Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; American Rust; Bosch: Legacy; Citadel; Curb Your Enthusiasm; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outer Range; Outlander; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Diplomat, Last of Us, Lazarus Project, Orville, Way Home; Tokyo Vice; True Detective; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

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

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Game of Thrones 8.3: Fighting Death

The great battle came early in the final season of Game of Thrones - 8.3 - and it was stunningly worth the short wait. In real life, you can't beat death - at least, not ultimately - though sometimes your words and works can, like Shakespeare's and John Lennon's. But in high fantasy, complete victory over death, though hard fought and costly, can happen.

It didn't happen for everyone tonight. The saddest deaths were Jorah's and Theon's and Lyanna's. I hope there weren't others that I missed in the flames and the killing frost (I especially hope not Sam's or the direwolf's). The most satisfying was of course the Night King's, epitomizing Shelley's observation that "tis death that's dead". And seeing Arya do it was one of the high points of the series. The best I can understand of how she was able to do it was her own prowess combined with the Night King's fixation on Bran distracted him at a crucial moment. And/or maybe Bran actively helped distract him.

The Night King's death means all of his dead puppets are now dead dead - gone - as well. Most importantly, that includes the blue-spewing dragon. But one of the good dragons - I think - was killed by the Night King's minions, too. So that leaves Daenerys and Jon with just one dragon to share.

And they'll need it in the fight looming ahead with Cersei. The ranks of the legitimate heirs to the Seven Kingdoms have been depleted by the battle tonight. Fewer heroes abound. Even Melisandre and her fiery magic are gone. In a more conventional narrative, the battle with Cersei would have come before the battle with the Night King. Hats off to Game of Thrones for reversing this order, and leaving us wondering tonight how the battle with Cersei could possibly top what we saw on HBO this evening,

"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now ..."

Friday, April 26, 2019

The Orville Season 2 Finale: Alternate History!

The Orville really brought it home last night with a season 2 finale (2.14) that built on last week's superb time travel episode (2.13), in effect making both parts a brilliant two-part time travel engenders alternate history story. Although time travel and alternate history can and do often happen independently of one another, the two science fiction genres are naturally connected. If I go back in time with knowledge I obtained from the future, that instantly creates an alternate reality in which a different series of events are spun, put in motion by the knowledge of the future I now have in the past.

The Orville 2.13 tried to deal with that problem by erasing the memories that Kelly had of The Orville, and specifically, her relationship with Ed, that she had from the future. But as we saw at the end of that episode last week, the memory wipe failed.

Last night we found out why - Kelly's brain lacked a compound necessary for the memory wipe to take effect. And, much more importantly, we saw the consequence of that change in history. Kelly's saying no to Ed's asking her on a second date resulted in his not being Captain of The Orville - Kelly, having not married him and broken his heart, had no motive to get him in the Captain's seat - and without Ed in charge, the Kaylons destroyed The Orville. And, as a result, Earth and Moclus as well.

This made last night's episode not only a direct sequel to last week's hour, but a powerful sequel to the two-episode Kaylon hours - "Identity" (2.8 and 2.9) - as well. And it was one powerful, instant classic episode indeed, with resonances to Star Wars in the early battles inside the ice ball, and Battlestar Galactica, which I realized the Kaylon story had all along. Although we humans didn't create the Kaylons, they have a lot in common with Cylons.

And like all great alternate history, The Orville Season 2 finale even brought back, all too briefly, Security Chief Alara - who unexpectedly left the show back in episode 2.3. This gives this finale, and the episode that preceded it, even more of the texture of "Yesterday's Enterprise," one of the very best episodes in the entire Star Trek genre, where time travel and alternate reality were also masterfully merged, with the reappearance of Chief of Security Tasha Yar.

If only I could travel to the future - without unduly altering history - and see the debut of Season 3 of The Orville tonight.

See also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration ... The Orville 2.3: Alara ... The Orville 2.4: Billy Joel ... The Orville 2.5: Escape at Regor 2 ... The Orville 2.6: "Singin' in the Rain" ... The Orville 2.7: Love and Death ... The Orville 2.8: Recalling Čapek, Part 1 ... The Orville 2.9: Recalling Čapek, Part 2 ... The Orville: 2.10: Exploding Blood ... The Orville 2.11: Time Capsule, Space Station, and Harmony ... The Orville 2.12: Hello Dolly! ... The Orville 2.13: Time Travel!

And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View

Amazon Prime put up the fifth season of Bosch last Friday, and I've got to say, though I really enjoyed all the prior seasons, this one was the best (I've said this after every season). It has more of Bosch's customary panache, with the punch-in-the-face surprises, top-notch acting, and well-drawn nexus of plots we've come to expect from this drama. At this point, it's not only the best cop show on television - in Los Angeles terrain that surpasses the many excellent homicide-cop shows that take place in NYC and Chicago - but must be counted among the best cop shows ever on television (I think I said this after most of the seasons, too).

