Having the characters of a science fiction show enter a time loop as on Groundhog Day has been a common trope on science fiction shows. Last week’s attempt at this on Legends of Tomorrow might not have been the best version, but it turned out to be a great homage to the sub-genre. Tala Ashe (Zari) did an excellent job of expressing her frustration of repeating the same events repeatedly.
In some ways this was most like the version seen earlier this year on Star Trek: Discovery. The overall scenario was quite different from Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, but they were similar in having one character realize they were in a time loop, and having their ship explode at the end of each cycle. On both shows, one person realized what was going on, but had a hard time convincing others.
On Discovery, Stamets beat the time loop by convincing Burnham that he was telling the truth by showing that he knew everything she was going to say, and subsequently others were brought in.
On Legends, Zari initially had no success convincing others she was telling the truth. I was actually thinking at one point that time loops are such a common science fiction trope that the obvious thing to do is to tell people that things were happening like on Groundhog Day. Moments later Zari came close to this in a conversation with Nate. Actually she explained the scenario and Nate recognized it as Groundhog Day. Having it explained like Groundhog day was enough for him to believe her, and he and suggested that she only had to tell him that to get him on board next time. She did botch by saying Hedgehog Day, but she ultimately got the message across.
Groundhog Day is hardly the only example of this. Subsequently Ray was brought in, except that he related the scenario to Cause and Effect, an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation. Other recent shows to use this trope have included the fourth episode of season three of Dark Matter, and the movie Edge of Tomorrow. While I did not watch the show, I also recently read that Xena: Warrior Princess had their own version entitled Been There, Done That. With this being such a common trope, it really should not be hard to explain what is going on if one encounters a science fiction fan while in a time loop.
The episode used the time loops partially for fun, and showing more about the characters. This included another rare occurrence of seeing Amy Pemberton give Gideon a human form. Other fun aspects including learning that Mick writes romance novels (and goes to great lengths to keep this secret). One time Nate suggested that Zari take a break and go though a cycle and just have fun, knowing she would have another chance to try to prevent the Waverider from exploding afterwards.
When Doctor Who returns next fall, major changes in how the show looks and feels are inevitable, between a new show runner (Chris Chibnall) and the first female Doctor (played by Jodie Whittaker). The show will also have a new logo, pictured above. A BBC America press release states that, “all official Doctor Who merchandise featuring the new logo will be available at selected retailers from February 20th, 2018.”
There will also will might be significant changes to the sound of Doctor Who. Murray Gold, who has been composing the music for Doctor Who since its return in 2005, is leaving.
Another rumored change might be moving the show from Saturday to Sunday. I hope this is the case as I regularly download Doctor Who as soon as possible after airing in the UK, except for when it conflicts with college football–as it inevitably will when moved back to the fall.
There are also rumors that an episode next season will deal with Rosa Parks.
Now that old television shows are easy to watch I suspect that there is far less interest in novelizations of episodes, but if people are still interested, Russel T. Davies and Steven Moffat are writing novelizations of some of the episodes they wrote.
For those interested in podcasts about both science fiction and Doctor Who, I recently discovered one worth subscribing to. Imaginary Worlds deals with a wide range of science fiction topics, and is currently running a series on Doctor Who. The first episodes was on the Doctor, the second was on the companions, and the third is on the Daleks, with briefer mention of other villains. The stories have a feel sort of as if This American Life was covering Doctor Who. The coverage includes both the original run and the new series. The podcasts would be great for someone new to the show to get a feel for its background, but long time viewers are also likely to find it interesting.
Another time travel show, Timeless, returns March 11. This was a rare case of a show being cancelled, and then the network reversing the decision and renewing it. Any chance someone went back in time to change the future for the show?
As Timeless ended on a big cliffhanger, which I looked at here, I am happy that it will be returning.
Following is the official synopsis of the season from NBC:
From Eric Kripke (“Revolution,” “Supernatural”) and Shawn Ryan (“The Shield”), season two of this thrilling action-adventure series will pick up right where we left off with our heroes. We continue to race throughout history with our beloved team: Rufus (Malcolm Barrett), a scientist; Wyatt (Matt Lanter), a soldier; and Lucy (Abigail Spencer), a history professor, in an attempt to prevent the destruction of our world as we all know it. This season they’ll find an unlikely ally in their quest to ruin Rittenhouse, a deadly organization with plans to change history and reshape reality — even though Lucy’s family has been a part of Rittenhouse for centuries. Still making every effort not to affect the past themselves, they will visit 1692, 1917, 1941, 1981 and more. We’ll be introduced to the likes of Marie Curie, Hedy Lamarr, William Randolph Hearst and a multitude of other influential people throughout history.
This season has become a huge season for time travel, and this is reflected in most of the items today. One time travel series,Legends of Tomorrow has been rebooted, and the second episode was much more fun with the addition of The Justice Society of America. I had an introduction to its members last week. Marc Guggenheim discussed the meeting between the Legends and Justice Society in the video above.
Another aspect of the episode was the elevation of Sara Lance to the leader of the group, at least while Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) is missing. Marc Guggenheim spoke with Entertainment Weekly about how she handles her new role, along with some teasers about Rip:
“As you start to see her become more and more comfortable in being the leader of this rag-tag group, it’s so much fun to watch her,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. “The character’s embodying the role of a leader, Caity’s performance really embraces it. It turns out to be one of the most successful things we’ve done in season 2.” However, the next mission under her command won’t necessarily be to hunt down Rip Hunter. “That’s going to be something that’s always going on in the background, and in some cases the foreground, of the various episodes,” Guggenheim says. “To a certain extent, we don’t want to change the mission statement from fixing aberrations to going and saving Rip. The bat has been taken out of their hands because there’s no way to find Rip, so what would they do? You will find out [what happened to Rip] before the Legends do.”
The Flash began the season with Flashpoint based upon ramifications of Barry going back in time to save his mother. Todd Helbing, executive producer of The Flash, explained why Flashpoint was only in one episode when it was a much bigger story in the comics:
“I think anytime you do a story like Flashpoint, something as iconic as that, with the character restrictions that we had, it’s going ot be different than everybody expected,” executive producer Todd Helbing told ComicBook.com. “I think for us from a story point, when we talked about it originally it was going to be more episodes but what happens more often than not is that when you break the story you find that it would be a lot better and a lot more satisfying if you pulled up a lot of that information and put it in that first episode….It just became a much stronger episode if we just made it one as opposed to four or five, and then we could really kickstart the rest of the season after that. But Flashpoint or not, there are consequences going forward for Barry for what he did and those ripples he’s going to explore throughout the third season.”
The first cross over of the season was having Oliver Queen appear on the season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow, but a much bigger cross over is coming up. Marc Guggenheim has more information. The villain will be aliens called The Dominators. As for how Supergirl gets involved in events in our universe:
“Last year, Supergirl established that Flash was able to make his way to what I call Earth-CBS, and it stands to reason that, with the proper breach technology, the reverse can happen,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim told reporters Tuesday following a screening of this week’s Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow.
In the crossover, the heroes will team up to fight against the Dominators, who in the comics were a technologically advanced alien race that wanted to invade Earth and eliminate the threat posed by unpredictable metahumans — and they have similar motivations during the crossover. “Once the heroes realize that they’re up against aliens, they decide that they need an alien on their side,” Guggenheim says. “Fortunately, Barry knows a really nice one. I don’t think it’s a big shock that between Barry and Cisco, and all their experiences with Earth-2 and the multi-verse, that they can pluck her from Earth-CBS.”
Guggenheim also revealed that the crossover will actually kick off at the end of an episode of Supergirl, where Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Barry (Grant Gustin) basically enlist Kara’s help. “Some people call it a four-way crossover because it involves four shows; my ulcer requires me to call it a three-part crossover,” Guggenheim explains. “The story that’s being told has a beginning, middle, and end: a beginning in Flash, a middle in Arrow, and an end in Legends. But Supergirl is very much a part of the whole thing, so we are crossing over four shows — four shows in three parts.”
Agents of SHIELD this year has combined the supernatural, the Inhumans, artificial intelligence, and the public reemergence if SHIELD. It looks like it would be helpful to be up to date on the comics to keep straight how this all fits together, especially with Doctor Strange to be released soon. Screen Rant explained how The Darkhold/Book of Sins fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
When Cumberbatch was asked how he saw Doctor Strange fitting into the largest Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor strayed away from talking specifics to avoid any undue spoilers. However, he did say the sorcerer would be “all over the place.”
“There’s a lot going on this story [Doctor Strange] that will lead you to understand why he’ll play a key role in the next phase,” Cumberbatch explained.
The actor also talked about how he felt now playing Doctor Strange. Cumberbatch said, “Obviously, you want to bring the character to life and tell this really incredible story.”
He continued and stressed that the character’s story is only started in Doctor Strange. “It’s only be the end of the film that you go, ‘Oh my god, this is the beginning.’ It’s an origin story of a superhero that’s going to be part of all of [the MCU].”
12 Monkeys was one of the top time travel shows of the past two seasons, and will add a real veteran of the time travel genre for its third season. Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd will play the Pallid Man’s father. Showrunner Terry Matalas has more information on the upcoming season in an interview with Blastr:
What can you tell us about how Season 3 is coming along? Logistically how’s it going (as far as shooting, etc.), and creatively what are some things you’re looking to explore?
Matalas: We’ve just started production – right now, I’m surrounded by a small army of incredible cast and crew – but creatively, conceptually, thematically the season’s all there. Last season we really wanted to explore the biology — the psychology – of Time. We wanted to tell a big, ambitious, sprawling time-travel story that ended with a very intimate, heart-wrenching reveal. This season, it’s about going inward.
The stakes are deeply, deeply personal for Cassie and Cole. It’s really the a real time travel dilemma, the fundamental question: “If you knew that your child would one day grow to be the Devil, would you – could you – kill him?” Or is there another way? And what that struggle does to our characters as a team – to Cole and Cassie as a couple – how it divides and unites them – is going to make for some remarkable drama. In some ways it’s a more linear season, and in others, it’s more complex than ever.
What can you tell us about the opportunity to land Lloyd for this new role? Why is he the man for the job?
Matalas: The fantastic thing about this character is that it’s not even remotely stunt casting. Certainly, when you make a time-travel show, you carry an obvious list of influences – Back to the Future, Doc Brown, Marty McFly – but when you cast that show, you never want the actor to distract from the moment. It’s difficult to tell a story or create an emotion if you’re constantly winking at the audience. We aim for levity, sure, but we never put the bullseye on “meta.”
