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.
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.
[7.5/10] Hey! Now there’s more of a surprise! If there’s one thing that seems clear about Barriss, good or bad, it’s that she has a strong sense of self-righteousness about her. In a way not unlike Count Dooku in the Tales of the Jedi miniseries from the same crew, you can see all these little things building up that make her lose her faith in the institution she’s a part of...again.
So when she sees Imperial citizens living in squalor, when she sees the Fourth Sister brutalize a square of impoverished people, when she hears excuses about needing to show strength to earn respect, when she sees a potential ally who’s ready to surrender mowed down, she can take no more. “Realization” certainly stacks the deck, but I didn’t see Barriss’ face turn coming, at least not in this episode. Given her history, maybe I should have.
I’m intrigued about where Barriss’ story goes from here. Do she and “The Jedi” she saves become confidantes and kindred spirits? Are they too simply hunted and eliminated by the people Barriss used to fight alongside? Does the Grand Inquisitor engage in even more rigorous “testing” for new recruits to ensure nothing like this ever happens again? Only time (or the finale) will tell.
But in the meantime, I can appreciate this one for showing the depth of the self-justified villainy of the Inquisitors that's enough to turn Barriss’ stomach and change her mind. The fear of children, the harshness of living conditions, the mortal blow on a defenseless person, all excused in the name of their mission, show how blinded and harsh this group can be. While a little heavy-handed in underlining the evil, it's enough to explain why Barriss would turn away from this and betray her erstwhile masters.
(Though hey, spoilers for the Obi-Wan miniseries: Some of the oomph is taken away by the fact that we see the Fourth Sister in that show, so we know she survives. Does a large fall kill any force-sensitive person in this universe?)
Overall, this is fairly standard stuff, but it’s done well, and gives us (or at least me) an unexpected direction for Barriss’ story.
[8.2/10] Nog has my favorite character arc of anyone in Deep Space Nine. In the first episode, he’s a trouble-making kid getting rounded up by Odo and used by Sisko as leverage over his uncle. When we find him here, he is an up-and-coming Starfleet officer, recovering from a traumatic injury at war. His father, Rom, has a nice path of his own. His friend, Jake, develops a few new attributes but remains fairly static apart from his height. But in many ways, Nog grows up before our very eyes.
That's what makes an episode like “It’s Only a Paper Moon” so heartbreaking. We’ve witnessed Nog’s journey over the course of six and a half seasons. We’ve watched him plead with Sisko to recommend him for the Academy and prove that he can do the work. We’ve seen him admire his fellow cadets, to a fault. We've seen him earn a promotion to ensign and work alongside our heroes as the perfect aspiring young officer. It hasn't always been a primrose path. He’s had bumps in the road like anyone. But the past few years have largely been an ascent for Nog, not ust from a civilian with a record to an ensign with a commission, but from a rough-around-the-edges kid to an admirable and mature young man.
So of course, it hurts to see him face down the thing he was eager to prove himself against, only to find himself broken by it.
As with “The Siege of AR-558”, the precursor episode to this one, I think this is the kind of installment you need if you’re going to tell an ongoing story about war. These ongoing battles can't just be a paean to the glory of the good guys or bastions of political intrigue. They need to have a cot. Nothing drives that cost home more than seeing one of the show’s most innocent young figures, torn apart mentally, and by extension, physically, by what he’s seen and what he’s been through.
Deep Space Nine and writer Ronald D. Moore deserve credit for exploring that idea with such conviction in such a clever way. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” doesn’t shy away from the hurt, the same, the dejectedness, the burrowing inside oneself that Nog is going through. He pouches away his friends and family. He rebuffs any and all attempts to reach out to him. He bristles at Ezri’s attempts to help him as a counselor. He’s crestfallen after what he went through. The show explores the why and the how of that with credible focus. But more than anything, the fact that we spend real time with Nog in this state, enough to feel his abject despair and closed off numbness in the aftermath of being shot by the enemy and losing his leg, is almost most important in and of itself.
