The Oscars had many political jokes at the expense of Donald Trump, but will be most remembered for an epic mistake in announcing the wrong winner for Best Picture. The accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers has taken the blame for handing out a duplicate envelope with Emma Stone’s award for Best Actress, leading to La La Land being announced as the winner instead of Moonlight. Donald Trump has blamed Hollywood’s obsessive focus on politics for the mistake.
Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue mocked Trump’s attacks on Meryl Streep following the Golden Globe Awards, with Kimmel jokingly referring to “her many uninspiring and overrated performances.” After also jokingly calling her “highly overrated,” he commented on her dress: “Nice dress, by the way. Is that an Ivanka?”
There were multiple references to diversity and immigrants throughout the awards. He introduced Cheryl Boone Isaacs, President of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, by noting that she is a president who supports both the arts and sciences. Donald Trump’s use of Twitter was also the topic of jokes. Kimmel announced that, “Some of you will get to come up here on this stage tonight and give a speech that the president will tweet about in all caps during his 5 a.m. bowel movement tomorrow, and I think that’s pretty excellent if you ask me.” Later in the show, Kimmel tweeted Donald Trump.
The Academy Awards was also an easy target for those of us watching and tweeting from home. I posted a comment on Facebook prior to the announcement, with La La Land expected to be the winner: “If I were to decide to go into making movies, I would make movies about Hollywood. That way I would have a good shot at winning more awards than better movies.”
Sure La La Land won more than it deserved. Wikileaks has revealed that they had Debbie Wasserman Schultz rig the Oscars.
When La La Land was announced as the winner, I quickly posted: “Sure La La Land won more than it deserved. Wikileaks has revealed that they had Debbie Wasserman Schultz rig the Oscars.” I quickly had to respond on Facebook and Twitter when the correction was made. This included a correction that, “Apparently La La Land won the Alternative Oscar for Best Picture.” I subsequently posted this explanation: “The explanation is that La La Land won the popular vote for Best Picture, but Moonlight won the official award in the Oscar Electoral College.”
By then the political comparisons were irresistible. I wrote, “Cast of La La Land is now blaming Vladimir Putin and James Comey for them not getting the Oscar.” Then I added that they also blamed Bernie supporters and Jill Stein voters, and that Jill Stein was raising money for a recount.
Timeless started out the season as an entertaining time travel series, even if not the most significant genre show on at present. As it approaches its season (and possibly series) finale, the show has gotten even better as the Rittenhouse backstory progressed, and the series moved on from its initial formula. Screenrant looked at Why Everyone Needs To Be Watching This Time Travel Show.
TV Line spoke with producers Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan about Timeless:
TVLINE | How would you preview the finale? SHAWN RYAN | I’m proud of the finale. It answers a ton of the questions that we’ve raised. We’ve had a pretty good plan from the beginning of the season. There are things that happen in the finale that we had plotted out in our first couple weeks in the writers’ room back in June. We’ve known for a while that we were going to make 16 episodes this season, so we were able to plan for that and build to this…
TVLINE | The last episode left off on quite a cliffhanger, with Rufus in very dire straits. How that will play out in the finale? ERIC KRIPKE | It’s not so much about whether Rufus will live or die, because — spoiler alert! — he lives. He’s one of our main characters and a popular one, and we’re not going to kill him. So as long as there’s a Timeless, Malcolm [Barrett] has a reasonable amount of job security. It’s more about the storyline that it leads to. Rufus is unable to pilot the lifeboat alone because he’s wounded, and so he needs some help, which comes from some unexpected places, and it kind of turns the story into a new direction, and then turns again.
I think the show’s gotten better and better the more we’ve focused in on and doubled down on the characters. The thing I’m most proud about in the finale is that it’s really a character piece. So many finales, especially the genre shows, are just about people running around and fighting, and ours really digs down to the thematics and the character issues that our people have been facing all year. It’s a uniquely thoughtful and emotional finale, and I’m really proud of it because of that.
TVLINE | How much did not knowing whether the show was renewed or not impact the finale and how you chose to end it? RYAN | It did not have a great impact. We had a story that we wanted to tell from the beginning. We’re moving forward optimistically. We think there will be a Season 2. I’ve been in a situation before on Last Resort, where it was clear as we were making Episodes 10 and 11 that the show wasn’t going to continue, and we chose at that point to write what was essentially a series finale for Episode 13 to give closure. I think there are a lot of reasons for optimism for a Season 2. We’ll find out in two or three months. We’ve always set out to tell this one-season story that then would provide a launching point for a Season 2, but that would answer a lot of things, and I think we did it. We didn’t have any conversations where we were pulling out ratings and trying to do the math. We’re just writers, and we told the best story we could. So we’ll let the chips fall where they may. KRIPKE | When you write these things, you plan for success. You just sort of have to, and whatever happens happens. But you write it as if the show’s coming back, because I think doing it any other way, you’re compromising the story you set out to tell.
Legion remains one of the more intriguing shows of the last couple of years, and is already being compared to recent greats like Mr. Robot and West World. It deals with mental illness and an unreliable narrator as in Mr. Robot. While it might not be a major feature of the show after the premise is established, it handled time jumps far better than West World. While the themes are quite different, it also raises comparisons to Noah Hawley’s recent work on Fargo, in which Hawley adapted another universe in his own way. Uproxx interviewed Noah Hawley:
When you first got the material, what was going in your head in terms of how you wanted this to look?
When I sat down to write it, there was nothing specifically contemporary about it, but I don’t think I assumed it wasn’t a contemporary story. Then, I guess we talked about, since the movies jump from decade to decade, should we be in there somewhere? Then it just seemed to me like the subjectivity of the show gave us this opportunity to create a reality and I don’t know why, I just found myself drawn to these ’60s movies, British ’60s movies; Terence Stamp movies and Quadrophenia. There was a sense of the young punks and these are a band of outsiders and there is that sense of teenage rebellion that exists in this thing. In a modern day sense I think we’re over that and yet there’s something about that period in us that makes something familiar unfamiliar.
It started with just thinking like, “Well, let’s embrace the brutalist architecture and let’s not have any cars, because cars date something, so then if you’re in a reality without cars, where are you when you’re outdoors?” We shot on this University of British Columbia campus where there were no cars allowed. Then the hair and the costumes, this idea of the track suits that they’re in and all of that was a process of figuring out what it was and then the music plays into that as well. This idea, as I said to our composer Jeff Russo, that the show should sound like Dark Side of the Moon, so he went out and he bought the patch cord synthesizer they use in the show.
It is this mixture of visuals and the sound and music of it that’s trying to create something that’s not about information but that’s about experience.
Yeah. It’s almost a ‘60s vision of what the future would look like.
Right. Some of the elements seem futuristic and some of them seem dated, but I wanted there to be a certain whimsy to it as well, and a playfulness. I always loved about that genre and genre in general was the pure inventiveness of it and the way like a science fiction story. The example I give is Battlestar Galactica, the remake. It’s the Cylons who have God. It takes God and it takes robots and it creates something completely new. It’s not something that you would do in a drama. It’s something you would only do in a genre and so what are the genre elements that will allow us to take a show that would work as a dramatic story, two people in love, trying to define themselves rather than being defined by society and it turns it into something that I hope every week there’s something that blows your mind a little…
David alone has, in theory, an infinite number of powers. You get a bunch of these other characters with their own abilities that seem to, for the most part, be your own creations, so you can give them the powers to do whatever you want. What was that process like of figuring out, for instance, what Syd can do?
