"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Monday, April 30, 2018

The Crossing 1.5: Migrations in Conflict

A pivotal episode 1.5 of The Crossing tonight, in which a big piece of the back story is revealed, and the stakes are dramatically raised for the near future.

The group that figures in both is the first migration from 200 years in the future, which we now learn got back here on a road late one night in 2008.  Unlike the water arrivals, these folks apparently all survived, and hit the ground running with a plan to stop Apex from ever happening, by taking out the small number of humans identified as crucial to Apex’s later emergence and ascendance.

In this, The Crossing is revealed as partaking of a classic time travel gambit - prevent something bad from happening in your present by going back in time and eradicating its progenitors.  Of course this plan will fail - if it had succeeded, there would have been no need to go back in time to prevent something which never happened - but the First Appearers are not quite that astute in their understanding of time travel and its paradoxes (at least not yet) and they come up with more drastic plan which will call for far many more people to die, after The Firsters realize their first plan didn’t work.

Interestingly, they see the evidence of their first plan’s failure in the Second Migration in the water, which until tonight had been the main focus of the series.  And this means the First and Second Appearers are on a bigger collision course than we first supposed.  The Firsters now want more than keeping the Seconders secret so as not to draw any attention to themselves - they want the Second never to have happened in the first place.

Never mind that if Apex is prevented from happening there will be no migrations from the future at all.  This conflict between First and Second Migrants makes for a strong upcoming story.

Timeless 2.7: Emma


Timeless is nicely mixing it up this session, putting villains on the team with our heroes, where they so far have performed remarkably well. Flynn is now almost admired if not yet quite trusted by everyone except Wyatt, and in 2.7 Emma joins our team.

The difference is Flynn was never a Rittenhouse agent as is Emma, and she makes it clear this switch of allegiance is for one night only. Her reason is about as noble as it gets - she wants to make sure the Suffragette Movement succeeds and women get the vote - and we get an episode with even sharper than usual dialogue - which has been excellent this season - replete with a few mentions of dick, as in private detective back in the nineteen-teens and as in, well, dick to our 2018 ears.

And there’s a well-played twist wherein Lucy looks like she’ll be stepping up to make a crucial Suffragette speech only for someone else to step in.  Good thing, too, since Lucy making the speech would have put a big change on history.  Even so, everyone is relieved that Hillary Clinton ran for President in 2016, showing the Suffragettes prevailed. No one was thrilled, though, that Trump won, and good for Timeless for name-checking both.

Hey, did I mention that I’m really enjoying this show? It’s much better than it was last year, and I’m looking forward to more.


Homeland Season 7 Finale: The President

The first part of Homeland’s season 7 finale was excellent high-powered espionage derring-do, with Carrie in top form.  The second part - well, let’s just say it was a little too predictable as well as depressing.

But by then, the main part of the story had shifted to a totally surprising development - probably the most surprising we’ve seen in the entire extent of Homeland so far.

Why did President Keane, after being reinstated due to Carrie and Saul’s heroism and smarts, suddenly decide to step down? It’s because she’s a President like none other we’ve ever actually seen in office.  I doubt that even the best of them, the most noble, would have ever ultimately put the best interests of the nation above their own self-interest and ambition. Because it’s too easy to mistake staying in office as being in the country’s best interests.

But in the world of fiction on television that can happen, and Elizabeth Keane’s resignation will stand as one of the high watermarks of television drama.  It puts the VP who succeeds her - who himself had earlier surprised us by backing Saul’s play in Russia - in a great place for next season.

Carrie will need every bit of his support to get back to what she does best - if that’s even possible any more at this point.

I’ll see you here next year with an appraisal of how she does.







And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional


Sunday, April 29, 2018

Westworld 2.2: “Narcissus Narcosis”




One of my favorite of Marshall McLuhan’s concepts (he called them “probes”) for exploring our relationship with media is “Narcissus Narcosis”: the Greek youth Narcissus was so in love with his own reflection that all he wanted to do all was stare at in a lake, wanting to reach out and embrace it, having no idea it was him. This, McLuhan noted in Understanding Media back in 1964, was us, we humans, looking at television.  And this is what William says to young Delores tonight in the sparkling city in episode 2.2 of Westworld: “you’re not even a thing, you’re a reflection” of me - i.e. William - who goes on to note that everyone loves their reflections.  Clearly William, i.e. the writers of Westworld, know their McLuhan.

By the way, there’s more than one William, even though he’s human not android. There’s young William, who tells a young Delores what she is, and older William, who we didn’t learn until the end of last season is aka The Man In Black.  And episode 2.2 features them both, as well as a young and slightly older Delores, who is of course unchanging and eternal.

But her mind is not unchanging, and in 2.2 we see it continue to rebel and take charge, as the narrative jumps up and down in time like playing the keys on the piano, which has been one of the apt motifs of the series.  And Delores’ violence is matched by the older William’s, which makes for one fine upcoming clash of titans indeed.

See you after the next episode.   Meanwhile, check out McLuhan in Age of Social Media for how “Narcissus Narcosis” shows up as "news bubbles" and figures in "fake news".

