SciFi Weekend: Timeless Cancelled; 12 Monkeys; Supergirl Season Finale; More Star Trek Shows Planned; Westworld Finale Tonight; Humans; The Handmaid’s Tale; Luke Cage; Cloak and Dagger; Man In The High Castle Renewed

As often happens with bad news, NBC released the official announcement on Friday that they are not going to renew Timeless. There is talk about a two hour movie to conclude the series, as Netflix recently did with Sense8.

Although this was mentioned as a possibility, I wonder if it will actually be completed. This would require reassembling the cast after they are released from their contracts. It made sense for Netflix to conclude Sense8 as their back library of shows is a selling point for subscribers, and a completed series might be watched by more people in the future. A made for television movie on NBC coming out in the future is of far less value, unless they have plans to try to make money from Timeless from DVD/Blu-ray sales and/or streaming sales as a complete set in the future.

Fortunately the cast appears interested and might be willing to work around such a movie even if they have moved on to other shows. A conclusion is especially desirable considering how the second season ended on a cliff hanger. So far there does not appear to be interest from others in saving the series, as has happened recently with The Expanse (Amazon Prime) and Lucifer (Netflix).

Reactions from cast and crew here and here.

Another time travel series will be ending in a couple of weeks, but fortunately it is ending strongly with a planned conclusion. 12 Monkeys released three more episodes on Friday which were a lot of fun. All three worked together as a quest for a weapon, while each was an independent story. The first, Legacy, gave background on both the origins of Titan and on the Jones family. Other highlights include Jennifer noticing many things which were not from the correct time which others missed, despite losing her primary abilities.

The second, or fifth episode of the season, After, effectively utilized a common trope of time travel shows with a time loop which included Cassie watching another version of herself. Jennifer had another key line this episode in an almost meta reference in which she referred to the weapon as the “mystery maguffin.” From a viewer’s perspective, that is exactly what it is.

The third episode, Die Glocke, was the obligatory Nazi episode for any time travel show, with killing Hitler being just a side aspect of the story. The episode both represented going to Nazi occupied France as descending into Hell, while also including several fun scenes, including Jones talking her way into the mansion. Cassie called it right in saying, “You’ve got some balls on you, Jones!” Sure it made no sense later in the episode that Jennifer would have the music from Pink ready to be performed, but seeing her sing this to the Nazis was too good a scene to be concerned about the reality of it. I’m also willing to suspend disbelief and just assume that Cassie wears that dominatrix outfit under her clothes. What could be better than seeing Amanda Schull mowing down Nazis dressed in her distraction dominatrix gear?

Once again Jennifer turned out to have the most important insights. Obtaining the “mystery maguffin” required them to interfere with the efforts of the French resistance to kill Hitler when visiting the mansion. As she pointed out, “You want to save Hitler? That’s the opposite of what you do with a time machine.” Finally Jennifer got her chance. Yes, realistically the time to kill Hitler was before he took power and established Nazi Germany. There was the danger that killing Hitler in 1940 could have led to Himmler taking control and being more successful in the war. However, for the fun aspect of the story, blowing up Hitler was the right decision.

The episode also redeemed Deacon, who had his own great moments (“bucket list” and how he may be bad but he ain’t no Nazi.) This set up the scene late in the episode in which this “family” could have a drink and celebrate together. “We may not have all the answers we seek, but tonight, we have each other. And that, in this moment, is enough.”

At various points during the series various members of Team Splinter were at odds with each other. This might be a final moment of happiness for these people, with things getting darker from here. As Cassie realized, success would mean that Cassie and Cole would not be together. The only way in which they have the upper hand going into the second half of the season is that both Katarina and Deacon are on borrowed time, leading to a plan in which Deacon brings Katarina Jones back to Titan. Next we have to see if they find a way to get back to 1491, along with what Hannah has been up to.

The season finale of Supergirl set up multiple changes for next season.  J’onn has left Alex in charge of the DEO, but it appears he will be around for different types of stories. Winn is going into the future with the Legion of Superheroes, explaining his previously announced reduced role. Presumably he could come back from the future at some point, possibly with other members of the Legion. Braniac 5 is remaining as his “distant relative” was saved from the blight and has created a virus which kills AI’s in the future. The most significant change is that Chris Wood is not returning, with Mon-El going back to the future. The producers discussed the changes with TV Line:

TVLINE | Let’s start by talking about Winn, who will return next season in a recurring capacity. In your eyes, what made joining the Legion the right next step for him?
QUELLER | We were so excited when that idea came up in the writers’ room, because it seemed so in-character with Winn. We asked what Winn’s dream would be, and that just met it perfectly.
ROVNER | We’ve been talking about this ever since the episode where Winn’s mom came back, when he was contemplating his destiny and what his impact would be on the world. We wanted to give him a fitting way to dramatize what we saw for Winn’s future.
QUELLER | He’s really fulfilling his full potential. Just imagine all that he could do in the future with his mind.

TVLINE | We may be losing Winn as a full-time member of the team, but on the plus side, we’re getting more Brainy. What excites you about bringing him into the fold and telling his stories?
QUELLER | Everything excites us. We love Brainy, and we love Jesse Rath. He’s just a magical actor. The character is delightful and brings fresh new eyes to Earth. Everything is brand new to him, which is just great to be around.

TVLINE | With Mon-El gone, is there any chance you’ll be exploring the romantic link between Brainiac-5 and Supergirl from the comics?
ROVNER | We did that a little bit when he first arrived. I think he’ll always have affection for Supergirl, but you’ll have to stay tuned…

TVLINE | And J’onn? I’m excited to see where this new journey takes him.
ROVNER | We thought it was important for his character to take in the teachings his father was trying to impart on him. Our Worldkiller story took us off-world a lot, but what’s great about this show is that we get to tell stories about what’s happening in the world and use National City to reflect that. We want to explore J’onn being on the streets among the people so we can continue to tell those stories.
QUELLER | We’re looking to tell much more grounded stories, like we have in seasons past, that reflect the climate we’re all living in in 2018.

