Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 253, in which I interview Polish poet and Trupa Trupa band member Grzegorz Kwiatkowski about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the role of music and beauty in the struggle for freedom.
Watch the video
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 252, in which I review Severance episode 1.3 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post review of Severance 1.3
podcast reviews of Severance: 1.1-1.2
It's hard to watch and review a profoundly dystopian science fiction series when a profoundly dystopian reality -- the horrendous, Nazi-like invasion of Ukraine by Russia -- is going on and available to see on a myriad of television screens. I'll be interviewing the Polish holocaust poet Grzegorz Kwiatowski about this on Monday (I'll be posting links to the video and audio recordings to that interview here), but for now, I wanted to take an hour to keep up with and review episode 1.3 of Severance on Apple TV+.
Severance is indeed a starkly powerful story about a uniquely totalitarian society. [Spoilers ahead ... ]
We saw some of the history of Lumon in this vivid episode. Apparently the corporation goes back to the middle of the 19th century. What's not clear is exactly when the severance process was introduced. This means, however, that Severance is not just a near-futuristic science fiction narrative. It's also a secret, steampunk history -- that is, a history that occurred in our reality without our knowledge -- and/or perhaps an alternate history as well. And, if you think about it, it's not even clear that what we're seeing is taking place in the future. If not, we're watching an alternate reality.
Moving on from the classification, there were lots of important ingredients in this episode. I think my favorite is Harmony, well played by Patricia Arquette. She's Mark's next door neighbor, as well as a high-level supervisor at Lumon (but not the highest -- she's called on the board by the board of directors, whoever they are). It seems that unlike Mark et al, Harmony is is not severed -- at very least, she has continuity between inside and outside, though this is not completely clear, either. But what does it mean that she's Mark's neighbor on the outside? That Mark has some sort of special role in this story that we haven't yet seen?
On the inside, Dylan, Helly, and Irving all had important roles in this episode. Dylan gets off one of the best lines, remarking that the museum reconstruction of the founder's home smells like "19th century ass". Helly's heroic but foiled attempt to escape was instructive. And the sheer demeanor of Irving is chilling.
See you back here next week with my review of the next episode of this unique narrative.
See also Severance 1.1-1.2: Erving Goffman Meets The Prisoner
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 251, in which I review Suspicion episode 1.5 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post review of Suspicion 1.5
Podcast reviews of Suspicion 1.1-1.3... Suspicion 1.4
Superb, delightful episode 1.5 of Suspicion up today on Apple TV+. Yes, delightful.
[Spoilers follow ... ]
My favorite scene was Tara and Sean in undies at the door, pretending to be a couple when the pesky neighbor came calling with a shotgun or a rifle. Perfectly staged and acted. Tara actually enjoying it underneath the pretence. Sean almost reminiscent of James Bond.
And my favorite line came a little earlier, when Sean remarked of Tara that she looks more like Lara Croft than a professor. Can't argue with that. The two have a chemistry that we see again, near the end of the episode, when Tara talks to Sean who is completely unclothed in the bathroom. Again, well staged and acted. Good work by Elizabeth Henstridge and Elyes Gabel.
The whole story was well plotted and paced in this episode. It now looks like Martin Copeland, Katherine's second in command, was responsible for Leo's kidnapping. Which in turn means that all of presumed kidnappers were set up to take the fall. And that also means that the killers with American accents who showed up in episode 1.4 are working for Copeland.
But we still don't have the complete story. There's clearly more to each of the suspects than we knew last week. Aadesh has sophisticated computer skills, Natalie has more money, etc. At this point, Suspicion is really shaping up as a first-rate stylish whodunnit, and I'm looking forward to more.
See you back here next week with my review of the next episode.
See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth ... Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 250, in which I review Raised by Wolves episode 2.5 on HBO Max.
written blog post review of this episode
Further listening:
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.4
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.1-2.2
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 1-3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 4-5
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 6-10
Further reading:
Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Interaction of Space and Religion
A jam-packed episode 2.5 of Raised by Wolves on HBO Max, with enough profound and provocative gambits to comprise half a season or more.
