Television

Minority Report: “Fiddler’s Neck” could have been a nice change of pace, but ends up being a little dull

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The more I watch Minority Report, the more I come to terms with all the reasons why this show is almost certainly going to be cancelled after just one ten-episode arc. It makes me a little sad because I think the show, in the beginning, had a lot of potential, but it’s basically all been squandered with bad writing and ill-conceived plots.

“Fiddler’s Neck” takes us to the weird Luddite island where Dash and Arthur grew up after the end of precrime and where Agatha still lives. It’s a nice change of pace, although the episode more or less maintains the case-of-the-week format that has previously been established. This time, though, we get lots of Agatha-related flashbacks, as this week’s case involves the daughter of her old flame. We also finally get to see Agatha and Vega in the same room, which I have mixed feelings about.

Fiddler’s Neck, apparently, used to be a peninsula and is only an island as a result of global warming. We even get a shot of the ruins of an amusement park to show how bad the global warming and coastal flooding is. Fiddler’s Neck is also, apparently, a refuge for libertarians, anti-vaxxers, and natural-living folks of all types. It’s basically so backward the US government gave up on trying to control it, and so it’s a place governed by its own sort of local militia—which turns out to just be a group of crooked rednecks with shotguns. It makes sense, I guess, why the precogs would end up there, but it also makes a lot of sense that Dash and Arthur would get the hell out as soon as they could.

Most of this episode was in service to giving us a better idea of who Agatha is, which I was excited about since she’s been one of the more consistently interesting characters on the show. It turns out, however, that she’s actually kind of boring. Certainly, her doomed love story with the guy who hired her to work on his farm when she first came to the island is dull and cliché, anyway.

I had high hopes for Agatha and Vega together, but even that didn’t really pay off. Agatha was coldly aloof, and Vega spent most of the episode just looking like she smelled something nasty. There were no sparks, no big arguments, and no major meeting of the minds between these two, and I felt like the end of the episode signified nothing more than a return to the status quo. With only ten episodes to work with, I hate to see any episode do as little as this one did to either provide interesting exposition or further the plot.

I’m so sad about this show. It’s one that I think started off with a lot of things going for it, but week after week it continues to fail to deliver on a premise that ought to be really interesting. Instead, Minority Report has turned out to be just a second-rate cop show with some flashy sci-fi window dressing. It’s likable lead actors do the best they can with poor scripts and boring stories, but their charm really only goes so far.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • This was an excellent episode for world building, which would have been awesome if it was the second or third episode of the series. This late in the game, it feels superfluous, especially since the most interesting parts don’t really contribute much to the main story.
  • The B-plot, which had Akeela discovering an investigation of Blake and then going to Wally for help, was just awful. Disconnected from the main plot, poorly written, badly executed, and Wally was really unnecessarily nasty to Akeela.
  • I laughed out loud when Vega was trying to show how big she thinks an ear of corn is.
Television

Supergirl: I’m only half in love with this show, but it’s still early

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Supergirl’s first episode is everything I dreamed it would be. It’s a huge info dump of some of the most ridiculous superhero mythology ever conceived, and it’s self-consciously (and at times misguidedly) feminist in a way that I hope doesn’t turn out to be characteristic of the series. But it’s also enormously fun.

Melissa Benoist is mostly responsible for this as she plays Kara Zor-El with a sort boundless enthusiasm and charm that makes her instantly lovable. Benoist’s charisma isn’t the only thing to love about this Supergirl, though. While the episode itself is full of dull/silly-but-necessary backstory that is told in flashbacks and voiceovers, Kara’s character is shown to us and by the end of this pilot, we have a pretty good idea of who she is.

I adore Kara’s straightforward earnestness and her apparent total lack of any ability to keep a secret. I love that Kara isn’t a reluctant superhero, although the pilot is careful to show that her transition from determinedly ordinary woman to costumed hero isn’t going to be entirely seamless. Still, this isn’t some kind of chosen one scenario, Kara’s powers aren’t a surprise or a burden, and it looks like most of Kara’s challenges are going to be external ones.

Even better, this pilot basically starts with the assumption that Kara is smart, strong, and capable of dealing with these challenges. The only time we see Kara out of sorts is when she meets James (not Jimmy) Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) who is so hot that she’d have to be far more than superhuman not to be flustered. In her other interactions, even with her demanding boss, Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), Kara is confident and earnest without being annoying.

