from Curbed.com
https://www.curbed.com/2021/02/the-cecil-hotel-elisa-lam-netflix.html

Crime Scene:
The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel

FEB. 24, 2021

The Cecil Hotel Docuseries Is a Crime Story in Search of a Crime
By Willy Blackmore

Photo: Netflix

Spoiler alert: Major plot details revealed within.

It’s one of the more indelible and eerie moments in internet video history: A girl in a red hoodie walks into an empty elevator and presses the buttons for more than a handful of floors. She then begins to peer up and down the hallway, stepping in and out of the door (and out of the security-camera frame), as if she’s waiting for — or trying to avoid — someone. She hides in the corner for a time, and her movements become more odd and exaggerated. Nothing dramatic happens, but there’s a shiver-inducing sense that something is wrong. The video, released by LAPD in 2013, is the last known sighting of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian tourist who disappeared while she was staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Nineteen days after she was recorded in the elevator, her body was found in one of the water tanks on the roof. The last, unnerving glimpse of Lam in the elevator went viral and it has sparked a wild online afterlife, a season of American Horror Story, and now a new Netflix docuseries that puts her life and death, and that of the infamous Cecil Hotel, into the ever-popular true-crime format — which is a troubling approach to take for a story in which it is increasingly clear that no crime ever took place.

There is one thing you should know before watching the Netflix docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel — but it isn’t revealed until the fourth and final episode. So consider this both a spoiler alert and a giant asterisk to place next to the first three episodes: When Lam’s body was found in a water tank on the Cecil’s rooftop, the access hatch on top of the tank was open, not closed as the police initially reported. Despite the video, Lam appears to have either fallen or jumped into the tank and drowned. This detail, which was gleaned from a 2015 lawsuit Lam’s family brought against the downtown Los Angeles hotel and corroborated in an interview with the former employee who found her, pretty effectively eliminates years’ worth of conspiracies about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the 21-year-old Canadian tourist. Although her body was naked when she was found, it showed no signs of trauma, and the only major red flags in her toxicology report were the prescription medications she took for bipolar disorder and depression that were not present in her blood. The fact about the hatch, and the timing of its revelation, presents a serious problem for the series: How is there a “Crime Scene” if there never was a crime?

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Photo: Courtesy of CBS News/YouTube

Even before it became an online sensation, the story was followed breathlessly by Los Angeles cable news in 2013. It was the kind of horrific noir tale that always felt like an echo of some other rainy, black-and-white Los Angeles playing out in real time in the drought-stricken modern city. But in many ways, Lam’s story has proven to be an anomaly for the Cecil, which has been infamous for nearly all of its 94 years: She appears to have only died at the hotel rather than somehow because of it. Even before Richard Ramirez lived there during his Night Stalker killing spree in the 1980s, there were stories: the woman who jumped from the ninth floor and flattened a man on the sidewalk below; the Elizabeth Short sighting there shortly before she was cut in two and became forever known as the Black Dahlia, victim of L.A.’s most notoriously unsolved murder. In the 1970s, Los Angeles tried to confine homeless people to nearby Skid Row, and the Cecil became a kind of quasi-shelter like many of the formerly grand hotels along Main Street — and the site of the kind of crime that generates fear rather than sympathetic victims. According to Amy Price, who was the Cecil’s manager when Lam checked in, there were some 80 deaths — ranging from overdoses to suicides to killings — at the hotel during the decade she worked there.

But despite having nine years of hindsight and clear sense on what likely did happen — that Lam went off her meds, and that if she was indeed running from anything it was in her own head — the filmmakers cede the narrative to a bunch of cops and a number of “web sleuths” who have spent years developing Elisa Lam conspiracy theories.

The series entertains various theories of what might have happened to Lam — that she was killed by another Cecil guest, that she was the victim of a copycat killing inspired by the 2005 horror flick Dark Water, that she was an op involved in an international conspiracy to spread a new strain of tuberculosis. Not only are these conspiracies detailed, but choice bits are pulled from Lam’s own Tumblr to make each potential horrific thing that absolutely did not happen to her seem plausible (although not for the whole TB thing, a subject she apparently never blogged about). The show works something like this: A narrator reads from her blog about how she was open to meeting a guy on her trip to California, and then there’s a whole section about how perhaps she was picked up by someone and then killed. Or we hear how she blogged that “my mouth is my downfall, and it will get me in trouble,” and then that horrific possible outcome is explored. “Anybody’s vulnerable, especially if you’re a naïve girl from some other country who’s here who’s thinking it’s all beaches and roses — it’s misleading,” says one of the LAPD cops. We hear about the pervasive crime on Skid Row, about how she couldn’t have possibly walked out the door without being offered hard drugs (in ten years of living in L.A., I was never offered hard drugs on or around Main Street), about the homeless men and the guys fresh out of prison who were surely riding up and down the same elevators. Surely something about the hotel must have figured into her death?

