Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing Black Doves; Dark Matter; Dept. Q; Detective Hole; Dexter: Resurrection; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; Memory of a Killer; MobLand; Outlander; Paradise; Presumed Innocent; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Smoke; Star City; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Tehran;The: Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Night Agent; Your Friends & Neighbors +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes

Dexter made what might well have been a life-changing mistake at the end of last week's episode - 4.7 - he called an innocent man. Tonight's episode 4.8 begins with Dexter's conscience being troubled by this mistake - I wouldn't say tormented - but Dex pretty soon gets beyond that. "It was a mistake, for fuck's sake," Dex's internal voice complains, as Batista puts up Dex's target on the board, saying we thought he was a killer but now he's missing and may be a victim.

Does this mean that serial killers have no conscience? Maybe. It's certainly one of the best lines we've heard from Dexter, rivaling his sister's.

Dex may be able to leave that mistake behind him, but this fine episode isn't quite done yet with big mistakes. The Trinity Killer is jumping off a roof, but Dex grabs him - this isn't the ritual way he wants to dispatch this monster, who Dex knows is guilty for sure. But Dex quickly changes his mind, realizing that an avenging execution from his hand is satisfactory, whether his hand wields a knife or lets Trinity fall. And at just that moment, two good samaritans appear on the roof, and pull Trinity up to safety. Dexter's mistake was trying to save the killer in the first place.

But the biggest mistake of all disclosed tonight was made not just by Dexter, but by Debra - who discovers it - and all of us, as well. We had been thinking that the Trinity killer wounded Debra and killed Lundy. But Debra realizes that her scars suggest a much shorter killer - shorter that the Trinity killer's 6+ feet - and Masuda confirms this.

Which leaves us with one huge-ass puzzle (sorry, I'm listening too much to Debra's great speech patterns). The Trinity Killer is responsible for the serial cycles of three killings. But who shot Debra and Lundy?

The only character I can think of who had a motive would be Debra's boyfriend Anton - but Anton's taller than Debra (you can see that clearly when they're kissing, standing, in episode 4.2).

So where does that leave us? I don't think Dexter - the show - would bring in a killer totally out of left field, at this point. So that leaves us, again, with the Trinity Killer. Was he crouching when he shot Lundy and Debra? Debra tonight said no, Lundy would have seen that.

But if the Trinity Killer is indeed a mistake for the Lundy-Debra shooting, who then?

It's mistakes like these that make Dexter such great television.

6-min podcast review of Dexter

See also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi'

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Bill O'Reilly, Saddam Hussein, and Ben Reynolds in Lie to Me 2.6

An outstanding episode 2.6 of Lie to Me last Monday evening. Among my favorite parts -

. Reynolds (Mekhi Phifer) has an expression of stubborn defiance about something he may have done wrong - cut to shots of Bill O'Reilly and Saddam Hussein. Priceless!

. Lightman's loyalty to his "family" - his co-workers - including FBI Special Agent Ben Reynolds. To prove his commitment to Reynolds, whose career and even freedom is in jeopardy due to Reynolds' actions when undercover, Lightman destroys FBI evidence right in front of Reynolds. Now Lightman is almost as vulnerable as Reynolds in this mess.

. The looks exchanged between Foster and Lightman, when Lightman talks about someone shagging her boss (thanks to my wife for noticing this). A slight smile from Foster, a big smile from Lightman, another smile from Foster, Lightman's still smiling. The carefully orchestrated facial expressions of the major characters in Lie to Me is one of its best features. On the other hand, who knows, maybe Tim Roth ad libbed that big smile.

All in all, a top-notch FBI-oriented episode. The FBI is having something of its own new golden age in what I've been calling the new golden age of television. Bones, FlashForward, Fringe, Numb3rs, with Reynolds a major player on Lie to Me, and there's likely more FBI in shows I haven't yet seen.

On Lie to Me, Reynolds is one of the ways show-runner Shawn Ryan (The Shield and The Unit) is infusing grit and punch into the series. Should be some good times ahead.

And here's me versus O'Reilly from a few years ago ... what would Lightman say?

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Realities 1 and 2 in FlashForward

Here's my thinking about the paradox of attempting to change a future you saw in your flashforward, as depicted in FlashForward on ABC:

The future in the flashforwards is Reality 1, in which people seen in the future did not already know that they would have that future - i.e., had not seen flashforwards six months earlier. In other words, no flashfowards had occurred in that Reality 1.

