Getting Part Three vibes again. A sense of "That's it?" when the episode closes coupled with the realization that pieces have been moved into position and the plot has been set up for some bigger thing that's about to happen.
I was confused and then delighted by Ezra's whole attitude. He's doing a kind of "Jesus in the wilderness" thing and seems to have a very different connection to the Force than he did when we last saw him. The way he moved when he fought looked like something was moving him. Lightsabers? Ain't nobody got time for that.
As short as this episode was, we got see a lot of different class pair-ups at the end. Baylan vs Ahsoka was power vs power; This time their dual ended in a stalemate. Sabine vs Shin was cunning vs fury; This time Shin didn't underestimate Sabine, but Sabine still held her ground. Ezra vs Shin was wisdom vs fury; The first time Ezra had to fight in a long time, and it showed. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is bruised and spongy." And Ahsoka vs Shin was balance vs fury; The thing that shook Shin the most was that Ahsoka wasn't angry at her. Shin comes from a time after the fall of the Jedi Order and I don't think she's ever had to face someone properly trained in the Jedi arts before.
The time spent with everyone else was pithy and just served to put them in their place for the finale. The scene on Coruscant was almost useless (of course Hera would be excused and protected for abusing her powers as a General), but Filoni does know how to force a grin out of me with a very unexpected C-3PO cameo. Apparently 3PO was having a spinal malfunction that day. I did appreciate the Gideon past-tense name drop which cements exactly when Ahsoka takes place against the third season of The Mandalorian (release order = chronological order).
Again, solid content, but nothing special... not yet at least. There's no question that Filoni is just putting runners on the bases to tee things up for a grand slam (baseball metaphor). It's what he always does. By now, even the lay viewer should understand that. Maybe it won't be exactly what I personally dream it could be, but good money says it'll be worthwhile. If you're still not sold on this series, or harboring discontent just because Disney's name is attached to Star Wars now, take advice from the wise, old star whales and fuck off to somewhere else.
:white_check_mark:86% = Great! = Essential!
Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time, the return of the Doctor, plastic boyfriends, and conspiracy theories!
There’s no better way to pull in viewers old and new than that classic title sequence with Murray Gold’s beautiful rendition of the theme tune!
Russell T. Davies effectively kicks off 21st-century Doctor Who by introducing the new companion, the old monsters, and the mysterious Doctor during the first few minutes. The first half of the episode expertly places the series in a modern setting, feeling realistic despite the science fiction theme.
The script makes the Doctor a great, mysterious character. It feels like it draws inspiration from the unrealized Cartmel Master Plan.
Rose is firmly told from the companion's point of view, establishing her role as an important audience surrogate. Those opening moments tell us all we need to know about her, her everyday life, and the world she lives in. And mere moments after that, RTD effectively introduces creepy killer mannequins (the Autons, not seen since the 70s!) and the mysterious, leather-clad stranger telling Rose to run for her life (the Doctor, not seen since 1996/1999/2003!).
Moving at a brisk pace, there's still a good time to develop Rose, her relationships with Mickey and her mother, and the mystery surrounding the Doctor’s identity. RTD throws in hints at a major war in the Doctor’s past while firmly developing the rather simple alien invasion plot (the least interesting aspect of the story). The characters are relatable; the humor is silly but actually fun; and the action and tension are palpably believable.
Overall, this is a sharply written episode, effectively introducing new audiences to the premise of the show while comfortably bringing back old fans. While elements of classic Doctor Who are present, the show firmly incorporates them into a contemporary, 21st-century framework.
Christopher Eccleston is very different from the textbook Doctor from the Classic Era—energetic, dropping pop culture references, and looking somewhat normal in that leather jacket and with that buzz cut—but he also shows familiar quirky alien qualities that make him recognisable to old fans. The most interesting part is how he hides his anger, sorrow, and depression under layers of false cheer.
Billie Piper feels like a mid-2000s 20-something. She's easy to identify with. She's just the right amount of curious and suspicious to feel realistic. They have amazing chemistry from their very first moments, particularly in the scene where the Doctor tells Rose about himself while they're walking towards the TARDIS.
She lives with her strict mother (the commanding Camille Coduri) and her goofy but helpful boyfriend (the he-who-fandom-is-trying-to-forget Noel Clarke), who regrettably serves only as comic relief and doesn't receive the respect he deserves as a character.
The music is wonderful, the direction feels slick and modern, and the Autons are well-realized.
Looking back at the visuals today, Rose (and the entire Series 1) are showing their age. The weird white glow effect is very distracting, and some of the bigger visual effects look strange (the wheelie bin bit and the Nestene Consciousness). Then again, the practical effects of the Autons are very effective. And there is a certain charm to wonky special effects, as fans of the Classic Show surely agree.
Many Doctor Who episodes in the revived era follow this template, which is fast-paced and exciting, but with enough time to develop the characters and the story.
That opening scene with the Autons slowly creeping towards Rose is an incredibly powerful sequence, and one that surely helped fans accept that this was indeed Doctor Who returning. The rest of the story is filled with wonder and excitement, feeling both fresh and old-school at the same time.
The climax with the Nestene is a great moment for the Doctor, as he gets to have a proper speech to save the day. The final few moments are wonderfully tense. The anti-plastic thing is a bit of a simplistic solution, but it doesn't hamper the story too much.
I've always disliked the strange white glow in the episodes of Series 1. It's so distracting, but it doesn't look as bad in HD.
The Ninth Doctor has recently regenerated and had several adventures on his own before this episode.
It is lovely how this episode feels modern by actually having Rose search the internet to try to find out who the Doctor is.
Not even New Who is always great! The scene with Mickey being drawn into the garbage bin, followed by the bin burping, is cringeworthy.
I love the TARDIS interior reveal. They draw it out so perfectly, and the moment is so rewarding.
The Doctor: "Lots of planets have a north!"
The disappointment in the Doctor's eyes when Rose initially turns down his offer to join him is so palpable, it's heartbreaking.
With Rose, Russell T. Davies did the impossible and brought back a beloved BBC franchise for audiences new and old, effectively updating the series while respecting its roots.
Colonel Carter Count: 14/20 episodes this season. I guess 70% isn't bad, but it's still considerably lower than I'd expect for a star with main-cast billing like Amanda Tapping.
Despite the whole "ECH" shtick in one episode of Star Trek: Voyager, it's still weird to see Robert Picardo in a red uniform. :joy:
This might be the best "clip show" in Stargate history, and that's because the clips are new material. Structurally, though, it's pretty similar: Most of the episode is vignettes tied together with a few low-budget scenes on some redressed corridor sets. Probably the most expensive scene (other than the raid on Michael's compound in the last few minutes, setting up the season-ending cliffhanger) was Sheppard fighting through the sandstorm. I like this style of storytelling, really. I just don't like being fed old footage. :smirk:
Sheppard's quip about it not being his birthday got me thinking… Atlantis never addresses the issue of planetary rotational/orbital periods. Does the planet where Atlantis sits have exactly the same 24-hour day and 365-day year as Earth? Surely not? Surely it's also different from where the city rested at the beginning of the series. There must be some small variation on each world, so what do the Atlantis personnel do about date-keeping? (Probably quartz or atomic timekeeping devices for reference to Earth time, and the city's own systems for local time, or something like that. Still, odd that they never even mention it.)
Devlin Medical Technologies, huh? Cute little inside nod to one of the co-writers on Stargate's original film.
This episode contains one of the most conspicuous incorrect card swipes in the whole franchise. Rodney tries the card multiple times, and the fact that it doesn't work is a plot point. The obvious reason is that he's swiping it backwards.
Meanwhile, still trying to figure out why Amanda Tapping joined the main cast only to keep skipping episodes. So far this season, she's appeared in just 6 of the 9 episodes—and many of those featured her character in just a few short scenes. I would guess that the producers probably wanted to add a tie-in with SG-1 after its non-renewal to capture any audience that wasn't already watching Atlantis, but if that had been the reason I started watching this show after SG-1 ended then I'd be none too pleased with her repeated absences. It seems too early for her work on Sanctuary to be interfering with Tapping's appearances here (it didn't premiere until nearly a year later, in October 2008), but maybe the production lead time was greater than I'd expect.
Wallace was almost redeemable until he almost turned kidnapping into murder. I felt that the character crossed a line in that moment. If he hadn't injected Jeannie with the defective nanites, sacrificing himself so Todd the Wraith could finish reprogramming the nanites would have been a much more powerful gesture. As written, Wallace's death and Sheppard's "contribution" to it fell more than a little flat, like "of course that's the solution, duh".
There seem to be a lot of trolls continuing to leave nasty comments throughout these episodes about the writers, the lgbt+ representation, choice of pronouns for some characters, or general comments of how much the show sucks... yet they've still continued watching the show for several seasons despite how much they claim to hate it. Personally I don't have time to waste watching four seasons of a show I don't enjoy.. just something to take into consideration when reading such overwhelmingly negative comments.
As for my own opinions, this was a great episode. Burnham seems to still be coming into her station and struggling with her past but with each challenge she faces she's becoming stronger in her conviction and that seems to be reminding her of who she was. And who she still is despite everything she's lost.
This episode was a good mirror for that, with rescuing unfairly punished criminals and standing up for the rights of other people who might have also forgotten who they were. Felix was a great comparison and reminder of who Burnham used to be. He knew who he was and was ready to accept the punishment that he thought that he deserved, just like Burnham at the beginning of season 1. It was a good reminder. And though their stories ended up very different it's clear that Burnham understood him and related to him in a very personal way.
Still really looking forward to the rest of the season and how things play out between Stammets and Tarka.
[9.5/10] Holy hell. This was incredible. I love that after A New Hope pulled a lot from classic Japanese films like Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress, the franchise is coming full circle. Japanese artists are now translating the tropes of Star Wars back into a feudal Japan setting, and it could hardly be cooler.
The art here is just gorgeous. This is the most beautiful blend of 3D animation with 2D flourishes since Klaus. The choice to go black and white, with only electronic things like lightsabers, droid lights, and whistling birds appear in color creates a striking aesthetic. And the design choices are downright stunning, from straw-covered R2 units, to the force-sensitive combatants and their artistically-conceived hair and clothing, to vehicles, weapons, and whole species reimagined with an ancient Japanese flair.
The basic premise works just as well. The notion of a Sith warlord coming to harass a humble village, while a calm ronin springs into action to save the innocent from their oppressors, fits wonderfully into this new rendition of Star Wars. That’s no shock. Episode IV reinterpreted a number of standard ronin tropes into a space setting, and watching those tropes reabsorbed and remixed back into a feudal setting is a thrill.
The action here is top notch. This is one of the best lightsaber battles we’ve seen in ages, with stellar choices in the blocking, shot-selection, and choreography. I love the little choices like letting the “camera” focus on the Sith’s hood floating away in the wind while we only hear the sound of her clashing with the hero. There’s a real mood and atmosphere which adds to the epicness of the confrontation. Intensity in the pace, eye-catching poses, and clever shifts and ruses to get the upper hand all make this a stand out among Star Wars skirmishes.
I’m also a big fan of the texture to this one: little moments that don’t contribute that much to the fairly simple “story” but which add color and intrigue to the world the characters inhabit. A ten-year-old being the chief because his dad’s asleep or ran-off, the hunched tea-maker fixing the droid, the bounty hunters fighting back against the Sith are all little details, but make this world feel more alive and lived-in beyond the immediate story.
On the whole, this is one hell of a coming out party for Star Wars: Visions. I’ll confess, I’m not much of an anime afficionado. But “The Duel” is enough for even a relative neophyte like me to sit up and take notice.
There's no logic in the primitive nostalgic pessimism that a lot of people seem to have. All cinematographical material have their flaws and we can't expect all producers, directors and editors to have the perfect perception for the source material as the older fans. This series has it's ups and downs and surely inconsistencies, but just wanting to see everything die out because it can't please the sense of what the old shows brought is pure pessimism (haters gonna hate).
This show on it's own is doing a much better job than a lot of movies and shows (also those outside the ST universe). Mind the flaws this is doing much better than anything we got for a long time. So please don't try to kill everything that can never succeed something branded in your minds as perfection. And I would remind you if you watch the old shows again (and the same goes for movies and videogames) you'll be met with grievance that what is engraved in your mind as perfection might not look that amazing anymore in the present.
