is so he can ‘move on’ (if that’s possible), or their feelings for each other will grow stronger and the pair of them will actually be in love with each other. The latter seems more likely as it’s the one with more plot mileage.

American Horror Story: S01 Ep5 – Halloween Part 2

2012-02-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

What happened?

The missing Violet had actually just ventured out with Tate on a date, and a desire to lose her virginity. Tate seemed unable to complete the act, however, and then a gang of ghoulish teenagers arrived with a bone to pick with Tate – talking of how he had shot them years ago. Tate got angry and denied it, but flashes of some disturbing memory returned to him.

Constance had to cope with the death of Addy and told Violet stated that Tate was her son. Meanwhile Ben and Vivien had to contend with Hayden who took a turn for the violent until the home security officer arrived and took her away. She disappeared as the sun rose. And whilst the Burns Man’s fate was left unknown, other spirits returned to the house before the sun rose, all apparently trapped in that place. Ben and Vivien, still in disbelief at such supernatural possibilities, were not reconciled; Vivien demanded he was to leave and yet Ben was adamant he was not giving up on his family.

Thoughts

So. . . Tate’s definitely a ghost, right? I mean, those kids claimed he had killed them many years ago (fourteen, I think, or something like that) and since he hasn’t aged I have to figure he is a ghost just like them, only he is bound to the house. The revelation that Constance was his mother had occurred to me, but it did make me struggle to make sense of the phone call I thought Ben had had with one of Tate’s parents when he was discussing continuing treatment. Either I didn’t quite grasp who was on the other end of the phone or there’s something of an unclear issue there.

Constance being Tate’s mother wasn’t otherwise that troubling – she had mentioned there had been one good son so Tate was a natural fit. Quite what it means for Constance’s ghost status is another matter. I am still thinking that she is alive, as was Addy (I think). I believe the real tragedy of Addy’s death, for Constance, was that she died outside of the grounds of the house and so could not return as a spirit in the same way Tate and Moira have.

I did like the gang of teenage ghosts, though. Their make-up effects were disgusting, and their anger and appearance really menacing. The demand for answers was all they wanted, something Tate seemed unable to provide. Is he actually unaware of what he did? He really seemed shocked by the memories himself? I am guessing he is aware of his ‘spirit status’, considering he was aware of when he could leave the house.

The ending with all the spirits we currently know about returning to the house before sunrise produced mixed feelings in me. I liked the detail of the two nurses, for example. But it made me think that we really ought to have been seeing a lot more ghosts returning to the house because I am absolutely certain there are going to be more deaths and more ghouls showing up before this season is done. Indeed, if the episode tradition maintains as it has so far then I can expect them in the next episode!

So the continuity-freak in me would have preferred to have seen glimpses of other ghosts just to give a sense that there was more, but that was my only problem with it. In principle the underlining of the fact that these are people that once had lives that got stopped in the moment and now they are stuck, bound to the house in a limbo, is a nice one.

Interesting thought I’ve had: If Tate is unaware of what he is, then maybe that lack of awareness allows him to move more freely throughout the world. I only suggest that because perhaps even Ben, Vivien and Violet are already dead, too, and are unaware of it and that’s why they are free to move around, too. It’s pretty crazy, I know, but then this show is full on nuts.

Throwaway question: What the hell was that hand that reached out from under the bed for Violet?

Ben’s mistress was a nice turn up of craziness. The scenes of her apparently exploding the dog in the microwave (for a while I thought she really had and the dog we saw afterwards was a spirit dog!) and bathing in the bath, choking up her own rotting insides, they were just all great touches of grisly style. American Horror Story these past two episodes actually felt more like a film than it usually does. I can’t help but be impressed by how it just goes for it and manages to pull it off. What so easily could have been a total, tasteless mess is instead a riotous, demented joy.

We didn’t get to see what happened with Burns Man. Last we saw of him was when he was confronted by the gay guy, just when he looked set on striking a few pyromaniac matches. Maybe the scene was supposed to state that Burns Man got stopped in his tracks and so went on his way – or maybe the next episode will reveal what it was that actually occurred to him. I doubt he’s dead, though. Whilst Hayden may now be permanently gone (big question mark about that) Ben’s life isn’t going to free of the Burns Man that easily.

Of course, Vivien and Ben have some serious differences to sort out. I expect things won’t be rosy between them for a while, but since he is determined to stay and make things work then he’ll be around for the foreseeable. So they’ve all survived Halloween, except for poor Addy (again, question marks over whether we’ll see her again) and there’s been just a touch more clarification about the nature of the spirits in the house. It’s near impossible to guess where the show goes to next, but I am absolutely loving it so far. I am now entrenched with the mindset that each episode, when I start it, is going to be a cracker, as that has been the case so far. I can’t think of any new series, just this many shows in, that has had me thinking the same way.

Let’s hope the next one’s a cracker then!

What was the best part?

For me it was the scenes with the murdered kids returning to interrogate their murderer, Tate. From the image of the five of them striding towards the house to chasing Tate before they came to demanding why he had done it. It sets up further intrigue around his character, and what exactly he is and what he thinks he is. A whole episode could have been formed around this central plotline – but this show likes to move quicker and have more going on to allow that to be the case, which is both a good and bad thing for various reasons, but mostly a good thing.

What do I think will happen next?

Sheesh, honestly I don’t know! I mean how Ben and Vivien get along will be a backbone, but quite where the next ghost is coming from, or what crackerjack scheme Burns Man will present, or what Tate might do. . . These are all elements in the mix and I’ve not even touched on the doctor and his wife backstory of the house! No, there’s just too much madness to even attempt to make predictive sense of. Better to just strap in and enjoy the ride for now.

Doctor Who: Christmas Special 2007 – Voyage Of The Damned

2012-02-02T06:05:00.001-08:00

What happened?

It’s Christmas Day on Earth, but unknown to the planet the cruiser Titanic drifts by in space. With the ship having crashed into the TARDIS, The Doctor has got onboard as a stowaway and merged in with the rest of the guests enjoying their holiday. The party is cut short when the captain deliberately lowers the shields and attracts meteors to strike the ship.

Crippled, with few survivors, those that are left are at the mercy of the robotic Host, picking them off. It’s up to The Doctor with a small band of people to discover that Max Capricorn, the owner of the ship, is behind the attack due to his failed business. The Doctor, with the help of a waitress, Astrid, stops Max.

Thoughts

I didn’t think much of this episode. I mean, I can be charitable and say that since it’s just an Xmas episode, one that exists kind of outside the regular show and the events there, then it doesn’t deserve to be viewed with the same critical expectation. It’s just a good family show, featuring none other than Kylie Minogue, for people to sit down with on Xmas Day having eaten their festive dinner whilst helping themselves to a nice drink as the kids play with toys and watch the telly.

Viewed in that context it’s a lot easier to let slip its misgivings, but that’s not the context I viewed it in. And I think I already tend to allow Doctor Who off the hook a bit more than other shows given it’s got a kind of daft charm all of its own making that affords it some slack. So why should a Christmas Special be considered permissible just because it’s, well, a Christmas Special? If anything a one-off show is exactly the kind of thing that plays to Doctor Who’s strengths.

Thing is, I can’t quite place exactly what it was about this episode that resulted in it falling so flat for me. I rather liked Kylie Minogue as Astrid (she was rather simplistically characterised so Kylie didn’t really have much to work with, but I felt like there was a spark between her and Tennant that really buoyed their interplay), and the Host angel robots were sinister enough villains that were memorable. The moment they showed up in attack, displaying the previously unseen ability to fly, was pretty cool.

The collection of core characters were an assorted bunch. The clichéd self-centred businessman was irritating – but then that was his function. More bizarre was the strange affection between the short alien cyborg thing with Astrid which didn’t exactly do Astrid any favours since it made it seem like she was ready to throw herself at anyone – Timelord Doctors, midget aliens, she’s up for anything!

I think really it was just a problem with tone. I couldn’t get in to the action because there was a slightly tongue-in-cheek aspect to it all (understandable, it’s Christmas Day, it’s a family show – it would be wrong to expect an episode like Blink!) that stopped me. And I suppose it didn’t help that the mastermind behind it all – Max Capricorn – had the sole motivation of doing these terrible things, taking all of those lives, purely so he could ruin his business and upset shareholders.

If you’re going to have one-off villains for a one-off Xmas day episode then just make them more unreasonably evil, like the Syrcorax, and give the casual viewers something to boo and hiss at before The Doctor saves the day.

What was the best part?

I’m really struggling to come up with a part of this episode that I could label as the best part since the whole thing rather left me cold. Honesly, I think the glorious stupidity of The Doctor discovering the captain’s mate was called Alonso, and so joyously declaring “Allons y, Alonso!” That was the best bit. Doesn’t say much, does it?

What do I think will happen next?

Series 4 will happen next, that’s what. Proper Doctor Who and none of this trifling Xmas day fare!

Doctor Who: S03 Ep13 - Last Of The Time Lords

2012-01-31T07:09:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A year of The Master reigning over the planet, things are in a miserable condition. The Doctor, still in an elderly form, has been reduced to The Master’s pet, Jack remains a prisoner and Martha’s family are nothing more than servants. Only Martha has carried the torch of hope, having been walking across the planet spreading word of The Doctor amongst the population.

And so the time arrives when The Doctor, thanks to Martha, is able to use The Master’s own subconscious control system against him when the entire planet thinks of The Doctor and restores him to full vigour. Unwilling to see the last of his people killed, The Doctor vows to keep The Master with him in the TARDIS but The Master is shot dead by his bitter wife.

Martha elects to discontinue travelling with The Doctor, unable to stand being around him due to her feelings for him that are not returned. And so The Doctor returns to the TARDIS alone, and instantly crashes into the Titanic. . .

Thoughts

The one very refreshing thing this episode brought in to the fold was having a year have passed since the end of the previous one. It really gave a lot more gravitas to Martha’s declaration that she would return that felt somewhat melodramatic previously. Shifting the focus to Martha, and her extraordinary (unbelievable?) feat of endurance and perseverance in travelling the planet and spreading the word about The Doctor was impressive, and fitting. She has been a terrific companion, resourceful and brave and reliable, and it felt right that she would be the real saviour here, despite The Doctor leaping in at the end to take all the credit!

Beyond the jarring state of the world and Martha’s heroic efforts, there wasn’t really very much else I liked about this episode. I didn’t like the longterm plan The Doctor had set in motion (was that really the best thing he could come up with?) and I thought the undoing of The Master and the resolution to things was awfully twee. I know Doctor Who often strains credulity but this felt like a reach too far.

I also felt elevating The Doctor to this mythical saviour in the eyes of all humanity across the planet felt disingenuous in comparison to the sometimes egotistically dangerous character he represents (he is, basically, an unstoppable force that determines the fate of the entire universe!). Fundamentally it just felt weak.

It’s a shame The Doctor was reduced to a CGI wench throughout the majority of this episode, because seeing the sparks fly between him and The Master felt worthwhile of a series finale – the last of the Timelords locked in opposition. There was a better, grandstanding event more deserving of such an occasion, and I don’t think we got it here.

I suppose the episode wasn’t all bad. I did like the nice surprise at the end that heavily suggested that The Face of Boe was none other than Jack! That was really good, and if we never see or hear from Jack again in Doctor Who (I know he crossed over as a main character of Torchwood, which I’ve never seen any of) then it’s a cute, quirky sign off.

Aside from Martha and that, however, the rest of it was overblown and lacked drama.

What was the best part?

The best part was seeing The Master cavort around near the beginning of the episode, to music, lording it over everyone and revealing The Doctor had been forced to remain on all fours and live in a kennel. For some reason such behaviour kind of made The Master seem like a nastier villain than the usual foes that are simply out to destroy and kill – enslavement, torture and humiliation are far more inhumane than genocide!

What do I think will happen next?

End of a series, and farewell to another companion. Since this episode ended with the Titanic abruptly crashing through the TARDIS (I thought that thing was impregnable and indestructible!?) the next episode, a Christmas special, will feature the aforementioned vessel. (I do happen to recall watching this when it was first aired so I know it’s not the actual Titanic as it may first appear here!)

Doctor Who: S03 Ep12 – The Sound Of Drums

2012-01-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Using Jack’s vortex method of time travelling, The Doctor, Martha and Jack land in London just in time to see Harold Saxon – The Master – having won his election (via subtly shifting the public perception in his favour by a low level drumming pulse embedded in mobile phone signals!) and become Prime Minister. His plan, 18 months in the formation, is to grab the world’s attention before unleashing billions of killer beings upon the planet.

The Doctor, Martha and Jack infiltrate his floating ship where he is staging the grand reveal to thwart him, but The Master is wise to their plans. He utilises aging technology on The Doctor, making him elderly, tortures Jack by killing him so he can rise again, and only Martha is able to escape whilst leaving her kidnapped family behind. She vows to return, as the aliens rain down on the planet and decimate a tenth of the population. . .

Thoughts

This mid-section of the three-part finale to the end of the series felt problematic to me. It just didn’t seem to flow right, or feel right – especially when set against the previous episode and the kind of edge and unease it generated. I suppose one key question that keeps cropping up with every episode that is set on Earth is: Why Earth? What is it about conquering that planet and attempting to wipe out the human race that is so compelling for all manner of aliens across the galaxies!?

It was explained, of course, that The Master had only been able to travel to Earth at the point when the TARDIS was last there but that was about all that made logical sense about The Master’s behaviour during this episode. He had got himself elected Prime Minister and immediately wiped out his cabinet, kidnapped Martha’s family, and announced to the world a new alien race was going to make its appearance the next day.

His grand plan, so far it seems, is purely to have got to the position he was in so he would have a televised audience watching him unveil his spherical alien race and see him kill the USA President and launch the attack decimating the planet. I have to assume this is so he can show the world who he is, what he’s done, so they will literally know he is The Master!

It felt rather convoluted. The mobile phone pulse to capture minds to vote in his favour just to destroy these same people just seems silly. But there is still a part 3 in the balance here, and presumably more revelations to come, that might answer some of my questions so far. Though I’m not holding my breath that there’ll be an answer to why he strapped a bomb to the back of Martha’s television. (If he could predict she’d be there why not just have his men capture her like the rest of her family? Again, seemed silly.)

The Master himself continued to provide good entertainment value, mind. His playful, cocksure psychosis makes for a very enjoyable villain, though it does come with the cost of sacrificing the sinister menace he possessed during those brief moments at the end of the previous episode in his awakened, older incarnation.

The Doctor, Martha and Jack weren’t really up to much during this episode. Their plan to thwart The Master wasn’t particularly clear (was the plan to put one of those things around his neck to stop his pulse signal to, what, snap the brainwashed masses out of the hold he had over them? So what? That time had passed!) but at least the idiocy of it was duly met with him turning the tables on them all.

Only Martha managed to escape, with a determined remark about how she’ll return, which I fully expect she will. Meanwhile The Doctor got hit with an aging process (courtesy of technology from Dr Lazarus, which was a half-decent attempt at tying previous episode’s events into proceedings here) that was uncomfortable to watch (something about the rudimentary effects employed made it seem horrible – I’ll give whoever was responsibly credit and consider it deliberate rather than a side-effect of low budget!).

The alien spheres that were unleashed were intriguing. The Master made a remark to The Doctor about how he knew what they really were. For some reason I wondered if they weren’t Daleks; it was just the idea that The Master would have allied himself to the very race that wiped out the Timelords could have been one that would so appal. Couple that idea with the strange ‘paradox machine’ that had been used on the TARDIS, which has perhaps been a part of explaining how the Daleks could be brought back, and that’s basically where my logic runs out. Beyond that I have no evidence for such a spurious pondering.

This mid-section episode really was about putting our characters in dire circumstances, defeated, before the final instalment will see them eventually triumph. It very much felt like a second act – robbed of the intriguing set up (even the climax to the previous episode was casually dodged by Jack warping all of them through time with barely a flinch) and lacking a climactic finish, it was an uninspiring halfway house that left me hoping they’d saved the good stuff for the last instalment.

What was the best part?

Probably the brief overview of life on Gallifrey, showing some of the trials the young Timelords went through. The mention of how they appear to have been self-entitled, so The Doctor called himself as much because he wants to help and save people – could have done with more elaboration, as that felt like a major revelation. The Doctor is always adamant that people just call him The Doctor, to be drip-fed information that suggested it was a name he provided for himself as part of his own moral ethos deserved more examination.

What do I think will happen next?

The Master will surely get thwarted, and I can’t help but feel like the exact nature of the alien spheres have greater significance. I’m still banking on Daleks! Otherwise I expect Martha will somehow return to the action and stage a rescue and perhaps The Doctor will snub her in some way, or something will happen to her family, and make her decide there is no way she can continue with him.

Doctor Who: S03 Ep11 – Utopia

2012-01-27T04:43:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Landing in Cardiff to make a pit stop for the TARDIS, The Doctor notices Jack racing towards them and tries to elude him. However, Jack grabs the TARDIS and propels them trillions of years into the future, to a dying universe, where the last vestiges of humanity survive on a barren world, dreaming that the rocket under construction there will one day take them to Utopia.

A man known as The Professor is working on this rocket, unsuccessfully, but with The Doctor on hand a plan is forged to get it going. Utilising Jack who, as a result of Rose’s last act as ‘Bad Wolf’ is now immortal, frozen as a constant in time, they engage the rocket and it launches. However, Martha makes a discovery that The Professor has a pocket watch similar to one The Doctor used to store his consciousness in – and once opened The Professor’s true identity is revealed.

He is a Timelord. The villainous Master. He regenerates in a youthful form and escapes in the TARDIS, leaving The Doctor, Martha and Jack apparently stranded on the desolate planet whilst savages infiltrate the place and beat at the door. . .

Thoughts

What began as a fairly knockabout, faintly silly episode of Doctor Who ultimately unfurled itself to be one of the edgier instalments I’ve seen so far. I can’t quite put my finger on why but it managed to be unsettling in places; it’s not like I was scared, but unnerved might be a more precise description.

The silly aspect of the sharp-toothed human savages wasn’t overly convincing, with the production values of the episode really not selling them as a viable tribe. They were there to cause some trouble and get our heroes to the base, and then create mayhem during the rocket launch, but ultimately they weren’t the big draw here, which is just as well.

Setting the episode at the end of the universe was a good move. The Doctor’s fake panic about being that far ahead in time, at a point when nearly all life had been and gone, was probably a key reason why the episode contained such an unsettling vibe. The Doctor maybe powerful but even he can’t combat the end of the universe. I’ll be interested to learn where it is the rocket bound for Utopia was really headed!

The business with Jack initially confounded me. The fact that he appeared to be invulnerable had me confused since, the last time I saw him, I didn’t recall this being a part of his character. I remember him getting killed! I thought that maybe there was something I had missed, but then it got explained during the episode.

It was during that scene of explanation, with Jack, despite being immortal, seeming vulnerable as he handled the deadly radiation that The Doctor had a menacing edge to him. His wariness of Jack because he was an impossible fixture in time was an interesting idea, and there was a just an unsettling tone to The Doctor suggesting that another Jack might still be around in the universe, further emphasised by him questioning if Jack had ever wanted to die.

I actually find the character of Jack irritating – his constant flirting and arrogance are somewhat tiresome – but with this he’s being taken in an interesting direction that certainly makes him a more interesting proposition.

The Professor turning out to be The Master was another fine part of the episode, in its reveal of the pocket watch arriving after the his talk of “the sound of drums” that had been in his head all his life. Again, I’m not sure if this episode pre-supposes some former knowledge of The Master, because his announcement of himself certainly landed with dramatic weight. As far as I can tell he is a Timelord, but not a good one. (Arguably The Doctor isn’t strictly ‘good’, but he tends towards the preservation of life as his moral compass and, in that sense, adheres to what he believes is right.)

I can hazard an assumption at a backstory: The Master was hounded by his own people, presumably for being bad, and so went and hid himself into the far reaches of the future where he could not be found. To hide all traces he secreted his consciousness in the watch, like The Doctor once did, and there even forgot to himself who he really was. Only now he has awoken, now as one of only two remaining Timelords (The Doctor told him this, which is what forms my assumption he was a part of their species before the Time War). Now he has the TARDIS he can go back to whenever he wants – though I think we already know he goes back to Martha’s time, calling himself Saxon, since she made a remark that his voice was familiar.

God knows how The Doctor, Martha and Jack are going to get out of the situation they are in. But then that’s what makes for a great cliffhanger. Possibly The Doctor will recall the TARDIS somehow? Or maybe the ‘other Jack’ will show up and save the day? Maybe even The Doctor’s severed hand will somehow be used!

I did enjoy The Master once he had regenerated, too. There was a deliciously, devilish spiteful quality to him that relished wreaking evil. His remarks to The Doctor about enjoying the end of the universe with a chirpy ‘bye bye’ before exiting were entertaining. And it was also good to see the final words of the Face of Boe finally get some meaning, though I’m in two minds if the ‘YANA’ name being an anagram of You Are Not Alone was a stroke of genius or an irksome contrivance.

What was the best part?

It was two scenes that kind of merged together close enough for me to regard them as one best part. The first was The Doctor speaking with Jack, about how he was immortal, and whether he wanted to die. Tennant played the scene with a quiet darkness about his Doctor that I’d never seen before and it really worked well; I wondered if he was about to do something particularly harsh, especially when he asked Jack if he wanted to die.

Martha’s startled reaction to the pocket watch and the revelation that here was the ‘other Timelord’ the Face of Boe had once alluded to was also excellent – it was a well-executed reveal that I didn’t see coming and totally delivered a showstopper of a surprise.

What do I think will happen next?

I really don’t know how The Doctor and co are going to escape their predicament, but we can be sure they do. Furthermore The Master apparently expects it, since he was investigating The Doctor via Martha’s mother (if, indeed, he really is this Saxon fellow, which I am certain he is). Possibly The Master has got himself set up and, having learned that The Doctor is the only other Timelord, seeks a showdown? (If his goal is to be the only Timelord, however, then I can’t imagine he’ll do something to ‘rescue’ The Doctor so they can meet face-to-face.

However The Master and The Doctor confront one another, I suspect the notion that The Doctor is not too far removed from The Master will be played out, to make sense of this somewhat more reckless and destructive quality he has displayed throughout the series.

American Horror Story: S01 Ep4 – Halloween Part 1

2012-01-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Halloween is apparently a time when the dead spirits can roam freely for one day. As such life for the Harmon family at the house they are desperately trying to sell seems more over-run with activity than ever. The ghostly twins are seen throwing eggs, and a dead gay couple return to argue and offer advice about changing the look of the place. At the end of the episode Ben’s dead ex-mistress even turns up knocking at the door!

Meanwhile the man in the gimp suit is constantly lurking around and, by the episode’s end, may have taken Violet away. Ben and Vivien are looking for her when they return home, having been at the hospital after an argument. Vivien had demanded that Ben leave but then had pains like her baby was kicking. When the nurse checked it on a monitor she collapsed, apparently shocked.

Moira was allowed freedom to go and visit her mother, and she turned off the machine keeping her alive. Her mother’s spirit told her to come with her, but a tearful Moira had to say that she was unable to. Elsewhere Addy had been given a mask and a dress to go trick or treating as a pretty girl, but then she ran into the road without looking and was hit by a car. A devastated Constance tried to drag her back to the house but eventually stopped and sobbed over the body.

Thoughts

Right. OK. It’s time to start asking some hard questions about this show, because it sure is starting to ask some seriously confusing questions of me. The first and most obvious question has to be: How many of the main cast members are ghosts? I mean, apart from the ‘ghosts of the week’ that show up (although I hope Zachary Quinto shows up again because his performance here was a delight) I know that Moira is a ghost. She’s a confirmed. Outside of the Harmon family (and, for now, I am assuming they aren’t dead and don’t know it because they are so free to come and go from the house) there’s Tate, Burns Man, Constance and Addy. Constance has aged since her flashback, but then Moira veers from old to young depending on who sees her so that’s no reliable marker. However, for now, I am going to believe she’s not a ghost.

Tate I am definitely not sure about. It seems crucial that he’s never away from the house. There’s the added suggestion that he’s also the figure in the gimp suit. The last part I am not so sure about – but him being a ghost makes sense. He’s had visions of himself in a gory state, so maybe that’s just his own appearance when he died that ‘haunts’ his psyche. Gimp suit man seems like a bigger mystery waiting to be unveiled.

Addy is confusing. There was some remark made this episode by Constance, about how she had looked after her for 35 years. I think it was 35 years, anyway. At first I didn’t think much of it, to be honest, I just sort of figured that Addy was much older than she looked (without sounding mean I’ll just say it’s difficult to tell how old people with Down’s Syndrome are) and that was her age. Mrs. Comet, however, seemed to believe this confirmed she’d been around longer than her age and so must be a ghost.

The ending was interesting in that regard. It was almost like she was a ghost that could be killed by virtue of it being Halloween and her able to move more freely. And yet Constance trying to drag her back to the house raised the suggestion that getting her there would allow her to ‘live’ again – as in surviving indefinitely – and to that end maybe she really was a ghost. This is uncharted territory for me, firstly in establishing if Addy is a ghost and now also contesting the idea of what happens to a ghost that ‘dies’!

You know, for now, I am going to assume that Addy wasn’t a ghost. That the remark about 35 years was how I interpreted it. And that Constance trying to drag the body back to the house was so that she could become a ghost in the event of her death. That’s what I think for now.

Burns Man is another that appears to be free to come and go wherever he pleases so I don’t believe he is a ghost. He does really want that thousand pounds very badly, though. He’s definitely a totally bizarre character, and now he’s taking a serious turn for the nasty all bets are off about what he’s capable of. I suspect Ben might just end up finding a way to placate him, but I am confident he won’t be off the scene for long no matter what happens.

The opening scene once again repeated the tradition of showing a piece of the house’s history where someone got killed, this time a gay couple that met a bad end at the hands of the man in the gimp suit. For the record, I think the man in the gimp suit is the grown form of the dead baby that was pieced together by the doctor. That was a grim backstory and no mistake, and it’s hard to imagine much worse than a kind of zombie-dismembered baby that grew up, and took to wearing a tight-fitting gimp suit (maybe it’s the only thing that keeps all the pieces tightly compact together!).

Ben and Violet’s relationship is in a bad way, though the baby becoming restless (and there’s no doubt that it’s not going to take nine months to pop out and it’s definitely not going to be a normal bouncing baby!) seemed to happen as a result of their argument and Ben being taken away. The suggestion is that Vivien must remain in the house and, furthermore, the family need to be there together otherwise it’s not a happy foetus.

I can’t help but wonder if the spirit of the mistress turning up might present Ben with the opportunity to confess one or two things to his wife that will, at least, stop her from thinking he’s cheating on her. That does seems like an awful lot of revelation to come this early in a show’s lifetime, but on this show anything goes and the thing is so busy rattling along with half a dozen other outlandish plotlines then it could take that kind of bombshell right in its stride.

It still continues to impress, how it’s just so rapidly going at it full tilt. The one thing American Horror Story is not quite hitting the mark with is with the characters. It’s just such a stylised show, hyper-real, that the characters aren’t quite landing square. Vivien is faring the best, and remains the one I turn to as an emotional anchor. Ben is either sexually troubled and upset about it, or just stressed out by the number of secrets and pressures he is inundated with. Violet has a great fearless attitude, but we haven’t got beyond that so far. I can’t even gauge what it is she feels about Tate beyond someone to hang out with and be subjected to weird stuff, with a roll of the eyes and an insouciant walk away.

Don’t get me wrong, I like them – but I am watching them with a detached air. I am not living their experiences with them. I am watching them experience stuff.

Addy getting hit by the car was a brutal shock, mind. The image of her in the mask and costume, flat on the road with her limbs splayed awkwardly was a twisted vision. Trouble is with this show that everyone comes back so seeing a character get ‘killed off’ doesn’t quite contain the same level as shock value as other show’s might. Still, it contained a heck of an impact – lame pun intended. And Constance’s pernicious veering from horrible mother to all-caring sobbing wreck over her daughter’s body makes her a complicated, fascinating creation.

I am absolutely loving this show. The pace of it stops it being boring, and it still manages to generate really great moments of horror and what feel like overwhelming sequences that mark it out as quite unlike anything else I’ve seen on television. It’s got it’s issues with making its main characters relatable, but because it’s so entertaining as a compromise then the quality of the show wins the day. (That last statement always carries the caveat that its fast-pace and entertainment value is spot on now, but forever feels prone to wane or get old fast – let’s hope the show keeps dodging that seemingly inevitable eventuality.)

What was the best part?

The moment where the Burns Man was banging on the door, when Violet was home alone, with her father on the phone. . . it was just a moment of increasing intensity and madness that for a few seconds just threatened to feel totally overwhelming. And then there was that cool reveal of the Gimp Suit Man stood in the room behind her and that sealed off an already fraught situation just getting a whole lot worse.

What do I think will happen next?

Halloween night is set to play out, so that ought to bring some clarification over Addy’s fate. I am going to figure she is dead, but Constance’s reaction to it might allow better understanding about the nature of what it is to be dead, or die, around the house. Meanwhile Ben and Violet are surely to be concentrating on the hunt for Violet. No doubt she’ll turn up alive and well, and maybe Tate will have intervened along the way for that. I’d be amazed if it didn’t involve a trip to the basement! However, there’s the dead mistress for Ben to contend with, now. If he didn’t believe in ghosts already he most certainly will have to now, and if he confesses all to Vivien then she will, too.

Boardwalk Empire: S01 Ep04 – Anastasia

2012-01-23T04:20:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Jimmy has hooked up with Al Capone in Chicago. Although claiming to be just passing through, Jimmy is embroiled in the gangster goings on to the extent that the prostitute he has taken a shine too is mutilated as a retaliatory act to Al Capone’s brute force attempt to take over the area.

In Atlantic City it’s Nucky’s birthday. He invites powerful movers and shakers to his party to discuss terms about building better roads into Atlantic City but his eye is momentarily taken off politics, and his girlfriend, by Margaret’s appearance (there to provide a dress from the boutique).

Margaret is evidently swept up in the heady world of Nucky’s, too, dancing with him and impressing with her intelligent responses. Yet by the next day she is brought back to Earth, to work, seeing Nucky strolling with his girlfriend Miss Danzinger, and on a whim she steals an item of clothing.

Chalky is allowed a personal audience with the leader of the local Klu Klux Klan, hauled in as chief suspect to the hanging of Chalky’s man. After unseen torture, and the removal of a finger, Chalky determines that this is not the culprit after all.

Thoughts

An extremely strong episode. I thought the multi-strand story approach worked well, with each of the main characters having their own nearly self-contained stories playing out alongside each other. It was probably my favourite episode so far and if the rest of the season plays to these kinds of strengths then I can see it really catching hold.

I think Jimmy and Capone’s relationship and story is my most enjoyable part; whilst Jimmy’s reserve and near-dreamer qualities didn’t ring quite true with the guy that was cold and immune after his war experiences from the first episode, he is a terrific foil for Capone’s mercurial character. It’s just strange that Jimmy could seem so at ease given the illusions of Nucky have been shattered and he’s just left his wife and kid behind! And his mother, too!

