Star Trek Picard S2

Star Trek: Picard - Season 2

By Scott Collura

Be careful what you wish for. What other lesson can we take away from this second (and also penultimate) season of Star Trek: Picard, which – let’s just say it up front here – might just be the worst season of Star Trek ever produced. Next Gen Year 1, take the party outside.

Look, when Patrick Stewart was announced to be returning to his iconic role of Jean-Luc Picard a few years back, it was more than any Trekkie could’ve hoped for. Captain Picard would finally get the ending he deserved! But now we’re two seasons into that ending, and it sure doesn’t feel like Jean-Luc, or any of us, have deserved this.

Season 1 of Picard was a mixed bag to be sure, as the series (and Stewart himself) sought to put a parsec’s distance between the title character and his Next Generation days. No uniforms, no starships, no Enterprise crew – these were more or less the mandates that enabled Stewart to return to space. Sure, there was some good stuff here and there, but the result was often a dour, dark, and just kind of confused affair.

And so Season 2 seemed to be attempting a course correction right out of the gate, with the opening scene of Episode 1 set on a starship in the midst of a battle. The first season’s cast – the Picard Squad – were mostly reconfigured into more likable, familiarly Star Trek-ian versions of themselves, even while Jean-Luc himself seemed to have a new lease on life. He’d accepted a role back at Starfleet Academy as Chancellor and was even circling a potential romance with Orla Brady’s Laris, a fan-favorite character from the prior season.

Oh, and TNG staples Q (John De Lancie) and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) were back in recurring roles. But again, and Q would know this better than anyone, be careful what you wish for…

After that fun Season 2 premiere, things began to take a turn for the tropey, if still enjoyable. Q’s meddling sends the Picard Squad to a dark, alternate universe? Check. The crew slingshots around the sun to travel back in time in an attempt to fix the timeline? Got it. Fish out of water hijinks ensue? Mmhmm. The Borg Queen is back… again? Yeah, that too. Uh, punk rocker with a boombox on the bus…? Checkkkkkk.

It’s as if the production, in reaction to Season 1’s distancing from the Treks that have come before, slingshotted too far around the storytelling sun to accommodate all the things we’ve loved about the franchise in the past. Unfortunately, as it unfolded, Picard Season 2 began to feel like nothing but a greatest hits album, and not just that, but one of those albums where it’s all covers of your favorite songs.

It seemed clear from the start that the writers wanted to undo a lot of what they were stuck with after the prior season. Core characters like Isa Briones’ Soji and Evan Evagora’s Elnor were effectively written out of the proceedings (though Briones would get yet another new character to play eventually, her fifth at this point). Brent Spiner’s fairly unremarkable Dr. Altan Soong was replaced with yet another Soong, this time the kind of screechy, hysterical, and sloppy Adam Soong (played by Spiner again). And even the budding relationship between Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Seven (Jeri Ryan) that was hinted at in the Season 1 finale is in the post break-up stage when we rejoin them here.

That said, it was nice to see the gang again as the new season began, with characters like Santiago Cabrera’s Captain Rios and Alison Pill’s Agnes Jurati coming across as more likable versions of their Season 1 selves. But as the characters landed in the past, and it became clear that they were not heading back to the future, as it were, anytime soon (in an apparently budget-saving move), a sense of running in place overtook things. This included some characters heading out on multi-episode missions that, in the end, accomplished nothing. The heist-style infiltration of the big NASA ball comes to mind, where there’s a whole rigamarole about sneaking into this event. But ultimately the mission seemed to accomplish very little (and certainly didn’t require the whole Squad). But hey, at least everyone got to wear tuxes and fancy dresses.

As for Picard himself, I take no pleasure in saying that at times this season, Stewart seemed frail and perhaps over-taxed. Who knows what’s really going on behind the scenes, but the man is 81 years old. When we hit mid-season and got two episodes in a row where Picard was unconscious for most of one hour and then spent much of the next sitting in a chair, one had to wonder whether or not the legendary actor just needed a break.

Picard’s arc this season certainly had promise, and it works to a degree as the show digs into his childhood and the mental health struggles of his mother. Are these difficult memories, locked away so tightly that even he doesn’t fully remember them, the reason why Picard grew into the guarded, emotionally distant man that he was often portrayed as? The show seeks to tie his budding romance with Laris, and apparent inability to commit to that relationship, to the mysterious past that is slowly revealed over the course of Season 2’s 10 episodes. But it hits a wall in part because Laris herself is given such a short shrift, introduced in the premiere as she is and then basically shoved aside until the final moments of the finale.

Instead, Brady spends most of her expanded role this season as Tallinn, a Romulan “supervisor” charged with guarding Renée Picard, a family member of Jean-Luc’s from the 21st century. In a very TV-ish “identical twin from Texas” scenario, Tallinn inexplicably looks exactly like Laris, and is also a callback to the Gary Seven character from the Original Series episode “Assignment: Earth” (which itself is basically recreated in the Picard Season 2 finale). It’s a lot, and as the season wore on it increasingly seemed like the disparate story threads just couldn’t be tied together in any kind of satisfying way in the end.

As far as Guinan and Q go, the younger Guinan of the past, played by Ito Aghayere, brought a spark to the season whenever she’d show up, but she also never really felt like Guinan. And De Lancie’s Q is just adrift throughout with no clear direction, alternately devilish and funny, and sometimes, I dunno, faux scary? It is Q’s overarching story, which is supposed to be the entire reason why the events of this season take place, that seems to make the least sense. And hence, the season itself ends with a big shoulder shrug. And yeah, we’re talking Next Gen Season 3, late '80s shoulder pads.

In the end, it’s as if the stage has been cleared for the promised reunion of the Next Generation cast in the third and final season. How far things have come from Season 1 in that regard, eh? Rios stays in the past to be with his new love and her son. Jurati is now a Borg Queen who has lived for centuries, but also a nice Borg Queen. Briones’ latest character just leaves for the byways and highways of the galaxy with… Wesley Crusher, in a wasted and puzzling cameo. Presumably Elnor will be shipped out on the Excelsior in Season 3 to make way for Riker, Worf, Troi, and the rest. None of these character arcs feel particularly earned, alas, and more just an “ends justifying the means” situation.

So what was this all for? What did this extended trip to the year 2024 really give us in the Picard lexicon? Has it really been worth it to bring back Stewart for this? I truly hope Season 3 is amazing and we get one last Trek from Stewart and the TNG gang that makes this all a distant memory. But as this season has proven, you can’t just snap your fingers like Q and make good TV…

Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:I got nothing.

Verdict

Season 2 started off in a good place, looking to amend some of the missteps of the show’s freshman year. But in attempting to embrace and celebrate the things that fans love about Star Trek, the show fell into the trap of regurgitating old concepts. Picard’s central arc focused on him unlocking the dark memories of his childhood and how those mysterious events of his past helped make him the emotionally guarded man he is today, and while this is an interesting development in the character’s story, it never quite gels. Meanwhile, the majority of the Picard Squad were seemingly doomed to run in place throughout the season, biding their time until they were written off the show entirely.

Dead To Me S1

from Thrillest: https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/dead-to-me-season-1-recap

The 'Dead to Me' Twists to Remember Before Watching the Even Twistier Season 2

A quick refresher about what went down in the Netflix show's first season.
By Sadie Bell

There's a scene in Season 2 of Netflix's dark comedy Dead to Me where Jen and Judy, the messed-up protagonists played, respectively, by Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, are eating pie at a diner just hours after burying a body. "We are not in Snow White," says Jen. "This is fucking Scarface." When Judy says she's never seen that Al Pacino movie, Jen quips that she hasn't either and that "no girls have," which, although not true, sums up how these two middle-aged Laguna Beach women are at a complete loss with how to deal with the blood on their hands.

The critcally acclaimed series, created by Liz Feldman and executive-produced in part by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, returns with even more twists. While Season 1 focused on boho drifter Judy's attempts to atone for being involved in the hit and run that killed Jen's high-strung luxury realtor husband, Ted — which she did to an overbearing extent by lying to, befriending, and moving in with Jen to the point of it all blowing up in her face — Season 2 finds Jen struggling to make a similar confession to Judy about having killed her ex-fiancé, Steve (James Marsden). Now that the total amateurs who've both committed felonies have to cover up their crimes, the comedic crime thriller veers into outlandish territory by ratcheting up the scandalous revelations.

