Project Blue Book 1.1: Science Fiction, Or?

Project Blue Book, the docudrama on the History Channel about Dr. Allen Hynek and his research into UFOs, couldn't have come at a better time.   I mean, a better time for me.  I read and reviewed Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding, about John W. Campbell and the golden age of science fiction,  And Hynek's story - at least, as it begins on Project Blue Book - begins in 1952, which many people, including me, would regard as the peak of that golden age.  Asimov's Foundation trilogy, which had first been published as a series of stories in "Astounding" (the magazine), was smack dab in the middle of being published as three books.  Robert Heinlein had just published, a year earlier, his Puppet Masters, to this day one the very best books about an extraterrestrial invasion ...  But I digress.

Or maybe not.  Because Project Blue Book - the docudrama - is right at the nexus of strange-but-true and science fiction.  Hynek is called upon by the Feds to give his scientific imprimatur to their insistence that flying saucers were nothing more than natural phenomena like birds or human technological phenomena like weather balloons.  The perspective of the docudrama is that we the audience know better, and Hynek quickly comes to know better.

Unsurprisingly, the government apparently knows better, too.  The first episode leaves us with the impression that the government knew we (the Earth) were visited by flying saucers, but they (the government) did not want the public to know.  This is a familiar characterization of our government on many issues, and may or may not be true in real history about flying saucers.

Speaking of reality, I'll own up to being skeptical to agnostic on extra-terrestrial visits.  I'm a skeptic, because if we've been visited, are being visited, by beings from outer space in space ships, why don't they ever land on 58th Street in Manhattan in front of CNN so everyone in the world can see them?  Or, if they don't want us to know anything about them, they've been doing a pretty poor job of that.  But I'm ultimately agnostic on the question of UFOs because there's certainly no reason in principle that there aren't intelligences other than ours out there in the universe, some of them far more advanced than ours in their penetration of the cosmos.

Back to more mundane matters, it was good to Aidan Gillen (from Game of Thrones and many other memorable performances) in his portrayal of Hynek.  The first episode offered several phenomena - like damage on the pilot's plane - that weren't explicable by science, according to Hynek.   One of those, however, a pilot hearing a California radio station in Fargo, North Dakota (that's right) high in sky at night could be explained by the long distances some radio waves can travel at night.  I wanted to shout that across the screen to Hynek.  But if all of this turns out to be science fiction, that's more than ok for me to watch on television.  Hey, strange things do happen in Fargo, if memory serves.


here I am talking Ancient Aliens a few years ago on the History Channel

 

Goliath on Amazon: Law Drama as it's Meant to be Seen

David Kelley - who created L. A.  Law, The Practice, and so many excellent law shows over the years - has checked in with a powerhouse on Amazon, eight episodes of bruising, exquisite law stripped to the bone or the soul or whatever your deepest buttons in a streaming series that pulls out stops you've never quite seen on any kind of law show on television.

Goliath flatly could not have been done on network television.  It might have been done on a cable, but watching it all at once or at least three or four episodes at a time added to the effect, and likely was even essential to this story.   Indeed, the closest cinematic narrative to Goliath was literally in cinema, The Verdict in 1982, staring Paul Newman as a down-and-out attorney who takes on a huge corporation represented by a mega law firm.   I saw that movie in one sitting, too, and loved it.

Indeed, The Verdict and Goliath also have the similarity of high-wattage star power.  Billy Bob Thornton as the David-like attorney in Goliath is not Paul Newman - who is? - but Thornton is one superb actor, having last distinguished himself on television in Fargo.  And the bad Goliath attorney is played by William Hurt, in of the best performances of his life, even more memorable than James Mason as the big corporate attorney in The Verdict.

But enough with comparisons.   Goliath has a pressingly relevant story about a big U.S. arms manufacturer, and outstanding characters including the judge and supporting lawyers all over the place.

If you like law drama realistically portrayed - and given that my father was a lawyer, I especially do - give yourself a treat and see Goliath.   But don't drink too much coffee or tea beforehand, you'll get all the stimulation you'll need on the screen.

