reviewing ... 24, Battlestar Galactica, Big Love, Bones, Californication, Damages, Dexter, FlashForward, Fringe, Heroes, House, In Treatment, Lie to Me, Lost, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The Closer, The Tudors, True Blood, V, Weeds, the odd movie, a little music ... and a lot of politics ... InfiniteRegress.tv
George Santayana had an irrational faith in reason ... I have irrational faith in television.
Been a truly banner week for Twice Upon a Rhyme, my 1972 LP, in both New York City and Los Angeles.
Here's how this tale of two coasts happened:
You may recall I mentioned the tasty lunch and great conversation I had at the City Diner in Manhattan last month with Evan LeVine, appreciator of fine 1960s music and all-around significant popular culture.
Well, after the conversation, Evan's perambulations took him to the Rockit Scientist Record store on St. Mark's Place, also in Manhattan. What I didn't know until a few days ago is that Evan talked up Twice Upon A Rhyme to the store's owner, John Kioussis, who this week sent a message to me on MySpace, asking if he could get a few copies for the store.
I of course said yes, and had the pleasure of talking to John at Rockit Scientist Records yesterday. Turns out he has a long relationship with Twice Upon a Rhyme. He picked up a copy in a record store on Long Island years ago, then traded it away for another album - something which John says he now much regrets.
Music to my ears.
I can't think of a better temporary home for Twice Upon a Rhyme than Rockit Scientist Records - take a look at that picture.
Though, actually, Evan works at a store in Los Angeles, Rockaway Records, which is no small shakes, either. Evan wrote on my Facebook wall about an hour ago that he discovered a copy of Vivid Records' issue of Big Pink's CD reissue of Twice Upon a Rhyme a little less than a year ago, and would be playing it on the store's loud speakers in about an hour, which come to think of it is just about now.
Twice Upon a Rhyme, coast to coast ... feels right, since both the Beachboys and the Lovin' Spoonful were great influences.
An endearing episode 5.8 of Bones last night, with a winning performance by Ralph Waite, who continues a sterling career in his senior years. On Bones, he plays Booth's grandfather - "Pops" - who raised Booth and his brother after Pops evicted their father from their lives. Booth's father had been beating him.
As in most of the episodes this season, the best story is in these personal interludes and not the skeletal puzzle at hand. Pops sees what every viewer and everyone other than Bones and Booth see - that they're right for each other, and time's winged chariot is hurrying near (I always work Andrew Marvel into my reviews when I can.)
"Shrimp" - Pops' nickname for Booth as a boy, still much in use - and Bones of course continue to demur and play dumb, likely for real, about all of this. I'm almost hoping for an episode in which we find they've been in bed for months or more already, and have been play acting to the world to the point of pretending it isn't happening, even when the two are alone.
Bones had customarily hilarious repartee in this episode. Pops says he likes her because she has "balls". Bones replies she has ovaries. Pops says, ok, he likes her because she has "steel ovaries". And Bones responds with a deadpan, sincere "thanks".
One of the best things about Temperance Brennan is that so few things offend her. We could use more of her attitude in this world.
Fringe really hit its stride last night, with an episode 2.8 not just about the Eternal Bald Observer, who we've been wanting to know more about, but the Eternal Bald Observers. It was a superb standalone story, with intellectual verve and real heart, and also moved the central story of Peter and Walter importantly along.
The Observers are indeed in effect eternal - I first called the Observer Eternal Bald when he was first introduced in episode 1.4 last year, as a way of pointing out that science fiction often seems to have an Observer who is bald and around for a long time - but last night we learn that the Observers have been present at an odd series of notable events in human history, ranging from the Boston Massacre in 1770 to the beheading of Marie Antoinette in 1793. I wondered why Fringe didn't show us an EBO at the death of Socrates or the Crucifixion, but maybe there's some reason for the presence of Observers at just certain important events that we don't yet know.
The Eternal Bald Observers are here only to observe, but they've interfered with our affairs twice. Last night brought us the more or less complete story of one of the interventions. An Observer at the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 is taken by the bravery of a young girl whose parents die. He thereafter has kept a watchful eye on her, and intervenes again, in our present, to prevent her from getting on a plane in Boston which will crash in Rome. The other Eternal Bald Observers - there's a table of them, including the EBO we met last year, who is not the same one who has been watching the girl - don't want any intervention, and hire a human assassin to clean up this problem, i.e., kill the girl.
But the EBO keeping watch on the girl can't allow this to happen. He's grown to love her, in an avuncular, protective way. Walter tells him he (the EBO) must do something to make the girl - now in her 20s - significant enough to make the board of EBOs want to keep her alive. He allows the human assassin to kill him, while orchestrating the woman's escape. His death in protection of the woman makes the woman special enough to warrant the EBOs' continuing protection of her - he's the first EBO to die on behalf of a human. Apparently his love of her, which impelled him to protect her, wasn't in itself enough - which is sad, but those EBOs are a tough bunch to convince.
The other time the EBOs intervened in our affairs is when they saved Walter and Peter. The older EBO leader apparently alludes to this when he tells his colleagues that this intervention was warranted because it corrected something which wasn't supposed to happen. The EBO we met last year was the point bald man on this, and he presumably also had a role in Walter's taking of Peter from the alternate reality after Peter died as a boy in our reality.
