I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching -- Wot? No Movies P2

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(him) 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.  That dog in the fiery house bad.

What I Am/Have Been Watching is the self-admitted state of typically Toast (not him), spending too much time in front of the TV. Sure, the Great Pause is winding down (culturally if not virally) but habits have been formed, doors have been locked and going outside is soooo pre-2019. The weird thing of late is not committing to movies. Sure, we add them to Watch List, we Download them, we say, "Let's watch xxx instead of TV tonight," but then we just either re-watch something classic or I find something else to download. 

One Episode is a segment in which we talk about shows we have watched one episode of (and sometimes more). We would like to watch less volume and more quality Television but that involves wading through a bevvy of meh to get to the good stuff. Sometimes we find gems which, for one reason or another, we don't (or haven't yet) watched another episode of.

P1 is here.

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, 2021, CNN - download

If you have seen my IG feed, you know I love food. And despite what I usually say ("I love eating"), no it's more about a love of food and all its glory. I was raised in a state of food phobia (i.e. a picky eater) and barely ate anything outside of my usual North American fast-food fare, or meat & potatoes. Once I was out of my home town, and with Marmy's sense of cooking at hand, I learned to love different food choices. And it continues, with almost new foods entering my radar almost every day.

One of my formative food experiences was Stanley Tucci's Big Night (1996, Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci) about two Italian brothers in New Jersey having one big night of food celebration at their little Italian resto. This was still in my early exposure years, so not everything looked delicious to me, but the approach, the zeal, the absolute love of the making and eating of the food embedded itself in me.

Apparently, Tucci never left his love for food behind (not sure how he stays so fucking skinny; how do YOU do it Kent?) and this show came up on my IG radar recently. He travels around Italy, visiting all of the major regions of the country, sampling the fare they are known for, visiting farmers, cooks, restaurateurs, and chefs. We have only watched a couple of episodes so far, because it makes me so very very hungry. I have already had to dive back into making "rustic" homemade pasta and putting together a quick cacio e pepe.

The amusing thing about food-travel TV is that every dish, every chef's specialty is the "best in the country". So, watching sincere, and sometimes lightly forced, "OMG, that is incredible!" reactions is fun. The first few episodes cover some American standard fares "of the moment" such as the aforementioned cacio e pepe, carbonara, pizza (Naples, with knives and fork?), tagliatelle bolognese, etc.

But its not just about cooking and eating, as he covers some food history (e.g. the Prosciuttopoli scandal), how different foods arose in some regions, the relationship locals have with the signature foods, and we. of course, get to see how absolutely grand travelling Italy with a nice budget is.

Dark Winds, 2022, AMC+ - download

Native American, or indigenous, culture is rising in exposure of late. I wonder how my new Director of Indigenous Affairs would see this exposure of his people's culture through the colonist's eyes. One of my favourite indigenous actors is Zahn McClarnon, who we got to know as the irascible tribal police chief in Longmire. But his character was one of those, the more you know about him, the more you admire. So, it's not surprising that he was chosen to play Joe Leaphorn from the Tony Hillerman crime series, about two Navajo Tribal Policeman working the usual murder-crime mysteries, while being steeped in American Indian culture. There have been a few adaptations prior to this series, but I was not familiar with them; I was here purely for McClarnon.

Only one episode in, we have met Leaphorn as he begins investigating the murder of a teenage girl and an old man who claimed to be cursed after he saw a helicopter used in an armoured car robbery fly over. The wise woman the teenager was working with is traumatized, but alive. As he begins to dig into what is going on, the idea of Navajo witchcraft comes up, which intertwines in a few other sub-plots. And his new Deputy shows up, Jim Chee, who is in fact an undercover FBI agent tasked with looking for the robbers. 

Set in the 70s, this feels it will be typically grim, full of suspicion and anger against colonials and men like Leaphorn who appear to be working for the white man, at odds with their people. This is "pre-woke" but I hope they don't use "period authenticity" in order to just have people be even more shittier to each other, no matter what side they are on.

Ms Marvel, 2022, Disney+ 

This show, and pun entirely intended, is a marvel. As the Internet of Old White Guys buzzes about how they cannot relate to a show about a teenage Muslim Pakistani-American, I just revel in watching something that is made with such vigor, such sincerity. Every episode, I am glad I am seeing the gradations of their Muslim Pakistani-American community, that we can finally step outside the stereotypes of how pop culture depicts the non-whites that make up the tapestry of North American life.

But its also a superhero story, where in a young girl finds a bracelet (bangle) that provides her with weird, loosely controllable light-based-energy, with which she can smash things, catch people and generally do what the Green Lanterns do with their rings.

I also enjoy that the main character did not have to be sexified up. She is a cute, vibrant teenage girl that is allowed to be just that. We don't have a 24 year old CW model playing the role, and very little about the show is even going to acknowledge that side of pop culture. Maybe that is why the Internet of Old White Guys (older than 20) are whining, in that they cannot get their creep factor on.

And the production! Oh, the colours and the stylistic choices! The music and balance between her doing super hero things, and just navigating her family, lifestyle and community! While I find the actual story-story somewhat lacking, all the things in between are perfectly setup.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching -- Wot? No Movies P1

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(him) 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.  That dog in the fiery house bad.

What I Am/Have Been Watching is the self-admitted state of typically Toast (not him), spending too much time in front of the TV. Sure, the Great Pause is winding down (culturally if not virally) but habits have been formed, doors have been locked and going outside is soooo pre-2019. The weird thing of late is not committing to movies. Sure, we add them to Watch List, we Download them, we say, "Let's watch xxx instead of TV tonight," but then we just either re-watch something classic or I find something else to download. 

One Episode is segment in which we talk about shows we have watched one episode of (and sometimes more). We would like to watch less volume and more quality Television but that involves wading through a bevvy of meh to get to the good stuff. Sometimes we find gems which, for one reason or another, we don't (or haven't yet) watched another episode of.

Of course, this is inspired by Kent's last post along the same topic. And stealing some of his format.

Stranger Things, S4-P1, 2022 - Netflix

S1 | S2

Wow. They finally re-captured the "watch the next episode, NOW !" vibe of S1. And, in looking at the air-times, also allowed the Duffer Brothers to do that thing Kent mentioned, allowing the creators to do alternate episode lengths, to better suit the cohesive tale -- some even reached close to single movie length! Good choices lead to good results.

So, when we last left our intrepid heroes, some of the ST Kids, and Joyce, were moving away from Hawkins, Indiana, for their own protection, relocating to California. Eleven had lost her powers, Hopper had been "killed" in the last ditch effort to shut down the crack to the Upside Down created by the Russians hiding underneath the Hawkins Mall, and Max had lost her brother Billy to the fleshy step-child of The Thing monster they called the Mind Flayer. The kids had saved Hawkins, and likely the world again.

When we pick up only months later, boy have the kids shot up! Growth spurts galore! Things are tense. Eleven is still powerless, cruelly bullied in her new California town. Nancy and Jonathan are suffering the LDR blues, and impending university choices. The D&D group is somewhat mystified by Lucas becoming a member of the Hawkins High basketball team, and his new found "popularity" but they have found new compadres in The Hellfire Club, the school's D&D club, DMed by brash, intense metalhead Eddie Munson. The World of Greyhawk came out in 1983, so it's appropriate the villain in Eddie's campaign is Vecna, the one-eyed, one handed lich wizard.

Then, of course, weird shit starts happening. The Upside Down's influence on Hawkins never goes away fully. This time, it feels more like classic possession horror movies, wherein an invisible otherworldly force frightens, and eventually kills local kids in absolutely horrific ways. And Eddie the DM is suspect prime.

