The two worst people in America debated last night. Donald Trump was not intellectually capable of challenging Hillary Clinton’s long history of bad decisions and poor judgement throughout her career. Clinton was better prepared, and it didn’t take much to out-debate a buffoon like Trump. It is a shame that Jill Stein and Gary Johnson weren’t allowed to participate and provide a more meaningful challenge to Clinton.
George W. Bush and Barack Obama both recovered from poor debate performances to win reelection. Sanders did better against Clinton as the debates went on. Maybe Trump will do better in future debates, but I’m not sure that he has the ability to improve. He did start out looking like he had a chance, trying to look calm and presidential in the first half-hour. Watching Donald Trump trying to remain calm was like watching Bruce Banner, wondering when he would turn into the Hulk. It didn’t take long for Trump to repeatedly interrupt Clinton and look foolish making faces while she was speaking.
The debate was primarily a contest based upon such superficial matters, with limited consideration of the issues. Without Stein or Johnson present, nobody was going to look at the issues which neither major party candidate has any interest in, such as ending the state of perpetual warfare started after 9/11, or curtailing the surveillance state.
The initial polls, such as from CNN, showed Clinton to be the winner, but I doubt that many supporters of either candidate will change their minds based upon the debate. The debate might help Clinton with some undecided voters, but McClatchy found Clinton to lose some support among swing state voters in their focus group.
I also noticed a reversal in the red/blue partisan color coding at this debate. Donald Trump wore a blue suit while Hillary Clinton wore a red pantsuit. Next debate, Donald Trump should be required to wear the red pantsuit.
A farce like this provided a lot of material for the late night comedians. Jimmy Fallon had this to say: There were actually 1,000 people in the audience tonight and they were instructed not to applaud or cheer during the debate. As people watching were like, “What about sobbing? Can we quietly sob?”
Jimmy Kimmel summed up the entire election campaign: This was expected to be the most-watched debate ever. The ratings were expected to rank up with the finale of “Cheers,” the finale of “M.A.S.H.” Makes sense, in a way this election feels like the series finale of America.
The difference in the debate was preparation, as Stephen Colbert explained: Hillary was so prepared, my new nickname for her is Preparation H.
Below is the video of Colbert’s coverage of the debate:
Seth Meyers took A Closer Look at the debate. Video below. He even fact-checked Clinton: Ahead of tonight’s debate, Hillary Clinton posted an article on Twitter pointing out that no living president has endorsed Donald Trump. Nice try, Hillary, but it just so happens that Vladimir Putin is living.
When word came out that Star Trek Discovery (officially abbreviated DSC, not STD) would take place about ten years before the original show, and it would feature a female lead who is not the Captain, many fans realized that this would put it around the era of The Cage (the original pilot which was re-cut into flashbacks on The Menagerie). Some also speculated that the female lead could be Number One from that episode if she transferred to a new ship. Bryan Fuller has told Ain’t It Cool News that the female lead will be know as Number One. It was not stated whether this will be the same character, or perhaps another character is being referred to in this manner (as Riker was on The Next Generation).
As for the other project upcoming from Bryan Fuller, I09 discussed plans for digital erections in American Gods.
Collider interviewed producer Andrew Kreisberg regarding plans for Supergirl’s second season:
With all of the great things that come with getting to continue the show on The CW, one of the things you lost was the ability to have Calista Flockhart on as a regular cast member. How often can we expect to see her?
KREISBERG: Well, she’s in the first two episodes and we’re talking to her about doing more. It’s funny because, from our perspective, we thought she wouldn’t do any. And it’s not because she doesn’t love the show. She’s such a huge fan of the show, but moving to Vancouver, we assumed that we would part as friends. But she’s so into the show and feels such an allegiance and a responsibility to it that she’s agreed to come back, so we’re very happy. We’re not focusing on what we don’t have. We’re focusing on what we do have, and it’s allowed us to have Ian Gomez, who’s playing Snapper Carr, come in, in a more supervisory capacity, which is fun. Kara has spent two years of her life learning to deal with Cat Grant’s idiosyncracies, foibles, short temper and mixed signals, and just when she finally got that down, she’s now introduced to a new boss who’s very different, has his own thing, and isn’t quite as impressed by her spunk as Cat always was, even if Cat wouldn’t admit it. It’s a journey, like any of us go on. We’ve all had different bosses, over the course of our careers. Just when you finally feel like you’ve nailed your job, you get promoted and you’re suddenly like, “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore!” That’s what’s going to happen to Kara this season…
What can you say about the addition of Christopher Wood and how his character will fit in with things?
