The Last Ship 4x01 “In Media Res” and 4x02 “The Pillars of Hercules” start us off in a new direction

"When is it gonna stop Danny? We're the good guys, right?"

There’s always a particular charm in watching the good guys of any worthwhile drama constantly finding themselves on the back foot. If anything, it is the modus operandi of The Last Ship, as its namesake implies. I have always found it interesting how the show has constantly found ways to take what is ostensibly a recruitment tool for the U.S. Navy and wrap that around in a drama where forces find themselves in a fight for sheer survival. In some way, this show has always carried around its post-apocalyptic setting as strongly as the Michael Bay-funded naval action drama. 

It’s something of a hidden gem to see a television drama that has this superficial brouhaha but still manages to anchor itself in actual, interesting drama. Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of times where characters share quiet moments or make idle chatter that gives additional depth and attachment to those on the journey, but the main drive is usually what mission these soldiers and sailors find themselves on. 

“In Media Res” is an interesting choice of a title to begin what feels like a brand new course for the show. It’s starting to become something of a habit for the show, taking a cue from the previous season by leaving the audience with a semblance of a victory for the crew of the Nathan James, but thrusting us and them into a brave new, once-again post-apocalyptic world where one solution leads to another problem. The problem this time is that about a year and a half later, the deadly Red Flu that tried to wipe out humanity was stopped when everyone was immunized, but the virus has simply jumped and started devastating the world’s food supply instead. It’s made quiet clear at the very start of the new season: there’s only one cure to this, but the good guys don’t have it, but they’re trying to work on getting it back.

Meanwhile, the great hero of The Last Ship has exiled himself away to Greece after the events at the end of the previous season. There’s a particular strength to this show when it uses other perspectives to do world building, and though I do hope for Tom Chandler to find his way back to the bridge of his ship, it is always interesting to see how the world has changed. In Greece, seedy men control the food supplies in the region and what basically amounts to a warlord holds the people of the Aegean in his thrall by lavishing them with food for loyalty, meanwhile levying hefty taxes on those that actually do the work of harvesting what food they can get. There's also some interested detail where a concoction can stave off the hunger, but it's basically an addictive drug for the masses.

An interesting use of in media res in the actual episode titled, “In Media Res”, occurs in the third act, just after Tom and Alex abscond with the food Giorgio and his men had taken from them, along with the attack on Naval Station Rota. We see Tom and his friends celebrating, happy to have flipped the bird on their oppressors for a night, enjoying their spoils for the night; meanwhile the crew of the Nathan James has to fend of a deadly attack on the naval base. The act breaks and then, immediately after, we’re hit with the aftermath. The crew of the Nathan James learns the true nature of the attack and has to deal with the hurt and damage inflicted on them; meanwhile Tom realizes the consequences of his actions. Especially in the latter, there is no need for a long-winded scene with our villains capturing Alex and leaving him for dead on the boat for Tom to find; we simply find ourselves in the moment with Tom, knowing his actions have cost someone their life. It was an interesting choice but I felt as if the execution was lacking somewhat.

“The Pillars of Hercules” is a much more straightforward affair to follow up the premiere. Quite simply, the Nathan James is caught en route to their intended destination, knocked out and ambushed and having to fend for themselves as best they can in the Strait of Gibraltar. It’s an issue common enough through the run of the series but, like many of these episodes, the Nathan James story usually allows the characters to shine in their own ways in what is a generally standard affair as they do what they can to pluck themselves out of a bad situation. It does a good job of showing the resourcefulness of the crew that the show has accumulated over time and even for their recent additions, giving them some much needed fleshing out. Meylan, who I thought seemed reticent and generally a quiet figure in the previous season, now has much more to add to the proceedings and fits in well. Diaz – who has been in the background most of the time after his introduction – now has moved up in the crew and also has a budding romance with Nolan, opening up her and the helo operator Sunshine (of which I hope to see more of both of them).

On the other hand, despite some of my reservations about Tom Chandler’s exile adventures in Greece, he is making some headway by taking a trip with Giorgio’s gang to what seems to be some kind of fancy Mediterranean fighting ring, led by some mysterious individuals that have a hand in the Greek navy as well. I would not be surprised if this leads into the Nathan James’ search for the ancient seeds they need, but it will be interesting to see how this conspiracy pans out, especially given the enemy seems to be fairly competent and well equipped to keep the U.S.’s sole naval destroyer on their toes.