Here are my favorites, in no particular order, because they all are excellent:
[Spoilers of course follow ... ]
See also Raised by Wolves 2.1-2: A Viking Out in Space, with Androids ... Raised by Wolves 2.3: Marcus and the Android Skeleton ... Raised by Wolves 2.4: Kinds of Sentience and Conflicts
And see also Raised by Wolves 1.1: Fast Action and Deep Philosophy ... Raised by Wolves 1.2-3: More than Meets the Eye ... Raised by Wolves 1.4-5: Halfway to Dune ...Raised by Wolves 1.6-7: The Look on Mother's Face ... Raised by Wolves 1.8-1.9: Frankenstein and Motherhood ... Raised by Wolves Season One Finale: The Serpent
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 249, in which I review Severance episodes 1.1-1.2 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post review of Severance 1.1-1.2
Finally saw the first two episodes of Severance. Well it's only been up on Apple TV+ for less than a week, and I'd intended to watch them earlier, but got caught up in other things, and I wanted to give those two episodes my full attention. Hey, I almost sound like a perpetually apologetic worker (John Turturro's Irving in particular) in that quasi-totalitarian workplace, in which workers or "innies" have no knowledge of their lives outside of work, and vice versa, hence the title of the series, Severance.
Totalitarian is a good word for the ambience of this new series, reminiscent in various ways of George Orwell's 1984 and The Prisoner (great 1960s TV series). At this point, we don't know how or why this schizoid society arose, and neither do the inhabitants that we've met. Fortunately, by the end of the second episode, we meet a former employee, Petey, who has somehow re-integrated his workplace and off-time personas, and is beginning to spark an undoing of this system, in which the severance is said to be irreversible.
One of the sociologists in our off-screen world who would have had a lot to say about Severance is Erving Goffman (1922-1982), who said in The Presentation of Everyday Life (1956/1959) we all have front regions, that we show to our public, and back regions, in which we interact with our close friends and families. A waiter in a restaurant, for example, might be perfectly polite and friendly to an obnoxious customer, and then tell his or her spouse later that night about the jackass in the restaurant. Of course, that waiter has continuous memories of both front (public) and back (private) regions, unlike the severed workers in Severance.
It's been a while since I've encountered as coldly and frighteningly intellectual a science fiction narrative as Severance. In addition to Turturro, the series has Christopher Walken and Patricia Arquette in supportive roles, and Adam Scott in a strong performance in the lead role as Mark, severed, but now in contact with Petey on the outside. I'm going to give this series, directed by Ben Stiller, a shot -- see you back here with my next review in a few days.
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Here's another one of my time travel stories available FREE on Vocal: "Slipping Time"
The wife and I binged Inventing Anna the past few nights, the nine-episode Shonda Rhimes series detailing the real-life rise and fall of Anna Delvey aka Anna Sorokin. It's superb television, for a bunch a reasons. Julia Garner in the title role was perfect, peerless, and Emmy-worthy. Pretty much the same for Anna Chlumsky who plays Vivian Kent, the fictitious name for the real reporter Jessica Pressler whose New York magazine story "How Anna Delvey Tricked New York's Party People" is the basis of the Netflix series. I haven't read the story, but the story in the movie is an incredible, powerful tale of a con artist, Anna, so charismatic that her lawyer and Vivian in their own ways practically fell in some kind of love with her.
But the question arises, as it always does with docu-dramas in any case, but especially those that tell us that what we see on the screen is true except when it isn't, about how much that we see on the screen is true? My wife did a little research, for example, and found that Jessica was pregnant while she was researching and reporting Anna's story, but didn't actually give birth at the crucial time that Vivien did in the series. Does that matter?