Some of the would-be killers the internet latched on to get more screen time than others, including Morbid, a black-metal musician (real name: Pablo Vergara) who had previously stayed at the Cecil and used to record songs that explored, well, morbid fantasies, including chasing down and killing a woman. With his tendency toward white contact lenses, facial piercings, and stage blood, Vergara may not look like the most sympathetic character, and he did make a video proclaiming his innocence in full Morbid dress and style that is more creepy than convincing — but the fact remains that there is nothing at all tying him to Lam. That didn’t stop sleuths convinced that he had killed Lam from stalking Vergara online, and the cyberbullying campaign mounted against him led Vergara to a suicide attempt.

“I do feel like I’ve lost my freedom of expression,” Vergara said in an interview for the docuseries. “I actually haven’t made any more music. When I try, it’s not the same. I’m trying to rebuild my life and everything, but it sucks. Every day, it’s never going away. I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”

It’s a shame, really, because you can so easily imagine a documentary that handles the facts differently and is more suspicious of the web sleuths and YouTubers who have been “investigating” the case for the better part of a decade. At a time when conspiracy theories have had an outsize influence in politics and public health after festering for years in closed communities (offline and on), why not start right off by saying that there was no crime, and instead look at Elisa Lam as the person she was? And then, separately, consider the community that has kept some horror-movie version of her alive online more critically.

There’s a quote from Lam’s Tumblr that figures in the first episode of Crime Scene, “the internet doesn’t really have consequences,” that I keep coming back to. While it may have rung true when she was still alive and writing in the early 2010s, we have again and again seen how it is decidedly not the case — QAnon and anti-vaxx conspiracies being prime examples. But instead of taking that shift in our understanding of online communities and conspiracies as its subject, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel only touches on the consequences of the internet, and the stories that take on a life of their own there, in the lightest of ways.

from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/your-honor-recap-episode-9-part-nine.html

Your Honor S1 Ep 9

Your Honor Recap: Water, Water, Everywhere
By Scott Tobias



Photo: Skip Bolen/SHOWTIME

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”

That line, from the end of W.H. Auden poem “First Things First,” is quoted by Michael Desciato to Joey Maldini, Carlo Baxter’s best friend, as he prepares to become the star witness for the prosecution at Carlo’s trial. It’s tempting to say that Michael had some loftier intent in referencing Auden, perhaps suggesting Joey’s newfound isolation from the Baxters, whom he considered family. But it could also be like that biblical quote from Ezekiel that Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) likes to recite at a moment of reckoning. (“I just thought it was a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass.”)

Michael is getting a little cute here, and a little sadistic, too. He believes himself to be the sort of learned, high-minded intellectual who can make such a reference, but he has to be relishing the irony that he’s tainted this life-sustaining water. It’s not as if Joey is a remorseful man seeking redemption here — testifying against Carlo and the other Baxters, and getting a sweet government deal for it, is just a way out another tight corner for him — but he’s in a vulnerable spot. He is the lonely man suggested by Auden’s poem, living without love, and now even the water is a killer. Or a maimer, anyway.

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If there was any time when Michael could hope to emerge from this cover-up with his integrity intact, that time has definitively passed. He’s entirely in scramble mode now, doing everything possible to save himself and his son from the Baxters and the law. The trial is the big grenade he’s falling on here. Rigging the court in favor of an obviously, flagrantly, remorselessly guilty thug like Carlo would take an incredible effort even without Carlo’s best buddy testifying that he bragged about splitting Kofi’s head open like a watermelon. (To underline the point, this episode also includes an incredible scene where Carlo’s lawyer is gently coaching him through his witness testimony and cannot get him to say non-vicious, non-incriminating things.)

There are no big holes in the prosecution’s case, exactly, but Joey’s testimony would have laid the self-defense argument to rest. In addition to Joey witnessing Carlo brag about killing Kofi, he can also testify that Carlo’s mother arranged for her son to be transferred to Kofi’s prison so he could have access to him. (Which doesn’t make that much sense given that Jimmy Baxter has goons on the inside willing to kill Kofi without Carlo getting his hands dirty.) It should be obvious, based on Carlo’s motives and the nature of his attack, that he wasn’t acting in self-defense when Kofi stepped into his cell. But poisoning Joey does let Michael sustain that precious shadow of a doubt, and he’s got more rigging to do.