 

• Again, because of the time jump, interesting to see Burk and Miller sport beards. (Danny too.) Alas, it seems they will be at odds for a while.
• And interesting to see a Kenyan soldier and British intelligence agent come aboard the crew of the Nathan James. Always delighted to see a more multicultural crew fighting together.
• A shame that the older of the Burk brothers had to take such a severe injury in the attack, but it means that Kara is coming back on the ship. Always felt that she belonged more on the ship than off; though I did enjoy her time spent in the US administration last season regardless. She always seemed to be a much more interesting character to follow anyway.
• Not sure how I feel about the whole Tom Chandler playing dumb here. Sure, he “fights smart” as I am told but nothing in that fight choreography really told me anything besides who hit harder.

Revenge? There's an app for that! (A review of Watch_Dogs)

This review of Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs was originally written and posted on NeoGAF on the 20th of September, 2015. (Original thread URL)




STORY SPOILERS AHEAD!

I'm not sure if I could say I really enjoyed the 50 or so hours I spent playing Watch_Dogs. But I'll try to describe the feeling of playing it through: Watch_Dogs is a video game that does an adequate job of being a video game. But that's all it excels at. The problem is that it never feels like the best version of what an open world game about a playable character that has nearly complete access to a city-wide surveillance apparatus is. In fact, I might go as far as to say the game is very incongruous with itself, and at the worst, it actively works against itself.

From Year Five back to Year One – In anticipation of Arrow Season 5

There’s a lot to unpack in a show that has gone on for nearly a hundred episodes, especially when that show is Arrow. If you follow the show off the air with even half intensity, there are particular themes and motifs that the audience will constantly harp on. In some ways, Arrow is a show that pioneered and succeed in its particular subgenre but now seems to have become a shadow of its former self. In other respects, Arrow, and other shows that it shares a universe with (chiefly among those, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl, along with Gotham in a different but similar orbit) are still part of a similar TV tradition that still continues today in the network TV space.

The First Of Many - The Big Five, Part 1

The First Of Many is going to be an ongoing series of posts - the quick and dirty kind - where I offer up my (usually somewhat measured) opinions of the new shows premiering  this season. There was a lot in the first set of premieres for the major US networks in the early part of September. Luckily it dies down a bit until October. I'm always excited by pilot season for many reasons. Without further ado:

• Son of Zorn – This was an early premiere for the show, which might work against it if the half-cartoon/half-live action aspect doesn’t, especially since it will be about two weeks before it debuts in its regular timeslot. The Lord/Miller backing might help it if it develops the same way The Last Man on Earth did and step into more of a character show. Personally, seeing Cheryl Hines on TV again is great and I feel like she fits into her role the strongest of the cast.

• The Good Place – Not by any stretch imaginative as I can also imagine everyone having an interesting notion of the afterlife, but regardless it is populated in a very vivid and colourful way. The notions of perfection that “the good place” offers/embodies coming to clash with Eleanor’s arrival and mistaken identity provides for interesting comedy but also of pathos and nuance. I am interested to see where the series continues, as it becomes clear in the opening episodes that not everything is as happy-go-lucky as the setting appears to be.

• Kevin Can Wait – It’s a Kevin James vehicle and although I’ve never been a fan of his output, there’s no real denying he has an audience that is willing to see him play approximately the same role as he did before. There is a good energy to the premiere that will probably continue through.

• Bull – There was a larger rant but I find it incredibly baffling this show was made at all or even allowed to air. A show about a trial consultant doesn’t seem much like a show with a protagonist you could get behind, but the show doesn’t do much to engender any sympathy for the protagonists either. The show, then again, doesn’t do much to put their central law case-of-the-week in any real logical terms or providing any real stakes to anchor either the audience or the characters to.

• This is Us – This is one of those pilots that makes me stand up and want to applaud. It is one of those rare pilots I would put into the same as something like Red Band Society’s that pulled on a lot of heartstrings but were completely earned by the end of its runtime. Coming out of it though, I’m hoping the show evokes a feeling of something like Parenthood as it moves forward.

• Lethal Weapon – Having never watched the movies, I have no reference point for this adaptation to the small screen. But knowing the genre – the buddy cop dramedy – it is easy to place it and know what beats it will try to hit. The genre did not do as well last season (entries like Rush Hour which I liked to some degree) so here’s hoping there’s more success this time around. I very much enjoyed all that the pilot had to offer, but I’m also wary about how regular production will maybe affect the ambitions of the show.

• Speechless – This is a single-camera comedy that I now recall (when upfronts were shown) that the trailer had a lot of heart, and that opinion still stands. It’s hard to say even after watching the premiere exactly how the show will proceed. I assume it will just do the same thing a typical comedy of it’s ilk will do, and try to do the best to squeeze out interesting performances for it’s cast.