Meanwhile Joyce learns that Hopper survived, grabs Murray, and drops everything to head to Russia to save him. The California Kids get dragged back into the secret government experiments & conspiracy and competing agencies full on attack the Byers house, giving us Road Trip! And Eleven folded back into the lab with creepy Dr. Brenner -- is he trying to resurrect her powers to save the world, as he and Dr. Owens claim, or does he have his own agenda (well, DUH!).

This is the first time since the first season they did a good job tying all the disparate sub-plots together. In S2 and 3 I didn't care so much about some stories, just wanting the focus to shift back to the main plot. But this time, each and every sub-plot was served up in admirable fashion, even if it had to harken back to S1 patterns. 

And the character growth! Not just in physical dimensions but maturity, even if a few were short-shrifted. Nancy takes charge, without the need for Jonathan's support. Steve & Robin have the perfect relationship built on their mutual relationship woes. The D&D Kids are getting somewhat blasé about having to save the world yet again, and dialing in Eddie the DM is handled perfectly. Max has PTSD, but finds solace and strength in Kate Bush. Much of the background cast is once again pushed back to the background, which I prefer. Let the stars shine.

The BBEG and perhaps even the Upside Down itself begin to tie back to Eleven herself, and ... well, I cannot wait for the rest of the season!

That Dirty Black Bag, 2022 - AMC+

What the fuck's up with putting a Plus beside the name of all your subscription based, streaming services? Is there now going to be a need for Netflix to release and ever more exclusive Netflix+  ?

Whatever. <inner 90s girl flipping of hand>

Westerns. I have mentioned before, my self-considered atypical attraction to Westerns. But that interest has a simple origin story, in that one summer in The Country (rural family land), I was out of books to read and found someone's old western pulp-style paperback, probably a Zane Grey. I was struck much the pulp aspect aligned with the Robert E Howard Conan stories I was also reading at the time. The world was dark & gritty, the heroes grim, and the situations dire. A new fascination was born.

TDBB begins with a bounty hunter (Douglas Booth, Jupiter Ascending) killing and beheading a man. "A head weighs less than a body," he intones. Meanwhile a corrupt sheriff (Dominic Cooper, World of Warcraft) tightens his grip on Greenvale, a dry, dusty town that hasn't seen rain in years. Meanwhile Farmer Steve (Christian Cooke, Witches of East End) stands up to the land baron (Paterson Joseph, The Leftovers) that wants what remains of his farmstead, while hiding a secret -- there is GOLD in them there hills!

This is spaghetti western,  shot in Spain, Morocco, and Italy! The angles are skewed, the violence is high and every character growls out his lines. The gruesome violence seems on-par with 2022, a little over the top.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, 2022 - Paramount+

Oh, Anson Mount, I have such a man-crush on you right now, especially that ever reaching coif. Can I visit the ready room for some home cooking? I'll even wear a red shirt!

I started this series commenting (to whomever would listen) extensively on how steeped in nostalgia it is. I mean, think about it, how can a series that showcases the actual starship from The Original Series not be? But this is not a TOS reboot, as its Pike, not Kirk, so this gets set in the years before Pike is confined to a badly designed wheelchair enclosure. In fact, the entire show is set up around that impending doom, as it begins with Pike being coaxed out of his self-imposed exile, one he took to wrestle with the visions of the future we all know about. 

Once he has shaved the beard, and styled the coif, we are back on the nostalgic, stylish, anachronistic Enterprise bridge meeting his new crew. And thus began my reservations. Security Officer La'an Noonien-Singh (Christine Chong, Halo: Nightfall) a descendent of Khan (KHAAAAN!!), and bearer of a most horrific backstory; Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush, Home and Away); cadet Nyota Uhuru (Celia Rose Gooding) who is pretty much playing the Hoshi Sato character from Star Trek: Enterprise, in that she is a genius (GENIUS!) with languages; and background Lieutenant Sam Kirk (Dan Jeanotte, Good Witch).

I am not mentioning the rest of the non-nostalgic bridge crew, just because. So, steeped in that "LOOK ! STUFF YOU KNOW !" mindset, I my reservations shouted loudly. Sure, Mount was spectacular, and the rest of the cast was pretty darn tootin' (sorry, still thinking about Westerns) good as well, but how much would it just rest on its laurels and harken back to TOS ? A whole damn lot, actually, but it turns out that is exactly what we needed. The episodic nature of much of pre-Discovery Star Trek is very welcoming here, with just enough edge to feel fresh. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Fuller attempt to do something fresh(er) with Star Trek but apparently nobody else did, as they immediately kicked him out and then kicked out all coherence in later seasons. All the fresh went rancid pretty quickly in Discovery and yes, that leaves me bitter. And feeling tentative about Strange New Worlds. 

But six episodes in, I am surprisingly optimistic.

But it may just be the coif.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Pt. 4)

For each post I put into this long running "What I Have Been Watching" I remember another show I completed in the past year or so, since I "regularly" updated what I was watching on TV. Some are things I have been watching forever, like Supernatural and some are astounding shows I am surprised I never covered, such as Humans.

But, for now, let's cover a couple of One Episode(s).

Colony, not the, is the new alien invasion show over on USA Network, starring Josh Holloway. This guy is good and deserves something stable, but he keeps getting put into sub-standard genre attempts. This one could be a good one, but I doubt it, as it had quite the lackluster first episode. Lackluster is actually pretty standard these days, as I am not sure what standard TV premieres now hold themselves to. Not everyone can have the wow factor of Mr. Robot had in their first.

The trend right now is to leak, or more accurately, show early. So, while I am still the downloader, this was not a under-the-table thing but fully supported by the producers. They are still figuring out the whole digital age thing.

Josh is an ex-military guy trying to survive in the oppressive post-invasion regime. Things are not horrible Falling Skies alien invasion bad, but more an Orwellian, occupation state. Some foodstuffs seem scarce and there are curfews and stories of the disappeared, but generally people live their day to days. When the aliens came, sections of the world (well, at least LA as its the only part of the world of which we know) were subdivided behind massive walls. And people are rarely allowed to pass from one to the other. Anyone who was in a section when the aliens came, has to stay -- Josh and his wife have lost their youngest son and Josh is obsessed with finding him. He doesn't get involved with the resistance (of course, there is a resistance) but he is using them to make headway into the other zone, to hunt for his son. And things go wrong.

Josh is caught and given an ultimatum --- help the puppet human leaders find the resistance and get his son back. Or take the fall for an attack and be disappeared along with all his remaining family. Seems like an easy decision to me, for you can accomplish more alive than you can thrown away in a hole. But his wife is upset, pissed he has agreed to be a collaborator. She has her own more personal reasons.

The drama was pretty standard fare, and the world being built reminded me very much of the original V series, but that may just be the whole LA vibe. We don't know who the aliens are, what they want or how things are going go, so there is lots left to explore. But I will leave it up to a couple of more episodes before I decide.

The Magicians (and the the is correct this time) is the adaptation of the popular series of books by Lev Grossman, another of the books that all my fantasy reading friends have commented about on Facebook but I never got around to reading, nor even finding much about. I believe it was compared to as the 'adult Harry Potter' but that is probably disingenuous.

So, there is another world of magic just out of our sight. Its not so much as hidden but highly managed so average muggles don't see it. Quentin Coldwater is nerd boy who doesn't fit in, has the perfectly lovely best friend whom he isn't sleeping with (but probably wants to), and an unhealthy obsession with some magic filled books from his childhood -- think Narnia.

