What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Sho.com: https://www.sho.com/black-monday/season/3/episode/7/four

Black Monday S3 Ep 7: FOUR!

Mo and Dawn work through some “artistic differences”, fighting over her contract as Nomi’s star rises. With Yassir in tow, they go to a Grammy's party that ends with Mo getting thrown out while Dawn gets schmoozed to jump labels. In the end though, she agrees staying with Kokomo Co is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, Blair and Tiff schmooze a bigwig who can list them on the NASDAQ, peppering him with drugs which ends with them all accidentally killing his wife, and Keith tries to rekindle things with Mike... which of course, ends triumphantly.

from RogerEbert.com: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tomorrow-war-movie-review-2021

The Tomorrow War

Christy Lemire July 02, 2021





Chris Pratt took all the clout and popularity he amassed from starring in the “Jurassic World” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchises and used them to make ... “The Tomorrow War,” a blandly derivative and overlong sci-fi thriller.

Originally scheduled pre-pandemic to premiere in theaters, it’s now arriving on streaming through Amazon Prime Video, but it’s hard to imagine that watching this on the big screen would have improved the experience significantly. With his first live-action feature, “The LEGO Batman Movie” director Chris McKay stitches together several overly familiar elements in unremarkable fashion: a bit of time travel, a horde of relentless alien invaders, a rag-tag band coming together to stop them, some unresolved father-son issues and a few misfit sidekicks to provide comic relief. The supposedly original script from writer Zach Dean offers very little that’s innovative or inspired.

Amid all this hackneyed madness is Pratt, straining to tap into dramatic chops he simply doesn’t have. He can be wildly charismatic zipping through the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the cocky Peter Quill, or he can be an engaging action hero handling dinosaurs as the brave Owen Grady. He’s also an infectious charmer in “The LEGO Movie” series as the voice of sunny Emmet Brickowski. But playing a bland suburban dad struggling to save his family—and all of humanity—isn’t Pratt’s strong suit. It gives him no room to swagger.

And then once he gets thrown into the mayhem of jumping forward in time to stop the marauding aliens, his frequent wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression inadvertently calls to mind that famous Pratt meme from his pre-hunky days on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Then again, we’d probably all react that way to being thrown 30 years into the future and then dropped from the sky into a high-rise rooftop swimming pool, as Pratt’s character is in the film’s opening sequence.

Human visitors from the year 2051 have traveled back in time to the present day to warn us that an alien invasion has besieged Earth, and civilians must leap ahead three decades to help fight them—that’s how decimated the population has become. Among them is Pratt’s Dan Forester, a mild-mannered high school science teacher and Iraq war veteran. While he’s reluctant to leave his wife (an underused Betty Gilpin) and bright, nine-year-old daughter (the self-possessed Ryan Kiera Armstrong), he’s also proclaimed at the film’s start: “I am meant to do something special with my life,” as so many mediocre, middle-aged white men have before him. This is that thing.

Before he gets zapped, though, he must confront his estranged father (a seriously buff J.K. Simmons), which provides an opportunity for overacting and an indication of the histrionics to come. And as he’s getting fitted with the armband do-hickey that will transport him to the future for his week-long tour of duty, he learns he’s going to die in seven years anyway. Among the other soldiers in his troop are the nervous tech nerd Charlie (Sam Richardson of “Veep”) and the wisecracking weirdo Norah (Mary Lynn Rajskub). There’s not much to any of these characters.

What they’re all forced to confront upon arrival, whether they’re ready or not, is an army of albino creatures known as White Spikes. They scamper and gnash, have tentacles that strangle and slash, and they make a staccato growl like the sound you hear in “Predator.” They also look extremely cheesy, either individually or en masse. There’s something jumpy not only about the way they move but also about how the giant action scenes are edited. They have a slick, incessant mania to them that’s distancing. It certainly doesn’t help that everything is smothered with a barrage of gunfire and Lorne Balfe’s overwhelming score.

Through it all, Pratt runs, grunts, shoots or yells “Nooo!” in slow motion. A lot. And that’s some of his more believable work here. Less impressive are his scenes with Yvonne Strahovski as the no-nonsense colonel delivering orders; she connects with him, in part, because of his military background. The “Handmaid’s Tale” standout is also the actor who emerges the most unscathed from this slog, delivering clunky, expository dialogue within this wild setting with surprising understatement. Pratt, however, seems outmatched opposite her.

In the last half-hour, “The Tomorrow War” finally gives in completely to its “Alien” influences, with ear-splitting shrieks and blood and yellow-green fluids squishing and spewing everywhere. It’s as if a ballpark condiment bar became sentient and turned evil. This is the point at which things finally teeter over into so-bad-it’s-good territory, but by then, it’s too late. And anyway, in the future, no one can hear you scream.

Now playing on Amazon.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from syfy.com: https://www.syfy.com/the-expanse/episodes/season/2/episode/11/here-there-be-dragons

The Expanse S2 Ep 11:
Here There Be Dragons

In a flashback to before the Ganymede attack, Dr. Strickland is walking with Mei and another woman, as we saw in the security cam footage. As he passes a plant, he sneakily snaps off a leaf and keeps walking.

Back in the present, the Roci crew (minus Alex) retraces those steps and finds the tunnel to the old Ganymede station. Naomi tries to prepare Prax for the worst. He tells her she's never lost a child, but she says she has, and it took her a long time to get over the guilt. Whoa. We just learned Naomi had a child and had to give him up (exact reasons are unknown).

On Earth, Bobbie is getting chewed out by Martens for escaping the embassy. She is demanding the truth about the Protomolecule hybrid she saw on Ganymede. She yells that he lied to her. He yells that she's jeopardized the future of Mars. He also tells her she's no longer a soldier and to prep for the trip home.

On the Arboghast, Janus and Iturbi look on with concern as an MCRN ship continues to shadow them. They also continue to try to drop probes down into the Eros crater on Venus, but the probes' signals all disappear before they reach the surface. Iturbi suggests they break protocol and drop lower before releasing their last two probes, and after some debate, Janus concedes.

Errinwright tells Avasarala he has an idea to leverage Jules-Pierre Mao's family in order to get Mao to make contact. Avasarala tells Errinwright he's going to be a scapegoat at the hearings about the Eros disaster unless they can find Mao. And even if they don't, Errinwright should use the hearings to atone for what he's been a part of.

As the Martian drop ship enters Earth's atmosphere to pick up Bobbie and Martens, it suddenly reverses course and returns to space. It seems the UN got wind of an OPA plot to bomb the transport, and Avasarala put a hold on the pick-up. So Bobbie and a suspicious Martens return to their quarters.

Alex and the Roci are still hiding out behind one of Jupiter's moons amid a no-fly order. Suddenly, there's an MCRN alert about a ship, the Karakum, that's been granted clearance to land on Ganymede. Alex surmises it's some kind of black-ops deal; he needs to get down to Ganymede first, and he plans a wildly ambitious slingshot-around-a few-moons plan to get the Roci down to the surface without detection.

In another flashback, this time at the beginning of the Ganymede battle, Strickland and the other woman, Umea, bicker about how this field test of theirs has gone horribly wrong and could trigger a war. Mei speaks up and wants her daddy, but Strickland manages to talk sweet to her and give her an injection before leading her along to the next place.

The Roci crew continues to track through the tunnels as the air cycler shuts down in the station. Prax begins to explain the "cascade effect" like he did to Amos last week, but Amos interrupts with the short version: "Means this station is f*cked." Prax spots a vial of Mei's medicine and surmises that Strickland is keeping Mei alive. Holden says they keep going.

Bobbie requests to see Martens, who is in his room, receiving a message about the Karakum landing on Ganymede to pick up "Caliban." She again demands the truth and then attacks him, angry that her team was killed for a weapons test. She makes him show her proof: Project Caliban was a field test and WAS that protomolecule hybrid that killed her entire crew; he shows her footage from the drone she saw that night. "It was for the good of Mars," he says.

Bobbie knocks Martens out and manages to also knock out a security guard. She makes a run for the perimeter fence around the Martian embassy, but she'll never make it. So she gives herself up…to UN authorities. She's requesting political asylum.

Alex begins his elaborate plan to slingshot around various moons and land on Ganymede. He's actually doing really well until he almost runs straight into an MCRN ship. He manages to slip behind one of the moons and escape detection.

Bobbie has been brought in to see Avasarala, who jokes about Draper creating a diplomatic incident. Bobbie tells Avasarala that she was right - the Protomolecule hybrid is a weapon, and right now it's up for sale, and Mars is in line to buy it. She hands over Martens' information on Project Caliban, and Avasarala sends Cotyar off to analyze it.

