Amazing Stories (2020)1.4: "Signs of Life": Happy Revivals

The fourth episode of the revived Amazing Stories (2020) on Apple+ TV was about a woman revived from a thought-to-be irreversible coma.   So, just like Amazing Stories, she comes back to active life, albeit not the same life she had before she was put in a hospital out of the day-to-day world.

Pretty good analogy, huh?  But I did think this was the most interesting, complex, and original of the four stories I've seen so far.  Even though I did guess what was going on pretty early in the episode.

It was fun seeing it played out.  Lost's Josh Holloway is always good to see on the screen.  Last time was in Colony, unfortunately canceled after just three seasons.   Significantly, there's a connection between Colony and "Signs of Life": extra-terrestrials.   But I'm not going to say anymore about the plot.

Back to the acting, Holloway always manages to deliver a combination of toughness, hipness, and underlying warmth.  It's not a common or easy combination.  But the deeper warmth in this episode of Amazing Stories resides in the mother (who came out of the coma) and daughter relationship.

I mentioned in my review of the third episode that every one of these stories so far has a happy ending.  The fourth episode is no exception.  And I've got to say I'm happy about that.  Science fiction and its weird tales cousin are usually short on happy endings.   We could use a lot more of them in our real world and our fiction.

This first season of the new Amazing Stories is just five episodes, making it more a half season than a season.  That's certainly not a happy ending.  I hope there's a second half down the road.  But I'll be back with a review of the fifth episode as soon as I get a chance to see it, in the next day or two.

See also Amazing Stories (2020) 1.1: "The Cellar": The Tops ... Amazing Stories (2020)  1.2: "The Heat": Life After Life ... Amazing Stories (2020) 1.3: "Dynoman and The Volt!": Sweet Superpowers ... Amazing Stories (2020) 1.5: "The Rift": Time Travel and a Candy Bar

Colony 3: Ascending, in More Ways than One

I'm a little late reviewing the third season of Colony - well, more than two years late - because I missed its initial airing on the USA Network and then I couldn't find it anywhere for free until I happened upon it the other day on Netflix.  And I thought it was so excellent, so fine a season of science fiction television, so much better than its first two seasons, that I regret I didn't shell out the few bucks to see this third season much sooner.

[Spoilers follow]

In addition to the whole season being top-notch, there were two especially effective and memorable turning points.

One was the death of Charlie, killed in a hail of grey-hat bullets.   The grey-hat commandos had been called in by "Uncle" Alan, and Will understandably holds him responsible, even though Will, Katie, and Bram were about to be killed by a firing squad, when the grey-hats arrived and violently disrupted those proceedings.  Charlie's death was a daring, terribly transforming event for both Bowmans and the audience, upsetting the previous givens of the series, and letting us know that anything was possible.

The other turning point flows from Charlie's death.  Will is determined to kill Alan, who, conniving as he always is, feels genuine grief about what happened to Charlie.  In a sequence that lasts at least ten minutes, Will later in the season has a gun pointed at Alan, and later his head in a bucket of filthy water, and struggles with himself over whether he can do this.  Peter Jacobson gives a tour-de-force performance as Alan, alternately trying to reason with Will and screamingly pleading for his life, and the combination plus whatever Will has inside him gets him to let Alan go.   Some of what Alan said, especially that without the grey-hat attack Will, Katie, and Bram would have died, apparently got through the Will.  I was on the edge of my seat, the whole time, as this scene played out.

In addition to Jacobson, the acting by the rest of the cast was good, especially, again, Josh Holloway as Will, Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie, and Tory Kittles as Broussard, and it was fun to see Peyton List from Frequency on the science fiction screen again.  The plot was fairly complex, with two outer-space entities at war with each other and we humans caught in the middle, but it all made sense through the end, with some kind of alien attack ensuing in the sky above Seattle.  It would have been great to find out more about this in a season 4 of Colony, but--

The geniuses at the USA Network failed to renew the series, for who knows what reason, so we're left high and dry, or maybe under the clouds of battle in the sky would be a better metaphor.  Hey, if it helps, I'll pay money to any streaming service to see another season of this series which, because of this third season, now ranks as one of the better science fiction series ever to have been on television, above Falling Skies and Revolution, its two closest competitors in theme.