The trouble is, there’s too much beyond his knowledge or control that’s starting to get away from him. That’s been the issue with Adam from the start, as he’s been on a passive campaign to incriminate himself for Rocco’s death and that campaign may finally be coming to fruition. He confessed to Frannie shortly after the incident and now he’s alienated Frannie by taking up with Rocco’s sister, Fia, which is like taking two giant steps into the lion’s den. Now Michael’s best friend, the politically connected mayoral candidate Charlie, knows that Adam did it. And Jimmy Baxter, through some casual Instagram sleuthing, knows that his daughter happens to be dating the son of the judge he believes ran over Rocco.

The noose is tightening elsewhere, too. Lee Delamere has learned that Kofi was taking the GED at the time of Rocco’s death, so he couldn’t have been responsible for the hit-and-run. (Was it really necessary for poor Kofi to have failed the GED? Give the kid a break. He’s dead!) New information is slowly coming to light about the death of Adam’s mother a year earlier, which seems timed to a big connect-the-dots reveal in the finale. And there’s some business about how the Desire gang figures into all these storylines, and what possible role Kofi’s little brother Eugene might play in either helping or exposing the gang leaders who have brought him under their wing.

Have I mentioned there’s only one episode left? The number of loose ends Your Honor needs to tie up next week is staggering to consider, given how much the show has opened up to down-the-ensemble contributions from familiar faces like Margo Martindale, Maura Tierney, and Chet Hanks. We’re going to have to get some conclusion from the trial, which will presumably dovetail with the Baxters’ reaction to that conclusion, which will presumably dovetail with Adam’s combustible relationships with Fia and Frannie, Charlie reacting to what he knows about Adam, Lee and Costello pursuing their independent hunches, and whatever revelations await about the war between the Baxters and Desire, and how Adam’s mother’s murder figures into all of it. A classic New Orleans gumbo, right? Or maybe just a gloppy pile of sausage, shrimp, herbs, and vegetables that don’t make any sense together?

But let’s give Your Honor the benefit of the doubt here. It’s been a reliably pulpy plot machine all season, so there’s reason to believe that all these little gears and springs are going to keep the show ticking until the end. A bigger question — and a question we must ask of all plot machines — is how meaningfully the show will feel once it’s over. Just as the ceaseless work of covering up the hit-and-run has clouded Michael’s sense of self, the show has the difficult job of not getting lost in the frantic details. Will it be a series about family ties, morality, racism, and systemic injustice? Or will it be a series about a bunch of stuff that happens. Stay tuned …

Beignets

• It should be noted that Michael’s moral sense prevents him from taking the easy way out with Joey. His original suggestion to Jimmy was to allow the prosecution to allow Joey to testify, but give the defense a day to prepare to cross-examine this surprise witness. That would give the Baxters an opportunity to slip in and murder Joey before he takes the stand. By denying the defense any time and making Joey incapacitated himself, Michael finds a non-violent and elegant solution to the problem.

• Even though the odd circumstances of Adam’s mother’s (and Michael wife’s) death are hinted at in the first episode, it nonetheless feels like a cheat to table any information on her murder until the very end of the show. It doesn’t seem like we need any extra baggage here.

• Lots of shifty looks from Costello in this episode, including a big one after Joey collapses on the stand and Michael instructs the jury to toss out his testimony entirely. Presuming that Joey recovers, she will surely have questions for him, especially since she likes the idea of using him to break up the Baxter empire more comprehensively.

• “Let’s keep our social distancing.” It’s very strange how half-heartedly Your Honor has handled the pandemic. We’ve maybe seen one juror in a mask, and what little else we’ve gotten has been vague. The show should either be set during the pandemic or not, because this ’tweener world does not exist.

• All Carlo’s attorney needs him to do is two things: (1) Say he was “terrified” when Kofi, his brother’s presumed killer, walked into his cell, and (2) Say he was “sad,” not angry, when he learned what happened to his brother. But he simply cannot pretend not to be a macho idiot.

 from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/2017/05/american-gods-recap-season-1-episode-4-git-gone.html

American Gods S1 Ep 4: Git Gone

American Gods Recap: Death Becomes Her
By Oliver Sava



Emily Browning as Laura Moon. Photo: Jan Thijs/© 2017 Starz Entertainment, LLC

American Gods isn’t a brisk novel, and the TV series is following the book’s inclination to break away from the main action and explore tangents that inform the larger world of the story. The first three episodes did this with the “Coming to America” and “Somewhere in America” sequences, but “Git Gone” is an entire detour of its own, an episode-length recounting of Laura Moon’s journey from suicidal blackjack dealer to superpowered zombie. It’s a bold move to pause the main story this early and rewind the clock to focus on a different character. The pacing already isn’t especially quick — the show spent a lot of time in Chernobog and the Zorya sisters’ apartment — and now Michael Green and Bryan Fuller are adding an hour’s worth of material that wasn’t in the book.

