Bosch: Legacy 2.7-2.10: The Highs and the Powerful Lows

A superb quartet of concluding episodes of the second season of Bosch: Legacy, put up last week and tonight on Amazon Prime Video.  Every one of these episodes had the masterful dialogue, riveting action, and mix of surprise and satisfaction that comes from seeing characters behave as you ultimately expect -- all of which typify Bosch at its best, which this second season of Legacy certainly is, as I've been saying all along.

Here are some of the highlights for me:

[And of course here's an advisory about Spoilers ahead ... ]

1. Maddie saves Harry, literally, just as Harry saved her at the beginning of this season, albeit in very different circumstances.  Maddie gets even closer to her father as a result.  But one of the fundamental, seemingly inviolable principles of this series and these characters is the two can't be happy together at the end, however close they may have become.  Whatever demons Maddie maybe be able overcome in her relationship with her father, which means everything to do her, he will always do, or will always have done, something that can and maybe does undermine that father-and-daughter unity.  It's tough to see, but realistic, given who Harry is.

2. I said in an earlier review that it was good to see Mo get some love.  Well, it turns out that the love was not physical, and worse than that, the attraction was not completely mutual.  But Mo is put in a position where he would have had to turn on Harry and Honey, and of course he's not going to do that, and so he can't continue with the woman he was falling for, even though she truly had at least some feelings for him.  Tough world, tough life -- there's that word again -- for just about all the main characters in this series.

3. Speaking of Honey, she's on her way to an unexpectedly big job.  At least, she hopes so, and I hope so, too.  Will be fun to see her in this new job next season.

4. As I've been saying in these reviews, the acting this season was outstanding, and especially impressive was Madison Lentz as Maddie.  By the conclusion of this season, I'd say she was on a par with Titus Welliver as Bosch, which is high praise indeed.

5. But speaking of acting, it was good and sad to see Lance Reddick one more time in his role of Irvin Irving in the season finale.  A great actor in everything from The Wire to Fringe, and I'm glad we all got a chance to see him one more time, filmed before he left us in March of this year.

See also Bosch: Legacy 2.1-2.4: Better and Better ... Bosch: Legacy 2.5-2.6: Maddie Steps Up

See also Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ...  Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber ... Bosch 3: Best Season So Far ... Bosch 4: Delivering and Transcending the Genre ... Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View ... Bosch Season 6: The Best Police on Television ... Bosch Season 7: Can't Let Go ... Bosch: Legacy: Even Better than Bosch

                   another kind of police story 

Bosch Season 7: Can't Let Go

It's the theme song of Bosch (written by Jesse Nolan, performed by Caught a Ghost) because it's the story of Bosch's professional life. It's animated every season in this best cop drama ever on television, and never more so than in it's seventh and final season on Amazon Prime Video.

What Bosch can't let go of is satisfying his profound sense of justice, or bringing to justice the perpetrators of the murders he's investigating and haunted by, or haunted by and investigating.  In season seven, the victim is a 10-year old girl who dies in a deliberately set fire.

The eight-episode season is powerful and memorable for other reasons, too.  Episode six contains one of the most intense short shoot-outs I've seen on any screen.  Paul Calderon is practically shaking with tension and fear as his Jimmy Robertson tries to protect Bosch's beloved daughter Maddie from a skilled hitman who has just taken out a judge who is Bosch's current lover.  The acting, by the way, is superb on the part of every character, both in this scene and the entire series.

Titus Welliver in the title role gives the performance of his career.  Jamie Hector as Bosch's partner Jerry Edgar may be even more than impressive than he was as Marlo in The Wire, which is the biggest compliment in my book, in case you didn't know what I think of The Wire.  Speaking of The Wire, Lance Reddick is always good, and he's as good as ever in Bosch.   I've seen Amy Aquino in a few prior series, but she became an essential character in Bosch.  Madison Lintz has really grown into her crucial part as Bosch's daughter, and I'm looking forward to seeing her in the Bosch spinoff.

Bosch began on Amazon at the dawn of our age of streaming, and helped establish it.  The series went out every bit as strong as it began, something you can't say about every great series.  Similarly, it kept a consistency of character and focus, something you can't say about too many things, period, in this our uncertain age.   But I'm certain I'll be watching the Bosch spinoff, and I'll see you back here with a review of that when it's up on Amazon.