See also Colony 2.1: Prelude ... Colony 2.2: 1969 ... Colony 2.3: The Wall ... Colony 2.7: Countdowns and Intentions ... Colony 2.8: What Passes for a Happy Ending ... Colony 2.9: Together Again ... Colony 2.10: The Fight Continues ... Colony 2.11: Twist ... Colony 2.12: The List ... Colony Season 2 Finale: Out and About

And see also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential ... 1.2: Compelling ... 1.5: Questions ... 1.6: The Provost ... Colony 1.7: Broussard ... Colony 1.8: Moon Base and Transit Zones ... Colony 1.9: Robot Arm ... Colony Season 1 Finale: Not Quite Enough

Colony 2.1: Prelude

Colony was back tonight with the debut of its second season, with an episode that was mostly prelude, and, like the first season, pretty good.

A couple of general impressions:  Colony now feels a little like FlashForward (cars suddenly stopping when the aliens arrive), Lost (prelude flashback), and even Fear the Walking Dead (the dawn of apocalypse).   All of that of course makes sense - especially given that star power from Lost (Josh Holloway) and The Walking Dead (Sarah Wayne Callies, not Fear the Walking Dead, buy close enough) are in Colony.

Colony was also a successor, from day one, to Falling Skies and its alien invasion, except we never saw the aliens per se in the first season.   Now we finally get to see ... well, not quite the aliens, but more of their ships and hardware.   We did see a big tall something, but it's not clear if that's an alien, robot, or even a tall co-opted human.

The prelude was generally satisfying, though - and, like everything else these days, like The Man in the High Castle, especially disquieting because ... you know why, look at who's set to be sworn in as President next week.  So Trump has had the unintended benefit of giving any show about a near-future or alternate history totalitarian state in the US a little more of an edge than it otherwise would have had.

But this first episode of the second has set the board nicely, and put the pieces in motion.  The first season had lots of potential, only some of which was realized.  I get the feeling that the second season will do better, and I'm looking forward to it.

See also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential ... 1.2: Compelling ... 1.5: Questions ... 1.6: The Provost ... Colony 1.7: Broussard ... Colony 1.8: Moon Base and Transit Zones ... Colony 1.9: Robot Arm ... Colony Season 1 Finale: Not Quite Enough


not exactly aliens, but strange enough ...  The Silk Code

Colony 1.2: Compelling

Colony 1.2 was as good as 1.1, which is saying a lot, because the debut episode was good indeed.   A common progression in weekly television series is for the second installment to be not as strong as the first, which signals a disappointing series, which I'm glad to see is not the case for Colony.

Of greatest interest in the narrative so far is the powerful role of Katie Bowman (Sarah Wayne Callies), wife of Will (Josh Holloway).   Indeed, her role is even a little more pivotal than Will's, seeing as how - as now is clear - she's not only actively working for the resistance but Will apparently doesn't know.  Thus, when she tells her kids that she supports Will's working for collaborators because that can help locate their oldest son, that's only half true.  The other half of the truth is Katie needs Will's information about what the collaborators are doing so she can report to the resistance.

Not that Katie is happy about being in such a difficult position - far from it - but the character navigates the difficult currents well, at least so far.  At some point, Will will find out truth, with any luck before the collaborators do.

Will, by the way, is no pushover, and shares the same abhorrence of the collaborators as his wife.  It's just a matter of time, at some crucial moment, when he breaks lose of the place he's in.

Significantly, we've seen no signs of the aliens themselves at this juncture in the story.   All we know of them is their space-faring ships, and what they've done to Earth.   There's a huge story to be told here, and if the no-holds-barred, lack of happy endings of the first two episodes provide any indication, we should be in for a rough and compelling ride.

See also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential


not exactly aliens, but strange enough ...  The Silk Code

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Colony 1.1: Alien Occupation with Potential

Hey, I saw the first episode of Josh Holloway's latest series, Colony, on the USA Network last night, and liked it.  Definitely has potential.  (I saw it On Demand - the series will premier this Thursday, January 10.)

With the demise of Falling Skies and the success of Childhood's End (it got pretty good reviews, though I wasn't thrilled with the ending of novel in the first place, but that's just me), we're definitely due for another alien occupation of Earth series.   Colony could well be it.