TVLINE I imagine that James outing himself as Guardian will also affect his future at CatCo…?
QUELLER | You’ll have to wait and see, but it’s very cool and it takes twists and turns. James has great stuff coming up.

They also discussed what the final scene is leading into for next season:  “For fans of the comics, I think they might recognize that the story we want to tell is inspired by the iconic DC Comics’ Red Son, which told an alternate origin story for Superman,” Rovner tells TVLine, to which Queller adds, “What happened if — as a baby — Superman landed in Russia and became a hero there instead of in America. It’s an homage to that.”

Last week’s news about a change in showrunner for Star Trek: Discovery has been followed up with news of additional Star Trek series under consideration. This includes a possible explanation for Patrick Stewart’s recent remarks. Variety reports:

Variety has learned that the studio behind “Star Trek: Discovery” has signed Alex Kurtzman to a new five-year overall deal that will see him supervise the expansion of CBS’ “Star Trek” franchise for television, developing new series, mini-series and other content opportunities, including animation.

To that end, sources say there are currently multiple shows set within the “Star Trek” universe already in development.

The potential new shows are said to include:

  • A series set at Starfleet Academy from creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz. The duo currently serve as co-showrunners on the Hulu-Marvel series “Runaways” and are best known for creating shows like “Gossip Girl” and the CW’s reboot of Dynasty.
  • A limited series whose plot details are being kept under wraps.
  • A limited series based around the “Wrath of Khan” story. Khan’s full name is Khan Noonien Singh. He was famously portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán in both the original series episode “Space Seed” and again in the film “Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.” Benedict Cumberbatch then played the character in the 2013 film “Star Trek Into Darkness.”
  • An animated series whose plot details are being kept under wraps.

The Hollywood Reporter also notes the possibility of “another Star Trek series, featuring Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.” I hope they don’t go stretch themselves too thin with too much Star Trek on at once, but this could be possible with different series running at different times of year. Plus a limited series might also work out well.

Tonight we have the second season finale of Westworld. While there are many questions, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy say that, unlike on Lost, there will be real answers:

“In Lost, they really believed in the mystery box and not looking too much inside the mystery box. It was some kind of idea generator that you didn’t need to dissect and open up. And that’s absolutely fascinating and an engaging way to tell a story”, Joy said. “But for us, you know, I think we are interested in dismantling the mystery box, opening it up, looking at what it is, putting it together like it’s some kind of Lego, seeing how it works and really questioning and exposing that.”

“The questions that we tee up, we do try to address”, she said. “We have an answer for all of them.”

Humans has premiered in the United States, while the sixth episode has aired in the U.K. While I’ve been downloading the U.K. episodes, I won’t say anything to spoil the series for those watching on the U.S. schedule. Needless to say following the set up in the season premiere, there is a lot which can go bad over the course of the season. Humans creators Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley discussed the latest episode with Digital Spy, which I advise U.S. viewers against reading at this point. I do like it when it works out that I can watch Westworld and Humans concurrently, seeing each handle a related topic in such different ways.

 

There are also many ways in which things go bad on The Handmaid’s TaleTV Line discussed the events of last week’s episode with producer/writer Yahlin Chang:

TVLINE | The handmaids in this show are ritually raped on a regular basis, yet I was ashamed when I realized how normalized it had become to watch The Ceremony — and I only realized that because of how much more disturbing it was when June fought back instead of going limp. At the same time, the show has had some criticism for showing too much of the violence against Gilead’s women. The Ceremony in this episode is brutal; talk to me about why we see it play out from start to finish.
I hear that concern. God, there are two things. One is that I felt like that is what would happen. What guides us in creating stories is being true to these characters and true to the situation that they find themselves in, and what would actually happen… The whole system that Gilead is built on is systematic rape and on the idea that the handmaid’s body does not belong to her, it belongs to the wife and the commander. It’s their body, so if they want to get the baby out sooner, they can do whatever they want to get the baby out sooner. I absolutely believe that they would. Why wouldn’t they do that?

TVLINE | It’s interesting to me that June calls out to Serena, not Fred, to stop it. 
They weren’t expecting Offred to fight back, and it shocks them… The place that they’re in is that Serena can’t stop it because if she stops it, it would be like admitting that all of the ceremonies were rape, and there would be such cognitive dissonance, it would explode everything.

In other genre news, season two of Luke Cage was released. I’m not too far into it but it looks like a typical Netflix Marvel series, starting slow but showing a lot of potential. Cloak and Dagger, staring Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt on Freeform has been the surprise of the spring/summer season. The show concentrates more on the two main characters dealing with finding they have powers as opposed to fighting super-villains.

Amazon has announced the renewal of The Man In The High Castle for a fourth season. Season three will be released at some point later this year.

SciFi Weekend: Legion Season Finale; 12 Monkeys Returns; Lucifer Saved; Fate of Timeless Remains Unknown; Star Trek Discovery; Spock In The Mirror Universe; Casting News On The CW Superhero Shows

I found Legion’s second season to be a disappointment compared to the first. Extending from eight to eleven episodes was probably a mistake. I wasn’t even certain if I would continue with the show beyond this year, but then the season finale did what producers hope, making me interested in seeing more. With Legion it is sometimes difficult to be certain if what we are seeing is true, leaving potential ambiguity, but it does seem that they really did establish that David both has super powers, and is crazy (along with becoming the villain).