Much of the credit for that owes to Aaron Eisenberg, who gives his best performance of the series in my book. He hits the big scene at the end of the episode with flying colors, giving us Nog’s abject plea about his circumstances with aplomb. But in some ways, the big moments are easier. What’s so impressive is the way you can feel nog’s lingering hurt and bitter shame in every scene: in the way he carries himself, in his taciturn and resigned responses to everyone around him, in the sorrowful disposition that has all but consumed him. Much of it is subtler, quieter than other bigtime moments in the episode, but they’re no less vital to conveying what the young Ferengi is going through., and Eisenberg nails them.
Moore and company also deserve credit for the cleverness of the setup and premise. Not ever Deep Space Nine enthusiast is a fan of Vic Fontaine, but I’ve always liked the character. James Darren is charming in the role, and more importantly, the holoprogram gives our heroes a measure of levity and escape from the sturm und drang of war. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” takes that notion to its logical extreme, with nog using the holosuite, and Vic’s mentorship in particular, as a comfortable cocoon in which he can hide away from his problems.
I appreciate the breadcrumbs the creative team gave us for that in “The Siege of AR-558”. Repeat watchers likely perked up when Dr. Bashir mentioned bringing Vic’s songs to the frontlines, or when they piped in through the facility while Nog recovered from his wound. As Nog explains here, the dulcet tones of Fontaine’s crooning gave him comfort in a difficult time. It makes sense that in a different, but no less challenging time, Nog would project that sense of comfort into seeking refuge within Vic’s Las Vegas holodeck program.
The show treats that decision smartly. Nog’s friends and family members have mixed feelings about it, given the unorthodox nature of this “rehab”. Ezri is measured but supportive. Quark is characteristically venal but generous about the whole thing. And overall, the tenor from those close to Nog is a sense of unease about this unusual method of dealing with trauma, but a willingness to give Nog a wide berth if it gives him comfort and maybe even provides a way for him to make progress.
So does the partnership with Vic. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is one of Fontaine’s finest hours. He’s been a good friend and kind of counselor to the main characters in the past. But here he is a peculiar but effective kind of therapist for Nog, one who is empathetic and light with the young man.
More than that, he provides a certain easy masculine archetype for Nog to slip into and feel better about himself. Part of Nog’s problem here is feeling lesser, losing his identity after his injury. It’s no coincidence that Nog spends much of the club’s downtime in the program watching old westerns like Shane and The Searcher that represent manly heroic archetypes of the twentieth century. They represent the thing that Nog feels he’s lost -- that stoic, badass persona the Ferengi admired in his commando comrade back in “The Siege of AR-558”.
Vic isn’t exactly a badass, but he is smooth, self-assured, and confident. He offers a persona that Nog can slip into, an identity he can try on for size and masquerade in, while he’s in the process of recovering and reforming his own. Your mileage may vary, but I think seeing Nog schmooze his way around a 1960s Las Vegas casino is fun and enjoyable on its own terms. But even if you’re not as charmed by the setting and its trappings as I am, you can appreciate what they represent for Nog -- a spritely and diverting alternative to the sad sack life he finds himself with in the real world.
Vic is also slick enough to use Nog’s fascination with his little corner of the station as an opportunity to help the kid. I love the mom where he gifts Nog a cane reminiscent of Errol Flynn’s (and the Grand Nagus’, in another nice little connection point), but tells him not to put his full weight on it because it’s a bit fragile. Nog’s phantom pains are heartbreaking. The sense that he’s been healed physically, but that his mental struggles are still affecting his physical sensations, is softly devastating. Using clever little tools like that to take Nog’s mind away from his lingering hang-ups, to show him what he’s capable of when he’s not focused on them, is sharp and enervating.
It’s plain that Nog is still suffering, especially when someone comes along to pop this idyllic bubble. He’s rude to Jake’s girlfriend and throws a punch at Jake himself. He threatens to resign his commission if Ezri forces him out of the holosuite. Even when he’s gregarious, welcoming Nog and Leeta in for a night at the club, he barely acknowledges the world beyond their walls, more interested in fictional casino expansion than participating in a shindig for his father’s promotion outside of it.
