[Updated] Black Mirror - Kent ranked

28 episodes, 6 seasons and Christmas special and an interactive movie (so far)

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Ranked from 1-10 each for:

T - thoughtfulness (how much it makes you think afterward)

WB - world building (how well the world building works and holds up to scrutiny)

H - horror (how scary is it)

E - enjoyable (it may be smart or scary or conceptually interesting, but is it a fun/good view?)

And finally Ranking 1-20
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s1-e1 National Anthem - the Royal Princess is kidnapped, and the Prime Minister is blackmailed into doing something really gross on live television to get her back. This one's uncomfortable as fuck.  Not the episode to start with (I didn't come back to Black Mirror for 6 months afterward)

T - 9 | WB - 2 | H - 10 | E - 2 or 8 depending on your disposition -- Ranking #31/34

s1-e2 15 Million Merits - in the future the average person's job is literally keeping the lights on.  As they work they watch entertainments and ads, and they gain credits.  When they're not working they live in tiny cubicles where every surface is a screen...gaming, entertainment, porn, and advertising, always..their lives are consumed by it.  The only escape for some: an American Idol-style talent competition.

T - 9 | WB - 7 | H - 2 | E - 7 -- Ranking #9/34

s1-e3 The Entire History Of You - an implant records every moment of your life for you to obsess over and play back.  There's no need to misremember things when literally everything is documented.  How does this access to one's past affect relationships...not well.

T - 8 | WB - 8 | H - 3 | E - 8 --  Ranking #11/34

s2-e1 Be Right Back - a woman loses her husband after moving to the countryside.  She can't stop grieving.  She catches wind of a service that will place her husband's memories (extrapolated from all social media and other digital records) in a bio-engineered version of him.  It gets a little awkward (stars Agent Carter herself Hayley Atwell)

T - 6 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 9  --  Ranking #3/34

s2-e2 White Bear - a woman wakes up, having been seemingly drugged and kidnapped.  Everyone she encounters refuses to talk to her, only monitoring her with their cel phones.  Then some masked crazies start hunting her.  WTF is going on!?! The world building kind of falls apart at the very, very end but still scary as hell

T - 7 | WB - 7 | H - 10 | E- 9  -- Ranking #8/34

s2-e3 The Waldo Moment - what if a foul-mouthed cartoon character ran for office? It basically predicted Trump.  Easily the weakest episode yet still worth watching.

T - 8 | WB - 7 |  H - 7 | E - 4 -- Ranking #34/34

Christmas Special - White Christmas - John Hamm tells a story to a coworker at a remote outpost, and the stranger tells one back.  There's a mystery here.

T - 4 | WB - 5 | H - 3 | E - 6  -- Ranking #24/34

s3-e1 Nosedive - Bryce Dallas Howard is obsessed with her social media score, an app that allows people to rank each other that the whole world is obsessed with and makes every decision around, but it's not high enough to get into the living community she wants.  Her efforts to be a better person totally backfire.  So casually horrifying.

T - 7 | WB - 8 | H - 6 | E - 8  -- Ranking #14/34

s3-e2 Playtest -  a man subject himself to playtesting an experimental, immersive virtual reality gaming experience, but what's the game and what's real start getting very confusing.

T - 4 | WB - 8 | H - 7 | E - 6  -- Ranking #33/34

s3-e3 Shut Up and Dance - a young man has his life upended when a hacker threatens to release compromising video of him to his entire contact list.  The only way out is to perform 24 hours of errands without fail.  The panic level is high on this one, and the ending is a total gutpunch.

T - 9 | WB - 8 | H - 9 | E - 8  -- Ranking #10/34

s3-e4 San Junipero - people can retire into the virtual reality of their choosing, while the young can only visit.  Two women fall in love but their ability to find one another and stay connected is a challenge.  It's an absolutely beautiful, and hopeful, story.  Won two Emmys.

T - 8 | WB - 10 | H -0 | E - 10  --  Ranking #2/34

s3-e5 Men Against Fire - an alien enemy has taken over, they're seemingly everywhere.  Military tech help identify them, but what happens when one soldier's tech goes on the fritz?  Better taken as an analogy than literal.

T - 7 | WB - 8 | H - 7 | E - 6  -- Ranking #21/34

s3-e6 Hated in the Nation - it's a murder mystery, a police detective show mixed with a bit of X-Files or Fringe.  It's practically movie length, and enjoyable but feels so outside of the usual Black Mirror episode...more like a Law and Order episode, or a pilot for a new detective series.

T - 4  | WB - 5 | H - 3 | E - 7 -- Ranking #30/34

s4-e1 USS Callister - technology that allows you to live within a virtual fantasy scenario finds its incel creator living a totalitarian fantasy life within a Star Trek knock-off, where his servile crew are stolen mind-maps of people from his real life.

T - 4  | WB - 8 | H - 4 | E - 9 -- Ranking #6/34

s4-e2 Arkangel  - helicopter parenting taken to the next degree.  As a parent I can relate to the impulse to protect your child, but when does protection start leading to control?

T - 8 | WB - 8 | H - 7 | E - 7 -- Ranking #20/34

s4-e3 Crocodile -  a hit-and-run in a remote coutryside returns to haunt a successful architect when an insurance investigation, using memory-reading technology, threatens to unravel her life.  It asks you to relate but it may be the biggest ask in all of Black Mirror.

T - 4 | WB - 5 | H - 8 | E - 5 -- Ranking #25/34

s4-e4 Hang the DJ - a little hopefulness and romance nodding back to San Junipero.  It's a cute/sad look at on-line/app dating, how people meet and whether algorithms can truly account for chemistry.  The reveal/twist is maybe the most eye-rolling of all though.

T - 7 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 6 -- Ranking #29/34

s4-e5 Metalhead - oops, drone technology got out of hand.  Directed by David Slade in glorious black and white, these metal dog things are freaking terrifying.

T - 3 | WB - 7 | H - 10 | E - 9 -- Ranking #5/34

s4-e6 Black Museum - a young British woman (Letita Wright!!) waits for her car to recharge, passing the time at the curious Black Museum.  There we see artifacts from across Black Mirror's episodes and are introduced to a few more curiosities.  Honestly, I forget how this one shakes out.

T - 5 | WB - 10 | H - 7 | E - 7 -- Ranking #32/34

movie - Bandersnatch - in the 1980's a choose-your-own-adventure novel is adapted by a mentally troubled young man into a video game, but aspect of his past and events of the present threaten to drive him to madness, or murder...you decide.

T - 7 | WB - 8 | H - 5 | E - 9 -- Ranking #4/34

s5-e1 - Striking Vipers - a married man and his estranged best friend from college reunite in a new virtual reality version of the video game they play, which leads to questions about sexual identity, marital fidelity and what constitutes an affair.
T - 8 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 8 -- Ranking #18/34

s5-e2 - Smithereens - a distraught widower takes a hostage in order to talk with the billionaire creator of a social media platform

T - 5 | WB - 5 | H - 3 | E - 8 -- Ranking #19/34

s5-e3 - Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too - Ashley O is one of the world's biggest pop stars, but she's trapped in a life she doesn't believe in.  Rachel is a lonely teen in a new town and she gloms onto her Ashley O fandom as her identity, while her sister Jack is too rebellious for it all.  Rachel gets an "Ashley Too" robotic interface which winds up connecting the sisters with the celebrity in a most unusual way.

