Television

Best of 2015: Favorite Television

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2015 has been a sort of strange year for television. On the one hand, there were quite a few shows that I was excited about at the beginning of the fall season, but when it came down to it I found that I just didn’t have time to watch all of them (The Last Kingdom and The Bastard Executioner were two that didn’t make the cut). Of the ones that I did watch, a couple turned out to be totally unwatchable disappointments (Scream Queens and Heroes Reborn fell into this group). And a couple of the shows I was most looking forward to (X-Files, The Shannara Chronicles, Lucifer, The Magicians, Shadowhunters) don’t actually premier until January. Most of what I’ve watched this year, then, has been things that I was already watching and enjoying. Only a few of the year’s new shows really stuck, and at least one of those is almost certainly not getting a second season.

Jessica Jones

This Netflix gem is kind of objectively the best new show of the year. It can be tough to watch, with its themes about rape and abuse, in spite of the fact that none of the sexual violence is ever actually shown on screen. Jessica Jones is a deeply compelling character who fits a lot of common noir tropes, but a lot of that is subverted by her journey being one of personal healing rather than a revenge tale. In the end, Jessica wants mostly to protect others rather than just avenge herself, making her a complicated and fascinating feminist hero. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Supergirl

This year CBS gave us a very different kind of feminist hero in Supergirl, and I love that we now live in a world where both Kara Danvers and Jessica Jones are getting their own vastly different shows. Supergirl is much more overtly and earnestly feminist than the Netflix series, which can be frustrating at times, especially when the show garbles its 101 level messaging, but Melissa Benoist carries the whole show on her super-strong shoulders by creating a Kara who is tough and brave, but most of all deeply kind. When Strong Female Characters are often imagined as ass-kicking fighters, it feels pretty revolutionary to have a super-powered woman on television who is as deeply empathetic and caring as Benoist’s Supergirl.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show that I almost didn’t watch at all because I found the title so off-putting. It’s also the show that’s been, by far, the most pleasant surprise of the year. Hot shot lawyer Rebecca is so miserable with her life that she makes a totally bonkers decision to move to a small town in California where her ex-boyfriend, Josh, lives. It’s an absurdly silly premise, but I haven’t related to a character this much in a very long time. I, too, struggle with mental illness, and I, too, have often thought that making some enormous and ill-advised change in my life would somehow magically fix everything. Essentially, this show is a humorous take on how this kind of insane decision could work out for someone. Spoiler alert: everything is terrible-ly hilarious. Also, there are songs, because everyone involved in the show is a musical theatre nerd.

The Expanse

It’s great to see SyFy actually getting back to its roots and producing more, well, sci-fi. I didn’t love their adaptation of Childhood’s End (although I appreciate the attempt), but The Expanse is truly excellent. It’s space opera, but also a sort of mash-up with a noir detective story and a futuristic political drama. There are several notable women characters, including Chrisjen Avasarala (played by the incomparable Shohreh Aghdashloo), who I am certain is going to end up being the iconic character of the show. It’s worth watching just for her parts, but the rest of it is pretty great, too.

Into the Badlands

For some reason, almost no one seemed to talk much about Into the Badlands during its six-episode first season on AMC, but it’s a fucking excellent show that has surprisingly feminist sensibilities as well as some of the most incredibly choreographed martial arts fight scenes I’ve ever seen on television. Just in general, Into the Badlands is a gorgeously imagined and shot show, with highly saturated colors, striking cinematography, and great costumes. It’s also got a relatively diverse cast headed up by two Asian men (Daniel Wu and Aramis Knight) in the lead roles. A black woman (Madeleine Mantock) is the main character’s love interest, but she’s also a doctor and a revolutionary of sorts in her own right. The numerous other women on the show also eschew stereotyping, and while they exist in a fairly sexist fictional world, their roles and struggles aren’t entirely dictated by that. The only negative of this show is that it’s only six episodes for now and a second season hasn’t been confirmed, which makes the cliffhanger ending at the end of episode six potentially very frustrating/upsetting.