Times change; this evolution of the ST universe is not half that bad. It does a much better job than the meager movies we got the last years. Please give this some slack and stop trying to kill everything. This show has amazing potential if we give them constructive (and not destructive) feedback on how they can improve and pave the way for finally something that can bloom into a 8+ season show with actual bonds we can build with characters, like in the old days.
9.0/10. Oh hell yes, Captain Rex! I enjoyed so much that was going on in this episode that I didn't even care it doesn't really function well as an individual episode rather than a series of moments. Those moments are so enjoyable, and laden with meaning that comes from mixing The Clone Wars, Revenge of the Sith and Rebels together that they carry the day.
More than anything, I love the way the old crew mixes with the new crew. There's so much consistency and naturalism in the way these people would respond to one another. The clones are, understandably, leery about seeing a Jedi and suspect Kanan is out for revenge. Kanan, for his part, is also understandably unable to feel copacetic the Clone Commanders, feeling the betrayal of how they slaughtered the Jedi.
The rest of the crew warms up to them pretty easily as well. Ezra has swung the pendulum the other direction in his idealism/cynicism and is almost preternaturally trust and open with these old warriors, instantly having what feels like a grandfatherly relationship with Rex. Sabine (who changed her hair, I think?) gets a thrill when her talents as a mechanic are recognized. And Zeb, while initially a bit reluctant, is a military man himself, who quickly feels at home with these guys despite being their bait.
That sequence, where the Ghost Crew and the old clones use Zeb to lure and fight a giant worm alien is one of the best and most inventive in the whole animated Star Wars canon. One of the great things about the original Star Wars films was this sense of adventure in the unexpected, the way the films always explored new locales that seemed to have their own unique quirks and surprises. The hunt for that big "bongo" was that idea to a tee. It had the thrills and the quips and the design work necessary to make the scene exciting and fun. Seeing the repurposed republic tanker go on an elaborate mechanical chase for a giant worm is the sort of funky Star Wars-ian fun that the show needs.
We also get so much world-building and continuity! The Emperor has retired the clones! As we saw hints of in Clone Wars, Rex questioned the point and purpose of the war once it ended! He and his buddies eventually took Fives's warnings to heart and dug out their control chips! The conflicted commanders don't really know how to feel about The Empire, or how it taints the way they felt they were serving The Republic!
That's probably what I enjoyed most about this episode. Seeing Rex & Co. again is a boon, and the bongo chase is a great sequence, but all of the nostalgia-fueled fun and visual excitement comes with the ballast of the difficult relationship between the clones and the jedis now. The lines between who the good guys were and who the bad guys were used to be so clear in The Clone Wars days, at least on the surface. But now we see Rex trying to be a good guy but not wanting to get involved in a conflict after his last round of involvement didn't go so well. We see Kanan and his inability to trust the people whose genetic copies took out the Jedi, skeptical of the protestations that they weren't control. We see Hera, trying to remind Kanan that the Jedi and the Clone Troopers once worked together to save billions, including, apparently, her. (Could she have been the little Twi'lek girl we saw back on Ryloth in The Clone Wars?)
For all the gnashing of teeth over the stifling qualities of franchises and cinematic universes these days, this is the benefit of them. In a vacuum, the story of old soldiers facing the friends of the people they killed in a war they didn't plan is strong all on its own. But buoyed by the fact that we know those soldiers and those friends, that we've seen the clones have their doubts about the nature of those battles, or seen Kanan have difficulty resolving the present and the past, makes that story so much more vivid and effective. There's a history there, one that informs every moment we see in that delightful old clanking tank. It makes nearly every moment of this one a thrill, and portends great things for the rest of this arc.
Ah, gotta love those Donkey Balls.
While I am not precisely liking the dubious new addition to the ship's complement, because he feels treacherous, he sure does come up with some good ideas.
This episode had some beautiful moments.
While I am still not enjoying Chrisjen's wooden delivery of dialogue, I very much liked that we got to meet at least one of Holden's parents. It would have been a bit more interesting if we had seen the whole unit of them, but who knows why production felt just his body-mother was required. Frances Fisher does a great job, making a meal of a small role, and we get a great look at Holden's backstory. This late in the season though, I suspect we won't get anyone else's backstory until Season 2. I don't know about you, but I am chomping at the bit to find out Naomi's story.
Miller's sad and wistful goodbye to Octavia, as he heads off into the black chasing Julie Mao; the tense but funny process of getting into the lockbox to find the black ops codes to evade the blockade, these both give us more character depth. Miller is turning into a different kind of man, and the Rocinante crew's democratic, yet effective teamwork makes them a lot of fun to watch as they're grinding through trying to get to the bottom of Lionel Polanski, the Scopuli and the Anubis.
I'm also enjoying the little things in the show: The Belter's patois, although largely incomprehensible, is a nice touch that adds a lot of dimension to the Belter's as an insular, underdog group. That they evolved their own language, says much for the alienation they must have to the rest of the solar system. Jared Harris as Dawes, has the most beautiful sing song thing going on, and it makes his character a much more seductive and enchanting force in the story's play...
Regardless of the next few episodes, which i suspect will be relentless, Sy Fy has done a marvellous job of fueling this production. Despite a few obvious TV gaffs here and there, for the most part the show is really well put together, and the concepts, sets, action sequences and character development almost make you pause, because Sy Fy has gutted us more than once since Battlestar Galactica went off air. I say again, this is the best show I've seen on TV since BSG ended... and that Sy Fy is coming through for us, is something to celebrate.
This show is pure science fiction and it's commitment to creating a believable story, is tremendous.
The pace slows a bit in this episode, but again the highlight here is the characters in play.
Again I am struck by Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and not in a good way. Although her accent is beautiful, I don’t believe Aghdashloo’s portrayal at all. She doesn’t seem to penetrate the character’s motivations and what I am perceiving is her delivering her lines, not so much acting. Consequently, her role seems off and aloof rather than a woman of passion that Chrisjen clearly is, at least on paper.
Which is a pity. Her role is such a juicy one for a woman, that it is a shame she feels like bad casting, and the role could have gone to an actress with more chops. I can see Tilda Swinton playing this role with gelid-eyed ferocity.Hers is the only real problematic portrayal, everyone else is doing a great job.
All of that said, this episode continues to build the story relentlessly from the previous episode.
We have an interesting additional ‘backstory’, that of Diogo (Andrew Rotilio), who we saw in earlier episodes in scenes with Miller where he was warned to 'Stay away from the aqua!’, and his uncle Mateo (Alex Karzis). This sequence gives us an emotional and tense story line, giving you some of the grit and determination of the Belters to make a sacrifice for what’s right, even though it’s clear they’re mistreated and taken advantage of. Although it doesn’t appear as though this character is important, the fact that this dramatic little side story appears, leads me to believe that Diogo, who we last see floating on his own, will become an important secondary character later on.
Regardless of the vicious machinations going on way above their heads, the Belters clearly deserve some justice.
We also get further evidence of the growing close knitting of the crew of the Rocinante. The handle Fred Johnson and his demands deftly, and head into God knows what by the end of the episode. Holden continues to display wit, and his team loyalty.
The byplay between Miller (Thomas Jane) and Octavia (Athena Karkanis) is also looking like something we will watch play out later on in the story. The chemistry between them is there, and I like all the scenes between them. Jane plays his character’s bitterness perfectly with her, and she hits her character’s notes perfectly. Tough but vulnerable, willing to stretch, but not quite bend the rules. Her rescuing of Miller in this episode definitely deserves a brownie point or two.
It is clear that this is a series that requires you to pay attention. It’s easy to miss some details on the first watch, so you cannot ignore anything or anyone at this point.
Yes! My boy is back and with a dog other than Riker! The new Number One sure is as cute as the original one.
This was not what I expected, but, then again, I didn't know what to expect of something set in the TNG universe 30 years later. This is definitely not TNG but — and most importantly — this is not STD either (gotta love that acronym).
There was a wee bit too much more action than I'd thought there'd be in a show revolving around one of the most wise and reasonable Star Trek characters, but it wasn't exactly gratuitous, anyway. The show seems to want to blend some action for the newer generations with the trademark deep and thoughtful Picard monologues. And I'm cool with that.
I'm not so sure about that "Tea. Earl Grey. Decaf." moment. That's meddling with a sacred TNG quote! Maybe it was just a one time thing, a nod to the good old TNG days, while showing at the same time that the years have clearly passed by.
Also, was that a Borg Cube at the end? Add that to the obvious incoming wave of guest appearances and this show will quickly get soaked in fanservice. I don't mean it in a bad way, though... Because I do want to see all of that!
After this premiere I still don't know what to expect from the show, but I did enjoy this first episode — both for the nostalgia and for the new elements — and it got me excited to watch the next one, which is all one could ask from a pilot episode.
Everyone loves a good mystery, and Picard sure seems to be getting his teeth (dentures?) into a tasty one. And so are we.
Very very good finale. I really enjoyed Lyra and Asriel's scenes together. He is a fascinating character with so many sides to him. It's obvious that he cares about Lyra, but his mission takes precedence over everything, even his daughter or his morals - we could see he took no pleasure in sacrificing Roger, but he didn't hesitate to do it because he feels he has a duty to free all of humanity from enslavement. Having read the books, I obviously knew the tragic ending was coming, but it still hit me really hard. Roger was a sweet cinnamon roll and he deserved better. His death was absolutely devastating, maybe even more than in the book, since Lyra got SO CLOSE to him that she could hold his hand. My poor babies :( And on Will's side of things, he's finally found the opening! I have to say, I love the foreshadowing with the cat that showed him the way. Now that we're onto The Subtle Knife, things are gonna get crazy. Can't wait.
As a long-time fan of the books, I find a whole lot to like about this series. The casting is for the most part excellent, especially Ruth Wilson, who was born to play Marisa Coulter, and James McAvoy, who brings a lot of nuance and depth to Lord Asriel. I was so looking forward to finally seeing them interact and their chemistry is amazing. I would really love to see a miniseries centered around these two when they first met and everything that happened leading up to Lyra's birth. Dafne Keen somehow manages to look like both of her on-screen parents (I genuinely applaud the casting director) and I think she's done a good job with her portrayal of Lyra. Her acting can be a bit hit-and-miss at times, but when she's on, she's pretty amazing. I also like the actors who portray Lord Boreal and Will. And speaking of Will, I don't mind the fact that the series decided to introduce him in season 1. I actually like it because I remember how jarring it was for me when he popped up out of nowhere in the second book. I was annoyed because it felt like he was interrupting Lyra's story. The show has done a good job of making us care about him just as much as we care about Lyra, telling us right out of the gate that this story has two protagonists from parallel worlds whose fates are intertwined and who will inevitably meet at some point. Very good choice on the showrunners' part. The visuals and cinematography are beautiful, the music is excellent (the opening credits slay me every time) and it's for the most part a very faithful adaptation of the source material.
Not everything is perfect, though. The biggest problem I have with the series is that it severely undermines the relationship between humans and daemons. There is literally nothing stronger in Lyra's world than that bond. Seeing someone without a daemon is so viscerally terrifying that it's like seeing someone without a head. Yet in the series we constantly see people without daemons. Yes, yes budgetary restrictions and all that, but you know what? Maybe that's a controversial opinion, but if you don't have enough money to accurately represent one of the key world-building features of the story, then perhaps you shouldn't be adapting said story in the first place. Can't believe I'm saying this, but even the movie, which is terrible in many ways, managed to portray it better, at least between Lyra and Pan. I don't think I'll ever forgive the show for the way Lyra just ignored Pan after they were almost separated at Bolvangar and ran towards Marisa instead of immediately grabbing her freaking soul, her dearest companion, from that cage. Like I said, even in the movie Lyra would cuddle Pan whenever something dangerous happened. Meanwhile on the show I can count on one hand how many times Lyra touched her daemon over the course of 8 episodes. Again, I understand that they have budgetary restrictions, but Lyra and Pan's relationship is probably the most important dynamic in the books and it just doesn't feel that way in the series. Another thing I don't like - and I realize that in the grand scheme of things it's really not that important - is that they changed Kaisa from a goose to a gyrfalcon. I know they did it because a talking goose looked bad and cartoonish and they felt they couldn't make it work, but we've seen many characters with raptor daemons (Ma Costa and Tony, for example). Kaisa being a goose was unusual, unique, and changing that fundamentally changes who Serafina is as a person. To me, daemons are probably one of the greatest concepts ever invented in literature. They're endlessly fascinating. So the way they're treated on the show is just bitterly disappointing.