The repartee is sharp as ever, laugh-out-loud funny, profound when need be, and cutting-edge current, as always. A female detective says she's "polyamorous". Back in the office, an old-salt high-ranking officer complains about the lousy coffee, "you might as well drink straight stomach acid, cut out the middleman". Harry asks Maddie if she remembers the MLK quote from her senior high school year, "the arc of the moral universe ..." Earlier, she advises Harry to "watch your six with her".

Maddie has really come into her own this season. She was always Harry's daughter when it came to doing what she wanted, and now she's applying this to directly helping her father. In fact, I not only thought Maddie had her best season, so did Lt. Grace Billets. Plaudits to Madison Lintz as Maddie and Amy Aquino as Billets. Come to think of it, attorney Honey Chandler (well played by Mimi Rogers) had her best season, too, and delivered some of the best twists in the narrative, starting with taking on Harry as her client. Speaking of which, Titus Welliver, always outstanding as Bosch, was even more outstanding in this fifth season. Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar and Lance Reddick as Irwin Irving are excellent as ever, too

Getting back to the locale, Bosch always captured the unique Los Angeles mix of stunning beauty and rotting degradation. Bosch's apartment is high up and indeed has a "killer view," as Maddie says. But his job takes him through the dregs of society. There are never any outright happy endings in Bosch - we have to be happy that at least he survived - but this one really goes to the dog(s). If that's not clear, give yourself a treat and see season 5, after you've seen the previous four.

See also Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ... Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber ... Bosch 3: Best Season So Far ... Bosch 4: Delivering and Transcending the Genre

another kind of police story

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

The Enemy Within 1.9: CIA vs. FBI

There's always been a tension between the CIA and the FBI on The Enemy Within, to say the least, but it was drawn much more sharply in last night's episode 1.9. Unsurprisingly, the FBI knew and did what was best.

Of interest, though, was how incompetent the CIA seemed. They not only were behind the ball most of the time. They were stubborn, and repeatedly jeopardized the mission. I usually prefer more subtle distinctions, but 1.9 was a pretty strong episode anyway.

Shepherd, of course, is (former) CIA, now working, in chains, for the FBI. Come to think of it, there's not much subtle about that, though there's plenty of complexity, and secrets within secrets. For the past few episodes, The Enemy Within has gone out of its way to show us that Shepherd is actually working with Tal. But I don't believe it.

I mean, she's working with him, sure. But the question is for what purpose. I'm thinking she's connecting with Tal as the most effective way of getting to him, so she can kill him. With just a few episodes left this season, I'm guessing we won't see that this year. Instead, I expect the season will conclude with Shepherd appearing to escape and joining forces with Tal.

Will Will Keaton be aware that Shepherd is working with Tal to take Tal out? I hope so. Keaton's come a long way in understanding what makes Shepherd tick. But he's not there yet. And, who knows, I could be wrong about this theory.

At very least, I hope The Enemy Within is renewed, so I can see if I am right.

See also The Enemy Within 1.4: Microsoft AI ... The Enemy Within 1.5: The New Mole ... The Enemy Within 1.7: The Conversation ... The Enemy Within 1.8: Oranges (Think About It)

Monday, April 22, 2019

Killing Eve 2.3: Lipstick

Well, the best scene in Killing Eve 2.3 is clearly Eve putting on the lipstick Villanelle slipped her, finding it has a blade when it cuts her lip, and, rather than recoiling in horror, brushes the blood across her lip so it mixes with the lipstick.

That scene about the mouth says it all. Villanelle loves Eve, this we already know. It's the weakness that makes Eve so dangerous to Villanelle, who is the superior agent, or at least a more cunning killing machine, sharp as Eve is. But Villanelle's attraction to Eve mades Villanelle vulnerable, and, as we've already seen, it was almost a fatal attraction - fatal to Villanelle.

But Eve is deeply attracted to Villanelle, also. If not precisely in the same way, something that both helps Eve understand Villanelle, but makes Eve more vulnerable, too. The question for both of them, as they hunt and crave each other, is which impulse will prevail. Libido or thanatos?

It's good to see Konstantin back in action. He's an excellent counterpart to Carolyn. And, in many ways, more of an asset to Villanelle than Carolyn is to Eve. The essence of this story, indeed, is (or are) counterparts. They might have even entitled this series Counterpart, had there not already been a series by that name, which, alas, was cancelled, but I'm still hoping comes back on some other network, wiser than Starz.

But back to Killing Eve, as exciting and daring as the first season was, I'm beginning to like this second even more. It has all the style and quirky texture of the first season, with symbolism simmering perfectly under the surface.