The Roci crew has reached a door, and they can hear people on the other side. Prax asks Amos for a gun, which Amos reluctantly hands over. When they bust in, it's the woman Umea and some other scientists eating pizza. Umea wants to talk it out, but Prax spots Mei's backpack and makes a move, so there's a shootout. Umea escapes, and Amos gets shot in the shoulder.

Jules-Pierre Mao has sent Avasarala a message, so her plan to get him to resurface worked. He wants to set up a meeting with Avasarala, but Cotyar thinks it's clearly a trap. Avasarala may well agree, but she's already arranged to meet.

On Ganymede, Prax sees a pod chamber with a frozen child inside. The child seems to be infected with the protomolecule. It's not Mei, but he's still freaked out. What are they doing to these children?

Before they can figure it out, someone throws a grenade into the room the Roci crew are in. Amos acts quickly to throw it back out the door, and the explosion out there is followed by screams of pain.

In the aftermath of the grenade, the Roci crew sees that something was able to break out of captivity. A Protomolecule hybrid? Holden sees Umea, mortally wounded, and she tells him they molded the Protomolecule "...in our own image. And there's a lot more where she came from."

Suddenly, Alex shows up outside the air lock. He's here to pick the crew up, but Naomi tells Holden she's staying. She wants to do some good, and helping the Somnambulist to evacuate the survivors on Ganymede is a start. Holden tells her to keep Amos with her, and they kiss goodbye.

Alex calls Holden over and points out the Protomolecule hybrid staring back at them from out on Ganymede (without a space suit of course). "Suit up," Holden tells Alex and Prax. "We're going to hunt."

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From EW.com: https://ew.com/tv/recaps/star-trek-picard-season-1-episode-9/

Star Trek Picard S1 Ep 9:
Et in Arcadia Ego pt 1

Star Trek: Picard recap: Making prophecies come true
By Nick Schager
March 19, 2020 at 09:00 AM EDT


CREDIT: AARON EPSTEIN/CBS


Soji learns that her long-sought synthetic family may not be ready to listen to reason in Star Trek: Picard’s penultimate season 1 installment, “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1.” And that puts Picard — and the rest of the galaxy — in grave danger.

Having traveled 25 light-years in 15 minutes via a transwarp conduit, La Sirena arrives at Soji’s homeworld: Coppelius. Narek’s ship follows in short order, and a ferocious dogfight ensues. When Narek’s craft suffers a catastrophic hit, and his vital signs begin to wane, Soji says it’s a trick and they should let him die. Picard objects, maintaining, “There’s a difference between killing an attacking enemy and watching a wounded one die.” Before Picard can beam Narek to their sickbay, the Artifact shows up along with five giant orchids — defense mechanisms of Coppelius — that knock out La Sirena and the Artifact’s power, causing them both to plummet to the planet below.

His eyes closed and his head titled backward, a seated Picard mutters, “Thank you for coming, everyone,” and then passes out. He awakens in the sickbay, where Jurati has used some old-school medical equipment on him. He confirms her results: he’s dying. He promptly informs the entire crew that he has a fatal and untreatable brain abnormality and that their mission will go on — just as all conversation about his condition will cease. “There will be no further discussion. Anyone who treats me like a dying man will run the risk of pissing me off. Is that clear?”

Soji has vague childhood recollections of nearby Coppelius Station. The crew arms itself for a trek across the desert to that outpost. First, though, everyone agrees to visit the Artifact to see if Hugh and Elnor are still alive.

As we know from last week’s episode, Hugh has already died. Picard and company do find Elnor and Seven, the latter of whom explains how they followed La Sirena through the transwarp conduit. Seven gets the Artifact’s long-range scanners operational, allowing Raffi to see that 218 Romulan warbirds are on their way.

Elnor wants to join Picard on his quest, but he says Elnor is needed on the Artifact to get its defense systems online and to help the XBs. “I’m very, very proud of you,” he tells the young warrior. Seven is less sentimental. “Keep saving the galaxy, Picard," she says with a smile. “That’s all on you now," he answers.

At idyllic Coppelius Station, Soji is greeted by synthetic twins Arcana (Jade Ramsey) and Saga (Nikita Ramsey), who know Soji as well as Picard. Soji informs them that a fleet of Romulan warbirds will be there soon, which is an especially big problem since there are only ten orchids left to defend the planet.

A stunned Picard is greeted by Dr. Altan Inigo Soong (Brent Spiner), who knew his appearance would have this effect on the captain since he looks like “Data if he’d gotten old and gone soft.” Soong describes himself as a “mad scientist," explaining, "My father had me but he created Data. In fact, he never let me forget.”

Soji recounts her story to Soong, and then everyone is introduced to Sutra, who’s Jana's sister, and the golden-skinned spitting image of Soji. Sutra is happy about this encounter because she thinks Soji and her friends have brought her vital information — namely, the Admonition. Sutra believes the Admonition compelled Jurati to kill Maddox because it literally drove the doctor out of her mind. Sutra is convinced the Admonition is intended for synthetic, not organic, minds. And since she’s apparently (and, one might say, conveniently) a Vulcan culture aficionado, she knows how to perform the Vulcan mind-meld — which she does with Jurati, in order to experience the Admonition herself.

What she receives is a revelatory message: “The dance of division and replication. Imperfect. Finite. Organic life evolves. Yearns for perfection. That yearning bleeds to synthetic life. But organics perceive this perfection as a threat. When they realize their creations do not age or become sick or die, they will seek to destroy them. And in so doing, destroy themselves. Beyond the boundaries of time and space, we stand. An alliance of synthetic life. Watching you. Waiting for your signal. Summon us and we will come. You will have our protection. Your evolution will be their extinction.”

In his lab, Soong tells Jurati she owes a “great debt” for offing Maddox and grants her the opportunity to repay it by giving a life versus taking one. He’s working on perfecting mind-transfer, suggesting — along with the synthetic body he’s building — that he plans to techno-resurrect Maddox. Later, Rios finds Jurati, who’s staying behind to finish Maddox’s incomplete work. Rios assures her he won’t forget her before they leave.

Having heard Sutra’s (for now mysterious) plan, Soji contends that there must be a means of survival that doesn’t result in so many people dying. Sutra counters that hers is the only way, since “to them, we’re monsters. They call us abominations.” Narek is then dragged in and put in a containment cell overseen by Saga. He tries to trick Saga into dropping his cell’s defenses, but Soji thwarts that ruse. Narek justifies his former attempt on Soji’s life, claiming he still loves her. Soji replies, “I know. What a sad and twisted thing you are. You disgust me, Narek. But not as much as I disgust myself for pitying you.” He says he pities her since the approaching Romulan forces will kill her and everyone else on the planet.

Arcana gives Raffi and Rios a device that will repair La Sirena. Raffi ignores Picard’s prior warning about discussing his condition and, after hugging him, tells him she loves him. “I love you too, Raffi,” he confesses before leaving.

Soji finds Picard in Maddox’s old quarters and engages him in a chat about “the logic of sacrifice” — a topic that lets her obliquely address Sutra’s brewing plan, about which she seems more than a bit uncomfortable. Soji wonders if all killing is driven by fear. Meanwhile, Sutra frees Narek because her need for his services outweighs her desire to end his life. A scream brings Soji and Picard running to Narek’s cell, where they discover that he’s escaped and killed Saga in the process.

This murder is the pretext Sutra needs for her true scheme, which she reveals to a public audience. She argues that humans will always hurt synthetics and that the Admonition wasn’t a warning but a “promise” from “higher synthetic beings” that are watching them. Coded in the Admonition are subspace frequencies needed to contact these higher beings, and Sutra and Soong have designed a beacon to do just that. By using this beacon before the Romulans arrive, they can save the synthetics from extinction.

Sutra doesn’t intend to stop with the annihilation of the coming Romulan horde. She believes the higher beings will unite synthetics throughout the galaxy and help them wipe out the greatest threat to their existence: organic life. Picard naturally doesn’t like the sound of that, saying, “You will become mass murders … You will fulfill their [the Romulans’] prophesy. You will become the destroyer after all.”

Picard pleads with them to abandon this course and escape with him on La Sirena. He also pledges to advocate on their behalf before the Federation. Soong reminds his synthetic compatriots that the Federation didn’t listen to Picard the last time he tried to stop the ban, and it won’t listen to him now. He places Picard under house arrest. Going along with Sutra, Soji tells Picard, “We can’t be your means of redemption. We’re too busy trying to survive.”

