Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; Black Doves; Bosch; Citadel; Criminal Minds; Dark Matter; Dexter: Original Sin; Dune: Prophecy; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outlander; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Last of Us, Way Home; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Silo 2: The Rest of the Season: Connections to Foundation

Well, I reviewed just about every episode of the first season Silo back in the Spring and Summer of 2023, and then the first episode of the second season this past November 2024, and then ... there was something about this second season that made me feel I wanted to know more before I wrote another review, and here I am with a review of the rest of season two, including the finale, up on Apple TV+ just a few days ago.

[And there will be no Silo spoilers ahead until the very end ... ]

What especially struck me about this second season of Silo, as it progressed, is that it had a cadence and essence that reminded me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy (and I mean the original printed trilogy, not the series, now waiting for its third season, also on Apple TV+, which in many crucial ways is a very different story than the one in the novels).

Now, Silo takes place on Earth, and a very limited part of it, at that, while Foundation takes place in the galaxy writ large, so what could the two have in common? For me, one of the best parts of the Foundation trilogy is the search for Second Foundation, which requires Ebling Mis to spend the rest of his life looking for answers in the library on Trantor. [And here I guess I should warn you about spoilers for the Foundation trilogy, in case you haven't read it.] Ebling pores of over countless documents, to say the least, trying desperately to glean information from a galactic culture that no longer exists.

And as people in both silos start to do that in this second season of Silo -- more in the second silo than the first, but really in both -- I got the same feeling I did when I read equivalent passages of the very different story, in a very different settling, in the Foundation trilogy. (And here I should say again -- as I've said in reviews of previous episodes -- that I haven't actually read Hugh Howey's stories.) But there's something very powerful -- emotionally as well as intellectually -- in the struggle to make sense of what's right before your very eyes, what your forebears have left for you, intentionally or not, which offers life-saving, civilization-saving information. It doesn't matter whether it's presented in codes or symbols or letters of an alphabet. The effect is the same.

It gets, in my mind, to magic of written words, and all written communication, whether on paper in books or on screens. These squiggles on surfaces provide essential keys to our very existence, and the science fiction stories which focus on them are narratives in which these words and numbers are as much as or even more than the heroic people who must decode them.

[Ok, now I'll talk about the very end of the 10th episode of the second season ... ]

This is of one the better twists I've seen in a science fiction story on the television in quite awhile. The jump to our outside world in Washington DC -- pretty literally our world -- was stunning stuff. It reminded me of I think the finale of the 3rd season in Lost, when we suddenly saw our world, back in Los Angeles, not in the past, not in a flashback, but in the present, as three people from the island made it back home.

The move in both series -- Silo and Lost -- was at once jolting and immensely refreshing. And I'll see you back when Season 3 of Silo is up on the screen.

Friday, January 17, 2025

Severance 2.1: Ultimate Fake News?

A thoroughly disconcerting -- and therefore, excellent, because that's what it's supposed to be -- episode 2.1 of Severance, the return of this cuttingly bizarre series on Apple TV+.

First, I really enjoyed the long opening sequence of Mark S. running through the severed hall at the opening of this episode. It was on the extended trailer which I watched a good couple of times, and I enjoy more every time I see it. In part because it reminds me of the halls on the ground floor (I think) of CBS on 57th Street in Manhattan -- I was watching a debate (on TV) there between John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election, that I was supposed to comment on -- and I stepped out for a moment to get a sip of water, walked down a hall and around to find a fountain I thought I saw when I was coming in, and it took me way too long to get back to the room with the debate. It also reminds me of some hallways in hospitals, which makes it even more unlikely that I liked it Severance 2.1, though I very much did.

[Now there might be a spoiler of two ahead ... ]

As to the story, it was nice and funny seeing Mark S. in a severed room with a new team, including a new old guy (played by Bob Balaban) named Mark W. -- which is why I'm calling our innie Mark S., because you never know, especially in a series like this, when a character like Mark W. will come back. (Actually, that applies to any and all of the characters in this series.)

But it was reassuring to see our Mark reunited with his innie team, and also reassuring to see how much Milchick -- aka Milk Shake -- lies all the time. In fact, it struck me that Severance from the very beginning was a series about the ultimate fake news, about news so fake, it's about your very self and being, split into two, with one not knowing what the other is doing. That's why notes passed back and forth between the inside and the outside hold such power.