But the moment the flashforwards do occur, that changes Reality 1 into Reality 2, in which everyone alive knows that flashforwards occurred, and most people have seen themselves in their flashforward.

That is the reality which our characters are living through now, and we are seeing unfold each week on television.

Which suggests that the flashforwards can indeed be changed, though not easily.

Of course, since in our reality there are no flashforwards (as far as we know), we are just living in reality, with no number.

But see FlashForward 1.9: Shelter from the Storm

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Friday, November 13, 2009

FlashForward 1.8: The Nightie as Grain of Sand

Last night's FlashForward 1.8 featured a philosophically high-staked card game, the back story on Tracy Stark (Aaron's daughter), and the biggest attempt Mark Benford has made thus far to change the future he and Olivia saw in their flashforwards.

I'm not sure I get why Simcoe would allow himself to be bound by the results of a poker game with Simon - Simcoe wants to go public with their causing the flashforward, Simon does not - but the game does provide some good occasion for some ontological talk about hard determinism. Hey, when was the last time you heard that phrase (hard determinism) on television, or, for that matter, saw that word (ontological) in a TV review? FlashForward gets props for doing and eliciting just that.

Meanwhile, Tracy's story is interesting in and of itself. She was presumed dead in Afghanistan because her leg was blown completely off, and her DNA was mixed into the remains that were examined. Even without the flashforward angle, this is one of more original wartime stories I've seen.

As for Mark Benford, he sets up one of the assassins he saw in the future to be killed right now. I don't quite see why this is so significant - has the point been made that all of you have to do change the future is remove one detail, or one part? Perhaps that's so, but wouldn't Mark be just as vulnerable from the other assassins? I suppose, operating on Butterfly Effect logic, that changing any one thing in the future could change everything, but this has to be made more clear.

The most on-point event last night in the Benfords' struggle to prevent the future revolves around the sexy little night outfit Mark gives to Olivia as a present. She's quietly horrified, because it's the same damn outfit she was wearing in her flashforward with Simcoe. So she throws it out.

Like Mark's friendship bracelet, and the guy he killed last night, this nightie is but a grain of sand in the avalanche Mark, Olivia, and the people who don't want the future are laboring so mightily to prevent...

5-min podcast review of FlashForward

See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability and 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures and 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House ... Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5 ... Across the Universe in FlashForward 1.6 ... FlashForward 1.7: The Future Can Be...

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7

A powerful and effective episode 2.7 tonight of Fringe, which continues to pull itself away from the horror insano-gore of last year, towards a more rational, edge-of-your-seat kind of science fiction. In other words, this evolution of Fringe is for the good.

Tonight featured a 15-year old boy - well played by Cameron Monaghan - who, courtesy of Massive Dynamics, has a massively powerful and, when pushed to its limits, homicidal kind of mind control. That is, the kid can compel people around him to do his bidding, however otherwise they may feel, including killing anyone who gets in his way.

This provides the makings a top-notch police show episode, as Broyles, Olivia, Peter, Walter, and Astrid put their heads together to disarm - or dismind - the kid. But Peter comes under his control, and the story then pivots to Peter's struggle to prevent the kid from making Peter a killer, and Walter's determined effort to save his son. He doesn't "want to lose him again," and the only person in the room who knows the true meaning of that is Nina.

Walter's science succeeds, as it almost always does, but not before Peter is directed by the kid to shoot Broyles. Whether Peter is able to shift his arm a little, or because he's not a good shot (Broyles' explanation, not likely), Broyles is only hit in the arm, and the shot goes straight through (which is good).

The show ends with Peter and Walter talking about Peter's mother - is Peter at all beginning to realize that he came from an alternate reality? - and Nina sending an email to Bell, in the other reality.

Fringe needs more shows like this one. And next week's episode promises to be just what the doctor ordered - a show about the eternal bald Observer.

5-min podcast review of Fringe

See also Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Psychological Bones 5.7

Physical bones played little role in tonight's fine Bones 5.7 - not just because the bones in the case were those of a little person (should not be called a midget, as Bones advises, but achondroplastic dwarf) - but because the heart of the case was psychological, not physical.

It begins when Booth is not shooting as straight as he used to. He and everyone presume this is another consequence of his removed brain tumor. Booth wants to talk to Sweets about this, but moves on to Dr. Gordon Gordon Wyatt, who is no longer a shrink working for the FBI, whose knowledge of Booth's problem could hurt Booth's career. In fact, Wyatt's not practicing psychotherapy at all anymore, he's a cook (apologies, a chef).