So when we came to this particular character – with this particular set of traits – with this particular heritage – Christopher Lloyd was not only an inspired choice, he was the right choice. Put a photo of Lloyd against a picture of Tom Noonan and there’s zero difficulty imagining them as father and son.
I finally had a chance to check out one of the new time travel series, Timeless, over the weekend. It is certainly not hard science fiction, but it was fun. After watching the first, I did want to immediately watch the other two episodes available. The explanation of how they travel through time was probably under a minute, mainly showing them folding over a sheet of paper as an illustration of how they move from one point to another. They showed by the end of the first episode that events in the past can be changed, and that this can and will impact events in the present. A small ship, which is no bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, holds a three person crew. They quickly dispensed with the idea of going back a few minutes earlier if their first attempt at fixing events in the past didn’t work with ominous warnings of severe consequences if they run into themselves. No mention if a different set of time travelers could go back if they don’t get it right the first time. So far the people in charge haven’t minded the minor changes (from their perspective) from the trips back in time.
Producers Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Revolution) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield),discussed the rules of time travel and other aspects of the show with (including a spoiler for those who have not seen the pilot) with Film:
Is there a butterfly effect every time they go back? Maybe not as drastic as in the pilot, but just being there changes things.
Ryan: Hopefully a lot of times our heroes will be successful and there won’t be any discernible effect. Sometimes there will be. One of our rules is whenever we can, if there’s a change, can it be specific and personal? The best example of that is the pilot when Lucy’s sister vanishes from the timeline. But we also can use it for comedic effect. I won’t give away too much but I think there’s a change in history after the German WWII episode that tickles my funny bone a lot.
We talk a lot about what the changes are going to be. The thing you have to remember is the only people that are truly aware of these changes are the three people that have this institutional knowledge that go away and then come back and find things are different. For everyone living in that world, that’s just the way the world is. For all we know, we know the world the way we know it but somebody could come right now and say, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, guys.” For the audience, our heroes’ job is to preserve a recognizable reality. Things aren’t going to get too crazy and too weird if our heroes do their job. That said, there are going to be times where they can’t control everything and Flynn’s going to do some damage. They’ll come back and something will be different. But the goal is for our heroes to make sure the world stays recognizable.
You don’t have to go that far back to find time periods that aren’t good for black people or women. Is it different in every time they go back to? 100 years and it’s before women’s suffrage, further and it’s still during slavery.
Kripke: Yeah, we are not going to shy away from the reality of what it was like to be African-American or a woman in those time periods. It’s the truth of who these characters are and we don’t want to stylize it or sugarcoat it. One of the goals of the show is to present history as accurately as we can. That said, an incredible amount of history is from the perspective of rich white dudes. There were entire communities of African-Americans throughout all of history. There’s going to be certain doors that our two white characters cannot go through and Rufus can. We’re interested in illuminating some corners and stories in history that haven’t been told, some peoples’ history. Same for women before the suffragette movement and they had incredible challenges but they also had an incredibly sophisticated world of interpersonal relations that in a lot of ways wasn’t recorded by mainstream history. There’s aspects and corners of that world that we can explore too. So I don’t think it’s going to be a one-trick pony of every episode, Rufus confronts racism and Lucy confronts male chauvinism. I think the tapestry is a lot more complicated than that and we have every intention of depicting that.
The Doctor Who spin-off Class premiered on BBC 3 yesterday and will be on BBC America this spring. Peter Capaldi appeared in the first episode. Screen Rant has a spoiler free review of the premiere. They have more on the show, with mild spoilers, here. Plus here are seven reasons to watch Class.
We still have a long wait for the main show. Cultbox summarizes everything we know so far about the upcoming season of Doctor Who with quite an extensive list of links.
Nerdophiles has news from the New York Comic Con on the second season of The Man In The High Castle.
Star Trek Beyond is the third installment since J.J. Abrams took over Star Trek. Like the first two movies, it is fun to watch, and in this one there is more of an effort (only partially successful) to make this movie actually be Star Trek. There will be some spoilers here, but not to the point of giving away anything which isn’t becoming obvious in the first half of the movie.
The movie has a lot of action, but also makes an effort to get a feel for the characters early in the movie. The Enterprise is now on the third year of its mission in deep space which began at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness. This work mean that, although James Kirk took over the Enterprise at an earlier point in his life, that they have been in deep space for approximately as long as the crew on the original show. (The original series ended in its third season, but they had already been on their five year mission for some time when the show began). In this universe, we also know that they have encountered Tribbles and Khan earlier.
Whatever they have experienced, Kirk now feels that “things have started to feel episodic” and is contemplating a desk job. It should be no spoiler to say that he doesn’t go through with it. There was a reference to the original when he complained that his shirt got torn on an away mission. There was also time for Kirk and the rest of the crew to take break when they traveled to a space station. Again, it should be no spoiler that something happened there which pulled the Enterprise into an adventure.
Before going off to fight another villain, and meet another memorable character, Spock also had to deal with both romantic problems with Uhura and learning of the death of Ambassador Spock, his future self from the origianl Star Trek universe. That is obviously an homage to the death of Leonard Nimoy. The ending of the movie also had a tribute to the death of Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov. While a fourth movie has already been approved, a decision has been made to not replace Yelchin. Chris Hemsworth will reprise his role as Kirk’s father in the fourth movie, despite having died in the first movie. No word whether that will involve time travel, a revelation that he somehow survived, or some other means.
Spock contemplated leaving Star Fleet to continue Ambassador Spock’s work and his people following the destruction of Vulcan. This provided no more drama than Kirk contemplating taking a desk job. While at this star base we also learned that a ship even bigger and more powerful than the Enterprise was being built. Do I need to label it a spoiler to say that this guaranteed the repeat of what didn’t occur to the Enterprise in the prime universe until its third movie?
While no longer directed by J.J. Abrams, his influence was seen. I have some of the same nit picks as I did with Star Trek Into Darkness. Everything must be bigger, including getting yet a bigger and better version of the Enterprise and the incredible size of the space station out in deep space (which seemed partially modeled on Epcot). Once again, distance did not seem to matter. The Enterprise has gone where no one has gone before, but is not far from a station of this magnitude, and right around the corner from an almost unexplored nebula.
The most important thing about the Star Trek movies is that they have kept Star Trek around in some form. Star Trek has always worked better as a television show than movie series, and it will return to television early in 2017. Bryan Fuller announced at Comic Con that the next series will be named Star Trek Discovery, (referred to as DSC rather than the initials STD). The series will premiere on CBS television but subsequently be shown on CBS All Access, a paid streaming service. Episodes will also be available internationally on Netflix within twenty-hours making me wonder if it will be accessible in the US if using a VPN. With such limited availability, I bet it will also be heavily pirated.
Star Trek Discovery will tell a single story in thirteen chapters, with episodes released weekly. The series will take place in the prime timeline, but it has not been announced when. There has been speculation that the registry number of NCC-1031 for the Starship Discovery suggests it could take place before the original show, but that is far from definitive.
The above trailer for Sherlock season 4 was presented at San Diego Comic Con.
That naturally leads to recent news related to that other show run by Steven Moffat. Moffat predicts that Peter Capaldi will be remaining with the show after he leaves as show runner in 2017.
Karen Gillan has been cast as the female lead in All Creatures Here Below, an indie drama written by and starring David Dastmalchian. (I just thought of Amy Pond earlier today when I was walking by a house with a small angel on its lawn. I did not blink).
Jenna Coleman will be playing Queen Victoria for ITV. She has not ruled out returning to Doctor Who some day, but told Collider she will probably not return “for a good while” if she ever does.
Adrianne Palacki has been cast in Seth MacFarlane’s upcoming show for Fox:
Set 300 years in the future, the untitled show — MacFarlane’s first live-action TV series — follows the adventures of the Orville, a not-so-top-of-the-line exploratory ship in Earth’s interstellar fleet. Facing cosmic challenges from without and within, this motley crew of space explorers will boldly go where no comedic drama has gone before.
MacFarlane plays Ed, captain of Orville. Palicki plays Kelly Grayson, Ed’s ex-wife and the newly appointed First Officer of the Orville. Grimes plays Gordon, Ed’s best friend whom he hires to pilot the Orville.
This should answer the question as to whether Palacki will return to Agents of SHIELD after ABC decided against picking up the proposed spin-0ff which she was to star in. While she was written out of SHIELD, the manner in which it was done did not make it too difficult to have her return.
The Last Ship has been renewed by TNT for a fourth season. It has taken a different approach for the third season, reminding me of previous post-apocalyptic shows such as Jericho and Revolution. It is like rebuilding society in Revolution, with a recent plague being far more plausible than the loss of electricity on Revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTnU5MG5Edw
There is no question I will be binging on Gilmore Girls Thanksgiving weekend until I hear the four final words which Amy Sherman-Palladino has always planned to end the series with. She had hoped to have the show released in individual episodes to avoid spoiling the ending, but Netflix insisted on releasing all four episodes on November 25. I can’t think of any better place than Stars Hollow to spend Thanksgiving weekend. Trailer above. John Oliver did respond to Lorelei’s question while appearing on Stephen Colbert’s show:
Then on Christmas we can get more of Sense8 as opposed to watching it for the eighth time. ONTD has these items from the J. Michael Straczynsk’s panel at Comic Con:
– He confirms they’re filming in more cities because the Sense8 will be meeting more Sensates and some of them might be evil.
– There’s a lot more action than in Season 1.
– They’re gonna dig a lot deeper into the company searching for Sensates.
– Kala/Wolfgang storyline evolves a lot from S1.
– He confirms Sun gets out of jail ‘but not in the way you’d expect’.
– They’re working more like a group and having more scenes together.
– Netflix revealed that most Netflix shows are re-watched once at most. Sense8’s rewatchability index is off the charts. People rewatch Sense8 up to 7 times in average (end to end).
– Season2 is more ‘hopeful’ about LGTB people, privacy and relationships
– Riley’s gonna be the one leading the agenda to meet more sensates and she uses her DJ concerts to do so.
– Christmas movie airs on Christmas Day and the rest of the season shortly after in 2017.
Agents of SHIELD has come a long way from the first season. While they always hinted there was something special about Skye, they didn’t have the payoff on this plotline until the midseason finale with her conversion to an Inhuman. This might have major ramifications for her relationship with Coulson:
Executive producer Jeph Loeb says that the current Inhumans plotline has always been the plan for “Agents of SHIELD.” Like they always knew that Grant Ward was going to be HYDRA in Season 1, the seeds of Skye being something other were planned in the pilot.