Holloway's Will Bowman and his wife Katie (played by Sarah Wayne Callies = Lori Grimes from The Walking Dead) play the pivotal couple in the story, and do it well.  It's good to see both back on television, as well as more work from Lost co-runner Carton Cuse.

[spoilers below]

Intelligence 1.2: Lightning Change

Well, Intelligence lost no time showing us what kind of series it will be, changing its basic setup in a profound and riveting way in just its second episode, on Monday.

The setup of the series, brought forth in the first episode and developed through most of the second, is that Gabriel is looking for his wife Amelia, who never came back from a mission years ago.  He's convinced she's not only alive, but still working for the good guys, i.e., our side.   In another television age, such a scenario might have continued for more than one season, with the viewers being doled out just an episode or two per year that slowly moved the story forward.

In the case of Intelligence, the scenario didn't survive the second episode.   By the time Monday night's hour was over, Gabriel is reunited with Amelia, who is moments later apparently killed (I say "apparently" because unless you see the head literally blown off, you never know in television drama). She's also revealed as working with the terrorists, but then, in a final twist, Lilian discovers that she was trying to help our side - or maybe just wanted to see Gabriel one more time - and Lillian will apparently keep this information from Gabriel, presumably because she doesn't want him distracted.

This is a lot of television plot development for one episode, and Intelligence does it well.  Not only is it fun to see Josh Holloway (Gabriel) and Zuleikha Robinson (Amelia) back on the screen together after Lost, but the scene with Gabriel, Amelia, and Riley in the hospital room, with Riley taking decisive action, was an outstanding little piece of stunning television in itself.

Intelligence, like the new television of Almost Human and Person of Interest, brings us into its world with a preface explaining what the series is about at the beginning of each episode.   But if the lightning speed of the Amelia arc is any indication, Intelligence may be in a class of its own.

See also Intelligence Debuts

#SFWApro

Intelligence Debuts

Intelligence debuted with a strong episode tonight - cerebrally as well action-wise - along with a good starting plot and set-up for the series, and a generally outstanding cast.

Leading that cast is Josh Holloway in his first major television outing since his portrayal of Sawyer in Lost, one of the most memorable characters in that now classic series.  Michael Emerson who played Ben in Lost has done well for himself in Person of Interest, so Holloway had a lot to live up to.  He's doing fine so far with his customary mix of sarcasm and no nonsense, a good persona for the lead character who is a master operative with the added advantage of a brain that's hooked into the Internet.   It's a good premise for a series for our day and age - the digital equivalent of The Six Million Dollar Man - and Gabriel (Holloway's character) even has a lost love he is searching the world to find.

Also excellent is Meghan Ory as Gabriel's secret service agent protector Riley - yeah, he's more important than the President - with a good combination of mental and physical agility.  Gabriel loves his wife, but there's a chemistry between hum and Riley that's bound to lead to interesting complications sooner or later.

Marge Helgenberger as head of the unit Lilian I'm not so sure about.  Her cool, deadpan performance as Katherine on CSI worked great for that almost anime-come-to-life series, but in Intelligence ... I don't know, I'll need to see more before I buy her as someone with sufficient wisdom and vision to be running this whole operation.

Meanwhile, the world depicted in Intelligence is sufficiently different from and similar to ours to host good continuing story.   It's not the Chinese who are our enemies, it's a conservative militant group within China, in the classic James Bondian tradition.   And the set-up recognizes and in fact is predicated upon the increasing interconnection of all forms of communication and information delivery - indeed, this is what makes Gabriel's connection to the Internet so powerful and effective.

The series moves to Monday night next week, replacing Hostages on CBS, which had its moments, but was based on a fundamentally absurd premise through the very end.   In contrast, Intelligence is a realistic as tomorrow's app, which Gabriel is well aware of, and which makes the story, at least in its premiere, refreshing and convincing.





#SFWApro

Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

Mission Impossible is back with its 4th movie, and one of the best - well, better than the 3rd, which was pretty good, but I'm not sure about the 1st and 2nd movies in the franchise, which were each in their own ways superb.