The result is that Season 2 is even easier to guzzle than the glasses of win Jen's perpetually downing. But with so many plot points in motion, there's also a lot to remember from Season 1 that will help you as you watch the new episodes. 

How did Jen's husband Ted die?

Season 1 hinged on the hit and run that killed Jen's (actually kind of terrible, cheating) husband Ted, and left her a lonely, angry widow. The show is of course about how Jen's new BFF Judy was involved in the incident — but the details were pretty murky and only revealed near the end of the Season 1 finale. Judy was at the wheel, but as soon as the accident happened, she felt compelled to pull over and get help. But she wasn't alone in the car; Steve was riding shotgun, and yelled at her to drive away, and then afterward counseled her to act like nothing had happened. Given that Judy is at times too conscientious and that Steve is connected to money-laundering and the Greek mafia, it checks out that Steve would ultimately be most to blame for trying to cover up the incident.

Why did Jen kill Steve?

In the Season 1 finale, Steve came over to Jen's unannounced, looking for Judy in a rage after finding out that she'd told the authorities about his money-laundering scheme. At the time, Jen was also livid with Judy, having just learned that she was involved with the accident that killed Ted, which made it easy for her to talk to Steve despite his intrusion on her property. But by apologizing for Ted's death, Steve unintentionally revealed he was also in the car with Judy the night Ted died, which caused Jen to deduce that Steve had manipulated Judy into fleeing the scene. The two started to argue, with Steve making cruel comments about how Ted must have wanted to die, and Jen forcefully asked him to leave by drawing her dead husband's gun on him. And then something happened offscreen that led to the shot of Steve's dead body floating in the pool. While it's clear going into Season 2 that Steve is dead, that Jen did the deed, and that Judy is aware of Steve's death, since Jen called her over — but both Judy and the audience are in the dark about what exactly went down.

Did Jen kill him in self-defense?

Here's where things get confusing: Season 2 picks up immediately the morning after — but it's instead spent over scrambled eggs in Jen's kitchen rather than on detailing what happened the night before. Once the kids are off at school, Jen and Judy finally talk about Steve and Jen says she already told Judy what happened: Steve allegedly strangled her and she killed him in self-defense. It seems plausible, given that we don't know what really happened either. But flashbacks show that Steve only verbally provoked her and that he never actually laid his hands on her. And it turns out, Jen didn't use the gun she drew on him, but instead killed him by braining him with a bird figuring, the baptism gift Judy had given her son that is apparently very sturdy. With Jen and Judy's friendship in shambles but on the mend at the start of the season, this lie starts to eat at Jen, as she knows she isn't being truthful with Judy, or, of course, the authorities.

Are the cops finally onto Jen and Judy?

While Season 1 focused on how Ted's death affected Jen as she was grieving and the culprits trying to cover up what they'd done, you may also remember there was also an active police investigation involved. The detective on the case, Agent Ana Perez (Diana-Maria Riva), found Judy insufferable personally, but information disclosed by Judy caused the detective to circle in on Steve as the prime suspect behind Ted's death. In anger, Jen went to Agent Perez at the end of Season 1 to say that Judy had confessed to her, but the detective stresses she cannot arrest Judy due to an ongoing investigation into Steve. With Steve dead, though, things have gotten even more complicated, and leads the agent to suspect something's likely up with the two women who seem to be at the center of every SoCal tragedy.

The Offer S1

From Empire: https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/the-offer/

By Ian Freer |
Posted On22 06 2022

Everyone involved in The Offer, Michael Tolkin and Nikki Toscano’s ten-part series about the making of The Godfather, clearly understands why Francis Ford Coppola’s film is a masterpiece. It’s just a shame, then, that none of that knowledge is applied here. For everything The Godfather has in spades — texture, nuance, piercing intelligence, rich subtext, sharply defined but subtle characters, opera in its soul — is pretty much absent in The Offer. It is enthusiastically played by a game, colourful cast and has strong moments, but the overall effect is a broad dramatisation of a Wikipedia page. Rather than end credits, it should end with references and external links.

The opening intro (the theme tune mashes Nino Rota with Mad Men) includes the credit “Based on ALBERT S. RUDDY’S EXPERIENCES of making The Godfather”, and Ruddy (Miles Teller, replacing Armie Hammer), the computer programmer who became a sitcom creator and then the producer who, on the evidence here, willed The Godfather into existence, is the focal point. It’s a smart choice. Ruddy provides connective tissue for all the lore that has amassed around the film: the battles with the Mob, the fights over casting Al Pacino (Anthony Ippolito, uncanny) and Brando (Justin Barnes, less convincing), the resistance to cinematographer Gordon Willis’ dark lighting and arguments over running time. Surrounding the ‘making of’ is the bigger power play between Paramount studio head Robert Evans (Matthew Goode) and Charlie Bluhdorn (Burn Gorman), the CEO of Gulf + Western, who owned Paramount.

As much as Coppola’s film finds the humanity in gangsters, The Offer delivers cardboard cut-out mobsters, as if The Godfather never existed.

The tone is set from the get-go. In the very first scene, a gangster walks through Little Italy and tells someone to “leave the cannoli” (Dexter Fletcher directs the opening episodes and this feels like Bohemian Rhapsody with Fredo rather than Freddie). Much of the show centres on Ruddy’s machinations with the New York Mob, embodied by Giovanni Ribisi’s Joe Colombo, and as much as Coppola’s film finds the humanity in gangsters, The Offer delivers cardboard cut-out mobsters, as if The Godfather never existed. What’s equally frustrating about The Offer is that not only did Tolkin and Toscano not heed the lessons from Coppola, they failed to pay attention to Tolkin’s own sharp-as-a-tack screenplay for Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire The Player. The dialogue is so on the nose (“Fuck art, Mario, start typin’!”), the call-backs ham-fisted (the famous episode of the actors morphing into the Corleones over a Coppola-arranged dinner is ludicrously literal) and the story is stretched too thin, the final two episodes devoid of any drama (Colin Hanks’ Paramount bean-counter creating the idea of the opening weekend is as good as it gets).

But for all its faults, The Offer does have its pleasures. It’s fun to see the iconic scenes recreated (especially Michael’s killing of Sollozzo and McCluskey) and the cast are clearly having a ball; Teller is a charming, easy-to-root-for protagonist, Dan Fogler is a captivating Coppola — his relationship with Patrick Gallo’s Mario Puzo is a delight — and Burn Gorman has a blast as the blunt Bluhdorn. But the standout is Matthew Goode’s charismatic Evans, full of both swagger and sadness, believable as a hard-headed businessman who still has a feel for his art. And even if some of the writing is a bit #MeToo-by-numbers, the show does a good job of highlighting the contributions of women often erased from Godfather narratives, especially Paramount casting exec Andrea Eastman (Stephanie Koenig) and Ruddy’s assistant Bettye McCartt (a terrific Juno Temple), whose industry nous saves the day on numerous occasions. It’s a shame McCartt didn’t work on The Offer. Her smarts and savvy just might have rescued it.

Played with gusto by an engaging cast, The Offer falls down on its tin ears and broad strokes. You can’t help but feel The Godfather deserves so much better.

Dexter S2

from wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_(season_2)

Dexter season 2

Taking place a month after the first-season finale, Dexter has been unable to kill anyone due to Sgt. James Doakes monitoring his activities and his sister Debra now living with him as she recovers from her traumatic experiences concerning Brian, the Ice Truck Killer. Dexter also realizes that he's having trouble killing even when he has the opportunity, due to feelings of guilt over killing his brother Brian.

Rita doubts Dexter's reliability and honesty after finding evidence that he set up her husband Paul to be returned to prison. After her husband dies in a prison fight, Rita confronts Dexter with her suspicions. He admits to setting up Paul but after claiming it was a spontaneous act, cannot explain why he happened to be carrying heroin. Rita incorrectly concludes that Dexter is, like Paul, a drug addict and that this explains his occasional absences and odd behavior. Dexter admits that he does indeed have an addiction (without specifying what that addiction is) and promises to seek help by joining Narcotics Anonymous. There, he meets Lila Tournay, who offers to be his sponsor. Sgt. James Doakes remains suspicious of Dexter's true motives, and constantly monitors Dexter's whereabouts.