Paths cross and suddenly he is made aware he has magic potential. And he has to write an entrance exam into Brakebills College, the Hogwarts of upstate New York? I assume it's on the same location as the Xavier School for the Gifted in this reality. He gets in, his friend doesn't, she gets depressed while he stresses out from studying.

The first episode was very very unbalanced. It was done as if they wanted to get quickly past the whole introduction of magic school idea and quickly into the Potter-esque plot of Quentin being the kid destined to fight the returning evil. We are given clues of how hard learning magic is, but never actually experience the difficulty, just Quentin twisting up his nose and whining while others around him seem to play with magic as a past time, very easily. And there was something very CW channel about all the kids, all being very stylish and very sexy, even the nerd girl was stunning and put her outfits together perfectly. Quentin himself was not so much as nerdy, as he was Brooklyn alterna-kid, ever so stylishly awkward.

I will watch the series if but for enough episodes to see where it is going. And two thumbs up on the number of pairs of thigh high socks. I hope they are a sign of their return to fashion.

So, from urban fantasy to straight up classic fantasy. The Sword of Shannara was the followup book for all Lord of the Rings fans to read.  It was Tolkien-light, borrowing most of the fellowship tropes but creating its own world that became very very popular in its own right. I believe I never got much past book... 3 ? I don't remember but I am sure I have one of those boxed sets of paperbacks on my shelf, from back in the day when those were a thing for Xmas gifts.

The Shannara Chronicles is that adaptation of the series come to TV, very loosely and not starting with the first book but with the latter two. We are following Wil Ohmsford and Elven princess Amberle as they try and stop the magical Elven tree from dying, releasing demons back into the world. They are being assisted by ancient druid Alanon, the patron saint of family drug recovery.

One thing I remember in reading the books was my annoyance at the merging of post-apocalypse science fiction with fantasy. I have always been perturbed by the blending of the genres, except when done from a pulp perspective, such as John Carter. But this show is going to just throw in with the current popularity of teen po-ap fiction and litter the visual countryside with fallen Seattle Needles and ruined buildings leaning against each other. And trolls that wear gas masks and armor made from.... street signs? How very Gamma World.

If The Magicians can be mocked for their pretty characters, then people are going to giggle at the Elves of this world. But for me, its always been the perfect way to depict the unearthly beauty of Elves -- make them 20sumthin super models. How else can you depict perfect beauty unless they are cast ever lovely, ever made up and always in the perfect clothes and of the perfect (??) weight? So, the Elves play out well for me, if they are a bit teen angsty.

Its a by the numbers low man against the evil magic of the world story, and not whatsoever the fellowship of the first book, so no LotR comparisons of yet. The lovely eared Elves are there, no Dwarves of yet and the only real monster was the demon lord Dagda Mor, and a few of his minions. Alanon was great, another perfect rendition of a character I would play in D&D. I will definitely be returning for more, but as for quality?  No, not really there. This is purely genre fodder for me.

Amusing note. I watched it on CTV which so very obviously blurred out the implied nudity from a couple of scenes. Marmy missed it, so she downloaded from the MTV source, and yes, the ever so faint hint of nudity was there --- making it ever so obviously blurred on Canadian TV. Ain't that the opposite.

One Episode: The Leaks in the TV Plumbing

One Episode is the segment where we edit the opening italicized paragraph, and talk about shows we have watched one episode of (and sometimes more, and sometimes less). This has nothing to do with quality but a desire to see everything that was *cough* leaked.

Lucifer -- Fox
Blindspot -- NBC
Minority Report -- Fox

OK, full disclosure. I am not all that familiar with Lucifer the comic book. It came out right around the time I was having Vertigo comics withdrawal.  The comic was a spinoff of the story from The Sandman where Lucifer Morningstar, The Fallen and King of Hell, left Hell and offered the keys to the kingdom to Morpheus, Lord of Dreams. In the comic Lucifer runs a piano bar, and that was pretty much all I knew about it.

In the TV show, Lucifer runs a swanky, decadent nightclub in LA with his demon sidekick Maze. It doesn't take long for the premise to kick in, when a pop diva he is fond of is gunned down in his company. Lucifer is immortal and unharmed and pitches in to help the investigation. Thus, we get 'she's an LA detective and he's the Ex-King of Hell, and together they fight crime' !! Amusingly enough, that formula is the basis of two of my favourite shows of the last decade -- Castle and Forever.

I loved this pilot, and mainly due to the way Tom Ellis (Merlin, The Fades) plays Lucifer. In character, he is comparable to a GBF (gay best friend; charming, catty and has the best lines) combined with a raving heterosexual cad. Wilde-ean was how Marmy described him. But the best aspect is how he does not hide who he is, from anyone. "You don't get this immortal thing, do you?" he asks Detective Dancer, played by Lauren German (Chicago Fire, Hawaii Five-O) after she witnesses him getting shot, to no effect. To round out the two of them working together, some mysterious force doesn't let his carnal rufie power (kinda creepy, but he is The Devil after all) work on her.

It was fun, and I don't know the comic, so it doesn't affect me whether it was accurate or not.

Meanwhile Blindspot held an immense amount of 'meh' for me.

You've probably seen the trailer -- bag found in Times Square, the Square is cleared with bomb squad approaching, when the bag unzips itself and out steps Sif/Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander, Thor) naked and covered in tattoos. Some nefarious group/person has covered her in arcane tattoos but wiped her memory entirely. She has procedural memory, just no life memory. As Exposition Character explains, "she knows what music is, but has no idea who The Beatles are." Also, she has the name of a high profile FBI agent prominently displayed on her back.

Jaimie Alexander does a good job of playing the trauma this young woman is going through. Scared, lost and utterly confused. The law enforcement agencies are not treating her nicely, as I guess we now accept their unilateral post-911 powers blindly, but the guy with his name on her back makes a connection. Meanwhile mysterious beardy guy shows up in the background.

The premise kicks in when she reads some Chinese that is written behind her ear. That leads them to a terror plot by a disgruntled Chinese national. She is allowed to tag along, probably because the entirety of the FBI and HLS don't have Chinese translators (*insert sarcastic frowny*) and ends up displaying martial arts superpowers, as well as translating for High Profile FBI Guy. And she has flashbacks to being trained by beardy guy. She saves the day.

That was what I didn't like. They dump the hidden agenda far too quickly. They should have milked the utter mystery for all its worth. But now we know there is a conspiracy, created or controlled by beardy guy, that took a very capable woman (Jane Doe) and turned her into a no-memory crime fighting force. Kind of ruined it for me.

Meh.

Finally, we have Minority Report, which I knew was going to be bad, but luckily its only Canadian SciFi TV bad, not bad bad. As you know, I love the movie, but was not sure how they would lift one of the precogs from their idyllic island house back to Toronto... ahem, Washington DC. The fact the series is so obviously Toronto, despite blankets of CGI everywhere, is kind of distractingly fun.

So Precog Kid is older now and curious about the world. He comes back to the city and has been attempting to stop crime, like the PreCrime Division used to. But he only gets part of the vision and has been failing at his crime fighting ambitions. I believe he says over a hundred people have been murdered because he is lacking. But then he runs into a Perky Young Detective (as you can gather from this whole post, I rarely recall names of new show characters) and helps her solve a crime; kind of.

Surprisingly there is a lot more depth here than in either of the two other shows. Perky Young Detective lives with her mom and baby brother. She also has the usual department tension with Wilmer Valderrama and Precog Kid will definitely give her a step up on crime fighting. And Precog Kid's twin brother is out there, trying to make contact. And something is going on with all the released criminals, that were put on the street when the Precime Division shut down. There is a lot of the world the writers want to play with, I am just not sure if their writing chops are up to it. Or maybe it was the director.  Not sure.