Jimmy’s mother having a dalliance with one of Rothstein’s men might just be a subplot too far in a show that is still finding its feet, but maybe its planting a seed for now that will grow into something crucial later. I did warm to Jimmy’s mother’s spark and guts in standing up the gangster at her door, and clearly he did, too! But beyond that there’s not really anything about the pair of them getting together that interests me since it seems too out of the sphere of the main events.

Far better and meatier was the introduction of the Klu Klux Klan. It’s in stuff like this where Boardwalk Empire has fertile ground to grow new and interesting things that are fresh to the genre. A collection of racists that are not breaking any laws is a stain on American history, but it’s right that it be included and addressed in this period piece. This is a show, to me at least, about America finding its criminal identity (and with the healthy political investments here, perhaps making intriguing statements about how government and the criminal world were tight bedfellows at the turn of the century). This in turn extends to the characters, struggling to find their place in Prohibition-era America; a period of change both for better and for worse, where only the best able to adapt will survive.

Like Margaret being taken on to the dancefloor by Nucky. It would have been all too clichéd for it to have been a scene all about her having a taste of the ‘good life’, the money and the fine-living, before being dumped back out into her real life like Cinderella making a run from the ball. But it was just as much a flight of fancy for Nucky, who gazed longingly past his crazy hot girlfriend to the prim, above-it-all figure of Margaret behind her.

Chalky almost took the honours for best scene, with his menacing dialogue to the KKK leader about his father that was tricked into a rendezvous with a waiting lynch mob. It was good, injected some cool for sure, but it wasn’t anything you hadn’t seen done before. I do like that Chalky has been invested with some grit and wit, walking out of the room with a finger and the sure knowledge that he hadn’t got his man; it wasn’t quite Omar swinging a shotgun, whistling a tune, but he’s laid down his card as a man not be trifled with.

So four episodes in and Boardwalk Empire is collecting quite an array of characters – Nucky, Jimmy, Capone, Chalky, Van Alden, Margaret – that are filling out and presenting fascinating revelations about who they are and, more importantly, what they do when they encounter one another and whoever gets in their way. The only struggle the show may have is in servicing them all fully and still maintaining a unified momentum.

What was the best part?

I really loved the scene with Jimmy and Capone talking with the gangsters. Jimmy trying to temper Capone’s hot-headed, brute force approach worked for about three seconds before he shot his mouth off and started making outrageous demands. It was a nice touch at the end of the scene with Capone thinking it had all worked out well whilst Jimmy had taken the precise opposite view. It was a good scene for entertainment value, but also highlighted how Capone, at least, will find Jimmy a useful advisor and how the pair of them could make a formidable duo – brains and brawn.

What do I think will happen next?

I envisage Jimmy and Capone being, shall we say, ‘inspired’ by the attack and be looking to turn the tables back in their favour and regain total control over their territory. Violence will ensue. I also suspect Margaret and Nucky’s burgeoning relationship will continue to gather pace (though quite what Margaret will make of Nucky and his world is interesting). And I also imagine that Chalky is going to continue looking for the lynch murderer, but quite where his allegiances will fall should Rothstein and his men go on the offensive again I can’t quite say. Van Alden was absent for this episode, so I suspect to see him again next episode though he’s such a wildcard at the moment it’s hard to predict what his involvement will provoke.

American Horror Story: S01 Ep03 – Murder House

2012-01-16T04:08:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Vivien’s attempts to move are thwarted by the realisation Ben’s handling of their finances has rendered them unable to leave without selling the house. Then she learns that the house is a notorious horror home, even featuring as part of a tour, and is known as the “murder house”. A couple used to live there performing abortions, but the doctor wasn’t just killing the unborn foetuses and was performing all manner of bizarre and grisly experiments.

Vivien does experience some bleeding but, though the doctor considers it harmless “spotting”, it seemed to get better when she returned to the house. The wife of the murdering doctor also appeared, apparently as a potential buyer, although Vivien never noticed the huge wound in the back of her head before she disappeared into thin air.

Ben had a bad time, experiencing blackouts drawing him to a patch of land in the garden he felt compelled to dig up. When one of his patients disappeared initial worries that he killed her turned out to be that she had killed herself after he had been blanking her. Whilst dealing with that and his Vivien’s pregnancy scare he missed an appointment with his mistress, Hayden, who wanted to keep the baby and tell Vivien everything. The burned man showed up and killed her, and buried her in the hole Ben had dug.

In the hole already were the remains of the housekeeper, Moira, and Constance slyly remarked that she was now stuck there after Ben built a garden feature over the grave.

Thoughts

The sheer size of the ‘what happened’ section above says it all – there was just so much going on this episode (and I kept it as brief as I could). No one can accuse the show of holding back or taking its time. Straight out of the gate the mystery behind Constance’s remark to Moira, about how she had killed already, were clarified in the opening scene set in 1983.

I don’t know if it was make-up, good lighting, CGI or a combination of some of those things that de-aged Constance for that scene but it was a flawless effect. And certainly interesting to see that Moira was a young woman when she was killed. There was a later remark about how women see the soul of the person, and men see only what they want to see. It was established here, by Ben and the detective, that when they look at Moira they see her as a sexy, flirtatious young woman. Women, meanwhile, see her as a withering, fussy old lady, which is apparently what her real soul appears to be.

I did enjoy the scene where Ben argued for Moira to be removed from the house, whilst Vivien defended her. The innate comedy as Ben described her coming on to him when we know that, to Vivien, he’s talking about this rather unpleasant and puritanical old woman was highly amusing.

The matter of her bones being buried in the grounds seemingly linked to her inability to be free is a curious one. Could it possibly be that all of the ghostly folk lurking around the building are there because their remains are dotted about the place (perhaps in the basement?). Hard to imagine that, since I fully expect there to be a whole host of other people to be killed in the murder house and appear as a spirit as the show goes on.

I’d imagine there will be a re-appearance from Constance’s husband before too long, for one thing. Just another plot line thrown into a whole stew of the things.

As I sort of expected, the selling of the house and moving out is not going to be easy, and without it the Harmon family are not going to be able to move. The moment where Vivien’s unborn baby seemed to be imperilled when she was away from the house, and calmed when she returned to it, might become something that really anchors her to the place. Once she makes a firm connection that the life of her child demands she remain at the house then there she will surely stay.

The history of the murder house was an interesting one, shedding some light on the jars of baby parts and strange splices sometimes seen in the basement. There’s the possibility that the thing in the basement is a product of the murderous abortion doctor’s experiments but right now I don’t feel like I know anything near enough to hazard further speculation.

This episode seemed to be tapping into the vibe of Stir Of Echoes, just as previous episodes have hinted at the likes of The Strangers (intruders in the house) and The Shining (ghostly twins). There are no doubt numerous other intentional movie references, as though American Horror Story wants to distil as many American horror movie inferences into its DNA.

Ben had a lot of hassle to contend with this episode, when he wasn’t inexplicably zoning out and being drawn to Moira’s burial place, he had blood on his hands, a mistress becoming increasingly uncontrollable, temptation issues with his hot maid and Burnt Face Man haranguing him for money so he can plough on with his ambitions of making it on the stage (possibly the most demented plot in the show so far!).

It’s unclear to me why Ben was so possessed to start digging the hole. There was no obvious suggestion to what was motivating him. But then there’s a lot that’s not known. Like what Burnt Face Man really wants with Ben (he seems to be helping him but twice now he’s displayed a sinister smile that suggests he’s up to no good). And what did the wordless exchange between Constance and Tate signify? And, and, and. . . well, I could go on and on.

If anything, American Horror Story potentially runs the risk of losing its character humanity beneath the intrigue, secrets and supernatural goings on. There was very little Violet this episode, so really I had to hang my empathy with Vivien and Ben. Ben I enjoy watching, though I certainly don’t identify with him and I can’t say I particularly like him. Vivien, however, I do like – I think the actress playing her really sells her as a forthright, fragile and fully-realised person and it’s perhaps the fact that she, a woman, seems to be taking the leading role that is all the more startling – in a good way. Make me care about all the Harmon family as much, if not more, than I just care for Vivien right now and this is a show that could really be something special.

What was the best part?

Hard to better the opening scene, with a more youthful Constance taking brutal (and rather unjust) revenge against Moira and her cheating husband. The shootings were remarkably cold – one through the eye for Moira (loved how Constance would later be delighted by what a crack shot she had been!) and several in the chest for her husband. Even the close out of the scene, shifting to the present day, making you think Vivien was about to walk in on the gruesome scene was nicely done.

What do I think will happen next?

Some clarity about the trinity of Constance, Tate and Moira is needed. Previous notions that Tate is Constance’s son don’t easily shake off, but how acquainted they are with ghosts and what their larger agenda is all about are sure to be ongoing concerns. It’s tempting to think all three of them are ghosts, but I don’t really see Constance being one. Moira is, Tate might be. If Tate is, maybe Constance was also responsible for his death!

Doctor Who: S03 Ep10 – Blink

2012-01-13T04:13:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Sally Sparrow, a relatively ordinary young woman, finds herself weaved into the fabric of The Doctor’s life when she wanders into an old house to take photographs and finds messages directed to her. She takes her friend, but her friend has a run-in with the Weeping Angels – statue-like beings that only move when not being observed – that sends her back in time, permanently.

Sally eventually finds messages from The Doctor embedded in DVDs, informing her about how the Weeping Angels are after her and that she needs to get to the TARDIS. The Weeping Angels close in on her, also keen on harnessing the power of the TARDIS, yet it disappears as they encircle it, catching them into looking at each other and freezing them in stone.

Thoughts

Now this is top notch stuff. This is the kind of episode that crops up during a series that stands out as being superior than the rest. Obviously I haven’t finished watching this series yet, but I find it hard to imagine an episode being better than this. Blink is perhaps the first great example of an episode of Doctor Who you could show to a total non-fan that they would enjoy immensely, despite themselves!

The Doctor, and Martha, being at the periphery of events is something that would make it easy for a newcomer to get involved as we see things from the perspective of just one of the people The Doctor meets in his life. It was a stylish way of telling the story, and it certainly helped that Sally Sparrow herself was so gorgeous in an innocuously cute way. When The Doctor and Martha did appear in person, at the end, it was amusing to catch them in the middle of another crazy adventure (presumably one we’ll never focus on directly during the show, making the assumption that The Doctor and Martha see and do things beyond what we witness during the series).

So the episode’s real strength was in presenting real people, identifiable and likable, and exerting the world of Doctor Who upon them. That exertion came in the form of the Weeping Angels that were a supremely simple yet fascinating creation. Having a foe that is harmless so long as it is being observed generated the impossible stalemate situation of having to stare at it, without blinking, to remain safe. In the space of a blink the Weeping Angel could dart forward, closer and closer. Very cool.

And their manner of despatching their victims neatly sidestepped the usual instant death scenario – casting a person back in time was a neat idea and one that was employed very well (even if it did have a Back To The Future-inspired feel to it all in people living out good lives in the past and sending messages by courier to the present day).

I know that Steven Moffat wrote this episode and he went on to become the showrunner for later series, and it’s clearly with an instalment like this that he distinguished himself. The characters and dialogue had that extra zip about them, a better layer of savvy . Doctor Who has a tough enough time selling itself as credible and cool, and I think it therefore needs to work extra hard at being sharp, harder than other shows might have to, in order to sell itself in this regard.

Doctor Who is always fast-paced and yet this episode still managed to find time for emotional interest to hold the pace, no more so than when Sally went to the bedside of the man she’d only just got a phone number for, to wait with him whilst he died. It was a bittersweet moment that was tenderly addressed. Again, I feel like it’s this extra sophistication that only benefits the show. I appreciate that Doctor Who is a family show, and it’s got younger viewers to cater for alongside the adults, but I think there’s scope for it to stray away from the cartoon japes and monsters for emotional depth.

I do believe that the Weeping Angels became a big favourite with the audience and they feature again, though not during the David Tennant-era. That’s good. It’s not hard to envisage them escaping their deadlocked stare in the basement; all that needs to happen is for them to be discovered and moved, for example! Or, more likely, for the lightbulb to go out and plunge the room into darkness once more to unleash them.

If the episode had a weak point it was in the bum note ending, that rather lamely flashed up images of various real statues, insinuating that these things you see on buildings and streets everywhere could really be these threatening ‘Weeping Angels’ just frozen whilst you look at them. Other people might not have minded but I found it a bit heavy-handed and undercut the subtlety and slickness of all that had preceded it. Hardly ruined things, mind.

New best episode ever? Yeah, I’d say so.

What was the best part?

The episode maintained a strong standard pretty much throughout, though I think the best part had to be the climax of the piece when Sally and her future boyfriend were in the house, staring off the Weeping Angels, before being pursued into the basement. They were fine whilst they kept looking but then, of course, the lightbulb started flickering on and off. . .

What do I think will happen next?

I’d like to be able to say we’ll see more of Sally Sparrow in future instalments – she was so lovely in both manner and appearance! However, alas, I suspect we’ll be back with The Doctor and Martha in more regular fashion, where the ongoing dynamic with Saxon and Martha’s feelings for The Doctor will continue to come to the boil.

Doctor Who: S03 Ep09 – The Family Of Blood

2012-01-11T04:07:00.000-08:00

What happened?

The Doctor, believing he is a human named John Smith, manages to escape the initial trap of ‘the family’ and holds up at the school, commanding the boys to take arms and mount a defence. Timothy, a boy holding the watch that contains The Doctor’s consciousness, returns the timepiece to The Doctor and he wrestles with the decision of ‘killing’ John Smith and abandoning the potential life he could have with the nurse to become a Timelord again.

In the end he chooses to become The Doctor, and cruelly punishes ‘the family of blood’ by interring them in various prisons that leave them permanently trapped in time, living forever like how they planned but not in a way they would have wanted. The Doctor and Martha then return to the TARDIS and leave 1913, the nurse and the human world, behind.

Thoughts

A bit of a surprising episode, in some ways, and not all of them I am quite willing to say married very well together. There seemed to be quite a lot of ideas being thrown into the mix all at once and that had the effect of suddenly making the last five or ten minutes of the episode cluttered and weighty.

The actual business of the plot was relatively lightweight. ‘The Family of Blood’ were given very little further explanation beyond their motivation to become eternal and so grow and spread out across the universe. They were rather easily outwitted in the end, with The Doctor pretending to be human and stumbling around pushing buttons on their ship before making a run for it.

Whilst it was a thrilling moment once he revealed himself as The Doctor (that switch between ‘John Smith’ and The Doctor characters was really good work by David Tennant) the manner by which ‘the family’ were so easily bested makes you wonder why The Doctor considered them so deadly he had to hide his consciousness away in the first place.

As I expected, Martha didn’t fare very well here – entirely unjustified, too. She was an absolute heroine; stayed behind to allow everyone to make their escape, persuaded The Doctor to return, even declaring her love for him, and all for what? To be given a thank you and a hug at the end before off they went again.

The Doctor is actually starting to get on my nerves in this regard. When he had returned as The Doctor he still had the audacity to go to the nurse and basically invite her to come travelling with him as his companion. He said he would like that! I kept waiting for her to say she couldn’t, that he was already ‘with’ someone, but that didn’t get a mention. But she turned him down anyway, and so then he just strolled back to Martha with a hug and thank you and off they went!

Perhaps this is deliberate. They are making The Doctor behave so objectionably towards Martha as part of a series arc. If this is the case then I hope they justify it because, otherwise, I’m finding it really difficult to warm to The Doctor when he’s behaving so ignorantly disrespectful.

Better was the idea being explored here that The Doctor was a terrifying monster of a person, as well as being so wonderful. Timothy’s frightened reaction was also mixed with awe (and an eventual thankfulness by the finish) as he glimpsed images of The Doctor wreathed in fire and dispensing cold-hearted punishment. Indeed, the justice he meted out to ‘the family’, binding them in eternal, tormenting prisons seems way more monstrous than just killing them (or, in the least, letting them die as they were supposed to very shortly).

Is his treatment of Martha and the use of his powers as he sees fit being used here to paint a portrait of The Doctor as a kind of anti-hero? I see all this stuff and I am forced to wonder if it is intentional or just the product of what the particular writer of that episode was doing. It’s hard to imagine such scathing depictions were just allowed to slip through the net so I will have to assume it’s part of the direction the show is taking.

Of course, with the next episode, the reset button might just get pushed and The Doctor and Martha will get along like before as though none of this ever happened. That can sometimes be the danger with Doctor Who as a serialised drama that also caters heavily on standalone episodes.

The last thing to discuss probably encapsulates my general enjoyment mired in confusion this episode left me with overall. The moment where The Doctor, as John Smith, touched the nurse and allowed them both to see the life they could have had together was moving and yet incomprehensible. At least to me. The Doctor had a family with her, grew old and then lay on his death bed having apparently had a great life. It was a touching, interesting sequence – I just don’t understand what caused it, what it was supposed to be or what we were supposed to glean from it. It felt less like a glimpse into a possible future and more like a flight of fancy.

It seemed absurd. And yet I liked it. That’s pretty much my overwhelming feeling towards this episode.

What was the best part?

Whilst The Doctor’s glimpse of a happy human future was emotive stuff, and his ‘ta-da!’ reveal as really being The Doctor amidst ‘the family’ was sparkling stuff, the best part of the episode arrived at the end. Timothy, in World War I, managed to avoid his death. Somewhat mawkish, but in an episode that came laden with heavy referencing of the futility of war (way too overdone for my taste) the ending coda, with Timothy as an old man, a war veteran, paying respects on remembrance day was absolutely lovely.

The Doctor and Martha dropped by, just to catch him there, with Martha putting a poppy in The Doctor’s lapel. Timothy saw them, and smiled, and in that nice little wordless exchange a more powerful and touching chord was struck that the rest of the episode couldn’t get near.

What do I think will happen next?

No references to Saxon in this two-parter, so the only ongoing thread is the matter of Martha and The Doctor. She announced she was in love with him here, taking things up a notch. She was cool enough to play it down afterwards though I suspect there’s going to come the crunch when that coolness evaporates and she breaks down under the impossible strain of her feelings for him not just being returned but pretty much being bluntly disregarded. The girl is gonna fall hard.

Doctor Who: S03 Ep08 – Human Nature

2012-01-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

What happened?

As a result of being pursued by an alien enemy calling itself ‘the family’, The Doctor is forced to turn himself human and hide in 1913, assuming the role of a teacher at a boarding school. With only dim recollections as to who he really is, it is up to Martha to keep her eye on him and open the timepiece watch, which will return all his memories, should a crisis emerge.

A crisis does emerge. ‘The family’ manage to overtake the bodies of various people around the school and village and stage an ambush at the dance. With the timepiece in the possession of a small boy with peculiarly intuitive instincts, Martha, The Doctor and the nurse he is striking a relationship have their lives held in the balance. . .

Thoughts

An extremely enjoyable episode that as well as offering up a refreshing twist on The Doctor’s character basically turns its attentions on Martha, and her relationship with him. It’s something the series has been clicking away with from the beginning and that’s really reaching a peak here.

Indeed, the scene where Martha bemoaned the fact that the one human The Doctor had decided to fall in love with wasn’t her pretty much nailed down what it is she wanted and what she’s never likely to get. I fear she’s in for a rather sad conclusion to her time as the The Doctor’s companion; unable to reconcile being with him on adventures to wanting more than he is willing, or even able, to provide in return.

I liked how the episode quickly threw us into the action – almost like we were coming in at the end of a previous episode with the two of them escaping into the TARDIS, dodging shots fired at them. Then the last ditch measure, that was barely explained, before we were snapped into 1913 England and The Doctor, with just one heart, fully in-character and oblivious as a teacher.

Only his book of stories and drawings gave away his subconscious understanding of who he really was. And I liked how Martha was integrated into proceedings – it wasn’t immediately apparent if she was also living under the same illusion as The Doctor, and was really of the belief she was a servant of the school.

Once it was clear that she was the same old Martha working undercover, and had been doing so for two months, it really helped settle the episode down and further defined her character. Considering the racist remarks she endured (the line about how she couldn’t tell things were clean due to her brown skin was deliciously nasty), alongside the frustration of seeing The Doctor she knows (and loves?) treating her as a nobody clearly display a genuine fortitude and strength.

‘The Family’ were a curious alien. The performances of the actors who were ‘inhabited’ really sold the otherworldliness of them, particularly the snooty schoolboy. The eerie cocking of the head to one side and deep sniffing were managed well; what could have looked silly worked out looking unnerving. Hopefully there will be more explanation about what they are beyond a nebulous form that, for some reason, The Doctor had to hide away from so drastically rather than somehow confront and thwart like how he does every other kind of enemy race!

Really fun episode, overall. Initially confusing but so fast-paced all you could do was hold on and take it in before frustration could set in. And then explanations emerged and before too long aliens had people hostage and The Doctor was forced into a difficult decision.

What was the best part?

It was really a short, near blink and miss it moment, but I really enjoyed when the small boy appeared to glimpse his own death in the trenches of World War I. What I really liked about it was his premonition actually took into account the fact that he had had the premonition! That, at the moment of his death, he knew it was about to happen because he had already seen it; we were just seeing the moment he first learned of it. I liked that detail.

What do I think will happen next?

An absolute certainty is this: The Doctor and Martha will both survive and get out of this situation! I suspect the only way out of the immediate standoff (and letting The Doctor off the hook of choosing Martha or the nurse) will be the smaller boy coming into the mix and opening the watch. From that point The Doctor should be back and he can then thwart ‘the family’ in some way before there’s a bit of heartache involved with him leaving the ‘human’ life and going back to the TARDIS.

It’ll be of most interest to see how Martha reacts. Maybe she’ll even bring up the point that he had fallen for a human woman? I envisage she’ll wind up feeling more despondent than ever, despite a successful escape!

American Horror Story: S01 Ep02 – Home Invasion

2012-01-04T04:43:00.000-08:00

What happened?

When Ben receives word from the girl he cheated with that she is pregnant he goes to be with her whilst she has an abortion. Despite apparently dealing with it maturely it is evident she still has feelings for him and he, meanwhile, is still wrestling with repressed sexual urges that are creating turmoil within.

In Ben’s absence, Vivien and Violet are alone in the house when a trio of murderer enthusiasts break into the house and attempt to recreate a murder that happened in the property during the 1970s. However, with the girls staging a fightback and Tate inexplicably being in the house, the murderer’s meet their comeuppance by a variety of grisly ends.

Ben returns to find his family somewhat traumatised but alive. Pregnant Vivien, however, fearing for the life of her unborn child and the wellbeing of herself and her family, has a determination to sell the house.

Thoughts

This second episode did feel like it had allowed itself to loosen the throttle after the riotous first instalment, but it did so without feeling like there was a lessening in intensity or misplacing the intrigue. Quite the opposite. It was a more standalone affair, self-contained, yet still kept a lot of weirdness ticking along.

I rather liked how it started with another flashback to an appalling occurrence in the house. It made me wonder if every episode will begin in this way – calling back to yesteryear to show some horrific moment. In that sense it would be a little like Six Feet Under, with a little pre-credits mini-story that then feeds into the rest of the episode but also serves as an enjoyable vignette all by itself. Fingers crossed that’s the case.

The weakest part of the episode, and also a bit confusing for me, was Ben’s away trip to meet his ‘mistress’ and perform the abortion. For some reason, and I’m not sure why, I was under the impression that Ben had his affair and got caught quite some time before they eventually moved house. I’m prepared to accept that’s the case and I’ve just got it wrong, but it did initially make me wonder if this wasn’t someone else he’d been playing around with. However, with her speaking about who she was to him and so forth I have become convinced she was the same girl he cheated with but the timings all felt off.

Clearly she is still in love with him and wants him for herself, and even more clearly he’s a man bubbling with sexual repression issues. Is he a sex addict? Or is it simply that the sheer lack of sexual activity with his wife has left him a troubled mess? It’s hard to figure that not getting any action would reduce him to sobbing under a public bridge during a jog, so I await further details on his particular psycho-sexual problems.

Ben being out of the way did allow for the episode’s most intense sequence as there came a knock at the door. . . I assumed something supernatural was occurring when the girl showed up with blood on her head, like a recreation of the opening scene it felt like this was some strange entity using a familiar method to get into the house.

Turned out the intruders here were real people (two episodes in and already normal, human being villains feel refreshing!). It didn’t take long for the bizarre to kick in, however, with Tate appearing in the house – tellingly the question of what he was doing there wasn’t revealed.

Constance did mention that she had a son. I wonder, then, is Tate her son? Only Ben did seem to be talking on the phone with Tate’s parents so that seems a little off. In the freaky world of American Horror Story I wouldn’t have been too surprised to learn that the hunky young man Constance was ‘entertaining’ turned out to be her son! In reality he might just be the man in the gimp suit, or he’s a character being loaded now to be introduced later.

Whatever or whoever Tate is (he did remark that he has bloody visions, as we saw in the previous episode, so for now I am sticking with the notion that he is a living flesh and blood person!), he was once again imploring Violet to lure people down to the basement. The twins were the ‘ghosts of the week’ last episode, this time it was the murdered girls made to dress as nurses. I get the impression that before this first season is even done the house is going to be apparently teeming with the restless dead!

The fact that they must surely remain in the house for the season does render the ending statements of intent to move rather empty. Either Vivien will have a change of heart, or circumstances will dictate that they can’t leave even though they want to. I am plumping for the former – the latter seems a bit extreme at this stage!

Certainly a strong episode, though, and considering how hard an act to follow episode one was I am all the more impressed. I still have a slight question mark pondering how long a show like this can sustain itself just being continuously like this, but beyond that it’s the most exciting and interesting show I’ve been introduced to. When it’s on you just can’t afford to take your attention away in case you miss something.

What was the best part?

The scene where one of the murderers rang the doorbell and recreated the original murderer’s ruse to gain entry into the house was genuinely unsettling stuff. I also liked how Vivien showed guts and guile and refused access, but all the while there were other figures in the house already. . . Yikes!

What do I think will happen next?

As stated, I don’t believe that Vivien will get her ambition of selling the house and moving out to fruition. Circumstances or a change of heart will dictate that she doesn’t achieve that end and the family will remain exactly where they are to endure whatever horrors are presented to them. If they survive, they’ll probably just become slightly stranger as a consequence – like Constance and Tate!

Terra Nova: S01 Ep12 – Resistance

2011-12-30T06:47:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Jim is captured and interrogated by Lucas, but gives away nothing. Skye aligns herself with Lucas and grants Josh his freedom and Jim a reprieve, and so the Shannon family make their escape. Washington aids them, but her endeavour is a sacrifice when she is shot and killed.

Jim is sent through the portal in a container on a mission to release a massive bomb to destroy the portal facility and cut off Terra Nova from the future. The plan succeeds, and Jim manages to return to the now isolated prehistoric world.

Skye reveals she was working against Lucas all along and, when Taylor fights with him and looks as though he may be about to killed, she shoots Lucas. Unseen, however, he crawls away. Meanwhile Terra Nova is vacated by the military who have relocated to the Badlands, and a strange item has been recovered from there: the prow of a 19th century ship.

Thoughts

Good for Terra Nova. From shaky beginnings, and an inherent cheesy vibe and a clumsy way with dialogue and plotting, this is a show that had great potential and appeared to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. But there was always something likable about it, despite all of the flaws and maybe even because of them. So good for this show to have managed to pull itself together to deliver a rousing finale and sow seeds of promise for future seasons – if it ever gets to have any.

The death of Washington was the episode’s coldest and most brutal moment. I knew the instant she died, however, that everyone else was bound to be safe. There was no way Terra Nova was going to deliver a massacre, but the nature of Washington’s sacrifice and death was definitely the show delivering its biggest impact moment. It’s just a shame her character hadn’t had more screentime and development previously. As it was we knew who she was but we didn’t really know anything about her. Her death was shocking in its execution, but not in generating any sense of loss. Terra Nova will go on just as well without her.

Liz got given something to do other than be doting towards Jim or do something science-y, at least. The trick with the injection showed she’s got some guile about her, too, and I’d like to see more of that from her to give her more vitality. From a promising beginning she is a character that has been somewhat pigeonholed. Even entanglements with Malcolm fizzled away into nothing and she became a one-note stock personality.

Mind, few characters really had much in the way of development. Taylor was always the most interesting, and remained so. Yet credit to Skye, as well. At first presented as an improbable object of affection for Josh, she’s developed into something more layered. Her shooting of Lucas here showed she had flourished into a character that could have more guts and courage than most other characters. She could almost blossom into a Starbuck-like figure. Well, OK, a Starbuck-lite figure. She more than anyone has definitely benefited from the last few episodes and the relationship between her and Taylor is also one that possesses plenty of mileage.

(It could be a bit like Adama and Starbuck, actually! Ha!)

The father-son showdown between Taylor and Lucas did really well to undercut the audience’s expectations. Terra Nova is guilty of going down the cheesy route all too readily, so when Lucas had a sudden about-face and pleaded for forgiveness from his father it looked farfetched and unbelievable – but that fit in with Terra Nova! To have it turn out to be a genuine ruse after all was cool. And, sure, having Lucas manage to crawl away and survive was hokey, but it does mean that the father-son relationship can take a few more twists and turns. Fact is, Lucas has promise as a deranged wildcard in the Terra Nova jungle and any second season would miss him.

I still think there will be an eventually father-son redemption bonding!

Am I supposed to figure that the Carnosaur that ran riot from the container was the equivalent of a T-Rex? I had predicted a T-Rex would make a big appearance in the finale, so to that end the Carnosaur just about fit the bill. The image of Jim running from the exploding facility with the dinosaur rampaging behind him but ahead of the blast was an eyeball-popping moment, that was for sure.

Mira will, naturally, have to assume that her reward of being reunited with her daughter was one that would have been fulfilled had the portal remained intact. As such she and the Sixer gang are sure to remain an enemy of Taylor and Terra Nova as they were the ones that destroyed the portal connection. It’s unclear if the Sixers have gone with the military, to the Badlands, but that’s the impression I got. What’s at the Badlands is, naturally, the big question mark Terra Nova presented to entice the prospect of a second season.

The recovery of the piece of ship suggests that there was/is a civilisation on Terra Nova. The most obvious idea would be that there was another rift in time back in the 19th century that people slipped through to this prehistoric world and set up life there. What became of them is a key question. Maybe they still exist. It is an entire world, after all, and not even bound by being a part of Earth’s history – so anything is possible.

It may even be that the rift is open already, and is connected to the 19th century. Perhaps the rift there is out at sea, and as such remains largely undetected except for when some ship happens to stumble into it and then runaground in the badlands. Perhaps there are rifts all over the place, connected to all different times! The possibilities are endless!

I am pleased that Terra Nova has cut itself off from the future (though, no doubt, the future is hastily resurrecting the portal should there be, say, a season 3 or 4 when they can make a re-appearance to liven things up!) so the world can be focussed as a more self-contained environment. That these remaining people may form the basis for a new civilisation is an intriguing premise. And as much as Terra Nova has been cheesy and poorly-written, and all too often clumsy in plot executions, I’d like to see it return.

In a funny way, it really grew on me. Not once did I ever think it was brilliant, and it was rarely captivating. But for a nice dose of easy, fun viewing with more than a dash of interesting potential, Terra Nova has been a good show.