And it was good to see Miss Huang, a new character, in the series. She clearly has a lot of importance, and at this point it's possible that she may be running the show. "And a child shall lead them" may be a central part of the story this season.

I'm off to watch the next episode of another great series, but I'll see you back here next week with my review Severance 2.2

Sunday, January 12, 2025

David Browne's Talkin' Greenwich Village: Cornucopic Rainbow Biography

more about the book here

If ever there was a time-travel ticket to a past and a place that you knew so well you could still see the sun glinting through the tree leaves, hear the din of the eateries as you walked by, and, most important, still hear the music that actually defied any given time or place, it would be David Browne's book, Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital. That's because Browne has a way of writing, an eye for detail, a penchant for commentary, that draws you in to fill the background you in one way or another actually experienced, or, what Marshall McLuhan called "cool".

Yeah, I sang doo-wop in Washington Square Park with my acapela group The Transits in the early 1960s, and then my folk-rock group The New Outlook a few years later (Ellie Greenwich and Mike Rashkow heard us uptown one Sunday afternoon in Central Park, and signed us to Atlantic Records, after changing our name to The Other Voices), but the way I really got to know the village was finishing up my BA in Journalism at NYU, then going a few blocks up to the New School for an M.A., then back to NYU for my PhD in the 1970s. (I even managed to write three pieces for The Village Voice just before all that, my sum-total career as a music journalist.)

Turns out David Browne and I could have passed each other in the street -- David arrived to pursue his BA in Journalism at NYU in 1978, and I left, thankfully finished with school, in 1979 -- or bumped into each other going in and out of the diner southeast of the park. But David stayed focused on the Village and its clubs and their music, to the present day, while I pursued music on the radio, MTV, iTunes, and anyplace I could hear it, and only came to the Village with my wife to eat in a great Italian restaurant near Houston Street, or go shopping at Balducci's.

And Talkin' Greenwich Village is one of the results of Browne's passion -- he's written more than half a dozen other books about popular music, and writes for Rolling Stone -- and delivers a cornucopia of vignettes, insights, and are what in effect mini reviews of dozens of artists. You know, I always judge a book by how well it treats a subject I know something about. My wife and I were/are devoted fans of Phil Ochs -- I consider his "The Crucification" right up there with the very best songs that Dylan wrote -- and Browne not only got everything right in his discussion of Ochs and his life in the Village (with an intermission in California) over the 1960s and 70s, until he took his own life the year my wife and I got married (we went to the Memorial Concert for Ochs that Browne also aptly describes), but I also learned something from his description of Ochs. It's become hard-wired into Ochs's story that he was broken when Dylan did not include him in his Rolling Thunder tour. But Browne provides a missing piece of the story, telling us how Ochs badgered Dylan, when Dylan was first beginning to put together the group that would tour. Which means, it's not quite true that a callous or jealous Dylan simply didn't include Ochs on the tour.

But in addition to, I don't know, at least vignettes of 50 artists spread across 8 chapters and an Epilogue teeming with information -- Browne lists every interview he did for the book in its Bibliography -- he focuses on two artists, Dave Van Ronk, and the Roche Sisters (and, also of course, Bob Dylan), and makes them, in effect, centerpieces and guides to what Browne is telling us happened in these magical decades. I only saw Van Ronk once (at the Phil Ochs 1976 Memorial Concert at the Felt Forum) and the Roche Sisters only on YouTube. But Browne's accounts of Van Ronk and of the Roches across the decades amount to mini but in-depth biographies of the two, and make Talkin' Greenwich Village irresistible reading just on their own.

But lest you think everything in this book is as serious as Ochs, or even Dylan, Browne also has a knack for the kind of detail that will make you chuckle, or even laugh out loud. Seeking the name of a song on one of The Blues Project's just-recorded albums, the response to the person who's writing down the titles is "'What song? You mean Steve’s song?' To [Steve] Katz’s chagrin, 'Steves Song,' complete with a missing apostrophe, became the title." Or, "when Orbison and Ronstadt huddled in his dressing room, [Jerry] Brown [then Ronstadt's boyfriend], waiting patiently outside, finally began pounding on the door: 'Let me in! I’m the governor of California!''' Or, "the worst [performers in this Village venue] were booed or heckled. When asked if one contestant should be booted off the stage, [owner] Porco grumbled, 'No, I think we should shoot him.'”