For me it was about creating characters and saying, what makes a tragic love story? A tragic love story is about people who want to be together but can’t be together for one reason. If they physically can’t touch then that creates this seemingly unleapable obstacle. Then it became about her having a power where she couldn’t be touched, and obviously I think there are characters in comic book lore who have different versions of, “If you touch me, something happens.” I took the creative license to say, “Well this is my version of that.” The danger with a character with a hundred issues of mythology is you’re always turning around and realizing you can’t do something because someone’s going to get mad or it’s going to conflict with what they know and it’s going to be confusing.
It just seemed more and more that I could take David and take this multiple personality disorder that he has in the comic and I could create a sort of metaphorical version of that, which is not to say we won’t ultimately realize that’s what he has, but it’s to say that that’s not what he’s diagnosed with in the show. Then to surround him with characters of my own invention so that I’m not hamstrung about what stories I can tell.
There has been a recent TV trend of unreliable narrators. How do you keep the audience from looking at the show as a puzzle to solve?
You have to solve the mystery. The narrator has to become reliable. It’s a lot to ask an audience to take a perpetually unsatisfying journey where it’s like you’re never going to know for sure. It’s another thing to say, “We’re going to take a character out of confusion into clarity and an audience out of mystery into clarity.” That’s the goal of it which is to say, there’s a contract and you watch that first hour and you like, “I don’t know. There’s a devil with yellow eyes and there are these other elements that I’m not sure what they mean, but I trust the filmmaker and I know that I’m going to understand it eventually.” You do. It becomes clear by the end of the first year what’s going on.
Before this era of peak TV, The 100 might have been the top genre show on of the night. Now it shares the night with Legion, The Magicians, The Expanse, and Arrow. The 100 really deserves more attention than I’ve been paying to it, but TV Line does have some comments on the revelations in Wednesday’s episode.
Spoiler TV reviewed last week’s episode of The Magicians in the aftermath of Alice’s death.
Plus information from the producers on Arrow here and here.
Although they have no inside information, and the decision probably won’t be made for several months, the odds makers seem to like Tilda Swinton as the favorite to replace Peter Capaldi on Doctor Who. Chris Chibnall will be making the actual decision, and says it will be made in the traditional way:
We’ll cast the role in the traditional way: write the script, then go and find the best person for that part in that script. You couldn’t go out and cast an abstract idea.”
He adds: “The creative possibilities are endless, but I have a very clear sense of what we’re going to do, without even knowing who’s going to play the part.”
Steven Moffat says that Chibnall did try to convince Peter Capaldi to stay. He also says he does not plan to write further episodes of Doctor Who for a while after he leaves as show runner. He seems to have thrown all his ideas into Doctor Who the last several years, but perhaps he will come up with something new down the road.
Odds are looking good that The Big Bang Theory will be renewed for two additional seasons.
Fox is considering a reboot of Firefly, but only if Joss Whedon is on board. That makes perfect sense. I question if there is any point in rebooting the show, as opposed to leaving it as a brief , but excellent, old series. I really see no point in having someone else do a reboot.
Netflix has announced that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt returns on May 19.
Outlander returns in September. The production is moving to South Africa, which might be a stand-in for Jamaica.
The Flash deals in multiple parallel universes, including the one in which Supergirl takes place. Screen Rant explains the most important Earths in the CW multiverse. This got me thinking after hearing Donald Trump’s comments on what appears to be an alternative Sweden…
It increasingly looks like the best explanation is that Donald Trump and his top aides have been replaced by their counterparts from an alternate universe in which there have been terrorist attacks in Bowling Green, Atlanta and Sweden. Also, in their universe, Barack Obama really was a Muslim born in Kenya, and scientists never did figure out the connection between human action and climate change. Presumably orange skin and that hair are also commonplace there too.
I’m still racing to catch as many of the top Academy Award nominees as possible by next Sunday. Looking at the favorites, at this point I enjoyed La La Land and am okay with Emma Stone as Best Actress, but I would not pick it as Best Picture. Based upon what I’ve seen so far I’d go with Arrival, but not expecting a science fiction movie to win, I’d also pick Lion above La La Land. It would be a toss up with Manchester by the Sea, depending upon whether I want a more upbeat or downbeat movie. Casey Afflect is justifiably a strong contender for Best Actor.
This could change by next week. My immediate goal is to at try to get in Hidden Figures, Fences, and Moonlight before the awards.
I am not going to give any spoilers on the season finale of Sherlock which airs tonight but leaked out early, waiting to watch until this is posted, but there remains a lot to say about last week’s episode. Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis spoke about the big twist in The Lying Detective. (Major spoilers for those who have not seen the episode):
At the end of the episode, we found out that the woman pretending to be Watson’s therapist, rush hour crush and Culverton Smith’s daughter were the same person. Not only that, but she was Sherlock and Mycroft’s long lost sister, Eurus (which means east wind).
After a screening at the BAFTA Cymru in Cardiff, the show creators hosted a Q and A where they told all about the chaos that had just ensued.
Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat explained how the idea that Sherlock had a sister had been in the back of their minds ever since the first episode. Gatiss said:
“It started as a joke years, years ago. Right from the beginning of the first season, there was a line in ‘The Great Game’ when we were sort of sketching in the idea of the Holmes family and there was going to be a line about Mycroft being a member, Sherlock admitting that he was cleverer than him and then him kindly saying, mind you…my sister…
It was absolutely cut off, and that’s really where it all began.
[At the time] we thought, we won’t do too much. And thank god we didn’t, as it gives us this place to go.“
But that wasn’t the only shock of Sherlock. People were frankly dumbfounded to see that Watson had been seeing a girl behind Mary’s back. Steven decided to tackle that one, head on, saying:
“He’s a fully rounded character. He’s a fully rounded human being with all the normal flaws that people have.”
BuzzFeed then asked him if he was going to be back to his usual self for the next episode, to which he said:
“We’re not going to say now that he’s cosy and lovely, you don’t get Martin Freeman to play that.”
The episode even contained a Torchwood Easter egg–a postcard on the mantel with the Torchwood ‘T’ logo. Technically this would place Sherlock in the Doctor Who universe.
“It’s a grand old finale. It’s a very very finale finale,” said Moffat, at the BAFTA screening for ‘The Lying Detective’.
“It’s the most like a Universal Sherlock Holmes that we’ve ever done,” Gatiss added. “It’s like a Basil Rathbone one. It’s absolutely crazy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8vR2FB1PGM
The Expanse returns for season 2 on February 1. For those of use who didn’t make it through the entire first season, Syfy has put out a series of videos on the series, such as the one above. For those who want a briefer summary of season 1, below is a recap with cats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivej0OW7WZk
Deadline interviewed the writers of Deadpool about the planned second movie. They also blamed the leak of test footage from the first movie on Putin.
The cast of Stranger Things teased season two in an interview with Vanity Fair.
Wayward Pines will not be returning this summer, but Fox has left open the possibility of it returning in the future. I’m actually happy to hear this. I’ve read the novels the show was based on by Blake Crouch, but the television show is one of many shows in this era of peak TV which I haven’t gotten to yet. Another year might give me a chance of watching the first two seasons before a third if there should be one. Incidentally, Blake Crouch is also the author of Dark Matter (no relationship to the televisions how by that name). The novel is more a page-turner thriller than hard science fiction, but, like his Wayward Pines series, was a quick and enjoyable read, and I’ve seen it on some of lists of top books of 2016. (Also, while not really related, I have used the hiatus in new shows around the holidays to catch up on Syfy’s Dark Matter and will now be able to include it in the weekly show coverage when it returns).
Return to Twin Peaks on May 21:
Kyle MacLachlan reprises his role as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. TWIN PEAKS, the 18-part limited event series will debut with a two-part premiere on Sunday, May 21 at 9PM ET/PT. Immediately following the premiere, SHOWTIME subscribers will have access to the third and fourth parts, exclusively across the SHOWTIME streaming service, SHOWTIME ANYTIME® and SHOWTIME ON DEMAND®. In its second week, TWIN PEAKS will air the third and fourth parts back-to-back on the linear network, starting at 9 p.m. ET/PT, followed by one-hour parts in subsequent weeks…
Directed entirely by David Lynch, the new SHOWTIME limited event series picks up twenty-five years after the inhabitants of a quaint northwestern town were stunned when their homecoming queen Laura Palmer was shockingly murdered.