Peter still does not know his real identity, and his story is the most compelling in Fringe, humanizing Walter as a father willing to breach alternate realities to "keep" his son, and putting the two on collision course as Peter learns more about the Observers and Walter strives to keep Peter in the dark about his origins. The unanswered questions that loom - including what happened to the Walter in the reality from which our Peter was taken - promise some outstanding Fringe in months and more to come.
Ain't it good to hear Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm," and see him sing it in a vid? This was the theme song and the theme of tonight's FlashForward 1.9, which peeled back a little more of the paradox of the story to reveal ... more fine paradox, and a mystery tramp, too.
Bryce goes to Japan to find Keiko, the Japanese roboticist and lover of Hendrix and Dylan, aka the woman he saw and found and knew he loved - and she him - in his flashforward. Significantly - a very important insight into flashforward business here - Bryce knows in his April 2010 flashforward that he has been searching for Keiko since he was about to commit suicide and the blackouts/flashforwards hit in 2009. Unless I've missed something, this is the first time the April 2010 flashforward shows characters who are explicitly aware that they had the blackouts/flashforwards in 2009. And this in turn means that the explanation I put forth last week - that the April 2010 flashforwards took place in a reality (reality 1) in which the people had not had blackouts/flashfowards six months earlier, but once the blackouts/flashforwards occurred in 2009, this slipped the world into another reality (reality 2)- is not quite right, at least not for Bryce.
It's not right for Keiko, either, and in another significant first in this episode we see her own flashforward story, which complements Bryce's. The two of course cannot meet before the April 2010 flashforward date, so Bryce's trip to Japan to find Keiko in 2009 cannot succeed. But Keiko's trip to Los Angeles can and will succeed and result in their meeting in April 2010. It's a nice bit of misdirection - Bryce and we are led to believe that their meeting will take place in Japan, when in fact it will and always did place in Los Angeles, the real shelter from the storm. (This episode also has the best use of back stories - Bryce's and Keiko's - making it reminiscent of Lost, which I take as a good.)
L.A., then, is the shelter at least for Bryce and Keiko. But what about the other characters? They're not getting much satisfaction at all, including Mark Benford, who wants to know who texted Olivia that he was drinking again in 2010.
Aaron and Stan, the only people Benford told about his future fall from the wagon, both provide pretty convincing denials. So who sent the text?
Could it be Simcoe - who is realizing he's falling for Olivia, and wants to do what he can to put Mark and Olivia on the skids? But how would he know about Mark's future?
It's a mystery - but as one of the scientists who caused the flashforwards, he just might know a little more of what the future holds that everyone else, except Simon.
Would you like a little shelter from the storm? Here's a little Dylan ...
The Visitors got visas in 1.3 tonight, and the twists and surprise identities continue to abound.
1. Erica stops a human from killing Marcus (Anna's top adviser), but it turns out the would-be assassin is a Visitor. They apparently were testing our (human) willingness to protect the Visitors, or perhaps even just Erica's.
2. Ryan goes to see another fifth columnist - a Visitor on our side - who tries (unsuccessfully) to turn Ryan into the Visitors.
3. Up on the ship, Erica's partner, unpeeled as a Visitor at the end of episode 1, has trouble remembering how he got nearly killed. Just as he remembers, his doctor drugs or kills him - his doctor is a fifth columnist. Good that we have at least one on the ship.
4. But right before that happens, Erica's former partner informs us that he's not the only Visitor who's infiltrated the FBI. I'm still thinking Erica's boss is a visitor, but maybe that's too obvious.
5. Tyler finally gets some good time in his room with Lisa, who takes off her uniform so Erica - who comes home unexpectedly - won't know she's a Visitor or a collaborator when Erica busts into the room. But the big reveal for Lisa comes at the end - she's Anna's daughter.
V continues to develop momentum and complexity. My favorite tech scene tonight is the lobster-eye multiple-reflection screen configuration Erica comes upon in a V security room. An insight into the deeply alien way most of the Visitors look at us and our world.
Eli Loker (Brendan Hines), one of the best characters on Lie to Me, in which all of the central characters are outstanding, has been in Lightman's dog house since the middle of the first (last year's) season, when Loker alerted the Security Exchange Commission about the results of a case he was working on. Lightman nearly fired Loker, settled for demoting him to a lowly unpaid intern, with an injunction that Loker needed to show he could really "contribute" to the organization.
In last night's 2.7, Loker did just that - in a way that lost the Lightman group almost two million of much needed dollars, but maintained the moral high ground that is so crucial to Lightman, and what makes him and the show so appealing. Loker finds that a big electronics discount store, signed up by Loker as a client, was partially responsible - "contributory negligence" is the legal term - for a stampede that took place in front of the store. When Loker makes it clear to the client that he does not intend to sit on this information, the client takes back the lucrative fee. Lightman feigns fury about this to Loker, but he's in fact delighted by Loker's integrity, and it will be fun to see Loker in an ascending rather than descending role.
The other story in 2.7 was about a teenager, kidnapped as a baby 16 years ago, in search of his real parents. It was a strong, in the end heart warming story, but it had no connection to the electronic discount store, and I find the two separate story approach (lots of television does it) usually does not make for the most riveting episode.
Hey, I'm reviewing Lie to Me, so I'm not going to lie to you.
And I'll be back here next week with my review of this highly original, compelling series.