Okay, deep breath, rant over.
Still looking forward to season 2. And in the meantime, if anyone is interested in daemons as much as I am, I recommend this quiz: https://app.ex.co/stories/laurenb90/what-is-your-daemon. This is not a self promo or anything (as if I could ever make something this in-depth), but I think it's pretty cool and the results can be pretty damn accurate. This quiz gives you one of the 34 possible animal groups. In the description of that group, there is a link to a second quiz that gives you a specific species or breed within that group. Have fun.
(Mine is an opossum. And I love him.)
[8.2/10] Man this one is cool. I’ll admit, there’s a bit of an odd tone to it, where on the one hand it seems to want to be deathly serious about things like not killing civilians and adds real stakes when Baby Yoda is in peril, but then you have Clancy Brown(!) and Natalia Tena(!) chewing scenery like this is a high class episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, so I don’t quite know how to take it. But despite that tonal wobbliness, it’s a visually thrilling episode that plays tension and action to the hilt.
The tension is incredible. Just the scene with Mando and his fellow criminals hanging out on the ship before they wait for the prison transport already feels like a powder keg that could go off at any minute. And that’s before Mayfeld picks up frickin’ Baby Yoda and the ship starts to rumble and shake coming out of hyperspace! There’s tons of tension in the scene where a Mexican standoff takes place over whether to kill the single human New Republic operator on the prison ship, which legitimately feels like it could break out into blaster fire, until it’s expertly punctured by Xi’an’s blades. And Zero going after Baby Yoda throughout the ship had me on the edge of my seat, even though I consciously knew that the rules of TV say that the mercenary droid wasn’t going to be able to catch him.
It was also an outstanding episode for action. Mando going against the warden droids on his own, whether taking on a mass of them in the hallway or wrangling one from inside a cell had a sort of kinetic excitement that stands down. The same goes for his fight with Burg, whose imperviousness to Mando’s usual tricks makes him a formidable opponent, who requires Mando to get creative and poses a threat in a way no other combatant can. Even just the production design here, with the wagon wheel design of cell doors and red lights holding steady or flashing added extra flavor to each encounter, especially the strobe stalking between Mando and Mayfeld in the final reel.
I was also a big fan of the little touches this one included, some for character, some just enjoyable bits for nerds like me. I appreciate the writing and performance of Mayfeld, who seems like a douchebag from the word go, something that’s reinforced over and over. The way he and the others casually disrespect Mando’s beliefs, the way he makes fun of Gungan speech, the way he just handles Baby Yoda all tell you that this guy’s an asshole long before he and his cohort turn on Mando. The show sets up that betrayal emotionally and in terms of personality, right down to Mayfeld holding back the others while Mando fights the warden droids. That actually helps the backstabbing here, because you can’t tell whether Mayfeld and his crew actively hate Mando or whether he’s just a jerk.
But then there’s little things only dorks would appreciate, like the fact that Matt Lanter (who played Anakin in the Clone Wars series) played the human that gets wasted by Xi’an, or that the New Republic fighter pilots who take down Malk’s space station are played by Dave Filoni, Deborah Chow, and Rick Famuyima, three directors and creative voices for the series. I like the world building in the glimpses of what we see here, from the prisoners behind bars on the prison transport to Zero (Richard Ayoade!) and our getting to see another competent bounty droid in action.
The story’s also paced well. It’s a pretty standard heist/rescue type deal, but the band of thieves conceit works well as The Mandalorian continues its genre-hopping excitement. The shift from “here’s the job” to the twists once they actually get to the prison ship, to the turn when Mando goes from hunted to hunter, all work well, particularly with the proverbial ticking clock in the form of Zero going after Baby Yoda. And the story reveals some nice character in Mando, who is still not a clear good guy, but who doesn't want to kill a random civilian, and who still is a man of his word who does the job and delivers Qin back to Malk, only to play the sort of badass loophole and “turnabout is fair play” twist on his “honor” when he sics the New Republic fleet on his former running buddy.
Overall, this is a distinctive episode of the show to be sure. At times it felt more like an episode of Star Trek (more hand to hand combat than usual) or even Suicide Squad (bunch of bad guys go on a mission together) than it did a piece of Star Wars. But that’s cool! It’s fun to see this show stretching its wings and delivering some of the coolest genre television around right now.
[7.7/10] There are three versions of the same motif in “Martial Feats”, three moments when Angela has her arms wrapped around someone, supporting their weight, before something major, and a little insane, goes down.
The first is the most straightforward. She, along with Looking Glass and Red Scare, help pull Chief Crawford down from his noose. It is a moment where she is losing a father figure, seeing someone she trusted, who was family to her, taken away from her by vigilantes. There is profound pain in her eyes when she watches the body bag zipped up, and tries to remain calm rather than immediately taking her revenge on Nixontown, even as her brutal beatdown shows how much anger she’s holding under the surface.
The second is a flashback to the “White Night”, where she’s holding her husband close, playing and flirting in the final moments before Xmas. Until all of a sudden, a man in a Rorschach mask barges in and, in a harrowing scene, tries to kill her. The result is an explanation for her closeness with Chief Crawford, a shared survival of something hellacious that hit close to home, that emboldened them to stay in the fight despite tremendous risks, that brought them together as something closer and more significant than two officers on the same force.
And the third is her lifting Will into her car after placing him under arrest. It comes not only after she has learned that her Chief, the man she trusted, was hiding a Klan robe in his closet, something to undermine the faith and love she thought they shared, but also after she learns that this man who claims to have killed Judd Crawford is her biological grandfather. It is something to tear her world apart, to rewrite everything she thought she knew about someone close to her, and a reason to take seriously someone who claims to be his killer.
What does it all mean? Well I think the key is in the opening scene, where we see the development and distribution of a letter to black soldiers fighting in World War II, asking why they fight for a country that treats them as something lesser, that doesn't give them dignity despite serving under the same flag. It seems like that sparked something in (presumably) Will’s father, a realization that despite serving with and under their white counterparts, there was a different war to fight, a level of trust and respect they were not going to get, which gave him, and now gives Angela, reason to question the justness of the battles they’re fighting.
A third of the way through, the Watchmen T.V. series is about the murky intersection of race and politics and service and our national institutions. But it also seems to be about an awakening in Angela, one that opens her eyes to realities she thought she knew, of lines between black and white she thought she understood, that are starting to become much more blurred with the light Will’s little lantern is shining on them.
Much of that falls on Regina Hall to carry, and she does an outstanding job here. Whether it’s selling Angela’s surprise at the revelation about her grandfather, her responding with determination and resolve and tremendous pain after hearing about how many of her comrades were gunned down, her reserve curdling into vengeful anger at Nixontown, or her understanding, concerned interactions with her son, all give Hall a hell of an opportunity to show the different layers and shades she brings to this performance.
It’s also an episode that helps build out the world, fill in the blanks for little questions that we might have assumed we knew the answers to, but couldn’t know for sure. We see what exactly the “White Night” was and how it affected the relationship between the police and “The Cavalry.” We learn that Angela and her husband adopted the children of her old partner who was killed that night, something the kids’ grandfather (Jim Beaver!) is clearly none too pleased with.
And we learn more details about the “Redfordrations” -- the financial recompense offered by the U.S. government in response to the violence enacted against black people in America, including the Tulsa Massacre of Black Wallstreet depicted in the opening episode. I’m apt to slate Watchmen a little for resorting to pretty raw exposition for this, but holy hell, it’s hard to complain when they have Skip f’n Gates do it, and include a DNA test to boot. It’s a revelation that helps connect the show’s political themes to something concrete, an effort to portray a right wing backlash to a left wing government trying to take steps to make amends for the abhorrent things in our country’s past, and to establish Angela’s place within that maelstrom.
We also see Veidt trying to make good on Dr. Manhattan’s suggestion that he might try to create a little life on his own. Ozymandias is trying to recreate tomatoes, emotions, people, and seems to be coming up short each time. His part of the episode seems to take place separate and apart from all the other goings on, without much of even a thematic tie. But it’s an intriguing side-story, one of obsession with his old blue compatriot, and one of trying to find passion and, yes, life in something he can create and control.
And last, but not least, we get a look at the “American Hero” T.V. show, giving us a scene of Hooded Justice’s backstory that...well...looks a lot like the aesthetic and style of 2009 Zach Snyder film. I’m not sure if there’s a broader point here, beyond vaguely slating the earlier flick. But maybe the purpose (along with the FCC’s disavowal) is to show the way that these exploits are still being lionized, still meant to inspire and give a hagiography for a form of vigilante justice that has nuts in Rorschach masks going on organized cop killing sprees. It’s a form of justice that the likes of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre once believed in, folks who may have something to do with Will getting picked up and carried off into the night sky.
They’re the other image that comes to mind when I think of two people holding one another in the way that Angela holds her husband, her surrogate father, and her grandfather here. I think of Dan Dreiberg’s dream of the two of them in the nuclear apocalypse. I think of the newsstand owner and his younger reader reaching for one another amid the squid’s blast. I think of these people reaching for one another in these horrible situations, seeking that last bit of connection amid terrible events. And maybe that’s what Angela is waking up to, a human connection that alerts her to something rotten, something ominous, waiting just beyond the horizon.
[7.7/10] My freshman English teacher told our class to always look for repetition. The things an author wants you to pay attention to will come up again and again, he’d say. Those little echoes were our cues to try to figure out what was important and what had extra meaning.
Sharp Objects may or may not be fertile ground for such symbol hunting. In the early going, the show is still full of mysteries. Some of them are of the whodunnit variety, having both Camille and Det. Willis trying to ferret out who killed the two girls who died in Windgap over the past year. But some of them are more personal, about the rough-grooved relationship between Camille and her mother in the past and present, who they used to be and who they are now.
“Dirt” offers no end of repeated images. They may be clues toward the identity of the murderer or murderers, hints about the core of Camille and Adora’s histories, or just random nonsense to keep nudniks like me guessing. Either way, may as well start guessing.
Let’s start with the most obvious and uncomfortable piece of the episode -- the self-harm. Beyond her drinking, we see Camille returning to what seems like an old habit. She buys a sewing kit and runs the needle across her skin, digging it under her fingernails, or piercing her stomach with it. On a network, and an episode, that offers no shortage of more gruesome images, it’s tough to watch at times.
The letters carved into her arms suggest this isn’t a new or recent phenomenon, but rather a longstanding coping mechanism she’d managed to avoid at some point, and now finds herself seeking refuge in once again. So much of Sharp Objects so far has seen bits and pieces of Camille’s old life coming back to her: the gossiping former cheerleader friends, the wolf-whistling used-to-be young men she once hung around with, the scoldings from her mother. “Dirt puts a particular focus on what seems to be her old way of dealing with all of that pressure and pain, by trying to put herself in control of her own pain, and maybe even like it.
But in an odd way, it seems to be a connection with her mother. Once again, we see images of Adora pulling out her own eyelashes in both the past and the present. That too, is a form of self-harm, one that suggests that while their methods and perspectives ostensibly differ, Adora and her daughter have similar compulsions to harm themselves in already painful situations.
Still, Adora isn’t the only one pulling things out in this episode. Richard runs down a lead about the latest victim, and tries to pull out the teeth off a pig’s head to try to decide whether or not it would take a man’s upper body strength to do it. Who knows if it’s a deliberate thematic connection to Adora’s eyelid tugs, or just a coincidence, or even an important hint that Adora may have more to do with those girls’ deaths than we might think. But there’s something there, and my freshman English teacher would hate for us to ignore it.
