The Peripheral 1.3: John Snow

So, I entitled this review of The Peripheral 1.3 "John Snow," even though it had an already very excellent title, "Haptic Drift".

First, John Snow is a great name.  In our real history -- which may be the history of The Peripheral story, too (since there's time travel in this story, its history is changeable)  -- John Snow was a British doctor who lived mostly in the first half of the 19th century, and helped put anaesthesia on the map of crucial medical treatments as well as get a handle on how to blunt cholera epidemics.  Anaesthesia, if you think about it, is deeply related to the transportation of consciousness at the core of The Peripheral.  Plus, we already saw the role that deadly illnesses and their treatment plays in this narrative, with Flynne's mother in last week's episodes.

In last night's episode, Flynne cleverly guesses that where "snow falls" could refer to where "Snow falls" as in John.  And as an added bonus, we have the acoustic reference to the hero of Game of Thrones that some people hate, the one and only Jon Snow.  (I actually first thought that Jon was the Snow being talked about in "Haptic Drift"). What a difference an "h" makes.

And in addition to all that, the action really picks up after John Snow is named.  We get Flynne and Cherise in a nice battle, and see Flynne pick up a little snowy figure -- not a snowman.  Years ago, I went up to the attic of my house where a new roof was being put in -- after a hurricane had taken part of it off -- and  I found a tiny figure of a soldier that someone in the family who originally lived in house must have put there.  And it reminded me of what Flynne picked up near the end of this episode.  So far so good, no one from the future has come after me, either physically or virtually.

By the way, "haptic drift" refers to people falling in love -- or souls melding, as Flynne is told -- when they spend too much time together in cyberspace, and that may be happening with Flynne and Wilf.  Good for them, they both could use it. (By the way, we have "haptic feedback" in our reality -- but, as far as I know, nothing called "haptic drift" has been noted when people fall in love in virtual communities like Second Life, or in any metaverse.) 

Otherwise, I'll say again that the Southern old boy stuff is not my favorite part of this excellent series -- mainly, because I've seen one version or another of it too many times before.  Also, in general, I'd say murder by bee stings is more creative than being locked into a car in the hot sun.  But I'll put up with it, because the rest of the story is so good.

See also The Peripheral 1.1-1.2: Cyberpunk, Time Travel, and Alternate Reality

alternate reality about The Beatles on Amazon, and  FREE on Vocal

Utopia seasons 1 and 2 UK version: Vastly Better than the American version

I watched and reviewed the American version of Utopia -- the one season -- two years ago.  I thought it had its moments, was right for the occasion of the Covid pandemic, but also had several things I didn't like.  Now, two years later, I barely remember it.  Indeed, I wasn't thinking about it all until a friend, Mike Grynbaum, urged me to watch the 2013-2014 two-season British version.  He said the 2020 American version was terrible, but the British version was right up my alley.

He was right.  I thought the British version was superb on all kinds of levels.  And now that I've seen it, I think even less of the American version.

[Mild spoilers ahead ...]

The central theme of the tautly, harrowingly drawn British Utopia, that a group of scientists and government officials are putting into motion a plan to drastically prune the human species, is itself chilling.  But the specifics of their plan, to render 90% of human beings infertile. via a DNA mix distributed with a vaccine for a "Russian flu" that was itself a hoax -- well, that was truly downright frightening, especially because it was all too reminiscent of what some insane conspiracy theorists have been saying about the mRNA vaccines distributed to lessen the severity of the real and very lethal COVID-19 pandemic we're still attempting to tamp down to reliable manageable levels.  In fact, I couldn't help wonder, as I watched this series with something akin to horror, if some of the conspiracy theorists in our real world had been consciously or unconsciously influenced in their views about COVID-19 vaccines by what they may have seen in the British Utopia.

And the logic behind this plan was top-notch science fiction struggling with ethical conundrums.  The world is overpopulated.  One way of dealing with that is severely limiting reproduction.  That would be a remedy I wouldn't choose in a million years -- I would prefer figuring out better ways to live on Earth without plundering the planet, combined with getting off of Earth to other habitable planets (see my The Missing Orientation) -- but the suggestion has just enough plausibility that you can believe, as a viewer, that some half-crazed scientist and ruthless government officials might go for it.

Even more important for the narrative, that one of the good guys, physically attacked by purveyors of the plan, changes allegiances and works on behalf of the plan.  Indeed, one of the other great strengths of this story is not only how a hero becomes a villain, but how a villain becomes a hero, against the backdrop of a vast array of vivid, idiosyncratic, and therefore memorable characters who are intractably working for the good, bad, and everything in between.