What was the best part?

The moment where Lucas appeared to plead for forgiveness from his father only for it to be a fake so he could get in close and stab him was a deft reversal of Terra Nova’s usual mawkishness. Having Skye then enter the frame at the crucial moment and pump a bullet into Lucas not only showed her character has a serious edge, it also made for the best moment in the episode.

What do I think will happen next?

Terra Nova will re-build and, no doubt, be forced to investigate just what on Earth is at the Badlands. As said above, I expect there to be a rift connected to the 19th century, and perhaps signs of a former civilisation. Beyond that the show has pretty much given itself a clean slate, with the Terra Nova people left to start a new independent life for themselves.

Terra Nova: S01 Ep11 – Occupation

2011-12-27T13:58:00.000-08:00

What happened?

The plans to stop the attack from the future on Terra Nova go awry when they send through a suicide bomber and destroy the portal. Jim is knocked unconscious for days and when he wakes he finds that Lucas and the people he is working for have taken over Terra Nova and are already making plans to mine the place of resources once they have wiped out plants and animals.

Whilst the people of Terra Nova that survived are kept as prisoners there under military rule, Taylor and a few soldiers are in the jungle staging a fightback. Jim groups with them and they manage to thwart the first assault to decimate the jungle. However, when Lucas begins beating Josh (working in the bar to try and eavesdrop for intel) Jim storms in and, though he makes a good fight, is overhwhelmed – and Lucas demands he tell him where he can find Taylor.

Thoughts

Things didn’t turn out how I, nor the people of Terra Nova, expected. And it made for the best episode yet. Cheese got to take a backseat when the show decided it was time to get serious (well, about as serious as it can be allowed to). It actually had a bit of a Battlestar Galactica season 3 feel to it, with our heroes and their homes under occupation from the enemy. And in the short space this episode allowed enough was done to make you hate the villains and want our good guys to come good.

Interesting start to the episode, beginning back with a stunning view of future Earth (apparently mostly a desert wasteland with giant pods erected in which humanity lives) it served to remind that the old world is a dying place – though it isn’t one that’s not without its own interesting angle and, if the show could find the scope for it, if Terra Nova chose to spend more time outside of Terra Nova to uncover plot machinations in the future, then that might prove fertile ground.

Another stylish choice was to have Jim taken out by the suicide bomber blast (I liked that he wasn’t a willing suicide bomber) and then awake disoriented, finding that the worst had happened and the enemy had, for the meantime, won. Of course it also meant the show didn’t have to go to the effort of showing the big battle and could cut quicker to the insurrection – but it worked well, perhaps more so here with this show than in others, because here we’re used to seeing our heroes plan's work out and them overcome the odds. To see them taken down, to see the enemy erecting flags and holding our main characters prisoner in their homes, that somehow felt more brutal because of the wholesome pedigree of the show’s previous episodes.

It’s not like Terra Nova suddenly found a mean, gritty streak, mind. The nastiest part of the episode showed the big bad corporate military guy shooting a brachiosaur in the head. Apart from giving him a cape and moustache to twirl it couldn’t really be less subtle in giving us someone to boo and hiss at. Even Lucas winced at it. As for Lucas himself, well, I did previously assert that I expected a father-son reunion to occur. Now I’m not so sure – Lucas did try hard enough to kill Taylor and he’s been something of a bastard about the place. I’m not calling off a total redemption arc here, because there is the other big bad man that could assume the role of chief villain, but it seems less likely.

Also, I did previously reckon that the Sixers would eventually come good and join in the fight with the good guys. Well, so far at least, that hasn’t panned out either. Mira I just can’t pin anything on at the moment because she wasn’t really allowed any moment to voice her own perspective. She did seem suspicious of Jim when he was pretending to be injured and delirious, but that didn’t go anywhere. I am sure that she expects her end of the deal to be fulfilled (if I remember rightly she wanted her daughter?) and if that doesn’t happen she’ll swiftly change allegiances. I don’t know if she or the Sixers actually will – but I find it hard to believe that both Lucas and Mira will remain bad to the finish. If they don’t get killed off (Mira, possibly, but Lucas surely not – but honestly I don’t expect either of them to) then I’d be very surprised if one of them didn’t stand up against the oppressors and help Taylor.

Indeed, if Lucas does manage to get the information he wants from Jim then Taylor’s going to be compromised and his people, already in a bad way, are definitely going to need a break from somewhere. Jim, meanwhile, will surely have a big part to play. Can’t exactly say the rest of the Shannon family have been showing much in the way of revolutionary spirit, and whilst Josh is well-meaning he’s also genuinely an idiot (let’s antagonise the chief bad man holding you and your people captive when he’s a had a drink!), so at least Jim has been showing some can-do attitude and is ready to bring the fight.

I liked the detail of Washington kicking her conscience around for surrendering. Not quite sure what the thinking was in having her sit in a bar all day to make a public example of her, though (particularly when she was left free to cavort with the drunken soldiers!). Still, I hope she gets her kick ass moment. And if it falls down to a girl-on-girl slug out between her and Mira then that can’t fail to be a great moment.

Terra Nova needed an episode like this; it needed to raise the stakes and give us some characters to really root for and the circumstances be dire enough to warrant proper drama. Whilst it still wasn’t what you would consider great television, it was the best episode so far and in an odd way I found it more enjoyable perhaps because of the low standards previously set through the season (particularly the first half) and because it undercut that nice, decent, cheesy vibe the show otherwise had. It wasn't great, but it was very good.

I genuinely can’t call it at the moment. Will the season end with things getting even worse and a cliffhanger at the most awful moment? Or will the current crisis get resolved, and the insurgent efforts come to fruition and take down the oppressors, Terra Nova getting reclaimed by Taylor and the slate wiped relatively clear? I lean towards the latter, but that’s because I’ve got low expectations that Terra Nova has the guts to be brutal. This episode went some way to undercutting my expectations with edgier surprises, so maybe the next and final one will really go for it. . .

What was the best part?

The boo-hiss villainy of the bad man killing the harmless brachiosaur was then followed up by the suspense driven cliché of the ‘bomb’ being diffused by cutting wires and the clock ticked down. It’s been done a stack of times before but it’s one of those staples that can’t help but generate some excitement – and this was a good example of it. I liked that it was Lucas urging the car to get out of the blast zone because he so wanted to detonate and kill his father. And when the detonation failed I especially liked how he got that cool multi-rocket launcher (not a bad shot) and tried to nail his old man that way.

What do I think will happen next?

Lucas won’t die but he will get thwarted (and perhaps either slope off into the jungle again, or return to the future to hatch another scheme). Mira will either die, or become a part of the Terra Nova camp along with the rest of her Sixers. Taylor will return to camp and reclaim Terra Nova and all of the Shannons will survive. Oh, and maybe Skye will make some kind of move on Josh or something. Because what would Terra Nova be without some pointless and saccharine scene of gooey love? (As you can see, my expectations don’t spell out terrific last episode finale – but I’m setting my hopes low so that they can be blown out of the water.) Out of the box prediction: just when all seems lost, a T-Rex will come charging into the fray. We’ve not had one of those show up yet. The season finale seems like a perfect place to make a debut appearance.

Terra Nova: S01 Ep10 – Within

2011-12-23T06:08:00.000-08:00

What happened?

As Jim’s investigation leads him closer to revealing that Skye is the spy in camp, Skye herself is under pressure from Lucas to supply him with information he needs to complete his work on making the portal work both ways. With her mother’s life under threat, Skye gives Lucas what he needs. Jim and Taylor work out what Skye has been doing but they are unable to stop Lucas from using the portal to venture back to the future, threatening to return with an army to wipe out Terra Nova.

Skye’s mother is recovered from the Sixer camp by Taylor’s previous banished soldier, Curran, and Taylor himself addresses the entire colony to inform them they must prepare for the oncoming enemy that threatens to destroy their entire way of life.

Thoughts

The steadily-improving Terra Nova doles out another decent episode, and sets the stage for what feels like could be an almighty showdown. And you know, the optimist in me holds a candle of hope that the show has got it in it to deliver the goods, to end this first season with a stunning climax that will validate it as one that has been getting better and better with every episode.

Everyone loves an underdog story. Terra Nova feels like that underdog, and all it needs to do is come good for the finish.

I’ll tell you what I noticed and thought was good this episode that I can’t say I’ve noticed before: the music. It really seemed to stand out and grab my attention (previously I thought it sounded rather dreary – here it had a bit more edge to it). Just like the show, it’s like the music has been struggling to figure out its identity but now is on the right track and all the better for it.

This episode couldn’t help itself entirely – no episode of Terra Nova is complete without some truly terrible dialogue and/or patient-testing plotting. Here we had Maddy’s subplot where she got all stressed out because her computer “Plex” core had burned out and she needed a new one so she could read and do homework. (Again, the script tells us she’s incredibly geeky but her performance really doesn’t sell it.) And so this peripheral froth of a subplot saw her bartering with the wheelchair trader and then turning to Boylan – and just when you thought it wasn’t bad enough he then had a sudden character transplant and was jittery and fearful of Jim so much so he gave Maddy what she wanted for absolutely nothing.

Awful. It’s better to pretend that whole part of the episode didn’t happen. Along with the terrible opening shots of bad-CGI pterodactyls (or whatever they call flying dinosaurs in Terra Nova); pointless and poor and all the more maddening by being completely unnecessary.

Skye took a fair share of the limelight here and it was probably her strongest episode for it. I particularly liked the detail that her mother called her ‘Bucket’ because she used to wear a bucket on her head as a child when she had dreams of being a soldier. That detail shed more light and depth to her character than anything else I can think of, humanising her in an instant.

Whilst more could have been made of the dramatic conflict inherent in her being rumbled as the spy (Jim far too easily reached the conclusion that she was behaving as a double agent against her will and I’d have liked to think Josh’s sense of betrayal would be pretty acute) it was better that it wasn’t dragged out. But Terra Nova, soft-hearted soul that it is, wasn’t quite prepared to have Skye live with the guilt of walking away to leave her mother to die. Up she popped at the end of the episode, conveniently rescued off-camera by Taylor’s once-banished soldier.

It’s not that I begrudge convenient, happy event plotting – it’s just that sometimes it can feel altogether too unbelievable if not handled right. The rescue of Skye’s mother fell on that side of disbelief for me.

Bad dialogue of the episode fell to Taylor, when he encountered Skye and demanded she tell him something that would make him believe what she was saying about Lucas. Of course, Lucas had previously provided her with enough backstory information of a date when it all went sour between him and Taylor, and so she could use that to prove herself. Again, that’s just really too convenient; so clumsy and heavy-handed it lands with a clunk.

Further criticism for Lucas, too. His character here came off worse than it has before. Instead of sounding like some righteous genius with a genuine viewpoint that runs contrary to his father’s he just came across as a petulant little brat that was prepared to cut off his nose to spite his face just so long as he could get one over on his dad. For someone so smart those daddy issues are provoking him towards a mass murder and destruction of a new world – and he doesn’t even seem to particularly care if it’s right or wrong.

If his hatred for Taylor was simply colouring his judgment that would be fine – but it’s actually dictating his behaviour beyond rational morals and that, for me, needs better justification. If I thought he was going to make a proper villain I would be more in-line for rooting against him, however this being Terra Nova I still expect a father-son, feelgood reunion is on the horizon.

With all this criticism it doesn’t sound like there was anything good to report about this episode, but that’s not the case. Despite all these detractors it went about its business briskly and wasted no time in getting the plot moving towards some serious action. In its own way, it’s made me care about the Shannon family. The image of Jim at the end, holding on to his family with a grim foreboding at what was coming, of what he and everyone was being called on to do to save themselves, brought home the stakes and made me realise that I do hope for the best for these cheesy, goofy Shannons!

What was the best part?

Despite Lucas sounding like a whiney teenager, his capture of the portal – blasting the conveniently positioned all on one side soldier guards – and then his confrontation and declaration of intent to Taylor really put a line in the sand between them. His stepping into the machine with a full-blooded promise that he would be back felt like a genuine threat. I didn’t doubt for a second, after seeing and hearing him, that when he came back he was going to be bringing some serious shit back with him.

What do I think will happen next?

Camp Terra Nova is going to have to conjure some serious defence strategies to protect themselves from the imminent onslaught. I fully suspect it to be a major battle (although the question of just destroying the portal ought to be raised, surely!?). I expect the Sixers to side with Terra Nova when it counts, too. And, furthermore, I anticipate Lucas and Taylor finding some kind of resolve between them. Mostly, though, I am just hoping for something spectacular and climactic.

Misfits: S03 Ep08

2011-12-22T04:35:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A super-powered psychic brings back ghosts from the gang’s past. Sally visits Simon, believing she is there to seek revenge for the murder of her boyfriend. However, her boyfriend arrives and tells her that she is not there for vengeance and, with their spirits having found each other, they disappear.

Whilst Simon and Alisha go through a rocky spell as a result of Sally’s actions they make up. However, another spirit, who the gang once killed after she attempted to brainwash them, believes she is there for vengeance and slashes Alisha across the throat and kills her.

Now believing Simon has found his destiny, of being in an endless loop of going back in time, saving Alisha and then dying, he acquires the power to time travel and goes to his past. The remaining gang members figure all they have left to do is see out their probation period and try to live happily ever after.

Thoughts

There’s a great temptation to wonder, with this being the series finale, if this episode doesn’t mark the end of the show. There’s a sense of a closed loop regarding the Simon and Alisha romance and timeline, and this episode practically closed out having briefly returned to the beginning. The remaining characters have mostly found resolutions but, although it might feel anticlimactic, there’s a definite vibe that if this were the very last Misfits episode it did provide closure.

I don’t think that’s the case. There’s still one or two ruffles in the plotting that hang in the balance and, with this show being the way it is, nothing can ever be considered final. This episode saw the return of characters long since dead from the first series, and far from being incidental they were instrumental in what happened.

Simon being reunited with the wonderfully distant Sally was the main drive of the episode. Sally was always good for possessing a chillier side to her crocodile smile and she effortlessly brought that back from the afterlife, too. Her ploy to destroy Simon’s life wasn’t exactly an arch-mastermind plan, and it’s arguable that it was too-easily resolved – although the old romantic in me did enjoy seeing her get back with the probation worker and then disappear after a kiss.

I did also like seeing that first probation worker return. He was barely in the first show for five minutes before he became a snarling, raging madman. So barring a few fire extinguishers to the face he fared very well. And his conversations with the others, them detailing how the other probation workers had fared, was very amusing. In hindsight, Alisha’s defiance about how they had just been trying to save their own lives and she considered they had been doing very well would turn out to be bitterly ironic.

Alisha’s death was the big shock moment. Even in this show, where anything can happen, the moment it did it felt like one of those events that was tragically permanent. Curtis could have resurrected her but only as a zombie – he no longer had the power that has previously undone the terrible. There was, indeed, bitter irony soaked through this episode.

It did make sense that Alisha had to die in order for Simon to find the will to travel back. (I can’t believe it never occurred to me that it would take something like that to make it happen, actually. Probably because he went back to save her life made me figure hers was a life that stayed saved.) Yet as Kelly romantically noted (and hasn’t she discovered her softer side thanks to Seth!?) it was a beautiful notion that Simon had plunged into an endless loop, to save her and allow their love to blossom over and over.

Yet there is a fly in the ointment, unless I have really missed something. The photo of the two of them in Las Vegas. Now, maybe I’ve missed something here, but I was under the impression that this photograph existed almost like a permanent marker of a future event and until that future event occurred then Simon would never go back. Now (again, assuming I haven’t missed anything) the photo has come to mean something else: hope.

Simon took the photograph back with him, presumably because it’s a picture of something that has yet to happen even for him. Which does suggest there is some hope, some possibility, that he can properly save Alisha and the two of them will make it to Las Vegas. If that’s the interpretation I am supposed to reach then it’s really clever writing. (If I just bloody missed the fact that they’ve already been to Las Vegas and had that picture taken then I am a complete idiot that hasn’t been watching closely enough.)

It was a fine end to the series. I wasn’t at all hopeful that there would be resolution to the Simon-Alisha timeline in this final episode so it was thrilling to see him assume the role, organise everything he needed to go back with him and become the man in the mask. Misfits was right to allow itself to get serious and let its hero have his big hero moment with the music and the direction of the sequence and it was a real treat to see.

Just like the remaining band of heroes were left on a rooftop, staring into the distance to their hero theme tune, Misfits signed off on an epic chord leaving me wanting more. As I understand it, this isn’t to be the last series. It’s a show that’s gaining in popularity and credentials and quite right, too. Hopefully they will all be back next year!

What was the best part?

Whilst I did appreciate the shock value of Alisha getting her throat cut (and I also liked the fact that it was righteous vengeance – our heroes do have blood on their hands!) the best part was what followed, with Simon becoming the man in the mask, facing up to his own future (and certain death, no less). Way to finish on a high.

What do I think will happen next?

Tough question, considering the ending to this was left more wide open than the rooftop view the series closed out with. If Simon and Alisha have now just been written out of the show then the Misfits world will certainly seem like an emptier one. At time of writing I am still scratching my head about the Las Vegas photo, though, so that being said I’ll predict: If Simon and Alisha are in the next series then Simon will develop a power that will allow everything that has happened to happen and still save the pair of them! If they are done, then there’s room for more new faces to join the gang – and that’s not something I can predict at all!

Misfits: S03 Ep07

2011-12-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Using his new power to bring the dead back to life, Curtis resurrects Seth’s girlfriend, Shannon. Whilst Seth breaks up with Kelly to attempt to make things work, Curtis discovers that his power causes the dead to return as bloodthirsty zombies.

The gang are forced to band together and stop the growing number of undead to prevent an outbreak that involves killing an old lady, cheerleaders and their latest probation worker. Seth kills Shannon and both he and Kelly declare their love for one another.

Thoughts

This is more like it. Misfits firing on all cylinders, meddling in the right genre with the prerequisite dose of unpleasantness, bad language and outrageous behaviour. It was such a return to old school form they even bumped off a probation worker; a staple that has now become a signature event!

The throughline of Seth attempting to reconcile his past with Shannon almost strayed into unsubtle territory when he was once more a supplier feeding her habit, only this time instead of drugs it was blood, and this time rather than kill her off and regret it he found love. And then kill her off. It certainly warmed the heart to see Kelly find such joy; hard-faced and blunt she may be, we’ve seen that she has a heart of gold merely diminished and wearied by a life of hard knocks. She deserves happiness.

Everyone was a pleasure to watch this episode. Take Simon and Alisa – him agog at the cheerleader display only for her to suggest that she might wear such an outfit to please him, later touted as a threat after she was blood-splattered following vigorous zombie-cheerleader slaying with the pulverised remains at her feet.

It’s a credit to Misfits that it can suddenly drop in a troupe of cheerleaders purely for explicit purposes of them becoming zombies and it not be considered ludicrous. Point is, it is ludicrous, but that preposterousness is the skill of the writing and the in-built joke of the show. It inhabits a strange, off-kilter world, surreal and self-aware, whilst still keeping itself real. Same goes for the probation worker. That many missing workers would have aroused far more suspicion, but like the countless bodies the gang have buried, this is a world where such things are just about allowed to let slide so long as there's been just enough done to keep it quiet.

Curtis has managed to wrangle himself back into the thick of things when he was, above everyone, the most in danger of becoming irrelevant. Clearly his power was the key driver of events, though quite what he does now with a power that can basically create zombies is anyone’s guess. I suspect he’s going to want to trade that in (but then to do so would mean risking such a power being in someone else’s possession!). Curiously, I am finding Curtis to be the most amusing character. He doesn’t splurge outrageous remarks and wisecracks like Rudy, but he’s often the ‘straight’ character forced to deal with the most bizarre and freaky occurrences and it’s his very reactions that are the source of much humour.

All in all, this was a Misfits classic. Throwaway and indispensable, tying up longstanding plot threads whilst delivering a standalone slice of entertainment. With Seth and Kelly now established all that really remains is for the plot of Simon and Alisha to run its course – though whether that happens this series remains to be seen.

Of course, the matter of whether or not another probation worker will ever emerge should be addressed. They’ve gone through two this series, so you’d have to figure that if another one should arrive on the scene they ought to survive the series!

What was the best part?

The whole episode was on top form, but really the scenes with our heroes rushing around taking out zombie cheerleaders was absurd and gory and brilliant. From Alisha’s ruthless slaughtering, to Rudy cowering behind a door whilst blood splashed against it as cheerleaders got pulverised, it was nothing but delightfully demented entertainment.

What do I think will happen next?

The preview for next week’s episode looked like a corker, with previous characters that have died during the show’s lifespan returning to the Misfit gang. Given we’ve had the dead physically resurrected I have to assume this ‘return of the dead’ phenomena will happen via some other means (perhaps a totally psychic, mental guilt thing). The big question, since this is the last episode, is whether Simon and Alisha’s timeline turmoil will find a resolution. I find it hard to imagine it will – Simon doesn’t seem anywhere near ‘finished’ as the man in the mask to fulfil his destiny.

American Horror Story: S01 Ep01 – Pilot

2011-12-13T04:17:00.000-08:00

What happened?

After a traumatic miscarriage, and subsequent infidelity, the Harmon family relocate across country to a new home to try and rebuild their life. The house they have moved into, however, has a history littered with death and strange goings on, and it doesn’t take long before these become manifest.

A housekeeper arrives that wife Vivien perceives as an old woman, only husband Ben perceives her as a sultry and seductive young woman. The next door neighbour, Constance, also claims to have killed her once already, whilst she seemingly wanders freely about the house to collect her daughter, Adelaide, and pilfer items. There’s ghostly apparitions of murdered twins, a figure in a gimp suit that has sex with Vivien (potentially getting her pregnant) and Ben is prone to sleepwalking and lighting fires.

Daughter Violet experiences bullies at the new school, but befriends one of her psychiatric father’s patience, Tate. The two combine to terrorise the bully but the resulting chaos and monstrous glimpses freaks Violet out enough to tell Tate to leave.

Thoughts

Whoa. I honestly can’t say I expected that! Before watching the programme the brief adverts and promos I’d seen suggested American Horror Story was going to take the well-used plot mechanic of a family moving to a new house that turns out to have spooky goings on. To that extent I got what I expected. But boy did I get a whole lot more.

The pre-credit sequence delivered enough messed up material to set its stall out, with the obnoxious twins meeting a sticky end after being attacked by something toothy and unpleasant in the basement. The introduction of young Adelaide issuing warnings of their death just added to the totally unsettling vibe. The proceeding hour just went on to throw a series of quickly-edited, fast-paced disturbing events, characters and moments with little recourse for pacing or exposition.

Where to start? The eerie housekeeper, who appears as a half-blind old-woman to Vivien and a teasing harlot to Ben? As if she wasn’t peculiar enough next door neighbour Constance then made the remark about how she had killed her once already!

Let’s just examine that for a second. First it loads the idea that the housekeeper is a ghost. Furthermore that Constance murdered her. And further to that, Constance can see her and accepts her as a ghost without a qualm! That’s a hell of a lot to digest in one quick remark.

Constance is an absolute delicious joy, though. Her introduction to Vivien was pierced with horrible sentiments and outrageous statements, yet all delivered with calming surface pleasantry. Her tale of wanting to be a Hollywood actress before “the mongoloid” showed up was truly breathtaking, and yet she’d later undercut her apparent cruel scorn of her child by threatening Vivien if she ever touched her daughter again. Like with pretty much everything shown here, all is not what it seems.

I did also like Vivian, too. Of all the family members she was the one that came across as the strongest, though she’s not without her weird qualities. There was the suggestion that she was medicated during her sexual encounter with the man in the gimp suit – though quite what he was all about, and what it may mean for her pregnancy, is literally too bonkers right now to even fathom.

Ben is certainly troubled. His sexual frustrations resulting in a cry-wank after seeing the housekeeper masturbating in horny form exhibited serious psychological issues. Not to mention that he has adopted potentially murderous pyromaniac tendencies in his waking sleep, like the creepy burns man said happened to him. And Ben’s the guy people come to with their problems! Which brings me to Tate, the teenager Ben was treating that has rejection issues.

I am struggling to recall if there was ever a scene where Tate wasn’t in the house. What I mean is, is Tate potentially a part of the supernatural fixtures and fittings of the house itself? He did catch a glimpse of what appeared to be his own form, with blood dripping from the head. And, of course, that scene in the basement where he appeared to be one with the beast that scared the life out of the bully heavily suggested he was a driving force to what occurred.

I was pleased to see that despite the deluge of ideas and rapid cutting into and away from horrific images, there was time made for actual character beats. The scene where Ben and Vivien had a row with one another, clearly an argument that had been bubbling and repressed, turning into much-needed sex was brilliantly performed. This show needs humanising more than most, just to anchor the preposterousness. Credit also to Violet, managing to come over as a likable, near-fearless yet also vulnerable teenager. The show has done great work in making three dysfunctional people into likable leads.

So I’ve been tremendously impressed by this first episode, and my only concern is that they’ve thrown everything and the kitchen sink into this pilot episode and blasted off with a momentum that cannot be sustained. It’s thrown a lot of crazy into the air in no time at all and converting all that into an engaging, long-running series looks like no mean feat. If the rest of American Horror Story can match up to the standard of this first episode then I’m set for a hell of a time watching it.

What was the best part?

Tricky thing here is that few of the scenes lasted for a particularly long time so restless was the pacing and editing. My favourite part was probably the very first scene with the ill-fated twins mooching around the house. Instantly creepy with young Adelaide, and hitting viewers with the grisly baby body parts in jars, it wasted no time in showing this show meant business and was pulling no punches. As opening scenes go, few ever grab the attention this sharply.

What do I think will happen next?

So much to speculate on! I certainly foresee Tate remaining a part of Violet’s life despite her objection to him. I expect Constance will make herself a constant visitor, too. In the long run Vivien’s pregnancy will surely turn out to be freaky, considering the gimp-father, and Ben is going to continue to be lured towards having sex with the housekeeper (with dire consequences) and potentially burning down the place and murdering his family (although this won’t actually happen otherwise it’s the end of the show!). Right now, the only thing I can predict with any great certainty is that all bets are off.

Terra Nova: S01 Ep09 – Now You See Me

2011-12-11T12:14:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Whilst on an excursion outside of the colony looking for his son, Taylor is captured by, and then subsequently captures, Mira. The pair of them are forced to work together from a couple of territorial dinosaurs. They part on amicable terms, with the suggestion that things could have been different between them.

In Terra Nova, Skye is revealed to be the mole in the camp, though she is seemingly only acting out of a need to save her dying mother in the Sixer camp. She has to act to prevent Jim and Liz from discovering her identity by destroying her blood DNA evidence. Never-the-less, Jim now has a list of under 50 females as his list of suspects and his investigation continues.

Thoughts

Well well well, I don’t want to get enthusiastic, even giddy, at the prospect of Terra Nova actually showing signs of becoming a decent television programme, but I can at least enjoy the fact that my perseverance is being rewarded by the last couple of episodes being rather good. It’s by no means anything special, but it’s much-improved!

The little adventure of Taylor and Mira was a splendid angle to take, and unexpected. (Not sure what she was doing out on her own, mind.) There was some clarification that Mira and the rest of the Sixers are basically mercenaries, hired-help, and as like Skye would prove to be, she’s acting in the interests of protecting her loved ones.

Whilst their see-saw power struggle over who had captured who was fun, the potential legacy of what their coming together may mean is the most intriguing. I am staking a guess that the Sixers may eventually switch from being enemies to allies, with the two sides uniting against this powerful organisation back in future Earth looking to drain resources from the new world.

Taylor made a remark that Mira didn’t realise what the people she was working for were really all about, and I suspect she’ll see the error of her ways and convince her people to stand with Taylor and fight for Terra Nova. I would certainly welcome this plot line. As I’ve said previously, I kind of hope the business of this battle of the portal can get cleared up in the first season – and if that leaves the situation where Terra Nova and the Sixers are left in Terra Nova to forge a new life for themselves (and all the potential challenges and struggles that presents) then that’s fine with me.

Lucas, as well, I expect will be returned to his father’s favour and the two of them will get along. Ordinarily I wouldn’t feel so optimistic about future plot lines from a sci-fi drama, but Terra Nova has a near-perverse level of wholesome decency about it that makes me assume that there’s a level of darkness it’s not quite prepared to drop to.

Take Skye as a clear example. Here she was revealed to be the mole in the camp (fair enough, I can buy that, considering our first introduction to her was when she escorted Josh over the fence). As it turned out, however, she wasn’t a duplicitous schemer of evil intent. She was working for the Sixers to somehow aid her dying mother. In Terra Nova, no one is turning out to be a bad person – they just do occasionally bad things for what they perceive are good reasons.

Taylor mentioned that there had been some kind of disease that was responsible for more deaths than anything else they’d encountered in Terra Nova. First we’d ever heard of it, of course, though it does lend some weight behind the motivation for making Josh steal the drugs from the clinic for the Sixers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sixers, courtesy of Lucas, had got close to formulating a cure for this terrible sickness.

See? Even Lucas won’t turn out to be all bad!

Terra Nova can’t quite dispense with the cheese, mind. Nursing the young dinosaur and releasing it into the wild to reunite with its own kind for a sweet, feelgood finish sums up what the show won’t easily dispense with – and I’m not saying it even should. There’s room for serious drama inside a family-friendly show, it’s just a matter of finding the right balance. Terra Nova hasn’t, for me, ever really got that down to a fine art but it’s getting better at it.

The business with Jim and the young solider suitor courting his daughter verged on the absurd. The boy’s trepidation at stating his intentions to Jim didn’t completely go over for me, mainly because the person Jim states he is, the intimidating, short-tempered person that he is written as in the script, isn’t how he appears on screen. He may talk the talk but you can’t help but see him as a thoroughly decent, teddy bear of a father before the tough-talking, head-busting cop.

It was also absolutely risible that Taylor would leave him in charge of the entire camp during his absence. . . He’s only been there five minutes! But these are niggles in a show that is thankfully gaining some momentum and a sense of identity. I'd really like nothing more than for these next few episodes in the run up to the finish deliver some total zingers and, hey, if it has the guts and the gaul to go darker and meaner than it'll hit all the more harder due to the good-natured quality it has exhibited thus far. Maybe that's the point!

What was the best part?

All the parts with Taylor and Mira (and who knew she had quite the hot body tucked away!?) were enjoyable, though the pick of the bunch was the scene at their night campfire when the dinosaurs attacked. Sure, the effects looked a little bit Ray Harryhausen rather than state of the art CGI, but in an odd way that gave it more charm.

What do I think will happen next?

Big bold prediction time! Lucas will successfully get the portal to do what he wants, which will herald the arrival of the big bad corporation doing something terrible and/or reneging on their deal with the Sixers. The Sixers, and probably Lucas, will then unite with Taylor and battle to turn the portal off and oust the evil corporation to defend the world for themselves.

Misfits: S03 Ep06

2011-12-08T04:07:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Rudy searches for the girl he slept with, that used her powers on him to cause his penis to apparently rot and drop off unless she prevents it. With Simon’s help he tracks down the girl and manages to convince her to reverse the damage and claims to be a changed man.