“Once we started down that road hopefully you were coming along for the adventure, and now that you’ve come along for the adventure one of the things that’s so amazing about what’s happening on that show is so now we know she has gone through a transformation,” he says. “How is everyone going to react to that? And in the same kind of way you’re asking as an audience member, one of the things that I think is really valuable and one of the things that I think Jed [Whedon] and Maurissa [Tancharoen] and Jeff Bell and the writing staff really do have a great feeling for is they are audience members. The writers room sits around and tries to come up with, ‘What is it that you think we’re going to do and how can we then turn that on its ear in a way that makes it feel like it’s fun and valuable?'”
Blood says “SHIELD” has often gone in a different ways from what he expected. He says the latest script he read “just turned another corner,” and that audiences will “be surprised of a lot of stuff that’s coming up.” Because the SHIELD team doesn’t know about the term “Inhumans” like audiences do, Blood says “it’s going to be something that is unraveled.” He has yet to find out where the storyline is going.
The obvious turn would be that Coulson helps Skye — someone Gregg says is the “the person he cares about most” — through her transformation into an Inhuman. But what if he views her as a threat instead of an ally because of her new powers?
“His no. 1 job is to be responsible for SHIELD, which he views as being responsible for the safety of billions of people from things they don’t know about. That’s what SHIELD is. No matter how much he loves Skye — and it’s as much as you can love somebody — it’s the closest thing to a daughter he has. That’s a sacred trust,” Gregg says. “I hope he doesn’t get put in that situation [where she is a threat] because it would mess him up.”
He teases there will be trouble within SHIELD in the aftermath of Trip’s death and Skye’s transformation. “I don’t think the whole team is going to be unified behind what just went on, and it’s hard to blame them. He’s got a couple of people that he’s come to really trust,” Gregg says. “One of my favorite things about this season is that everybody comes up to me on the street really worried about Fitz and these new characters we introduced this year. Coulson also has these new people … he doesn’t have the same type of history with those people. It’s going to be hard to hold the baby brand new, on the run SHIELD together in the wake of what just happened.”
There’s also the question of Bobbi’s secret, which Blood says is as big a mystery in the second half of Season 2 as who the man with no eyes is. “I honestly think people are going to freak when they see some of the stuff we’ve been filming recently,” he says.
The 100 returned last week and the events of the fall finale continued to have a major impact on the characters. While I originally did not watch this show, thinking it was another CW show putting attractive young people in a sci-fi scenario which has been done before, I found that this was far better done than I anticipated.
Yes, it does have its attractive young cast members, led by Eliza Taylor as Clarke Griffin, who does an excellent job in the role. (Having binged on the first one and one-half seasons over a weekend, I did notice that Eliza Taylor does show less cleavage in the second season, which must have been a conscious decision by the producers considering that the characters couldn’t just run out to clothing stores in this post-apocalyptic world to change their wardrobe). There are also the CW love triangles, but they do not distract from the stories. Both the characterization and plot lines have been strong, even when going where other shows have gone before. Bustle and The Mary Sue both have posts on why you should watch the show.
CBS has chosen Melissa Benoist to play the lead role on Supergirl. Previous reports on the show have described it as more of a CBS procedural with Supergirl as a feminist investigating crimes, but with cross overs possible with the CW shows Arrow and The Flash.
CBS is showing success with another mixture between procedural and genre with Person of Interest. The show started out as a procedural show with a science fiction gimmick to propel it, and has evolved to what might be seen in the future as “a modern sci-fi epic that is considered a must-see show along the lines of Firefly or Battlestar Galactica…”
Many blogs and podcasts, along with this thread on Reddit, have looked at the question of how someone could get caught up with the show without watching all the old episodes. The purely procedural episodes of the first two seasons are mostly unnecessary to appreciate the more recent episodes since the show evolved into a more significant science fiction series, but it is hard to say exactly what can be skipped and must be watched as often early episodes would have a few minute segment towards the end to slowly develop the mythology in addition to the number of the week story.
There have been some posts, such as here and here, which might help in listing some of the more essential episodes. It would really be helpful if some of the other mythology segments which are only small parts of other episodes could be accumulated in a video.
Time looked at the politics of Parks and Recreation, which is concluding its run on NBC.
But there’s a big idea in Parks’ small-scale vision. In the frame of today’s politics, it might be a liberal notion, but it’s one that for much of the 20th century was centrist, and even championed by Republicans like park lover Teddy Roosevelt: that we need government to do things the private sector can’t or won’t, like preserving public spaces.
Shockingly, Parks has dared to suggest that while some civil servants might be bumbling–sorry, Jerry!–they can also be well-intentioned and competent. (This too wasn’t considered a liberal notion before the era when Ronald Reagan joked that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”) Leslie is comically tenacious–Poehler plays her as a cheerfully overprepared super-wonk–but she’s good at what she does and is driven by a fierce love for her hometown as well as its famous waffles…
Leslie can’t do it alone, though: she’s assisted by a network of co-workers and friends (played by a comedy-powerhouse cast, many of whom–like Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza and Aziz Ansari–have deservingly become stars). Even her former supervisor Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) admires Leslie’s commitment, even though he’s so libertarian, he once illustrated the evils of taxation to a fourth grader by eating 40% of her lunch. Parks argues not only that we need our neighbors’ help but that helping makes us better ourselves; it’s in the small-town, populist tradition of Friday Night Lights and It’s a Wonderful Life.
When I recently posted my list of top television shows of the year, I noted how little representation the major broadcast networks had on the list. Perhaps the biggest decline is being seen at NBC. They will soon be without two of their highest quality returning shows. Besides trying to run through Parks and Recreation as quickly as possible, Parenthood concludes this week, apparently with Lorelei Gilmore marrying Ray Romano. If it ends with Zeke dying, I’m imaging angry mobs storming Rockefeller Center. After these are gone they will still have some shows worth watching, most notably Hannibal, which I’m amazed a network is broadcasting, but the lineup of quality shows will sure be thin. Their announcements of upcoming shows is being greeted with far more snark than interest.
In the past NBC would often be the home of some of the highest quality drama shows on television, such as The West Wing, Friday Night Lights, I’ll Fly Away, and St. Elsewhere. They probably had better ratings success with some, but not all of their sitcoms, which included shows such as Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Community, 30 Rock, and Will and Grace. Going further back, it was also the home of some classic genre shows such as the original Star Trek and The Man From UNCLE. (We won’t talk about some of their more recent attempts at genre such as Revolution,The Cape and Heroes after the first season.)
So, what happened to NBC? I suspect that that it is a victim of otherwise good changes in television. Writers and producers for many high quality shows are now going to cable and streaming networks, where they can develop an audience without the need for netw0rk-level ratings. (In the case of Community, it is moving directly from NBC following cancellation by NBC, with the first two episodes to be streamed by Yahoo! on March 17.) It will be a challenge for NBC to attract this type of quality show in the future, and it is questionable as to whether they even care considering that lower quality shows will probably deliver higher ratings.
Increasingly cable or smaller networks owned by the major networks are offering higher quality shows than the major networks. FX and FXX are offering some of the best shows on basic cable. CBS has Showtime and CW, with The CW Network turning into one of the strongest networks, especially for genre, as it attracts a totally different audience than CBS. NBC/Universal have even lagged behind other cable networks which have produced better science fiction than its Syfy Network.
Syfy is finally trying to compete with hard science fiction. 12 Monkeys remains promising after the second episode, which aired Friday and was available for streaming last week. With Leland Goines dead, his daughter Jennifer becomes a major character. Her character in an insane asylum serves as an alternate version of the Brad Pitt character in the movie. As discussed previously, the television show can cover far more ground with changes such as having the ability to change time and with the Army of the 12 Monkeys playing a more significant role.
I saw a posted link here which supposedly allows streaming of the third episode for cable subscribers in the United States but it would not allow viewing through either my Charter or Xfinity account. I’m posting the link in case it works for other cable systems, or if it becomes active later. The first two episodes are available for streaming there.
Netflix has released a brief synopsis for their upcoming Marvel shows. While previous reports suggested that we might have to wait a year between shows, it looks like the Jessica Jones show (staring Krysten Ritter) will be out sometime later this year.
Daredevil
“Marvel’s Daredevil” is a live action series that follows the journey of attorney Matt Murdock, who in a tragic accident was blinded as a boy but imbued with extraordinary senses. Murdock sets up practice in his old neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, New York where he now fights against injustice as a respected lawyer by day and masked vigilante at night. Coming April 10
A.K.A. Jessica Jones
Working as a private investigator in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, a troubled ex-superhero’s past comes back to haunt her in the live-action series, “Marvel’s A.K.A. Jessica Jones.” Coming 2015
Iron Fist
“Marvel’s Iron Fist” follows superhero and martial arts master Danny Rand in the upcoming live-action series. Coming soon
Luke Cage
In this Marvel live-action series, a street-fighting ex-con battles crime in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen as the superhero Luke Cage. Coming soon
The Defenders
“Marvel’s The Defenders” brings together Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage in an epic superhero team-up in New York City. Coming soon
Melissa Raunch of The Big Bang Theory has received a lot of attention at Sundance for her raunchy sex scene in The Bronze.
“The Bronze” kicked off the 2015 edition of the Sundance Film Festival on a foul-mouthed note Thursday, sticking a dagger through the concept of hometown heroes and providing one of the raunchiest sex sequences in movie history.
The scene in question, one that involves pole vaults, cartwheels and pirouettes, was a constant source of amusement during a question and answer period immediately following the film’s premiere at the Eccles Theater.
“Right after this there’s going to be an audition for the sex scene in the sequel,” joked director Bryan Buckley.
Melissa Rauch, the star of the film and its cowriter along with husband Winston Rauch, said, “As for the sex scene, you write what you know.”
Her husband added that it gave the couple a chance to “show you what we do in our bedroom.”
With In The Forest of the Night, I feel that Doctor Who has gone overboard with preposterous solutions to problems this season. We had the golden arrow in Robot of Sherwood and then the mass of the moon growing because the moon is an egg in Kill The Moon. At least Robot of Sherwood was more a comedy, so I didn’t mind the ending as much. Kill The Moon did at least address the question of what would happen after the egg hatched, when they knew the moon still existed. In The Forest of the Night made bad science was made even worse with such a weak attempt to explain away what happened.