Minority Report

This show had tepid ratings and mediocre reviews and is the abovementioned likely-cancelled show, but I enjoyed it. The actors had a decent chemistry, though the writing could have been stronger all around, and I’d have liked to see the show explore more of its bigger ideas instead of adhering mostly to a case of the week format. Sadly, Fox has a tendency to invest in development for interesting sci-fi shows but then cut them off quickly if they don’t perform well, and that’s what happened with Minority Report. The news that their episode order had been cut from thirteen to ten after something like episode three of the first season didn’t help ratings. Still, the show was entertaining and had a lot of promise. It even managed to wrap up episode ten in a way that will act as a reasonably satisfying end to the story if there are no more episodes. It’s still available for binge watching on Hulu if you run out of other things to watch.

Film

Best of 2015: Favorite Movies

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I never feel like I get to see as many movies as I’d like, but looking back at 2015 I have to admit that I saw almost everything I wanted to see this year. And everything was so good. Partly this is because, as I get older, I just get better at picking and choosing what media to consume, so I don’t waste my time with nonsense, but also 2015 was just a great year for genre films.

Jupiter Ascending

This is a kind of strange film to love because it’s, objectively, kind of a mess. However, it’s also beautiful and weird and ambitious, and tough, funny, clever Jupiter is a stand-out female protagonist. It’s not often that this type of wish-fulfillment escapist hero’s journey is written for or about women, so it was a refreshing change of pace in a world of testosterone-fueled grimdark action films. I think (and certainly hope) that twenty years from now, people will look at Jupiter Ascending with the same kind of fondly uncritical indulgence with which we recall 1980s fantasy films like Legend and Willow.

SpySpy

I actually didn’t get to see this until late in the year because I, frankly, didn’t think I’d be very interested in it. I will, of course, forever regret not seeing Spy in a theater.

It’s great to see Melissa McCarthy getting work where the joke isn’t that she’s fat. This movie is an excellent showcase of her acting abilities, and she brings brave, smart Susan Cooper to life with both sensitivity and good humor. While the examination of the spy movie genre isn’t particularly deep or groundbreaking, the movie more than makes up for any shortcomings in that department by being riotously funny and delightfully vulgar. It also doesn’t hurt that most of the movie’s important characters are women, and their interactions are all the best parts.

Inside Out

This movie’s strange concept is one that ends up working rather surprisingly well, and I’ve never felt so many feelings about a movie that is just about feelings. Many more thoughtful people than I have already written about how important Inside Out is, what a great achievement it is, how useful it is as a tool for helping children talk about their feelings, and so on. I totally agree with all of that stuff. However, my favorite thing about Inside Out is actually the character design for the feelings, which are not actually solid objects in the inner world the movie depicts. Instead they seem to be made up entirely of tiny, slightly fuzzy motes of, well, whatever feelings are made of, I guess. It’s just such a clever and lovely way of representing something abstract and somewhat ephemeral, and I never get tired of watching it on as big a screen as possible so I can see every detail.

Advantageous

This quiet little independent sci-fi film showed up on Netflix a few months ago having never even played in the artsy theaters in Cincinnati, so I didn’t know much about it when I watched it for the first time. It turns out that it’s a lovely and understated feminist movie about a future dystopia, and it’s absolutely worth dropping everything you’re doing and watching right this second. There’s not much that I can say about it without spoiling the whole thing, but Jacqueline Kim is incredible in it. She also co-wrote it with director Jennifer Phang, whose work I will definitely be looking out for in the future.

The Martian

I’d read this book earlier in the year and enjoyed it, and the movie didn’t disappoint. It’s funny and smart and exactly what one would expect of a big budget affair based on a best-selling novel and starring Matt Damon, which is to say really, solidly very-good-but-not-great. This might be the most purely entertaining film I saw this year, perhaps because—just due to the nature of the thing—there isn’t much to criticize about it, and I appreciate the occasional movie that I don’t have to think too hard about.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

I feel like I’m one of just a few people who even cared that this movie came out, although its sales numbers belie that. It’s a movie that felt strained almost throughout, largely because its stars had all sort of aged out of the franchise by the time they even started filming. Still, it’s a creditable ending to the series, true to the spirit of the franchise, and on par in production value with the previous films.