I wasn’t entirely certain what to make about these revelations with the Minority Report style trial based upon future crimes which David has not yet committed. If this was all there was, there could be questions as to whether the others were being misled, whether David’s fate is definite, or if there were even honest misinterpretations (such as the claims on Agents of SHIELD that Daisy was responsible for destroying the earth). The problem came when Sydney said later in the episode, “You drugged me and had sex with me.” These days, this is not something they can come back from easily.

Noah Hawley discussed the finale, and David being the villain, with Entertainment Weekly:

The season finale ends with David emerging as this villain. Has that always been the plan with this character?
Yeah. For me, I always had this question in my mind, what would happen if Walter White was a supervillain? That Breaking Bad superhero show. This idea, especially in the X-Men universe, that the moral line between good and evil is often fudge-able. Magneto, who sometimes is their villain and sometimes is on their side, and the idea of what the right thing to do is can shift depending on the circumstances. So I wanted to evolve the show so that you realize over time that maybe David’s not the hero of your show, but maybe Syd is the hero of your show.

Once you see that, it becomes a different show on some level. You’ll watch it with different eyes at that point — which doesn’t mean that David can’t come back or that in the end he doesn’t find his way back. But on some level, the whole show is a mental-illness parable, the idea that [David] tried to kill himself and he went into the hospital, and they straightened him out and they gave him his meds, and they let him out and he took his meds for a while, and then he decided he didn’t need them and then he went off them, and now he’s in this psychotic break, except he replaced the word “meds” with the word “love.” He realized he had this love story and the love was making him a better person — a saner, more stable person — and then he started lying to the woman that he loved and not being consistent. When he turned his back on the love story, everything started to fall apart for him.

You mentioned that maybe Syd is the real hero of Legion. Do you see this next phase of the story focusing more on Syd?
Yeah. On the level that it’s their story, I think she should always be front and center, and I think we went a long way this year towards expanding your understanding of her. We had that fourth hour where we saw her childhood from many different angles, and how she became the person that she is and the fact that she’s not a pushover by any means, and she’s someone who’s learned to embrace the ugliest parts of herself as her strength and not her weakness. To the degree that all of the X-Men franchise is a metaphor about being an outsider, you’re a mutant, but we’ve seen it as a metaphor for many different kinds of exclusion. A lot of the time with those characters, the powers that they have are directly connected to the way they don’t fit into society and it’s a way to redefine their weakness as their strength, and I think that’s what makes it exciting and relatable to the audience…

The David we see at the very end is much closer to the Legion we know in the comics with all the split personalities. Since you’re now two full seasons into this story, has your relationship to the comic books changed at all, in terms of what you do and do not include from the page?
Yeah. The character in the comics, there was a complexity to his origin story and the powers and the way that they work that seemed a hard ask of the audience to say, well, you have these multiple personalities and each one has its own powers. We’re seeing the birth of this character that we may know from the comics, and so the idea that organically we got to a place [where] we had a moment last year where a rational British version of David popped out to help him out in a scenario, and this year we end up with three Davids all arguing different points of view. That may increase in season 3, and of course, if so, creating different versions with different voices. So I want to see if I can put him through phases, I suppose.

After hunting Shadow King all season long, he pops in at David’s trial nonchalantly and nobody seems to be freaked out by him anymore. Do you see him as being an ally now in the sense that Division 3, even though they were enemies, now are sort of allies?
I think it’s really interesting what I’m attempting here, which is this idea that a lot of the time in these comic book stories, you have a takeaway where you feel like might makes right and the only solution to a problem is war. And I think what I’m playing around with is the idea that there’s really no such thing, that in real life you can fight your enemies but ultimately you have to make peace with them. And it may be an uneasy peace, and it may not be a lasting peace. At a certain moment, if you’re Division 3 and you’re realizing your biggest problem is David, then you do need Farouk as a weapon in that battle so you have to make peace with him. Now, that may play exactly into Farouk’s hands, but it was an element that seemed like it would generate more of an interesting story line than just a fight sequence leading to a larger fight sequence leading to a larger ultimate fight sequence.

12 Monkeys returned for its final season. While they are still giving us a lot at once, they did limit it to three episodes instead of a weekend long binge of the entire season like last year. The episode used a trope often seen in time travel shows–having characters return to an earlier point in the series. Apparently showrunner Terry Matalas has know they would come to this point since the beginning. He was interviewed by Syfy Wire:

Because you and I have talked about this briefly, how much of a plan do you have for the whole show? How much of that did you start with? How do you keep track of all the different storylines and permutations?

I just like to.

When I watch a show I kind of am always hoping I’m in the hands of somebody who has a whole plan. You can have a plan and little things can change along the way, but as long as I know where I’m going [and] I’m not making it up as I go along, that’s an important thing to me.

So in Season 1, there was a plan for the first season. We knew that the show, by the back half, would actually kick off the series in the respect that the first few [episodes] start with the notions of the movie. We dove into time travel a lot more than the movie did.

But we knew ultimately Ramse was gonna find out he had a son and wouldn’t be on board with the project and that all these characters would all have different motivations. We knew the journey we wanted to take. By the end of Season 1, we wanted to make [Cassie] much more like Cole started, and make Cole much more like her. It’s almost like Season 1 is the pilot of the series.

Season 2, same thing. We knew it would be the search for Titan. We knew it would be the reveal of the Witness. I always knew what I wanted the last scene to be, in the series. So [we were] just kind of leading up to there. After Season 2, I came in with a plan for Seasons 3 and 4. I said, “Here’s where we’re going.” We had a room that was wall-to-wall giant white erase boards. We know we’ve gotta get here, we know we want to do this, that, and the other thing, so let’s plan for this. Let’s do this right.

So really Seasons 3 and 4 are one giant movie, in the respect that you can watch Season 3 and be like, “Wow, they really were telling us giant things about Season 4 along the way.” There are scenes you have forgotten. Even our season opener — Jones and Project Charon — that started in Episode 6 of Season 3.