Once we found out that a solar flare was threatening to destroy earth it became predictable that the trees were acting to save us, not attack humans. Although the Doctor also figured this out, are we to really believe that government agencies working on attempts to clear out paths through the trees would stop based upon a child’s text message? We got an indication of how unlikely this was earlier in the episode when we learned how a child was ignored, and medicated, rather than be listened to.
It is implausible enough that the trees could quickly cover the earth, including the oceans based upon the pictures shown of the entire planet. It also implausible that the trees would be impervious to fire, and would be able to save the earth from the solar flare. However if this is possible, any chance that they removed the excess carbon dioxide from the planet and reversed global warming?
The worst aspect of all of this was to have something so major, which clearly everyone would remember and be talking about for a long time, be dismissed as something which humans will quickly forget about. If Torchwood was still around, perhaps they could have been called to Retcon the planet.
The episode did touch on other themes, and was actually enjoyable to watch despite being so implausible. There was self-mocking by the Doctor (“I am Doctor Idiot”) and sort of an acknowledgment that the Doctor solves far too many problems with his sonic screwdriver (“Not everything can be fixed with a screwdriver. It’s not a magic wand.”). Peter Capaldi had a good line when he first ran into a young girl looking for him: “Do you have an appointment? You need an appointment to see the Doctor.” There was also more on Clara’s relationship with Danny and the Doctor, and the Doctor’s relationship with the planet earth. Plus there was another appearance from Missy, who plays a major role in the two part season finale starting next week (with a Christmas episode to also follow). The synopsis for the finale, Death in Heaven, written by Steven Moffat:
With Cybermen on the streets of London, old friends unite against old enemies and the Doctor takes to the air in a startling new role. Can the mighty UNIT contain Missy? As the Doctor faces his greatest challenge, sacrifices must be made before the day is won.
The Doctor Who Extra is above.
Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Lex Luthor in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, might also play the same villain in the Suicide Squad movie.
The Marvel television and movie universe has already had appearances by Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother. Now another cast member (even if rarely seen) joins the cast of Agent Carter. Lyndsy Fonseca, who played Ted Mosby’s daughter, will play Angie Martinelli, an aspiring actress who befriends Peggy (Hayley Atwell)
The TV Addict interviewed Neil Marshall, who has directed for Game of Thrones, and now directs Constantine, which premiered on Friday night.
Aaron Paul has responded to the decision of Toys R Us to not carry Breaking Bad toys.
Wait, so @ToysRUs pulled all of the Breaking Bad figures from their shelves and still sells Barbie? Hmmmm…I wonder what is more damaging?
We finally have an air date for second season of The Fall, an excellent mystery staring Gillian Anderson. It will air on an Irish television channel starting on November 9 and on BBC2 at approximately that time. Netflix released the entire first season on in the United States when it started to air internationally, and hopefully this will be the case with the second season.
Revolution creator Eric Kripke is still talking about continuing the story in some form and has discussed what he had planned for season three before it was canceled:
While he ruled out the show’s return to television, Kripke provided some insight into what a Revolution Season 3 would have looked like, “It was going to be great. It was gonna be this kind of treasure story where they were going to hear a legend of a very mythic treasure. It wasn’t gonna be gold, it was gonna be supplies.”
“It was gonna be this incredible stockpile of supplies. All the good guys and all the bad guys in the show were going to fight for this gold mine of material and supplies. It was going to be fun. It wasn’t going to be a war season. It was going to be a treasure hunt season, which would have fun and mixed up the show in a really interesting way. But, alas…”
Reading this does not have me very interested in seeing the story continue and still has me thinking that NBC was right in canceling the show.
Person of Interest had another episode dealing with Samaritan and artificial intelligence last week, showing Samaritan get involved in politics. I hope we see more of this.
Now that the Black Canary has been killed in the season premier of Arrow, everyone is convinced that Laurel will take on the role as in the comics. Katie Cassidy even discussed this:
“It’s so sad when somebody leaves,” Cassidy told reporters on the “Arrow” set in Vancouver last week. “Caity and I were really close, and she is a great actress, and we loved having her. It’s always sad when somebody leaves, but exactly like Colin Donnell, it’s like he took one for the team, because something drastic needed to happen, and he is an amazing an actor as well. It’s always tough when you lose an actor, but she seemed to be very supportive, and yes, of course I was excited to continue to see what was going to develop for Laurel and her journey, and hopefully one day becoming the Black Canary.”
The Flash, along with Jane the Virgin, have received full season orders from CW. Last week’s episode of The Flash, Things You Can’t Outrun, included flashbacks to the night of the particle accelerator launch, ending with a scene clearly showing that Harrison Wells knew what would happen to Barry Allen to turn him into The Flash. When he started the accelerator he said, “I feel like I’ve waiting for this day for centuries.” He clearly has knowledge of the future. Is he also a time traveler, and how long has he really been around for?
Time travel is clearly going to play a role in this series. I heard one reviewer (sorry, I don’t recall which), state that in the flash backs to the night of Barry’s mother’s death there are both yellow and red streaks present, speculating that the red streak was The Flash. It certainly is possible that Barry Allen at some point goes back in time to try to save his mother. I would go on from there to speculate that a rescue form his future self could be how young Barry suddenly appeared far from the murder scene.
There is a lot of speculation about where the series is going from those who have been following the comics. For example, Giant Freakin Robot speculates on another time traveling super hero who might wind up on the show.
Peter Capaldi’s second episode of Doctor Who was much better than the first. Into the Dalek was literally about going into a Dalek, Fantastic Voyage style. Once the reference was made, and we saw antibodies within the Dalek (for an unclear reason), I was surprised that Steven Moffat didn’t take the opportunity to recreate the attack of antibodies on Rachel Welch’s body with Jenna Coleman. Despite the Doctor’s strange criticism of Clara’s body at one point in the episode, Clara did serve an important role as the Doctor’s moral compass, which was disrupted by the shock of seeing a good Dalek. The episode also served as the introduction of the next companion, and romantic interest for Clara, Danny Pink. There is no doubt that Clara and Danny will overcome the Doctor’s newfound objection to having a soldier join him, which certainly contradicts all the time he spent with UNIT.
While I knew the phrase was coming from advanced review, I was surprised by the context in which Resistance is Futile was used by the Dalek. There are certainly many comparisons to be made to the Borg, and I think Doctor Who did a better job than Star Trek The Next Generation with an episode about a good Dalek or Borg. Into the Dalek was a strong stand-alone episode, and now there is no doubt that Missy and “Heaven” will be a recurring storyline for the season. This time, instead of the person who the Doctor was fighting (and possibly pushed to his death), it was someone fighting with the Doctor who was seen in “Heaven.” My suspicion is that this will turn out to be something such as Missy saving people just before imminent death who are in the vicinity of the Doctor as opposed to actual “Heaven,” but even if I am right on this a lot of questions remain.
Doctor Who Extra (video above) gives behind the scenes information on the filming of Into The Dalek.
There have been two major sets of awards in the past couple of weeks, the Hugo Awards and the Emmy Awards. Doctor Who had five nominees for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) but an episode of Game of Thrones won the award:
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Game of Thrones: “The Rains of Castamere”, written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
Doctor Who: “The Day of the Doctor”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Television)
Orphan Black: “Variations under Domestication” written by Will Pascoe, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)
An Adventure in Space and Time, written by Mark Gatiss, directed by Terry McDonough (BBC Television)
The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, written & directed by Peter Davison (BBC Television)
Doctor Who: “The Name of the Doctor”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Saul Metzstein (BBC Televison)
Gravity won for long form among these nominees:
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Gravity, written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Esperanto Filmoj; Heyday Films; Warner Bros.)
Frozen,screenplay by Jennifer Lee, directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee (Walt Disney Studios)
Pacific Rim, screenplay by Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro, directed by Guillermo del Toro (Legendary Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney Double Dare You)
Iron Man 3, screenplay by Drew Pearce & Shane Black, directed by Shane Black (Marvel Studios; DMG Entertainment; Paramount Pictures)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, screenplay by Simon Beaufoy & Michael Arndt, directed by Francis Lawrence (Color Force; Lionsgate)
The full list of nominees can be found here, with the winners listed here.
While the Emmy Awards generally goes with the safe bet, such as repeatedly giving the award for best comedy to Modern Family, there is at least some realization that genre is ignored. While Tatiana Maslany was snubbed for a second year for her work on Orphan Black, the snub was at least acknowledged in a skit. They finally discovered Sherlock, even if it meant awarding Emmys for the weakest of its three seasons. It was a pleasant surprise to see Steven Moffat up on stage, and he also provided some vague hints about season four in post-award interviews:
Sherlock was a big winner at the 66th Primetime Emmys, taking home three awards (to go with the four the show earned at last week’s Creative Arts ceremony), including trophies for stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.
In celebrating his win for writing for a miniseries/movie or dramatic special, executive producer Steven Moffat dropped some hints backstage about the British drama’s anticipated fourth season, which begins production in January 2015 — the same time Doctor Who will also start filming.
Moffat was confident that the new season would be even more gasp-inducing than the previous year, which ended with an unexpected resurrection of a character presumed dead.
“We have a plan to top it — and actually I do think our plan is devastating,” he teased. “We practically reduced our cast to tears by telling them the plan. Honestly, Mark [Gatiss] and myself are so excited with what we’ve got coming up, probably more excited than we’ve ever been about Sherlock. … Honestly I think we can [top the last season].”
Moffat spoke of the surge of Emmy recognition the show has received in its third year.
“We’ve won outside of America, which is a place,” Moffat deadpanned. “We were just starting to think that that phase of our lives was dying down because as shows get older they don’t win as often — just like people. We’re delighted that we’ve made it here and hopefully this gets more people watching. That’d be great.”
He remained mum on when the new episodes would be premiering. “When they go out is up to the BBC,” he said. “And I am their loyal servant. I simply do what they ask me.”
Moffat reassured that the creative team behind the show will continue returning to Sherlock, no matter how busy they may be with other projects. “What’s happening with Sherlock is unusual,” he admitted. “We will keep coming back to it.”
I am thankful to Vox for finally settling in my mind how The Sopranos ended, even if they totally botched the story. When the finale first aired, after I realized that my cable hadn’t gone out, I interpreted it as an intentionally ambiguous ending. Sure, going to black could be what happens to Tony if shot, but I didn’t accept this interpretation as the scene was not from Tony’s perspective. The scene concentrated on many things Tony did not see, from the actions of others in in the coffee shop to Meadow attempting to park the car outside. If I wanted to think that they finished the meal and then Tony showed Meadow how to parallel park, this interpretation was as valid as any other. I saw the real meaning as that Tony would always face threats to his life. One of the people in the coffee shop might have shot him, or he could have been suddenly killed at some other time in the future. There was even a chance he could remain alive despite all the threats.