Widely considered one of the most groundbreaking and influential broadcast series of all time, TWIN PEAKS followed the inhabitants of a quaint northwestern town who were stunned after their homecoming queen Laura Palmer was shockingly murdered. The town’s sheriff welcomed the help of FBI agent Dale Cooper, who came to town to investigate the case. As Cooper conducted his search for Laura’s killer, the town’s secrets were gradually exposed. The mystery that ensued set off an eerie chain of events that plunged the inhabitants of Twin Peaks into a darker examination of their very existence. Twenty-five years later, the story continues…
Maisie Williams has a major role in an new superhero movie coming out on Netflix. It has a more modern origin story. Instead of being bit by a radioactive spider, the hero gets his powers from portions of a smartphone embedded in his brain:
Tom is an average teenager whose world is turned on its head when a violent encounter with local thugs leaves fragments of his shattered smartphone embedded in his brain. He wakes from a coma to discover that returning to normal teenage life is impossible because he has developed a strange set of superpowers. With these new powers he sets out to seek revenge on the gang, who also assaulted his best friend Lucy.
iBoy is a Netflix original film starring Bill Milner, Maisie Williams, Miranda Richardson and Rory Kinnear and is available on Netflix globally from January 27th, 2017.
The Hollywood Reporter has news on another Game of Thrones Star. Peter Linklage is engaged in talks to appear in Avengers: Infinity War.
The second season of Humans was excellent, and will become available (legally) in the United States on AMC on February 13. Deadline has some information. Syfy Wire spoke with the showrunners about topics including the comparisons to Westworld:
The showrunners were asked whether they minded that Westworld entered their same thematic storytelling space last year, but Brackley says the more, the merrier. “From our point of view, it’s only a good thing if people are interested in the issues we are all talking about. There’s plenty of room for both of us, and probably more about AI. Our shows are very different.”
Another excellent series from the UK will also become (legally) available in the US. Victoria debuts on PBS tonight. It is often compared to Golden Globe winner, The Crown, with similarities including actors from Doctor Who in key roles. While The Crown had Matt Smith in a supporting role, this one stars Jenna Coleman. Both The Crown and Victoria center around a new Queen and her relationship with the Prime Minister in their first season. Unlike The Crown, in which Elizabeth is married to Philip at the start, Victoria doesn’t meet Albert until later in the first season. Entertainment Weekly has more on Victoria and spoke with Jenna Coleman:
Apparently there is some other show about British royalty called The Crown, which features your Doctor Who costar Matt Smith. Have you two compared notes?
[Laughs] I think both of us tried to work out our [characters’] relationship to each other. It’s funny, he’s filming the second season in London. I’ve seen all the first, which I think is fantastic.
We already know Victoria will have a second season. In an ideal world, how long will the show run?
It depends on appetite and the pacing. There’s so much story, it could run for 60-odd years!
There is another interview with Jenna Coleman at Collider.
The Night Manager was one of the highlights of 2016. This leaves me optimistic about the next John le Carré adaptation from AMC, The BBC, and The Ink Factory: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
While several celebrities say that at first they were petrified about the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump, they are now singing, I Will Survive. Those singing Andrew Garfield, Chris Pine, Emma Stone, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Matthew McConaughey, and Chris Pine. Needless to say, conservatives don’t find this entertaining. The New York Times looked at how other celebrities such as Judd Apatow are responding in a different manner. I previously posted about reactions to Donald Trump at the Golden Globe Awards, including text and video of Meryl Streep’s speech, here.
Flatline managed to provide an episode of Doctor Who which successfully combined elements of both horror and humor. While not a totally original idea, it was something not seen on Doctor Who before, and realistically few television shows manage to come up with ideas which have not been influenced by other works. Think of it as if the residents of Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott were to invade earth, with a touch of The Adams Family thrown in.
Besides the idea of two dimensional beings invading, there was the added component of the TARDIS shrinking when the “structural integrity is compromised.” This did contradict The Name of the Doctor which showed such leaking to cause the TARDIS to swell in size, not shrink. The shrinking of the TARDIS, with the Doctor trapped inside, did enable Clara to take a leading role in this episode. This whole situation was quite difficult for the Doctor: “I mean this is just embarrassing. I’m from the race that built the TARDIS. Dimensions are kind of our thing.”
The Doctor did win out in the end. Ultimately the aliens from the two dimensional world were defeated by their inability to distinguish a two dimensional picture of a door from a real three dimensional door.
With the Doctor separated from the action for most of the episode, Clara took on the role of the Doctor, including taking on a companion, Rigsy, and calling herself the Doctor:
Rigsy: “What are you the doctor of?”
The Doctor: “Of lies.”
Clara: “Well, I’m usually quite vague about that. I think I just picked the title because it makes me sound important.”
The Doctor: “Why, ‘Doctor Oswald,’ you are hilarious.”
Clara did show Rigsy the inside of the shrunken TARDIS leading to the classic comment, “It’s bigger on the inside.” This set up the Doctor’s response: “I don’t think that statement has ever been more true.”
Clara also showed that she can act like the Doctor, from using the Sonic Screwdriver to using his tactics:
Clara: “I just hope I can keep them all alive.”
The Doctor: “Ha. Welcome to my world. So, what’s next, ‘Doctor Clara’?”
Clara: “Lie to them.”
The Doctor: “What?”
Clara: “‘Lie to them.’ Give them hope. Tell them they’re all going to be fine. Isn’t that what you would do?”
The Doctor: “In a manner of speaking. It is true that people with hope tend to run faster, whereas people who think they’re doomed …”
Clara: “Dawdle. End up dead.”
The Doctor: “So, that’s what I sound like?”
Ultimately, when Clara asked if she did a good job, the Doctor did respond, “You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara. Goodness had nothing to do with it.” We still have the question from the start of the season as to whether the Doctor is a good man, and whether they are doing good.
The most amusing gag of all in the episode was seeing the Doctor’s full sized hand emerge from the tiny TARDIS to walk it away from an oncoming train. The episode was very light on Danny Pink, but we did have another amusing scene with Clara talking on the phone with Danny, hiding the fact that she was in danger. The previews do show him taking an active part next week, but it still remains unclear whether we will ultimately see a return to two teachers from Coal Hill School being companions aboard the TARDIS as was teased last summer.
The ending scene with Missy took a different turn from her previous scenes, with Missy saying, “Clara, my Clara. I chose well.” It has already been suggested that it was Missy who gave Clara the Doctor’s phone number back in The Bells of Saint John, but we still have no idea as to what Missy’s overall plan is. Also uncertain is whether this has any connection to Clara’s role in The Name of the Doctor to become fragmented in time and have a role in each of the Doctor’s regenerations.
The writers this season do seem to be writing as if some of the past events have not taken place, almost starting fresh with Clara and the Peter Capaldi Doctor. Even going back to the season premiere in Deep Breath, the Clara who saw each regeneration in The Name of the Doctor should not have been as surprised by seeing the changes in the Doctor after his regeneration. Perhaps the events of The Time of the Doctor, with the Doctor gaining additional regenerations and not dying on Trenzalore, also mean there was never a giant TARDIS tomb for the Doctor and Clara never was fragmented in time. The Missy story line might wind up providing a completely different version of Clara’s life.
The Doctor Who Extra for Flatline is above.