Divers accidentally stumble upon Dexter's underwater burial ground, discovering the many bags containing the body parts of his victims. Realizing this dumping ground is the work of a serial killer, the media dubs these bodies the work of the "Bay Harbor Butcher." When it's revealed that each victim was a criminal and killer, some members of the public openly support the Bay Harbor Butcher; the case even inspires the creation of a knife-wielding comic book superhero "The Dark Defender." To oversee the investigation of the Butcher's crimes, an FBI special team is assigned to Miami, led by FBI Special Agent Lundy. Working with Miami Metro PD, Lundy brings in several of the Miami detectives, including Debra, to join his team. Over time, Debra and Lundy become romantically involved.

To ensure he's not identified as the Bay Harbor Butcher, Dexter finds a new dumping area with current that leads to the Atlantic Ocean. He also falsifies records, destroys evidence, and contaminates refrigerated remains to throw the investigators off his trail. Despite this, Lundy narrows down his suspect search to people in Miami with police training. Dexter puts his guilt over Brian behind him and returns to killing. Dexter later learns that his biological mother died because she was a criminal working as a confidential informant for Harry and had an affair with him. Dexter wonders if he was adopted because Harry felt guilty for his mother's death and he also learns that Harry didn't die of natural causes but purposefully overdosed to cause his own death. He doesn't understand why until later in the season.

Doakes becomes confident of Dexter's guilt and confronts him. Dexter then tricks Doakes into assaulting him in the police station, in front of other officers, leading others to side with Dexter that the Sergeant is out of control and causing him to be placed on suspension. Becoming more desperate, Doakes breaks into Dexter's apartment and finds the box of blood samples collected from his victims. However, the investigative team mistakenly concluded that Doakes is the Butcher after finding the box in his car, and Doakes goes into hiding while still tracking Dexter's movements. Lieutenant LaGuerta attempts to vouch for the innocence of her former partner, but Lundy refuses to consider her evidence after he learns that she didn't report previous contact with Doakes during the period he was a fugitive, because of their personal relationship.

Meanwhile, Dexter's relationship with Lila becomes closer as she shows him how to accept who he is. When Rita discovers Dexter spent an evening in a hotel with Lila, she breaks up with him and Dexter ends up sleeping with Lila for the first time. Dexter learns that Lila is a pyromaniac, at one point purposely setting fire to her apartment and feigning innocence to draw Dexter back to her. When she starts to follow him obsessively, he takes measures to distance himself from her, eventually forgoing their relationship. Realizing he is developing genuine connection to Rita and her children Astor and Cody, Dexter returns to them. Lila is furious and begins to track Dexter's movements, while also dating Detective Angel Batista. Dexter warns Batista that Lila is not to be trusted but he dismisses the concern. Later, Lila brings rape charges against Batista and tells Dexter she'll drop them if he returns to her. Debra investigates Lila and finds that her real name is Lila West, she is in the country illegally, and she has a criminal history, threatening her with deportation if she doesn't leave Miami.

Dexter tracks down the men responsible for his mother's death. One is dead, one is in jail and one, a drug dealer named Jimenez, is alive. Dexter targets Jimenez and tracks down the dealer's secluded cabin in the nearby swamps, where Dexter kills him. Dexter is called away before he can dispose of the body, but feels confident that the cabin is remote. When he finally goes back, he is unaware that Doakes is following him. Dexter subdues Doakes and locks him in a makeshift cell within the cabin, admitting to the sergeant that he is indeed the Bay Harbor Butcher. Dexter decides that he'll escape the law by convincing others that Doakes is the butcher. He kills a drug lord in the cabin in front of Doakes, shocking the police sergeant. Seeing Doakes' reaction to his actions reminds Dexter of something Harry said days before he died. Dexter suddenly realizes that his father committed suicide because he was ashamed of training Dexter to be a serial killer. Horrified, Dexter tells Doakes, "I killed my father."

While Dexter considers that he must be held responsible for his crimes, Lila takes the GPS device from Dexter's car and uses it to locate the cabin. She finds Doakes, who explains that he is a prisoner of Dexter Morgan, the Bay Harbor Butcher, and needs help. Deciding she now understands Dexter and must help him, Lila leaves Doakes imprisoned and then lights the cabin's gas stove and opens a propane tank. She leaves and Doakes fails to escape, dying in the explosion. Finding Doakes' body and the other evidence Dexter left behind, the FBI concludes that Sgt. Doakes was indeed the Bay Harbor Butcher.

Lila admits her actions to Dexter and reaches out to him. Although he is glad not to be going to jail, Dexter did not intend to kill Doakes since he didn't fit the requirements of "Harry's Code." However, since Lila is a murderer, he plans to kill her since she is too dangerous to his personal life. He pretends that he wants to run away with Lila, but she realizes the truth and kidnaps Rita's children Astor and Cody. At the same time, Debra is on her way to leaving Miami with Lundy rather than letting their relationship end, but then misses the flight when she learns that the children are in danger and Dexter needs her. Lila lures Dexter to her apartment and then sets it on fire with him and the kids still inside. She leaves, sure that they will all die, but Dexter and the children escape. Debra arrives just as Dexter has gotten to safety and decides to remain in Miami after all.

The season concludes with Dexter tracking down Lila to Paris and killing her, avenging Doakes and ensuring that no one alive knows his secret life as a serial killer.

Westworld S4

from ign: https://www.ign.com/articles/westworld-season-4-review


By Matt Fowler

Westworld's fourth season was almost the punchline answer to the question: "Where can you go with a show about a robot-filled Wild West theme park?" In short, Westworld took us to the extinction of humanity, the vicious and feral endgame that Jurassic Park (another Michael Crichton-created theme park story) never dared to go after six movies. Though not without a few lulls and lapses, Season 4 was shocking, ghastly, and established that Artificial Intelligence could be just as vengeful and cruel as its human creators -- thus, also unworthy of transcendence.

An argument could be made that Westworld went, perhaps, a little too big with its story, but this series is even more fascinating if you're familiar, or were a fan of, Jonathan Nolan's Person of Interest, which was his first foray into an A.I.-pocalypse (though it was on a much smaller scale and more rooted in post-9/11 surveillance state paranoia). Watching Person of Interest balloon, story-wise, from a procedural with gentle sci-fi underpinnings to a fully serialized saga exploring nightmare scenarios was almost an appetizer, teasing the much grander (and crazier) Westworld. In that regard, from the POI standpoint, you could maybe predict that this show was also going to try take us to a breaking point (while also bringing back composer Ramin Djawadi and more than a few Radiohead songs).

Season 3 of Westworld was more in line with the corridors Person of Interest poked around in: a world secretly governed by an algorithm that kept the entire citizenry in line. But thanks to Caleb and Dolores, that society was uprooted and undone at the end of Season 3. What could possibly await us now? Well, the surviving "Dolores" from that story, Charlotte Hale, simmered in her anger about the child she lost (which wasn't truly hers, and also wasn't established all that well as a reason to end all human life) and decided to hatch a scheme where a nanobot goop virus could turn people into puppets. From there, it was all downhill and after a few decades human beings (aside from some stragglers) were all "hosts" and all cities were theme parks where robots could use them the way they used to be used.

Getting to this took a few chapters, and the first few episodes of Season 4 were slightly clunky, giving us a time jump (the first of two) and the reactivation of Caleb as a freedom fighter. It wouldn't be until the fourth episode, "Generation Loss," that the full picture formed (and some backstory between Maeve and Caleb was filled in) that the season began to grab hold a lot better. On top of that (and beyond killing/shelving two main characters), it gave Caleb's wife, Uwade (Nozipho McLean) and daughter, Frankie (Celeste Clark/Aurora Perrineau), a larger, more proactive story than just being the family the retired gunslinger leaves behind to embark on one last adventure.

Before "Generation Loss," we entered a new theme park, The Golden Era, for some roaring '20s fun, but we knew, and the show knew, that's not what it should be anymore. Fortunately, the park was a trap, and an official expediter of humanity's demise. Hale and host William found themselves in the ultimate arch-villain roles. It's a slightly shallow direction to take them in, sure, but the final two episodes of the season flipped their scripts, having teased a possible existential awakening from host William, and had host William just become an abomination version of old human William. Hale got to briefly play hero in the end, before letting herself expire.

