SciFi Weekend: Hannibal; Orphan Black; iZombie Season One Finale; The Flash; The Leftovers; The Man From UNCLE

Hannibal-Season-3-Episode-2-e1434150257687

While last week’s episode of Hannibal jumped ahead and left open the fates of those left for dead in the season two finale, Primavera centered on Will and flashed back to the aftermath of the bloodbath. There was no indication on screen as to the fate of Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom but I was surprised to see Abigail walk into Will’s hospital room early in the episode. I was surprised a second time when it was revealed that Abigail was only in Will’s head, most likely representing the part of Will which still wanted to be with Hannibal.

The other key character of the episode was a police officer named Rinaldo Pazzi who had history with Hannibal. Years ago he investigated the murder of a couple who were arranged like a painting. Will explained how Hannibal operated, including how he doesn’t leave evidence– as he eats it. The climax of the episode was a search through catacombs. When Will warned Pazzi that he shouldn’t be be down there alone, with the warning that Hannibal will kill him (which will probably happen at some point), Pazzi pointed out that he had Will with him.

Will’s response summed up the episode: “You don’t know whose side I’m on.” The problem is that that Will himself doesn’t know, and if he was smart he would followed the advice he gave Pazzi and remain home with his dogs (and Alana if she survived). There was another clue as to Will’s state of mind when he said at the end of the episode, directed towards Hannibal,  “I forgive you.”

This still leaves open how each will respond when they actually meet again.

Orphan-Black-Insolvent-2

The penultimate episode of the season of Orphan Black, Insolvent Phantom Of Tomorrow, gave more answers, regardless of whether plausible. Allison’s days as a drug dealer appear to be coming to an end, but the storyline provided for an unexpected pairing of Donnie and Helena. Helena was disguised as Allison, but under the circumstances it was more useful for Donnie to have the psychopathic killer clone along. The big mistake at Pouch’s warehouse was for the drug dealers to first take Helena’s tank with her embryos, and then threaten Donny and who they believed to be Allison’s children. Helena told them, “You should not threaten babies.” She then made them pay for the threat, and then rejoin Donny with the money he had lost, and more. “I got refund, we should go now.”

Delphine again showed how terrifying she can be, threatening Shay’s life believing that she had given the information about the book to the Castor group. It really didn’t come as a surprise when it turned out that Gracie and not Shay had sold them out to please her guy-clone. Seeing Delphine hold that razor blade after Cosima phoned her about Gracie, I half expected Delphine to tell Cosima that it was too late and then proceed to kill, or at least torture Shay.  The previews revealed that Shay remains alive, although I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that there is still more to her than appears.

The biggest revelation took place in London when Kendall Malone turned out to be Sirobhan’s mother, who had absorbed a male twin in the womb s0 that she has two cell lines. She was the original cell line for Castor, but they couldn’t kill her as planned  because she also was the original cell line for Leda, having both male and female cells. Not only are Castor and Leda brother and sister as we learned earlier this season, this would also mean that Sarah along with the rest of the clones and Siobhan actually are biologically related.

If this didn’t set up enough for the season finale, Ferdinand and Topside are also back.

izombie Season one finale

Like Veronica Mars, the previous hit from Rob Thomas, iZombie was enjoyable more for its season-long arc and the characters than for the case of the week. By the season finale much has changed, including more people knowing that Liv is a Zombie. David Anders, as usual, made a fantastic villain, this time as Blaine. He had a great racket going, turning people into zombies, and then selling them brains. As opposed to the typical zombie show, the zombies on iZombie kept their human memories as long as they had a steady supply of brains to eat. Now that Blaine is no longer a zombie, will he keep his racket going? If not, where do the zombies he created get their brains, and do we  wind up with a zombie apocalypse?

Rob Thomas discussed the finale and second season with E!:

E! News: Blaine and Major have both been cured—are there going to be any complications with becoming human again?
Rob Thomas: Yeah, there will be. Ravi would not have wanted to put that cure on the market yet, and for good reason. There will be side effects. There will be fallout from that. It won’t be as easy as boom, you’re human again, go enjoy the rest of your life. Blaine will have to try to maintain his zombie world while being human so we’re going to have some fun in season two with him trying to pass as a zombie. Imagine him trying to put on white face to convince his clients that he’s still a badass who they should be afraid of.

