The Mosquito Coast 2.7: Sandpiper

An outstanding episode -- 2.7 -- of The Mosquito Coast up on Apple TV+ today, in all kinds of ways.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

First, it was great to see Ally roll out his Sandpiper program -- assuming he wasn't just going through the motions for Lee -- but I doubt that, he seemed really into it.  The project itself seems close to science fiction, but I'm no expert in new, top-secret apps.  What it's supposed to do is keep track of all police and police activities in a given area, so that a drug smuggler, for example, can be really efficient.  

And while on the subject of Ally -- this episode had best ending so far in this second season, with Ally looking through some old documents in Guillermo Bautista's backroom and finding a photo of the coast, entitled "La Costa de Los Mosquitos".  Well, we all know what that translates to.  And seeing it leads Ally, judging by the expression on his face,  to muse that whatever is in that photograph, or on that page, could provide a new solution to everything.

That's a pretty big order, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Dina were both in top form in this episode.  Charlie loves this place, and Dina is dying to get out there, as fast as she can.  I of course can understand where both are coming from, but, for some reason, I find Charlie's trajectory a little more intriguing.  It's almost as if he's melding and melting into his surroundings, gradually becoming both less and more civilized, in a Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness way.

Come to think of it, there's always been an element of Conrad in The Mosquito Coast, and it's good to see it coming to the surface in this way.

                            photo by Tina Vozick

See also The Mosquito Coast 2.1: Thirteen Years Ago ... The Mosquito Coast 2.4: Motion Pictures on the Cave Wall ... The Mosquito Coast 2.5: Hitting the Fan ... The Mosquito Coast 2.6: Close Calls

And see also The Mosquito Coast 1.1-2: Edgy, Attractive, Enlightened, and Important ... The Mosquito Coast 1.3: Broadening Horizons ... The Mosquito Coast 1.4: Charlie and the Gun ... The Mosquito Coast 1.5: Charlie and the Gun, Part II ... The Mosquito Coast 1.6: What Kind of Brother? ... The Mosquito Coast season 1 finale: I'm Well Bitten

The Fall Season 3: Delving into Homicide

I binge-watched The Fall Season 3 on Netflix this week, and found it superbly disturbing and brilliant, the best of the three seasons.  [Big spoilers follow.]

The story in all three seasons pits Stella Gibson, brought into Belfast to investigate serial killings done by Paul Spector, who seems like the sweetest guy in the world. Both parts are played to perfection - by Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan - and Anderson's performance is one of the most powerful I've ever seen on any television or movie screen.

There's plenty of action, but what makes this series special are the deeper moments of contemplation and reflection.  Gibson nails her suspects, at last, at the end of the second season, but the match of wits continues and escalates in the third season, as Spector evinces amnesia, presumably brought on by the trauma of his capture, which nearly kills him.

Is he feigning or really suffering a memory loss, which would make his prosecution in court much more difficult.   Gibson is sure he's feigning, the medical and psychology staff - and we the audience - are not so sure.

The doctors in intensive care, Spector's nurse in particular, are correctly devoted to bringing this monster back to full health.  The head of psychiatric facility to he's brought wants only to find the truth of what's going on now in Spector's brain.

This of course is connected to what went on in his brain before.  I've seen many examinations of the homicidal mind on television and in cinema over the decades, but never as breathtakingly chilling as in this third season of The Fall.   It's a trip that Joseph Conrad, who explored insanity in a different context in Heart of Darkness, would have enjoyed, if that's the right word.

Spector's outburst - in which he physically beats Gibson after an interrogation which puts him in a corner and strips his soul bare (the police have linked him to a killing which took place before his amnesia-blanked years) - is both shocking and instantly totally believable in retrospect, a winning combination in a narrative moment.   Not so believable is why Spector would not have been put in a padded cell somewhere after that, rather than back to the psychiatric unit where he does even more damage, and that's the biggest flaw in in this otherwise flawless story.   But that story is so riveting and convincing and horrifying that it easily survives as a masterpiece despite the flaw.