Well, no and yes. No, because, if the story on the screen is as riveting as Inventing Anna, what does it matter how much truth it conveys? But, yes, because part of the very reason that we find this narrative so riveting is our assumption that most of it is indeed truth, or closely based upon it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his Biographia Literaria back in 1817 about the "willing suspension of disbelief" that is the essential foundation for the enjoyment of poetry. We may know that the words are in whatever degree fictitious, i.e., not completely truthful. But our mind puts that aside and we laugh, cry, and everything in between about what we see on the page and now screen as if they were indeed 100% real.
So, by that standard, Inventing Anna gets the highest grade. Still, one cannot suspend one's disbelief forever. Fortunately in this case, the real world is still very much with us, and it will be fun and instructive, more than fun, to see what happens with Anna in the years ahead.
In the meantime, in addition to Garner and Chlumsky, I thought Katie Lowes as Rachel, Arian Moayed as Todd, and Anthony Edwards as Alan put in especially memorable performances in this unique memorable series.
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 248, in which I review Suspicion episode 1.4 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post review of Suspicion 1.4
Podcast review of Suspicion 1.1-1.3
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 247, in which I review Raised by Wolves episode 2.4 on HBO Max.
written blog post review of this episode
Further listening:
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.1-2.2
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 1-3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 4-5
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 6-10
Further reading:
Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Interaction of Space and Religion
[Spoilers follow ... ]
Mother is the victor in every contest. She triumphs over Marcus, whose superhuman powers come from Mother's eyes. Mother easily repossesses them, and reclaims the awesome power that lets her then triumph over the Trust. It will be instructive to see how Mother's devotion to care for her children compares with the Trust's professed devotion to serve humanity.
But Mother may have a rival. The Frankenstein-like android brought back to life by Father may well have powers comparable to Mother's. How will Father's "creation" use them? Which side will she choose, or will she comprise her own side, and how will she then fare in implementing her choice?
Meanwhile. there's a beautiful and instructive more minor android vs human story with Vrille, though it's not really minor. The mentality of even a child android is impossible to predict and therefore effectively program.
I'll miss her character and I'll be back here next week with more.
See also Raised by Wolves 2.1-2: A Viking Out in Space, with Androids ... Raised by Wolves 2.3: Marcus and the Android Skeleton
And see also Raised by Wolves 1.1: Fast Action and Deep Philosophy ... Raised by Wolves 1.2-3: More than Meets the Eye ... Raised by Wolves 1.4-5: Halfway to Dune ...Raised by Wolves 1.6-7: The Look on Mother's Face ... Raised by Wolves 1.8-1.9: Frankenstein and Motherhood ... Raised by Wolves Season One Finale: The Serpent
First, let me say that I'm really liking Suspicion on Apple TV+. It has great ambience, including the music, fine acting (including now Tom Rhys Harries as Eddie Walker), and a plot that keeps slapping you in the face with unexpected developments, often lethal. Episode 1.4 was the best so far, excelling in all of those pulsing qualities.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Sean nearly kills Tara, who's saved not by the UK police, but a bullet-proof vest. Sean is not invulnerable, but pretty close to it. He's stabbed but gets the better of his stabber, and after killing his stabber, Sean dresses his own wound with crazy glue. Later, the episode ends with Sean rescuing our four other, often hapless, suspects, and killing all of their attackers in the bargain. These, by the way, have American accents, and sound like Scott on a bad day -- which indeed he had -- but I'm guessing/hoping he wasn't among them.
So who sent the attackers? Likely Katherine, Leo's mother, but we can't be sure of that. We do get to see a lot more of Uma Thurman in this episode, but the true intentions of Katherine in this narrative remain a mystery. It's too easy to believe that she's behind the kidnapping, though I suppose that can't be discounted.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Sean and the other four is still not clear. Why try to kill Tara and then rescue her? Did he know she was wearing a bullet-proof vest? And I have to say that Sean does seem a little too invincible to be completely believable. His escape from the UK police was a little too impressive, unless the UK police are just not that good at catching a killer like Sean, which I'd also find hard to believe.