KREISBERG: We don’t want to say too much because we’re doing our own version of Mon-El. Obviously, he’s a character from the comic books and he’s much beloved, and we’re putting our own spin on it. What’s interesting about Mon-El joining the show, from Kara’s perspective, is that Kara has spent her whole life as someone who’s been mentored, first by her mother, and then by the Danvers and Superman and Cat. She’s always been somebody who’s been taken care of, in a way. Now, with Mon-El, he’s fresh off the boat. As far as he’s concerned, living on another planet happened yesterday, and suddenly, he’s on Earth and everything he knew was lost, just the way it was for Kara, but she’s had 12 years to process it and he’s struggling with it. So, Kara is now the one in the mentor position. Ironically, she even says in an episode, “I was sent to Earth not to be a hero. I wasn’t sent here to be Supergirl. I was sent here to protect Clark and take care of Clark. Now, in an odd way, with Mon-El here, I’m getting to fulfill that original mission that I had.” So, it’s a big change and a big growing experience for Kara, this season.
How daunting was it to figure out how you wanted to portray Superman, what you wanted the dynamic between Clark and Kara to be, and finding the right actor to take all of that on?
KREISBERG: I think our take on him is probably something a little bit more traditional. There’s certainly a little bit of the “Aw shucks” about him, but he’s been Superman for awhile, so there’s a savviness about him as Superman and as Clark. If he’s been Superman for 12 years, that also means that he’s been Clark Kent for 12 years. He knows how to interview somebody. He knows how to get a story out of someone. As always, with any of these things, we’re never doing a direct adaptation of a specific comic book. We cherry pick the best parts and things that we love. So, there’s a little bit of the Christopher Reeve Superman in there, a healthy dose of the Superman animated series, which we’re huge fans of, a little bit of Lois & Clark, a little George Reeves, and a little Super Friends. And as far as finding the right guy, as soon as we said we were going to do Superman, Greg [Berlanti] mentioned Tyler [Hoechlin]. We’ve been fans of his for years, and when we sat down with him, he is Superman. Not just with the looks, but he’s such a good guy, such a nice guy, and he’s so open and forthright and brimming with life. You just feel better when you’re around him, which I think is part of the secret of Superman. He is that ideal, but not in an unattainable way. Superman should make you feel like you can do anything, even though he’s the one that can do anything. And Tyler just had all that in spades. So, it was less a question of us reaching out. It was more a question of hoping he would say yes. After Tyler, I’m not sure what we would have done…
What’s in store for J’onn J’onzz?
KREISBERG: Part of the reason we’re bringing on Miss Martian is to give J’onn his own story this year and his own emotional ride, meeting her and having this tie to his home world that he thought he would never have again. As he has to keep reminding people, he’s been here for 300 years and isolated for most of it. Last year, with his relationship with Alex and his relationship with Kara, he started to come out of his shell a little bit and wasn’t quite so afraid to show who he really was. So, in getting to interact with M’gann, he’s going to have a whole new person with which to share his martian experience. We think it’s going to be a great story.
On the weekends I often wear somewhat subtle genre t-shirts such as Stark Expo, Wayne Enterprises, or Nelson and Murdock, Avocados At Law. I have a lot of ties with hidden, and in some cases not so hidden Mickeys (and one with both Mickey and Goofy). Now it is possible to go all out with superhero themed suits. Fun Suits has put out a line of discrete Marvel and DC based suits. The Mary Sue provides a description. The downsides are that they are polyester, and won’t be available until November.
In other Marvel news, Marvel has revealed what Thor was busy doing during the events of Captain America: Civil War in the above video, which was shown at San Diego Comic Con.
