You also don’t have the force and pod racers
I think they made an error in dialogue, Barris is telling the Fourth Sister that they are still alive but there is only one man, so I think originally creators wanted severall Jedi there but ultimately they decided that there will only be one, and they forgot to rerecord the dialogue. Idk it's so weird that they left that mistake in.
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@dbmen no mistake here and no cut story either. "The Jedi", as the character is known, is non-binary so would be referred to by they and them.
what if...? marvel did panderverse
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@asinis do you people NEVER stop crying? We get it, you hate women and POC. Stop trying to participate in society when you don't like it.
Three if you include Ventress.
"Boxing Daria" is this show at its best. I loved the episode's structure, that has the refrigerator box trigger Daria's troubling memory from childhood, and uses the rest of the episode to have her slowly piecing together and reacting to what happened.
Season 5 has been, in large part, about Daria recognizing her own faults, stepping outside her own, often unyielding perspective, broadening her horizons, and showing a great deal of personal growth. This episode was the perfect capstone to that, with her concern over being a burden on her parents, and her hurt that even they see her as a misfit, turning into a recognition that her parents understand her better than they let on, and appreciate and love her for who she is, and that, in turn, makes Daria appreciate how lucky she really is to be raised by these people she's so apt to resist.
Much of this show has centered on Daria's misfit status, and closing out its regular season with one last 3,000 foot view of how Daria feels about being an outsider, how its shaped who she is and who she's always been, was a wonderful way to approach the end of the series. As strong and distinct and interesting as Daria is, her greatest flaw is myopia (figuratively, though she probably has literal myopia as well). Being able to look at herself a little more clearly through her parents' eyes, and with their respect, take a step toward being more social like leading a freshman tour, was a wonderful bit of symbolism to show the potential for growth and change in Daria without taking the character away from the sarcastic non-joiner we've come to know and love.
There were also a lot of wonderful little grace notes to help tie up the series here, from a call back to the ink blot test from the series's premier, to Daria telling Jane she's the person that Daria trusts most in the world, to Quinn saving Daria's box. Even the deft way the show handles how a child remembers their parents' fights, or depicts how the uber-popular Quinn was once just an energetic toddler feels well-observed and trenchant. There's a heart and complexity to the best episodes of this series, and "Boxing Daria" had both in spades, from a complicated look at the conflicted feelings an outcast like Daria feels, to the strong bonds of friendship and family she's built despite that. I'm still looking forward to "Is It Fall Yet", but "Boxing Daria" is a strong a note for this series to go out on as any.
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Agree with everything you said here. It was a really well written and constructed series finale, something very rare in television thanks to abrupt cancellations or just shows outstaying their welcome.
6.9/10. This is a pretty stock story. I was rolling my eyes at Jet from the minute he swung down from the trees as a cutrate Peter Pan with his collection of Lost Boys. There's a fairly hackneyed arc for Sokka where Katara and Aang make fun of him for "trusting his instincts" and leading them into trouble, then of course it's his instincts that save the day when the two of them get hoodwinked by Jet. It's done well enough, even if the bits with Jet flirting with Katara while plays Cassandra about how bad a dude Jet is and no one will believe him feels especially hacky.
Still, the backgrounds and setting of the episode was particularly gorgeous, with the fall colors and vibrant reds contrasting nicely with Aang's robes and Jet's autumn-hued clothing. Their fight up in the trees was a pretty cool setpiece as well, though again the stuttering animation takes some of the oopmh out of it. And I have to admit, I bought into the fake out at the end, and was ready to applaud the show for having the moxie to show the bad guys winning. Still, Sokka managing to Xander it up and find an unorthodox solution by following his instincts, Zeppo-style, is a nice bit of redemption for him despite the stock nature of the conflict.
My only other complaint is that there's something very interesting about the idea of a young adult who's lost his parents due to the Fire Nation's brutality, and is willing to inflict the same level of brutality on the Fire Nation, civilians and all to get his revenge and protect his band of brothers. Instead, the entire focus for Jet is on his ability to smoothtalk and manipulate others, eventually painting him as a fairly one-note villain. There's some thematic depth to the idea behind the character that the episode barely scratches the surface of.
Overall, this one feels like something of a placeholder episode, meant to give a little more depth to Sokka but ending up giving him a stock arc with a pretty obvious trajectory. But it's not without it's charms and it has some quality design work, so it's close to passing grade.
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Couldn't have said it better.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.1/10] The pacing and structure for *Homeland*s season finales has been kind of wonky since at least Season 3. “America First” is half-climax and half-denouement, and that leaves it feeling a bit jumbled tonally. It is difficult, at best, to have the culmination of all the fireworks and plotting and threats that have bubbled up over the course of a season sewed together with the quiet aftermath and scenes of people putting the pieces back together. It leaves the finale of one of the show’s best seasons feeling like Frankenstein’s monster.
And yet, taken apart, each half of the episode is solid, if not exactly an achievement. The attempt on President Keane’s life, and Carrie and Quinn saving the day, would have worked better as its own thing, and expends a number of conveniences to get the characters separated and put back together right when the show needs it, but it has its moments.
For one thing, it’s nice to see Carrie taking charge a bit. One of the show’s recurring bits is Carrie as the last sane woman, and seeing her make her way to the President, figure out the plot (with some unexpected help from Dar Adal), and keep the President Elect safe from her would-be assassins is a minor thrill. The threat of the rogue ops team trying to blow up her car and then hunt her down verges on the unbelievable, but makes for a few nice set pieces at least.
And, oh yeah, Quinn is dead. It’s a moment that feels like it should have more impact than it does. It’s nice that he goes out with a heroic sacrifice, saving not only the leader of the free world but the woman he loves amid a torrent of gunfire. The fact that making it through that blockade means they’re suddenly safe, and the entire idea of pegging the assassination on him are a bit farfetched, but there’s the kernel of a good idea there.
Quinn goes down fighting, and when he believes he’s empty and worthless and only good at killing, he dies putting his life on the line for something bigger than himself. The tone of the moment is somewhat weird, as the show doesn’t get too impressionistic or too realistic, but it tries to follow up on the sense that Quinn has been out of sorts and trying to protect Carrie throughout the season, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice in that regard here.
The problem is that Quinn has been near-death so many times in this show, from his pirate king escapade last season, to his miraculous survival of the attempt on his life at the cabin this season, that it’s hard to gin up too much investment in his actual death here. “America First” doesn’t dwell on it, and I appreciate its commitment to not overdoing the moment, but you can only turn a character into a death-defying superman so many times, or fake out his demise so many times, before when you actually pull the trigger (so to speak) it doesn’t mean what it might have.
We then get to “six weeks later,” which conjures up troubling recollections to Brody magically beating his drug addiction through the power of a “three weeks later” mini-montage. Still, the passage of time puts some distance between the climax of the season and the inevitable end-of-the-line reflection, which at least softens the sort of disjointed feeling of it all.
The good guys have won! Brett O’Keefe still has his show, but he’s talking about how he’s let his fans down by letting Keane get inaugurated. Dar Adal and his cronies are in jail! Saul is the head of the CIA, or at least someone big enough to have a seat at the table when the heads of the intelligence community are gathered! Carrie is going to get Frannie back, and she’s getting a job in the White House! All is well! Conspiracy scuttled! Bad guys vanquished! Heroes victorious!
This being Homeland it is, of course, not that simple. I like the poetry of that “what hell hath I wrought?” ending to the season, where Saul is arrested, Carrie is used by the people in power, and things don’t look so sunny on the other side of Keane’s inauguration. There’s something uncomfortable in Dar’s ominous-yet-warm statement to Saul that what he did was unforgivable, but that he’s not sure he was wrong to do it. It feels like the show is trying to tie into Trump-related concerns of the real world that are an uneasy fit for Homeland’s fictional, if occasionally ripped-from-the-headlines one.
Still, I like the law of unintended consequences coming into play here. Dar and O’Keefe’s efforts stemmed from a mistrust of Keane, a sense that she would set back their projects and their way of life. Now, that feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no doubt that Keane would have enacted reforms, but it is clear that the attempt on her life hardened her, made her into someone that would have heads roll throughout the intelligence agencies, who would reauthorize the patriot act rather than limit it, that would make mistrustful of anything that isn’t under his auspices.
As disquieting as that is to see, it’s entirely understandable. When your own deep state makes an attempt on your life, it’s not crazy to be mistrustful of anyone even remotely affiliated with them. When your enemies, who turn out to be mortal enemies, subvert the rule of law to run you out as a duly elected leader, it’s not a crazy move to subvert it yourself in order to ensure they’re not able to do the same thing again. There’s a troubling subtext from Dar’s comments and Keane’s own worries to Saul that there is something fundamentally unsound about Keane that makes her prone to this, or not up to the mantle of being President, but the show take an interesting tack in showing how Dar and O’Keefe’s plan changed the course of Keane’s presidency, but not in the way they imagined.
It’s not in the way Carrie imagined either. The iconography at the end of the episode, of Carrie looking off into the distance and seeing the capital, is a direct parallel to the famous image of Brody doing the same thing. The implication, at least as I read it, is that just as the first major arc of Homeland centered on the blowback and problems from the war on terror sparked by undeniable tragedy, so too does Carrie look upon a government in Washington that is poised to start the same cycle over again, the same recriminations and power-consolidating executive that helped to create an environment where Brody would be born. Carrie had hoped to avoid all this, to prevent Dar from perpetuating that cycle, and yet despite her best efforts, it’s all back where it began, even if it took a different road to get there.
But Carrie doesn’t just mourn the lost opportunity for reform. She mourns her friend. As Mrs. Bloom noted, Carrie discovering Quinn’s collection of picture hidden in a book is a nice callback to how she uncovered his former family life in the first place. The book itself, Great Expectations, is a symbolic choice, one that tells the story of a young man who idolized a young woman, and who went through hell in pursuing someone who would not, and arguably could not, love him back. The stack of pictures is a little cliché, but still, the moment where Carrie finds the photo of herself amid Quinn’s treasured snapshot memories is still affecting, a sign of intimacy that she was one of the few things in his life that mattered, that made him more than a heartless killing machine.
