Distraction: What I Am Watching (Or At Least Attempting To) Pt C: Abandoned Before I Really Paid Attention

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my D&D character. The theme almost always comes in batches.

Pt. A is here. And Pt. B.

Abandoned Before I Really Paid Attention

Holy Fuck !!  Look at that post title !!

There is so much to watch these days. Even if I didn't download stuff, I couldn't watch everything available OTA or via the handful of streaming services I have signed up for. There is just too much that Is Good or too much Less Than Good But Genre. And yeah, I still watch too much that is Less Than Good. I also eat too many french fries and potato chips. I also have a tendency to flick flick flick through the listings until something catches my attention, even when there are Things I Must Watch right in front of me. That leads to one or a few episodes and then Next Shiny Thing.

For example, the new season of Westworld (Kent's post). I know I love the show, you know I love the show. So, why have I watched only one, maybe two episodes so far? I dunno, I don't have any deep insights as to my attention span, even if you remove The Pause (have to move past that label, as we are no longer paused, but changed) from the calculation.

As we have moved on from the Big Pause Button in the Sky, the series has moved on from the bubble lives that was imposed on the self-unaware Hosts (what the show called its robots), as some of them gain more awareness. Focusing on Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood, True Blood) who is taking the war to us, we are briefly shown her plans, while Bernard, Maeve and Fake Charlotte get intertwined in this Grand Scheme. Getting mixed into the intrigue is Caleb, a small-time crook who grabs jobs through an Uber-like gig economy crime app, and the family running the company in direct competition with Delos (the robot makers), with its world influencing big data fed AI.

Soooo much going on in such a short exposure. I ran away. Too heavy right now.

The same goes for Devs (same Kent post) which I only gave one episode. I had actually been waiting for this show to appear, having been enthralled by the trailers. I love Alex Garland's way of exploring topics, so this one yet again again focuses on the idea of an eccentric Big Brain Creator (Nick Offerman, Parks and Recs) running a programming company on the torrents of bleeding edge technology.

In his usual slow, deliberate, beautiful manner (which reminds me of the music of Max Richter) we are introduced to Lily (Sonoyo Mizuno, Maniac [another good show I abandoned for no good reason]), whose BF Sergei is invited by the head of Amaya (Offerman), a company making waves in quantum tech, to participate in their inner circle of coders. He sees something startling, makes the mistake of trying to sneak the info out, and is killed. And Lily is told he mysteriously committed suicide. She doesn't believe it.

So, groundbreaking tech that has such incredible ramifications that they would kill to keep it hidden. Strange, eccentric coder who has the persona of being an almost deific benefactor, but obviously is not. Or is he? Is he hiding something for a very good reason? Or is it and he just Evil? I really should find out.

Reality Z is the Brazilian rip-off of Charlie Brooker's (Black Mirror) Dead Set which itself was simply the idea of doing a zombie apocalypse on the set of Big Brother. I would love to be able to say these reality shows would be long dead more than ten years later, but nope, still going pretty strong.

In this one, set in Rio, the Greek God focused show is full of the usual vacuous stars and wanna-be stars and horrible staff all stabbing each other in the back or fucking each other in the back room, when suddenly zombies start eating their faces. With little real reason, they decide that the set is the best place to all congregate for safety's sake.

I actually watched enough episodes to get bored with it. Zombie Apocalypse seemed utterly perfect for this actual pandemic situation, as it was the jokingly extreme end of what we could have been dealing with. Seriously, did anyone see that video in December, of the Chinese couple who are set upon by state officials, on the street, and loaded into a secured box on the back of a truck? Who knows the actual source, but this is when Wuhan was the centre of this (seriously, when is the last time anyone even SAID the name Wuhan?) and nobody knew where it was going to go. We were dancing between thinking it was "just another flu" and ... well, zombies? Anywayz, this show was light enough to distract me until it actually annoyed me with the usual tropes as well as how much reality TV annoys me, which is why I never finished Brooker's show prior.

Snowpiercer (Kent, I still have your hardcopy on my side table....) is a wonderful idea, a whacked out idea of French scifi about a train that travels constantly, in circles, around the planet which was frozen solid due to a ecological disaster that makes Global Warning look like the mild effect people think it is. This massively long train has rich people in the front, poor people in the rear and a mass amount of privileged middle-classmen. Enter metaphors for classism.

And yes, the TV show is based on the movie.

But, we cannot run a series purely on the story from the movie, which focused on a rebellion led by Captain America, and how to reveals the failures inherent to the classicism built into its system, eventually bring about the downfall. Sure, they could have stretched that out, and I guess they will but they need more story for the filler. So, enter Murder Mystery and the Curtis character's pre-freeze background allowing him the part of investigating cop. The train has a delicate balance that must be maintained, and the idea of a murderer not only killing people but able to frame others, while continuing his acts, upsets the balance. So, Curtis asked to investigate in exchange for ... his soul?

I have only watched a couple of episodes but may favourite immediate Spoiler is that Jennifer Connelly plays a steward, but who is much more, maybe the real mind & skill behind the name Wilford, inventor and apparently false engineer of the train? I will have to watch further, as I was intrigued, just ... distracted.