This characterization of Kara is probably the most feminist thing about this show, and it’s definitely the feminist thing about the show that feels least studied and forced. I appreciate that the show is explicitly feminist, and I there are actually a couple of more self-aware moments that are downright hilarious (the waitress who just straight up says “Can you believe it? A female hero! Nice for my daughter to have someone like that to look up to,” for example), but I’m not convinced yet that this is entirely intentional. Cat Grant’s speech about the “Supergirl” name was downright cringeworthy, and the misogynist villain was a bit of a flop.

The show also isn’t as feminist in its execution as it ostensibly is in its writing. While there are multiple female characters, and the episode passes the Bechdel test many times over, Kara doesn’t seem to have any actual female friends. There are also no women of color in this first episode at all, and while it’s nice to see a race bent James Olsen, I did get the uncomfortable feeling that Mehcad Brooks was being used as “exotic” eye candy.

It could be that these are things that will be improved upon in future episodes. This is only the pilot, after all, and often there are major changes made between pilots and subsequent episodes. I sincerely hope that this is the case here, because I think Supergirl has the makings of a truly good show.

Book Reviews, Fantasy

Book Review: Updraft by Fran Wilde

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Updraft is an exciting, inventive debut novel with a delightful protagonist and a unique and totally unexpected setting. I often think that authors have to pick and choose where they want to do things that are new and fresh and different, and Fran Wilde has chosen really well here by writing a relatively pedestrian story in a fascinating new fantasy world.

Kirit has never wanted to do anything other than become her mother’s apprentice and learn to be a trader between the tower communities that make up the world of Updraft, but her plans are derailed just days before she’s supposed to take her flight test so she can travel freely around the cities. The plot of Updraft is a simple one, really, a fairly classic coming-of-age-with-complications story as Kirit finds herself forced into a role she never wanted and starts uncovering secrets that make her question everything she thinks she knows.

­You can tell when reading Updraft that Wilde has really thought about every aspect of this world, and probably her greatest achievement is in the society she’s invented for the people who inhabit her bone tower cities. The largely oral traditions are well-thought-out in a world where lack of trees and paper would make for minimal written communication, and this is also, to a large degree, where the major ideas and themes of the novel come from. In a world without written records, who controls information, who has the power, and how does that affect a civilization?

Also, there are huge monsters called skymouths that sound something like enormous aerial squids and something like flying gulper eels. And it’s never exactly spelled out, but the bones these people are living on might be growing out of the back of something even bigger.

While I’ve read reviews that class Kirit as an “unlikable” heroine, I adored her. It’s refreshing to read about a girl character who isn’t anxious from the beginning to sacrifice herself for some greater cause, and I love that Kirit has a bit of a stubborn, selfish streak. Kirit doesn’t want any part of being some kind of chosen one, and she only participates in “destiny” under duress and with no romantic notions about it. Kirit is a tough girl from the start, and Updraft is the story of how she grows into a strong woman with a well-developed sense of civic responsibility.

Also a nice change from many other books about young heroines, Kirit isn’t neatly paired off with a man at the end of the novel. Instead, she’s made over her society and stands ready to be a significant part of a future that is very different from their history up to this point.

So far, it looks as if Updraft is planned as a standalone novel, but I rather hope that Fran Wilde returns to this world and these characters. For all that this is a book that deals mostly with the uncovering of secrets, I still feel as if there’s a lot more to be explored. I, for one, would still like to know what exactly the bone towers are the bones of.

 

Doctor Who, Television

Doctor Who: “The Woman Who Lived” is the show’s best episode in years

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“The Woman Who Lived” is the first episode this year that I’ve unequivocally loved. In fact, I’d say it’s the best episode of Doctor Who since 2010’s “Vincent and the Doctor.” It’s certainly the best episode so far of the Capaldi era, which has generally been lackluster to say the least. Interestingly, and I think not insignificantly, this is also the first Doctor Who episode written by a woman (Catherine Tregenna) since 2008. It shows, and in a good way as I think “The Woman Who Lived” is an episode that very much benefits from a woman’s touch.

The most important woman involved in this episode, though, is the titular one, played with rather surprising deftness and nuance by Maisie Williams. I wasn’t particularly impressed by Williams’ workmanlike turn as Ashildr last week, but this was no simple reprisal of that role. Rather, after some eight hundred years, Ashildr has taken and abandoned many names and now refers to herself as just “Me.” She’s known colloquially, however, as the Knightmare, an infamous highwayman, and she meets the Doctor when they both are trying to steal the same object in 17th century England.