Review of Rob Sheffield’s Dreaming the Beatles 23 of X: Near the Science Fiction Shop

It’s been more than two months since I’ve read a chapter and posted a review (really more my commentary than proper review, whatever exactly that is) of Rob Sheffield’s wonderful Dreaming the Beatles. The main reason, as I’ve said here before, is that I don’t want the dream to ever end. But you can’t put off the inevitable forever, and The Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio with DJs like Peter Asher, Dennis Elsas, Laura Cantrell, and Meg Griffin is pretty good consolation.  I listen to the channel every day, still manage to hear a song I haven’t heard in decades once or twice a week, and am still learning new things about fame and music.  (For some reason having nothing to do with this review, “Honey Pie” which I heard yesterday is still in my head today.  So is “It’s Only Love,” but I know the reason for that, it’s one of the best love songs ever written and sung, even though Lennon said otherwise.)

And that’s as good a segue as I’ll give you for the first of the last three chapters in Dreaming the Beatles, this one about the immediate aftermath of John Lennon’s murder.  Sheffield explores this by looking at the effect of that beyond-tragedy on Yoko and Paul, and relating this to his own experience as a widower, and how it immediately gave him a kinship with Yoko.  Here we get another facet of Sheffield’s peerless writing - quiet and deeply effective and intensely personal when it needs to be.

Sheffield once passed Yoko on the street - not far from where the Science Fiction Shop used to be, which,  as fate would have it,  I just had occasion to write about a few weeks ago.  Meetings like this have a science fictional aspect wherever they happen to occur.  Rob and Yoko exchanged big smiles, even though he wasn’t sure at the time she was Yoko.

I said a few months ago on Twitter that I get tears in my eyes every time I hear John sing “Oh Yoko,” which I had just heard then on The Beatles Channel. There is a magic in New York City, and I’ll always love living here, but there is pain here, too, and always will be, because of what happened to John at The Dakota.  I’ve tried to change that reality in my science fiction - but, after all, that’s just fiction.

But Rob crossed paths with Yoko in reality, and that will live forever, too - like The Beatles, The Beatles Channel, and this book.

See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 9 of X: Covers ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver ... 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper ... 13 of X: Beatles vs. Stones ... 14 of X: Unending 60s ... 15 of x: Voting for McCartney, Again ... 16 of x: "I'm in Love, with Marsha Cup" ... 17 of X: The Split ... 18 of X: "Absolute Elsewhere" ... 19 of X: (Unnecessary but Brilliant) Defense of McCartney ... 20 of X: "All Things Must Pass" ... 21 of X: Resistance ... 22: The 70s Till the End ... 24 of 24: The Last Two

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023




"Ian, Isaac, and John" and "Saving Lennon" in this antho

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Kudos to Michelle Wolf for Best Speech Ever at Tonight’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Just a brief post to record my appreciation of Michelle Wolf’s appropriately expletive-laden keynote address at the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight.

And kudos to CNN for broadcasting it unmaligned by bleeps and cuts. That in itself is a wonderful expression of freedom of speech - not to mention emergence from infantile journalism, which most media suffer from.

I have no idea what MSNBC and Fox News did, but I bet they went the cravenly bleep route, rather than airing Wolf’s words just as she spoke them.

Those words were not only funny but true - or especially funny because they were true - and that makes this speech on CNN a great day for America, sanity, and freedom.

Note added 30 April 2018: Some additional thoughts on Wolf's important address, in my quote (scroll down) in Helen Ubiñas's article, In Defense of Being Mean, in The Philadelphia Inquirer

Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Americans 6.5: Common Denominator and Collision Course



The common denominator in tonight’s episode 6.5 of The Americans - another perfectly powerful episode - was ... sex.

It not only was the subject of the delightfully drunken conversation between Claudia, Elizabeth, and Paige.  Sex also motivated two major developments in the story. First, Elizabeth sleeps with Philip as prelude to persuading him to set up Kimmy to be jailed in Bulgaria. And then Philip in turn sleeps with Kimmy to convince her to leave Greece to meet him, so that Elizabeth’s plan to get Kimny in a Bulgarian jail as a way of getting leverage on her CIA father can happen.

But that doesn’t happen, because Elizabeth’s killing of Gennadi and his wife with their seven-year old son in the next room makes Philip realize that he draws the line at targeting or in any way utilizing children, which Kimmy still is to him even though they just slept together.

I’m expecting, however, that the end of Philip and Kimmy will not be the most significant fallout of Elizabeth’s murder of Gennadi and wife. Stan genuinely liked Gennadi. He won’t rest until he finds out who killed him. And that  hunt will lead to Elizabeth, given that that FBI agent caught a glimpse of her, thinly disguised, the time she unsuccessfully tried to kill Gennadi earlier in the episode.

Stan and Elizabeth are now on an irrevocable collision course, and it’s hard to see how both of them will make it out of this final and superb season alive.