See also Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ...  Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber ... Bosch 3: Best Season So Far ... Bosch 4: Delivering and Transcending the Genre ... Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View ... Bosch Season 6: The Best Police on Television ... 

                   another kind of police story 

 

Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View

Amazon Prime put up the fifth season of Bosch last Friday, and I've got to say, though I really enjoyed all the prior seasons, this one was the best (I've said this after every season).  It has more of Bosch's customary panache, with the punch-in-the-face surprises, top-notch acting, and well-drawn nexus of plots we've come to expect from this drama.   At this point, it's not only the best cop show on television - in Los Angeles terrain that surpasses the many excellent homicide-cop shows that take place in NYC and Chicago - but must be counted among the best cop shows ever on television (I think I said this after most of the seasons, too).

The repartee is sharp as ever, laugh-out-loud funny, profound when need be, and cutting-edge current, as always.  A female detective says she's "polyamorous".   Back in the office, an old-salt high-ranking officer complains about the lousy coffee, "you might as well drink straight stomach acid, cut out the middleman".   Harry asks Maddie if she remembers the MLK quote from her senior high school year, "the arc of the moral universe ..."  Earlier, she advises Harry to "watch your six with her".

Maddie has really come into her own this season.  She was always Harry's daughter when it came to doing what she wanted, and now she's applying this to directly helping her father.   In fact, I not only thought Maddie had her best season, so did Lt. Grace Billets.   Plaudits to Madison Lintz as Maddie and Amy Aquino as Billets.   Come to think of it, attorney Honey Chandler (well played by Mimi Rogers) had her best season, too, and delivered some of the best twists in the narrative, starting with taking on Harry as her client.   Speaking of which, Titus Welliver, always outstanding as Bosch, was even more outstanding in this fifth season.   Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar and Lance Reddick as Irwin Irving are excellent as ever, too

Getting back to the locale, Bosch always captured the unique Los Angeles mix of stunning beauty and rotting degradation.   Bosch's apartment is high up and indeed has a "killer view," as Maddie says.  But his job takes him through the dregs of society.   There are never any outright happy endings in Bosch - we have to be happy that at least he survived - but this one really goes to the dog(s).   If that's not clear, give yourself a treat and see season 5, after you've seen the previous four.

See also  Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ...  Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber ... Bosch 3: Best Season So Far ... Bosch 4: Delivering and Transcending the Genre

                   another kind of police story 

Bosch 3: Best Season So Far

Binge-watched the third season of Bosch on Amazon the past few nights, and found it better than ever.

Among my favorite parts of this unconventional season of an unconventional hard-boiled LA noir cop series are: a serial killer who comes in and out of the story, and apparently has no connection to the central story lines, rides by Bosch, untouched, and likely to play a central role in season 4; Bosch discovers that he has not solved his mother's murder, and the new suspect is, well, I don't want to give that much away; and, Frank Herbert's Dune makes a cameo appearance.

Bosch has a gut connection to The Wire, and not just because Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick play major roles.   There's nothing in Bosch like The Wire's drug crime and culture of Baltimore, but the police part of Bosch has the same compelling intra-gritty cop story.

Loyalty is always put to the test, in an environment in which almost no detective is thoroughly ethical or reliable.  Bosch epitomizes this - he's par excellence no angel, but someone you'd want on your side and not on your case.  Titus Welliver delivers the best performance of his career - by far - and is well on his way to portraying a character as iconic as Sgt. Friday.  In fact, I'm feeling more and more that this Bosch series of Dragnet meets The Wire will be as significant in our popular culture as those 1950s network television and early 21st century cable series.

Unlike many other fine police shows - such as Chicago PD, which deals with a different case just about every week, and has a Sergeant who is not quite believable in the violence he dishes out - Bosch sticks with its several cases throughout its 10-episode season, with some of those cases even going a lot further than one season.  And the quality of the detective life portrayed on Bosch feels to me more realistic, though I have no direct knowledge myself of what police life is actually like.   It's testament to the writing, acting, and production of the series that it feels so real.