Variety reports on Ron Moore’s comments about season 3 of Outlander:
“Outlander” showrunner Ronald D. Moore told an audience at the Edinburgh Intl. Television Festival on Thursday that in Season 3 the show would start in Scotland but would then be making a sea voyage in the 18th century.
“There’s an extended journey across the Atlantic and then the story eventually goes to Jamaica, the Caribbean and ending up in the New World,” he said. “Season 3 will be as different to Season 2 as Season 2 was to Season 1.”
These dramatic shifts threw up challenges for Moore, who said: “It’s exciting creatively; it’s very hard in terms of the production… You are doing a whole new series with every season. So that’s very difficult. Scouting new locations, building new sets, bringing in new cast members, new costumes, different eras. It increases the expense, it increases the time necessary to prep everything, to shoot everything… So it makes it more difficult and it also takes more mental energy having to crack new problems.”
…Moore underscored the differences between the novel and the show. “You are not capturing Diana’s voice in the show, so much as you are capturing her world and her story. Diana’s voice is there for you on the page. When you read the book, or any book, the author is speaking to you directly,” he said. “The TV show has a vision, feeling and vibe that is an entity unto itself. All these component pieces then combine into our voice.”
Ingrid Oliver says she knows the difference between the human and Zygon version of Osgood:
Discussing last year’s last year’s ‘The Zygon Invasion’ and ‘The Zygon Inversion’ episodes, Oliver told Doctor Who: The Fan Show: “In the script it simply said Osgood 1 and Osgood 2. Steven [Moffat] never said explicitly ‘This is Zygon Osgood and this is not Zygon Osgood – or Hybrid Osgood’, so I sort of made a choice, but I don’t know if it’s right!”
Asked if there were any tells to signify which Osgood is which, she revealed: “Yes, in my head there are some very small tells. But, having said that, it’s sort of open to interpretation – because I guess that’s the point of the episode. In my head, inevitably there are a couple of little things that I did.”
Oliver joked: “I don’t know if people have noticed it – probably not… the Zygon one strokes her chin a lot!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EurfvJ2z3gM
You’re the Worst returns on Wednesday. Season three trailer above. I hear the first episode is rather Not Safe For Work, and the season also includes an episode entitled The Last Sunday Funday. TV Line has more on the season.
I am waiting to see what happens next on tonight’s episode of The Last Ship. Last week’s episode felt like a look at Donald Trump’s America with that wall going up.
Listen was an ambitious episode of Doctor Who, even if it does fall short of Blink, which it has been compared to. The episode deals with the character and origin of the Doctor, the further importance of the impossible girl in the development of the Doctor, along with Danny Pink’s (and presumably Clara’s) family tree. The episode begins with the Doctor writing on his chalk board (chalk boards are cool) and seeming to be talking directly to the audience about an idea he has come up with:
Listen! Question, why do we talk out loud when we know we’re alone? Conjecture: because we know we’re not. Evolution perfects survival skills. There are perfect hunters There is perfect defense. Question, why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? Answer: how would you know? Logically, if evolution were to perfect a creature whose primary skill were to hide from view, how would you know it existed? It could be with us every second and we would never know. How would you detect it? Even sense it? Except in those moments when for no clear reason, you choose to speak aloud. What would such a creature want? What would it do? Well? What would you do?
In many ways this is a repeat of previous Moffat ideas. The Weeping Angels, introduced in Blink, are a terror which can be hidden in plain site, only moving when you aren’t looking at them. The Silence took this further, with people losing all memory of seeing them. Now the Doctor postulates a creature which cannot be detected at all. However, while we learned about the nature of the Weeping Angels and the Silence, at the end of the episode it is not clear whether these beings even exist.
If the exist, they could mean that a common nightmare is really about something which has actually occurred:
I think everybody at some point in their lives has the exact same nightmare. You wake up, or you think you do, and there’s someone in the dark, someone close. Or you think there might be. So you sit up, turn on the light, and the room looks different at night. It ticks, creaks, and breathes. And you tell yourself there’s nobody there. Nobody watching, nobody listening, nobody there, naturally. And you very nearly believe it. You really, really try.