I will watch it when it starts and see where it goes.

But one thing I am loving is the CG. You know I loved the CG from the movie, and they are having even more fun expanding on the world it built.  This world is less dark, more on the colour of the screens everywhere and the social media gone wild, that the Tom Cruise movie wouldn't have predicted. If one thing about the world bothered me, is that they kept on dragging out visual cues from the movie. We did not need to see a fight on fire escapes, nor did we need to see his face gone melty. And the replacement of the jet packs with stupid cable driven backpacks was plain ludicrous. Just run with the fun stuff, and abandon all the other props please.

One Episode: Mr. Robot, Stitchers & Supergirl

One Episode is the segment where we edit the opening italicized paragraph, and talk about shows we have watched one episode of (and sometimes more, and sometimes less). We would rather watch less volume and more quality, but that involves wading through the meh to get to the good stuff. 

Mr Robot -- USA
Stitchers -- ABC Family
Supergirl -- CBS

Not that I need anything more in my queue to watch (or maybe I do; everything is currently ending), but I always like premieres. This round we have a show about hackers, a show about superheroic brain hacking and a show about a superhero in a short skirt.

Mr Robot was fantastic. If you watch a cyber show like CSI:Cyber or Scorpion your head might explode from the inaccurate and fictionalized accounts of computing. Well, if you know anything about computing. If you don't, then you might just be terrified as to what hackers can do. Or thrilled Which, I suppose, is the point. Anywayz! Mr Robot depicts a much more grounded, but probably not much more realistic, view of computers and hacking. It just feels right. They mention Linux flavours.

Elliot is kind of messed up. He is young, depressed and suffers from social issues. Actually, he is not that messed up, for he interacts with his friends quite well, his coworkers (as long as they don't touch him) but he just doesn't do well in large crowds. If that was the definition of messed up, me and many people I know would be very messed up. Shut up, you. Anywayz, by the show's standards he really is. He is also rather misanthropic, being able to see the weakness in everyone. And he's a great hacker, so he often manipulates that weakness. Sometimes to his own advantage, but often he takes on a white knight approach and protects others he cares for.

The show felt British. The color tones, the angles and the way they filled space felt like like a BBC or Channel 4 show. I have said that before, but different production styles are apparent around the world. Hell, even the production styles between US network television and cable is apparent. Anywayz, felt British.

Elliot is being dragged into a conspiracy, sort of Fight Club-style, to bring down the debt-owning financial institutes. Mr Robot is weirdo, pseudo-homeless Christian Slater, who may or may not be just a hallucination of Elliot's. And if not hallucinating, the definitely Elliot is being manipulated by other socially dangerous hackers. And men in black ARE following him.

Very good first episode. Rami Malek as Elliot is brilliant, with his slightly off eyes and dark, low voice putting across the socially aware, and socially angry introvert quite well.

And then we have Stitchers on ABC Family. Before you go, "Well, there you are, its on Family!" remember that the utter fantabulous The Middleman came from ABC Family. This is far below fantabulous. It wants to be like Scorpion in introducing a rather far-end-of-spectrum smart but weird person. This time, she has Temporal Dysplasia, or, well, she has no concept of the passing of time. What does that mean? The show doesn't really know, but it's a buzzword that they can have her spout from time to time to explain why she can do miraculous things and is so very very odd.

With her magic power, she is stolen by a secret secret agency to hack into other people's memories, to stitch (*ahem*) together a story and prevent something .... further from happening? I don't know, the first episode is about finding two more bombs by looking at the last few hours of memories of the bomber who killed himself. I am not sure how this top secret hacking trick will apply in future episodes, nor will I find out.

The show is filled to the brim with dialogue, rather well written dialogue, if you ignore the fact it often contributes little to the scene or story. I never heard of a teleplay needing an editor, but, well here you go.

Very terrible first episode.

And you may or may not have already seen Supergirl. These days, when you hear about a leak, you are probably hearing more about a purposely leaked show. Supergirl was likely leaked to generate some early buzz and anticipation for the series that will begin on CBS much later on this fall. It probably also allows them to tweak/edit the show to some degree based on upon reaction.

I kind of liked it, which is odd, considering I haven't bought into any of the DC shows. Arrow, The Flash and Gotham are only of so much interest to me. The last one at least gets downloads from me; but mainly for Jim Gordon, who I really enjoy for his GI Joe aspect of the character, and the weird out-of-time feel to the show.

Supergirl starts off with a weird sort of cameo to both the previous Supergirl and Lois & Clark, with cameos from Dean Cain and Helen Slater, as her adoptive parents. It is this smile & nod that sets the lighter tone to the series. And that is slammed into us by having Kara Zor-El nee Kara Danvers playing Anne Hathaway's character from The Devil Wears Prada. Is that enough of an stylistic character choice to be a trope yet? Basically, Kara works for a media mogul who is utterly full of herself and desperate to have the same ratings as The Daily Planet, but without the easy catch of a Superman.  Kara gets her coffee and is verbally abused.

But nervous, perky desperate to approve Kara also knows who her cousin is, and what he has been doing. And she wants some of that. Teenage, anxiety ridden but really really wants to be beside her cousin instead of in his shadow. The boot in the right direction comes in the crashing of her adopted sister's plane, and Kara's up up and away rescue of the plane. Boing, enter one more flying superhero, one that Kara's boss can take credit for the image of.

Its light. I said that already, but its nice and light. Oh, there will be badguys of the week, with criminals from the Phantom Zone, when she bumped through their micro-dimension in her spaceship, showing up from time to time. As for it entering into the same universe as the other two, I doubt it, for this one was very focused on mentioning her cousin, and the other two seem unaware of a flying superhero on the east coast.

We shall have to wait to see if I will continue to watch it.

Retro One Episode: Get Smart, The Green Hornet, The Man From U.N.C.L.E,

Get Smart (1965-1970)
The Green Hornet (1966-1967)
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968)

I was a fan of Get Smart as a kid.  Even though the show aired 20 years before I eventually saw it, it still seemed fresh and funny to me.  The wobbly sets, retro style, and clunky technology were all part of the show's charm and atmosphere.  I'm fairly certain that I had watch some of the made-for-TV reunion  movies and the short-lived revival show, which probably made me quite the receptive seed for the repeats airing weekdays around dinner time (I'm thinking on YTV).  Not to mention being raised on Inspector Gadget, which is just Get Smart to even sillier extremes.

I've been quite keen to revisit Get Smart since I started doing the James Bond recaps, and learning that it was created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks (which somehow I didn't know before) I was expecting some undiscovered comedy gold to match my youthful recollections.

It's unfortunate then that the pilot episode is a bit of a clunker.  Horrendously dated attributes like the opening narration, incredibly protracted comedy bits which seem to take forever to get to the joke (with the joke coming a mile off, but that's because these jokes have become staples, part of the comedy language and done much better), and, ouch, that laugh track.  Then there's the jokes at the expense of Little People (the C.H.A.O.S. boss is the ironically named "Mr. Big").  In its pilot, the show was almost trying to have a serious spy story with jokes surrounding it.  Maxwell Smart isn't a complete bumbling buffoon, but also isn't the agile super-spy that's earned his reputation.  It was a surprise when Smart actually turns out to have some competency.  Equally unsettling is 99's tendency to make googly eyes at Max.  Is part of the joke that everyone's oblivious to how incompetent Max is?