But Wyatt's as sage as ever, and in a brilliant conversation with Sweets we learn some of the best things of the season. Sweets is agonizing about publishing the book he is writing about Bones and Booth, because he is concerned about what effect its ending might have upon them. And that ending is? Booth and Bones love each other - as, of course, everyone in the world other than the two of them know.

Wyatt further is able diagnose Booth's reason for not shooting straight: his love for Bones, love he cannot fully admit to, because he is afraid it could hurt her, has led him to shackle himself psychologically, as he struggles to keep in check what he wants to do and be with Bones. Freud himself could not have written a more instructive psychological episode.

Wyatt not only realizes this, but shares the insight with Booth. True to the untangling of internal conflict which promises relief or reduction of symptoms in psychotherapy, Booth's shooting is back up to par at the end.

So is this mutual deception destined to continue much longer? Hey, I have an idea - how about a joint episode of Bones and Lie to Me, which could certainly straighten everything out between Bones and Booth. Well, they are both on Fox...

5-min podcast review of Bones

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

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

V 1.2: The Effects and The Characters

A fine second outing for the return of V on ABC-TV on Tuesday, in which I especially liked -

1. The special effects: A story about high-tech aliens on Earth has to have convincing gadgetry, weapons, and vehicles in motion, and V didn't disappoint. In fact, I thought that quick opening scene of the Visitors' crystal swooping down and chasing Erica and Father Jack was one of the best pieces of work I've seen on television, reminiscent almost of the movies.

2. The character development: Continuing differentiation of major characters, especially when they're on the same side, is something the original V excelled in. The remake is doing a good job in this area, too. We're starting to see some differences between Anna and her advisers (who may be more than that), and gorgeous Lisa may be more than skin deep, as she shows what may or may not be real concern about Tyler's throwing some punches. Even Ryan, who's a good Visitor - that is, on our side - has some slight differences with another good Visitor, whom Ryan visits to fix up his lacerated arm. All of this is to the good of the developing story.

3. Father Jack continues to be the most interesting human character. Erica and the FBI are fine, but they've been done before, ranging from Fringe to Numb3rs. The addition of Jack adds a moral element we don't usually see in these narratives.

4. Who else among the humans are Visitors in disguise? Well, as I said last week, I'm still betting on Jack's superior, the older priest. He continues to have too much good to say about the Visitors. Erica's boss is also suspect - he reminds me of Larry in last year's 24 - but it's hard to tell in these cases whether he's a bad guy (a Visitor) or just a hard-ass human.

I'm certainly going to keep watching.

See also V Returns to TV

5-min podcast review of V

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi'

Another superb, surprise-twisting Episode 4.7 of Dexter Sunday night. The 'he can't kill Bambi' quote comes from Harry, Dexter's id, conscience-super ego father voice, and it's about the Trinity killer. "He spent his life killing innocent people, but he can't kill Bambi," Harry/Dexter Morgan acerbically notes about Trinity, who cringes away from using an ax to put a deer that he hit out its misery. Dexter goes on to do the job.

Harry's/Dexter's code would never allow him to kill an innocent person, and this sets Dex sharply apart from Trinity, and all the other killers Dex has killed.

But on Sunday night, Dex kills an innocent man mistakenly thought by Dexter to be a serial killer. I'm pretty sure this is the first time for killing an innocent by Dex, though there have been some close calls. Even Sunday night was a close call - Dex is initially thrown off his plan to kill this apparent killer by a camping trip with Cody - but leave it to Dex, he figures out a way to get his man later that night, anyway-

Only to find the next morning that the real killer is being brought into the station house by Batista - the real killer was the assistant of the guy Dexter dispatched.

Dexter's shocked, Harry's frowning - this goes totally against their code. What impact will this error have on Dexter? He is rational enough to realize the lesson of this mistake: vigilante justice, even when meted out by someone as smart and careful as Dexter, is no substitute for the police and judicial due process. This process is far from perfect - it convicts innocent people, and sets free guilty parties (who are prime candidates for Dexter's attention). But due process does afford the accused and apparently guilty a lot more opportunity to prove their innocence than do Dex's knives.

This show keeps getting better and better, fearless addressing profound ethical issues, as it keeps the pot boiling with serial killers of every stripe prowling the nights of Miami.

