Snowpiercer S1 Ep 10: 994 Cars Long

from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/snowpiercer-season-finale-recap-episode-10-994-cars-long.html

Snowpiercer Season-Finale Recap: Devil in the White City
By Hillary Kelly


Photo: Justina Mintz/TNT

We still don’t know exactly what’s happened to Mr. Wilford. (I am, however, patting myself vigorously on the back for refusing this whole time to believe that he was dead.) To lay it all out, the people of Snowpiercer were told for over six years that he had locked himself up in the engine, working all day and night to keep the train moving and humanity alive. Only Melanie and the engineers were, they said, privy to his whereabouts, occasionally calling him with passengers’ queries and problems and passing along the mighty Mr. Wilford’s instructions. But as Layton figured out in the course of the Sean Wise murder investigation, Mr. Wilford wasn’t hiding himself away, he was gone, and Melanie (with the cooperation of Bennett and Javier) had been ruling in his stead for six years. She admitted to Ruth that she’d left him by the side of the train — where the cold was sure to kill him — six years ago, because he’d nearly destroyed Snowpiercer with his ineptitude and ego. But how did he survive? And make his way to a second train?

Now, suddenly, there’s a chance that he’s been steering a supply train around the globe — a vengeful maniac bent on destruction, or a savior come bearing gifts of bovine cultures, a genetics lab, and new engine parts? Either way, Layton warns those standing in the Tail as it’s blowtorched open, “Wilford was only ever a man. Do not build him up in your minds into something he isn’t.” Under her breath, Ruth adds, “A great man.”

The ideology of Snowpiercer was of blind devotion to one man: the wondrous Wilford, who built the Engine Eternal and inspired schoolchildren to sing songs of devotion as they crossed themselves with the Sign of the W. Even if he was a subpar leader and a grubbing opportunist, Mr. Wilford did one thing right. He created a set of alluring rituals for a group of desperate, confused humans — the last people alive on Earth — and gave them an idol to put their faith in as they aimlessly circled the globe. Branding, it turns out, will get you everywhere.

Snowpiercer has spent its first season dismantling the cult of Wilford. Most of his successes, we learn, are actually Melanie’s. She built the train. She maintained order. She saved humanity, dammit. Now, just as she’s stepped back from leadership and ceded to the demands of the revolution, he’s back. As Ruth chirps delightedly out the window, it has to be Mr. Wilford steering that second train, for who else but that great man could effectively rise from the dead, commandeer another locomotive, and catch up with Snowpiercer just as it sailed through Chicago and began a whole new revolution?

This puts both Layton and Melanie in precarious positions. As the de facto leader of the train “until a constitution can be drafted for an elected government,” Layton has just — as in, like, 24 hours earlier — violently overthrown the yoke of oppression and the system that Wilford himself organized and endorsed. Looters have been moving through the train — commandeering lettuce carts and taking over first-class quarters for rather sparsely attended get-togethers — and the various aggrieved parties are engaged in a ferocious conflict over whether they are destroying the carefully tended balance of Snowpiercer’s systems, or simply taking what’s due to them after seven years of inhumane treatment. Layton doesn’t exactly have the chops to handle it; Wilford could easily swoop in now and remind passengers that on his watch unsightly messes were kept tucked away in the Tail. That’s how a heavily biased meritocracy works, anyway. The rich neighborhoods are swept clean and tended by loving gardeners, while the less fortunate are left with the muck.

For Melanie, Wilford’s arrival (again, if it’s really him) could mean a battle royale with her former employer and foe. After all, she did toss him into the snow and speed off, leaving him to die in the negative 100-degree cold. (In a good bit of self-referentiality, Melanie ends this season in that same exact place.)

But the nexus of Melanie’s emotional evolution really has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the daughter she thinks she left for dead in the Chicago cold. Until now Melanie had resisted the Night Car’s pseudo-hypnotic-cum-theraputic sensory overload experience on purpose, unwilling or unable to access the flood of guilt she felt over devoting herself to the train and not to ensuring her daughter Alexandra’s safety on it. In a series that sometimes doesn’t know if it’s being intentionally campy or not, Jennifer Connelly’s performance has been steadily tremendous and artful, and “994 Cars Long” adds even further heft.

We’ve been fed details about Melanie’s daughter piecemeal until now, when she finally allows Miss Audrey to reach into her memory and wiggle loose the deepest images down there. Unsurprisingly, they are of Alexandra, still so young in her mind, the child who she thinks she abandoned, who was meant to arrive at Snowpiercer with Melanie’s parents but never made it.

From there the episode speeds up (ahem), with Javier’s discovery that the music he’s hearing through radio isn’t coming from a HAM, but some point “out there” in Chicago, and then the sight of Big Alice (the supply train) barreling through the snow on the track next to them. Snowpiercer tends to jam an outlandish amount of action into small bits of time, but in this case it works. With Melanie’s hope to outrun the train foiled, she tries to take it upon herself to cut the uplink feed between the two trains and take away Big Alice’s ability to control Snowpiercer. Sure, the physics of it appear impossible — how could she stand, let alone walk into the wind on a train speeding that fast? — but the idea works. In what must be the polar opposite of one of those James Bond train-top fight scenes, Melanie has to venture out into a world so unforgiving that it’s essentially a space walk on Earth, and shut down the last connection between her and Wilford. She’s prevented by one thing nobody expected, because it so imminently leads to death: a complete stop of both trains just underneath the dead, looming towers of Chicago.

Meanwhile, one of the show’s best exchanges takes place inside, as Ruth’s ideology comes crashing into Layton’s. He’s headed to greet Wilford with a war party, and she practically has a lei in her hand and a cocktail with a tiny umbrella for him. Ruth’s indignation (played off so superbly by Alison Wright) is a wonder to behold. She’s a woman who follows protocol, dammit, and she will not be dissuaded from it by any emergency, no matter the size, scope, or potential for human annihilation. “Teal,” she practically screeches, “is the color of diplomacy!” Rather than continue the fight with a gun-wielding concierge, Layton relents, throwing her off her game, and asks her to greet Big Alice’s emissary with him. “I’m a dignitary,” she insists. “Yeah I feel that,” Layton offers.

But who is this emissary? Not the man behind the curtain himself, but someone Melanie Cavill might be far more interested in seeing during the 13 minutes in which Snowpiercer must agree to a peace treaty. It’s Alexandra (Rowan Blanchard) and she has one important question: “Where is my mother?”

Well, she’s out in the snow.

From EW.com
https://ew.com/recap/star-trek-picard-season-1-episode-4/

Star Trek: Picard S1 Ep 4

Star Trek: Picard recap: Making amends, and reuniting with old friends
By Nick Schager
February 13, 2020 at 09:00 AM EST


CREDIT: TRAE PATTON/CBS


Picard seemed to have finished assembling his crew of adventurers in last week’s “The End Is the Beginning.” Yet it appears he was just getting started, as “Absolute Candor” finds the former Starfleet hero once more confronting past mistakes in order to forge his (hopefully triumphant) future — a process that involves face-to-face meetings with not one, but two key figures from his past.

Directed by longtime Trek favorite Jonathan Frakes (and written by Michael Chabon), Star Trek: Picard‘s fourth installment begins fourteen years in the past on the planet of Vashti, a Romulan Relocation Hub in the Beta Quadrant. It’s a happy place, and when Picard beams down — in a tan suit and matching wide-brimmed Panama hat — he’s greeted warmly by its inhabitants. Having stolen some fruit from the marketplace, young Elnor (Ian Nunney) runs home, announcing Picard’s impending arrival.

At Elnor’s residence, Picard gives the boy a copy of The Three Musketeers. As a sign of gratitude, Elnor hugs Picard. This prompts Elnor’s caretaker Zani (Amirah Vann) to inform the boy that he’s making their visitor — an accurate, if blunt, assessment that causes Picard to remark, “Someday, I may get used to the way of absolute candor.” Zani is one of the sisters of the Qowat Milat, an all-female religious order/fighting force whose “way of absolute candor” involves speaking one’s mind without hesitation or guile. Picard can only shrug in agreement when Zani says that Picard doesn’t like kids because “they’re demanding, distracting, and interfere with duty and pleasure alike.” Yet he also tells Elnor — whose feelings are hurt by this admission — that he likes him very much.

Picard wishes Zani and the Qowat Milat could find Elnor a more suitable home, and during his stay, he tries to provide the boy with some paternal attention and affection, fencing with him by day and reading to him at night. Picard’s visit is cut short, though, when he receives word that Mars has been attacked by synthetics, and promises to return soon before beaming away.

In the present, Jurati tells Rios that her dad used to read paper books, and Rios explains that the one he’s currently immersed in is about “the existential pain of living with the consciousness of death. And how it defines us as human beings.” Upon learning that Picard has scheduled an unplanned stop at Vashti, Raffi angrily confronts Picard in a holo-matrix recreation of his chateau study (which has been meticulously crafted by Rios’ hospitality hologram). Picard pointedly remarks that he knows Raffi is “eager” to get to Freecloud, at which she bristles. He then hears from Rios that Vashti has devolved into a dodgy place full of smugglers, warlords, and other unsavory types.