T - 2 | WB - 4 | H - 1 | E - 6 -- Ranking #28/34

s6-e1 - Joan is Awful - Joan pops on the in-world Netflix to find a TV show starring Salma Hayak who is styled like her and is reenacting moments of her immediate life. Joan's world is thrown into chaos. It gets pretty meta from there.

T - 6 | WB - 2 | H - 2 | E - 8 - Ranking #16/34

s6-e2 - Lock Henry - A young documentary filmmaking student turn his attention on his depressed Scottish hometown, and the murders that rocked it a decade earlier.

T - 7 | WB - 7 | H - 7 | E - 7 - Ranking #22/34

s6-e3 - Beyond the Sea - in a different reality of 1969, two astronauts are on a long-term space mission, but are able to send their consciousness between their real selves aboard the ship and the androids on earth that allow them to continue their lives. Things go unexpectedly bad and then get predictably awful.

T - 2 | WB - 3 | H - 5 | E - 5 - Ranking #26/34

s6-e4 - Mazey Day  - In mid 2000s, a reluctant paparazzo chases after a famous starlet who has seemingly disappeared after being fired from a shoot for unknown reasons. What she doesn't know is the starlet was involved in a deadly hit and run and is having a very hard time.

T - 5 | WB - 6 | H - 7 | E - 8 - Ranking #13/34

s6-e5 - Demon 79 - In 1979 England a young shoe sales woman of Indian descent experiences constant racism - overt, veiled, systemic, etc - but when she's accidentally tethered to a demon, she's given the opportunity to let out some of her pent-up frustrations...because she has to kill 3 people or the world will end.
T - 6 | WB - 8 | H - 6 | E - 9 - Ranking #12/34

s7-e1 - Common People - She was dying with a brain tumour but a new technology saves her life by backing up her brain. But is life worth living when there's a subscription cost that, like all subscription services, just gets worse and worse and more expensive over time.

T - 9 | WB - 8 | H - 8  | E - 7 - Ranking #23/34

s7-e2 - Bete Noir - A snack food developer finds her past comes back to haunt her when a nerdy kid from her old high school gets a job working with her. But even if she could get over the past, the fact that reality starts changing around her is bound to drive her mad.

T - 6  | WB - 5  | H - 6  | E - 8 - Ranking #17/34

s7-e3 - Hotel Reverie - A brand new type of movie production finds an actress taking the role of leading man in a classic 1940's film, reconstructed as a simulation. When the simulation glitches. the movie stops and time starts racing forward, the actress and her leading lady, who has gained a level of sentience, fall in love.

T - 6  | WB - 6  | H - 1  | E - 7 - Ranking #27/34

s7-e4 - Plaything - A man is brought in for questioning on a cold case murder from the 90's. He tells the story of being a video game reviewer, dropping acid, and helping a species within a videogame evolve, and how that led to the murder.

T - 6 | WB - 7  | H - 6  | E - 8 - Ranking #15/34

s7-e5 - Euology - A man is given a high tech package to help eulogize the recent passing of an old love. His journey into photographs help unlock memories long buried, opening old wounds but also finding a closure he never thought he could get.

T - 10 | WB - 7 | H - 2  | E - 9 - Ranking #1/34

s7-e6 - USS Callister - Into Infinity - a true sequel, the cloned crew of the USS Callister struggle to survive within the open world of the online video game Infinity. When they've drawn too much attention to themselves, the outside world starts to intervene.

T - 6  | WB - 9  | H -  6 | E - 9 - Ranking #6/34

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Ranking Black Mirror

1. Eulogy

2. San Junipero (-1)

3. Be Right Back (-1)

4. Bandersnatch (-1)

5. Metalhead (-1)

6. USS Callister - Into Infinity (new)

7. USS Callister (-2)

8. White Bear (-2)

9. 15 Million Merits (-2)

10. Shut Up and Dance (-2)

11. The Entire History of You (-2)

12. Demon 79 (-2)

13. Mazey Day (-2)

14. Nosedive (-2)

15. Plaything (new)

16. Joan is Awful (-3)

17. Bete Noir (new)

18. Striking Vipers (-4)

19. Smithereens (-4)

20. Arkangel (-4)

21. Men Against Fire (-4)

22. Loch Henry (-4) 

23. Common People (new)

24. White Christmas (-5)

25. Crocodile (-5)

26. Beyond the Sea (-5)

27. Hotel Reverie (new)

28. Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too (-6)

29. Hang the DJ (-6)

30. Hated in the Nation (-6)

31. National Anthem (-6)

32. Black Museum (-6)

33. Playtest (-6)

34. The Waldo Moment (-6)

T&K's XMas (2023) Advent Calendar: Day 9 - Under the Christmas Sky

2023,  Séan Geraughty (Follow Me to Daisy Hills) -- download

The Draw: Primarily because my friend Mukey sent me a list of Hallmarkies shot in Winnipeg, but also, kinda, more so, because it stars Jessica Parker Kennedy -- swoooooon.

HERstory: Kat (Jessica Parker Kennedy, Black Sails) is an astro-physicist and was an astronaut in training until a car accident left her with a permanent eye anomaly, basically a blind spot. In fact, its pretty much the same eye anomaly I had that led to my surgery and eventually, after the latest surgery didn't "take", mostly blind in that eye. So, let me say, I sympathize with her, her frustrations and the taking-used-to it requires. Now, mine didn't end a career in the making but...

Anywayz, she's taken a leave of absence from work while she deals with the getting-used-to and the emotional impact, but still wants to keep busy, so she takes her friend's advice and volunteers (takes a job?) at the local planetarium, as a consultant. She is immediately tasked with assisting David (Ryan Paevey, General Hospital), the current curator to help incorporate Xmas into the coming exhibition on The Sun. Her specialty is The Sun. She's also from a family of Xmas experts. David is More Science, Less Fun! Initially he's gruff at this interloper, but Kat immediately bonds with his wheelchair-bound daughter, which warms him up a bit.

Side-Story! Kat's brother Andy (Andrew Bushell, Salvation) is jobless, again (family rolls eyes), and tags along with Kat when she visits the planetarium and ends up volunteering to help the girl who runs the cafe with her Xmas Events, but with ulterior motives in mind. I have a feeling the cafe was supposed to be a gift shop but was late rebranded.

Kat's family loves Xmas. Much of the movie bounces back and forth between Kat and David doing the "walking around to get to know one another, and her family's living room where Mom is constantly baking cookies, and her Dad is trying to sneak the un-iced ones from the tin -- a man after my own heart, as we share the love of un-iced sugar cookies.

The Walking Around begins and David invites Kat out for an actual date... curling. Curling? Did they think they are in Canada or something?!? And its a double-date so Andy and Cafe Girl get to come and look all googley eyes at each. 

Peanut Gallery, yells from the kitchen. "No career in space? Have babies instead !!" Yeah, the encouragement from family and best friend for Kat to embrace her current opportunity (boy opportunity not job opportunity) is kind of annoying, but on point for Hallmarkies.

Time for a planning montage. And then the Tree Decorating Event for the kids, the event that they were planning and Andy volunteered to help with, so he could cozy up to Cafe Girl. But a mean boy bullies David's daughter Lilah, and when Kat tucks her aside to check on her bruised feelings, David loses his shit. Only HE can soothe his daughter. Kat is really hurt. Lilah seemed OK but David overreacts.