Of course, no volume is perfect, and I'll tell you the one thing I missed in this New York Public Library of a book. I was a big fan of The Blues Project, and to this day I find myself humming or singing to myself "Cheryl's Going Home". The song was written by Bob Lind (who wrote "Bright Elusive Butterfly of Love"), who does a pretty good job singing it. But the Blues Project rendition, with those piercing guitar notes, and their interplay with organ, is something else. Browne tells us almost as much about The Blues Project, Danny Kalb in particular, as he does about Van Ronk, the Roches, and Dylan. But not a word about that elusive heart-breaker Cheryl. I guess she was already home and out of sight.

But every page of this pulsating encyclopedia of whirling words is worth reading. The fall of Greenwich Village and its clubs and taverns and whatever you want to call them brought tears to my eyes, because David Browne had made it seem like a beloved living organism, a mini gaia of music just several blocks long. My only really lasting regret about this book is that it wasn't ten times longer. As it was, it's 400 pages went by too quickly, because I just couldn't put the book down.

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Check back here at the end of the month for my upcoming interview with David Browne.

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in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover

Friday, January 10, 2025

Dexter: Original Sin 1.6: On the Strong, Non-Serial-Killer Parts of the Show

The deepest heart and strength of all the Dexter series -- including the current Dexter: Original Sin -- is of course the story of the serial-killer Dexter on the side of the angels. But I was especially struck watching Dexter: Original Sin 1.6 how good the other aspects of the narrative are, too.

Here's a list of some highlights [spoilers ahead .... ]

1. Dexter losing his virginity in that men's room, after Sofia follows him in. The truth is, Dexter's romantic relationships in all the series are very well done highlights (though I guess it's stretching things a bit to call Dexter and Sofia's relationship romantic, at least from Dexter's point of view).

2. Speaking of "romance," Harry being torn between his wife and Dexter's mother Laura is one fine piece of drama, too. The writing and the acting in the scenes with Harry (Christian Slater) and Laura (Brittany Allen) are top-notch, too.

3. Speaking of acting, Patrick Gibson as young Dexter is outstanding. He both inhabits and is growing into the Dexter we've come to know via Michael C. Hall just perfectly. (This of course is helped by Hall's voice saying the right things, with the right tone of voice.)

4. For that matter, Captain Spencer's story vis-a-vis his kidnapped son and his former wife is a powerful piece of narrative, and it's good to see Patrick Dempsey branching out from Grey's Anatomy (which I don't watch anyway -- I only know the actor because my wife is such a devotee of the hospital drama).

What I'm saying is these and just about every other aspect of Dexter: Original Sin are riveting television, and one of the reasons all of the Dexters have been right up there with The Sopranos and The Wire.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Dramatic Reading from 2nd Chapter of It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 405: Howard Margolin invited me to join him on his Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction show (on WUSB Radio) in a dramatic reading from the second chapter of my 2024 novel, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles. Here's the reading, with some commentary before and after by me.

Relevant links:

Get the Kindle, paperback, or hardcover of the novel
Read the award-winning first chapter of the novel, FREE
Listen to the award-winning radioplay adapted from the 1st chapter, FREE
Anne Reburn's recording of "Real Love" for the radioplay
Watch my reading the 1st chapter of the novel at its book launch at The Players in NYC, March 27, 2024
Interview about the novel on Bloggerythms
February 23, 2025 up-coming in-person dramatic reading from parts of the novel -- at Big Red Books in Nyack, NY -- featuring Anthony Marinelli (playwright, director) and Amanda Greer (actor), who are real-life characters in the novel
My reviews of Max & Domino (play), and Why I Had to Kill You While You Slept (movie), both written and directed by Anthony Marinelli and starring Amanda Greer
Listen to the full episode of Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction, with both the reading in this podcast, and Howard Margolin's interview with me, before and after our reading, December 27, 2024, FREE

Check out this episode!

Monday, January 6, 2025

Outlander 7.15: Penicillin and Again Television Logic

Another powerfully wrenching episode -- 7.15 -- of Outlander on Starz, to say the very least. But I'm an optimist, and I'll you why.

[After I alert you to spoilers ahead ... ]

So, if you've seen the episode, you know what I'm talking about. And you haven't, that's why I cautioned you about spoilers.