Alias, Lost, and Fringe fans (I'm a big one, though not of the ending of Lost), will be glad to know that J. J. Abrams is back, this time getting top producer credit (he directed MI3), and Josh Holloway puts in an appearance at the beginning.    The antes are raised nicely in MI4, with the Kremlin blown up, the US Defense Secretary killed (played by major actor Tom Wilkinson, making the death even more surprising, and all-out nuclear war at stake between the US and Russia.  This had an appealing retro flavor, and was refreshing in view of so many Islamic terrorists in movies and on television.

The MI slight-of-hand devices and impersonations were also in fine display - with a projector that makes the guard think he's looking at a far wall with no one in the room, even though Ethan and Benji are actually walking right by the guard into the guarded room - and a cool double feint in which the team splits up and fools two of the villain groups at the same time, keeping in touch via the comm at their disposal.  

As in all the MI stories, there are a couple of escapes that fall a little short of believability - Brandt's survival in the wind tunnel or whatever that was is the one that most comes to mind.  But these were balanced by the MI plans and strategies which don't work out - including failure to stop the launch of the Russian nuclear warhead toward the US - which gives the movie a good smack-in-the-face plausibility.

And the acting, including and especially Tom Cruise as Ethan, was excellent.  Jane (Paula Patton) and Sabine (Léa Seydoux) were both dangerous in different ways and good to look at.   The team - which was ghosted or put into non-existence when wrongly held responsible for the Kremlin bombing - accomplishes its mission in the end, and will clearly be back, as Ethan's new team, for another romp, I hope not too far in the future.

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Lost 6.8: The Third Team

Another superb Lost - 6.8 - tonight, as the story just gets better and better.  This one centers around Sawyer and his deceptions of others, in both realities.

First, in better LA:  Sawyer is a cop, not a con-man, looking a little like Don Johnson in Miami Vice.   He's kept his James Ford name.  He chose the cop over criminal life, because, after all, this is better LA.  His partner is Miles (first intersecting character), who helps set Sawyer up with a gorgeous red-head:  Charlotte (second intersecting character), who looks better than ever!   She and Sawyer sleep together - still a much better LA.  But she's on some kind of mission, some kind of spy - working for who, Widmore, but why, in this reality?  Sawyer gets furious when he finds her going through his files, with photographs of parents and him as a kid, behind his back.  He throws her out.   Ok, this is a better reality, not a perfect one.   But a few beats later, he and Miles apprehend another beauty: Kate (third intersecting character) on the run in LA.   (And in the just for good measure inexplicable intersection of characters, Sawyer the cop encounters Charlie's brother, looking to bail Charlie out of jail.)

Back in island reality, I've just to mention that Terry O'Quinn is giving a fabulous performance as faux-Locke/smoke monster.  He's 99% just like real Locke, and puts an enormous amount into the 1-percent difference.  Josh Holloway as Sawyer was better than ever tonight, too.

Anyway, back on the island, faux-Locke sends Sawyer on a mission: scout out that island across the water.   Sawyer eventually meets face-to-face with Widmore on the sub, and offers to work for him, to get Locke, in return for Widmore helping Sawyer and his friends, whoever they may be, off the island (I'd say, at very least, Kate, Hurley, Sun & Jin, and maybe Jack, if he wants to leave).   Sawyer's very convincing.

But back with Locke, Sawyer says he's just setting Widmore up for Locke to kill him.   Locke apparently believes him,  as did Widmore on the sub.   But then, alone with Kate, Sawyer says his real plan is to have Locke and Widmore fight it out, while he and Kate (and presumably Hurley etc) escape on the sub.

So, what does that leave us?   Last week, we had but two teams, Locke's vs. Jack's, with the status of Sawyer and Kate not yet determined.   Tonight, we have a third team with Widmore, and maybe a fourth team with Sawyer et al escaping, though could really be just part of the second team (or the first team, depending how you're counting) of Jack, Hurley, etc.

And regarding Sawyer's convincing deceptions, who really believes him?   Widmore's a pretty smart guy, is he really taken in?   Locke/smoke monster is way beyond smart - hard to believe that he'll fall too long for Sawyer's set-up?   And what about Kate - is Sawyer deceiving her, too?

I've always liked Kate and Sawyer better than Kate and Jack as a couple, so I'm most believing what Sawyer said to Kate on the island.   But what a tangled web Sawyer's weaving ...

And he and Kate may be just getting started in better LA.