For the Doctor it was real, but instead of being a creature whose existence was unknown, it turned out to be Clara, back in time to the Doctor’s childhood on Gallifrey. Seeing the Doctor’s childhood in the barn does provide a connection to The Day of the Doctor, providing a reason as to why the War Doctor chose this place to decide whether to detonate the Moment. The scene also provides background to the Doctor’s antipathy towards soldiers (at this season, ignoring his past work with UNIT) and reused a line from 1963: “Fear makes companions of us all.”
It is questionable whether Clara could really control the TARDIS at all (even putting aside Sexy’s dislike of Clara, as revealed in The Doctor’s Wife), and even more questionable whether she it could have gone to Gallifrey, which was time locked, but whose status is no longer clear after the events of The Time of The Doctor. However these minor questions of continuity are outweighed by the manner in which Moffat ties in the entire history of the Doctor and the show.
Besides Gallifrey, the TARDIS traveled along Danny Pink’s timeline, presumably due to the importance to Clara’s. This included a visit to him as a young child, then called Rupert, to literally the end of the universe where a time-traveling descendant was stranded. If the implications are correct that Orson Pink is a descendant of both Danny and Clara, it looks like time travel is the Pink/Oswald family business on Doctor Who just as it is for Alec’s family on Continuum. Clara also has both influenced Danny’s decision to be a soldier and has made Dan the Soldier Man not only an important part of Danny’s life, but a family heirloom. Clearly, “A soldier so brave, he doesn’t need a gun” also refers to the Doctor.
Listen isn’t limited to other times ranging from the Doctor’s childhood on Gallifrey to the end of the universe. Moffat also took advantage of his experience from Coupling to present Clara and Danny’s first date. Things did not work out very well, but Clara ultimately figured out that she had to make it right.
One of the scenes of the date included an astronaut walking through the restaurant to get Clara. Using the astronaut suit made no sense, but this, along with the minor questions of continuity, can easily be overlooked. A more serious problem with the episode is that the initial question as to whether the creature which the Doctor speculated about does exist is never answered. Learning that Clara was the creature under the Doctor’s bed suggested that there was no need for such a complicated explanation for the nightmare. The noises in Orson’s ship could have been these creatures, or perhaps just noises from the ship. It is harder to explain what wrote on the Doctor’s chalkboard, and what was under Rupert’s sheets.
Above is the Doctor Who Extra for Listen.
Last week I posted the synopsis for the first episode of season two of Sleepy Hollow. Fox has released the synopsis for the second:
ICHABOD AND ABBIE TRY TO GET A “HEAD” OF THE COMPETITION ON AN ALL-NEW “SLEEPY HOLLOW” MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, ON FOX
Ichabod Crane and Lt. Abbie Mills concoct a daring plan to try to rescue Ichabod’s wife, Katrina, from the Headless Horseman by resurrecting a Frankenstein-like monster created by Benjamin Franklin. Meanwhile, Frank Irving faces new trouble after revealing the true details of his encounter with a demon, and Jenny Mills finds herself at odds with the new sheriff in town in the all-new “The Kindred” episode of SLEEPY HOLLOW airing Monday, Sept. 29 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (SLH-202) (TV-14 L, V)
While sometimes Outlander seems to move too slowly, The Garrison Commander does advance the plot considerably. It seems to be a safe prediction that Jack Randall does not just forget about Claire following her marriage. The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Tobias Menzies, who plays both Jack Randall and, back in the 20th century, Clarie’s husband Frank. The interview does have some major spoilers as to future events from the novels:
Because Outlander is primarily Claire’s story, we don’t get to see Frank’s internal monologue while she’s in 1743 Scotland. Have you filled in the blanks in terms of Frank’s state of mind and what he’s dealing with back in England?
We see Frank still struggling to come to terms with what happened, and be at loggerheads with the authorities and the police. Basically, they tell him to go home and that his wife has eloped with someone else. He won’t believe it. Through the episodes, we see him coming to accept the version of events that people are saying to him. I suppose he does know Claire better than the others, and in a way, he’s right. She isn’t a woman who would run off with someone else, and he’s forced to give up. I think it’s a good episode.
At the end of the episode, Dougal proposes that Claire marry Jamie. How do you think Frank would react to that?