Nonetheless, Picard is determined to visit the Qowat Milat (here referred to as “Romulan warrior nuns”), the most skilled single-combat fighters he’s ever seen, and the feared enemies of the Tal Shiar. He’s confident he can convince one of them to join his cause, even though the Qowat Milat have a particular criteria for giving, or withholding, assistance.

Unable to land on Vashti due to their defense forces, Picard beams down alone to find the community radically changed, now full of angry-looking men and women, and cafes with signs stipulating “Romulans Only.” He receives a warm greeting from Zani, but Elnor (Evan Evagora), having grown into a fearsome adult warrior, is less thrilled about this reunion.

On the Borg cube, Soji watches an old video of Ramdha speaking about Ganmadan, an ancestral term for “The Day of Annihilation,” in which all unshackled demons answer the call of “The Destroyer” (the very name Ramdha called Soji during their previous encounter). Later, while examining the still-unconscious Ramdha in the “disordered” wing, Soji tells Narek that she blames herself for the woman’s suicide attempt and that she felt “seen” by Ramdha. Over subsequent drinks, Soji asks Narek how he always knows her whereabouts and has so much insight into her life. He denies being Tal Shiar but confesses that even if he were a member of the secret Romulan sect, he wouldn’t admit it.

Candor is clearly not Narek’s strong suit. Still, the enigmatic figure does suggest that the Borg database might have answers to Soji’s questions about what happened to Ramdha’s Borg-assimilated ship. To access the database, Narek makes Soji follow a Borg ritual by taking off her shoes and sliding through steam-filled passageways. While their joyful hand-in-hand trip along this corridor ends in kissing, things turn sour when Narek confronts Soji about her lie regarding her presence on a transport ship, and she considers storming off.

Back on Vashti, Raffi warns Picard that he’s been ID’d, and that local chatter is turning hostile. Picard admits to Zani that, by sticking to his ideals at the expense of saving lives years earlier, he allowed “the perfect to become the enemy of the good.” Despite his failings, however, he desperately needs the help of the Qowat Milat in his quest to combat the Tal Shiar. Elnor is not an official member of the Qowat Milat (because he’s a man), but he remains a formidable and open-hearted warrior, and in order to convince Elnor to bind his sword to his cause, Picard tells Elnor the story of Data, Dahj, and her mysterious android twin. “I’m an old man, and you’re a young one, and you’re strong,” says Picard, which isn’t enough to stop Elnor — still fuming over Picard’s prior abandonment — from angrily walking out.

Back in town, Picard pokes the proverbial bear by taking down the “Romulans Only” sign, walking over it, and taking a seat at the cantina. He’s confronted by a former Romulan senator who blames Picard for ditching them on Vashti in a supposed effort to scatter, confuse, and divide the Romulan people. Picard denies this, proclaiming that he “did everything I could,” which doesn’t smooth things over. The giant man forces Picard to take up a sword, and during their showdown, Elnor appears, announces that he’s bound himself to Picard as “qualankhkai,” and then decapitates Picard’s adversary. Before things can get nastier, they’re both beamed up to Rios’ ship.

Now safe, Picard chastises Elnor for committing murder, saying that if he’s bound to Picard’s cause, he will fight, or stand down, when ordered. Picard introduces Elnor to the rest of the crew, and confesses that the reason Elnor found his proposition acceptable is because it’s a “lost cause.”

Narek is awakened in bed by his sister Rizzo, who teases her brother about Soji’s anatomical correctness. He asks her why Soji is so obsessed with Ramdha and the fate of her ship, and when Rizzo mocks his lack of progress, Narek tells her that if he presses Soji too hard, he might activate her, leading to the same sort of violent situation they had on Earth — thereby creating the need to kill Soji. Rizzo reminds him that Soji will have to be killed, but he says they can’t do that until they’ve learned where she comes from — and where “the rest of them are.” Apparently, Soji and Dahj aren’t the only Data-bred androids roaming the galaxy.

Rizzo reminds her sibling that “your little robot girl has a plan — don’t forget that.” She then grabs him by the throat and demands he reveal Soji’s true identity, which he does: “The Destroyer.” She gives him one more week to get somewhere with his undercover work; after that, they’ll try her “pain and violence” approach.

Picard and company are attacked by an enemy ship. They’re saved, however, by a mysterious, and “hideous,” second ship that comes to the rescue. That helpful craft takes catastrophic damage, and Picard agrees to let the doomed pilot beam onto their own deck. Prepared for a possible adversary to materialize in their midst, Picard instead finds himself in the presence of Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), who states, “You owe me a ship, Picard” before collapsing.

Captain’s Log:

It’s unclear what Seven of Nine’s relationship to Picard is at present, but her status as a rehabilitated Borg drone certainly fits with Star Trek: Picard’s ongoing narrative.
It’s a good thing Picard is surrounded by younger fighters because as evidenced by his fencing showdown on Vashti, he’s no longer fully capable of protecting himself.
Narek and Rizzo’s relationship continues to exude incestuous vibes, which is … gross.

From EW.com
https://ew.com/recap/the-sinner-season-1-finale/

The Sinner S1 Ep 8
*******

The Sinner finale recap: 'Part VIII'

The identity of Cora's masked captor is revealed at last
By Molly Fitzpatrick
September 20, 2017 at 11:01 PM EDT

CREDIT: PETER KRAMER/USA NETWORK

The Sinner
S1 E8

After nearly two months (the same length of time Cora was held prisoner by that mysterious masked man — coincidence?!), The Sinner has gone a long way toward winning me over. That’s not say it shouldn’t have been about half as many episodes long, with half as many abrupt flashbacks. But going into “Part VIII,” the very last episode of the season, I’m pleasantly surprised that I have no idea what’s about to happen.

We’re back in that cursed Beverwyck basement, this time in the present day. Cora, distraught, remembers now. She blames herself for Phoebe’s death, and for Frankie Belmont’s, too — he was only trying to save her sister. But what happened next, after J.D. hit her with the ashtray? She still doesn’t know. Nevertheless, Ambrose is optimistic, telling her he’ll find a witness from that night. She has a motive, which means she has a defense.

Or does she? Ambrose is a little disappointed to learn that nothing like the telltale wallpaper from Cora’s memories was ever seen in the Beverwyck basement. Farmer reports that there’s no trace of Cora’s DNA in the room, though the body found in the woods is indeed Phoebe’s. As for Creepy Todd, who seems like exactly the kind of guy who would abduct a woman and imprison her at length (that Todd!), he died two years ago — but more importantly, the day after Phoebe’s death, he took his wife to renew their vows in the Caribbean (LOL), where they remained for the following month.

Ambrose does have one promising lead, though. Authorities have identified one of the two men who fled the murder scene at J.D.’s house as Daniel Burrows, a.k.a. Duffy. Officer Caitlin finds his rental van parked in front of a shifty storefront for the “American Medical Clinic.” Ambrose enters, without waiting for backup. (His beard deflects bullets, you see.) The waiting room is full of women, all of whom eye him suspiciously. In case there was still any doubt that criminal activity was occurring on the premises, the extremely unchill receptionist leaps to his feet and tells Ambrose, “This is a private business. You’ve got to leave.” But before he can do anything, Duffy arrives — only to run right back out when Ambrose calls him by his name, just as more cruisers drive up. Duffy is shot by Caitlin when he pulls a gun.

Well, that’s one more potential witness down. Ambrose sits in on the interrogation of the man who was working the clinic desk. He explains that these women were hired to pick up prescription drugs from pharmacies, using scripts J.D. writes with license numbers defrauded from doctors. The receptionist says he had nothing to do with J.D.’s death, that Duffy killed him because all the police activity buzzing around J.D. made him nervous. Ambrose finds this hard to believe — there must be some connection to Cora Tannetti. He catches his favorite inmate up on his non-progress. She doesn’t understand why she can’t just tell the judge what happened — her sentencing is tomorrow. That won’t work, says Ambrose. Without a witness, she won’t be believed.

Cora has another visitor — holy s—, it’s her mother. Make no mistake, this isn’t a happy reunion. Mother Lacey thinks Cora is as “disgusting” as ever. Cora tells her she doesn’t regret taking Phoebe out. She fell in love, she had sex, she died the way she would have wanted. “I’ve never seen her happier than that night,” Cora says. Her mother reminds her that Phoebe was buried in the woods, in the dirt, alone. (Good point!) Cora asks her why she didn’t call the police when they didn’t come home. (Extremely good point!) Mom thought they ran away — she’d heard them whispering about Florida all those years, which clearly didn’t do anything to further endear her to her elder daughter. Womp womp. “I’m more free now than I ever was with you,” Cora tells her.

At the sentencing, Cora can’t restrain herself from rising to her feet and addressing the court. She apologizes to the Belmont family, then makes a last-ditch plea for clemency. “Somebody took my sister and buried her in the woods and they kept me in a room for months and I don’t even know what they did to me and they’re out there,” she cries. Hmm. It occurs to me that if you haven’t watched seven and a half episodes of a miniseries building this very story line, that might sound a little nuts. Anyway, this statement is too little too late — Cora already waived her right to a trial. The judge sentences her to a minimum of 30 years in prison.