6-min podcast review of Lost

See also  Lost Season Six Double Premiere ... Three Questions Arising from the Lost Season Six Premiere: Linkage Between Two Realities,  Dead Bodies Inhabited, Who/What Survived H-Blast? ... Lost 6.3:  Kate and Claire, Tenacious Details, and Dr. Arzt's Arse at the Airport ... Lost 6.4:  Better LA, Wilder Island, Some Partial Answers at Last ... Lost 6.5: Jack's Family and Prester John's Speculum ... Lost 6.6: Sayid the Assassin in Both Realities ... Lost 6.7: A Better Ben in Both Realities

More Lost - see : The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...

and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb ... 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time ... 5.5 Two Time Loops and Mind Benders ... 5.6 A Lot of Questions ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben ... 5.8 True Love Ways ... 5.9 Two Times and a Baby ... 5.10 The Impossible Cannot Happen ... 5.11 Clockwork Perfect Time Travel ... 5.12: Ben v. Charles, and Locke' Slave ... 5.13: Lost Meets Star Wars and the Sixth Sense ... The Problem with Baby Aaron and the Return of the Oceanic Six ... 5.14: Eloise, Daniel, and Obsession Trumping Paradox ... 5.15: Moral Compasses in Motion ... Lost Season 5 Finale: Jacob and Locke

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The Plot to Save Socrates





"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book 

Lost 6.3: Kate and Claire, Tenacious Details, and Dr. Arzt's Arse at the Airport

We now have more evidence about the nature of the two realities in Lost.  Not only the basics - most of the people on the plane, for example - stay the same.   So do the details.  In the LA reality of episode 6.3, Claire thinks her baby's name should be Aaron.   In metaphysical terms - the what-if ground rules of science fiction - the rules of these two realities are that details have a stubborn tenacity.  They poke through whatever the differences in the two realities, whenever they can.

Inexplicable coincidences, which in many ways have been the hallmark of Lost (Desmond and Jack running into each other on the steps of the stadium, Sawyer is served by Kate's mother in a dinner, etc) continue in the LA reality, as well.  Ethan is Claire's doctor in the hospital to which Kate brings Claire when she goes into labor.   But how did Ethan end up in Los Angeles in this reality?   In the original Lost reality, which the characters are still pursuing on the island, Ethan was born to Amy and Horace.   But if the H-bomb went off, how did Ethan get off the island, with the tenacious, constant detail that he's still a doctor kicking in?

Events on the island are little more explicable. There's something inside Sayid, if we believe Dogen, and I'm inclined to. I said last week that I thought Sayid came back to life inhabited by Jacob.   That still seems to be on track, though Jacob's taking a little longer to manifest himself.   (I suppose there's an outside chance that the manifesting spirit "claiming," as Dogen puts it, Sayid's body is not Jacob but Smokey - but what would be the Nemesis's point in claiming two bodies, Locke's and now Sayid's?)

Kate had some very good scenes with Sawyer on the island (and some really powerful acting from Josh Holloway) , where we also find that Claire is still alive - though inhabited, at least according to Dogen.

And back in alternate-reality L.A., Claire is not giving baby Aaron away.   The adopting parents have split, and the adoptive mother no longer wants the baby.  Lost missed an opportunity, here, to make the adoptive mother someone we know.  But we did get Dr. Arzt's arse at the airport. 

And with Claire keeping her baby, the two realities move maybe a little closer to convergence, which I predict will be how this will all end.


5-min podcast review of Lost

See also  Lost Season Six Double Premiere ... Three Questions Arising from the Lost Season Six Premiere: Linkage Between Two Realities,  Dead Bodies Inhabited, Who/What Survived H-Blast?

More Lost - see : The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...

and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb ... 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time ... 5.5 Two Time Loops and Mind Benders ... 5.6 A Lot of Questions ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben ... 5.8 True Love Ways ... 5.9 Two Times and a Baby ... 5.10 The Impossible Cannot Happen ... 5.11 Clockwork Perfect Time Travel ... 5.12: Ben v. Charles, and Locke' Slave ... 5.13: Lost Meets Star Wars and the Sixth Sense ... The Problem with Baby Aaron and the Return of the Oceanic Six ... 5.14: Eloise, Daniel, and Obsession Trumping Paradox ... 5.15: Moral Compasses in Motion ... Lost Season 5 Finale: Jacob and Locke

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book