Thoughts

A bunch of folks are feeling, to put it mildly, off balance, in need of distraction, or recentering. I’ve been asked by a few people this week about shows I like, so here’s a quick list of shows I am attached to, in alphabetical order:

• Babylon 5: Peak space politics and anti-facism. Some of the best character arcs on TV. Slooow start tho.
• Being Erica: Cute show about finding self acceptance by having a therapist who sends you back in time to relive “regrets” and learn some thing’s you had spent a lot of time regretting maybe weren’t so bad and shaped you and you’re not so bad.
• Birds of Prey: Corny early 2000s DC hero show but kinda a fun vibe.
• Bojack Horseman: It’s a good show about depression and how we deal with men who are bad, prolly not really recommending for anyone right now, but I do like it.
• Black Sails: Amazing pirate show (cw: there is a SA plot in s1) that has a lot to say about rage and society and in group politics and the costs of those. Also pleasantly queer.
• Breaking Bad: As with Bojack, show about an “everyman”’s decent into villainy. Not the right vibe for right now probably.
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 90s camp. Slightly guilty pleasure given geastures the show runner
• Chihayafuru: Anime about being way to into and competitive into an incredibly niche Japanese poetry card game. It really is an experience. Very earnest and passionate. Also love triangle with clueless girl at the center who just wants to be better at the game.
• Counterpart: Excellent Spy show and cold war vibes except set contemporarily with a scifi conceit. Also big philosophical dives into identity.
• Cowboy Bebop: “Cowboys in space”. Follow our motley crew of bounty hunters bumming around the solar system always trying to make enough money to stay afloat and usually struggling. Good show but not one that’s overly mood boosting.
• Dark Angel: Season 1 really. I enjoy the dynamic of the idealist (rich as well) hacker boy Logan, and the pragmatic, on the run, amped up main character Max. Set in the alternate dystopia of 2019 (show is from 2001), it’s a good time on folks building community and getting by in a light dystopia.
• Elementary: The better Sherlock Holmes show, as an episodic procedural, so it is a cop show, but Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Lu have fun chemistry in the early seasons.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Top tier cyberpunk from the 90s/early 2000s, examines a ton of issues in an episodic nature around the intersection of philosphy, psycholgy, what it is to be human, and evolving technology that is bluring the line. They are essentially cops tho.
• Hannibal: Incredible heavy atmosphere. Watch Hannibal and Will Graham chase down murders and each other.
• Imposters: Fun fairly light hearted heist show with a love square of sorts.
• Killjoys: Scifi bounty hunters. kind of fun vibes and some interesting starts of world building but a little weak other times. Good chemistry between the characters.
• Leverage: Peak best heist show. Take a crew of solo criminals (theif, grifter, hacker, hitter) and pair them with each other and someone who used to chase them as the “mastermind” to lead them as now they play “black king / white knight” and are essentially “Robin Hoods” going after generally rich companies and individuals who have screwed over normal folks who the system has let down.
• Noragami: Gods are real but live and die with people’s belief in them waxing and waning. Join Yato, a down on his luck god doing odd jobs to try and remain relevant, when of course, he gets paired with a highschool girl, and the ghost of a teen boy as his newest weapon (it’s a whole thing). A fun rock style permeates the show, haven’t seen anything else quite like it.
• Orphan Black: Really good contemporary scifi mystery thriller as our main characters are always trying to unravel layers of a corporate and governmental conspiracy concerning their own lives. Tatiana Maslay gives a career defining performance as the lead.
• Person of Interest: Procedural show about a hacker and ex CIA guy trying to save people each week. Starts off slow but grows into a full on singularity war scifi. They do work along side some cops, but not quite a cop show, and systemic crooked cops are more often the enemies.
• Red Dwarf: British sitcom in space. Some dated humour (of course) but also surprisingly good tour of scifi concept of the week like the scifi shows it is also satirizing.
• ReGenesis: Team of north america doctors battling slightly scifi outbreaks. If you likes teams of smart people working problems, this might work for you.
• Russian Doll: Groundhog day style show. Natasa Lyons mostly sells it. Grungy vibes.
• Severane: Split your memories so one of you has the work memories and one of you has the rest of life memories. Surprising no one, it’s actually a nightmare for half of you. Season 2 finally coming next year.
• Serial Experiments Lain: Kinda psychedelic cyberpunk anime. A classic of the 90s.
• Stargate(s): “Your gods aren’t real, and we’re here to kill them and free you”. A team of experts in their fields (military, science, anthropology and history) working together.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: The best new star trek, the most utopic and optimistic, and a great laugh to boot. What more could you want?
• Station Eleven: A mellow trek following a travelling Shakespeare troupe through an apocalypse. An interesting meditation on the importance of stories. My kinda thing but arguably meta.
• Steven Universe: Feel good show with really good plotting, revelations and character development (falters a bit when the end is rushed for fear of being canceled, but totally worth it).
• Task Master: Distilled pure fun. If you need a laugh just go watch. It’s all free on youtube.
• Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles: A moody deeper dive into the Terminator universe and mythology. It is apocalypse assuming and somewhat antitech as a result, but it also spends more time starting to delve into the issue of humanity.
• The Good Place: Pretty fun comedy and tour of philosophic topics
• UnReal: Drama about the team behind a reality TV show. One of the show runners actually worked in reality TV so it acts a bit as a dramaticized confession. Provides new perspectives on the creation of reality TV. The two leads of the show are at the peak of their performances with their characters, they are something to watch, even when they are not doing well.
• Yellow Jackets: Dual timeline about a 90s highschool soccer team that crashed in the wilderness and wasn’t found for 18 months and the present day drama of the remaining survivors. Ongoing.