Fortunately, Cora’s next prison visit is a much happier one. Mason finally brings Laine to see her. She scoops her son up into her arms. The three enjoy a nice family moment — perhaps the series’ very first, given how depressed Cora was from the very beginning — as Laine colors and his parents chat about his good performance in school. But Cora isn’t sure if it’s right to bring him here, right for the difficulty of her incarceration to keep hurting both Laine and Mason. Her husband firmly disagrees. Laine needs his mom; they’ll come to see her every week. Awww, Mason. I like you so much more when you’re not in Junior Detective vigilante justice mode.

Meanwhile, Ambrose seems like he’s taking Cora’s sentence at least as hard as she is, staring into space both out in nature, as is his custom, and in his office, which is new. He’s not ready to give up yet. He manages to track down new mom Maddie Beecham — her name long ago changed, to escape JD — by searching birth records for babies named Winter, the name she would have given her child with everyone’s favorite dealer slash abuser. That night at the Beverwyck, she left early, right after her fight with J.D., and took a bus to Vermont the next morning. J.D. kept calling and calling, eventually asking for her help with a “new business opportunity” — namely, selling Oxy, which wasn’t among J.D.’s wares until after that night. Ambrose’s face changes, hearing this, like all of his beard hairs are standing on end at once. 

Cora, in cuffs, is driven to a swanky home, swarming with cops. Ambrose is waiting for her — this is the Belmonts’ house. Inside, Patrick Belmont is demanding to talk to his lawyer, but he shuts up immediately as soon as he sees Cora. Ambrose takes Cora on a tour of the property, like the least upbeat real estate broker of all time. After two large, bright bedrooms fail to jog her memory, she comes across a smaller, dimmer room, with just one small window obscured with blinds. Cora peels back the slightly frayed edge of the neutral wallpaper to reveal, beneath it, the unmistakable pattern that’s haunted her nightmares for the last five years. Her eyes well with tears of recognition.

A flashback to the Beverwyck reveals that Frankie called his father in desperation in the middle of the night. Patrick raced over to the club to find Phoebe dead and Cora bloodied and unconscious (thanks for the massive head wound, J.D.!). Frankie wanted to take them to the hospital. J.D., unsurprisingly, was less keen on the idea. If the police get involved, he tells Patrick, he’ll just have to inform them that his son was “balls deep in this very sick girl,” stoned out of her mind. Not the best look. Mr. Belmont, thinking of nothing but protecting his son, tells Frankie to go home. He stays behind with J.D., and they drive Phoebe and Cora in the trunk of a car out to the abandoned school bus in the woods. Cora, now somewhat awake, watches the men dig a shallow grave and deposit her sister’s body in it. As she crawls feebly toward the bus, Belmont raises the shovel as if to finish her off, too. But he can’t bring himself to do it. The next morning, he’s tending to her wounds in his own home, to his wife’s horror. Belmont refuses to bring her to the hospital; he’s in too deep now. They send Frankie back to L.A. on the first flight out.

And so the man wearing scrubs and a creepy mask was none other than Patrick Belmont, the father of the man she’d stab to death on a beach five years later. In many ways, he treated his patient slash prisoner with concern and kindness, neatly dressing her wound, gently brushing her hair, and sponge-bathing her, yet — in an ultimately successful effort to wipe her memory and protect his family — shooting her up over and over again, leaving the gruesome scars on her arms that at first made Ambrose peg her for a heroin addict. Once her physical wounds were healed and her addled mind had lost its grasp on Phoebe’s death and the events that followed, he dropped her on the street in Poughkeepsie for a good Samaritan to find.

Our old pal Harry Ambrose determined that the stolen license numbers used by J.D. and company all came from Belmont’s colleagues. Guess who had been blackmailing him? Rest in peace, J.D.: You’re the worst, even in death. Cora studies Patrick Belmont’s face. She knows it was him. She remembers his eyes. “I know you did it for your son,” she says. He tells her he’s sorry and begins to sob. (This effective admission of guilt sure seems convenient for Cora, given that Belmont’s extremely improbable crimes against her might have been hard to prove otherwise?)

Driving away, Ambrose tells Cora that, when they first met, he saw himself in her. “The thing is, what somebody did to us when we were young, I know it wasn’t our fault, I know we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow I — I don’t know what to do with it all.” Hold the phone, Ambrose. We’d kind of figured out that you were a troubled guy by now — my personal favorite piece of evidence to that point being the time you watered your estranged wife’s trees in the rain while screaming — but you’re just going to put that out there and not tell us what happened?

Back in court, Cora’s public defender (who, until now, was worth no more than her price tag of free) passionately and effectively argues on her client’s behalf, touting Cora’s determination to get clean and lead a normal life in the face of lifelong, unimaginable abuse. The sight of Frankie on the beach triggered her in ways she couldn’t have imagined. Given the new evidence that Cora was “under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance,” the judge reduces her conviction from murder in the second degree to manslaughter. “And rather than spend another day in prison, I hereby order Mrs. Tannetti to be transferred to a secure psychiatric facility,” she says. There, Cora’s case will be reviewed every two years, with the possibility of release if she’s no longer deemed a danger to society or to herself.

Short of a literal fairytale ending in which Cora is discovered to be a long-lost foreign princess and immediately absolved of her crimes thanks to diplomatic immunity (and also, surprise, she has magic powers), this is the very best of best-case scenarios. As she’s led out to the van that will presumably take her to this psychiatric facility, she finds Ambrose waiting for her. They share a hug. Their friendship, if you can call that, has been the most intimate relationship either of them has had in a long time. He promises to check in on her.

But Ambrose has unspoken trauma of his own yet to process, and there’s no telling whether he’ll find a path to absolution like Cora has. Ambrose climbs into his car in the courthouse parking lot. After a few quiet moments, he gazes at his bruised, broken fingernails.

 from not That Complicated
https://notthatcomplicated.net/2020/06/black-sails-season-1-episode-5-recap

Black Sails S1 Ep 5
*******

Toby Stephens as James Flint. Photo courtesy of Starz.


Recap by Elizabeth Wright

This episode contains explicit language, racism, sexism, slavery, rape, and violence.

Episode V opens with the Walrus setting out in pursuit of the Andromache. Flint is still mulling over what Silver told him last episode. He pulls Billy aside for “a few minutes’ honesty.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

Billy finally stands up to him, if only in private. Men died careening the ship, and they’ll die chasing the Andromache – never knowing it was all on the strength of a lie. Billy is doubting everything, and he’s infuriated that Flint seems to doubt nothing.

But doubt, Flint tells him, is useless. “No good captain would acknowledge it.” Doubting men won’t fight, and a captain who lets his doubts consume him can’t lead them. Flint has doubts about the chase, and even about the Urca, but he has no doubts about lying to his crew.

Billy tries to ask about Mrs. Barlow, too, but Flint brushes him off. “Your captain makes a home with a nice Puritan woman who shares his love of books.”

The scene ends with the Andromache in sight, and, from Billy’s expression, nothing else resolved.

Back on the island, Rackham has coerced Vane into a career change: with Noonan dead, they can mount a takeover of the brothel. Anne Bonny terms it “a stupid fucking idea,” and Vane is still silent and distant, but Jack has a plan.

We get a quick introduction to Mrs. Mapleton, the brothel supervisor, as she deals with a distraught prostitute assaulted by one of her clients. She may look like the archetypical madam, cheerful, iron-willed, and fiercely protective of her girls, but in a few sentences we learn she’s anything but. She dismisses the woman’s tears, and her only advice is to ask for more money next time.

Money is her only priority with Jack Rackham, too. She immediately twigs to the fact that Noonan was murdered, Jack’s protests aside, but her only concern over the whole affair is getting a bigger percentage of the gross. A forty-percent ownership share established, Mrs. Mapleton trots off, and the erstwhile Ranger crew are now “the proud new owners of a brothel.”

Nothing is going well for Eleanor.

Mr. Scott hasn’t just betrayed her, he’s vanished. Her father has thrown her under the bus. And, coming into her office, she discovers that Flint’s left her a present: Silver, chained up in the corner. He’s not thrilled about the situation either, but he works for what advantage he can get. Why, he asks, does Eleanor hate him personally?

She lambastes him for stealing from Flint, but her voice breaks when she gets to Max. Eleanor refuses to blame herself for what happened – any more than with Scott – and so she’s settled on Silver as a scapegoat. It’s his fault Max is in this predicament, his fault Max walked back into hell rather than let Eleanor save her… Because if it’s Eleanor’s fault, she’ll crumble.

No good captain acknowledges doubt.

Things manage to get worse when she hears her father’s voice. He’s giving a speech one porch over, spilling everything: he’s a wanted man, there are no merchant ships left, and he’ll try to pay back what debts he can. In a parting touch, he leaves that last bit to Eleanor.

She confronts him, but if she ever had power over her father, it’s gone now. He explains what bits of his plan he thinks will convince her – making allies of the planters when the pirates are gone – but Eleanor isn’t listening. Her only question is about Scott.

“What the fuck did you have to threaten him with to get him to betray me?”

He’d threatened Scott – obliquely – with Eleanor, and who she was becoming. But unlike Mr. Scott, Guthrie only cares that what Eleanor is becoming threatens him. She’s a child, a girl, and she will fall in line.

“Fuck you,” spits Eleanor.

It’s time to make new plans of her own.

These plans are simple, at least in her own mind. The crews may be restless, but a few captains are still willing to speak with her. Captains Naft and Laurence are her worst earners – so she’ll turn them into merchants. If their men object, they can point out that they’ll make more in one peaceful voyage than they have in the last year of piracy.