While both the Doctor and now Clara having claimed to be a doctor without formal qualifications, there are some actual doctors who have done considerable harm despite having true medical degrees. One example, Dr. Henry Cotton, has appeared on cable television shows in the past week both on The Knick (at the start of his career and Boardwalk Empire (near the end). He was a real person. Henry Cotton believed that psychiatric problems were based upon infections and his treatment often began with pulling the teeth of psychiatric patients. If this did not provide a cure, then he would proceed to remove other organs which he believed were the cause of the infection. Needless to say, in an age before antibiotics, such unnecessary surgery could have catastrophic results. At one point during his career Cotton even had a nervous breakdown. He responded by pulling his own teeth, then proclaimed himself to be cured and returned to work.
Knowing the factual basis behind Dr. Cotton’s life leaves me concerned about Gillian Darmody’s fate after she told Dr. Cotton that she felt she was cured. We already saw another woman at the asylum undergo surgery, and Cotton would not be likely to accept Gillian’s assessment that she is cured without surgically removing what he believes to be the site of her infection. Being the final season, Boardwalk Empire does have the ability to show tragic endings for its characters. This included the deaths of two long time characters last week. While Boardwalk Empire is ending, The Knick just ended its first season and has done an excellent job of showing what medical care was like back in 1900 and the development of new ideas such as transfusions.
News came in last week that a cable series which debut last summer, Manhattan, was renewed. While I have not seen the series, I feel comfortable in recommending this show about the development of the atomic bomb based upon several favorable reviews. (Although I have not seen Manhattan yet, do I get any points for reading Joseph Kanon’s novel, Los Alamos, several years ago?)
Still no news on whether Continuum will be renewed.
I would also recommend another new cable series which I did see the premiere of last weekend, The Affair. The main story involves an affair from the viewpoint of both parties, each telling their version for half the episode. We have narrators who are unreliable at least due to the faults in human memory. There might be additional reason for intentional deceit as we found that the stories are being told as part of a possible criminal investigation years afterwards, similar to in the first season of True Detective. It also reminds me of William Landay’s novel, Saving Jacob, in which there are glimpses of future questioning but we don’t know who the accused is or the crime until the end of the novel.
The creator of The Affair, Sarah Treem, discussed the dual narratives in an interview at The Hollywood Reporter:
With Noah and Alison remembering different accounts of the same stories, the series explores the notion of objective truth. Do you think there’s such a thing?
I think there is such a thing as objective truth. There are events that actually happen. As individuals our understanding of what happens is often quite limited. Sometimes the only way to get at objective truth is to have multiple people tell their own version of the same event. It is the job then of the interrogator, the therapist, the audience member, whomever, to basically try to find the commonality between the accounts in order to figure out what actually happened. That’s basically what we’re trying to do with this show. We’re not saying there’s no such thing as truth — there absolutely is — but we don’t think that one person is usually the arbiter of the truth. We think that it comes forward in conversation. There’s this quote, I think it’s from Hegel, but it’s the idea that all understanding is dialectic, meaning that nothing gets understood unless it’s as a result of a conversation. That’s how I think of the two sides of this show, that it’s a conversation from which the audience gains an understanding.
Will we see the perspectives of other characters besides Alison and Noah?
Not this season but maybe in subsequent seasons, if we get them.
We see a lot of overlapping stories that vary slightly depending on who’s telling them. What’s it like to have to regularly write two versions of the same event?
It’s a really fun exercise for a writer. It’s just about putting yourself in another character’s perspective, seeing the scene through the other character’s eyes. For the scene at the end of the pilot [where Alison and Cole have sex on their car], I was interested in writing a scene that looked like an attack on one side, and then coming back into it knowing more about what was actually happening to where all of the sudden the scene plays as a very different negotiation. Writers are trained at this because you’re always approaching the story through somebody’s eyes so it’s just a great, enjoyable exercise to go back and think, “Well, I wrote it this way the first time and now let me jump into a different character’s body and a different character’s mind and let me try it again and just see what happens.”
Both Warner (DC) and the various studies which own the rights to Marvel characters have recently released news on their upcoming movie plans. Comics Alliance has more information and has put together the above infographic.
“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” directed by Zack Snyder (2016)
“Suicide Squad,” directed by David Ayer (2016)
“Wonder Woman,” starring Gal Gadot (2017)
“Justice League Part One,” directed by Zack Snyder, with Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams reprising their roles (2017)
“The Flash,” starring Ezra Miller (2018)
“Aquaman,” starring Jason Momoa (2018)
“Shazam” (2019)
“Justice League Part Two,” directed by Zack Snyder (2019)
“Cyborg,” starring Ray Fisher (2020)
“Green Lantern” (2020)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice producer Charles Roven recently gave an interview with more information on the movie, including the origin story for Wonder Woman which is being used.
Unlike Marvel, DC is keeping their movie and television universes separate. While Gotham will probably need to be kept in a separate world of its own, Green Arrow, The Flash, and next Supergirl are forming their own television universe. Many fans are angry that Stephen Amell and Grant Guston won’t be appearing as Green Arrow and The Flash in the Justice League movie. While fans would probably prefer such continuity, it does make it easier to wrote both the television shows and the movies if there is not a need for consistency. We saw how Agents of SHIELD was harmed by a need to postpone mention of HYDRA taking over SHIELD until after Captain America: The Winter Soldier was released.
Marvel fans are getting more excited by what appears to be planned. While Robert Downey, Jr. has not agreed to do another stand alone Iron Man movie, he may be appearing in Captain America 3, which reportedly involves the two being on opposing sides over the Superhero Registration Act. This could also be the end of Chris Evans as Steve Roberts. of There have also been rumors of Marvel making a deal with Sony, which owns the cinematic rights to Spider-Man, to allow him to appear, which sounds plausible as Spider-Man had a role in this storyline in the comics. Several other Marvel characters are also rumored to be appearing.
Meanwhile Emma Stone, when not playing the role of Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man, will be playing Sally Bowles on Broadway in Caberet.
With Twin Peaks coming back we have twenty-five years to catch up on. Mark Frost is writing a book to fill in this gap. I am looking forward to see what they do with the series and which characters return. I do hope that Audrey Horne returns and has a daughter who can tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue.
NBC has commissioned Bill Lawrence (Scrubs) to do a remake of the fantastic British sit-com, The IT Crowd. I have mixed feelings about such attempts to remake UK shows here. NBC’s first attempt at a remake, with cast including Joel McHale, was reportedly a total flop and never aired. NBC also failed in adapting Coupling, another excellent British sit-com written by Steven Moffat.
Fox has had their own problems in attempting to remake British shows, both with Gracepoint (a remake of Broadchurch) and Us and Them (a remake of Gavin and Stacey).
Here is an interview with Matt Smith on the Jonathan Ross Show. For those who are just interested in the Doctor Who Clip, here is a clip from The Bells of St. John, which appears to take place shortly after Clara first enters the TARDIS (which has a new look):
Here is an interview (audio only) with Jenna-Louise Coleman and producer Marcus Wilson:
Executive Producer Caroline Skinner is leaving Doctor Who. Faith Penhale, head of Drama at BBC Wales, will be producing the 50th Anniversary episode. Steven Moffat has gone through three executive producers but rather than dwelling on rumors of conflict, let’s look back at the days when Julie Gardner spent four years working with Russel T. Davies. Above is The Ballad of Russell and Julie. This is a must-see video for Doctor Who fans who have not seen it yet:
They are starting filming on the third season of Sherlock and Benedict Cumberbatch has confirmed that he is willing to return for a fourth season:
“We’ve already agreed to two more series”. Those were the seven words Benedict Cumberbatch uttered today that set a sizeable section of the internet afire. Speaking at this afternoon’s South Bank Show Awards, the Sherlock and Star Trek: Into Darkness actor revealed, “All I know at the moment is that I’m doing these three and another three”.