Liv’s brother is in critical condition by the end of the finale—how is this going to shake up their family dynamic especially since Liv can’t give her blood to save him?
It will have real repercussions next year. We know that the season two opening scene is going to be a really rough scene with her family. They do not understand the decision she made and it’s kind of impossible for her to tell them.

iZombie -- "Dead Rat, Live Rat, Brown Rat, White Rat" -- Image Number: ZMB112B_0203 -- Pictured (L-R): David Anders as Blaine DeBeers, Aleks Paunovic as Julien, and Robert Buckley as Major Lilywhite -- Photo: Liane Hentscher/The CW -- © 2015 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

More in an interview at TVLine:

TVLINE | There’s not one, but at least three major cliffhangers in the finale. Was that always the plan, even before the show was renewed?
Yes. In fact, it’s been the plan for a long time. When we offered [Robert Buckley] the role of Major, he called me and said, “Listen, I just want to make sure that I’m not just going to be the boy that Liv pines for, that I’m going to have something to do,” and I pitched him the exact ending of the show. I said, “It’s going to end like Taxi Driver. You going into the zombie headquarters and mowing people down. You will have gone through this horrible journey. You will have this moment where you get to take out all these enemies.” So we were always building to that.

And probably around midseason, we had some ideas on how we wanted to reset for Season 2. We announce our big Season 2 storyline right there in the finale. Vaughan, the head of Max Rager, says, “We’re going to take out all the zombies.” So that will be a big part of Season 2, and it will make Liv and Blaine strange bedfellows. One of the things that was rough in Season 1 was we loved those two actors on screen together, but part of the season arc was Liv searching for Blaine. We couldn’t play them on screen. Next season, you’ll see a lot more of them on screen, at the same time, with a common enemy.

TVLINE | Is it safe to say that Blaine as a human, even without his zombie strength and rage, is still not a nice person and a dangerous threat to Liv and Major?
Yeah. We’re not going to make him cuddly next year. If you talked to me a few years ago, I would have thought, “Well, how in the world, after him spending Season 1 murdering homeless teenagers, could we ever believe him as anything but evil?” Then you watch Game of Thrones. Somehow, Jaime Lannister has become a sympathetic character even though he threw a young boy out a window in Episode 1. So it can be done, and maybe someday, we will attempt that. But for the immediate future, Blaine is bad.

TVLINE | Can he keep his business going as a human?
That’s going to be part of the fun of Season 2. He will need to trick his clientele. Next season, he may be passing as zombie in order to maintain the fear, which I think we’ll have fun with.

TVLINE | So instead of tanning, he’ll be putting on powder.
It’s funny you say that because we already have a scene up on our writers’ board in which we will see him getting powdered up in order to appear as a full-blooded zombie.

TVLINE | Major now knows the whole truth. What does that allow you to do that you couldn’t before with Major and his relationship with Liv?
Now that they both know, and Major knows what he’d be getting into, we’re toying with, could they try a romantic relationship in which no bodily fluids were exchanged? It’s sort of a great existential question of, could you have a romantic partner with whom the sexual limits were very, very strict? How would that go? We may explore that.

theflash_barry-new_romance

The Flash is casting a Felicity-like love interest for Barry Allen for season two. Of course we know from those future newspapers who he winds up with, assuming they are from the same timeline.

There were at least two huge scenes on The Game of Thrones last Sunday, with one of the most disturbing deaths of the series and flight on dragons. With the season finale airing tonight I will wait for that before saying more about the show.

Defiance returned on Friday with two more alien threats. Fans of the show probably enjoyed the two hour season premiere. I remain lukewarm, but see more promise this season than in the second season. Knowing the characters after two seasons did make me more interested in the events than I had been at points in the  past.

The HBO version of The Leftovers completed the material from the novel in its first season. The above trailer has been released for the second season which moves to a new location, with major changes in the cast. The story moves to Jarden, Texas where, unlike the rest of the world where two percent of the people vanished in a rapture-like event, nobody disappeared in Jarden. I wonder if they play Dillon, Texas in football.

The BBC adaption of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, about half way through in the UK, premiered in the US on BBC America. Reading reviews of the mini-series I found that they all agree that some aspects of the novel did not make it into the television show. The reviewers disagreed as to whether this means that important aspects of the novel were left out, or if this means that what they saw as flaws in the novel were fixed.

The Man From UNCLE will be released in theaters on August 14, 2015. The trailer is above and the synopsis, based upon the 1960’s television show, follows:

Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin. Forced to put aside longstanding hostilities, the two team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization, which is bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology. The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe.

Streaming video has greatly changed how many of us watch television. Netflix has dominated this market, but there are additional options including Hulu, Amazon, Yahoo! (primarily notable for carrying the sixth season of Community) and now stand alone subscriptions for HBO and Showtime. Netflix has been expanding worldwide, but they will have new competition when they move ahead with plans to expand to China. Alibaba plans to launch a Netflix-like streaming service in China. About ninety percent of its content will be paid for, either by subscription or payment for individual shows. with the remaining ten percent available for free.

No Comments

1 Trackbacks

Leave a comment