• Designated Survivor – An interesting premise surrounded by a strong cast is the first thing that comes to mind when this show is mentioned. There was a very strong energy in the premiere, and I’m hoping it can continue riding that energy moving away from the pilot. The political thriller angle is always interesting even when it is sandwiched inbetween some good drama (which for starters allows Sutherland more range than his previous role as Jack Bauer) and intrigue. The only thing that I fear is any subplots following the children in the show, as I cannot seem to see where they want to proceed with that.

• Notorious – There is a lot of frantic energy contained in the pilot as it tries to chew through all the plot it has to offer. Frankly, I was surprised where I was in the hour when I stopped myself to wonder how much I just took in. The pilot mostly builds on a lot of intrigue and character dynamics that just need build on more nuance and specificity further down the line, beyond the tease of a central character drama bomb at the end. Not sure if the show needed to establish a proper C-plot in the pilot, however, as it felt almost completely unneeded.

• Pitch – Even as someone who doesn’t follow baseball, I thought this was a strong outing for a show that wants to talk about bigger things than simply baseball. I have no real idea how the show wants to proceed in telling its stories but I am open to it. I am a bit wary about the characters though, as they seemed to not offer much beyond the main character having any nuance, instead leaving the rest of the cast to mostly act as well-worn and well-travelled stereotypes with not much else to offer.

• MacGyver – Although it started off really flashy, I’m not entirely sure what the show has to really offer. I had never watched any of the old MacGyver, so any opinions are completely fresh on the matter. I did not find the premise too interesting having seen similar takes on the matter (Burn Notice comes to mind) and any teases towards its future don’t really offer much to really be interesting. This was a pseudo-origin story and the news about the pilot’s storied problems and having to be reshot will have me give it another chance.

• The Exorcist – I am not a horror fan so I will leave it to someone else to laugh at my weak will when it comes to these things. But it did set up an interesting, foreboding mood to the whole series. The preview for the season provides an interesting setup since the show has to move beyond the mostly single setting that the movie was isolated to. Definitely interested to see how the show progresses.

I Can See Clearly Now – In anticipation of Blindspot Season 2

I can’t readily admit that much of the first season of NBC’s Blindspot ever really wowed me too often, but what I did discover was a show that happened to align with much of my tastes and formats that I’ve been scouring TV for, especially in the network space. I guess I should also be glad it was doing well in the ratings enough for early episode orders and a renewal last year.

In the same vein, I could never say Blindspot was anywhere close to my favourite shows in all of the 2015-16 TV season, but it has proven to be an interesting case study in the kind of television I enjoy, and hope to one day enjoy creating – a strong action-adventure series anchored by a central underlying mystery that’s driven by interesting characters (or at least dynamics), and has a somewhat interesting set of themes, theses or questions it wants to address; all in the meanwhile it takes advantage of the episodic format to tell its stories that tie back to its central mystery. Blindspot manages to hit most of those notes, as well as being generally entertaining (on the action-thriller level). It also has a few misses – in my opinion – but that gives it some room to improve, hopefully, as it heads into season two.

Killjoys 2x02 – “Wild, Wild Westerley” mostly moves a lot of pieces into place

There is a lot of setup in this episode that has to be walked through, causing this episode to feel a bit overstuffed, but also slightly unfulfilling by the end of it. A lot of material simply flies past during the course of the episode and there isn’t a lot of substance behind whatever movements the show wishes to make by the end of the hour. 

A lot of this season likely hinges on the team chasing around whatever Khylen and Black Root left behind on Arkyn, although we’re told that whatever was there is long gone and destroyed. The fate of Old Town is revealed, but leaves a lot in the air as it pits Pawter and Jelko (Jelqo? I can never understand how names are spelled in Killjoys) at odds which does plays to Killjoys’ strengths but mostly leaves the aftermath of the rebellion in the background, leaving it to probably be explored later, even as the team's mission brings them deeper into it by interacting with certain figures of the uprising.

Old Town, I would argue, is probably one of the series’ stronger places so it’s a bit of a shame to leave it relatively untouched. There’s not much time for exploration in this episode as the trio jump back and forth with leads and chasing a canister of deadly gas. The Company’s stance on the scarbacks sounds interesting when spoken but we only ever really follow Alvis as he helps the trio to their next lead more than anything. The episode seemed to imply a closer relationship between Alvis and Tarren Tighmon than I expected, but ultimately it seemed less that and more a man (Tighmon) who had become disillusioned by meeting his hero (Alvis).

