reviewing Black Doves; Dark Matter; Dept. Q; Detective Hole; Dexter: Resurrection; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; Memory of a Killer; MobLand; Outlander; Paradise; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Smoke; Star City; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Tehran;The: Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Night Agent; Your Friends & Neighbors +books, films, music, podcasts, politics
George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.
Chuck Todd interviews me about alternate histories
Showing posts with label Michelle Forbes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michelle Forbes. Show all posts
Caught the first two hours of The Killing on AMC the other night. The series has a lot going for it, including
a genuine whodunit, where we don't know who killed Rosie Larsen - in contrast to Criminal Minds, where we usually know the killer fairly early, but like Wire in the Blood from England and Wallander from Sweden - and The Killing is indeed an English-language adaptation of a very successful Danish series
Mireille Enos in the starring role of Sarah Linden - Enos did a great job on Big Love, and on also played memorable guest roles Numb3rs, Lie to Me, and Medium which I happened to see ... here, Enos is reminiscent of Olivia from Fringe, though at once grittier and more emotional ...
Michelle Forbes in a supporting role as Rosie's mother ... Forbes always puts in a winning, no-holds-barred performance
Rosie's father is good, too, and the reactions of the family, the various police, and the politician and his staff who (at this point) may or not be involved in some way in the murder are all believable, and more real - less contrived in their reactions - than you often get on television. This is especially true of the family, and it's already clear that the search for Rosie Larson's killer on The Killing will be no search for Laura Palmer's killer on Twin Peaks, but instead will be an unvarnished, powerful look at a murder, its impact on the family, and on a police investigation comprised of detectives with talent but no ready answers.
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...
Fine, taut episode of The Closer last night, with Mary McDonnell, fresh from her role as the late President Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica, right in the face of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick), and the Deputy Chief of course giving it back as good or better than she gets.
The confrontation is about Capt. Sharon Raydor's (Mary McDonnell) investigation of Sgt. David Gabriel's shooting of an unarmed man. We the viewers saw the flash of fire that Gabriel was responding to, so we know he's telling the truth, but Raydor did not and does not. Brenda Leigh knows Gabriel is telling the truth, not because she saw anything, but because she believes in the Sgt., and her job is to get the proof.
But the best action was between Raydor and Johnson. Brenda already acquired a brilliantly evil nemesis last season in the character of the lawyer Stroh, and now she's acquired a tough, volatile opponent in Captain Raydor, who is unimpressed with Brenda Leigh's rank and drawl. But Raydor clearly does appreciate the Deputy Chief's intelligence and power, which should make for a good continuing story this season. It could be The Closer's equivalent of Kavanaugh vs. Mackey on The Shield, though so far Raydor doesn't seem quite as pathological as Kavanaugh, and Johnson is clearly a different kind of cop than Mackey, though both like to take authority into their own hands, to say the least.
Hey, it would be really wild now if Michelle Forbes walked into some role on The Closer...
Well, the next to last episode of True Blood was powerful and provocative. Amy died happy. Jason's reaction made perfect sense. The kiss between Sookie and Sam was satisfying - at least to the viewer - and Bill's travails with that white trash vampire had just the right dollop of humor. I liked Tara, her mother, and whatever it is that Michelle Forbes is playing.
But I gotta say that I don't see Rene as the killer. Yeah, he had that conversation with Jason earlier on that fateful day, and he's certainly been around close enough to do the killings - but he just seemed too decent throughout the whole previous part of the series.
I know, that could be his front. And we know nothing, really, of what happened to his sister. But I would have liked to see some spark of brutal insanity in Rene prior to his picture coming in on the fax.
A lot of viewers, of course, have the read books, and know from them who the killer is. All the rest of us recalcitrant television viewers will know tomorrow...
But I'm guessing ... well, we'll see...
And what about the other big question - will Sookie choose Bill or Sam? She still loves Bill, but Sam is better for her ... I'll guess Sam. Unless - he's the killer ... Can shape shifters take on the faces of other humans?
I should have read the books ... But we'll know the answers tomorrow.
Paul continues to be the most effective - offering just right the blend of insight, keen questions, and protecting compassion - to Sophie. This is evidenced by her smashing one of Paul's model boats on his floor, as he probes the likelihood that she was abused. Unlike Paul's unprofessional reaction to hostile actions by Alex, he takes his boat on the floor as an indication that he is finally reaching Sophie.
The difference between the professionalism of Paul's responses to Sophie and Laura also continues to be pronounced and powerful in Week 6 of In Treatment. Paul tells Laura he loves her, and stops a micro-inch short of passionately kissing her. We might have expected Paul not even to admit his feelings for Laura - how can that possibly help her as a patient - but he is too far gone, too much in love with Laura, to not express his feelings, at least, verbally. And, besides, this gives us a chance to see Laura's reaction, which may be instructive: she at first doubts what Paul is telling her, and then lets herself believe it, apparently. For some reason, this made me think that once Laura is sure Paul loves her, and certainly if they sleep together, she'll soon realize that she doesn't really love him at all... A rough sea for Paul to sail.