There’s also repeated images of Camille being denied affection by her mother. Camille remembers coming home from outside, only to see her sister embraced while she’s ignored. In the scene set at her sister’s funeral in the past, Camille goes to her mother for comfort, and Adora ignores her to go weep over the other daughter’s grave. These are clues to the bad blood between mother and daughter here, Camille’s sense that her mom didn’t love her, or at least not as much.
“Dirt” seems to draw an even firmer line between that supposition and Camille’s self harm. At the funeral home, Camille not only witnesses her mother pulling her eyelashes out -- Adora’s seeming self-harm method of choice -- but she picks one up and rubs it across her skin. That too is an echo, one of the needle running across her skin in the present, tying together both the learned behavior and the emotional hurt that motivates Camille’s compulsion to cause herself physical pain in the here and now.
But the repetitive motifs aren’t just about Camille’s personal relationships and destructive habits. They’re also clues to the pattern, if any, of the young women who are being killed. There’s talk in the town of Natalie Keene having been a tomboy, one who didn’t conform to the expectations of young women in Windgap, in the same way that Camille herself didn’t at that age (or at least stopped after some unspecified trauma). And Amma and her friends declare that the little girls being slaughtered “aren’t the cool ones.”
Natalie’s father talks about how the family “keeps to themselves” in the same way that Bob Nash described his family. There are parallels between not only the girls who were killed, but between the families who raised them, even if those families don’t get along. And there’s parallels between these young women today and Camille’s when she was a girl, nodding toward some contours of what changed Camille from the cheerleader who once felt at home with the gossiping magpies at the funeral and now feels like a very different, more broken person.
There’s also visual motifs that come up again and again in the episode. Over and over, “Dirt” punctuates a scene with a split-second image that it seems to want the audience to have to work to catch. The image of Anne Nash’s dead body, a word scratched into a car door that switches from “scared” to “sacred”, a ghostly woman’s presence that quickly dissipates, all suggest that there’s something haunting Windgap, that Camille is losing her grip on reality and herself, or possibly both.
Then there’s those fans, the softly whirring devices that are omnipresent in the episode. Camille stairs vacantly at one in her bedroom, possibly hinting toward a similarly numb affect she had to inhabit while suffering something terrible in that state. Her stepfather does the same just a floor below later in the episode, and Det. Willis has one in the background as he’s going over Anne’s case.
Could this all be coincidence or intentional obfuscation? Without a doubt. Each bit of repetition here could be an echoing message about the cyclical nature of such things, or a clue as to the nature of these murders, or just some window-dressing to help set the mood and keep the audience guessing. Whatever the case, everytime Sharp Objects doubles up these moments and phrases and images, it’s asking us to pay attention, in a way that should warm the hearts of ninth grade English teachers everywhere.
Patrick Stewart flubbed a line in the Sickbay scene, saying "Terellian" instead of "Talarian", and that made it into the final print. It also survived into the syndicated TV broadcasts, DVD release, and Blu-ray remaster.
It's odd that a message to Starfleet would take 48 hours to arrive on subspace frequencies, according to Riker, when the whole episode started with a communiqué from Starfleet asking the Enterprise to investigate a disturbance in the area. They wouldn't ask unless the request would arrive quickly enough for the ship to actually arrive in time to see what happened. Picard says to inform Starfleet the Enterprise will enter the Neutral Zone, which presumably won't take 48 hours to get back to Earth. You can't run a fleet of starships on four-day turnaround between order and acknowledgement… Riker's line had to be a mistake.
Speaking of communication issues… When Tasha reports a hostage situation on deck 17, which she later tells the Bridge to disregard, it's extremely fishy that no one acknowledged it, asked for more details, said they were sending another team… anything.
Worf's reference to the "Age of Inclusion" in this episode is the only time that term appears in Star Trek. In all future episodes that reference this point in a young Klingon's life, it is called the "Age of Ascension" instead.
And more Klingon-related writing flubs: Klingons use disruptors, not phasers, but everyone in this episode calls the weapon Korris and Kon'mel assembled in the security detention cell a "phaser". Oops?
I like this episode as a character study of Worf, though it's not that great overall. The important bits are acted well, and we get a nice bit where Data explains the Klingons' howling at the ceiling to Captain Picard. I do have a soft spot for Data being a smarty-pants.
I thought this was a pretty great episode in spite of its numerous, shall we say, plot holes.
Troi is once again shown "reading" Ferengi in direct contradiction to later established canon that Betazoids cannot sense Ferengi emotions due to their unusual four-lobed brain structure. Bok also transports off the Stargazer while its shields are up—I suppose the Ferengi could have transporters that work through shields, but if so they'd be used in other episodes and this just smells like the writers forgot Bok had raised the Stargazer's shields earlier in that scene. (And at the end, Picard has the Enterprise beam him back without lowering the shields, too. We know Federation transporters don't work through shields.)
What really saves the episode is Riker's relationship with the Ferengi first officer, Kazago, whose actions begin the work of transforming the Ferengi from the underwhelming villain role originally assigned to them by the writers into the principled traders we come to know. He's reluctant at first, but comes around to demonstrate that the Ferengi do, in fact, have a sense of morality and ethics after all. Armin Shimerman might have been one of the Ferengi in their first appearance ever, but Douglas Warhit has the honor of kicking off their development as a proper Star Trek alien race with some kind of actual culture.
EDIT: [8.0/10] All I can say is mea culpa. When I watched this episode for the first time, I rated it a 6.0/10, and on rewatch, that seems mighty piddling for such a strong start.
I don’t want to slate my past self too badly. There are things about this pilot that don’t work on the first go-round. For one thing, it has what I would term a Game of Thrones problem, where there are scores of guys, each with the same complexion, each with some amount of facial hair, each with with some degree of ruddiness, who are pretty hard to tell apart in the early going. Series creator David Milch doesn't skimp on the characters in the show’s opening hour, and that can make it tricky to keep up.
At the same time, there were certain characterizations on my first watch that felt like clichés on the first watch. It’s easy for Bullock to seem like a generic man of law and order whose sense of justice is too strong to be snuffed out even in this lawless place. It’s for Wild Bill to seem like the standard old hand, there mostly to pass the torch to the new gunfighter. Hell, even Al Swearengen, the most original and distinctive character on this show, and one of television’s best, could seem a little too straightforwardly evil in this opening salvo.
But knowing more about these characters having watched the whole series, knowing where Milch intends to take them and having a better sense of their personalities, makes this a far more compelling and engaging experience, because Milch plants the seeds of so many details, so many shades of characterization that are subtle enough to miss (or at least subtle enough for me to miss) but which will blossom and bloom later.
Because in the shadow of the whole series, you can understand Bullock as not just a paint-by-numbers Western protagonist, but as someone who is almost pathologically obsessed with his sense of righteousness. Bullock is not a decent man in indecent times; he is someone who harbors a deep anger that he can’t control, for how things ought to be, that rears its ugly head whenever things are even slightly askew from his exacting standards.
I’ll admit my apostasy, that I’m still not necessarily a big fan of Timothy Olyphant’s performance, at least in the pilot. But I see now what I missed on my first viewing -- that there is a raw, barely-restrained intensity to the performance, one that I mistook for moral steadfastness, but now see as a sign of Bullock’s rage-filled pathology, that is focused in the right direction but nevertheless not exactly laudable or helpful.
Which is why it’s a good thing Sol Star is there. That’s another thing that didn’t necessarily process fully on my original watch -- how much this first episode takes time to establish not only the holy trinity of this first season -- Bullock, Hickok, and Swearengen -- but also establishes their seconds, in many ways keeping them in check.
For Sol, that means making sure that his partner doesn't goes off the rails, keeps his frustrations under control, and doesn't do anything too wild to get them in trouble on their first day in town, despite the many things that tempt Bullock to give in and smash some heads. Sol doesn't get much shading here, but you get the sense that he needed to take Bullock out of Montana to this unincorporated territory because Bullock needed to be away from the color of law. While many of the people who come to Deadwood do so because of the outrageous freedom a place with no laws represents, Bullock is there because a place without laws hopefully means none that he’ll feel compelled to enforce, in brutal, angry terms.
But Sol isn’t the only one keeping his partner and friend in check. Both Charlie Utter and Calamity Jane are clearing the decks for Wild Bill in town. Utter has more of Star’s role vis-a-vis his counterpart, trying to make sure that Bill still has a pot to piss in by the time he’s done, and trying to make plans and arrangements to support their little operation which the seemingly laid back Hickok doesn't concern him with.
And then there’s Jane, one of the most singular figures in a show not short on them. The enraptured look in her eyes when she gazes upon Will Bill, the curses and recriminations she offers to the patrons of the Gem Saloon, and the tender care and protection she offers to a rescued little girl from a family slain on the road, evoke this captivating woman of contradictions. She is vulgar as the street is muddy, vituperative and quick-to-anger with poor Charlie Utter and any the doctor and anyone who dares get on her bad side, but she is also capable of great love and affection. We see all this in miniature in Deadwood’s first hour, and we’ll see more of it as the series unspools.
Then there’s Bill himself, a mostly taciturn man who seems reserved in his early forays into the town, retiring from his celebrity and taking everything in stride, but also a bit resigned. There is the sense of a man going through the motions (something to which I might chalk up my initial impatience with the character) but who’s also a sleeping giant whom, when awoken, as by the need of the youngest daughter of a slaughtered family for help, is as formidable as his reputation might suggest.
That just leaves Al Swearengen and the comings and goings of the Gem to cement the oft-deadly, always duplicitous ecosystem that he presides over in Deadwood. So many people have come to Deadwood looking to find something the rest of the world can no longer offer. Bullock seems to want freedom from his lawman responsibilities. Wild Bill is escaping the warrants on his head. Dozens of others (including fancy pants heirs from back east) have come to prospect, and leave their troubles behind as they hope to hit it big in the gold rush.
But Swearengen isn’t trying to escape anything, he’s just found the place where he belongs, where he can be king and play the rest of this town like a fiddle while he tries to keep an eye on anyone who might strike a sour note.
I could go on for pages and pages about Ian McShane’s performance here, about how his dealings with the carpet bagging stuffed shirt, with the hilarious hotel proprietor E.B. Farnum, with his dutiful enforcer, with the unfortunate goon who meets his end after one of Al’s schemes, and most of all with the disquieting brutality and unsuspecting tenderness he shares with Trixie, tell you immediately what the tenor of this place is and what kind of show this is going to be. But there’s time for that in the course of the thirty-five more episodes Deadwood would use to explore Al Swearengen, the place he’s made for himself here, and the lengths he’s willing to go hold onto it.
I was wrong about the first episode of Deadwood. Every pilot has to essentially teach the viewer how to watch the show, particularly for series that depart from the normal modes and rhythms of television, and in that, perhaps, this episode failed me the first time around. Deadwood throws the audience in and expects them to keep up.
But having learned how to swim in those waters, the grand designs beneath the service are much more evident. The characters are deeper, the crackling dialogue is easier to follow, and the sense of place put forward in just that first hour seems all the more remarkable. It is a fine welcome to Deadwood, one that seems far less combative than on the first go.
The man who rode that train was built weak and born to fail. You fixed him. Now forget about it. Teddy 2.0
Dolores wanting to change everything but herself, Maeve wanting to change herself to influence the world.
What we learned in Phase Space
Dolores is
programming and testing and Arnold bot
Or maybe, that's not her (or her cr4-dl consciousness). That's Ford. He needs to have her appearance b/c that's what the real Arnold knew about that conversation.
William thinking
his daughter was a host sent by Ford. ROFL!!!
Of course, he was testing her to see if she was a real or host version of Emily sent by Ford as part of the game
Climate
control is working
More about the Cradle
Cradle—spelled CR4-DL is "the simulation technology that stores and tests all of our storylines" and ensures customers "get the immersive and dynamic experience [they] deserve." So it's the way Delos test-drives its experiences. Bernard describes it as a "backup," and Elsie calls it a "hive mind" where all the host's consciousnesses are "alive.
Japanese Armistice
is sticking with Maeve and the gang
William and Emily's
relationship has been...difficult
William confused his wife with his daughter when recounting the story about the elephants in Raj World. Does that say something about his family life, a simple slip of the tongue, or is it something else like MIB is a Host?