I was satisfied with this interpretation until I heard a report that David Chase had said that there was a definitive meaning to the finale. Perhaps, as happened again this week, the person reporting put too much meaning into what he said during an interview. However, if there was an answer to the question as to whether Tony Soprano lived in the ending, then I could only see this as meaning I was wrong. If limited to Tony living or dying, I thought it would be easier to making an argument that the ending meant that Tony had died.
Then Vox had an interview with David Chase last week in which it reported that Chase said that Tony had lived. I actually found this to be very unsatisfying as it lacked any further explanation. Soon afterwards, David Chase issued a statement that what he said in the interview was misconstrued:
A statement issued by Mr. Chase’s publicist, Leslee Dart, said that the Vox.com writer “misconstrued what David Chase said in their interview.”
“To simply quote David as saying, ‘Tony Soprano is not dead,’ is inaccurate,” the statement continued. “There is a much larger context for that statement and as such, it is not true.”
The statement added that Mr. Chase had said “numerous times on the record” that answering the question of whether “Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point.”
“To continue to search for this answer is fruitless,” the statement said. “The final scene of ‘The Sopranos’ raises a spiritual question that has no right or wrong answer.”
This leaves me comfortable in returning to my original interpretation, more confident than in the past that I’m just not in denial over a scene intended to show Tony Soprano as getting killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7usAdGlc32E
The new promo for season three of Arrow above will make Oliver/Felicity fans happy. A digital comic will fill the gap between the second and third seasons.
Falling Skies showrunner David Eick answered questions on the season four finale.
The series finale of True Blood really isn’t worth talking about. It is a shame that they couldn’t put together something more meaningful to end the series with.
The writers on Defiance did try harder. They used a formula which often works in combining elements of a season-long story in each individual stand-alone stories. Unfortunately it didn’t work very well. It just didn’t work for me to have an alien girl being used by a supercomputer intelligence to destroy New York City and the rest of the planet, and then end the crisis by having her kiss a boy who was a minor character during the season. When the show runners previously talked about expanding the show to New York and space I expected something more sensible, and more than a quick scene at the end of the season.
I was more impressed with The Last Ship. While not an A-list, must-see show, they did a good job of keeping the show entertaining. When I heard that they had renewed the show for a second season, my immediate impression was that this would mean they would not find a cure no matter how many episodes gave them a lead. I am glad I was wrong on that. If the first few episodes reminded me of Battlestar Galactica at sea, the return home to a country destroyed by plague now makes me see the show more like Revolution or Jericho (hopefully doing a better job than Revolution). So far there is nothing ground breaking. Who didn’t see the remnants of the Unites States government as being the enemy and realize they were walking into a trap? Still the show does provide solid entertainment.
Last week’s episode made my happy I stuck with The Leftovers. The episode was a flashback which explained key points, such as why a family which did not appear to have lost anyone was affected so much by the rapture-like event.
Karen Gillan filmed the shaving of her hair for Guardians of the Galaxy (video above)
Joe and Anthony Russo will be directing the sixth season premiere of Community. The Russo brothers are also working on Captain America and say the third movie will be more like Winter Soldier than the first installment (which is a good thing).
What Culture gives five reasons Sin City 2: A Dame To Kill For was a huge flop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUw8IAKnEac#t=41
The video above provides a synopsis of last season of Person of Interest.
I’m not sure why, but Fox plans to reboot The Greatest American Hero. Amazon plans to return Patrick Warburton as The Tick. Fox provides plenty of material for anyone who desires to bring back a genre show canceled on the network. How about Firefly? I also wouldn’t mind seeing what happened after the cliff hanger on the final episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
…it’s a comic book adaptation that stars Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Eliza Dushku, Gina Gershon, Sasha Grey, Garret Dillahunt, Michael Imperioli and Billy Campbell, which is to say director John Suits has compiled an ensemble filled of “been there, done that” names, but they are recognizable names at least.
The film follows Suki (Cassidy), a young woman confronting her destructive mental illness using “The Siamese Burn,” an experimental machine designed to eliminate multiple personalities. The closer Suki comes to being “cured,” she’s haunted by a thought… what if the last unwanted identity turns out to be her?
Speaking of nudity by genre actresses, there has been more interest this week in the nude picture I posted of Jennifer Lawrence last year. That was a picture of her in her role as Mystique which was used as a publicity photo, and distribution of that is far different from hacking her phone or iCloud account, among with pictures of several other actresses, to obtain nude pictures which were privately stored with expectations that they remain private. As Jennifer Lawrence’s spokesperson said, “This is a flagrant violation of privacy.”
Bryan Fuller has ambitious plans for his adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
Assignment X has an interview with Caitlin FitzGerald, who plays Libby Masters on Masters of Sex. I’ve always been impressed with FitzGerald, who has done a lot of work in indy films. In her role as a late 50’s housewife she faces many of the same problems as Betty Draper on Mad Men. I wonder how much better Betty Draper’s role could have been if cast with someone with FitzGerald’s talent as opposed to January Jones. On the other hand, perhaps a less talented but more beautiful model is exactly who Don Draper would have married.
Ko No Mono is the beginning of the end for Hannibal, now providing a clear path to the scene in the season premier with Jack and Hannibal fighting. Alana Bloom has been terribly under utilized this season but played a key role in this episode. She represented the audience, expressing the same questions I had from the perspective of a character on the show.
Last week’s episode left two possibilities. Either Will had killed Freddie Lounds and Hannibal has succeeded in turning him into a monster, or there is an elaborate scheme to expose and capture Hannibal. My view of the show would be forever changed if it turned out that Will has become like Hannibal and no longer a sympathetic protagonist. Alana’s question was limited to wondering if Will had killed Freddie, and the answer to that would provide the viewer with the answer to what we were wondering.
It is a common axiom in reviewing genre shows that if there is no body the victim very well might still be alive. Bryan Fuller really played with the audience on that one. We got funeral, and saw a burning body which could not be confirmed as Freddie’s visually by the audience, but which provided possible confirmation to those aware of her fate in the novels. Of course Fuller has displayed a tendency to take aspects from the novels but alter them or have them occur at different times to keep things interesting. Once Jack “verified” that the body was Freddie’s from dental records it became even more clear that Freddie was dead or there was a very elaborate scheme, which would have to include Jack along with Will, to fake Freddie’s death.
This question was answered with another question, with Freddie asking Alana, “How was my funeral?” Alena seemed so distraught over the situation that it was hard for Jack not to let her in on the secret, but this might be a big mistake. Even assuming that Alana doesn’t intentionally give away the secret, there is too great a risk that Hannibal will sense that something is wrong. Perhaps that is why the season ends in a fight as opposed to a more organized arrest.
The other theme of the episode was parenthood and surrogate parenthood. This included a look back at Abigail, Hannibal’s perception of fathering a new Will who has adopted his views on killing, and sadly Margot’s terminated pregnancy. Mason Verger is turning into the even bigger villain of the season.
Bryan Fuller discussed the revelation that Freddie was alive and Margot’s desire for children:
AVC: So the end of this episode reveals that Freddie’s alive. Jack is in on the plan somehow. How cognizant are you of not letting those story points stretch out too long?
BF: We had originally talked about, gosh, how long can we keep Freddie dead? Because we wanted to make sure that the audience felt that she was dead, and that’s why we used the flaming wheelchair. Those who are close to the material know that is how Freddie Lounds goes out, so we wanted to make sure that the audience felt that she was dead, and that the funeral was a real funeral. Also, telling the story through Alana’s eyes as she’s like, “What the hell is going on with everybody?! Everybody’s lost their minds!” and to really feel that kind of mounting panic and dread that she’s experiencing. We felt like to clear the path for episode 12 to really be the final episode with the arc between the triangle of Will, Mason, and Hannibal, we really needed to wrap that up by the end of 11 and put all of our cards on the table at that point. What I think is really fun about using the wheelchair death is it tells the audience that, oh gosh, Freddie very well may be dead, because they used the actual way that she dies. But in a fun way, I loved forecasting the moment between Hannibal Lecter and Francis Dolarhyde in the Red Dragon story where Hannibal Lecter is part of Freddie’s demise and says, “If you’re going to kill Freddie Lounds, this is exactly how she has to go out, because she faked it once and I’m not particularly happy with her for that.”
AVC: Why does Margot want to have a child with Will?
BF: That was a big element of the novel, was Margot’s desire to have a child and I thought, “Well, wouldn’t it be interesting if Will Graham became the device to achieve that goal?” That way, we had elements of the future story that we had recombined with other stories so they felt distinct from the novel but reflective of the novel at the same time. I think it goes back to that Thomas Harris mash-up DJ aesthetic that we have with this show, where we’re pulling elements that suit us for any given story and then mixing them in as needed. It also felt like a clever way for Margot to get back at her brother. We knew from the book that Margot had been cut out of her father’s will for being a lesbian and not being able to breed, and the stipulation had been put into the will that only an heir proven to be of the blood of the Verger clan would be deemed legitimate. So it set into motion a very crafty plan of Margot’s, “Well, I’ll get pregnant and once the baby is born I’ll kill my brother, and I will not have to deal with him anymore or his evil ways.” It felt like she was being very crafty, and she’s waving her uterus around like a loaded weapon. So that felt like it was part of the new Margot and part of her new agenda for dealing with her brother and also giving her a little bit more strength. Also, it puts her clearly on the chessboard as one of Hannibal Lecter’s pawns, and he is now influencing and moving her piece around to suit his greater agenda.
Fortunately Hannibal was renewed for another season. NBC sadly canceled Community, giving us the darkest timeline, with fans hoping someone else will pick up the show. SpoilerTV doesn’t think it is likely to happen. At least the show went out with an excellent season with Dan Harmon back. I think NBC did make the right move in deciding to permanently turn out the lights on Revolution. There is a lot of other news regarding cancellations, renewals, and new shows picked up, but being a holiday weekend I’ll hold off on most of the other news until a later post. I’ll also be brief in looking at the other shows this week.
In other genre shows of the week, Orphan Black provided more information on Mrs. S. and Project Leda. Alison is in rehab, we learned whether Helena could have children, and there was a reunion of sisters. Orphan Black c0-creator Graeme Manson discussed the reunion scene:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with what has to be the creepiest sisterly reunion ever — one in a bloody white wedding dress and the other bleeding and in handcuffs in the bathroom. You’re a sicko, Graeme.