Back at the Kat Family place we sit around and discuss David being a stupid head while having even more burgers and shakes from the Winkie's place. Makes me wonder if the catering came from a local Winnipeg place and there was so much on set, they just incorporated it into the movie. And David shows up to apologize and explain how over protective he is with Lilah. Forgiven!

The two end up going to an Xmas Event at the NSP (National Spacey Program) and all of Kat's coworkers express how much they miss her, but there is a coworker in a wheelchair which gives Lilah a lot of inspiration, and is quite the sweet scene.

Back to Kat's place for a pancake breakfast because.... ? 

And now its time for another Xmas Event at the planetarium, this time we get the Santa Tracking so it must be Xmas Eve! And Kat is there is her best Red.... Pant Suit? I am not, in theory, against pant suits, but I want my Red Dress. Post Sexy Kiss, a Boss from the Monarch Space Centre (what they do when they aren't tracking MUTOs) Kat is offered a new job in another city ... at another space agency. I didn't really understand this bit. In theory, there was nothing stopping her from going back to her original job at the NSP after her leave of absence is over. Its not like she was supposed to become an astronaut, right? Whatever, they need some misunderstanding and conflict and a possibility the two will be separated.

Its now Xmas Day and Kat invites David & Lilah over for Xmas Dinner to set the record straight as to her career aspirations which were.... NSP or just be a co-curator at the planetarium? Who knows, its not like the latter job would pay much but at least she could be doing non-stop smoochies with David.  So everything is fine, and the do a sweet, low-key kiss and will likely live happily after.

The Formulae: Xmas Events galore. One for the kids to decorate trees with homemade space related ornaments, one for snooty science types to stand around and congratulate each other for being science type people, and a final one to track Santa. There are tons and tons and TONS of Xmas Cookies. And trees -- OMG, how many frickin' trees does Kat's family have? There is hot chocolate the Santa Tracker, and well tree decorating. There is an opportunity presented which could lead to the growing couple breaking up, which of course, is abandoned cuz careers don't matter. 

Unformulae: Kat is not given a choice between her career and her adherence to PST life, as her dream job was taken away by a medical issue -- well, initially. The random job offer at ANOTHER space agency was probably because they realize the first was not going to meet trope. The PST is not really that small to begin with. Also, Kat's pant suit, while being sexy AF, is not a red dress. 

True Calling? I suppose any sky at Xmas is a Christmas Sky? But it would have been nice if they mentioned a Northern Star. But Hallmarkies do their best to separate themselves from Christian Christmas and stick with Santa Xmas.

The Rewind: When we first are introduced to the NSP, the logo is so obviously Photoshopped onto the Winnipeg building I couldn't help by pause and double-check --- man, that drop shadow is sharp. Secondly, we just had to count trees --- sooo many trees at Kat's place, at least 10. 

The Regulars: Surprisingly, Kennedy has not done any before; weird, as she seems perfect for the genre. But Paevey is a standard in these movies, enough so to be on both the "we like him the most" and the "we like him the least" lists of Hallmark fans. Her brother Andrew Bushell has done a couple, as has Kat's best friend Sarah Luby. And it looks like her mom Candace Smith is an emerging regular. But beyond that, not much. I need to see more movies so that have All of the Above regulars.

How does it Hallmark? It was, from memory, pretty ... standard in its trope choices, but more than a bit bland.

How does it movie? I am already late in posting this, and while sitting in my local pub, getting my take out, I am struggling to write it up from memory, needing to depend on my note-taking to finish the post. That means, it didn't connect with me at all, neither from the Hallmarkie view, nor from the "generic Xmas movie" view. So, not memorable, not endearing despite my swoony attitude.

How Does It Snow? Its Winnipeg so there should have been some memorable snow scenes! Alas, it almost entirely takes place indoors, in the planetarium or in Kat's family living room. Given David's daughter is wheelchair-bound, there are not likely to be any snowball scenes, or sledding (actually, strangely these are rare enough to not even be a trope, but that is explainable by the fact that you need REAL snow for these, and many of these movies are shot in .... JULY) or anything real snow related. Boo.

n Paragraphs: Devs

2020, Hulu - download

I could probably do a whole series on the rewatches I have blown through during the numerous Lockdowns or Stay At Home Orders we have had here in Ontario over the past year plus. But, as I have done so in the past numerous times, I created an imaginary line between that which I watch for the blog and that which I watch for my own no-agenda viewing pleasure. Or distraction. I find it odd that my brain does this, the separating of two groups, given that this blog is not a requirement for anyone or for any reason. But its my brain, and I have to deal with it. 

But one thing that stood out in my Lockdown viewing, and I have mentioned this already, is Ease of Viewing. I choose easy things, like my ongoing rewatch of Castle or Enterprise or Person of Interest. There are many shows I could be watching, and by could I mean shows I know I want to watch but for one excuse or another, I don't. My looked back at Devs and Westworld S03 and decided to actively choose them, to break my "easy" streak and wake up my brain. I am so glad I did with this series by Alex Garland (Ex Machina).

On the surface, Devs is about our fear of technology, more precisely the fear of big technology companies. Facebook is stealing our private data. Google is listening to us. Microsoft is putting trackers in our vaccines. These massive tech companies have access to mass amounts of money and technologies and we can only imagine what they do with those resources, in order to expand the mass amounts of money even further. Devs deals with one such company, Amaya, whose area of expertise seems to be smartphones and search engines, i.e. Google, but really it all seems to be funding their quantum computing research.

Most of these type of shows suffer from an economy of plot progression, but this shows dives right into the plot, as Serguei accepts a job in the inner circle of Amaya, the DEVS program, where in he discovers the Faraday Caged workspace, air gapped and in a maglev floating programming chamber all excruciatingly beautifully designed and mysterious. Serguei is not told what the project is, but almost immediately he sees something in the raw code that leaves him in awe. But Serguei is not who he pretends to be, and steals said code with his James Bond watch. The security head of Amaya, Kenton (Zach Grenier, Law & Order), and the head head of Amaya, Forest (Nick Offerman, Parks & Recreation) murder him for the act. His GF Lily (Sonoya Mizuno, Maniac) is shown evidence he committed suicide, but she doesn't accept it and begins her own investigation. This is just the first and second episodes.

In Garland's typical slow and deliberate manner (and no, this doesn't contradict what I said above, he doesn't rush, but he also doesn't supplement the space between plot points with filler content), we are exposed to what is actually going on inside DEVS and why it was so important, a software company would murder to protect it. They have used the ultimate in "big data" to create a predictive model of our world. And by "ultimate big data" I mean, the relational information that each and every single particle in our universe has with the next particle. It means they understand the entire universe down to its smallest component. The revolutionary quantum computer they created had an application that surpassed even their wildest dreams.

The simplest way to see what they have done, is that they can see the past, they can see the future, and they can see the present, in that they can also see any physical location. They can see everything. But it assumes that the universe is ENTIRELY deterministic, in that it is entirely based on the relationships between particles and everything we think of as free will or random is an illusion. In theory, what they see is the "simulation" of the time & place based on the relationships between the particles from now/here to there. This revelation/technology revolution utterly terrifies the members of DEVS but also excites them. Forest feels the need to control what they have unleashed, setting guidelines and rules. But of course, team members break the rules. But even then, in his mind, he accepts that it had to happen, as there was no choice.