Maeve's daughter
has new parents
Who didn't see Maeve meeting her replacement? Did she think her daughter was all alone? That was typical of Lee to omit that little piece of information. And what is the Ghost Nation's game?
Ghost Nation wanted Maeve to come with them. Since they protect the guests, there was also more to Maeve than simply being a host.
Akecheta is awake & probably sees that Maeve is too!
Teddy 2.0 is Stone Cold
Dolores is going to regret reprogramming Teddy in the coming episodes.
Her reactions were so funny "oh shit what have I done!"
Teddy is aware that Dolores reprogrammed him. I feel that will be important later.
Ford is inside the Cradle
Ford's back, or at least an approximation of his consciousness in the Cradle. We all suspected Ford would return as a Host despite the flat-out denials from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Nolan & co.. They pretty much telegraphed his return over the season (he's in the system, briefly surfacing in Hosts e.g. young Ford), but Episode 4 all but confirmed it.
Dolores and Maeve storylines ** is not interesting at all. They're currently paper thin and taking their sweet time to go anywhere.**
The Man In Black's daughter who we know nothing about is a far more compelling character.
The Cradle Is Capable Of So Much More Than We Expected
The Cradle, in essence, is a server that stores memories and consciousness for retrieval. Like a file cabinet, the hosts’ “data” is copied and contained within the server, and can be accessed to run theoretical or training simulations on the robots. The main function of the Cradle, though, is to act as a backup for each of the intricately-crafted hosts; a way for Delos to preserve the work that went into detailing their appearances, their preferences, their mannerisms, the very things that make them so human. Think of it as the Cloud that stores your phone pics.
Those pearls, it turns out, are the container for the hosts’ consciousnesses. But the Cradle itself send commands to the parks, not unlike the way the Matrix papers over glitches with deja vu. And the implications of this functionality go way beyond just data storage. It means that the Cradle itself can run simulations or disrupt the flow of time —if it has a programmer (the host) to program a server farm (the Cradle), illustrated by Bernard getting off the train at exactly the spot he needed to be. The Cradle doesn’t appear to create simulations without a host’s consciousness to guide it.
Do we have a host in the Cradle? We sure do, and because Bernard just uploaded his brain pearl into the Cradle, it could mean that everything we’ve seen in season 2 thus far — the multiple timelines, the weird ways that the characters are interacting with him — are just a simulation. This totally mind-bending but plausible theory was put forth by YouTuber HaxDogma, and in a 10-minute video he makes the case that Bernard has hacked his way into the Cradle, and everything is running from his point of view. In other words, it’s as though we’re viewing everything like Neo did at the end of the first Matrix: as a source code that can be manipulated.
Or (and this is even more sinister), perhaps Robert Ford has been in the Cradle all along, pulling the strings, and driving wedges between Dolores and Maeve with her new powers.
Make that three pickle jar jokes in as many episodes, this time with godawful CGI to go with it.
Interesting that the show is set farther in the future than any Star Trek series, but doesn't have teleportation technology available. An excuse for shuttle docking effects porn every week? (i.e. the exact opposite of the reason why Roddenberry gave the Enterprise a transporter.)
If asked for the most Star Trek–like thing about The Orville, it's that the captain regularly goes on away missions. Dangerous ones.
And he always almost gets killed.
The last scene is iffy on the effects.
Stars outside the captain's office window: moving.
Ship: stationary.
What.
Pria shouldn't have vanished. That creates all kinds of plot holes that wouldn't exist if she'd stuck around to be dropped off at a Union base or whatever they would do with her. Since she disappeared, that implies she never existed in this timeilne, so she couldn't have saved the Orville from the dark matter storm, which means Mercer couldn't have ordered the wormhole destroyed. But if the wormhole isn't destroyed, then Pria continues to exist in this timeline, which means the wormhole Mercer will order the wormhole destroyed, which means… Time travel is a bitch to write.
A backup, a hug, a fight and a kiss
El is the cutest BADASS character ever
This episode was amazing and beautiful, if there's more than 10 stars I would give it more
First let's talk about Steve, he's amazing, he's brave and kind.. Did you see how he was genuinely care about these kids and puts himself in danger just to protect them.. I gotta say he became one of my favorite characters in the show
Also lets talk about the kid who plays Will, gosh!! That kid is sooo talented, I was genuinely feeling his pain, he's so amazing and I'm sure he has a bright future ahead of him
The 3 ways attack bit was also amazing, seeing all the characters attack at the same time from different places was gold writing from the show runners.. I liked how the kids took Steve with them while he was unconscious LMAO, and he was like f*** it lets go burn that sh*t.. I still thing that Nancy doesn't deserve Steve, he's too good for her
Anyway, I didn't like that bit with Dustin and his pet, it felt stupid, I mean they're monsters after all so I don't see how that monster can form such feelings for human, anyway he died at the end we saw him next to the chocolate bar
About El, her scene closing that gate was simply EPIC, I loved how she towards the end used both her hands to push the monster back, and by doing that she actually became more powerful, so now we know El with 2 raised hands are unstoppable
Last thing is the Snow Ball party, it was sad and hilarious seeing Dustin get rejected one by one LMAO, but then Nancy saved his a**, then we saw Mike sitting alone and I had a feeling that El gonna show up, and she did!! She was beautiful and cute.. I'm glad that she's finally with Mike and she feels happy
It was a great season but now we have to wait a long time from season 3 :(((
[8.1/10] Ambiguity can be both frustrating and brilliant. There is a natural impulse in most people to want to know the answers, to resolve the unknown, but the unknown is also a part of life, and if a television show can harness that, use it to make meaning, it can hit outstanding notes. David Chase knew that with The Sopranos , his protégé Matt Weiner knew it with Mad Men, and Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland seem to know it with Rick and Morty.
Because the last thing you’re likely to think about when you flip off “The ABCs of Beth” (if you’re not reflecting on the amusingly self-aware answering machine gag) is whether or not Beth replaced herself with a clone and left to go mount the universe. Rick and Morty is a show that usually delivers answers, even if it’s content to delay them for months or, in the case of Evil Morty, even years. But maybe some questions shouldn’t be answered.
I think that’s the point of “The ABCs of Beth.” Rick gives his daughter two options: either she can create a painless substitute that will carry her current life forward while she prowls the galaxy in search of meaning or adventure, or she can live her life as is, knowing it’s what she actually chose with clear eyes and real alternatives on the table. The Beth we meet at the end of the episode could be either -- the content clone or the real, happy Beth who’s satisfied at having picked this rather than having it forced upon her.
That’s the cinch of the episode. For many of us sitting home, we have similar choices, even if they’re not quite so fantastical. We can radically change our lives, pursuing abstract principles and goals at the expense of all that we know, or we can go forward with how things are, finding comfort and joy in the day-to-day. There are multiple paths to happiness, Rick and Morty seems to posit, or at least multiple paths to wholeness, and which path you take there isn’t necessarily evident or comprehensible to an outsider observer. But it starts with accepting who you are and what you want.
That’s the noteworthy parallel “ABCs” draws between its outstanding A-story and its less-inspired B-story. Both Beth and Jerry spend much of the episode attempting to deny who they are, blaming unfortunate events on family members, rather than owning them, accepting that the consequences are a product of their own actions.
For Jerry, that means accepting that him dating an alien huntress is a pathetic attempt to make Beth jealous. It’s an interesting way to mirror the two stories, but Jerry’s half of the episode just isn’t as strong. Maybe it’s the hard-to-watch way his kids just bust on him constantly (not that he doesn’t deserve it). Maybe it’s the divorced dad humor that’s pretty tepid, even if it’s spiced up in Rick and Morty’s intergalactic fashion. Maybe it’s that the ultimate twist -- that the huntress ends up going after the Smiths, only run into her ex -- is amusing but predictable.
Jerry’s part of the episode isn’t bad or anything. The bubble gun is enjoyable. Jerry’s barely-sublimated space racism and smugness is used for amusing effect. And there’s some more frank exposing of Jerry’s true colors. But it mainly feels like Rick and Morty needed something for the rest of the cast to do while Rick and Beth hit the high notes, and little that happens in Jerry’s dating life, however explosive, can match it.
But really, who could match the horrible realization that not only was your childhood fantasy land real, but that your childhood friend is still stuck there in it. There’s so many endlessly interesting things that spin out from the unveiling of “Froopyland.” I’d be lying if I said that the reveal that Beth’s friend survived by “humping” the fantastical creatures and then eating his own children didn’t gross me out, but Rick and Morty manages to wring the humor from even that with its bizarre little forest creature play about it.
Stronger still is the emotional and character material. For one thing, we learn that Rick created this fantasy land for his daughter. He claims it’s a practical measure, something to keep her occupied and to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious. But as the Citadel episode hinted with its Rick wafers, there’s a part of Rick that really does care about his daughter, even if it means he shows it in weird ways like creating deranged toys, or letting her help him clone her childhood friend, or giving her a way out of her family.
For another, we learn that Beth, despite her seemingly greater morals and guilt and issues with her dad, is just like him. That’s been a subtle thread throughout Season 3, with particularly resonance in “Pickle Rick.” Beth admits it herself, realizing how she denies the utility of apologies, and elides her own mistakes and past by casting those things as simply how others interpret her greatness. Her unwillingness to face that she pushed her childhood pal in the honey pit, and her then getting into a bloody confrontation with him, is an odd form of self-acceptance, but also a cathartic one.
It leads Beth back to the choice that represents the crux of the episode. If you are the daughter of Rick Sanchez, the miserable, amoral, genius, do you go out and try to ride the universe until it gets tired of bucking you, or do you try a different way, a way that finds happiness in being a part of your family, in doing the everyday. It’s the clearest suggestion yet as to what choice Rick himself made when he left Beth and her mother all those years ago.
But as much as they have in common, Beth is not her father. She feels enough guilt to want to save her friend’s dad from death row, to look at those pictures of her family on the fridge and feel the wistfulness of the thought of leaving him. We just don’t know if that’s enough to change her mind.
Maybe we shouldn’t know. I bet dollars to donuts that one day we will, that the “real” Beth will come floating down in Season 5 and cause some story sparks just like Evil Morty and the Cronenberg Universe Smiths did. But regardless, the force of the ambiguity is clear. There are different ways to live, different ways to try to make your peace with who you are and what you want out of this universe. What we choose, and why we choose it, can be opaque, even to ourselves, and the art that reflects that vagueness, that uncertainty, can be all the stronger for it.
[7.0/10] This season ends as it began. That’s not just to say that Lynch and Frost go back to the beginning, with repeated scenes from “The Return”’s opening foray back in the Red Lodge, or that we return once more to the Palmer house where, depending on how you interpret “Part Eight” the instigating events of Twin Peaks started. It’s also to say that I have to rate this thing at a flat seven because, once more, I just have no idea what to make of the possible final bow for this show.
But I can tell you what I both admire and frustrate about it. This was not a traditional season/quasi-series finale. This wasn’t the culmination of everything that had come before (which “Part Seventeen” came closer to.) It wasn’t some triumphant or tidy bit of narrative housekeeping that gave everything meaning and summed up what had come before, even to the extent that the at times mystifying Season 2 finale did.
Instead, it was something entirely different than the Twin Peaks that we’ve come to know over forty seven episodes. It is weird and unknowable in the way that the best of Twin Peaks can be, but not in a way that really harkens back to the other red room or otherwise supernatural shenanigans we’ve seen so far.
Rather, it captures a feeling, one that seems to draw a connection to however and wherever Audrey is trapped. Here is Dale Cooper, restored once more, but finding himself waking up in a familiar yet foreign place. He’s drawn to certain places and names -- Judy’s diner, the face of Laura Palmer -- but the world doesn’t recognize him. Names are different. Everything is so close, to present, but also so just out of reach.
I’ve said before that I think Lynch is oftentimes a pretty crappy storyteller. His characters are hit and miss and his plots sputter and stall to the extent they’re worthwhile in the first place. But he is an almost incomparable crafter of moods, of these motifs and atmospheres that provoke something in you even if you’re not sure where, if anywhere, all of this is going.