GRAEME MANSON: Homage to Carrie, all the way. The director did a great job with that scene and it’s right up the alley of what John Fawcett and I really like. It really slips into horror mode there and we like that the show has that elastic tone that we can do that. We expect a lot of Helenas in bloody wedding dresses at Comic-Con this year. It’s a truly freaky and wonderful scene, and just the fact that it has that horror and its broken by the sisterhood and by forgiveness is one of the great clone-on-clone scenes we’ve done, I think.
EW: You can feel and read the terror on Tatiana’s face as Sarah in that scene. Just an unbelievable job she does in that moment. MANSON: It was. And it was a really hard scene for the crew to watch, because Tatiana really went there. It was scary. She was scaring the whole crew. And then you yell “Cut!” and everyone just has this ball in the pit of their stomach and Tatiana recovers immediately and is immediately smiling and laughing.
Larrick has turned into the big bad for the season on The Americans, and is getting closer to Elizabeth and Phillip. With no progress finding out who murdered Emmet and Leanne, I wonder if Larrick’s earlier denial should be believed. Of course there are still two episodes in which to advance that storyline.
I was sad to see Kate go, but she was clearly over her head. Now I wonder what the deal was with Jared, between Kate meeting him with no disguise and her encoded note to “Get Jared out.” I suspect he knows about his parents, and possibly realizes who Elizabeth is. Is he already working as a spy with Kate his handler?
Nina made the obvious move of turning to Stan for help in avoiding a forced return to Russia to stand trial. Will she take the next step in convincing him to get the information on Echo for her so that the two can remain together, as opposed to Nina going into hiding?
Agents of SHIELD presented Grant’s back story, and it was rather disappointing. Being left out in the woods was not the type of training I expected. Just because he spared the dog should not mean that he gets to be redeemed as a good guy in the end, but I suspect that that might be where the show is going. Sparing Fitz and Simmons is also not enough (and might be considered two points against him). Besides, evil Grant is a much more interesting character than the Grant we saw most of the season.
Skye has also improved as a character in recent episodes, actually showing that she has some skills. The story with Cybertek was also weak, but I suspect this was set up for the season finale, in which Nick Fury returns. After a run of excellent episodes I can forgive this one, although if they didn’t have a better back story for Grant it might have been better just to leave it out.
It looks like Arrow is getting ready for a comic book style big battle with Malcolm Merlin and the League of Assassins joining up with Team Arrow to take down Slade.
It also looks like Person of Interest and The Blacklist will have big season finales this week.
For those watching Continuum on Syfy, it might seem like things aren’t moving very fast this season, but big things happen on the next two episodes which have aired in Canada. No spoilers.
Sakizuki, the second episode this season of Hannibal, did an excellent job of blending a serial killer of the week story with the overall mythology of the show. Hannibal did track down the killer the FBI was hunting, but finished the killer’s job before the FBI got there. Only Hannibal could look so fashionable in a plastic suit, or convince the killer to become a part of his own work. Will Graham is doing an expert job of playing a cat and mouse game with Hannibal. He purposely looked beaten when saying, “I am the unreliable narrator of my own story” and asking for Hannibal’s help, but looks far stronger when alone, contemplating his next step.
The biggest tension of the show involved Hannibal and his psychiatrist, Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier played by Gillian Anderson. There were moments when it was not clear if she would come out alive, with this tension increased by the knowledge that Anderson is involved in two other shows this season. Instead the episode made it plausible for Dr. Du Maurier to disappear for a while (or have a reduced) role without winding up visiting Hannibal for dinner. I suspect she will return towards the end of the season and be involved in Hannibal’s downfall, as foreshadowed by the start of last week’s episode, especially with her telling Will she believes him at the end of this week’s episode.
Bryan Fuller discussed the episode with A.V. Club. An excerpt:
AVC: Bedelia leaves town at the end. Obviously, you had limited time with the character because Gillian Anderson has another show…
BF: Another couple of shows!
AVC: What did you want to do with bringing her back, and how much of her backstory with Hannibal do you, as writers, know?
BF: There was a much bigger, broader, longer story to be had with Bedelia that I’m hoping we get to play out in some form in the future, but because of Gillian’s schedule, we were only able to get her for a couple of episodes at the beginning of the season, and we’re desperately trying to figure out how to get her to navigate her schedule and get her back to wrap up her story. Though we want the audience to think when they see the trailer for episode two that she’s going to get killed at the end. The idea would be to get her back. There’s so much cool stuff with her backstory and her relationship with Hannibal and how closely it parallels Will’s relationship with Hannibal, which would be explored in an episode toward the end of the season if we can figure out schedules.
AVC: She also tells Will that she believes his story. How important was it to you to give Will an unquestioning ally at this point?
BF: I think he needed it, because there was so much despair, and everybody was just assuming he was guilty of all of these crimes. I think he needed someone to say simply, “I believe you.” When I was writing that scene I teared up, because something so simple as someone saying, “I understand you, and I believe you,” when you’re in a dark, lonely place is such a beacon of hope. I love Gillian Anderson as a human being and as an actress. And I love Hugh Dancy as a human being and as an actor, so I was excited to get them in a scene together, especially one that was so still and eerie and wrought. I’ve always been inspired by this line from Damaged that Juliette Binoche says, which is, “Damaged people are dangerous, because they know they can survive,” and I paraphrased that in the last scene with Dr. Du Maurier and Will Graham, where there is a camaraderie in the damaged. You may feel you are alone in your damage, because it is such an interior experience to be damaged in that way, and then to have somebody come along who you know can know you in that way, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a glimmer of hope. So I was really excited about that moment, writing it, and even more excited when I saw the actors perform it, because I do think that there is a bond between Will and Bedelia that I hope we get to explore.
Arrow picked up in The Promise where it left off last week with Slade in the Queen Mansion, but Team Arrow came to the rescue. The bulk of the episode, reversing the usual pattern, took place back on the island. Once again the show has greatly surpassed most other attempts at bringing superheroes to the screen. The manner in which the back story is fleshed out on the island makes comic book scenarios in the present seem plausible, taking far less suspension of disbelief than is generally necessary to accept the conventions of superhero series. The scenes on the island also showed the first time Oliver ever put on his hood and Slade ever put on the Deathstroke mask in their attack on Ivo’s freighter. I wonder if we will see more of Dr. Ivo.
Dreamcatcher was a fun episode of Revolution, with the nanobots putting Aaron in the Matrix. Aaron was back in a world with electricity, seeing people he knows but who initially do not know him. Some took active roles in the story while Giancarlo Esposito was seen as a sleazy insurance salesman on billboards and television commercials. Although fun, the episode could have been much better if not for so many plot holes and being so predictable.
The premise was that the nanobots were trying to trick Aaron into solving a formula which would allow them to survive. As viewers we know they must survive as the destruction of the nanobots would mean they would not be around to eat all the electricity, ending the show (which might not be a bad thing). Just as we must suspend disbelief in the premise of nanobots which eat electricity which powers devices while ignoring the electricity in our nervous systems, we must grant the premise that the nanobots can mess around in Aaron’s brain but could not just force him to solve the equation or extract the information they needed.
Aaron’s mind fought back, first in the form of Charlie. Seeing her shot in the head was one of the highlights of the episode. After being chased by Horn, who represented Aaron’s greatest fears, he managed to wind up with Rachel, Miles, and Monroe. Aaron gave the nanobots the information they needed to manipulate him by telling Rachel he would never harm her. At first Rachel, Miles, and Monroe did not recognize Aaron, creating some drama, but then suddenly they knew everything. It was too easy. They came up with the idea that if Aaron fell in this “dream” he would wake up, unconcerned about horror stories in which death in one’s dreams results in death in the real world.
From here it was so predictable. Aaron appeared to wake up. Rachel was placed in danger, and Aaron gave in and solved the equation. Then (coming as no surprise) it was revealed that he was still in the Matrix. I would have expected Aaron to have seen enough science fiction to see that one coming.
T.A.H.I.T.I. was revealed on this week’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to be not the Island where Agent Coulson was rehabilitated after being brought back from the death but a room with possibly alien science which was used to save him. The show is certainly more fun to watch than in the early episodes, but remains a disappointment. Ignoring the superhero and science fiction elements, the show just remains impossible to believe. Among other problems, there are no consequences as would be expected in an agency of this nature. In a previous episode, Simmons knocked out a superior with no repercussions. It appears that this was totally consistent with the world in which Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. operates.
The show opened with faux drama in having Bill Paxton as Agent Garrett coming to board Coulson’s plane for disobeying orders in keeping custody of Ian Quinn. False drama and no consequences once again as Paxton and Coulson worked things out. The handling of Quinn made me wonder if S.H.I.E.L.D. is really supposed to be the good guys or a parody of our worst fears of the Bush administration. It is understandable that Coulson would place a high priority on saving Skye’s life, but absurd to expect that he would attack a base, and kill those working there, when the base had to either be part of S.H.I.E.L.D. or another facility they were working with. Then more false drama when Coulson suddenly decided they should not inject Skye with the drug, followed by the drug magically healing her wounds.
Fortunately The Americans presented a spy story which seems much more grounded in reality as it continued to deal with the repercussions of another undercover family being killed last week. Philip went to check if they guy in the drop knew anything but things didn’t go well between Philip and Fred at first. Philip’s efforts to gain Fred’s trust was far more compelling to watch than the relationship between Phil Coulson and Agent Garrett on SHIELD. I loved seeing Elizabeth’s fear as the construction truck pulled up outside of their home, along with her side trip to help out another agent. What will Paige walk in on next? Once again, there are so many story lines being expertly intertwined.
I was a little puzzled by Nina telling Stan about the walk-in at the Soviet Embassy. Certainly her handlers would realize that the embassy was being watched and the FBI would figure out who it was. Did the Russians have no real interest in Bruce Dameran? Did they just make a mistake allowing Nina to mention this, was it a mistake on Nina’s part, or on some level did Nina still want to help Stan?
One problem that Almost Human faced is that episodes were aired out of order. While there was no major continuing story line which required viewing the episodes in order, the most enjoyable aspect of the series was the relationship between John and Dorian. Seeing them out of order led to a couple of recent episodes which lacked this dynamic which had been filmed earlier. Fortunately the final two episodes of the season were done later when this relationship was better established.