Word on the web is that Stella Gibson may well return in a 4th series created, written, and directed by Allan Cubitt.  The supporting characters - such as Spector's attorney Aidan McCardle (Loxley on Mr. Selfridge) - are excellent.  I'll be watching for sure.

Intelligence 1.8: Heart of Darkness, Cyberstyle

It was flashback time on Intelligence 1.8 on Monday, with a combination of the least amount of high-tech gadgetry we've seen on the show so far, and the most backstory for Gabriel.

This makes for a nice enough episode, but one which resembles the CBS mega-hit NCIS more then it does the science fiction on Person of Interest, Revolution, Almost Human, and Intelligence.   Still, the developing chemistry between Gabriel and Riley was good to see, as was Gabriel before he had the implant.

And the story of Norris - who partnered with Gabriel in the flashback, and is the crucial character in the present part of the narrative - has echoes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which is to say, important and moving.   The toll of war on those who survive can make them something less than human - or less motivated by the empathy that most of us have - and Norris provides a powerful contrast to Gabriel on this score.  Both survived.  Gabriel was embedded with a chip which connects him directly with the Internet.   Norris was not.   And who is the more human?   It's Gabriel, despite or maybe because of his techno assist.

This also makes a point which is consistent with my view of technology, and the view of a small number of other academics and theorists.  The Nobel laureate biologist Sir Peter Medawar once said that technologies are what make us human.   You can see evidence of this every day.  When someone puts on a pair of glasses, is she or her less human?  No, they are more human, because by seeing better, they can navigate their world better and more effectively accomplish their human goals.    When someone puts on on Google Glass, are they less human?  No, I would say they are more human, for the same reasons that corrective glasses better enable out humanity.

Gabriel and what he represents are not that big a step beyond Google Glass in its enablement of humanity.  That's one of things that makes this series so good.

See also Intelligence Debuts ... Intelligence 1.2: Lightning Changes ...Intelligence 1.3: Edward Snowden and 24 ... Intelligence 1.4: Social Media Weaponry ... Intelligence 1.5: The Watch ... Intelligence 1.6: Helix meets Rectify and Justified ... Intelligence 1.7: Nanites

#SFWApro



Like science fiction about chips in the brain?  Check out The Pixel Eye

Fringe 5.5: "You Don't Even Know What You Don't Know"

"You don't even know what you don't know," Peter's captive Observer advises in Fringe 5.5, expressing the consumate disdain Observers hold for us lower cast humans.  The same Observer has the other great line of the night, explaining to Peter, Matrix-like, that "you think the black over your head is dark skies when it is really our shoe," in this superbly written, dark episode, which later actually does have a shoe of an Observer closing in on Peter's head.

But the deeper darkness of the show is the dark in Peter and Olivia's hearts over the loss of Etta, and the episode draws not only on Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," but Plato's "Meno" paradox, or a reversal of its axiom that that you can only know what you already know or have knowledge of, otherwise how could you know that you were really knowing anything?

Peter and Olivia each struggle with the darkness and their lack of knowledge in different ways.  Olivia's   new world is falling apart with her daughter gone, and Walter and she fear that she may lose Peter again.  In the end, an unambered videotape of Etta as a little girl brings Olivia back.

Peter's path is a little different.  The Observer's mocking him about his feelings for Etta pushes Peter to torture and kill the Observer - good - and also take the chip out the Observer's head and place it in Peter's.  Is that also good? The tech reveal of the episode is that part of the Observers' superiority is indeed tech - ala Borg - in the brain.  In this masterfully written episode by J. H. Wyman, not only philosophy reigns supreme, but The Matrix meets Star Trek.

What will the Observer tech due to Peter.  Will he be able to absorb the Observer powers and retain his humanity?  Will he be able to truly love Olivia, as he has up until now?

Fringe continues in its brooding brilliance towards finale.




See also Fringe 5.1: Paved Park and Shattered Memories ... Fringe 5.2: Saving Our Humanity ... Fringe 5.4: Ghosts of Fringes Past

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17:  Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge ... Fringe 4.21: Shocks ... Fringe Season 4 Finale: Death and Life

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ...Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe  

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ...17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ...Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

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