“Part Eighteen” captures that sense of alienation, the sense of (again, as Audrey putting it) dreamlike arena where you know what you’re supposed to do and where you’re supposed to be, but something feels wrong, everything you know and want and think is important is lingering at the edge of the frame.
So much of Lynch’s oeuvre has involved capturing the surrealism of dreams, the way that one thought leaps into the next without transition or comprehension. But here, he captures a very different sort of dreamlike state -- the one where you live a different life, inhabit a different body, and everything seems normal enough, but the settings are miscalibrated, the world isn’t as it should be, and you can just barely wrap your hands around the sense that there’s somewhere else, something else you’re supposed to be, but that fought can find no purchase where you are.
It’s a finale with very little closure. We get no confirmation on what’s happening with Audrey. We’re left to wonder about what the implication and, moreover, the point, of Steven and Becky’s story is. We don’t know what happens in Twin Peaks after The Good Dale and cockney Iron Fist save the day. (Or do we?) While “Part Seventeen” closed off a surprising number of loose ends, there’s still so much that’s so up in the air or unclear after the show’s final hour which is, I suspect, how Lynch and Frost like it.
You do have Mike making a new Dougie and depositing him with the Joneses, in one of the few scenes that not only evinces a sense of finality, but also one of heartening sentiment. The other comes with the equivalent of Cooper’s last meal with Dianne. There’s the sense that the two of them know that what Cooper did, his saving Laura from her grisly end, changed something, and that whatever it means to cross over, to go past that spot -- the same place The Bad Dale (who’s consumed in black flame here) seemed to be driving -- exactly 430 miles away, will change it. Dale and Diane get to have one last moment of happiness, one respite from the time and distance in which they’ve been separated, to enjoy that bliss, scored to the dulcet tones of The Platters no less.
Despite that musical high point, “Part Eighteen” is a surprisingly quiet, languid episode. My mind drew back to Shadow of the Colossus, a large, often empty video game filled with far away destinations and long sojourns that force the player to reflect on their task and their role in these events during the journey. The Season 3 finale embraces the same idea, not populating its world with the chatter of conversation or the gooey riffs of Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack or even much of the electric hum that’s zapped through so much of the show.
Instead, it offers those hollowing silences, where the road rumbles beneath and the dim lights of the highway peeking through an enveloping darkness. “Part Eighteen” is devoted to the scariness of that silence, the places where unnerving thoughts creep in and disturb or peace. More than painting his own portraits, Lynch in some ways offers an empty canvas, one where we’re left to fill in the disturbed blanks rolling around in the minds of Agent Cooper and Carrie Page.
And then comes the punctuation, the return to Twin Peaks but one that doesn’t feel like the warm place with a dark underbelly that we know and feel comfortable with. Whether it’s shot differently or just put in a different context, the place feels alien. As the camera seems to float up the steps of what we know as the Palmer house, there’s a sense of foreboding, of pulling at the wrong threads, or not being able to pull at them hard enough.
There’s clues. The woman who answers is the door gives her last name as Tremond, and says she bought her house from a woman named Mrs. Chalfont, both names used by the elderly woman who guided Laura in Fire Walk with Me and was served meals on wheels by Donna in Season 2. But they only serve to further disorient. Dale stumbles, almost like Dougie, realizing he’s not sure what year it is, or what realm the forces of Twin Peaks may have deposited him in.
Carrie looks up at that house one last time. Certain names, certain faces, sparked something in her, something that prompts her to ask what’s happening. And in the shadow of the house where so much abuse was visited upon Laura Palmer, the horrible truth seems to wash over her brain, and she lets out one last ear-piercing, blood-curdling screech, as the place seems to pop out and shut down in an instant, one last chilling images to make your heart skip a beat in this alternatively stultifying and unnerving show.
After forty eight episodes, I still don’t know if I like Twin Peaks, if the balance of those stupefying moments and those horrifying moments and those interminable moments and those transcendent moments comes out in the show’s favor or not. It is a show with deep flaws, either ignored or praised, but also a singularness that few series have grazed, let alone matched. It can indulgent, hokey, and downright dumb, but also weird, terrifying, and irrepressible when its stars align.
Its finale represents that, the head-scratch, unpredictability of the show, the long pauses that may leave you checking your watch, but also the strange mood that the show at its best could evoke. Twin Peaks is never going to be a show that makes sense, or even really wants to, but one deeply concerned with how it makes you feel. And that means it’s hard to know whether it’s good or bad, or even whether you like it or not, but it is there, and it lingers with you, like reality lurking on the edge of a dream, present and transfixing whether you seek it or shun it or just sit and wonder what it all means.
[7.3/10] If the first six installments of the show were about reintroducing this world, lingering in the details, and setting everything up, then the seventh was about actually moving the plot forward, delivering a few real answers, and keeping things moving. I imagine this will be the episode that most old school Twin Peaks fans enjoy the most of the show’s opening third or so, since it feels the most like what the show used to be.
That means we spend the first third or so of the episode in Twin Peaks itself, following where Hawk’s discovery leads Sheriff Frank, and checking in on a number of old faces. It didn’t do much for me, but the back and forth between Ben and Jerry Horne over Jerry being lost feels like the sort of quirk and comedy Lynch & Frost used to spin back in the 90s. We also get Deputy Andy on the trail of Richard Horne, which means Richard is probably off scot free.
On the other side of the coin, there’s something undeniably warm and sweet about Sheriff Frank’s skype session with Doc Hayward. Sure, it too advances the plot, letting us know that Doc saw Mr. C sneaking out of the hospital back in the day (where Audrey was in a coma!). But more than that, it works in parallel with Dianne’s pronouncement in this episode, that Doc saw that it wasn’t the Dale Cooper he’d known, and just feels authentically like a nice conversation between old friends. There’s a homespun charm to the conversation between the old sheriff and the old doctor.
(Warren Frost joins Catherine E. Coulson and Miguel Ferrer who seemed to live just long enough to reprise their roles in this revival, and if I were a more superstitious man, I’d say there’s some providence there.)
It all seems to be setting up Sheriff Frank coming to believe that the Cooper out and about in the world is not The Good Dale. To that end, Hawk’s discovery turns out to be not only the missing pages from Laura Palmer’s diary, but the ones where she wrote down Annie’s warning from Fire Walk with Me. It’s enough for him to call his brother Harry (who sounds worse for wear). Again, I’m impressed at how much continuity Lynch & Frost are playing with here, making meaningful follow-ups to things they set up decades ago.
The episode also closes in Twin Peaks, in one of those “this is more for local color than for plot advancement, and you either like it or you don’t.” Ben Horne and Ashley Judd have romantic tension around his office, while they try to locate an electric hum, the sort that tends to signify spiritual happenings in Lynchland. After a moment of letting it hang in the air, Judd goes home to her sick husband whom she fights with. Seems like the show’s going for a “exhausted by caring for a loved one at home and so finds solace in relationships at work” type of storyline, which didn’t do much for me here. But again, these sorts of local diversions are par for the course for Twin Peaks.
But apart from Twin Peaks, the story is advancing as well. As mentioned before, Diane meets with The Bad Dale face-to-face and concludes it’s not really him, confirming Gordon and Albert’s suspicions that there’s something missing “in here.” Laura Dern’s performance is a little overblown for my preferences, but I like the idea that she is pissed off at the FBI and anyone associated with it, drinking and smoking for comfort, and above all not in a great place. My pet theory is that The Bad Dale did something to her that started her down a bad path of disillusionment, and while the execution leaves something to be desired, the idea of her as this “tough cookie” lashing out at all these folks associated with her old life is an interesting one.
We also get The Bad Dale’s great escape. I like the vagueness of his references to Mr. Strawberry and “dog legs.” It adds a cryptic menace to these unspoken events, and the Warden’s reaction to Mr. C’s calm-voiced threats and demands tells us all we need to know. The Bad Dale is back on the road, and the smart money says he’s on a collision course with The Good Dale.
The Good Dale, however, is looking like less of a pushover by the episode. While a visit from the local cops (including David Koechner!) offers another opportunity for Janey-E to stand up for her husband even when she’s exasperated with him, Catatonic Coop gets his own moment in the sun.
When the small man who took out Lorraine last episode comes at him with a gun, Cooper moves his wife aside and disarms the little person before he can do any damage, receiving an assist from The Arm who tells him to squeeze the little man’s hand off the weapon. It evokes two notions: one, that once again, there is still part of the full-fledged Dale Cooper buried somewhere in Dougie, and two, that the denizens of The Lodge are still looking out for The Good Dale, trying to keep him out of trouble.
But there’s a third player to be concerned with as we seem headed for a Dale-on-Dale rumble. As the young military woman goes to investigate the mysterious murder scene that kicked off the revival, she uncovers a startling revelation (well, two to be more precise). The body that the local forensics team found belongs to none other than Major Briggs, and it’s the body of a man in his forties, suggesting that the good Major was stuck in the Lodge or regenerated there or some mumbo jumbo happened before he was pulled out and beheaded like this.
And there’s a mysterious figure, kept in the background and producing that same electric hum stalking the floor of the morgue that the young military woman is investigating. Who could it be? My money’s on Phillip Jeffries, but who knows.
Overall, it’s one of the most answer-filled and plot-moving episodes of the revival, and hell, the whole show, which ought to please some folks who felt like Lynch & Frost were spinning their wheels. There wasn’t much as transcendent or moving or jaw-dropping like there has been in prior episodes (though the Frank/Doc Hayward conversation comes close) but it certainly advances the ball.
(Oh yeah, what's with Jacques Renalt seemingly having survived his incident with Leland and going back to the Road House to ply his usual trade? Identical twin cousin? Wouldn't be the first time Twin Peaks has tried to pull that.)
[8.0/10] When I think of David Lynch, I think “weird,” and that may be what was missing all too often in Twin Peaks for me. Most of the show functions as a parody/pastiche/homage to soap operas, and while Lynch and Frost seem to want to riff on the tropes on that genre, more often than not the line between playing with the form of a bad soap opera and just presenting a bad soap opera was too blurred for my tastes. I don’t mean to relitigate all my criticisms of the show here, but suffice it to say, vanilla Twin Peaks, the parts of the show that were just supposed to be about people interacting and having emotional reactions and learning things about one another almost uniformly fell flat to me.
But every once in a while, the show would get truly weird, truly outré, truly thought-provokingly bizarre, and those instances were the few times that I felt like I “got” Twin Peaks, like I understood what all the fuss was about. Sure, some bits -- like Lynch Jr.’s creamed corn or Josey getting trapped in a doorknob -- only amounted to what Futurama memorably described as standard-issue “hey look at that weird mirror” nonsense. But in some scenes, like Cooper’s dream, the sequence in the bar at the end of Season 1, and his epiphany and confrontation of Leland this season, the show lived up to its jarring, out there reputation, and for a few brief moments, it actually felt like nothing else on television in a good way.
It’s fitting, then, that Twin Peaks delivers the best episode of its original run by devoting most of its erstwhile series finale to an extended-length return to the realm of Cooper’s dream, and with it, the sort of symbolic strangeness that served as one of the few things the series could consistently do well.
But before we can get into that, we have to tie up a few loose ends (and unravel a few more) in the real world. Lucy and Andy say the L-word, and it’s as much of a waste as you’d imagine. Bobby and Shelly make goo-goo eyes at one another and talk about getting married while the episode cuts to Leo still trapped under his spider box. Worst of all, Ben Horne and Donna’s mom try to talk to her about her paternity, only for their significant others to jump in and turn the whole scene into the usual overwrought, overdramatic nonsense that consistently turned me off of the show. It’s a bad storyline and it’s featured more of the painfully exaggerated emotions of the show that make it seem like Days of Our Lives redux not something avante garde.
Still, we do get two scenes in the real world that bear some merit despite falling into a few of the usual traps. One is a brief scene where Nadine recovers her sanity. There’s a bit more overacting, and it’s patently ridiculous that Nadine’s mental issue is cured via the old “just hit her on the head again” routine from Saturday morning cartoons. But there’s some legitimate pathos in Nadine basically waking up from the weeks (months?) worth of reverie to realize she’s being comforted by a stranger while her husband canoodles with another woman. I’ve gone back and forth on Nadine over the course of the show, but there is something inherently tragic about her, and I’m glad that Twin Peaks leans into that tragedy and compassion for her in her last appearance.
