Category Archives: Television

It is Getting Tougher to Watch Silo

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While the series continues to give us good actors, kudos to Rebecca Ferguson for her non-glamorous appearance not something all model quality actors are willing to do, and decent production the continuing failures of world building are making it hard for me to suspend my disbelief in the fictional setting.

This week we learn that things that can’t be recycled or repaired are sent to the incinerators. Really? You have a close ecology, effectively a generation spaceship and you are throwing material over the side? Material that can never ever be replaced.

And where is all this plastic coming from? We see constant used of plastics, and we know it’s been more than 140 years because that was when the ‘rebellion’ occurred. I want to see the plastic oxygen mask that remained clear, perfect, and usable for 140 years.

Eggs? Really, eggs? I am not a vegan or a vegetarian, but I do know that consuming animal products is less efficient that eating the vegetable material directly. In a close ecology with very limited space, it makes no sense whatsoever to spend energy, lights, water pump, cultivation, to grow calories that you then feed to something else and consume the reduced calories from the animal. In the Silo everyone would be vegan or vegetarian.

We also had a reference to ‘burial’ in this episode. Just as with anything else the elements in human bodies are elements you can’t get back if you throw them away. In the Silo everything you eat and breathe would have been at one time a person. You can’t escape the fact that in a closed ecology everything gets recycled or the ecology collapses.

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Quick Thoughts on Silo

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Premiering on May 5th, 2023, Silo is a limited series adapted from novels by Hugh Howey
concerning a community of 10,000 people surviving a devastated ecology by living underground in a massive silo.

Rebecca Ferguson plays Juliette an engineer from the structures lower levels suddenly pulled into a conspiracy that entangles the silo’s highest citizens, the sheriff, the mayor, and the judge.

Only three episodes have streamed, and it would be unfair and unjust to judge the series’ quality without having seen the final turns and revelations, but I do have a few thoughts.

First off, the production values are first rate. The environment and the setting feel real. There is a palatable sense that this place, with its undetermined age, has seen countless generations of survivors.

Second, the cast is fantastic. Led by Ferguson, who is also a producer for the show, everyone is real and complicated. The actors and their characters are engaging enough to endear attachment from the viewer helping to audience to flow past some of the less that ideal world building.

The less-than-ideal world building comes down to a few key issues.

For dramatic reasons in the 3rd episode Machines Juliette leads a dangerous but unavoidable repair procedure to correct the colony’s single massive generator before it fails and dooms everyone. The idea that the colony was constructed with a single generator, upon which everyone’s survival depended, without even the ability to shut it down for regular maintenance is absurd and a sin against rational engineering. (Not to mention the lack of a relief valve for the geothermal steam that powers the generator.)

Much is made of the vast distance from the top of the silo to its lowest inhabited level with such trips effectively taking an entire day even for the silo’s political leadership. Apparently, the structure has no elevators, which again is absurd considering the large amount of material that would be required to move between levels to sustain a large population.

A close ecology system such as the silo where no new material comes in from the outside would be very fixated on recycling and not wasting a single gram of material. Yet, the colony maintains a tradition that anyone who proclaims that they ‘want to go out,’ is allowed to go outside of the silo to their certain death taking with them kilos of fabric, plastic, and irreplaceable mass. Madness.

All that said I am still intrigues by the series and have some hope it might stick the landing. With conspiracy stories the revelation of the conspiracy is a major element that either contributes to success of failure and only when we reach that final turn can a valid judgement be rendered.

Silo streams on Apple TV+.

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Streaming Review: The Investigation

 

August 10th, 2017, Swedish journalist Kim Wall boarded a privately built submarine built by a Danish man for an interview and cruise in the harbor. She never returned and the next day the submarine had sunk, and its designer rescued from the water. What unfolded next became an international case and the subject of the limited series The Investigation.

Focusing nearly entirely on the Danish Police investigating Wall’s disappearance The Investigation takes the unusual approach of never having the subjects of that investigation,
either Wall or the suspect Peter Madsen appear in the series. Aside from Wall’s parents the focus is fixed squarely on Jens Jansen the lead detective and his team as they attempt to discover the truth behind Madsen’s continually changing story.