American Gods is taking a risk, but it’s one that pays off with “Git Gone.” For better and worse, the episode feels like a pilot for a different show. There are references to events we’ve seen, but this could easily be someone’s introduction to the series and they wouldn’t be lost. The reasons behind Laura’s resurrection and the lynching she discovers immediately afterward aren’t made specific because they are still a mystery to her, and everything else is explained in enough detail that this “Git Gone” could stand alone. It’s a satisfying, self-contained narrative about a woman who finds a new purpose in life after death, and it ends with the final moment of the previous episode, merging the two stories together.

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Laura Moon completes the trinity of undead heroines in Bryan Fuller shows, joining Dead Like Me’s Georgia “George” Lass and Pushing Daisies’ Charlotte “Chuck” Charles. (The connection would be even stronger if Laura had a masculine nickname.) Fuller has experience writing women who are liberated by death, and Laura is the darkest of these three characters. She’s introduced as a casino employee who is so numb to the world, she passes time by trapping herself in a covered hot tub filled with bug spray. The name of the spray gives the episode its title, and Laura is looking for a way out of her life.

Emily Browning does strong work capturing Laura’s existential ennui, and she’s trapped in a routine that is draining her more with each passing day. The thing she enjoyed about her work, shuffling cards, has been taken away from her by an automated shuffling machine, and the recurring visual of Laura pulling cards out of the shuffler is a fitting metaphor for how the character feels about her life. She has no control over the cards she’s being dealt, but she still pulls them one by one because she’s used to it. She’s resigned herself to this fate, and Browning’s performance highlights that detached boredom, which weighs Laura down until her death.

As for the music, it’s strange to hear Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s main theme from The Social Network underscoring Laura’s unhappiness at the start of the episode. (It pulled me out of that sequence because I just started thinking about Mark Zuckerberg being an asshole.) The religious imagery in the Band’s “The Weight” made it an interesting music choice for the moment before Laura and Robbie’s deaths, but I didn’t understand the decision to have her ask him to sing along. It’s a moment of humor that doesn’t land, and while I can see this being a way for Laura to exert authority over Robbie, it feels shoehorned in by the writers. They have a comedian in Dane Cook, so I guess they wanted to give him some comedic material?

Like many pilots, “Git Gone” simplifies characters and relationships to give viewers a clear, shallow idea of who these people are and how they interact with each other. There’s a lot of material to cover in an hour, so Green and Fuller don’t bring much depth to Laura’s conflicts before she dies giving her best friend’s husband road head. The betrayal would’ve hit harder if the show provided a clearer picture of Laura’s friendship with Audrey (Betty Gilpin), but we do eventually get a stronger sense of that dynamic when an undead Laura shows up in Audrey’s house to sew up her detached arm.

While the pilot exaggerated Audrey’s character to the point where she didn’t feel like a real character, her aggressively vulgar behavior plays into “Git Gone” after she discovers her best friend is now a zombie. Audrey’s heightened state of vengeful grief in the pilot makes her interactions with undead Laura more intense, and Audrey can direct all of her rage directly at her. (The severity of this encounter is undercut by literal toilet humor, as Laura expels the embalming fluid from her body.) You can see glimmers of shame and regret in Laura as she’s berated by her old friend, but she has bigger problems on her hands.

The most substantial relationship in “Git Gone” is the missing one, and so the episode provides valuable context for Shadow and Laura’s marriage. It shows their first meeting at the blackjack table, where Laura tells Shadow not to go through with his attempt to cheat the casino, then follows them through the early days of their courtship and the degradation of their relationship after getting married. Ricky Whittle brought a lot more confidence to Shadow last week, and he’s all bravado when he first shows up in “Git Gone.” Shadow thinks he has what it takes to steal from the casino, but Laura quickly deflates his ego.

Laura challenges Shadow, and that attracts him to her. He’s totally smitten, while she’s mostly interested in having something new to distract her from her dreary life. Once that freshness wears off, she looks for another distraction: She decides that she’ll be Shadow’s inside man and help him rob the casino like he suggested when they first met, but we never see her perfect plan in action. Instead, the action cuts immediately to Shadow in jail, where he decides to take the full blame rather than put Laura in prison, even though it’s a change that would probably satisfy her need to get out of her hometown.