Curtis discovers that, as a girl, and as a consequence of masturbating as both male and female, he has managed to get himself pregnant. Ultimately he turns to Seth, asking him to get rid of his power. Seth, however, has just acquired the power to bring people back to life and requests that Curtis take the power in exchange and use it on his dead ex-girlfriend to bring her back.

Thoughts

This was perhaps my least favourite Misfits episode ever. It feels like a harsh statement because there’s nothing about it I can directly point to and say, This is why this episode sucked. But tellingly there’s nothing I can point to in this episode and say, This is why the episode worked. It was fundamentally a filler episode, and whilst Misfits has often thrown out episodes that don’t particularly further the drama they’ve never felt like they were bridging a gap.

Misfits episodes usually feel like they’re the best of a bunch of ideas; ones that made the cut, concepts that were too cool to ignore. And here we had the issue of Cutis becoming pregnant as a girl, which was a massive (and potentially powerful concept) and yet it felt like a b-plot. Trouble is, the ‘a-plot’ of Rudy trying to find the girl he slept with also had a distinctly low-rent feel to it.

The girl who used her powers on Rudy was a total unknown. Misfits generally affords its villain-of-the-week some screentime and personality exploration (or, at least, clarification) but with this girl we got nothing but a sense that she’d been treated badly in relationships before and so had inherited a power that allowed her to emasculate men in the worst possible way. Yet, by the end, all it took was a couple of clumsy sentiments from Rudy over a DJ microphone to have her reverse her rather terrible actions.

And with that all was well that ended well!

Unconvincing.

I did actually enjoy Rudy, though. If anything he carried the episode and made it entertaining, managing to crystallise what he was about. His little speech at the end where he basically admitted that his bravado and selfish actions were merely a cover for his insecurities was a nice admittance, but nothing we as an audience couldn’t see for ourselves. I still don’t feel like the two ‘halves’ of his characters have been as distinct as they could have been (the previous episode did it better) and I was actually rather annoyed that their dispute from last time, where they refused to be ‘together’, had evidently been brushed over and forgotten about. That was a promising angle, I thought, utterly squandered.

Simon and Alisha were absolutely wasted in this episode. Alisha being an amused bystander to Curtis’ plight I can understand, but Simon has his own fate to fulfil and surely wouldn’t still remain the grinning wallflower he appeared as here. It was like Simon from series 1 dropped by to tag along for Rudy’s ride.

The explanation as to how Curtis managed to get pregnant was glossed over, but it made sense since it basically came down to his best guess. As an audience we could have arrived at our own possible explanations as to how or why it happened. For a brief moment there did appear to be the chance that Curtis, as ‘Melissa’, was contemplating the magnitude of having a life inside him when s/he was looking in the mirror. As such, his decision to terminate the pregnancy by the act of having his power taken from him ought to have carried more gravitas. Effectively he was committing abortion.

As it was, the episode ended with the promising set-up that Seth, having finally obtained the power to bring people back to life (kudos to me for predicting as much a few weeks back!), was now set on getting his girlfriend back. Clearly this is going to be problematic for his and Kelly’s relationship. Kelly is at the point where she’s put herself at her most vulnerable and so means she’s not going to take it well, although I did like how she handled Seth questioning her if she was pregnant. That was the one flash of ‘old Kelly’ we got here – the rest was a bit soft and smitten (understandably so, and she’s always had that tender underbelly to her steely façade).

Ostensibly if this episode doesn’t at least mark a distinct change in Rudy’s personality as a consequence of his experiences then it’s basically just been a long-winded detour to get to the point where Curtis will resurrect Seth’s ex-girlfriend, Shannon. Filler, basically. I’ve come to expect better.

What was the best part?

Slim-pickings, but I was highly-amused by the telephone exchange between Curtis and Rudy. Curtis called Rudy to ask him if he had raped him, to which Rudy flatly denied it and then in the next breath was remarking about how he had to go because his cock was going to drop off. The look on Curtis’ face was priceless; the guy knows how to pull off a disgusted expression to a tee!

What do I think will happen next?

The preview for the next episode looked ace – zombie cheerleaders! I got the impression that the consequences of resurrecting the dead bears with it a kind of Pet Sematary vibe where the returned-dead aren’t quite the same as they were alive and harbour evil intent. I expect that Seth perhaps wants to resurrect Shannon to apologise and atone for what he did to her – though I anticipate Kelly and bitter jealousy is going to assume he wants her back properly. Whatever, it looks like it could be quite the riot.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep07 – Pretty Much Dead Already

2011-12-07T04:13:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Rick’s group learn about the walkers in the barn. Whilst Rick tries to appeal to Hershel to change his mind about letting his group stay, the majority of the group, and in particular Shane, seem convinced they are to stay and that to do so they must remove the threat in the barn.

Enraged when he sees Rick with Hershel wrangling walkers for captivity, Shane hands guns out to everyone and advances on the barn. It is opened and every walker that emerges – the friends and family of Hershel and his people – are shot and put down. And then, at the last, Sophia emerges from the barn; she is a walker. As everyone near-collapses in shocked despair, Rick steps up and shoots her in the head.

Thoughts

I had been accidentally spoiled before I watched this episode, having caught a line on some Twitter feed about Sophia being in the barn. I didn’t read anymore but, I figured, if Sophia was in the barn then she certainly wasn’t going to be ‘alive’. Thus the dramatic and shocking ending was somewhat diminished for me and I can’t ever really know just exactly how much of an impact not-knowing would have had on my viewing experience. I’d like to think it would have been effective and I’m a bit pissed I was deprived of that.

We have to assume that Hershel and his people discovered Sophia, rounded her up and stuck her in the barn shortly before Rick and the rest arrived. Sophia had bites on her neck, so it figures a zombie got to her but she wriggled free and perhaps roamed the woods for a while (maybe stayed the night in the house cupboard that Daryl found) before she eventually ‘turned’.

This certainly blows quite the hole in Rick and Hershel’s group relations!

On the one hand Hershel had to endure watching his friends and family shot and killed by Shane and the rest. If the scene had ended there then you can only imagine Hershel never being able to forgive or live with them. However, Rick’s group now have justification to round on Hershel and demand explanation about how he let them go off searching for Sophia when he knew she was almost certainly the little girl he had found and contained in his barn.

He’ll claim he couldn’t say anything because he was keeping the whole barn secret but, really, that’s not going to sit very well with anyone. And the issue still stands that it seems impossible that he would allow them all to live side by side. Yet, with an enraged Shane and the group carrying all the guns, and Rick desperate to stay to keep pregnant Lori and his son safe, it seems to me that if Hershel demands they leave then they’re going to feel they have no option but to take Hershel’s farm by force and claim it for themselves. And if that means killing Hershel then so be it. Shane would certainly see it that way – his survival attitude that Dale remarked he was made for definitely possesses the wherewithal to commit such an act.

Although Shane’s bluster and self-righteousness took quite the dent in the eyes of the group when he was unable to kill Sophia – so maybe a lot of his claims for leadership will evaporate.

There’s slim chance of a reconciliation, but it has to be Hershel that concedes. At least Shane did pump bullets into a walker’s vital organs to show him that it was ‘dead’ before he put it down. Hershel has, apparently, been oblivious to the true nature of these things (I struggle to properly comprehend that, I really do) but how can he deny what he saw with his own eyes? He’s been played as a bullish, old-fashioned man but not one without a sense of reason.

On saying that, however, I have to figure that The Walking Dead as a show needs to get back on the road and start moving things on. Put bluntly: the show can’t just stay at the farm indefinitely otherwise it’ll lose dramatic inertia and turn viewers off. They’ve finally laid the hunt for Sophia to rest now, and it’s in the best interests of entertainment that they get moving, so unless there’s a mass walker infestation descending on Hershel’s farm I’m intrigued how the show handles the need to provide dramatic excitement with plot logistics.

Plot logistics dictate they’d stay at the farm. Dramatic excitement demands they get moving.

Daryl and Carol took some small steps towards developing a relationship, though partly I think their conversations about hope were partly to fuel audience belief that Sophia would be found so the surprise at the end was all the more brutal. There’s no doubt it’s a bold step; having a small girl shot in the head as a zombie is a harsher occurrence than I figured The Walking Dead had the capacity to be. I’m pleased it did, mind. So long as it continues to have the audacity to do the unthinkable on television it remains vital – if the show ever goes soft it’ll be pointless.

Shane’s rapid disintegration has been brewing, and there’s no doubt that the catalyst for his rage was learning that Lori was pregnant and then have her tell him the child would never be his. I’m surprised that Rick didn’t at least address that he also knew about Lori and Shane when he delivered the news; the little look back indicated he knew there was more to be said, and he could expect more reaction from Shane, but it felt remiss that he wouldn’t have brought it out in the open.

I thought Dale was going to fare badly when Shane caught up with him in the woods, particularly when he pulled a gun on him! It turned out that Shane didn’t even see him as enough of a threat to bother killing, which is perhaps the most undignified insult Shane could have delivered. I did like Dale’s response; confounded by a man like Shane and how he could flourish under such terrible conditions. There’s a little piece of me that thinks Shane’s character has been too swiftly morphed into this ‘wild survival persona’, content to throw out logic and humanity to do what needs to be done, but as stated the catalyst and his pronounced emotional turmoil can be traced back to the news of Lori’s pregnancy so it just about scrapes past.

Lori isn’t being portrayed particularly sympathetically, really, and it’s almost as though the writers don’t want us to like her. She can be silly and unrealistic and then shrewish and fierce – she can display such range and never once does it feel like it’s the appropriate response. Indeed, I have read some critiques that suggest the treatment of women in general on the show hasn’t been great – from Lori’s difficult spikiness, to Andrea’s over-reactionary victim, to even Maggie’s flip-flopping romance with Glenn. I’d suggest if there’s a flaw in their portrayal it’s that the women have been too defined by how they react to the men rather than being defined in their own right. Personally I’m not up in arms about it, but it would help them from being generally irritating and more admirable if they were adeptly and in-depthly depicted.

Nit-picking aside it was a good episode, and presented a devastating and powerful emotional and visceral climax. Where do they go from here? That’s the question all good drama asks, and The Walking Dead has asked it under the most extreme circumstances you can think of.

What was the best part?

Easily the final scene at the barn, which it’s perhaps is fair to say has been the season’s most gruelling and powerful scene. From the look on Hershel’s face to the sense of release as the group got to fire upon the ‘walkers’ and vent some of their own demons to that final, cruel reveal of Sophia. I’m glad, in a strange sense, that Rick was the only one that had the courage to step up and do what had to be done. For all Shane’s angry bluster, Rick has more steel running through him.

What do I think will happen next?

Ain’t that the question! Well, I believe the show has to move on from the farm now. There’s a long shot that the group will feel so ruined by what they’ve done to Hershel, and having found out that Sophia is dead, they’ll want to go. Failing that circumstances will dictate that they have to leave – whether that be because the farm becomes an impossible place to stay at (zombie invasion!) or they get wind of a different destination; maybe they hear a radio broadcast or something. I appreciate the show needs them to move on, I just want the reason for that on-screen to work logically.

Terra Nova: S01 Ep08 – Vs

2011-12-05T04:27:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Captured and interrogated, Boylan reveals the whereabouts of a body to Jim. Recovering and examining the body, it appears the person was murdered years back and indications are that Taylor did it. Taylor explains that he was sent to Terra Nova under false pretences, and killed his superior officer when his rule was to be overturned and the place was merely to be plundered for resources rather than used as a new place for humans to exist.

Taylor’s son, Lucas, had been working on a way to create a two-way portal to the future so that the old Earth could harvest resources from Terra Nova and kill the world. Taylor refused to allow that to happen, and explains to Jim that he and Terra Nova stand against the Sixers, and Lucas, who are intent on sacrificing this new world to try and save the old one.

Thoughts

Terra Nova finally gets around to showing its hand and displaying the true set-up, the meaning behind the strange calculations on the rocks and the message behind the oblique warnings about the “truth of Terra Nova”. In doing so the show has actually stepped up a notch and delivered its best episode, as well as lifting the curtain on the stage things are being played on to better determine the drama.

It was still rather predictable. I expected the truth would suggest that Taylor had gone against the initial plans for Terra Nova and, whilst for a short while there might be the impression he wasn’t to be trusted, ultimately it would transpire he was on the side of ‘right’ and the Sixers and their agenda were working for a cause that was ‘wrong’.

It’s worth taking a moment here to discuss that notion, of course. Whilst Terra Nova was quick to side with Taylor, via Jim and his assent to fight with him and for his cause once he learned the truth, and the depiction of Lucas as a scheming, angry, vengeful son, it’s worth considering the view of the Sixers and ‘future Earth’.

From Taylor’s view there’s this new world that a handful of people have been permitted access to away from the pollution and decay. And now they have it, they don’t want anyone taking it from them. Only the world they left behind presumably has millions of people that are living under a death sentence.

Fundamentally Taylor’s willing to sacrifice the vast majority of the old population for the few lucky souls that are forging a new life for themselves. There’s an extremely selfish principle at play there. I’m not saying Taylor is some monstrous despot – I just hope Terra Nova doesn’t just gloss over this crucial dynamic and expect us to accept that fresh, innocent Terra Nova is good because the old world of pollution and technology is bad.

If they can make the suggestion that Terra Nova is to be plundered of resources just for one major corporation’s gain, for example, or to benefit the few in future Earth rather than replenish and rescue the planet there’s a better argument being made. Perhaps if it’s established that even ravaging all the resources would only be a temporary fix then there’s better justification for Taylor’s strident position towards defending Terra Nova from ‘future Earth’. It needs a better explanation than it just being about Taylor liking Terra Nova and wanting to keep it for himself and the few hundred with him and to hell with the billions of others back home.

The episode title, and Terra Nova, are apparently setting out their stall for a ‘them vs us’ scenario, so I would like the battlelines and battle reasons properly marked out if I am being provoked into siding with one faction.

As stated, however, this advancement does definitely mark an improvement. It does make me wonder where else the show can go, though. I quite like the idea that the portal to old Earth gets destroyed completely by the end of the first season and so this ‘battle’ can have a line drawn under it; the people of Terra Nova left then to face their brave new world and the show can introduce an entirely different set of challenges. This is, technically, a parallel universe in the past which paves the way for anything being possible.

The plotting regarding the flying insect was rather clumsy. That it just happened to flutter around the rehearsal stage and get thwacked so they could learn that it was like a carrier pigeon was altogether too convenient. And I’m not sure why Taylor was such an ass about marking Jim out as a suspect and so leaving the real mole at large. He actually had the potential of finding out who the traitor was in his midst and he squandered it!

I am glad there is still a secret mole, though, and that it’s been made clear that this is as much a secret to us as it is to the characters. I’d still have to figure it’s the young soldier, too, although he did get ambushed and injured (though we didn’t see it directly, unlike when Washington got into a proper fight with a Sixer).

It’s rather risible how Josh has been treated rather lightly (for making pacts with the Sixers and providing them with the entire stash of lifesaving drugs, Josh is sentenced to. . . being grounded!). Whilst Boylan was eventually released he sure did have to suffer under Taylor’s hand. Interesting reveal that they used to be friends, though – Boylan has moved from being a clichéd side character into someone with depth and intrigue. Same can’t be said for Malcolm who has gone in entirely the opposite direction. There’s the odd ruffle that suggests he’s a rabble rouser against Taylor’s command but there’s scant sight of it, and even his scheming affection for Liz appears to have died down.

Lucas is a welcome addition to, I suppose, the ‘bad guys’. Mira’s one-note tough girl aggression played out more like an irritation than a credible threat. Lucas appears to be the mastermind and if the show wants to go down the route of making him a proper villain then I’m rather in favour. . . However, with how saccharine Terra Nova can be I wouldn’t for one moment write off the possibility of their being a father-son reunion before the season’s end.

What was the best part?

Taylor’s flashback was absolutely the best part, shifting the little plot details about the calculations on the stones and the body in the woods into focus, and with it pushing Terra Nova into the light as a show that was marking out exactly what it was about. At least for the foreseeable future. I don’t see how a battle over a portal gateway between a new world and an old world can support an entire show indefinitely but, for a season at least, there’s a lot of mileage in it.

What do I think will happen next?

I would expect that the emerging crisis of Lucas working out how to get the portal permanently open will be next on the agenda. I fully expect him to get to the point where he can succeed with this, and it will fall on Jim and Taylor to stop him (or convince him to stop). Potential season end? For sure. In fact, it might pull a massive cliffhanger and the season could end with the portal being opened permanently.

Misfits: S03 Ep05

2011-12-01T04:47:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A girl in a coma manages to body swap with Kelly and attempts to get back with her boyfriend. The rest of the Misfits gang realise that ‘Kelly’ is behaving curiously and discover what has happened and manage to make the girl realise she cannot remain. However, the girl in Kelly’s body stabs the probation worker and he dies before she relents and returns Kelly back to herself.

Rudy meanwhile has a split with his ‘other half’ when he wrecks a relationship with a counsellor, with ‘Rudy B’ refusing to fuse back together with ‘Rudy A’.

Thoughts

This felt a lot more like old style, classic Misfits. Scattered, fast-paced, rude and outlandish and then, just when you’re lulled into amused entertainment, along comes a sucker punch of poignancy to hit when you least expect it. The death of the probation worker was that bombshell in this series’ most bittersweet moment.

Fusing comedy and tragedy, as the probation worker lay dying the gang revealed the secret about their powers, I liked how he practically summarised the show. Insulting them all as “dicks” and scoffing at the idea of them as superheroes. Because Misfits is the anti-superhero comic book series, presenting a group united by special powers that absolutely dodge and fail the superhero mould at every turn, even though in their own way they are often to be found thwarting evil. Only Simon exhibits anything like traditional superhero tendencies – a trait that Alisha constantly attempts to suppress.

Simon and Alisha were relatively background this episode, along with Curtis. Indeed, the three came together to basically amuse us and themselves at Curtis using his powers for the wonderful purposes of being able to masturbate as a woman. (The issue of why he does indeed choose to do this in the community centre storage room is a fair question with no clear answer provided here. Best explanation would surround Curtis revisiting fond memories of his times with Alisha, but there’s been no indication he misses her or feels any twinges of jealousy towards her and Simon.)

The real focus here was on Kelly and Seth (I did like how Rudy contemplated whether or not he was now a part of the gang and actually asked the question about what his name was – that was something I didn’t know until Simon said it!). Seth really cemented himself as a vital part of the group, and the show, with this episode. Indeed, he has the manner that might make a good leader out of him. If the Misfits were ever to be compared to X-Men then Seth would be their Professor X.

Lauren Socha just about sold her changed performance when she was inhabited by the coma girl. Since we never actually got to see what coma girl was like as a person in her own right the only gauge was in how different ‘Kelly’ was from the regular Kelly, and I was mostly convinced that she was distinct.

I thought there might have been more to explore from what the boyfriend said, when ‘Kelly’ threatened to turn the life support machine off, about how she was not the same person he knew. I liked the idea that, due to her period in a coma, a dark streak had formed in her character. You could argue it was manifest in her stabbing of the probation worker, but that came across more like a desperate act than a deliberate murder. The notion that she had been fundamentally changed and had come back with an evil element within her seemed compelling – but possibly I am channelling old memories of a b-movie I saw as a kid called Chiller.

Look it up! It's utter shit!

Rudy this episode was on good form, much better handled for straddling his irritating traits for comic effect. From launching himself at Seth to his reaction at getting an impromptu handjob off the counsellor he was good value. And it’s the best kind of antagonism that may be emerging, with the two aspects of his personality unwilling to inhabit the same body – that’s a concept with a stack of mileage in it; whether they exist in conflict or find one suffers whilst the other flourishes. Ultimately I’d imagine they’ll discover they cannot live apart but, whilst the split exists, I hope Misfits makes the most of it.

For me this was probably the best episode of this series so far. All the bits and pieces that make *Misfits* unique and enjoyable were in place – jangling interesting ideas with lowest common denominator humour. Throwing in the pathos of the probation workers death (gotta love how the burial of another dead body has become commonplace!) gave proceedings an unexpected emotional tug and, for the romantics, Kelly and Seth finally appear to be sweetly hooking up.

In all honesty, I don’t really buy him being into her but I liked the sincerity in his voice when he talked of how it might not work but they at least deserved a chance to find out.

What was the best part?

The extraction of coma girl from the hospital was the most entertaining part for me. Kind of shocking, totally outrageous (Seth directing people to grab the beeping machine, the breathing machine, etc) and then just flat out funny as they made their escape – via Rudy distracting the nurse with his “grandad’s prolapse” story to the look on Simon’s face when Seth triggered the alarm and then headed out to make a dash for it.

What do I think will happen next?

The previews curiously seemed to lay the suggestion that Curtis, in female form, may have become pregnant and is thus unable to change back. (Admittedly the editing of the preview cajoles me into making connections and speculation that might see me getting the entirely wrong end of the stick.) However, it was shown that Curtis is transforming uncontrollably and there’s suggestion that Kelly may be pregnant – so that’s the 2 + 2 I’ve put together.

I did actually raise the question a few weeks back that, since Curtis can have a period as a girl does it not follow that he could also get pregnant, so it is a possibility that has been seeded so I’m rather hopeful it’ll bear fruit. Of course, if Kelly is pregnant, it raises the question of coma girl’s boyfriend being the father!

Otherwise there surely ought to be suspicion raised about the disappearance of another probation work and, of course, there’s the intrigue of who the next probation worker will be. . . Maybe this time it’ll be someone with a superpower of their own!

Terra Nova: S01 Ep07 – Proof

2011-11-30T03:54:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Maddy became suspicious of an explorer idol of hers when he returned to Terra Nova and yet appeared to lack memory of key things from his past. She eventually uncovered that he was really the assistant and had murdered the explorer on Earth and stolen his identity to get to Terra Nova.

Josh, having been promised reunification with his girlfriend, steals drugs on behalf of the Sixers using his mother’s passcard. Learning that lives depend on the drugs, though, he confesses what he has done and in the process outs Boylan as a mole.

Taylor tracks down the soldier he banished, helps him recover from near-fatal injuries and suggests that if he can infiltrate the Sixer camp and obtain information for him he may allow him back into Terra Nova.

Thoughts

You know, once you just accept the cheese and clunk that is Terra Nova in script and screen acting, there’s something rather likable about it. Unless there is a tremendous rug pull around the corner – the equivalent of the all the gloss and lights been yanked away to reveal a dark, twisted truth – then it would appear Terra Nova isn’t to be treated as seriously as other shows, and is perhaps geared more towards a family Doctor Who audience.

It doesn’t quite have the right tone for that, because I think it wants to cater to a family audience whilst also being considered serious dramatic sci-fi. In trying to straddle both genres it’s not a fine example of either, but it’s muddling along in an amusing, bumbling, near-inoffensive way.

Maddy’s excursion into detective work this episode, for example, was actually rather engaging. Was it serious adult drama? No. But it was an intriguing mystery that was slowly peeled away to reveal a murderous truth. Quite how Horten thought he was ever going to get away with killing Maddy after Zoe had been sent off is beyond me, mind. What did he think he was going to do? Style it out despite being the last man to see Maddy alive when her father is the sheriff and would be beyond enraged and ceaseless in his hunt for the all-too-obvious culprit?

No, that was dumb. Better would have been to play up the contradiction of a murderer with his own not insignificant intelligence and positive benevolence; like curing the apple crops. He’d have been better played as a good man taking desperate measure after doing a bad thing out of a sense of necessity. I guess Terra Nova just doesn’t have the time to get beneath the surface in that way. Another example of a good idea squandered in favour of simplistic skimming over: it’s this show’s worst trait.

There were some unintentional laughs to be had here. Jim’s fishing exploits were one. The effects on his ‘catch’ were truly awful. The people in charge ought to have seen the CG in those scenes, cut their losses and edited the scene at the point where Jim was seen getting a bite on his line. Given how inconsequential it was anyway it would have been better leaving his struggle to land the dino-fish to our imaginations.

Other unintentional laughs: Taylor hissing and yelling at the cowardly dinosaur; Jim surveying a huge broken window and remarking about how that was the point of entry for the robbery (no fucking shit, Sherlock); the Shannon family having a panic codeword “asparagus” – would have been clever if that had been seeded in a previous episode rather than feeling somewhat conveniently conjured here.

Taylor’s tracking down of the banished soldier, Curran, was an enjoyable detour, though I am somewhat confused by the pertinence of it considering Josh’s confession and ousting of Boylan as the Terra Nova link to the Sixers. I mean, for a good few episodes now I’ve been confused whether the ‘mole’ in Terra Nova is meant to be a secret from the viewers (as in a key character will be revealed as a double agent) or if Boylan is it, and has been all along, and we’ve known about it all this time.

If Boylan truly is the one and only mole then Taylor has sent the solider on a redundant mission; infiltrating the Sixers to find out something already known. Unless the soldier comes back with a revelation that there really is a double agent then it’s pointless.

It was interesting that the belief of Jim, and perhaps Taylor, that the Sixers were primitive was shown to be false. Taylor instantly figured his son Lucas was the man to have developed such communication technology and, since Terra Nova apparently doesn’t have this, it still leaves the door open for the idea that Taylor has been ruling autonomously in a way not agreed by ‘future Earth’ and is the reason why the Sixers wish to overthrow him.

I’d really love Terra Nova to be pulling that kind of surprise but it just feels too wholesome, too set on making Taylor and the Shannons as good people and everyone else. . . not necessarily bad but in conflict with their well-meaning goodness. If Taylor is disobeying the original schemes for Terra Nova then it’ll no doubt be for a ‘good’ reason, and the Sixers and Lucas will have plans that we, as an audience, are probably supposed to feel isn’t the best thing to do.

I’d be thrilled to be absolutely wrong on that last point.

What was the best part?

Really struggling to think of a standalone scene that impressed, despite this episode generating an overall good impression. For sheer dumbness, I’m going with the fishing scene. Not only did they choose to fish on a cliff edge where the dino-fish could swiftly drag them to their doom, the visual effects were so shockingly bad I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the poor quality. Uniquely, then, the best part of the episode is one that really ought to have been left on the cutting room floor!

What do I think will happen next?

Hopefully there’ll be some clarification as to why the Sixers wanted the medication. I’m not convinced there really was an epidemic in their ranks they needed curing, but I can’t imagine that other purposes they needed it for. I’d have to assume Lucas requires it, but since what he is up to is the most oblique part of the show I’m literally clutching at straws in the dark wearing boxing gloves trying to grasp any sense from it. Now there’s an image.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep06 – Secrets

2011-11-28T04:06:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Glenn attempts to keep it a secret that the barn houses zombies. Maggie, and Hershel, know they are kept there as friends and relatives that may one day be cured. Glenn does eventually tell Dale about it, and about Lori being pregnant. Lori sends Glenn to get morning after pills, and he goes to town with Maggie where they narrowly survive a nasty attack.

Shane takes Andrea shooting and they run into a zombie horde but survive, and have sex shortly after. Returning to camp Dale confronts Shane about what kind of man he is and suggest he leave, only to have Shane threaten him. Meanwhile Rick discovers Lori has taken the pills and finds her. She states she threw them up and also confesses that she slept with Shane.

Thoughts

This episode crunched down to a few pivotal conversations between two people to make it worthwhile but, really, it was perhaps the weakest of this season. A weak episode of The Walking Dead is still good television, mind.

Glenn’s inability to keep his mouth shut does, at times, feel slightly too stretched to believe but at least it gets the plot wheels turning. I particularly liked how Dale has been Glenn’s confidant because he, on the surface, appears to be the wise elder of the group. And whilst his handling of Lori and her pregnancy was relatively delicately done it was inconsequential. And his conversation with Hershel achieved nothing. So by the time he made the mis-step of confronting Shane it marked a triple whammy of blows to his stature.

As I suspected, the Hershel zombies are people they’ve known and people they believe may one day be cured. Having been so insulated from the outside world Hershel considers it a disease rather than the actual resurrection of a corpse. I struggle with this. One man, like Hershel, being swayed into this notion is one thing – but for someone like Maggie to share that view feels risible. I mean, they were attacked on some level consider how many are in the barn – so they must have seen the extent of what this ‘disease’ is truly about, no?

Maggie will, perhaps, be quicker to align with Rick’s group’s view considering what she saw in the well and, more pressingly, the encounter in the pharmacy. When Glenn stepped up and battered the zombie with its head hanging off Maggie ought to be under no illusions that these are just people that are ‘unwell’! Glenn’s actions here, and his care for Maggie, as well as her words to him may also mark the point where he stops being the skivvy of the group and decides to stand up and be counted more, too. He certainly isn’t leadership material, no matter what Maggie says.

Shane and Andrea’s shooting training foray was one of the less successful elements for me. I don’t particularly like Andrea’s character, for one thing (which may turn out very intentional). But the shift from absolute shooting no-hoper to stone dead zombie killing marksman was too severe a shift. There’s the scary potential now that someone as unhinged as her, learning how to detach her emotions to fluidly and effectively kill, may make her a seriously dangerous antagonist down the line. I just didn’t buy the transition. Some successful shots would have been acceptable – but standing there picking off zombies with ruthless aplomb within moments of being a gibbering wreck just didn’t not go over for me at all.

Fair play to her for being direct. Girls, want to have sex with a man? Just reach down and grope his cock and balls. And fair play to Shane for an equally charming response: park car and say, “Come on then”. They certainly do seem made for each other, for all kinds of wrong reasons, and together they may be worse then they’d have been apart – perhaps vying for Rick and Lori’s status as the king and queen of the group.

It was surely impulsive jealousy that prompted Dale to give Shane an ill-advised dressing down and suggest he leave. Dale, of course, will firmly believe he is acting in the bests interests of the group but there’s no doubt his affection for Andrea tainted his judgment. Shane’s rebuke, that if he was the man Dale painted him as then that would make him a threat to Dale, was totally predictable (in terms of his character) and a net result Dale would have foreseen had his emotions not got the better of him.

Fractures and leadership rivals are appearing in the group all over the place, and this feels like the beginning of the disturbances. The only thing that might bring some harmony and unity, and restore morale and faith in Rick, is if Sophia is finally found alive and returned to the group. It’s been so long hunting for her now. At first I thought it might remain unresolved but, after all this time, I can’t conceive the show letting this hang as a loose thread. Dead or alive, she will be found.

For what it’s worth, I’m fully expecting her to be alive. Even The Walking Dead wouldn’t be so brutal to hit the group and the audience with the despair of a dead little girl, right?

The episode abruptly ended following Rick and Lori’s conversation – the last of the big secrets finally outed. Lori confessed that she and Shane had been together when she thought Rick was dead, and Rick was surprisingly accepting of it. Indeed, he’d apparently even suspected as much. I did like that his reaction wasn’t to lose his head and go out looking for blood. Given how heated and upset he was already, finding out that Lori was pregnant and had attempted abortion without consulting him, he showed remarkable restraint in keeping his head.