5-min podcast review of Dexter

See also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

House 6.6 Around the Bases

Another fine, primarily personal episode 6.6 of House last night, featuring House and Cuddy, and Chase and Cameron.

House and Cuddy clearly love each other - it's more than sexual attraction, even though that is prominent, propelled by Cuddy looking and dressing better than ever before. We're now into House's long pursuit of her - that hunting and gathering part of the relationship - with House going out of his way to see her at a convention he otherwise would not have attended, dancing a suggestive dance with her, only to find that someone else is sharing her room, that very private investigator that House earlier hired.

The convention does provide the occasion for the one nice piece of ethical quandary in the episode, with House doing what he can - in a way only House could - to stop Wilson from ruing his career by admitting to euthanasia.

Outright homicide, not euthanasia, is what's troubling Chase and Cameron back at the hospital and at home, as Chase continues to agonize about his medical murder of the genocidal dictator Dibala several weeks ago. He tells Cameron at the end, and, even though Cameron herself was considering not treating Dibala, it's clear that this admission by Chase puts their relationship in some jeopardy.

It's good to have House back after the World Series. Even when the show is not a home-run in medical amazement, it gets around the good bases of personal relationship.

5-min podcast review of House

See also House Reborn in Season Six? ... 6.2: The Gang is Back and Fractured ... 6.3: The Saving Hitler Quandary ... 6.4: Diagnosis vs. Karma ... 6.5 Getting Better

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The Best of Times and ...

Well, it was the end of the world in last week's Mad Men 3.12, in every way for most of our major players, especially for Don. Tonight's surprising, satisfying altogether brilliant Season 3 finale reversed that. It was the best of times, for everyone, especially including Don, especially regarding his business. And as for his personal life - I'll get to that.

Taking care of business first: Don turns the absorption of Sterling Cooper by McCann into a tour de force triumph of the best of Sterling Cooper coming together, one by one, under the momentum Don starts, to form a new company, Sterling, Cooper, Draper, and Pryce (Lane - the British exec).

Here's how it happens: Don convinces Cooper, and the two walk into Roger's office and convince him. It takes Don praising Roger, and admitting he hadn't acknowledged Roger's strengths (schmoozing clients). Don asks Peggy to join - she says no. She's tired of being dumped on and berated by Don, whatever the name of the company. Don and Roger go to see Pete - he's praised, by Don, who acknowledges that Pete has valuable understanding of "aeronautics, teenagers, and the Negro market" (what a quintessentially perfect-pitch phrase for the end of 1963). Pete's in. So is Harry Crane (who still looks Isaac Asimov, praise in my book). So, too, is Lane Pryce, who's come to enjoy the American pace of life, and not enjoy at all the way his lords in London treat him. Don goes back to see Peggy, and admits to how he's been unfairly tough on her (because he sees her as his "extension"). Peggy says, and if I don't go with your new company, you'll never speak to me again? Don answers, no, I'll keep trying to win you over to our company. Peggy's in. And Joan is back with the upstarts, too.

Cosgrove and Kinsey are not invited. Will they be, next year? Will Sal be invited, right after the closing credits of this Season 3 finale?

Whatever happens, this was one of the most exhilarating, even joyous, interludes ever to be seen on Mad Men.

And Don's personal life? Not so much. Betty definitely is ending their marriage. Don evolves from hurt to furious (when Roger tells him about Henry) to accepting, to some extent - he tells Betty he won't fight on her this. This shows - as does this entire episode - that Don, though seriously flawed, is made of some very good stuff.

As is Mad Men, which this season seemed not too flawed at all. We've finally broken through the web of Don Draper deception that covered, and sometimes risked smothering, many a previous episode. But this season in general, and the last two episodes in particular, were as top-notch as television, any narrative medium gets.

I can't wait for Season 4.

8-min podcast review of Mad Men
See also: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Rent-a-Car, eBags, eHarmony, eMusic, Nutrisystem

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Why The Public Option Is Crucial

A brief reminder about why a public option in health care is so important:

Insurance companies are in business to make money, or financially profit from their work. The time-honored way of maximizing profit is straightforward: increase income and reduce costs. In terms of health care, this translates into raising the cost of health care to businesses and consumers, and turning away or refusing to pay for as many claims for health care as are legally permitted. In other words, a health care system motivated only by profit is bound to cost more and do less for the population as a whole.

