Surface season 1: Deeply Engaging

I saw that Apple TV+ recently signed on for a second season of Surface, and since I hadn't seen the first season (which was on Apple TV+ this past summer), I figured I should.  And I'm very glad that I did.  It's rare that I watch a whodunnit aka mystery story with so many pieces that fit together so well in retrospect but I haven't been able to work out when they -- the characters and the situations -- first come into play.  But Surface did just that, and I'm eagerly awaiting more in the second season.

[Inevitably, some spoilers ahead ... ]

The story starts with Sophie and her almost total amnesia, the result, most people think, of her attempted suicide, as she jumps off a bridge into the deep waters near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  Except Sophie can't quite believe she tried to take her own life, and has a feeling she was pushed. 

By whom?

Her husband seems truly loving, but he's apparently caught up in some big money business deal which went bad.  And he is sleeping with Sophie's best friend.  Meanwhile, Sophie discovers that she was having an even more tempestuous affair with an undercover narcotics detective.  He loves Sophie, and strongly suspects that she was indeed pushed overboard -- by her husband.

I won't tell you anything more about the plot, in case you haven't seen the series, which you should.  I will say that even the secondary characters are excellent, ranging from the husband's best friend to a senior detective in the SFPD.  And the acting is excellent, too, with a tour-de-force performance by Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Sophie, and memorable jobs by Oliver Jackson-Cohen as her husband, Stephan James as her narcotics detective, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste as her shrink.

And, as I said, the amazing thing about this complex puzzle of a story is that just about everything fits together in the end.  Indeed, my only big question now is why did Apple TV+ wait so long to renew this gem of a series?

Homecoming 2: The Perils of Forgetting

Just saw Homecoming 2 on Amazon Prime Video, and I wanted to review it before I forgot what I just saw.

Sorry, couldn't resist, but Homecoming 2 is even more about forgetting than was Homecoming 1.  It features Alex, who wakes up at the very start of the narrative not knowing who she is, and Walter, back from Season 1, sans Julia Roberts' character, still wanting to know who he is, i.e., what he forgot.

The cause of all of this amnesia is some kind of juice from a plant grown on the Geist farm.  When used as cream, it's almost miraculous in helping the skin heal.  When taken internally, either by food or drink, it makes you forget.

Just how long your mind is lost is not clear.  It could be forever.  It certainly is long enough that Alex does not stop her lover and partner Audrey from drinking the red drink with the drug, after Walter and Geist have spiked everyone's punch at the big party.   Alex not only has lost her intellectual memory of the woman she loved, she's lost that lovin' feeling.  I missed hearing the Righteous Brothers sing that great song, with that masterful Phil Spector production, in background.   (But here is it now, if you'd like to hear it.)

Since no such plant with those effects exist, Homecoming, especially this season, is almost as much science fiction as it is thriller, which is always fine with me.  Of course, it's not impossible that I at some point in my life consumed such berry juice, and I've forgotten not only that I consumed it, but such a juice even exists.  Hey, after sheltering in place at home for more than two months, almost nothing would surprise me.

Excellent acting in this second season, even though I missed Julia Roberts.  Stephan James was just superb as Walter, able to modulate from sweet to angry in an heartbeat.  Janelle Monáe was also excellent in the dual role of Alex before and after she lost her memories.   And Chris Cooper was perfect as Geist.

I've always liked narratives about memory - so much so that I wrote The Consciousness Plague - and Homecoming 2 is a most worthy addition to the genre.

See also Homecoming 1: Memory Spliced, in Ten Short Parts

Homecoming: Memory Spliced, in Ten Short Parts

A powerful, unusual, vexing yet ultimately satisfying short series on Amazon Prime - ten 30-minute episodes - created and directed by Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail (with Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz), starring Julia Roberts, with great supporting acting by Boardwalk Empire's Bobby Cannavale & Shea Whigham, and Stephan James, whom I've seen here for the first time.

The plot concerns a government contractor with a plan for PTSD soldiers - treat them with a drug that will make them forget the memories that are unraveling them, with the result that they will be whole and happy again.  Julia Roberts plays social worker Heidi, with a heart and a brain.  Cannavale is her boss Colin, in charge of the project.  Whigham is government investigator Thomas looking into this.  And James is Heidi's patient Walter, beginning to fall in love with her, as patients in therapy often do.

But that's the best of what's happening.  The worst, we soon discover, is that four years later, in 2022 (the present are the Spring months of 2018), Heidi has lost all of her memories of working in Homecoming, and Walter is nowhere to be found.  We're now not only in Mr. Robot territory - one of differentiating truth from lies, what's real from what's implanted - but in Chris Nolan's pathbreaking world of Memento. 

And Homeland delivers, with one of the most memorable performances ever delivered anywhere by Julia Roberts, a storyline that surprises and yet all fits into place, and even an ending that's good for your heart.  Cannavale is suitably megalomaniacal yet vulnerable,  Whigham is aptly dogged and a little clumsy, and James has a winning quality, making it not surprising that Roberts' Heidi has reciprocal feelings for him.   Hats off to all concerned, including whoever came up with the square and letterbox screens, as a way of showing limited and full memories.   I predict that by 2022,  Homeland will become as much a classic as is Memento.