The Investigation does an excellent job of portraying the meticulous work of investigating a crime and slowly building a case element by elements when critical pieces are missing from the puzzle. While Jensen and his home life are the elements that are intended to give the limited series a ‘character arc’ I found them far less compelling than the actual work of solving the case, the multi-national team assemble to do it, and the extraordinary lengths required.

Like The Wire this series is not about cops and robbers in gun battles but rather on the actual work, day to day, and the frustrations of good police work.

The Investigation is streaming on HBOMax.

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Impressions The Mandalorian Season 3

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I have to confess that so far Season 3 of The Mandalorian a space fantasy series set a few years after the downfall of the Empire in Star Wars has been less compelling than the preceding two.

In season one we had a clear narrative line, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) accepts a bounty to collect an asset and deliver it to remnants of Imperial Forces. The asset, an immature member of the same species of Yoda, wins his affections and the plot is about keeping the child safe.

Season two Din Djarin is tasked with returning the child to a Jedi who can complete its training while dealing with the powerful enemies still intent on collecting the child for their own schemes.

Both of these plots are clear and established early in each season with Din eventually sacrificing his commitment to his warrior religion to rescue the child.

The third season, with Din Djarin and the Child reunited, has so far displayed no narrative cohesion. Feeling much more like an adventure role playing game, the season has wandered from battle to battle, event to event, with very little plot connecting the various elements. Each week stuff happens but without revealing a goal that the characters are pursuing. The season seems to be comprised of side quests while forgetting to give a central one for the side ones to branch off from.

The show is still quite well produced and directed but lack cohesion to give it narrative gravitas making it by far the weakest season so far.

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That Potential Harry Potter Series

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Deadline and other sources are reporting that Warner Brothers, a studio once known for its anti-fascist stances, is looking to move forward for a re-booting of the valuable Harry Potter IP as a series for its streaming service HBOMax. It is reported that WB CEO Zaslav has met with JKR in hopes of bringing this project to life and that JKR may even be producer on the series. JKR, in addition to the controversies surrounding her small-minded stance on trans issues, is notorious for demanding control over the property and would likely wield great influence over the series’ production.

It’s understandable that people became fans of the franchise either through the books or the films before JKR’s opinion became public poisoning, quite understandably, many against the author. With the proposed series all this is known ahead of time on this go around and raises ethical and moral concerns about financially supporting JKR as she continues with what many people feel are bigoted opinions.

I fully support those who protest and drag into the light the statements and attitudes of JKR, but I also think it would be wise and just to be prudent in who is targeted if this series continues to move forward.

For example, the young actors cast in the series I would not want to see hounded or harassed on social media. ‘We are not so smart when we are young,’ as one fictional character observed and it is already a very hard road to travel as a child actor there is little, very little, to be gained targeting them.

The writers of the ‘writers room’ are likely to be in the first stages of their careers, struggling with student debt, the high cost of living in LA, and the difficult task of landing any paying gig in Hollywood, refusing an assignment may not have been a viable option for them.

However, the show runner, as of yet unnamed, the person with creative control only checked by the studio and the dictatorial JKR is another matter. That person is likely to be an experience veteran of the business with the financial and career resources to walk away from the series. If they choose to get into bed with JKR, fully aware of the controversies she brings along, then they have made their decision and shouldn’t be surprised when it turns out to be far from popular.

I have read the books and seen the film adaptation and found them enjoyable but flawed. Others have done a fine job pointing out the antisemitic tropes and the ignorant racism in the text so I will not elaborate on that here just beware it is there. I have no need to purchase anything new from the franchise and I am quite happy leaving it behind, the proposed series holds no interest for me and hopefully not for you either.

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Those Organians Doors

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Errand of Mercy is the 26th episode of season one of the original series Star Trek, notable for the debut of the Klingon Empire and god-like Organians that prevented a disastrous galactic war.