At first, Me thinks that the Doctor has come back for her, and she hopes that he will take her with him on his travels, but he quickly disabuses her of this notion. It turns out that she’s got a back-up plan, involving a lion-alien and an ancient space artifact and a gateway to maybe Hell, but this is really all secondary to her interactions with the Doctor and the emotional journey that they both go through over the course of the episode.

A major theme this season has been the need for this Doctor to reconnect with his humanity, to rediscover his purpose, and after 800 years of functional immortality the woman who was once Ashildr finds herself in much the same position. She’s a perfect foil for the Doctor here and forces him to look at his own life choices and deal with some of the consequences of the decision that he made for her. This is exactly the sort of accountability that the Doctor needs and that used to be more commonly provided by his companions, but it’s nice to see here, especially handled so nicely.

I’m not back to the level of enthusiasm I had for Doctor Who, say, five years ago, but this episode is the most enjoyable the show has been for me in a long time. It was smart, funny, and hit all the appropriate emotional notes perfectly.

Some stray thoughts:

  • Though the idea doesn’t make a ton of sense, I love the thought that Me’s memories fade over time, and her library of journals detailing her many lifetimes is fascinating.
  • I really was impressed with Maisie Williams in this episode. It’s a little surprising to see someone so young be really believable as an eight hundred-year-old immortal.
  • I could have done without the lion alien, to be honest. He was really just silly-looking, and I think Me could have easily come up with her plan some other way, perhaps using some other artifact or device.
  • I love puns so much.
  • I found that I didn’t really miss Clara this week. She’s had so little to do lately, that it’s hardly noticeable when she’s gone.

 

Film

Crimson Peak lets the madwoman out of the attic, with glorious results

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Crimson Peak has replaced Mad Max: Fury Road as my favorite film of 2015, and that’s saying something because I have a passionate love for Fury Road. I honestly didn’t expect Crimson Peak to be my kind of movie, as I felt like the trailers showed it as more of a horror flick than it turned out to be. While I like the occasional zombie or slasher movie, I don’t like to watch anything that’s actually frightening, so I almost didn’t see Crimson Peak at all on account of its [in hindsight, totally unnecessarily] very creepy-looking ghosts.

I’m so glad I saw it anyway, because if there’s one thing that Crimson Peak isn’t, it’s frightening. Instead, Crimson Peak is a stunningly imagined and gorgeously detailed Gothic romance that is at once a highly traditional take on the genre as well as an incredible subversion and interrogation of the standard Gothic tropes and conventions.

Early in the movie, our writer-heroine Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) says of her own story that it’s not a ghost story–it’s just a story with ghosts in it. The ghost is a metaphor, you see. It’s a little much, really, and it almost feels as if the movie is self-conscious rather than self-aware about what it is. And what Crimson Peak is is a terrifically beautiful, better-than-middling clever twist on a classic Gothic romance. The “twist,” of course, is that the romantic hero isn’t, in any sense of the word. Instead, both of the male leads–impoverished nobleman Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and handsome doctor Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam)–take a decided backseat to the women in this tale.

There are no passive, fragile flowers here. Guillermo del Toro gives us a world that is far fuller of women than what would normally be expected in this sort of story, and just the presence of these other women makes it easier for the characters of Edith and Lucille (the incomparable Jessica Chastain) to exist as the imperfect and compelling women that they need to be to carry the weight of this story.

As a protagonist, Edith seems at first a little too conventional. She’s got a dead mother, a bookish pastime, a dull suitor, and an overprotective father. It’s all pretty genre-standard stuff, but it’s the details that save the first third of the film from being ordinary. The first time we meet the adult Edith, she’s confronted by some social acquaintances on her way to a meeting with an editor who she hopes will publish her novel. I knew I was going to love her when she responded to an insult about dying a spinster like Jane Austen with a quip that she’d prefer to die a widow like Mary Shelley.

It has little to do with the rest of the story and could easily have been cut, but I loved Edith’s meeting with the publisher and the scene where she begins typing her novel at her father’s office with the encouragement of the woman receptionist. It’s material that really has no purpose other than to show us who Edith is and make her a more well-rounded character, which is a refreshing change in a genre that’s known for paper-thin heroines.