That is sad and sympathetic, and creates a brilliant tension in the episode. On the one hand, Vic’s club is a godsend. It’s given Nog a project, a place to rebuild his confidence and self-image. When he’s schmoozing guests at the club, cleaning up Vic’s books’, going over plans for what a new club might look like, he is reinvigorated and, most importantly, not cognizant of his leg. He can go up flights of stairs, move around the room with ease, and seem unbothered by the grisly images that are haunting him earlier in the episode.
The only problem is that none of this is real and all of it is unsustainable. One of my favorite touches in all of this is that Vic likes Nog being around too. He takes joy in seeing someone buy into what he’s selling and take such a shine to his world. When Ezri says it’s time for Nog to start weaning off of his Vegas escape, Vic is understandably reluctant. Things are going well, and they’re having fun together.
But Vic has a tidy and winning little arc here too. Nog’s constant presence has meant that, for once, Vic himself gets to have a life. We’re not quite to the level of The Doctor from Voyager or anything, but Vic’s already self-aware, and now, he gets to have an existence beyond being flipped on like a jukebox for a few songs or showing a few folks a good time for an evening. Fontaine comes to see the value of those in-between times, the beauty of a day-to-day existence that doesn’t revolve around a particular function or immediate demand.
Rather than hoarding that, it makes him realize that he wants the same for Nog. He comes to understand, in the way few holograms can, what Nog is giving up. Ezri’s a smooth operator herself, suggesting that all the casino expansion talk is just a ploy to help Nog gradually break away from his holographic refuge and gesturing toward Nog’s dad and stepmom, highlighting how excited they’ll be to have Nog back. It’s enough to leave an impact on the crooner, realizing that as fun as it is, the party is over, and however much progress may have been made in this reimagined Las Vegas, it’s time for him to step away from the bright lights and back into the real world.
In truth, Vic doesn’t take the best approach to that, essentially abruptly forcing Nog to go cold turkey rather than having a heart-to-heart and giving the young Ferengi the push out of the nest he needs in a gentler way. But charitably, you can also see it as Vic realizing he’s been too indulgent. He’s let himself get carried away in all of this, not just Nog, and may be trying to make up for the sense that, as pleasant as things have been in the moment, he hasn’t been putting Nog’s deeper needs first, and is overcompensating.
Maybe, though, the nudge is what Nog needs. If nothing else, getting the boot from the club prompts the young officer to spill his guts to his maestro mentor, and the results are incredible. I expected the survivor’s guilt. I expected the PTSD after being through a traumatic experience. What I didn’t expect, and what goes beyond the usual tropes and cliches of war stories, is Nog’s admission that he’s not just shell-shocked. He’s afraid.
For many of us, being a young adult comes with a certain sense of invulnerability. Going through puberty, growing bigger and stronger, being given more rights and responsibility in society, makes you feel more powerful, maybe even unstoppable. You surpass so many of the limits you use to have that it’s easy to feel like you have none. Ferengi physiology is still a bit of a mystery, but for us humble humans, our frontal cortex, the part of our brains that helps us to weigh risks and discern consequences, among other things, doesn’t fully develop until we’re in our twenties. In the throes of that, it’s all too easy to feel impervious, like you can take on the world, eager to show who you are and what you’re capable of.
It’s shattering, then, to see those myths rent asunder in the most visceral terms. Those feelings must be magnified as a young soldier, eager to display your courage and prowess, only to be reminded how vulnerable and mortal each of us remains no matter how brave or bold we might be. To hear Nog speak of that fear, of the realization that he is not invulnerable, that he could die any minute, and how the feeling of that is nigh-literally paralyzing, breaks your damn heart. Who wouldn’t want to run away from that, seek a place of comfort where the real world can be kept at bay, if only for a while?
As with Chief O’Brien’s own PTSD, Neelix’s existential crisis, and B’Elanna’s depression, this is not the type of problem that can be solved in forty-five minutes. If I have a major criticism of this episode, it’s that Vic’s “You have to play the hand you’re dealt” response is endearing, but fairly trite, and certainly not enough to fix what ails poor Nog.