Cumberbatch recently won a British Press Guild award as Best Actor. Interview with him above.
Alex Kingston is also interested in returning to Doctor Who as River Song:
I’m so attached to that character. I never expected her to grow and develop in the way she has. You never know whether she’s going to be hard-ass or good. As long as Steven Moffat has storylines that include her, I will always say yes.
Damon Lindelof on Star Trek Into Darkness and the secrecy surrounding the movie:
“If the first movie was about meeting and introductions, this movie is about becoming a family,” Lindelof said. “The title of the movie is not just about the mission that the Enterprise is going on but what happens when you get to know each other a little better and the hurdles you must jump over in order to truly become family.”
“If anything, we’ve become more terrified,” he said. “We kind of got it right the first time, [we thought], ‘Let’s really not screw it up this time.’ You really have to honor the 40-plus years of canon and legacy that this amazing franchise had before we put pen to paper.”
Lindelof said they settled on the villain for the movie and decided very early on to say little about him — apart from the fact that Cumberbatch’s antagonist is named John Harrison.
“The audience needs to have the same experience that the crew is having,” Lindelof explained. “You’re Kirk, you’re Spock, you’re McCoy, so if they don’t know who the bad guy is going to be in the movie, then you shouldn’t know. It’s not just keeping the secret for secrecy’s sake. It’s not giving the audience information that the characters don’t have.”
Game of Thrones returns March 31. Trailer above.
As I posted earlier in the week, I am helping to finance a Veronica Mars movie. Along with over 50,000 other people I have pledged money for a Kickstarter campaign which made its goal the first day. Don’t let that stop you from pledging–the more money that is pledged the better the movie might be.
The success of this Kickstarter campaign immediately led to speculation that this might be done to finance other genre movies, and Firefly was one of the first to come to mind. Buzzfeed spoke with Joss Whedon:
Buzzfeed talked to Whedon, a long-time Veronica Mars fan, and he admitted that he was thrilled to see the movie project funded, and funded in the way it’s been. “It feels like a real game-changer”, he admitted.
And then the obvious question. Is this something he’d consider to get more Firefly off the ground?
“I’ve said repeatedly that I would love to make another movie with these guys, and that remains the case. It also remains the case that I’m booked up by Marvel for the next three years, and that I haven’t even been able to get Dr Horrible 2 off the ground because of that”.
He added that “I don’t even entertain the notion of entertaining the notion of doing this, and won’t. Couple years from now, when Nathan’s no longer [working on] Castle and I’m no longer the Tom Hagen of the Marvel Universe and making a giant movie, we might look and see where the market is then. But right now, it’s a complete non-Kickstarter for me”.
Whedon suggests that Kickstarter “doesn’t just open the floodgates”, although we’d imagine that a flood of projects will be testing the water very shortly. He clearly still sounds keen to make more Firefly, though, and we’ll keep you posted as we hear more…
Batman in the Movies.
Pepper Potts is no damsel in distress in Iron Man 3. From Marvel Studies President Kevin Feige:
In this movie [Iron Man 3] we play with the convention of the damsel in distress. We are bored by the damsel in distress. But, sometimes we need our hero to be desperate enough in fighting for something other than just his own life. So, there is fun to be had with ‘Is Pepper in danger or is Pepper the savior?’ over the course of this movie.
In the comic books she does get a taste for the suit and becomes her own hero named Rescue, who doesn’t necessarily battle other people, but is on missions to help people and to save people. Will we do that down the line with Gwyneth Paltrow? Who knows. But her being in the suit is something we have been playing with since ‘Iron Man 2,’ where we did some designs and it didn’t end up fitting in that movie.
Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy) meets Shailene Woodley (Mary Jane Watson). More Amazing Spider-Man 2 set photos available here.
The big science fiction news of the week is that J.J. Abrams will be directing the next Star Wars movie. I think it is a good idea for J.J. Abrams to direct the Star Wars movie. His tendency to destroy entire planets (Romulus, Vulcan) fits in better with Star Wars and Death Star than Star Trek.
There are reports that they might wait until 2017 to reboot Batman. There is also speculation that the cast of Justice League of America, scheduled for a 2015 release, will be cut down to five, leaving out Batman until he is rebooted in his own movie. Other rumors say that plans continue to reintroduce Batman in Justice League but possibly leave out Aquaman. Incidentally, if anyone is interested in getting the Michael Keaton Batman movies on Blu-Ray, I found they were much less expensive when purchased as part of a Michael Keaton Collection (recently discounted even further on Amazon) than as stand-alone Batman movies.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome was turned into a web series after SyFy decided against picking it up as a weekly series. They will be televising this as a movie on February 10.
Dallas returns tomorrow night, starting with the final episodes filmed before the death of Larry Hagman. Considering all the publicity the show obtained in its original run with the mystery of Who Shot JR?, it only makes sense that JR Ewing will leave the series by being murdered as opposed to dying of natural causes. They should be able to keep this mystery, and other references to JR Ewing, part of the show for quite a long time.
Colin Morgan won the award for Best Drama Performance at the National Television Awards for his portrayal of Merlin.
While January Jones won’t be returning to X-Men, Anna Paquin (Rogue), Ellen Page (Kitty Pride) will be returning in these roles.
I was initially concerned that Person of Interest would be about independent stories every week, but over time an increasingly convoluted back story has developed. If you are having as much trouble as I am keeping track of everything, the chart here will either help or confuse matters further.
Filming is starting on S.H.I.E.L.D. Cobie Smulders will be reprising her role as Maria Hill despite continuing on How I Met Your Mother for another season.
Downton Abbey is casting for a new suitor for a character in Season 4. If you saw Season 3, or heard how it end, you will know who. If you do not know, don’t follow this link.
After nine years the documentary crew is being introduced into the cast of The Office. Will they have a plausible explanation as to why they have been covering this office for nine years?
Caroline John, who played Liz Shaw, died at age 71 last week. Liz Shaw was a companion to the third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee during the seventh season of Doctor Who in 1970. Here are some clips from her first appearance when she was recruited by U.N.I.T.
Did Matt Smith give away a hint as to Amy Pond’s fate:
There’s something coming up in the final days of the Ponds that was in The Eleventh Hour,” he said. “There’s a shot in that. [Moffat’s] been thinking about it that long. He always knew how she was going to… I’m saying too much already.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s talk about some of your favorites.
JOHN NOBLE: I had some favorites. I loved the “Letters of Transit” episode, which was the one where we went into the future. I thought that was really a beautiful looking episode, beautifully told. I very much liked “Return to Westfield” because it was the first time that really the old team had got back together again — Walter and Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson). It was a very interesting story for all sorts of reasons. Those two stand out.
Episode 20, where the two worlds were bridged was also a fan favorite.
I loved the final conversation between Walter and Walternate where they’re in the corridor together. I waited a long time to see how that would be handled, and I thought the writers really handled it beautifully and eloquently. I loved doing that scene.
Tell me what it was like filming that.
I think I was so ready for it. For me, I realized there needed to be a payoff between the fellows. And I’ve always seen them as two shades of the one man. You know, he’s the same man, but circumstances took him in a different direction. So it was like a personal reconciliation for Walter, Walternate. I was really touched by the way they were able to be so kind to each other. I found that encouraging, and it was the way that I would have wanted it to happen. There had been plenty of abuse flying around, previously. But it was just like a human being finally coming to some sort of resting point in their life and saying, “OK, let’s stop fighting.Let’s just agree on what we can agree on.” So, on a much larger scale, I thought it was beautiful. The whole sequence was beautiful. Looking back on it now, it was really sad that separation of the two worlds. No one kind of expected it to be because I have to tell you, they’re brutal to film, those doppleganger sequences. They are really demanding, and they take forever and ever and ever and ever. But I loved that scene.