Don Adams is perfect for the role.  His unwavering tone of voice even in the face of his own ignorance is there right from the beginning.  The character evolved slightly into a more Clouseau-esque fool, but Adams had found Max's voice from the onset.  Barbara Feldon as 99 spends too much time awkwardly mooning over Max, a conscious effort to be sure.  It hampers her performance. Edward Platt as Chief of CONTROL is equally note perfect. The seeds of greatness are in the Pilot, but it's much too slow and labored compared with what follows later on. Skip the second episode too, it's quite racist. Just hitting up random episodes on youtube is probably your best bet.




I watched plenty of Batman reruns growing up too, once again, even though it was 20 years after the fact.  None of my hometown stations ever aired Batman, so I really only ever got to watch it when traveling and visiting family.  Even at a young age I didn't like it, but I was fascinated by it.  It wasn't the Batman I knew and loved, it was the highest camp, almost insulting to comic book fans with it's "BIFF" "BAM" "POW" effects and overt melodrama.

I always assumed The Green Hornet was much the same, a high-camp riff on costumed vigilantism.  I'd never seen an episode, and, quite frankly, it wasn't until I watched the Seth Rogen film that I realized I knew nothing about the character.  He's more a pulp radio hero in origins, not a comic book character, so he just never crossed my path.  The pilot blew my mind, if only a little, because it's a dead serious interpretation of the character.  It's not tongue in cheek at all.  It has no cheek.

I'm fascinated by the fact that it starts with the Green Hornet already in action.  He's the series hero but he operates as a bad guy, controlling the underworld in order to keep the underworld under control.

The theme song is insane, a classic.  Set design is pretty great.  The Black Beauty is, well, a beaut.  Bruce Lee!  It's got a lot of good things going for it, but the chief detraction, and it's a huge one, is the direly dull Van Williams as Britt Reid/Green Hornet.  He's not menacing, or charismatic.  He's not heroic or dangerous.  He's just sort of there.  With the whole show rotating around him, it's a problem.

The pilot isn't bad, but it feels like it's an hour long when it's only a half.  I read that the Hornet doesn't square off against any other costumes in the show (except during the crossover with Batman), which leads me to believe the show never reaches to be anything more than what we see in its first episode.


Interestingly enough it was The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) that Get Smart was aping, complete with its complicated hallways and sliding doors entrances.  The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was taking its lead from Bond as well as the British spy series of the time, The Saint, The Avengers and the like.

Now unlike Get Smart which I watched, and loved, and the Green Hornet which I had preconceived notions of, I have no experience whatsoever with TMFU.  I'm not really familiar with its stars (I sort of know Robert Vaughn) and I don't really have any sense of what the show's impact on popular culture at the time (or after) was.  My guess on the latter was that it was negligible, as Bond was really the forerunner of these things at the time.

The pilot episode introduces us to Vaughn as Napoleon Solo through a complex and confusingly edited opening sequence.  Agents of T.H.R.U.S.H. infiltrate U.N.C.L.E.'s New York headquarters and in the end it's Solo who stops them.  He gets his money shot as the bad guy fires off three rounds at his silhouette only to be stopped by the bulletproof glass before him.  The light turns on to reveal our well dressed, well groomed lead.  But he's no Bond.

The pilot, excellently titled "The Vulcan Affair", has a fairly interesting story, which involves Solo enlisting a housewife to help him infiltrate a millionaire industrialist's ball.  This industrialist, Vulcan, is suspected of being a THRUSH supporter, and is going to murder a visiting President from a young African nation.  The housewife used to be a lover of Vulcan, and they set her up with a false background to make her much more posh.  The actress Pat Crowley, is eminently watchable, and I think they missed a true opportunity to have an awesome espionage show about a stay-at-home mom who is a part-time spy.  She's quite the looker too.  She's like Betty Draper on Mad Men but with personality.

In the pilot Vaughn doesn't seem to have full awareness of who Napoleon Solo is yet, so he seems softer around the edges than he should.  A hardened spy like him probably wouldn't smile so much.

While there's nothing fancy to the visual aspect of the show, the tone is quite perfect.  It takes its material serious and it earns itself some nice character moments.  The action is quite stilted (as 60's TV action generally is) with bad guys going down with one punch to the back.  These are things easily overlooked.  I hear the later seasons start to devolve into camp, succumbing to some of the more ridiculous tendencies of the spy genre.  I'm definitely going to carry on at least to that point.  It's good stuff .  (Caught the first few minutes of the second episode and it's a terribly clunky opening sequence with a voice over introducing U.N.C.L.E. and then the three main characters introducing themselves to the camera...woof).

One Episode: Gotham, Scorpion, Forever

Ooooo Gotham (Fox, Donal Logue, Ben McKenzie), ooooo all the villains in younger forms, ooo its young Bruce Wayne. That's it, that is why I didn't give a hoot about this show -- why would I want to watch a Batman show without even the possibility of a Batman? Sure, Gotham is a character unto itself, the deeper, darker version of Manhattan with all those elevated trains and a corrupt police force & government. But even the promotional campaign annoyed me, as they dropped hints about incidental characters who we know would grow up to be big players, such as Selina Kyle the street kid or Ivy, the daughter of a thug who hides behind her potted plants. And all that, "Which one is the Joker? Is it the standup comedian??" So, I was not looking forward to this show.

But surprisingly, I was not all that bothered by the first episode. This is tooled for the fans of Arrow, with a sort of drama light. Gotham is gritty and dirty, but not so much so that its always night. And honestly, anything with Donal Logue is going to have me watch at least occasionally. But really, it was Ben McKenzie sporting a confounding tough-guy accent (did I catch hints of growly Christian Bale?) and the clear values of Jim Gordon that made me enjoy it. There is no way he can clean up the entire city or even the GCPD in the first season, but I was happy to be convinced he will try. But with a level head on his shoulders, not all gung ho, "You guys are all corrupt, I am gonna take you down !!"

I will probably watch a few episodes until I get bored or more annoyed by the references.

Meanwhile we have mostly no names in Scorpion (CBS, Elyes Gabel, Katharine McPhee, Robert Patrick). Billed as a non-comedic version of The Big Bang Theory (because we always have to provide common ground) with overly intelligent, socially inept people who are gathered together to save the world each week, this was not as terrible as I expected it to be.

Oh, it was pretty bad. We have a white male math genius, a white male psychology genius, a white male (but Irish, ooo the ethnicity !) genius genius (one of the 5 smartest people in the world) and a wh...er, Asian female technology genius.  Token smart girl has to be Asian. So, one understands numbers, one people, one machines and the last is smart enough to know everything. Together they are smarter than all of us (I mean all of us) but they cannot pay their bills or keep relationships because they are emotionally crippled. Like a room full of Sheldons.

Except, they are not. Main character Walter O'Brien is well dressed, obviously works out, has friends and at every turn is cracking smiles, connecting with people and understanding the emotional impact of what he is doing. But they add the occasional interpersonal flub to remind us. And the math genius can talk to pretty girls; now THAT was the most unrealistic bit.

They are gathered by blacksuit Robert Patrick (Homeland Security, NSA, something like that does not matter) to save a bunch of planes that cannot land because of a virus in the LAX air traffic system. No one can get hold of the planes and they would rather them be blown out of the sky than attempt dangerous landings.  ??!?!

But all together, this silliness was kind of fun. The tech talk is your typical mix of technical bullshit with a dose of truth so it sound real. Their solutions are way over the top (such as connecting a network cable from a low flying plane to a speeding car) and the interactions are fun. I could actually enjoy this, as long it doesn't ever try to take itself too seriously.