So the show in my head I was calling “Lena Heady in space”… they killed Lena Heady’s character Aster technically in the finale of s1. they just instantly confirmed it in the opening of s2. So that was a gut punch. Get rid of the high profile main character I was here for. Her performance of the character (less the character and writing) was what drew me in in season 1. It was just really fun to watch her lope through the sets and interact with the characters in a way I hadn’t seen her before even between Cersei and Sarah Connor and with a wonderful physicallity and relaxed confidence you rarely see women in their 50s get to have on screen. But I gave it a bit of a go. Just to see what was happening. ep 2 was semi filler, just AI character Harm in AI office. Then she escapes so finally we start? remember its 8 episode seasons so with 2 down we’re 25% done. nope full ep and then some to introduce the new main character who can now only be here fore 75% of the season, gonna be hard to get me too attached, I’m barely here for the other human main character (Halan) and I guess the AI is a main character?

Then the standard invaders of the Beacon, we’re captured, cliff hanger, but then to kill pacing (I mean keep us on the edge of our seats?) the whole of ep 6 is a slow flash back for Aster (Lena Heady’s character, who, do I need to remind, is dead?). So it’s played by a younger actress so it’s blah. And then that ep too somehow ends on a cliffhanger unresolved? but we never get back to that. Wild

The main plot, such as it is resumes in ep 7, the final quarter of this season lol. And then Halan is throw that maybe his main memories and trauma that have been driving him are fake implanted memories? which would be a ridiculous rug pull, and boy howdy is he ready to rejoin the just terrible military when he hears this. But then they just drill holes in his head, and we think he’s maybe in heaven? or the artifact for most half of ep 7 and all of ep 8? but no rug pull, it was a hallucinated space made by Harm the AI, and actually Halan also died a while ago, didn’t you notice?

So that’s s2 and it’s finale. Kills it’s other main character, and I guess the AI Harmony is our new main character going into s3, along with the new girl Iris and then someone else she collected in the latter half of the season.

This is sadly another case of a show that thinks it’s wildly smarter than it is. There’s a million tiny examples of the writers demonstrating they heard about some scifi concept but didn’t even read the wikipedia page on it, like the “solar sail boat” that some folks come in on? That someone “fell off clinging to a rope as the ship was being rocked about” ??? And then when we see it, the sail to ship ratio is like less than traditional sail boats on earth, lol. And it takes this same lack of care, research or any depth to it’s handling of AI which is becoming the central focus of the show. It talks a lot about “imprints” and having none, one, or a few, that some were installed? or created in Harmony, and by the end of the season she’s some how got like 4? That she made some herself? It was never clear to me if the Halan one was added to her or she made even. I’m not sure all the writers could agree and tell me. So with handling of supposed core material this sloppily, we don’t find much worth latching on to here, even in the burgeoning main focus of the show.

Which is all to say this is a show that has trapping of wanting to say things about things and use scifi concepts but no one seems to actually know what they are doing so it’s not going terribly well and they seem to be inexplicably addicted to killing off their cast that you might possibly get attached to. They really seem to want you not attached to anyone on screen ever so that’s a choice. I can’t believe I watched season 2 actually after Lena Heady’s character’s death instead of just reading the wikipedia summaries but I was 2 eps in and already 25% done so it seemed easy enough to just finish the other 6 episodes. I think in hindsight that was a mistake, and if this show ever does get another season I’ll just read synopsis. Cus if they don’t want me attached to the show or caring about the characters or experiencing it, then, ok, I won’t.

Rewatching Dark Angel and it is weird the shift between season 1 and 2. I blew through season 1. They had good elements like the tension between Max and Logan, and not just romantically, but Logan’s overworking idealism vs Max’s survival instinct. They had a good story generating engine with Max being on the run, mysteries about Manticore, the other escapees etc, and it created tension and pressure. Episodes had little twists you didn’t always see coming.

Then season 2 comes, Manticore is gone, Max and Logan can’t touch, and all the others have escaped. But Max isn’t looking for the rest of the original 12, even tho there’s no one ostensibly hunting her and them (I know White will emerge later this season), but yeah, the episodes are suddenly dragging. There’s no threat, no mystery, each episode is just a weird slice of life now? We’re not even really doing Eyes Only work for Logan. We even have so little idea what to do this season 2 we have a whole episode that is a dream. Even when an episode has an A plot, sometimes it’ll be so anemic the B plot will take up as much if not more time and I’ll get done scenes on the B plot only to get back to the A plot and have forgotten it was even happening cus pacing and tension are just… gone.

Real weird and disappointing but it sounds like network interference (Fox) and show runner change just murdered the vibe, and style of the show and ejected and blunted the story. I can see why there would have been a ratings drop and then it got canceled cus I’m not even half way into season 2 and it’s dragging so hard it feels like it’ll be hard to complete. Which is a shame since I blew through season 1 happily and felt pulled through it.

There’s other warning signs. Herbal Thought’s character disappearing with out a mention. Original Cindy def is taking a further back seat in the show. All it’s season 1 vibe, edge, representation, messaging, just gone or sanded down. Someone wanted to make this show more “palatable” and killed it instead, as is often the way of these things