A highly significant House 6.7 tonight, which clarified a question going back to the first season, brought together the best of all the seasons, and may have resulted in a permanent change - though with House, you never know for sure.
The question clarified and the apparently permanent change concern the same person - Cameron. She flat out says that she loved House, but adds to that that she loved Chase - note the past tense - because she's leaving him, and therein the team and the show. Presumably, because this is House we're talking about. But it feels more or less finally.
And why? Cameron can abide Chase's medical murder of the "Idi Amin, Jr." - as House aptly terms Dibala - but only if he is genuinely sorry about that. But Chase, under House's prodding, comes to accept-going-on-being proud for what he did, and when he lets Cameron know about that, she just can't abide that. She always did take a moral ground a bit too high for most mortals.
House prodded Chase into this position - which is indeed consistent with who Chase most is - because House wanted to get Chase to want to be back on the team. House feels that way about Taub, 13, and, for that matter, Cameron, too, and his pursuit of at least Taub and 13 was one of the more enjoyable interludes of this excellent show. House succeeds with Taub and 13, leaving open the question of whether he'll take back Taub, 13, and Chase, or let one of them go, to get back to the magic number of three (along with Foreman).
House says 3 out of 4 ain't bad, expanding on Meatloaf, but personally, it wasn't the greatest night for him at all. Cameron in effect breaks up with the part of love that she had for him, and Cuddy's not moving an inch away from the private eye.
But it was good to see House starting to scheme to break them up in the coming attractions. I expect they'll be in bed together for real before the end of this season.
Dexter made what might well have been a life-changing mistake at the end of last week's episode - 4.7 - he called an innocent man. Tonight's episode 4.8 begins with Dexter's conscience being troubled by this mistake - I wouldn't say tormented - but Dex pretty soon gets beyond that. "It was a mistake, for fuck's sake," Dex's internal voice complains, as Batista puts up Dex's target on the board, saying we thought he was a killer but now he's missing and may be a victim.
Does this mean that serial killers have no conscience? Maybe. It's certainly one of the best lines we've heard from Dexter, rivaling his sister's.
Dex may be able to leave that mistake behind him, but this fine episode isn't quite done yet with big mistakes. The Trinity Killer is jumping off a roof, but Dex grabs him - this isn't the ritual way he wants to dispatch this monster, who Dex knows is guilty for sure. But Dex quickly changes his mind, realizing that an avenging execution from his hand is satisfactory, whether his hand wields a knife or lets Trinity fall. And at just that moment, two good samaritans appear on the roof, and pull Trinity up to safety. Dexter's mistake was trying to save the killer in the first place.
But the biggest mistake of all disclosed tonight was made not just by Dexter, but by Debra - who discovers it - and all of us, as well. We had been thinking that the Trinity killer wounded Debra and killed Lundy. But Debra realizes that her scars suggest a much shorter killer - shorter that the Trinity killer's 6+ feet - and Masuda confirms this.
Which leaves us with one huge-ass puzzle (sorry, I'm listening too much to Debra's great speech patterns). The Trinity Killer is responsible for the serial cycles of three killings. But who shot Debra and Lundy?
The only character I can think of who had a motive would be Debra's boyfriend Anton - but Anton's taller than Debra (you can see that clearly when they're kissing, standing, in episode 4.2).
So where does that leave us? I don't think Dexter - the show - would bring in a killer totally out of left field, at this point. So that leaves us, again, with the Trinity Killer. Was he crouching when he shot Lundy and Debra? Debra tonight said no, Lundy would have seen that.
But if the Trinity Killer is indeed a mistake for the Lundy-Debra shooting, who then?
It's mistakes like these that make Dexter such great television.
An outstanding episode 2.6 of Lie to Me last Monday evening. Among my favorite parts -
. Reynolds (Mekhi Phifer) has an expression of stubborn defiance about something he may have done wrong - cut to shots of Bill O'Reilly and Saddam Hussein. Priceless!
. Lightman's loyalty to his "family" - his co-workers - including FBI Special Agent Ben Reynolds. To prove his commitment to Reynolds, whose career and even freedom is in jeopardy due to Reynolds' actions when undercover, Lightman destroys FBI evidence right in front of Reynolds. Now Lightman is almost as vulnerable as Reynolds in this mess.
. The looks exchanged between Foster and Lightman, when Lightman talks about someone shagging her boss (thanks to my wife for noticing this). A slight smile from Foster, a big smile from Lightman, another smile from Foster, Lightman's still smiling. The carefully orchestrated facial expressions of the major characters in Lie to Me is one of its best features. On the other hand, who knows, maybe Tim Roth ad libbed that big smile.
All in all, a top-notch FBI-oriented episode. The FBI is having something of its own new golden age in what I've been calling the new golden age of television. Bones, FlashForward, Fringe, Numb3rs, with Reynolds a major player on Lie to Me, and there's likely more FBI in shows I haven't yet seen.
On Lie to Me, Reynolds is one of the ways show-runner Shawn Ryan (The Shield and The Unit) is infusing grit and punch into the series. Should be some good times ahead.
And here's me versus O'Reilly from a few years ago ... what would Lightman say?
Here's my thinking about the paradox of attempting to change a future you saw in your flashforward, as depicted in FlashForward on ABC:
The future in the flashforwards is Reality 1, in which people seen in the future did not already know that they would have that future - i.e., had not seen flashforwards six months earlier. In other words, no flashfowards had occurred in that Reality 1.