That said, I almost wonder why they bothered with Edith’s background as an aspiring novelist. Once she marries Thomas and moves to England, her writing is largely forgotten as she becomes consumed with uncovering the secrets of Allerdale Hall. On the one hand this makes sense, what with the ghosts and all, and it makes Edith an extremely genre-savvy heroine. On the other hand, it makes much of the first third of the movie entirely superfluous as Edith doesn’t have any special knowledge or skills related to her literary knowledge and occupation. I’m torn between really liking and enjoying that first act and being frustrated that it feels like such an unnecessary and disconnected prologue to the real story.

All in all, though, I have to say I ultimately find myself on team first act. It meanders, and it doesn’t contribute much to the later parts of the film, but it does establish a sort of normalcy to compare and contrast with Edith’s experiences at Allerdale Hall, where she proves herself to be clever, resourceful, and brave. Edith is more than capable of rescuing herself, and I actually really liked that I never felt that she was in so much danger she might not be able to handle it.

Our other female lead, Lucille Sharpe, is something else. In many ways, Lucille is the character in Crimson Peak who is most interesting and who most defies stereotypes. In another story, Lucille might have been a classic madwoman in the attic, which is barely a character at all, but here she’s allowed out of the attic (both literally and metaphorically) and is given an almost alarming amount of agency along with big heaping piles of characterization. Lucille is not a woman who can be hidden, shuffled off, or forgotten, and I would argue that Edith and Lucille are mutually antagonistic foils who both have heroic qualities.

The story of Crimson Peak revolves around Edith, Lucille, and their conflict, with the concerns of the male characters definitely secondary. Even more broadly, when we take into account the ghosts that are all too common in Edith’s world, Crimson Peak becomes a story about the many ways in which women help and harm each other.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Crimson Peak, however, is the visual aspects of its storytelling. This is not just your run-of-the-mill costume or scenery porn. It certainly is gorgeous, but for a reason.

Allerdale Hall is fantastically surreal, with its Escher-esque staircases, vaguely questionable geometry, plague of moths, horrifying noises, and the red clay that seems to color most every surface of it. I would have loved to see Edith get to explore even more of this house, which I’m sure holds enough secrets for a sequel.

All of the costumes were perfectly sumptuous (and I want to wear all of Lucille’s clothes), but for me it’s Edith’s look that stands out as a true achievement. There is a lot of typical Gothic imagery in Edith’s costuming, but with many cleverly subtle differences that highlight the ways that Edith is not an ordinary romantic heroine.

Edith’s colors are angelic gold and white, which set her apart from Lucille’s positively vampiric black, red, and blue, but this isn’t the whole story of Edith’s wardrobe by a long shot. When Edith is at her best and most confident, she appears in dark gold, with enormous puffy shoulders that make her seem larger and more substantial. This is what she wears when she meets her publisher, in her first flirtatious meeting with Thomas Sharpe, and in two scenes in which she initiates physical intimacy with Thomas. When Edith is more vulnerable or frightened, we see her in voluminous white nightgowns, but we also see her in these fluffy confections when she’s at her bravest and most inquisitive as she unravels the Sharpes’ secrets and confronts the ghosts of Allerdale Hall.

This is also her look for the final showdown between her and Lucille—an epic knife fight in which both women are wearing their nightgowns, with their hair unbound, and fight it out in the red-stained snow—which is one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen in any movie. It’s seriously at least as cool as anything in Fury Road, albeit in an entirely different direction.

I guess what I’m saying, really, is that everyone should go see this movie. At least once. Having seen it twice now, I can say that it is even better the second time around. If you love to pick apart and analyze every aspect of a film, Crimson Peak is a must-see. If you hate all that critical thinking stuff, it might not be the movie for you.

Personally, I’m already looking forward to writing retrospective looks at this movie every few years for the rest of my life.

Weekend Links

Weekend Links: October 24, 2015

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Starting this week’s links off with the light, fun stuff, there’s a post at io9 on the 8 Types of Expository Beards.

The A.V. Club examines Willow after 27 years, which makes me feel both kind of old (has it really been 27 years?) and a little defensive because Willow is, no joke, one of my all-time favorite fantasy movies.  It’s up there with Dragonslayer and Ladyhawke and Legend in my book.

Web Urbanist looks at 13 of the world’s most beautiful bookstores, any one of which would be an acceptable place for me to go when I die.