Was it hard for you to say goodbye to that character?
I always had a soft spot for Walternate. I always figured that if my world was in trouble — I mean, really in trouble — he’d be the one I’d want to be in charge. And obviously he was painted as the baddie, initially. But I never personally took it that way. I took it as a man with a job to do and a huge burden and very good reason to be incredibly angry and vengeful should he choose to go that way. But he never did take that these actions; he just wanted to save his world. And then I got the chance — I think it was maybe last season– to humanize him a bit.
Look, Walter…Walternate, I don’t really think he’s gone. I think he’s just one suit away — just put another $2000 dollar suit…
Well, let’s keep you away from suits, then — for the good of the universe.
[Laughs]
Peter and Walter had an amazing scene in the finale, right after he shot Olivia and he was working to save her. Did you actually slap Josh?
There is a little story to that. When we were doing it, it was very complicated. What Josh had realized was that his girl was lying there dead — hurt — and then [Walter] had just come trying to reason with him. There was just no way he would have done anything except strangle Walter really. So I said to [Josh], “We need [him] to snap on this one.” And we’d never done it; there’d never been any physical contact between the men. So I said, “How about if I slap you?” And he said, “Yes, that’s what it needs.” So we put that in. And it did; it was very powerful. When a person’s in distress, sometimes they slap them. So we put that in, and it was terrific. It was effective. And it was dramatically right for what we needed to do.
It appeared from the season finale of Once Upon A Time that it only made sense for Emilie de Ravin’s version of Belle to reappear frequently next season. Her pilot for ABC, Americana, didn’t get picked up, leaving the former Lost actress free to become a regular on Once Upon A Time.
While Star Trek‘s greatness really came from the television series, it lives on in the movies. Geek Tyrant notes that with the release of the movie currently in production, Star Trek will tie (with the Friday the 13th movies) for second in number of movies made. Both series will have twelve movies but they have a long way to go to catch up with James Bond who is going on twenty-four. As I pointed out several weeks ago, Bond director Sam Mendes has compared the James Bond franchise to Doctor Who.
What if there were SuperPAC ads in Kings Landing like those we have here? See one example above, and more here.
The Newsroom premiers tonight and most of the ads are negative. It doesn’t matter to me. If it is written by Aaron Sorkin I’ll watch every episode and enjoy them, just like Studio 60. (I probably agree with every criticism of Studio 60 out there, but still enjoyed the show.)
Seeing Rory Gilmore lower herself to having an affair with Pete Campbell on Mad Men before undergoing the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind treatment makes me nostalgic for Rory before she became corrupted. This is how Rory should be remembered: The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. And how did Amy Sherman-Palladino manage to get a young clone of Rory for Bunheads?
I don’t think that the flaws in the science will affect whether audiences enjoy the recently released movie, Seeking a Friend For the End of the World.
Last week was Father’s Day. Here’s a couple of kids out shopping for a card for their famous but evil father.
Or if you are in need for a birthday cake, this recipe can be found here. Extermi-cake?
The first ever official Doctor Who convention took place this weekend, and Steven Moffat discussed the event in the video above. More videos can be found here, here, and here.
The biggest news out of the convention is that the fifth episode next season, which has the final encounter with the Weeping Angels (and final appearance of Amy and Rory) will take place and be filmed in New York City. While in New York, the cast might feel at home in this TARDIS-themed bar which Karen Gillan mentioned in an interview.
Low-quality versions of trailer for the new season, taken while shown at the convention, have also been posted on many sites, as above. Hopefully we will have an official release early next week. Steven Moffat’s promotion of the season: “Amy and Rory leaving, tragedy, heartbreak and a Western, what more do you want out of Television. Come on Downton take that on!”
The biggest Doctor Who news of the week came on Wednesday before the convention with the naming of Jenna-Louise Coleman as the next assistant, beginning with the Christmas 2012 episode. The initial announcement, along with news on the upcoming season, were first posted here. In a follow-up post later in the day I had interviews with Jenna and Steven Moffat. A post on Thursday concentrated on her roles in Captain American and Titanic, along with advice from Matt Smith. On Friday we had the first official BBC picture of Jenna in front of the TARDIS, information on another series she is appearing in, Dancing on the Edge, and a report of links to an alleged sex tape with Jenna-Louise Coleman which actually lead to a malicious site. There’s also a brief video of what Matt Smith might say to people searching for sex tapes of Jenna.
Steven Moffat spoke toRadio Times about Doctor Who and Sherlock. He dismissed internet rumors that Benedict Cumberbatch will be playing the Master and reports that he has not started writing season three of Sherlock yet:
Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat has dismissed reports that Benedict Cumberbatch is to play the villainous Master on the sci-fi series.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com at the Royal Television Society awards, Moffat said: “People really do sit in rooms and make that stuff up. Look at the filming schedules for Doctor Who and Sherlock – those two shows tend to shoot at the same time. We’d have a problem and there’s only so much I can arrange.”
But he then added, as a quick afterthought: “But who knows what could happen in the future…”
Moffat also told RadioTimes.com about plans for the forthcoming series of Doctor Who. Asked whether there would be a large story arc running through the episodes, or if we could expect self-contained adventures, he said: “As ever, there’s a bit of both. But this time we’re moving closer to stand-alone stories. At this point, we’re not planning any two-parters. So, every week is going to be like a different mad movie.”
He added: “We went quite ‘arc’ last time and we’re going stand-alone this time around. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t those things creeping in. You’ve got to find a way to make the last episode special, and by God that worked ratings-wise last year. We don’t want to abandon that idea.”
Asked for any teasers he could offer, the ever-evasive Moffat replied: “Watch out for the title of episode two. I think that’s a belter. It’s one of my favourite titles ever.”
As for his other hit BBC1 series, the detective drama Sherlock, Moffat had this to say about series three: “Mark [Gatiss] and I have planned it out. We haven’t started writing it yet because I’ve got God knows how many episodes of Doctor Who to get sorted first. But the way it works with Sherlock is that we starve you and then we give you a short burst and then we starve you again. It’s worked so far, we’re not going to change it.”
On the scheduling of future episodes, Moffat said: “I don’t actually know. Given that this is a show that I haven’t started writing yet, it’s a bit early to suggest scheduling. Once we hand them over, they’ll be on television quite quickly.”
CBS announced earlier this year they would be filming a pilot called Elementary.
The US programme will feature Sherlock in New York and Watson will be played by 43-year-old Lucy Liu.
Steven Moffat says he hopes it will be good or it may degrade the Sherlock brand.
“It isn’t a version of our show,” he said. “They’ve just decided to go off and do one of their own, having been turned down by us to do an adaptation of our version.
“So how do you think I feel about it? Annoyed is in there.”
‘Rogue version’
The US Sherlock will be played by British actor Jonny Lee Miller.
If the pilot is successful, it will be turned into a TV series which will air on US television in the autumn.
“The bigger problem for us with Elementary is, what if it’s terrible? What if it’s awful? Then it degrades the brand,” he said.
“I remember there was a legitimate American version made of Coupling, actually adapted from our version.
“It was terrible and it was a disaster and it did sort of diminish the original.
“So if there’s this completely unrelated rogue version of Sherlock going around and it’s bad, it can be bad for us.”
So far CBS hasn’t revealed which Arthur Conan Doyle stories will be made.
Talking at the Royal Television Society Awards, Moffat dismissed the idea that legal action had been taken over copyright.
“We don’t own Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “We don’t even own the idea of updating it. It’s been done before.
“I hope they know their Sherlock Holmes very, very well indeed because we know what’s in our show and wasn’t in the original.
“So if we did discover our material had made it into somebody else’s show we would have a problem with that. If there is no such incidence of that, then there’s nothing we can object to.”