But the moment the flashforwards do occur, that changes Reality 1 into Reality 2, in which everyone alive knows that flashforwards occurred, and most people have seen themselves in their flashforward.
That is the reality which our characters are living through now, and we are seeing unfold each week on television.
Which suggests that the flashforwards can indeed be changed, though not easily.
Of course, since in our reality there are no flashforwards (as far as we know), we are just living in reality, with no number.
Last night's FlashForward 1.8 featured a philosophically high-staked card game, the back story on Tracy Stark (Aaron's daughter), and the biggest attempt Mark Benford has made thus far to change the future he and Olivia saw in their flashforwards.
I'm not sure I get why Simcoe would allow himself to be bound by the results of a poker game with Simon - Simcoe wants to go public with their causing the flashforward, Simon does not - but the game does provide some good occasion for some ontological talk about hard determinism. Hey, when was the last time you heard that phrase (hard determinism) on television, or, for that matter, saw that word (ontological) in a TV review? FlashForward gets props for doing and eliciting just that.
Meanwhile, Tracy's story is interesting in and of itself. She was presumed dead in Afghanistan because her leg was blown completely off, and her DNA was mixed into the remains that were examined. Even without the flashforward angle, this is one of more original wartime stories I've seen.
As for Mark Benford, he sets up one of the assassins he saw in the future to be killed right now. I don't quite see why this is so significant - has the point been made that all of you have to do change the future is remove one detail, or one part? Perhaps that's so, but wouldn't Mark be just as vulnerable from the other assassins? I suppose, operating on Butterfly Effect logic, that changing any one thing in the future could change everything, but this has to be made more clear.
The most on-point event last night in the Benfords' struggle to prevent the future revolves around the sexy little night outfit Mark gives to Olivia as a present. She's quietly horrified, because it's the same damn outfit she was wearing in her flashforward with Simcoe. So she throws it out.
Like Mark's friendship bracelet, and the guy he killed last night, this nightie is but a grain of sand in the avalanche Mark, Olivia, and the people who don't want the future are laboring so mightily to prevent...
A powerful and effective episode 2.7 tonight of Fringe, which continues to pull itself away from the horror insano-gore of last year, towards a more rational, edge-of-your-seat kind of science fiction. In other words, this evolution of Fringe is for the good.
Tonight featured a 15-year old boy who, courtesy of Massive Dynamics, has a massively powerful and, when pushed to its limits, homicidal kind of mind control. That is, the kid can compel people around him to do his bidding, however otherwise they may feel, including killing anyone who gets in his way.
This provides the makings a top-notch police show episode, as Broyles, Olivia, Peter, Walter, and Astrid put their heads together to disarm - or dismind - the kid. But Peter comes under his control, and the story then pivots to Peter's struggle to prevent the kid from making Peter a killer, and Walter's determined effort to save his son. He doesn't "want to lose him again," and the only person in the room who knows the true meaning of that is Nina.
Walter's science succeeds, as it almost always does, but not before Peter is directed by the kid to shoot Broyles. Whether Peter is able to shift his arm a little, or because he's not a good shot (Broyles' explanation, not likely), Broyles is only hit in the arm, and the shot goes straight through (which is good).
The show ends with Peter and Walter talking about Peter's mother - is Peter at all beginning to realize that he came from an alternate reality? - and Nina sending an email to Bell, in the other reality.
Fringe needs more shows like this one. And next week's episode promises to be just what the doctor ordered - a show about the eternal bald Observer.
Physical bones played little role in tonight's fine Bones 5.7 - not just because the bones in the case were those of a little person (should not be called a midget, as Bones advises, but a condoplasiac dwarf) - but because the heart of the case was psychological, not physical.
It begins when Booth is not shooting as straight as he used to. He and everyone presume this is another consequence of his removed brain tumor. Booth wants to talk to Sweets about this, but moves on to Dr. Gordon Gordon Wyatt, who is no longer a shrink working for the FBI, whose knowledge of Booth's problem could hurt Booth's career. In fact, Wyatt's not practicing psychotherapy at all anymore, he's a cook (apologies, a chef).
But Wyatt's as sage as ever, and in a brilliant conversation with Sweets we learn some of the best things of the season. Sweets is agonizing about publishing the book he is writing about Bones and Booth, because he is concerned about what effect its ending might have upon them. And that ending is? Booth and Bones love each other - as, of course, everyone in the world other than the two of them know.
Wyatt further is able diagnose Booth's reason for not shooting straight: his love for Bones, love he cannot fully admit to, because he is afraid it could hurt her, has led him to shackle himself psychologically, as he struggles to keep in check what he wants to do and be with Bones. Freud himself could not have written a more instructive psychological episode.
Wyatt not only realizes this, but shares the insight with Booth. True to the untangling of internal conflict which promises relief or reduction of symptoms in psychotherapy, Booth's shooting is back up to par at the end.
So is this mutual deception destined to continue much longer? Hey, I have an idea - how about a joint episode of Bones and Lie to Me, which could certainly straighten everything out between Bones and Booth. Well, they are both on Fox...
A fine second outing for the return of V on ABC-TV on Tuesday, in which I especially liked -
1. The special effects: A story about high-tech aliens on Earth has to have convincing gadgetry, weapons, and vehicles in motion, and V didn't disappoint. In fact, I thought that quick opening scene of the Visitors' crystal swooping down and chasing Erica and Father Jack was one of the best pieces of work I've seen on television, reminiscent almost of the movies.