But these kinds of flaws in the story don't distract from its power in any way, and I'll see you back here next week with my review of the next episode.
See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 246, in which I review Suspicion episodes 1-3 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post reviews of Suspicion 1-2 and Suspicion 3
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 245, in which I review Kimi on HBO Max.
Written blog post review of Kimi
Just saw Steven Soderbergh's Kimi on HBO Max starring Zoë Kravitz, not in the title role, but as Angela, the highly intelligent, resourceful, ethical worker for Amygdala, the company that sells and runs Kimi, an updated Alexa, which serves its customers better by recording all their interactions and making them available to human listeners if there's a problem. Angela's job is to listen to recordings in which there may indeed have been some kind of problem. The problem that sets her in motion is a rape murder.
As such, Kimi is a current hi-tech viscerally violent update of Hitchcock's 1954 Rear Window, considered by some to be his best movie, and an undeniable masterpiece. I don't know if Kimi is Soderbergh's best, but it's a top-notch combination of surprises, setbacks, narrow escapes, topped off with some breathtaking action.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Other than Angela. my favorite character -- and unlikely hero -- is Kevin. We see him looking at Angela through a window across the way, a surely malapted guy who's going to be trouble for Angela. Instead, he proves to be her savior. An excellent, unexpected development in the story.
Likewise, Terry's trajectory as Angela's boyfriend develops in an unexpected way. Angela has problems with people. She sleeps with him, ignores him and practically glares him out of her apartment afterward, only to invite him back the next day. But we and Angela expect him not Kevin to come to Angela's rescue. Instead, he shows up at the end to celebrate after Kevin has made it possible for Angela to kill three of her would-be assassins with a staple gun. Yep, she's one resourceful woman, especially when she's fighting for her life.
The bad guys, corporate and hitmen, are the most obvious. But that's ok. All in all, we get a fast-paced, digitally accurate movie, with a happy ending that's good to see in these troubled times. Kudos not only to Soderbergh, but David Koepp for the writing.
You may recall in my review of the excellent two-episode debut of Suspicion last week, I wondered why, though there were only four masked kidnappers of Leo Newman at the beginning, and only three suspects taken in by London police plus one murdering suspect on the loose (3 + 1 = 4), the description of the series on IMDb, Wikipedia, etc., as well the above publicity photo, say or show five kidnappers not four. Tonight, at the very end of episode 1.3, we find out why: there is indeed a 5th suspect, Eddie Walker, who helped with the getaway but was not in the original hall of the kidnapping. And he's a student at Oxford, where Tara (one of the three London suspects now under surveillance) happily teaches,
Ok, that's a neat development in the plot. But it was spoiled, to some extent, by the telegraphing in the publicity photo and the description of the series that there were five suspects, when all we saw in the first two episodes were four. This is not the fault of the creators of the series. It's the fault of the publicity people, who were really out to lunch on this one.
Anyway, the connection between Natalie and still the only palpable bad guy Sean was interesting, and lays bare one of the best dynamics of this narrative: the three other suspects (Tara, Natalie, and Aadesh) all seem to be so nice, in comparison to Sean, who certainly isn't. (Too soon to tell about Eddie, who was only on the screen the last minute of the episode.) This suggests that at least one of the connective tissues between Sean and the other kidnappers is that the other three were taken advantage of in some way, pulled into something that they had no idea was a kidnapping. But still a little too soon to know how many of the three that happened to, if it happened at all.
And I'll round off this review with a mea culpa: last week I said that Katherine Newman, mother of Leo, was a media mogul. I somehow missed that she's a powerful PR executive -- so powerful that she's being nominated for US Ambassador to the UK.
I'll see you back here next week with my review of 1.4.
See also Suspicion: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five?