When asked about a possible fourth series, Moffat revealed that Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch was keen to continue playing the lead role.
Emma Stone talked about her initial reluctance to appear in Spider-Man:
“I heard about Spider-Man and I didn’t think it was something I would want to be a part of. I just thought that probably isn’t right for me. Then I [auditioned with Andrew Garfield] and realized that this was a really interesting, fantastic relationship between two people and that I was being really closed-minded,” she said.
The actress, who wore her naturally blonde hair for the part, went on to discuss how her character finally changed her mind about the film: “[I] started learning more about Gwen Stacy and her history and just fell in love with the character and with the fans, too. I started reading forums and getting involved more in the comic book universe and it just became something I really wanted to be a part of, just because of all those elements.”
Emma Stone discussed Spider-Man further in this interview. Here is a brief excerpt:
You went from playing a literary character in The Help who was in a much beloved book with its own kind of following, to a comic book character who’s iconic and has this rabid following. Was there a big difference for you between those characters and how they’re treated by their fans?Well of course the characters themselves are incredible different and there seems to be a different fan base between Spider-Man fans and fans of The Help. There are conventions for Spider-Man fans and there aren’t for The Help fans, although I would love to see a convention of The Help fans. It could be like the big Lebowski Fest. But they’re two tonally different worlds to me even though they both had such a rabid following. There’s a difference just in terms of bringing the material to life. There are different incarnations of Gwen Stacy and of Peter Parker throughout comic book history, all these different storylines to pull from depending on what kind of script you’re going to patch together. With The Help, it was such a distinct story that kind of needed to be matched line for line in a way. It felt different just in terms of becoming part of it and the way the material was adapted. But I’m so excited to be part of a movie with a built-in fan base in that way. You go to Comic-Con and there’s so much passion in one room. Everybody’s so passionate about these characters and how they’ve affected their own loves. It’s a really cool thing as an actor to know that you’re part of something that’s so much bigger than you. You’re not creating it from the ground up, you’re trying to fill the shoes of someone that’s been around a lot longer than you. It’s really exciting. I love that aspect of it.>
Why do you think the producers and writers went with Gwen instead of Mary Jane?Well, Gwen’s story happened before Mary Jane’s, and I think that coming back to their roots, it was interesting to explore the woman who came before Mary Jane. I think she’s such a definitive part of Peter Parker’s relationship with Mary Jane ultimately, who is literally the polar opposite in personality of Gwen Stacy. I think just building that into Peter’s life and seeing that story from the very beginning was really interesting. And of course Gwen’s story is so beautiful and important to that story of Spider-Man that I think they wanted to come from that angle at this time.
There might be less to report about the upcoming Star Trek movie as J.J. Abrams has built a wall around the set for secrecy.
I remain shocked that JJ Abrams destroy Vulcan in his Star Trek movies. That would be like eliminating Gallifrey and most of the Time Lords on Doctor Who.Oh, never mind.
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This week’s episode of Fringe, A Short Story About Love, cleared up Peter’s confusion about the meaning of a changed time-line. When Peter began searching for a way to get home, and rejected the Olivia in this time line even when she gained memories of “his” Olivia, I questioned this. Peter was treating the changed time line as if it was another form of alternative universe, but a changed time line would imply that it is the same universe in which things have changed. Olivia would be the same Olivia, but with different experiences due to the changes in the time line. Although I was thinking these things while watching, I also considered the possibility maybe Peter could be right as we really don’t have established rules for dealing with different time lines. Last night we found out that the interpretation I first had was actually correct, and Peter had been wrong. Peter also realized that reuniting with the Olivia in this time line was fine–not like sleeping with the hotter Olivia from the alternative universe (especially as we found out in the previous episode that having a baby with Altlivia led to bad consequences).
Awake didn’t address the show’s mythology this week, but once again showed a character whose life was different in each world even before the accident. Again this rules out the possibility of the universe splitting into two different paths at the time of the accident (unless we really get complex and have time move in both directions, which would be way too confusing).
Mad Men returns tonight. Here are some stories about the show:
Matthew Weiner spoke about Betty Draper’s reduced role and things which fans might hate in an interview with Huffington Post.
Stephanie Newman looked at what Mad Men might look like if it took place today. (Wouldn’t that defeat the whole idea of the show?)
Leonard Nimoy appears on The Big Bang Theory. Hopefully he does more than lend his voice to the toy version of himself (which might be the case considering how he only appeared in cartoon form in his last appearance on Fringe.) Following is an ad for the episode:
Matt Smith returned to Craig Ferguson’s show last week, wearing a hat but not a Fez or Stetson.Matt also made a contribution to Swedish lesbians. Craig Ferguson prepared this musical introduction to an earlier interview with Matt Smith but it could not air as CBS failed to get clearance in time from the BBC:
Planet Gallifrey has quotes some information from Steven Moffat on next season of Doctor Who:
On the Doctor’s fame: “We’re going to explore that properly next series. The Doctor’s project is to sort of erase himself from history because there’s only so many times you can stand and boast at Stonehenge”
On the heavier story arc: “I don’t think Doctor Who will ever be as arc-driven again”
Due to the increased interest from the title ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’, Moffat has told the writers to really “slut it up” and “write it like a movie poster. Let’s do big, huge, mad ideas”
On Amy, Rory and River: “I do have an end game for all of them”
On River: “You realise you’ve learned nothing. She may or may not be married to the Doctor, depending on whether that was actually a marriage ceremony, or whether it counts if he’s inside a giant robot replica of himself”
On his future as showrunner: “Even though I’m more tired than I’ve ever been, I don’t feel any impulse to leave”
Moffat also says the cancellation of Doctor Who Confidential was a bad decision.
The boxed set of series six will contain six mini-episodes. They are described here.
Once Upon A Time premieres tonight but the pilot episode has been leaked on line (probably intentionally by ABC to create more buzz for the show). The above video shows the first nine minutes and I found the entire pilot to be enjoyable. The show, by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz of Lost, does have some features in common with Lost, as well as many differences. Like Lost, the show alternates between two different scenes. While Lost had flashbacks, flashforwards, and sideways flashes in the final season, Once Upon A Time alternates between our world and a fairytale world. The Evil Queen casts a spell on the inhabitants of the fairytale world, taking away their happy endings and forcing them to live in our world in a town name Storybrooke without memories of their identities. The only person who can save them is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who is lured to Storybrooke. More on the idea behind the show:
Their unique tale explores what happens when the modern world and the world of fairy tales collide. In Once Upon a Time, a 28-year-old bail bonds collector named Emma Swan finds herself returning young runaway Henry, a 10-year-old boy she gave up for adoption, to the town of Storybrooke. Henry believes that Emma and everyone in the town comes from an alternate world, a fairytale land that, thanks to a curse by the Evil Queen, is now trapped forever in time. The characters have been brought into our world with no knowledge of who they really are. The series, which premieres Sunday, Oct. 23, at 8 p.m., stars Jennifer Morrison as Emma, Jared Gilmore as Henry, Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White, Lana Parrilla as the Evil Queen and Robert Carlyle as Rumpelstiltskin.
“What really [Lost’s showrunners] Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse] taught us was it’s character first, mythology second. And we took that really to heart, and it’s that lesson that led us to this, how to tell this story,” said Kitsis. “Because we’ve had this idea for eight years, and it wasn’t until we were on Lost that we really figured out how to tell it, because we didn’t want to do a pilot where every episode was about the first five minutes of the pilot. … For us, it had to be about the characters and emotion. If Lost was about redemption, Once Upon A Time is about hope.”
“The stories are amazingly difficult,” said Horowitz. “We try to set an incredibly high bar for ourselves, and we always want to try to top ourselves and to push the limits of what’s possible on a network television schedule and budget, and for us it’s really about ‘How do we keep telling the stories that excite us and that we really love, and how do we keep finding new things about these characters to explore and reveal to the audience?'”