I expect Lori will feel much better that the weight of her secrets will have been lifted, and might bring back more composure from her. She’ll need it. If she has, as it seems, caused no permanent harm then the pregnancy will be going ahead and she faces tough times. I expect the urgency to get some place safe, to set up as ‘home’, will become paramount. Hershel’s farm certainly isn’t it, and not just because Hershel doesn’t want them there. With the zombies in the barn and friction between the factions, not to mention the threat of zombies appearing at any time, the place feels like a powder keg waiting to explode. If and when that happens, I expect Maggie will join the group – but Hershel and the rest will be left behind.

What was the best part?

The zombie attacks were cool, although Andrea’s sudden transition from useless to marksman shattered disbelief and ruined that scene. So for me the best scene was Dale’s confrontation of Shane. The expression on his face when he saw Shane and Andrea return, fuelling his sense of righteousness, to finish up with him looking dumbstruck and slapped down after Shane issued his threat was really well-played.

A well-earned second place for best scene, though, to the part where the woman (not quite sure who she is in relation to Hershel) broke the leg of the chicken and fed it to the zombies. As if the twisted nature of feeding chickens to zombies wasn’t messed up enough, hobbling it and carting the distressed and pained bird to its horrific doom was a very unsettling concept.

What do I think will happen next?

As I understand it, the next episode marks something of a mid-season break. As such I expect there might be fireworks to come, potentially to end the Hershel’s farm tenure. One way or another the zombies in the barn are literally going to be the cats that got out of the bag and create mayhem. Hopefully Sophia will be found before the shit hits the fan, clearing the way for Rick and his group, and probably Maggie, to cut their losses and hit the road once more. Hershel, surely, will pay for his pious foolishness with his life.

Fringe: S04 Ep07 – Wallflower

2011-11-25T04:05:00.001-08:00

What happened?

An ‘invisible man’, Eugene, a product of a genetic disorder exacerbated by work done on him by Massive Dynamic, murders people to extract their pigmentation in order for him to become visible and make a connection with a woman he has a crush on. Whilst the Fringe team come close to capturing him, warning he will die if he continues, he pursues his goal. He makes conversation with the woman in the elevator and, finally happy, he dies.

Olivia frets about her mental state at having no release for these experiences she has. Taking prescription drugs for crushing headaches, she slowly begins to form a potential romance with Lincoln Lee. However, just before setting out to meet him a gas is released into her home, she is knocked unconscious and is injected by intruders, remarking that it will leave her with a terrible headache and no memory of what happened. Nina Sharp is revealed to be conducting this attack.

Thoughts

For the most part this was shaping up to be something of a weak episode, almost playing out as nothing more than a filler, monster of the week instalment. It was like the kind of episode Fringe had managed to dispense with of late (for the better) and so felt mostly underwhelming. It was rescued only by a lovely conclusion to the ‘invisible man’ plot and, of course, that bolt out of the blue final scene.

Eugene’s story was definitely a wholly unoriginal aspect. I’ve lost count of how many troubled individuals exhibiting strange phenomenon have appeared on the show and presented a threat to ordinary people. They’re invariably lonely and emotionally volatile, too, so Eugene ticked all those boxes, and having been persecuted in some fashion by Massive Dynamic was no groundbreaking notion either. Kudos to the effects work, though – Eugene’s Predator-like cloak of invisibility was brilliantly realised.

The truth of how ruthless Massive Dynamic can be (there’s not a lot morally worse than faking the death of a newborn baby to steal it away for a life of scientific research) is echoed in Nina’s actions to Olivia at the end of the episode. Her little speech to Olivia, about how choosing to care for her and her sister fundamentally changed her life, paints her in a cold light when it’s revealed how hollow that sentiment appears to be.

I don’t yet know exactly what is being done to Olivia. It would seem that she has been having these headaches for quite some time, considering she has been getting repeat prescriptions. Since we learned (through the clumsy expositional dialogue) that the injection she received will leave her with a painful headache and no memory it’s to be concluded that these gas attacks and injections have been occurring for a while.

Has she just been waking up on the floor of her apartment thinking she just fell asleep there or something? Or do they move her to her bed, or the couch?

What’s interesting here is that she had an appointed date to meet Lincoln, which may for the first time cause her to question if something peculiar occurred. The last thing she’ll remember is getting ready to go out and meet him (and, alas, it appeared she was running late for that date; if she’d been more punctual she’d have been out when the intruders arrived!) and then a blank. Possibly, with the pain of the headaches she’d conclude she’d blanked out. It’s hard to imagine she could ever conceive of the truth – that she’s been knocked unconscious and had something done to her on a serial basis.

What’s Nina doing? Surely something linked to her Cortexiphan-enhanced capabilities. My best guess would figure that Nina is injecting Olivia with Cortexiphan, or some variant, spearheading some kind of genetically-induced project using Olivia to aid the war against Over There. It’s the kind of thing they were doing with other subjects so it would fit their M.O.

It was a great final scene, no question. Completely lifted the episode from the average fodder it looked set to be defined as. And I did like the relationship development between Olivia and Lincoln, mostly because I do like Lincoln’s character in this universe. Her being late for the date and missing it entirely adds an extra layer of misery to proceedings

Peter was used in a more limited fashion here (I thought there was going to be more overt parallels drawn with Eugene’s sense of being in a world where no one made a true connection with him and Peter’s treatment as a ‘free prisoner’) and whilst I liked his clarification that the Olivia here wasn’t his Olivia that does suggest the idea of him returning to his original timeline is on the cards. What is he up to with all those blueprints? Attempting to re-build a kind of machine like the one that blasted him out of existence first time around? I suppose it’s the most logical place to start – a machine that can reverse what the first machine kickstarted.

Peter playing Cupid felt a little bit like overkill but, OK, I can live with it. He clearly saw his old self reflected in Lincoln (guy brought in from the outside and quickly handed a Fringe division badge and thrust into the madness) and wanted to give his lovelife a boost as a thanks for treating him like a human being. Fair enough.

Trouble with Peter is that he doesn’t seem to be particularly grieving the loss of his former world. Since he’s established that this Olivia isn’t his Olivia then, really, he ought to really be coping with the thought that she and everyone else he knew has been wiped out. Now, with Lincoln correcting himself for referring to Peter’s Olivia in the past tense, it’s arguable that Peter simply has not conceded defeat. He’s just apart from his world – it’s not gone. But then why care about this world?

If his plan is to go back then surely it’s occurred to him that undoing it all will mean this alternate world, and everyone in it, will be erased. So what difference does it make that Olivia and Lincoln get together to him? It should be inconsequential. On this matter, in terms of Peter’s state of mind, I think Fringe is guilty of just skimming the surface and shying away from having Peter face up to the awful dilemma of what has happened and what could happen next.

Very keenly felt, so far, is the lack of time spent Over There. Whilst clearly the issue with Peter breaking through has been the key storyline, Walternate’s lack of appearance is the elephant in the room. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t strictly consider this a criticism. If Fringe is holding back from showing us Over There, and Walternate, to deliver some serious zinging surprises further on then I’ve got patience. It’s frustrating but, so far, it’s frustration of the good kind.

What was the best part?

Has to be the scene where Eugene finally made the connection he had been seeking all his life. Just a simple conversation where the woman acknowledged she had noticed him and was worried he had got sick; he exchanged his name with her and then sunk to the floor and silently, contentedly, passed away. . . Fringe doesn’t often deliver tender moments that make you go ‘awww’ but that was one of them.

What do I think will happen next?

The plots are pulling in different directions, at present, and we’re not entirely sure what way Over There are going. Peter aims to hit reset. Nina is priming Olivia for enhanced powers (presumably against Over There). Meanwhile Over There could be looking to make themselves the dominant universe. And, amongst all this, The Observers wait on the sidelines (and we really ought to be shown what they have made of September’s actions).

Peter’s intentions to build a new machine strike me as more season-end material. I’d hope The Observer’s intentions emerge sooner but, most pressing, I’d expect the effects of whatever Nina is doing to Olivia to start to become manifest and perhaps escalate a conflict with Over There.

Misfits: S03 Ep04

2011-11-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A holocaust survivor has the power to travel back in time and attempts to kill Hitler, but he botches the task and re-writes history when Hitler takes his mobile phone and uses the advanced technology to win the war. An alternate universe is created where Nazi rule runs amok, and in the present day they are keen on harnessing powers to use for their own ends.

Fighting a resistance movement is Kelly, Curtis and Rudy, who try to stop the Nazis from controlling the power dealer. Simon and Alisha, working for the Nazis but not agreeing with their ideology, eventually form a part of the resistance movement in a battle to the death. Kelly acquires the time travel power, goes back in time and takes the phone back from Hitler. At the episode’s end, remembering all of the alternate history, she visits the power trader and requests he rid of her the ability to time travel and lets her be a rocket scientist again.

Thoughts

What initially started out as a really promising episode for me quickly went south and ultimately disappointed. Probably it was because the inherent issue of the alternate timeline was one I knew had to be resolved before the end of the episode so there was little for me to invest in. I was also left confused by the time travel logic employed here – specifically to do with Kelly’s memories – which marred my enjoyment.

I’ll come to that.

There was some good stuff, though. I liked how the ‘missing’ Misfit from the first episode appeared here (and was once again killed off by someone else’s power!). And I liked how the probation officer was given more time here – he is an unsung comic hero of the show and it was good to see him utilised more. As a self-serving, cowardly toad of the Nazi party his character couldn’t have been better defined!

Less well-served here were Simon and Alisha. Simon, especially, I expected to emerge into something more heroic (like turn his gun on the commandant when ordered to shoot the old man) but perhaps that was the point; without the original timeline’s ‘man in the mask’ identity he is the shrinking violet. Although it appeared that he and Alisha still found time to get it on! Apparently, no matter what timeline, those two are destined to hook up – if that was the point it just about translated.

I’m not quite buying the pair of them as the doomed, star-crossed lovers Misfits potentially wants me to perceive them as, though. They just fall short of epic. (Mind, that’s Misfits in a nutshell – always deliberately falling short of epic despite conjuring the ingredients to do otherwise.)

I quite liked Curtis operating his bar as a cover for a resistant movement (albeit one with very few members!). It at least gave him something to do, and his death was a brutal one (although totally lacking in shock value on account of the previously mentioned certainty that this was not a permanent timeline and so the reset switch would inevitably get pushed).

Rudy, meanwhile, although more tolerable this time out was something of a spare part. Or even spare parts. He did bag some of the best lines and the scene with him bluffing that he and Curtis were a gay couple and, upon hearing homosexuality was outlawed, were actually cousins was the standout funniest scene.

Kelly and the power dealer continue to have some form of relationship, which I thought they might have consecrated in the alternate timeline. They didn’t, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t happen for them before the series is done. Unless power dealer gets to save his dead girlfriend, something his capacity to trade in the power of time travel may enable? (I doubt it – this undoing of the past plotline has been well-worn on Misfits, and now this series, so I can’t see it occurring again.)

The issue with Kelly and her travelling through time is the most confusing aspect. Because really it seems that the ‘original Kelly’ got erased here to be replaced by the ‘alternate timeline Kelly’. Now this clearly doesn’t quite stack up because at the end she wanted her power of rocket scientist back, so she evidently had awareness of the original timeline.

It’s like she has both: awareness of the original timeline and the timeline when Nazis where in charge. And I find that exceedingly hard to reconcile logically! It’s tempting, because of the show’s low-budget, rough around the edges nature, to say that it’s not supposed to be viewed rigorously but when I consider Simon’s future fate plotline, which clearly needs to be watertight, I’m not so quick to let Misfits off the hook.

Unless I’ve seriously missed or overlooked something, I’m calling it a plot hole.

Similarly, what happened to the old man with the power to travel in time? We saw him again in the reset timeline – but what about his time travel power? Doesn’t he still have that? Where there not then two ‘time travel powers’ in this timeline – the original one from the old man and the one Kelly inherited in the alternate timeline?

Again, perhaps I can be accused of thinking about this too much but I don’t think that’s acceptable. Or I’ve seriously missed something.

Fact is, Misfits has usually kept itself logically intact and self-contained in this respect, and the impression of loose plot ends (generally where Simon is concerned), are invariably be covered by the assurance that the writer has it all under control. At least we do now have – with the power dealer in possession of a time travel – a means by which Simon will one day travel back in time. But all those other ripples and niggles this timeline altering episode has conjured have made it one of my least favourite instalments of the show. Shame, really, because in principle it was Misfits at its most high-octane, high concept, boundary-pushing best.

Ironically, if it turns out I am the one that’s not understood things properly and the episode is totally shipshape then it’s actually one of the best Misfits episodes there has ever been! (But I don’t think I’m wrong, so it’s not.)

What was the best part?

The pre-credit sequence (suggesting so much promise!) with the old man writing the letter and venturing back in time. Managing to install instant sympathy and understanding about this man’s entire life story and motivation, and wasting no time getting to Hitler and a brutal stab (reminiscent, I thought, of a stab scene in Saving Private Ryan) the show packed more in those couple of minutes that most shows would dare tackle in one single episode. Having Kelly smoke a cig and sum it all up with “fucking Nazis” just stamped the Misfits brand of foul-mouthed humour perfectly.

What do I think will happen next?

There’s not much in the way of progression from the previous episode. The power dealer did hint that there was much about him Kelly didn’t know, so I envisage that may come under greater scrutiny. And, of course, there is now the means as to how Simon can travel in time on the board to play with, suggesting that the Simon vs Fate plot might find its conclusion this series. . .

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep05 – Chupacabra

2011-11-22T04:23:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Daryl’s solo hunt for Sophia turned into a fight for survival when his horse threw him into a ravine. Terrorised by both walkers and visions of his brother, Merle, he cuts a shambling figure that the group initially mistake for a walker and nearly kill. His plight comes into direct conflict with an argument between Rick and Shane about whether the hunt for Sophia is justified – the search for one girl against the greater good of the group.

Friction between Rick and Hershal’s factions quietly mounts, with a peace-offering dinner merely a tense affair. Despite her father’s request, Maggie persists in seeing Glenn, but his suggestion of hooking up at the haybarn prompts him to discover that Hershal has been keeping at least a dozen walkers locked in there for reasons unknown.

Thoughts

I knew there was something in that barn! The moment Maggie read Glenn’s note it was a terrific sense of surprise waiting to be sprung. And I had predicted that the most likely thing to be kept in the barn were ‘walkers’, though I still don’t know precisely what Hershal was doing with them. My previous guess from last week, that they are friends and relatives waiting to be cured, still holds. Yet it has occurred to me that they might be held there for more practical reasons.

What is the lifespan of a walker? It’s an important point. Perhaps Hershal has herded them all in there and keeps them, unfed, just to see how long they last. Once they all die off he can perhaps figure that the rest of them ought to be suffering a similar fate. It seems like a good plan, right? Or maybe I’m thinking too much like how I would be. Hershal, with his strict manner and religious leanings, may have an altogether more far out reason for keeping zombies in his barn!

Hershal certainly isn’t the host with the most. That dinner scene was so tense, so awkward, I couldn’t help but laugh at how awful it was. The group eating in stilted silence. And that only got worse when Glenn tried to diffuse things with the suggestion of playing the guitar, asking if anyone knew how. Of course, Otis could play brilliantly!

(On this Hershal was being something of a dick. Let’s not forget that Otis was the one that shot Carl with a hunting rifle. He was the one that brought them there in the first place. No one knows that Shane made the hard call and killed Otis to save the boy so, from their view, Hershal's group drew first blood.)

Shane’s survivalist mentality does walk the line between common sense and inhumane. For now Rick will not cross that line and give up hope, or at least give up trying. Given that they do have leads – like the child’s bed and Sophia’s doll – I think I side with Rick’s view that they need to keep looking. I mean, it’s not just about abandoning one girl – it’s also about living with her mother and expecting her to just take that. Carol is quietly shaping up as a worthy character in her own right, and perhaps she’s just there to do the non-glamourous chores of cooking and cleaning, but that sill makes her a vital part of the group.

I really liked that she went to pay Daryl a visit and remarked that he was every bit as good as either Rick or Shane. He didn’t betray much emotion but I hope he did take some comfort from that, especially after the day he had. This was very much Daryl’s episode and if he hadn’t already earned his place as a fan favourite I think this instalment should have cemented it. Only question mark is whether his loyalty and decency are being eroded by his conscience and, perhaps, sanity.

His hallucinations of Merle were fascinating scenes, managing to deliver some insight into the kind of upbringing he had as well as reveal his state of mind. It’s important to remember that everything Merle said really came from Daryl’s mind, albeit projected onto Merle’s foul and objectionable manner. So Merle’s criticism for abandoning him betray those feelings of guilt Daryl possesses.

And Merle chiding him for following Rick exposes Daryl's nagging sense of selling himself out to a man that doesn’t deserve it. (If anything, Carol’s compliments about him being as good as Rick might actually throw fuel on his fire in that respect and make him resent following Rick’s leadership.)

I thought it was curious that Daryl established for himself that this Merle was not the real Merle (teased as long as possible for the audience by not revealing both hands for quite some time) and seemed rather comfortable with it. Are we to infer this might not be the first time he has had such visions? Like Merle remarks about the titular chupacabra he claimed to see, it’s every bit as likely to have been another figment of his imagination. . . As I said, maybe there’s a question being raised over Daryl’s sanity.

For what it’s worth I sincerely hope I’m wrong. I like Daryl as the capable, but dependable, outsider of the group. For as long as he can deliver sequences like how he saw off the two zombies here – smash the head in of one then rip out the crossbow arrow from inside himself, arm it and fire it at the other – he is the man!

Lastly, Andrea is establishing herself as a rather unsympathetic character this season. When she’s not wanting to kill herself she’s wanting to establish herself as one of the men, and she nearly killed Daryl in the process. Irritating woman, but mostly understandable. Dale, on the other hand, was a little too easy-going on her for my liking. Passing off her stupid actions with a quip about how they’d all like to shoot Daryl sometimes to try and win back her friendship was like crawling on his belly through dirt – an intended indignity, I am sure. Dale is the kind of man that, under Shane’s survivalist laws, wouldn’t last too long and he knows it.

What was the best part?

Without question the captivating ‘appearance’ of Merle and the exchange between him and Daryl, then bluntly proceeded by the zombie attack. Although Daryl coming round to discover a zombie eating his shoe made me think that it was the dumbest zombie ever it still didn’t stop the scare being effective and Daryl’s actions to see them both off nothing short of gory and cool.

What do I think will happen next?

Dependent on just how weird Hershal’s barn full of walkers turns out to be will depend on how tolerable it is for Rick’s group to accept it. If it’s purely as a measure of waiting for an antidote to cure them, or to see how long they last, it will be just about surmountable. However, there’s every reason to believe Maggie will convince Glenn to keep his mouth shut (and if he wants to use any more of those condoms he has he’ll keep it shut, too!) so the rest of them may remain unaware of the dark secret locked away. . .

Terra Nova: S01 Ep06 – Nightfall

2011-11-21T02:22:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A meteorite falls near Terra Nova and explodes in the air triggering an EMP, disabling the fence security, weapons, vehicles and medical equipment. As a solution to craft new chips and return power to Terra Nova is sought Taylor and his men are forced to defend their colony the old-fashioned way.

Spying a chance at reclaiming the box, Mira launches an assault on Terra Nova and, using a dinosaur decoy, manages to take the box back and deliver it to its intended recipient: Taylor’s son.

Thoughts

Oh, Terra Nova walked a fine line with the opening minutes. It was almost, almost, as though it was self-aware enough to parody its worst traits as a means of delivering a surprise. I’m not sure it was being that clever. I just think the schmaltz and sweetness of seeing the Shannon family hurrying around in the morning to get to wherever they are going just all felt like it was being played for maximum mawkishness.

Really I think they were just trying to create the feel of an everyday, normal run of things that was then abruptly interrupted by the sudden impact of the meteorite knocking out the electromagnetics. I don’t think Terra Nova has displayed enough self-aware credibility to claim it was sending up its own tacky qualities before it dropped a big explosion on it all.

The meteorite delivered an EMP that knocked Terra Nova for six. (Note to writers: If you want to make us believe in Maddy as an intelligent geek girl (which she plainly is way too hot to play with ease) then don’t let her use the phrase “EMP Pulse”. If you don’t know why that’s wrong you’re too stupid to write the show.) Briefly I hoped for something of an old-school siege episode, with Taylor defending the weakened colony from dinosaurs smelling free lunch.

As far as I could tell they didn’t get troubled by a single dinosaur except for the massive lumbering one the Sixers directed towards the camp. I’m 50/50 on whether or not I thought that was the dumbest thing ever or the show managed to sell it convincingly enough. It was all basically a plot device to let the Sixers get into Terra Nova and get the box and get back out again. Felt like a waste, to me. There’s any number of ways that box could have been liberated (most dramatically would have been to use the mole in camp, yet to be revealed, I think!) but the programme-makers had the camp crippled to make them vulnerable.

As stated, a more fun, crowdpleading episode would have been a defence against a dinosaur assault under those circumstances. If there’s one thing Terra Nova could use it’s a rousing, crowdpleaser of an episoder.

Still, Taylor and Jim (once he got out of ‘the eye’ room, which better be used again for better purposes than rollercoaster simulators!) were good value for some punching and kicking action with the Sixers. And I don’t know the name of Mira’s right-hand man, the one that Jim chased, but he had some nifty moves and could certainly handle himself in a fight. Hopefully there’ll be a dust up between Washington and this guy; a right-hand sidekick face-off!

The subplots were reasonably decent, I thought. Sky and her friend, that she thought of as a brother and he wanted more, felt a bit fumbled. Up until that point the business with the tapeworm creature thing was unpleasant and amusing. Although just when you thought that Liz might have some tense, surgical procedures to perform, with lives in the balance due to the lack of power, Terra Nova elected to just not bother. She’s at risk of becoming seriously redundant and/or boring. Still hot, though.

Maddy and solder boy’s picnic/night in a tree was about as good as the blossoming romance between these two has been handled so far, though it’s still being ladled on syrup-thick with insipid chivalry. Unless teenagers in the future all live like The Waltons it’s highly unlikely and unclear why they behave in such a quaint fashion.

Soldier boy being away from the camp on the day the power went down and the night the Sixer’s apparently had inside help to retrieve the box suggests he’s not the mole. Shame, he would be infinitely more interesting if his noble goody-two-shoes front was a mask for sinister intent.

It has occurred to me that, regarding this mole, possibly I am giving Terra Nova too much credit and assuming it’s staging a mystery to be revealed. It could be that the bartender is the mole, we’ve been well-informed about it for some time, and now we just need to see if and when Taylor finds out! The bartender's actions here in shooting the Sixer were surely to prevent him from being captured and potentially telling Taylor about him, as opposed to stepping in to save Taylor’s neck – though it could be a handy bonus that he is winning back some trust.

There was absolutely no surprise to anyone who has paid the mildest bit of attention to the show that the man at the end was Taylor’s wandering son. Whilst the exact nature of what was in the box remains a mystery (there’s no more clue in the graphics that appeared than was present in the rock carvings from the first episode) it’s the most compelling plot thread Terra Nova has. Indeed, the idea that Taylor’s rule is flawed and that the truth about Terra Nova the place, its original intent and its potential future, have been subverted by his leadership are the best things Terra Nova has waiting to spring. The big question is: Will the mystery deliver a payoff that justifies the suspense and takes the show to a new level?

All in all, it was actually a decent episode, it’s just that all the shortcomings Terra Nova is riddled with (simplistic characters, cheesy values and a confused tone) were present here and, as ever, made watching it and enjoying it a matter of overlooking its flaws and holding onto the few good bits. It desperately needs to get better to be considered ‘good’, let alone ‘great’, television.

It’s a shame, really, because it’s actually a show with a terrific concept and good ongoing ideas. Somehow it just keeps getting in the way of itself from delivering them.

What was the best part?

You know, for all the crashing meteorites and huge stomping dinosaurs, the best bit of the episode for me was the all-too-human and non-effects scene where Jim and Taylor engaged in some smackdown with the infiltrating Sixers. Brutal without being overly-violent, it was succeeded by a nice chase to the fence. But, really, the cherry on top was Taylor’s “Let’s dance” taunt. It’s like 80s machismo never went out of fashion!

What do I think will happen next?

The plot ball really sits in the Sixer’s, and Taylor's son's, court. If that doesn’t get picked up and taken some place then there’s really not a whole lot else of ongoing interest worth getting invested in enough to make predictions about. Maddy and soldier boy will continue their romance. Josh might wake up to the fact Sky likes him, egged on by his mum. . . Is this really all there is going on!?

Fringe: S04 Ep06 – And Those We’ve Left Behind

2011-11-18T03:15:00.000-08:00

What happened?

The Fringe team investigate a series of strange events related to apparent time anomalies. Believing Peter to be a potential cause, distorting the space-time continuum due to his appearance, they take him along to investigate. Whilst he experiences these time jumps himself it transpires that another man is chiefly responsible.

Continuing work his wife was pursuing before she developed Alzheimer’s, the husband has been creating a time bubble to the past so his wife can finish the work and create a permanent window to the past. However, realising the dangers occurring elsewhere the wife destroys her work so it can never be repeated.

Due to Peter’s assistance he is offered Walter’s campus residence to stay in, and whilst Olivia has figured the version of her Peter knew obviously meant something to him and is warming to him Walter is proving harder to win around.

Thoughts

Tricky business, time travel. A lot of sci-fi shows like to dabble in it and it can tie a plot up in knots and nonsense in no time flat. Fringe is very often a cut-above but, for me, it fell over itself with this episode. It’s a shame because, before the introduction of the husband, before the episode actually tried to explain itself so it could resolve the situation, it looked like Fringe was really cooking up a knockout instalment.

From the scene with the mother in her kitchen that switched to a burned husk, her rushing out of the place with her girl now a baby, to the scene where the kids in the car were nearly hit by a section of train appearing out of nowhere and dashing by, it was fast-paced and inventive stuff. Furthermore, Peter’s trips through time were masterfully handled; quick edits dropping him seamlessly from one place to the next. I loved how he just rolled with it, remarking how it could get annoying but got on with it.

Once an explanation was attempted to be posited it all started to unravel. I mean, there was a kernel of a good idea (albeit one that’s feeling a bit creaky on Fringe, that of the well-meaning person meddling with science and generating tragic results) but it wasn’t really well sold. The episode with Peter Weller in (can’t recall the name of it, possibly it was White Tulip) dealt with similar ideas, I seem to remember, and managed them far more successfully. I know Fringe often skirts around the cyclical nature of behaviour and events but recycling plot ideas with new riffs here just feels lazy.

I mean, the genius wife had her timeline interrupted by her husband dredging her forwards in time (kind of) and telling her everything, and then she disappeared back to her original timeline. . . Surely that would have changed history! And how did she just disappear anyway? To where? It was all very sketchy. Bizarrely the story could have shaped out that the husband’s mucking around with time travel was what caused her mental condition – but instead that self-fulfilling, terrible (and, yes, paradoxical) time loop idea was ignored.

Also glossed over was whatever was happening with Peter – when he kept zipping back and forth in time what were other people seeing him do? Did he break a piece off the car bumper first time at the scene, or when he travelled back there? Again, it was very sketchy, and I was waiting for a scene that would offer a more objective explanation – but it never arrived.

So the initially enticing premise gave way to a bit of a mess, luckily the episode had some good business going on with the main characters to redeem it even if I have to somewhat baulk at how quickly and easily the likes of Broyles and Olivia have bought into the idea that Peter is really Walter’s dead son as deposited from an alternate historical timeline! Just because it’s true doesn’t mean our leads should be so readily swayed by it!

I did like the interplay, or lack of, between Walter and Peter. Walter’s retreat into childish ignorance won’t hold for long, though I like how he is being won around by a sense of admiration by Peter’s display of intelligence at the Faraday cage belt plan. A sense of fatherly pride? Just a touch, but it can be fostered into something more.

Peter, meanwhile, has to deal with a kind of reversal to Walter, in that he has ‘lost’ the father he knew. This Walter won’t speak to him, but he also lives in the laboratory. The moment Peter returned ‘home’, pulling the sheets off the furniture of the place that he and Walter used to live in (curious that the place was furnished with a top notch enormous widescreen LCD television, I thought!), the point was hit home: this was the world he knew but it was a world he didn’t belong to.

As Peter remarked to Broyles, he has come to realise that he is the person that needs to be reset – but that is, of course, impossible. Also impossible, I feel, is the idea that he can go back to the previous version of the universe he knew. I think Fringe this season has set up plot dynamics and characters here that are establishing themselves as permanent, to be invested in, so I don’t see the ‘undo’ button getting pushed and all of that being erased to go back to the state of things at the end of season 3. So Peter is ‘stuck’ in this world but, maybe, Olivia and even Walter, might just awaken to an awareness of that previous version of things and make this new world feel more like home.

It was interesting that Olivia didn’t answer the question about what her dreams of Peter involved, and whether they at all featured the park and picnic as he dreamt. Also interesting was Peter being unaware of appearing and speaking to Walter before he properly arrived. If Olivia was dreaming of Peter, and Walter alone was having visions of him, it’s almost like they dragged him back into existence. . .

Deep, heady territory this. I rather hope that there’s more to be pursued about this angle, this extra dimension – a shared dream of a perfect day. That maybe all of these characters and versions of the universe are all circling around an ideal place, iterations and variations that fail to meet the ideal. . . If Fringe has an endgame, maybe that’s it.

What was the best part?

I really liked the sequence when Peter was jolted through time. The edits were sharp whilst the transitions were smooth. It was unexpected and it really enlivened what looked to be one of Fringe’s usual investigation scenes. Icing on the cake was Peter’s deadpan acceptance of what was happening and just getting on with it. Peter’s really cool this season!

What do I think will happen next?

I expect that Walter and Peter will continue to grow their relationship, to the extent that Peter may eventually be faced with a decision where he no longer wishes to return to the world he came from since he has become attached to this one. Olivia will be crucial in this. (As ever, Peter’s choice regarding Olivia will determine the fate of the universe!)

Misfits: S03 Ep03

2011-11-17T02:15:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Simon saved a guy called Peter from being mugged, instantly winning Peter’s adoration. Simon doesn’t realise that Peter has his own power of being able to draw events that will then happen for real. Using this power Peter controls Simon and tries to split him apart from Alisha. However, when the gang stop Peter’s plans he draws a final scenario where he kidnaps Alisha only for Simon to rescue her and kill him in the process.

Kelly gets to know the Power Dealer more, learning that the girl in the cemetery was his previous girlfriend who suffered an overdose he feels responsible for. As such he’s finding it difficult to submit to a new relationship. Alisha, now back with Simon, makes him promise to burn his outfit and stop trying to fulfil his destiny of travelling back in time. He says he will, but in secret hides the costume.

Thoughts

A Simon-centric episode is the one that offers up the most engaging subject matter for Misfits fans interested in the larger story arc. This episode very much raised the questions tucked at the heart of the timeloop and Simon’s fate, but didn’t take any closer steps towards answering them. I don’t think this was the chief reason why this episode failed to lift off for me, but it was certainly part of it.

I did think Peter was underserved here. The reveal of his power was deftly uncovered, and as ever fitted with his character (being someone powerless to make things go his way in real life, as the story of the stolen handbag revealed, and thus granted a power to shape the world and events as he wanted). Yet I felt like we didn’t really get to understand what he was all about, and so his final act of showing Simon that dying for what you believe in by making the ultimate sacrifice didn’t quite land perfectly.