Meanwhile, Alex, whom Laura quickly moved on from, is making genuine progress with Paul. In his most productive session yet, Alex admits that what he wants from life, and from Paul, are the means to not "feel shitty". This is by far the most truth we've heard from Alex.
We didn't get much truth from Amy this past week. She showed up without Jake, told Paul she's a terrible person and wants his permission to have an affair. As I've said in my previous reviews, I think the Amy and Jake sessions are the weakest, and have the most interest as parallels to Paul and Kate seeing Gina.
I've got to say Michelle Forbes is doing a great job portraying Paul's wife, Kate, whose anguish at Paul's love of Laura is ringing a little hollow: Kate, after all, went off with her lover for a week. Does the fact that that didn't work out, and Kate had no strong feelings for him, give Kate a moral high ground over Paul, who at least has refrained from having sex with Laura, as Gina correctly points out?
I admire Paul - if only because of his excellent work with Sophie - and this makes me think that maybe he'd be better off without Kate and with Laura. But the problem with that is Laura may not be likely to want him once that happens... A dangerous sea indeed.
A scalding second week of In Treatment on HBO, with the talk and the action centering much more on Paul and his wife, powerfully played by Michelle Forbes.
Michelle Forbes has had memorable roles on trend-setting television ranging from Star Trek to last year's Battlestar Galactica, and her performance as Kate is about as down-to-Earth as you can get and just as outstanding.
Kate figures in the Monday Laura episode - Paul doesn't want scintillating Laura to use the bathroom inside his home (the office bathroom needs plumbing) because he doesn't want Kate and Laura to meet. Sophie comes into the office out of the rain on Wednesday, holds her arms up, and asks Paul to help her undress (her arms are in casts). Paul wisely calls on Kate to help.
There's a clear tension between between Paul and Kate in every scene they inhabit. But it all comes to a head when Jake and Amy leave unexpectedly on Thursday (she's having a miscarriage), and Paul and Kate are alone in the office.
Kate tells him she's never felt in first place in his life. He barely reacts. She eventually tells him she's having an affair. He goes ballistic.
Although we saw Paul not being on top of his life last Friday at Gina's, the Thursday confrontation between Kate and Paul clearly moves him from hero to tragic hero, to perhaps even hero-villain in this unfolding story. Well, maybe villain is too strong a word, but Paul certainly seems less sympathetic a character after that scene.
Which is all to the good in this surprising, highly original series. Paul's conversation with Gina this past Friday moved the story along - Gina's one of my favorite characters, she has a real tenderness - and although Alex's story on Tuesday didn't intersect with Kate's, Blair Underwood was the best he's ever been on the screen.
For that matter, all the acting is superb - as is this series.
With rumblings that the WGA strike might nuke the 4th and final season of Battlestar Galactica - at the same time as the Sci Fi Channel tells us on the screen to look forward to the 4th season - Battlestar Galactica blasted back tonight with a scalding, clarifying, glistening, bristling two-hour special, that tells the story of the Pegassus, Admiral Cane, and her protege - a new character, Kendra Shaw, powerfully and sensitively played by Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen. We learn some important new things about Admiral Adama's past and Starbuck's possible destiny.
First, Cane. Michelle Forbes gives another superb performance, as she did in the part in BSG two years ago, and, for that matter, as Ensign Ro in Star Trek. Cain is both softer and more vulernable, at the very beginning, before the Cylon attack, and even tougher than I recall her as being two years ago. The strong suit of BSG has always been the agonizingly tough decisions it requires of our humans fighting the Cylons, staying alive, and it was never stronger than tonight. Differences of assessment between well-meaning people - whether Adama and his son, or Cain and her second-in-command, and the response of the other well-meaning people around them - are the basis of profound plots and complex characters, and as always bear irresistible resemblances to some of the current political struggles in our country and world.
Cain was two years ago, and tonight was again, willing to make more brutal decisions than Adama. We learn at least part of the reason - Cain and Gina (Number 6 Cylon) were lovers before the Cylons attacked. (I thought Tricia Helfer never looked better than in that role tonight, before her Cylon identify is discovered). Whatever the horrors in Admiral Adama's closet, he never (as far as we know) had to face something like that. Further, as he points out to his son Lee, Admiral Adama had the advice and orders of the President, usually staying any actions like Cain's that he might ever have contemplated, and, even more poignantly, Lee's eyes that he had to look into. That scene between father and son was one of the best in the entire series.
The pacing of the narrative was excellent - part of the story before Cain is killed by Gina, interspersed with part of the story after. In case you haven't seen it, I won't say any more, except that the ending is motivated and chilling.
So where does that leave us? As the quick preview for Season 4 indicated - the one which said it would begin in March - we have all the Cylons on board identified now, except one. We have a word or two about Starbuck's ultimate destiny that make everything she does, already suspect, even more so.
I wish March were tomorrow. I'm eager to see what the most politically powerful, ethically trenchant show on television has in store for us.
See also Galactica Dylan and listen to a 20-minute podcast about the Season 3 finale, with choice music samples...