See also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos ... Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Game of Thrones 8.2: Apologies and Memories

Among my favorite scenes in tonight's episode 8.2 of Game of Thrones, in which every scene was a memorable gem, Jamie was pivotal in both of them:

First, at the beginning, when Jamie refuses to apologize for what he did to everyone, including Bran, and Brienne comes to his defense.

And then, a little later, when Jamie apologizes to Bran, and Bran explains he is no longer Bran, but something else, a living keeper of all memories and human history.

Apologies are obsolete with the Night King and his dead forces approaching. But memories are everything. Bran understands this - as does Sam - so Bran offers himself as bait to draw out the Night King. As Sam explains so well, death is absolute forgetting on the part of the individual who has died. Therefore, the Night King, in his quest to destroy humanity, needs to destroy the keeper of all human memories - Bran. Just as the Nazis burned books, and millennia earlier, retrograde forces burned the ancient Library of Alexandria.

This is the essence of the Night King's quest. But though almost all the humans defending Winterfell and thus humanity - and an impressive force they are, including the newly knighted Brienne, and Arya being with a man for the first time, in two other great scenes - expect to die in the upcoming battle, I'm with Tyrion in being something of an optimism. Certainly not all of the heroes, male and female, will die. Is it too much to ask that it be none of them?

One quibble (as always): why was there no discussion of the dragons in the approaching battle? We saw the two surviving dragons last week, right? Where are they now? And, where exactly is the dragon who is now with the dead?

See you next week.

"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now ..."

Friday, April 19, 2019

The Orville 2.13: Time Travel!

I've said many times in my many places that time travel is my favorite genre of science fiction. The best episodes of Star Trek TOS and TNG were time travel stories - "City on the Edge of Forever" in TOS, "Yesterday's Enterprise" in TNG. So I was expecting that sooner or later The Orville would check in with a time travel story - if not quite as superb as the TOS and TNG stories, right up there in excellence, anyway. It did so tonight.

The time travel goodies in episode 2.13 come in three parts:

1. Kelly, seven years younger, arrives on The Orville, after some quantum force or whatever amplifies the power of a nascent time-travel device. On the deck, the main characters discuss how that could be - wouldn't current Kelly remember that her younger self appeared on The Orville? Everyone agrees that the answer to this paradox is the multiple worlds hypothesis - a new reality in which young Kelly appeared, right next to older Kelly and older Ed, was created at the instant young Kelly traveled to the future. That new reality is separate from the original reality in which we have been watching The Orville. Good for The Orville for (a) recognizing the paradox (not every time travel story does), and (b) coming up with the best solution (multiple worlds).

2. Isaac et al figure out a way to send young Kelly back to her time (after some fun romantic interludes with Ed, and some soul searching conversations with her older self). But ... if young Kelly successfully returns to her past, which would be the same as the past she left, how come older Kelly has no memory of her time as her younger self in the future? Claire can give her a memory wipe. Another good solution to a temporal problem, and I liked the deft way the metaphysics switched from multiple realities to time travel in a single reality frame.

3. Young Kelly gets back to her past, but when young Ed calls her the next day, she tells him that they shouldn't see each other. Nice touch! The memory wipe may have erased the memories but not the visceral feelings Kelly brought back with her from the future. Of course, the two will have to get together sooner or later, otherwise the stories we've been seeing on The Orville the past two seasons would be completely undermined. My guess is young Ed will be persistent and young Kelly will choose him over her misgivings from the future.

And there could be an implicit part 4 to this, as well. The experience tonight will get older Kelly and older Ed to get back together in the future. Or - maybe they'll read this and decide not to, because they don't want their future prescribed by some blog review. Either way, tonight and its aftermath will make for a great story (and continued fine acting by Adrianne Palicki and Seth MacFarlane).

See also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration ... The Orville 2.3: Alara ... The Orville 2.4: Billy Joel ... The Orville 2.5: Escape at Regor 2 ... The Orville 2.6: "Singin' in the Rain" ... The Orville 2.7: Love and Death ... The Orville 2.8: Recalling Čapek, Part 1 ... The Orville 2.9: Recalling Čapek, Part 2 ... The Orville: 2.10: Exploding Blood ... The Orville 2.11: Time Capsule, Space Station, and Harmony ... The Orville 2.12: Hello Dolly!

And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive

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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Aliens Night: Twist on B

I thought I'd check in with a short review, when no one's looking, of Aliens Night - a short film, a little over seven minutes, with over eight million views on YouTube. The story is about as Grade B and campy as it gets - aliens with luminous eyes and not bad physiques trying to abduct a human scientist. But she--

Well, I don't want to give away the ending. But it's a good twist on on the well-worn genre. Which is why, if you're a devotee of this genre, I'd recommend you see it. Written and directed by Andrea Ricca, who also co-stars along with Stefani Autuori.