P.S. The show is also stylishly titled as </scorpion>. Uh, closing a tag to connect something to tech is soooo 10 years ago. And its not even proper syntax. <scorpion /> would have been more appropriate.

Speaking of common ground, I can hear the elevator pitch for Forever (ABC, Ioan Gruffudd, Alana de la Garza, Judd Hirsch). Its Castle meets Bones meets Elementary meets New Amsterdam. That's alot of meeting. So, we have the cop & non-cop partnership, charming and well dressed. We have Dr. Henry Morgan as a coroner / medical examiner, who also happens to have a Sherlock style of noticing details about people & situations. And finally, most importantly, he is immortal. If he dies, he instantly appears nearby, naked, in a body of water.

Now, given it has the directing and writing style of Castle, I am built to find it appealing. Surprisingly, Gruffudd who has annoyed me in movies past, is becoming rather charming as he grows older. And the relationship between him and Judd Hirsch just seals that for me. You see, Hirsch is effectively his son, adopted in the 40s and the two have been together since. Abe has aged but Henry is still late 30s. But the two display such a bond, inter-changing father and son, as the situation plays.

The story of how he became immortal is somewhat explained, but with enough mystery to play out for a few seasons. Also, Henry has a "fan", possibly another immortal who is taunting him. As long as they don't end up with tons of mythology, which overshadows the buddy cop show, it could last awhile.

Of the three, I think Scorpion will die the quickest. Despite being on Fox, Gotham will have the most support and it will be up to Forever to find an audience to stick around.

One Episode: Black Mirror, The Strain, Extant

One Episode is segment in which we talk about shows we have watched one episode of (and sometimes more). We would like to watch less volume and more quality Television but that involves wading through a bevvy of meh to get to the good stuff. Sometimes we find gems which, for one reason or another, we don't (or haven't yet) watched another episode of.

Black Mirror - via TMN
The Strain - via FX Canada
Extant - via Global



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Black Mirror is a British anthology series from Charlie Brooker that seeks to "tap into collective unease about our modern world".  It's not an outright horror, sci-fi or fantasy series, but it taps into aspects of such genres for a meaningful, if often crude, examination of first-world society, a modern Twilight Zone, if you will.  The first episode, "The National Anthem", is set in an alternate Britain, with a different Prime Minister and royal family, but otherwise not to dissimilar to our own.  In the story the young, popular Princess Susannah is kidnapped an held for ransom, but the demand is not for money or any sort of political reason, but solely for the Prime Minister to have sex with a pig, live on camera, and finish to climax.

When the ransom details are revealed, the crude and distasteful nature of it sends the immediate impulse to turn the television off.  It's a disgusting premise, and yet, the effect it has on the actual viewer is the same that it has on the viewers within the show.  Brooker with director Otto Bathurst don't simply cut to the chase, nor do they just focus solely on the Prime Minister or any investigative team.  They jump around to different households and public places, following a few average Britons as they monitor the story's progress via the internet, social media and television and engage in surveys and debate over whether the PM should or should not.  As the political damage control team try to find other options, and a swat team chases leads and dead end, the Prime Minister wrestles with the decision that will affect his career, his family, and another person's life.

It's the classic train wreck scenario.  You don't want to watch, but you cannot look away.  It's a thoroughly uncomfortable premise, and yet it's masterfully executed, complete with a not-quite-a-twist ending that really hammers home the message that we can all be all too willing to devote our attention to media and miss the events going on around us.  But the message is layered, in that messages can all too easily be subverted or buried, thus missed and deemed pointless.  The show's brief epilogue takes place 1 year later and shows the good and the bad fallout, and just how grey everything remains.  Black Mirror has had two seasons consisting of 3 episodes each.

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The Strain is based off a successful book trilogy written by film director/avid fanboy Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, a series which I would like to read but have little time or patience for novel reading.  The series is being adapted into comics by Dark Horse comics and I've bent an eye towards picking the collected editions of that up (as I have much more time for comics reading), but I just haven't had time yet.  So when The Strain was announced as a new series from Del Toro and Lost producer/showrunner Carlton Cuse, I knew I could make time for it.

Particularly exciting was learning Del Toro had directed the pilot episode, which meant a more refined visual sensibility than your average TV program, which I guess is what made it all the more disappointing upon actually watching it.  The first episode of The Strain does indeed look good, but it suffers painfully from too-much-too-soon syndrome.  The show starts with a plane left disabled on the tarmac, all its windows closed and its passengers and crew inert inside.  The Center For Disease Control investigates and quarantines the plane and the facilities, discovering weird little worms and an odd 9-foot-long, intricately carved box full of dirt not on the manifesto.  It has the set up of an intense plague thriller, but then it jostles wildly into vampire mythology, and once more into zombie terrain.  Its more fantastical elements aren't teased or toyed with really at all, and it's ultimately awkward and off putting the manner in which they're revealed.

There's a heavy pulp fiction element to The Strain, the characters are rather broadly drawn, and if there's any nuance to them, the actors haven't really found it, at least in the first episode.  It's far too hectic and introduces way too many characters and scenarios to allow for any real development.  The story leaves very little in the way of surprises, but also a lot of questions, less about the plot and more to do with its consistency and plausibility.  It's not a wholly believable world.  With its in-your-face, pointless gruesomeness, and abundance of unlikeable characters, the first episode of The Strain leaves plenty to be desired, and very little to entice a return.

But I have watched the subsequent two episodes and they're marginally better, yet still suffer from pacing and structural issues.  The cast is still oversized for so early in its run, but they're slowly getting weeded out.  The introduction of Kevin Durand as a rat exterminator in the second episode has been the show's brightest spot, with David Bradley as an aged pawn shop owner and holocaust survivor with previous experience with the vampire/zombie/worm plague brings an intriguing historical element to the show that should be more in-focus.  Like Richard Sammel as the creepy, seemingly ageless Nazi broker for the vampire overlord puts in a good turn, and his squaring off with Bradley in the second episode further demands expansion in the show.

But the problem keeps coming back to too many disparate elements running concurrently to make for a satisfying whole.  The third episodes starts to bridge the gaps, but it doesn't make for any less clunky a start

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There has been such a spate of genre-related shows that have debuted or returned this summer, like The Leftovers, The Last Ship, Dominon, the Strain, Under the Dome, and Hemlock Grove,  that Extant sort of got buried in the summer release schedule, in spite of its high-profile star (Halle Berry) and producer (Stephen Spielberg).   There is literally too much television happening.  Not just genre TV, but in general.  Not only are there dozens upon dozens of networks, all producing original content, but there are "digital networks" like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Yahoo all looking for their own stake of the ever game geek market and the crossover share that can accompany.  I worry about idea exhaustion, retreading the same familiar ground too often, but moreover I worry about burnout, just taxing not only the fans of this type of material but the larger general audience who may only be willing to tolerate so much of it.  (With four DC Comics-based TV series and two Marvel-based ones, plus an endless parade of movies for the next decade, superhero burnout is only the beginning).

Extant thankfully is not a rip-off of Gravity, which I feared it would be from the trailers I had seen of Halle Berry's astronaut Molly returning home after a lengthy and troubling solo mission in space.  But outside of one spot of trouble where a solar flare knocked out power and communications briefly, it was a smooth 13-month mission.  Oh, except for having impossibly seen her dead boyfriend on board immediately after the solar flare, and has impregnated her somehow, even though she'd been unable to conceive, trying for a decade or so before.