Monday, April 23, 2018

The Crossing 1.4: Hofstra

Well, episode 1.4 of The Crossing was moving along pretty predictably until about a few minutes to the end, when "Hofstra" was mentioned, and everything suddenly changed for the better - for the narrative, if not for one of the major characters.

Hey, I taught a few courses at Hofstra in the mid-1990s, and my wife and I were right across the street this past Fall, at the Nassau Coliseum, for a great concert by Paul McCartney.  Hofstra's a good school, and this may be the first time I've heard it mentioned in a television series, definitely a time-travel series, so The Crossing deserves notice for that.

Anyway, here's how Hofstra came to be mentioned: One of the survivors, Paul, is looking for his wife.  He gets an artist to draw a likeness of her, based on a precise mathematical diagram of how far apart the centers of her eyes are, etc - is there a name for that? - I don't know, but it's pretty cool.  And Agent Ren gets hold of the drawing and finds Paul.  He tells her it's a picture of his wife, who came here - to our time - in the earlier migration.  Ren, unsurprisingly,  goes looking for the woman. 

She finds her, and the woman explains that she and her husband met at Hofstra - why Hofstra? who knows? - and that she learned he was part of a cult.  It's not clear how much if any of this Ren believes, but before we find out, the wife shoots and badly wounds Ren.

Is she dead?  Well, Sandrine Holt is a medium-big star, and her character Ren is important, so under the logic that you don't kill off a big star or a major character so early in the show, she'll likely survive.  But you never know.

More important, the series has taken an interesting turn in the story of the early migration, which  has been one of the more intriguing parts of the narrative.  We now know the first migration people easily lie as well as kill to protect their secret - it's not just Lindauer who does this.  And then there's Hofstra - why pull this name out of the blue?  I'm hoping we'll hear more about this university in Hempstead, and how and why someone from the first migration knows about it.

See also The Crossing: Lost Again, But OK ... The Crossing 1.2: Calling for More Time Travel ... The Crossing 1.3: The Missing Inventor

Timeless 2.6: Lucy and Flynn




As has been hinted at and gradually gaining moment - ironically, after Wyatt was re-united with Jessica, ironically after he and Lucy had made love for the first time - Lucy and Flynn finally get together at the end of Timeless 2.6.  Or, at very least, Lucy comes into Flynn's room at night with a nice bottle of vodka.  Their being together of course changes everything, and it will be fun to see in the weeks ahead how this plays out.

As for the time travel, rock 'n' roll and time travel are one of my favorite couples - it's been a bedrock of several of my novels and stories - and it was good to see the team, with Flynn instead of Wyatt, and expanded to four with Connor - go back in time to save Elvis, the Beatles, and other icons of the ensuing music.  They do this by saving blues legend and progenitor Robert Johnson from Rittenhouse assassination.  (Connor is fortunately a blues aficionado, which is why he's drafted by the team.)

But as much as everyone - including me - loves the Beatles (see my frequent posts here about The Beatles) - they and music in general are not the ultimate reason Johnson needs saving.   Lucy tells us that without Elvis and The Beatles, there would be no Civil Rights movement, no end of the Vietnam War,  none of pathbreaking social developments that lit up the 1960s.  This may be a bit of a stretch - lots of other factors led to the culture of the 1960s and its liberation of much of humanity - but I'm happy to accept it as the ultimate reason for making sure Elvis and The Beatles happened (though, strictly speaking, if I were writing this episode, I'd hold out for just the incredible music of the 1950s and 60s itself as more than enough reason for saving Johnson).

All in all, Timeless is continuing with a good mix of world events that need protecting, obvious and more subtle, as well as personal stories that continue to intrigue.  And we learn in the closing moments that Jiya's latest vision shows Rufus being killed...

See you here with word about how all that turns out next week.



                    more time travel about music

Homeland 7.11: Carrie In Action

Well, Homeland 7.11 was so good, and ended on a such a sharp cliffhanger, that it called out for next week's season finale to follow tonight, and make this a two-hour episode.

But as it was ... first, about the removal of President Keane from office: it was a strong narrative move, but why was no mention made of the fact that the 25th Amendment only provides for a temporary removal, with Congress required to make it permanent?  Her Chief of Staff mentioned that in a previous episode, and he or someone should have mentioned it again tonight.

But Moscow was where the main action was, and it was good indeed to see Carrie at her best - not fighting to keep her daughter, or against her own inner turmoil, but out there in the field, as a highly effective, in fact brilliant, agent working in almost impossible circumstances, and managing to come close to succeeding, if not succeeding outright.

Fighting against all odds is her forte, and it was satisfying to see Saul back her up for once, almost immediately, after she calls Saul on some of the ups and downs he's put her through these past years.  As an operative, she's a great talker as well as adept on her feet and with weapons, and I always thought the series was at its best with Carrie moving fast and effectively and blazing.

She and Saul are going to have some pretty tough going as they try to get Simone back to the US next week.  I'm wondering, with the announcement that next year's Season 8 will be the final for Homeland, if we'll get another cliffhanger next week as set up for whatever resolution 2019 has in store for this series.

We'll know more next week, and I'll see you back here then.







And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional


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