Maeve and Bernard had some good moments as well -- as Maeve ditched her feelings for Caleb so he could fall in love with his nurse and Bernard got to play out a Doctor Strange-style scenario where he learned, in the Sublime, that the world had to lose in order to win -- but it was Caleb, Frankie, and Dolores (who was now a digital storytelling program imagining herself in the world as "Christina") who got to shine brightest with the most emotionally wrenching, and fulfilling, stories.
The return of James Marsden as Teddy felt nice and gave us, at times, a peaceful reprieve from the armageddon madness.

Caleb's fidelity loop hellscape was one of the best things this season pulled off, tracking the 247th version of him as he clawed his way past multiple corpses of himself to send a message to Frankie. It's often been difficult for Westworld to sneak in sentiment that works, because of its time tricks and overall (over)ambition, but this trek was mesmerizing and agonizing. Plus, it used an established Westworld story device, the fidelity test, to manifest a race against time scenario, one steeped in hope, love, and family.

Dolores' time as Christina dragged at times, mostly since we could figure out how she connected to the rest of the story a few episodes before the show brought her up to speed, but the return of James Marsden as Teddy felt nice, and gave us, at times, a peaceful reprieve from the armageddon madness of the real world story. The fact that Dolores created Teddy to wake herself up, as the love of her life who could help her see the truth, also made for the best Dolores/Teddy moments on the show so far.

We understood these two were in love in Season 1, but also they were programmed to be. Season 2 was a roller coaster of Dolores being Wyatt and Teddy being turned into a killer and it was hard to get swept up in a love story there. Here, though, in the longing, lonely world Christiana lived in, Teddy felt like a natural anchor and someone who could help her find her way. Christina's plight took up a lot of time this season (perhaps a bit too much since it ultimately was just a way to bench Dolores), but heading into Season 5 now with Dolores at the helm of everything feels right. She gets to now run the final test for sentient existence, which is such a lofty notion that the writers' room tasked with crafting this finish has its work cut out.

Verdict

In some aspects, Westworld's fourth season was its most traditional "airport novel" sci-fi saga yet. It was about a world overtaken by cruel robots that enslaved humanity and now toyed with people according to their malicious whims. Structurally, though, Season 4 was able to throw some crafty curveballs (without getting excessively twisty) and use its existing characters to help us invest in this grandiose nightmare. This is the absolute furthest the story has wandered off the trail since the start, but everything got reset by the end in a particularly fiendish way that nicely skirted a "this was all a dream" cop-out scenario.

 from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther:_Wakanda_Forever

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

T'Challa, king of Wakanda, is dying from an illness which his sister, Shuri, believes can be cured by the "heart-shaped herb". Shuri attempts to synthetically recreate the herb after it was destroyed by their cousin N'Jadaka but fails to do so before T'Challa succumbs.

One year later, Wakanda is under pressure from other nations to share their vibranium, with some parties attempting to steal it by force. Queen Ramonda implores Shuri to continue her research on the heart-shaped herb, hoping to create a new Black Panther that will defend Wakanda, but she refuses due to her belief that the Black Panther is a figure of the past. In the Atlantic Ocean, the CIA and U.S. Navy SEALs utilize a vibranium-detecting machine to locate a potential vibranium deposit underwater. The expedition is attacked and killed by a group of blue-skinned water-breathing superhumans led by Namor, with the CIA believing Wakanda to be responsible. Namor confronts Ramonda and Shuri, easily bypassing Wakanda's advanced security. Blaming Wakanda for the vibranium race, he gives them an ultimatum: deliver him the scientist responsible for the vibranium-detecting machine, or he will attack Wakanda.

Shuri and Okoye learn from CIA agent Everett K. Ross that the scientist in question is MIT student Riri Williams and arrive at the university to confront her. The group is pursued by the FBI and then by Namor's warriors, who defeat Okoye before taking Shuri and Williams underwater to meet Namor. Angered by the failure of Okoye to protect Shuri, Ramonda strips her of her title as general of the Dora Milaje and seeks out Nakia, who has been living in Haiti since Thanos' attack on Wakanda.^{[N 2]} Namor shows Shuri his vibranium-rich underwater kingdom of Talokan, which he has protected for centuries from discovery by the world. Bitter at the surface world for enslaving the Maya, Namor proposes an alliance with Wakanda against the rest of the world but threatens to destroy Wakanda first if they refuse. Nakia helps Shuri and Williams escape, and Namor retaliates with an attack against Wakanda, during which Ramonda drowns saving Williams. Namor vows to return in a week with his full army, and the citizens of Wakanda relocate to the Jabari mountains for their safety. Meanwhile, Ross is arrested by his ex-wife and CIA director, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, for secretly exchanging classified intelligence with the Wakandans.

After the funeral of Ramonda, Shuri uses a remnant of the herb that gave Namor's people their superhuman abilities to reconstruct the heart-shaped herb. She ingests it, gaining superhuman abilities and meeting N'Jadaka in the Ancestral Plane, who urges her to seek revenge. Shuri dons a new Black Panther suit and is accepted by the other Wakandan tribes as the Black Panther. Despite M'Baku's urges for peace, Shuri is determined to exact vengeance on Namor for Ramonda's death and orders an immediate counterattack on Talokan. Preparing for battle, with Ayo assuming the position of general of the Dora Milaje, Shuri bestows the Midnight Angel armor upon Okoye, who in turn recruits Dora Milaje member Aneka to join her. Williams creates an Iron Man-esque powered exoskeleton to aid the Wakandans.

Using a seafaring vessel, the Wakandans lure Namor and his warriors to the surface as a battle ensues. Shuri traps Namor in a fighter aircraft, intending to dry him out and weaken him. The pair crashes on a desert beach and fight. Shuri gains the upper hand, but realizes the similarities between their paths and implores Namor to yield, offering him a peaceful alliance. Namor accepts, and the battle ends. Namor's cousin, Namora, is upset at Namor's surrender, but Namor reassures her that their new alliance will allow them to conquer the surface world one day. Williams returns to MIT, leaving her suit behind, while Okoye rescues Ross from captivity. Shuri plants more heart-shaped herbs to ensure the future of the Black Panther mantle. In Shuri's absence, M'Baku steps forward to challenge for the throne. Shuri visits Nakia in Haiti where she burns her funeral ceremonial robe in accordance with Ramonda's wishes, allowing herself to finally grieve T'Challa.

In a mid-credits scene, Shuri learns that Nakia and T'Challa had a son named Toussaint, who Nakia has been raising in secret far from the pressure of the throne. Toussaint reveals his Wakandan name is T'Challa.

 from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Worry_Darling

Don't Worry Darling (2022)

In America during an unspecified time period, Alice and Jack Chambers live in an idyllic 1950s-styled neighborhood of the company town of Victory, California. Every day, the men go to work at Victory Headquarters out in the surrounding desert while their wives (among them Bunny and Margaret) stay home to clean, relax, and prepare dinner for their husbands. The women are discouraged from asking questions about their husbands' work and told not to venture out to Headquarters. Margaret has become an outcast after taking her son out into the desert, resulting in her son's apparent death, although she claims that Victory took him from her as punishment. While attending a party hosted by Frank, Victory's enigmatic founder and leader, Alice sees Margaret's husband attempt to give her medication after an outburst at the party. Later, she sees Frank looking in on her and Jack while she is fingered in Frank's bedroom.

One morning while riding the trolley across town, Alice witnesses a plane crash out in the desert. She rushes to help and stumbles onto Headquarters, a small building covered in mirror-like windows. After touching one, she experiences surreal hallucinations before waking up back home later that night. In the following days, she experiences increasingly strange occurrences. She receives a phone call from Margaret, who claims to have seen the same thing Alice did. After rebuffing her, Alice sees Margaret slit her own throat and fall from the roof of her house. Before she can reach Margaret's body, Alice is dragged away by men in red jumpsuits.

Jack dismisses Alice's claims and says Margaret simply fell while cleaning the windows and is recovering. This story is further corroborated by the town physician, Dr. Collins, who attempts to give Alice prescription drugs. Alice becomes increasingly paranoid and confused, and during a special Victory event where Frank gives Jack a special promotion, she breaks down in the bathroom and is comforted by Bunny. Alice attempts to explain everything to her, but Bunny reacts angrily, accusing Alice of being selfish.