Mr. Frasier holds a trading charter; his authority can get their cargo past customs houses.

Captain Hornigold – she hopes – is her big gun. But Hornigold has a request of his own. Her takedown of Vane has worried the other captains. Revoke the interdict, and she’ll have his men and support. Don’t… and she can deal with the men outside.

Eleanor orders them out. She has a decision to make.

Meanwhile, the Andromache‘s outrunning the Walrus.

Flint orders speed at all costs, raising every bit of canvas despite DeGroot’s protests that they’ll lose the masts. We’ve seen this scene before – DeGroot warning, Flint ignoring, Billy stepping forward and then backing down.

The repetition here, though, strengthens the theme rather than weakening it. Flint won’t change, and now we fear that Billy won’t either. Meanwhile, the scene is well shot and action packed, with ropes creaking, men falling from the rigging, and Flint sprinting over to take the wheel himself. This time, Flint turns out to be right: the mast holds, and their pursuit of the Andromache continues.

The crew of the Ranger are just as restless as Eleanor.

The remaining crew want a ship, not a brothel, and they’ve joined the mob outside Eleanor’s headquarters. They taunt her with Max – “we’ll send her your love” – and both she and the audience feel a visceral, hopeless urge to murder them.

Jack seizes the opportunity to have Mrs. Mapleton “treat” Max – or, rather, to give her an eighteenth century-style abortion.

Anne follows, and, seeing Max in pain, takes over. “She wasn’t using enough lotion,” she says, and repeats the process with a practiced hand. Anne doesn’t understand why Max didn’t leave when she had the chance, and Max doesn’t understand why Anne suddenly cares.

“You were the one who threw me to them in the first place.”

“I only thought they’d kill you.”

Anne’s backstory – and its marked differences to the historical figure’s – will be saved for season two, but here we see the first signs that she and Max might have more in common than we’ve known.

Vane, meanwhile, is listening to the mob, his face slumped and distant. Rackham sends Idelle up to comfort him – or at least sponge him off – and he treats her to a muttered soliloquy on power.

Eleanor’s “strong, and we’re weak. No one down there’s strong enough to change anything.”

“And you?” Idelle asks, running her fingers over a branded scar on his chest.

“Maybe it’s time I found out.”

A protesting Jack follows him to the harbor, but Vane’s determined. He sails a one man skiff out into the gloom, chasing yet another ghost.

Even as the Walrus gains on the Andromache, Bryson is unconcerned. He orders his men to protect the cargo, and only then sees about manning the guns.

Flint hashes out a plan to board the ship, and for once, it goes off without a hitch.

They let the Andromache rake them with her broadsides, losing man after man to the guns, and keep charging forwards rather than mount a broadside of their own. To turn the Andromache so that they can board side-to-side, Flint employs a sniper (and the audience’s suspension of disbelief) to kill two successive helmsmen until the Andromache loses the wind and becomes a sitting duck. That done, the boarding crews come roaring across, overwhelming the Andromache’s resistance.

This is interspersed with Dufresne, the ship’s bookkeeper, in his first trip “over the side.” He’s petrified, even after Billy takes Flint’s advice and lies to him that no Walrus man has ever died their first time over. We see the chaos of the battle from his point of view… right up until he rips a man’s throat out with his teeth.

But as the battle wanes, Flint realizes Bryson had reason for being unconcerned. He’s holed up in a near-impenetrable strong room belowdecks…

And he has one more ace up his sleeve.

Bryson’s safe room is just past the holding area for his cargo – a few dozen slaves in chains, including, we see for the first time, Mr. Scott. He betrayed Mr. Guthrie, Bryson informs him, and “we men of duty must often put our feelings aside.” He punctuates this by shooting a woman in the head, and then threatening a second, until one of the slaves agrees to run a message up to Flint.

It’s a stark reminder of how fragile Scott’s position really was, how fragile Nassau is. The outside world has returned, and Scott is no longer a businessman or an authority – he’s property to be sold.

That’s reinforced above decks, where one of Flint’s men translates the slave’s message – they share the same language, and likely some of the same story.

His message: the Scarborough is coming.

This is confirmed as Billy and Dufresne search the ship’s log. Billy, though, finds something else: a letter from Miranda Barlow. He pockets it, but there’s no time to read.

The Scarborough’s sails are in sight.

Returning to Nassau, we see Eleanor in a conundrum – and Silver’s silver tongue at its best. He latches on quickly to Eleanor’s weak point – her refusal to blame herself for what’s happened to Max. Guilt, he tells her, goes away, but “losing your life’s work… that doesn’t.”

We’ve yet to see Silver guilty about anything, but this conversation plays very differently in light of the choices he will eventually make, the life’s work he will eventually destroy, the guilt that follows him through the pages of Treasure Island.

Here and now, though, he’s a convincing man.

We don’t see Eleanor’s answer… but he knows, and she knows, that only one answer will let her keep Nassau.

And a good captain can’t acknowledge doubt.

 from AVClub.com
https://www.avclub.com/american-gods-season-three-is-stuck-in-a-winter-s-tale-1846009254

American gods S3 Ep 1: A Winter's Tale

American Gods season three is stuck in “A Winter’s Tale”
Ani Bundel



Ricky Whittle stars as Shadow Moon in American Gods season threePhoto: Starz


“You can be your own man until destiny kicks in”

American Gods season-three premiere on Starz stumbles into the party like a show out of time. Based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel of the same name, the series moved to Starz in 2014 after three years of development hell at HBO. It took another three to premiere, by which time, STARZ had already pivoted from towards a more female-oriented slate of programming, making American Gods the odd show out since it arrived, a prestige TV concept that doesn’t quite fit in with its surroundings. After another four years and two seasons, it still feels awkward, even as it finally figures out what sort of show it can be.

The drama behind the scenes at American Gods over these four years is its own story, one worthy of a show in its own right. What matters is after season one, original showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green were fired, leaving season two rudderless, winding up as eight episodes searching for a direction. The “Previously on” that precedes the newest season tells how little season two matters, with over 70% of the footage pulled from season one. For fans who skipped season two in the wake of all the reported drama, that’s good news because it means they can easily pick back up with season three, having not missed much.

Season three certainly seems to want to get back to what made the first season such a hit. It starts with a fake-out within a fake-out, as a set of dancers performing Swan Lake are revealed to merely be the opening of a heavy metal stage show lead by Johan (Marilyn Manson). But even that is only a feint, as Johan’s show is not a rock and roll performance, but a house of worship dedicated to Odin. Ian MacShane has a ball with it, showing up in furs and leathers, swan-diving off the balcony into the outstretched arms of the audience, and crowd-surfing to the stage, where Johan fetes him.


This opening scene is a reminder American Gods’ dirty little secret from the beginning was that there wasn’t enough material to make a proper multi-season prestige TV series. As a selection to follow in the footsteps of Game Of Thrones, it was a good concept—a novel with a passionate built-in fan base, which filled the fantasy brief as being the flip side of the GOT coin. That was an American’s fantasy of British history; this is a Brit’s fantasy of America’s past and future. But Thrones brought multiple 800-page novels to the table with which to fill out 10-episode seasons. American Gods had a single 300-page book (plus two slimmer follow-ups), in which the first season only used the first 125.

That means filler was the name of the game for the show’s success. Fuller used it to examine the human need for spirituality and how we, as a modern-day society, fill the absence of a monocultural theocratic symbol. Season two lost that thread, and seeing it revived here is a good sign.

But the meditation on underground countercultures as substitutes for a larger sense of spiritual belonging is short-lived. Soon, we’re back to season two’s biggest failure, the insistence on keeping both Laura and Mad Sweeney alive well past their expiration dates. The good news is season three seems to be willing to put at least one to rest, as Laura finally rips out the lucky coin keeping her alive in hopes it will embed in Sweeney, bringing him back. But sadly, it rolls away as she turns to dust, leaving him dead in the crypt.

There’s better news for the New Gods, as season three attempts to use some of what went down in season two to its advantage. Cast resignations in the wake of Fuller’s firing meant Media had to be recast, establishing that these gods can change their faces (and therefore actors) when necessary. Season three uses that to convert Crispin Glover as Mr. World to Dominique Jackson as Ms. World. (Whatever happens to Ryan Murphy at Netflix, he’ll always have Pose.) Not that Jackson has much more to do, other than carefully-edited-for-cable violence, but she does it with so much more panache, it’s almost forgivable. But the plot, especially the Technology Boy vs. Bilquis stuff, remains at a standstill. Tech Boi wants her to join the New Gods; she prefers to stay neutral. Tech Boi fails to persuade her. Eventually, something will happen here, but today is not that day.

The one thing everyone can agree on is the road trip between Odin and Shadow is the heart of the show. As long as that part works, the show has a central axis on which to turn. Season two rode on it heavily until the wheels came off, and Shadow went to start a new life as Mike. Season three shows up in this new life and immediately derails it to put Shadow back out on the road with Odin. Next stop: Whiskey Jack (Graham Greene), where the Native American deity pushes Shadow on his destiny before rebuffing Odin, reminding him that the white men who the Nordic God came here with are responsible for centuries of death for his people.