Mad Max: Fury Road

I grew up watching Mad Max movies, but this is the first time I’ve gotten to identify with a character who got to be part of the action, which makes a huge difference. Imperator Furiosa, the wives, and the Vuvalini are all amazing, revolutionary women characters, and the low key eco-feminist message of the movie is a great bonus. George Miller’s visual style is incredible. By centering the action and characters in each frame, he manages to eliminate a lot of the male gaze that would normally be focused on sexualizing the scantily clad women. It also works well to show off his impressive use of practical effects and gives the film a remarkable amount of distinctive character. I will definitely be watching this two-hour car chase again and again.

Crimson Peak

I love literally everything about Crimson Peak. While the trailers for it seemed to suggest that it would be a horror flick, it turns out to be a fairly straightforward gothic romance, although it subverts most of the more troubling gothic tropes. It’s definitely a movie that I think only really appeals to a certain sort of bookish, literary nerd who also loves voluminously pretty dresses, which I feel is the only reason that this movie wasn’t as universally beloved as it deserves to be. It’s a wonderfully woman-focused story with women characters who have an almost alarming amount of agency, and its climax is two women having an epic knife fight while dressed in absurdly billowy nightgowns. A nearly perfect film, and probably my favorite of the year. The only thing that would have been better would be more of Tom Hiddleston’s butt.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The Force Awakens is so good, you guys. It’s basically everything good about the original trilogy and none of the bad stuff. It’s excellent to see some diversity in space fantasy, and Carrie Fisher is back as General Leia. The movie definitely feels a bit derivative at points, and it hits a lot of the same beats that A New Hope did, but in a way that is pleasantly familiar and made fresh again by building the story around characters that don’t fit the usual (read: white and male) mold of characters who get to have hero’s journeys.

Book Reviews, Memoirs, Non Fiction

Book Review: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

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I read Why Not Me? as part of my last ditch (and probably doomed) effort to catch up on my 2015 Goodreads challenge and finished it in just a few hours. Like Mindy Kaling’s first book, this one is a fast, enjoyable read with a moderate amount of insight into all kinds of things that Mindy Kaling is interested in. Also like Mindy Kaling’s first book, this one makes me want to be best friends with her, because she seems to be utterly delightful.

I say that, of course, with the full understanding that Mindy Kaling is obviously not going to be delightful to everyone. In fact, she’s clearly a little self-absorbed, a little out of touch, super smart, somewhat nerdy, and not above being occasionally awful. Basically, Mindy Kaling seems like a real human being, albeit far more successful most of the rest of us.

What I love best about Mindy Kaling, though, is that her real human being-ness never feels like a schtick or an act or a ploy to make us like her. Sure, she’s endearingly self-deprecating, but always about actual flaws. She kind of weirdly humblebrags about her McDonald’s addiction, but I suspect that she really does eat too much McDonald’s, and I can relate to that because I, too, eat too much McDonald’s. Her story about dragging B.J. Novak to a play against his will sounds exactly like the sort of thing a real person might do. So, also, does her story about the time she gave a teenage girl a kind of bullshit answer to a serious and worth-answering question.

The advice that Kaling offers at the end of her book is thoughtful, but not too obnoxiously wise. Her thoughts on her work and career are amusing and sharply observed, but delivered without rancor. There’s definitely a little bit more of “work hard and good things will come to you” advice, but it’s not offered without at least a basic awareness of the role played by luck and privilege.

Why Not Me? is not a great work of literature, but Kaling is a clever and funny essayist who isn’t weighed down by pretension. I enjoyed Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) but this follow-up book is altogether better and showcases a Kaling who is more confident, more assertive, and even more readable than she was before.

Television

The X-Files Reopened builds our expectations up to epic heights

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If you’re a stickler for spoilers, I actually suggest skipping this video altogether, but if you’re like me and don’t care about learning a few things in advance, it’s amazing.  I haven’t been this excited about anything in a very long time, and I’m thrilled to learn that there are going to be some stand-alone monster of the week episodes in the mix.

The only problem, of course, is that there’s no way that six episodes is going to be anywhere near enough.

Television

Ash vs. Evil Dead: “Bound in Flesh” is a mad rush towards an uncertain end

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“Bound in the Flesh” chews through material at such a blistering pace that it becomes nearly incoherent, though it finishes with a big reveal and a scary turn of events that should make next week interesting.

Last week ended with Pablo and Kelly arriving right after Amanda Fisher’s death, and this episode picks up right afterward. Unfortunately, there’s little time for standing around having feelings about Amanda’s brutal demise. There’s actually not much time for having feelings about anything this week. There’s not even much time for dealing with Evil Ash, who is dispatched quickly and with minimal fuss once Pablo and Kelly show up.