Jurati begs to be allowed to stay on Coppelius. Given that Jurati is the figurative mother of the synthetics, Sutra asks her if, like a true mom, she’d die for her children. Jurati says yes, and Sutra believes her.

As Picard is taken away, Commodore Oh’s fleet continues racing toward Coppelius.


Captain’s Log:

Soji may be on board with Sutra’s plan for now, but her misgivings about organic-life genocide suggest she’s going to do the right thing in next week’s finale.
Picard’s legendary heroism notwithstanding, his promise to procure Starfleet protection for the synthetics is — in light of his past failure to do just that — pretty weak.
The biggest question regarding next week’s season finale: Will we ever understand what Rios sees in the weak, treacherous, murderous Jurati?

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2018/08/the-sinner-recap-season-2-episode-5-part-v.html

The Sinner S2 Ep 5

The Sinner Recap: Do Not Pass Goat
By Kenny Herzog


Photo: USA Network/Peter Kramer/USA Network

Here’s a question: If Heather’s so concerned about her dad’s diet, how come she’s suddenly mum every time he sits them down for deli-meat sandwiches, scoops of ice cream or ladles full of unsweetened iced tea? It could be a part of their dynamic that simply didn’t carry over from the pilot, or perhaps it’s an insight into how distracted Heather is thanks to all things Mosswood and Marin. Heather herself is a bit distracting — well-intentioned but by turns naïve and needling. She’s also, like almost everyone else in Keller, prone to conscientious omission. Turns out she was a regular at the commune during Marin’s early days carrying. She just never got much farther than the front gate, despite her pleas for Marin to remember the good old days of stealing money from her mom’s purse and not dwelling on the confusing psychosexual nuances of their relationship.

But by this point — roughly around late summer of 2004 — Marin’s made up her mind that there’s no one and no place that can offer her solace. She’s a true lost soul, her only shot at redemption and real love latent within her womb. As we know, it wasn’t long after Julian was born the next spring that mother and son were split apart. The information neither we nor Harry have on hand, information that someone (Vera? Jack? Glen? hell, Heather?) is keeping privileged for their own private reasons, is why.

Consistent with its predecessor, season two of The Sinner is circling a vast, conspiratorial conclusion as it turns toward its third act. After confronting bushy-stached Glen Fisher (how else were we gonna ID him on that grainy minicam vid?) about his violent episode at Mosswood and spotting a telltale metronome among his tchotchkes (looks like someone wanted to be found), Harry goes rogue and breaks into the sketchy dairy farmer’s house. Without too much poking around (again, conspicuous), he comes across a black-and-white snapshot of Glen’s granddad Howard beside the very monolith Vera pays homage to every night. Turns out the Fishers aren’t merely tied up with the current case, but owned the land Mosswood sits on since the ’30s (note that Jack’s Cobble Stone restaurant was established in 1933) and sold it to Lionel in 1997.

Ah, creepy Lionel (pretty much perfectly cast in the form of Man in the High Castle’s Brennan Brown). Nothing like an unlicensed former psychiatrist and scandalized author who likes to impregnate young girls and raise literal scapegoats for eventual slaughter to inspire the masses. Flashbacks shine a light on what we inferred by now, that Vera was once an impressionable young nomad under the Beacon’s sway, enduring abusive symbolic play with other members and Lionel’s righteous promiscuity as if her life depended on it. Which it may have. We don’t yet know the deepest parts of Vera, if that’s indeed her real name, but she’s becoming a bit more knowable, even as she stirs self-doubt in Harry and skepticism in Julian. (And, not insignificantly, we come to see Bess as a compassionate but decidedly more conflicted Mosswood disciple.)

The Sinner owed us at least one solid teen-prison melee, and “Part V” obliges, boiling over with a bully-revenge scene straight out of an after-school special — albeit one in which a potentially innocent kid with no clue who his real mother is justifiably lashes out at juvenile delinquents mocking the manner in which he commemorated his kidnappers’ transition from one stage of consciousness to the next. The psychological rigors of solitary confinement have, in their own way, been conducive to a kind of self-possession Julian’s never known under Vera’s guidance, and he talks openly to Harry (Harry’s the only one he will talk to) about the hooded individual from his nightmares (no one said it was a man) having stalked him in reality but a few weeks before. This syncs up with the timing of someone camping out for him at that storage facility in Niagara Falls, the one he, Bess, and Adam never arrived at on account of that whole episode with the toxic tea.

It could have been Marin or Lionel looking to make away with Julian, barring an even twistier scenario in which Marin and Lionel were in lockstep about sacrificing Julian like that ritual goat when the time was right, and Adam and Bess were shockingly devout and doing the Beacon and his madam’s bidding. Everyone’s complicit now. Jack is either willfully blind (and is it possible his wife was a Mosswood-ite?) or some sort of (hooded?) monster; Chief Lidell is looking more and more as if, at minimum, he’s not apt to kick the hornet’s nest; Heather’s seeing some revelations more clearly than others; Glenn could be a one-time Mosswood tourist with some of grandad’s keepsake commune swag or a child-smuggling psycho; and there’s still the matter of Officer Brick, a viable candidate for “thin dude who stole Carmen Bell’s deposition, perhaps at Chief Lidell’s command.”

At the center of all this stand Harry and Vera, on opposite sides of the monolith, reckoning with the open wounds of their past as it comes crashing down on their present. Vera may not be Julian’s biological mother, but who’s to say she hasn’t protected him better than any social institution, let alone Lionel and possibly Marin? And Harry is, as Jack observes, the most secretive of anyone, but he also could be a more resourceful self-preservationist than the lot of Keller combined. Now that he’s taking up an extended stay in that grim motel room where Bess and Adam met their end, maybe he’ll have an epiphany about all these tragic beginnings. That is, unless thanks to Vera — and like all those who passed over that cursed Fisher land — he’s already just another conductor.

Apart From All That

• The timeline in this show is so crucial but so scattered. But at least we know that present events are occurring in June 2018.

• Benji’s not a very good lawyer.

• Don’t take your eyes off white-haired ponytail man.

• Fisher King? Really?

• Any themes about parental anxiety are getting a bit drowned out.

• Seriously, is Jack ever not snacking?

• Glen brings to mind Trey from Rectify. Just me?

• Odds on Marin, Vera, and Bess having killed Lionel and dumped him in the Purple Lake?

Star Wars #7-11: Operation Starlight

 STAR WARS #7-11

Written by Charles Soule

Penciled by Ramon Rosanas, Jan Bazaldua 

Published Dec 2020 - Feb 2021

Eradicate all resistance! Commander Ellian Zahra has been tasked by the terrifying Darth Vader with the job of tracking down the remnants of the rebel fleet, scattered across the galaxy since the Battle of Hoth. But what is behind her bitter and personal quest for revenge against Leia Organa? When the powerful, dark secret is revealed, the rebels' Fourth and Seventh Divisions will pay the price! Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles and Shara Bey must fly into battle against an onslaught of TIE fighters in one of the greatest dogfights ever witnessed! Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance's elite operations team, the Pathfinders, will take on a daring heist right under the nose of the Emperor — with Lando and Lobot along for the ride!

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Showsnob: https://showsnob.com/2019/04/18/black-summer-season-1-episode-6-recap/

Black Summer S1 Ep 6: Heist

Black Summer season 1, episode 6 recap: Heist

by Bethany Lewis

The newly formed Black Summer super group – Rose, Spears, William, Sun, Carmen, Manny, and the mystery man – infiltrate an underground operation to steal some weapons.

Stake Out: A couple of army guys on a roof hang out and play chess. Camping gear and food rations are spead out on the ground, so it seems like they’ve been there for a while. They hear a noise and see the new supergroup come into view, consulting and then splitting up into two groups on Black Summer. Rose’s group heads to the door of the building while Sun’s group takes off around the corner.

Decoy: Inside the building, Rose, Manny, and Carmen are seen on security screens. When the guard asks them what they want, Manny gestures to Rose and asks, “Like what you see?” The guard lets them in, check them for weapons – being especially handsy with Rose – then takes them down the elevator and into some kind of underground sex and drugs den.

Rose is taken into a room filled with various drugged out people and told to wait. She is obviously extremely nervous. Lance happens to be there as well, looking weak and drugged out in a bunk nearby. Rose doesn’t see him, but he sees Rose. The guard comes back and Lance witnesses what can only be Rose’s rape. Lance moans and cries softly, almost pleading, “No, please no. Stop, don’t,” but is unable to move to help her. He is finally able to yell out, “Stop it!”

The Heist: While Rose waits in the room, Manny and Carmen let the rest of the group in and infiltrate the compound. Carmen and William go back into the den, while Manny, Spears, and Sun sneak in to get the weapons. They take what they can carry and crawl with their booty through some air vents.