Not that it stops Odin, who is ready to head out to meet with another, the Night Carrier. But Shadow has once again had enough. That Odin lets him go so easy can only mean that whatever Shadow does, he’ll wind up heading to Lakeside, the place Odin has been trying to send him since season two. Whether or not the Old God meant for the key to break off in the lock of Shadow’s new apartment and wind up with a shotgun to the back of his head remains to be seen. But considering everything else is going plan, it doesn’t seem that irrational to believe.
Stray observations
As always, the soundtrack to the series is A-plus-mazing. Even when nothing is happening, this show is doing fantastic work with song choices.
Line of the week, New God edition: “You and I both know that a direct pipeline into every cerebral cortex is a no-brainer.”
Line of the week, Old God edition: “I don’t see any conflict in enlightened self-interest.”
Sweeney spent two seasons demanding his lucky coin back, only to drop it at the worst time. Maybe the coin doesn’t want you, man.
I don’t know where one studies to become a Dominologist, but I now assume there is a Doctorate of Dominology.
The way those buses disappear from the schedule on a blizzard evening is the real cancel culture.

from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/2017/11/the-girlfriend-experience-season-two-review.html

The Girlfriend Experience S2 Pt 1
*******

The Girlfriend Experience’s 2nd Season Is a Mixed Bag
By Matt Zoller Seitz

L-R: Anna Friel and Louisa Krause. Photo: Starz Entertainment, LLC

The first season of Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience was one of the boldest premium-cable projects in years, a half-hour drama with the same title as a film almost nobody saw: a 2009 Steven Soderbergh indie feature about an escort moving through a world of obnoxious finance guys. The TV version had nothing to do with the movie save for the choice of an escort as protagonist. Its first season fused nearly pornographic erotica with aspects of the corporate and legal thriller and the psychological drama; the writing and direction channeled classic 20th-century art-house flicks like Persona and The Passenger. Soderbergh served mainly as a creative matchmaker, pairing two well-regarded indie voices — veteran writer-director Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven) and actor and short-film maker Amy Seimetz (Stranger Things, The Killing) — then stepping aside. The first season starred Riley Keough as Christine, a law clerk, law student, and secret call girl whose trysts drew her into a corporate conspiracy, publicly humiliated her, and pushed her to question her identity and consider remaking it. Kerrigan and Seimetz co-wrote every episode and took turns directing (Seimetz did six, Kerrigan seven). Although the show’s analytical style could be off-putting, its central performance was mesmerizingly opaque, and its rigor was fascinating. Season one was a rare TV drama that revealed psychology through action, be it as visually spectacular as a prolonged sex scene or as mundane as Christine nervously setting down a drink after being warned by a client’s wife never to go near him again. The finale, which unfolded like a compact one-act play, detailed just one of Christine’s appointments with a john obsessed with a cuckold fantasy; it was filled with images and lines that served as a commentary on the acts of storytelling, filmmaking, and performance, including discussions of word choice and intonation during sex talk and a shot of the client opening motorized window blinds that was framed to evoke curtains rising on a stage production.


Season two is an experiment of a different kind. The winning team has split up. Kerrigan and Seimetz have each written their own half-hour, seven-episode series that are being presented as concurrent but separate events. Successive installments are paired on the same night over seven weeks. But whether this arrangement was meant to spark associations between the narratives or simply confirm that the filmmakers were creative equals who’ve been given their own sandboxes to play in, it doesn’t add much to the viewing experience, because the projects are so different in subject matter, visual style, tone, and worldview.


Kerrigan’s “Erica & Anna” is half–psychological drama, half–political thriller, set in Washington, D.C. (actually Toronto). The city streets and eerily unfurnished interiors are photographed with ruthless compositional exactness and populated by cruel and/or desperately unhappy people. The main characters are Anna (Louisa Krause), an escort who caters to political types, and Erica (Anna Friel), a high-powered operative who funds races through a super-pac. The two become entangled when Erica convinces Anna to help her in a blackmail scheme. Then Anna and Erica fall in love, and the story becomes a tale of sexual and emotional obsession. Kerrigan’s script alternates edgy discussions of the main characters’ relationships with graphic sex scenes (between Erica and Anna and Anna and her clients) and scenes where Anna tries to navigate a complicated congressional race in which obscene amounts of money and power are at stake.

Unfortunately, Kerrigan never convinces us that the carnal aspects of the series are integral to the exploration of Anna and Erica’s psychologies. You can skip at least half of the sex scenes and not lose important plot information — a marked contrast to the original The Girlfriend Experience. Neither these nor the intense scenes of Erica and Anna flirting, fighting, and breaking down in cathartic tears ever fully connect with the stuff about money, politics, and money-in-politics. Despite fully committed and often superb performances, neither Erica nor Anna come alive as recognizable human beings. The same is true of the men, most of whom are morally hideous Ayn Randian right-wingers gassing about the glories of job creation and the ingratitude of the undeserving poor. It’s clear that Kerrigan was going for something other than naturalism here, and that the series’s misanthropic vision of American life (which would be misogynistic if the director didn’t seem to hold the men in greater contempt) is integral to whatever he’s doing. But despite powerful individual scenes and sequences, the series’s larger vision never snaps into focus....

from RogerEbert.com
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tenet-movie-review-2020

Tenet
*******

Brian Tallerico August 26, 2020






For transparency’s sake, it feels important to state that this film was screened for limited press in Chicago with extreme precautions that simply won’t be in place for most ticket buyers at least for weeks, including 1% capacity of a huge, sanitized theater first thing in the morning. The intent of this review is not to encourage or discourage anyone from attending a theatrical screening at this specific time. It is an analysis of the work itself for posterity.

No one could possibly mistake “Tenet” as being by anyone but Christopher Nolan. First, it has the kind of budget that only Nolan could get for an original screenplay. There’s so much money in every bursting frame of this opulent film that a scene in which gold bars are literally dumped on a runway feels almost like a self-referential wink. Second, it contains one of those time-twisting narratives that have defined the Nolan brand, one that blends robust action sequences with high-concept stories that viewers have to legitimately strain to follow. Finally, at times, it even seems to echo previous Nolan projects like an album of remastered greatest hits. There are war action scenes that recall “Dunkirk,” an espionage narrative that feels like “Inception,” and even a whole lot of people talking through masks a la Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises.” It is 100% designed as an experience for people who have unpacked films like “The Prestige” and “Memento” late into the night, hoping to give Nolan fans more to chew on than ever before. More certainly seems to be the operating principle of “Tenet,” even if the chewing can get exhausting.


[Note: Spoilers will be incredibly light but if you want to go in completely unvarnished as many Nolan fans do, you’ve been warned.]

“Tenet” wastes no time, dropping viewers into an attack on a symphony performance in Kiev and barely allowing anyone to get oriented. One of the agents sent in to retrieve a high-profile asset during the assault is a man known only as The Protagonist (John David Washington, proving more than capable of carrying a blockbuster film with his charismatic performance). Our hero is captured by the enemy, tortured, and takes a cyanide capsule, as he was ordered to do in training. He survives, and his allegiance to the system and his orders leads to a promotion of sorts, a top-secret assignment that involves a new technology that has the potential to literally rewrite human history.

The Protagonist is taken to a remote facility and introduced to the concept of inverted objects. We look at an object and it is traveling forward through time along with us. That’s obvious from elementary school science class. But what if an object could go in the other direction through history instead? Apparently, objects have been doing exactly this, and the Powers That Be need to control it because if a bullet could be sent back through time, what happens if a nuclear weapon takes the same trip?

Teaming up with a mysterious partner named Neil (a charming Robert Pattinson), our hero tracks inverted objects to a villainous Russian arms dealer named Andrei (Kenneth Branagh). To get closer to this mega-wealthy madman, The Protagonist uses Andrei’s wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), who loathes her abusive husband but is being blackmailed into staying with him via threats that she will lose her son if she doesn’t do exactly what he says. On a very basic level, “Tenet” is about the extremes of unmonitored power. When one becomes so rich and powerful that they can literally shape world events, why not try to shape world history too? Sound a little familiar? Andrei is very much cut from the same cloth as classic Bond villains, complete with unchecked opulence, Russian accent and snarling line delivery. Blend Nolan’s obsession with time-twisting high concepts and his love of classic action construction and you have some idea what “Tenet” feels like.



However, there’s never been a Bond movie so stuffed with expository dialogue. “Tenet” spends roughly two hours of its 150-minute run time explaining what is happening, why it is happening, and what might happen next. And yet even with that it’s still incredibly difficult to follow because Nolan goes so far down his own rabbit hole of time travel that one almost needs to take notes to keep up (and I still think it arguably wouldn’t all add up if they could). Scene after scene of Washington, Pattinson, Branagh, and Debicki trying to convey the plot becomes exhausting, and it's Nolan's biggest mistake. It would have been better to just leave more unsaid, and jump chaotically into the film's mood and visuals instead of so often returning to over-analyzing a plot most people still won’t be able to follow. At times, it feels like a film crafted for YouTube explainer video culture. (There’s already one online that purports to deconstruct the ending and the movie isn’t even out in most of the world.) Early in the film, the scientist who explains inversion says, "Don't try to understand, feel it," and I wished Nolan had listened to her more.