Elvis & Nixon on Amazon: History As It Could Have Been Written

I don't usually review comedies, but Elvis & Nixon isn't really a comedy, though it's billed as such, and even though it does have lots of laughing-out-loud scenes and lines.

But the Amazon original movie mostly is a seemingly cracked but deeply revealing double bio-pic, and a bio-pic not of two lives, but of what led up to a single moment in history when Elvis Presley met Richard Nixon in the White House.  The photograph above, the most requested from the National Archives, captured that moment.

The movie provides the background, true in general, but like all docu-dramas, replete with dialogue written for the movie.

What we learn about Nixon is nothing new, but ever fascinating to see.   He's a deeply insecure man, even in the most powerful office on the planet.  He complains to an aide, before the meeting, that he's not very good-looking, and doesn't have it as easy as guys like the Kennedys and Elvis who are.   Although Elvis doesn't hear this, he later compliments Nixon on his good lucks, as part of his successful effort to butter him up.

Elvis is riven with insecurity, too.  It's not only December 1970, but December or at very least the late Fall of Elvis's career.  Though millions of course know of him and still adore him, it's an older crowd, and he's no longer making the record-breaking records that launched him to superstardom, succeeding Frank Sinatra in the 1950s, gyrating on the Ed Sullivan show, and Elvis knows this.  He hates the Beatles, and is almost bored with his public.   Indeed his passion at this point is what brings him to the White House - collecting police badges, in pursuit of a badge as a Federal agent at large, a position he's conjured into being.

Kevin Spacey at Nixon is of course perfect and superb.  Michael Shannon, last seen to good effect on Boardwalk Empire, is outstanding as Elvis.  If you'd like to know what this off-beat movie most reminds me of it would be the second season of Fargo, which takes place in 1979.   Elvis & Nixon and Fargo have almost nothing specifically in common - the one point of similarity would be Reagan appearing in an episode of Fargo - but the two share a uniquely true, bizarre but incisive ambience you'll find in few other places on the screen.

My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2015

This is the first time I've made a list, which includes television on network, cable, and streaming.   Runners-up - superb but not quite making this list - include Chicago Fire (NBC) and Vikings (History Channel). Also worthy of Honorable Mention this year are Empire (Fox) and American Crime (ABC). But here's my Top 10 for 2015:

10. Deutschland 83 (Sundance): An unwilling East German spy undercover as a West German soldier at the height of the Cold War, i.e., 1983, and much easier to buy than The Americans. Outstanding.

9. Humans (AMC): The best android story ever on television, and likely in the movies.  Isaac Asimov would've loved this.

8. Rectify (Sundance): He has the heart of a poet and the native literacy of a Dylan.  Is there any chance he's guilty of the murder for which he's been released from death row on a technicality?

7. Mr. Robot (USA Network): A hacker show in a class by itself, that'll keep you on the edge of your seat in extreme suspense when you're not chuckling at the dark humor.

6. House of Cards (Netflix):  Not its best season, but still a masterpiece of political intrigue including murder.

5. Nashville (ABC): What can I say?  I just love the music.

4. The Good Wife (CBS): Easily the best show on network television, mixing up-to-date 2016 Presidential politics, NSA, courtroom drama, and romance, with its best season so far (sorry Will).

3. Fargo (FX):  Very loosely derived from the movie, but staking out a wacked-out intensely compelling territory all of its own.   This past season, for example, which had little in common with the first, had Ronald Reagan and a UFO as crucial parts of the story (well, the UFO anyway).

2. The Affair (Showtime):  The writerly life as realistically as it's ever been portrayed on television - plus a top-notch whodunnit, and then there's that hot affair.

1. The Man in the High Castle (Amazon):  Philip K. Dick's masterful alternate history of the Nazis and Japan winning World War II brought to the screen so effectively that, when you look away, you can almost believe that the reality we're now living in is the dream.

Fargo Season 2 last few episodes: UFOs, Protocols, and yeah, Heartwarming

Fargo concluded its second season earlier this month with a few episodes that were, literally, just out of this world.  Well, one was, anyway.