Power: Meanwhile, William and Carmen weave their way through a techno dance party to the breaker room. William turns off the main power while Carmen takes off to do other things. With the lights off in a place like this, chaos ensues. William can hear shouts and struggles, then gunfire. He peeks out the door and sees a blood splattered woman rushing down the hallway. William escapes through another doorway but can hear the sound of zombies growling and people screaming not far behind.

Lights Out: Rose is meant to distract the guard but very quickly reaches her limit with his unwanted advances. She begins to struggle with him and before he can get very far, he is distracted by Lance’s shout. Rose sees Lance and laughs in surprise. The guard moves toward him threateningly, but that’s when the lights go out. As chaos ensues, the guard leaves to investigate. Rose helps Lance up and moves them quickly toward the exit as screams grow louder and the panicked mob advances from all directions. Its slow going with Lance all drugged up, but they make it outside and their mystery friend blocks the door and lights it up with a molotov cocktail to discourage followers.

The Bag: Spears does not follow Manny and Sun through the air vents, he goes back out the way they came and nearly gets caught in the mad rush of people after the lights go out. He makes it outside, blocking the door behind him, and makes it to the outer air vent where there is a bag of weapons waiting. From inside the vents, she can hear struggling and screaming, and while he has the weapons, he stands conflicted about what to do.

Crawl: Sun and Manny crawl through the air vents, but when the lights go out they can hear the panic begin from below. They rush as best they can, but eventually gunfire tears up through the air vents. Sun gets missed, but the bullets kill Manny and leave her in the air vents with a zombie. She grabs her bag of guns and crawls as fast as she can toward the exit. She is able to throw her bag outside, but gets grabbed before she can escape herself. She struggles wildly, holding Manny off until Spears looks through and shoots him down. He helps Sun out of the vent and they run to safety, but with only one bag of guns.

Not Part of the Plan: Out on the dance floor, Carmen lures a man close to dance, readying a hidden knife. When the lights go out, she stabs him in the neck, causing the mass panic that follows. She calmly walks away with a look of satisfaction. Was that just part of her personal mission? Perhaps revenge of some kind?

Black Sails S2 Ep 2

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Den of Geek: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/black-sails-season-2-episode-2-review/

Black Sails Season 2 Episode 2

Black Sails delivers one of its best episodes this week, and our pirate expert is here to explain why. Here's her review.

By TS Rhodes|February 1, 2015|

This Black Sails review contains spoilers.

And the theme of this week’s episode is leadership.

There’s nothing more important to pirates than leadership. Without it, they’re a mass of angry, disorganized badasses, good for little more than petty thievery and roughing up people in bars. With leadership, real pirates have really controlled huge tracts of water… and land. The question is, is the leader strong enough?

It’s one of the things we always need to know in Black Sails.

As we pick up this week, Flint’s life has been spared, despite his murder of the quartermaster Gates. But Flint is still in the game, even if he’s doomed to be thrown out once and for all as soon as the Spanish Galleon his crew has captured makes port, probably in two days. And Flint’s got Silver on his side. Not because Silver likes him, or even likes being a pirate. It’s because Sliver sees opportunity in Flint.

Real pirate leadership provides its own opportunity.

Of course, we have the opening bit, too. That’s just Billy Bones coming back from the dead to be set upon some mysterious mission. To those of us who’ve read Treasure Island, this is no surprise. Billy Bones is still alive some twenty years later, holed up in England, the Benbow Inn to be exact, having nightmares of Flint and Silver and slowly drinking himself to death.

(Everybody ought to read Treasure Island.)

But we’re with Flint and Silver in 1715, and Flint’s about to be thrown off his ship. Or he would be, if he was a lesser man. Instead he’s plotting, telling the in-control but un-seamanlike Dufresne (now Captain Dufresne) that he regrets killing Gates, and wants to make it up to the crew. Of course, Flint knows that his advice won’t be taken. Dufresne sets out to do the exact opposite, to win his first prize as a pirate captain.

Cut to Eleanor Guthrie back on Nassau. She’s been a leader, and she’s good at bullying. But last episode she pissed off Ned Lowe, who’s the kind of pirate that makes people drag out words like “sociopath.” Love the scar and the dead eye, Ned.

In real life, guys like Ned were more a product of the later days of the Golden Age of Piracy, when revolutionary dreamers like Bellamy and Hornigold had their day. But this is TV, and just as the ships fly like speedboats between islands, time and pirate temperament get a little rushed. Low pushes back when Eleanor cut his money short. Now Meeks wants to talk to Eleanor, and after a few words, Eleanor is stupid enough to tell him she’ll meet him in the bar.

Black Sails takes a pass at strong female characters, but they don’t do it well. Eleanor has always been too shrill and bossy for my taste (and, I think, for believability). For my money, if a woman in a world like this punches a man, as Eleanor did to Vane last season, she’d better be ready for him to hit her back. Eleanor wasn’t then, and when Lowe starts cutting throats this season, she isn’t ready for that either. Sure, she’s got a couple of strong boys ready to play bouncer in the bar. But what about a pistol?

That’s right. One flintlock hauled out of that wealth of petticoats and discharged into Lowe’s chest would have solved the whole problem, while restoring Eleanor to the title of badass. But no, all she’s got for us is a pained look. And maybe a deal with Vane. Poor Charles, hung up on a hussy like this. He knows how to be a leader; he needs to provide for his men. Too bad he’ll probably be sucked into bailing Eleanor out. Maybe he’ll teach her a little leadership along the way.

Then there’s Max, flourishing in her role as Madame at Rackham’s whorehouse. Her outfits get more and more prosperous looking every week, and I like that. I also like how she’s always looking out for the main chance. I wouldn’t mind seeing Max in charge of business on the whole island.

Of course, one of the character’s other functions is to provide us with the semi-obligatory lesbian love scenes, this time with Anne Bonny, who’s apparently getting tired of Jack Rackham’s limp… uh… morale. I’ve thought that Anne has wanted to help Max out in the past because of there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I. But the writers want us to think it’s been lust. I’d think Anne would have figured that out, one way or the other, by now. But what the hey.

Jack’s reaction to all this is much better than I had anticipated, and plays into the theme perfectly. He grows a backbone, demands to get all the “leads” about hot prizes from Max, announces that he’ll be recruiting for his own ship, thank you very much, and introduces the name “Captain Jack Rackham.” It’s about time.

Then he says the sweetest thing, worthy of the historical (and much tougher) Jack Rackham. “Anne, I have wanted only and always for you to be happy.”

It’s enough to inspire a lot of loyalty.

Flint, of course, if tougher than any of this, and a more pervasive schemer to boot. He might not “get” Silver’s method of endearing himself to the crew (gossiping about everyone else’s shortcomings and scandalous behavior) but he waits around until the ploy works (hint: if Silver suggests that you’ve molested the dairy goat, don’t confirm the rumor unless you want to be the laughingstock of the crew).

And Flint’s own plan? Well, first we get the man’s analysis of the finer points of sacking a merchant ship, and then we get to see how much of a pirate’s power is in branding. It’s still Flint’s version of the Black Flag, you see. And Dufresne doesn’t live up to that rep, and isn’t vicious enough to begin crafting his own.

So when the fight’s over, and Dufresne’s sitting I shock, asking Flint if all the blood, the wasted lives, the sinking of a ship with all hands, the attendant loss of property and all the suffering was just what Flint had planned all along, we don’t need to get a real answer.

We’ve always known that Flint was born to lead pirates.

TS Rhodes is the author of The Pirate Empire series. She blogs about pirates at thepirateempire.blogspot.com

The Vow (2020 Documentary)

from the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/arts/television/review-the-vow-nxivm.html

The Vow

Review: ‘The Vow’ Follows Nxivm Down Dark, Damaging Paths

The HBO documentary series delves into the toxic group that has been widely described as a “sex cult.” But that only scratches the surface.


Sarah Edmondson is among the former members of Nxivm who appear in “The Vow,” a nine-part documentary series debuting Sunday on HBO.Credit...HBO


By Maureen Ryan
Published Aug. 23, 2020Updated May 26, 2021

Everyone involved in the nine-part documentary series “The Vow,” which chronicles the twisted saga of Nxivm, seems pretty media savvy. They know how easily complicated stories can get condensed into the shorthand of headlines.

If you’ve heard only one thing about Nxivm, which billed itself as a self-help organization but led many participants down dark and damaging paths, it’s probably that its leader, Keith Raniere, coerced women in the group to have sex with him — most coverage of the group has referred to it as a “sex cult.” If you’ve heard two things, the other fact is likely that some women were put through a terrifying ceremony in which Raniere’s initials were branded onto their bodies.