The big showdown of the week is with Deadite Amanda, but in spite of her creative use of last week’s hikers as puppets it felt anti-climactic. I’d expected to see Ash and company having to face Amanda this week, but I thought it would be pushed off to the end and mostly dealt with in the finale episode for maximum emotional impact. Mostly, I’d expected the Ash vs. Evil Ash stuff to take a bit longer, but like everything else this week, this was all very rushed.

The big reveal of the week was Ruby’s identity, but this too was so hurried it barely made an impact. This was also a place where the script failed. I’d expected Ash and Ruby to have great banter, but that wasn’t so much the case. The jokes were there, but they failed to land squarely. The mad rush towards the end of the episode and Ruby’s betrayal just didn’t leave time for good script writing, apparently.

This is the first time that I’ve thought the show suffered for its short run time. Usually I’m glad that it’s broken up into fun-sized segments so that it doesn’t outstay its welcome, but this episode felt overstuffed and chaotic. Worse, while I know that there’s already a planned second season of the show, which means there can’t be too much resolution in the finale, I don’t see how there is going to be any kind of satisfying ending in just another thirty minutes.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • This show has the best musical choices. “Just the Two of Us” was inspired.
  • The Notorious C.A.T. is a great name.
  • I feel like Ruby and Amanda weren’t really friends? I mean, they only road-tripped together for a couple of days. Ruby’s sadness for Amanda was a little inexplicable and not at all earned.
  • Poor blonde hiker. I think she’s the only character in this show that I feel worse for than I felt about Amanda Fisher.
  • Oh, no! Pablo! That mask thingy is legit scary-looking, though.
Doctor Who, Television

Doctor Who: “The Husbands of River Song” was surprisingly wonderful

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I feel like it’s a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I adored “The Husbands of River Song.” Certainly, it’s my favorite Moffat-era Christmas special, but it’s also a rehabilitation of the relationship between the Doctor and River Song, for whom this episode also functions as a very nice send-off that wraps up her story as neatly as I think Steven Moffat is capable of doing.

In the tradition of Doctor Who Christmas specials, “The Husbands of River Song” is wildly silly. With a whisper-thin plot (River is trying to steal a diamond that’s embedded in the head of a tyrant robot king), the episode is carried along mostly by the entertainingly slapstick-y performances of the guest actors and, ultimately, by the wonderful interplay between Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston, who have more chemistry in this one episode that Matt Smith and Alex Kingston ever did.

The thing about this episode is that it’s basically not about the plot at all. The tertiary characters of Hydroflax, Nardole, Ramone, and Flemming are all fun, in their ways, but they don’t matter. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure why the episode spends so much time with them. While I appreciate the desire to give everyone a happy ending, I actually found it unpleasant when Nardole and Ramone popped up in the final, otherwise beautiful and very romantic, scene at the Singing Towers of Darillium. For the most part, though, everything about this episode is building up to River Song’s impassioned speech about the Doctor’s indifference towards her and her realization that the Doctor has been with her all along on this adventure. From there, the episode makes quick work of showing how the Doctor plans to make things right with his wife.

River Song has been a troubled character almost since the very beginning of her existence in Doctor Who. While her introduction back in “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” was interesting, River’s appearances after Steven Moffat took over as show runner became more and more frustrating as she was transformed from a fascinating time travelling adventuress to a character whose entire existence seemed to be bound up with the Doctor. When she and the Doctor actually wed, things were just plain uncomfortable, as the Eleventh Doctor was overtly hostile to River by that time. The couple of times River appeared after that were, frankly, forgettable, and it seemed that, after systematically diminishing the character and thoroughly subordinating her in service to the Doctor’s development, Moffat was finally content to let River Song be.