I've enjoyed Bosch from its first season two years ago. But having just seen the third season, I'm thinking Bosch is not only the best police drama now on screen but on its way to being one of the best police dramas ever on television.

See also  Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ...  Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber

                   another kind of police story 

Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber

I just finished the second season of Bosch last night, streaming on Amazon Prime.   Like the first season, this gritty, fast-moving, wise-cracking LA cop series is the living incarnation of Dragnet - that iconic very early television series featuring Jack Webb as Joe Friday - which is to say, very good indeed.

There were some differences between this second season and the first.  Almost no romance - which I missed - but made up for by a stunner in the middle of the season, and one of the best shoot-outs ever on television a little after that.  Indeed, my main complaint about this second season is that it took a little too long to get there, after which the action was lightning on the screen.

The repartee, as it was in the first season, and in Dragnet, was nonstop and top-notch.  It's also pretty hip, with Bosch invoking Uber - not using the app but invoking the name - at one crucial juncture. As was clear in the first season, Titus Welliver inhabits this role with perfect intensity and laconic style, and there's no doubt that, although he's played cops on television often in this past, this will be the defining role of his career.

Jamie Hector is also excellent as Bosch's partner, and although this hasn't quite yet attained what Hector did as Marlon in The Wire, it's a strong contender.   Lance Reddick, whose career also began to catch fire on The Wire, is excellent as always in a top brass role, and in the second season he plays an especially pivotal role.

Back to the lack of romance in the second season, there are also fewer really memorable women on hand.   But this is just one season, and with Bosch already renewed for a third, there's every reason to look forward to stories with all sorts of people in bed in what has become the best cop show on television.

See also Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ... Bosch Season 3: Best Season So Far

                   another kind of police story 

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Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended

I binge-watched the first half of Bosch on Amazon Prime Instant Video last night.  Herewith a brief, nonspoiler review.

The series is superb, and a worthy addition to streaming masterpieces such as House of Cards and Peaky Blinders on Netflix, and what The Man in the High Castle promises to be on Amazon.  These shows are spearheading a new revolution in television viewing, as far ahead of most cable today as cable was to network television when it first unveiled The Sopranos in the late 1990s.   The capacity to binge watch - available with cable usually only for series already aired, or after the DVD was released - has been coupled on Netflix and Amazon with a pace in the narrative that we've not quite seen before on the television screen.

All I'll say about the narrative of Bosch, at this point, is that it's a story that seems old for an instant - about a Dirty Harry kind of cop - which quickly pivots to originality, and surprises with twists and turns in every episode.   The writing is joyfully literate.  In the very first episode, a character asks, can you "humor us about the humerus bone"?   Bosch's love interest, a lawyer turned cop (itself a pretty original character) who wants to be a detective, is said by Bosch to have gone from "the briefcase to the billy club".   And there's a meta-quality that runs through the entire story - Bosch lives in a fancy apartment, with a great view, far above his pay grade, because he was paid a lot of money by Paramount for a movie about one of his cases.

The acting is outstanding. Annie Wersching - of 24 fame - plays Bosch's aforementioned love interest, and she's never been better.   Titus Welliver puts in the best performance of his career in the title role, and that's saying a lot, since he hit the note so well in his stint on Sons of Anarchy.  Jamie Hector from The Wire plays Bosch's partner, and Lance Reddick of Fringe as well as The Wire is on hand as the Deputy Chief aka Bosch's main boss.

It's tough, as I said, to get a fresh take on a police procedural, a genre as old on television as Dragnet in the first golden age of TV in the 1950s.  But Bosch - based on the novels by Michael Connelly, who co-created the series with Eric Overmyer (The Affair, Treme, and Boardwalk Empire are some of his credits) - has somehow managed to give us a police story we haven't seen before, and it's a riveting tale indeed.

See also Bosch: Second Half: As Fine as the First

                   another kind of police story 

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John Wick: A Man and His Dog

John Wick is being billed as Keanu Reeves' best film since The Matrix.  It is.   And, if no-holds-barred shoot-em-ups like Banshee are your glasses of tea, you might like it even more.

John Wilk, played by Reeves, is a hit-man who, against all odds, managed to get out of the business alive and relatively happy.  In this, John Wilk shares a provenance with movies like Assassins with Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas, in my view the very best of this genre, in which there's of course always something to get the retired assassin drawn back in.