Season 6 was still one of Homeland’s best, one with an impressively unified story that relied on fewer wild twists or conveniences than most, and which offered better and more potent commentary on today’s political climate despite not quite tracking with the real world in its fictional leaders. “America First” isn’t the softest landing for an otherwise quality stretch of episode, with the divided structure and languid pace giving the entire efforts a less-than-cohesive sensibility, but it ties together a certain fatalism that has been with the show from the beginning.
There are good people, even good people who do bad things. There are well-intentioned people, in government and in the intelligence services, who mean to change things and defend their country. But sometimes the confluence of those intentions leads us inexorably back to the same place, sinking to the level of those we oppose, stamping out our enemies without process or justice, and starting the cycle anew, birthing more Brodys and Quinns to fight and die in the struggle. Carrie is a survivor and a witness, and all her talent, all her effort, all her sacrifice to make things better or different may be for naught. That’s not fun, but its potent, and so is Season 6 of Homeland.
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Thank you Andrew, that was beautifully written, and an exceptionally insightful analysis of the finale. I couldn’t agree more with you about all the arguments you make: in particular, those you make regarding Quinn’s death, and the disquieting “what Hell hath we wrought?” feeling in the aftermath of saving the PE and clearing the path for her inauguration.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.8/10] I appreciate the choice to conflate something as geopolitically momentous as the end of The Troubles with something as personally momentous as the act of leaving your childhood behind. The choice to vote yes on the titular agreement is juxtaposed with the choice to accept adulthood, and the inevitable changes that come with it. Granda Joe lays it out -- it’s easy to be afraid that it could all be for naught, but it’s tougher, in some ways, to imagine there could be something better, even if it’s scary.
The finale does some of those full-circle things that help mark that this is a big closing event for a show. We open with a montage of the major developments, big and small, that have taken place over the course of the series. The whole thing ends in a big dance party and celebration that includes most every character of note boogieing down together in one big brouhaha. They dust off the Cranberries again and show most of the cast making their choice on the ballot before venturing into that big wide world and with it, the future. The show does a good job of marking the milestone, for the series and for the lives of its characters, that this represents.
And I like that for all Erin’s literary aspirations -- devolving from Hamlet to a “Shakespeare Simplified” book to a teen magazine -- these experiences genuinely did give her a voice that helps her to articulate not only her own perspective on growing up, but on her country’s perspective on emerging from ages of sectarian violence into a new period of peace. The hints that this show is, more or less, what Erin was talking about when she said she’d write this down “someday” are a little too cute, but I like that idea as the capstone to her growth and her arc over the course of the show.
The side stories we get along the way are good too. Sister Michael is my favorite character in the show, so pretty much anything they did with her was going to meet with my approval (including her chalking up Jenny Joyce’s song as another “atrocity” that the troubles has visited upon them). That said, I really like where they went. More than anyone, Sister Michael seems perpetually disgruntled about her job and this school. But when the bishop is ready to reassign her, she looks wistfully about the place that’s been her calling for the last several years, affirms that she appreciates her work and feels as though she makes a difference, and ultimately succeeds in her fight to stay. Watching her fight for the thing she seemed to disdain, because deep down she appreciates it, is softly moving.
I also appreciated the fight between Erin and Michelle over how the agreement would free her brother, who killed a man amid The Troubles, from prison, and whether or not that’s a good thing. (Did we know that before now? Feels like a line that got tossed off semi-joking in season 1 that’s being played straight now.) The show wrings good comedy from their tiff, with Clare’s inadvertent game of phone tag being the funniest bit in the episode. But it also pays off the dispute nicely, with both acknowledging the shades of gray, the lack of clarity in resolving what’s good and what’s bad, and in line with the broader ideas of this episode, connecting their own uncertainty over how to reckon with such things personally with the people of Ireland’s difficulty in doing the same.
Connecting it to dueling parties between Erin/Orla on the one hand, and Jenny Joyce on the other, makes for some good set pieces. The fact that Erin has to share her party with Orla, share her theme of literary heroes with Orla’s of monkeys, and share the parish hall with a first communion, adds to her parade of amusing indignities. By contrast, Jenny’s party is appropriately tricked out, replete with a famed singer from Derry. The big shindig gives the show a chance to go a bit wild. And the imagery of Clare blacking out Jenny’s party to bring it to the rest of the Derry Girls on foot is a nice way to give everyone a win.
(As an aside, I don’t know if it was covid or scheduling commitments, but Nicola Coughlan was apart from the rest of the cast for a lot of this episode. It’s not a hindrance to the episode necessarily, but it’s a little conspicuous in a series finale.)
The other bits we get here are all solid. Gerry bristling at having to house cousin Eamonn, who’s in no hurry to get his roof fixed and is ready to take advantage of the Quinns’ kindness, is worth a laugh. Granda Joe puzzling over what the agreement actually means, and the family’s reactions, are worth a few laughs. And my favorite part of the episode may actually be the opening, with Orla’s free-spirited, musical wandering through the town, which comes with a great energy and carefree air that signifies the spirit of hope amid uncertain possibilities “The Agreement” represents.
The thought that lingers with me is Joe’s prophecy to his granddaughter, that one day she’ll tell these tales to her kids like they’re ghost stories. I didn’t grow up amid the end of The Troubles, but I’m old enough to know what he means, to feel like your childhood took place in a different world, one you can describe and explain, but never truly account for to someone who wasn’t there before so much changed. This finale isn’t perfect, but it and Derry Girls as a whole, is the best way to capture a few of those ghosts, share them with people who might appreciate them, and conjure those days again. It did it all with great humor, an incredible sense of place, and a poignancy that remained until the final moments of the show.
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Nicola (Clare) was also filming Bridgerton and there were some scheduling conflicts, which is why she was away.
[2.8/10] Woof. After having such a rough time with the first season of the show, I blanched a bit at the suggestion that the second season was a step down. “How much further could it go off the rails?” I wondered. How could it conceivably recede from the already paltry levels it had already hit. Well, there’s my answer -- ninety minutes of television that is 90% shlock.
But, as I always try to do when talking about something I don’t particularly care for, let’s start out talking about what’s good about this one. Full disclosure, the opening scene with the senile old room service guy doddering around while Cooper lays bleeding on the floor initially annoyed the hell out of me. The scene drags and drags and is almost excruciating in its duration. But I take that to be the point, and somewhere around the second time the guy returned just to give a thumbs up, it elicited a chuckle for the sheer rake gag-esque audacity of the scene, so that’s something.
We also get the who, if not necessarily the why, of the central mystery of the show. Cooper lays out the details of what he’s pieced together, and the episode reveals, or at least seems to reveal, that Bob, the guy from Cooper’s dream and Mrs. Palmer’s vision, beat up Ronette and seemingly killed Laura. Some of the scene veers into cheese, as nearly everything here does, but the quick, spliced together clips of that grisly final scene are legitimately chilling, and add a level of fright and severity that the show has had trouble establishing outside of myna bird mimics thus far.
There’s also some nice material involving Ed and Nadine. I’ll admit, I’ve come around on this portion of Twin Peaks, which I initially found bothersome. Ed offers a sad and exaggerated but believable tale. He and Norma were longtime sweethearts; he thought Norma ran off with Hank (where presumably there’s more to the story), and Nadine was there for him in a time of need. Ed was impulsive and distraught and married her, but she was so happy and so gracious and so devoted to him (never even blaming him for accidentally shooting out her eye) that he didn’t have the heart to leave her. It’s a little melodramatic, but it’s a good performance from Ed, and the look of wistfulness in Norma’s mind when she sees the husband and wife together adds another layer of pathos to the whole thing.
That said, the theme for this episode seems to be two-fold: 1. Baffling transformation and 2. Doing a collection of really stupid stuff.
The latter assessment may sound harsh, but I don’t know how else to explain some of what seems to be trying to pass for comedy or texture throughout this episode. While the senile room service guy has a certain anti-humor charm to it, the similar attempts at weird or wooly humor are painfully bad. The numerous, extended shots of Deputy Andy’s odd little walk and wobble were dumb as all get out. Leland breaking into a little jig and Ben and Jerry following him was a baffling effort at charm. And the “hospital food is terrible” recurring gags are the hackiest kind of easy crap. I think the show means to be funny here, but it never quite makes it above moronic.
And that’s not the only place where “Giant” be with you makes no sense (in a bad, rather than merely surreal, way). When Ben chases Audrey around the bed, why in the world doesn’t he recognize his daughter’s voice, or the other features besides her face? The whole bit is creepy (which is, in fairness, what I think Lynch & Frost were going for) but it feels like a cheap way to avoid the reckoning the show set up in the prior episode.
That’s not the only nonsensical parent-child scene in the episode. Major Briggs tells his son Bobby about a dream he had where they embraced as family in a wonderful house some time in the future. It’s meant to play as some kind of reconciliation or corner-turning moment for the pair, but it plays as ridiculous as all get out. Much of that can be pinned on the horrible acting from Bobby Briggs, who seems be trying to communicate being sincerely touched, but mugs and renders the reaction implausible.
Then there’s the strange transformations in the episode. Leland Palmer’s hair turns white after he returns from strangling Jacques Renault. So...there’s that. But he’s also happy now, singing songs and passing out during them. I’ll admit, there’s something funny about Ray Wise playing so chipper (and it’s a nice change from his awful cry-dancing routine), but it’s so exaggerated and over the top that it’s hard to take anything from it beyond mild bemusement.
The same cannot be said for Donna’s transformation here, as she seems to be attempting to step into Laura’s persona. Between taking Laura’s glasses, her meals on wheels route, and toying with Bobby, we get an entire change in her personality without the slightest hint as to why or how. Maybe the glasses are cursed or the ghost of Laura is possessing her or some crap like that? It’s weak sauce from Lara Flynn Boyle, and a direction for the character that feels entirely unmotivated.