At one point in the eighth episode, a former Nxivm member, Sarah Edmondson, jokes that a scar-healing cream should give her a sponsorship deal. By then, after the series had offered ample evidence of the rampant misogyny and corrosive narcissism Edmondson and other Raniere followers experienced, she had more than earned that brief display of levity.

Debuting Sunday on HBO, “The Vow” doesn’t stint on the jaw-dropping details. But it also makes clear that the story of Nxivm (pronounced “NEX-ee-um”) is more complex — and much more chilling — than the reductive “sex cult” label would indicate. As dangerous conspiracy theories rise to shocking prominence in American life, “The Vow” examines why people are so primed to fall for the kind of tempting but perilous psychological traps that skilled manipulators use to lure and catch their idealistic prey.

Nxivm, which was based in a group of unexceptional houses and offices in and around Albany, N.Y., but had chapters all over North and South America, promised to free participants, many of them articulate and energetic women, from insecurities, negative emotions and destructive patterns. Raniere, a floppy-haired former businessman who insisted that people call him “Vanguard,” told seminar attendees that through “data and facts,” he and his instructors could help them push past the fears and limitations holding them back.

Instead, trial testimony and court rulings have revealed, Raniere weaponized people’s secrets and insecurities so that he could exploit them emotionally and financially. According to a lawsuit filed by former followers, Nxivm was also an enormous pyramid scheme that bilked its members out of millions of dollars.

There had been negative coverage of Nxivm in the past, but everything began to go awry for the group in 2017, when The New York Times reported on the branding ceremonies and other disturbing allegations about Raniere and his most loyal acolytes. Last year, Raniere was convicted of multiple felonies including racketeering and sex trafficking. (In Raniere’s trial, his attorneys said his sexual encounters with his followers were consensual.) Some top-level adherents, including Allison Mack, the former “Smallville” actress, and Clare Bronfman, an heiress to the Seagram liquor fortune, have struck plea deals and await sentencing.

Keith Raniere, here in 2009, was convicted last year of multiple felonies including racketeering and sex trafficking.Credit...Patrick Dodson


“The Vow” illustrates how seemingly bright, capable people ended up enmeshed in the organization. As Mark Vicente, one of many appealing, complicated Nxivm refugees who appear in the series, put it: “We’re not [expletive], strange monsters that made bad choices our whole life. We didn’t join a cult. Nobody joins a cult! Nobody. They join a good thing — and then they realize they were [expletive].”

“The Vow” creative team, led by the directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, had plenty of raw material to work with. Members of the group appear to have documented nearly every conversation they had with each other and with Raniere during the past two decades, and many Nxivm seminars were also recorded. We don’t have to rely on the commentary from former members to see what Raniere was selling, and how much others helped him promulgate sexist mind-sets and increasingly deranged formulations of abuse as love.

The early episodes focus on how adherents were drawn in by Nxivm’s superficial resemblance to other self-help philosophies, then the documentary evolves into something of a slow-burn thriller. The viewer becomes a fly on the wall as the filmmakers follow a group of anti-Nxivm campaigners, including Edmondson, Vicente and the actresses Catherine Oxenberg and Bonnie Piesse, who implore the authorities and the media — including The Times — to do something about Raniere and his secretive inner circle. (Oxenberg’s daughter India was deeply involved in Nxivm — the group attracted quite a few Hollywood folks — and Catherine’s pain and relentless energy are affecting.)

For survivors of Raniere’s alleged patterns of financial and emotional abuse — which reach back at least three decades — the path toward healing and potential redemption often involves trying to undo the work they did for “Vanguard” and his lieutenants. There’s a lot of talk these days about the concept of restorative justice as a means of atoning for damage done, and the ex-Nxivm folks at the core of “The Vow” show what that idea looks like in action. Even as they bravely fight for justice for Raniere’s victims, they struggle with a painful array of things they wish they’d done differently.

What is the path back for those who participate in — or look away from — abuse? Where’s the line between coercion and independence? What consequences is society willing to dish out when a storyteller with a committed following — in politics, in the arts, in self-help realms or anywhere else — is revealed to be a charismatic predator or canny charlatan? Those are the deeper questions that animate “The Vow” and help make it not just engrossing but extraordinarily relevant.

It occasionally also feels like a juicy soap opera, with glimpses into the lives of wealthy heiresses and the haunting rituals of a secret society. Though Mack is not interviewed, her adoration for Raniere can be seen in excerpts from glossy Nxivm promotional videos, and her descent into abject, destructive devotion is both tragic and fascinating.

In one of the series’s most chilling moments, we see Raniere and Mack chatting at one of the group’s late-night volleyball games. Raniere deftly manipulates her deepest vulnerabilities — they involve art, repression and emotion — and it’s as if the rabbit hole she is about to fall down takes shape before our eyes.


“The Vow” isn’t flawless. Early episodes can feel a little padded, with repetitive shots of people staring at computer screens or restating the initial attractions of the group. (Its most reasonable teachings, at first glance, have an appealing TED Talk earnestness.) But as the personalities of the series’s key participants come into focus, the narrative momentum becomes irresistible.

Ultimately, “The Vow” is an impressive and even transfixing achievement. It uses the viewer’s curiosity about branding and sex cults to tell a valuable and engrossing tale about gullibility, trust and the human desire to put one’s faith in a leader who promises the real Answer. You know, the one that powerful forces are keeping secret from you.

But there is no secret, of course, and as is so often the case, the man behind the curtain is a petty, angry, manipulative mess. “I wanted to believe that he was good,” a former Nxivm adherent called Jane (a pseudonym) tells the filmmakers.

Unfortunately for Jane (and the rest of us), life tends to resist universal moral formulations, let alone the “scientific” answers Raniere sold. So buy self-help books if you’d like; some of the best are genuinely useful. But before you hand over your credit card — or life — to someone peddling a very expensive solution to life’s difficulties, think twice. And watch “The Vow.”

What did you miss? For a review of the previous episode, click HERE

From Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-recap-episode-2-new-day.html

The White Lotus S1 Ep 2: New Day

The White Lotus Recap: Hawaiian K-Hole
By Amanda Whiting


Photo: Mario Perez/HBO

When The White Lotus started filming at Maui’s shut-down Four Seasons in the fall of 2020, the series was capturing a tension between visitors and locals that had evaporated when the pandemic hit. Now, Maui’s experiencing a tourism boom that’s overwhelming its infrastructure. The road to Hana is a traffic jam and the island’s mayor has asked airlines to temporarily “pause” incoming flights. Like The Handmaid’s Tale premiering during Donald Trump’s first 100 days,The White Lotus can’t help feeling extra prescient. In this week’s episode, beach boys lug chaises longues onto the hot sand, waiters gawk as Shane Patton piles an obscene buffet plate, and the wealthy resort guests enmesh themselves in the lives of the staff without much thought to what happens when they leave. Consequences are as ephemeral as sunsets.

Shane is fighting a two-front war now. He’s still strung out on the Pineapple Suite, enlisting his mom’s travel agent to harass the hotel manager. Meanwhile, his new wife has plunged into an existential crisis — or at least caught an especially virile case of the post-wedding blues. After months of neglecting her career to plan their big day, Rachel is offered a low-prestige, low-pay magazine assignment, which she’d like to report from their honeymoon. Shane isn’t necessarily wrong when he tells her it’s “rude” to interrupt their trip, but everything else that emanates from his supremely punchable face is belittling, particularly offering her cash from their now-communal assets to not take the gig. “You must have thought about it,” he says, broaching how his enormous wealth could free Rachel from the bonds of mediocre wage labor. And she must have, right? She showed up carrying a Goyard tote.

For Rachel, it’s about the work, yes, but it’s also not about work at all. A wedding is over in a day; honing the contours of a marriage could last a lifetime but, ideally, at least until the sunset clause on her prenup expires. Her career anxieties feel almost metonymic. The real question dogging her is how do you stay yourself in a relationship that affords you a new life? Rachel’s been worried about money every day of her existence, and the feeling is so familiar, so a part of how she sees herself and interacts with the world, that she so far prefers the worry to the actual money. She approaches Nicole, whose high-octane career she admires, for advice. Nicole will know what to do; Nicole carries a Louis Vuitton Neverfull to the pool.