Some time later, Alice and Jack invite the rest of the neighborhood (except Bunny and her husband Dean) to dinner, with Frank and his wife Shelley as special guests. Frank speaks privately with Alice in the kitchen, insinuating that she is right in her suspicions. Spurred by his confession, she attempts to expose him over dinner; instead, Frank gaslights her, making her look delusional to the other guests. In the aftermath, Alice begs Jack to take them both away from Victory. Jack initially agrees, but when Alice gets in the car, he lets her be taken away by the men in red jumpsuits. Dr. Collins forces Alice to undergo electroshock therapy. During the procedure, she sees visions of herself in another life, as a present-day surgeon named Alice Warren who lives with the unemployed Jack and struggles to make ends meet.

Alice returns to Victory and reunites with Jack, but continues to have hallucinations and flash-backs. She later remembers the whole truth: that Victory is a simulated world created by Frank, and that Jack has forced her into the simulation in the hope that they can lead a perfect life together. When Jack realizes she knows the truth, he claims he did this for her as she was miserable in her real life, but Alice is enraged that Jack took away her autonomy. Jack hugs Alice, begging her to forgive him, then attempts to strangle her, forcing Alice to kill him with a glass tumbler.

Frank is alerted to Jack's death and sends his men to capture Alice. Bunny finds Alice and explains how she has always known that Victory was a simulation, but chooses to stay so she can be with her children who died in real life. She tells Alice to flee to Headquarters, which is an exit portal from the simulation. The other wives begin to realize the truth as their husbands start to panic. Alice drives Jack's car toward Headquarters, chased by Dr. Collins and Frank's men, who eventually crash into each other. At their house, Shelley, wanting to regain her own control, stabs Frank to death. Alice makes it to Headquarters, where she encounters a vision of Jack asking her to stay. Alice ignores the vision and rushes to the window as Frank's men reach her. After the screen goes black, Alice is heard gasping for air.

Inside Man S1

Inside Man

from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/26/inside-man-review-stanley-tucci-goes-full-hannibal-lecter-in-rollicking-death-row-drama

Inside Man review – Stanley Tucci goes full Hannibal Lecter in rollicking death row drama

Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan

Mon 26 Sep 2022 17.00 EDT





A great man/awful character … Stanley Tucci as Jefferson Grieff in Inside Man. Photograph: Paul Stephenson/BBC/Hartswood/Kevin Baker

Tucci is a smug prisoner; David Tennant is a sweet vicar with a secret. Their tales come together confidently in this funny and typically meaty mystery from Steven Moffat

Iwonder how Anthony Hopkins feels about being a serial killer, not just for an age but, the way things are shaping up, for all time? It is 31 years since he gave us his Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs – since he sucked his teeth and looked down the lens straight into our livers and spoke in the light, Larry Hagmanish drawl that made everything he said 300 times more gruesome. He remains the nonpareil and it is hard to come out from under his boiler-suited shadow.

In the new Steven Moffat drama Inside Man (BBC One), Stanley Tucci is burdened by many parallels with the great man/awful character. He plays Jefferson Grieff, a softly spoken, highly intelligent prisoner, on death row for murdering his wife. People come to him for insight into their stalled cases and he enjoys toying with them until he deigns to provide his unsettled visitors with solutions to their problems. The latter are deduced in a manner that can only be described with reference to another great man/awful character, Sherlock Holmes, whom Moffat himself resurrected in a way that will probably prove as hard to beat for the next few generations. Tucci works hard to make him his own man, but it is elsewhere that the real innovation lies.

Grieff’s story at first runs alongside an apparently unrelated narrative unfolding in an English village, around sweet vicar Harry (David Tennant) and a – pivotally – unsweet maths tutor Janice (Dolly Wells). We meet her seeing off a young, drunk man (that unmistakable blend of creepiness and aggression perfectly captured by Harry Cadby) who is intimidating young journalist Beth Davenport (Lydia West) and other women on a tube carriage. This core of steel, and possibly this journalist, are going to make Harry’s life very difficult soon.

Vicar Harry is given a flash drive by his troubled young verger Edgar (Mark Quartley) that turns out to contain child sexual abuse images. An unlucky chain of events means Janice sees it, and believes it belongs to Harry’s son Ben (Louis Oliver). He is an incredibly unrewarding teenager, but Harry loves him and tries to convince Janice that she is mistaken, without betraying Edgar. This is a weak point in the tale. I suspect a lot of people were screaming, like me, at the television: “Betray the paedophile!” But we all understand how fiction works, so a little more effort to suspend disbelief is applied and on we go.

A struggle between Harry and Janice ensues and she ends up unconscious in the cellar. Harry locks the door behind him. And the show becomes a twisting interrogation of Grieff’s assertion that we are all murderers – we just haven’t met the right person yet.

When Beth visits the prison to interview Grieff for a piece, and then ask his advice about the missing Janice, the weaving together of the stories begins. Only the first two of the four episodes were provided for review but the mystery is clearly going to deepen.

Inside Man is typical Moffat fare. Rollickingly confident, meaty, funny, clever (if not quite as clever, on a line by line basis, as it appears). Wells – cast here after her tremendous turn in Moffat’s last project, the glorious Dracula, and hopefully now a permanent member of his rep company – is brilliant as Janice. The ineffable oddity and unremitting moral authority she brings to the trapped woman gives the whole thing an anything-could-happen air that shifts you anxiously to the edge of your seat, even though nothing truly terrible has occurred. Tennant is in non-frantic, non-spitty mode – which is a relief. Tucci sells his slightly smug, slightly portentous section of the script well, and some fine comic relief is provided in the form of his sidekick, Dillon (Atkins Estimond), a serial killer (“I went to a therapist – I really opened up! She left the profession”) from the next cell. Think Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Doug Judy with a murderous edge. If you aren’t a Moffat fan, watch it for Dillon alone. If you don’t get sucked into the rest of the romp, I would be surprised, but I’d like to think you had this joy at least.

The Watcher S1

The Watcher

from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/oct/14/the-watcher-review-ryan-murphy-serves-up-a-seven-hour-whodunnit-about-a-typewriter

The Watcher review – Ryan Murphy serves up a seven-hour whodunnit about a typewriter

Stuart Heritage
@stuheritage

Fri 14 Oct 2022 10.52 EDT

At this stage in his career, Ryan Murphy finds himself with two cruising speeds: real life stories (Feud, Halston, American Crime Story, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story) and horror (Ratched, American Horror Story). So you can imagine the absolute joy he must have felt when he first read Reeves Wiedeman’s 2018 New York Magazine article entitled The Watcher.

The article told the story of the Broaddus family who, upon buying the home of their dreams in Westfield, New Jersey, found themselves plagued by sinister letters from an unknown correspondent (called, you guessed it, The Watcher) who informed the family that their every move was being monitored. The letters, full of deliberately unsettling passages (“I am in charge of 657 Boulevard. It is not in charge of me. I will fend off its bad things and wait for it to become good again. It will not punish me. I will rise again”) seemed to be an attempt to spook the family into leaving the area.

Which, you have to admit, is an automatic Murphy slam-dunk. A real life story that reads like an overbaked horror novel? He must have been waiting for this his entire life. Forget that the story had already been made into a movie – 2016’s Lifetime film The Watcher (“Overall not a bad movie to kill time on a Sunday afternoon”, reads a typical Rotten Tomatoes user review) – this had Murphy written all over it. Imagine if Anna Delvey dabbled in cannibalism, or the people from WeCrashed were secretly werewolves. That’s the level of synergy we’re talking about here.

As you might expect, the new Netflix series The Watcher is a powerfully Murphyish watch. He co-created the show, co-wrote all the episodes bar one and also had time to direct a couple. If you like his shows, you will love this. If you don’t? Hey, at least it’s better than that godawful Jeffrey Dahmer thing.

Personally, I’d rank this somewhere in the upper-mid range of his work. There’s a sly sense throughout that Murphy and his collaborators know how silly the source material is. While never fully descending into parody, there are moments that (I hope intentionally) border on Mel Brooks.

This is the sort of show that really wants you to know that anyone could be behind the terrifying letter-writing campaign; something it achieves by turning the peripheral cast into a parade of goonish caricatures. Weird, identically dressed neighbours? Check. A pair of local historians who look like the American Gothic subjects after decades of surgical negligence? Check.

It is also jarring that the Broaddus’ home is in no way an attractive property. From the outside it looks like Tony Soprano’s McMansion, and the inside is riddled with secret rooms, hidden tunnels, pianos that appear to play themselves and something that can only really be described as Chekhov’s Dumb Waiter. Any sensible family would spend less than a microsecond there before getting the willies and running away.