To the episode’s credit though, the writers don’t pretend that it is. It just has to be enough to convince Nog that it’s time to leave the holosuite, and Vic’s encouragement more than suffices on that front. His words don’t suddenly cure Nog, but they’re enough for him to be able to walk down the stairs of Quark’s on his own, embrace his dad, stepmom, and uncle, and tell them that he’s not better, but he’s getting there. It’s a long journey, and this is only one step along the path, but it’s an important step out of his fantasy.
Nog returning to light duty at first shows that the progress is incremental, not monumental, as it should be, and him arranging to see Vic’s program is kept constantly running as a thank you is a lovely coda.
We all need comforts. Even when we’re not facing war, the world can be full of hardships and miseries that can be too much to take. Things that give us a means to escape from all of that, worlds to lose ourselves in, are a godsend. But they’re also not a legitimate alternative to a real life.
I haven't suffered anything hear what Nog has, and even I find myself lost in shows like Deep Space Nine. While not always as smooth or musical as Vic Fontaine’s club, there is something undeniably alluring about a world where everyone becomes supportive friends to one another, where humanity has solved its major issues and become an enlightened species, where there are some continuing struggles, but most issues are solved by the end of the hour. It’s easy to relate to Nog, of wanting to say somewhere that the problems are manageable, the challenges are fabricated and exciting, and above all, the place is safe.
But that's also a dead end. Watching and writing about Star Trek is a joy. At its best, it enriches me, reminds me of values I share and helps me see depths and truths that move me through well-made art. There's nothing wrong with reveling in that. The problem becomes when embracing that becomes an excuse to turn away from real life, your life, with its trials and travails but also its richness and joys that are your own, not borrowed from a fantasy world.
Part of growing up is being able to accept that, of finding the courage to face the day. There’s many in Nog’s position who are not so lucky, either to have the support or to be able to recover from the legitimate horrors he’s been through. Thankfully, for us and for him, we have the opportunity to see him grow up a little more, and keep growing.
[9.5/10] I’m not sure Enterprise has ever put together a more intense hour of television. If there’s something to be said for the 10-car-pileup of storylines the show introduced in the prior episode, it’s that it can pay them off one after another in this one, and basically never take its foot off the gas. The story of the Klingon augment virus comes to a rip roaring conclusion here, and it had me on the edge of my seat nearly the whole way.
That starts with “Divergence”’s first act, which uses what, frankly, seemed like a pretty disposable cliffhanger in the last episode, and turns it into the show’s finest action set piece ever. The ridgeless Klingon sabotage basically turns the Enterprise into a “Speed except on a starship” situation. The ship can’t slow down below warp 5.2 or it will explode, which requires a big assist from Trip, the Columbia, and even poor “relegated to the brig” Malcolm.
What ensues is the biggest dose of excitement Enterprise has ever delivered. It starts with the mid-air, mid-warp transfer of Trip with nothing but an EV suit, a tether, and the vacuum of space to get him from one ship to another. While the CGI effects are a little dated, the image of the two NX-class ships belly to belly, with a human being rappelling between them, is a gripping one, and the episode sells the tension with the direction, editing, and score.
Beyond the nuts and bolts thrills of that moment, it’s also a nice chance for Reed to prove that he’s still on the side of the good guys. It’s a little contrived that he just so happened to have had training that would prove useful in this situation, but it’s still neat to see him essentially rescue Trip and make the rescue of the whole Enterprise possible.
The same goes for Trip’s exciting cold reboot of the warp engine to purge the Klingon subroutines. Again, it’s a little contrived that Trip’s the only one who can pull this off, but the show absolutely sells the suspense of the limited time the Columbia can sustain the warp field, and how dicey and quick Trip and company have to be in order to complete the reboot in time without blowing everything up. It’s a thin excuse to get Trip back on the Enterprise after he just left, but the nail-biting sequence that follows more than makes up for that.
Of course, once that excitement is out of the way, “Divergence” has to get back to the business of, you know, telling the story of the episode. Despite a couple of (amusingly combative) scenes between Trip and T’Pol, and some lip service being paid to Trip’s new role, this episode manages a bit more focus than the prior one. It ties off Malcolm’s whole Section 31-based tiff with his captain, sets Archer’s hunt for Phlox into the depths of Klingon space for a big confrontation, and shows Dr. Phlox figuring out a way to cure the Klingon augment virus without violating his ethical principles.