Lilly represents the world of free will. Forest, and his assistant Katie (Alison Pill, Star Trek: Picard), represents a die-hard belief in determinism. Lilly is throwing all caution to the wind to find out what happened to Serguei, even when it presents more danger to her and those she loves. Those in Amaya "let" it happen because they know it will happen, and Forrest even seems at peace with it. But he has to be, as deep in his heart, if the world was not deterministic than a seemingly small variable took his wife and daughter from him, a variable he instigated.

I loved everything about this show, right down to what had to be a very controversial ending. This is Big Brain pondering about the capabilities of technology, but also about the philosophy of how our universe might be. Besides the ideas presented, the acting and pacing are just top notch. Sonoya Mizuno is just incredible, but then again, she is a stand out in everything I see her in. An amusing side-bit was that two of Sonoya's sisters, and her niece were also involved in the making of the mini-series. Of course, Nick Offerman is spectacular, and boy has Alison Pill come a long way from Sex Bob-Omb (sorry, rewatched Scott Pilgrim not so long ago). 

The post in Kent's universe is here where he also covers Westworld S3, which I will be covering soon, as well.

3 Short Paragraphs: Explorers

1985, d. Joe Dante

I've seen the bland box cover art of Explorers
a million times. I don't think I've ever seen the
actual poster before

Having never seen it before, I was way into watching this film, nerdy and charming and so wistfully 80's, up until the end of the second act. It's a film about discovery and it really gets the childhood tendency of hanging out with people who will hang out with you.  You don't so much as choose your friends as happen into them.  The way the three boys here interact feels spot on for the ways boys actually interact, not heightened Hollywood versions of how kids behave around each other.  You've got lil' Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix and Jason Presson all showing real talent for this acting game.

This film seems so in Joe Dante's wheelhouse.  He's great at unfurling a mystery, and building a world around his characters, but he's not always so great at bringing it all home into a satisfying story.  His cinematic inspirations are obviously sci-fi films of the 50's, high concept stories that rarely had much budget for effects.  The most successful genre features of the time did so based on characterization and world building (or world declining, as so often they were disaster pictures).  You can see that in how lovingly takes his time as the boys take information conveyed to them in a dream and make it reality, discovering a computer-generated force-field with the ability to go anywhere, do anything at any speed.  There's application of scientific reasoning, and even more, logic, here, and even better 12-year-old boy's logic, so that what happens in the first two acts makes complete sense.  Up until they decide to try and tie Dick Miller's cop character into the proceedings.  First he states to having had dreams himself as a kid (as statement which breaks the logic of the eventual reveal in the third act) and then he starts investigating, finding young Hawke's jacket and tracking him down to his home...only to...do absolutely nothing and serve no actual purpose.  Putting the cops on the tail of the kids is a complete fake out to the point of irrelevance.  Every scene with Miller past his very brief encounter with their UFO while he was in a helicopter should be cut.

But then again, so should the entire third act. The boys (and it's so 80's sexist/young boy heavy...it's sad that Amanda Peterson's Lori is pretty much just an object of affection and not part of the gang...thought the film's ending implies that a sequel would bring her into the fold) go into space, get sucked into a much larger spacecraft, explore the inexplicable innards of said craft and then meet the two most ill conceived alien characters of the 80's. Seriously, worse than the family in Mac and Me. We spend the entirety of the first two acts anticipating some very cool space adventure, but instead we get a sub-par Robin Williams impersonation out of Robert Picardo voicing a gruesomely ugly and downright unappealing teen alien who is obsessed with 80's Americana. Ugh. I hated this third act so vehemently I'm blind to thinking anything was good about the film in the first place.  I cannot summon the strength to talk about this third act.  It's one of the all-time biggest let-downs as far as third acts go.  It's on the level with Sphere and Event Horizon and Mission To Mars and even Flight of the Navigator  in how it so utterly falls apart.  Yeah, I hate this movie now.

Determinism: Devs vs. Westworld (Season 3)

Devs - d. Alex Garland, FX (8 episodes)
Westworld Season 3 - HBO (8 episodes)

It would seem that in the past two or three years writer-director Alex Garland and Westworld showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan read the same book about how the philosophical concept of determinism could potentially be validated, or even instituted, by the mighty power of artificial intelligence and big data.

I don't know for certain that there is even a book out there that explores that thesis, but given that two shows running at the same time are exploring the same subject from different approach vectors seems to at least intone that it's now part of the intellectual conversation.  Maybe it's a Ted talk, I dunno.

I can't say I prefer one show's approach on the topic over the other.  Both have their merits, but I'm also still contemplating whether they're saying the same thing or not.

Garland has, for a number of years now, been exploring both philosophical and technological concepts in his very heady directorial sci-fi projects like Ex Machina and Annihilation, but his screenplays even before that, like Never Let Me Go, Sunshine and even 28 Days Later toyed with contemplation of existence (whether it be clones bred for organ replacement, a crew trying to save the humanity or a small group of survivors of a zombie-like plague).  Clearly, what life means and what we're supposed to be doing with it is something that is on his mind.


At the epicenter of Devs story [mild plot spoilers ahead] is that a secret coding project within the Google-like Amaya corporation, where they're working on a project that can see the past and future with precision.  But the meat of the show centers around Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) whose fiancee, Sergei, was admitted to the Devs program and then disappeared, only to show up days later and self-immolate on the Amaya campus.  Her investigation into Sergei's actions, attempting to understand them, lead her on a complicated path that sees her revisiting her past and questioning her future.

The idea behind the Devs project is one of determinism, that we're all on a fixed path, that free will is but an illusion.  Having taken in all of the data systems have collected on practically everyone for decades now, the Devs system can extrapolate and interpret and ultimate display the exact past and the exact future.  Everything will happen as it will always happen, such that it always has happened even if it hasn't happened yet.  Amaya founder, Forrest (Nick Offerman) and Katie (Allison Pill), his right hand on the project, have looked to their future and they know what happens.  As such they perform their roles as they're meant to, thinking they would be unable to deviate even if they tried.  They also know Lily's future, and they're more than at peace with letting the horrifying events in her life proceed without  any sense of troubled conscience.  They're devoted believers in the fixed tram lines our life are on, and feel absolved on any complicity because of it. 

An author before a script writer then director, with Devs, Garland seems to be redefining what can be done in the new golden age of television [aside - the new golden age of TV is certainly coming to an unpredicable end thanks to the Coronavirus shut-down...I wonder how things will look a year from now?] by literally making a tele-novel.  It's a rare show that has one writer and director for the entire production, but Garland's control of the situation make it a decidedly singular vision from start to finish, and it feels structured like chapters of a book.  At times the way the show plays out, it has a similar feeling to reading a book. There's a solitude to the experience of watching (or maybe that was just my experience watching it alone), as Garland let his camera sit and rest in a scene, letting the ambient noises fill the space, gleaning insight or understanding by holding on expressions or exploring the backgrounds, or just giving the audience time to contemplate meaning or feel the weight of events.  He bookends each chapter with a song, the same one in the starting montage and the ending montage, but a different song for each chapter.  The songs are well selected reflecting the tone the show is seeking perfectly.