For some of his fans, this narrative assault is exactly what they’re looking for, but I prefer emotional registers in my Nolan that he seems only casually interested in here. The stakes don’t feel as high as “Dunkirk,” the maze construction isn’t as thrilling as “Inception,” and even the characters don’t feel as easy to invest in as “Interstellar.” Almost as if he knows his puzzle box is ice cold, Nolan adds the subplot about Kat losing her son, but it’s so underdeveloped that I don’t think her kid even has a line. The kid is as much of a device as an inverted bullet.

If “Tenet” can be a hard movie to engage with emotionally or even comprehend narratively, that doesn't take away from its craftsmanship on a technical level. It’s an impressive film simply to experience, bombarding the viewer with bombastic sound design and gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema. The movie never sags in terms of technical elements and even performance. Everyone is committed to Nolan's runaway speed. Van Hoytema's work is vibrant, Jennifer Lame's editing is tight, and the performances are all good to great. In particular, Pattinson really shines in a playful register that he's not often allowed to use.

The decision to release “Tenet” in theaters instead of VOD was controversial for many reasons, but there’s no denying that "Tenet" was conceived by Nolan to be an experience that shouldn’t be paused and needs to be projected with a speaker system turned up to 11 (even if that would have still been true if Warner Bros. had delayed the film until it was safer to see it). I almost got the sense that playing "Tenet" at a lower volume or even pausing it at home to take a break might reveal its flaws. Nolan doesn't want you to be able to to dissect it or be distracted by your phone while you watch it. The irony is that he doesn't want you to be able to rewind it. "Tenet" is a movie about momentum, reflected both in its narrative and its aesthetic, and more cracks would show without it.

Viewer response to “Tenet” will come down to how much one engages with that momentum. I expect a surprising number of people will open the door and jump out of this moving race car (look, another palindrome!) before it crosses the finish line, exhausted by a story that doesn’t make sense even as it’s trying to explain itself to you. Others will embrace the filmmaking's energy, which starts with intensity and doesn’t let up much at all. The word I kept thinking of was one I used earlier in this review: “aggressive”—that may sound like high praise to Nolan fans looking for something other than a lazy, predictable blockbuster and harsh criticism to those who aren’t looking to be left weary by a self-serious sci-fi epic. In the spirit of a film about objects moving opposite ways in time in the same space, maybe both groups are right.

 from TVline.com
https://tvline.com/2021/05/02/mare-of-easttown-recap-episode-3-hbo-kate-winslet/

Mare of Easttown S1 Ep 3:
Enter Number Two
*******

Mare of Easttown Serves Up a Shocker: Can [Spoiler] Be Redeemed After This?
By Dave Nemetz / May 2 2021, 8:00 PM PDT

Courtesy of HBO


Warning: This post contains spoilers from Sunday’s Mare of Easttown.

We’re rooting for Mare Sheehan to solve Erin McMenamin’s murder on Mare of Easttown, of course… but we may be rooting for her a little less as a person after what went down in Sunday’s episode.

Mare has custody of her grandson Drew, after her son Kevin died by suicide and Drew’s drug-addicted mom Carrie ended up in rehab. Last week, Carrie announced that she’s clean and she intends to regain custody of her son. This week, Helen let it slip to Drew that he may have to go live with his mom, flatly telling Mare: “She’s the mother. She’ll get custody.” Mare went to see Carrie at her halfway house and asked for some time for Drew to finish out the school year, but Carrie wants to start her new life with her son right away. After Mare threatened to tell a judge that Carrie is an unfit mother, Carrie got nasty, telling Mare that “Kevin f—king hated you” and that Drew “deserves a lot better than you.”

Later, we saw Mare sneaking into an evidence locker and taking something with her when she left. At the end of the episode, the police chief confronted Mare: Carrie got pulled over, and the cops found heroin on her. Carrie claimed the drugs were planted on her — and the chief knows Mare took those drugs from the evidence locker and altered the logs. “Part of me wants to make sure you never wear a badge again,” he said gravely, putting Mare on leave and asking her to go to grief counseling to deal with her son’s death once and for all. He also took her gun and badge — and ordered her to stay off the Erin McMenamin case. (But we all know that’s not gonna happen, though, right?)

Mare “feels that she did wrong by her own son,” star Kate Winslet explains to TVLine. “She hasn’t been able to solve him, or to fix him, and wasn’t able to save him. It manifests itself in these enormous ways and just infiltrates her world to a really destructive extent. And it makes her make some bad choices, too. What she does with Carrie at the end of [Episode] 3, this is a woman who is on the absolute outer fringes of real desperation.”

Elsewhere in “Enter Number Two”: Kenny confessed to shooting Dylan, but the kid didn’t actually die (he is hospitalized, though, and may never walk again); Mare cornered Frank about the paternity rumors, but he angrily insisted he never touched Erin and took a DNA test to prove it; Mare followed Erin’s severed finger to a park miles away, deducing that she must’ve been killed there and then dumped in the creek; Colin drunkenly talked about his failed engagement and hit on Mare (!); and Mare and Colin interrogated Deacon Mark, who was the last person to speak to Erin before she died. He claimed it was innocent… but later, we saw the holy man dump Erin’s missing bike into the river.

Do you feel differently about Mare, now that we’ve seen her do something horrible? Who do you think killed Erin? And how are you feeling about the season so far? Drop all your thoughts and theories in the comments below.

from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/the-nevers-recap-season-1-episode-3-ignition.html

The Nevers S1 Ep 4: Ignition

Photo: HBO

Telephone lines are being run into private residences, like Lord Massen’s stately home, while elsewhere in London, Penance has invented an amplifier to extend the reach of Mary’s palliative lullaby. Information, often in short supply on The Nevers, is at once more immediate and more diffuse, a disturbing trend for characters who like to keep secrets. But this week, little by little, those secrets start to eke out.
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The plan to recruit more of the touched to Amalia True’s inscrutable mission isn’t going so hot. “You know we’re dying,” she pleads with Bonfire Annie on the docks of Limehouse. Annie is there to wrest the territory from the Beggar King; Amalia is there to convince Annie, a free agent since quitting Maladie’s crew, to join her own girl gang. The only good that comes of the confrontation is Penance inhaling so much of the Beggar King’s burning opium that she enters a fugue of invention, devising a way to elevate Mary’s delicate song above the sound pollution of the Big Smoke.


Amalia may be willing to schlep door-to-door to sign up a big name like Bonfire Annie, but Mary is her billboard for mass recruitment. The problem? Mary’s song eludes her. On the upright in the St. Romaulda’s kitchen, she can mess around with an 1895 bop like “The Band Played On,” but her special song to soothe the touched is missing. She blames Amalia for keeping secrets; every girl Mary asks has their own version of what this orphanage is and what their Miss Hannigan wants them to do. Mary lands a zinger that’s somewhere between a plea and an ultimatum: “You want me to sing so that more people will come here? Maybe I’m struggling because I don’t know if they should.”

What exactly are Amalia’s secrets, besides the origins of her preternaturally hard open-hand slap? She tells Mary she woke up three years ago knowing things she shouldn’t, but doesn’t elaborate. Harriet the ice breather overhears another whopper when Amalia and the married Dr. Cousens discuss their aborted affair in the grand staircase.

But Amalia’s not the only one hiding things in Neversland. At the airless Ferryman’s Club, an increasingly repulsive Hugo Swann is “auditioning” new acts and swindling Augie Bidlow’s good reputation by registering the venture in his name. Augie, in turn, is keeping his involvement with the bordello from his older sister, Lavinia, whose affection for the touched, we know, has been greatly exaggerated. Lord Massen, too, has something hidden in the literal basement, which a snooping installation guy from Victorian Verizon accidentally stumbles upon. A housekeeper says the growling and scraping behind a steel door are the sounds of rabid dogs, but why keep a rabid dog at all? As eagle-eyed viewers of the series premiere, we know that Massen’s daughter was in the path of the gleaming spaceship exhaust that made the touched; now, we’re supposed to believe she’s dead because some flimsy grave marker says so? England should demand more honesty from its political leaders.

And from its coppers! Frank Mundi, the detective with a reputation as a bruiser despite the fact we’ve never actually seen him hit anyone, has skeletons of his own. First, it turns out he’s in bed with Hugo Swann, who orchestrated last week’s raid of St. Rom’s hoping it would shake free new talent for his Ferryman’s. Second, Frank’s been to bed with Hugo — a few times actually. A later chat with ex-fiancée Mary strongly implies Frank’s gay (though history tells us the Victorians perhaps did not draw such rigid lines between hetero- and homosexual), and he hates himself for it. It’s a moment of depth for a stock character — a possible explanation for the strong “why I oughta” pent-up rage that Ben Chaplin’s been bringing to every scene.

This might be the brave new world of telephones and amplifiers, but the best ways to spread news are still as old-fashioned as word of mouth and the lithograph. Penance finds one of Dr. Hague’s dummy flyers for St. Rom’s — the same poster that lured that Italian shopgirl to her brain-death last week — and Amalia marches straight to the bogus address and rightly slaps the shit out of everyone involved. Then Amalia takes the discovery to Lavinia, which means she’s just brought news of a touched abduction racket to the mastermind running it. It’s a disastrous consequence of The Nevers’ breakneck pacing that this car crash doesn’t really even register as that big a deal. Amalia also lets slip that Mary is doing a dry run with the amp later that evening because why not just tell her everything. It’s only with Lavinia that the guarded Amalia permits the possibility she’s not the only adult in the room. The judgment lapse makes me wonder more about how they got hooked up in the first place.