I think he would be pretty understanding. My understanding is that Claire, later on in the novels, reappears and is taken back by Frank, even though she’s pregnant and she tells this story of time travel. And for whatever reason, he chooses to accept it and raise a child together, which I think is a pretty big gesture on his part. What’s interesting about Frank is that he’s thoughtful. It’s not the great, most ostentatious of loves. In that respect, he’s overshadowed by Jamie and Claire. But I think [Frank and Claire’s relationship is] deep and meaningful and speaks volumes.
This was a big episode for Black Jack and Claire. Let’s talk about the interrogation scene.
It’s only a page and half in the book. It was a great decision on the part of the writers to explode that moment. In the book, there’s a lot of Jack being referred to and not a lot of him being there. You need him onscreen. I’m really happy with where it ended up. It gave us the time to go back and understand where the backstory with Jamie and Jack began and also to understand the emotions that are driving Jack, so he isn’t just a two-dimensional thug. Compared to the rest of the season, it’s a change of gear. It’d be interesting to see how people find it.
Here are some great examples of what Star Trek, the original show, could have looked if filmed in wide screen. Here is creator Nick Acosta’s description of this project:
Forty eight years ago this week Star Trek debuted its first episode on NBC. The show, like all other shows at the time, was broadcast in the old style 4×3 aspect ratio. Using HD screen caps from my friends at Trekcore.com, I created this project of what the show would have looked like in Cinerama widescreen. As a kid the show always felt bigger and more epic than it appears to me as an adult. I was able to create these shots by waiting for the camera to pan and then I stitched the separate shots together. The result is pretty epic. It reminds me of the classic science fiction movies of the 50’s and 60’s. Suddenly the show has a “Forbidden Planet” vibe. Other shots remind me of how director Robert Wise would use a camera technique to keep the foreground and background elements in focus.
Major television events of the upcoming week include the season finale of the best new sit-com to come around in a long time, You’re The Worst. Gretchen and Jimmy might be “the worst” but that is what makes them so fun to watch. If the season is a ten episode version of a warped romantic comedy movie, the eighth episode was the required portion in which the couple temporarily break up based upon a misunderstanding. Last week was somewhat of an origin episode with flash backs to before they met, as shown in the pilot. Hopefully this Thursday will end the season with the two back together, and ready for many seasons to come. The other summer sit-com from FX, Married, also ends this week. If it returns I will probably watch it, but it is You’re The Worst which I will really miss if it does not return.
You’re the Worst would also be a great show to binge watch if you haven’t seen it, with only ten episodes for the season and all highly entertaining. Another show to binge watch if you missed it (as I did until binging over the past week) is An Hounorable Woman. Certainly there are unrealistic aspects, but watching it for eight hours was like reading a highly entertaining novel, and the portions which might not be realistic in the real world can easily be ignored while following the events surrounding Nessa Stein and her family.
Binge watchers are also getting excited to hear that the full seven seasons of The Gilmore Girls will be available on Netflix starting October 1. In 2006 I posted some of the political lines from the show. USA Today has listed five top episodes to watch once they are available.
If you want to stick with science fiction, Vulture has listed the best science fiction movies on Netflix.
Nurse Jackie is to end after the upcoming seventh season. It is probably the right decision. We can’t keep going through cycles of Jackie getting off drugs and then relapsing year after year.
Community, on the other hand, deserves at least one more year and a movie–preferably far more. I am glad to hear that Dan Harmon is denying the rumors that Alison Brie is not returning.
Hayley Atwell, star of the upcoming series Agent Carter, will appear on the second season premiere of Agents of SHIELD. I don’t know if this will be a flash-back or Agent Carter at an older age. In other Marvel news, there is talk that the Hulk might return both for a television series and movie. New DC projects being considered include Supergirl and Teen Titans.
While the show has had its ups and downs, The Leftovers did end with a satisfying season finale (far more than I can say for True Blood). While the show will probably never really explain what happened, at least we have the view of some characters as for the reason only some disappeared, along with finally learning what The Guilty Remnant was up to. The show has now caught up with the end of the novel, making next season even more of an unknown.