While I’d been excited for some time about the prospect of seeing Alex Kingston get to act with Peter Capaldi, I tried very hard to temper my expectations for this Christmas special. Even just the title, “The Husbands of River Song,” just seethes with sexist potential, and it wouldn’t be the first time that Moffat had used a Christmas special to convey some boring and condescending ideas about the role of women. Instead of the sexist disaster it could have been, though, “The Husbands of River Song” turned out to be a lovely portrayal of the romance between River and the Doctor. Sure, it may be a sort of hand-waving solution to years of missteps on Steven Moffat’s part, but it works so well and the payoff is so earned and touching that I can’t help but fall in love with River Song all over again, myself.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • The Doctor’s feigned reaction when he steps inside his own Tardis is a new iconic moment for the show.
  • Peter Capaldi really sells that “Hello, Sweetie.” Perfection.
  • I honestly just sort of uncritically love this whole episode, but I can definitely see myself watching that ending over and over and over again.
Book Reviews, Fantasy, Magazines, Short Fiction

Magazine Review: Fantasy Magazine, December 2015, Queers Destroy Fantasy!

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Perhaps it’s because fantasy is my first and forever true love under the SFF umbrella, but I’m convinced that the Fantasy Magazine entries in the DestroySF project are the best. At the very least, they’ve been consistently my favorite magazines in the series. Queers Destroy Fantasy has, hands down, the best fiction in any of the Destroy issues so far.

A new Catherynne M. Valente story is always a treat, and “The Lily and the Horn” is a near-perfect fairy tale where wars are waged by pitting poisoners against unicorn horns. Like much of Valente’s work, it’s a story concerned with interrogating very old fantasy tropes, and it’s full of her characteristically beautiful language and meticulously structured prose.

Kai Ashante Wilson is a newish author who I only discovered this year when I read his Tor.com-published novella, but I quickly fell in love with his work. I was thrilled to see a new story by him in this magazine, and “Kaiju maximus®: ‘So various, So Beautiful, So New’” did not disappoint.

“The Lady’s Maid” is a weird and subversive and deeply unsettling tale by Carlea Holl-Jensen. It deals with a maid who is charged with caring for a strange mistress and the mistress’s many interchangeable heads. I actually enjoy being unsettled by stories, so of course I loved this one.

Richard Bowes’ “The Duchess and the Ghost” takes a turn towards more magical realism than simple fantasy, and it’s a haunting story about identity and the tradeoffs and compromises we make in order to survive in a world that is often hostile and unsafe.

The first of the reprints, Shweta Narayan’s “The Padishah Begum’s Reflections,” somewhat mirrors Valente’s “The Lily and the Horn” in tone. It’s similarly in the fairy tale vein, though “The Padishah Begum’s Reflections” is more like a steampunk Arabian Nights story than anything else, being told from the point of view of a clockwork princess. This is probably my favorite story in this magazine.

“Down the Path of the Sun” by Nicola Griffith is a fantasy with an almost post-apocalyptic feel to it, although the setting is never quite explained. It’s the only story in this issue that I didn’t care for, but that is largely a personal preference as I found the brutal rape described in the story to be highly unpleasant to read and not nearly as effective as the author seemed to think it would be.

Austin Bunn’s “Ledge” starts off slow, even boring, but it rewards the patient reader by delivering a great and very memorable ending.

Finally, “The Sea Troll’s Daughter” by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a nice piece of sword and sorcery with a woman character in the sort of gruff, tough adventurer role that is too often reserved for men. It’s not a particularly groundbreaking story, but it’s fun.

The non-fiction in Queers Destroy Fantasy was somewhat disappointing, with only Ekaterina Sedia’s piece on fashion standing out, but the author profiles are, as always, wonderful and well worth reading.

Weekend Links

Weekend Links: December 26, 2015

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This is my last weekend links post of 2015, and it feels a little light on substance, probably because about 80% of what everyone is publishing this week is year-end retrospectives and “Best of 2015” lists. Goodness knows, I’ll be doing my own round of those this coming week. In the meantime, it doesn’t help that I’ve also been making a last-ditch effort to make up for the reading slump I had after I broke my foot back in May. That said, I’ve still managed to see a bunch of cool stuff on the internet this week.

There’s this great piece about Erszebet Bathory from the Hairpin.

WebUrbanist showcased some rad pre-fab Hobbit houses.

Sqrrl is a neat art project on display in New York. If you’re trapped in the Mid West (or somewhere equally remote) like I am, you can still check out the website for the exhibit.

The Mid West isn’t entirely devoid of culture, of course. My best Christmas gift of the year was the tickets my parents gave us to see The Revolutionists, a new feminist play premiering at Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park. If you’re in the area in February, I highly recommend checking it out. I know I’m pretty excited about it.