2. The character development: Continuing differentiation of major characters, especially when they're on the same side, is something the original V excelled in. The remake is doing a good job in this area, too. We're starting to see some differences between Anna and her advisers (who may be more than that), and gorgeous Lisa may be more than skin deep, as she shows what may or may not be real concern about Tyler's throwing some punches. Even Ryan, who's a good Visitor - that is, on our side - has some slight differences with another good Visitor, whom Ryan visits to fix up his lacerated arm. All of this is to the good of the developing story.
3. Father Jack continues to be the most interesting human character. Erica and the FBI are fine, but they've been done before, ranging from Fringe to Numb3rs. The addition of Jack adds a moral element we don't usually see in these narratives.
4. Who else among the humans are Visitors in disguise? Well, as I said last week, I'm still betting on Jack's superior, the older priest. He continues to have too much good to say about the Visitors. Erica's boss is also suspect - he reminds me of Larry in last year's 24 - but it's hard to tell in these cases whether he's a bad guy (a Visitor) or just a hard-ass human.
Another superb, surprise-twisting Episode 4.7 of Dexter Sunday night. The 'he can't kill Bambi' quote comes from Harry, Dexter's id, conscience-super ego father voice, and it's about the Trinity killer. "He spent his life killing innocent people, but he can't kill Bambi," Harry/Dexter Morgan acerbically notes about Trinity, who cringes away from using an ax to put a deer that he hit out its misery. Dexter goes on to do the job.
Harry's/Dexter's code would never allow him to kill an innocent person, and this sets Dex sharply apart from Trinity, and all the other killers Dex has killed.
But on Sunday night, Dex kills an innocent man mistakenly thought by Dexter to be a serial killer. I'm pretty sure this is the first time for killing an innocent by Dex, though there have been some close calls. Even Sunday night was a close call - Dex is initially thrown off his plan to kill this apparent killer by a camping trip with Cody - but leave it to Dex, he figures out a way to get his man later that night, anyway-
Only to find the next morning that the real killer is being brought into the station house by Batista - the real killer was the assistant of the guy Dexter dispatched.
Dexter's shocked, Harry's frowning - this goes totally against their code. What impact will this error have on Dexter? He is rational enough to realize the lesson of this mistake: vigilante justice, even when meted out by someone as smart and careful as Dexter, is no substitute for the police and judicial due process. This process is far from perfect - it convicts innocent people, and sets free guilty parties (who are prime candidates for Dexter's attention). But due process does afford the accused and apparently guilty a lot more opportunity to prove their innocence than do Dex's knives.
This show keeps getting better and better, fearless addressing profound ethical issues, as it keeps the pot boiling with serial killers of every stripe prowling the nights of Miami. 5-min podcast review of Dexter
Another fine, primarily personal episode 6.6 of House last night, featuring House and Cuddy, and Chase and Cameron.
House and Cuddy clearly love each other - it's more than sexual attraction, even though that is prominent, propelled by Cuddy looking and dressing better than ever before. We're now into House's long pursuit of her - that hunting and gathering part of the relationship - with House going out of his way to see her at a convention he otherwise would not have attended, dancing a suggestive dance with her, only to find that someone else is sharing her room, that very private investigator that House earlier hired.
The convention does provide the occasion for the one nice piece of ethical quandary in the episode, with House doing what he can - in a way only House could - to stop Wilson from ruing his career by admitting to euthanasia.
Outright homicide, not euthanasia, is what's troubling Chase and Cameron back at the hospital and at home, as Chase continues to agonize about his medical murder of the genocidal dictator Dibala several weeks ago. He tells Cameron at the end, and, even though Cameron herself was considering not treating Dibala, it's clear that this admission by Chase puts their relationship in some jeopardy.
It's good to have House back after the World Series. Even when the show is not a home-run in medical amazement, it gets around the good bases of personal relationship.
Well, it was the end of the world in last week's Mad Men 3.12, in every way for most of our major players, especially for Don. Tonight's surprising, satisfying altogether brilliant Season 3 finale reversed that. It was the best of times, for everyone, especially including Don, especially regarding his business. And as for his personal life - I'll get to that.
Taking care of business first: Don turns the absorption of Sterling Cooper by McCann into a tour de force triumph of the best of Sterling Cooper coming together, one by one, under the momentum Don starts, to form a new company, Sterling, Cooper, Draper, and Pryce (Lane - the British exec).
Here's how it happens: Don convinces Cooper, and the two walk into Roger's office and convince him. It takes Don praising Roger, and admitting he hadn't acknowledged Roger's strengths (schmoozing clients). Don asks Peggy to join - she says no. She's tired of being dumped on and berated by Don, whatever the name of the company. Don and Roger go to see Pete - he's praised, by Don, who acknowledges that Pete has valuable understanding of "aeronautics, teenagers, and the Negro market" (what a quintessentially perfect-pitch phrase for the end of 1963). Pete's in. So is Harry Crane (who still looks Isaac Asimov, praise in my book). So, too, is Lane Pryce, who's come to enjoy the American pace of life, and not enjoy at all the way his lords in London treat him. Don goes back to see Peggy, and admits to how he's been unfairly tough on her (because he sees her as his "extension"). Peggy says, and if I don't go with your new company, you'll never speak to me again? Don answers, no, I'll keep trying to win you over to our company. Peggy's in. And Joan is back with the upstarts, too.