In the episode Spock and Kirk end up trapped on the seemingly technologically stunted Organia, a critical star system on the Klingon Empire’s expected invasion route. The Klingons arrive and what follows is a series of captures, escape, and acts of sabotage as Kirk and Spock

CBS Home Video

do their duty while the Klingons as brutal occupiers seeming slaughter Organians by scores. At every turn the Organians are pacifistic and welcoming, seemingly untroubled but disgusted by the overt acts of violence. Everything resolves when the Organians, revealing themselves to be beings of ‘pure energy’ and unlimited powers, stop the war and force a peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

There is a subtly to this episode that I have admired for some time, and I can’t recall someone drawing attention to it.

Kirk and, along presumably the Klingon characters, have for all their lives known doors that operated automatically at their approach. It is a classic bit of blooper footage watching the actors of Star Trek slam into the set door when a stagehand missed the cue and they remained closed. The faux setting created by the Organians was one of a society which technologically had not yet advance beyond animal power with massive wooden doors bound with iron like some absurd D&D setting. It is revealed that the god-like aliens crafted all this to make it easier for the humans, Vulcans, and Klingons to interact with the Organians, presumably drawing inspiration from their own biases and preconceptions. Including the bias that doors open themselves.

Throughout the episode every ‘primitive’ wooden door swing open or closed without anyone touching it. Kirk, Spock, Kor, and everyone else simply walks towards the doors and they sweep aside for the characters without a single character every commenting or noting the anachronism.

Of course, for the production of the episode there are stagehands watching intently and pulling on ropes operating the set. Everyone is keenly aware of what is happening in these scenes but the characters, in a beautiful and subtle obliviousness, fail to notice because it is how door always work. The strange working of Organian doors is never brought directly to the viewer’s attention. Not cut away shot focusing on the effect is revealed. The magical doors are simply part of the environment left to be noticed if one is not fully engaged with the story as it unfolds.

When you do notice it, and think about it, its beauty is apparent. A tiny little story element without any direct effect on the plot but establishing the ‘reality’ of the characters and their preconceptions of their world.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempts to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Streaming Review: Bad Sisters

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Adapted from a Flemish television program Clan, Bad Sisters is an Irish comedic drama centered on the five Garvey Sisters, and their recently deceased under questionable circumstances brother-in-law, John Paul, JP, who had been a controlling, emotionally abusive, and belittling

Apple Studios

husband. The story follows twin linear timelines, one after JP’s sudden death with a private insurance firm suspicious of the circumstances, and the other a few months prior as the other four sisters plot his murder.

JP, played with excellence by Danish actor Claes Bang, manages in every succeeding scene to justify the audience’s sympathy with the Garvey sisters and their desire to murder the man. Even in Episode Eight when, after witnessing the emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, and I found some measure of pity for hi, the character managed to destroy that ember of good will with his own selfish and evil actions.

Each of the sisters is a well-drawn and performed character in their own right with their own motivation for their hatred of JP.

The series maintains a careful balance between drama, with JP’s cold, hurtful nature a dagger to anyone with a heart, and the comedy of errors as the sisters, not one with any sort of criminal experience, fumble repeated attempts to rid the world of JP’s baneful existence.

Complicating the situation are the half-brothers Thomas and Matt, inheritors of the small insurance firm responsible for JP’s policy, facing criminal charges and bankruptcy due to their deceased father’s fraud and mismanagement. Their only salvation would be finding the truth to avoid paying on the claim.

Bad Sister is a native Irish production and filled with familiar Irish actors. The program’s cinematography is lush, fully capturing the Emerald Isle’s beauty while never losing focus on the characters and their dilemmas. At the heart of the story is family and the bonds of blood that can drive people to extremes to defend and protect their siblings.

Currently streaming in Apple TV+, Bad Sisters, is enjoyable excursion and a welcome diversion.

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Bits and Bobs

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So here are some quick thoughts on various subjects some with fuller elaboration to come.

Bad Sisters: an Apple TV+ comedy/drama series about the five Garvey sisters and how four of them plot to murder the brother-in-law who is crushing the life out of the fifth. We have one episode to go to finish the first season and I adore it. I marvel at how every scene in which the brother-in-law appears makes me more and more appreciate the sister’s motivation. I suspect that they will stick the landing, but I have been burned by endings before. (Looking at you Game of Thrones and The Rig.)