Kate Hart has some designs for Book Pumpkins. I’m a little sad to say that I don’t think I’ve read any of these titles since I haven’t read any YA in about a year and a half, but this is such a great idea I had to share.

Looks like Laverne Cox will be the new Frank-N-Furter in a TV version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Brain Pickings has “Ursula K. LeGuin on the Magic of Conversation and Why Human Communication is Like Amoebas Having Sex.”

Margaret Atwood was interviewed by The Millions.

Kameron Hurley was interviewed by A Fantastical Librarian.

Diabolical Plots writes about the unaddressed issues in YA dystopian fiction, which actually explains a good deal of why I’ve shied away from YA recently. Namely, I think the YA dystopia often squanders the storytelling potential of the dystopian setting in favor of telling small, personal stories, dealing with individual issues rather than societal or global ones.

Meanwhile, at Dark Matter Zine, Kameron Hurley asks, “What comes after dystopia?” 

Geek Mom wonders why we’re so hard on heroines (spoiler alert: the answer is sexism) while at Tor.com, Sleeps With Monsters tackles the related issue of strong female characters and double standards.

At Kirkus Reviews, a look at Playboy’s history of publishing science fiction. Maybe with no more nudes in the magazine, we’ll be getting more fiction in the future.

This week saw the publication of one of the books I have been most anticipating this year, Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance. She talks about the book in The Big Idea, tells about some of her literary influences at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog, and answers a ton of questions from fans in a Sword and Laser podcast.

 

 

Book Reviews, Fantasy

Book Review: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

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The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a technically superb and compulsively readable novel that might also be the most frustrating thing I’ve read this year. It’s a book that comes very close to greatness only to fail so slightly, yet so completely, that it’s actually pretty impressive.

The story opens with the invasion of the child Baru Cormorant’s small island nation by the militarily, culturally, and economically hegemonic Empire of Masks. Baru’s entire life is disrupted by this momentous event, and she sets out on a lifelong quest to infiltrate the Empire itself, understand its workings, and find a way to avenge the wrongs that were done to her family and her people.

It’s a fascinating story from the very beginning, and Baru is an incredible character. I have a penchant for unlikable women in fiction, and Baru is, frankly, pretty despicable by the end of this book. She’s inscrutable and calculating. She’s cold and selfish and manipulative and arrogant. She gives words like duplicitous and treacherous new meaning. Baru Cormorant will do anything, say anything, sacrifice anything–or anyone–in pursuit of her long term goals. I love her, of course.

The enormous cast of supporting characters is equally well-drawn and works to bring the world to life. Every character works, from Baru’s three parents to the mysterious “benefactor” who sponsors Baru’s education and career to the woman Baru loves. Like every other detail of The Traitor, each and every character seems meticulously planned, and they all move around and through Baru Cormorant’s life like clockwork.

The Empire of Masks (or Masquerade) looms large over all of the characters we meet, as they are all either colonizers or colonized (and sometimes both). The Traitor is a pretty amazing portrait of the dynamics and complexities of colonization, and the Masquerade touches every aspect of people’s lives. In addition to language and currency, the Empire of Masks imposes law and order, educational standards, religion, strict “hygienic” practices (namely, no homosexual or polyamorous relationships), and eugenic breeding schemes. Like all empires, the Masquerade is a mix of good and bad; it’s not devoid of benefits for some of the people it colonizes, but it definitely brings its changes whether the colonized like it or not. It’s interesting to see an author making such an honest attempt at really deeply examining how that colonization works and what it does to people.

Which brings me to one of the two subtle-but-significant failures of The Traitor Baru Cormorant. While the novel tries to handle its themes with delicacy and nuance, and is helped along in this by staying strictly in Baru’s point of view, I can’t help but feel that in the end it’s all treated a bit glibly. The evil empire itself is almost too evil to be really believable, and the book makes far too much of a point to highlight the benefits of colonization. Even the choice to center the narrative so firmly on Baru’s POV weakens the message, as Baru’s identity becomes increasingly confused over the course of the novel as she slips further and further inside the mask she’s chosen to inhabit. Her real opinions become more and more opaque as the story goes on, and her perspective becomes unreliable and even slightly unhinged.