At the very least, the cast is absolutely berserk. Here, the Broaddus family consists of Bobby Cannavale, Naomi Watts and their photogenic young children. The neighbours are played by Margot Martindale, Richard Kind and Mia Farrow. Noma Dumezweni is a private investigator. Jennifer Coolidge is an estate agent. And, without fail, they all get a chance to do the exact thing they are best at. Farrow is haunted and creepy, Watts is brittle and paranoid, Coolidge seems as if she walked on set having accidentally prepared for a completely different series to everyone else. More than anything, it is this cast that holds The Watcher together.

In truth, though, you can see why Lifetime jumped on the story first. Strip away the phenomenal acting talent, and some of the more outre decisions to liven up the source material, and what is left is a seven-hour whodunnit about a typewriter. It is Cannavale going batshit about envelopes for almost an entire working day. The Watcher is a world away from the daring, groundbreaking originals that Netflix used to seemingly conjure up from thin air. At times, it has the unfortunate air of an ITV drama that plays unwatched on a television above a budget gym treadmill.

I have no doubt that it is going to be huge, because that’s why Murphy is paid the big bucks, but there’s so little to it. I’d be staggered if anyone can remember a single thing about it come Christmas.

Licorice Pizza (2021)

from Roger Ebert.com: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/licorice-pizza-movie-review-2021


Paul Thomas Anderson’s golden, shimmering vision of the 1970s San Fernando Valley in “Licorice Pizza” is so dreamy, so full of possibility, it’s as if it couldn’t actually have existed. With its lengthy, magic-hour walk-and-talks and its sense of adventure around every corner and down every block, it’s a place where anything could happen as day turns to night.

And yet within that joyful, playful reverie lurks an unmistakable undercurrent of danger. It’s in the score from Anderson’s frequent collaborator, the brilliant Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, putting you ever so slightly on edge. It’s in the searchlights outside the grand opening of a Ventura Boulevard pinball parlor, incessantly beckoning to the sky. And it’s in big, brash moments through showy supporting performances from Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn, both going for broke. Anything could happen as day turns to night—but are you ready for that?



This is a place Anderson knows well from his own childhood and it’s where he still lives today. His love is specific and palpable for the Valley, with its suburban sprawl and non-descript strip malls. This is the place of my youth, too—I grew up In Woodland Hills, just down the 101 Freeway from where the events of “Licorice Pizza” occur, and I recall fondly the Southern California record store chain that gives the film its title. (As a kid, I used to go to the one on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Canoga Park, across the street from Topanga Plaza.) He’s taken us on a tour of this area before in a couple of the great, early films that put him on the map (“Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia”) but with “Licorice Pizza,” he offers us a gentler view. Anderson has harnessed all the thrilling, muscular techniques that are his directing trademarks as well as his affection for high drama as a writer and applied them to telling a story that’s surprisingly sweet.

It’s also wildly unexpected from one moment to the next as Anderson masterfully navigates tonal shifts from absurd humor to tender romance with a couple of legitimate action sequences thrown in between. “Licorice Pizza” meanders in the best possible way: You never know where it’s going but you can’t wait to find out where it’ll end up, and when it’s over, you won’t want it to end. Once the credits finished rolling, I had no desire to get up from my seat and leave the theater, I was so wrapped up in the film’s cozy, wistful spell.

And in Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, both making their feature film debuts, Anderson has given us the most glorious guides. “Licorice Pizza” will make superstars of them both, and deservedly so. Hoffman is the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose long and fruitful relationship with Anderson resulted in some of the defining work of his career, ranging from the heartbreaking (“Boogie Nights”) to the terrifying (“The Master”). Hoffman has a very different look and demeanor from his father—he has an infectious, boyish optimism—but he shares his dad’s intriguing screen presence. And Haim is just a flat-out movie star. She has that “thing”: that radiant, magnetic charisma that makes it impossible to take your eyes off her. The youngest of the three sisters who comprise the indie rock band HAIM—they have a long and fruitful relationship of their own with Anderson, who’s directed several of their music videos—she’s got impeccable comic timing and consistently makes inspired choices. Together, she and Hoffman have a snappy chemistry that’s the stuff of classic screwball comedies, but they both seem totally at home in this ‘70s setting. Adding to the authenticity is the presence of Haim’s sisters, Danielle and Este, playing Alana's sisters. And their actual parents play their parents, all of which pays off beautifully in a hilarious, Friday-night shabbat dinner scene.



We haven’t even begun discussing the plot, but then again, the plot isn’t really the point. In the simplest terms, “Licorice Pizza” finds Haim’s Alana and Hoffman’s Gary running around the Valley, starting various businesses, flirting, pretending they don’t care about each other, and potentially falling for other people to avoid falling for each other. One thing: She’s 25 and he’s 15, and they meet cute at his high school where’s she’s helping the photographers on picture day. What makes this amorphous romance make sense is that a) it’s extremely chaste, b) she’s sort of stunted at the film’s start, and c) Anderson wisely establishes early on that Gary has a swagger and intelligence beyond his years. In a way that’s reminiscent of Max Fischer in “Rushmore,” all the adults Gary encounters take him seriously and treat him as an equal. The fact that he’s a longtime child star has a lot to do with his maturity (and the character of Gary is inspired by Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks’ longtime producing partner, who was an actor in his youth). So when he meets Alana and is instantly smitten by her, he carries himself with such confidence and addresses her so directly that she can’t help but get drawn into his world.

While their ever-evolving relationship provides the framework for the film, “Licorice Pizza” is really about this young woman’s journey of self-discovery: trying out different jobs and clothes, different priorities and personalities, and seeing what fits. (Oscar-winning “Phantom Thread” costume designer Mark Bridges vividly reinvents her look for each new situation.) The vast majority of characters Anderson has focused on throughout his career have been men, from Dirk Diggler to Reynolds Woodcock, so to see him turn his immense artistic instincts toward a woman is only part of what makes “Licorice Pizza” such a breath of fresh air. Hope springs eternal for Alana, but the reality of life as a young woman in Los Angeles—hell, in the world—keeps rearing its head. Maybe it’s an intrusive conversation with an agent when she’s pondering becoming an actress. Or it’s a midnight motorcycle ride with a much older screen star (Penn, as a William Holden figure, gets to be unusually charming). Cooper serves as a much more obvious source of menace as an unhinged Jon Peters, the real-life hairdresser-turned-producer who dated Barbra Streisand; he absolutely tears it up in just a couple of scenes in a way that’s funny and ferocious at once. (Christine Ebersole, Skyler Gisondo, Benny Safdie, Joseph Cross, and Tom Waits are among the many actors who enjoy standout moments within this packed cast.)

Peters’ presence here is crucial to the through-line of Hollywood’s prevalence in this time and place. Gary reminded me of so many kids I grew up with: They had agents and headshots, they got to leave school early for auditions, they had parents who would schlep them all over town to pursue their dreams of stardom. Gary merely takes that initiative and funnels it into a variety of endeavors, and Alana finds herself coming along for the ride. A long tracking shot in which Gary enters the Hollywood Palladium to launch his waterbed company (something Goetzman actually did) calls to mind both the beginning of “Boogie Nights” and the end of “Phantom Thread.” Anderson, serving as his own cinematographer again (this time alongside Michael Bauman), infuses this moment and so many others with a mixture of wonder and melancholy.



And as always, he gets so much right about this location and era. The details are dead-on without ever devolving into kitschy caricature: a baby-blue rotary phone hanging on the kitchen wall, or a billboard for the rock radio station KMET perched above a gas station. Gary lives in Sherman Oaks, but in a modest, mid-century ranch-style house, rather than one of the fancier neighborhoods south of the boulevard. And the gas shortage that plagued this period is just one more source of tension for these characters as they try to make their way in the world. Anderson doesn’t pummel us over the head with geopolitical reasons, but rather shows Gary running in slow motion past long lines of cars at the pumps, with David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” as a powerful choice of music in the background.

And yet, an achingly romantic tone returns by the end, as well as the sensation that while we may not have ended up anywhere in our wanderings, we just watched the best movie of the year.