Oh yeah, and then there’s a soothsaying giant. While this struck me as odd, it’s of a piece with the “people who seem like they’re from an old circus’s freak show give Cooper vaguely-worded prophecy” shtick from the first season. It didn’t do much for me (and certainly didn’t feel as formally audacious as Cooper’s first dream), but it didn’t really bother me either.
In total though, “May the Giant Be With You” may be a new low for Twin Peaks, which had already been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while by this point. Plodding pacing, more awful dialogue and acting (with Pete joining Bobby as a particularly bad offender on that score), dumb attempts at comedy, and nonsensical character choices. This was a slog, but hey, at least we have Alfred back to voice my thoughts on the ridiculous of this all in-universe. Yeesh.
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@andrewbloom honestly, cool review. i've read quite a few of yours over the past years (almost a decade, sheesh) on this app. i just think it'd be nicer if you didn't present your opinion as fact. but since this review is so old, this might be different now. don't know.
It's hard to know how much leeway to give a sitcom when it comes to things that would be horrifying in real life but can seem merely goofy in the context of a television show. In real life, Robin would be justified in never speaking to either Ted or Barney ever again after they turn her hopes, her personality, her very life into a class. The show attempts to sweep that under the rug by having Ted frame it as a use for all the Robin knowledge he'd generated when they were dating, and that it's the hardest he'd ever seen barney work to keep a girl. It doubles down by having Barney apologize and attempt to explain himself. But it still feels a little strange for Robin to forgive the both of them so quickly for such a gross violation, even if the show bends over backwards to make the argument that it was well-meaning.
On the other hand, there are demands of a sitcom, chiefly that things be more-or-less reset to the status quo by the end of the episode. Even in a comedy as continuity-heavy and intertextual as How I Met Your Mother, there's a certain inertia of the familiar, where outside of the season finale or Big Event context, the basic dynamic of the group has to stay the same. With that in mind, I can, more or less, make my peace with it. It helps that beneath the inherent creepiness of the whole thing, Ted's class is pretty damn funny, from the brick joke with the Flatiron Building, to Barney being a less-than-model student, to the list of items that can distract Robin when she's mad. Marshall's barrel B-story is pretty slight by comparison, but as usual Jason Segel makes the most of it.
All-in-all, the laughs are there for the most part, even if some of the humor is broad. It's just a question of whether you can separate how horrific something like "Robin 101" would be in the real world from the silly tone it has in the heightened reality of HIMYM.
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@andrewbloom I've watched the show a few times and every time I watch it, I build some new opinions on things that happen in the show. I completely agree that it is a gross violation, and that it would be truly acceptable to not forgive Barney. But I've come to understand why it makes sense for Robin to forgive Barney. We have already established what Barney is like and Robin has still chosen to be with him. Now that doesn't mean that she accepts everything he does, but I think she is okay with some boundaries being broken, if she can get through to Barney. She knows and we know that Barney can change his behavior and learn, so she gives him that extra wriggleroom in the relationship to learn.
It's still a over the top sitcom moment, but I believe there is a rational part to it, unlike some plotlines in further episodes.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.5/10] Scores of great Star Trek feature our heroes taking a stand. Woven into the ethos of the series is the sense of a crossroads where those steeped in the ways of the Federation must choose whether to follow protocol and do what’s expected, or to make the tough call and do what they truly believe in, what’s right. Those choices often intersect with complicated notions of tolerance and what right we have to interfere, but just as often they result in the crew of the Enterprise rising to the occasion and choosing a bold solution.
And yet, my favorite episodes are sometimes the ones where the characters come tantalizingly close to that sort of choice, only to relent in the end. There’s a certain type of tragedy in it, a sense of being a little more true-to-life where sometimes even our ideals and our connections aren’t enough to push us to upset the apple cart. The Sopranos would make a cottage industry out of the idea -- showing its characters wandering out to the edge of a major change, only to repeatedly back down at the precipice.
I think it’s why an episode like “Half a Life” feels so affecting. We meet Timicin, a scientist from a nearby planet, Kaelon II, on the verge of astronomical collapse. Despite being isolationists, the Kaelon have sought the Federation’s help to avert the potentially disastrous effects of a nearby decaying star, and Timicin is their top scientist. Along the way, he strikes up an unexpected romance with none other than Lwaxana Troi. But both his work, and his new love, are threatened by a cultural ritual, where every Kaelon who reaches the age of sixty commits suicide to make way for the next generation.
The episode is an interrogation of that idea, taking seriously the notions of euthanasia, of care for the elderly, of the rights of seniors to choose how to live their lives. But it’s also about the balance between rituals and traditions on the one hand, and self-determination and change on the other. And, like all great Star Trek episodes, it’s also about the impact of these lofty ideas on the flesh and blood human beings forced to confront them.
Unusually for The Next Generation, that comes down almost entirely to the episode’s guest stars, who both give fantastic performances. The first is the inimitable David Ogden Stiers, whom you probably know as Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast or Major Winchester from MASH. He is completely outstanding as Timicin here, a soft-spoken man of science, devoted to his world and his people, forced to confront the fault lines between his loyalty to them and his personal willingness to embrace new ideas and new experiences.
Stiers carries himself with a quiet woundedness, as someone who knows and accepts that his time is coming to an end, and yet inwardly laments that his life’s work hangs in the balance. His inner conflict between someone who doesn’t want to form new connections given his numbered days, and who cannot resist this enchanting new presence in his life, is sweet and sad. And the force and conviction within him, that emerges when he’s pulled at from opposite sides, show the sleeping giant within, made all the more impactful by the contrast with his normal reserved demeanor. In this hour, Stiers marks himself as one of TNG’s absolute finest guest performers.
But the second is Majel Barrett as Lwaxana Troi. I’ve written before about how, despite her negative reputation in the fandom, I grew up enjoying Lwaxana episodes. She brings a different tone and perspective to the series than the sturdy Starfleet officers, and that usually pays off, even if her man-crazy goofiness rarely does. Still, somehow it works here! Barrett and Stiers have outstanding chemistry together. There’s something about her as the boisterous charmer, and him as the quiet but charmed one, that really clicks. Make no mistake, the Lwaxana/Timicin connection smacks of the same insta-love nonsense that other shows devolve into, but the duo have such an instant rapport and lived-in dynamic that it’s easy to buy their nigh-instantaneous attachment to one another.
That’s a good thing, because the episode is founded on it. We need to buy that Lwaxana would be so attached to Timicin that she would be distraught to the point of anger and tears that he’s going to die. And we need to buy that Timicin would be attached enough to Lwaxana to potentially take a stand against his own people and their time-honored cultural practices at her behest. That is a tall order for any TV show to pull off in forty-four minutes, but by god, between impromptu engineering picnics, solace offered in Ten Forward, and bedside arguments on tradition vs. freedom, you buy it.
To be frank, it’s refreshing to see the romantic lives of older people depicted at all, let alone with such sensitivity and charm. “Half a Life” centers the experience of those later in life, facing down the prospect of aging, slowing down, relying on their children, and mortality. But it also focuses on their vibrancy, their ability to still live rich meaningful lives, have new experiences, and forge new connections. It’s not a perspective we see much of in mainstream television today, and it’s nice to see it vindicated here.
Much of the heavy-lifting on that front comes from Barrett as Troi. As entertaining as I find Lwaxana in her “Auntie Mame” mode, as fans of The Original Series she’s also capable of being a talented dramatic actress when the script calls for it. Her argument with Timicin over the rights and responsibilities of seniors, her intimate confession to her daughter about her emotions around aging, the simple looks she exchanges with her new but important paramour, sell the gravity and humanity of the big ideas at play. After multiple episodes where Lwaxana is an outsized comic relief character, it’s a welcome development to see TNG showing her as a more three-dimensional person like this.
It’s also bold of “Half a Life” to spend a full act with her and Timicin debating the merits of self-imposed euthanasia and the pros and cons of following tradition and how new experiences and new people can change your perspective. (Lwaxana’s parable about Betazoid wigs is an all-timer.) It would be easy for the show to say, “Mandatory death for anyone who reaches sixty is absurd,” and have the characters draw a moral line in the sand over an archaic practice. (And to be fair, many good Star Trek episodes have followed that approach.) But this episode doesn’t make the practice feel like a straw man. Instead, it justifies Timicin’s acceptance of it for cultural, practical, and personal reasons, even if it’s hard for the audience to swallow. And it also justifies why he’s willing to break from that tradition after his time on the Enterprise.
For one thing, he’s figured out the answer, or at least a possible answer, to his life’s work, but he needs more time to complete. He’s still vigorous and sharp and believes that his imperiled planet would be in worse straits if somebody else has to pick up where he left off. And most of all, he’s met someone who’s renewed his zest for life, given him a reason to mourn the potentially happy years ahead that would be lost rather than just consider the “Resolution” fulfilling his duty to his children. It’s enough to make him ask Captain Picard for asylum.
But then “Half a Life” starts stacking considerations on the other side. He’d be shunned and excommunicated by the people and home he loves so much if he chooses to buck tradition. They’ll reject his research even if it would save their lives. His stand would sow greater distrust for outsiders in the Kaelon. Most of all, it would make his daughter (played by the future Ensign Ro!) ashamed of him, potentially staining his family legacy and estranging him from his child in a way that causes him great pain.
The dilemma does so many of those great Star Trek things. It raises potent philosophical questions about how to ethically balance intergenerational needs. It zeroes in on political issues on how to manage a society. It grapples with diplomatic issues on how one culture should deal with the practices of another. It delves into the personal, making space for both Lwaxana’s and Timicin’s emotions throughout all of this. And there’s nuance to the exploration of each.
In the end, however, Timicin decides that he cannot maintain his one-man revolution, spurred by Lwaxana’s passion though he may be. He decides to go through with his culturally-mandated suicide, for the good of his people, to not disrupt a society that he believes needs stability as it faces down this challenge. Lwaxana is understandably devastated, but accepts his decision, even going down to the planet to witness it as a loved one, hand-in-hand with her doomed partner, a beautiful display of cultural acceptance and tragic but genuine affection.