Was that his intention all along, when he was trying to separate Simon from Alisha? Or did he have a change of heart and mind once his first scheme failed? I’m tempted to believe he intended it all along, and breaking Simon and Alisha up was his way of testing their relationship’s resolve, but it’s impossible to really call for sure.

I liked Simon’s performance here, adopting a muscular comic book pose when he was under Peter’s control was a nice touch. It did seem a tad remiss that his power of foresight was never employed, although he has stated in a previous episode that it’s not something he is able to control. Didn’t particularly serve him well here!

The ending to the episode was a compelling build that, alas, felt anticlimactic. I did like how Simon’s burning of the corpse was depicted very similar to Luke burning Darth Vader at the end of Return Of The Jedi (are we to deduce something more meaningful about overcoming the dark side from this!?). However, Peter having ended his comic book with a ‘to be continued’ felt underwhelming; I expected the camera to pan towards a stack of comic book papers he had drawn already, basically mapping out events yet to come, which I thought would have been both cool and interesting in the sense of challenging notions of free will.

Simon’s very predicament is determined by the sense of doing what he believes must be done against what free will would suggest he is able to do. The compelling opinion of Alisha, that he doesn’t need to go back in time because she already got saved, feels right! If Simon never goes back, what happens? Does the space-time continuum unravel? But time travel logistics would suggest that Simon doesn’t have a choice. His fate is as predetermined as the drawings in the comic book. He will go back in time and die because he’s already done it. It’s set down. Drawn in black and white. Inescapable.

I’m torn 50/50 on whether Misfits will proceed with this tragic plot or, somehow, find a way around it so that it happens without Simon being really dead. There’s all manner of ways around it (on a show where anything can happen, where anyone can do anything, solutions are plentiful). He could be cloned. It could be an alternate timeline permutation. Someone could have the ability to reincarnate the dead. . .

This brings me on to the power broker, and the nice interplay between him and Kelly. His story of the dead girlfriend was less mysterious than it first seemed, but the reason why he can’t let her go and give Kelly a whirl makes me think he is looking for a power that will allow him to bring his girlfriend back. Maybe all of his power trading is a means for him to eventually acquire the power to bring back people from the dead, and this quest might dovetail into Simon’s tragic fate. Stranger things have happened.

Really enjoyed Kelly in this episode. Her straddling between awkward and vulnerable to cocksure and profane is really well-played. Lauren Socha performs it to a tee. High-fiving when she once again uses her powers as a rocket scientist, to bemoaning getting cum on her face, to laying her cards out and admitting she likes the power broker – she’s a subtle and unsubtle standout in every scene.

On the flipside Rudy was rather irritating this episode and got on my nerves. He was a rather redundant player in proceedings and yet still hogged screentime that would have been better used with Simon and Peter. For every funny scene, like Rudy suggesting the probation officer was abused as a child, there was a boorish misfire where his obnoxious sense of humour and witlessness clunked up proceedings. I wouldn’t want to see him befall the same fate as Curtis (present in scenes despite being utterly superfluous) but his character needs the most work to wrestle into someone relatable.

Lastly, and I know it’s debased and pathetic (so quite a good fit for Misfits!) but a word of praise for Alisha’s breasts this episode. The tops she was wearing, and the camera shots that amply showed her off, meant I could barely take my eyes off her chest when she was on-screen. More of *those* please! (I’ll break with tradition and stick a pic of her here for, uh, artistic purposes.)

What was the best part?

Despite the weighty thematic ideas, the actual execution of events wasn’t particularly slick in my opinion. Peter’s death scene felt rushed when it really ought to have been the best part. As such I’ll plump for Simon burning Peter and then making his false promise to Alisha, intercut with the flashbacks and comic book frames. The climax didn’t quite deliver the punchline I felt was coming, but it was still captivating and felt momentous.

What do I think will happen next?

Beyond the longterm quandary of whether Simon’s fate is sealed or he will fulfil his destiny and yet survive the only other ongoing thread concerns Kelly and the power trader. As previously suggested, I can’t help but figure he’s not given up hope of getting his dead girlfriend back. However, next week’s preview hinted at a deranged Nazi-inspired happening (time travel involved? Simon could be discovering his means of going back!) featuring the probation worker, too, so looks like demented fun.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep04 – Cherokee Rose

2011-11-16T01:26:00.000-08:00

What happened?

The group convene at Hershel’s Farm, ostensibly to allow Carl time to recover and to mount a more rigorous and controlled search for Sophia. With Rick still weak from gjving blood, and Shanae limping, it’s left to Daryl to continue the hunt. He finds a house and potential signs of life, but ultimately no Sophia.

Whilst Glenn and Maggie take a supply run to town, and get it on, Rick requests that Hershel reconsider his stance that the group are not welcome to stay permanently. Lori had asked Glenn to bring her back a pregnancy test and, in the secrecy of night, she steals away to check herself. The test comes back positive.

Thoughts

Whilst this episode felt a little like filler, it’s hard to imagine many other shows having filler episodes that house this much quality. Whilst there may be those that feel The Walking Dead needs to kick things up a gear and get moving I totally disagree. I like the leisurely pace and, besides, where exactly is the plot in a hurry to get to? Barring whatever information the CDC man told Rick at the end of season 1 (I’ve read a theory that he informed Rick that Lori was pregnant, but I’m not overly-convinced) there is little reason for the group to be in any rush to get anywhere.

Indeed, the fundamental issue comes down to wanting to stay at the seemingly idyllic Hershal’s farm. I got the first sense of things being not quite right about the place in this episode. They were only small touches, like the look on Maggie’s face when the zombie was brutally killed, or Hershal’s remarks to Rick that their staying here would depend on certain conditions. . .

I really can’t identify exactly what is going on, but I get the sense it’s something grim. I can’t help but wonder if the large building Rick offered to stay at (which Hershal refused) contains something rather unpleasant. Like what? My best guess, and it’s a total stab in the dark, is that Hershal and the others keep zombies there, perhaps people they know and love, awaiting the arrival of a cure that will bring them back.

Potentially the fat zombie stuck at the bottom of the well was one such zombie that had gotten free or something and thus Maggie had to steel herself and keep it a secret that she knew who it was, thus explaining her curious reaction. Like I said, it’s a total guess. But whatever the truth of it, I am definitely expecting dark revelations to be unearthed.

The zombie in the well did offer up the coolest scene and perhaps the most disgusting moment The Walking Dead has put on-screen so far. Glenn’s descent and hurried scrambled ascent in and out of the well was adeptly handled though I would have been mightily shocked if it had ended in tragedy. Very cool was the moment Glenn handed Dale the rope to show that, despite his panic, he had still managed to lasso the zombie anyway. Very cool indeed.

And, of course, dragging the zombie up out of the water (honestly, would you have drank from that well even if the extraction had been successful considering the drooling, bloated beast had been sloshing around in it for God knows how long?) ended spectacularly; it burst into two pieces and the camera near-delighted in giving an unflinching view of the guts and entrails flooding out.

Truly revolting. I absolutely loved it.

There was also time for some levity and humour, too, which was very welcome. The sense of dread and jeopardy is only increased the more we like these characters and the more we feel they are ‘safe’. Glenn and Maggie (hello farmer’s daughter indeed!) getting it on was a fun scene that humanised the pair of them as well as carrying the dark undertow of just how scarce choice and other people truly are. It was played for laughs but possessed an all too understandable truth about loneliness and the need for intimacy, if only casual and shortlived.

Daryl continued to transform into a new man. His determination to find Sophia yielding perhaps the best sign of hope yet with the discovery of the house and the small makeshift bed in a cupboard. There’s no definitive way of knowing if it was Sophia that had been staying there (and how much did you just want Daryl to find her?) but it’s the best lead so far. His finding and presenting the Cherokee Rose to Sophia’s mother was a symbol of hope, but also stood as a metaphor of beauty and life flourishing in unlikely circumstances, a concept echoed in Lori learning she is pregnant.

First question is: Who’s the daddy? I suspect Lori’s dread is formed from that potential quandary, and also from the opinion she expressed in the previous episode when she considered if it was better for Carl to die rather than live in this world. Now she faces the prospect of bringing a child into this hell. It’s certainly a daunting proposition but, if the human race is to survive, it’s precisely this that needs to happen.

With Shane still a brooding presence, wrestling with his conscience (he practically gave the game away of what he did to Otis in his near-confession to Andrea) and potentially misconstruing Lori’s meaning when she requested he stay with the group, things are set to get continuously edgy between him, Lori and Rick. No question this is a plot dynamic that is going to be painfully wrought out. It’s testament to the quality of the show that both Shane and Lori can be considered both to blame and yet totally sympathetic. Only Rick continues to play the role of burdened but thoroughly decent leader – the moment he becomes conflicted with immorality might be when this ragtag band of survivors really unravel.

What was the best part?

Has to be the whole exercise in attempting to get the zombie out of the well. It had drama (Glenn’s near-death), heroics (Glenn’s reveal of achieving the goal), gore (bursting zombie!) and humour (TJ’s remarks about how at least they didn’t do something like just shoot it). Wonderful stuff, even if the speed of how Shane and the rest were pulling on that rope didn’t quite tally with the complete lack of upward movement of Glenn in the well.

What do I think will happen next?

The previews I glimpsed somewhat help me here, as next week’s episode seemed to suggest that Daryl will get into trouble on his own – injured, and perhaps even seeing his brother (hallucination or real, that’ll be the key question, I suspect). That he seemed to stagger out in front of Rick I anticipate will trigger a tense moment of deciding whether Daryl has become infected or is just seriously injured. With any luck he’ll have suffered but survived and, please, finally have recovered Sophia!

Terra Nova: S01 Ep05 – Bylaw

2011-11-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

What happened?

An apparent dinosaur attack that killed a man turns out to have been a murder. Whilst the initial suspect is the first person to be tried in Terra Nova and sentenced to a very public banishment, eventually the real murderer is revealed to be another soldier who owed the victim money. He is more privately sent out for banishment by Taylor who says he will lose no sleep over his actions.

Liz and her daughter are in the laboratory where a dinosaur egg they retrieved is cared for and eventually hatches. Meanwhile Josh has fulfilled his bargain with the bartender and meets with the Sixers and Amira. She tells him she can get him his girlfriend back, so long as he promises to one day fulfil a request from her no matter what.

Thoughts

How is it that this show can take powerful ingredients of a murder mystery, an issue of dictatorship against social equality, and traitorous behaviour, pack them all into a single episode and still make it all seem a bit blah? For the answer you just needed to watch this episode of Terra Nova which, as ever, continues to make the intriguing and amazing seem tedious and overcooked.

The opening murder was a nice introduction sequence, and was a rather cool idea. That someone would trap a dangerous dino in a confined building they knew someone was going to turn up to was a decent method of murder. The reveal of who eventually perpetrated the crime felt rather fumbled. Initially a red herring regarding a husband and young wife (another interesting question raised, regarding people who had won the lottery then getting married purely to bring people with them – what kind of quality control issues would that create?) it turned out to be a soldier we’d never seen before.

It was all rather convoluted, particularly when the episode had employed the bartender to be part of a pre-arranged ruse to trap the soldier. I didn’t get that. Why did they have to stage such an elaborate scheme? And what about the original innocent guy who was so publicly banished? Aren’t people going to be raising their eyebrows when they see him walking around camp free as a bird? If that matter got addressed I missed it.

The issue of Taylor’s rule over Terra Nova is meaty territory. From the very first episode I pondered what Terra Nova would do about law and order in this new civilisation. Turns out that Taylor’s word is pretty much law and, whilst he claims to have never encountered such a serious crime as yet, it’s still curious that he has maintained such a rule over these people for so long, unchallenged and unquestioned. (There was brief mention of it from Malcolm, I recall, in his first episode.) I definitely feel like this is quite a crucial aspect to the show, and one that the programme could really use to good effect. It would seem from the Sixers that they have a problem with Taylor and the fact that he has absolute rule over the camp if his character has moral grey areas or reason for dispute makes it an especially juicy scenario.

I say all that with reservation, of course. Terra Nova being Terra Nova can have all the terrific ideas in the world and manage to blunt them of any edge and squander pulse-quickening tension for safe and sound tied up plots.

Like, for example, the whole business with Liz and her daughter and the hatching egg. What the hell was that all about? It just felt like something cute and wholesome dropped in and nestling very uneasily against everything else in the episode. If it was there to provide balance then for me all it did was create problems with tone. Is this dinosaur now going to live with the Shannon family? Are they turning into The Flintstones!?

Josh and his deal with the Sixers was presumably meant to feel more dramatic than it played out. I’m not sure where Skye fits into this picture. Was her urge to go along purely because she’s worried about Josh? Or is she potentially the mole in the camp and she accompanied Josh to ensure he got there and would be on hand to be used? I fear that it was the former, because Terra Nova feels like that kind of show, but hopefully it’s springing a shock surprise and it will be the latter.

As could perhaps be deduced, I wasn’t a big fan of this episode. I feel like the honeymoon period is over and Terra Nova needs to start taking itself seriously and start producing some serious goods for me to continue with it. There’s a lot of good television on at the moment and right now Terra Nova isn’t sitting there in the schedules screaming ‘must-see’.

What was the best part?

I’d have to go with the pursuit and capture of the dinosaur. At least this episode did have the saving grace that the dinosaurs which are the show’s big calling card delivered the standout scene. Terra Nova needs to keep remembering that it is set in a world with dinosaurs and dinosaurs are cool and if they want to do an episode where the camp is under siege by T-Rex and raptors then it’ll be a storm and be a total hit. Play to your strengths, and hit the lowest common denominator if you must!

What do I think will happen next?

Josh will invariably have to be made to do something he doesn’t want to do. (Really, though, once he gets his girlfriend back what’s to stop him reneging on the deal and telling his father everything he knows?) And, I guess, the Shannon’s will have a baby dinosaur living with them for a while. Which will be fun!

An Idiot Abroad: S02 Ep08

2011-11-12T05:23:00.000-08:00

What happened?

A retrospective episode with Karl sitting down with Ricky and Steve to discuss his travels and field questions from viewers, as well as Ricky finally ensuring that Karl had his prostate checked and his invention of Pilkopants made it to a shopping channel.

Thoughts

Strange kind of episode to write a write-up for, considering that a lot of it was basically going over old material and discussing it. As such there doesn’t leave much for me to actually discuss here so I don’t envisage this being too long-winded. Curiously, though, this retrospective episode was perhaps the most consistent and amusing episode of the whole series.

Anyone who has heard or watched The Ricky Gervais Show will be familiar with the trio of Ricky, Steve and Karl and how they get along together. It’s a lot of fun to actually see them, properly. I think one of my most memorable moments was the sight of Steve Merchant creasing up with laughter, clinging on to Ricky’s arm, when Karl was talking about how one of the rooms he had stayed in had stank of fish.

There’s little else to say about the three of them talking about what happened, save to say it remained fun and entertaining. The highlight of the straight conversations had to be when Ricky made Karl re-enact his ‘Bullshit Man’ superhero, which then resulted in an interrogation of whether he could fly, or had superhearing, all of which were added superpowers! If there was anything lacking, I would say that I'd have preferred to see more 'behind the scenes' pieces of the making of the show - stuff that didn't fit in with the regular episodes but could have been included here.

This being an episode of An Idiot Abroad then Ricky and Steve couldn’t help themselves lay out some stunts for Karl to endure, although they were definitely the highlights of the episode. The visit from the doctor that took Karl to a private room to perform a check on his prostate was brilliantly funny. I defy anyone not to observe a man begrudge another man sticking his finger up his arse and not laugh. And the scene was capped off brilliantly with Karl’s perfectly-timed joke remark asking whether he was a real doctor.

Karl also had his own surprise when he showed Ricky and Steve his stint on a shopping channel trying to sell his Pilkopants. They were truly a terrible invention, basically boiling down to little more than a string bag attached to the seat of trousers. (Surely a better idea would be to have a form of inflatable thing in the seat of trousers for the use as a seat when required?) Still, Karl gave it his best shot (best line being that they’d be useful for children that fell into water to keep them buoyant, with Ricky pointing out that they would be floating face down, submerged!) and managed to sell all fifteen of them.

Probably some smart consumers snapped them up. Not because they were a good product but because they’ll surely be worth quite a lot more as famous rarities.

End of the series then, and this second foray of An Idiot Broad has been good value. The first episode had me worried that they were striving too hard to re-create the effortless fun of the first and failing. But after that initial mis-step the series seemed to relax and find its own groove and be thoroughly good viewing week in, week out. Dare I say it, but I think I liked it more than the first one.

What was the best part?

Easily the part where Karl had his prostrate checked. He took it in good humour and, strangely, it probably did more for raising awareness about what such a simple and important check it is that might prompt men over 40 to do the same.

What do I think will happen next?

Ricky Gervais is usually pretty strict on quitting on a high, and his television output so far has always took the trend of two series, and a special (not including the podcasts that inspired The Ricky Gervais Show). So, I suppose, there’s always scope that there will be An Idiot Abroad special. Given the massive success of the show, though, I would imagine there’s a lot of encouragement to go right ahead and make a third. If they can get the right conceptual reason to be sending Karl overseas then I certainly would be tuning in.

Fringe: S04 Ep05 – Novation

2011-11-10T08:06:00.001-08:00

What happened?

Peter makes an attempt to explain to Walter who he is and where he has come from, but only realises for himself that The Observer apparently didn’t intervene in this timeline and is left confused as to why he therefore exists. As a means of getting to spend more time with Walter he assists with an investigation into the shapeshifters that have now taken human form.

The shapeshifter takes hostage a Dr. Truss who manages to stabilise its physical condition, paving the way for them to be near undetectable infiltration units capable of impersonating anyone. Whilst the team face up this new potential crisis Olivia experiences a strange moment of de ja vue.

At the close, the shapeshifter is seen communicating on a typewriter where she is informed that the others will be sent over now that their physical form has been stabilised.

Thoughts

Good episode, this. Managed to pick up and dive straight in on multiple plot threads. Indeed, I was most impressed by how no time was wasted in Peter breaking the news of who he was and where he had come from to Walter. I anticipated that this would have been held off for more of a Peter/Olivia focus. Not so.

I really enjoyed Peter this episode. His confidence and intelligence has previously appeared as reserved and reactionary, but here he was on the front foot, calling the shots and making things work in his favour. It was good to be reminded that he’s also a genius – a point that doesn’t always translate. Way to return, Peter! And he was quick to ask the pertinent questions that revealed the fundamental difference between the universe he came from and this one: here ‘he’ drowned in Reiden Lake rather than get saved by The Observers.

Interesting point that Broyles and co had no idea about The Observers. Originally it transpired that The Observer, September, had been noticed and photographed many times over and was subject to investigation. In this universe there is no awareness of him, or the others. Was the function of the machine that September constructed and used to simply remove the traces of any Observer appearances and interventions? As such there was no investigation of Observer sightings since they had been erased, just as much as September’s intervention in saving the drowning Peter had also ceased to exist as an event.

Until I know better, that’s my rationale. September used a machine that wiped out his own interactions, though we know he didn’t fully complete the mission since he allowed traces of Peter to remain and ultimately bleed through. The answer to Peter’s question of how he still exists surely lies with September. The answer to why he has been permitted this continued existence is a far larger question.

Walter’s reaction was nicely handled here. Just when you thought he might eventually be won around by Peter – the man with his son’s eyes – he eventually confronted the situation like a kind of morality test; a challenge to see if he would repeat the terrible acts (terrible, at least, in the sense of the devastating consequences) he made with young Peter once before. Given his conviction he’s not going to be easily swayed.

The shapeshifter plot was perfunctory, though anyone who has even half-watched Fringe over the years could have predicted the injured man at the end was actually the shapeshifter’s current form. If a person is ever found lying prone, having survived an encounter with a shapeshifter, odds are it’s because they are the shapeshifter!

I fully anticipate our shapeshifters to somehow infiltrate Fringe Division courtesy of someone we are familiar with. Would Fringe be so bold as to have another main character (like Charlie) be killed and have a shapeshifter assume their place? I’d hope not, because it’s a plot that’s well-worn. It was used with Charlie’s duplicate, and also with Fauxlivia posing as Olivia – faking a person’s identity with their likeness has been well and truly done on this show, so the only problem for me with these new near-perfect human shapeshifters is the threat of retreading old ground.

Other tantalising pieces of information: Nina stepped in and raised Olivia. This explains their easy and comforting relationship previously exhibited. A surprising reveal, perhaps, though at present I can’t see how it will prove pivotal. The other major reveal was of the shapeshifter communicating with Over There. Barring any further knowledge, I have to now assume the shapeshifter is a creation of Walternate and operating under his bidding. If the truce between the two worlds is being undercut in this way then things are going to get messy (and, for dramatic purposes, it would make more sense for this to be the case).

All this and the episode still had time cram in a little bit of romance (kind of) with Olivia asking Lincoln if he wanted to go for a drink. I couldn’t tell if Olivia was genuinely asking out of attraction or distraction. I got the feeling it was more the latter, almost like the niggling feeling of Peter’s appearance had unnerved her to the extent that she needed to shake off the incertitude and Lincoln was her nearest and best bet. Unfortunately for her he said no!

The biggest subtle moment was the de ja vue Olivia experienced. I feel like this was seeding something major for the next episode, or possibly episodes. At present I have to assume that Olivia is somehow becoming aware of how this universe isn’t quite the ‘real deal’ (although, technically, if this is the way the universe is without The Observer’s intervention then it’s arguably the definitive one!) and her momentary reliving of a moment is an event that she’s going to encounter on a larger scale. Like maybe hours, or days, lived once and then reset to live again (perhaps with the capacity to make changes). It was curious that she didn’t ‘relive’ things completely – like she saw the folder returned to her desk twice yet only asked Lincoln out once. Weird.

Out of the box final thought: Olivia is experiencing the world like how The Observer’s experience the world. Able to relive moments over. When I think of that scene in Season 1 where September was able to speak the words that Peter was saying as he said them that’s a notion that doesn’t seem as ridiculous as it may have first sounded.

What was the best part?

Tempted to plump for Olivia’s moment of de ja vue for sheer intrigue level, but really I thought the scene where Peter had hacked the intercom to hear and speak to the outside area was good stuff. Peter’s manner and proactive stance here really suits him and makes his character more dynamic than ever before.

What do I think will happen next?

I suspect Peter’s ongoing struggle to justify why he is still around will be a longterm plot for the season, and of course it must be linked into the actions of September and the role The Observers play.

The shapeshifter communicating with Over There implies Walternate is involved and, despite previous reservations, I’m going to plump for the idea that he really is behind their actions. There’s the longshot that William Bell has/had a hand in it, and perhaps the reason he pulled the plug on the doctor’s research many years back was so he could continue it down this path rather than medical advancement. . .

Most intriguing was Olivia’s moment of de ja vue, which I suspect has to have something to do with the instability of this current universe timeline and it ‘glitching’ on account of Peter’s return. Why only Olivia has experienced it thus far may indicate that she alone is receptive to the phenomena, or she’s just the first. For now my hunch is that she alone will experience the strange time shifts since she was alone in dreaming of Peter, but possibly Walter might also be involved.

Misfits: S03 Ep02

2011-11-09T06:53:00.001-08:00

What happened?

Curtis uses his power to turn into a woman as a means of getting back into his beloved sport of running. As both Curtis and his female counterpart, Melissa, he forms a romantic relationship with a fellow runner – but with the added complications of male advances and a date rapist trainer, Curtis is forced to reveal his secret to both the group and his girlfriend.

Meanwhile Kelly and Alisha set about following the Power Trader man and spy on him laying flowers at a grave to a person they don’t yet know.

Thoughts

Interesting episode, this, for the reason that there was actually little reliance of the super powers aspect. Save for the central conceit of Curtis’ sex change ability there were no other displays of powers. It was refreshing. If Misfits could be accused of a flaw it would be the way everyone around the place seemed to have some kind of power and were cropping up every episode. It’s telling that I was watching this episode rather expecting either the girlfriend or the date rapist to have a hidden power to be revealed, and it worked out better that they didn’t.

Stripped of super power shenanigans, this episode pretty much played out like a more conventional teen drama – albeit one with that specific brand of Misfits coarseness and profanity. Making Curtis the focus was much-needed for his character that appears to have been a little lost in the mix of late, though I do wonder if this might be his biggest time in the spotlight this series and now he’ll retreat to a more supporting role in the future.

The episode ended with him deciding that if he couldn’t feasibly run competitively then he would have to find something else to fill his life with. It seems like a reach, considering this is Misfits, but he could choose to become more heroic and use his powers productively (though this would, of course, depend on him getting a more useful power – with the presence of Power Trader remaining I fully expect that to occur for at least one or two of the gang).

Speaking of Power Trader, plot lines between he and Kelly are evidently being seeded. She wasn’t in it much, but Kelly almost stole the show. Her downbeat, pouting manner, even when singing her own praises at being a rocket scientist and so able to fix the car, were just fantastic. Her matter-of-fact remarks to Curtis about how he would have to put his bloodstained underwear in a hot wash were delivered pitch perfect.

Interesting question raised: If Curtis as a woman can have a period, does that also follow that he can become pregnant!?

The episode certainly wasted no time in getting down, literally, with Curtis exploring the sexual possibilities of being a woman. (I can’t believe he waited so long to investigate his own body! If there was a part of the episode that stretched credulity, that was it. The first thing every man would do were they in a woman’s body, I suspect, would be to masturbate and see how it felt.)

I liked Simon’s confused questioning of the matter of whether he was a lesbian or not – it’s certainly a grey area. And what I did think was interesting was Curtis’ reaction to Rudy ‘going down’ on him. He could laugh about it at the end, and during the episode he talked about Melissa as though she was a separate person. I’m not sure if Misfits is interested in going that in-depth with the idea, but there are suggestions of Curtis splitting his personality and experiencing himself as Curtis and as Melissa as two different people.

It’s not a totally farfetched idea that the programme could take this direction, as it would parallel Rudy’s own split personality power where two aspects of his character manifestly appear as distinct entities.

Yet, as I said, maybe I’m thinking too in-depth.

This wasn’t really an episode that particularly warranted massive analysis; it was an entertaining exploration of Curtis and his power that sprinkled a future plotline for Kelly and Power Trader but otherwise effected little else. Good fun but, in the grand scheme of the series, I would expect this to ultimately turn out to be a rather inconsequential episode.

What was the best part?

Standout sequence had to be the attempted date-rape of Curtis/Melissa. Not only was it a pivotal moment in the episode, but it also had the balls to show the full, well, cock and balls of Curtis back in male form. The scene needed that moment of stark clarification for plot purposes, but the fact that it was such an in your face full frontal makes me have to admire Misfits for always looking to push the boundaries.

What do I think will happen next?

From this episode I would have expected that the next logical progression would be to follow Kelly’s investigation into Power Trader man, though it seemed from the preview that Simon would be the main focus next. This is certainly welcome as the matter of why he pursues a course of action he knows will lead to his death ought to make for meaty subject matter for Misfits to grapple with (and possibly overcome).

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep03 – Save The Last One

2011-11-07T12:44:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Shane and Otis try to escape from the school; running low on ammo, and both of them unable to move quickly, it doesn’t look like an easy escape. Shane eventually arrives at the farmhouse, telling how Otis and he got separated and he lost him. However, with the medical equipment he brought, the Doctor is able to perform the operation on Carl and save him.

Daryl and Andrea venture out into the woods to continue hunting for Sophia, with only Daryl holding hope that she could be still found alive. All they discover, however, is a zombie hanging from a tree and return to the camper van without her.

Lori pleads with Shane to stay with the group, little realising the truth that Shane was responsible for Otis’ death, having shot him in order to make his own escape. He shaves his head as he remembers the horrific act he had committed.

Thoughts

What a difference a final scene makes. Before the last reveal I have to say I was getting rather annoyed with this episode, particularly when Shane turned up without Otis and stated that he had been killed. I think I literally threw my hands up at the screen and remarked, “What?” I was already set to be annoyed if they killed off Otis, but to have done it off-screen just felt doubly-insulting.

And then, of course, the last scene revealed what had really gone on between Shane and Otis and it was devastatingly effective. Hats off to all involved; they totally got me with the surprise. Seeing Shane shoot Otis (and I loved how he angrily fought to hold him back) and then return to the farmhouse, shaving his head, was a shocking way to end the episode. In a good way.

With Lori imploring Shane to remain with the group, unaware of just how unstable he has become, it sets up a really precarious dynamic between the trio of Rick, Shane and Lori. I recall in the first season the moment where Shane had Rick in the sights of his gun and Dale caught him in the act. He held back then, but maybe Shane is moving closer to a point where he realises the consequences of his actions no longer come with the threat of law and order and he is turning to more brutal measures to get what he wants.

That’s not to say I believe Shane has suddenly turned into a murderous psychopath. The Walking Dead is smarter than that; Shane did perform a terrible act for the greater good of saving Carl. Clearly this is going to weigh heavy on his conscience and create strain and tension there that might push him into a bad state of mind. But, as stated, I also suspect that an awakening to what he can do to get what he wants may push his character into dark territory.

Also effective in this episode was the discussion between Rick and Lori about whether it was even right to battle to keep Carl alive, considering the world he was set to grow up into and the desperate life he would be forced to lead. It was a gruelling conversation and, perhaps it’s because I have a one-year old son and the feelings of protection and love as a father are ones I well understand, I thought the whole scene was powerfully charged. Lori, especially, really sold the steely yet fraught emotional state exceptionally well.

It was a little trite that Rick’s counter-argument basically boiled down to the fact that Carl remarked about how beautiful the deer had looked in the brief period of consciousness he had. Surely there are better arguments to be had? Like how there is hope for humanity to survive, and how if the current survivors last long enough they will see off ‘the walkers’ and face a world to re-populate for themselves. And even if they face only a desperate future, those little pockets of joy and happiness and the right to live surely count even more in such circumstances. Those are the kinds of arguments Rick could have laid out, and it would have been in keeping with his character, but let’s just say he wasn’t thinking entirely clearly on account of all the blood he gave away!

The scenes with Daryl and Andrea were also nicely observed. Daryl had a little more time to shine and ever more his character and personality show flourishes and depth that really mark him out as a personal favourite. That he seemed alone in the belief that there was a chance for Sophia was refreshingly unexpected, and the shared jokes between him and Andrea were nicely played. Who knew that these two might make an unexpected couple? Even if they do fundamentally disagree on the rights and wrongs of shooting walkers that have strung themselves up!

A lot of good stuff this episode, though the experience of watching it was also frustrating. The scenes of Shane and Otis desperately trying to escape the school were well done, but annoyingly short and interspersed with duller scenes at the farmhouse, away from the real action. I appreciate in hindsight that this was so the episode could load and spring its surprise conclusion, but during the watching of the episode it just became an irritation.

Other subplots, like Glenn trying to pray for the first time, felt superfluous here – almost as though they were included just to keep these characters in the mix, inventing ways to justify their inclusion and screentime rather than them naturally commanding attention as a result of events occurring to inform their actions and responses.