Made For Love S1

Made For Love Season 1

from Metawitches.com: https://metawitches.com/2021/04/13/made-for-love-season-1-episode-1-user-one-recap/

Made for Love is a half hour dark comedy from HBO Max starring Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs), Billy Magnussen (Maniac) and Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond). Made for Love was created by Patrick Somerville (Maniac, The Leftovers), Alissa Nutting, Dean Bakopoulos and Christina Lee, based on Nutting’s novel of the same name. The series explores the life and crumbling marriage of a directionless millennial, Hazel Green (Milioti), and her controlling, tech billionaire husband, Byron Gogol (Magnussen).

Made for Love uses the same edgy, absurdist tone that Somerville utilized in Maniac to examine modern relationships- human to human, human to tech, human to dolphin, human to inanimate object, and so on. It’s a story about obsession, love, fear of loss and death, desperation, need, forgiveness and humanity. Sometimes there’s more humanity found in animals, tech and inanimate objects than there is in humans, but, as Kurt Vonnegut said in Slaughterhouse Five, so it goes. As is so often true, hope and optimism play a large role in success, for both good guys and villains. Even nihilists need to believe in something to succeed long-term. Whether someone is a good guy or a villain is wholly dependent on point of view. And finding the correct app.


Recap

The show begins with a commercial for one of Byron’s pet projects, Made for Love, matching brain implants for couples that bring people so close together they’ll feel like they only have one mind. No, seriously. It’ll be like they only have one mind, instead of two. In the initial test case, that mind will be Byron’s.

Unfortunately, the commercial isn’t available on Youtube. Here is the message, starring host Byron Gogol, and his silent, vacant-eyed wife, Hazel Green-Gogol:

“Love. It’s the center of our lives. But our lives have changed. The world has evolved around us. I should know. I’m Byron Gogol. And at Gogol Tech, we evolve communication. We’ve created your phones, your computers, your software and now it’s time for love to evolve too. Now you and your loved one can truly come together. Every thought, every feeling, shared. Your brains, fully connected. A network of two. We made it possible because you were… Made for Love.”

Coming Soon, from Gogol. The sun explodes. Oh, it’s just the HBO Max production company insert. But we are in the desert in Southern California, so the air temperature is probably at least 100 degrees. The sand is much hotter. Might as well be inside an oven. Even the Joshua trees are looking raggedy from the drought.

As I was saying, in a desolate desert landscape, a single, large, windowless prison industrial building can be seen in the distance, surrounded by huge satellite dishes. In the wilderness foreground, a hidden hatch suddenly pops open and a soaking wet woman in a sparkly green cocktail dress splashes halfway out, smiling. Before she can escape, the hatch door falls down on her head, knocking her back under. She soon opens the door again, this time more slowly, then carefully makes her way out onto the desert floor. Once she’s completely out, she breathes the sweet air of freedom, turning to give the building the finger before walking off into the desert. As she walks away, a boundary sensor beeps.

She walks for a long time.

Lord, I hope she has something on her feet.


24 hours earlier, in a lovely modern home, our heroine, Hazel Green, is being taken care of sexually by her husband, Byron Gogol, while a nearby device in the form of a tasteful brass chicken statuette monitors her vital signs to gauge the level of her responses. Hazel seems like she’s enjoying herself. When Byron comes up for air, Hazel offers to take care of his needs next, but he declines the offer. Instead he goes for a swim with his pet dolphin, Zelda, in the pool that’s just outside their bedroom.

Hazel gets dressed and sits in one of the poolside lounge chairs to read a women’s magazine. She finds a piece of broken glass on the ground next to her chair and has a vision or hallucination of a glass falling and breaking. Byron notices her distraction and interrupts her thoughts, asking if she’s up for singing at their event tonight. Hazel agrees.

Byron gets out of the pool and as he dries off, turns on a holographic video screen controlled by his earpiece. It displays a news report on riots in several countries following the release of his latest product, the Gogol Max Tablet. People were injured in multiple countries. Byron is thrilled by this sign of his popularity. He pushes Hazel to watch the report with him. The reporter continues, telling viewers that Byron and Hazel haven’t been “seen outside the Hub in ten years.” Byron rhetorically asks why they’d ever leave the Hub.

Hazel removes her ear piece and suggests that Byron send new tablets to everyone who was hurt. Byron agrees, using his nickname for her, Noodle. Byron’s top employees, Fiffany (Noma Dumezweni) and Herringbone (Dan Bakkedahl) arrive to start the business day. Fiffany asks about Byron’s swim with Zelda- the dolphin has been unhappy lately. Byron orders her to restore Zelda’s happiness.

Before he leaves with Fiffany and Herringbone, Byron tells Hazel to loosen up the guests at tonight’s event before he and the Gogol executives arrive. She smiles and says she knows what to do. But as he turns and walks away, she gives him the finger behind her magazine. Byron was facing the other way and looking at his phone, but he stops to glance back at her. Hazel can’t figure out how he might have seen what she did. They say “I love you,” to each other before he finally leaves.

And we’re back to the present day. Hazel does indeed have bare feet in the desert, which is crazy. Cactus needles have barbs on them so you can’t just pull them out, never mind all of the other pointy, sharp, stinging hazards she’d encounter. I can handle the rest of the magical realism in this show, but not the exposure of Hazel’s pampered feet to the desert floor.

Next Hazel hitches a ride with a local DJ, El Perro, who’s upset that she doesn’t recognize him. When he asks if she’s been living under a rock, she says she has. Then she picks up a stray coin and says she also hasn’t seen money in ten years.

So she really hasn’t left Byron’s Hub for ten years. And she’s so desperate to escape that she’s willing to risk life, limb, rape and kidnapping to get out. Come to think of it, her marriage was more like a kidnapping, if she has to go through all of this to leave. We just saw her picture flashed on the news. She’s an easy, valuable target all alone in the desert. Normally, a woman like her would have discrete security trailing her everywhere.

Maybe she still does. Hopefully they brought some shoes for her.

Back to the day before- Hazel plays a video game. It looks like she might be piloting an airplane. Dreaming of flying away or crashing into the side of the Hub? She’s interrupted by a review app which plays a video of her orgasm from earlier, then asks her to rate her experience with a number on a 1-20 scale. Is she rating both Byron’s performance and her own? Because her acting was definitely more nuanced. This is orgasm #3248. That gives Byron a lot of meaningless numerical data to work with.

If staying inside the Hub wasn’t already the biggest possible warning of how insecure he is, forcing his wife to rate every single orgasm after he leaves the room would do it.

She rates the orgasm itself a 5/20, but is more generous toward other aspects of the sexual encounter. Then the blandly pleasant computer chicken (Mother Hen? Little Red Hen?) orders her to take a nap. Since she hasn’t done much of anything all day, she can’t sleep. Instead, she remembers back to her childhood, when her dad, Herb (Ray Romano) traded the family car for a small, beat up plane. She and her mother, Lottie (Ione Skye) weren’t sure he’d ever get it off the ground, but he was confident he could. He also apparently had a drinking problem, but they were mostly happy.

Hazel stops pretending to sleep and uses her earpiece to call up the Gogol Earth real time satellite imagery of her father in the front yard of her childhood home. She only watches for a few seconds before a door opens in the bushes on the edge of the yard. A man wearing a hipster pack basket emerges and walks past her into the house. The door to the rest of the Hub closes behind him as Mother Hen tells Hazel that naptime is over. Now it’s time for her appointment with Bennett (Caleb Foote).

Hazel’s beautiful home and wealthy lifestyle are, in reality, a windowless room inside an industrial building in which her every action is monitored, the epitome of a gilded cage.

Hazel and Bennett have a wine tasting session, then he pulls out the scores from this morning’s sexual encounter. Byron has asked that she confirm her ratings. Hazel stands by her initial assessment of the experience. Bennett is rattled by the whole thing, makes some Freudian slips, then literally runs away.

It can be hard for the kids when things are tense between Mommy and Daddy, especially when it’s because Mommy stops pretending.

In the present day, El Perro the DJ stops at another windowless building with Hazel. It’s time for his shift at the radio station. Hazel tells El Perro she’s in danger. His response is to give her a souvenir can cozy. She can’t stop moving or she’ll be caught by Gogol, so she slips into the dark, industrial building next door, which turns out to be a strip club.

It’s another windowless sexual fantasy, as if she’s found a door into the dark side of the Hub. She already understands her place in this world and goes straight to the employees dressing room to search for another outfit to use as a disguise. Her sparkly cocktail dress stands out too much in the harsh sun of the “real” world.