At the risk of projecting too much from outside the text, it’s worth remembering that Barrett was months away from losing her real life husband, Gene Roddenberry, when this episode aired. There’s a truth to Lwaxana’s reactions and responses here, of having to see loved ones pass, of a fear of “dying before you die”, of being forced to reconcile someone you love having to go, that are piercing. I don’t know if the “First Lady of Star Trek” was channeling real life events when imbuing Mrs. Troi with such force and pathos here, but there’s a resonance to them nonetheless.
The beauty of “Half a Life” is that her love persists, even when it’s painfully limited in time and space, even when the object of her affection does something she deeply disagrees with. Timicin tells her that he cannot disrupt his people’s society just to be happy, that he loves her deeply, and that’s so close to make him want to overturn the tables in the temple, but not quite enough, by that much. We understand him. We understand why. And it just makes the whole thing feel more devastating yet moving.
It is not easy to age. It is not easy to choose centuries of cultural programming and expectations over newfound personal epiphanies. It is not easy to turn down the unexpected but invigorating chance for love in favor of the ultimate sacrifice. But the greatest of stories come from the hardest of choices, even and especially when the decision made denies the characters, and the audience, what they want. There is no grand speech or vital gesture that can save the day in “Half a Life” -- only the acceptance that there are some things so big that no one can change them, and that despite them, we go on loving to the end.
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@andrewbloom Coming back to this episode after 5 years, i appreciate the moral complexity more, and the relationship between Timicin and Lwaxana, and the subject of suicide.
Do you think Timicin was right to go back?
[4.4/10] Thank goodness for Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Cooper. That’s about all I can say for the second episode of Twin Peaks. There is such a joie de vivre, a wide-eyed, confident heap of quirk to the character and the performance, that his presence instantly elevates every scene he’s in. From the Batman-like introduction in this episode, to his meticulous evaluation of coffee, pie, and various other breakfast foods, to his ability to sniff out that the Sherriff is seeing Ms. Packard, there’s the sense that Cooper is certainly eccentric, but also scrupulous and good at what he does because of it. It doesn’t hurt that MacLachlan can make Lynch and Frost’s dialogue sound believable in a way that no one else in the cast can.
The only other character in the episode who offers anything of note is Audrey. There’s parts of that I find unpleasant, because her role seems to be to titillate as much as she’s meant to be a legitimate character. But the other side of the coin is that there is an intrigue and an unassuming pathos that cuts through the way she’s uncomfortably cast as a teenager oozing sexuality.
That comes through in her apple cart-upsetting ways. Like everything in Twin Peaks, it’s absurdly over the top, but the scene in which she pulls her pencils out of the cup she just bored into, just to see what happens when the coffee spills everywhere, represents the way in which she is something of a wildcard, willing to stir the pot for the sake of stirring the pot.
But as much as it seems like adolescent nihilism, or causing trouble for trouble’s sake, there’s also the sense that it’s a cry for attention. It’s trite to have the wealthy parents with kids who make problems because they feel neglected, but it’s at least an interesting tack to take in the scene where her dad confronts her for scaring off the Swedish investors with the news of Laura’s death. It’s all a little silly, but unlike most of the characters in Twin Peaks (Dale Cooper excepted) she at least has a presence about her that makes her stand out in a show full of thinly-drawn, stereotypical characters. (It may help that she typically doesn’t have to spit out too much of the series’s abysmal dialogue.)
And no one in the show is more of a flat, stereotypical character than Leo, the abusive husband of Shelley. But before we get into that, let’s tease out the ridiculous, lumpy, love-dodecahedron that the show has going with its teen cast members at the moment. It starts with Leo, who’s married to Shelley, who’s seeing Bobby on the side, who was also dating Laura, who was having a dalliance with James (and possibly two other guys), who is not romantically involved with Donna, who is officially dating Mike. If that weren’t enough, there is Naomi (the eye patch-wearing nut obsessed with drapes), who’s married to Ed, who’s secretly seeing Norma, who’s married to a man in jail. And just to make sure there’s enough tangled romantic webs to really make things convoluted, the Sherriff is seeing Mrs. Packard, who is flirting with Pete, who is married to Catherine, who is schtuping Audrey’s dad. Phwew. Suffice it to say, this is a show where you need a diagram to keep up with all the romantic connections, and it’s utterly, utterly ridiculous.
Anyway, we get Leo’s homecoming with Shelley, where he is viciously jealous (over unfamiliar branded cigarettes in his ashtray) and willing to beat her with soap in a sock over a missing, blood-stained shirt. I’m willing to cut some slack to a show made in 1990, but I can’t help but wince at something as serious as spousal abuse being depicted in such a cartoonish, Halmark Channel-esque fashion.
Rest-assured, there’s plenty more crap where that came from, as we dig deep into a budding relationship between expressionless James and Donna. There’s the grain of something solid there, with the idea that grief provokes strong emotional states in people that sometimes forges unexpected connections, but there’s next to no chemistry between the pair.It doesn’t help that James has all the ability to emote of a particularly dull Rock, or that Donna is saddled with the cringiest of bad dialogue. Her little monologue about this all seeming like a wonderful dream, but also a nightmare, is a noble attempt to capture the confused feelings that emerge around grief and comfort, but it’s written with all the nuance and eloquence of an episode of G.I. Joe.
That level of depth and subtlety carries on in the scene that Donna shares with Laura’s mom. As if the over-the-top acting the mom had already shown weren’t enough, we get some poorly-done special effects to superimpose Laura’s face on Donna’s to signify that the mom is delirious or out of it in her grief and grasping in vain for her daughter. The frantic screaming when she sees a random dude peeking from behind the couch is too much too, and it’s hard not to laugh when the show at least seems to be going for sincere, grief-stricken emotion.
The thrust of the episode seems to be a dichotomy of Laura as someone who was an upstanding young student on the one hand – dating the captain of the football team, volunteering at meals on wheels, and tutoring Audrey’s mentally-challenged older brother, and a doomed ingénue on the other, two-timing her boyfriend, doing cocaine, and getting lost in dark forests with mysterious people. But it’s a rote sense of duality, the usual Madonna/whore complex without any wrinkles in the early going beyond mystery thrown on top of mystery in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it’ll all be going somewhere.
That’s the best I can hope for this rewatch of Twin Peaks, that eventually all this over-exaggerated camp and baroque plotting turns into something decent beyond its status as an intermittent showcase for Kyle MacLachlan. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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@andrewbloom ah we're finally finding our differences. I totally understand your criticisms, I've heard them before (some of them I've even identified with). I'll just quote my review of Inland Empire so that you understand where I stand wrt Lynch.
Mark Fisher (R.I.P.) wrote that Inland Empire "often seems like a series of dream sequences floating free of any grounding reality, a dream without a dreamer [in which] no frame is secure... to see Lynch's worlds captured on digital video makes for a bizarre short-circuiting: as if we are witnessing a direct feed from the unconscious." (The Weird and the Eerie [2017]). I first saw this in the Australian summer of '07/'08, late at night on SBS. I would have been 16 at the time, and as such had never seen anything like it before. I was sheltered from anything too subversive in my quiet suburban cul de sac. I thought it was the weirdest thing I'd ever watched and didn't even know if it was supposed to mean anything. Later when I found out the director's name was David Lynch I must admit that I steered clear of his other works... for years I was hung up on needing to "get it". Then I moved into my first "art" sharehouse in 2015 and my new housemates were obsessed with Twin Peaks. A piece of advice with regards to Lynch that was given to me by one of the housemates was (paraphrased), "It is important to keep in mind that Lynch tends to value the emotional expression in his work over anything else. It would do well for you to focus on how you're feeling and not whether you're following what plot there may or may not be." This helped me not just with appreciating Lynch's creations but also many other films and forms of art. With Inland Empire in particular, upon revisitation, I let it wash over me and savoured the little things. The closeups that I cringed at as a teenager now mesmerise me. Where I couldn't understand why certain cuts were being made before, now I can see their emotional value. Also, because I've seen so much of Lynch's other work, I can understand the hyperlinks in Inland Empire to Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. They're not just references, but in some places microcosms of those films themselves.
History will look kindly on David Lynch.
Most relevant is what my housemate was saying about Lynch as I was being introduced to Twin Peaks. Every single other aspect of film, cinematography, sound and set design, writing, storytelling, casting and overall production is subject and behelden to... emotion. Everything good about Lynch is a byproduct of his raw emotional output. Because this is so hard to actually quantify and talk about, it's easy to take potshots at his works. I had to actually block out everything tangible going on and constantly check in with myself, "how am i right now?". This meant I could actually approach Lynchian works from their base, pure emotion. This breakthrough lead to me being able to revisit Inland Empire and not just tolerate, but enjoy it... and exhalt about Twin Peaks :).
Peggy always seemed to me a good avenger, hopefully they include her in the live action as a wink or something...
And to see natasha fighting uff....
I like the resemblance between Steve and Peggy,
It was a fun episode.
Let's see what happens with the scarlet witch.loading replies
@ifhyzzaykg they did, in Doctor Strange 2, it was pretty cool
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.5/10] I love the concept of the Morlocks. The idea that there are mutants who don’t have the passing privileges that the mainline heroes do (give or take Beast), and so feel compelled to live in the shadows is a rich one. But “Captive Hearts” doesn’t do much with it.
The idea that Kalisto just wanted Cyclops to be her mate to produce an heir and help leads the Morlocks is stupid, generic villain stuff. The Morocks themselves are pretty dull in terms of their powers and most are devoid of personality. Leech trying to return the favor of Cyclops’ help by taking away his constant eye blasts for a little bit is a nice touch. But everyone else is generic muscle, generic goop monster, or a generic “power of suggestion” lady.
That last baddie, a woman who can use her psychic powers to make people think they’re her daughter, or covered in scorpions, or whatever might have a cool power if it was used for anything interesting. But she ends up being more of a plot device than a person.