Devs is very small scale in how its looking-glass project impacts humanity in the world of the story.  It's still technology at its incubation stage.  It hasn't been commoditized or exploited for much purpose other than self-satisfaction.  But one can see where taking all that personal data collected, all that observational video recorded, all that digital audio parsed and using it to see what people will do, and what they have done (or at least believe that's what you're seeing) could wind up being very bad for society, and the very sense of freedom.

In Season 3 of Westworld, we've left the trappings of the theme park where the automatons ran wild.  They're now loose in the real world (well, the real world of 2058) and they've starting a war nobody even realizes is happening yet.  Delores (Evan Rachel Wood) an a small cabal of hosts have taken various strategic forms and insinuated themselves in roles across the globe, including taking the body of Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) seeding her in the top spot of Delos, the owners of the AI technology and host body technology.

Delos is the focus of a hostile takeover by Incite and its somehow mysterious and completely off-the-grid owner Serac (Vincent Cassell).  Serac, meanwhile, is aware that someone, or something is interfering with his plans.  Serac is the co-creator of Rehoboam, an AI construct that has absorbed the world's big data and now effectively (and secretly) governs it, ensuring that everyone stays on their predictive paths, and that the outliers, the ones its unable to predict the actions of, are removed from the equation.

Rehoboam is also tracking aberrant behavior from other hosts that made it out, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) who's basically in hiding, having had the massacre at Westworld pinned on him, and Maeve (Thandie Newton), who has been resurrected under Serac's sway.  It's also tracking Caleb (Aaron Paul), an ex-marine with PTSD finding it hard to break out of Incite's predictive existence for him, and who falls into Delores' sphere of influence.

Westworld is using our advancements in big data, AI and predictive modeling as it's groudwork, noting its potential to eventually accurately predict the future, and then extrapolating a scenario where the AI and its employers ensure a predictable future, both as well-meaning societal benefit and as a means of self-elevation (Serac is clearly not hurting for money or resources).  It's the central thesis of the season, having already explored the ideas of existence and what it means for AIs to have consciousness and exist in the previous seasons.  It carries those with it, as the hosts are still front-and-center, but each displaying just as much humanity, good and bad, as any character in the show.  Serac and Delores are flipsides of the same coin each very much fueled by their convictions, and each very much willing to sacrifice anything for their plans.

Jonathan Nolan explored the emergence of artificial intelligence prior to Westworld in Person of Interest, a clever bait-and-switch on the case-of-the-week formulae that was really about observational nanny state, the abuse of all that monitoring, and artificial intelligence that could use that information for good or ill based on the guidance of their programmers.  Rehoboam in Westworld is very much an extension of PoI's machine, taking that observational AI system, feeding it ALL the world's data and giving it the task of ensuring humanity's future through order.  It's kind of like communism if you manage to eliminate the corruption and thirst for power.
 

Where Devs' determinism is explored on the micro level, how the very idea impacts the people who believe it, or the people who refuse to do anything with the information they have, believing even the possibility of doing something other impossible, Westworld's use of determinism is mostly macro.  We don't really sit with the impact of a predetermined existence too much with any one character, but we see the impact it has on society, and it's not a far-off extrapolation of where we already seem to be heading.  Westworld, however, has more designs on staying within its pulpy Michael Crichton origins. Action is still very much a part of the play, as are cool looking technology and futuristic designs to vehicles and other equipment.

The original Westworld is said to have influenced the Terminator, and this season is taking that influence right back.  The indestructible machine, the stony-faced determination, the impassioned assaults... Evan Rachel Wood's face seems to be made up to be even more esoterically smooth and her angles sharpened to give her an inhuman, perhaps even ultrahuman visage.  It's not uncanny valley, but it is somehow captivating and unsettling.

In both shows, the idea of the outlier does come into play, where in Devs the very concept is willfully abandoned, the very idea that there is free will would throw the system into a chaotic multiverse, but it does play it's part.  In Westworld it's these anomalies hailed as humanity's savior...or at least liberator, much like Delores was her people's liberator in Season 2.  For better or worse.

Devs is methodical, and may not be to everyone's taste.  Westworld Season 3 basically reboots the show with a new path and keeps only a scant few threads from the past.  It may not be what viewers of previous seasons were expecting.  Both are, however, compelling viewing.

The Aeronauts

Twenty-for-Seven #5 (Day 2)

2019, d. Tom Harper - AmazonPrime

Here's that origin story of the science of weather forecasting that absolutely nobody was asking for.

Seriously, that's ultimately what this tale is, the remarkable, probably-not-even-close-to-accurate adventure partaken by a female balloonist and a male scientist as they ventured into the upper atmosphere of the earth.

Real-life scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) is laughed at by one of those big assemblies of old white men ("royal society of whatever") about his thoughts on meteorological studies, that there was any science at all to predicting the weather.  He set out to hire a balloonist to take him up high in the sky to advance his studies but nobody would take him on, at least in this story.

Enter Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones), a fictional construct still pained and traumatized by the loss of her husband in a ballooning accident the year or so previous.  It takes much convincing on Glaisher's part but he manages to secure the funding and gets her to agree to pilot him. 

After some crown appeasement they take to the sky and venture up, up, up.  In their 80 minute journey they face storm clouds, butterflies, freezing cold, thinning air, and much worse on the way down.

The film is told inter-cutting the voyage with the history of how the adventure came to be, and the odd (likely to pad out the run-time) look at people on the ground waiting in anticipation for news of the journey (or looking through spyglasses). 

There are some real and CGI vistas which are both quite gorgeous but it's not enough to sustain the film.  Moments of action and excitement seem largely manufactured, and are more eye-rolling than thrilling.

In real life, Glaisher was much older than Redmayne when he made his first of many trips into the sky, and he was accompanied by a male pilot, not a female one.  I find that "based on a true story" is the biggest burden to any film as it then sets the viewer on a mental path to validating the events as portrayed in the film, and much of what happens here seems unlikely.  One or two lesser intense mishaps perhaps, but so much going wrong in one short flight seems unlikely.

Redmayne and Jones have worked together before, thus they have an easy, established chemistry.  The film takes admirable pains not to put them into any sort of romantic entanglements (that would have been unbearable).  They seem like professional colleagues who don't necessarily trust each other at first but have to come to rely upon each other for survival. 

It's passable entertainment but I needed to be doing something else (a puzzle, actually) while watching it.

10 for 10: "Netflix and chili" edition

[10 for 10... that's 10 movies TV shows which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]


In this edition, 10 teevee programmes watched on Netflix.

1.Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23 - season 1 & 2 (Netflix)
2.The Crown - season 1 (Netflix)
3.The White Rabbit Project - season 1, 3 episodes (Netflix)
4.The OA - pilot (Netflix)
5.Chewing Gum - season 1 (Netflix)
6.Dear White People - season 1 (Netflix)

7.Maron season 1 & 2 (Netflix)
8.Friends from College - season 1, 4 episodes (Netflix) 
9. Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later (Netflix) 
10. Big Mouth -season 1 (Netflix)

aaaaand...go!

