Westworld 2.8: The Wrong World

An exquisite, almost standalone episode 2.8 - much of it told in Lakota, and brilliantly performed by Zahn McClarnon (who was great in Fargo 2, but even better in Longmire) as Akecheta, who comes to realize his part of the Westworld is not the real world, is the wrong world, and like Dolores devotes his life to getting out of there.

Of course, that part is not standalone, and it's the best part of this part of the story.  Although Dolores and Akecheta share the goal of getting into the real, aka our, world, their methods are very different. Akecheta wants to get there, with the woman he loves, and only kills when necessary.  Dolores wants to get there with Teddy, but she has no problem changing his mentality to be more pliable to her wishes, and otherwise is "The Deathbringer" (in Akecheta's words) of everything and everyone around her, including Ford.

The difference between Akecheta and Dolores, who is actually barely seen in this episode, gets us back to Maeve and her daughter, who play a huge role in Akecheta's life.  Based on the final scene, either Maeve is actually Kohana, Akecheta's true love, or Maeve is able to read her mentality, wherever Kohana is.   Occam's razor says the latter - we already know Maeve can control hosts through her telepathy - but I prefer the former.  What is indisputable is that Akecheta is devoted to protecting and liberating Maeve's daughter (opposite of the implication at the end of previous episode - a nice turnaround).  This raises the question of why, one answer being what I mentioned last week, that Maeve's daughter is really Maeve as a girl, though there's still not much evidence for this.

What is undeniable is that Akecheta and Maeve are on the same side, and their vision of the right world, and how to get there, is sharply at odds with Dolores' (likely because she was already there). With every episode in the second season, the most important battle looming ahead becomes not between hosts and guests, but hosts and hosts.  No wonder they all want to get out of that world.

See also Westworld 2.1: Maeve's Daughter ... Westworld 2.2: "Narcissus Narcosis" ... Westworld 2.3: The Raj and Guns of the South ... Westworld 2.4: Questions Pertaining to Immortality ... Westworld 2.5: Telepathic Control ... Westworld 2.6: The Dangling Conversation ... Westworld 2.7: Maeve vs. Dolores

And see also Westworld 1.1: Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick Served Up by Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and J. J. Abrams ... Westworld 1.2: Who Is the Man in Black? ... Westworld 1.3: Julian Jaynes and Arnold ... Westworld 1.4: Vacation, Connie Francis, and Kurt Vonnegut ... Westworld 1.5: The Voice Inside Dolores ... Westworld 1.6: Programmed Unprogramming ... Westworld 1.7: The Story of the Story ... Westworld 1.8: Memories ... Westworld 1.9: Half-Truths and Old Friends ... Westworld Season 1 Finale: Answers and Questions 

Longmire Season 6: Out From Under His Hat

Longmire certainly saved the best for its last season - 6 - which was better in every way than any of the previous seasons, including Walt Longmire finally getting out from under his hat, not just emotionally but physically, in lots of scenes in which he wasn't wearing that iconic sheriff's hat.

[spoilers ahead] ....

Whether his successor, daughter Cady aka Punk will wear a hat on the job at all remains to be seen, but probably not.  She'll also differ from her father in not getting into too many physical altercations (except maybe swinging a stake), and likely not shooting too much, either, but we'll need a sequel series to find out.

She'll have three able deputies - assuming she's elected - including Vic, which raises an interesting question.  She would find it very difficult to have a relationship with Walt if he continued as sheriff, because she can't bear to think of the danger of death he'll always be facing.  But how is Walt ok with that for Vic?

I guess Vic might try to be more cerebral, like Cady, but that's not really Vic's style.  Or maybe Vic will retire, too, but I can't quite see that, either. Well, at least the Ferg is well on his way to becoming a top-notch lawman, and Zach's sharp and tough, too.  Still, it's a little hard to see how this future sheriff's office will work, and that's testament to how hard it will be to replace Walt's, which was so good, despite and because of all the turmoil.

The Cheyennes were also better this season than before for all kinds of reasons.  It was great to see Mathias and Walt working together most of the time, instead of at odds.   Henry is also better as Walt's closest friend and ally, where he belongs, rather than lying to him for whatever good reason  in the previous season.  And even Nighthorse had his best season, coming to Walt's aid in the trial, and even being almost heroic at the end.

Longmire was a wonderful modern-day Western, a worthy successor to Cade's County, and at this point in a class of its own as a narrative for our time, in a beautiful but inevitably dangerous place where few of us actually live but we all inhabit metaphorically.

Great acting by Robert Taylor, Katee Sackhoff, Lou Diamond Phillips, Cassidy Freeman, Adam Bartley, A Martinez, Zahn McClarnon, Barry Sloane, and good to see Dylan Walsh, John Doman, and Peter Weller in short but powerful threads too.