Cosgrove and Kinsey are not invited. Will they be, next year? Will Sal be invited, right after the closing credits of this Season 3 finale?
Whatever happens, this was one of the most exhilarating, even joyous, interludes ever to be seen on Mad Men.
And Don's personal life? Not so much. Betty definitely is ending their marriage. Don evolves from hurt to furious (when Roger tells him about Henry) to accepting, to some extent - he tells Betty he won't fight on her this. This shows - as does this entire episode - that Don, though seriously flawed, is made of some very good stuff.
As is Mad Men, which this season seemed not too flawed at all. We've finally broken through the web of Don Draper deception that covered, and sometimes risked smothering, many a previous episode. But this season in general, and the last two episodes in particular, were as top-notch as television, any narrative medium gets.
A brief reminder about why a public option in health care is so important:
Insurance companies are in business to make money, or financially profit from their work. The time-honored way of maximizing profit is straightforward: increase income and reduce costs. In terms of health care, this translates into raising the cost of health care to businesses and consumers, and turning away or refusing to pay for as many claims for health care as are legally permitted. In other words, a health care system motivated only by profit is bound to cost more and do less for the population as a whole.
Good things can and do come from private enterprise in health care - in stimulating research and increasing patient choice. A public option won't limit that - it will only offer health care to Americans locked out of the profit-making system, and provide more choices for people who already receive health care.
Never underestimate Soviet science. In reality, they got out into space before we did in the 1950s. In the intersections of science and science fiction, the Soviets experimented with mental telepathy and all kinds of things. Who knows what they may have accomplished, or what strange forces walked through the doors they opened.
Tonight's Fringe 2.6 considered one of them - actually, a possibility that the U.S. was concerned about, regarding our own astronauts. They were quarantined at first, to protect us from any exotic organisms they might have brought back home from space.
This was the the different "stripe" of incredible, as Walter put it, that Fringe explored tonight. As Walter also said, those "pinkos" were up to all sorts of bizarre activities. One of which was their treatment of a cosmonaut who returned from space with an alien, shadow passenger.
Not the most original theme in the world - or, in places beyond our world - but, as I've noted about Fringe frequently, it excels in the retelling of classic science fiction motifs. Tonight's retelling embroiled Broyles, and gave us a bit of back story on how he lost his family - his wife left him, and took along their children - as his attempt to keep them and the world at little safer kept him too far from home.
But the best parts, as often on Fringe, were the visuals. Tonight's alien turns people into dust, leaving their skin intact as a fragile shell, which a strong breeze or the gentlest touch can shatter. The most memorable scene was a fly landing on a face, and causing it to crumble.
Fringe itself sometimes seems to be a such face. I hope we keep seeing it on television.
Well, I've often said that truly good combinations of mystery and comedy are as scarce as hen's teeth, and none do it better than Bones, as tonight's episode 5.6 about a murder in a chicken coop so tastily shows.
The chicken part led to fine puns, which I'll just let simmer without pulling apart. And there was also a pig in this episode - not the male chauvinist kind, but a real pig - which provided the emotional foundation of the story.
Angela, who was been abstinent for months, is channeling her pent up emotions into concern for the plight of pigs. She asks Bones to contribute to save one - Bones refuses. (Don't hate me, but I'm 100% with Bones here.) Angela is hurt, and says she can't see how she could be such close friends with Bones, since they have almost nothing in common. And now Bones is really hurt.
This opens up the best part of the episode, as Booth tries to advise and support her. The two have been getting closer and closer this season, in a gradual, realistic, emotionally satisfying way.
Bones supports Booth as well, as he misses a call on seeing through a killer's deception. He's still recovering from his days in a coma, and this, too, is refreshingly realistic in a television show. Bones assures Booth that she trusts him, whether he's 100% or not.
He advises her to contribute to Angela's cute little piggy fund. Well, I already told you how I feel about that. And Angela should be getting beyond that by now, anyway. She's no longer refraining from sex.
Good for Wendell, the lucky recipient. Good for us. And even good for Jack - I have a feeling this may be the beginning of a reunion with Angela, though maybe that's just chicken pot pie in the sky.
Okay, I'll stop writing now. I don't want you to wring my neck.
The sweeping winds of November brought as an episode of FlashForward - 1.7 - that may be better than even the pilot.
It starts with a scene which in part is actually close to the end of the episode - that is, the end of the piece of the present we are seeing unfold each week. We also saw a significant part of the past, and of course some flashforward time in the future. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.
That opening brings a woman with two children on a beautiful morning. She finds an invitation on her windshield, which tells her she is not alone. We soon learn that she is being invited to join a group of people who have had no flashforward vision - a death club, The Blue Hand, of people with no visions who see themselves as doomed and want to put a modicum of control back in their lives by determining the time of their deaths. At the same time, we hear a voice reading a letter which says you can indeed have control over your life. It is this voice and letter that actually come from the end of this episode....
The voice is Agent Gough's, and the incredible story tonight was his. It turns out that his meeting in London with Fiona Banks (Alex Kingston from ER) was not the most significant part of his vision. It has seemed to us that it was, because Gough and Banks were the first to mutually confirm their joint vision, apparently proving that the future visions are views of the real future. But Gough saw and heard something else, in addition, in that vision - a conversation in which he is devastated to learn that he is responsible for someone's death.