The Malcolm-related material isn’t as good in this episode as it was in the prior one. It’s cool to see Malcolm pulled out of the brig when he’s needed and then shoved back in there when he’s not useful anymore. But the Section 31 doesn't play out with much drama if you already know what Starfleet’s covert ops group does. Sure, there’s some juice to the fact that the Section 31 head is working with the Klingon general and is complicit in Phlox’s kidnapping. But Malcolm’s “conflicting loyalties” bit doesn't come to much beyond him affirming his loyalty to Archer, which is just a reversion to the status quo.
It also doesn't help that this episode gives more focus to Archer himself, leaving Scott Bakula, as usual, not up to the task. His “I’m the tough/angry commanding officer” routine with Malcolm is laughable, and a mode that Bakula tries to hit a lot in the show without ever really getting there. And his convulsions when he’s infected with the Klingon virus are just as comical.
Thankfully, those are smaller parts of the episode, and the bulk of the remainder is Phlox being possibly the biggest baddest in the entire show. He’s still refusing to cooperate with his captors, works on an emergency cure when there’s no time left, and eventually pulls a scheme off on the exacting Klingon general, who’s prepared to blow them all to smithereens, that’s as bold as all hell.
Before we can do that, the show tries to humanize the Klingons a bit, which is a nice touch. A lot of the material is a bit rushed, given how packed with incident this episode is. (Really, this should have been a three-episode arc at least.) But there’s still something compelling about learning that the Klingon doctor was disowned by his father for going into healing rather than military conquest, or that Klingon Uncle Phil subjected his own son to the augment experiments without wanting to show favoritism, making that much more eager for a cure. In an episode full of wild twists and high-intensity action, there’s still come character work going on, which is always nice to see.
But the biggest character development of all comes for Phlox, who proves himself the bravest, steeliest guy around, despite is unassuming demeanor. His willingness to die rather than be a part of making “living weapons,” him rebuffing his own captain so that he can forgo rescue to help save millions of lives, and his brilliant scheme to both trick the Klingon overseers into giving him more time and infecting them with the same virus so that they have skin in the game, is arguably the most heroic set of choices any character has made in Enterprise.
In the end, the show’s answer to why the Klingons look different in The Original Series is....there was a virus. That’s a mildly unsatisfying retcon, and the dribs and drabs of exposition about the effect this will have on Klingon society are thin broth. Still, the path to get there: of thrilling ship-to-ship rescue efforts, time-crunched mid-warp reboots, and bold moves from the good doctor, make this one a thrill from beginning to end. “Divergence” is definitely Enterprise leaning into Star Trek’s pulpier side instead of its more thoughtful side, but it’s some damn good pulp.
[6.4/10] There is character in Star Trek: Discovery; it just gets squeezed out by action, exposition, more action, the obligatory table-setting, and then for a change of pace, a little more action.
I don’t mind a little high octane excitement in my Star Trek. Even the measured dignity of The Next Generation got into fisticuffs and firefights on multiple occasions. It’s a part of the franchise that goes all the way back to Kirk’s double ax handles on unsuspecting baddies.
But in Discovery’s penultimate episode, it feels like the point, rather than a side dish. As we head into the series finale, I care far more about whether everyone’s connections to one another stand than whether our heroes will inevitably overcome the challenge du jour, let alone the season’s overall arc. But there’s just not as much time for it when the show has to move all the pieces around the board so that they’re ready for next week’s installment, and try to keep the audience’s attention amid explosions and rampant random danger, as its number one priority.
I want to see Stamets and Dr. Culbert feel uneasy about Adira going on their first potentially deadly mission, and for Adira to rise to the occasion. But we can't! We have to spend time escaping from a black hole! I want to see Tilly convince Rayner it’s okay to sit in the captain’s chair, but there’s no time to develop that idea because the away team has to get stuck in a fiery exhaust port. God help me, I even want to see Burnham and Book express their regrets to one another, but we can only have a minute of it because they need to get into a fistfight with some random Breen soldiers.
