Turn Season 1 Finale: Good Turns

Turn turned in its season one finale last night, with still no word on whether it will be returning to AMC.   I hope it does.

The finale was one of the best episodes of the first season, which admittedly was mixed, but managed to create some powerful characters and set in motion some subtle and historically interesting plot lines.   Probably the single most significant of those last night was Robert Rogers' exit from his dressing down by the Crown's man, which I think leaves him wide open for joining up with George Washington and the revolution if there is a second season (even though there is no historical record of the real Rogers doing anything other than serving the British).

But Anna jumping off the boat rather than debarking with her newly re-united husband was also good to see, and a fine testament of her love for Abe.   He had a great night, too, making love to his wife - who turned out to be a savvy ally at the end - and doing his best to defuse the confrontation with the Brits with no loss of American prisoners.   And it was of course satisfying to see Simcoe get his due. I'm glad he wasn't killed, though, as he's too despicable and ruthlessly intelligent a character to be absent from a second season.

What that second season could use is a little more grounding in actual history.  The strongest episodes in the first season, other than the finale, were the ones that featured General Washington.  It's been exciting, the past few episodes, to hear Benedict Arnold mentioned as a strong revolutionary general, when we know that he will switch sides to the British before the war is over, and his name will become synonymous with treason in the United States.

I'm looking forward to some subsequent season of Turn showing us this, because that's what the series is ultimately about - who could be trusted and not trusted in this war, and how that led to victory on our side.   A few more appearances by real generals and statesmen could go a long way towards making his series a total winner.

See also: Turn Premiere: Good Historical Drama in Revolutionary New York ... Turn 1.5: Shot in the Arm ... Turn 1.8: Nice, Instructive Turn

 
a little earlier history in ... The Plot to Save Socrates

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Turn 1.8: Nice, Instructive Turn

Turn 1.8 took a nice turn on Sunday night, with Abe and Anna finally together, without interruption.

Also revealed is the guilt Abe has been carrying for the death of his brother, important to know in any case, and the catalyst for Abe and Anna taking their clothes off, at last.   There was also a fine poetry in the way this was presented in the episode, which starts with the two dressing, separately, and concludes with the two undressing, together.

Meanwhile, this was also a good Robert Rogers episode.   He's clearly the best that the British have against the Americans, because he's more than willing to break the rules in pursuit of American revolutionary quarry.   But when he fires into a prisoner exchange, that's going too far for the Red Coats, who now want him dead almost as much as do the Americans.   Britannia is all about the rule of law, hence the Brit opposition to American independence, as well a wily trapper like Rogers who puts victory above the law.

In that sense, Rogers is a very modern combatant, and one could even make a connection between his way of conducting war and the drone strikes of today.  Rogers' team is also worthy of note - a Native American and an African American.  It's historically accurate that some of both groups tended to fight on the side of the British, which at first seems to clash with our American sense of history, and how we have always been a country that values freedom above all else.   So why, then, did anyone from two oppressed groups fight on the side of the Brits?   The answer is that neither group was free in Revolutionary America.   The "all men are created equal" in our Declaration of Independence not only applied literally to men - not women - but also excluded slaves, Native Americans, and, for that matter, any white man who was poor (not a land holder or a very wealthy merchant).  Small wonder, then, that both groups tended to be more kindly disposed to the Crown than our Continental Congress.

As Turn has already explored, Britain was well on the way to abolishing slavery by the time of the American Revolution.   Not that the Brits were above using African Americans for their own lofty ends, but there's no doubt that Britain was well ahead of American in ending slavery, and indeed did so throughout most of the Empire in 1833, or 30 years before our own Emancipation Proclamation.

Turn can be a little slow moving at times, but episode 1.8 was just fine, and the series continues as one of the most historically intelligent on television.

See also: Turn Premiere: Good Historical Drama in Revolutionary New York ... Turn 1.5: Shot in the Arm

 
a little earlier history in ... The Plot to Save Socrates

Turn 1.5: Shot in the Arm

An excellent Turn 1.5 last night, in which George Washington makes his first appearance, and Abe kisses and almost beds Anna.

The Anna scene was especially good to see.   Abe, drunk, kisses her.  She pulls away.  But then, as she's about to leave his house, she impulsively turns back to him for an impassioned embrace and kissing.  Clothes begin to come off-  But they're interrupted by the redcoat staying in the house, who walks in on Abe and Anna and gives Abe a lecture.

Not that I wish Abe's wife any ill, but it's good to see Abe with the woman he loves.  The Brit interruption is nicely symbolic of everything the Brits are now doing in America - sticking their noses in and disrupting affairs that are properly American.  Whether affairs of the heart or of business and state, the Brits don't belong here.

Their freeing of our slaves creates an interesting moral conflict.  The Brits were right to free slaves, anywhere and everywhere, and we in American were very wrong to take so long to do that.  But the cynical Brit use of our slaves to aid their war effort, with the reward at the end that they'll be freed if they perform well for the Crown, is cynical and despicable.