We also get Audrey staging a sit-in at the Twin Peaks Savings & Loan to protest its involvement in the Ghostwood Estates deal, which just so happens to be the same location where Andrew Packard and Pete Martell go to open a safety deposit box with the key they found in Eckert’s magic box. The results of it all -- the Bugs Bunny-esque dynamite and note, the cheesy cliffhanger of who survived the blast, the flying glasses -- are all pretty silly.
That said, there’s a strange rhythm to the scene, where the doddering old man who’s in charge of the place brings an amusingly workaday energy as he putters around trying to deal with Audrey and the rest. It has sort of the same vibe as the scene with the bellhop in the premiere, and I can appreciate the intentional stiltedness of it, with Lynch (who directed the finale) choosing to keep in all the awkward little moments that slick T.V. editing usually elides.
But the main event of the episode is Cooper’s return to the Black Lodge. Lynch & Co. provide a nice enough prelude with some of the show’s trademarks. Earle strong-arming Annie through those big red curtains has the sort of chill that Leland was able to bring and which Earle had previously been unable to muster. Andy incessantly asking Harry questions about coffee and pie is true to the best flavor of the show’s humor -- awkward intrusions of the mundane into the dramatic or fantastical.
What happens next, however, is something I cannot really describe or encapsulate. It is Lynch’s unrestrained id, let out to play on a black and white floorboard girded with red curtains. Suddenly, it all comes rushing back. The owls. The giant. The man from another place. Bob. Laura. Maddy. Sarah. Annie. Caroline. Windom. The backwards talking. The barking. The damn good coffee that’s suddenly not so damn good. Everything Cooper’s seen and done comes blasting back at him in surreal sequence after surreal sequence that I cannot capture with my humble words.
But I can tell that you that it’s unique, bizarre, disquieting, affecting, and gripping in a way that so little of Twin Peaks has been. Laura Palmer screams and the strobe light flashes and the contrast of her smiling face and gaping maw makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. She promises to see him in twenty-five years (and the timing of the revival is just about right for it) in a way that seems ominous rather than reassuring.
It’s a series of images full of what the text of the episode acknowledges as doppelgangers, “one and the same.” It blends the presence of Laura and Maddy. It jumps back and forth between Annie and Caroline. A dark-haired Leland proclaims his innocence and then laughs like Bob. Cooper himself runs from his own double.
One of the show’s major themes has been duality, the notion that there’s parts of who we are we only show to certain people. But while Twin Peaks could belabor that point, here it is visceral, scene in the flashes and phantasmagoria of strange figures flitting about this weigh station beyond life and death.
It’s unnerving, the way that Cooper and Bob look directly into the camera, the way the lights come on and off, the pretzel logic and impossible geography of this far away place. With its last gasp, Twin Peaks reveals its magnum opus of weirdness, of expressing itself in iconography and poignant or disturbing images rather than clumsy dialogue or overwrought attempts at emotion. The past and present fade together, with the texture of Lynch’s warped brain to hold it all in place.
Naturally, it ends with a cheesy cliffhanger, one that reveals that Bob has now wormed his way inside Cooper, perhaps signifying that there’s a darkness in all of us, even the most decent and upstanding, or perhaps just signifying that the show wanted somewhere to go in the event it was renewed. While Cooper’s headbang into the mirror and maniacal laugh carries its own force, and haunts just enough as a closing image, even it cannot match the virtuoso, nightmarish dreamscape that Lynch and company craft as the culmination of everything Twin Peaks has been and promised.
This is what Twin Peaks should have been, what I was promised by the partisans and diehards who speak of a show that is so, to put it charitably, uneven in such hushed tones. Beneath the convoluted conspiracies, beneath the painful love stories, beneath the dreadful dialogue, there is a capacity from this show to convey these liminal, atavistic, subconscious versions of the themes and ideas it has such trouble expressing directly. I don’t know if it’s worth thirty episodes of mostly dreck to extract those bold and unmatched gems, but at least Twin Peaks saves it best for last, going out with an extraordinary, unnerving dose of the weird, the sort of genuine strangeness the show promised all too often, but delivered all too rarely.
[3.1/10] Got word that this is considered one of the worst episodes of the show and yeah, it’s pretty awful, but frankly not significantly worse than the show usually is, so it’s hard to take the cries that this is the nadir too seriously.
But I get why this ep is so derided while at least some others are given a pass. For one thing, it leans heavy into the James/Donna/Mrs. Marsh storyline and the ensuing overwrought melodrama. It’s a plotline that’s been crap since it started and wallowing in it for three overblown scenes’ worth of nonsense does the episode no favors. Mrs. Marsh semi-remembering the whole thing in flashback at a funeral is a mildly interesting wrinkle, but it’s more bouts of bad acting and soapy ridiculousness.
Speaking of ridiculousness, we get the goofy conclusion to the “Ben Horne thinks he’s General Lee” storyline, with Dr. Jacoby, Audrey, Jerry, and Bobby doing an alternate reality recreation of Appomattox. It’s pretty dumb, and lightly offensive, but at least it’s sort of silly in the way that’s more palatable than when the show’s trying to be serious and failing miserably. Oh, and we see Audrey’s brother for the first time in forever! He’s even (in)appropriately in full Native American garb for his father’s bout of insanity.
Then we get Wyndam Earle as a third rate psychopath torturing Leo Johnson and tormenting Cooper with clues about the hypotenuse of their little love triangle. The shock collar is cartoonish, Earle himself is too outsized to have any real menace, and the whole chess angle so overdone that whole thing falls apart.
So with all that, is there anything good about “Slaves and Masters”? Well, I don’t know if I’d call it good, but there’s interesting motifs of people in uniform standing in lines. Is there a point to the symbolism or is it just some pattern for the sake of a pattern? Who knows! But it’s something. The only decent thing storyline-wise is Cooper and Alfred (who’s always a pleasure to have back) uncovering that Josey probably killed Jonathan and may have even had a hand in Cooper himself getting shot, but being hesitant to tell Sheriff Truman because of his relationship with her. There’s some emotional heft there that plays on Cooper’s relationship with Truman to decent ends.
But Josey’s actual part of the storyline is pretty terrible. Again, Joan Chen’s not a good actor so her efforts to seem disturbed or manipulative come off eyeroll-worthy. In the same way, Catherine Martell and Mr. Eckert exchanging Bond villain lines over dinner is a big stupid nothing.
We also get more with Norma and Ed, where they’re supposed to having intimate, wistful pillow talk that’s sunk by the show’s usual bad dialogue. Nadine kind of gives them her blessing, but who knows what will come of that. It’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s dangerous to have someone with super strength and mental instability roaming around unchaperoned, but whatever, it doesn’t even make the top ten most foolish things on Twin Peaks.
Otherwise, we’re just deep in the weeds on the Wyndam Earle storyline and there’s nothing, at least nothing so far, to show for it. This one is, perhaps, a little worse than usual, but only because the other episodes of the show didn’t devote as much time to garbage like the Marsh storyline. The quality of the show hasn’t gotten worse. It’s still as poorly written and acted as ever. But it’s major mystery, the only decent thing about this show story-wise for much of it’s run, is worse, with the Earle business being a paltry substitute for the Laura Palmer stuff.
At the end of S2 I was very anxious about the direction the season finale set back then.
Most of the time I felt this Season was very weak overall and confirmed my reservations more often than not. The plot is getting way too fast, way too big to stay what made iZombie so great. Just like Ravi said in the last scenes, it all started in the morgue. Now it's too big to stay there. I like that iZombie is moving the plot forward and doesn't stay for years and years in one place, story-wise. But I'm still not onboard with how fast that is achieved. Mainly because it was this "small" group of people we followed and we, as the audience, were the "selected few" to follow along. It's the same feeling Friends gave and still gives me. This season, on the other hand, broke this off without the proper care, without a good transition by focusing too much on other things like the military corps.
Now I do have my doubts whether a fourth season is going to get me this feeling back. But it did get a lot of setup this season to become even greater than it ever was. Yet I remain cautious.
While the season was overall weak and I am not too happy with it as a whole, despite some really good episodes, this second part of the season finale was by far the best episode. We got a lot of answers, a few sideplots were concluded (more or less) quickly to make room for the next season (business as usual) and new stories. All my issues here and there do not make this season bad, though, but by direct comparison with S1 and S2, S3 simply lacks on many things. Things I hope S4 will make better.
But no matter how good S4 will be, Major, as a character, was simply destroyed this season. I loved that guy at the end of S1, in S2 he was still pretty darn cool, S3 on the other hand....ughh. I don't like him anymore, can't relate to his changes, even though S3 followed him closely in how people treat him and stuff. He's this muscled, good looking and now hollow character. That's probably the biggest bummer in S3. Besides the loss of the cure sideplot. I tink that was pushed too much into the background just to resurface for tension reasons at the end.
Clive getting his girl back in a tragic way was great.
Liv getting back to her new-old self, the pale zombie, was overdue and Ravi is just being the best, like always.
I would have been so pissed if that end scene would have been exactly that for iZombie.
S4 was announced in May despite somewhat low ratings, even for iZombie.
http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/izombie-season-four-renewal-cw-tv-show/
I like that iZombie started on The CW, other networks probably would have cancelled this ages ago.
[6.9/10] This was pretty easily my least favorite episode of The Acolyte so far, and a big part of my complaints is that the dialogue is painfully clunky here. This is Star Wars, so not every line has to be the most poetic or natural thing you’ve ever heard. But the conversations in this episode feel so stilted and declaratory. You have characters outright announcing their emotional states in a jarring way. The actors do their best to make up for it, and some of them manage to inject some emotion and feeling into otherwise tin-eared lines. (The actress who plays Jecki does a particularly good job of this.) But when the words being exchanged by the characters feel so awkward and obvious, and it’s a dialogue-heavy episode, you’re going to have problems.
The production design and location scouting helps make up for some of it though! My goodness, Khofar looks lovely. It’s easy to shoot lush verdant landscapes and wow the audience. But the art direction team also does a lovely job of making the planet seem like a deep, interwoven jungle that's alive and treacherous. (For those of you who’ve played Fallen Order it feels true to the Wookiee environment on Kashyyyk in that game.) Plus, Master Kalnacca’s camp seems incredibly cozy, with shades of the freakin’ Ewok films of all things. Even as the narrative presentation falters a little bit, this is a nice place to spend half an hour in, which helps.
That said, it’s not just the dialogue that suffers here; it’s the character choices. Mae and Osha’s reactions to one another seem sudden and jarring, to the point that I wondered if both were feints at first. I get that Oshi being alive would be a big deal for Mae, but all of a sudden she’s ready to give up her entire quest and turn herself into the Jedi and give up her master? It’s not inconceivable as a character choice, but I think you need more build to that notion to make it meaningful. Here I almost thought she was just messing with Qimir. All we;’ve gotten from Mae so far is this firm resolve and determination to complete her mission, so to turn on a dime like that feels implausible.
The same goes for Oshi asking the annoying prig Yord to kill her sister if she has to. I get the idea that Osha thinks she’s incapable of doing it and wants to make sure someone can handle it. But again, the conversation is awkwardly written, and going from “I can't hurt my sister” to “I want to make sure someone else can” feels like a big leap.
I do like that we get the awkward dynamic of Osha being on a Jedi mission as a civilian. Her status as an ex-Jedi with her former crew pays some dividends, and her budding friendship with Jecki is especially endearing. The theme of different cultures’ reactions to death and loss is a potent one. And on a pure fun level, Basil the tracker is a memorable design and addition.
That said, I’m less up on the partnership between Mae and Qimir. Not to belabor the point, but it’s where the dialogue is at its worst and most emotionally expository, which doesn’t help. But it also feels like the writers are tiptoeing around something in a graceless way that makes their interactions seem off. (Speculative spoilers:I’m sticking with my prediction that Mae’s master is one of her moms, but my backup guess is that it’s actually Qimir, and the show’s trying to pull a legit Darth Jar Jar by taking a jokey character and turning him into a secret menace. There’s at least something more going on with him, I think, and I’m not entirely sure what.)