Once Upon a Time will feature both the modern world of Storybrooke and the lavish fairytale land in every episode.
“Every week is going to kind of be exactly like the pilot,” said Kitsis. “We are going to go back and forth between the two worlds, and we’re going to focus on a character and … highlight what that character had going on in fairytale land, and in Storybrooke you’re going to see the void that the cursed replaced it with.”
Maureen Ryan has more on the show, including ways it is and is not like Lost:
The Ways in Which ‘Once Upon a Time’ Is Like ‘Lost’
1. There are parallel and connected realities, as noted above. Horowitz: “The typical episode will be a version of a story in Storybrooke, Maine involving the characters you have met in the pilot and focusing probably on one of them, and taking us into the fairytale land where we see a version of [that character’s] story, and there is hopefully some thematic connection with what is going on” in both places.
2. What the show is really about is not very high-concept. Kitsis: “That was what was so funny about ‘Lost’ — everyone was like ‘[It’s] high concept!’ Not really. A plane crashed and now they’re stuck.” Similarly, ‘Once’ can be stripped down to very basic themes of loss, acceptance, community and connection. Horowitz: “Ultimately, it’s about these people in this town — what are their conflicts going to be, how are they going to find love or not find love, how are they going to find happiness or not find happiness.” Kitsis: ‘Lost’ “was not ‘Let’s come in and start pitching craziness!’ It was character. Hurley was a guy who was frightened of change in any form, so every episode, we were like, ‘Well, what is he frightened of in this one?’… It’s character first, mythology second.”
3. There’s a mythology, but each episode will work on its own. Horowitz: “There will be an ongoing story, but …each episode is a self-contained. …But if you’re watching the show, you’ll also be enjoying Emma’s ongoing struggle against Regina over [Regina’s son] Henry and there will be those [continuing] elements.”4. Storybrooke isn’t an island, but it might feel like one at times. Kitsis: Fairy tales “were moral tales to teach children, and in a lot of ways, ‘Lost’ was about redemption. For us, ‘Once’ is about hope and that’s what we’re interested in [exploring] … It’s about an enclosed group of people trying to get over things.”
5. It’s ultimately optimistic about the possibility of change and redemption. Kitsis: “What I love the most about fairy tales … is, it’s why you buy a lottery ticket. It’s that your life can change. One day you’re Cinderella and you’re sweeping up for your evil stepmom and then the next day you get everything, and that’s what I love about these stories. When Charlie gets the chocolate factory… what I love about writing is it’s wish fulfillment. We try to write in a real way, but like at the end of the day, I want the chocolate factory and I want the golden ticket and we wanted to write a show about hope, especially in a time where I feel like it’s needed.”
6. It won’t be perfect. Embracing mistakes as learning experiences was one of their chief lessons on ‘Lost.’ Horowitz: “Anything that someone else may look at and say ‘Oh, that didn’t work’ or ‘It was a problem’ or whatever, to us simply was part of the journey. It was part of how we got to the endpoint that was the show. So there is nothing from the show I would say ‘Oh, I didn’t want [that],’ because it all organically [allowed] us to get the whole thing to be what it was.”
7. One of the show’s wizards is named Lindelof. Kitsis and Horowitz said that Lindelof was a huge help when they were working on ‘Once Upon a Time.’ Kitsis: “His name is not on this pilot, but he is in the DNA of it in the sense that like he has really helped us realize our vision of our show.”
The Ways in Which ‘Once Upon a Time’ Is Not Like ‘Lost’
1. Horowitz: “We’re not bringing Nikki and Paulo onto the show.” Kitsis: “Yeah, not yet.” Horowitz: “Season 3, episode 5.”
2. There are no polar bears, hatches, Others or downed airplanes. Kitsis: “For us, you can’t repeat ‘Lost’ because ‘Lost’ was its own unique thing, so why would anyone try?” Having said that, eagle-eyed fans will be able to spot little shoutouts to ‘Lost’ in some of the details of the Storybrooke world.
3. Their storytelling surrogate is a 10-year-old Storybrooke boy named Henry (Jared Gilmore) who’s really nothing like Hurley (or Walt). Kitsis: “Henry is us at 10, who’s into things that no one else is. … All the things that later in life, people celebrate about you are the exact same things that made you eat lunch alone when you were young, and that’s what we write about because that is where we came from.”
Another new series, Grimm, also deals with fairytales but sounds much less interesting to me. The premise is that the protagonist is a Grimm, whose family has the ability to see and track down fairytale monsters. It sounds like just another police procedural drama with a twist, and we already got one of those this season with Person of Interest.
Terra Nova shows potential, but to remain interesting will have to do more with the conflict with the Sixers and revelations as to the real motives for setting up the colony in the prehistoric past. It appears that this is the direction the show will be moving in based upon this interview from Entertainment Weekly with Brannon Braga and Rene Echevarria:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congratulations on the ratings uptick. I hear the show is going to get more serialized from here on? RENÉ ECHEVARRIA: It does. We’re going to roll out the whole Sixer mythology this season. You’re going to see who sent them here and why, and it all comes to a head in the season finale. BRANNON BRAGA: Whether it’s the strange markings on the rocks, or even the new thing we introduced Monday night with the container, all these things will culminate and be explored by the end of the 13. And it’s been fun doing that. As the episodes go on, the momentum will build with the ongoing storylines.
It was almost like you had these serialized elements in the pilot, then Fox said “make it more stand-alone.” BB: Are you sleeping with a network executive? Do you have spies?
That’s sort of what happened on Fringe. RE: It’s true in the first couple episodes, you do want to cast a wide net. And we are picking up those threads now. The story with Josh picks up a lot of heat about what he’s willing to do to get his girl here, and he gets way in over his head. It was an unexpected discovery as the season went along that this was a way to play scenes with the Sixers, but not with the adults. And it gives Josh and odd romantic triangle with Skye — how does she compete with an idealized person?
BB: The question was asked in [Monday’s] episode — which we thought was a good template for what the show really is going to be like moving forward, with a mixture of stand-alone elements and ongoing storyline — there was a question asked: “What is Terra Nova really all about?” That’s a question we’ll begin to answer. Things are not what they appear to be. Clearly Taylor has secrets. Jim is keeping things about his Sixer visit from Taylor. And there’s something big going on that Jim finds himself in the middle of.
Will we see more of 2149? RE: We don’t see a lot of 2149. We come to see the conspiracy with the Sixers is being orchestrated in 2149, and as we get toward the season finale we will go to 2149 and see that more explicitly. But most of our storytelling takes place in Terra Nova.
BB: When we do go there, it’s very cool.
While right wingers whine about liberal Hollywood, Emma Stone is concerned that it has become too conservative:
The ‘Help’ actress believes many movies that were made in the 1970s would not be commissioned these days as studio bosses are too afraid of “offending” anyone.
She said: “It concerns me that movies seem to be getting more and more conservative and watered down.
“I see movies made in the 70s such as ‘Network’ that I really don’t think would get made today. A movie that calls the audience to task for sitting glued to their screens, believing everything they’re told by the media? That would be considered too challenging today. Nobody wants to risk offending the viewers.
“Movies need broad appeal to succeed and bosses don’ want to alienate anyone.”
Emma, 22, believes many actors censor themselves to an extent where it has a severe impact on their performances.
She added: “I even hate it when people censor themselves. You can always tell when an actor has grown a ‘rhino skin’ to protect themselves. It comes across on screen and they aren’t believable.
“They’re dead in the eyes because they’ve been told a million times that they’re the greatest actor that ever lived. If you don’t realise what’s happening and get your feet back on the ground, it can be the worst thing that ever happens to you.”
