A powerful - even brutal, in parts - episode of Showtime's Meadowlands on Sunday, in which Wintersgill tortures Danny, Evelyn gets a code to help him, Brenda is finding Mark more difficult to resist, and lusting Dr. York is up to his usual tricks with Evelyn. The ante is raised on all accounts.
I'm no fan of torture, either in real life or television, so I would have been just as happy not to see Wintersgill work Danny over. But the intensity of those scenes calls our attention to a continuing question: just who is this guy, Wintersgill (for that matter, who is everyone in Meadowlands), but who is Wintersgill that he can get away with such brutality? Is a he a real cop on the Meadowlands beat, or a denizen of the strange town, under some kind of witness protection, who once was a cop and is now just going through the brutal motions? Why doesn't Samantha just take him out? (I'm expecting she will - but we don't really know too much about Samantha, either...)
And speaking of Danny's handlers from the outside, why did they take the circuitous route of giving Evelyn the code - a word that Danny could speak to enable him to get the better of Wintersgill, but letting Wintersgill know that Danny knows something about W's past? Why not just stop Wintersgill outright?
Interesting, interesting....
Meanwhile, true love is trying to flourish in its diced-up Meadowlands way in other parts of town. Mark seems to be making some headway with Brenda, almost old enough to be his grandmother. Hey, who am I to judge, I always wish a guy well in these circumstances.
But I'll draw the line at Dr. York, who tells Evelyn that Danny's infertile - of course he does, the doc would like to father her baby, the old-fashioned time-honored way... I don't believe him....
You know, I was talking about Meadowlands to our graduate work study student Josh at Fordham University yesterday, and he offered the view that Meadowlands is really like a soap opera in pace and storyline.
He may be right, but, whew ... I don't remember ever seeing anything like this on Peyton Place, Dallas, or even Days of Our Lives ... and I'm looking forward to what next week as in store on Meadowlands...
Fine acting all around as always on this episode - but special applause for Ralph Brown for the harrowing Wintersgill.
Intriguingly Miasmic Meadowlands
reviews of other episodes: Meadowlands Opens - with Tongues and Grooves ... Episode 2 ... Episode 3 ... Episode 5 ... Episode 6 ... Episode 7 ... Episode 8
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
6 comments:
Great review, you know I am a soap opera fiend. I have watched All MY Children for almost 30 years. More religiously for the last 20. I was also the Luke and Laura craze and catch that show once in a while, Meadowlands is definetly a soap opera. Its just a soap with Quirk kindof like twin peaks. I'd be interested in finding out what Wintergills did too, what an odd character. It must have been bad. Oh on another subject, I have Jack on this morning and if it's changed I can't tell they are playing pretty good music.
It changed at 1:01pm - and the last thing Jack played was "Can't Stop Believing," which suddently stopped... :) no, really...
Thats just too funny, I guess America will use that song now for years. Actually the station is good I like the 60's so it's good to get some Beatles and America etc
See, I knew you could come around on CBS-FM ... we agree on just about everything else...
Are you people in the USA only getting this in 1/2 hour episodes? Your episode 4 appears to be our episode 3 in the UK.
Welcome to Infinite Regress, Adrian.
No, we're seeing one-hour episodes here in the US.
Episode 3 was getting rid of Jack's body.
Episode 4 was Wintersgill interrogating Danny...
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