Rather than an account of a morally grey character navigating a complex political situation, the book becomes a simple story of power and corruption. Because of the heavy focus on the worst atrocities of the Masquerade, it’s easy to root for Baru against it, but Baru’s own lack of deep feeling undermines the very idea that she is sincerely opposed to the Empire. This lack of sincerity becomes absolutely palpable in the last third of the book, and it leads to the second major issue I had with the novel:

While the specifics of the ending are well-thought-out and make complete sense, the broad strokes of the ending are so heavily telegraphed in the last 30-40% of the book that the “shocking twist” is more likely to elicit groans than gasps. It’s really obvious, honestly, that this was always the story that was being told and things were always going to play out this way. Unfortunately, it’s just not that satisfying.

Perhaps I’m just old-fashioned, but I’m just not sure I “get” this book. I kind of love that Seth Dickinson has done something ostensibly new and different, but how different can it really be if I saw the ending coming so many miles away? Baru Cormorant is an amazing character, but it’s hard to really make a story work when its subject doesn’t, ultimately, get to be even an antihero. By the end of the book, Baru has lost sight of any noble goals she may have had and abandoned every principle she may have started with, so the final impression I was left with was one of existential bleakness and hopelessness so complete that it was actually a little depressing.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the most fun I’ve ever had reading a book this hyper-tragic, which is something special in itself, but it’s definitely not the sort of thing I want to reread over and over again. It’s funny and smart and cleverly plotted and often insightful, but it also might crush you under an enormous weight of despair. It’s a book that I want to love wholeheartedly, but that ended up leaving me cold.

Television

iZombie: Peyton is back, but Blaine is conspicuously absent

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Peyton is back! Finally! And it looks like she might be getting a good amount of screen time, as she’s already getting embroiled in some of the show’s bigger plots (though she doesn’t know it yet).

This week’s murder mystery was only moderately interesting, functioning largely as a vehicle for advancing other plots. It just never quite got off the ground under its own steam, and even watching Liv strut around in rich bitch mode wasn’t that entertaining. The writing seemed torn between trying to take the stance of “trophy wives are people too” and joking too gently at these women’s expense, which is just unfortunate as it means the episode flounders a bit and doesn’t manage to be either funny or insightful. The one redeeming feature of this week’s whodunnit might have been the revelation of the murderer, except by the time that happened I didn’t even care anymore and it was quickly overshadowed by Peyton stuff.

It seems that Major is going to figure larger in this season than in the first one, but he continues to be a bore. It looks like he won’t be hitting rock bottom with his burgeoning addiction anytime soon, and in fact he seems almost too functional, all things considered. He’s certainly functional enough to bang Gilda (who it turns out is Vaughn’s illegitimate daughter?!). I’m not sure who of that pair I feel more sorry for, to be honest. That sounds like it would be the saddest, most vanilla sex ever. Also, is Major Lilywhite really the guy you run to in a fit of post-adolescent youthful rebellion? Poor Gilda.

Ravi was excellent this week. I like Rahul Kohli best when he’s less funny, to be honest, and Ravi is an excellent voice of reason, with good insights. That said, it was a little disappointing to see him so completely oblivious to Liv’s pain this week. So was Clive, but Clive has the excuse of having limited exposure to Liv–basically he sees her just often enough to think she’s probably insane. Speaking of Clive, though, he’s been kind of tragically underused this season so far. It seemed like he and Liv were becoming something like friends last year, but now he seems to exist only to react to her bizarre behavior.

With Blaine missing in action after the reveal of his zombie dad last week, this episode’s big villain was Vaughn du Clark, who was really wonderfully wicked. His interactions with Liv were particularly fun to watch for his part, although Liv’s strange behavior was a bit much. It mostly worked, but this week it was all due to Steven Weber’s excellence as Vaughn.

The most important part of “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle,” however, really is Peyton’s return. With Liv having so few female characters to interact with, Peyton is a pretty vital part of the show that has been missing far too often and, this time, for far too long. Her return was handled nicely, and I thought I might cry when Liv opened her fridge and found that cake. Now I just need for Peyton and Liv to find themselves in the same room. You know, talking and stuff, because I can’t imagine that Peyton has really, fully wrapped her head around the zombie thing yet.

Television

Minority Report: “The Present” is mostly about delving into the past

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I’m increasingly feeling very, very alone in my affection for this show, but even this big old mess of an episode hasn’t turned me off entirely. In fact, I think part of my loyalty to the show is exactly because it’s such a disaster, and “The Present” has unfortunate writing and story decisions in spades.