The one story thread in “Lagrange Point” that gets any room to breathe is Saru and T’Rina’s parting. While the charge between the two of them has diminished somewhat since the show finally pulled the trigger on their relationship, there remains something cute about the quaint little couple. And even as the dialogue sounds stilted, the notion that both understand a devotion to service, since it’s part of their mutual admiration society, to T’Rina would only encourage Saru to seek a diplomatic solution in a dangerous situation, is a heartening one.
Even there, though, the time spent with the couple bouncing off one another is limited because we have to spend so much time with Federation potentates laying out the details of the byzantine situation with Discovery, the Progenitor tech, and two Breen factions so that they don’t have to bother explaining it next week. It is nice to see President Rillak again, and I appreciate that amid so many explosions and deadly situations, we do see some true-to-form attempts at a diplomatic solution. But whether it's in the Federation HQ boardroom, or the bridge of Discovery, or even the Breen warship, there’s so much robotic talk that only exists to get the audience up to speed on what’s happening, and it quickly becomes exhausting.
I get that, especially before a finale, you want to make sure everyone at home and on screen is on the same page. But it contributes to the lack of felt humanity that has, frankly, suffused Discovery since the beginning.
What kills me is that we get pieces of it! Or at least attempts at it! I am quietly over the moon for Adira coming into their own with smarts and courage to help save the day. You can see how much the attaboys mean to them, and Blu del Barrio sells it well. Rayner and Tilly’s grumpy/sunshine dynamic really clicks here, and as extra as Tilly’s dialogue is sometimes, her stumbling line-delivery makes her feel like a real person and not just an exposition-delivery mechanism like so many characters here. As corny as it is, I even like the playfulness we get between Book and Burnham once they’ve rushed through their personal issues and are instantly back to flirting for whatever reason.
Little of this is perfect. The same sterile approach to the aesthetic and lines and sometimes the performances, that's become Discovery’s house style, still weighs the show down. But by god, they’re trying! You catch glimpses of looser, more authentically personal interactions that would help make these characters feel real. (It’s part of what elevates Strange New Worlds despite that show spinning off of Discovery.) Instead, it’s crowded out by all the explosions and narrative heavy-machinery that “Lagrange Point” seems more interested in.
At least we get a good old fashioned wacky infiltration mission. The humor here is a bit zany for my tastes, and considering that this is supposedly a perilous mission the good guys might not return from, there’s rarely any sense of real danger. Burnham and company bluff through most situations with ease, and even when they don’t, the overacting Moll doesn’t kill them or otherwise fully neutralize them the way you’d expect. This is, as T’Pring might say, mainly a dose of hijinks. I like hijinks! But it detracts from the seriousness of what you’re pitching to the audience.
So does going to the well of dust-ups and destruction ten times an episode. Everything comes too easy for our heroes anyway in “Lagrange Point”. But even if it hadn't, even if you don’t just know that everything’s going to work out because the plot requires it to, the grand finale of ramming Discovery into the Breen shuttle bay and beaming the crew and the MacGuffin lands with minimal force. We’ve already seen scads of action and explosions in the first half of the episode, and again, the imagery is sterile and unreal, which makes it harder to emotionally invest. Your big honking set pieces won’t have the same impact if you’ve done something similar in scope and peril every ten minutes or so for no particular reason.
“Lagrange Point” still has some charms. Even though it’s inevitable, Michael and Moll being stuck in some liminal space offers an intriguing endgame. Rayner finding the self-assurance to sit in the big chair again exudes a rousing level of confidence to the crew and the audience. His chance to face his Breen tormentor has just as much promise. Him, Saru, Adira, and more having their minor moments of triumph is all a good thing.
Unfortunately, these gems have to be carefully pried out of a dull firmament full of rote descriptions of events seemingly meant to untangle the convoluted narrative knot Discovery has tied for itself and unavailing action meant to nudge a half-asleep audience awake. It’s all largely watchable, but easy to zone out in explosive set pieces and boardroom scenes alike in between those precious moments of character. All I can hope for is that this is a necessary evil to clear the decks for the series’ swan song, and that once this detritus is out of the way, there will be better things to come.