It is unfortunate that, despite hints of developing an ongoing storyline, little came of this and the final two episodes were again essentially stand alone cases of the week. The season finale did concentrate on the dynamic between John and Dorian, with Dorian’s performance review. I had feared that they might run a cheap cliff hanger of having Dorian fail and be scheduled to be removed as John’s partner, only to have this reversed next season. Fortunately they did not succumb to a feeling they had to do a cliff hanger as far too many shows do. With or without a cliff hanger, this show was entertaining enough to return to next season. I just hope they do more to expand on some plot lines they hinted at this season, such as what really happened in the ambush at the start of the season and what is beyond the wall.
A
How I Met Your Mother is winding down and this week’s episode, Vesuvius, did a lot to promote a fan theory which has been going around that the Mother had died before Ted began his stories, possibly with Ted actually winding up with Aunt Robin. The first episode of the series had viewers expecting it was a typical love story about Ted meeting Robin and eventually marrying her until the ending, That’s how I met your Aunt Robin.
There have been scenes suggesting that the Mother might not remain alive, but all have alternative explanations and are far from definitive. The most compelling was in The Time Travelers in which Ted was outside his future wife’s apartment and said, “Exactly 45 days from now, you and I are going to meet. I want those extra 45 days with you. I want each one of them.” If the two were really to meet in 45 days and live a long life together, there would be little reason for Ted to be so concerned about getting those 45 extra days together.
In a fifth season episode, How I Met Everyone Else,Ted, Marshall, and Lily are seen at a reunion in 2020 and it was awkward when Ted asked, “Where is my wife?”
There are pictures of Neil Patrick Harris on the set of the final episode in regular clothes. Barney has said that the one time he doesn’t wear a suit is to funerals. Could he have been filming a scene of the Mother’s funeral?
All of these items, along with suspicious answers by the cast about the finale, could be explained in other ways. Vesuvius keeps theories that the Mother will die alive. Throughout the episode there is a sense of sadness in the way Ted looks at his wife in scenes of the two from 2024. The most suspicious scene of all was when there was mention of the present when Robin’s mother made it to the wedding. The big question, with tears filling both of their eyes was, “What kind of mother would miss her daughter’s wedding?” Were these tears of happiness for Robin as they thought back on her wedding day, or tears of sadness as the two realized that Ted’s wife was dying and would never see her daughter’s wedding? Was she dying in 2024, or worse was Future Ted revising the Inn with the ghost of his wife?
It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Barney and Robin either wind up not getting married or if their marriage doesn’t last. In the final twist of the series, it could turn out that Ted and Aunt Robin are married. Then it would not matter as much that Robin could not have her own children as she might wind up eventually becoming the mother to Ted’s children. The series could easily be seen as an explanation to the children why Robin was the one he was meant to be with if their mother could no longer be with them.
This plan would have made a lot of sense when the series was first developed and fans rooted for Ted and Robin to get together. Now fans are strongly hoping it is not the case. Too much has changed. As absurd as the pairing of Barney and Robin was at first, fans now want them to succeed together. More importantly, fans have fallen in love with Cristin Milioti’s still unnamed character this season and having her die would be far too sad a way to end the series.
Another possible explanation for the scene in Vesuvius is that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas want to make us believe the Mother does have a serious illness in 2024, but in the end she survives. Perhaps they even changed their original plans after seeing how this season has played out.
Moving on to another series involving time travel, Rachel Nichols and the cast of Continuum discuss season 3 in the video above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBTd9–9VMI
An updating of Cosmos was already a big event. We know so much more than when Carl Sagan first aired the show. As an example of how important this show is in an age of such tremendous misunderstanding and denial of science, the show is going to be introduced by Barack Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k0kkSHiiPE
Extended clip above of Captain America and Black Widow from Captain America: The Winter Soldier
With the Olympics over many weekly series have returned and two of the best shows from last season which aired in the spring or winter have started their second seasons. Hannibal and The Americans both began their second seasons. Hannibal began with an extended fight scene between Hannibal and Jack Crawford which foreshadows what we know must eventually occur before moving backwards twelve weeks in the narrative. The brutality of the fight indicates it is not a simple temporary falling out between friends, such as Watson being angry at Sherlock for pretending to be dead. Jack must have found out the truth about Hannibal. As the series is part of a seven year plan (should it last that long) to retell the Hannibal novels (with some variations), we know that eventually everyone will know that Hannibal, and not Will, is the serial killer. (More on Bryan Fuller’s seven year plan for Hannibalhere.)
After the fight scene we go back to just after the first season ended, with Will in jail for the murders committed by Hannibal. So far only Will, and some of Hannibal’s victims who did not live to tell what they know, really suspected the truth about Hannibal. Now that Will is healthy and no longer suffering from encephalitis, he can begin what will probably be a season-long cat and mouse game with Hannibal to reveal the truth. Hannibal has essentially taken over Will’s role in advising the FBI in serial murder cases, but we know he will not be able to resist Will’s request for Hannibal’s therapeutic help. Hannibal might even realize what Will is up to, but based upon his relationship with Will in the first season, this will be irresistible for Hannibal. We know where everything is leading and have already seen how the season ends. The suspense will be in seeing how we reach that point.
The Americans returns to 1982 with two Soviet spies living undercover as an American couple. Elizabeth has returned home two months after she was shot in the first season finale, claiming to have been caring for a sick aunt. We immediately see that 1) not everything works out perfectly for spies and 2) even the spy we have been led to root for (even if from an enemy nation) can be a cold blooded killer when there is an innocent witness around. While the first season centered around the relationship between Philip and Elizabeth, the second season will deal more with the entire family.
Elizabeth and Philip have tried to keep their children safe from their activities and we saw how important this is as another undercover couple were killed, along with their daughter. We know Paige is suspicious, but so far instead of learning the truth about her parents she caught them having sex. It is not certain which revelation will ultimately be more shocking.
The Americans did an excellent job of working all of this into the season premiere, along with returning to other subplots. We saw the fake marriage between Martha and Phillip (or Clarke as she knows him) in order to spy on the Americans. Their FBI agent neighbor Stan continues to use Nina, unaware that she is now really using him. The nature of Stan’s relationship with Nina came up as they watched a pirated copy of The French Lieutenant’s Woman before Stan went to see the same movie with his wife and a friend. We also learned that Claudia has remained in the United States and she will have an influence on the season.
Arrow, yet another excellent genre show in its second season, returned after the Olympic hiatus with Time of Death. With Sara now making out with Oliver in the Arrow-Cave, it was time for Felicity to more firmly establish her importance. (“You’ll always be my girl, Felicity.”) The episode introduced another worthy opponent, The Clock King. It also brought the present day and island stories together further in the final scene where Moira brought Oliver in to introduce her son to the man she was meeting with–Slade. The first photo has also been released of Barry Allen in costume as The Flash in the planned spin off.
Yet another sophomore show, Revolution, is well below the quality of the other shows discussed above. They do try to keep coming up with new things to keep the show fresh, but in the end they just wind up without anything really compelling happening. The supposedly upcoming battle to the death between Monroe and his son sounds guaranteed to disappoint. Having Aaron wake up in an alternative reality in 2014 with the power on after trying tying to upload a virus into his nano-bot children (or are they now Gods?) made for a good final scene, but will anything significant really come from this? At least it sounds it might make for a good episode. In this alternate reality, Giancarlo Esposito will be back in his old life as a sleazy insurance salesman. If they were really creative, the episode would take place in a different alternative universe where instead he runs the Los Pollos Hermanos restaurant chain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhcbTa_BHuI
Hannibal, The Americans, and Arrow were all excellent new series which began last year, but the best of all the series to premiere last year was Orphan Black. BBC America has released the above sneak peaks, with the show returning on April 19. More news on season two here.
Aaron Paul has again expressed interest in appearing in the Breaking Bad spin off, Better Call Saul. Bryan Cranston and Jonathan Banks have also expressed interest. Dean Norris is not interested, failing to understand that one episode of anything by Vince Gilligan is far more significant than an entire season of Under the Dome. (The series finale of Breaking Bad was reviewed here.)
Disney has always excelled at their synergy in using each of their holdings to make money for others. ABC will be running a documentary (extended commercial?) March 18 on Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe.
Heroes is coming back for a thirteen episode miniseries, possibly with some of the original cast “popping back in.”
“The enormous impact ‘Heroes’ had on the television landscape when it first launched in 2006 was eye-opening,” said NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke. “Shows with that kind of resonance don’t come around often and we thought it was time for another installment. We’re thrilled that visionary creator Tim Kring was as excited about jumping back into this show as we were and we look forward to all the new textures and layers Tim plans to add to his original concept. Until we get closer to air in 2015, the show will be appropriately shrouded in secrecy, but we won’t rule out the possibility of some of the show’s original cast members popping back in.”
I don’t care either way about Heroes but am happy to see that an American network is getting away from the usual season format. Heroes itself would have been much better as a miniseries rather than continuing it beyond the point where Tim Kring seemed to know what to do with the show. Note that almost all of the shows I mentioned above were aired for short seasons, generally on cable, which I think helps make a better quality show. Fox is also doing something similar with 24.
While I don’t care whether Heroes returns, I am looking forward to the return of Farscape. A movie is planned:
Set to follow the awesome comics written by our favorite Keith R.A. DeCandido, the film would follow John and Aeryn’s son, D’Argo (or Little D, as we will always refer to him). Because their baby was exhibiting a set of interesting powers that made him a magnet for galactic villains, we find that John and Aeryn hide their son on Earth to grow up. Now the kid is 19 and ready to go into space with his parents.
Last week I questioned making US versions of British shows as opposed to airing the same shows here. Steven Moffat has had experience with cases where that did not work. His excellent sit-com Coupling flopped when an American version was aired, but I would highly recommend watching the original on Netflix. It is sort of a combination of Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex in the City with just a little bit of The Big Bang Theory thrown in. Moffat wisely says it would be insane to make an American version of his current shows, Sherlock and Doctor Who:
Not just popular on a worldwide level, it’s so distinctively local in outlook that a remake of any sort would destroy what makes it work in the first place.
“Doctor Who’s everywhere,” he said. “You can bump in to the Doctor anywhere,” adding that the series has, “probably penetrated enough that it’s no longer regarded as an import, it’s just that show.”
“Sherlock and Doctor Who are both doing rather well but they couldn’t be more definitively British. They’re obtusely British. They’re about as British as it gets. You shouldn’t be afraid of being British because that’s what you’re selling.”
