Chance: Couch to Action

First television review of 2018:  What more could you ask for?  Hugh Laurie playing a specialized shrink, with a fondness for William James, a penchant for not just treating his patients' maladies but doing something about them in the real world - that is, punishing some of the people who are physically abusing his patients - and an accomplice/guide who is at once street smart, enormously capable in the martial arts, and has the keenest sense of injustice and what to do about it you've ever seen on the screen.   Welcome to Chance - the shrink - and D (short for Darius) as his partner in righting wrongs.

But lest you think that Chance is some kind of super-hero show, it's also the furthest thing from it, as Chance and D ultimately have only their flawed and all-too-human strengths to rely upon.  They take chances all the time - which makes the series especially aptly named - and sometimes fail in their endeavors.

The acting by Laurie as Chance is superb - not surprising - and Ethan Suplee as D (first time I've seen this actor, or recall seeing him, but I won't be forgetting him now) was outstanding.  The supporting acting was great, too, with Clarke Peters, who was excellent in The Wire and everything since, putting in a fine performance as D's employer (an antique dealer), and Stefania LaVie Owen just right as Nicole Chance, who takes after her father in all kinds of ways.   On fathers and daughters, we've seen this before in many a television series - Lie to Me, Californication, and Bosch are three that come immediately to mind - but Chance and his daughter have the most riveting storyline.

The first two seasons are both entirely different yet deftly woven together.   Chance falls in love with a likely psycho - fetchingly played by Gretchen Mol - in the first season, and hunts a straight-up psycho with much more to his story in the second season.  Highly recommended for fans of detective, shrink, and Hugh Laurie shows - you won't be disappointed, and you'll be eagerly awaiting a third season on Hulu, as am I.

winner Locus Award for best first novel ... introducing Dr. Phil D'Amato

Chronological Order: Door to the Past, Literally

Chronological Order, the 2010 feature-length movie I just saw on Amazon Prime, certainly deserves an award, which would be for the most unlikely time-travel device I've ever come across on page or screen.  That would be a door that our protagonist, a guy by the name of Guy, finds floating in the ocean.  He and we soon learn that when he stands it up and walks through it, he walks a little or longer into the past.

That's a great set-up for a time-travel story in the science fantasy genre.  But the execution and development leaves a lot to be desired.  I'm always up for a low-key, slice-of-life presentation.  But Chronological Order is so low-key as to seem desultory, and although this reflects the persona and the predicament on the protagonist, it also makes it difficult for the viewer to keep focus or even, in my case, continuing interest.

Nonetheless, Chronological Order does have something, in its unusual set-up and even its meandering pace.  Lurking behind everything Guy does is the question of free will, which comes up whenever the time traveler in the present sees himself in the future, or when the unknowing time traveler in the past (before his present self has traveled to the past) sees his present self in the past for the first time.  If I'm wearing a blue shirt today, and I travel to the past to yesterday, where I see myself wearing that blue shirt, does that mean I in yesterday will have no choice but to put on that blue shirt when I get dressed today?  If the answer is yes, that negates or erases my free will to put on whatever shirt I please.

Guy wears lots of shirts in Chronological Order, and grapples with rather than explicates the inherent problem of free will in this story.  Just to be clear: I'm a firm believer in free will.  I don't believe it's a necessary illusion of intelligent life.  And it's one reason (in addition to the grandfather paradox, which can only be solved by the multiple-universe hypothesis, even more incredible than time travel) that I think time travel is impossible, whether low-key and unfocused or keenly drawn on a razor's edge.  Though, I've always admired a point that Chance (played by Hugh Laurie) made in the first season of that series on Hulu last year, "Someone once asked William James if he believed in Free Will. 'Of course,' James replied. 'What choice do I have?'"

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