While I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan, I did enjoy seeing racists go nuts this week when stage!Hermione was cast as a black woman. Still, there are good arguments to be made that this casting decision isn’t the great win for progressivism that some are framing it as.

I want this so much.

There’s now a Doctor Who Lego set, and it’s amazing. Certainly my ardor for the show has cooled during the Moffat era, but the Lego Tardis looks excellent.

Andy Weir is writing a new book–with a female main character.

I know Christmas is over, but this project of Yule log alternatives could be useful if we ever get some wintry weather.

io9 and The Daily Dot both address accusations that Rey from Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a Mary Sue. Spoiler: she’s not, and you’re probably sexist if you think so.

Black Gate has a list of fantastic reference and non-fiction books.

The Mary Sue talks about why feminist criticism is important for video games as an art form.

At The Book Smugglers, Sunil Patel writes about his first foray into reading romance novels.

The Atlantic examines the perennial sci-fi obsession with imagining the subjugation of white people.

I love this Ars Technica piece on the fact that hating parts of Star Trek is essential to loving Star Trek.

The L.A. Review of Books examines the term science fiction and what it means to the genre in “Toward a New Fantastic: Stop Calling It Science Fiction.”

Bookworm Blues has a list of some of the most anticipated new books of 2016.

At the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, editors offer their picks for what they think we should be reading in the coming year.

 

 

 

 

Television, The Expanse

The Expanse: “Remember the Cant” is basically the Chrisjen Avasarala Show (which is great)

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The Expanse chugs along this week with another hour that eschews the episodic format in favor of functioning more as a chapter of a greater whole than as any kind of self-contained story in its own right. For some, this may be a criticism of the series, but I rather like the way things flow along, even if I do hate having to wait a week between installments. (Yes, I know that the first four episodes have been online for over a week, but the faster I burn through them, the longer I have to wait for episode five, so I’ve been holding off.) In “Remember the Cant,” we see all of our story lines inch forward a little more, and it’s becoming easier and easier to see the connections between them, but it’s really Chrisjen’s that comes together this week after a lackluster start in the first two episodes of the show.

In the first couple episodes of the show, Chrisjen’s scenes on Earth felt very disconnected from the scenes on Ceres and with the Cant survivors, but this week we finally get to see her do something that feels important and shows how intimately tied her story is to what is going on farther afield in the solar system. Her interactions with—and manipulation of—her old friend the U.N. ambassador to Mars are compelling and really help to humanize a character who has so far spent most of her time onscreen overseeing the torture of a Belter. Here, we see that, while Chrisjen may indeed be a coldly calculating politician, she’s also on some level deeply principled and committed to doing what she thinks is the right thing to do in order to protect her planet. We also learn that she’s not unwilling to cause suffering to herself in service of what she sees as a greater good, as she sacrifices a lifelong friendship in order to try and head off an all-out war with Mars.

Unless something significantly changes over the coming weeks, I have little doubt that Chrisjen Avasarala is going to go down in history as one of sci-fi’s great, iconic women characters. She’s got a unique and distinctive look, and she’s played with an incredible mix of shrewdness and sensitivity by Shohreh Aghdashloo. So far, she’s the most complex and non-stereotypical character on the show, and in “Remember the Cant” her story just got a lot more compelling, helped along by a strong supporting performance from Kenneth Welsh as the Mars ambassador Franklin DeGraaf. The final exchange between Chrisjen and Frank is downright heart wrenching.

Meanwhile, on Ceres, Miller runs into a roadblock in his search for Julie Mao. Her trail ends at the Scopuli, which he discovers right around the time Holden’s video is going viral. This episode sees Miller struggling (sort of) to balance different aspects of his life and identity. His boss at Star Helix tells him to close the Mao case so he can focus on working with the rest of the Earth-contracted police force to nip the burgeoning rebellion on the station in the bud. However, Miller is increasingly distracted by Julie Mao, who he’s becoming somewhat obsessed with, and as a Ceres-born Belter himself his loyalties are somewhat murky when it comes to keeping the peace.

I’m surprised to find myself saying this, but I think the show is actually doing a better job than the first novel in the book series did of communicating Miller’s character and making him interesting to watch. I was happy with the way Miller’s meeting with Anderson Dawes played out, and I can’t wait to seeing what happens next week when Miller has to deal with Havelock’s possible murder.

