The Gorge: Hi-Tech Blast from the Past

Thought I'd take a brief break from reviewing science fiction like Severance, which will break your brain if you watch it too much and try to understand.  The Gorge, though the story takes place in the present, harkens back to Creature from the Black Lagoon and Them -- simple stories with clear-cut heros and monstrous monsters, the pride and joy of the theaters in the boroughs in the 1950s, where in the case of The Allerton Theater on Allerton Avenue in The Bronx, you could get in for a double feature with a quarter.  And if you somehow missed one of these movies and the popcorn and the candy, you had a good chance seeing it a few years later on Million Dollar Movie, I think on Channel 9 in New York City --  where they shoulda been if they weren't there.

the Allerton Theater in the 1950s

The Gorge's story actually goes back just a few years before the 1950s, and the horrors it reveals -- mutants ranging from everything, including human-and-tree combos -- are the result of science gone awry at the end of World War II, with Oppenheimer and the atom-bomb specifically mentioned as a parallel development.

[Ok, here's an advisory about some spoilers ahead ... ]

And The Gorge is also a love story, with a male and a female sharp-shooter on both sides of the gorge.  When they're not fighting off villains of the worst kind, he writes poetry and she loves it.  They start off communicating with pen-on-paper viewed through binoculars across the gorge, and, of course eventually get together and fight the monsters in all kinds of ways.

By the way, when I say villains of the worst kind, I'm referring not only to the monsters who are partially human, but the monsters who are completely human, and try to exterminate our heroes with the latest in drones and weaponry.  Sigourney Weaver makes an appearance as one of the evil people, and Miles Teller (who looks familiar but I can't remember where I saw him) and Anya-Taylor Joy (who looks familiar because she starred in The Queen's Gambit) play our two loving commando heroes.

So, hey, if you're in the mood for a bit of adrenalin and true love in an insane life-and-death pressure cooker of a situation, you can't go wrong with The Gorge.

Political Animals: Alternate Hillary History

Political Animals (6-part mini-series) debuted on the USA Network Sunday night.  The Hollywood Reporter called the 2.6 million viewers "soft ratings"- I disagree, those numbers are pretty decent. I hear tell that the producers say that series was not really inspired by Hillary and Bill Clinton - that's complete nonsense, and another demonstration of literary critic I. A. Richards' admonition that the creator of a narrative is the last person you should go to for an explanation of what it means - the creator could be anything from dissembling to not being in touch with the implications of the work.

Alternate history is a form of story telling well known in science fiction.  How would the world have been different had Lincoln or JFK not been assassinated, had Germany won the Second World War, etc?  I take a similar tack about Socrates and the hemlock in The Plot to Save Socrates.

Political Animals is the story of Elaine Barrish, former First Lady of a popular two-term President (the most popular "since Kennedy") with a southern accent and a penchant for the ladies and affairs.  She loses a close campaign for the nomination for President to a young, well-spoken, dynamic opponent.   So far, the history is not alternate but all but identical to Hillary and Bill's.  But on the night she concedes to her opponent, the divergence from our real world begins:  Elaine wants and gets a divorce from her philandering husband.

So the excellent set-up for this series is: what would have happened had Hillary left Bill after conceding the nomination to Barack Obama in 2008?  One highly significant development stays the same:  President Garcetti (played by Adrian Pasdar, who also played a President in one of the realities in Heroes) makes Elaine his Secretary of State.   And the show if off and running.

There are inevitable minor differences between the reality of Political Animals and ours.  Former President Hammond and Elaine Barrish (who uses her original name, unlike Hillary) have two sons (one gay, the other engaged to a bulimic) and no daughter.  And, at this point, it looks like Obama is a better President than Garcetti (who is Italian American not African American).

But the tableau is easily recognizable as ours, with the twist, and that's its appeal.  What differences will this twist engender? Elaine is free to sleep with other people - though the only man she sleeps with so far is her former husband, at least once, for special emotional support - and she vows to run again for President. The acting is excellent - Signorney Weaver as Elaine and Ciarán Hinds (Caesar in HBO's superb Rome) as her former husband and former ex-President, and I'm looking forward to every episode of this original, courageous, and highly entertaining series.




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