Meanwhile, it's great to see George Washington finally in the mix.  One of the great pleasures of historical dramas is seeing real characters in history, people that we already know well.   This was one of the great strengths of Rome and The Tudors.   So far, Turn has gone with fictional or little-known characters, and confined itself to mentions of movers and shakers like Washington.

Now that he's in the action, we can look forward to the heat being turned up in both the battles and espionage, which should provide a good shot in the arm for Turn.

See also: Turn Premiere: Good Historical Drama in Revolutionary New York

 
a little earlier history in ... The Plot to Save Socrates

Chris Hayes on Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously Tonight

No one needs another show to watch on Sunday night these days.  In addition to Mad Men and Game of Thrones, which I watch and regularly review, there's also The Good Wife and Turn, which I watch and sometimes review, and Mr. Selfridge, which I watch and enjoy and usually don't review, because enough is enough.   On the other hand, to paraphrase the Victorian poet Robert Browning, one's reach on TV should exceed one's grasp, or what's a DVR for?   And Years of Living Dangerously, whose third episode is on tonight, is also On Demand.

I'm looking forward to Chris Hayes' contribution to this high-tech broadside on the need to wake up to the dangers of global warming.  Just to be clear, though I think Hayes is one of the brightest and most cogent voices on television, I don't agree with everything he says.  For example, I'm not too worried about the apocalypse to democracy thought to be engendered by Citizens United, seeing as how Obama - whom I voted for twice, and strongly support - handily won reelection in 2012, or two years after that much derided Supreme Court decision.   This confirms to me, once again, that Milton and Jefferson were right that people are inherently rational and vote their best interests - now in the 21st century, regardless of the mega-bucks spent on political advertising.

But Hayes and James Cameron and the all-star cast both in front of and behind the camera in Years of Living Dangerously are completely right that we need to do something about what is going on in the climate around us.   Look, even if all the evidence that the world is slowly heating up is wrong, wouldn't we be better off having some control over our climate and the temperature of the world?  To say, as do some Republicans, that the climate is in God's hands, misses the point that God or natural selection or whatever brought us here left us with minds and the capacity not to just accept the natural world around us but improve it, for us,  and most living denizens of this planet.   Surely, we're better off now than in ancient Rome, with its average lifespan of 20-30 years (45-47 for those who made it to the age of 10) - a result of science and medicine and its invention and application via human mentality.

The Scientific Revolution in the Renaissance was borne on the wings of the printing press (as I detail in The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution).  Television in America, though it's had its moments with Nova and the original Carl Sagan Cosmos series and the reboot now on Fox, has by and large not risen to the task.   It's good to see Years of Living Dangerously and some of the best minds on the planet join the ranks.

Turn Premiere: Good Historical Drama in Revolutionary New York

Hey, the first episode of Turn on Sunday night on AMC was quite good.   Here's what I most liked about it -

It's fun and interesting to see a series set in our Revolutionary War era.  You don't often see a drama series in this time period - in fact, I can't really think of any (I don't think of Sleepy Hollow historical drama) - and even movies set in this era are few and far between.   But it's certainly a crucially important era in American, British, and for that matter world history.   

There have been superb docu-dramas set in the Revolutionary War and a little beyond - like the John Adams series, and the Adams Chronicles before it - but docu-dramas are something very different from historical dramas, like Rome, Vikings, The Tudors, and Black Sails.   Turn, based on its debut episode, looks like it has good chance to join those winning shows.

There's excellent character development in Turn, even at this early point in the narrative.  Abe Woodhull is a suitably conflicted, messily recruited spy.  And his personal life is no less complex - he's married and a father, but also loves another woman.  Anna at very least is Abe's first love, but she may well be his true love.  Abe also has problems with his father, who is his champion but in some ways his worst enemy, being thoroughly loyal to the British in all matters other than his son, at least as far as we can tell (I say this because of the great twist in Zorro in which the father joins the son in opposing the military.) And Abe's friends are an appealing combination of people who in their own ways offer a variety of opposition to the British.  This includes Anna, who married Abe's best or least very good friend.  We'll likely soon meet some friends, though - or at least one - who are not only British sympathizers but the British spy.

The British are mostly villains, though there may be lurking in their leadership someone with a little more understanding of the way history is beginning to turn.  Captain Simcoe epitomizes the attitude of even some of the British officers, restrained by the thinest veneer of gentlemanly conduct from rape, and not all from savagely beating a colonist who crosses them in any way.  It's especially shocking and instructive to see the Brits treating American colonists the way we later treated conquered people like Native Americans.

And a particular plus for me is the location of the show - New York City and its environs, especially Long Island, with sojourns to New Jersey and Connecticut.   I'm looking forward to more.

 
a little earlier history in ... The Plot to Save Socrates