Molly's husband John is a roboticist, working a new theory of evolution of the human/machine dynamic.  He's created Ethan, an lifelike artificial intelligence grown mentally in a lab and transferred into a human-esque body.   Ethan has effectively lived as Molly and John's son for years, but Molly having been away for so long has put strain on her relationship with both of them.  John's trying to secure funding for more advanced research of his "Humanichs" program, which comes in the form of Hideki Yasumoto, owner of the Yasumoto Corporation, the same company that owns the International Space Exploration Agency (space exploration has been privatized in this near-future).

Molly's return has been difficult, but even more so because of her experience on the Seraphim.  She deleted her video of her encounter with her ex's spirit, and has encouraged her friend and physician to withhold her pregnancy from her superiors.  The astronaut who was on the mission before Molly had faked his suicide, but has gone a little conspiracy nuts in the interim.  There's something she's not being told, and something is going on in this world, both with aliens and robots, that needs to be explored.

The titles start off reading "Extinct" before shifting ever so subtly to "Extant", which means there's something much bigger behind both the robotics and possibly alien encounters than just this world having robots and ghosts.  There's much at play and it's a fairly intriguing set of circumstances creator Mickey Fisher has pulled from all sorts of different sources (for example: Solaris, A.I.) to seed a decent mystery.  If the show has a problem, then, it's in the awfully dry acting of all players involved.  Berry is serviceable but doesn't quite wear the weariness and discombobulation of her return to Earth.  Goran Visnjic plays John, but he's never had a great emotional range, and there's no real spark between him and Berry ... they feel like actors.  Pierce Gagnon plays Ethan, he's a child actor playing a robot, so he naturally is asked to have a dead-eyed stare and a natural state of aloofness.  There are moments where Ethan seems engaged with the world, but far more where he's almost completely detached (and his pausing before a dead crow uttering, "It was like that when I got here" is supposed to send ominous shivers after all the discussion about robot overlords overtaking humanity, but it's really too easy and cliche).

I've watched the second episode and the mystery really heats up, as does the theme of extinction get a proper introduction (Ethan asking Molly, "Are you weak?" was an aces scene) though the acting stays understated.  But still the concepts are engaging and there's something bigger at play that it's leading up to.  I'm hoping it executes a single story for it's initial 13-episode run, one that can be elaborated on if need be, but also feels satisfying on its own.  Not excellent, but worthy.  David will like all the future tech innocuously used in the show.

One Episode: True Detective, Brooklyn Taxi, Halt and Catch Fire

True Detective (HBO) is the competitor for the hearts & minds of Hannibal fans. I was watching the latter when I heard about the former. I watched the first episode and loved it, but knew what would happen should I continue to watch both simultaneously. First, they would compete for space in my little brain, filling in gaps around each other leading to memories of both seasons merged. It would make these "reviews" very confusing. Secondly, nightmare fuel. Now that Hannibal has ended, its time to go back and re-watch Ep1 and then quickly plow through the rest of the season. My dreams have been too calm as of late anyway.

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson compete for the most intense screentime in this period crime drama. McConaughey is just post-Dallas Buyers Club, thus still scary skinny, but is just sooooo engrossing as the almost unemotional cop stuck with Woody Harrelson investigating a horrific, possibly mystical murder. They don't like each other but they know it has to work. Amusingly, Harrelson is playing the "normal guy" but you don't really buy it --- I expect him to get weirder, more intense, as the season goes by, making McConaughey look calm & composed by reflection.

The key to comparison of the two shows is style. Hannibal is all about colours and set dressing, clothing and artistically laid out crime scenes. True Detective takes on the similar artistic bent but reminds us how utterly horrific it is. This is small town America, late 70s, completely unfamiliar with this. They are scared. We are scared with them. The set dressing is impeccable, the colours all washed. This is like coming downstairs in the middle of the night, half asleep, in your pyjamas, and turning on an old 70s movie that you never heard of.  The whole show feels a little surreal. I hope to enjoy it equally yet separately.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn Taxi (TF1) is the French entry into the TV cop market that Canada has been dominating of late, with TV shows like Rookie Blue, Flashpoint and Motive. But it has the trademarks of a show being produced for a market that doesn't actually know the setting very well.

We have a classic American rogue cop, who is known for ... well, trashing the cars she drives. Yeah, that's it. She doesn't blow things up or shoot drug dealers, she just drives badly. Oh, those crazy American women! So, they take away the keys from her. Rather than desk duty, she will walk a beat. But before she can get into swinging a billy stick and whistling a tune, she is mixed up in a bank robbery story involving taxi cab drivers. Together they (her, cab driver) solve the crime and he ends up becoming her personal driver, as thanks.

Now, you would think that wouldn't matter -- she has been assigned to walking a beat. But no, it just means she is not allowed to drive a precinct car and the premise of the show is that they will be OK with her being driven around by an illegal (France) immigrant taxi cab driver. Oh those crazy American cops!

Oh, so its about a Brooklyn taxi cab driver. Now, the first thing I learned when I visited Brooklyn a couple of summers ago was that Brooklyn doesn't actually use the yellow cab company. They have a bunch of privatized car services. I think this stands, though I will accept an American (crazy!) correcting me on this. Maybe Wikipedia is not up to date. But the original market was France, so that can be forgiven, can't it?

And, the show was not very good even if you forget everything else above.

P.S. Shit, was this based on a Luc Besson movie?  Now I am curious...

And we have Halt and Catch Fire (AMC), another period (80s) drama set at the beginning of the personal computer race. It is everything that other shows like Silicon Valley make fun of, the revolutionizing of technology fueled by personal passion and brilliance. This is when making a difference was going to count. IBM dominated the PC market, Apple and a few others were trying to sneak into it. But Joe McMillan (Lee Pace, Pushing Daisies, who is utterly fucking brilliant here) has ideas that computers can be so so so much more. He is thinking 10, 20 years from then to now, when they are ubiquitous and are everything. He wants in on that. He wants to make history.

This is very precise story telling, establishing an economy of characters and a tight premise. You have McMillan, you have the genius but disillusioned engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy; Monsters) and forward thinking, hot young Cameron Howe. The show needs a trio and the company Clark and McMillan work for needs a scapegoat engineer no one has every heard of. As they fulfill the trailer promise in the first episode (reverse engineer an IBM PC) I am not sure how they will maintain a pace (excuse pun) but I willing to explore it, just to watch more of this acting and directing. This is my Mad Men when that show couldn't do it for me.

One Episode: Bitten, The After, Crisis

Bitten is an original Space channel series about werewolves.  It is based on a book series by Kelly Armstrong and is set in Toronto, for the most part.  Elena is the only female werewolf having been changed by an ex-boyfriend and now lives apart from the pack. But try as hard as she can to keep away, they will keep dragging her back in.

This is CW lite fare. With a little bit more nudity than American stations allow, the werewolves are all pretty, buff boys with blonde, lithe Laura Vandervoort (Kara/Supergirl from Smallville) as the lead. The first episode reveals her difficulty in leading a normal life without giving into the change and the hunt. It is likened to a psychological addiction where you need release, but in this case, if you don't do at least a little skin walking, you might wolf out and eat your neighbours.

That is the central plot of the first episode, as someone is eating girls in a park, and suspicion is cast on her or maybe its just on a rogue werewolf, a mutt. That is why the pack draws her back to upstate New York to discuss her place in the werewolf world, to flaunt around in expensive clothes and give sideways looks at each other. They are werewolves, so you know they will never really get along.

It was boring. Not even CW tantalizing, because if we are only get one female werewolf, then its meant for the female population. I am so far outside its demographic,  I am not sure why we downloaded it. I am not against that, it just didn't do anything for me. Slick, decently produced and full of nice locations and well dressed people. But I want more wolf and less soap opera.