And of course, if a remake were to be proposed and the Doctor were no longer British in demeanor (albeit British via Gallifrey), would he even be the Doctor?
“If anyone were to ask me, I’d say it’s an absolutely insane idea. You couldn’t have more than one Doctor Who in the world. It would just be dreadful.”
CBS did approach Moffat about making a US version of Sherlock and when turned down developed Elementary.
This has not been a good season for new sit-coms, especially for NBC but last week’s episode of The Crazy Ones (on CBS) was its best episode of the season. The cast put on both a Bar Mitzvah and a musical. While far from a great series, Robin Williams has kept the show amusing through a lot of otherwise weak scripts. I actually don’t mind that the new NBC sit-coms were flops. It just increases the chances that Community will be renewed.
Mixology premiered last week, showing some promise even if the premise is far-fetched. Personally I’ve always found the prospect of successfully meeting anyone in that type of bar to be less realistic than most of the shows discussed in this post. Besides, if I can spend the entire final season of How I Met Your Mother showing a weekend at the inn where Robin and Barney’s wedding is taking place, I can try a series taking place all in one night in this bar. It will be interesting to watch to see if the idea works or turns into a flop.
Sleepy Hollow ended its first season with several cliffhangers, placing virtually all the major characters in some sort of danger. If they had known how successful the show would be, perhaps they wouldn’t have had to resort to such gimmicks. Get the viewers to return the next season based upon the quality of the show rather than ending with cliffhangers for the sake of cliff hangers. With all the shows now on, people aren’t even likely to recall all the cliffhangers, especially with the longer wait following a show with only a thirteen episode run.
This isn’t to say I oppose all cliff hangers. Back when Dallas first ran the Who Shot JR? storyline, this was somewhat unique for network television, and the buzz around it was a major television event. Star Trek The Next Generation had a great cliffhanger in Best of Both Worlds with Riker ordering the Enterprise to fire on Borg Picard. The buzz over that summer helped make the show. Most cliffhangers are not this good and do not provide comparable benefits.
An alternative to the cliffhanger which I prefer is for a show to tie up the major story lines at the end of a season and then foreshadow what is coming next. Once Upon A Time did an excellent job with this. The show has been mixed quality-wise, but the old Lost writers on the show manage to keep things interesting by changing things every season. The Peter Pan story from the fall season was drawn out too long, but if you take out the middle episodes where everyone seemed to just wander around Neverland, it did end well. After concluding the story, there was a great final scene taking place a year later which sets up the show when it returns. They got the benefit of favorable publicity and talk about what is happening next without making the viewers wait to see the current story tied up.
Sleepy Hollow didn’t need a bunch of cliffhangers in the finale to create discussion among the fans. Without putting everyone in immediate danger, there was a major revelation and change for the show via John Noble’s character. It was like having him change from Walter to Walternate on Fringe but remain the same person. I was happy to see Captain Irving’s wife find out what is going on so he will no longer need to make lame excuses for not being home, but now we have to see him get off on the charges he confessed to to protect his daughter when processed. On top of all this, we got a flashback to see Zombie George Washington!
Doctor Who did well at the National Television Awards. The show won as Best Drama, beating Broadchurch, Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife. Matt Smith won for Best Drama Performance, beating Miranda Hart (Call The Midwife), Martin Clunes (Doc Martin) and Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey). He was not present to accept the award in person. Instead it was accepted by Steven Moffat and Jenna Coleman (video above). Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) won the award for Best TV Detective.
The Americans returns February 26. Here’s some information released about the second season during a panel at the Television Critics Association press tour:
This season will turn the focus back on the family.
“We felt like [season 1] had been so focused on the marriage,” says EP Joe Weisberg, “and the natural place to go next was the family.” Particularly with Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth’s (Keri Russell) marriage on more solid ground, they wanted to move on to exploring “the next point of fracture” — the family unit.
Paige’s curiosity continues
At the end of the first season, the Jennings’ teenage daughter started to show signs of increasing curiosity about her parents and their ongoings, and this season, questions will start being asked and “it’s not going to go great,” says EP Joel Fields. “Teenagers are hard,” adds Weisberg. “They’re all tough on mom and dad.”
Margo Martindale returns
The actress will be back for several episodes this season as KGB handler Claudia. The fate of her CBS comedy The Millers will not determine what comes next for that character, as The Americans will be done filming the second season in March — well before broadcast network renewals are typically announced. That said, if Martindale finds herself available full time and the show gets a third season, “It’s hard to argue with more Margo Martindale,” says Fields. “We love that character and we love her.”
Martha will get a backbone this season!
Martha’s faux-marriage with Philip will actually serve to strengthen the character, who is widely thought of as insecure, the producers said. “Who she was was extremely lonely and extremely vulnerable and she’s less lonely this season, so it’s allowing her to grow,” says Weisberg. “It’s a law of unintended consequences,” adds Fields.
There’s a racy scene in the premiere
Without giving away too much, a racy scene in the season premiere had critics buzzing. According to Weisberg, the purpose was to depict a show of love between Philip and Elizabeth that was “powerful, shocking, and funny.” You’ll see.
Stan is in a power struggle.
“He’s got such an interesting season coming up,” says Weisberg. “Nina is getting ahead of him. You see that at the end of the first season, and that’s such an interesting place for him to be in and so true and so real for what happens to people when you’re playing this back-and-forth game. People who are smart and good can have people get ahead of them because they are also smart and good at what they do too.” And while Stan is a man who is used to a certain amount of pressure, what it does to him will be “great” to watch, he says.
BONUS BURNING QUESTION: Is the show ever heading to Russia?
The producers said they have “half-joked” about having a season that takes place in Russia, later admitting that such a task would require heaps of funding. But, they said, “I think we’re going to eventually have some storylines there,” teases Weisberg. In fact, he added, there will, like season 1, be some material set in Russia. But filming in the country remains on their to-do. “It would basically be a budget question,” he said.
Arrow star Stephen Amell says that episode 15, The Promise, is “grandest, most challenging and most difficult episode” of the series:
“Episode 15 that we have coming up – and this is breaking news – it’s an island-centric episode,” he revealed to Entertainment Weekly Radio. “We take our usual format of 75% of the time in Starling City and 25% of the time on [the island], and we flip it upside down.”
He continued: “[In this episode], there is a shot where we establish where we are and it’s the biggest shot that we’ve ever done on the show. There’s people getting blown up. There’s people getting thrown overboard.
“There are all of these incredible things happening, and then the camera zooms from way, way, way out and it comes in to end on a close-up of me. And all I had to do was evade a punch and bang a guy’s head into the wall. I was super nervous!”
Gal Gadot has been signed to appear as Wonder Woman in three movies: the Superman vs. Batman movie, a Justice League movie, and a Wonder Woman standalone movie. Presumably this might be extended further if the character does well.
I don’t know if this is the official final storyline, but this synopsis (spoiler) of the Fantastic Four reboot leaked out from casting calls:
“The Fantastic Four’ will tell the story of two very young friends, Reed Richards and Ben Grimm. After an event transforms the boys, they find themselves empowered with bizarre new abilities. Reed becomes a scientific genius who can stretch, twist and re-shape his body to inhuman proportions. Ben becomes a monstrous, craggy humanoid with orange, rock-like skin and super strength. However, the two end up being owned by the government and used as weapons. But after they mature, two others with powers come into the picture – Sue Storm “The Invisible Girl” and Johnny Storm “The Human Torch.”
I’m glad I stuck with Revolution. The show still has its flaws, but when it gets away from the daddy issues of major characters, the current story lines are getting better. (Along these lines, when will they reveal that Miles is Charlie’s father? This is so obvious, even if it isn’t intended by the writers.) One good thing about the show from the start has been that the story does advance and they are not constantly repeating similar stories. Now there are the Patriots who are getting into eugenics. I thought the story line with Aaron and the nanobots was pretty dumb last fall, but suddenly that is becoming interesting. Of course any storyline with Giancarlo Esposito has hope due to the quality of his acting. Currently Tom and Julia Neville/Doyle are in Washington, D.C. but unfortunately for Tom his plot has been exposed. I’m sure he will recover from his current setback, but should they ever decide to end his time on the show, I hope he goes out in a scene where half his face is blown off, as happened with his character Gus on Breaking Bad.
A longer trailer for Season 2 of Hannibal, which starts February 28, has been released–video above.
Two characters will be killed in the first episode when Under the Dome returns. I’m having a tough time getting down to only two characters who I would like to see get killed. Maybe they can kill two characters every week. That might help the show.
HBO has renewed The Newsroom for a third and final season. I’m glad that Aaron Sorkin’s show will be returning, but wish there would be more than one season to go.
Maybe I’m getting softer, but I also think Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has improved. I am glad to hear that there will be more than has been revealed so far on the mysteries surrounding two of the characters according to an interview with Chloe Bennett:
Though “Seeds” and its “SHIELD Hogwarts” storyline was one of the series’ more playful episodes, Bennet says that the end of episode 13 “TRACKS” is “f***ing crazy” and will leave viewers “very worried.” Henstridge backs her up, saying that the rest of this season gets very serious and very intense.
“The thing about the next few episodes that we’re about to film and that are about to be shown, it starts getting very serious and the tone goes a lot darker,” Henstridge says. “There’s less kind of comedic things for us to do. The stakes just go through the roof. With Coulson having been kidnapped, things start to get very scary. So I think it’s more focused on the mission and there’s a lot of mystery around Skye, and that starts to be explored. So that’s kind of the main mystery.”
In terms of the mystery surrounding Coulson’s death, Bennet also acknowledges that there is a lot left fore viewers to find out — and that she thinks we’ll find out those answers before the end of Season 1.
“We found out what Tahiti was — or lack thereof — but we didn’t know why. Why is it a huge secret?” Bennet asks. “There’s a couple big question marks. There’s: What am I? Where am I from? Why the f*** are they not telling Coulson why he died? And then there’s: Who’s the Clairvoyant? Who’s the head of Centipede? What is happening? Basically starting next episode, it’s bam bam bam bam bam from here on, so it will be a lot of answers and a lot of drama.”
Jamie Alexander will be appearing on an upcoming episode reprising her role as Lady Sif from the Thor movies. There are also upcoming guest appearances from Stan Lee and Bill Paxton.
Parks and Recreationhas been renewed for a seventh season, and it is looking hopeful that Community will return for a sixth season.
Colin Jost has been named to replace Seth Meyers as the anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live.
Mr. Selfridge returned last week for a second season on ITV. It picks up four years after season one, but the events of the end of the season still have ramifications.
