Hell on Wheels 4.1-2: Rolling Again

Hell on Wheels came back for its 4th Season Saturday before last, and has chugged in with two fine episodes.

Most appealing is Cullen's devotion to his new wife and baby.   Cullen's even sleeping with Naomi in season 3 was a breakthrough for the character, who was much more circumspect - and boring, in this regard - in previous seasons.   We could only assume that Cullen felt some kind of deep attraction to the Mormon farmer's daughter, and, if that was the case, it was satisfying and not surprising to see Cullen not only standing by but enjoying his new family in episodes 4.1-2.   (There's a new actress playing Naomi, but that's fine.)

Cullin's confrontation with the Swede ("I'm Norwegian!"), masquerading as the bishop he killed, was also satisfying.   As cannily demented and dangerous as the Swede is, he has never been a match for Cullen and his intelligence face to face.

The other big news in season 4 is Ulysses S. Grant's appointment of Campbell as provisional governor of Wyoming, the current forward point of the railroad.   Campbell is well-played by Jake Weber (last seen to good effect as Joe on Medium, and to not such good effect as a lunatic cult-leader on The Following), and the character will provide a good opponent to Durant, and likely Cullen as well, before this season is over.  Indeed, Durant will need Cullen to stand up to Campbell and his well-dressed men, the cutting violent edge of civilization.

One looming question is what happened to Elam, last seen at the end of season 3 on the wrong end of a bear.  We learn that his horse came back but not Elam, and since Common's name is not in the credits, it's not unreasonable to conclude that the bear consumed him.  However, I think Elam is far too important and powerful a character leave the series this way, or in any way at this point.   I'm looking forward to seeing Cullen go out and find him.

And I'm looking forward to this season of Hell on Wheels in any case.  The series continues to get better, was good in the first place, and is a pleasure to see.

See also Hell on Wheels 3.1-2: Bohannan in Command ... Hell on Wheels 3.3: Talking and Walking ... Hell on Wheels 3.4: Extreme Lacrosse ... Hell on Wheels 3.5: The Glove ... Hell on Wheels 3.6: The Man in Charge ...Hell on Wheels 3.7: Water, Water ... Hell on Wheels 3.8: Canterbury Tales ...Hell on Wheels 3.9: Shoot-Out and Truths ... Hell on Wheels Season 3 finale: Train Calling in the Distance

And see also  Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the Track, and the Telegraph ... Hell on Wheels 1.6: Horse vs. Rail ... Hell on Wheels 1.8: Multiple Tracks ... Hell on Wheels 1.9: Historical Inevitable and Unknown ... Hell on Wheels Season One Finale: Greek Tragedy, Western Style

 
deeper history

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The Following 2.8: Coalescing?

The second season of The Following has thus far been a little at loose ends - which is to say, a few too many threads with weakly connected villains to provide the kind of intensity we saw in the first season. Not only has Joe been resurrected, but Lily's family, itself somewhat disparate, has played a major role in the havoc until recently, and now Joe as taken up with Micah, played by Jake Weber, the guy who played another Joe, much more affable, on Medium a few years ago.  Fortunately, it looks at the end of episode 2.8 that Joe Carroll may be taking over Micah's following, which could be a big step in the right direction of getting a more unified Following narrative.

Otherwise, although there's been some good development of Ryan's niece - if not the trite story of the reporter who wants the Joe Carroll story - the most interesting character development on The Following season 2 has been with Mike.   The killing of his father by Lily's group for revenge only sent him in a direction he was already headed, a direction towards greater violence towards the following based on what happened to him last year.  Last night Mike nailed it when he confronted Ryan about Ryan's concern that Mike might be turning into another Ryan, which is pretty much exactly where Mike is going.  Ryan, in a realistic portrayal of how over-the-top people react when other people they care about go over the top, doesn't like what he's seeing in Mike.

So The Following, after eight episodes of its second season, stands at a crossroads of sorts.  If Joe can pull all the evil together around him, the second season could gain a focus that rivals the first.  Ryan's niece Max is an important new character, and the mole in the FBI puts Ryan, Mike, and Max in a situation even more dangerous than last year, in which Roderick was just a sheriff not FBI.

I'm looking forward to seeing how all of this develops.