That would be Celia, the woman with the children in the opening scene. And Gough struggles with this for the whole rest of this episode - he can't live with himself, knowing that he did something to kill this woman. In the end, he comes upon a solution. He says he knows how to change the rules of the game. He jumps off a high roof.
He's left a letter for Demetri - who, with Benford and Stan, in a superb scene, try in vain to talk Gough down. The letter is the one we heard at the beginning. Gough wrote it the night before. And it is now Demetri's voice we hear reading it.
So the future can be changed. There is hope for Demetri - we earlier had been treated to a good scene with him and Zoey, in which he tells her the truth, and they confront their conflicting visions. Zoey's vision of their marriage was not enough to give him real hope. But Gough's death is. So Demetri now has hope. And Benford does, too. He hugs Olivia as never before since the flashforward (and, indeed, he says the least on the roof - not that he wants Gough to jump, but he finds the possibility that the future can be changed irresistible).
But this still leaves open a crucial question: what is Banks now seeing in her recollection as the vision she and Gough originally shared? Will she continue to recall that vision now wrong, realizing it is wrong, or will she now recall seeing something different, a flashforward with no Gough?
And as the episode shows us that the future can be changed, it also showed us that it seems to have some inevitability, too. Aaron wants his vision to be true, because it shows his daughter alive. He at first gets confirmation of that tonight, from a soldier who gives Aaron his daughter's pocket knife - Aaron has seen himself giving that knife to his daughter, alive, in the future. But the soldier later tells him that his daughter died. It seems the future with her alive did not come to be, either. And then, in a great last scene, Aaron's daughter is sitting on his couch, in our present, very much alive.
Flashforward has a lot of explaining to do. Which is precisely why, with episodes like this, it is such emotionally and intellectually commanding television.
Kenneth Johnson's original 1983 mini-series V - along with its 1984 sequel V: The Final Battle - was oddly one of my favorite television shows. Actually, it still is. But I say "oddly," because although the story was trite - aliens landing on Earth, claiming they want to help us, only to eat us - the media savvy and political implications were compelling.
Damon Knight's 1950 short story "To Serve Man," adapted into one of the most enduring Twilight Zone episodes in 1962, told the story best. Aliens land, cure our illnesses, bring peace, want happiness for us - because they view us as livestock. V in 1983 expanded this story to show the aliens - The Visitors - manipulating the media, and provoking underground freedom fighters all over the world who discovered the truth about The Visitors. Indeed, V posted a dedication "to the heroism of the resistance and the freedom fighters, past, present and future." In 1983, freedom fighters encompassed everyone from the Hungarians who bravely stood up to Soviet tanks in the 1950s (viewed as heroes by most Americans) to Contras fighting the Sandinistas in power in Nicaragua in the 1980s (viewed as heroes mostly by Ronald Reagan and his supporters).
Tonight's V had political analogies, but a little more obvious and less complex than the 1980s version. Tonight's Visitors promise "universal health care," a clear and unnecessary shot at the good work Obama and the Democrats are trying to do right now in Washington. A more apt connection was made tonight between the Visitors and terrorists.
Actually, the Visitors are referred to as the "V's" in this incarnation, and I prefer the "Visitors". But V 2009 does have Father Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch, who played Frank Vasser on Journeyman), which opens up some good theological threads (I'm suspecting his superior might be a Visitor undercover), and Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell has a top role as Erica Evans.
The new version also has the winning mix of good and bad Visitors, and Visitor-collaborator and rebel humans as the original, as well as some echoes of Battlestar Galactica (the Visitors as Cylons), and an appealing media criticism component, so I'm going to give it a chance. And kudos to ABC for stepping up with science fiction a lot more than once this decade - Lost, Invasion, FlashForward, and now the return of V.
Poor Dexter was on the couch in 4.6 - the shrink's couch, brought there for couples counseling by Rita, concerned about their lack of communication. She of course doesn't know the tenth of it, and when things work out just fine at the end of the episode - Dex is moving his stuff into a shed right next to their house - she's as clueless about Dex's dark side as ever.
I'm a little worried, though, that Dex's trophies - the slides with blood samples - will sooner or later get discovered. Their hiding place in the air conditioner is by no means completely immune from detection. We'll see...
Meanwhile, Dexter has a confrontation with the Trinity killer, in which Dex is the victim. He picks up the urn containing Trinity's sister's ashes, to provoke him, and he's provoked. John Lithgow goes from helpful deacon to enraged almost-monster in the blink of an eye, and comes pretty close to choking Dexter out. It's instructive to see Dexter's extraordinary control in these situations. He's able to keep his meek cover, essential to what he ultimately wants to do to his adversary, but at the price of risking his own life.
Speaking of risks, Laguerta and Batista are risking a lot lying to Captain Matthews about ending their relationship - at least, I think they're lying, because they love each other far too much to end it, and they love their work too, so neither wants to be the reason the other leaves homicide. But pretending you're no longer in a relationship, with so many eyes on you, can't be easy.
Debra's not having an easy time of it, either. But she's finally realized that Lundy was killed by the Trinity killer, which gives her focus which is the best thing for her - but points her right at her brother Dexter, who is trying to take care of the Trinity killer all on his own...