The Thaw: Polish police procedural following a female detective, recently widowed after the suspected murder of her husband, thrown into a case with political implications and a missing newborn. We are one episode in on this one, but the writing and production values are quite good. Streaming on HBOMax.

The Mandalorian: Season three is airing on Disney+ and while I thoroughly enjoyed the first two seasons this one feels a bit off. It is not bad, but the narrative seems to wander about, and it lacks story momentum. Pedro Pascal continues to be quite good, and the puppeteering is outstanding but after the outstanding drama that was Andor the bar has been raised and the writers of this show will need to step up.

I have run my first role playing game via Zoom and aside from a sore throat that manifested during the game, things went quite well. In some ways this is superior because with my desktop computer and two monitors it is far easier for me to use all the spreadsheets that I have created to manage FGU’s quite elaborate game system.

Our condominium remains in a state of partial disassembly following the water damage from February, and we are still without a functional kitchen or able to entertain friends.

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My Strange Relationship with The Last of Us

 

A new prestige television series from the creator of the fantastic Chernobyl? You would think that I would be right there every Sunday evening, devouring the newest episodes.

The truth is that zombies of all stripes have worn rather thin for me, particularly the setting of the zombie apocalypse. Yes, I know that these are not technically zombies, they are not magically reanimated corpses but aggressive, disease-infected individuals. The cast looks

HBO

fantastic and there’s no doubt that the series is winning praise from both within and without of the genre communities. And yet I really am not interested in watching it. I never played the game. Games with prolonged story arcs are less appealing to me due to their intense commitment in time. I play first person shooters, never completing their ‘campaigns’ but simply enjoying the on-line matches against hyper-competent players who nearly always leave me beaten and broken.

So, it sounds like I have no relationship with TLOU, but that’s not accurate either.

Craig Mazin, the principal writer and showrunner, co-hosts a fantastic podcast on screenwriting called Scriptnotes. For Chernobyl he launched a companion podcast for the limited series to help illuminate the history and where the show explored fiction. The podcast was a success and helped promote the series and naturally HBO wanted another for The Last of Us.

So, without watching a single episode of the series, or having played the game one second, I am a devoted listener to the series’ companion podcast.

The podcast features Mazin, Druckman ho was the creative force behind the game and co-runs the series with Mazin, and the voice actor who first gave life to one the game’s and show’s principal characters, Joel. Episodes by episode they break down what happens, why they made the creative decisions that they did in staying true to the game or driving far afield from it, and expounding on, in their view, what makes foe compelling stories.

While I may not be interested in fungal zombies overrunning the world, I am thoroughly and utterly fascinated by the process by which that premise becomes so compelling to so many and the secrets of the story telling craft these men so clearly understand.

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The Rig: Concluding Review

 

Two months ago I posted a review of the streaming series The Rig about ancient threats from Amazon Studiosthe ocean’s floor endangering the crew of a North Sea Oil Rig. At the time I called the first couple of episodes an intriguing start.

Sadly, I can’t say that the season ended well.

It did not end terribly either.

It sort of petered out, revealing some things, establishing its deeper mythos and lore, but clearly more focused on a second, or possibly even more, season that crafting a tale well told.

I do not insist that every season of a multi-part project be presented as a complete story. Game of Thrones first season certainly ended with loads of unresolved plotlines, but it also had a finality to it that gave it a sense of ending. The Stark’s time in King’s Landing had ended, that chapter was done, and the tragedy had befallen the family.

The Rig, while superficially, presenting the same sort of season close had none of that emotional weight. The oil rig is abandoned, some characters survived, some did not, but none of it felt like a close. It reeked of ‘cliff hanger,’ something I truly despise.

Endings are critical. I personally cannot start writing a short story or novel without knowing the ending. It is the culmination of all those hours of reading and watching. It is the treasure that is the artist’s gift to the reader and audience. It is the bow that completes the wrapping.

An ending doesn’t have to be ‘happy.’ Michael’s at the conclusion of The Godfather is far from happy. He has become everything he said he was not, but that transformation is the point and that’s what we see fully realized in the ending.

The Rig gave me nothing but the dangling thread that more was to come but without the character arc, without the human transformation, more to come is far from enticing.

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