Once Laura dies, supernatural elements begin to take over the narrative. The circumstances of Laura’s death invite Mr. Jacquel (a.k.a. Anubis) to take her to his desert limbo and weigh her heart against a feather, but unlike Mrs. Fadil in last week’s “Somewhere in America” sequence, Laura doesn’t have patience for this process. She bats Mr. Jacquel’s hand away when he tries to rip her heart out, then slams her fist on the scale because she knows what it’s going to say. She lived her life, good and bad, and she’s ready to face the consequences without all of the added theatrics. Laura’s final resting place comes in the form of a hot tub and a can of bug spray, but before she can submerge herself, she’s pulled away from limbo and brought back to the world of the living.

After Laura crawls out of her grave and stumbles around for a bit, she discovers a gang of faceless goons lynching her husband. “Git Gone” reveals that the explosions of blood shown in the pilot were courtesy of Laura, who has been gifted with incredible strength after her resurrection. She punches holes through heads and abdomens, and a kick to an opponent’s crotch sends his spine and skull bursting out of his skin. It’s a grisly sequence made all the more brutal by sound effects that emphasize the sound of bones breaking and gore squishing. The violence is totally over the top, but it effectively establishes that Laura’s new circumstances are giving her the excitement she craves.

The shot of Laura covered in blood, walking down the middle of the street in broad daylight and holding her detached arm is a visual that is both chilling and comedic. Laura has no reservations about her current state, and the juxtaposition of her appearance with the sunny suburban surroundings adds a layer of dark humor. “Git Gone” actually gets funnier once Laura is a zombie, which makes a lot of sense given the tone of Bryan Fuller’s previous shows that dealt with similar circumstances. Now that Laura has the spotlight, will she become a more active player in the ongoing narrative? Will that sense of humor follow her into upcoming episodes? The best part about “Git Gone” is that it makes it even harder to predict where American Gods will go next.

from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/away-episode-2-season-1-recap-negative-return.html

The Feed S1 Ep 2: Negative Return

Away Recap: Just a Casual Little Space Walk
By Maggie Fremont



Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

You know that whole thing about the lack of trust between Emma and Misha? Yeah, well that immediately comes to a head in the most dramatic of fashions when the two astronauts at odds have to do a space walk together. If you’re unfamiliar with space walks, or EVAs, they’re when the astronauts need to go outside the ship, usually to make repairs. The ship is hurtling through space, and they have one little tether that they can hook onto the ship to keep them from, well, just floating away into space. I feel like that description doesn’t fully convey how intense these things are, but if you watch the last 20 minutes of “Negative Return,” you’ll get it. Holy hell is that a space walk, folks.

In the premiere episode, after the fireball incident, Emma’s husband, Matt, reassures Darlene at mission control that it’s totally fine: “Every mission has a screwup, Darlene. They just got theirs out of the way early.” Oh, how that line makes me laugh. I mean, we have ten episodes of space content to fill — you know there will be more screwups. There will be all the screwups. Which is why it’s not at all surprising that when the crew goes to deploy the three solar panels that will provide all the power their ship needs for their entire journey, one of them gets stuck. There’s no way they’ll make it to Mars and back without it.

It’s Misha, our mechanics guy, and Emma, crew commander, who are tasked with the big EVA. Neither seems super-thrilled, and Misha reiterates his belief that Emma isn’t fit to lead this mission, which is a supercool and fun thing to do in this exact moment. But, as Misha informs his crewmates, “[they] have no idea what [he] had to sacrifice to get here!” (I bet we’ll find out!!), and he’ll be damned to let it all be for naught.

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Misha’s sacrifice clearly has something to do with his adult daughter, who he calls up ahead of his EVA to … ask for her forgiveness? Which is apparently something he does for every space walk (he’s done nine) out of superstition, but his daughter wants no part of it. Their relationship is … let’s say tense bordering on contentious.

Emma, at least, gets a much sweeter EVA send-off from Matt, who has all the faith in the world in her — he won’t even let her say she loves him because it feels like she’s saying good-bye. She also gets in a quick call with Lex and tells her that she’s her “reason to hold on tight,” and honestly I hope that teen is in therapy, because yeesh, that’s a lot to process right there.

And then it’s just Misha and Emma. They may have Ram buzzing in their ear and mission control weighing in, but really, out there in space, with nothing but a tether keeping them bound to the ship, it’s just about them. So, like, that’s probably a little worrisome.