If there was one thing I didn't care for in the British Utopia it was its partaking of the trauma porn which has become a veritable hallmark of  fantasy and science fiction since 2013-2014, ranging from House of the Dragon to The Peripheral, and even reaching as far as fiction verging on biopics such as Blonde.  The spoon and the eye -- you'll of course know what I mean if you've seen British Utopia -- were revolting to see, and not really necessary to see in such detail.

But that shouldn't get in the way of your seeing Utopia the way the series was meant to be seen -- and now that I've alerted you to the brutality, you can safely turn away from the screen for a few moments when you see that spoon coming.   

As I said at the beginning of this review, I've all but forgotten the 2020 American version. 

In contrast, the 2013-2014 British version is something I'll never forget.

Podcast Review of The Peripheral 1.1-12

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 342, in which I review the first two episodes of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video.

Written post of this review on Vocal

Further reading:  alternate realities about The Beatles (It's Real Life) ... time travel (Slipping Time) ... the grandfather paradox (Why Time Travel Is So Enjoyable)

Check out this episode!

The Peripheral 1.1-1.2: Cyberpunk, Time Travel, and Alternate Reality

Just saw the first two episodes of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video.  It's an adaptation of the 2014 novel of the same name by William Gibson, the veritable godfather of cyberpunk, and made by the creators of Westworld on HBO, so it has to be good, right?

Well, it is.  Pretty good, that is.   I haven't read the book, so I'm not making comparisons.  My favorite parts are 2099 London, inside the peripheral, a cyber construct that our heroes and villains from an earlier time -- just ten years from now, and who knows when else -- inhabit.  But there's some triteness here.  Good old Southern boys.  The mother of the hero (or one of the heroes), Flynne (well played by Chloë Grace Moretz) dependent on some drug to treat her deadly cancer.  I also could have lived without such physical detail of the eye-transplant in the first episode.

But there are also lots of fun and cool details, like the deputy or whoever he was coming upon what seems to be a coffee-to-go just floating in the air, in the second episode.  And Flynne does bring back a drug from the future to cure her mother, after seeing an obituary for her, who would otherwise have died very soon.  We also soon learn that Flynne's entering the peripheral causes her visceral self to branch off in a different life back in 2030.  So we're dealing here not just with cyberpunk, but with time travel, in effect, and alternate realities, which is tremendously ok in my book.

In addition to drugs and knowledge, money can also be transferred from 2100 to 2030, or seventy years back in time, from the cyberworld to the real world -- if you can call a world already significantly different from ours in 2022 really real -- and that opens all kinds of possibilities, such as people in the further future hiring assassins in the nearer future.  And at this point, that's what we have in The Peripheral, all kinds of intriguing possibilities.  Good guys and bad guys, young and older people, of all genders, and lots of people and things in between.  I'd say as long as The Peripheral continues to mine the esoteric, mind-bending possibilities of cyberspace, time travel, and alternate realities, it could be a top-notch series.

I'll be watching and reviewing.

alternate reality about The Beatles on Amazon, and  FREE on Vocal

 

Bosch: Legacy: Even Better than Bosch!

As you readers of this blog may recall, I said Bosch was the best cop show on television.  I was therefore not too happy that it concluded, and I expected to be at least somewhat disappointed by its sequel Bosch: Legacy, which I just got around to watching on Amazon's new FreeVee service.  Well, I now think just the opposite: I thought the first season of Bosch: Legacy, which continues the story of Bosch, now a private detective, and his beloved daughter Maddie, now a rookie LA cop, was better even than Bosch.

First and foremost, the acting was better than ever, with Titus Welliver as Bosch, Madison Lintz as his daughter Maddie, and Mimi Rogers as the other powerful character, defense attorney Honey Chandler.  And the stories were both more plentiful -- and, as always interweaving -- and by and large even better than what we saw in previous Bosch seasons.

Not only that, there were more surprises.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

My favorite was the revelation that Ida (played by Kate Burton) killed Whitney Vance (good to see William Devane back on the screen, if not in much action).   The Russian assassin was handled well, and the Russians as bad guys rang especially true with what that monster Putin has been doing in Ukraine (which played no part in Bosch, but I'm just saying).

About the only thing I didn't like as much as in the original Bosch was the theme song.  But, in all fairness, Caught a Ghost's "Can't Let Go" is a flat-out masterpiece and among the best theme songs ever sung at the beginning of a TV series.  And I guess I would have liked to have seen a little more of Jerry Edgar, but I'm not inclined to quibble, because what we did get is a Harry Bosch really coming into his own as a human being and his daughter becoming a truly impressive adult.

Count me in for the next season.