Skeeter Davis's The End of the World played under the closing credits of Mad Men 3.12 tonight, and it came pretty close to that in many, but not all, ways...
We knew it would be coming. But the logical time was the Season 3 finale - which will be on next week. Instead, Mad Men surprised us with a kick in the heart tonight, which started as a cold day with no heat in the offices of Sterling Cooper, proceeded to too much heat being pumped out, and soon showed us the television in Harry's office, which told us it was November 22, 1963.
It was painful to see those news clips again - worse than painful, as it always is, but also always instructive. Don's says everything will be fine, but of course it won't. In many crucial ways, our country has still not recovered from the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I know that some of the tears I quietly shed as I watched the funeral of Teddy Kennedy this summer were for JFK.
And, yet, incredibly but not surprisingly, that wasn't the worst of it for Don. The assassination and the emotional cauldron it creates makes Betty realize she no longer loves him. Significantly, it's not just what Betty found out about Don's assumed identity - in a crucial scene the night before assassination, she still looks with love at Don as he takes care of their baby in the middle of the night. But after the assassination and Don's reaction to it, Betty gives Henry an incandescent smile that's the happiest we've seen from her in the three years of the series. Another brilliant performance from January Jones, and Jon Hamm, too.
What will become of Don now? What does the finale have left to tell us? If I could imagine that Mad Men could continue without Don, I'd almost see suicide as his next move.
But maybe not. Don still has some reserves of strength. People land on their feet in strange ways on Mad Men. The same terrible end of November that split Don and Betty have pulled Pete and Trudy closer.
What an episode. I'm looking forward to watching Dexter now - I could use a breather from the angst - a contest of serial killers would be relaxing.
But what an episode ... in addition to all of its other superlatives, it may well be the best fiction ever on the screen about the impact of November 22, 1963 on a stratum of Americans, influential and otherwise...
And I'll be back here next week, after I've seen the Mad Men finale.
A softly compelling episode 1.6 of FlashForward tonight, double slits across the universe, or, more precisely, an episode that started with Simon (Dominic Monaghan) talking about Young's double-slit experiment (which showed that light is both waves and particles) and ended with Rufus Wainright's wonderful rendition of one of my favorite Beatles songs, John Lennon's "Across the Universe".
The wave and particle duality is, in our reality, part of the paradox of quantum mechanics, because, ordinarily in our world, things are either waves or particles but not both. In FlashForward, Simon's reference provides a nice way of summarizing the paradox of seeing the future, and trying to make it not happen - as is the case with Mark and Olivia, for starters. It also provided the occasion for a nice crack, from a woman Simon was starting to seduce, about double-slits being about some kind of sex she tried in college. (The L Word shows up again, but enough double-entendres.)
Back to our main FlashForward story, tonight indeed inexorably brings Simcoe much further into Olivia and Mark's lives. Simcoe's son Dylan wanders out of the hospital on Halloween, and makes his way to the Benford house. He says he belongs there - because that's what Charlie told him in his flashforward. Simcoe comes by to pick up his son, Mark doesn't like it, Mark and Olivia argue ... and, they're starting to fall apart, creating the very future they're struggling to avoid.
Meanwhile, across the universe - which, in this episode, is across town - Janis will (of course) survive due to the fine doctoring of Olivia, who also performs a difficult operation that may, just may, safeguard Janis's reproductive capacities. And, call me crazy, but Wedeck is looking at her asleep in the hospital bed with some strong, real feeling, that makes me wonder if somehow he may turn out to be the father...
And Simon and Lloyd Simcoe meet, and tell us that they're responsible for the flashforward.
Could they possibly have the power to undo the flashforward at this point? Not likely in this universe, but it's something to think upon as you watch and listen to Rufus's fine video, which you can see over here, because, in another plot twist perhaps have nothing to do with FlashForward, embedding has "been diabled by request".
e-mail received from a reader: Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchidren. Thanks! Tom
President, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001
I’m proud to be on the May 8 page of this calendar, with the following quote: "What begins as a seemingly innocent campaign against indecency … always segues in short order into political censorship."
my podcasts: Light On Light Through popular culture, new techs, tv, movies, Wikipedia, science fiction, politics, the works ... 15-20 minute commentaries, once a month
Paul Levinson's The Silk Code won the Locus Award
for Best First Novel of 1999. He has since published Borrowed Tides (2001),
The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), and The Plot
To Save Socrates (2006). His science fiction and mystery short stories
have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards. His eight nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997),
Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), and Cellphone (2004),
have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired,
the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into nine
languages. New New Media was published by Penguin Academics in September 2009. He is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.
Paul Levinson appears on "The O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News," "Nightline" (ABC), the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" (PBS), and frequently on NPR and all-news radio...
Well, after the conversation, Evan's perambulations took him to the Rockit Scientist Record store on St. Mark's Place, also in Manhattan. What I didn't know until a few days ago is that Evan talked up Twice Upon A Rhyme to the store's owner, John Kioussis, who this week sent a message to me on MySpace, asking if he could get a few copies for the store.
Though, actually, Evan works at a store in Los Angeles, Rockaway Records, which is no small shakes, either. Evan wrote on my Facebook wall about an hour ago that he discovered a copy of Vivid Records' issue of Big Pink's CD reissue of Twice Upon a Rhyme a little less than a year ago, and would be playing it on the store's loud speakers in about an hour, which come to think of it is just about now.