The only big takeaway here is the love triangle between Wolverine,Jean, and Cyclops. Wolverine harboring forbidden affections for Jean, but still rescuing Cyclops because it’s the right thing to do, adds some depth to the character. The same goes for Cyclops, who remains a bit of a dull stiff, but who is made more sympathetic in the way he’s tormented by trying to live up to Professor X’s expectations for the X-Men.
When the psychic lady uses her powers of suggestion to make Wolverine try to kill Cyclops, his preexisting bitterness at Scott makes him an easy mark. But when she tries to do the same to get Logan to turn on Jean, he can't do it, a sign of the depth of his feelings. It’s about the only important thing to come out of this one. (Other than it being the source of the famous “Wolverine looks at photograph” meme!)
The other thread of note is Storm grappling with her claustrophobia. I like the idea of her pushing through it for the good of the team, but there’s no real emotional and psychical breakthrough here. She’s tortured by her phobia and then she...just isn't’. There’s no sign of her finding a way to overcome it, which feels odd.
Overall, this is a low light of the season, but at least introduces some interesting comments, like the Morlocks themselves or the feelings between Jean/Wolverine/Cyclops that can be fleshed out more down the line.
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@andrewbloom Thanks for summing everything up. this episode didn't live up to the standard set in the previous four.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.6/10] I didn’t really anticipate this episode turning into such an affecting mediation on sacrifice, atheism, and faith. That’s probably more than most people expect when diving into an episode about a bunch of superheroes fighting an ersatz Cthulhu, but shame on me for underestimating what this show and its creative team are capable of.
For one thing, they don’t shortchange us on the “fighting the Old Ones” action. “The Terror Beyond pt. 2” introduces some of the DCAU’s most striking and creative visual designs ever. From the hand-screamers that call to mind Pan’s Labyrinth to the grotesque sea creatures invading Atlantis, to the domineering skull-squid himself, the episode does a stellar job at making everyone and everything in Ichthultu’s realm seem off and more than a little disturbing.
But I also appreciated how this episode expanded the show’s history and cosmology. We don’t get a whole lot of insight as to what Aquaman and Dr. Fate’s original plan was, but it basically comes down to sacrificing Grundy using the power of Aquaman’s trident in order to close the gates that the “Old Ones” a group of malevolent “extradimensional beings” use to antagonize our world.
The wrinkles to that are two-fold. First, Aquaman’s trident isn’t just the latest in a line of cool weapons wielded by Justice League allies. It’s an implement used by Poisedon himself to ward off Ichthultu thousands of years ago, absorbing and exhausting all the ambient magic to do, causing Atlantis to sink to the bottom of the sea. And Thanagar isn’t just another lost alien world. It’s a planet where Hawkgirl’s people used to worship the Eldritch Abomination, and even make human (er, hawk-human) sacrifices to him in exchange for his favor centuries ago. That explains the need for Aquaman to be a part of the ceremony and why Hawkgirl’s mace and knowledge of Thanagarian “prayers” turned out to be useful for and against Doctor Fate.
That backstory leads to some pretty cool and meaningful developments down the line. When Arthur Curry stands down an army of the Old One’s aquatic menaces, it’s more than just another random superpowered fracas. It’s him trying to follow in the footsteps of his forebears and protect his kingdom against an invasion with a longstanding antecedent.
And when Hawkgirl faces the Elder God, she’s doing more than just subduing the villain of the week. Instead, she’s expelling and excising the devil’s bargain her people made with his monster, rejecting the authority of any higher power over her in the process.
That’s also what makes this episode as a whole more than just the latest smash-fest. There’s a lot of spiritual questioning at the heart of this one. When questioned, Wonder Woman affirms that calling out to Hera really does feel like it gives her strength. Grundy, despite his mere rudimentary understanding of what’s happening, is on the quest for his immortal soul and seeks the comforts of the afterlife. And Shayera is an atheist, one who affirmatively rejects the comforts of faith given what it cost her people long ago.
But these notions collide with one another. Grundy becomes a strangely sympathetic character. Despite Superman questioning whether Grundy has the mental wherewithal to consent to what Fate and Quaman want to do with him, he ultimately becomes the key to destroying the Elder God. Instead of being sacrificed, he basically sacrifices himself, arguably earning his soul back through deed, rather than by fiat.
Hawkgirl takes action as well, rejecting this malevolent force despite its boasts that its bargain with the Thanagarians was fair. There’s something symbolic about her finishing the job, permanently throwing off the shackles of this would-be deity and what he extracts and expects of his “children”.
Despite that, in the end, she helps bury Grundy, does so according to human customs and, most notably, tells Grundy that he and his soul will be reunited in the afterlife, despite her beliefs to the contrary. The show seems to come down on the side of faith, or at least on the notion that it can be useful, a comfort in dark times, regardless of whether you’re a believer, or a doubter, or somewhere in between. That’s remarkably profound for a show where a bunch of mulit-colored strongmen stop a squid demon’s portal by wedging a giant rock into it.
But that’s par for the course for Justice League in this period, a show that knows how to balance its fantastical adventures with deeper examinations of what makes its characters, and our world, keep ticking. I hope that Hawkgirl gets some peace out of that world, and that there’s something waiting for Grundy on the other side of it.
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@andrewbloom It's a good episode, but it's dumb that Grundy and Hawkgirl beat CTHULHU.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[5.0/10] It’s nice to know that, whatever Twin Peaks’s other failings, it’s still good at being creepy. Mrs. Bloom noted that the final image of the episode, with Cooper’s former partner having set some random dead man up in Truman’s office with a chessboard, feels very much like a proto-version of something from Dexter. (For the love of god, let’s not use the word “tableau.”) Like most things in the show, it’s a bit cheesy, but it’s still a haunting thing to have our heroes walk in on.
But much more chilling than that is the scene with Shelly and Leo. I’ve been cold on the two of them as a pair of the numerous weak links, but the scene with the two of them was one of the scariest and best in the show. The hum and creep of the power coming on and off, while the music unnervingly stops and starts, creates a frightening mood from the get go. The cinematography -- slow shots of light bulbs and empty furniture -- lend to that scary atmosphere as well. And the smiling face of Leo, with his party hat and cake-covered face, is the best use of the character there’s been yet.
Here’s the other thing I really appreciated about this episode. When Twin Peaks is bad, most of the time it’s just kind of dull, but the stuff that’s bad here is appropriately loony or pulpy that I can at least laugh at it and be entertained by it.
The peak of that is Nadine’s storyline. It actually led to somewhere for once! For one thing, seeing her go all predatory on Mike was its own kind of creepy, but also speaks to the persistence of teenage Nadine that likely helped her in wooing Ed. Even beyond the backstory that Ed gave of the two of them early in the season, that sort of “won’t take no for an answer” perseverance helps the two of them make sense as a couple back in the day.
And her super-strength actually came in handy! I don’t particularly care about Ed and Norma. The forbidden love angle has been weak from the start and their rekindling didn’t do much for me either. (Though is the first time we’ve ever seen the two kiss?) By the same token, Hank being magically behind Ed after he says goodbye to Norma was silly as all get out. But I laughed my head off at Nadine bursting in and using her superpowers to knock Hank around the house. It’s cartoony as hell, but it was fun in a bent sort of way, and I could at least enjoy the ridiculousness of it.
Were that the same could be said for the continuing lame adventures of Deputy Andy and Dick Trelane. Their little escapade to the orphanage drags out this go-nowhere storyline of whether Little Nicky really is a demonspawn even further. Though at least Dick has the smarts to know to get out while they can and read the stolen file in the car.
Also, James’s story continues to be the absolute pits. The cut-rate Kim Bassinger femme fatale angle with Mrs. Marsh is dull, and whether it’s the actor who plays James (who actually smiles here!) or the garbage-level dialogue, the lines exchanged between them about James’s survivor’s guilt over what happened with Laura and Maddy goes over like a lead balloon. The twist with Mrs. Marsh making out with her “brother” could be a Game of Thrones-like twist, but I suspect it’s part of some black widow scheme to have James kill Mr. Marsh so the two of them can inherit the estate and be together. Feh.
But we get some decent material from Major Briggs. While the radioactive symbol floating through the galaxy and then turning into flames was goofier than the Disney character, the way that the normally stoic Briggs was clearly shaken by his experience gave his recounting force. It’s more mumbo jumbo in terms of dialogue, but Briggs sells it, and his struggle between what’s classified and transcendent, better than it has any right to be sold.
We also get a pretty darn good Cooper caper. The sting gone awry with Norma’s prospective father-in-law is a nice setpiece. The hostage exhange gives Cooper some more nobility. It’s a fitting end(?) for Jean Renalt, who is at least able to assess the situation with clear eyes. And we even get Denise/Dennis using her cross-dressing ways (and Cooper’s quick thinking) to save the day! The scene where she shows up dressed as a waitress from the Double R packing a pistol is, again, broad action movie stuff, but it works with the vibe of the show in a fun way.
Were that the same could be said for Ben Horne and Catherine Martell. Ben’s going nuts and having a Civil War obsession was kind of amusing as a change at first, but now it’s quickly run its course. And I don’t know if anyone was really clamoring for him and Ben to start being romantic with one another again. Similarly, Audrey is mired in this story which is dragged down, naturally, by the inclusion of Bobby who is, as usual, focused on himself and trying to turn this association into a money making scheme, while putting the moves on his latest attempted conquest. Basically anything going on at the Great Northern that doesn’t involve Coop is skippable.
Otherwise this is an episode that you can pretty well divide into the third. There’s the material that’s legitimately good and entertaining, like the Sherrif’s sting operation and the creepy Leo scene. There’s the stuff that is corny but so off the wall that you can’t help from at least appreciating it ironically like the Nadine material. And then there’s the stuff that’s just nigh-unwatchable Drek, like James’s adventures in Dynasty and Ben’s insane playroom, where the only pleasures to derive are from the abject terribleness of the dialogue. Still, that’s better than a lot of Twin Peaks episodes can muster, so I’ll take it.