See also The Following Is Back for Its Second Season ... The Following 2.2: Rediscovering Oneself ... The Following 2.3: Coalescing ... The Following 2.4: Psycho Families and Trains ... The Following 2.5: Turning Tides

And see also The Following Begins ... The Following 1.2: Joe, Poe, and the Plan ... The Following 1.3: Bug in the Sun ... The Following 1.4: Off the Leash ... The Following 1.5:  The Lawyer and the Swap ... The Following 1.7: At Large ... The Following 1.9: All in a Name, Or, Metaphor in the Service of Murder ... The Following 1.13: At Last Something of a Day for the Good Guys ... The Following Season 1 Finale: Doing Dead

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Like a Neanderthal following in the current world? Try The Silk Code

Person of Interest of Interest

I was interested enough to see the first episode of Person of Interest.  It's Minority Report (an operation identifies crimes before they're committed, and tries to stop them), Medium (sees the future), Mission Impossible (you know what that is), a bit of 1984, and a few other touches all its own.  I liked it a lot.

Michael Emerson (Ben from Lost) is one of the major characters (Finch) who is so much like Ben (Finch even gets roughed up like Ben) that it could have been Ben, but that's ok, because Ben was one of the more fascinating, provocative characters on Lost.   Here he plays a computer genius who built a device, in the aftermath of 9/11, that could track potential terrorist attacks, with a view towards our government's intercepting them.   An unintended consequence is that this special super-computer could also ID potential non-terrorist crimes like individual murders and kidnappings.  Ben - sorry, Finch - built a back-door to his program, and he's determined to stop as many of these one-on-one crimes as possible.  Not as easy, of course, as it sounds, and complicated by the fact that the computer program cannot be sure whether the person of interest it identifies is the victim or the perpetrator.

Finch needs eyes in the field.  Not only only eyes, but moves that can stop the crimes.  He's not government, but he has plenty of money, he's off the grid, and he's in the market for a James Bond kind of agent.  That's where Reese comes in, played by James Caviezel (who was excellent in another science fiction story, Frequency, one of the best communication-back-through-time movies ever made - in fact, the best).  My Mission Impossible reference gets to the complexity of Reese's assignments, and 1984 points to our government still watching all of us through Finch's massive computer and its omnipresent lenses.

The premiere was good,  the show has potential, and I'll keep watching it.  I'm always a sucker for stories about the government watching me.  And, hey,  J. J. Abrams - one of the executive producers - has done some pretty good previous work with Felicity, Alias,  Lost (except for the ending, which I don't think was his fault),  and Fringe.

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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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Rubicon 1.5: Bloom

Ed advises Will to "connect the dots," find the "narrative," in Rubicon 1.5, and Ed gives Will a significant dot or name:  Donald Bloom.

But the narrative is not easy to find or even fathom in Rubicon, much like Joyce's Ulysses, where Bloom also plays a major role.   In Rubicon, where the spy games are much more life and death than the figurative polarities of Ulysses, the key is matching the code to physical realities at home and abroad.

Will soon runs into Bloom in the real - at a table in a restaurant - but Will's boss Kale (played with quiet deadpan potential deadliness by Arliss Howard, last seen to good effect on television in Medium) is sitting right across from Bloom.   Kale sees Will, who "scurries away," as Kale later says to Will, and the chess game is on.

Will finds enough to know that looking into Bloom can be dangerous.   When Ed proudly shows him that he's connected a lot of dots, producing summaries of summaries, Will tells him that they both should forget about Bloom - he wasn't a spy at all.   Will wants to protect himself as well as his new old friend Ed.

But the intricacies wind higher.   Turns out Will's meeting with Ed was recorded, and it winds up in the hands of Spangler - Kale's boss - who also now seems disinclined to pursue Will on this matter.   Is that because Tanya, the nervous but brilliant new kid on the block on Will's team, dazzled Spangler by identifying a major Al Qaeda operative - one George Beck - before he even fully became one?

Hard to say - as is the case with just about every theory on or about Rubicon.  But that's part of the strange appeal of the show, and tonight's episode did have the major step forward of Will finally meeting Katherine Rhumor (the widow of the guy who blew his brains out at the beginning of series) in person.   And that was real, no rumor, and enough to keep me in good humor that show's making some real progress.


5-min podcast review of Rubicon


See also Rubicon on AMC ...

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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