Paradise Season 1 and Season 2.1-2.5: A Story about Anything But ... and More

My wife and I binged Season One and the first five episodes of Paradise 2.1-2.5, and we loved it.  So much so, I decided to post this review, and come back after Season Two ends in the weeks ahead with another review.

You know, it's no easy thing to pull off a science fiction / who-done-it mystery hybrid -- I've tried it myself in my Phil D'Amato series -- and the first season of Paradise does it splendidly.  It kept the ultimate villain hiding in plain sight until the end, as it told its post-apocalyptic story hurtling along with surprises in every episode.

And in addition to all this, Paradise in both seasons treats us to a potent true-love story, with all the trimmings.  Human relationships are always put to the test when humanity is hit with an extinction-level event, but the love explored in Paradise is so deep and real it would've worked splendidly even if the background was just another Pleasant Valley Sunday.

Speaking of which, the songs in the series are as good as those in Lost, with a special emphasis on Elvis.  In an attractive twist, which adds to the surreality of the narrative, we get covers of some great songs, spun out in slow tempos which hang seductively in the air and paint the walls and the meadows of the scenes.  And the acting is just superb.  Sterling K. Brown, who was so memorable in Dan Fogelman's other masterpiece, This Is Us, is just perfect as a man thrust into ... well, I've resisted talking about the specifics of the plot so far, so I won't start now.  But I will say that Shailene Woodley, Julianne Nicholson, Jon Beavers, and James Marsden also put in powerhouse performances.

And I'll also say that I was glad to hear quantum entanglement mentioned in the second season (see, again, Phil D'Amato), and Episode 7 in the first season was so punch-in-the-stomach heart-in-your-mouth compelling I'm feeling it's one of the best episodes of anything ever on television, period.

Phil D'Amato series ... radio play and movie  "The Chronology Protection Case"

Dark Matter 1.4: The Multiverse Unveiled

A highly informative episode 1.4 of Dark Matter up on Apple TV+ today, as Jason 1 and Amanda make their way through "The Corridor" (the title of this episode) and therein partake of the doors to the multiverse.

And I have to say that my favorite spoken line in this episode is when Jason tells Amanda that the entire corridor with its doors don't really exist, they are rather the result of their human minds struggling to make a little sense of a reality that the human mind cannot comprehend.  The only thing missing in this astute observation was that the true conduit(s) to the universes Jason and Amanda were accessing were the thing-in-itself, which Immanuel Kant realized the human intellect could never comprehend.

Kant made that observation in the 1700s (in our universe).  Jason 1 also draws upon a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics, which of course brings us to the 1900s, and underlies all of Dark Matter. That principle is that the mere observation of a subatomic particle can change it.  Jason explains that he and Amanda can get to the alternate reality they seek by merely clearly thinking about that reality.  This QM on the macro-level has been a staple of lots of science fiction, and Dark Matter is parlaying it very effectively.

Indeed, Jason goes on to explain that his kidnapping that launched this narrative was the result of Jason 2 figuring out in which alternate universe Jason 1 was residing, because Jason 2 wanted to give Jason 1 some of the pleasure of having Jacob 2's accomplishments as a world-famous scientist -- actually, not figuring it out, but envisioning it in some intense way, and thereby finding and identifying the door into that reality.  Since the multiverse consists of all possible realities, which in practice is an infinite number of places, this QM way of locating the place that you want to visit is a good thing to have on hand.

And Dark Matter, as of its fourth episode, is a very good thing.  It's rare to find philosophy woven so well into a thriller, inside a corridor with so many tempting and dangerous doors.

See also Dark Matter 1.1-1.2: Break-Neck Action and Philosophic Contemplation ... 1.3 Missing Fingers

the corridors under Fordham University figure in this novel ...

Touch: Fractals, Heroes, and 24

Touch joins Awake as one of the most intelligent shows on television - with heart and soul as well as intellect - refreshing, very complex, provocative, and altogether welcome.

Two great forces of popular culture come to bear in Touch - Kiefer Sutherland, who looks and sounds almost exactly the same as 24's Jack Bauer on Touch, and creator Tim Kring, who brought us Heroes.