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@andrewbloom Your spoiler tags seem broken in this one
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP98.7/10.
Here's what I loved about this episode. We finally got to see The Chancellor become The Emperor (It's never been clear to me whether the show has outright acknowledged this or merely hinted at it.) There's a risk in a show like Clone Wars where, with so many characters wielding lightsabers and using force powers, you might dilute the specialness of the biggest players on the scene, and the specialness of the franchise's primary heroes and antagonists. But Clone Wars firmly avoids that with Palpatine here.
There is a pure and overwhelming display of power from Palpatine here. The way he neutralizes Maul's death squad guard while barely moving a muscle, the way he effortlessly tosses his opponents around the room, and the way he seems firmly in control even while fighting both Maul and Savage at the same time really drives home what a powerful force-wielder Palpatine is. There's also a cruelty to him here that is striking even knowing where the character goes to in the franchise's future. Much credit goes to Ian Abercrombie (who, passed away prior to this episode airing) for imbuing such menace into his delivery. The way that Palpatine declares, "you have been replaced" and "you are no longer my apprentice" to Maul is simultaneously fiendish and gutwrenching, particularly as he unleashes the Sith lightning on his former protege.
The best lightsaber battles in Star Wars have meaning behind the action, and this fit that ideal to a tee. The otherwise unflappable Maul being clearly shaken by his master's reappearance; Palpatine's initial impressed tone that quickly curdles into disdain, and the death of Savage (which adds even further stakes to this battle) all make those visual and auditory elements that already serve to heighten the tension into something undergirded by story and character. There's something disturbing, even haunting, about Maul having to say goodbye to his brother and being at the mercy of Palpatine once more.
As Obi Wan points out, Maul didn't choose this life, and while he's done terrible things, he's also seen many terrible things and had many terrible things done to him as well. It's too much to call him innocent, but he is as much a victim of Palpatine as any, and here he's once again beaten by his abuser. That's unexpectedly powerful stuff from a show whose last quartet of episodes devolved into goofy kiddie fare.
The Obi Wan half of the episode was still good, but not quite as good. As with Obi Wan's prior adventures in and around Mandalore, it's nice to see Obi Wan seeming a little more like Anakin here -- going behind the council's back and acting alone in order to help the woman he loves. I certainly wouldn't want the two characters to become clones of one another, but it continues to give an added dimension to a character who could otherwise easily fall into being a monolithic wise old monk. There's humanity beneath Obi Wan's staid exterior, and that's always nice to see.
But I didn't really like how Satine was used here. I don't mind the character dying (well, actually, I do, because I really enjoyed her as a character, but I understand the narrative necessity of this sort of thing). The problem is that whereas in prior episodes, Satine was a full-fledged character with her own goals and distinct personality, here she was mostly just a prop for Obi Wan, something to motivate him and impact his journey. Sure, that can be said for many secondary/tertiary characters on television (and it's arguably as true for Savage here, though he at least gets to be more active in the proceedings), but the villain killing the woman the hero loves in a way that only serves to motivate the hero is a tired trope and something of an ignominious end for one of the more interesting recurring characters. The show also seemed to underplay Obi Wan's reaction to her death, which you can sort of chalk up to his Jedi detachment, but still felt off. I didn't need him to scream or cry, but he seemed mostly unfazed, even quipping, shortly after Maul kills Satine, in a way that blunted the impact the death was supposed to have.
The rest of the episode, featuring the return of Satine's nephew to help her contact the Jedi, Obi Wan's first unsuccessful attempt to rescue Satine, and his later collaboration with Bo Katan to get back to the Jedi and possibly mount a Republic Invasion, had some solid action and excitement with clear goals and well-directed combat to keep the thrill-quotient up. The reveal that Katan is Satine's sister is a little contrived for my tastes, but there's interesting places for the show to go with it.
Overall, this is a landmark episode of Clone Wars that, in many ways, feels like a culmination of much of what the show has built over the past five seasons, and even the unrealized potential of The Phantom Menace. It's built on so much of what we already know about the characters from their prior televised and cinematic adventure, and the convergence of all of these elements (give or take the Katan reveal) feels organic to previously established character motivations, while still advancing the ball and giving the series further room to grow. That's no small feat, and even if elements like Satine's death feel kind of cheap, overall this arc represents the best sustained run of quality from Clone Wars in the series history, and a high water mark in terms of capitalizing on the groundwork previously laid by the show.
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@andrewbloom I'm watching it for the first time now :). Hence the reply to your very-old message. It's fresh in my mind!
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP98.7/10.
Here's what I loved about this episode. We finally got to see The Chancellor become The Emperor (It's never been clear to me whether the show has outright acknowledged this or merely hinted at it.) There's a risk in a show like Clone Wars where, with so many characters wielding lightsabers and using force powers, you might dilute the specialness of the biggest players on the scene, and the specialness of the franchise's primary heroes and antagonists. But Clone Wars firmly avoids that with Palpatine here.
There is a pure and overwhelming display of power from Palpatine here. The way he neutralizes Maul's death squad guard while barely moving a muscle, the way he effortlessly tosses his opponents around the room, and the way he seems firmly in control even while fighting both Maul and Savage at the same time really drives home what a powerful force-wielder Palpatine is. There's also a cruelty to him here that is striking even knowing where the character goes to in the franchise's future. Much credit goes to Ian Abercrombie (who, passed away prior to this episode airing) for imbuing such menace into his delivery. The way that Palpatine declares, "you have been replaced" and "you are no longer my apprentice" to Maul is simultaneously fiendish and gutwrenching, particularly as he unleashes the Sith lightning on his former protege.
The best lightsaber battles in Star Wars have meaning behind the action, and this fit that ideal to a tee. The otherwise unflappable Maul being clearly shaken by his master's reappearance; Palpatine's initial impressed tone that quickly curdles into disdain, and the death of Savage (which adds even further stakes to this battle) all make those visual and auditory elements that already serve to heighten the tension into something undergirded by story and character. There's something disturbing, even haunting, about Maul having to say goodbye to his brother and being at the mercy of Palpatine once more.
As Obi Wan points out, Maul didn't choose this life, and while he's done terrible things, he's also seen many terrible things and had many terrible things done to him as well. It's too much to call him innocent, but he is as much a victim of Palpatine as any, and here he's once again beaten by his abuser. That's unexpectedly powerful stuff from a show whose last quartet of episodes devolved into goofy kiddie fare.
The Obi Wan half of the episode was still good, but not quite as good. As with Obi Wan's prior adventures in and around Mandalore, it's nice to see Obi Wan seeming a little more like Anakin here -- going behind the council's back and acting alone in order to help the woman he loves. I certainly wouldn't want the two characters to become clones of one another, but it continues to give an added dimension to a character who could otherwise easily fall into being a monolithic wise old monk. There's humanity beneath Obi Wan's staid exterior, and that's always nice to see.
But I didn't really like how Satine was used here. I don't mind the character dying (well, actually, I do, because I really enjoyed her as a character, but I understand the narrative necessity of this sort of thing). The problem is that whereas in prior episodes, Satine was a full-fledged character with her own goals and distinct personality, here she was mostly just a prop for Obi Wan, something to motivate him and impact his journey. Sure, that can be said for many secondary/tertiary characters on television (and it's arguably as true for Savage here, though he at least gets to be more active in the proceedings), but the villain killing the woman the hero loves in a way that only serves to motivate the hero is a tired trope and something of an ignominious end for one of the more interesting recurring characters. The show also seemed to underplay Obi Wan's reaction to her death, which you can sort of chalk up to his Jedi detachment, but still felt off. I didn't need him to scream or cry, but he seemed mostly unfazed, even quipping, shortly after Maul kills Satine, in a way that blunted the impact the death was supposed to have.
The rest of the episode, featuring the return of Satine's nephew to help her contact the Jedi, Obi Wan's first unsuccessful attempt to rescue Satine, and his later collaboration with Bo Katan to get back to the Jedi and possibly mount a Republic Invasion, had some solid action and excitement with clear goals and well-directed combat to keep the thrill-quotient up. The reveal that Katan is Satine's sister is a little contrived for my tastes, but there's interesting places for the show to go with it.
Overall, this is a landmark episode of Clone Wars that, in many ways, feels like a culmination of much of what the show has built over the past five seasons, and even the unrealized potential of The Phantom Menace. It's built on so much of what we already know about the characters from their prior televised and cinematic adventure, and the convergence of all of these elements (give or take the Katan reveal) feels organic to previously established character motivations, while still advancing the ball and giving the series further room to grow. That's no small feat, and even if elements like Satine's death feel kind of cheap, overall this arc represents the best sustained run of quality from Clone Wars in the series history, and a high water mark in terms of capitalizing on the groundwork previously laid by the show.
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@andrewbloom "(It's never been clear to me whether the show has outright acknowledged this or merely hinted at it.)" - right at the end of Season 5 episode 1 – 'Revival' - there's an openly evil and menacing Palpatine!
[7.5/10] Actions have consequences. That may be the abiding theme that stretches across Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. You make one small decision, and it pushes you in a certain direction. Then you make another and are pushed a little further. Then another, and another, and another. And before you know it, you’re a long way from where you started, finding yourself looking over your shoulder, worried about what’s lurking in your wake.
Gus decided to take out his business rival. Now he’s wearing bulletproof vests and ankle holsters in his own home and constantly monitoring his neighborhood for fear that vengeance will come. Saul decided to become a “friend of the cartel.” Now he’s got every scruffy-looking hump in New Mexico seeking to retain the legal services of “Salamanca’s guy.” And Kim decided to stay with Jimmy, to tolerate and even enable his coloring outside the lines. Now she’s living in fear of one drug lord while the goons of another are following her.