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 ... Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View ... Bosch Season 6: The Best Police on Television ... Bosch Season 7: Can't Let Go

                   another kind of police story 

Rachel Maddow's Ultra, Episodes 1 and 2: Crucial Listening

I just listened to the first two episodes of Rachel Maddow's new podcast, Ultra.  Its vivid exploration of the fascist right-cadre in America in the late 1930s and (thus far in the podcast) 1940 offer a chilling, stunning historical precedent for what is threatening America right now.  I'm recommending the podcast to all three of the classes I'm currently teaching at Fordham University this term.

I began seeing similarities between Trump and Hitler as soon as Trump denounced CNN and its reporter Jim Acosta as "fake news" at a press conference when Trump was President-elect in 2017 (see my Fake News in Real Context).  The parallels between Trump's attacks on legitimate journalism as "fake news" and the Nazi characterization of the Weimar Republic's legitimate press as “Lügenpresse” (lying press) were unavoidable.  Such attempts to destroy unwelcome reporting were and still are a cornerstone in the dismembering of democracy.

Of course, back then in 2017, Trump and his supporters had not yet resorted to violence, another cornerstone of fascism.  Indeed, the textbook definition of fascism is denial of the truth backed up by force.  And as recently as 2020, House Majority Leader Jim Clyburn had it more accurately when he said that Trump is Mussolini and Putin is Hitler.   But that was before the violent attempt of Trumpists to stop Congress's certification of the election in January 2021.

It is that failed violent insurrection and its aftermath -- the Proud Boys, the Republican Senators and Congresspeople who have given support and comfort to those insurrectionists, Trump's simultaneous denial and explicit support of these people who tried with deadly force to keep him in office -- that serves as the explicit backdrop of Maddow's exploration of how much the same took place right before America got directly involved in the Second World War.  In typical Rachel Maddow style, the first episode tells us about an American Senator who dies in an unlikely plane crash, the second episode about the violent Christian Front who walked out of court, free as birds, after they were found not-guilty of plotting violence against the United States.  Senator Lundeen had a speech written for him by a Nazi agent when he died on the plane, and the Christian Front were public admirers of the Nazis when they walked out of court, virulent followers of Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest whose radio show attracted an audience of tens of millions of people, a percentage of Americans far greater than that of any show that attracted that number of Americans today. 

The parallels to today's America are undeniable and frightening. Tucker Carlson is not a Catholic priest, does not engage in anti-semitic screeds, and has far smaller audience than did Coughlin. But his lies on Fox News give credence to people who deny the results of the 2020 election, and he has more than once expressed support for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, early on in that war, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov expressed praise for Fox News.

I always tell my students that everything in the news today has historical precedents.  I'm looking forward to Rachel Maddow's unique reporting on them in her Ultra podcast (and kudos not only to Maddow but Mike Yarvitz and Kelsey Desiderio, who helped her create this chillingly important podcast).  I can't think of more crucial listening in our world today.

Quantum Leap (2022) 1.4: The Other Side

A momentous Quantum Leap 1.4 on NBC tonight, in which--

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

1. We learn what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the Quantum Leaper.  And we learn this from Magic, whose life was indeed changed in Vietnam by Sam Beckett in the original series.  He tells Ian (a great character, well played by Mason Alexander Park) that he lost all awareness and when he awoke found he had saved the life of Sam's brother Tom.  Not only that, but Magic had some slivers of memory of what Sam in his body had done, and that's what motivated Magic to restart the Quantum Leap project.  That episode back in October 1990 -- "The Leap Home, Part 2" -- was one of the best in the original series, and working it into tonight's episode 1.4 made it the best episode of the new series so far.

Would've have been nice had Christopher Kirby been able to play Magic again in the new series (even though Ernie Hudson's doing a fine job) -- and looking at his IMDb page,  Kirby's been incredibly busy -- but the story of Sam and Tom again got me thinking that we need to see Sam in this 2022 sequel.  I'm still predicting that we will, and the part will be played by Scott Bakula, despite what he's said to the contrary.

2. And, if all of that good plot stuff wasn't enough, Ben in this episode also remembers that he loves Addison.  The pace of this sequel is fast -- which makes for a taut, exciting narrative -- and one of the reasons that the new Quantum Leap just picked up the order for the closing six episodes for a full season of 18.   I'm hoping and expecting that we get some episodes tied to major public rather than essentially private life and death events.  As I said in my first review, this sequel series is off to a good start.

See also Quantum Leap (2022) 1.1: Off to a Good Start ... 1.2-1.3: Overarching Developments

 

Goodreads reviews for The Plot to Save Socrates

Reviews from Goodreads.com

The Outfit: Cut Just Brilliantly

If you'd like a 2022 movie on Amazon Prime that takes place in the 1950s in one indoor place -- a tailor's shop in Chicago -- starts off slowly and builds up to one of the best series of twists and turns that I've ever seen in a few hours on the screen, check out The Outfit.

[Some spoilers ahead ... ]

Here's the set-up:  Leonard is a British tailor, with a love of his craft, in Chicago -- but he'll correct you if you call him a tailor, he's a "cutter" -- and Mable sits at the front desk of the shop.  The local mob uses his shop as a dropbox for its illicit cash.   The action starts up when the mob boss's son shows up with a bullet in his belly, accompanied by his gunman, Francis.

From that point on, what begins as almost a PBS documentary on tailoring in the 1950s, progresses to an edge-of-your-sear taut thriller of a movie, with major characters turning out to be not who you were given to believe they were, and surprise upon surprise emerging faster and faster until you're left mouth agape at the end, simultaneously stunned and realizing yes, it all made sense, after all.

Two points about the plot, one which turns out not be a criticism, the other a slight criticism:

1.  A crucial part of the story is a small, portable reel-to-reel tape recorder.  I did some doo-wop recording with my Bronx group, the Transits, in the early 1960s, and had been thinking all these years that the tape recorder we used, at Paul Gorman's house (our bass singer) off Allerton Avenue, was a new invention.  The Outfit takes place in 1956, so I was a little skeptical that even the FBI would have had one back then, but I did a little research and it turns out they were in use since the early 1950s. Creds to the producers of the movie, who must have done some research, too.

2. There was a least one crucial case in which someone whom we thought was shot dead, not only survived but was soon back in action.  But, ok, lots of movies and TV shows do this kind of thing, and it was the only thing that didn't ring true to me in an otherwise precisely cut story. (And I've also said many times that, unless you see a character's head literally blown apart or chopped off or shot through and through, there's always a chance you'll see him or her up and about, if usually at a somewhat later time.)

The acting was also excellent.  Mark Rylance, whose acting in lots of historical and contemporary dramas was superb, is better than ever as Leonard in The Outfit.  And relative newcomers (to me) Johnny Flynn as Franics  (he did a good job as Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat last year)  and Zoey Deutch as Mable (I know, that name is usually spelled Mabel, and I have no idea why they went with that spelling here here) were also memorable.

So hats off to Graham Moore who directed and co-wrote (with Johnathan McClain) this exceptional movie. My wife commented that it felt like a play, because it all took place in a couple of rooms, with the exception of a few establishing shots from the outside of the shop. It's billed as a thriller, and you might be tempted to cut your losses and look elsewhere for excitement after the first ten minutes. But, trust me, stay with with it, you won't be disappointed.

Podcast Review of Blonde

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 341, in which I review Blonde on Netflix.

Written post of this review on Vocal.

 

science fiction/fantasy novelette

 

Check out this episode!

Quantum Leap (2022) 1.2-1.3: Overarching Developments

Even with the original series, I usually was more interested in the overarching story than the individual narratives recounting Sam's historical saves.   The new Quantum Leap, now three episodes in, is shaping up the same way.  In fact, though the astronaut and boxer stories in 1.2 and 1.3 were quite good, the central narrative, the connective tissue, has gotten a lot more interesting in at least two ways:

1.  Ben is going further into the past, earlier than when he was born, by bouncing off the times he visits and using that boomerang energy.  He and we still don't know what his ultimate goal is.  

2. In fact, we learn in 1.3 that Al's daughter Janis may have set all of this -- Quantum Leap (2022) -- into motion.   That moves the ultimate goal we need to know from Ben's to Janis's.  

Let's look at this a little closer.  We still don't know if Ben and Janis are collaborating on this, if Janis is using Ben, or if someone else we may or may not have met yet (likely not) is using both of them.  And, for what end?  The likely answer is somehow tied to Sam's disappearance, which makes me think even more that we'll be seeing Sam again before this new incarnation is concluded, which I certainly hope takes a lot longer than just this season.

Addison has already become the most important character in Ben's journey, whatever exactly that is.  Episode 1.3 addressed the important issue of her getting physically exhausted back in the present as her hologram supports Ben in his various pasts and seeks to save him from the errors he inevitably makes.  I wouldn't be surprised if the team in the present considers the pros and cons of her actually physically accompanying Ben on his trips.  The pros of the hologram are she can't be hurt in the past, and can't be seen.  But the big pro of her actually being there with Ben is that she'd be there regardless of how much her holographic connection to the present wavers.  Of course, it's not clear if and when it will be possible to send Addison back to the past, let alone in a way that allows her to accompany Ben.