The remaining crew of the Canterbury doesn’t fare so well this week as they are interrogated by the Martian navy in a somewhat confusing series of scenes on the Donnager. For a group of people who are supposedly innocent of any wrongdoing, the Martians are shady as hell, and the interrogator guy was legitimately unsettling. However, the information that was revealed about the Cant survivors was mostly just general background stuff about each of them, not all of which is particularly important—except for the fact that Shed faked his medical credentials to escape from a drug dealer who wanted to kill him, which is confirmed in a hilariously deadpan fashion by the good doctor himself. I’m also a little disappointed that the show seems to be reneging on last week’s suggestion that Naomi might be taking a more central role in the show than she did in the first book. By the end of “Remember the Cant,” we see Holden stepping up to take responsibility, of a sort, and referring to the other survivors as his people.

Episode four should be interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing everything hit the fan even more than it did this week.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • Hello, Brian George as Arjun Avasarala! IMDb says he was in “Dulcinea” as well, but I must have missed him.
  • The crowd scenes on Ceres are impressively done and really help to show the scale of the unrest there.
  • While I’ve read Leviathan Wakes, I can already see where the show is slowly moving away from the source material, even on Ceres and with Holden and company.

 

Television

Ash vs. Evil Dead: “Ashes to Ashes” reminds us what this show is really about

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“Ashes to Ashes” is my favorite episode yet of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and it has a lot of great things to recommend it as one of the show’s best episodes overall. It’s also an episode that really works hard to reassert that, ultimately, this show is about Ash and his journey, which is too bad, since the show’s created several characters that I really like and don’t really want to see turned into Deadites.

The biggest way that “Ashes to Ashes” reasserted the primacy of Ash’s character and development this week—and the thing that everyone seems to be talking about (to the degree that people are talking about this show)—is by killing off erstwhile cop and Ash’s new love interest, Amanda Fisher. I have so many mixed feelings about this.

I love Amanda, and I’ve been saying for weeks now that it’s a shame the show hasn’t done better with writing things for her to do, but (even though apparently literally everyone else who watches the show had called it beforehand) I really didn’t think that she would die. I’m not sure that I ever thought she and Ash would turn out to be an endgame couple, but Bruce Campbell and Jill Marie Jones have a pleasant chemistry and a good rapport that I’ve enjoyed in the last couple of episodes when I haven’t been irritated by their half-baked romance. At the very least, Amanda isn’t a character who “deserved” to die, and the way that she’s killed is incredibly brutal and in every way about servicing Ash and his story, which is just the sort of thing that I normally hate.

The thing is, I think Amanda Fisher’s death actually works. It raises the stakes by proving that the show isn’t afraid to kill its darlings, and it’s surprisingly emotionally affecting. It’s also a real surprise, which I liked, although I suppose in hindsight that it had been foreshadowed and hinted at. The actual fight between Amanda and Evil Ash is well-executed, and her impalement on the taxidermy deer is a great bit of symmetry with the fate of Amanda’s partner back in episode one. Even Amanda’s actual death is presented in a way that I like, and Ash’s tender last exchange with her is perfectly scripted and performed.

While I, in theory, hate everything about Amanda being killed off, I have to admit that I love the way the show handled it. Plus, I guess this means that she’s going to come back as a badass Deadite before the end of the season.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • I’m not really sure I understand the point of the backpackers that Kelly and Pablo meet. That whole sequence felt like filler in an episode that had plenty of stuff going on. If it was meant to show Kelly’s proprietary feelings towards Pablo, I feel like there are smarter ways that could have been done.
  • That bird at the beginning was a great bit of dark humor, but why weren’t all the animals Deadites?
  • Linda’s head was equal parts hilarious and unsettling.
  • The cabin set is wonderful, and I can’t get enough of the sort of yellowish, softly-lit shots this show likes to do of creepy stuff. You’d think it might get old eventually, but it’s all so pretty I never do get tired of looking at it.
  • It’s nice to get to see more of Bruce Campbell’s range in this episode, and I appreciated his scenes with Amanda. However, Ash vs. Evil Ash is a great example of Bruce Campbell at his best and most fun to watch.

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