What immediately follows is hands down the most spectacular scene across three episodes of The Nevers. As Amalia rides off from Chez Bidlow, the Beggar King’s giant goon comes to exact revenge for whatever role she played on the Limehouse docks. He knocks her into the water, which he can also walk on, forcing her to swim away. Predictably, Amalia’s lung capacity is inexplicably large, and she’s eventually able to choke him with his own chain by pinning his back against the surface of the water. It’s a thrilling superfight, the first action sequence to live up to the show’s hype. As in previous scrapes, there’s some reason why Amalia’s dress must come off so she turns up to the park for Mary’s rehearsal in her petticoat.

Except it’s not a rehearsal — it’s showtime! Earlier, Penance and the girls interrogated one of Dr. Hague’s underlings, a mother who confesses to a filicide by drowning so dark and bigoted, it helps Mary overlook her doubts about St. Rom’s. She might not know what Amalia plans to do with this army, but for many of the touched, she reasons, a cot at the orphanage is safer than their own homes. A sad Frank comes along, too, hoping that somehow he’ll be able to hear Mary’s song and swim in its peace.

Mary walks to the center of Penance It’s-Only-A-Prototype Adair’s contraption and begins to sing her elfin tune. Ribbons of oily, spectral light emanate from her chest, reaching more touched than I would have guessed existed based on previous estimates of a “few hundred” in all of London. Frank watches on, empty. He’s still watching when Maladie’s henchman with a gun for an arm shoots Mary, again and again, in an act of public violence that’s sure to rend the city.

How did it happen? Presumably, the only person to know about the concert other than the night’s attendees was Lavinia Bidlow, whose underground excavations require picking off the alienated girls no one is looking for. Her motives here are easy to guess; it’s her choice of assassin that raises questions. Is Maladie somehow in bed with Lavinia, too?

It’s dark when the heartbroken women return to St. Rom’s. They’re tired and sad and this is London, so they’re probably cold. Bonfire Annie is in the forecourt, holding up a fireball to illuminate all the other touched people who heard Mary’s song and came to this place. It’s affecting. It would be more affecting if I had any real confidence they’d be safe here.

There’s a flaw, we know, to Amalia’s safety-in-numbers strategy: The touched are congregating on Bidlow’s home territory. But The Nevers doesn’t foreshadow this conflict, or really much at all about what’s going to happen next, week to week. What’s the deal with that glowing hellmouth that seems to have disappeared? And does Myrtle — the girl whose near-abduction kickstarted the show — matter at all?

Here’s the thing about secrets: They’re not inherently interesting. To care about what someone’s hiding, we need some indication that the information, if only we had it, would matter, could explain something or some person. There are other series that work on a need-to-know basis — series that are enduringly enigmatic and series with protagonists who refuse to explain themselves and series that are always a couple beats ahead of their audience. But The Nevers wants to be all three. So far, that’s as frustrating as it is intriguing. After three episodes, the show is still insisting that there’s a larger story. It’s just not telling us enough of it

X-FACTOR #1-5

Written by Leah Williams
Penciled by David Baldeon
Published Jul - Dec 2020

   With the advent of resurrecturable mutants, there inevitably creates a hole for investigating what happened to them. Obviously the last thing we'd want to do is have another version of us running around without the other being gone before. Enter X-Factor investigations. These 6 or so mutants are now part of an elite team to being the reasons for and proof of a mutants early demise before they can be born anew. Also with a spiffy new HQ, these guys will prove to be invaluable to their peers. 

   So far, I'm really liking where this is headed. And also where it could end up. There's a few unnecessary things in their personal lives (Ahem, we don't really need to know that much about Daken's personal life...) but overall, it's got some incredible potential. I like where it's going. I give this arc an 8/10. 

From Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/halston-recap-episode-2-versailles.html

Halston S1 Ep 1 & 2

Halston Premiere Recap: Brand Awareness
By Whitney Friedlander


Photo: JOJO WHILDEN/NETFLIX

It seems inevitable that reviews for Halston, the new Netflix biopic about the eponymous fashion designer, will end up comparing the career of its subject to that of its most famous executive producer: Ryan Murphy. Although this miniseries is created by playwright Sharr White and based on author Steven Gaines’s biography Simply Halston, it comes as part of Murphy’s ridiculously large Netflix deal. And at this stage of his career, simply saying the name “Ryan Murphy” means something. The shows he has produced (with others) for FX like Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, and Pose helped TV fans come to associate his name with boundary-pushing and the promise of a you-ain’t-seen-nothing-like-it story. Teen dramedies like the WB’s Popular and Fox’s Glee trafficked in the sardonic and gave that genre more bite.
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Murphy was one of the first household-name producers to make the switch to the streaming giant — Shonda Rhimes struck a deal there a few months after Murphy, and Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss followed a year later — but the programs that have come out of Murphy’s Netflix deal haven’t seen the same cachet. TV shows like Ratched and The Politician have failed to hit. The movie adaptation of the musical The Prom was both panned and criticized for not being, as Vulture wrote when it was released, “the gift to queer teens it thinks it is.”


Similarly, in the latter half of the 20th century, Halston the brand sold a contagious mixture of luxury, sex, and feminist statements. Vibrant-colored gowns and patterned caftans embraced the new era of braless beauty, while his Ultrasuede shirtwaist dresses — i.e., model No. 704 — celebrated the upwardly mobile, fashionable career woman. Meanwhile, Halston the person (who is here played by Ewan McGregor) would be seen at Studio 54 and photographed on the arms of the likes of Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli. He was a celebrity fashion designer and his own brand, before people actually used that term. Then he made a deal with the Devil in the form of a partnership with JCPenney. While partnerships like this may be expected — and essential — now, the move marked the beginning of his downfall.

But before any of this, he was just Roy.

A little boy from nowhere America who grew up during the Depression, young Roy Halston Frowick (played here by Maxim Swinton) started accessorizing hats with chicken feathers he found around the farm. The miniseries uses its opening shots to show that he would present his creations to his trembling mother as tokens to help her forget his alcoholic father’s latest abuse, and she’d tell him, “You are far too special for this place.”

It’s clear that Halston believed his mother’s words. He is next seen as an adult, having perfected the talents he showed at an early age to land a gig as the head milliner at New York luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman. And what a head he is now designing for: Halston is the genius who thought to put a pillbox hat on Jackie Kennedy for her husband John’s presidential inauguration. Suddenly, as with Jason Wu’s inaugural ball gown for Michelle Obama, he’s a household name and his shop is overflowing with rich wives wanting to look like they just stepped out of the new Camelot.

Halston’s brush with fame doesn’t last forever. In a few years, Kennedy has stopped wearing hats, and so have a lot of women. Knowing when it’s time to pivot, he convinces Bergdorf to let him design his own line. He also feels confident enough to buy a drink for the handsome man in the bar (Sullivan Jones’s Ed Austin).

While Ed will stick around for some time, the line’s a bust. Not knowing exactly what his voice is yet, Halston tries to put the new world of mod black-and-white prints and patterns on heavy, matronly fabric. Awkward murmuring fills the air during the show as the audience members aren’t buying it. They politely deign to clap at the end. Yet, Halston does clock something of use from the experience: a young woman in the audience who, among the sweater sets, is wearing a colorful silk hat.

While walking through New York to clear his head, Halston sees that the world is changing and there’s a divide between the wannabe astronauts’ wives of yesteryear and the flowy flower children of the late ’60s. A trip past the Metropolitan Opera Club gives him even more inspiration: Big dreams call for the best team.

In an attempt to become New York’s answer to Balenciaga, Halston quits Bergdorf and plans to set up his own atelier. But like all success stories, it’s not just about looking the part; it’s about who can help you fake it until you make it. He pleads with his friend, interior designer Angelo Donghia (Andrew Elvis Miller), who designed the Opera Club, to create his interiors at cost. The space will be boho chic and include orchids, Halston’s favorite flowers.

Illustrator Joe Eula (David Pittu) joins the group, mostly — it seems — out of curiosity to see how this thing pans out. A youth named Joel Schumacher (Rory Culkin), who before he would go on to direct the cinematic masterpiece that was Batman & Robin was designing the window displays at mod-fashion headquarters Paraphernalia, joins up even though he is completely out of his element. Elsa Peretti (Rebecca Dayan), a model and the estranged daughter of an Italian oil baron, comes on as a fit model, muse, and creative genius in her own right.

All of these people with their own talents and skill sets agree to help one man prop up his name and his vision. But what is a (wannabe) celebrity fashion designer without a celebrity friend who will wear his creations? During drinks with Joe, Halston catches Minnelli’s (Krysta Rodriguez) one-woman performance of “Say Liza (Liza with a ‘Z’).” Backstage, he tells her that her black sequined drop-waist dress and large white frilly collar look like a “Buster Brown getup” and that she needs a better look. They commiserate over wanting to step out of other peoples’ shadows (she with her mother, he with Kennedy) and strike a mutually beneficial partnership that results in her wearing one very saucy red dress.