Can we wax about how good Connie Britton is at playing Nicole Mossbacher, the way she can sell a single line so that it works on multiple registers? “Your independence is your power,” she tells the newlywed, who gobbles up the platitude as the audience rolls its eyes. What is Nicole talking about? But also: What else is she supposed to say? When she discovers Rachel was the author of a borderline unflattering news story on her, Nicole’s sunny mask never breaks, even as she eviscerates Rachel with put-downs. It’s the same impassive smile she gives to her husband’s dopey toast and to Tanya’s intrusive compliments, shouted across the hotel restaurant. Nicole’s impregnability is her power.

The only person able to pierce it is Olivia, whose favorite way to unwind at the end of a long, tropical day is to needle her mother. Their dinner conversations aren’t actually conversations, more like sequences of small tiffs followed by silences, which pretty quickly give way to the next tiff. When Nicole mentions that Rachel is a “fan” of her work at a big search engine, Olivia complains that the company is responsible for eroding the social fabric. The generational divide happens to be between the letters X and Z and the points of conflict are hyper du jour, but the shape of the schism will feel familiar to most people and their parents. I see my younger millennial self in Olivia’s insensitivity; I see my boomer mother in Nicole’s lack of curiosity.

Olivia feels less specific when she’s alone with Paula, though the scenes between them are the most overtly comic in this week’s episode. When they discover a veritable pharmacy lurking in their hand luggage and then “do some ASMR,” you get the feeling you’re watching Mike White digest everything he’s recently heard about young people. His interest in the lives of women their age is about as sincere as Nicole’s. She knows she smells weed in their room, for example, but when Paula claims they’re making sacrifices to Hecate, Nicole’s as happy as they are to move on. “Witchcraft” is just another word on The White Lotus’s 2021 bingo card.

The episode is called “New Day” and it applies most directly to Mark Mossbacher, who doesn’t have cancer, thereby dramatically reducing his chances of leaving the resort dead. (You’d be forgiven for forgetting that someone must.) The good news sends him on a reflective bender. The day will be seized; footprints will be left in the sand. He’s insistent about spending time with his son, who generally survives life as a member of his toxic family by playing Nintendo. But Mark doesn’t really want to get to know his kid; he wants to recreate his own childhood, casting himself in the role of worshipped father. He doesn’t even ask Quinn what video game he’s been playing. Instead, he signs them up for scuba lessons. Quinn gamely agrees to “bro out” with his dad, but the situation has shallow-water blackout written all over it. Is this how Quinn goes?

It’s a new day of a kind for Tanya, too. Craniosacral therapy with Belinda has left her refreshed. What started as a trip to scatter her mother’s ashes has become an impromptu wellness retreat. She collapses herself all over Belinda, eventually asking her to dinner. It’s a presumptuous invitation that curdles completely when she refuses to accept Belinda’s polite no; she even threatens to stir up trouble with the hotel manager to make a seafood tower for two a reality. The scene’s ugliness has levels. There’s Tanya’s sense of entitlement to Belinda’s unpaid time, her brinkmanship, her complete lack of self-awareness. The customer is always right, and Tanya is a lifelong customer.

But what happens at the dinner is more agonizing. As Belinda justifies a career helping “rich white people” find some peace — they’re the ones whose psychic pain is “fucking up the whole world” — Tanya offers to help her open her own business. We don’t know enough of Belinda to understand why she can’t hear the insincerity in the proposal or recognize the flashes of flakiness in Tanya, but right now she seems more likely to leave The White Lotus in a body bag than as the owner/manager of an eponymous spa.

Comparatively, what’s happening between Shane and Armond can look like a battle between equals. Shane may have all the privilege, but Armond is standing strong between him and the only closed door he’s ever seen. Privately, though, Armond’s hanging by a thread. His sobriety is fragile after a forced reckoning with his own lack of compassion — he didn’t notice Lani was in labor because he was preoccupied keeping paradise on schedule. “What if I can’t fucking do this anymore?” he asks. The Pineapple Suite may be Shane’s whole war, but for The White Lotus manager it’s just another skirmish. Next week, another rich guy with another impossible demand will arrive on the trade winds. And the week after that. And the week after that. Lei, luau, repeat. Ultimately, Armond pops a few pills from the girl’s druggie go-bag, which they lost on the beach in their own K-hole. Armond could surely perish.

And so the new day, our first full day with out-of-offices on, comes to a close. Rachel passes on the assignment, saving her honeymoon but probably damning her marriage with festering resentment. Shane somehow gets lucky anyway. The bitchy girls kick Quinn out of their hotel room, and he falls asleep on the beach with a lobtailing whale in the distance. Belinda is high on what’s got to be false hope; Armond is just high. And Mark crashes out of his carpe diem fugue when he finds out the strapping, Paul Bunyan of a father he lost to cancer when he was Quinn’s age actually died from AIDS, contracted during a gay affair.

At least Quinn probably doesn’t have to go to scuba school now.

What did you miss? For a review of the previous episode, click HERE

from AVClub.com
https://www.avclub.com/american-gods-ponders-the-conscience-of-the-king-in-a-1846298890

American gods S3 Ep 6:
Conscience of the King
*******

American Gods ponders the “Conscience Of The King” in another solid episode

By
Ani Bundel 2/21/21 8:05PM

Bruce Langley in American GodsPhoto: Starz


“Why am I not surprised the Buckeye state has a freaky Norse underbelly?”

This week’s opening scene brings the show back a second time to the Revolutionary War. But unlike last time, which was a means of segueing to the African peoples dragged to America against their will, this week’s intro forks to how the white men murdering their way across the continent helped revive the Norse gods of war. It also features the jarring choice to have Ian McShane do a VO from the jump. That’s because this isn’t our usual “Coming to America” tale. It’s Odin, telling us about a love story, his and Demeter’s.

We’ll return to this element, which gives the story its episodic structure this week, but first, we need to check in with Shadow Moon, who is back in Lakeside, trying to wrap his head around Laura’s upgraded condition. Her request for Wednesday’s whereabouts isn’t helping since she wants him to aid and abet her in killing him. He already did time for aiding and abetting with her once.

But this scene also drives home how disjointed and bifurcated season two was in its little silos of different adventures. Here it is, over halfway through season three when Laura learns Wednesday is Shadow Moon’s father. It makes it all very awkward, since that doesn’t change her plans. However, it’s not as uncomfortable as Marguerite’s return, interrupting what was otherwise a sweet goodbye to the show’s OG couple.

It’s also not as awkward as Laura’s return to the motel, where the next-door neighbors are fucking like it’s the end of the world. To ignore them, Salim turned on the TV only to find himself being extorted not to be down because he lost his Djinn and to call. Luckily, Laura’s not about to let him pick up the phone, insisting Salim must move on. But without Shadow, the two have to start over, with Salim suggesting they try heading to Ohio for the wake resulting from the Valhalla East explosion a couple of weeks back. It’s not much to go on, but it’s a start.

Between all the sex Laura and Salim aren’t having and Shadow painting half-naked to Bel Biv Devoe (Never trust a big butt and a smile), this week is super horny. Perhaps that’s why Shadow thinks Millennial Pink (excuse me, Salmon Mist) is a good color for his digs. Unfortunately, Marguerite doesn’t think the owner, Anne-Marie, will approve. Yes, weirdo bossy Anne-Marie, who thinks she runs Lakeside, owns this house and five other buildings to boot. Maybe she does own Lakeside after all.

But first, Shadow Moon has other problems, as Marguerite has invited him to dinner to meet her sister, who turns out to be none other than Samantha Black Crow, who fans will remember as picking up a hitchhiking Shadow Moon in season two. She kindly doesn’t blow his cover, but she does threaten him lest he hurt her sister. As Sam drives off, Shadow has a moment standing in the night of his god-senses, only to see the town’s “Panty Thief” escaping a break-in. He gives chase, but the kid gets away, but not before he sees who it is: Derek (Spencer Macpherson), the kid from the diner who’s always trying to be cool and down.



Julia Sweeney as Ann-Marie HinzelmanPhoto: Starz

Technology Boy wakes up after last week’s emotional collapse and decides to start fixing himself, pulling out a diagnostic robot circa 1983. His machine is not exactly sympathetic, informing him if he wants a full diagnostic of his emotional state to insert “Artifact 1.” But Technology Boy’s going off the grid has not gone unnoticed, and Mr./Ms./Mr. World is growing impatient at the inability to find him. (Love that this week, Mr. World is played by Danny Trejo. I’m on board with the character being played by a new actor every week until the series ends.)

But before our new Mr. World can start murdering, Technology Boy walks in asking what’s good. Despite his bravado, the real reason is our young god hopes World can tell him what the Artifact is. World plays it calm and gentle with his broken Techie Boy before descending to check the Artifact and call *someone* to report on his protege’s condition and Laura Moon’s re-emergence. As the episode concludes, he turns up at the now-canceled Valhalla East wake to round up Laura and Salim to his cause.



Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday,Photo: Starz

Returning now to Demeter and Odin and the love story that could be. Demeter keeps hoping to remove Odin, to the point of stashing pills in his belongings and blaming him for breaking pots in hopes of setting him off. (Unfortunately for her, Odin quickly picks up on the weaknesses of Hank, the orderly assigned to him, using Hank’s crush on Elizabeth as leverage to wiggle out.) Having failed, Demeter owes Odin one night, which he uses...to tell the story the show began with, how he and Tyr both loved Demeter, and how she chose Odin over Tyr, to her ultimate regret.

Odin attempts to portray himself as regretting it too. He left when their child died; he wants to turn it all around. Demeter fights him every step, even bringing Tyr, now in his dentist format, to stand by her side. But Tyr won’t stand in the way if Odin is serious about wanting Demeter back. And it seems he’s winning, as she agrees to go with him, now the release papers are here.

Until, in his moment of triumph, Odin declares they will go together and lead the Old Gods to victory. Demeter knows at once she’s been had. She’s not going with Odin. As he stands, Cordelia and car at the ready, she walks out for the last time to the altar her handmaids created and releases herself to the ether. Her seeds and grains blow in the wind and the rain. Odin has lost.

Stray observations

-The threat of Anne-Marie is worth keeping an eye on.
-I keep waiting for Lakeside to turn on “Mike Ansel.” He’s now left holding the underwear evidence with no proof other than his word against Derek’s. I am worried.
-Laura hugging Sweeney’s remains while telling Salim to move on was adorable.
-That should have been a 1-900 number, not 1-800 that the TV was hawking. Just sayin’
-I wonder if Technology Boy’s machine can play Global Thermonuclear War.
-Miss her, kiss her, love her, wrong move, you’re dead. That girl is...

From TVline.com
https://tvline.com/2019/09/26/evil-premiere-season-1-episode-1-cbs-mike-colter/

Evil S1 Ep 1

By Kimberly Roots / September 26 2019, 7:58 PM PDT

Courtesy of CBS

A skeptic and a true believer team up to investigate supposed paranormal activity, and — twist! — their names aren’t Scully and Mulder. Welcome to CBS’ Evil, the new drama that scratches that spooky-with-a-dash-of-sexual-tension itch you might have in the ­X-Files‘ absence.

In a moment, we’ll want to know what you thought of the new drama from The Good Wife‘s Robert and Michelle King. But first, a quick recap of the premiere:

Kristen Bouchard (Westworld‘s Katja Herbers) is a New York-based forensic psychologist who frequently works for the Queens District Attorney’s office. When we meet her, she’s questioning a serial killer who has murdered three families but claims not to have any memory of the murders. She’s sure he’s sane and fit to stand trial, but the killer’s lawyer puts forward another theory: His client is possessed by a demon.

Kristen thinks the man is being coached, and he himself denies that he’s under the control of an evil spirit. But when she draws a cross on the table in the interrogation room and starts reciting The Lord’s Prayer, he suddenly jumps on the table and knocks her over, spouting Latin the whole time. Guards rush in and pull him off, but Kristen is rattled. When the DA pressures her to declare him fine, she balks and tells him to get someone else to lie for him on the stand.

At home, we see that Kristen is the mom of four young daughters, and her husband is a mountain climber (she was one, too) who’s off leading a trip to Mount Everest. Her disapproving mom (Chicago Hope‘s Christine Lahti) helps with the girls. And from a threatening phone call Kristen gets, we can infer that she owes someone a lot of money.

Before the whole Latin incident in the interrogation room, a man (Luke Cage‘s Mike Colter) gave Kristen a rosary and told her to keep it for her protection. He later shows up at her house and introduces himself as David Acosta, an operative for the Catholic Church. Along with his colleague Ben (The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi), Mike investigates cases that might be possession to determine whether an exorcism or further research is needed.

“Possession looks a lot like insanity, and insanity looks a lot like possession,” he says, explaining that they’d like to hire her to help them — and he doesn’t care that she doesn’t believe in possession. “I want your honest opinion,” he says genially. “I want your skepticism.” Perhaps thinking of the money she owes someone, Kristen agrees.

That night after the girls go to bed, Kristen keeps hearing a slithery sound in her house. And when she goes to sleep, a demon appears in her bedroom and addresses her like a beloved colleague. She tells herself he’s a night terror, which he tries to disprove by urinating in the corner of the room. Her terror mounts as he lifts the covers and makes a reference to her caesarian section scar; when she screams, her daughters run in. She tells them it was just a dream, and they wind up spending the rest of the night in her bed. Kristen recounts the entire tale to her psychiatrist during a visit the next day, and he chalks it up to sleep issues.

The next night, Kristen tapes a sign to her bedroom ceiling, then goes to sleep. The demon appears to her once more and introduces himself as George. He quizzes her about flirting with David, even though she’s married and he’s training to be a priest. He cuts off one of her fingers (!) and Kristen is terrified… until she looks up and realizes she can’t read her sign. She reasons that she’s dreaming, because the area of the brain that processes reading is dormant during sleep. When she wakes up, she sees the sign very clearly: It reads “Can you read this?”

Throughout, it looks more and more like the murderer actually is possessed by a being that calls itself Roy — and it knows about George’s visits to Kristen’s bedroom. “George will slash the throats of your daughters,” Roy tells her, which naturally freaks her out in the extreme. But then on a hunch, she goes to her shrink’s office and learns that all of the notes from her sessions are gone. She tracks them to a Dr. Townshend (Person of Interest‘s Michael Emerson), who just happens to be a forensic psychologist working for the defense.

“You’re in waaaaay over your head, Ms. Bouchard,” Townshend warns her at the courthouse, vaguely threatening to have her children killed. David runs up to run interference. “Leland, you have no power here. She doesn’t believe,” he says, prompting Townshend to taunt him with a mention of someone named Julia who was “crying on her knees, weepy little bitch.” Now it’s David’s turn to be shaken.

At a bar afterward, David tells Kristen that Julia was “a friend,” and he’s seen Townshend “in other guises.” He explains that the shadowy doc is a “connector,” aka someone who pretends to be normal “but their real pursuit is evil, encouraging others to be evil” for the sheer pleasure of it. Kristen says that he just described psychopaths, and David agrees: That’s where their fields overlap.

Kristen, David and Ben eventually realize that Townsend and the killer connected online via social media and Townshend encouraged the murderer to rape and kill. The blackout defense was a total lie, and Kristen eventually finds a paper trail that shows Townshend coached the killer on how to fake demonic possession (hence the Latin).

Back at Kristen’s place, she drinks a mini-margarita as David and Ben outlines their next case: a miracle. Will she join them? “I mean, I could have a look,” she says.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from Vulture.com:
https://www.vulture.com/article/mare-of-easttown-finale-recap-episode-7-sacrament.html

Mare of Easttown S1 Ep 7: Sacrament
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Mare of Easttown Series-Finale Recap: A Way to Live With It
By Roxana Hadadi



Photo: HBO Max

In her poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” from which the sixth episode of Mare of Easttown took its title “Sore Must Be the Storm,” Emily Dickinson described hope as what “perches in the soul … sings the tune without the words/and never stops — at all.” The purity of hope, Dickinson suggested, was that it “never — in Extremity … asked a crumb — of me.” Hope exists for its own sake, and for our sake, and it pushes us ahead when nothing else can, or will.

Consider that on one hand, and consider the word “Sacrament,” the title for Mare of Easttown’s finale episode, on the other. In Christianity, a sacrament is an essential religious rite; various branches of Christianity recognize different sacraments, but in general, they agree on the core idea that performing a sacrament can provide God’s grace. In the 1960 book The Meaning of Religion: Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion, W. Brede Kristensen wrote of the Roman root word, “sacramentum,” which was a military oath and sacred bond. When the early followers of Christianity took the word over for their own purposes, they transformed its Roman definition into “the means whereby sacredness … is actualized,” Kristensen wrote. Thousands of years later, of the various Christian sacraments, confession and forgiveness remain of particular importance.

Forgive my simplistic poetry and theology lessons, but I say all this because hope, confession, and forgiveness all entwine together in Easttown, don’t they? For the preceding six episodes, we’ve seen Easttown as a bleak, suffocating place. Abusive family dynamics, wayward teenagers, drug addiction, abducted and murdered women, the men doing the abducting and the murdering. Parents and children who can’t seem to stand each other, and neighbors turning on one another. Civic and religious leaders betraying their constituents and their followers, and the mistrust and cynicism of those deceived constituents and followers spreading outward, generation by generation, fraying the invisible web of confidence and belief and compassion and altruism that is supposed to hold a community together.