Claire is shot in the abdomen -- she says, in her very critical condition, maybe in her liver. But the med she trained gets back in time to attend to her, along with a gift from Lafayette, some Roquefort cheese! And turns out the Frenchman's not crazy. Claire knows the cheese comes with the kind of mold that we today -- since the 1940s -- call penicillin. This can help treat her life-threatening wound,

So why, then, in the coming attractions, is Jamie seen crossing himself, and, more importantly says to Claire, who's unconscious, "we didn't have much time". I don't know, but I don't think it's because Claire is gone, certainly not for the remainder of the series. As I've said many times -- including earlier this season when Jamie was thought to be drowned -- unless you see a character blown to bits, with a head chopped off, television series usually just don't work that way.

And since Outlander is after all a time-travel tale, Jamie or someone could go back in time and prevent Claire being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I haven't read the books, so I don't know what happened at this juncture on those pages, and how much the TV series is adhering to the novels, or branching out its own, especially at this very crucial juncture. But I'm predicting we'll see Claire alive and well, again, if not next week, then when the series resumes with its final season. And not just in flashbacks, as ubiquitous as they've become.

But I'll admit to being a little worried, anyway. I'm not a time traveller. I can't see the future. I'll see you next week.

Friday, January 3, 2025

Dexter: Original Sin 1.5: Revelations and Relations

Dexter: Original Sin just keeps getting better and better, and that means powerful indeed, giving us everything we want in a story like this, a story about how a serial killer for the cause of justice came to be. But episode 1.5 has some special juice, because--

[Here I have to warn you about spoilers ahead .... ]

Last week's episode 1.4 concluded with young Dexter getting his man killed, but indirectly. A car strikes him down after he breaks free of Dexter's restraints. Harry is furious and worried when he finds out what happened, and grounds Dexter, and this sets in motion a whole series of revealing events ...

The most important is Dexter convincing Harry that Dexter is good to go as a serial killer with a white hat, and this leads to one of the most powerful scenes in all the Dexter series so far: Harry winds up strapped on Dexter's table with his adopted son looking over him with a knife. Dexter drugged Harry, already drunk and on his way to kill a killer whom the court set free because Harry messed up the previous process of apprehending the killer and getting him on trial. Dexter of course doesn't kill Harry, but does convince Harry not to stop Dexter's crucial work -- crucial to Dexter and crucial to the world -- of killing killers that the justice system for whatever reason has been unable to stop. This scene would have been crucial for that reason alone -- convincing Harry to accept and use Dexter's talents. But there was something else in that scene that was really bone-chilling. The look on Dexter's face as he loomed over Harry with a knife, well, just cut to the quick: you could see Dexter resisting the impulse to kill the father he loved. Yes, he loves Harry. But he loves the gratification of killing even more, and it takes considerable effort from Dexter to control that lust.

Control of that lust is what Dexter's development and future life is all about. The code itself is a series of rules which Dexter has to follow -- that is, rules that control Dexter's lust, so that he does the killings without getting caught, or harming the people he loves, etc. Dexter: Original Sin is providing an excellent primer -- exciting, chilling, instructive -- on the final ways in which Harry, for better or worse, has been helping Dexter enact the code.

There were other notable things in this notable episode. Deb in the car with her boyfriend. I don't know why, and maybe it's just the over-protective father in me, but I have feeling something no good is going to come from that. Also the developing relationship between Harry and Dexter's mother (in the past) was good to see. We already knew that Harry's first son died in the swimming pool, and talking about it was one of the ways Harry and Laura (Dexter's mom) drew closer.

But in some ways the most interesting revelation in episode 1.5 comes from adult Dexter's voice narration (by Michael C. Hall) near the beginning of the episode, when adult Dexter says that back in 1991 Miami, the homicide squad's success rate was whatever. What this tell us, of course, is that the adult Dexter's voice is coming from the future (indeed, as we learned in the first episode, after adult Dexter survives being shot by his son at the end of Dexter: New Blood). I like the fact that Dexter's voice in Dexter: Original Sin comes from the future -- unlike Dexter's voice in all the original episodes of Dexter, which came from the present, and Deb's voice in Dexter: New Blood, which in effect came from the past. There's something, almost, time-travel-ly about that voice from the future.

"challenging fun"
- Entertainment Weekly

e-mail received from a reader:
Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom

I of course happily replied...

42 reviews of The Plot to Save Socrates!