We will see scenes of future Cole again from the other perspective, so we needed to know exactly where Cole was in his life and what he was saying. When you go back and see it from this perspective you’re like, wow, they knew it all along. So that was the goal. That’s what we wanted to do. It’s up to the audience if we were successful or not. I think we were.

Is Season 4 the kind of thing where, if you go back to Season 1 and start over, you’ll see it from a completely different perspective?

Yes. You could go back to the beginning knowing what you know and be even more satisfied by the end. That was the deal with our writing staff. We wanted to make sure this was as tight as possible.

What’s kind of great about that is, even if you go into some of these Facebook pages like Addicts of the 12 Monkeys, they will ask really intricate tough questions about the plot. We’ll have that answer for them. We can say, “Here’s what happened, here’s why.” We had to go through every aspect of the loops and tangles of time travel and make sure it all added up. We didn’t want to whiff it…

As far as how this whole timeline works, at some point Cassie has to end up dead at the CDC for Cole to get the watch. But I have a question. Is there anything besides the watch that identifies that body as Cassie?

That body is Cassie. I’ve heard theories about bodies being switched. It’s Cassie. Without question. That’s Cassie’s body. I’m sorry to say to many people who had a lot of hope.

We don’t know how old she was, either.

You essentially saw her demise. But yeah, there’s no wiggle room there. She will die at the CDC.

Netflix has saved Lucifer shortly after it was cancelled by Fox. Deadline reports:

Buoyed by strong fan support, Lucifer producer Warner Bros. TV started shopping the series to steaming services and premium cable networks immediately after its cancellation more than a month ago.

There were multiple interested buyers, including Netflix and rival Amazon. It took time for a deal to be ironed out because the US  SVOD rights to the first three seasons of Lucifer are owned by Hulu. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Lucifer is carried by different networks/platforms in different international markets. For instance, Amazon has it in the UK and Germany, which drove the company’s interest in the series. I hear Lucifer now is expected to be on Netflix in the UK as the streaming company tries to clear the show in a as many territories as it can.

One other cancelled Fox series, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, was saved by NBC. In addition, there was one other major save of a genre series with Amazon picking up The Expanse after it was cancelled at Syfy.

Having both Netflix and Amazon show such interest provides hope that other genre series could be saved. There is still no word on Timeless. Hypable reports on efforts being made to keep it alive:

Everyone from Eric Kripke to the Timeless writers’ room to the cast is communicating with the fans as best as they can and all of them have stayed upbeat and positive. Whatever’s happening behind the scenes, no one’s letting the uncertainty or long wait rattle them. Instead, they’ve turned the whole thing into a month-long celebration of Clockblockers all over the world as they encourage fans and fans encourage them.

To keep Timeless fans fired up, the Timeless writers started sharing deleted scenes once a tweet met a certain number of retweets. The responses were so positive that they ended up sharing one (sometimes two) scenes a day. They actually ran out!

There are more examples in the full post. If NBC is not persuaded by this, perhaps Netflix or Amazon will come to the rescue.

The behind the camera turmoil drama on Star Trek: Discovery. Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts became showrunners after Bryan Fuller left the series in 2016. Now Berg and Harberts are being replaced by Alex Kurtzman. The Hollywood Reporter has the story:

Out are Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, who originally took over the role at the helm of the drama from Bryan Fuller. Executive producer Alex Kurtzman, who has guided the franchise (and a few of its feature films), will take over as showrunner on season two. As part of the change, Kurtzman will now also oversee the Discovery writers room for season two.

“We’ve made some producer changes at Star Trek: Discovery. The series continues under the creative vision and leadership of executive producer and co-creator Alex Kurtzman. Discovery remains on course for season two in 2019 with new and continuing stories that build on its successful premiere season,” producers CBS Television Studios said Thursday in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Sources say the decision to oust Berg and Harberts was based not on the creative but instead for leadership and operational issues. Production on Discovery‘s first five episodes of season two are near completion, with Kurtzman likely taking over for episode six and beyond. Berg and Harberts, who were longtime collaborators with original showrunner Fuller, will likely still be credited on the episodes they oversaw. Sources say the budget for the season two premiere ballooned, with the overages expected to come out of subsequent episodes from Discovery‘s sophomore run. Insiders also stress that Berg and Harberts became increasingly abusive to the Discovery writing staff, with Harberts said to have leaned across the writers room table while shouting an expletive at a member of the show’s staff. Multiple writers are said to have been uncomfortable working on the series and had threatened to file a complaint with human resources or quit the series altogether before informing Kurtzman of the issues surrounding Berg and Harberts. After hearing rumors of HR complaints, Harberts is said to have made imposing remarks to the staff to keep concerns with the production an internal matter.

Sources tell THR that Discovery is nearing what has been characterized as a planned production hiatus after episode five, which will allow Kurtzman time to regroup the show’s writing staff. Production is not expected to be impacted by the showrunner change.

The first season of Discovery kept interest going regarding the always popular Mirror universe stories. While I don’t follow the comics, I found it interesting to read that the comics have revealed what happened to Spock after the events of Mirror, Mirror. Comicbook.com summarizes events of the comic book miniseries:

What we know from Star Trek canon, based on the mirror universe episodes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is that Spock rose in the ranks of the Terran Empire to become Commander-in-Chief. He instituted numerous reforms, but those reforms were said to have failed and left the Empire too weak to defend itself again the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. The Alliance attacked and, still angry over their races’ previous treatment by the Terran Empire, enslaved Vulcans and humans alike.

“Ripe for Plunder” reveals that’s only partially the truth. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who stole the Empire’s new ship Enterprise, discovers that historical files on Spock, who eventually rose to become Terran Emperor, had been altered and sends Data to investigate.