Hey, I said this would be a short review.

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Monday, April 15, 2019

The Enemy Within 1.8: Oranges (Think about It)

An excellent episode 1.8 of The Enemy Within tonight, which via flashback provides a big missing piece of what happened three years ago to Shepherd, which resulted in her betraying Laine and three other CIA agents to the notorious Tal.

We already knew it was to protect her daughter. Her blurting out the names of the four-member CIA names to Tal, as he was counting down to when he would kill Shepherd's daughter Hannah, makes perfect sense. What doesn't make as much sense is why she didn't try to warn all four of them a little sooner - or why, after issuing the order for all four to abandon their current positions, she didn't follow through a little sooner with Laine. I know, she had to confirm that her daughter was safe at home, but it isn't quite believable that a leader as effective as Shepherd would be so rattled that she couldn't have multi-tasked a little more.

On the other hand, it does make sense that once she was in the mode of protecting her daughter, Shepherd's other instincts were blocked. Which brings us to the present. We saw her talking to Tal in the present, last week, and again tonight. But I don't think she's working for him. I think she's playing a long game of working for Tal with the goal of his somehow getting her out of prison - as she tells him tonight - with the goal of killing him once she's out.

By the way, it's good to see Lev Gorn from The Americans in action as Tal in The Enemy. Not only is my oldest nickname Lev, but Gorn is a convincing actor. He was a way of conveying a humanistic impulse, which is especially vexing when it's packaging the persona of a character who's a stone cold killer.

At this point, I'd say that The Enemy Within is the best espionage series that's come along on old-fashioned network TV in a while. See you here next week.

Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim

A crackin' good Killing Eve 2.2 - I had to use that phrase at least once in my review of this series, so it might as well be now - in which Eve and Villanelle draw ever closer in England, with Eve, nearly choked out in a car passing Eve on the street, but Eve doesn't see Villanelle - so it's ever closer but not yet actually meeting.

Now the guy who is driving the car, and subdues Villanelle, is her new handler - or, from our perspective, her bad guy boss - who knew where she was because she had placed a call to MI6, desperate to escape the urbane psycho's house who was also batting her around. So this tells us: MI6 is infested with spies. Which is true to life, given what happened to MI6 in real history during and after World War II, with Kim Philby and all. Question: Is Killing Eve offering an accurate portrayal of MI6 today? That is, is MI6 infested with Russian agents? I wouldn't know, but that seems a not unreasonable proposition.

Anyway, the new handler has a job for Villanelle, but she and we don't yet know what it is. It may well be killing Eve, though that would be a little too pat and cutesy given the title of the series. Eve, for her part, has deduced all kinds of things, as is her wont, including that Villanelle will be jealous of the new assassin, who likes to work under the radar, as, in tonight's episode, a cleaning lady.

At this point, we have a story of Villanelle, still weakened by Eve's stabbing, as much the victim as the aggressor in her interactions, but still able to kill when necessary, versus Eve, who seems no longer tormented by stabbing and almost killing Villanelle. That's a pretty good match, and I'll be back next week with a report on the next round.

See also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Game of Thrones 8.1: All Together Now

A very fitting beginning of the end for Game of Thrones tonight - 8.1, first episode of the final season - in which nearly every crucial, living human player in the grand narrative is on hand. Not altogether in terms of being truly united against the menace from the north, but at least in evidence in one or another scene or conversation or plot or intense worry.

Cersei, of course, is in it for herself. Bran is no longer a Stark, but at least is still loyal to them and humanity. Tyrion's as witty as ever. Jamie - the Kingslayer - shows up at Winterfell, where Daenerys is by and large ruling as Queen, even though the King slain by Jamie was her father. Everyone except Cersei is willing to risk almost everything to fight the coming onslaught of the Night King, accompanied by one of Daenerys's dragons, now worse than ice cold. (By the way, who was the Night King when he was living? He seems to have a lot of smarts.)

Daenerys gets Jon Snow to ride a dragon, but what he learns near the end of this episode about his real lineage means that riding a dragon should indeed come naturally to him. It's a nice twist. We thought he was Ned's son and Catelyn accepted him and raised him and loved him, but Jon was really Lyanna Stark's son and a Targaryen was his father. This is not only a good twist but stunning news since, as Sam tells him, this makes Jon a true king of all the kingdoms. It also means he's a blood relative to Daenerys. That's no big deal as far as their romance - incest, as we know from Cersei and Jamie, has run far wilder in Game of Thrones - but it does mean that, at some point, Jon may request Daenerys to bend a knee to him. (Nah, I can't really see that - Jon's more likely to cap the knee bendings than require them.)

So we have an excellent, simmering kettle of fish for the start of this final season, and I'm looking forward to more.

"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now ..."

"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!