In the next-to-last episode, which featured one of the best shoot-outs ever on television, with lots of evil characters getting their just deserts, and some not-evil characters, too (like that brave lady cop), which I guess makes their deserts unjust, we have a resolution of that shoot-out, a saving of the day for Lou - which had to be saved, since we know older Lou from Season 1 - by a UFO.

So does this mean UFOs exist in the Fargo universe?  Is Fargo, in addition to all of its other merits, science fiction?

Not necessarily.  No one interacted with any alien.  And reports of UFOs are common enough in our reality and world.  So whatever was seen at that shoot-out was just light in the sky, which was caused by some contraption, which may or may not have been an alien ship.

Even if it was, would that be so bad?  Well, certainly not for me, seeing as how I'm a big fan of science fiction, having just reviewed Childhood's End (and I reviewed most of Falling Skies), speaking of UFOs.  I've even talked about them on the History Channel.



But there is what literary critics call a protocol issue, if UFOs with aliens are suddenly introduced into a series like Fargo.  If you have a dead body, murdered, in a room with a door locked from the inside, this makes a classic whodunit.   If you solve it by discovering the murderer beamed into and out of the room, that kind of solution can anger mystery fans by violating the expectations of the whodunit genre.

On the other hand, there has always been an aspect of Fargo that almost seems out of this world, anyway.   Hanzee, the "Gerhardt Indian" and one of the best characters in season 2 (well played by Zahn McClarnon, who also stood out in Longmire), has even been suggested to be an alien.  And, let's face it, that cold snowy terrain sometimes looks like a scene from another world, even when there isn't a gunfight at the OK Corral to liven up the night.

As is the case with many top-notch television series these days, the next-to-last episode was better than the finale, which tied things up, but with far less energy than the previous episode.  Still, it was great to see that Lou's wife Betsy survived, and her collapsing was because of the treatment the she had indeed been receiving, thus giving this finale a nice, unexpected silver lining which also is an intrinsic part of this series, and therefore not completely unexpected, I guess, but heartwarming and welcome.

Looking forward to next season on Fargo.

See also: Fargo 2.1: Good to be Back in the Freezer ... Fargo 2.6: Just Superb

And see also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year ... Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Fargo 2.6: Just Superb

I just want to say how outstanding this second season of Fargo has been so far - indeed, heretical though it may be to say so, better than the first season, which was excellent indeed.  But this second season is moving much faster, is more dynamic, and has less of the quirks that slowed down the first season a little.

Don't get me wrong. I love the quirks, they're essential to the Fargo story.  But somehow, in the first season, they got a little in the way of the narrative, until its last few shows.

In contrast, season 2 is just blasting along.  Last week's episode, which I didn't get a chance to review, had a priceless conversation between Ronald Reagan - beginning to run for President in 1979 - and Lou, in the bathroom.  The best part of that, in classic Fargo fashion, is what Reagan didn't say and couldn't say, when he makes some Reaganesque noise in his throat and leaves the men's room in response to Lou's questions.

Last night, Lou had a fabulous episode, defending Ed from Bear Gerhardt and navigating his escape from the sheriff's office.  The only thing we know for sure is that Lou won't die - because he's alive and well in season 1 in the future - but, otherwise, anyone can go in this story, and that's what's been happening in the past few episodes.  So the lawyer's role in saving Ed was heart-in-mouth, because he could have been blown away at any minute.

Peggy had a good night, too, and it's not clear whether she killed Dodd with the electric cattle prod - a taser for before its time - or just knocked him out cold.   Similarly, we don't know what happened in the Gerhardt house when all the shooting began, though I think there was a glimpse of Mamma in the coming attractions.   The best candidate for death in Gerhardt house would be the father, because, let's face it, he's well on his way there already.

There's nothing else like Fargo on television - nothing as wryly, darkly literate and exciting at the same time - and I can only hope this series continues for a long long time.

See also: Fargo 2.1: Good to be Back in the Freezer

And see also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year ... Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Fargo 2.1: Good to Be Back in the Freezer

Fargo was back for its second season on FX on Monday, with a narrative that promises to be as brilliant, blackly humorous, complex, and altogether in a world of its own as what we saw in its first season.  And other than this story also taking place in North Dakota, this story seems at this point to have only one connection to the first season, which I'll get to shortly   Indeed, whereas the first season took place in the present, this second season is happening in 1979.