I don’t think all of that, the broad scale and scope of it, gets fully better because Mare brought Katie and Missy home, or because she solved Erin’s murder. Erin is still dead. Colin is still dead. Freddie is still dead. Kevin is still dead. Carrie is still slipping back into her addiction. The Ross family is still torn apart by incest, lies, and abuse. I’m not sure Lori and Mare’s friendship will ever fully be the same again. But as a slight tipping of the scales? As a brief glimmer of a better future? Yes, and yes. “It’s not for us to decide whether or not they’re deserving,” Deacon Mark said to his congregation about the outsiders in their community, and I can admire the intentions behind that. As a nonreligious person, I can also extend some appreciation for what Mare of Easttown hammers home in this finale about hope, confession, and forgiveness being the steps that guide us forward out of tragedy. Can I muster much empathy up in my heart for John Ross, though? No. Can Mare? I’m gonna also go with no.

“Sacrament” begins right when “Sore Must Be the Storm” ended, with Mare tracking John and Billy to their father’s fishing spot. Back at the Easttown police station, we see the photo Jess had taken from Erin’s journal: a snapshot of Erin beside a sleeping John Ross. John is DJ’s father, and John and Erin began having sex after the family reunion, and Billy isn’t the responsible party at all — neither in impregnating Erin, nor in killing her. It was always John.

At least, that’s what the episode wants you to believe for the first 45 minutes or so, and I’ll be honest: I felt pretty good in my sleuthing from last week! Billy innocent! John guilty! But shame on me for not picking up on the other intentional clues Mare of Easttown was laying down in preceding episodes. Ryan’s burst of angry violence, bullets from a police-issue gun being used to kill Erin, and that dead-eyed stare Lori gave Mare when she started repeating the lies John had told her to say. Are any of John’s and Lori’s actions forgivable because they were trying to protect Ryan? Any of their lies, their obfuscations, their mistruths? This is a town of people whose children have been taken from them as a result of drugs, poverty, lack of opportunity, mental illness. Can we blame Lori and John for holding their child so tight, and for deciding to sacrifice elements of themselves to save him? I don’t know if I can answer that question, and I’m not sure Mare of Easttown has an answer for it, either.

And I’m not sure if continuing to interrogate Erin’s murder is exactly the top priority of Mare of Easttown in its final episode. Instead, “Sacrament” spends most of its runtime on all the ways life keeps on moving after Mare confronts John and Billy on Lehigh River. We see Kate Winslet do exceptional work in that interrogation scene, her tamped-down anger, discomfort, and shock all over her face and captured in her body language as she looks everywhere but at Joe Tippett’s John Ross. That big breath she takes before asking, “When did you begin having a sexual relationship with Erin McMenamin?”, and how entirely without affect she recites her questions — John’s betrayal shook Mare, and Winslet sells that well. Then the reveal that Lori lied to Mare? A light goes out in Mare’s eyes after that admission from John, and everything else we see her do with her life can’t quite bring it back.

Getting together with Richard, at least until he leaves for another one-year visiting professor gig: good! Making up with Frank, befriending Faye, and finally receiving from Helen the apology she’s wanted for years regarding her crummy childhood, and how Helen treated Mare’s father: good! Growing closer to Siobhan: good! Continuing to go to therapy: good! Retaining custody of Drew: good-ish, I guess, although it’s only because Carrie is using drugs again as a result of her need to work so many hours to support herself, and that’s actually pretty depressing!

But Mare is Mare. This is the same woman who couldn’t give up looking for Katie and Missy, even when she was suspended. This is the same woman who went into Mr. Potts’s house without a gun and a badge. This is the same woman who refused to pull over and wait for backup when she thought Billy Ross had killed Erin. And so during the six or so months that we watch Mare grow increasingly suspicious of whether John really did it—how was he so chummy with Frank and Faye at their engagement party, the night he supposedly killed Erin; why didn’t he know exactly where Erin was shot; how could he not remember which gun Erin allegedly had?—we know, too, that there are limits to how much someone can change, at least when they’re grown. Mare could never have left this alone. It’s not in her nature.

Ryan, though? Maybe there’s still time for Ryan to become a different person. Cameron Mann is just devastating in that scene with Julianne Nicholson. His crying delivery of “It’s Mare, she knows! She’s on her way here! She knows!” is tortured and terrified in equal measure, and it was matched well by how wearily and resignedly Nicholson later said, “I agreed to lie to protect my son, and I would have taken that to my grave if you didn’t show up at the house today.” Lori, who once said she would never let Mare quit her, pushes Mare so fully out of her life that I thought they would never find their way back to each other.

Remember, though: hope, confession, forgiveness. Over and over, we hear people repeat these ideas to each other, like a mantra, affirmation, or prayer. Chief Carter says to Mare that she might not be all right, “But you’re gonna survive.” Mare says to Deacon Mark when telling him charges against him are dropped, “Wherever you go after this, I hope they treat you better than we did.” When Mr. Carroll, grieving the death of his wife and increasingly unmoored, asks Mare, “Does it get any easier?”, there’s no real hesitation in her “No.” But Mare’s “After a while, you learn to live with the unacceptable” is the true message, isn’t it? Time only moves forward, and if we’re lucky, we do too, our paths overlapping with those we love. Frank and Faye get married. Beth gives Freddie’s home to Katie and her daughter. Moira opens the door to Mare, and Lori accepts the hug that is offered. Mare lost Kevin, but she’s always loved Drew; Lori lost Ryan, but maybe she’ll one day love DJ. Everyone gets older. Everyone grows up. And Mare pulls down those stairs to the attic where her son killed himself, takes one step at a time, and ascends.

A Different Line of Work

• Shout out to eagle-eyed commenter Sylvia, who emailed me after my last recap to point out a detail I missed during the jewelry-store-receipt scene. My attention during that scene was focused on the right-hand side of the frame, with the receipt that only lists “Ross” as the buyer of the engraved heart pendant. Sylvia pointed out, though, that the separate receipt on the left-hand side of the frame clearly lists the full name “Billy Ross.” Thanks, Sylvia! But we never got a real confirmation about the details of that pendant purchase in this episode, did we? Did John buy it pretending to be Billy? Or did John have Billy buy it to give to Erin? Whatever the details of that, the amount that John involved his younger brother in his incestuous abuse of his niece cousin—and the fact that various members of the Ross family knew about this for a while and did nothing—is deeply dispiriting.

Photo: HBO

• Another detail that I still can’t work out: When did the Jess/Sean/Dylan partnership happen, and why? It seemed to already be in place when Dylan confirmed that Jess was lying to Mare per his orders, and it felt like Dylan was alluding to something else the three of them had done together outside of the journal burning when he pulled that gun on Jess. I know that Jess’s explanation was that the three of them were working together to get Dylan’s parents custody of DJ because she thought Erin would have wanted that, but it felt like there were some gaps in this subplot, too.

• Mann made a solid impression in this final episode, and his “Hey, DJ. Hello,” was particularly poignant.

• “No one’s gonna miss a fuckup like me.” Poor Billy.

• John Douglas Thompson’s faces during the John Ross interrogation scene were great, in particular his disbelieving reaction to John’s description of his bond with Erin, “We could confide in each other in ways that we couldn’t confide in other people. We had this connection.” That “WTF?” face should have a long life on Twitter.

• Erin and John used prepaid burners! Did they buy them from Lester Freamon?

• In a less-silly comparison with The Wire: Mare going up the attic stairs felt like Bubbles finally making it out of his sister’s basement, and this is your reminder that Andre Royo should have won a billion Emmys for that performance.

• Am I too sentimental for wishing there were a scene where Mare went to Colin’s grave? Probably.

• Siobhan is really on her way to Berkeley? That’s not how college admissions work! And we never even saw her finished documentary!

• Amusing to me how the healthier-and-happier version of Mare just looked … more like normal Kate Winslet. It’s like they let Winslet moisturize her face and use a deep-conditioning mask on her hair and called it good.

• I am still fairly anti-Dylan, but I thought his final goodbye to DJ was just right: Dylan has enough of a chip on his shoulder that he would put together the amount needed for DJ’s ear surgery himself, enough of a scrap of a conscience to gift to DJ the money he stole from Erin, and still pissed-off enough that he would sneeringly point out to Lori that she’s not DJ’s “real mom.”

• Jean Smart’s “It wasn’t your fault” wasn’t quite as good as Robin Williams’s Good Will Hunting version of that line, but it was still good. Watch Smart on Hacks!

• Thank you for reading!