It’s one of the things I love most about Better Call Saul. (Not people being watched and pursued by drug-runners.) The mark of good storytelling is people making choices that stem from who and what they are, and then navigating the ripples and reactions of those choices. Everything has a cost. Everything has trade-offs. Every decision made means opening some doors and closing other. There may be no show on television more acutely aware of that fact than this one.
That gives “Hit and Run”, a calmer and more sedate episode after the grand events of last week, a bit of thematic oomph even when the show’s at slack tide. There’s comparatively few dramatic events in this installment. Nobody dies. Nobody has a white-knuckle confrontation. Nobody faces down mortal threats or serious peril. Everyone just stews in the messes they’ve made, or are still making, over the last handful of episodes.
Gus is properly paranoid. He divined from Hector’s reaction that Lalo lives. So despite seeming to have settled the most immediate threat with Nacho’s demise, he’s constantly worried that his rival will return with lethal impulses. He has Mike stretching his team thin, working guys for eighteen hour days, setting up an elaborate neighborhood farce to provide cover for his surveillance operation, and fretting over a car that follows his for a mere three blocks.
It took some finagling, but Fring seemed to pull off his big scheme. He arranged for the death of the only young man who would spill his scheme, and his enemy is presumed dead. But he can’t rest easy. The audience knows his fears are justified. But to his crew, it feels like chasing ghosts. Even the meticulous Gus isn’t able to buy himself any peace, with an equally cunning, if less subtle foe still potentially on the board.
Jimmy’s consequences aren’t quite so dire (at least not that he realizes). His interactions with Lalo result in a far more mundane consequence -- nobody at the courthouse wants anything to do with him. The security guard makes him run his belt and shoes through the scanner. His once-friendly clerk gives him the cold shoulder. The prosecutor he traded horses and snacks with thinks he’s gone too far. Whatever temporary advantages dealing with Lalo provided, they’ve left him ostracized by an ecosystem that he used to flit through with a hummingbird’s effortless grace.
Frankly, it’s a touch unbelievable. Maybe everyone in that courthouse draws a line between representing the occasional lowlife and pushing the limits to do so versus advocating for a killer and drug lord, but it’s awfully quick and seemingly coordinated. And yet, I don’t mind the convenience because it succinctly conveys the bridges Saul burns as he sidles up to the cartel.
He’s building new ones though. Doing business with Lalo didn’t just net him a duffle bag full of cash to fund his and Kim’s escapades. It gave him a reputation with, shall we say, a certain type of person who both admires Lalo Salamanca and might have the type of legal troubles that require a man of the...caliber to help a drug lord skip out on a murder rap.
It’s amusing to see Jimmy once again managing clients over the protests of his nail salon-owning landlord. Watching Bob Odenkirk ply his comedy chops once more, shuffling potential clients with his glad-handing, slick ways is a hoot as always. But at the same time, we can see the life of Saul Goodman starting to take shape, and the life of Jimmy McGill steadily slipping away.
It’s a life that includes running scams in his spare time. The most high-octane part of the episode comes as soon as the intro wraps up, as Kim and Jimmy complete the next step of their scheme to convince Clifford Main that Howard Hamlin is unreliable.
The ploy to steal Howard’s car and make it seem like he’s erratic and consorting with sex workers, conveniently within the eyeline of Clifford, is a thrill. The sheer absurdity of seeing Jimmy in his Howard-esque getup for the first time since the first season delights. The way Kim’s lunch with Clifford and Jimmy’s grand theft auto slows coalesce until the point of their seemingly disparate actions emerges is expertly crafted. And the mere involvement of Wendy, a familiar face from Breaking Bad, as their accomplice, makes the bit that much more of a sop to the fans.
The peak, though, comes when it always does -- when things start to go awry. Jimmy’s effort to return Howard’s car runs into a snag. Some inconsiderate jerk removed the traffic cone Jimmy left to save the spot and parked there. Watching Saul improvise -- heaving a parking sign out of the ground and moving it to make his questionable alternate car placement plausible -- adds joy and extra competence to the clockwork scheme. And the comic timing of the sign falling down mere seconds after Howard pulls out is perfect and uproarious.
But there’s a moment of pause there too. Each of the plays we’ve seen so far have skirted on the edge of discovery and disaster. Jimmy had to strip to his skivvies to avoid detection in the premiere. Huell had to rush the locksmith before a devoted valet went back for the keys. Saul had to scramble like mad to pull the car “borrowing” off without detection here.
Our protagonist and his allies are getting lucky. More to the point, they’re pushing their luck, with riskier and riskier plays that come closer and closer to blowing up in their faces. Better Call Saul likes to zig when we expect it to zag, but more in more, it seems like they’re skirting catastrophe, moments if not seconds away from everything blowing up in their faces.
Maybe that's why Kim feels uneasy about all this. She’s thinks she’s doing the right thing, as the diversionary lunch with Clifford turns into a genuine funding possibility for her pro bono efforts. But as Jimmy suggests, there’s a disbelief that, as Jesse Pinkman might put, they keep getting away with it. When you’re on a run of good luck, the sense that it could run out, that there’s some karmic comeuppance or at least reversion to the mean awaiting, puts a psychic weight on you.
That weight helps prompt Kim to spy the men following her (with an assist from Wendy, naturally). It gives her the gumption to walk up to them and call them on it. And it gives her the sterner stuff to earn a visit from none other than Mike Ehrmantraut for catching on.
Let’s be real, after five seasons, it’s a thrill to see two of the show’s major characters sharing a scene for the first time. The two could just talk about the weather, and it would still have the electricity Kim and Mike sitting across from one another after orbiting each other for so long. It doesn’t hurt that Kim’s sharp enough to deduce that Mike was the man with Saul in the desert, or that Mike intuits the steel behind Kim’s eyes that makes her steady and strong enough to deal with his frankness about why she’s being followed. That scene too is a bit of a sop to the fans, but a welcome one.
And it serves a purpose. Mike effectively tells Kim that they are not out of the woods, that Lalo Salamanca might still be on the loose, that he might be coming to them for answers, and that if he does, it might put them on the radar of a rival drug lord. Whether it’s Mike’s men or Lalo’s pursuit or the authorities, she’s now caught in the web of greater, potentially deadly forces.
It shakes her, as it would anyone. She can handle it, even if it leaves her uneasy about what might be around the next corner. But she doesn’t think Jimmy can. Especially when he’s reveling in what the association with Lalo netted him, she can’t burst his bubble, frighten him with the possibility of a side effect from a past decision coming back in a bad way.
He will though. Lalo is the Sword of Damocles hanging over this season. Gus isn’t wrong to be paranoid. Kim isn’t wrong to be frightened. Jimmy might be vulnerable in his blissful ignorance. Sometime, someplace, Lalo will emerge from his desert hideaways and strike, even if his path and target remain obscured.
But the choices these people made led them here. They may not have intended this outcome, but no one is here by accident. The choice to orchestrate a hit on your counterpart, the choice to stop representing run-of-the-mill defendants and help out a true bad guy, the choice not to tell your spouse about the danger that might be coming for them, have all had consequences. And while this moment is calm, the rules of Better Call Saul dictate that, sooner or later, the chickens will come home to roost.
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@andrewbloom I’m an admirer too. You have a talent with your writing!
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.3/10] It’s funny, when I was watching Return of the Joker, I thought to myself that despite Terry’s street smarts and the enhanced strength via the suit, we’ve never really seen him receive the sort of hand-to-hand combat training that Bruce did. It’s like somebody from the past read my mind! Bruce not only sending him to receive that sort of training, but sending him to Kairi, the fellow dojo pupil and hostage from “Day of the Samurai” from B:TAS is a real treat for folks watching through the whole DCAU like yours truly.
That said, I still find Kobra kind of tedious. Their status as a lame Hydra ripoff is upped with utterances of “Hail Kobra” here, and what’s worse, there’s no real consistency to them. Are they just thieves? Are they supervillains? Are they martial arts badasses? The show can’t seem to settle on a goal or a mission for them, and turning mooks into dinosaurs or unleashing some kind of dino-bomb doesn’t really move me.
That said, I do like that Terry befriends Xander, another pupil at Kairi’s dojo, who turns out to be the new head of Kobra. Xander isn’t exactly a tragic figure here, especially after he manhandles and kidnaps Max, but you do get the sense of him as a sheltered young man with great expectations placed upon him, ones he struggles to live up to, which gives him more dimension as a villain than a run-of-the-mill “evil for the sake of evil” type baddie.
We see him try pizza for the first time, play video games for the first time, and refuse to lose or be trifled with, whether it’s in a Street Fighter-type game or with a pack of Jokers. The show establishes his personality, his prowess as a fighter, and the sheltered life that he leads before it unveils him as the antagonist (give or take his fierce, evil-looking eyebrows that do the same) which I appreciate.
Still, I’m not enamored with Batman squaring off with some guy who looks like a combo between Mr. T and Aquaman who uses electric nunchucks. I’m also not thrilled with Max being a damsel in distress, even if Xander’s fascination with her adds another wrinkle to him as a bad guy. And I’m curious how the show is going to connect all the disparate kung fu, gene-splicing, and town-destroying bomb elements of this two-parter.
But still, overall the episode definitely does enough to pique my interest in the conclusion, fills in a blank for Terry in an exciting way, and establishes an interesting villain. That’s not bad at all.
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@andrewbloom It annoys me though western creatives and executives can't let an episode be solely dedicated to a character's training. Japanese creatives were doing it since the 80s like with Dragon Ball. In this episode Terry has a few minutes of training and is then interrupted by the plot, and we should have got this episode in season 1.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.3/10] I’d be lying if I said I was over the moon about this first episode, but there’s plenty to like. I enjoy the fourth-wall breaking conceit. This isn’t the first show to use that device (hello Zach Morris and Woody Allen), but I like how and how well it’s integrated here. This isn’t just a dose of voiceover narration there to give the audience the important facts, but a nice way of adding in Fleabag’s stream of consciousness reactions to what’s happening in the moment in a natural way. Even just the aside looks at the camera (so much Jimming) work well in that regard, and it’s the thing that stands out the most in this pilot episode.
