I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Long Look Back, Pt. C - Rewatch

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Ottawa Freedom Convoy bad.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else was the last few years about? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the 35 shows we downloaded, and the 5 or so streaming services we are subscribed to.

Part A is here. Part B is here. 

Star Trek: Picard, 2020, CBS Paramount+ -- download

The new season starts the first week of March (edit: just watched!), so I though I would rewatch. I didn't actually recall much beyond the basic details and that I rather loathed the last episode. I also recall absolutely loving the first episode and being disappointed it wasn't as emotionally weighty throughout. Surprisingly, without all the expectations holding me down, I rather enjoyed the rewatch, including the final episode. Oh, I still think it sucks on so many levels, but I didn't hate it anymore, much like I don't hate all the myriad of terrible episodes in TNG. And honestly, I can be incredibly "meh" about a lot of Star Trek but I will never hate it.

Recap. The Future. Picard has left Star Fleet and retired to his vineyard in Southern California France. Can I just state, that while I understand its predicated on locality, and on a rather nostalgic amusement at where and how the series were shot, it still annoys me that every planet in the Federation looks like southern California. Anywayz, Picard left angrily because the Federation cancelled its plans to assist the Romulans in evacuating their star system before the impending super nova. Remember, it is this super nova that sends Spock and his little whirly gig spaceship into the star, only to fail, and be sent back in time to create the Kelvin Timeline / Alternate Universe. The reason the Federation cancels its plans is because a handful of advanced Synths from the Institute *ahem* Daystrom Institute (sorry, Fallout 4 joke) bring down the shields on the Mars shipyards, causing destruction and the death of a lot of people. In reaction, the Federation bans all synthetic life. A bit of an overreaction, but they are being skillfully manipulated by some Romulans in secret places of power. The Federation never seems capable of not being infiltrated.

Picard gets dragged back into everything when a young woman, who happens to be an android built on reconstituted positronic neurons from Data, is murdered in front of him. Picard is desperate to find her twin, to save her from also being murdered by a mysterious cabal of Romulans. But the Federation says no to his plan (actually they literally tell him to fuck off) and he has to cobble together one from lost connections, and fly out to save the day.

What I noticed keenly during this rewatch was how the failure to rescue so many Romulans, Romulans that were being sacrificed by their own people BTW, was even more on Picard than on the Federation. When his plan was cancelled, he didn't marshal personal resources, break rules and head out anyway. He just had a tantrum, dumped the Federation and went to pout in his estate. He abandoned Romulans, he abandoned friends, and his tantrum tanked the reputation and career of his best friend (at the time) Raffi. And he hides away from this shame for almost 15 years.

Despite all the nostalgia and throwbacks to this series, once I am unfettered from my expectations, much of it felt like a melding of the movies and TNG. It was not as grand a departure from norm as Discovery is was. But it does have fun with the newness. I am no longer annoyed with Picard becoming a Synth in his own right, despite the weirdness of them just giving him his fucking old body, and the remaining lifespan before the brain abnormality and the stress of the impending end of the galaxy killed him, but fuck all that "normal span of a human lifetime". How about just put him back into a body that represents what all people have in their mind's eye. Hell knows, I don't see this pudgy 50ish body full of aches and pains, so why not put Picard in a 40ish body full of vim & vigour and allow him to repair what he could have been doing during those 15 wasted years growing grapes.

Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency, 2016, BBC America -- Netflix

There are just so many aspects of this show that make me smile, that as we crawled through yet ANOTHER year of a Pandemic, and then fucking not-truck drivers began making fusses over things that a) were not really a right/big inconvenience/impact to "freedom" and b) were not entirely being controlled by the Canadian Federal Govt. But no matter, logic or intelligence did not play into this action, but boy did it bother the fuck out of me. And I needed a mood cleanser, so we sat down and began to slowly re-watch this lovely show.

And yep, smiling ensued.

I never did go deep into the plot the first time I wrote about this, mainly because the plot is so purposely convoluted, which is entirely where all the fun comes from. So, here's a stab.

Todd is an ex-indie band member in Seattle doing his best to earn money for his sister Amanda, who suffers from a debilitating disease, and she cannot often afford meds, and their parents have already been bankrupted by Todd having the same disease. Todd got better and then Amanda got sick. He works at a hotel as a bellhop where he is abused by his dick boss. Dick Boss sends Todd to see what is going on in the penthouse, and has a brief weird experience on the wrong floor, where he sees himself in all sorts of wacky clothing. But then he goes to the penthouse -- death and mayhem abound -- bodies chomped in two, blood everywhere, burn marks that look like bites taken out of the sofa, and the body of one of Seattle's wealthy elite. Todd gets in trouble for just walking through the door.

Back at home he comes across Dirk breaking into his shitty apartment. Disk is weird and that is saying it mildly. Overtly friendly and outgoing, he talks in riddles about how everything is connected and is convinced that whatever case  he is working on (he claims to be a detective, a holistic detective) involves Todd. He decides Todd is his assistant. At first Todd resists, but then the weird things start compounding and Todd starts.... believing.

Meanwhile another holistic practitioner is wandering the roads killing whomever she comes across, because if the Universe put her in front of them, they should die. And she cannot be hurt, because the Universe won't let her be. And her goal in life is to find Dirk Gently and kill him. But she bumps into Ken, who she somehow doesn't immediately kill, so that must mean something. Because everything means something.

Meanwhile there is a weird cult of bald guys and a growly talking chubby ex-zoo worker who claims to be a famous dead rock star, who have a girl who has the soul of a corgi in her, while said corgi is wandering the streets. She is the daughter of the dead wealthy elite guy, and Dirk was hired to find her. And there are two Seattle detectives, working the missing persons case for her, and bumping into all the mayhem.

There is also a van full of hooligans, led by our fav actor Michael Eklund, and yes their van growls. For some reason Amanda is attracted to their weirdness, especially after she has an attack of her disease and they suck the pain off, like so many psychic vampires. Meanwhile, there are a weird pair (lots of pairs in the show) of black ops type soldiers trying to hunt down these hooligans, and Dirk.

And there is Farah, the bodyguard of the wealthy elite dead guy, who has been kidnapped by the cult, and is in turn, through a series of coincidences and circumstances, released by Dirk and Todd, and joins the "detective agency" to figure out what is going on, find the dog, save the girl (not cheerleader) and stop the cult.

Didn't I say there were a lot of moving pieces?

But its how it all comes together as well as watching the gears in this huge crazy machine move, which makes this show so much fun to watch. Performances are over the top, often sometimes insane (I am talking about you, Ty Olsson as tweaker landlord Dorian) and sometimes hard to comprehend. And being shot in the Vancouver environs, the cast is full of the usual Canadian familiar faces. There are just so many lines, and so many manners of delivery that just make me smile, it is a welcome respite in all this chaos we currently live in.

P.S. That was just Season One above, and season two, while still as enjoyable, is not as precisely perfect as the first season, being more all heroic journey into a fantasy fairy tale world grown from the mind of a child, and is somewhat marred by a less than confident Dirk, a surprisingly sociopathic Ken, but raised up by performances from Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk.