The Way Home, Season Three: Magic and Music

I binged the third season of The Way Home the past few days on Peacock -- it started airing on the Hallmark Channel two months ago, week by week, and I enjoy the series far too much watch it doled out like that.

Here's what I really liked about this third season [yeah, spoilers ahead]:

• The music was fabulous.  The scene with Kat and Eliot singing Sister Hazel's "All for You" in the first season was one of the highlights of that season, and the third season had lots of music highlights.  But they weren't so much the songs as the top-notch performances.  Young Cole (played by Jordan Doww) has a great voice, whatever he sings, and when he's joined by time-traveling Alice ( Sadie Laflamme-Snow) the resulting harmony is pure magic.
• There was a lot more time-traveling to various years in the past, and it'll be no surprise that I really enjoyed that, because time travel (and the related alternate history genre) are my favorite kinds of stories to read, watch on a screen, write, and sing about.  (But here I'll also say that the pool as the time travel vehicle is feeling a bit too magical for my taste, just as the stones are for Outlander.)
• Kat's other love in past. Thomas Coyle (Kris Holden-Reid) has real charm, and I hope we see more of him next season.
• It was really good to find out so much more about Del's back story, including a lot of focus of young Del (Julia Tomasone) falling in love with young Colton, who pretty quickly is head-over-heels in love with Del.

Here's what I didn't care for, all that much.  Not too many things, because the narrative was pretty tightly woven.  But the villains were a little too much comic-bookish, especially that guy in the past, Cyrus Gordon, who seems ready to kill at the drop of a hat.  Not mention that he's so unpleasant and unpleasant-looking, that it's difficult to imagine why anyone would ever marry him for whatever reason, especially his beautiful wife.

But this third season has real heart, and, notwithstanding what I said about Thomas in the past, I'm really glad Kat and Elliot finally seem to getting together on a more permanent basis.  The series in general always had a certain sweet and beautiful charm -- refreshing in this age of cynicism -- and that seems to be increasing with every new season.  I'll see you back here when the fourth season is up someplace where I stream it to my heart's content.

See also: The Way Home, Season One: Somewhere Between Outlander and The Time Traveler's Wife

“Paul Levinson’s It’s Real Life is an incredibly unique and captivating peek behind rock and roll’s mysterious curtain. The idea that the story delves into an alternate world adds to its page-turning intrigue. Highly recommended!” 
-– Steven Manchester, #1 bestselling author, The Menu


"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." 
-- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History


get It's Real Life in paperback, hardcover, or on Kindle here

Audio Podcast: Paul Levinson interviews Simon Vozick-Levinson about Rolling Stone's Top 100 Protest Songs

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 409, in which I interview Simon Vozick-Levinson, Deputy Editor of Rolling Stone, about the magazine's list of the 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time.  We talk in particular about Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Sam Cooke, and also discuss the importance of publications like Rolling Stone standing up for democracy in these politically troubling times.

As a special treat, at the end of this interview, I play a song, "Dance with Destiny," from James Harris's new LP, The Moons of Jupiter.  This is consistent with Phil Ochs' view that we needs works of beauty especially in troubled times.

Relevant links:

• Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time
• The science fantasy story I wrote, "Sam's Requests," inspired by Sam Cooke's song "Having a Party" ... read the story here ... or here (free)
• My review of Trupa Trupa at the Bowery Electric, Manhattan, 1 March 2025
• My Light On Light Through interview with David Browne about his book, Talkin' Greenwich Village
• NY Times listing of the three-hour show Joshua Meyrowitz and I did about Phil Ochs, after his death in 1976, on WFDU-FM Radio
• My Light On Light Through interview with Sarah Seltzer about her novel The Singer Sisters
• The Moons of Jupiter on Bandcamp (soundscapes by Nicky Rowe, vocals by James Harris)

Check out this episode!

Severance 2.8: Nordic Noir and Charles Babbage

So, Nordic Noir is one of my favorite genres.  It usually takes place either in Scandinavia or Iceland (which I don't think is part of Iceland, but don't quote me on it).  At its best, the genre combines crime with scenery so cold you want to put on an L. L. Bean winter coat indoors -- wait, I think anything (like the latest True Detective) that takes place in Alaska is also a kind of Nordic Noir -- but getting back to this eighth episode of the second season of Severance, which we're told in the creators' epilogue takes place in Newfoundland, it certainly delivers a deep Nordic Noir chill.

As for the story ... [here's the spoilers ahead advisory ...]

Well, as for the story, it pretty much delivers one thing, but that one thing is pretty important: Harmony Cobel is apparently the inventor of the severance process!  I mean, it's not clear if she actually built it, but she came up with the designs for the process, including how to deal with its complications, and that's impressive.  I guess this makes her the Charles Babbage of Severance.  (Babbage came up with the design for our digital computers -- his analytical engine in 1837 -- which Turning liberated from paper into the ancestors of the digital computer more than a hundred years later, and we all have in our laptops and phones today, which my students tell me is in turn now in the process of being transformed again into astronomically-fast quantum computers, even as I'm writing and your reading this).

I doubt that Lumon will have much to do with quantum computing -- though, come to think of it, Cold Harbour could be some kind of code for quantum computing --  but as of now, Lumon seems very much rooted in the 19th century, almost literally so.  On the other hand, in addition to Cold Harbour, since Severance is science fiction, anything that in retrospect is plausible could well be the way this season goes.

See you back here next week.

See also Severance 2.1: Ultimate Fake News? ... Severance 2.2: Multiple Dylans ... Severance 2.3: Innies<->Outies ... Severance 1.4: Innies Out in the Snow ... 2.5: Watermelon Man ... 2.6: Tables ... 2.7: Gemma and the Dentist

And see also Severance 1.1-1.2:  Erving Goffman Meets The Prisoner ... Severance 1.3: The History and the Neighbor ... Severance 1.4: Deadly Ambiguity ... Severance 1.5: Second Lives ... Severance 1.6: Lumon on the Outside ... Severance 1.7: Overtime Contingency ... Severance 1.8: Fired, Kissed, Almost Fired ... Severance: Season One Finale: Stunning Revelations

Coming Soon: Complete 3-Hour "Life & Death of a 20th Century Troubadour" 1977 radio tribute to Phil Ochs (5-min Clip in this Post)

 

Joshua Meyrowitz and I did a three-hour special show back in 1977 on WFDU-FM Radio on Phil Ochs (a year after he died). Here’s its listing in The New York Times — Josh has found a tape recording of the entire show. I’ll have it up online soon, after we get it digitized. In the meantime, here's a 5-minute clip from the show (you'll hear my voice first):

Trupa Trupa at the Bowery Electric in New York City

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a man of many talents.  He's a holocaust investigator and denouncer of fascism, a poet, and a member of the neo-punk band (don't rely on me for the terminology) Trupa Trupa.  I've seen him talk at New York University (my double alma mater) about his holocaust research and his assessment of current fascism.   I read and was very impressed with Crops, his book of poetry (here's my review).  I've interviewed Grzegorz on my YouTube channel.  I've listened to but had never seen in person his band Trupa Trupa. Until tonight, when Trupa Trupa put on a volcanic performance in the small but packed Bowery Electric venue in New York City -- packed with gyrating fans (including me), who loved every minute.

And performance is the right word for it.  Trupa Trupa not only sings and plays two guitars and a drum -- all of which is done with a keen edge of power and excitement -- but Grzegorz  especially puts on an impressive nonverbal show of facial expressions and panoply of gestures.  Ray Birdwhistell (look him up) would have had a really good time at this concert.  Maybe even Baryshnikov.

And all of this was window dressing for a potent bunch of high octane songs which could wake, if not the dead, likely someone in a coma.  But my favorites were two slow songs -- "Wasteland" and even more so, "Sacrifice" --  and "Uniforms," in a class of its own, which I've been liking a lot as an anti-fascist paen for a few years now.

And as a Beatles fan who can never get enough of them, I was delighted to hear Trupa Trupa work bits of "Magical Mystery Tour," "Blue Jay Way," and of course "All You Need Is Love" into their show.  This song is a tonic for the hate daily spilling out of the White House.  And I heard it on Sirius/XM's Beatles Channel when I was driving home.  That has to be a sign of something hopeful.

So count me in now as a big fan, not only of Grzegorz Kwiatkowski but Trupa Trupa.  Tonight was the last performance of their American tour.   I'll be sure to see them next time they're in town.

selfie of NY Times reporter & family friend Mike Grynbaum, Rolling Stone Deputy Editor Simon Vozick-Levinson, and Yours Truly enjoying the concert earlier tonight