In Wick's case, it's a double punch.  His wife, whose love got him to leave the business, dies of natural causes.   She arranged to send him a sweet little puppy to keep him company after she's gone. But the headstrong son of a Russian mob boss makes the mistake of cruelly killing the puppy when stealing the keys to Reeves' car.

The death of the puppy was a highly effective and moving scene.   It certainly made me want to bring those bad guys to justice, and it was the motivation that set Wick back to his lifetime profession.   When the dog killer wonders to Wick and others why Wick is so upset about the puppy's death - "it's just a fucking dog" - we know, having witnessed its killing and what happened with Wick and the puppy before that, why that little puppy was so much more.

The action is great, even though there were a couple of easy shots that Wick missed, in service of the plot, and there were a couple of holes in the plots logic, too.  But, on the other hand, the supporting cast was outstanding, including Lance Reddick of The Wire, Lost, and Fringe fame, who's always good to see on the screen, and Willem Dafoe as another hit man.

If the Russian mob, bigger than life killers, and hotels for assassins with rules of the house that must be followed if you don't want to be killed yourself, take a 90-minute break and check out this fine movie.

Intelligence Season 1 Finale: The Stars and the Chips

An excellent Intelligence Season 1 finale tonight, which tied up some loose ends, and brought out at least one new one to dangle before our eyes and beckon to a second season.

You can analyze this episode by a look at the stars.

Tomas Arana, who played the bad guy in the 1992 movie The Bodyguard - who portrayed the assassin who masquerades as a bodyguard - reprises much of that role in Intelligence.  He plays an intelligence chief who in fact is one of main bad guys - Iranian super spies deep undercover, out to kill a governor on her way to likely being elected President, and anyone who gets in the way.

Lance Reddick plays another intelligence chief who turns out not to be such a bad guy, after all.  But his character doesn't have much luck, and suffers the same fate as his character over on NBC's The Blacklist, also on Monday night.  The character dies.   Reddick played two memorable, long lasting characters on The Wire and Fringe, but his characters haven't had much longevity since.

And Peter Coyote, an outstanding character actor for decades, and Lillian's father on Intelligence, turns out in a nice twist to be the bad guy who hired Mei Chen.  We'll need a second season to find out why.

Gabriel's mother, played by Debra Mooney, makes her first appearance in the series, and is an important new character who lends humanity to Gabriel.  Not that he needs it - as Riley and everyone who knows him sees - he's a human being enhanced not degraded by his chip.  And that's really the thesis and essence of this story, and what makes the series so good.  It has a balance of tech and human, of digital and flesh-and-blood, which is right where it should be, and where I think it will indeed be in our real future.

My one criticism is the continued refusal to mix pleasure (aka sex) and business by Gabriel and Riley. But that can be easily remedied, and is one of the many reasons I hope Intelligence gets the future on CBS it deserves.

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 ...Intelligence 1.8: Heart of Darkness, Cyberstyle ... Intelligence 1.9:  EMP Amnesia and Children ... Intelligence 1.10: Lillian's Daughter ...Intelligence 1.11: American Chernobyl Countermeasures ... Intelligence 1.12: Cyber Adam and Eve

#SFWApro



Like stories about near-future high-tech counter-espionage?  Check out The Pixel Eye

Intelligence 1.12: Cyber Adam and Eve

Intelligence checked in with its best episode of the season last night, with the first a two-part finale, of what I hope will be the season not the series.

The set-up puts everyone on the show in crisis:  Mei Chen has killed three high-level agency people, and made it look like Gabriel did it, under some enemy's nefarious control.  This sets Gabriel and Riley - who of course implicitly believes in Gabriel - on the run, and gets Lillian removed from command, too.   The Cassidys are expected to keep working for Cyber Command, but soon lend their acumen to helping Gabriel and Riley find out what really happened with the murders.  This leaves Lance Reddick's Tetazoo in charge of a mostly ruthless Cyber crew - hey, it was good to see Reddick back on the screen after his character was killed last week on The Blacklist - but in a good final twist, it seems he may not be that bad, or at least not the worst, after all.   If we can believe Mei Chen, she was working for someone else in our government when she did the killings and framed Gabriel.