Despite that I did not feel like there was enough to justify Alvis’ lapse in judgment leading to him releasing the gas in a fit of rage. In fact most of the time following the attack, it never really shows the collateral damage the Company was willing to commit to in order to kill Tighmon (besides killing him and no one else really dying on-screen) and Alvis looking distraught that he witnessed it (but it was really Dutch that was really the one who led the Company to Tighmon). It’s a weird step back from the previous week where a character like Clara existed with her history and emotional depth mostly as exposition but intersected well with the show’s strengths and worked for me. But it’s probably because that the politics of the Old Town storyline are a much larger and readily identifiable and visible part of the show that has been explored in season one, I expected more substance to it. Though again, it’s likely there will be more whenever the hunt for Khylen/Black Root/Level Sixes dies down.

But of course that doesn’t seem likely given the stinger at the end of the episode, because the season seems to also imply that many of the upcoming stories will be from Turin’s unsanctioned bag of warrants that will take the trio around the Quad as both parties search for the truth. As long as part of that search takes them back to Westerley once in a while.

 

Miscellaneous observations:

• Pree is still as fun as ever, which is mostly why I’m hoping the show returns to Old Town more often than not.
• “On what planet were you a warlord?”
• Poor Gared, getting the crap kicked out of him and nearly each of his limbs broken and stabbed. Actually nevermind, it’s pretty funny.
• Not much to add about Pawter. Sad to see Hills go though, but I think the introduction of a new company officer made his fate inevitable. Pawter basically acting as a liaison (or courtier in some way) in Spring Hill could be interesting if the power dynamics and politics of the upper class come into play in an interesting way (or intersect with whatever Dutch, John and D’avin are chasing after).

Killjoys 2x01 – “Dutch and the Real Girl” returns in a way that’s loud and clear, for the most part

I’m always particularly wary when a genre show returns for another season, mostly because I always wonder if this will be the last one and the creators don’t see it coming, but my biggest fear – when it comes to genre especially – is how escalation is going to work. Sci-fi and fantasy shows are generally guilty of this trend where each season they have to plant their flag in the ground and declare that they are going to go bigger, expand the world (universe) more, and just make everything more deadly to our heroes, because we can. And in a way, it makes sense, because the creators have grown more confident with their craft, but as a viewer and also a writer, it’s something that makes me wary. Do the stakes truly need to be upped so high every time? Because I feel like I have seen this happen and fail more often than it working out in favour. And that’s a shame if it befalls a show like Killjoys.

Maybe some of those fears are there, for me at least. But the season opens strongly in something of a dream sequence. John, D’avin, and Dutch are all back together, background exploding behind them for no good reason and they’re ready to kick some ass again, ending in a kiss that gives off sparks, which I found oddly amusing. The imagery is great though, but it quickly boots us back to the real present, with D’avin being experimented on to become a level six killjoy (but failing), and Dutch and John trying to find a way onto Arkyn.

The real meat and potatoes of the episode leads to the introduction of Clara (and Alice!), a modded-out woman that carries the one thing on her Dutch and John (and Pree) need to get onto Arkyn. It is Clara though who proves to be the most interesting aspect of the episode, as she embodies much of the series’ strengths and themes of family, trust, and purpose as strongly as the main trio do. It’s likely she’ll reappear again, hopefully more often than not as she embarks on her own journey that hopefully crosses paths with the main characters.

On the other hand, though D’avin’s journey is interesting in of itself, the fact that it’s tied to Khlyen’s and that there is an ever brooding, more insidious, looming threat that makes even the straight-faced Khylen shake feels a bit more cliché. Hopefully there is more to it than that but it’s probably safe to assume it’s just greater unknown organization that hides on the dark side of the moon or outside in dark space whose plans are probably going to be inscrutable to the viewer for a while. The only relief is that Fancy is back, albeit as an antagonist, but at least a familiar one. Hopefully they use him for more than end of episode teasers where he does something vaguely evil to drive the point home that his bosses are evil.

At this point I’m probably leaning more towards how the show wants to continue or resolve the Old Town storyline, as it is a bit more personal to the characters. One of the strengths of the show is that cohesion of character tied to world building. It’s still present when D’avin realizes he’s seen Dutch in his dream-vision/old memory/green goop hallucination, but there’s not much behind it yet as much as the rest of the show’s other storylines. But I’m willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt. It is only the premiere and the show still knows how to have fun, after all. Sometimes that’s all you need to do.

Miscellaneous observations:

• Pree is a fantastic addition to the team who fits in on their first mission, no questions asked. He was a former criminal, after all. He knows his way around.
• Lucy is as sassy as ever, which is also great.
• I have the feeling the show is maybe inching towards putting John and Clara together, and I guess I like this idea a lot. Lucy probably does too.
• I found it odd that amidst the sadness of the Old Town reveal to D’avin, Dutch seemed to really only care about Pawter and Aldis. I’m sure she means well but there are clearly all the other citizens that could use your help!