Meanwhile, we get The After, from Chris Carter (The X-Files) by way of Amazon. The pilot aired on the Internet (Amazon's streaming service, I would assume, though its not available in Canada) and that has been about it. It must have been so under the radar, nobody has even provided a decent Wikipedia summary, but made enough money that a full season has been ordered.

Post-Apocalypse meets Lost is how I heard it billed. Basically, an ensemble cast are tossed together in the parking basement of a hotel when something happens. We are not sure what; we just see the chaos outside the building. Cell phones are flaky, TV is showing weird happenings, but along with the trapped bunch in the basement, we are mostly in the dark. Oooooo, cue mysterious tense music.

The opening act gives us french actress Louise Monot as Gigi, as an actress in LA trying to get a good role but offered a bad one. She is our eyes into what happens around the city, as the cast gets tossed together, trapped in the basement. Tense moments, conflicts, allegiances and essentially an entire season mingled into act two.

When they finally escape, they are given a bit of deus ex machina by escaping to The Rich Lady's house. Therein lies food, booze and rest. It would have been a perfect place to hole up for a few episodes while the series lays out the groundwork for the season, but nope, bad guys show up and everyone has to run off into the dark, into the woods. Are there woods in LA? End act three.

It has possibilities, as it flowed back and forth across the line of decent indie production to half-assed web series. It was definitely not a polished Netflix original series (not sure how they knew how to produce such quality as the first of its kind) but it has potential. I have a feeling the cast will be gutted before the series properly starts but even so, there could be some fun to be had.

And then we have Crisis, which I just noticed is running on broadcast TV now.  It was a mid-season replacement series from NBC, which I am pretty sure we saw long before it properly aired, but it has all the feeling of half-assed web series. The charm of web series is that despite their clunkiness and limited budgets, they are often labours of love and that shows through. Their condensed formats, usually running much less than 42 minutes of standard TV, keep things flowing and create a whole new rhythm. This one has all the bad acting, head shaking story telling and boring sets without any of the charm. It was really bottom of the barrel scraping for mid-season replacing.

Basically the plot is that a bunch of kids, including the President's son, are kidnapped by an extreme group, one of whom we find out is actually one of the kidnapped, a disgruntled intelligence worker played by Dermot Mulroney in scary-geek mode. So, its up to the Secret Service (who had traitors in their midst) and FBI (when did late-20s blonde become an FBI model?) and the kids themselves to save everyone. But I am not sure we actually care about these over-privileged kids and their desperate parents. I am sure someone billed it as 24 for soccer moms,  but again, not my demo.

Its kind of disappointing that soon after the emergence of exploring TV from different sources, I am already running out of decent stuff to watch. I guess I should just give up for a while and watch the three Bridges.

One Episode: Salem, Fargo, Resurrection

Interestingly enough, the dark, moody & somewhat sexy series about the Salem witch trials was not CW-ized. In other words, the focus characters are not all pretty people in their early to mid 20s. This is a show meant for those enjoying American Horror Story and some of the lighter spooky genre fare like Grimm and Sleepy Hallow.

Beginning Salem, John Alden (Shane West; Nikita) and Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery; Human Target) are in love amidst a growing Puritanical movement in their hometown. Then John goes off to war (French/Indian I believe) and she is left pregnant. She never hears from him, so assuming him dead, is given a choice between facing the Puritans as an unwed mother or doing something... darker. She chooses the latter and sells the fetus, and her soul, to a dark spirit in the forest, with the coaxing, soothing help of Tituba, the slave girl.

But John returns many years later, a soldier who "saw things", a tortured soul, bitter that Mary forgot about him and married the wealthiest man in town. She now stands on her balcony looking over the town while John pines. Meanwhile Cotton Mather (Seth Gabel; Fringe), John's boyhood friend, is a full blown raving Puritan preaching Hell and Damnation while spending good coin at the brothel. When Cotton is not partaking, he is warning the good townsfolk about witches. The thing is, he is not wrong. There are evil witches in town, Mary Sibley being the gothy leader of them. With her toad familiar and third nipple (between her thighs) she controls her husband, and by extension, the town.

The show doesn't actually label a bad guy. Mary may be an evil witch, but we can see she is being manipulated by Tituba, and probably whatever dark powers want the town. Cotton may be a hypocritical Puritan finding evil where none resides, but there are witches and he may be the only one who can ferret them out. I imagine the show is going to be about John stuck between the two warring factions, trying to extract his love from either of their clutches, first the witches that have Mary as their leader and later on, the Puritans who have learned of her evil duplicitous ways.

I was looking forward to Fargo, it being one of my favourite Coen Bros movies. Like Hannibal is rewriting the books to create a series, I expected Fargo the TV show to rewrite the movie, but keep its quirky American mid-west sentiments and random shocking meets humorous violence. And seeing it was starring Martin Freeman (Sherlock, The Hobbit) how could I not believe this would be great.

It was meh, IMO. First up, it is not a re-creation or retelling, more an ode to the sentiment of the movie. So, new characters, new story, same quirkiness. Secondly, try as he may, Freeman butchers that mid-western "yah" accent.  Freeman's Lester Nygaard is meek, mild and bullied by everyone. He beyond unfortunate and also not very likeable. He is ripe for the manipulations of Billy Bob Thornton's (Armageddon, Love Actually) Malvo, seedy and intuitive with a fondness for fucking with people. You see immediately things are going to go very wrong when these two connect. Meanwhile, we are still wondering about the half-naked man who froze to death after running way from Malvo at the beginning of the episode, and is now discovered by the local cops.

And that is as far as I got before turning to Marmy, "Are you feeling this?"  Nope?  OK.  Click.  But I will have to go back and re-watch as Kent said it gets much better.

Resurrection joins that convoluted collection of movies and books and TV shows, tenuously connected by the idea of the dead returning. No, not zombies, but *blink* a person is back, exactly the way they were on the day they died. No explanation, though we know in American TV, this must lead to a why.

The TV show Resurrection is based on the book The Returned by Jason Mott (2013). The book has the same basic premise as a TV show out of France called Les Revenants (2012).  The French TV series was in turn based on an older movie (2004) with the same title.  Next year, probably, A&E will be presenting its own adaptation of the French TV series, called They Came Back. Unrelated, there is a post-zombie movie called The Returned (2013) which is about people cured of the zombie plague but dealing with prejudice and suspicion, which in turn is the same basic premise as the British TV series (2013) called In The Flesh.

So, this TV series. A young boy, Jacob, wakes up in a rice field in China. He wanders into a local market place speaking no Chinese but somehow communicates enough that an immigration agent is sent to pick him up and find out where he is from. The kid plays with the agent's smart phone and writes out Arcadia on the screen. Somehow, the agent connects that word to a missing child story from Arcadia, Missouri but not catching the fact it happened 32 years ago.

Can I just state my annoyance at the fact the kid figured out a smart phone? As a viewer we are not supposed to know he died in the 80s, based on plot points, but EVERYONE would know this. So, its ludicrous.

Agent Bellamy (Omar Epps, House) returns Jacob to his parents, a little nonplussed when they tell him the circumstances. This is the real only gem of the show, depicting the reactions by his parents now in their 60s. Suspicion, fear but a deep seated knowledge this is their son. Thus the mystery begins, one that draws out questions about the details around the boys death, his childhood friends now adults and by the end of the episode, the return of more people.

This show needed more style. The details are chilling enough but not for me. I am saturated by weird mystery shows, strange supernatural occurrences. I need something a little more in genre fiction to keep my attention. I never did return to this show but I imagine its something I might revisit should it appear on Netflix. I suspect the A&E series will be more captivating.