Otherwise, I do appreciate that the awkward relationship between Osha and Sol continues. In a way, Sol is using her, while catching heat from his superiors. But he also doesn’t want Mae hurt. His intentions are good, even if his methods are questionable, which is a compelling way to write a parental figure.
Plus hey, halfway through the series, it’s about time we got a little more from our dark side force-wielder. So even if it’s just a tease, seeing Mae’s master show up, compel Osha as an adult much as the Jedi did when she was a kid, and then casually flick away Sol’s forces, gives the baddie a formidable introduction.
Overall, this is still the lowlight of the season to date, especially given the tepid lines that pervade it, but there’s some promise for things to come.
[4.6/10] An episode like “Bride of Chaotica” needs to be charming or fun, and in high doses. This was neither, at least not for me.
I can appreciate the idea of doing an homage to 1930s B-movie sci-fi. It is, to some extent, the wellspring that the original Star Trek, and by extension Voyager emerged from. Co-writer Michael Taylor also penned “Far Beyond the Stars” on Deep Space Nine, which pays homage to early science fiction on the page, so you can tell this all comes from a place of passion and genuine interest. Using a show that reflects contemporary hopes and visions for the future to measure itself against the visions of the future in similar programs from yesteryear could pay dividends.
There’s a few problems, though. For one thing, we don’t actually get much of that. Tom rattles off some 1930s sci-fi vocabulary. He pokes fun at the prospect of slave girls and reused sets (which seems like a dig at Voyager’s 1966 predecessor). And he notes the validity and fascination of looking back at the past and exploring what they thought the future would look like. (I mean hey, from the vantage point of the modern day, we’re still waiting on the Bell Riots and the Irish Reunification predicted by 1990s Trek.) But those bits are, at best, side dishes to the main business of the episode.
That main business is just...straight up doing a 1930s sci-fi pastiche. That's all “Bride of Chaotica” really has going for it. If you enjoy that era of Flash Gordon-inspired storytelling on the screen, you may appreciate and enjoy it. For me, it got old quickly.
Some of that's just my own personal tastes. I’ve seen a handful of classic sci-fi reels, and I can recognize the tropes of malevolent warlords and clunky killer robots and dashing square-jawed heroes that are with us today, albeit in different forms. But I don’t harbor much affection for them. (In contrast to, say, classic animation which has a style and a sense of flourish that earns homages and affection to this very day.)
So there is very little charm in all of this for me. Yes, it was mildly amusing to see Tom masquerading as Captain Proton for a single scene here or there in the season premiere, but that's about all the mileage this concept has. By the time you're stretching it out to a full episode, the novelty is all but drained away. And if you don’t already love 1930s science fiction B-movies, then what “Bride of Chaotica” presents will do nothing to turn you into a fan. Instead, you just have to suffer the same dull shtick for an extra thirty minutes while you check your watch, waiting for it to end.
There’s also not much in the way of humor. There’s a few gags about the old timey robot that are worth a mild chuckle. Kate Mulgrew earns some plaudits by giving a vampy, classic Hollywood starlet performance that presages the comical exaggerations of “Timeless” Toni Storm. The Doctor gets in some mildly amusing jokes about portraying the President of Earth. But that's about it.
What’s odd is that “Bride of Chaotica” plays this one surprisingly straight. There’s some inherent absurdity to how the likes of Chaotica himself, his chief enforcer, Lonzak, and the other members of his goon squad chew the scenery. But honestly, it plays as pure homage rather than something poking fun at the excesses of the subgenre. If you’ve seen the old black and white flicks in this vein, this isn’t so much an exaggeration as it is a fairly accurate rendition of the tropes.
The results are, well, boring. If you’re (generously) under the age of fifty you probably don’t have much personal connection to these films. Any novelty or charm the homage might have wears off quickly. And the rendition of it isn’t comical enough to make up for all of that with a barrel of laughs.
So everything else about this looks worse by comparison. I’m not one to take issue with plausibility in Star Trek. Especially in comic relief episodes, I’m more than willing to throw out the usual internal logic in the name of going along for the ride.
But it feels like they barely even tried here! It’s plain that the writers wanted an excuse for our heroes to be compelled to playact as old school sci-fi characters for a while. That's nothing new for Star Trek! Hell, Voyager itself did it back in season 1’s “Heroes and Demons”! So all this claptrap about Voyager being stuck in a subspace “sandbar” with tears that prevent them from halting the holodeck until they defeat the bad guy from Tom’s holonovels feels unconvincing and lazy.
If there were enough charm or laughs, we might not notice. But with how lackluster everything else is, the shakiness of the premise Voyager uses to throw its characters into yet another holodeck malfunction becomes that much more evident and irksome.
Worst of all, the episode squanders a perfectly good idea! As my write-up for last week’s “Latent Image” confirms, I am a sucker for a good “discovering and affirming new life” story. The discovery of a dimension full of photonic lifeforms, who consider biochemical beings to be the ones who aren’t real is a fascinating opportunity to flip the script! “Bride of Chaotica” does next to nothing with the concept! It’s a minor obstacle in a vain attempt to add stakes to the B-movie mishegoss, with a couple forgettable comments from the EMH before everyone moves on. Candidly, Voyager would have been better off reducing the Chaotica portions to a side dish, and made engaging with this unexpected form of life the main event of the episode.
“Bride of Chaotica” is not totally devoid of merit. Kate Mulgrew does her best to carry some weak material, and has her greatest success when rolling her eyes, literally or figuratively, at the corny nonsense Tom expects her to participate in. The costumers do a nice job of replicating the look of those old getups. And the Captain’s exchange with Neelix over coffee is an all-time funny (and relatable!) scene.
But those are occasional gems in what is otherwise a pile of black and white dirt. At one point in the episode, Tom Paris declares that, after this miserable experience, as soon as he’s able, he’s going to delete the whole Chaotica program. If only Voyager’s creative team had the same forethought, and could have erased this episode before it reached us woebegotten earthlings.
[9.2/10] When I think about the overall arc of Enterprise, it’s one of prejudice and resentment blossoming into understanding and attachment. It didn’t really click for me until Trip tried to talk to his captor, asking if he’d ever talked to one, spent time with one, basically giving him the “I was once like you” speech. There’s an irony, albeit a poignant one then, that the young man who was once ready to kill T’Pol in his spore-addled suspicions and delirium early in the show, is now the one risking his life to save her and their child.
To put mildly and cheesily, it’s been a long (and rocky) road getting from there to here, but “Terra Prime” honors that journey. Given that former showrunners Brannon & Braga return to write the show’s final episode, this feels like Manny Cotto and company’s take on a series finale, and it has the rhythms of one. There is a climactic battle, a series of reflections on where this group is after so many adventures together, and a challenge that seems to be the thematic bookend to where they began.
That challenge is to take down a man, and a group, who aim to destroy all the expanded horizons and interstellar cooperation that the crew of the Enterprise has established over the last four years. In that, Paxton is most compelling villain our heroes have ever faced (depending on how you want to think of Soong).
He has Peter Weller’s droning conviction, a sort of true belief and clear motivation and acceptance of costs and hypocrisies as part of a misguided greater good in every line he utters. He has the undercutting secret that T’Pol exposes -- a genetic abnormality that would have made his idol, Col. Green, euthanize him, and which he can only treat due to cultural exchange with the Rigellians. And he has a philosophy -- of isolationism, of xenophobia, of self-interest over altruism -- that runs counter to everything that Starfleet stands for.
Oh yeah, and he has a giant frickin’ laser pointed at Starfleet headquarters. Beyond the moral challenge that “Terra Prime” lays at our heroes’ feet, it also gives them a challenge with the potential for daring shuttlepod landings and phaser fire exchanges and low oxygen fistfights. For as much as Paxton feels like Enterprise’s “final boss” on a thematic level, the show finds a way to make the infiltration of his base and takedown of his weapon exciting on its own terms.
Part of what makes this episode feel like a series finale is that it finds ways to give everyone a moment, give them something to do, in accomplishing that takedown. Reed gets to ply his old Section 31 boss again for the info on how to break in to the Mars facility. Mayweather gets to show his flying chops once more and pull off the “sneak behind a comet” plan despite having to go manual and evade sabotage. Hoshi gets to hold firm as commander of the Enterprise despite pressure from Earth’s Prime Minister to just blow Paxton’s facility up (and her friends with it). T’Pol gets to...well...mostly hold her baby and cry, which isn’t ideal, but she also exposes Paxton’s hypocrisy, which is something.
Naturally, though, it ends up coming down to a physical struggle between Archer and Paxton. But there’s a few things to like about it. For one, the show’s action game is on point, from the shuttlepod near-crash landing that gets them in the door, to the phaser fire exchanges that set the stakes, to the exposed atmosphere environment that makes the fisticuffs more than just the usual punching and kicking. For another, Archer essentially loses! The twist with Paxton being adapted to the low oxygen is a cool one. And the fact that despite failing to stop the countdown, Archer bought Trip enough time to redirect the laser is an even better one. While not flawless, the action beats here are really good and befitting of a final challenge for our heroes.
Of course, not everything in the episode is great. For one thing, the answer to the big mystery of how Trip and T’Pol turns out to be...that Enterprise has genetic samples for all its crewmembers and Terra Prime stole it and used it to clone a baby. Okay then? We’ve never heard anything about these samples before, or had any hint that this was possible, so it just feels out of nowhere.
It ties into the other unsatisfying reveal in this episode -- that there’s a mole on Enterprise who’s been working with Terra Prime and is also apparently responsible for stealing the samples. As soon as Gannet mentioned that, I assumed it was Kolby. It plainly wasn’t going to be one of the main crew; he was the only other named character on the ship, and he had motivation to defame Trip given the situation. Sure, it was a little obvious, but at least the steps were there. Instead, Kolby is a red herring, and it’s just some ensign we’ve never heard of, which gives the reveal all the momentousness and shock of a fart in an elevator.
What’s more, for however much I enjoy the thematic symmetry of this group of people who mistrusted Vulcans being the one fighting so hard to let them stay and work with humanity, I definitely didn’t enjoy the fact that the conceptual punctuation mark on that notion is delivered via yet another Archer speech. His (and by extension the writers’) thoughts are not bad, tying the coming together of a crew with the coming together of an interstellar community in a nice way. But there’s something that feels so perfunctory and expected about Archer’s big monologue saving the conference as the music swells and bland platitudes about togetherness are spouted.
Still, much of it comes down to performance, which is what saves the rest of the episode and gives it the emotional punch that that scene lacks. Phlox has the least to do in the rescue mission, and is given the hoariest idea in television to express in his big scene -- that his coworkers have become his family. And yet, John Billingsley just nails the scene, proving himself once again the finest actor on the show. His reflections on thinking the Enterprise would be a respite from Denobulan familial tangles, his expression of grief for a child whose death he feels as though it were his own, his visibly breaking down at the thought of how much they have all been through and the emotional costs of it, is just tremendous.
The same goes for the ensuing scenes with Trip and T’Pol. There is a Deadwood quality to these moments, where two people who care for one another, but who have been at a distance for understandable reasons, come together in offering solace to one another in the face of an unimaginable loss. Naming the child “Elizabeth” after Trip’s sister adds a particular resonance to these scenes, and the simple act of the two of them holding hands adds an emotional warmth to an otherwise devastating set of scenes.
It is a personal connection, like the many forged upon the Enterprise, that “Terra Prime”, Manny Cotto, and his team mean to celebrate here. It’s a connection, a development, that they didn’t expect back when Archer and humanity as a whole resented the Vulcan High Council, and when Trip saw T’Pol as a strange interloper. And yet over the course of four years, Starfleet found itself part of a broader community, Archer and Ambassador Soval earned one another’s respect, and T’Pol and Trip discovered that the ties between a human and Vulcan could be deeper and more meaningful than anyone would have guessed.
Whatever comes next in Enterprise’s much-maligned finale, “Terra Prime” delivers a fitting ending to the series, that puts a capstone on so many ideas, so many characters and relationships, that marks the distance between where things started and where they are now.