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 244, in which I review Raised by Wolves episode 2.3 on HBO Max.
written blog post review of this episode
Further listening:
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.1-2.2
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 1-3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 4-5
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 6-10
Further reading:
Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Interaction of Space and Religion
A fascinating and important Raised by Wolves 2.3 today on HBO Max, in which Marcus beats Father in a fight, and Father works on bringing an android skeleton back to life (or tries to).
Other important and fascinating things happened too. But those were the two most important and fascinating.
Marcus beats Father in a fight. Campion later asks Father how that could happen? Father either doesn't know, or doesn't want to discuss this with Campion. Later, we see Father, still not completely recovered from his thrashing by Marcus, rather easily beat a brute of an industrial android. So Father, even hurt, is a pretty formidable opponent in a fight. How, then, did Marcus, a human, prevail over Father?
My best guess, at this point, is that Marcus himself has some sort of android essence. He certainly doesn't look like Father or Mother. But do we really know what's inside him? Did we get any clues to this in Season One? Perhaps Marcus is some sort of what we would today call a bionic human -- a human being invested with some sort of powerful non-organic materials.
Meanwhile, Father later discovers that some of his white fuel -- what serves in effect for him and Mother as blood -- can begin to animate the android skeleton. This now raises what could be a pivotal, crucial question of what that android will be when it comes to "life"? (Surely we'll see that happen, with any luck not too further in the future of this season.)
The title for this excellent episode is "Good Creatures". I assume that name pertains at very least to the flying serpent. At this point, I'd say the serpent being an herbivore is not as important as Marcus vs. Father, or Father and the android skeleton. But the presumably good serpent (after all, it may not be good, even though it is an herbivore) could have further, increased importance as the season progresses, just another reason I'm very much looking forward to the ensuing episodes.
See also Raised by Wolves 2.1-2: A Viking Out in Space, with Androids
And see also Raised by Wolves 1.1: Fast Action and Deep Philosophy ... Raised by Wolves 1.2-3: More than Meets the Eye ... Raised by Wolves 1.4-5: Halfway to Dune ...Raised by Wolves 1.6-7: The Look on Mother's Face ... Raised by Wolves 1.8-1.9: Frankenstein and Motherhood ... Raised by Wolves Season One Finale: The Serpent
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 243, in which I review Reacher on Amazon Prime Video.
Written blog post review of Reacher
I just a late 2016 movie, A Kind of Murder, on Amazon Prime Video. It's advertised as "Hitchcockian Noir," which it's not -- somewhere between not quite and not by a long shot. But, then, again, Hitchcock's work is so uniquely masterful, I've never seen anyone else's work equal to what he did, including some who came close, like Brian De Palma.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Here's the story: Walter Stackhouse, a writer in 1960 New York, is in an unhappy marriage with a mentally distraught wife. He's writing some kind of murder mystery, and collects newspaper articles about lurid and/or unsolved crimes-- including a recent case in which the wife of a bookstore owner in New Jersey, Marty Kimmel, turns up dead. Laurence Korby, a detective who is no Sherlock Holmes and has a nasty violent streak to boot, is sure Kimmel did it. When Stackhouse's wife, who tried to take her life with pills turns up dead in New Jersey, Korby isn't sure where her murderer is Kimmel or Stackhouse, because (as we should know from umpteen police dramas), the husband is always the first suspect.
So this is a pretty good, even excellent, set-up. And the acting (especially Patrick Wilson as Stackhouse and Eddie Marsan as Kimmel, but also Vincent Kartheiser as Corby, Jessica Biel as Mrs. Stackhouse, and Haley Bennett as his girlfriend) and the ambience are excellent. But the ending chooses to be stylishly ambiguous, rather than giving us the satisfaction of an answer to the whodunnit.
All we know for sure as the closing credits role is Kimmel killed his wife. He possibly/likely killed Corby and Stackhouse, too, though the scene was so dark you had to look twice to be sure. And, then, in the last scene, as Stackhouse is on his back, apparently dying from the wounds Kimmel inflicted, we see him going over in his mind all the major scenes of the movie, concluding with him sitting in his apartment at his typewriter, typing "the end".