There's lots of good material here, not just for the finale but a second season.   Gabriel gets the cyber drop on Mei by pretending he's enjoying her overtures and appeals that they both comprise a new kind of humanity who are above the rest of us, whatever the side, U.S., Chinese, or otherwise.   But as the audience at least can see, this perhaps was not a complete pretense on Gabriel's part.   He likely not only finds Mei physically attractive, but agrees to some extent with her view that the two of them share something very special and different.   The question for the future would be, to what extent?

Meanwhile, it was good to see Lillian take her most independent stance in the series so far.  Cyber Command and Gabriel and Mei indeed represent something never seen before in intelligence gathering and espionage, and binding such an operation to old-fashioned government structures and lines of command will never be able to make the best use of it, and indeed may hobble the operation.

Intelligence has rolled out a provocative start to an original and important narrative, and I'm looking forward to more both next week and next season.

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 ...Intelligence 1.8: Heart of Darkness, Cyberstyle ... Intelligence 1.9:  EMP Amnesia and Children ... Intelligence 1.10: Lillian's Daughter ... Intelligence 1.11: American Chernobyl Countermeasures

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Like stories about near-future high-tech counter-espionage?  Check out The Pixel Eye

The Blacklist 1.16: True Colors

Well, it's been clear throughout The Blacklist that there was something wrong with Elizabeth's husband Tom.  Last week, we found that he was indeed a fake, an agent whose "target" was Elizabeth.  And this past Monday, in episode 1.16, we find out just what kind of agent:  brutal, effectively overpowering, outwitting,  and killing two people, Jolene and  Lance Reddick's formidable character - who, at a steep price, was doing's Red's bidding.

Reddick's character at least figured it out - too late to save his life, but in time to alert the audience - about the kind of agent Tom is.   And now Tom is Elizabeth's and Red's problem.

Actually, he's been Elizabeth's problem throughout this first season.   Far more interesting, as it is always, is what's going on with Red vis-a-vis Tom.   If Red had an inkling of how deadly Tom is, why would he have allowed Elizabeth to keep living with Tom?  And if Red was clueless about this, or had little more than the distrust of Tom he revealed from time to time, then why was that?   Surely, regarding anything that important about Elizabeth, Red would have been more proactive, as he's been in many other matters.

Meanwhile, while this intrigue was partially unfolding, we got a good story about the other villain in 1.16, played by Hoon Lee of Banshee renown.  In The Blacklist, unlike Banshee's Job, Hoon Lee plays Mako Tanida, who's just bad and ruthless, with no redeeming humor at all.   This is the difference between a hero - which Job is - and a villain.  Tanida indeed kills Ressler's love,  and this sets Ressler off in one his best story lines in the series.  Red takes care of Tanida, but I would have liked to have seen more about how he did this, rather than Ressler just getting Tanida's head in a box.

But the overall episode was excellent, and the unmasking of Tom promises some more excellent episodes ahead, and I'm looking forward.

See also The Blacklist Debuts: Alias Meets Jay Z ... The Blacklist 1.2: Mysteries ... The Blacklist 1.3: Construction Site Heights ... The Blacklist 1.6: Truth and Enigma ... The Blacklist 1.7: Natural Immunity ... The Blacklist 1.8: The Father and the Husband ... The Blacklist 1.9: Field Transfusion ... The Blacklist 1.10: Those Words ... The Blacklist 1.11: Red's Retribution ... The Blacklist 1.12: The DNA Meister ...  The Blacklist 1.13: Red Writ Large ... The Blacklist 1.15: The Husband's Other Shoe

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  Enjoy a little espionage?  Try The Pixel Eye

Fringe 5.4: Ghosts of Fringes Past

Talk about searingly bittersweet - mostly bitter, actually, but indelible on the psyche - we get a soul-satisfying scene, followed by one of by one of the biggest kicks in solar plexus in tonight's episode 5.4 of Fringe.