I remember seeing promos in 2012 for Don't Trust the B... and thinking "what the hell"?  From the mouthful of a title to the "James Van Der Beek as himself" it seemed like a show that was trying waaaay too hard to be part of the new wave of TV sitcoms that Arrested Development bore.  I gave it a hard pass.  Through the year and a half-ish that it was on television I saw people I knew who had good taste giving it a go and liking it, review sites giving it favourably passing grades, and I thought "how".  I mean, I have friends who watch Big Bang Theory and I know that's garbage, surely this goofy-titled poseur was just another hot pile in disguise, right?  I mean, I'm not a John Ritter fan at all, and I didn't think I'd be a fan of his kids either, nepotism and all.  But after coming to love Krysten Ritter in Jessica Jones and learning she's not, in fact, even related to John Ritter, I needed to get more of a Krysten fix.  I hesitantly pressed play on Don't Trust The B... on Netflix and had a quick laugh very early on, plus saw  Nahnatchka Khan's name as creator (also created Fresh Off the Boat) and I was hooked.  Ritter's morally spurious Chloe is both just as nasty as her reputation suggests and nowhere near as nasty, really.  She could have been fairly one note, but I love how Ritter takes her on journies without ever getting "soft" (her on again/off again Aussie boyfriend/soulmate/nemesis is a show highlight).  Van Der Beek adds some "Sad Hollywood" humour and the extended cast of Dreama Walker, Eric Andre, Ray Ford as Luther (JVDB's assistant), Liza Lapria (Chloe's ex roommate and stalker), and Michael Blaiklock as the perv in the window across from them are all ridiculously fun.  This show hits it instantly with only a couple duds early on, and leaves a lasting impression.  I want a rewatch.

[12:46 -- oops]

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Oh the Royal Family.  We shouldn't care, and yet, we do.  I don't know why.  There's something about Rulers and Monarchs that is so ... other.  Especially in modern times of democracies and governments, the idea of a monarchy and royalty seems solely symbolic.  Thankfully The Crown elucidates on that symbolism by taking us into Queen Elizabeth's early days as ruler, taking over after her father passes away and her uncle abdicates to be with an unlikable American socialite.  The show zeroes in on how the titular crown affects Elizabeth's relationships, with her husband Philip who expects to be king (and is sorely disappointed/emasculated), with Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Churchill's story takes on its own fascinating sub-plot of calculation and back-biting within his party to oust him), and with various members of her staff, not to mention the colonies she visits and her receptions, both the ones she's aware of and the ones her aides attempt to shield her from.  It's a phenomenal show, Claire Foy amazingly inhabits the role and expresses the weight of it tangibly.  Ex- Doctor Who Matt Smith puts in a great turn as Philip, his jealousy and pettiness combined equally with sympathy and love.  Surprisingly outstanding is John Lithgow in his Emmy winning turn as Churchill... it shouldn't be surprising that he's so go but he's above and beyond.  I was utterly engrossed at both the historical and fictional recounting of this time as well as with the care to show it in a reflective lens of modern concerns.  Just a beautiful production.

[23:01]
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I miss Mythbusters.  I've been an on-again-off-again viewer of it since its inception, but it was in its final season when my daughter and I started watching it together.  It's science and entertainment, rolled into one, and highly educational while also being ridiculously silly.  It'll be back in some form soon enough, unfortunately The White Rabbit Project, which stars the Mythbusters b-listers Grant Imahara, Kari Byron, and Tori Belleci, doesn't quite hit the mark.  The basic premise of the show is to focus on one topic, find 5 or 6 prominent examples of the topic, look at the science of those examples, conduct some experiments and then judge which of them is the best based on whatever criteria they establish on the show.  The main problem with this is they go through their experiments much too rapidly on the show.  With 5 or 6 examples to get through every story and experiment feels rushed and the exploration factor, the trial-and-error part that Mythbusters did so well, is lost in the process.  Grant, Kari and Tori are capable, amiable hosts, but the premise of the show puts them in talking mode more than action/experimentation mode.  I really wish it were better.  As it is, I didn't get past the third episode, even with an enthusiastic 7 year old ready to watch.

[29:52]
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The OA opens with a feature-length pilot about a woman (played by Another Earth's Brit Marling, also the show's co-creator) who famously disappeared as a teen and then returns inexplicably seven years later.  She has some oddities that surround her, mysterious scars, and she starts calling herself "the OA".  Meanwhile her adoptive family tries to reconnect with her with difficulty, and she begins establishing perhaps inappropriate connections with some of her neighbours (mostly all younger than her).  Eventually she starts to open up, both about who she is and what she went through, but her tale of lost time is a difficult one to believe.  The believers though, gather with her, and experience a touch of the supernatural.  It's all a little too self-serious, hitting the same tenor as Another Earth but leaning hard into its more bizarre elements (specifically leaning into Marling's more bizarre and frustrating behavior).  The pilot, around the 50 minute mark, takes a dramatic left turn, as the OA recounts her tale as a young girl in Russia.  It's a lavish production, a harrowing half hour story that seems at once a tangent and absolutely the reason why one should watch this show.  And yet, I haven't gone back to it.  I'm definitely intrigued, but the tangent being more engrossing than the main tale to me was problematic.  That said I'm not sure I was particularly invested, and I've not quite decided whether Marling is a good actress or painfully one-note.  The show's tenor doesn't exactly allow for a broad range from its lead.  The facebook reaction at the time it came out seemed to be "it's mostly good but what the fuck"...which leads me to believe it has a frustrating ending that may not make the journey worthwhile.... I need someone to sell me on continuing with it...

[40:37]
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Haha, this show is great.  Just thinking about it makes me smile.  This British show is just goddamn fun.  Written and starring the formidable comedic talents of Michaela Coel as Tracey, it's a show about a repressed 20-something finally coming into her own sexuality it the the low-rent flats of suburban London, while still living with her mother and sister, both direly religious.  The show's explicitly frank sexual talk is utterly refreshing, and coupled with Tracey's ignorance, it's utterly hilarous.  It's a show that could easily fall into a cringe comedy trap, but because the characters are largely so open and honest with each other, the cringe factor rarely (I won't say never) manifests.  Tracey's just a supremely joyful and awkward person, naive but willing.  The supporting cast from her mother and sister, to her almost-kinda boyfriend and his invasive, liberated mother, to her in the closet ex, to her promiscuous friend and her suffering boyfriend, the show is full of amazing supporting characters, most delivering comedy gold.  (Tracey's sister having her own sexual awakening is just one of many, many highlights).  If you're not put off by sex or sex talk, give the pilot a shot.  If it doesn't hook you in then the show won't be for you, but it's practically genious.  So gloriously vibrant, fun, and riotously funny.  I don't think I've ever seen Coel before, but with this series, she's already a comedy legend to me... just a phenomenal spotlight for her.

[48:32]
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Oh, the heavy stuff.  Well, heavy, but not, but still heavy.  Dear White People is an series extension of the film of the same name which I've never heard of before.  The series itself is brilliant, exploring issues of race in America, largely African American but not solely.  The series uses its microcosm of a black dorm on an Ivy League campus to explore the macro issue, without ever forgetting that some of its characters who seem to have all the answers are still, in effect, kids without a lot of real world experience.  I loved the exploration of different black thought, and it's not that the show manages to come from every possible perspective but it does effectively reiterate that there's not just one voice when it comes to the black experience, but it equally effectively reiterates that there are common experiences across the board that are largely a result of systemic and even unintentional racism.