And then they encounter a problem. Well, another problem. Their path to the stuck solar panel is blocked by an electrical issue that could fry them should they get too close to it. Misha may not trust Emma, but Emma trusts Misha implicitly in this situation. Or at least she pretends to. Should astronauts be faking it till they make it? Seems dangerous. Anyway, when Misha comes up with a plan to make one long tether and toss one of them over the electrical mess and onto the solar panel, Emma tells him that she’ll do it. And so that’s what they do. They fling Emma into space.

This might be a good time to let you know that there is a live feed following Atlas I, broadcasting everything they do, which is truly just nutty. The people in mission control can barely watch what Emma and Misha are attempting, and that is their actual job. Cut this feed, people! No one needs this!

Once Emma gets up on the solar panel, she can see that one of its cables is caught and she needs to move it back into position. In order to do that, she needs to untether herself and slingshot herself around the panel onto the back. I’m nauseous just thinking about it. It is true insanity. But it works, she hooks herself back in, she moves the cable, and I stop covering my eyes … which is actually a terrible decision because the force of her pulling on the cable sends her flying backward, and she maybe goes unconscious for a hot second? Misha seems worried, and when Misha is worried, I’m worried.

Thankfully, Emma quickly comes to, and after pulling herself back toward the solar panel, Misha is able to grab her and they get back into the ship tethered together. The solar panel fully deploys, and we’re all back in business. It looks like that trust Misha wanted Emma to earn is there. It only gave us all a stomach ulcer to achieve it.

As Misha and Emma wait in decompression, Misha opens up a little bit more. Before they went out, he had prayed to his late wife to protect them. And then we learn about the real sacrifice Misha made to be here: His wife died suddenly when his daughter was young, and he was in space when it happened, unable to get back. When he did, he asked his daughter for her forgiveness and promised to never leave her again. Obviously, he’s gone back on that promise repeatedly. His daughter has never really been able to forgive him. Our Misha!

So things seem better with the crew of Atlas I after surviving that shitshow of an EVA. So much better, in fact, that they all come together for a little toast to Emma and Misha. But, as it turns out, not everyone is in the mood to celebrate. Ram — yes, Ram — goes off on Misha and Emma. How dare Misha assume he’s the only one “haunted” by the sacrifices he’s made for this job. HOW DARE Emma be so reckless with her life. “We all need you alive. I need you alive,” he tells her. Those suspicions I had in the first episode? Yeah, those have been upgraded. Has someone caught some feelings?

Mission Control

• Meanwhile, on Earth, Matt learns that he’ll be in the hospital much longer than he thought, and there could be permanent mobility issues, especially with his legs. As if this man doesn’t have enough to deal with! He just watched his wife fling herself out into space!!

• Turns out Melissa, Emma’s chosen crew support on the ground, was also in the running for Atlas I but backed out when she had her special-needs daughter, Cassie. It looks like Melissa is raising Cassie by herself, so there must be a story there. Also, when Matt asks if Melissa is okay keeping Lex while he’s in the hospital, he mentions feeling bad that they’ve grown apart over the years. Like I said, a story.

• Have we possibly discovered who gave Lu that ring she wears? It seems like our mission CAPCOM, Mei, is a strong contender, since the two share a conversation over the comms system about how the thoughts of the people of China are with Lu, and it is dripping in some real tension. I think that conversation might be code for something else, you guys.

• Plant Watch: Kwesi introduces us to the first plant that will grow on Mars, and it is currently in soil from Ghana, where he was born. He’s so proud of his plant! Kwesi is the best of us.

Superman #7-15: The Unity Saga

 THE UNITY SAGA

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Pencils by Ivan Reis, Brandon Peterson, Jason Fabok

Published Jan-Sep 2019

   Fresh off just being gone on a field trip with Grandpa El, Jon El is now like 17 years old. Problem is that when he left he was like 9. This is a bit of an issue for the super fam and Kal El is bound and determined to find out what happened.

   Catching up with Jor El, the elder Superman is in the middle of a battle with Rogol Zaar and General Zod.  Problem is that his excuses for it don’t really add up. After being joined by Supergirl and even Crypto, they get it all back on track. Finally seeking peace, Jon hatches the idea of a United Nations of planets. He’s then met by some future team who asks him to return to the future with them. But what does this mean for Superboy’s life on earth? We’ll have to wait till next time to find out.

Fargo S2 Ep 2: Before The Law

from the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/arts/television/fargo-season-2-episode-2-crime-isnt-for-amateurs.html

Fargo S2 Ep 2: Before The Law

‘Fargo’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: Crime Isn’t for Amateurs





Brad Mann, left, and Bokeem Woodbine in “Fargo.”Credit...Chris Large/FX


By Scott Tobias
Oct. 19, 2015

Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Before the Law’

As the homemade cover of “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby” that closed last week’s episode reminds us, Noah Hawley’s “Fargo” isn’t merely a play on a single Coen brothers film, but a comprehensive plucking of their entire oeuvre.