Kiefer plays Martin Bohm, father of 10-year old Jake, who's mute and diagnosed as autistic, but is much much more.   Jake does have an incredible memory - like the classic idiot savant - but he also can see, intuit, understand the fractal nature of the universe, or the interconnected patterns of everything around us.  This part of the story - fractals - is science not science fiction.  Why, for example, do leafs and bird wings have the same patterns, when they have no evolutionary connection?   The universe, it seems, offers up a given series of templates - which harken, in a sense, to Plato's ideal forms.

But Jake sees much more than this, and here is where the wonder and amazement of science fiction come in.  Not only is Jake sympatico with fractals, but with quantum mechanics, and the part of it that compresses past, present, and future into an omnipresent now.   In plain English, Jake not only sees the interconnections, but where they can lead.   His chosen job is to get silent word out about bad futures to his father, so Martin can do something to avert them.

The pilot has two distinct stories, both connected via Martin, otherwise distinct from each other.  One concerns a smart phone that someone loses at the airport, which Martin gets his hands on, but before he can return to the owner,  gets called away to help get Jake down from a steep construction site on which he has climbed.  Good thing, too, because that phone set loose in the world eventually leads to stopping a suicide bomber, and making a singer famous.   The other plot concerns a firefighter who almost saved Jake's mother's (Martin's wife's) life on 9/11, and has felt guilty about that ever since.  Jake's interventions lead to a school bus of kids saved and the firefighter reclaiming his sense of self-worth.  Both of these happy endings follow a long series of apparently unrelated events, and the fun  is in seeing how these events all tie into one another - see, that is, what Jake already knows.

Meanwhile, Martin learns more of what's happening in Jake's head from Arthur Teller (Danny Glover), a sage old guy in the Bronx.   With Martin now realizing at least part of what Jake is up to do, the stage is set for some wild, complicated stories in which Martin tries to pick up on Jake's leads to shape the future.

Heroes meets 24?   That's just the past, Touch is the future, and I'm looking forward to more (including that 24 movie which is somewhere still to be made).

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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

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Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox

It was great to see Ralph Waite back on Bones 7.4 as "Pops," Booth's grandfather Hank, in a sad, beautiful episode about the passing of Booth's father, and how Bones helps Booth comes to terms with it, in a way that brought tears to Booth's and certainly my eyes.  But I'll get to that in a minute.

First, a shout-out to a nice toochas oyfen tish - or more precisely, tush on the xerox - which, while not solving the case, helps swing it in a enjoyable direction, a take-off of sorts on Murder on the Orient Express, in which an ensemble of suspects seem guilty (one of whom with the tush in question),  but the killer turns out to be someone else.   It's been a fine Fall season for the toochas - what with Manny's primo pronunciation of the word over on Boardwalk Empire - and it was good to see Bones lend a hand.

But back to Booth's father.  Bones is at first at a loss in how to how to help Booth deal with the loss of a father whom he hated in many ways and with good reason.  Hank, in a powerful scene, tries to get Booth to see that Hank is grieving over the loss of his son - Booth's father - and the guilt Hank feels for the way that Booth's father turned out.  This affects Booth, but just barely. He accepts a small box that his father left for him,  but doesn't open it.  It's left for Angela to give Bones the best advice, as she usually does - just draw on who you are, Angela says, you're the one Booth loves.

And Bones does just that.   Applying her knowledge of quantum physics, and its paradoxical view that all times - present, past, and future - exist simultaneously when the universe is looked at in a certain way, Bones gets Booth to see that the good times he had with his father (for they weren't all bad) are with him right now.  That includes one of the best days of his life - when his father took him to a Phillies game - and Bones' quantum mechanical acumen is confirmed when Booth opens the box, and finds (among other meaningful things) that his father had saved those very two tickets to the baseball game. It had been an extraordinary day, a time worth never forgetting, for Booth's father, too.

As this was an extraordinary episode for Bones.  Everything is better through the lens of Bones and Booth being together.   More vibrant, more keen,  more quivering.   And making the loss of Booth's father the focus of that lens upped the payoff.  Where and when else on television can you see quantum mechanics, controversial and ambiguous as a hard science, used to such clear and uplifting effect in a human relationship?   Only by Bones on Bones, and in a show in which the dimensions of an ass-bone, as Booth puts it, also play a significant role.

For another story about quantum mechanics and human relationships, see The Chronology Protection Case.


See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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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

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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 ...