It turns out the Spock is not dead, but in hiding after being deposed. Data discovers him being guarded on a mostly uninhabited planet by a small force of Tellarite guards, but Data proves too strong for them to handle. Spock tells his side of his story, saying that – despite what the recorded histories may imply – his reforms were actually proving quite successful and should have brought a new era of prosperity for the Terrans.

The Terran Republic was strong, but even the Empire would not have been strong enough to face the combined forces of the Klingons and the Cardassians. That the Alliance’s assault came during this time of reform made Spock and his political movement into an easy scapegoat to take the blame for the Terran’s defeat.

However, Data is less interested in Imperial history and more interested in where he can find supplies and tech to keep the ISS Enterprise in the fight against the Alliance. Data is specifically after information on the alternate universe that Spock’s Enterprise made contact with during the events of “Mirror, Mirror,” which Star Trek fans have known as the Prime Timeline. Spock resists, but Data doesn’t take no for an answer. There’s a fight, and Data leaves with blood on his uniform and having gained the information he sought on the other universe. Whether or not he left Spock alive is unknown.

The CW superhero shows have completed their seasons, other than for Supergirl which concludes on Monday. Some casting news has been announced. On Supergirl, Braniac 5 has been promoted to a series regular, which also raises the question as to whether other members of the Legion of Superheroes might be returning. Jeremy Jordan (Winn) has been reduced from regular to recurring cast.

Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man (Hartley Sawyer) and Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) have been promoted to series regular on The Flash. As has been previously reported, Matt Ryan (Constantine) and Jes Macallan (Ava) will be regulars on Legends of Tomorrow while Keiynan Lonsdale (Wally West aka Kid Flash) will not be returning as a regular.

SciFi Weekend: The Big Bang Theory Wedding; Anson Mount on Star Trek Discovery; George Kirk Is Still Dead; The Expanse Cancelled By Syfy And Other Renewal/Cancellation News; 12 Monkeys; Bafta Awards

The wedding of Amy and Sheldon occurred on The Big Bang Theory last Thursday. TV Line discussed the episode with Steve Holland:

TVLINE | You mentioned when we spoke last week that Meemaw’s “cameo” was cut for time. Was there anything else you had to lose?
Usually our scripts come in at about 40, 45 pages. This one was about 65 pages. [Laughs] We spent the week [of production] paring it back. There were some jokes here and there that we lost, but I think the episode is stronger for it. We knew we weren’t going to skimp on the vows. We knew we weren’t going to skimp on the wedding. Some of those cuts were painful, but anything that wasn’t servicing [the central story] fell by the wayside.

TVLINE | What was the most painful cut?
Probably the Meemaw phone call. It was a lovely moment. That was a hard one. But it was 35 seconds in a script that was [already] five or six minutes long.

TVLINE | How and when did it come up with the idea to have Mark Hamill be the officiant?
When we first started talking about the wedding, it had come up that maybe one of Sheldon’s friends could get him a surprise officiant. And Mark was the first name on the list, so we reached out to him to see if he’d be interested. We didn’t have a script at the time, so [he] really had to take a leap of faith and trusted that we were going to do right by him… He was the nicest human being you could ever imagine.

TVLINE | Will we see much of Sheldon and Amy’s honeymoon when we pick back up next season?
I don’t know. We have some overall conceptual thoughts about next season, but we haven’t nailed down any of the specifics. But it’s certainly possible. It’s something we have talked about as an option.

More on the wedding last week.

Another cut scene with a tribute to Stephen Hawking was released on Twitter. I really think they should have made an expanded episode for the wedding.

More on the wedding last week.

BleedingCool.com has a guide for for those interested in seeing every moment possible of coverage of next week’s wedding of Prince Henry of Wales and Meghan Markle of Suits. Television coverage starts at 4 am on BBC America, with BBC America devoting more time for coverage than the BBC.

StarTrekMovie.com shows how Anson Mount is turned into Captain Pike for season two of Star Trek:Discovery.

Last week I quoted Jennifer Morrison refer to George Kirk’s “supposed death” in the 2009 Star Trek movie. She later clarified that she was just joking and wrote on Instagram, “I have no idea what they are planning for the next Star Trek. I’ve never talked to anyone involved with the project. I’m excited to watch and see how it turns out just as much as all the other fans.” So he might have never died, he might have died and is coming back, or there will be some timey wimey stuff going on.

Den of Geek summarizes what else is known about Star Trek 4.

We received a lot of news about television renewals and cancellations this week. From a science fiction perspective, the biggest cancellation is of The Expanse. There is talk of trying to get another network to pick it up but Ars Technica discussed why this might be difficult, as well as why it had problems at Syfy. At least there are the novels to find out what happens next.

The one show which so far has been successful in finding a new home was Brooklyn Nine-Nine. After talk of it being picked up by Netflix of Hulu, NBC wound up taking it.

Fox has cancelled The Last Man On Earth, with talk of Hulu possibly picking it up. Otherwise we will never know what is going on with those people who were underground.

Lucifer was cancelled with a huge cliffhanger, causing Fox to once again frustrate genre fans.

Timeless received a reprieve after being cancelled last season and remains on the bubble. Eric Kripke says it could go either way.  NBC has renewed The Blacklist.

The other major bubble show is Agents of SHIELD with no word yet from ABC. (Update: SHIELD has been renewed for a thirteen episode season). It came as no surprise that ABC officially cancelled The Inhumans. It was pretty much assumed that it would not be returning.

The CW Network has renewed The 100 and iZombie. They also announced new series including reboots of Charmed and Roswell.

Syfy has released the above trailer for season 4 of 12 Monkeys, which returns June 15.  All eleven episodes will be shown over four week. Three episodes will air on each Friday for the first three weeks of the season. The two-part season finale will be on Friday, July 6.