The last scene saved the day, then, on an episode that I was all set to condemn as a clunker of bad decisions (killing Otis!) and wasted tension on diluted, interrupted action sequences at the school. What I got was the rug pulled out from beneath my feet with Shane firmly in place as a serious liability within the group who is totally unpredictable.

What was the best part?

The last scene flashback, showing exactly how Shane managed to escape the walkers. Intercutting the shaving of his head and the reveal of scratches and marks on his body, the actual truth of how he shot Otis to make his own escape was nothing less than shocking. Shooting him in the leg so his screaming, prone body could be devoured by the walkers was nothing short of horrific. In retrospect I ought to have seen it coming, but I’m not going to pretend the episode didn’t fool me and thus make the revelation an absolute surprise (which, frankly, is how I prefer my television drama to accost me – it’s way more fun to be shocked than to predict stuff before it happens).

What do I think will happen next?

It’s hard to imagine what Shane will do next. For the short term I anticipate he will stay with the group and remain an uneasy, brooding presence that we the audience know houses terrible potential. The group will have to remain at the farmhouse to allow both Rick and Carl to recover, so I expect the other group will join them there, and still hopefully continue their search for Sophia from this new base. Fingers crossed they’ll find her alive and well. There’s still hope.

An Idiot Abroad: S02 Ep07

2011-11-06T02:52:00.000-08:00

What happened?

Karl is sent off to Japan, ostensibly to climb Mount Fuji, for the last of his bucket list journeys. Before he climbs the mountain he takes a trip to a cat cafe, samples rare sushi dishes, tackles sumo wrestling whilst all the time trying to think of a new invention to make his mark on the world. He eventually comes up with Pilkopants; in-built cushioning for trousers.

Thoughts

I was looking forward to seeing Japan through Karl Pilkington’s eyes and it’s fair for me to say that I was a little disappointed. I didn’t really get the feel of what the place was like because the programme seemed more intent on making him go and visit various pre-planned appointments, be it the cat cafe or the sumo wrestling. Whilst these were by turns either amusing or interesting there wasn’t a little portion of the programme left over just to show Karl having a wander and seeing whatever he came across.

This episode lacked that sense of spontaneity.

I think the closest the show got to demonstrating the strangeness of everyday Japan was when the room full of builders were all engaging in morning exercises before they started work. It was a truly bizarre sight. At least a thousand builders in hard hats all crammed together and doing stretches and postures to loosen up and get them ready for the day – it’s so mad but so weirdly understandable; that’s the kind of thing that fascinates me about the place.

Karl versus the Sumo wrestlers went as predicted, with Karl getting picked up and thrown around and pressed against fat, sweaty wrestling skin. I felt like I’d already seen this kind of thing before, from the time Karl visited the wrestlers in Mexico in the first series. So whilst it was funny to see Karl haggling over wearing his boxer shorts under his thong (he does have a self-consciousness about wearing anything revealing, I’ve noticed) there really wasn’t anything refreshing to see.

Karl's trip the Buddhist monastery went well in the end, although even Karl managed to find conflict and pain there after his transgression during the meditation period. But in the end he managed to find contentment and common ground over the tradition of gathering to make and drink tea. If you had to pick anything in the world you could bank on Karl being pleased about it, it's a cup of tea!

I did like the part where he was sent to sample a rare sushi dish, that had been fermented for years. His reaction on being presented with it was funny, as was his debating with the man who served him that it would be better etiquette if he went first rather than Karl (a hopelessly idiotic argument that the guy quickly deflected in good-humour). And, of course, Karl took a mouthful of it and then soon later was throwing up in the bushes. There was an inevitability to it all that didn’t stop it being funny – quite the opposite.

The climax of the episode, and the series properly (I realise there is another episode next week that is a look back at all that has happened) did at least end on a high. It was a literal high, with Karl making it to the summit of Mount Fuji. But I really liked how the show didn’t cheapen it out too much. From Karl’s wry observations at the beginning, seeing that everyone coming back down the mountain appeared to be travelling in pairs, that dissolved into him very tired, listing off famous double acts he knew. And then there was a little monologue where he talked about how he wasn’t one for finishing things, talking about not finishing school or even getting married, and that was actually rather moving to see him consider making it to the top of the mountain as an urge to actually, for once, finish something.

It was also good to see that when he reached the summit at dawn, and marvelled at the view, in typical fashion he could appreciate that it was spectacular whilst at the same time moaning about how he felt like shit. It did look magnificent.

Of course, An Idiot Abroad does play for laughs, so there was the punchline of the Pilkopants revealed. His invention formed from needing a comfortable place to sit wherever he was, the cushioning he had stuck to the backside of his trousers looked ridiculous, and it had a ridiculous name, but Karl’s unswerving sense that it was a winning invention just about sums him up. He’s one on his own, with his own ideas about how things should be.

So not the greatest bucket list event to cap off the series, but at least the finale felt deserving of the climax and proved to be a strong conclusion to what has been a very good series. It perhaps may even be the last one, too (although the sheer success of it must have the powers that be hoping it won’t be and pushing for another one!).

What was the best part?

I’m tempted to plump for the sequence where Karl ate the raw fish and then vomited, but for sheer class and a fitting finale, I have to say the journey up the mountain was good stuff – and probably the show’s most classy moment. Despite the Pilkopants.

What do I think will happen next?

Next up is a retrospective over Karl’s journey with Ricky and Steve; it’ll probably be a lot of fun, like a video version of their podcasts, so I am looking forward to it perhaps more than any of the ‘proper’ episodes. (And Ricky Gervais on Twitter has been talking about how it’s his favourite episode of the series and is really good, so that helps generate more enthusiasm for it.)

Misfits: S03 Ep01

2011-11-02T08:34:00.001-07:00

What happened?

Rory, a man with a power that means his personality physically splits into two separate persons runs into the Misfits gang now free from their probation duties, and also from Nathan who has gone to Las Vegas. With all of them now possessing new powers they struggle to make the best of them, with Simon most successfully employing his ability to perceive potential consequences with his burgeoning parkour skills to become the ‘man in the mask’.

Rory reveals that Alisha once broke his heart after sleeping with him, and the pair of them find themselves at the mercy of a murderous girl with the power to freeze in time her immediate surroundings. Luckily Rory’s alter-ego comes to their rescue. Shortly after the gang are caught driving a car Rory stole and, before they know it, are back on community service, musing on whether or not the next 7 weeks will pass by uneventfully.

Thoughts

The big question facing Misfits for this third series was how it would cope with the unplanned departure of Nathan. Clearly leaving a massive hole in the group dynamic, not to mention the show’s signature outrageous comedy value, he was as close to a ‘lead’ as Misfits had and was not going to be an easy patch to cover. So whilst this episode did focus more on new boy Rory I suspect the show is going to lean more than ever on functioning as an ensemble piece.

How does Misfits fare with the departure of Nathan? Actually, not bad.

New character Rory is, naturally, going to be the major talking point. I personally found him a tad annoying but mostly enjoyable. The only aspect to him that kind of bugged me was that his power had him split his personality; one being egotistical and over-confident and the other being insecure and wracked with conscience. The trouble was when these two personalities were combined the personality that was presented was barely dis-similar to the over-confident one. I think I would have preferred the ‘joined’ Rory to be more balanced to better emphasise the extremes of his individual components.

Maybe the point is that the insecure Rory is just a small part of him that he kept buried, like he shielded himself from it after his suicide attempt. The powers a person has invariably feed back into some aspect of their characters so Rory’s split is just a power that makes him confront the very thing he wants to repress; the moral conscience and constant reminder of all that he would like to forget. If I consider it in those terms then his rather objectionable (although funny) coarse personality that dominates makes more sense.

So, Rory, he’s no Nathan, but if Misfits can traverse the fine line between his full-on manner and level-headed decency then there’s the makings of an interesting dimension to the gang. I did like his remarks about how there was definitely going to be trouble coming for the group; clearly this was the writer making a knowing in-joke but Misfits is littered with such moments, with the characters literally speaking the opinions of the audience, and it’s cheeky enough to get away with it. Indeed, it’s part of the charm.

Kudos to the opening rooftop scrap Rory had with himself; Misfits is evidently a show that operates on a small budget but they do wonders with it and the effects here looked great, particularly on the subtle touches like their shadows when they were stood together.

Elsewhere our gang have all undergone something of a reinvention and the other big question hanging at the end of the last series was what new powers they would now have. Kelly’s was the ironically dumb revelation that she was a “rocket scientist”; a power that felt like it had been given to her purely so she could make the self-aware remark of incredulity that she was “a fucking rocket scientist”. The danger is that, now that joke is done, it doesn’t leave her character with a particularly interesting or useful power.

I do wonder if the ‘rocket scientist’ power isn’t going to be a temporary one and that before long she will seek out the man who can give and take powers and manage to bequeath herself something a little more potent. (I did note that the preview for next week’s episode suggested she was pursuing him out of some form of love interest, so maybe that will be a part of it.)

Curtis had the most eye-opening power at being able to transform into a girl. I did like how he stated he had basically ended up with it because he had let everyone else go first and it was the only one left! What direction that will take his character in remains to be seen but, at the moment, he feels like the least vital member of the group. Possibly could be a mind-boggling situation for him, though, if as a woman he gets involved with another man. . . Will that make him gay!? Confusing!

Lastly, Simon and Alisha have the two ‘best’ powers. Simon is clearly focused on becoming the ‘man in the mask’ so he can fulfil all the amazing rescues and acts we’ve seen him perform already. His power of being able to foresee consequences ties into what we saw in series 2, where he was busy making sure certain things happened in order to make everything turn out as it should. The big issue for him is that he knows his own death date and the big question for the show is: Will Simon actively try and avert that?

It’s hard to determine if that’s a question this series will even tackle. The Las Vegas photo informs us that Simon and Alisha have to least go and have that picture taken before he meets his fate (and, presumably, encounter someone with the capacity to send him back in time). For now it seems they have time but I would hope it’s a matter that does get addressed.

Alisha’s power to see things from another person’s perspective is a natural extension of her new-found empathy from the selfish person she used to be. It’s certainly a handy power to have and will surely be useful many times during the series. Of all the characters she’s the one that’s come the furthest, although Simon is not far behind and, whilst he still retain that otherworldly creepiness about him, he’s the one with the best ongoing plot arc and the most character depth.

All in all it’s good to have Misfits back and even better to see it’s endured the loss of a major character and barely suffered in the process. Profane, funny, fast-paced and, so far at least, inventive and logically-sound. It’s a misfit from the rest of the TV crowd and all the better for it.

What was the best part?

I really liked the sequence where the girl who could freeze time did so in the pub upon seeing Rory with another girl (who was totally hot, shame they killed her!). Just the way the music was slightly fuzzy as action-time went to a crawl and the girl wandered through the room before bottling Rory in the face with bloody retribution was a standout moment.

What do I think will happen next?

Kelly will pursue her interest in the power broker; whether for romantic reasons, or to trade for a new power, or both remains to be seen. Otherwise I anticipate questions surrounding Simon’s fate will be addressed by both he and Alisha. Beyond that the world of Misfits has been thrown wide open and no doubt it will be populated with the usual array of other people with powers that will invariably create problems for our unlikely superhero group.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep02 – Bloodletting

2011-10-31T05:23:00.001-07:00

What happened?

Rick takes his shot son to a farmhouse where a veterinarian tends to his injuries. Whilst Rick gives his own blood, it’s left to Shane and the hunter that accidentally fired the shot, Otis, to venture to the local school where vital supplies to save Carl could be found. The school, however, is surrounded by walkers and whilst Shane and Otis manage to get in and get what they need they are spotted and trapped inside.

Lori and the rest, meanwhile, have no luck hunting for Sophia. When word reaches them of Rick and Carl at the farmhouse, Lori goes to him and leaves the others by the camper van on the road, waiting another night in slim hope that Sophia will return.

Thoughts

Second episode in, and a second strong showing for this new season. Whilst this episode didn’t generate the tension of the ‘under the cars’ sequence from episode one, what this episode brought was more emotion, personality depth and intriguing group dynamics. These ingredients are far more vital to the sustained drama; a zombie attack every week is not enough for a show to survive 13 episodes of.

I loved how the episode opened properly (I’ll sidestep the flashback prologue, which I thought a bit unnecessary) with Rick desperately running to the farmhouse, skipping the whole ‘introduction’ we can only imagine occurred between Otis the hunter and Rick and Shane. The panic and exhaustion of Rick, the sheer heavy weight of his son in his arms, it really added a humane horror that pervaded the episode.

Andrew Lincoln probably gave his best performance so far here, really selling the awful helplessness of his situation. But far, far better served by this episode was Shane, who was in danger of becoming a brooding menace towards Rick and Lori and here got to show his more noble and decent traits. His speech to Rick, about how he had to be strong just like Lori had been for him, was powerfully emotive. Here Shane reminded us that he had been a staunch and loyal friend to Rick before the outbreak and those values don’t shake off easy.

I also liked how Otis was portrayed. I’m glad he turned out to be a decent man, mortified by what he had done and willing to try and make amends. I’ll actually be really annoyed with The Walking Dead if they don’t allow both he and Shane to survive the escape from the school. I did fear that his slow moves and huffing and puffing might see him become zombie fodder when they were making a run for it. It would be typical of this programme to strike a cruel blow, but killing Otis so soon would just feel unnecessarily brutal.

The farmhouse group did seem intriguing. The horseback woman showed a kick ass capability, and the veterinarian was measured and assuring. They all appeared to be a fundamentally decent crowd, but whether they are to become new additions to the cast or just passing guests is up in the air. I would imagine they aren’t all too keen on leaving (the doctor himself laid out that their strategy was basically to lie low, remain where they were, and wait for a cure to be discovered and distributed). However, I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if all the activity at the farmhouse has created attention to their location and a horde of walkers descend on the place making it essential for them all to jump aboard the survivor convoy and hit the road.

Really interesting conversation between Dale and T-Dog. Dale does straddle a line between well-meaning, level-headededness and overbearing know-it-all. And yet even he was given pause when a delirious T-Dog made the observation that they were the weakest members of the group and, when it came to it, they would be considered surplus to requirements. I liked how it gave Dale food for thought. He might have liked to feel that the medicine Daryl revealed he had stashed (once again he comes to the rescue!) would cure T-Dog and return him to his senses but I got the impression a seed was being planted here that will burrow right into the heart of how this group dynamic functions.

Sophia is a case in point. By the end of the episode the plan seemed to be that they would wait out the night but after that they would head to the farmhouse and just leave a note about where they had gone. (Aside: if less savoury humans come across that note it might also be a reason for the group to move on, with their location given away.) Dale worries about the group becoming fragmented and he, more than anyone, seems aware of how close to falling apart they constantly are. Like Andrea’s unforgiving look stated as she slammed the door on him, this is not a happy family all pulling in the same direction.

Sophia’s survival chances are looking bleak. What is it? Two days now? If she hasn’t found water, food and shelter in all this time then it won’t be the zombies that have seen her off, it will simply be a helpless plight at the mercy of the elements. My hunch is the show will either have her return by the next episode, or she won’t be coming back at all and quite what happened to her will be left dangling as a mystery (potentially leaving the door open for her to show up much further down the line, but just as likely never showing up at all). It’s hard to imagine her mother ever leaving her, though, so what? Do they leave her too?

Again, desperate circumstances, like a mass zombie attack or a band of savage humans might force the group’s hand and get them all moving but, otherwise, they either move and become fragmented or remain and go nowhere. The latter just isn’t an option, unless hunkering down at the farmhouse is considered as good a place as any.

There’s no question I am totally hooked at the moment, and really looking forward to the next episode. Shane and Otis are in a tight spot that promises more nailbiting thrills as they attempt to get back to the farmhouse before Carl fades away – I anticipate the next episode is going to really play on this tension and eke it out for all its worth.

What was the best part?

The moment a walker came lumbering alongside Andrea in the forest and had her pinned down was brilliant in its execution; the surprise appearance of the walker just suddenly being there was a real jolt. That the woman on horseback came along, cool as you like, and gave the walker a smack showed she’s got some fighting skills but it fell to the all-too-cool Darly to deliver the finishing crossbow shot whilst barely even looking at his target.

What do I think will happen next?

I hope that both Otis and Shane make it out of the school (I’m confident Shane will, Otis not so much – though it’d be a shame to kill him off in this way) and they’ll get back to Rick’s son and, one close call, tense operation later I am sure that their efforts will prove successful. I just don’t see the boy not making it! After that the big question is: Do they stay or do they go? I suspect they’ll stay up until circumstances have it that they can’t stay.

An Idiot Abroad: S02 Ep06

2011-10-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

What happened?

Karl takes a drive along the famous Route 66 in America, stopping off along the way to visit a weird bottle dump home, a cuddling commune, an explosive gold hunter, an Amish community and sing in a Glee-style concert before he finished by viewing the end of Route 66 on top of the wings of a bi-plane.

Thoughts

Can’t say I was particularly enthused by the ‘bucket list’ concept for this week – travelling along a road across America didn’t really strike me as all that fascinating. However, this episode of An Idiot Abroad really managed to make it feel like an effortlessly enjoyable journey, and I think Karl was perhaps more relaxed and willing to participate (maybe due to not being kept too far away from the general luxuries and familiarity of the western world).

As anticipated, the journey was staggered with pre-arranged events for Karl to participate in, but this was a necessity. If Karl just kept driving then he was utterly unlikely to encounter anything random or spontaneous so this episode, more than any other, was really dependent on the pre-arranged items. Luckily they were weird enough to be eye-catching, yet not so silly so as to be preposterous.

Well, except for the Glee concert part, but what a joy it was to see Karl actually get involved, stomping around the stage ‘singing’ Van Halen’s Jump with a broad accent. Clearly this also showed that Karl is not a man that is averse to his own sense of comic timing and schtick; he delivered a comic performance and the crowd loved it and it made for good TV.

It’s curious how Karl, and this programme, seem to have to wrestle with the notion of how genuine it all is. I personally think this series has seen a more genuine Karl than the previous series did. This series he has been seen to smile, laugh, make dry bemused comments about what was going on. Last series seemed more determined to only show Karl ‘in character’; miserable, moaning and angered. This series there’s been a little more dimension to his on-screen persona and, whilst I don’t doubt that it’s what he is like, there’s almost certainly an element of him exaggerating his own traits, or holding back other aspects of his character to remain true to the tone of the programme.

That’s fair enough. I don’t have a problem with the show in the sense of how ‘genuine’ it is in that respect.

I did like seeing Karl at the hugging commune. Was it wrong that I was rather attracted to the commune leader? Her discussion about how it was OK for men to become aroused, and offering to spoon Karl. . . He showed stronger will than I would have in turning her down and getting out of there early.

Better was his charming relationship with the gold prospector. Charging into the remote mountains on a riotous ride in his 4x4, this gun-toting man of the world was great value. But I really enjoyed how Karl seemed to warm to him, putting faith in this man to keep him safe no matter what happened. They’d make a great double act, and it was good to see Karl rise up to the man challenge and shoot at the explosive targets (even if he did scurry away and cower like a big girl’s blouse!).

The ongoing thread of the episode had Karl seeking out a gift for his girlfriend (the ever-unseen star of the show Suzanne; someone who should never, ever be revealed because there is so much humour to be mined out of wondering how she deals with a man like Karl in her life). It resulted in some amusing moans that, as ever, revealed Karl to be the opposite of romance, and it was a delightfully pitiful present in the form of a jar of peas from the Amish community.

I really enjoyed the feel of this episode. I think Karl not being too annoyed and yet not being too comfortable really helped, but it was just a really eventful, varied collection of encounters and strange characters that really worked. Contrived without feeling forced, amusing without feeling absurd – another strong episode. So far the only weak link this series was the first episode, and that’s something I am happy to report.

What was the best part?

For once the climax of the episode actually delivered the most entertaining part of it. Karl stood atop the wings of a bi-plane whilst the pilot really didn’t seem to show him any mercy, performing barrel rolls and loop the loops whilst Karl shouted and cursed at the top of his voice. I defy anyone not to have watched that and at least smirked, if not laughed out loud.

What do I think will happen next?

Next week Karl is off to Japan to climb Mount Fuji, which I am really looking forward to seeing. Japan is a country that totally fascinates me so to see Karl poke his nose into it and see what he makes of it will be highly interesting.

Terra Nova: S01 Ep04 – The Runaway

2011-10-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

What happened?

A small girl, Leah,was seen around the perimeter of Terra Nova, an apparent escapee from the Sixer camp. Whilst she claims to want to remain in Terra Nova it turns out she was sent to retrieve a strange box from the house that Sixer-leader Mira used to live in.

Whilst Taylor manages to prevent the girl escaping with the box (she was doing so believing that her brother would be hurt) Jim is captured for a brief period by the Sixers and told that Terra Nova is not what he thinks it is. Unable to open the box, Taylor has it kept safe until they can figure it out. The Sixers do reunite Leah and her brother and they remain in Terra Nova as permanent residents.

Thoughts

Almost symbolically, the penultimate scene of this episode pretty much encapsulated what the whole thing had been about. The box containing an unknown thing was unopened and locked away in a safe. A mystery presented and then left unresolved. That was pretty much the nature of this episode, from the unopened box to Mira saying to Jim that he didn’t know the truth about Terra Nova but that he’d eventually find out. . .

OK, I don’t expect Terra Nova to reveal all its secrets but let’s hope a few things get let out of the bag before the show gets cancelled! It’s a fine line between building a mystery that fuels audience anticipation and annoying the viewers by dangling secrets with no answers. Lost successfully walked this tightrope very well (especially in the early seasons) but that was because it reeked of quality and grabbed interest. Terra Nova, for me, hasn’t earned those credentials, that seal of quality, and so it dangling intrigue is more irksome than intriguing.

What most struck me about this episode, when it ended, was a sense of, Is that it? It actually felt like it was an episode that was dealing with a deeper, dramatic thrust and yet came out feeling more insubstantial than the previous standalone episodes had done. Weird.

So in the main it was disappointing, but at least it has generated some mystery and questions to make tuning in weekly more essential (because if it had kept up the standalone format for much longer I think it would have been far worse than the drip-feeding of intrigue presented here). The question of what is in the box is certainly interesting (and suggests that the Sixers departed Terra Nova in such a hurry they couldn’t collect all their things). My best guess would be that it is some means of communication, or potentially even travelling back, to the ‘present’ day of 2149. Or else it's a key of some fashion, something that Sixers needs to enable whatever it is they are out in the jungle getting up to!

Mira stated that there were people from their original world that were not happy about Taylor, but then if that’s the case why not send someone through the portal when it’s next opened that has the might or the authority to overturn Taylor’s rule? Is it because Taylor is running things in a way that was not intended (presumably so, he was the first guy through and must have been tasked with something but perhaps disregarded that)? Maybe the Sixers were the means to overturn what Taylor had disregarded and they are out in the jungle getting stuff done – Leah did mention they travel around a lot. It’s definitely got mileage, when written out and considered like this, the trouble with Terra Nova is communicating this sense of fascination on screen.

More tangible is the mystery of who the spy in camp is. Since there’s only a few key characters outside of the Shannon family and Taylor then the suspects rapidly dwindle. It’s surely not the female Lieutenant Washington, since she had a fairly rough battle with the Sixers at the start of this episode (maybe that was a staged bluff but it didn’t look like it). More likely is the young man attempting to woo Maddy, Mark Reynolds, since he does seem improbably involved in everything that goes on.

The other major candidate is the scientist Malcolm, whose manner and quick opposition to Taylor’s dictatorship certainly mark him out. Outside bet falls to the guy with no legs being the spy, though how he gets messages outside of the compound is anyone’s guess (why is the idea that the spy could be using telecommunications not taken more seriously as opposed to them having to be someone physically meeting the Sixers?). There’s always Skye, not present this episode, but there’s literally nothing about her to lend credence to that as presented so far.

Right now I’d plump for Mark Reynolds to be the spy. It would at least make his sappy romance with Maddy have some edge to it.

Strangely deflated episode, then, considering it’s the one that’s generated the most for me to discuss. The best scene in it, for me, was the moment where Jim Shannon got caught in a trap and was left dangling whilst a dinosaur (I’m tempted to say Raptor but I think the species presented in this show aren’t quite sticking to known dino breeds) attack him. It was an eye-catching situation to be clipped into a trailer and I felt like they really could have tacked on an extra minute or two and made it a truly nasty, desperate predicament for Jim to hopelessly try and extricate himself from before it looked like he was done for.

Instead the Sixers arrived and ended the scene and took Jim away, diffusing the tension and moving things along to a more ‘safer’ vibe. Shame. Sometimes a show doesn’t realise when it’s onto a good thing, and a scene like that could have been really protracted and eked the most out of to deliver a properly memorable, tense sequence. Missed opportunity for that scene, but in general this is a step in the right direction for the show.

What was the best part?

As stated, Jim in the booby trap. Despite it not quite reaching the potential I could have imagined for it, it was still the best part in an episode otherwise laden with mystery and mawkishness but little in the way of visceral thrill. (Kudos for the smackdown at the start with Washington and the Sixers, though – more of that and she’ll become a cooler character.)

What do I think will happen next?

Hopefully they’ll get to work on opening that box and not just leave it in the safe. And also they’ll dig further into the Sixers (rapidly assuming a vibe not dis-similar to The Others in Lost as an enemy tribe that hold more answers than our heroes) and quite what it is they’re about. Right now I’d be happy to ditch the Shannons and Terra Nova for an episode and hang out with the Sixers, but I doubt that’ll happen.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep 01 – What Lies Ahead

2011-10-24T11:17:00.001-07:00

What happened?

Rick is leading the group to Fort Benning where he hopes he will find survivors living in protected safety. However, on the freeway, their transport needs repairs only they are forced to hide when a horde of the walking dead shuffle by. However, when they are seen by a few zombies, little Sophia makes a run for the woods forcing Rick to give chase. He kills the pursuing zombies, but Sophia is missing.

The group then remain searching for Sophia, coming across a church whilst looting cars as the search continues. Shane announces that he is going to be separating from the group as he cannot stand to see Lori and Rick together. He and Rick stick together to continue searching, also with Rick's son. In a potentially tragic turn, however, Rick’s son is shot when walking towards a deer they see by an unknown hunter.

Thoughts

The Walking Dead is back, picking up where it left off with the dwindling survivors heading away from the destroyed CDC building and instead going for Fort Benning. It was good that Rick still continues the discipline of leaving radio messages for the guy he met in the very first episode – whether or not this guy will ever appear again is almost moot as it’s a narrative convention that allows Rick to explain to the watching audience what he is doing, what the plan is, without it being intrusive.

It will be a nice moment if we do ever meet that father and son again, though.

Someone else that lingers from season one is Daryl’s brother, Merle, who cut off his own arm and scarpered with a serious grudge against Rick. He’s another one we can’t really be sure we’ll ever see again, but it’s worth holding on to the memory of him because he feels like a candidate for most-likely-to-return, and I’d expect it to happen right at the most inconvenient moment.

This was a really strong first episode, particularly from the moment the walkers showed up shuffling along the freeway. There was the mild suggestion that there was something odd about them, like they were moving like a herd. Possibly there's ideas being seeded here that the walkers might be being motivated in some way, or operating under more influence than the haphazard, random nature of their shuffling around has previously suggested. Right now it's not an idea I am really going to spend too much time on, but I did think it was interesting. (I also think of the curious manner by which those few zombies were sat in church. Arguably the suggestion is that these undead are acting under the same instinctive behaviour they exhibited in their regular lives - but maybe there's some hint here that there's a semblance of consciousness developing in their undead heads?)

When Rick realised that the approaching herd weren't going to be taken out by a few well aimed sniper shots I’m not sure that getting under cars was the brightest move (why not just head straight into the forest to begin with and hide there at the side, waiting for them to pass?) but it made for a sustained, tense sequence that really got me on edge and hooked me straight back into the atmosphere of the show.

Like that creepy zombie that got into the caravan and started trying to get the suicidal woman Andrea, The Walking Dead makes its living dead look disgusting and fresh, and it’s nice to see that the show hasn’t gone soft on the gore. If they’re not poking zombies through the eyeball there’s Rick slamming them in the head with a rock, and then there’s Daryl gutting one open and slicing into its stomach sac to see if its last meal was a little girl!

Daryl is so cool it’s brilliant. He just about retains that sense of menace about him, that he could turn on the group if it serves his own interests, but whilst he’s on their side he’s a hell of an asset. Stabbing zombies with his crossbow rather than shooting it to save ammo, he’s the coolest and most capable undead killer in the group and I enjoy any scene with him. They do well to keep him used to a minimum – less is more with that guy. If Merle ever did show up then his reaction would be crucial to how well the group manage.

The semi-triangle of love with Rick, Shane and Lori works well, principally because of the performance of Shane. Rick and Lori are rather one-dimensional, but Shane maintains a conflicted, anti-hero quality about him. I don’t like the guy despite all the good he has done and yet I can completely understand his situation, and especially his need to get away from the gang. (That Andrea wants to join him is a tough call – on the one hand she’s kinda hot and might make good company but, on the other hand, she’s also suicidal so not really the type of person you’d wanna get stuck with!)

The mystery at the end of the episode was who fired the shot (surely intended for the deer). Rick’s son is certainly not going to be in good condition, having been hit by a round from a hunting rifle, but I’d be amazed that even a show as brutal as The Walking Dead can be will go so far as to have Rick and Lori lose their son. I have my doubts that Sophia will be found dead. Potentially the show might make the wrench to have her never found, but that will be hard viewing for when the time came to abandon the search and keep moving. As for who fired the shot, I’d have to figure it’s someone we’ve not yet met – perhaps a new character that’s going to be a big part of this season. Whoever it was, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes!

Triumphant return, then. I know this season is double the length of the previous one, so the big question is can the show sustain itself over a longer period? I think it can. I know there’s plenty of source material from the original comic book it is spawned from but, mostly, it’s because The Walking Dead is about the characters. Whilst it may have to work a bit harder to make some of the people that aren’t Rick or Lori or Shane become more vital to proceedings (and, for sure, shading Rick with more self-conflict and Lori with less of a holier-than-thou attitude would do wonders) I’ve got a lot of faith that this is a well-crafted, solid show and it’s going to have to really go off the rails to go stale.

What was the best part?

No question it was the whole sequence from when the zombies appeared on the freeway and caused everyone to go and hide and hope for them to pass. It feels like it’s been a long time since I sat watching a television programme that got my stomach tightening and my senses on red alert. I absolutely loved it. If the show produces anything better in its entire forthcoming season I’ll be overwhelmed!

What do I think will happen next?

I’m not entirely convinced Shane will leave the group – possibly the injuries to Rick’s son will prompt him to have to change his self-centred plans. I imagine the shooter will turn out to be someone we’ve not yet met – for some reason I envisage them as a single person, living by looking after themselves. Rick’s son won’t die. That’s the one thing I am most sure about! I’d also expect them to find Sophia, too. Maybe the shooter will turn out to have found her already and have been keeping her safe – that would be something to ease the hostility he (or she!) is sure to face.

An Idiot Abroad: S02 Ep05

2011-10-22T15:02:00.001-07:00

What happened?