Let me see if I got the setup (always a question, when you've only seen an episode of Fargo just once).  There's a criminal family, the Gerhardts.   They need a judge to make a proper ruling.  One of the sons, a hothead with a gun, thinks he can convince her to do what they want.  He accosts the judge in a diner, and ends up shooting her, a former athlete now working there, and the waitress, all to death.   Then he's hit by a car, and carried along on its hood.

We learn that the driver, Peggy (played by Kristen Dunst) is a married to a guy, Ed (played by Jesse Plemons), who works for a butcher (the honest kind who sells meat, not as far as we know a murderer of humans).   This serves Ed in good stead, as he has a freezer in which to stow the killer's body (after he kills him, after the bad guy attacks him, because the bad guy wasn't thoroughly dead).  You just know that freezer with the body is going to be opened in some upcoming episode at the worst time.

Meanwhile, the sheriff and state trooper are investigating the three killings at the diner.  Hank Larson the sheriff is played by Tad Danson, always good to see.   The state trooper is none other than Lou Solverson, who will age well and be played by Keith Carradine in Season 1 (that's the one connection).

And just to top it off, and provide a little more sinister depth to this story - always a key ingredient in Fargo - the episode ends with a bigger criminal enterprise in Kansas City set to move in on the Gerhardts in North Dakota.

There nothing else quite like Fargo on television, and I'm looking forward with relish to the rest this second second (maybe some mustard, too).

See also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year ... Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero

A brilliantly satisfying finale to what I hope will be the first season of Fargo - true to its quirky, compelling, and often stunning narrative, in other words, just perfect.   Indeed, as much as I loved the 1996 movie, this reboot of the story was considerably better, and will replace in my mind, from now on, what I took away from that movie.

Gus killing Malvo after Lester surprises Malvo and shoots him in the leg was just as it should be.  Gus, after all, let Malvo intimidate him in that fateful first encounter.  And Lester -

Well, I'm not even completely sure that he's dead.  We see what looks like the top of his helmet under the hole in the ice where he fell through, but then why does Molly later say to the Montana police let me know when you recover the body?   That clearly indicates that Lester's body is not in hand, and, given Lester's astonishingly high quotient for survival, it's by no means impossible that he somehow swam under the ice and got away.

Lester, indeed, in this series, has been one of the most quietly astounding anti-heroes ever on the television or any screen.  From the get go, he manages to crawl his way out of every threat, including, at very least, the death about to be meted out by the arch-killer Malvo.

Speaking of Malvo, the one slight flaw in all the action tonight occurred not tonight in but in Las Vegas.  Why didn't Malvo just wheel around and shoot Lester after killing the other three people in the elevator, including the blonde that he must have had at least a little lustful feeling for?

But given the 90-minute clockwork masterpiece of tonight's episode, that can be forgiven.  Replete with riddles explained (like the fox, the rabbit, and the cabbage, explained by Lester) and those not quite (the two gloves story, which Molly tells Lester  but doesn't elaborate upon when he asks her what it means), Fargo with its snow and ice and Minnesota accents and dialogue has been a nearly letter perfect, one-of-a-kind series.   I hope we get to see more of its next year.

See also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Fargo 1.8: The Year

Well, I've never seen anything quite like it on television.   Fargo, about 2/3rds through episode 1.8, just skips a year.   The show had some time passing in an earlier episode, but this was a whole year.  Molly is pregnant - finally achieving the status the deputy began with in the movie version.  Except she's happily married to Gus, who's traded in his badge for a postal delivery route, and Lester and Malvo both seem well out of range.

The two are in fact in Las Vegas - Lester, looking confident and great, to receive his insurance man of the year award, and Malvo who knows why.   The episode began with Lester learning that the washing machine that provoked the final spat between him and his wife was a lemon, which means his inability to fix it wasn't his fault after all.   And it ends with Lester riding high, married to a beautiful woman who adores him, about to pick up another beauty in Vegas, until he spies Malvo.