The Bafta TV Awards were presented today. Winners include Peakey Blinders for Drama Series and The Handmaid’s Tale for International. The full list of winners can be found here.

As regular readings might guess from the scarcity of the usual comments on the week’s shows, I remain seriously behind following last weekend. Hopefully I can get caught up for some of the season finales coming up imminently.

SciFi Weekend: Timeless; Legion And Other Wednesday Genre Shows; Doctor Who; Renewal And Returning Show News; A Sci-Fi Explanation For Donald Trump; Oscar First Thoughts

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.

Vox has more on The Expanse.

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 has renewed Lucifer for a third season.

I gave up on Once Upon A Time a while back, and  from the ratings it looks like many others have too. The producers are talking about wrapping up the current narrative at the end of season six, and possibly rebooting the show in a different direction for a seventh season.

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.

Goliath has been renewed for a second season.

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.

SciFi Weekend: New and Returning Shows For 2016, And Other Genre News

There has been a reduced television schedule so far this year, (giving me time to watch the second seasons of Catastrophe, Mozart In the Jungle, and Tranparent), but many shows are starting or coming back soon. Blastr has a list of nine science fiction shows premiering in January. I have already discussed Legends of Tomorrow and the revival of  X-Files several times in the past. The trailer for Legends of Tomorrow,which premieres on CW on Januray 21 is above.  ScreenRant discussed Sara  Lance’s mental state on the new series with Caity Lotz.

As for the three shows I mentioned watching above, Catastrophe‘s second season was broadcast in the U.K. on Channel 4 late last year but is not availably yet on Amazon, while the second seasons of the other two shows recently became available. The first season of Catastrophe, which I ranked as the best new comedy of 2015, is available on Amazon.

Getting back to the science fiction shows premiering this month, I have heard some favorable buzz for The Shannara Chronicles which began on January 5 on MTV. Nerdist interviewed the executive producer, Miles Millar. Other shows on the list which have received the most interest so far have been The Magicians (with Syfy streaming the pilot early) and Colony (with initial reviews being better for the first). Initial buzz has been negative for Second Chance, and there are questions as to whether Lucifer can make it on a major network.

There will be many additional genre shows premiering later in the year, along with the return of other shows. What Culture has a list of original shows appearing on Netflix this year, including Daredevil, which returns on March 18 (trailer above).

Supergirl returned last week, resolving the cliff hanger of Cat figuring out her secret identity just as I predicted last Sunday.

Sherlock returned for a single episode,The Abominable Bride, on New Year’s day. Those of us expecting a self-contained story in Victorian times were surprised by what was actually done with the episode and how it actually played into last  season’s cliffhanger.

ABC has ordered a pilot for the Agents of SHIELD spinoff, Marvel’s Most Wanted. The series will center on Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Lance Hunter (Nick Blood).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXUx__qQGew

Among the shows I’m most interested in seeing, 11.22.63 premiers on Hulu on February 15, with new episodes being released weekly as opposed to all episodes being released at the same time as on Netflix and Amazon. (Trailer above.) There will be some changes from the Stephen King novel. More here and here, plus J.J. Abrams also addressed the controversy over the female lead in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (reviewed here) being left out of the Star Wars themed Monopoly game.

In my review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens I noted how the novelization has filled in some plot holes. Mashable has more from the novelization. In addition, the script has been released which also provides further explanation of some plot points.

"YHWH" -- Finch (Michael Emerson, left) and Root (Amy Acker, right) race to save The Machine, which has been located by the rival AI, Samaritan, while Reese is caught in the middle of the final showdown between rival crime bosses Elias and Dominic, on the fourth season finale of PERSON OF INTEREST, Tuesday, May 5 (10:01-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Photo: Giovanni Rufino/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. © 2015 WBEI. All rights reserved.

J.J. Abrams also says that Person of Interest will probably end after this season, which is no surprise considering how it is receiving a reduced thirteen episode run and has not made the schedule for this season yet. As long as it ends well this season, that is fine with me. The show gradually changed over time from primarily a procedural show to a true science fiction show, and it is better to have it end well as a great genre show as opposed to continuing indefinitely as a typical CBS procedural.

Like Person of Interest reinvented itself this year, Blacklist has also been considerably different from how it began. It was also off to an excellent start in this week’s episode. Unfortunately I don’t know  how much longer they can continue this storyline for.

The trailer above shows how the second season of Outlander will be much different from the first when it returns in April.

While not genre, another show of interest, Love, from Judd Apatow and staring Gillian Jacobs of Community will be released by Netflix on February 19.

HBO has renewed Girls for a sixth and final season. The fifth season begins on February 21.

Sundance has renewed Rectify for a fourth and final season.

Better Call Saul returns for its second season on February 15. Trailer above.

12 Monkeys will return on April 18 on Syfy.

Besides all the speculation as to the fate of Felicity, there have been rumors that Stephen Amell would leave Arrow, presumably ending the series, in the next year or two. Amell responded by saying his contract runs through 2019 (which doesn’t guarantee that CW will continue the show that long).

Laura Dern has been added to the cast of Showtime’s revival of Twin Peaks. While her role has not been announced, there have been rumors that she might play Special Agent Dale Cooper’s previously unseen secretary, Diane. The cast also includes Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Sherilyn Fenn,  Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Knepper, Balthazar Getty and Amanda Seyfried. The first three were from the original cast.

Coal Hill School

Class, the Doctor Who spinoff from BBC Three taking place at Coal Hill School, will also be available on BBC America sometime in 2016, but no date has been set yet.

Doctor Who has made the short list for the National Television Awards in the Drama category. It is up against Downton Abbey, Broadchurch, and a show I am not familiar with named Casualty. Humans is among the nominees for New Drama. Downton Abbey has completed its run in the U.K. (doing a good job of concluding the series) and has resumed in the United States.