So is he envisioning all of that including the typewriter in his mind as he takes his dying breath on the damp concrete? Or is he actually sitting at his typewriter typing "the end" -- the end to the whole story he has typed, which we just saw on the screen?
Well, I do like ambiguity in an ending -- like in "The Lady and the Tiger" or in the last scene of The Sopranos, but as I said, in "A Kind of Murder," that just too ambiguous by half. Or, as my wife said, maybe that's why the movie, an adaptation of The Blunderer, a 1954 novel by Patricia Highsmith, is called A Kind of Murder.
Hey, see Reacher on Amazon Prime Video. At its best, and that's more than some of the time, the lead character named Jack Reacher but known just by his last name has some of the quick thinking and lethal delivery of another Jack, last name Bauer, on 24. And sometimes Reacher even recalls James Bond, with his wit and penchant for the sharp retort.
And Reacher has two assistants all his own: Roscoe, a bright and beautiful and deadly when necessary young cop in a small town down in Georgia, and Finlay, detective captain in the same small town, who came down there from Boston. There's almost constant action, unpredictable twists, bad guys and worse guys in this thriller based on the Jack Reacher book series by Lee Child.
Which I haven't read. Come to think of it, I've been saying that about a lot of series and movies I've been streaming and reviewing here in the past few years, and that's likely because there are so many good series and movies out there and up there to stream. Reacher is one of the best.
Here are some of the things I liked most in this eight-episode series which I'm sure will have some sequels:
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 242, in which I review Raised by Wolves episodes 2.1 and 2.2 on HBO Max.
written blog post review of these episodes
Further listening:
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 1-3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 4-5
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 6-10
Further reading:
Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Interaction of Space and Religion
Just saw the first two episodes of Suspicion on Apple TV+. Looks to be a top-notch crackling whodunnit, with all the trimmings.
Here's the crime: four people in a big New York midtown hotel, wearing British royal family masks (the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, and Kate) kidnap the son of the biggest American media operation. (For some reason, the promotion for the show talks about five suspects not four -- Wikipedia says "Five people - three men and two women - have their lives turned upside down after being identified by London police as suspects in the kidnapping" -- and the above picture shows five. I have no idea why. Maybe that's part of the mystery?) The FBI and their British counterparts soon discover four Brits living not too far from one another in London were in New York the very night of the kidnapping, in the very hotel where the kidnapping occurred. Three protest their innocence and are convincing, at least to me, under intense questioning. The fourth, Sean, is apparently not only one of the kidnappers, but definitely a murderer, blowing up his girlfriend on a boat offshore in his smooth and so far successful attempt to elude capture.
So the question is: who among the other three are also guilty? All three? That would be an Agatha Christie move, but I'd say unlikely. But I'd say it's equally unlikely, though not impossible, that none of these three donned a royal mask and helped kidnap the kid in New York. So the question is which one or two? And the narrative is doing a fine job at this point in not giving us a clue.
About the acting, all of that is good, too. Among the actors I know, Uma Thurman plays the kidnap victim's mother, but so far we've barely seen her on the screen. Noah Emmerich plays the American FBI agent. First time I've seen him since he did a great job in the same job on The Americans, and he's off to an excellent start here. The London scenes work well. All we've really seen of New York after two episodes is the hotel. But there's clearly a lot more to come, and I'll be on top of this series, adapted from the Israeli False Flag series (which I haven't seen), with weekly reviews after every showing.
Raised by Wolves was back for a second season on HBO Max yesterday, with two sharp episodes that advanced the narrative in all kinds of intriguing and important ways.
Travis Fimmel was superb, as he was in the first season as the sun god prophet Marcus. The actor has a unique way of expressing emotions, which (of course) first became clear to me in Fimmel's memorable performance as Ragnar in Vikings. In Raised by Wolves, we see it again as Marcus almost seeming to channel Ragnar expresses his fury and disappointment about having to kill an atheist whom Marcus would much rather have converted to his spiritual perspective. And it worked so well -- if you think about it, Ragnar versus the Christian world is much like Marcus versus the godless world out there on that distant planet.