Karl was presented with the opportunity to travel to Uganda to see mountain gorillas in their natural environment. Before then he was given something of a small tour of South Africa and Africa, to once again be presented with bungee jumping, to seeing a house where a hippo is kept as a pet, to be a children’s teacher and to build a new hut for a poor family as well as cook for a king.

Thoughts

I really feel like this show has settled down a lot more into itself, almost as though it’s comfortable with itself and what it’s about without having to try too hard. The first episode tried too hard for me and, slowly, over the course of things, that sense of forced amusement and stunt pieces has given way to a more flowing vibe and it’s really helping the show along.

Take Karl taking a visit to the school and then to the mass maze of hut homes in South Africa. Now this was an eye opening place (and credit for the high definition views, some of the shots this show captures of the world are quite amazing and something An Idiot Abroad doesn’t get particularly noticed for). But whilst it was amusing to see Karl struggling to teach children about risk there was the undercurrent of what their life is really like when they were asking about the risk of getting pregnant at just thirteen years old.

Same for the building of the hut. The guy whose home they knocked down and rebuilt was lay ill by the side, and whilst Karl quipped and later bickered with Stephen Merchant about the futility of his actions (genuinely touching, just hearing Karl’s exasperation at how his efforts were so miniscule in making a difference to the overwhelming problems of the area) the programme was also showing us what conditions these people live in are like. It did it without patronising or ramming the message home – it showed us a world of need and deprivation and still made us chuckle at Karl.

I guess what I am saying is that An Idiot Abroad does have the potential to be justified and vital, and not just a show about putting Karl Pilkington through as much shit as possible and then sticking a camera in his face to record his expression and see what he has to say about it.

There was something near-justified in presenting Karl with another opportunity to do a bungee jump which he subsequently declined, it kind of makes it into a running theme during the series since it was something he also failed to do during the first episode. That he lied about it to Ricky was amusing, but better was the last reveal that Karl had got one of the crew to do it for him and was going to pretend that was him – only the hat had fallen off the guy and so revealed a head of hair that Karl patently does not have.

Again, what made this reveal all the better was seeing Karl discuss it on the phone with Ricky and laugh about it. Again, Karl laughs! It’s better that the show allows him this – isn’t afraid to occasionally drop his dead-pan, morose demeanour to let us see there is a sense of humour and fun beneath.

The show is, of course, called An Idiot Abroad and it’s perhaps worth me remembering that before I get all irritable about the actual end, where Karl was presented with gorillas, and seemed to become utterly bored with it. Maybe it’s just because it’s one of those things that I would have been fabulously fascinated by (far more than boring old whales from the last episode) but his grumbling all the way along the trek to find the gorillas and then near-tedium once he was there just rubbed me up the wrong way.

As I said, I suppose I ought to remember that he is the ‘idiot’ that is abroad and, as such, I ought not to be too surprised when he behaves in a manner I deem idiotic! Good episode all round though and, you know, I think this series is actually shaping up to be stronger than the first one.

What was the best part?

I really liked the part where Karl was being a teacher. His flipping between being stuck for what to say to becoming incredibly agitated, like when they thought he shaved his head and he adamantly announced that he was in fact bald, were very amusing. But the bit where he mentioned that he didn’t have children despite having a girlfriend for seventeen years, and then having to clarify that she wasn’t seventeen years old was laugh out loud funny.

What do I think will happen next?

Karl is off to travel Route 66 in America, which might prove to be mightily entertaining or it might be one of those episodes where a lot more gets set up along the way and so loses that fluid, impromptu quality the series has been developing. I’ll continue to hope for the best, and the good news is that Karl will at least be able to communicate better with the people he meets which might mine more comedy gold.

Fringe: S04 Ep04 – Subject 9

2011-10-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

What happened?

Olivia is being terrorised by a strange energy force that appears with increased frequency and ferocity. Walter fears that it may be caused by another Cortexiphan subject and so leaves the lab for the first time in 3 years to accompany Olivia in finding this person. Walter also wants to validate himself as sane enough to not be taken back to the mental hospital – a decision that rests with Olivia.

Walter and Olivia find ‘subject 9’, Mark Little, and though he possesses magnetic powers he is not responsible for the energy force. He can, however, repel it – and so he is taken to channel his powers against the energy when it next appears. Just before he does, however, Olivia stares into the energy and believes she sees the man that has been appearing in her dreams.

When the energy force is apparently destroyed, over at Reiden Lake Peter pops up out of the water. Fringe division quickly claim him due to his knowing so much he really ought not to. He asks to see Olivia and, though he is pleased and relieved to see her, she has no idea who he is.

Thoughts

Curiously, I’ve read a couple of reviews to this episode already and they all generally come out with a sense of disappointment and negativity. And I’m surprised. Because my reaction to this episode was entirely the opposite – I thought it was great and the best of the season so far.

Naturally the big take-home point was the arrival of Peter and all along it felt rather obvious that this strange force that was terrorising Olivia was Peter trying to break through. Yet for all that it still managed to be creepy – this strange, faceless ball of malevolent energy. The scene where Olivia woke with it in her room was good, but better was the ‘attack’ in the bathroom, preceded by Walter seeing it before it happened on his monitor, that made it feel like a kind of supernatural poltergeist assault.

The look on Olivia’s face to Astrid before the bathroom door slammed was really haunting, and that scene for me was one of the most intense Fringe has ever shown.

The episode really focused on the relationship between Olivia and Walter. It was explained that Walter did conduct his Cortexiphan trials, and Olivia was one of his subjects. We were also told that the instance where she set her room on fire occurred, so much of what we knew from the ‘former universe’ events is true here.

Olivia running away from the trials perhaps accounts for why she’s not quite as bitter towards Walter as you might expect her to be but it also seems that there hasn’t been any investigation into other subjects, considering Massive Dynamic (a more mercenary, immoral company in this universe) has held the files for twenty years. This in turn suggests Olivia has never really delved into her ‘powers’, nor have other Cortexiphan subjects been used to enable a crossover to the other universe to occur (as in the Season 2 finale). Since there was no Peter to go ‘over there’ to rescue I suppose that all makes sense.

Compared to the hostile and damaged Mark Little, Olivia is balanced and understanding and patient with Walter. His flip out in the hotel room saw her decide to stay awake with him and there they were, in the café, almost like a grandfather and grandchild, with him teaching her how to drink her ice-cream beverage to get the most flavour.

Perhaps more striking was Olivia’s relationship with Nina, which here seemed far more familiar and almost mother-daughter like. They shared a quick joke, one that displayed Nina knew much about Olivia’s life, and that one exchange was all that Olivia needed to settle herself. Very interesting. I also really liked how animated and irritable Walter was towards her, too – clearly there’s a lot more antagonised history between them. Maybe in this universe she’s like Yoko Ono to Belly’s Lennon!

Walter really stole the show for me in terms of emotion, though. I’ve never wanted to give the mad bastard a hug more than when Olivia was trying to leave him alone in his hotel room; the unsure smile and the fidgeting demeanour masking the tirade of nervous tics and neuroses vying to explode was heartbreaking. Walter has always been a lovable monster but more because of his quirks and irreverence – here his frailties and broken functionality illicit sympathy.

The red herring plot of ‘subject 9’ was perhaps the weakest element of the episode. Considering it seemed plain enough that he wasn’t responsible for the force then anything to do with Mark Little just felt like filling in time before Olivia and Walter realised the same thing and progressed on to what we really wanted them to see. And retreading the path that Walter had a lot to answer for because of all these children’s lives he messed up was, perhaps, an important point to clarify for this universe but it did also feel like a well-worn plot we’ve seen and heard about many times before.

Can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Mark not ‘defeated’ the energy force and instead listened to Olivia commanding him to stop. Quite what did occur in that moment to then result in naked Peter appearing in (of course) Reiden Lake was totally glossed over. I doubt Fringe will really bother explaining it. The basic point, I think, was that Olivia had made a tangible connection with Peter through the force of energy and then Mark ‘popped’ that energy away and, thus, Peter was ‘born’ into the universe (naked, in water, at the spot where ‘he’ died; your standard baptism/rebirth!)

As I suspected, Peter here retains all of his memories from the ‘former universe’ whilst this universe has no idea who he is. That’ll mean he has to try and rebuild the relationship he had with Olivia (and, perhaps, if she’s not inclined maybe Fauxlivia will lure him to her side?) but quite how Walter will deal with the thunderbolt news that this is his son is going to be very interesting.

Same goes for Walternate, too, who we still haven’t seen! If anything is going to draw him out maybe it’s to stake a claim on Peter for himself. . . This could start another battle between the two sides all over again, which would present a certain kind of plot echo where Peter is, once again, the key cause to a great rift.

What was the best part?

So many great scenes, but I think the diner scene was the best of the bunch. Shifting from the intimate and honest exchanges between Walter and Olivia to the energy force emerging, sending people running, was a good surge of excitement. And Olivia quickly shooting out the glass to make their escape, finishing with the skidding car dully thumping against the energy force to extinguish it just looked and played out really cool.

What do I think will happen next?

Peter will surely tell Olivia who he is, where he came from. How easy a time she has accepting that and what she does with that information may dictate how things are taken from there. If we’re lucky we’ll also be treated to Peter getting the chance to tell Walter who he really is, too. If we’re really lucky the next episode will also let us in on seeing how The Observers will react, knowing that September disobeyed the order to remove Peter from existence entirely (as previously stated, this may provoke them to try and take matters into their own hands and prompt a whole different kind of conflict).

Terra Nova: S01 Ep03 – What Remains

2011-10-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

What happened?

A team at a research outpost have gone offline, so Liz is sent along with Nathaniel Taylor to check the place out. There they discover the people were infected with a virus that caused them to lose their memories and briefly shift mentally to some time in their past before catatonia set in. It’s not long before Liz and Nathaniel are affected.

Worried for his wife, Jim goes there with Malcolm, and whilst Malcolm suffers from the same malady it transpires that Jim is immune due to his cold. Whilst a cure his hastily put together Nathaniel, believing he is a soldier in Somalia, returns to Terra Nova and attacks some of his people but is knocked unconscious and cured when Liz and Jim return.

Thoughts

Another episode and one that very much played it safe with a plot that anyone dropping in new to the show could pick up and watch. Aside from the ending scene, which offered prospects of ongoing dramatic development with Josh being used by the Sixers, there wasn’t anything here that would particularly alienate a brand new viewer, and nor was there anything here which made you feel like you needed to have seen this episode in order to keep up with the show.

I suspect it’s intentional, in order to try and attract new viewers to the show that might not have got there right at the start. Fair enough, I can get that. But what’s not clear now is whether or not Terra Nova is going to stick to this formula of having episodes that function mostly on their own terms or whether it will eventually become a more serialised affair.

If I was forced to choose, I’d plump for it sticking to the more standalone format. It’s expensive and it wants to try and keep viewers and attract new ones. As I said, it’s understandable, but of course the problem is that for people like me that are prepared to stick around we are poorly rewarded for our loyalty. What we get are what feel like a lot of filler episodes with the odd bit of plot progression and peeled away layers of mythology tacked on at the end or paid brief lip service during proceedings.

This episode was OK if taken on its own merits. The structure was similar to last week in that the build-up and execution of the main threat was nicely handled and then the too-easy resolution felt unearned. I mean, really, Jim just happening to catch a cold turned out to be the only cure to this deadly, genetically-produced virus? That’s rather fortuitous to say the least!

Keeping Malcolm in the mix was good, although I thought that they could have played more on the idea that he was faking the symptoms of memory loss when he was making his moves on Liz. It seemed to transpire that he really wasn’t faking after all when I’d have hoped for a tad more ambiguity, or even genuine duplicity, to have injected a little bit more edge.

I also didn’t really buy the chemistry between Jim and Liz, here. When she had forgotten who he was, the news that she was married to him, with kids, was delivered and accepted with little fuss. Then, before long, she was passionately kissing him – even though to her this was a man she had never met before in her life and had not so long since held at gunpoint. Again, it just felt a little rushed, a little lacking in the willingness to not take the ‘nice’ route.

Taylor’s mental breakdown offered the darkness Liz, Jim and Malcolm’s plot lacked. Going all Colonel Kurtz with warpaint, holding Josh at knifepoint, when he was informed his wife was actually dead and this was news he was yet to be reacquainted with the speed at which he was set to slit his throat was startling. Sure it was probably a slight contrivance just so Washington got to save the day and, at last, make her mark on the show, but it’s nice to hope that there may be turmoil beneath the austere surface of leader Nathaniel Taylor that suggest he's not the ideal leader for this brave new world.

The plot with the Shannon kids was largely negligible, particularly the romance part. Josh and the smuggler just set things in motion for the last scene – though the conversation with the Sixers did reveal that they can communicate with the ‘future world’ when the portal opens, too. I have to trust that this issue of what can be communicated, and how, gets explored much more in future instalments because it’s a big piece of the show that’s been glossed over so far.

I don’t know how long the show will be able to sustain itself with these types of episode. Not quite standalone enough to be able to go into syndication and shown out of order (and thus generate lots of revenue) and not quite driven with continuing plot threads to support an ongoing dramatic arc, Terra Nova can perhaps survive a few more episodes like this before it’s in danger of becoming extinct.

What was the best part?

I liked the part where Jim and Malcolm were dragging the unconscious soldier and the raptor appeared at the open entrance port. It was just a cool little sequence, injecting a dinosaur into the thick of things at close quarters, to create an instant and deadly problem that required some quick thinking to resolve. If Terra Nova has a big ace up its sleeve, its that it has dinosaurs. Kudos, too, to the bit where Taylor drove through the legs of the Brachiosaur. Badass or idiotic: you decide!

What do I think will happen next?

The plot by the Sixers to use Josh via the smuggler will perhaps take further shape so we can gain a better indication about what it is they intend to use him for. Right now I can only imagine that they intend to somehow get Josh to make Jim get them guns and ammo, the commodity they seem to value. Or, possibly, they may even try to get Josh to join with them. . .

An Idiot Abroad: S02 Ep04

2011-10-16T02:46:00.000-07:00

What happened?

Karl was discharged to Alaska to fulfil the once in a lifetime event of seeing whales in their natural environment (although he didn’t realise he’d be doing this from the vantage point of a working fishing boat). On the way he stops off to see parts of the Arctic circle, with Inuits to eat frozen chopped whale, to trek through wilderness in deep snow and to be pulled by huskies across a frozen lake.

Thoughts

I don’t judge the quality of an episode of An Idiot Abroad by how funny it is. Funny is good, but my enjoyment of the programme isn’t based on how much I laugh. It’s a mixture of amusement and interest and seeing something refreshing. Following Karl, we invariably get taken to poke around in quarters of the world most travel documentaries don’t bother with, or overlook, or put a nice gloss over. Karl will turn up at an Insuit’s house and be hospitably treated and only remark about how he’s being given cold food when they have an oven there they don’t seem to be using.

And what other show will let the viewers know about the “honey bucket” system, which is basically a bucket that the locals use as a toilet and then stick into a plastic bag to be emptied and returned, just like we have refuse collectors. (The poor guy that was desperately holding out for a replacement honey bucket also made for priceless TV!)

Sure, Karl’s perpetual moaning does sometimes feel a little over-egged. When he was roaming the snowy wilderness, in a barren, frozen desolation, his complaining about how there was nothing to see and the sun was making him go blind felt unbalanced against what must have been an incredible sense of wonder. He’s not that much of a Philistine and the natural world is one that interests him so, even if for a little while, I don’t doubt that this man who craves solitude and peace must have found something rather marvellous in his journey North.

The guide Ricky and Steve initially hooked him up with was a joyously irritating find. He even had a high-pitched laugh of mocking delight like Gervais’; the irony was rich. And after chugging through deep snow, dragging an abundance of provisions on a sledge, the final resting place being a cold hut with no toilet (just go outside and wipe yourself with a frozen hunk of a snow afterwards!) was a perfectly miserable start.

For the most part, though, Karl seemed in good-humour. He had enough hubris to dryly remark about how this was all “things to do before you die”, like when he was charged with chopping up dead fish on a boat that was making him seasick. And his bemused chuckle when chatting with the truck driver who merrily informed him the last place he’d go to was exactly where Karl was headed. It’s all the touches like that which make the show flow more enjoyably for me than all the big contrived stunts that seem to want to force through humiliation and attempt to mine laughs.

That being said, the highlight of the episode had to be when Karl was being dragged (I’d like to say riding along with, but that wouldn’t be an accurate reflection) by huskies. His swearing, his tight grip, the brief moments of downtime to chat to camera about how the frozen river was tough terrain and the huskies just did not obey commands and the brakes didn't work, they all added up to a great section of the show that certainly did have me chuckling out loud (and at the time of watching the show I was riddled with a horrible aching flu and felt like shit so that was no mean feat).

As is becoming something of a motif of the show, the actual ‘thing to do before you die’ was an anticlimax, although this one felt rather more poetic than just straightforward disappointment. Suffering aboard the fishing boat, chopping octopus, nausea overcame Karl so that by the time whales were spotted surfacing in the waters he was stifling the urge to vomit. He hauled himself over to catch a few glimpses but, cruelly yet typically, his lot would have it that he missed the best things on account of himself – barely able to keep his eyes open let alone stand and get a clear view.

To be fair, aside from the odd flipper or tail, it didn’t look like he was missing much.

What was the best part?

Easily the husky drag, which did look like a lot of fun though I can well see how, hanging on to the back of the sled being dragged uncontrollable across a frozen lake, it would well have felt very treacherous. What made the sequence great was Karl’s out and out anger and frustration, from cursing at the dogs to yelling at the people with him about how long this was going to go on for. You'd never see that with Palin! Terrific viewing.

What do I think will happen next?

Next stop Africa, I believe, from the preview at the end of the episode. As said, I was rather ill when I watched this so I can’t actually remember what the ‘bucket list’ event is for the next one. The fever was taking hold. I’m sure I can stand the surprise!

Fringe: S04 Ep03 – Alone In The World

2011-10-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

What happened?

A strange fungus appears to have formed a psychic connection with a small boy. However, this rapidly-growing fungus is killing those that come into contact with it and so it’s down to Walter to break the psychic link between the boy and the organism before Broyles orders it to be destroyed. Walter eventually realises that it is the boy that is in control and, clearly confused by thoughts of the young Peter he lost, he endeavours to save his life and does so.

Still seeing visions and hearing voices of Peter, although he doesn’t know who he is, Walter believes he is going crazy and to prevent being sent back to the asylum he attempts a lobotomy on himself. Olivia arrives and stops him and then reveals that she too has been dreaming about this same person, placating Walter’s fears for his sanity and forging a resolve in him to find out who he is.

Thoughts

Apart from the terrific last scene (Fringe is rather good at producing last scene kickers to sign off its episodes with) this wasn’t the kind of episode to write home about. The main plot of the boy and the fungus brain thing was bizarre, even by Fringe standards. It started out well, I thought. The intrigue surrounding the organism and the boy was good, mainly because the boy had a slightly otherworldly feel about him that created a sense of mystery. And when Lincoln and Olivia were shining a light on the fungus, and getting ready to burn it, and the kid was freaking out, there were moments where I was rather excited about what the eventual explanation would be.

Turned out there wasn’t much of an explanation at all. A rather boring story of a miserable child finding an emotional connection that needed to be broken wasn’t particularly inspiring. But more baffling was how this strange organism thing even came to exist in the first place. Broyles and everyone else were quick to want to get rid of it without questioning where on Earth it had come from!

If, indeed, it did come from Earth!

Really it was just a bit of a lame Macguffin to get Walter in cahoots with a little boy so he could peel back some layers and confirm this universe’s history of Peter and the tragedy in his life that had damaged him so. It was detailed that Walter did lose his original son, and then crossed over to the other universe and snatched Peter. The different with this universe, and what was supposed to happen without Observer September’s intervention, was that Peter fell under the ice and drowned at Reiden Lake.

It’s straightforward enough, and as I had figured it (although for some reason I had it in my head that Peter must have died in a car crash into the icy lake – which I seem to recall now was actually the cover story fed to Peter to explain his dim memory of nearly drowning).

I think I said this from the last episode, too, but I don’t see anything to suggest that when Peter is eventually recalled there will be a fundamental change to the universe as it is shown now. This world is here to stay, it’s just that Peter is likely to be dragged into it as a strange ‘foreign’ object that really ought not to be there but exists anyway. A living paradox. It’ll be interesting to see if what he has to say prompts the likes of Olivia and Walter to have better memories of their former lives, though. . .

The ramifications of what might occur should Olivia and Walter and others realise this universe wasn’t the ‘original’ version remains to be seen – potentially this is a dynamic that could form the arc for this season. Potentially Peter’s return could make this universe unstable so that it becomes essential for things to be ‘reset’.

I hope not. I’d much rather prefer Peter was brought back, fully aware of his former life, and this universe and people had to try and wrap their heads around it and then move forward. The question then is: move forward to what? Where is the next dramatic conflict coming from? Potentially it could be from The Observers themselves who would seek to eradicate Peter themselves, and thus it would be our heroes versus these strange bald people!

Outlandish stuff, I know, but then you have to figure The Observers will have to be brought into the fold more at some point. I haven’t yet got any kind of idea about how the ‘first people’ thing from last season will be integrated into the grand scheme of Fringe. Let’s just take one big idea at a time and see where it gets us.

So Walter’s crisis with the kid making him relive his fight to save Peter in this episode felt a little heavy-handed, though it at least served the purpose of making it clear to everyone exactly what the situation with Peter’s history was. Fringe does sometimes feel clumsy in how it always needs to link in the current case story as a parallel to ongoing character drama – I know it helps forge the line between standalone episodes and continuing the serial drama but it does sometimes clunk like dropping bricks.

Credit to John Noble as Walter, though, who at least helped sell how bereft and undone he is compared to the man that we once knew – the man that had saved Peter and had him to help rehabilitate him. This Walter had no such solace in his past, and no crutch in his present, and it really comes across at how he clutches to a sane reality by his fingertips with only Astrid and Olivia there as his safety net to keep him in check. Whilst this universe may remain the same with Peter’s return I have to wonder if perhaps the ‘old’ characters that Walter and Olivia used to be might re-surface along with their awareness and, perhaps, memories of Peter.

For all of its clunking plot beats the episode served a purpose. It’s got Walter and Olivia united in a common cause of trying to find Peter. I kicked myself at the end for not being more suspicious of Olivia at the beginning. I knew she had been searching for Peter’s face on the computer and yet for some reason I just rationalised it as her having been given the description by Walter and she was just checking it out for herself. It didn’t occur to me that she was searching for her own purposes, even though she blatantly kept it a secret from Lincoln!

That’s just sloppy attention from yours truly, but it at least meant the end scene held a little more impact when she revealed she’d been dreaming of Peter so Walter could quit drilling into his brain and get on with figuring out who this ‘ghost’ really is!

What was the best part?

The best parts were really all about Olivia’s revelation that she too was sharing visions of Peter. I particularly liked the little scene where she was searching the facial recognition database for his image, a moment that registered with more impact only at the end (at least for me) when she revealed that she had been dreaming about this man and drawn his image so that she might figure out who he is.

What do I think will happen next?

Hopefully the search for Peter will now begin in earnest. With Walter dispensing with the paranoia that he is going insane, and with Olivia also on board now, I can well envisage the next episode really focusing on getting to the bottom of this mystery. I did predict that Peter would return within about four or five episodes so it seems about the right time for Fringe to cut the foreplay and get on with the main event!

Terra Nova: S01 Ep02 – Instinct

2011-10-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

What happened?

The Terra Nova settlement area has a problem – the area they settled in is the migration point for reptilian birds that have come home to roost as part of their cycle. Coming in dribs and drabs at first, they attack and kill various settlers. Whilst Liz Shannon works with a man she knew in college, called Malcolm, who is also responsible for requesting her to be there, it becomes clear that thousands of these birds will descend on the compound and decimate the place unless something is done.

A plan is conjured where the pheromone scents the birds are attracted to is manufactured and relocated to a point further away. Terra Nova is saved once more, though during the operation Jim has become aware of Malcolm and his possible intentions towards his wife and has issued a warning to steer clear.

Thoughts

This ‘proper’ first episode outside of the pilot episode perhaps demonstrates better what kind of show Terra Nova is. And, by the looks of it, it’s rather old-school sci-fi with modern day effects. There is something distinctly old-fashioned about it; I have actually wondered if the tale of The Shannon family in prehistoric times might not harken back to the old shows like Land Of The Giants and, in particular, Lost In Space, high-concept shows that week by week stick with the same core characters through various adventures.

There was really nothing about this episode that pushed ahead with anything like a sense of progression in the drama. Ostensibly birds attacked Terra Nova until our heroes figured out a means of resolving the situation. Status quo resumed. That's not really a put down, mind. It was actually rather good in delivering a decent build-up, a credible threat and a decent set piece in the main attack on the Shannon household. The resolution was a bit lame and thus the only real weak point - it's hard to imagine a species would be so easily-fooled into a new breeding ground by the dispersal of manufactured pheromones elsewhere.

Actually, the dialogue was interspersed with a lot of cheese. If Terra Nova wants me to take it more seriously as a credible drama show then it needs to take itself more seriously.

There was promising future drama in the introduction of Malcolm, the scientist who clearly still holds a torch for Liz (don’t blame him, she’s smoking). This antagonism did at least allow Jim to stop being quite the douche about the house for a minute or two when he got to play alpha male regarding his wife. Hopefully that’s a side-edge that will continue (though if it goes down the route of Jim getting paranoid and jealous over really pathetic schemes by Malcolm I’m going to get annoyed – it’ll be better if Liz genuinely becomes conflicted between the two of them).

There wasn’t much else, character-wise, going on. The story involving the migrating birds did unsubtly parallel their quest to get down to some action alongside Jim and Liz getting some one-on-one time. To be fair to Jim he has spent many years in a prison with absolutely nothing so, frankly, how he hasn’t ravaged Liz before now is hard to fathom.

I did think that those Terra Nova homes didn’t exactly scream privacy. Those poor Shannon kids are going to grow up to the sounds and silhouettes of their parents at it. That’s unfortunate. Though the two eldest siblings already have their respective romances burgeoning, though Sky and the soldier-boy one (so bland I haven’t even identified his name) were hardly given much to do other than hang around the Shannon’s. Honestly, what did they do before they arrived?

It’s the tone of Terra Nova that was most prominent here, though. And I very much got the sense that it was a more family-oriented, early-evening kind of slot that this show is aiming at. If it weren’t for the gory, scratched-out eyes of one of the victims this would have been Doctor Who standard family viewing. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think that's exactly where Terra Nova is aiming to be. As it is, with the blood, this isn’t exactly a show for kids. So the tone is a little bit of a concern, unless it’s a show that’s starting off light before it goes into darker territory.

For the moment I’m still enjoying the show, in the sense that it’s more interesting than most television, but it’s nowhere near got me hooked or gripped. If it’s aiming to be light and enjoyable, then it needs to up its game. If it’s aiming to be mysterious and thrilling then it needs to cut through the froth. There’s time yet, and to be fair I think the show does need to spend time with the characters and the world of Terra Nova before it heads out into grand territory, but my early instincts are telling me that this doesn’t feel like a show that’s got the legs to last longterm.

What was the best part?

It was a brief moment, but the wide shot showing the masses of gathering reptile birds spiralling into the sky before they made their attack, watched on by Jim, was good stuff. It reminded me a lot of the movie Pitch Black, an effect that was probably intentional.

What do I think will happen next?

I can only assume that the introduction of Malcolm will also introduce complications between Jim and Liz, and meantime I expect the other Shannon kids will further blossom their romances with their paramours. In terms of the wider mythological drive of the show, however, there was little forward momentum in that regard to make further speculation.

An Idiot Abroad: S02 Ep03

2011-10-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

What happened?

This week’s bucket list charged Karl with being sent off to Australia to swim with dolphins. However, he was sent to Thailand first as a stopping off point to see ladyboys, visit Monkeytown and fight in a blind Thai boxing tournament. It was only when he arrived in Australia was he informed “swimming with dolphins” had changed to “swimming with sharks”, and Karl was placed into a cage and lowered in to the water with the deadly fish.

Thoughts

It was good to see An Idiot Abroad feel like it was back on form with this week’s episode. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and perhaps it was telling that the actual ‘bucket list’ event of the episode was the least engaging part of it. Better was the bulk of the episode that followed Karl in Bangkok and, as usual, participating in stuff and witnessing things that other travel documentary shows shy away from.

It was very strange seeing Karl dressed up as a woman by the ladyboys. They actually did a good job in making him look feminine! If they could have persuaded him to shave his beard off then he might have actually made you look twice. Of course, the genuine ladyboys were practically indistinguishable from regular women, and it was fun to see Karl confronted with it and then question his own sense of gender. I’m sure Suzanne his girlfriend would be thrilled to hear that if he found out she was a guy all along then he’d probably stay with her anyway – albeit demanding that she participate in more heavy lifting!

This episode certainly did make me laugh and chuckle pretty frequently. Karl getting put through his paces by the Thai boxing instructor, and looking like he was genuinely getting angry and stressed out by the physical endurance and being harassed by a dog at the same time. The blind Thai boxing part did succeed in making Karl look silly, but I’m glad they didn’t dwell on it.

It was good that Karl actually (well, seemed to) go out and see something that he wanted to see. Going to Monkeytown was just bizarre. Monkeys are those kinds of animals that are cuter in idea and perception than they are in reality; they are smelly, scavenging and pretty wild. That there was this entire area called Monkeytown that was given over to the monkeys (and, naturally, the tourists) just boggled my mind.

Karl has been synonymous with monkeys for quite some years, for anyone that ever heard the podcasts or watched The Ricky Gervais Show, he was regularly reading out ‘monkey news’. Clearly he has an interest in them, and so to see him broken down and disappointed, lamenting ever meeting his heroes, was pretty funny.

I did think Karl was in very good form here, and it’s his mood that can very much make or break the show. He really seemed to go with the flow in Thailand in good humour – from the moment he turned up there to be fired at with water and paste, trundling into his hotel looking like a refugee, he got involved in everything that was thrown at him. Kudos as well for remarking how picturing a naked Rupert Murdoch in his head made him think of a turtle without its shell!

When the climax of the episode came, the swimming with sharks bit, I just didn’t feel it. I think the editing of the piece did its best to make it look exciting but, really, it was just Karl in a cage looking frantically around him as, occasionally, sharks came near. Can’t really expect more, of course – I am not suggesting I would only have been satisfied had his cage been attacked like he was Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws – but I did wonder if maybe the original plan of swimming with dolphins might have produced a genuinely good, golden moment.

It wouldn’t be in the spirit of An Idiot Abroad to have Karl enjoy something and have it be wondrous, but coming at the end of a gruelling episode and journey I don’t think anyone would have begrudged him a joyful experience at the close.

What was the best part?

I thought Monkeytown was the best part, purely because it was a fascinating place to see anyway. But watching Karl being accosted by monkeys crawling over him, snatching food out of his hands, amidst this strange little area of Bangkok was something I found interesting and entertaining.

What do I think will happen next?

Karl is being sent off to some frozen wastelands to see whales, by the looks of the clips at the end of this episode. Should be interesting, actually.