Up until now, Vega has remained a fairly undeveloped character, but this is her episode. It’s been strongly hinted at since the beginning that the reason Vega got into police work and the reason she was so interested in pre-crime was due to a personal tragedy, and this is the week that we finally learn all about it. Yes, “The Present” is Lara Vega’s origin story.

The episode opens with a flashback to a rainy night in 2048, where a different Officer Vega is patrolling a dark alley (called “the Sprawl” of all things) on foot, by himself, whistling and checking his pocket watch, in the pouring rain, (ominously) eight months before pre-crime. His body cam badge flickers off and he starts to get scared–because, really, there is absolutely no way this perfectly cliche scene was ever not going to end with him getting murdered–then turns around and gets shot. After, we see a guy with no eyes walking away.

As ridiculously over-the-top comic book-like as this is, it wouldn’t stand out nearly so much if the rest of the episode supported this kind of melodrama, but it doesn’t. Instead, most of the rest of “The Present” is just Vega being awful to pretty much every single person she comes in contact with because apparently she and her dad shared a birthday, and she’s got feelings about it. Add in some serious ethics violations and straight up police brutality, and Vega comes off here as extremely unlikable at best. At worst, she’s an absolute monster who should have her badge taken away and never be allowed near a firearm ever again.

There was just so much in “The Present” that doesn’t make sense.

  • Why would a police officer be walking on patrol in the rain through an uninhabited dystopian wasteland alone in the first place?  I mean, what legit police business could he have there all by himself?
  • Is it really necessary for Vega to be so unilaterally terrible to everyone? It’s really grating, and not even a little bit endearing, especially since she’s actually pretty self-aware about it. If she’s aware that she’s being so awful, couldn’t she have even the tiniest bit of self-control? Instead, she just spews her feelings on everyone.
  • Vega doesn’t seem like a big enough sports fan to really want a 45-year-old team jersey. It’s older than she is, for goodness’ sake.
  • Also, even if the Washington team did change its name, and even if they did for some reason only make 500 fan jerseys that year, they would be rare collectibles. You wouldn’t wear them (and certainly wouldn’t let a young child wear one), as they would be fairly expensive pieces of memorabilia.
  • Are Vega and Akeela really such good friends that Akeela would spring for such an expensive birthday gift? I mean, we keep being told that they’re friends, but we only get to actually see it in rare flashes.
  • Why does Arthur even bother acting all cool and in control and putting up a fight? Five episodes in, and it’s very clear that he’s a total pushover for his brother and, rather inexplicably, Vega.
  • If Agatha is wrong about Vega, why aren’t Dash and Arthur a little more proactive in figuring out what Agatha is actually right about? We know that all three of the precogs have visions, and those visions are demonstrably real. It just seems to me that ensuring their continued freedom ought to be more of a priority.
  • Why does Wally have so much equipment? Yes, he explained how he got it, but that explanation made no sense.
  • I think it’s great that ex-criminals can be reformed and stuff, but it seems unlikely that one would be put in charge of a rehabilitation center. And why would she keep a trophy from the time she murdered someone for drug money out in plain sight?
  • And “make it look like a mugging” is all well and good, but who mugs an on-duty police officer?

I’m sure there was more, but I’m really feeling a little overwhelmed by how much sense this episode didn’t make. There were a few cool things, but they all seem inconsequential in comparison to the incredible amount of nonsense going on in “The Present.”

  • Love the body cam integrated into the badge. This actually seems like a useful and sensible invention.
  • Washington Red Clouds could work, although 2019 might be a little too optimistic as a date for the name change.
  • Dash presenting Vega with birthday flowers was adorable.

Until next week. I don’t watch previews for this show, so I have no idea what’s going to happen next. Probably something absurd. I’m still enjoying this show, but it’s firmly in guilty pleasure territory now. I hate to say it, but I think Fox made the right call in cutting their order for it. Only five episodes to go!

Doctor Who, Television

Doctor Who: “The Girl Who Died” is more of what I suppose is the show’s new normal

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I think the thing that is bothering me the most about this season of Doctor Who so far is that people seem to be generally enjoying it, and it appears to be receiving largely favorable reviews in spite of being, objectively, pretty bad. It’s a sign of how much Steven Moffat’s tenure as show runner has damaged the show that we’re all looking at these last few episodes like, “Wow, that was alright. That was fun.” I feel like our collective expectations for the show have just gotten so low that basically anything remotely coherent that’s not overtly offensive just blows us away. It’s pretty sad.