The genius of the show is in how it plays out.  It starts with an event, a campus party, an un-PC party put on by the campus humour/satire publication (a Harvard Lampoon of sorts), and it approaches it from our main character, Samantha.  Or at least we think it's our main character.  She hosts a campus radio program with the same title as the show that seeks to incite and inform in equal measure.  But the next episode our lead switches to Lionel, the demure side character from the first episode, as he becomes fully aware of his homosexuality, and we see the party and events leading to it from his perspective, but advancing slightly.  Each subsequent episode retraces steps with another character, but moves things forward, by midway the rather lighthearted take on race relations becomes in your face and dire, as an encounter with campus security turns almost deadly and the show does an incredible job at hitting to the core of what the police violence against black people means, the lack of safety in the world, the crawling unease.  Eventually the show swings back to it's lighter perspective, but after that it never lets go of the fact that America (and many other places, let's not kid ourselves) still treat black people as "other".  The show explores the roots and continued fight for equality in a systemically corrupt reality.

It's not a straight comedy, it's not a drama, but it manages both incredibly well.  The cast is incredible, and many of the characters become instant favourites, such that we're eager to see the spotlight circle back on them but also disappointed that it's to the detriment of other favourites.  Just an incredibly well put together show.

[1:02:16]
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I've reviewed Maron once before, back when IFC threw fans a bone and place a couple episodes on youtube.  In the years since Maron had four seasons and is now finis, but has been available on Netflix for some time.  I've slowly worked my way through the first half of the show in fits and starts, pretty much the same way I consume Marc Maron's podcast now.  The podcast has hundreds of episodes, each with a famous or semi-famous person, always with a cold open of Maron discussing his life.  The TV show flips that.  The show is mostly about his life with a bit of the podcast where he's interviewing a celebrity creeping in.  It's Maron's angst that leads the show.  Nearing 50 at the show's inception Maron's past the mid-life crisis, has done a ton of self-help, and is a much better person than he used to be.  He's not a slave to his demons anymore, but they occasionally return to remind him of who he was, which only surges him on to try and do better.  But old habits die hard.  Maron is a compelling central figure, a solitary man not looking desperately for love, a man only marginally burdened by his parents, a man whose friends are as messed up as he is, only generally more secretive about it.  Maron's life, especially towards the end of season 1 and the start of season 2 spiral out of control when a particularly destructive and invasive relationship begins and then decays.  It's a relationship I knew from Marc's real life told through the podcast but it's fascinating to see it play out in fiction.  Part of my fun was recounting to my wife the reality of the situation which was actually just as crazy if not crazier than the show.  There's a hint of cringe comedy to Maron, but most of it is Maron fighting with his own worse tendencies in a given situation, sometimes side stepping the cringe, and sometimes stepping right into it, it's not knowing which way it will go that makes it so satisfying, and funny.  With a tinge of DIY and a hint of melancholy, few other comedies have felt like Maron, and few others trying to find this balance are as successful at being funny.

[1:10:51]
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Oh I was so looking forward to Friends From College as an exploration of how friends you made from one of the peak times of your life have grown or not grown with you, how friendships have evolved or stagnated, how those old habits and tendencies you have with those friends crop up every time you see them, and how those same things impact your significant other when they're invited to join in yet are perpetually the outsider.  Ostensibly these things happen in Friends From College, but the show is less a broad exploration than it is a very specific one, for this very specific group of friends.  I dunno, I just couldn't relate.  Nick Stoller has done some fun, funny, accessible films, but this, this was off putting, despite it's fantastic cast which includes Keegan Michael Key, Cobie Smulders, Nat Faxon, Annie Parisse and Fred Savage.  The show opens with Key and Parisse engaging in a post-coital discussion in a hotel room, their long-standing relationship obvious by the familiarity they have with one another.  As the conversation progresses, these are obviously people who are in love with each other and still good friends after all these years, a real solid relationship to start the show on...except when it becomes clear that these two are not married to each other, and in fact have been cheating on their own spouces with each other since before either were ever married.  It makes the show wildly uncomfortable from the get go, and despite the likability of both actors, it's hard to like or sympathize with the characters at all, and it's hard to find something to root for... do we want them to break up their otherwise happy marriages/families (Parisse has a child, Key and Smulders are going through IVF to try to have a child) and friendships?  It's a no win situation for the show, even if Key and Parisse choose to never sleep with each other again.  After four episodes of this horseshit sneaking around and cringe-inducing situation comedy around covering tracks and friends finding out, I couldn't really take watching anymore.

[1:20:00]
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The first Wet Hot American Summer Netflix series, First Day of Camp was great for how it played with the timeline of the original movie in relation to the actual timeline in real life...that is to say, it was old comedians attempting to play teenagers, the results were never not funny.  This sequel series Ten Years Later takes its cue from the end of the film where the characters promise to regroup in 10 years time, and we get to see where they all wound up.  The First Day of Camp succeeded in spite of its logistical challenges, bringing together its repetoire of now very successful actors and comedians, and having a script that juggled their availability in any one scene adeptly.  Ten Years Later feels less well planned, the logistics not working out as well, and rushed in spots.  The excuses they make for replacing Bradley Cooper with Adam Scott, for instance lends its own spot of comedy, as does the retroactive inclusion of two new players Mark Feuerstein and Sarah Burns and the continual flashbacks that insert them into sequences of the film or preceding series where they never were.  This would be more amusing if the show didn't spend so much time with them.  The cast of characters was large enough that spending (a lot of) time on two new characters only makes them stand out more as outsiders (and for them to be quite unlikable as well doesn't help anything).  There's an absurd plot involving George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan that also doesn't quite take off, primarily for how much cheap comedy circulates around them, and yet the show's under-arching plot pretty much hangs off it.  There's a lot of fun stuff in Ten Years Later but not nearly as much as First Day of Camp.  Like most comedy sequels, it's diminishing returns on similar jokes.

[1:28:38]
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I can't say that Chewing Gum inspired Big Mouth, but these are two peas of the same pod, despite one being very British, the other very America, one a live action cartoon being about people in their 20's discovering their sexuality, and the other a highly animated cartoon about teenagers discovering sexuality as they go through puberty.  Both are incredibly frank and hilarious, although I might have to give Big Mouth  an edge largely for what it dares to do with it metaphors come to life.  Created by Nick Kroll and his childhood friend Andrew Goldberg (with Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin) its a mostly fictional recounting of their pubescence, with Kroll playing Nick and frequent collaborator John Mulaney playing Andrew.  Andrew's puberty is hitting him hard, and he's shadowed constantly by the Hormone Monster (also played by Kroll), who's like the little devil on his shoulder telling him to get into trouble, only there's little sinister about it, it's just a personification of urges.  Nick and Andrew hang out with Jessi (Jessie Klein) who has her own Hormone Mistress played brilliantly by Maya Rudolph and, for some reason, Jay (Jason Mantzoukas) who is that kid who's just the filthiest kid, extremely annoying, you never want to be around them, and yet you're friends with them for some reason.  The show's exploration of pre-teen sexuality is very daring, but necessarily frank, and absurdly true to life, despite its grandiose metaphors.  At one point Jessi has a conversation with her vagina (as played by Kristen Wiig) and there's a sequence where Nick, still having not hit puberty, catches a glimpse of Andrew's post-pubescent crotch and can't think of anything but...it's penises everywhere.  The casting is brilliant, the show is largely spot on (one episode's spotlight on Jay's relationship with his pillow is, perhaps, too weird, stretching the metaphor way past its breaking point), and it's full of quotable quotes (as often based on inflection as cleverness).  I'm a huge fan of Kroll, from his stand-up to Kroll Show to Oh, Hello on Broadway and now this... it's not just about how talented Kroll is, but the people he surrounds himself with.  Outrageous, and again, like Chewing Gum, not for prudes.  Watch the first episode, if it puts you off you won't want to continue.