Meanwhile, we also learn at the end of 1.3 that Janis may be planning on joining Ben -- why else would she take her father's equipment?  This again raises  the question of to what extent Ben and Janis were working together before his jaunts to past began.

Lots of possibilities already in motion in the new Quantum Leap, and I'm looking forward to seeing where they lead.

See also Quantum Leap (2022) 1.1: Off to a Good Start

 

Blonde: Only the Acting Was Excellent

Just watched Blonde on Netflix. I'm sorry to say I found only the acting was excellent.

Let's talk about that excellence first. Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane delivered an Oscar worthy performance, conveying the 20% bravado/80% vulnerability that we think we know of Marilyn just perfectly. The voice, the facial expressions, and body language were so good, I could believe I was seeing Marilyn on the screen.

Adrien Brody as "The Playwright" aka Arthur Miller was also superb, not ever really understanding Marilyn, flattered and impressed not just by her beauty but more by her intelligence. Bobby Cannavale as "The Ex-Athlete" aka Joe DiMaggio also gave a strong, if somewhat obvious performance (not his fault, since he didn't write the dialogue). And Julianne Nicholson gave a memorable performance as Norma's mother.

As for the rest -- the story, the pace, the intensity of many of the scenes -- not so good at all. First, to be clear, I obviously know nothing of Norma/Marilyn personally. And I haven't read the "novel" by Joyce Carol Oates that Andrew Dominic's movie is based upon, so I can't say how true the movie was to the novel. (I put "novel" in quotes because the amount of truth in her accounting of Marilyn's life and death has been under debate since the book first was published back in 2000.) But whatever the source of this lurid accounting on the screen, I don't get why Miller and DiMaggio had to go nameless. (I would add that, at least here in the United States, the law says that the dead cannot be slandered.)

But namelessness is the least of this narrative's problems. Norma/Marilyn dies, according to the movie, either accidentally or deliberately taking too many pills and alcohol because she's devastated that someone, obviously not her father, who had been writing to Norma as her father for years, admits that he really wasn't her father? Unless that truly happened, that's a pretty lame reason, given what the movie previously shows us about Marilyn's surprising resilience, rescuing her time after time. Not to mention that someone with her intelligence, which was well portrayed in the movie, surely would have realized that the "tearful father" who communicated with Norma/Marilyn over the years but never showed up as he was promising to do, certainly was not her father.

And the scenes ... with the exception of most of the Arthur Miller segment, which at times had a real tenderness, the overall story was a continuing series of scenes, one after another, that were punches to the stomach and the soul.

Ok, I will admit that the closing scene did have a flash of perverse poetry, perhaps, with Marilyn posing and smiling at us, her audience, after she was gone. It felt like a cinematic embodiment of Bernie Taupin's words in the Elton John song, "Goodbye Norma Jean," about all the papers having to say was that Marilyn's body was found in the nude. Even in death, her body was exploited, with whether or not this was what she wanted never being known for sure.

But as for the rest, I suppose this is a question of personal taste, but the tableaus were just too unpleasant, viscerally revolting, even if the events they were portraying were necessary to see in any form in this movie. The John F. Kennedy fellatio scene was demeaning to everyone -- including the viewer -- not to mention that who knows if this actually happened. And while we're on the JFK-Marilyn relationship, why not show the famous "Happy Birthday Mr. President" iconic scene from Madison Square Garden, which was real and stunning?

So, though I'll take a chance and see any movie about Marilyn Monroe, only the acting and a sparse few scenes save me from saying I'm sorry I wasted my time on this trauma porn. 

 

Podcast: Roundtable Discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 340, in which I join Captain Phil on WUSB-FM Radio (Stony Brook, New York) and Marybeth Ritkouski, Michael Rizzo, Roy Bjellquist, and Colleen Bement in a 2-hour in-depth, fun discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

More about the discussants: Marybeth Ritkouski, Michael Rizzo,  Roy Bjellquist, Colleen Bement

Check out this episode!

Boarding the Enterprise (edited by David Gerrold and Robert J. Sawyer), anthology with essay "How Star Trek Liberated Television" by Paul Levinson, which discusses the Star Trek syndication impact

Fringe Science: Parallel Universes, White Tulips, and Mad Scientists (edited by Kevin R. Grazier) anthology with essay by Paul Levinson, "The Return of 1950s Television in Fringe," which discusses Levinson's "First Love Syndrome" in popular culture appreciation.

Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time (2020 LP by Paul Levinson on Old Bear Records and Light in the Attic Records)