That song, a traditional, appeared in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” which itself is named after a proposed book about the common man in the Preston Sturges film “Sullivan’s Travels,” so Hawley’s references to the Coens lead us down the referential rabbit hole.

But there’s one Coens-specific idea that brings tonight’s thrilling hour all the way back to their debut feature, “Blood Simple”: Crime isn’t for amateurs. And a related lesson: Blood doesn’t sop up easily. One of the signature sequences in “Blood Simple” emphasizes the physical labor involved in covering up a crime by disposing of a dead body. Those pools of blood on the barroom floor are not like water, but a viscous mass that spreads across the hardwood as it’s being wiped away. It stains the hands, the rags, the sink and the conscience, and that’s before the oppressive weight of a lifeless body comes into play.

Tonight’s episode moved like a shot — this season has a lot of narrative transactions to make — but Hawley (who directed) downshifts markedly when he gets to poor Ed Blumquist, who’s left to clean up his wife’s mess. Our first shot of Ed has him sitting glumly outside the garage, contemplating the moral complications of the crime before he sets to work on the practical ones. We don’t know what Ed and Peggy’s marriage was like before she struck Rye Gerhardt with her car and drove him “the back way” into their garage, but it’s safe to say that Ed has learned something about his wife’s capacity for misbehavior and deceit. He also has to contend with his own role in finishing Rye off in the garage — self-defense or no, he’s a killer now.




Amateur criminal though he may be, Ed is a professional butcher, so at least he knows how to break down a body. (His technique is certainly more methodical than that of Peter Stormare with the infamous wood-chipper in “Fargo.”) Still, Hawley emphasizes the slow, grisly process of turning Rye Gerhardt into ground chuck, and the emotional toll it must be exacting on Ed, who married into this particular torment. Meanwhile, Peggy displays the instincts of a criminal mastermind — in addition to the hit-and-run, she’s swiped toilet paper from the salon — but none of the skills. In just one short visit from her boss, Constance Heck, Peggy has to come up with a hasty excuse for her shattered car window (which she immediate contradicts) and she gets outed as a T.P. thief. Constance seems oddly aroused by Peggy’s bad-girl side, but she’s also the first to tug at the loose threads of the Blumquist story, which now seems certain to unravel.


In contrast, Floyd Gerhardt knows her criminal business. Though the timing of her husband’s stroke couldn’t have been any worse for the Gerhardts, who face the encroachment of corporate goons from Kansas City, Floyd continues to manage the day-to-day (“Give these to the Chinaman, usual disbursement”) while working to stifle the mutinous entitlement of her hotheaded son Dodd. When Dodd objects to the idea that his 19-year-old daughter Simone might be too young to listen in on a business meeting, Floyd seizes the opportunity to belittle him: “Girls grow up to be women,” she says, “and change boys’ diapers.”

There’s no doubting that Dodd has the strength and pitilessness to do the ugly parts of the trade — just ask the poor earless guy in the barn — but force alone does not make an effective leader in the long run. He’s all hammer, no scalpel.

At this point, Lou Solverson, a state trooper, and Hank Larsson, the sheriff, can only sense the storm coming. Lou’s itchiness over the crime scene leads him back to the Waffle Hut, which in turn leads his wife, Betsy, to discover the murder weapon while she is playing with young Molly Solverson in the snow. For Betsy and Molly to find this key piece of evidence is thematically significant: This is a crime that will reverberate beyond those responsible for it, and touch the lives of ordinary, innocent people. Hank feels the dread sinking in, too, when he stops Mike Milligan and the Kitchen brothers on the road outside the Waffle Hut. There are threatening undercurrents to both Mike’s faux-friendly chatter and the Kitchen brothers’ absolute silence. They want to rattle Hank and they succeed. And they won’t be taking that police escort out of the state.
Three-Cent Stamps

• A nice visual touch: Juxtaposing overhead shots of the river slicing through the Upper Midwest landscape with the fat running through a piece of butchered meat.


• It’s important to note that Floyd does not want to lead the Gerhardts in her husband’s absence, but rightly feels she’s the only one who can do it in a time of crisis. “I’ll turn my thoughts to the grave later,” she tells Dodd, promising the throne to him later if he concedes it now. But Dodd has no intention of conceding it, so thoughts may be turning to the grave sooner than expected.