BBC America is also working on a new television adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently series.

There is now hope that Parenthood will return in some form, with Jason Katims being inspired by the movie Boyhood to return to the lives of the major characters over time. (Review of the finale here). It is interesting that two of the shows which might return in such a manner both star Lauren Graham, with a revival of Gilmore Girls now being filmed. Katims made it sound unlikely that the rumored follow up of his other show, Friday Night Lights, will return.

Yahoo Screen has been discontinued, making it even less likely that Community will ever return.

Sylvester Stallone discussed running for office and Donald Trump with Variety.

Update: News came in overnight that David Bowie died of cancer. The New York Times reports:

David Bowie, the infinitely changeable, fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images and personas, died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday.

Mr. Bowie’s death was confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, on Monday morning.

He died after having cancer for 18 months, according to a statement on Mr. Bowie’s social-media accounts.

“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.

His last album, “Blackstar,” a collaboration with a jazz quartet that was typically enigmatic and exploratory, was released on Friday — his birthday. He was to be honored with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the Roots, Cyndi Lauper and the Mountain Goats.

Following is a video of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station in 2014:

SciFi Weekend: Finales Including Last Man on Earth & Gotham; Marvel and DC News; New Shows, Returning Shows, And Cancellations

Last Man On Earth Finale

The Last Man on Earth started out strong (my initial review here) but it was apparent in the early episodes that the story would have to evolve over time. The initial stories with just Will Forte (Phil), and even those with the edition of Kristen Schaal (Carol), could not go on for very long. Unfortunately the series got bogged down way too long with a variation on a simple sit-com scenario. Will married Carol as, even though they thought at the time that they were the only ones left alive on earth, Carol insisted upon marriage before she would have sex with Phil. Soon after the marriage January Jones turned up, followed by others. Several episodes were centered around Phil trying to have sex with January  Jones, or later additional women who appeared, despite his hasty marriage to Carol. Plus Phil repeatedly tried too hard to make himself look good, and various forms of deception were repeatedly exposed.

In the finale, things got progressively worse for Phil, who even lost his name as a newcomer was also named Phil Miller, leading to the original Phil being called by his middle name, Tandy. With all the lies he told all season, he couldn’t think of a cooler middle name? Tandy/Phil found that Carol was even having sex with the new Phil, explaining that she insisted upon marriage initially as the plan was to repopulate the earth, but she had no problems with casual sex with the new Phil. Of course casual sex is exactly what Phil wanted.Later Tandy/Phil was literally driven out of town after it was revealed that he contemplated driving the new Phil out of down and abandoning him. He had tried the same with an earlier arrival, but he couldn’t go through with it and turned around and brought him back. Tandy/Phil was left with two days worth of food, which could have lasted until he made it to the next city. Phil ate it all in twenty minutes, but Carol anticipated this and showed up with additional food. After Phil convinced her that he now actually cared for her, and even wrote a song for her, Carol decided she would rather stick with the guy who didn’t have the heart to go through with abandoning someone in the desert, as opposed to the man who actually did this. The show nearly ends with the two going off together, leaving it open as to whether they will go off somewhere else or ever return to Tuscon. As if this didn’t leave things open enough, at the end we saw Phil’s brother, an astronaut stranded in space played by Jason Sudekis. This left the question of whether he would return to earth, which is certainly possible on this show considering how fast and loose the show plays with science.Will Forte discussed the finale with Entertainment Weekly and the short answer is that he and the other writers don’t really know exactly where they plan to go with these scenarios:

Where on Earth are Phil and Carol headed? And what does this mean for all of those other characters that joined the show later in the season? Forte cautions that the plotting of season 2 is in the embryonic stages, though he notes, “I have one idea that would be a really fun first episode. It is fair to say that you haven’t seen the last of the old new gang, despite Phil’s banishment. “Obviously we’re not going to not show Mary Steenburgen or Cleopatra [Coleman] or Mel [Rodriguez] or January [Jones] or Boris,” he says. “They’re so important to the show. There’s a lot of room for play and it opens us up to having some time where the characters are once again in a very desolate situation. We really want to open up the world and look at the starting up of a society again with just a small group of people and basic rules…. Phil is not allowed on the cul-de-sac right now. It is entirely possible that Phil and Carol could be living somewhere else for the whole season, and we’re checking in on the different people. But I would think that they would somehow rendez-vous at some point earlier in the season.”

Is Phil truly going to try this time to make a relationship with Carol work? “Is this just a situation of you want what you can’t have, or is he truly in love with her?” Forte asks right back. “That’s how we go into season 2. They’re still totally different people and they have such different world views, we still think it’s going to be really fun to see how they act as a couple. Not in any way would I ever compare it to this, but an Archie-and-Edith type situation, or Sam and Diane—that’s what you shoot for, these two different people who just somehow are together.”

When did Carol decide to stay with Tandy? While you might be wondering if she had a change of heart before she left the cul-de-sac— as she told him in the desert, “I don’t want to be with a man who can leave someone in the desert to die; I want to be with the man who doesn’t have the heart to go through with it”— that was not her intention when driving out to meet him in the middle of nowhere, according to Forte.In our minds, Carol came out to the desert just to give him supplies,” he says. “She had no clue that she would be ending up with him and it just kind of hits her after the song. When he told her about the song, she didn’t believe him immediately. He’s told her a million things. We edited the show a million different ways, and it used to be edited in a way that you really didn’t believe that he had written a song, so we put a lot on that song. You can tell that Phil actually took the time to write this song and was feeling very real feelings toward Carol. [Click here to read more about the song, which was written by cast member Mary Steenburgen.] It’s an impulsive decision that she makes and Phil even says, ‘I think you’re making a really bad decision here.’ But she’s willing to take the chance and Phil really appreciates that.”