[1:42:22]

-fin-

Star Trek Discovery

2017, Space/CBS All Access (5 episodes reviewed)

I'm not a Trekker. I'm not even a Trekkie (the less hardcore of the franchise's fanbase).  I'm an admirer, from a distance.  The Next Generation was my Trek.  I watched the pilot when it aired and each subsequent episode weekly for 7 seasons and 3 movies (I only recently watched the 4th).  I watched a scattering of the first few seasons of Deep Space 9, I watched Voyager sporadically, I never made it past the pilot of Enterprise and I've only seen random episodes of the original series ("TOS").  Every movie, though, I've seen every movie, many multiple times.  So yeah, I've put some time in with the franchise, but this is all to quantify what comes next.

I freaking love Star Trek Discovery.

Unabashedly.

I don't care what the continuity gripes are for a show taking place ten year prior to TOS.  I really don't.  Would this have been maybe better if it were 30 years past the end of Voyager?  Sure, it would help to resolve that stabbing dagger in the back of many fan's brains that make it impossible for them to resolve the better looking sets, the much different looking Klingons, the better technology, the nicer outfits...all the things that modern day television can do so much better than 50, 20, even 10 years ago.  But the showrunners, Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, are operating in this time frame to tell a very specific story, which is the war between the Federation and the Klingons. 


The easy fix though would be to have the Federation at war with another, newer civilization, given that we know tenuous peace between the Federation and Klingons is the eventual outcome.  But that presupposes the fanbase, both hard core and casual (and new) would care as much about the conflict between a new alien race versus an established -- nay notorious -- adversary like the Klingons.  Beyond that, just because we know the outcome of a battle has never stopped anyone from recounting stories from that time.  Every major war has millions of stories to tell.

The opening salvo for Discovery is a 2-parter, a full-blown movie, essentially, and as a movie it is one of Trek's best.  Sonequa Martin-Green is the show's de-facto lead as Michael Burnham, the first officer of the starship Shenzhou under captain Captain Philippa Georgiou (the always welcome Michelle Yeoh).  The show immediately thrusts us in the mix of Burnham and Georgiou's almost familial relationship, it should be noted the first ever female captain-first officer pairing in Trek.  The dynamic is incredible, with spot-on writing that hints at how incredible Georgiou is as both a leader, mentor and person, as well as how Burnham is so utterly capable and yet flawed.

As a child, Burnham was rescued from a Federation space station by Vulcans after a Klingon raid that killed everyone else on board.  Burnham was raised by Sarek (yes, Spock's dad, making Burnham Spock's adoptive older sister...probably the most flagrant attempt the show makes to pander to the fanbase by tying it to TOS), giving her a superior educational experience as well as teaching her to suppress her emotions.  She's no Vulcan though, and her humanity is sometimes at odds with her calculating nature, which keeps others at a distance.

The opening "movie" also introduces us to the Klingon side of the conflict, largely a cultural quest by one Klingon, T'Kuvma, to unite the scattered 24 houses against the threat of the Federation and their gentrification of the galaxy.  Long story short, by the end of the movie, the war has begun, Burnham is jailed as a traiter, the Shinzhou floats lifeless in space, and T'Kuvma is martyred, making him a rallying point for the Klingon armadas.

There's a sense of "where do we go from here" by the end of the gripping two-parter.  With over half the cast gone -- dead, or left for dead, or imprisoned --  there's a thrill of the unknown, especially with the titular starship Discovery yet to be revealed.   It's easy to underestimate how exciting this is both as a movie and the opening act of a new ongoing series.  To establish a cast, to build an exceptional rapport among them, to get the audience excited for the future adventures of this crew together, not to mention their contention with a particularly dedicated adversary, and then rip not one, but both away, it's rather unprecedented. 

The third episode opens 6 months later with Burnham in chains, pleading guilty to her crime (the Federation's first ever traitor) and ready to accept her punishment.  What an amazing point of view character for a Trek show.  Burnham as a human-raised-by-Vulcans, female, person of colour as lead of the show was a marvelous feat on its own, but this turn for her makes her journey a thousand times more fascinating.  Her guilt looms large, though the public blames her for starting a war, her guilt is in not actually finding out whether her treasonous act would have actually stopped it or not, and saving the lives of her crewmates.  When her prison transport ship encounters problems, she's rescued (not by chance) by the Discovery, where she meets a few familiar -- though no longer friendly -- faces from the Shenzhou.  She meets its difficult captain, Lorca (a wonderful Jason Isaacs), who has taken pains to recruit her to help her with the ship's mysterious experiment.

The third episode effectively acts as pilot after the "movie" and it does a good job of establishing all the new and returning crew, giving them distinct personalities from the outset, and then playing with the expectations of those personalities within the next two episodes.  This is a crew of scientists and explorers being led by a military captain during wartime.  Needless to say, no one is particularly thrilled with the situation, least of all Burnham who is trying to both atone and fit in.  Meanwhile, things are no easier on the Klingon side.  In the wake T'Kuvma's death, the outsider Voq has taken the helm of the only ship with cloaking technology, but it's dead in space and the crew is getting desperate, so when another house comes to claim T'Kuvma's cloaking technology, Voq has to determine what he compromises first, his leadership or his convictions in the teaching of the martyred T'Kuvma and Klingon traditions.

Many complaints are lobbed at Discovery... "too focused on action and not enough on science" is one of the main ones early on.   This particular season is meant to focus on the war, so action will be a part of it.  But the focus is never of a particular action set piece, it's always on the players involved, and science (if really comic-booky science) is still a mainstay in exploring the Discovery's new spore drive.  Recently, "Captain Lorca abandons another human on a Klingon prison ship ...that's not the hopeful Trek I'm used to"... because you haven't had a warmongering Captain before.  Lorca is cold, Lorca is calculating, Lorca is shrewd... he's given his command because the Discovery is trying to engineer a weapon, a tactical advantage against their enemy, and they need the most hard-bitten man to get the job done (which flies in the face of the traditional "peaceful explorers" model of Trek's past).  Ultimately Discovery is telling a much different tale, one that is effectively exploring how war impacts a society's tenets (both Federation and Klingon) and the impact it has on the people involved.

This is easily the best looking Trek, the costuming, make-up, effects, and sets are all amazing.  Despite not advancing the Trek chronology, it does advance some of what we see in Trek culturally.  From more people of colour and women in positions of power to gay relationships, it's full of long-overdue progression (even off screen with women and people of colour directing, writing, costuming, and beyond).  As well, the bulk of Trek is episodic in nature, where as this is highly serialized.  While the two-part opener definitely stands on its own, what comes next builds and builds, and is set to make a fascinating season as a whole.  The showrunners have said the war will be resolved by the 15-episode season's end and what happens for season 2 is still a mystery.

As I said, I love it unabashedly.  It's fascinating, it's exciting, it's one of the better looking shows on TV (well, on TV in Canada at least, it's the inaugural show of CBS's "All Access" streaming service), which isn't wholly unexpected when much of (now expunged) showrunner Bryan Fuller's crew is involved.