Briarpatch is a typical weird murder mystery show, something that used to rather rare but is all over the TV map these days. I keep on forgetting why I was caught, albeit briefly, into watching it but then I recall the tenuous connection to Sam Esmail, the creator or Mr. Robot, and the first episode directed by Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). It stars Rosaria Dawson (Daredevil) as the sister of a murdered cop, forced to return to her small Texan hometown "affectionately" referrred to as St. Disgrace. She is not happy to be there, and folks in town are less than happy to see her return. She left a long time ago, for a reason.

There is a definite mood to the opening episode, all that I watched. Allegra (Dawson) is glad to stand apart from the odd locals, with her haughty attitude and pressed outfits. There is that Small Town Gothic feel to it, as well as oddities (local owns a giraffe) and darkness, and a tiger wandering around. But seeing I didn't get past episode one, we shall see how the show embraces such. I am also curious to jump forward in time to see how they handle the second season, for the show is being billed as an "anthology" series, in that he second season will have little, if any, connection to the first season but for ... something? American Horror Story does this to some degree of success, but not sure, not sure. (note: it was cancelled, so no...)

Someone, somewhere on social media, stated that they see Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and the new Perry Mason as taking place in the same universe. Possibly, and I see what they are getting at, but I saw it more as two people having the same dream, and when they wake up and tell you all about it, you get each person's version, their personally tainted view of the dream. Both are 30s LA, both are about racial tensions, and both are focused around a murder case connected to a religious organization. And both are moody as fuck (AF as the kids say).

But wait, yes I hear your question. Wasn't Perry Mason a lawyer TV show from the 60s? Yes, you are correct but no, not the guy in the wheelchair -- that was Raymond Burr's other show, Ironside. But THIS Perry Mason is set prior to his law career, when he was a down-on-his-luck gumshoe. This Perry is a less than stellar individual, but oh so in tune with the classic schlub film noir P.I. I would have loved to be in the elevator as those two suited studio execs talk about this one, one getting progressively more confused as the pitch is made, "Wait, so he's not a lawyer? And it has nothing to do with him becoming a lawyer? Why again is it even called Perry Mason again?"

And yet, wow.

Matthew Rhys (The Americans) is an everyman, sad-sack in the role, both sympathetic and just head-shakingly a loser. And like the centres of all these stories, he gets hooked on the case he shouldn't, the one that isn't safe for him to investigate, mixing him up in all sorts of things above his pay grade. So, we underdog support him and sort of root for him, as long as he can stop just being a jerk. I definitely need to watch more, as I just excited myself recalling it.

European specfic is a thing right now, or I should more clearly say, European specfic actually appealing to North American audiences is a thing. I can remember the days when I would hunt blogs and entertainment sites from overseas, looking for the next weird & wonderful show to hunt down. These days, there are just so fucking many. I watch some, drop many, I tell you about a few.

Ragnarok is a Norwegian series about a small town at the head of a fjord which has a very personal connection to the Norse Gods. Something environmental is going on in the town when a new family arrives, one with a nerdy, awkward kid who almost immediately starts having ... episodes that lead us to believe he is probably Thor. It is the premise of the show, but with little explanation Magne begins to get stronger, lose his need for glasses and gets all sparky. He is Thor, but what does that mean?

I am not sure, as not a lot drew me in. I usually like the exploration of everyday culture in a part of the world I know little about, but the basic premise that something dire is going to happen and the resurrected Gods are required was a bit thin. And none of the characters were particularly captivating. Might go back, probably won't.

Into the Night is one of the few apocalyptic series released recently, likely ahead of a loooong list that will be released next year, if there is anything to be released next year. This is one of those "something happened" premises where we spend at least a couple of episodes not really knowing what or why, if we ever do learn. Deadly Global Event is the best way to describe, which has the ragtag members of a flight from Brussels to Moscow that is hijacked and forced to fly west, away from the rising sun, away from the sunlight that kills everyone it touches.

I dropped after a few episodes, because it was one of those shows where everyone mistrusts everyone, everyone has their own agenda and its own premise is unable to be sustained. At some point, as they fly west, trying to find airfields to land and refuel, in the circle around the earth, something HAD to go wrong. Oh, I was expecting it to do the season through a liberal amount of hand waving and pseudo science, which I can be OK with, but all the yelling was getting to me.

The Order, classic mid-grade Canadian specific, which we hit upon in one of those, "Well, we are finished watching, what is next?" It seems there was to be magic and monsters, and a secret order of spell casters embedded in a university, and our Hero was somehow mixed up in it, despite his lack of knowledge. Was he a secret wizard? Was he a secret monster? Who knows, but there is Matt Frewer playing the amiable grandfather to the main (grandfather? Fuck I am old) and Adam DiMarco basically playing the same character he played in the main magic-using-uni-students show The Magicians. And there is headmistress Katherine Isabelle, who will always be the werewolf from Gingersnaps, so, of course, I wanted there to be a werewolf in the show.  Guess what?

The show is serviceable enough, but not so much that we got past the first episode. It just didn't really have anything all that exciting going for it. Even look at that ad poster that looks like it was built by an algorithm. This is something I expect to show up on The CW later this year, as they have been plugging in Canadian shows, as they run out of American productions to air. Then again, Netflix has it, so why even bother.