Good things can and do come from private enterprise in health care - in stimulating research and increasing patient choice. A public option won't limit that - it will only offer health care to Americans locked out of the profit-making system, and provide more choices for people who already receive health care.

See also Private, For-Profit Health Care Is Self-Contradictory

Friday, November 6, 2009

Soviet Dust: A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6

Never underestimate Soviet science. In reality, they got out into space before we did in the 1950s. In the intersections of science and science fiction, the Soviets experimented with mental telepathy and all kinds of things. Who knows what they may have accomplished, or what strange forces walked through the doors they opened.

Tonight's Fringe 2.6 considered one of them - actually, a possibility that the U.S. was concerned about, regarding our own astronauts. They were quarantined at first, to protect us from any exotic organisms they might have brought back home from space.

This was the the different "stripe" of incredible, as Walter put it, that Fringe explored tonight. As Walter also said, those "pinkos" were up to all sorts of bizarre activities. One of which was their treatment of a cosmonaut who returned from space with an alien, shadow passenger.

Not the most original theme in the world - or, in places beyond our world - but, as I've noted about Fringe frequently, it excels in the retelling of classic science fiction motifs. Tonight's retelling embroiled Broyles, and gave us a bit of back story on how he lost his family - his wife left him, and took along their children - as his attempt to keep them and the world at little safer kept him too far from home.

But the best parts, as often on Fringe, were the visuals. Tonight's alien turns people into dust, leaving their skin intact as a fragile shell, which a strong breeze or the gentlest touch can shatter. The most memorable scene was a fly landing on a face, and causing it to crumble.

Fringe itself sometimes seems to be a such face. I hope we keep seeing it on television.

5-min podcast review of Fringe

See also Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot

Well, I've often said that truly good combinations of mystery and comedy are as scarce as hen's teeth, and none do it better than Bones, as tonight's episode 5.6 about a murder in a chicken coop so tastily shows.

The chicken part led to fine puns, which I'll just let simmer without pulling apart. And there was also a pig in this episode - not the male chauvinist kind, but a real pig - which provided the emotional foundation of the story.

Angela, who was been abstinent for months, is channeling her pent up emotions into concern for the plight of pigs. She asks Bones to contribute to save one - Bones refuses. (Don't hate me, but I'm 100% with Bones here.) Angela is hurt, and says she can't see how she could be such close friends with Bones, since they have almost nothing in common. And now Bones is really hurt.

This opens up the best part of the episode, as Booth tries to advise and support her. The two have been getting closer and closer this season, in a gradual, realistic, emotionally satisfying way.

Bones supports Booth as well, as he misses a call on seeing through a killer's deception. He's still recovering from his days in a coma, and this, too, is refreshingly realistic in a television show. Bones assures Booth that she trusts him, whether he's 100% or not.

He advises her to contribute to Angela's cute little piggy fund. Well, I already told you how I feel about that. And Angela should be getting beyond that by now, anyway. She's no longer refraining from sex.

Good for Wendell, the lucky recipient. Good for us. And even good for Jack - I have a feeling this may be the beginning of a reunion with Angela, though maybe that's just chicken pot pie in the sky.

Okay, I'll stop writing now. I don't want you to wring my neck.

6-min podcast review of Bones

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

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

FlashForward 1.7: The Future Can Be ...

The sweeping winds of November brought as an episode of FlashForward - 1.7 - that may be better than even the pilot.

It starts with a scene which in part is actually close to the end of the episode - that is, the end of the piece of the present we are seeing unfold each week. We also saw a significant part of the past, and of course some flashforward time in the future. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

That opening brings a woman with two children on a beautiful morning. She finds an invitation on her windshield, which tells her she is not alone. We soon learn that she is being invited to join a group of people who have had no flashforward vision - a death club, The Blue Hand, of people with no visions who see themselves as doomed and want to put a modicum of control back in their lives by determining the time of their deaths. At the same time, we hear a voice reading a letter which says you can indeed have control over your life. It is this voice and letter that actually come from the end of this episode....

The voice is Agent Gough's, and the incredible story tonight was his. It turns out that his meeting in London with Fiona Banks (Alex Kingston from ER) was not the most significant part of his vision. It has seemed to us that it was, because Gough and Banks were the first to mutually confirm their joint vision, apparently proving that the future visions are views of the real future. But Gough saw and heard something else, in addition, in that vision - a conversation in which he is devastated to learn that he is responsible for someone's death.