First, there's a delightful trip down Fringe memory lane, as Walter realizes that some of the mementos of Fringe cases past could help our gang in their future resistance against the Observers.   He kept what he could of what we saw in every Fringe episode, and selects the gaseous compound that causes skin to quickly grow over the lips and suffocate the target - in this case, tonight, the targets being human collaborators and Observers guarding Penn Station Newark (a station I know well, having caught a train or two from there down to Washington, DC when I taught at a college in New Jersey).

So far, so good.  And even better when we see Broyles, apparently collaborating with the Observers, but of course that couldn't be, and we see him in a great scene with Peter, Olivia, Walter, and Etta - one of the best this season.  Excellent acting by Lance Reddick who perfectly plays an older Broyles, with a little less of the Broyles quirk, and a slowing down just a bit as befits his age.

Tonight's show would have wonderful had it ended right then and there.   But Fringe isn't pulling any punches, not holding anything back in its final season, including the overwhelming superiority of the Observers, at least at this point.   And so the episode concludes with yet another tip-top gun battle, but an Observer gets the drop on Etta - and kils her.

A major blow, not only to the resistance, but to viewers.  Etta was a wonderful character, the best of Olivia and Peter, full of sass and power.   It doesn't make us feel much better that she manages one last move which takes out a bunch of Observers with a bomb.   Her loss is pretty close to insufferable.

Fringe, as we know, admits of time travel.   Certainly the Observers do it with ease.  In that sense, there's hope for Etta.  But until and unless we see her alive again, we've seen a sad and diminished future on Fringe tonight indeed.   Maybe even more reason that ever to watch what happens.




See also Fringe 5.1: Paved Park and Shattered Memories ... Fringe 5.2: Saving Our Humanity

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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"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"Daddy, this is the best book I've ever read!" -- Molly Vozick-Levinson, age 12 at the time

"cerebral but gripping" -- Booklist

Lost 5.7: Bentham and Ben

Wow, what an episode of Lost! (5.7, if you're counting) ... in which we learn -

1. Our hope that Ben might not be bad is shattered ... at least, for the most part ... because Ben kills Locke! Now, maybe this is part of some more complex master plan, but it sure seems as if Ben doesn't want Locke to interact with Eloise (Faraday's mother), because that could lead to dangerous consequences of some kind for Ben. So he talks Locke out of the noose, but then, after he learns Locke is going to see Eloise, strangles Locke with the noose, anyway, and makes it look as if Locke killed himself... One of the best surprises this year on Lost..

2.Ben also kills Abaddon (who is in Widmore's employ) - too bad, I actually like Lance Reddick in this role better than in Fringe.

3. Back on the island, after the plane crash of last week, we see two other results in addition to Jack, Kate, and Hurley alive and ok: (a) Locke is back alive, in seemingly perfect shape, and (b) the other people on the plane - including Cesar, and Ben - have survived, in various wounded and ok conditions. Cesar is ok. But Ben is badly wounded. So Locke is again revealed as someone the island regenerates. The first time around, the island let him walk again (and Locke as Jeremy Bentham back in a wheelchair in our world was a nice touch). This time, the island brings Locke back to life...

4. Which leaves us with yet another question about Ben: if he knew the island would definitely bring Locke back to life, maybe Ben wasn't so evil to kill Locke, after all... You gotta hand it to Ben and Lost - once again, just when we're pretty sure Ben is evil, a facet emerges that maybe puts Ben in another light ... And we haven't even found out, as yet, how Ben got beat-up before the latest plane trip...

5. And last point about plane trips... Didn't Jack say in the Season 3 finale that he'd been flying around, lots of times, hoping his plane would crash? Jack didn't give quite that impression in his conversation with Locke tonight. In fact, Jack rejected Locke's plea that he round up the Oceanic Six and take them back to the island. But Locke's death is reported pretty soon after Jack's meeting with him - Jack sees the notice in the newspaper on his plane ride back from Sidney. When, exactly, did Jack get in all of that traveling around by plane? I suppose Jack might not have intended the plane rides to bring him back to the island, just to crash, but still...

6. But it was great to see Locke talk to Walt, back in New York...


5-min podcast review of Lost 5 Hr 7

Enjoy Battlestar Galactica? Every episode reviewed on Infinite Regress ... here's a review of the latest episode: Final 7: 'Since I Died in Your Arms'

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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 ... 5.8 True Love Ways

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The Plot to Save Socrates

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