See also Longmire Season 5 on Netflix

Timeless 1.12: Incandescent West

Timeless keeps getting better every time, and as I've been saying with almost every review of the past few episodes of this series, episode 1.12 was the best episode so far.

Here's why -

1. An excellent Flynn episode, in which he not only interacts with Jesse James - whose life he saves - but with Emma.  Who's Emma?  Well, she's not only played by 24's Annie Wersching - always up for a gritty, attractive performance on screen - but she's the very first time traveler, who has been hiding out in the past for a decade.  This alliance promises some good times ahead.

2. Not only does Jesse James play a big role in this episode, but so does the Lone Ranger and Tonto - and the Lone Ranger is African-American, much to Rufus's delight, and played by Colman Domingo of Fear The Walking Dead.  For that matter, Tonto is played by Zahn McClarnon of Longmire (and I just saw him on Frontier).   Timeless has had some strong guest starring power all along, but episode 1.12 was a special event.

3. Lucy puts in one of her best roles - actually, it all happens in one scene, but this was something new and important for the show.   She shoots Jesse James in the back, for the sake of saving history. Of course, Flynn's actions already changed our history - the Ford Bros no longer did the cowardly deed - but at least Lucy kills Jesse, and in much the same way as in our original history.

4.  Wyatt's philosophy is it's right to kill bad people who kill good people. That has never been Lucy's philosophy, but tonight her values and Wyatt's coincide.  Clearly they won't in the coming attractions for next week's episode, when Wyatt will try to save his wife which in some big way may change history as Lucy and we know it.

And I'll be back here with a review to tell you how all that went down ...

See also Timeless 1.1: Threading the Needle ... Timeless 1.2: Small Change, Big Payoffs ... Timeless 1.3: Judith Campbell ... Timeless 1.4: Skyfall and Weapon of Choice ... Timeless 1.5: and Quantum Leap ... Timeless 1.6: Watergate and Rittenhouse ... Timeless 1.7: Stranded! ... Timeless 1.8: Time and Space ... Timeless 1.9: The Kiss and The Key ... Timeless 1.10: The End in the Middle ... Timeless 1.11: Edison, Ford, Morgan, Houdini, and Holmes (No, Not Sherlock)!

Fargo Season 2 last few episodes: UFOs, Protocols, and yeah, Heartwarming

Fargo concluded its second season earlier this month with a few episodes that were, literally, just out of this world.  Well, one was, anyway.

In the next-to-last episode, which featured one of the best shoot-outs ever on television, with lots of evil characters getting their just deserts, and some not-evil characters, too (like that brave lady cop), which I guess makes their deserts unjust, we have a resolution of that shoot-out, a saving of the day for Lou - which had to be saved, since we know older Lou from Season 1 - by a UFO.

So does this mean UFOs exist in the Fargo universe?  Is Fargo, in addition to all of its other merits, science fiction?

Not necessarily.  No one interacted with any alien.  And reports of UFOs are common enough in our reality and world.  So whatever was seen at that shoot-out was just light in the sky, which was caused by some contraption, which may or may not have been an alien ship.

Even if it was, would that be so bad?  Well, certainly not for me, seeing as how I'm a big fan of science fiction, having just reviewed Childhood's End (and I reviewed most of Falling Skies), speaking of UFOs.  I've even talked about them on the History Channel.



But there is what literary critics call a protocol issue, if UFOs with aliens are suddenly introduced into a series like Fargo.  If you have a dead body, murdered, in a room with a door locked from the inside, this makes a classic whodunit.   If you solve it by discovering the murderer beamed into and out of the room, that kind of solution can anger mystery fans by violating the expectations of the whodunit genre.

On the other hand, there has always been an aspect of Fargo that almost seems out of this world, anyway.   Hanzee, the "Gerhardt Indian" and one of the best characters in season 2 (well played by Zahn McClarnon, who also stood out in Longmire), has even been suggested to be an alien.  And, let's face it, that cold snowy terrain sometimes looks like a scene from another world, even when there isn't a gunfight at the OK Corral to liven up the night.

As is the case with many top-notch television series these days, the next-to-last episode was better than the finale, which tied things up, but with far less energy than the previous episode.  Still, it was great to see that Lou's wife Betsy survived, and her collapsing was because of the treatment the she had indeed been receiving, thus giving this finale a nice, unexpected silver lining which also is an intrinsic part of this series, and therefore not completely unexpected, I guess, but heartwarming and welcome.

Looking forward to next season on Fargo.

See also: Fargo 2.1: Good to be Back in the Freezer ... Fargo 2.6: Just Superb

And see also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year ... Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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