Her outfit probably didn’t phase the DJ at all- with her smeared makeup and tangled hair, he just thought she was another lost hanger on whose party lasted too long. It never occurred to him that she could have escaped abuse, kidnapping, rape or trafficking with nothing but the clothes on her back. And he shut her down when she tried to tell him otherwise.

Here in the world outside the Hub, she seems to be seen as a sex worker rather than a wife, and she hasn’t even told anyone her full name yet. It remains to be seen whether this is a metaphor for how Hazel feels about herself, how Byron sees her, how her friends and family see her or how the whole world sees her.

El Perro translates directly as “dog”, but can be used as an insult with the connotations of foul and/or promiscuous.

She finds beverages, sunglasses, clothing and first aid products, then takes them to the bathroom. After changing into a red jogging suit (the opposite of green), she washes her face and cleans up her injuries from when the hatch door fell on her head. Next she practices saying her maiden name instead of her married name to the mirror.

She’s used to talking to inanimate objects instead of people.

She flashes back to the day before, when she held up her dress for the evening’s party, white with colorful botanical appliques around the neckline and bodice, and practiced saying “Hi!” in a super enthusiastic voice without introducing herself. As the boss’ wife, everyone already knows who she is. Once she’s at the event, which turns out to be a party combined with a board meeting, no one calls her anything but Hazel. They try to pry information about Byron’s plans out of her and marvel at how realistic the cube environment is (she tells them to look for the flaws in the corners). She plays her role perfectly, charming the guests, revealing nothing of importance and flirting with, but supporting Byron.

She’s the perfect corporate wife, but when Byron arrives, he whispers that she’s been lying to him, before starting his presentation to the guests. He tells everyone that Gogol is no longer a “me”- it’s now a “we”, a partnership, and calls Hazel Gogol up onto the stage. Fiffany and Herringbone had started to get excited that Byron was finally going to acknowledge their contributions to the company. Now it’s clear that he’ll continue to exploit them, providing direction and ideas but doing little of the actual research and development that the success of the company depends on. He’s a front man and marketing executive who doesn’t totally understand Gogol’s products.

Byron to the crowd: “Made for Love is operational.”

Fiffany tells Herringbone that it’s not operational.

Byron: “Comingled hearts, comingled minds, comingled identities, secrets dismantled. Pure. Union.”

Hazel: “What the f–k are you doing?”

Byron: “Hazel and I are Users One. Tomorrow, friends, Hazel and I will get our chips implanted.”

Fiffany: “One of them will die if they try to synchronize. Even with dolphins, we only have a one-way transmission. Just like the chip in Zelda’s brain. We can only see what she sees. It’s no better than a spy-cam.”

Byron: “Two bodies will remain, just like you see today, but our minds will be one. Clap!”

Hazel tries to keep smiling.

Byron and Fiffany just explained the basic rules for how the Made for Love chips currently function. On the default setting, one user can watch the other user’s every move and also receive other information about vital signs and emotional readings. On the advanced setting, when the transmission should go both ways, the app wipes out one user’s brain instead, leaving behind the dominant user.

If you’re the dominant user and all about control, this might sound acceptable.

In the present, Hazel leaves the strip club. As she walks out, there are no live girls, only video screens.

When she opens the door to the outside, she stops, realizing that she doesn’t have her next move planned and she’s in a deserted part of town. If we’re playing real/not real, right now the outdoors is real, but it may not offer a realistic plan for someone without money or a car of her own.

She spots Herringbone at the other end of the parking lot and runs back inside. Herringbone follows his GPS inside.

Hazel has already used doors clearly marked “employees only” 3 times, while Herringbone parks at the front and enters through the customer entrance. Technically, if the club is a metaphor for Gogol, Herringbone should be the employee/dancer, while Hazel is the consumer/target audience, but out in the real world, with the veil provided by Byron’s wealth and technology pulled aside, the reality that the male gaze is ubiquitous and runs the world is acknowledged. Every aspect of Hazel’s life has been observed, analyzed and controlled by Byron and his creative team for the last ten years. She hasn’t had a shred of physical privacy from Byron or his employees, just like a sex worker. Even when she takes an unscheduled trip outside of the compound, one of his employees is only minutes behind her, as if she’s an escaped convict.

Herringbone hollers his plea for her cooperation to the entire club. He pretends that he escaped too, and wants to go on the run with her. She answers him using the loudspeaker, telling him she’s not an idiot and knows he’s lying.

Gogol is the equivalent of Google or Amazon, a tech giant which owns most of the apps in our devices and can thus listen in on anything, anywhere, anytime, even if the device is turned off, if they really, really want to. If you doubt that, pay close attention to your Google and Amazon ads sometime. Hazel knows that if Lyle Herringbone was actually escaping from Gogol, he wouldn’t yell out his plans in a strip club that’s essentially filled with listening devices.

Hazel tells him she knows he plans to take her back to the Hub so they can put the Made for Love chip in her brain. He swears he won’t do that, but he has something he needs to tell her about the chip. While he’s talking, she makes a run for it. He follows her toward the door, back into the employees only section, admitting to his own status as exploited worker who’s also in real danger from Gogol. In fact, with Lyle in the club, there’s a neon cyberpunk spy thriller feel to the situation. He brings deeper, darker secrets to the mix that Hazel has been shielded from in her “perfect” life as the “perfect” wife.

Lyle finds Hazel hiding in one of the private performance rooms- she’s been giving a semi-private performance for the last ten years. She’s also found the fire ax, and when he gets too close she swings at him and (accidentally?) chops off some of his fingers. She apologizes as she runs out of the room, tipping over a vending machine to lock him in so he can’t follow her. (Never trust a vending machine. They kill twice as many people as sharks. But this seems to be a hero vending machine.)

Chopping off the fingers of anyone isn’t cool, but tech developers like Lyle depend on typing in order to use their computers. If a software developer loses the use of their hands, they lose their livelihood. Since Lyle was apparently developing evil apps, maybe that’s the show making a statement. He is trying to help Byron hold Hazel hostage indefinitely and destroy her brain.

Once Lyle has been disabled, Hazel leaves the club through a different door, which lets out onto a busier street. A passing truck stops for her and she rides away.

Back at the board meeting, Hazel and Byron sit in front of a (fake) fire and sing Mickey and Sylvia’s Lover Boy, made famous in the film Dirty Dancing, while Byron plays guitar.


As the party winds down, Hazel quietly walks out, with a smile that wants to crack and become tears. A hidden door opens into the house, where she stares at the green dress hanging on the wall in a glass case, next to a white tuxedo. She throws something solid at the case, shattering it, then takes the dress to her bedroom. She puts on the dress and her makeup as if she’s going out for the night. Lover Boy continues to play in the background.

Then she takes a sheet off the bed, turning it into a makeshift sling and gathering up several of the hated Mother Hen Hazel monitors to drop into it as weights. On her way out the door to the pool, she leaves her double wedding ring behind. It looks like handcuffs.

As Lover Boy ends, Hazel wraps the twisted sheet around her neck a few times, then jumps into the deep end of the pool.

She startles awake in her getaway truck back in the present, just as they cross a bridge into Twin Sands, her hometown. The driver, a gruff but kindly old man, drops her off in the center of town as music that’s a metaphorical combination of The Andy Griffith Show and the Bewitched themes plays. The town looks like every other small, hard luck desert town. She insults the town as the driver leaves.

Apparently, reality isn’t as great as she remembered.

Except, we’re not in reality. We’re in the Byron Zone. Hazel finds a pay phone and moves to put her one coin into the slot, but the phone rings just before she touches it. She backs away. As she continues down the sidewalk, car alarms sound and other phones ring in the distance.

A man comes out of his house who says Byron Gogol is on his phone for her. She says to tell Byron it’s too late. Byron says she’s very valuable to him and she’s not safe. He throws in a “Noodle” so she knows it’s really him. Then he reveals that she’s already Made for Love.

She’s been chipped.

Hazel runs, as her brain buzzes and she understands that it’s true. She looks at her reflection in a car window so that Byron can see her face. He’s watching on his phone and sees what she sees, as if he’s looking through her eyes. He’s smug while she yells at him to get out of her head, but angry when she breaks the window.

He’s also following her in a motorcade.



Hazel stumbles into her dad’s manufactured home, then to his bedroom, where he’s having sex with his life partner, Diane, who is also manufactured and not quite animate. Once Herb realizes they were interrupted by Hazel and not an intruder, he welcomes her home. She faints.