The episode also hints at what will become bigger issues throughout the series. Halston is a genius who can make an immediately iconic design just with a couple snips of scissors. But he is also a totalitarian boss who treats his employees in ways that would make Scott Rudin uncomfortable. Joel, who came into the situation with a substance-abuse problem, can’t handle it and sneaks off to the bathroom to do speed. And it’s Elsa who almost always can fix the problem, be it figuring out that the breezy caftans Halston designs from Joel’s rich dyed prints look best when paired with a tight hair bun or simply calming the visionary down when he is too stressed out. There also always seems to be a risk of the company going under tomorrow if some wealthy wife or widow doesn’t swoop in to save it. (First it’s Karen Mason’s Mrs. Marsh, who invests $100,000 in the fledgling company as long as Halston gives her son a job. Next it’s Regina Schneider’s socialite Babe Paley, who goes berserk for the Ultrasuede shirtwaist dress).

We also see the emergence of the brand, Halston the Person. He shuts out any attempts from Ed or others to get close to him and tells half-truths like “I had a magical childhood.” (Yeah, he did. But that magic was the make-believe he created as a coping mechanism.) As his star starts to rise, he embraces an all-black wardrobe, accessorized by self-tanner, dark sunglasses, and a more domineering baritone. The little boy with the chicken-feather hat is no more, as the prototype for the aloof celebrity fashion designer has emerged.




Halston Recap: Battle Royale
By Whitney Friedlander


Photo: ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/NETFLIX/ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/NETFLIX

The Battle of Versailles fashion show in 1973 was one of the greatest publicity stunts ever associated with the American fashion scene. In an attempt to both raise funds to restore Louis XIV’s former abode and bring attention to American designers, Halston, as well as Anne Klein (played by Elena McGhee), Stephen Burrows (Micah Peoples), Bill Blass (Peter Gregus), and Oscar de la Renta (Juan Carlos Diaz) packed up their best work and their favorite models and headed to Europe to “compete” in an unofficial showdown against Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, Marc Bohan, and Hubert de Givenchy. The black-tie event was a media bonanza that was the brainchild of the castle’s curator, Gerald Van der Kemp, and Emily Gilmore influential American fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert (played here by Kelly Bishop).
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Halston the designer would say he only got involved because his company was popping and there was no way to keep up with demand for orders, but they also needed more revenue to hire the people to make the clothing that everyone wanted to buy. Eleanor convinces (well, really, blackmails) him to play nice with his fellow American designers and head to gay Paris.


“You’re going to come to Versailles and you’re going to blow those snobby French motherfuckers off the stage,” Eleanor demands. “They don’t respect you and they don’t respect me. Well, that’s going to change.”

But Halston the miniseries made another argument for his reluctance: He was scared. It’s easy to reach some form of notoriety and cash in because you claim no one will back you financially and that no one understands your brilliance. It’s a lot harder to try to reach even further and risk melting like Icarus as you’re cast aside when all your fancy new friends find out you’re a fraud.

Eleanor also arranges one more life-changing event for Halston: a meeting with Norton Simon chief operating officer David Mahoney (portrayed by Bill Pullman), who wants to buy the company. Halston’s hesitant about letting his beloved label fall under some corporate umbrella, but David promises him that he’ll support him as he becomes America’s version of Balenciaga.

All of this is making Halston very uncomfortable. He may roll his eyes at the four other American designers on the ticket, but the truth is that, behind those dark sunglasses, he’s intimidated by them. They all have clout and confidence. He was trying, and failing, to make the Skimp happen. He’s stressed and repressing it all.

It’s even hard for him to ask Liza Minnelli, one of his dearest friends, to come with him on this trip and perform. (Of course she’ll do it; she’ll even ask her godmother Kay Thompson to choreograph something — fitting, as Thompson played a fashion editor in the musical Funny Face).

And so Halston begins to find other coping mechanisms for his anxiety. He picks up men at hookup spots and begins to experiment with drugs. But most importantly, he meets Victor Hugo (portrayed by Gian Franco Rodriguez). Brash and aggressive, Victor is the antithesis to the controlled demeanor that the workaholic Halston wants to project to the world. Naturally, the fashion designer finds him immediately addictive — almost as addictive as the cocaine Victor has in constant supply.

Immediately upon arriving in Paris, Halston’s worst fears are realized. He sees the other American designers immediately, and there’s a frenzy for paparazzi photos. He learns that, even though it was his idea to bring Liza, she has to open the whole American portion of the presentation — not just his. And he’s not closing the show like he thought, but has to go next to last so that Oscar de la Renta can take all the final victory lap. Plus, he gets the worst workroom, some of his clothing hasn’t arrived, he’s short a handful of designs, and illustrator Joe Eula has to design a new backdrop ASAP because — stupid metric system — they sent him the measurements in meters and he designed it in feet.

It’s all too much, and Halston heads to his car to freak out in private. Liza’s sent out to calm him down, and he briefly opens up that he feels like he’s 4 years old again and his domineering father is threatening him. Liza tells him to check his PTSD and “march that tight fabulous ass back in there.”

He does, but not before taking David and Norton Simon up on the offer while also making David swear Halston the person must never be made to feel like he was “unappreciated, underfunded, unprotected, unsafe.” David gives him his word, but it’s clear neither of them are remembering that this is a business venture and not a friendship.

Back in the Versailles workrooms, Joe makes magic by using a broom and some black paint to create what looks like a giant etching of the Eiffel Tower. And, as the leaky ceiling drops water in a bucket to signal each precious second ticking by, Halston and Elsa work to create her a shining purple-sequenced monokini of an evening gown that’s only appropriate to wear in public because it’s accessorized by a black-feathered Moulin Rouge-like fan.

As the curtain goes up for the American showcase, Halston is nervous in his box seat even though he’d seen the audience dozing off earlier. It’s getting late, and the French brought out a spaceship and Josephine Baker, for goodness’ sakes. But then Liza and two dancers wake things up with a rendition of “Bonjour, Paris” and things swing upward. The audience laughs and smiles and Halston’s flowy, metalliclike gowns sparkle under the lights. He gets a standing ovation as the audience throw their programs in the air, and the spotlight swerves to shine on his own dumbstruck face. Halston blows a kiss to Liza and the models on the stage from his box seats and sits back to take it all in.

The scene ends with a callback to Halston’s first fashion show, the Bergdorf Goodman bomb after which he sat silently in the room and recalculated his career options. Here, he’s alone again in the empty theater, but with a smile on his face. Halston’s just signed a lucrative deal and has gotten the approval of Parisian society.

He’s made it. Right? Joe has his doubts, which he confides to Halston on the plane home. But Halston reminds him, “Just think what I can do.” As the designer himself pauses to ponder that, Joe slips away. Halston’s left alone staring out an airplane window, a fresh crop of his beloved orchids sitting on the seat next to him.
Loose Threads:

• In this episode, Liza puffs up her buddy Halston by saying he designed her costumes for the movie Cabaret and that he wouldn’t take credit for his work. This may be confusing to fans of FX’s 2019 miniseries Fosse/Verdon. That biopic claimed that Gwen Verdon is the one who brought in the infamous black halter top and shorts. Either way, Charlotte Flemming is officially credited as the costume designer for the Oscar-winning film.

• The show Halston and Liza are watching at his house is Liza With a Z, the Fosse-directed concert. Halston did do the costumes for that, in particular a red halter micromini.

• Speaking of the color red, there’s more of it and its symbolism of fame in this episode. Liza wears a red scarf while she practices her dance routine at Versailles. It’s casually slung around her shoulder because she’s comfortable in her position in life. De la Renta’s working on a red dress when Halston finds him. He confident he’s the most important, and most famous, designer because he gets to close the show.

• The second episode has introduced an important, memorable member of Halston’s entourage: Pat Ast. The entertainer and model was a muse of both Halston’s and Andy Warhol’s and was a B-movie icon. She’s portrayed here by Shawna Hamic.

• It’s surprising that a show about a man who sold sex and clothing has next to no nudity. I know these decisions are complex, and I don’t particularly want to see Rebecca Dayan topless during the fitting scene, but cable and streaming have made us so accustomed to nudity that not having it is almost distracting.

• This is probably not director Daniel Minahan’s intent, but the meeting of the five U.S. designers at the airport just reminds me of that showdown scene in Anchorman.

 X OF SWORDS

Collects: X of Swords: Creation, X of Swords: Stasis, X of Swords: Destruction, X-Men #12-15, Excalibur #13-15, Marauders #13-15, X-Force #13-14, New Mutants #13, Wolverine #6-7, Cable #5-6, Hellions #5-6, and X-Factor #4.

Written by Jonathan Hickman, Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Leah Williams, Ed Brisson, et al.

Penciled by Pepe Laraz, Phil Noto, RB Silva, et al.

Published Sep - Nov 2020

   Ok so that was cool. I always plan to ignore crossovers but usually get sucked in and am almost always glad it happened. Fresh off the heels of Fantastic Four’s EMPYRE, this one was much, much longer but was so very worth it. As a 30 year X-Men reader, there’s going to be a lot of writers come in and out of the bullpen, but this time, Jonathan Hickman has created probably the finest era of X-writing I’ve ever seen. This series examines what Krakoa was before it was the Xavier hub. Ancient rulers of Arokka have united to take back their home, and their idea to do so is by challenging a dozen of X’s finest in a massive sword duel. Incredible from start to finish and can’t wait to see what’s next. I give this one an enthusiastic 10/10.