This, like so many scenes in this bizarre and wonderful series, is replete with ironic meaning.   It's saying that no matter how far Lester goes - not only away from the law but in enjoying the better things in life - he'll always have the Achilles Heel of Malvo, who knows better than anyone where Lester came from.

Indeed, that last scene might have been a good ending for this season, but Fargo has other things to tell us.   Is one of them that Lester won't get away with his crimes in the end, that Molly will have the satisfaction for finally getting the bad guy - maybe bad guys, with an "s," if she is able to get Malvo, too?

I'm not sure - not sure of anything in this wild roller coaster of a series - and that's precisely what makes Fargo so good.  It has indeed shattered the usual expectations of narrative, and for once in my television viewing, I have no idea where this is going.   Which is welcome indeed in a TV series.

See also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave

Fargo continues to pick up steam, with its second exceptional episode - 1.7 - in as many weeks.

Last week, in the blizzard, Molly gets shot by Gus at the end of a literally blindingly harrowing scene. This week, we learn that the shot went "clean through," and caused no lasting damage.  But the time in the hospital gives Molly and Gus some good time to draw closer together, as well as leaving Molly isolated from the ground-changing developments back in Bemidji, which sets her up for another evocatively symbolic frame of her face at the end of the episode.

The most important action - and it's brilliant - concerns Lester's framing of his brother Chaz.  Last week, we saw Lester at his crafty best, leaving the hospital, carefully planting evidence in his brother's house, and returning to the hospital with no one knowing he had left.   This week, we see him reaping the rewards for this hard work.

Chaz is arrested for the murders.  No one including his wife supports him.   The painfully dumb sheriff of course buys Lester's "confession" that he witnessed his brother's murders - hook, line, and sinker.   And Lester, intent on pressing his advantage, has some great sex with the widow of the guy whose bullying started all of this.   It's just one of the perks of being an insurance agent intent on giving personal service to the policy holders.

The police in this fine series are almost all morons - the exceptions being Molly and Gus - and 1.7 makes this point yet again in a horrifying and hilarious scene in which the two FBI guys argue about a sandwich in a car while Malvo massacres everyone in the building outside their window.   Malvo then unsurprisingly makes his escape with ease.

And this leads us to the last scene.  Molly learns that Lester's brother, not Lester, has been charged with the murders, and knows that this is wrong.  In her absence, the bungling police did it yet again.   The expression on her face as this episode ends is just priceless, as is this wild and off-beat series.

See also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos

Fargo debuted on FX this Tuesday, in the spot of the just-concluded next-to-last season of the excellent Justified.  I saw the 1996 movie, thought it was superb, but recall little other than the general setup.   So I approached the television series with not much in the way of specific expectations.   If the premiere is any indication, it looks like we're in for an experience even better than the movie - whose story has been changed at least somewhat for the television series.

The story on Tuesday night was basically a tale of two psychos.  One, Lorne Malvo (perfectly played by Billy Bob Thornton) is a already a criminal and a killer.  But he's a psycho beyond the way that any hired killer is a psycho, in that he has no tolerance for people being bullied or pushed around - at this point, one man in particular, no relation to him.  He has so little tolerance for this that he kills the bully after encountering the bully's victim in the hospital.

The victim - Lester Nygaard ( also played perfectly by Martin Freeman) - turns out to be the second psycho himself.  Inspired by Malvo's exhortation that Nygaard should act like a man, Nygaard hammers his wife to death after her customary ridicule, this time of his inability to fix their washing machine.   And just for good measure, Malvo shows up and kills the sheriff who's come to Nygaard's house to investigate the murder of the bully.

This is the situation that the pregnant deputy Molly Solverson inherits.  This is the character - named Marge Gunderson - that I most remember from the 1996 movie, which more than anything else was a story about how a highly intelligent, highly pregnant police officer could investigate a deadly case in the cold of Minnesota.   I'm glad this character will also play a central role in the television series, but it's already looking to be more than that.   Less humor (though still plenty), more action and violence, equally great Northern dialogue make Fargo a contender for one on of the best television shows to come down the pike in a few years.

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A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code