• Anyone else as perplexed as Joe Bulo at Mike’s lobster metaphor? Which Gerhardt son is “the pincher” and which is “the crusher”?

• The deadpan exchanges at the Blumquist butcher shop are becoming a consistent comic highlight:

“Never trust anything that comes from the sea.”

“We came from the sea.”

• The series is occasionally guilty of voicing themes that are already embedded in the show. Like this from Hank to his son-in-law: “After World War II, we went six years without a murder here. These days, sometimes I wonder if you boys didn’t bring that war home with you.” Got it, Hank. No country for old men.

• This week’s biggest “Fargo” the movie callback: The typewriter salesman on the phone with creditors, which recalls Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) making assurances to his criminal cohorts. “I got the money, see.”

• The U.F.O. references continue with the radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” over the closing credits. We’ll see where this is going, but a commenter last week helpfully linked to this story of a U.F.O. sighting in 1979 Minnesota. Hmmm...

 from MarvyTVseries.com
https://marvytvseries.com/upload-episode-4-review/

Upload S1 Ep 4: The S*x Suit

Upload Episode 4 Review – Season 1

May 9, 2020 

 

Marvy 

 

2 Comments

Upload Season 1 is over as all episodes were released on 1st may 2020. So far it has been worth watching upload tv series.  Episode 4 begins as David Choak, a billionaire who takes it upon himself to teach Nathan golfing.

 

Upload Episode 4 Review – Season 1

If there is one thing you have not noticed in upload Tv series is how important it is to be rich before you die. Life there is not as simple as it is. That is why it’s made up of data and app purchases. This comes in mind what life would have been if we all needed data and money to enjoy an activity or even a meal.

The A.I guy has been really interesting. Initially Nathan did not see his relevance of being there. As time went on he had to deal with. It is all part of the package of being in Horizen.

Someone should reveal the policy of Horizen client support center to us. Now than Nora broke the ice, she has fallen into the comfort of Nathan.  Nora and Nathan talks about how wealthy and well lived Choak had lived his life. At some point it chokes Nathan, he wish he had lived long. He imagined how old he could have been if he was still alive.

As Nora has come across a lot, she opts to show Nathan the other side of Horizen. In the real sense she is looking into the death of Nathan. Nora shows what it is like to enjoy certain things in Horizen. Having data is also in important there. (Life must be boring and annoying over there without data) Just as they discuss how others cannot even afford clothes, a naked man passes by without a penis.

Life can be very controlling, but in Horizen it can be worse. Ingrid has the money, she has the plan and now Nathan is in his world. Their meeting in more times were represented by Ingrid even though Nathan was around. He feels disrespected anytime he is around Ingrid, now he can’t make hit own decisions.

As this episode is named; sex suit, we couldn’t wait to see how the sex will be like. Horizen has quite a good technology around. Just as Ingrid begins to romance and be playful she realizes that Nathan has no boner. She was indeed desperate for it, with that fierce and eagerness in her eyes. Ingrid calls for tech support only to see “jealous Nora” show up. But why was Nora jealous? Does he like Nathan” it is pretty obvious there is a bit of a flame there. Seeing the sex suit coming up on her screen she begins to blaze. It felt like a disappointment to her. Later on, Nathan tries to apologies, but Nora brushes it off.

This tv series has been very interesting, the part time investigator who Nathan refers as the gym instructor begins to put the puzzle together. Well, she was right about being good in puzzle. Something was not right and she is so close to bringing out the truth.

Nora ends app installing the nitely app again Aleesha notices how distressed she wants to hook up. She had been waiting for long after craving for Nathan. Nora opens her door only to find the same guy ….. She knows she’s been deceived but this time it is for a payback. Throughout the sex, she takes control and all she could picture in her mind was how hot Nathan was looking that day. Something tingled and triggered her hormones.  This surely confirms, Nora has feelings for Nathan or she is just crushing on Nathan. Finally she gets her five(5) star and ready to push her boss to sign the loan for her dad.

The gym instructor who as a character is known as Fran Booth has been on this case persistently and consistently. What is in her for? is it justice or just doing what she is expected to? Fran walks to the shop where Nathan’s car was parked before he died. She needed to see as she discovered something strange with Nathan’s car in episode 3. Finally, Fran gets to see the tape only for her to see who was around the car before the night of the car crash. She feels so content about getting close to the case. She is indeed trying to fix the puzzle.

Stick to us as we bring you the review on episode 5 of upload.

Nora ends app installing the nitely app again Aleesha notices how distressed she wants to hook up

Finally she gets her five(5) star and ready to push her boss to sign the loan for her dad.