This is also a good first episode in terms of how it sets up the basics of the world. Using a mix of flashbacks and convenient (but still organic) exposition, we get a sense of who Fleabag is, what she’s like, and what she’s after. Right now, the latter part seems to be mostly money and sexual gratification, but that’s interesting! While far from the first to do it, I appreciate the show’s frankness about that, and its effort to make Fleabag understandable, if not exactly likable, in that effort.
It also introduces the major figures in her life, giving each a quick sketch to let us know who she is and her relationship with each is like. She has a, shall we say, prickly relationship with her sister, a barely-there relationship with her dad, and a cold war combative relationship with her stepmom. The one bit of sunshine in her life seems to come from her best friend Boo, and the show does a nice job of punching the audience in the gut over the revelation that she’s dead.
(To be candid, at first I didn’t comprehend that the blonde woman they were flashing back to was the same woman Fleabag was describing to her cab driver.)
I also appreciate the theme of feminism and femininity at play. There’s a nice effort to grapple with the idea that while modern feminism is a good thing and far better than the sexism it’s tried to replace, that it also results in women who feel like they fall short of its standards. Dramatizing that struggle, to be “good” whatever your standard for that is as a modern woman, is an interesting path to follow.
The comedy is light and dry (this did air on the BBC after all) but I got a few solid chuckles here and there. The cafe electricity freeloader was a particular chuckle, and there’s a few good lines or reactions out of Fleabag that tickled my fancy. No guffaws just yet, but it’s still early, and this strikes me as more of a “smile at the cleverness” show than a “laugh out loud” one, which is totally fine.
Overall, if I watched this apart from the hype, I’m not sure I would understand what the fuss is, but there’s enough intriguing groundwork laid here to see potential great things ahead.
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(To be candid, at first I didn’t comprehend that the blonde woman they were flashing back to was the same woman Fleabag was describing to her cab driver.)
...oh... then i didn't get it until right now...
[9.8/10] What an episode! I am a sucker for bottle episodes, high concept episodes, and deep dives into character, and this was all three at once. The idea of FitzSimmons being stuck together in a union of their two minds, where they’re forced to confront their histories and their pain and their connection is nigh-brilliant.
I like the jaunts we make to the past. Seeing Li’l Simmons, with her biology aspirations and box of nightmares was very cute. Seeing FitzSimmons connect in college, laying the groundwork for their partnership and eventual romance made for an interesting beginning. And seeing the two of them signing up for Coulson’s field team gave us an important chapter in their history and was revealing as well.
But I also really like the device as a way to bring Fitz up to speed on everything that happened while he was sleeping. It’s a nice way to deposit the aftermath of the season 5 finale without belaboring it. It gives us Simmons’ and the rest of the team’s reactions without being maudlin, and it gives Fitz the opportunity to realize the full implications of what’s happened: his death, Coulson’s death, his wedding, etc., and have it be emotionally overwhelming and mind-bending, as it should be.
There’s also some cool conceptual material. The whole playground of the mind is done well with neat turns from the rest of the cast in flashbacks and key moments. And the fact that we get to see the dark doppelgangers of both Fitz and Simmons to represent the pain they’ve caused one another is a nice touch too.
I like where the episode lands, with the pair of them realizing that each is the cause, or at least, a cause, of one another’s pain, but that despite that, each is always striving for, and working to save the other. There’s a lot of hashing out of the pair’s history, both from what we’ve seen during the run of the show, and what happened before, and I always appreciate when a series that’s run for a while takes its past seriously. Prior events are brought up not just as set dressing, but as an important part of Fitz and Simmons emotional journey together. Their eventual reaffirmation is fueled by that, and it makes it stronger.
It’s also just a damn funny episode! Fitz having to deal with seven-year-old Simmons, or “Leopold” and the Wraith ending up making out, or “you’re so English” are all very funny setups and lines. The closing “you kind of stepped on my moment there” line with Quake and Mac was the perfect kind of Whedon-y schtick (no surprise coming from Buffyverse alum D.J. Doyle), and Quake’s sort of shrug and acceptance of the latest insane adventure was just as perfect.
Plus, we even get Enoch making a big moral choice to save his friend! (I’m slowly realizing that the Enoch/Fitz relationship is not far removed from the Michael/Eleanor relationship on The Good Place).
Overall, this is that annual outing from AoS where they pull out all the stops, focus on some of the show’s best characters, and deliver something with boldness, creativity, humor, and depth. It’s a real treat, and it's nice to see the show still going for broke this late into its run.
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@andrewbloom I agree 100%. I also love these episodes and they tend to be the most memorable ones. For me this is easily, in mny ways, the absolute best episode of the whole show. Sadly traditional episodic television is getting suffocated by these short 6-10 episode (streaming) shows that offer only a moments worth of excitement and very little to actually get you truly invested in any characters at all (many would work much better as movies). They are so short that I doubt that even the actors and crew get deeply invested in them - or at least that is what the writing, acting and directing often looks like these days... This is a truly great episode and easily earns a place among my top favorite episodes ever.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[5.0/10] Far be it from me to cast aspersions on what is, by acclimation, one of the best episode of Star Trek ever produced. Far be it from me to turn my nose up at something penned by the great (if prickly) Harlan Ellison. Far be it from me to offer no quarter to the crown jewel of this show’s first season. But call me a Philistine, because “City on the Edge of Forever” did nothing for me.
It’s not a bad episode exactly. There’s no blatantly wrong turns (so to speak) or outrageous missteps. It’s just not especially compelling, and doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do.
First and foremost, the central conflict of “Forever” falls flat because the central relationship it hinges on falls flat. There is a compelling, ethically complex issue in the decision of whether to allow an innocent person to die in order to defeat the Nazis and, by extension, allow all of humanity’s accomplishments from the 1930s to the 23rd century to occur. There’s even a tragic irony in the individual who must perish being the one who envisions a day when mankind ends war and hunger and want. Keeler imagines a world she will never get to see.
But rather than anchoring “Forever” on the difficulty of that choice, the conflict between utilitarian morality versus proscriptions on allowing harm to come to innocent people, Star Trek anchors it in the romance between Kirk and Keeler, and there’s just nothing there. I can appreciate that the episode is trying to ground the abstract and headily moral question at play in the personal, but the romance isn’t as successful or developed enough for that to work.
Maybe the relationship between Kirk and Keeler would have more oomph if it didn’t take place in little more than a week. Maybe it would have been better if William Shatner and guest star Joan Collins could manage to have more chemistry in forty minutes than Collins and DeForest Kelley do in five. Maybe it’d be easier to invest in if Kirk didn’t fall in love with someone every third episode.
Or maybe it’s just changing mores about how love is depicted in the 1960s versus how it’s depicted in the 2010s. Kirk’s gazes at Keeler seem more like creepy leers than admiration. Keeler’s preternatural ability to sense that Kirk is a great man feels, at best, convenient, and at worst, pernicious in the “some men just have greatness in them” themes the show has trafficked in previously.
Whatever the reason, the cornerstone of this episode, the thing that’s supposed to make us feel the pain and pathos of its ending, is Kirk’s emotional arc through his attachment to Keeler, and when that fails, everything built on it fails too. In this sort of depiction, I don’t feel the connection; I don’t feel the romance; and I don’t feel the loss of anything when it’s ended, even in tragic terms. That essentially sinks everything else “Forever” is trying to accomplish.
That’s unfortunate, because there is, as I often find with Star Trek, a great deal I like about the episode in conception, if not in its execution. Again, the moral dilemma of whether to sacrifice one blameless life for a better future is an inherently compelling one (and one picked up by Futurama, a series that I always knew was indebted to Trek, but where I did not realize the extent of the influence). Kirk and Spock, as usual, make for an amusing odd couple. And as weird as the premise is, it fits the sci-fi flair of the series.
Also, for better and worse, “Forever” doesn’t really feel like other episodes of Star Trek. This isn’t the first time our heroes have gone back in time, or confronted difficult moral choices, or had to make due without their usual tools and technology. But there’s a different tone here, one that seems more grounded and even melancholy despite the genre trappings. It could just be the depression-era setting, but there’s a certain mood throughout the episode that distinguishes “Forever” from its predecessors.
And as silly as it is, I kind of love the Guardian of Forever. There’s just something so essentially sci-fi about a giant stony circle that speaks in a booming, stilted voice and emits, smoke, light, and black-and-white historical footage. (To that end, it’s also clear to anyone who’s read/played Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream that he enjoys this type of thing.) This giant alien thing that can send our heroes across time is appropriately and enjoyably out there.
The impetus for the whole episode, on the other hand, is less so. Dr. McCoy accidentally injecting himself with some future substance that makes him paranoid and crazy is a weird story-motivator. Kelley is up to the challenge, with his frantic declarations of “killers” and “assassins” seeming appropriately unhinged, but it’s a thin and (given the turbulence-related cause of it) convenient excuse for Kirk and Spock to have to chase him through time.
Still, there’s a certain amount of charm to the pair landing in 1930s New York City and trying to fit in and save Bones (and the future) at the same time. Kirk using reverse psychology on Spock to build a computer is amusing, particularly in Nimoy’s restrained but clearly affronted reactions. The Sesame Street-like environs have a well-worn allure. And again, the premise of the episode is, at worst, solid.
But the whole thing just comes down to Kirk and Keeler, and that’s not enough to sustain “Forever.” It’s hard, to say the least, to be invested in Kirk mourning this woman he barely knew for a week, where we’ve seen far more googly eyes being made than any real depth to their relationship. Binding a fantastical story with the personal loss of a star-crossed romance can add a human dimension to an otherwise outsized tale, but if you make that romance the centerpiece of your story, and it falters rather than flourishes, it can take the entire story down with it. “Forever” has its merits, but by centering the episode around Kirk and Keeler, it’s as doomed as she is.
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@andrewbloom Just came across this review. I largely agree; I've always thought that this episode was over-rated.
2024-01-01T05:00:00Z2025-01-01T04:59:59Z