Forte said that what  happens with Will’s brother comes down to whether Jason Sudekis is available. He left it open as to whether there will be new characters and whether much is said about the virus which killed almost everyone:

Will we learn more in season 2 about the virus that wiped out almost every single person on the planet? The short answer: Possibly. The longer answer: ”We’ve purposely avoided the virus stuff because we didn’t think that it was important,” says Forte. “And it’s tricky to handle virus stuff and how real should it be. What happens if a real virus becomes a problem around the world? There were a lot of pitfalls. We’ve always had this general idea of the type of virus that it was. We’ve said that it’s a virus that is potent enough to sweep across the world in a matter of months but one that is slow moving enough that allows people to safely crawl into their beds and die very neatly in their own homes. (laughs)… At some point in the pilot, we showed a dead body. There was a lot of back and forth, and it was decided that we shouldn’t show the dead body. We’ve always wanted to address that, so I really do feel like there will come a point where we address the virus. Even if it’s just an indirect addressing. When we still were going to have flashbacks in the pilot, one of the ideas we had was just a regular dramatic scene between two people wearing surgical masks and everybody around them is wearing surgical masks. They don’t ever talk about the virus—it’s just happening. I would love to flesh out the virus with little scenelettes like that, although they would have to be in flashbacks, because obviously everyone who was not immune to the virus has died.”

GOTHAM: Bruce (David Mazouz) looks deeper into his fatherÕs past in the ÒAll Happy Families Are AlikeÓ episode of GOTHAM airing Monday, May 4 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2015 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Jessica Miglio/FOX

In other finales last week, Gotham appears to have gotten rid of some characters, most likely to open up room for more spectacular Batman-style villains. Fish Mooney appears to have drown, but there is talk that Jada Pinkett Smith might return. The big reveal at the end of the episode was a stairway which we know leads to the Batcave. Presumably next season we will learn what Bruce’s father did with it, and what  Bruce will do there as he is years away from becoming Batman.

Person of Interest ended with the situation looking bleak, but at least the Machine was saved for now. The Big Bang Theory ended with major changes for two couples. Arrow, The Flash, and Agents of SHIELD are heading towards big season finales next week, plus there are only two episodes left of Mad Men.

Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Joss Whedon and other producers on the tie-in between Agents of SHIELD and Avengers: Age of Ultron. The movie will also have an extended cut on Blu-Ray with an alternate ending.

Emily Van Kamp might have lost her job on Revenge, but she will be reprising her role as Agent 13 (Sharon Carter) in Captain America: Civil War. It actually sounds like most of the Marvel universe will be taking part. The movie will then set up the two part Avengers: Infinity War.

Jessica Jones

AKA Jessica Jones staring Krysten Ritter will be the next Marvel series on Netflix. A synopsis has been released:

Ever since her short-lived stint as a Super Hero ended in tragedy, Jessica Jones has been rebuilding her personal life and career as a hot-tempered, sardonic, badass private detective in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. Plagued by self-loathing, and a wicked case of PTSD, Jessica battles demons from within and without, using her extraordinary abilities as an unlikely champion for those in need… especially if they’re willing to cut her a check. In this new collectible volume, go behind the scenes into the world that brings the story of Jessica Jones to life. Packed with stunning production photography, as well as exclusive interviews, this deluxe companion reveals the details of the set and script of Marvel’s AKA Jessica Jones through the eyes of its makers.

There has been a lot of news this week on renewals and cancellations. I fear that the DC shows on CW and now CBS (which owns CW) might be growing exponentially. First there was Arrow. Then the number doubled with the addition of The Flash. Next year this will double again as  CBS has picked up Supergirl, and CW will have the Arrow/Flash spin-off, now named DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Will we have to find room for eight or sixteen shows the following year?

A synopsis has been released for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which will be premiering in January:

When heroes alone are not enough … the world needs legends. Having seen the future, one he will desperately try to prevent from happening, time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat — one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself. Can this ragtag team defeat an immortal threat unlike anything they have ever known?

I wonder if the time travel element will provide a way for Caity Lotz to return as the original Black Canary, or if she will play a different role. Incidentally time travel might be allowing for the return of a popular Doctor Who character who apparently died last season–Ingrid Oliver as Osgood.

The Marvel television universe is not growing as much as it originally appeared. Instead of the rumored spin-off of Agents of SHIELD, they will stick with this and Agent Carter will get a second season. I hope they do it the same way, putting Agent Carter in SHIELD‘s time slot temporarily, as opposed to adding yet another hour. Maybe CW will also begin to stagger their shows.

Constantine was canceled by NBC but there is speculation that it might be picked up elsewhere. The Mindy Project was also cancelled, with talk that it might be picked up by Hulu. Among other genre shows, Resurrection and Forever are both cancelled, and most likley neither will be resurrected and both are gone forever.

Fox has picked up some new genre shows including Minority Report and Lucifer.

Orphan Black and iZombie were  among the genre shows which recently received official renewals. Being busy this Sunday, I will hold of on discussing this week’s episode of Orphan Black until next week.

Grace and Frankie were released by Netflix on Friday. The handful of episodes I watched did look promising, and at this point I would rank it above Kimmy Schmidt, which received much more buzz. An incidental benefit of ent Carter, Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, Avengers, Batman, Big Bang Theory, Black Canary, Captain America, Constantine, Doctor Who, Frankie and Grace, Gotham, iZombie, Jessica Jones, Joss Whedon, Krysten Ritter, Legends of Tomorrow, Lucifer, Mad Men, Minority Report, Orphan Bla Grace and Frankie is that the major cast members have all been on Aaron Sorkin shows.