The unfolding story in the atheistic center was multi-layered and fascinating as well. Mother's beloved Campion doesn't see life and his world the same way as his android "mother" on a growing number of crucial issues. He doesn't see the world the same way as Paul, Marcus' adopted son, does either, but the two make a good team. And Mother (well played by Amanda Collin) and Father (well played by Abubakar Salim) don't see eye to eye, as well -- ranging from mother and father differences that we recognize in humans here on Earth (Father tells Mother she needs to treat Campion like an adult) to much more serious life and death situations.
The science fictional elements are vivid, ranging from life in the robotic center to the flying snake that seems reminiscent of Dune. In fact, the whole desert part of the Wolves story reminds of Dune, with nice frightening new ingredients like the acid water. Good thing Raised by Wolves is on in winter, when I'm not likely to want to jump in any nearby ocean for a swim.
I'll be reviewing every episode of this excellent new season of this powerful series, and I'll see you back here next week.
See also Raised by Wolves 1.1: Fast Action and Deep Philosophy ... Raised by Wolves 1.2-3: More than Meets the Eye ... Raised by Wolves 1.4-5: Halfway to Dune ...Raised by Wolves 1.6-7: The Look on Mother's Face ... Raised by Wolves 1.8-1.9: Frankenstein and Motherhood ... Raised by Wolves Season One Finale: The Serpent
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 241, in which I review Beforeigners seasons 1 and 2 on HBO Max.
Written blog post review of Beforeigners.
More about The Silk Code.
I just binged the first two seasons -- twelve episodes -- of Beforeigners on HBO Max over the past few nights. On Jackie Reich's suggestion. She was Chair of my Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and is now Dean of the School of Communication and the Arts at Marist College. She told me on Twitter, "I think about you when I watch it — all that time travel!" She has my number. As Ricky Nelson almost said, "I am a [time-] travelin man."
And, in addition to having a clever title -- the series is mostly about people who travel to the present from earlier times, i.e, before -- there's indeed plenty of time travel in this Norwegian series. And it's served up in a refreshing, unique way, with lots of humor along with the lethal breakneck situations.
[Some mild, general, situational spoilers ahead.]
The first season starts much like La Brea -- no explanation of why people from the past (in Beforeigners) -- two pasts, Viking times a thousand years ago, and Victorian times some hundred and thirty-five years back -- start popping up, thrashing around, in today's waters off Oslo. In La Brea, people from the present travel back to the past, and I'd also say that that very popular network series in the U. S., which I liked a lot, doesn't hold a candle to Beforeigners. Which means I really liked the first season of Beforeigners a big lot. And I liked the second season even more.
Both seasons are not only refreshing, but fresh, in both the common and romantic/erotic senses of the word, with all kinds of nudity on the screen. Alfhildr Enginnsdóttir (the last name translates as "no one's daughter") comes from the Viking past, and has almost no inhibitions in what she says, does, and is willing to do in the present. She is partnered with Lars Haaland, a detective with the Oslo police. So what we have in Beforeigners is a science fiction/police procedural hybrid, also one of my favorite genres, as a reader/viewer as well as an author (for example, The Silk Code).
In the second season, things get even more complex and interesting. It turns out that travel from the present to the past is also possible, with disastrous consequences in some cases, including the appearance of one of the all-time infamous serial killers in our reality, and the possibility of alternate realities springing forth before our very eyes ...
But I'll say no more, other than excellent acting by Krista Kosonen and Nicolai Cleve Broch in the lead roles, great theme song "Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City" (sung by the late Bobby "Blue" Bland, written by Dan Walsh and Michael Price), kudos to creators Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin, and if you have any time at all and are even the slightest bit like me regarding time travel, see Beforeigners as soon as you can.