And that’s how I feel about “The Girl Who Died.” Like every other episode so far this year, it’s not terrible. It certainly makes a good deal more sense and relies on much less deus ex machina than last season. It even has a couple of moments where it feels like a proper episode of Doctor Who instead of Steven Moffat’s Mediocre Doctor Who Fanfic Hour. But it’s not good. (So why these sort of breathless puff pieces?)

“The Girl Who Died” commits two major sins, in my book. First, it continues the shows recent tradition of giving Clara almost nothing to do aside from cheerleading for the Doctor. Second, it shoves literally every point it’s trying to make down the viewers’ throats, explaining it all as if we’re all very, very stupid. The worst part of all of this is that the show has been doing this every week now, for five weeks straight, spoon-feeding us every plot point and straight up telling us how to feel about it. This episode, especially in its epilogue, is the absolute pinnacle of this kind of insufferable hand-holding. Before I get too far into that, though, let’s look at what Clara got to do this week.

Things actually started out promising, albeit with a cold open that apparently has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the story other than to give Clara an excuse to spend half the episode wearing a space suit. The real story starts when Clara and the Doctor find themselves captured by vikings and taken to the vikings’ village, where the Doctor tries to trick their kidnappers into thinking he’s Odin. Someone else has beaten him to it, though: a warlike alien, who beams all the best warriors in the village–along with Clara and a viking girl named Ashildr (guest star Maisie Williams)–up to his spaceship.

On the spaceship, the warriors are unceremoniously vaporized, while Clara and Ashildr manage to escape that immediate danger. When they find out that the warriors were harvested for testosterone (okay…), Clara gets one legitimately hilarious line and then manages to almost talk a way out of the situation for herself and Ashildr, only to have Ashildr start an actual war with the alien. They’re then beamed back to earth where they have to explain the the farmers and craftspeople that are left that they now have to fight a bunch of terrifying space people.

For the rest of the episode, Clara is relegated to nearly silent emotional support for the Doctor as he works through his feelings about saving people and possibly changing time or whatever. In the final fight against the alien, Clara gets to take a cell phone video and then pose with it a la Vanna White while the Doctor threatens to take it viral if the alien doesn’t leave earth alone. It’s actually kind of disturbing just how quiet Clara gets in the back half of the episode. Even though she gives all the appearance of being present, she’s little more than a prop for the Doctor’s angst to reflect off of.

Maisie William’s Ashildr fares little better, to be honest, and never manages to become a truly fleshed out character though Williams does her best with the weak material she’s given to work with. Ashildr and the other vikings barely react to the loss of all their village’s warriors, which makes no sense considering that everyone supposedly loves this community so much that they’d rather get killed by aliens than leave. There’s also just not much substance to Ashildr herself. Though we’re told that she feels sort of like an outcast (which again belies her attachment to her village) and that she likes stories and makes puppets, we’re not shown any of it, just told it, and then only when the plot demands a character with a strong attachment to the town and a penchant for puppets and storytelling.

The all around lack of subtlety in this episode would be astounding if it wasn’t so characteristic of the show these days. The (frankly extremely belated) revelation of why the Doctor “chose” his current face would have been nicer if it hadn’t served as such a great reminder of the show’s better days. A perfectly passable and sense-making ending–with the Doctor reviving Ashildr and leaving the extra dose of space magic healing for her–was ruined with a long sequence of heavy telegraphing about what next week’s episode is going to be about. Worst of all was that lengthy spinning shot of Ashildr with the Doctor talking in voice over. That was just downright silly.

The thing about Moffat-era Doctor Who that was re-emphasized in this episode is that Steven Moffat just doesn’t know how to quit while he’s ahead. Over and over again, he fails to create mystery, using foreshadowing that is so heavy-handed that there’s no such thing as spoilers for his episodes anymore. He comes up with ideas that are interesting and works with themes that ought to be compelling, only to have his stories consistently devolve into masturbatory self-congratulation as he wastes three quarters of an episode telling-not-showing us all just how clever he is.

I’ll be watching and writing about next week’s episode because I like Maisie Williams and I hate to leave a thing half-finished, but I’m not sure how much longer I can keep going with this show. I’m already exhausted, and I’m not even halfway through the season. Week after week, I have the same complaints, and the biggest one is Steven Moffat, who is quickly running this show right into the ground. I might keep watching the trainwreck happening, but I don’t know if I have it in me to keep writing a thousand words about it each week.

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