That would be Celia, the woman with the children in the opening scene. And Gough struggles with this for the whole rest of this episode - he can't live with himself, knowing that he did something to kill this woman. In the end, he comes upon a solution. He says he knows how to change the rules of the game. He jumps off a high roof.

He's left a letter for Demetri - who, with Benford and Stan, in a superb scene, try in vain to talk Gough down. The letter is the one we heard at the beginning. Gough wrote it the night before. And it is now Demetri's voice we hear reading it.

So the future can be changed. There is hope for Demetri - we earlier had been treated to a good scene with him and Zoey, in which he tells her the truth, and they confront their conflicting visions. Zoey's vision of their marriage was not enough to give him real hope. But Gough's death is. So Demetri now has hope. And Benford does, too. He hugs Olivia as never before since the flashforward (and, indeed, he says the least on the roof - not that he wants Gough to jump, but he finds the possibility that the future can be changed irresistible).

But this still leaves open a crucial question: what is Banks now seeing in her recollection as the vision she and Gough originally shared? Will she continue to recall that vision now wrong, realizing it is wrong, or will she now recall seeing something different, a flashforward with no Gough?

And as the episode shows us that the future can be changed, it also showed us that it seems to have some inevitability, too. Aaron wants his vision to be true, because it shows his daughter alive. He at first gets confirmation of that tonight, from a soldier who gives Aaron his daughter's pocket knife - Aaron has seen himself giving that knife to his daughter, alive, in the future. But the soldier later tells him that his daughter died. It seems the future with her alive did not come to be, either. And then, in a great last scene, Aaron's daughter is sitting on his couch, in our present, very much alive.

Flashforward has a lot of explaining to do. Which is precisely why, with episodes like this, it is such emotionally and intellectually commanding television.

9-min podcast review of FlashForward

See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability and 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures and 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House ... Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5 ... Across the Universe in FlashForward 1.6

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

V Returns to TV

Kenneth Johnson's original 1983 mini-series V - along with its 1984 sequel V: The Final Battle - was oddly one of my favorite television shows. Actually, it still is. But I say "oddly," because although the story was trite - aliens landing on Earth, claiming they want to help us, only to eat us - the media savvy and political implications were compelling.

Damon Knight's 1950 short story "To Serve Man," adapted into one of the most enduring Twilight Zone episodes in 1962, told the story best. Aliens land, cure our illnesses, bring peace, want happiness for us - because they view us as livestock. V in 1983 expanded this story to show the aliens - The Visitors - manipulating the media, and provoking underground freedom fighters all over the world who discovered the truth about The Visitors. Indeed, V posted a dedication "to the heroism of the resistance and the freedom fighters, past, present and future." In 1983, freedom fighters encompassed everyone from the Hungarians who bravely stood up to Soviet tanks in the 1950s (viewed as heroes by most Americans) to Contras fighting the Sandinistas in power in Nicaragua in the 1980s (viewed as heroes mostly by Ronald Reagan and his supporters).

Tonight's V had political analogies, but a little more obvious and less complex than the 1980s version. Tonight's Visitors promise "universal health care," a clear and unnecessary shot at the good work Obama and the Democrats are trying to do right now in Washington. A more apt connection was made tonight between the Visitors and terrorists.

Actually, the Visitors are referred to as the "V's" in this incarnation, and I prefer the "Visitors". But V 2009 does have Father Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch, who played Frank Vasser on Journeyman), which opens up some good theological threads (I'm suspecting his superior might be a Visitor undercover), and Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell has a top role as Erica Evans.

The new version also has the winning mix of good and bad Visitors, and Visitor-collaborator and rebel humans as the original, as well as some echoes of Battlestar Galactica (the Visitors as Cylons), and an appealing media criticism component, so I'm going to give it a chance. And kudos to ABC for stepping up with science fiction a lot more than once this decade - Lost, Invasion, FlashForward, and now the return of V.

5-min podcast review of V

Monday, November 2, 2009

Dexter on the Couch in 4.6

Poor Dexter was on the couch in 4.6 - the shrink's couch, brought there for couples counseling by Rita, concerned about their lack of communication. She of course doesn't know the tenth of it, and when things work out just fine at the end of the episode - Dex is moving his stuff into a shed right next to their house - she's as clueless about Dex's dark side as ever.

I'm a little worried, though, that Dex's trophies - the slides with blood samples - will sooner or later get discovered. Their hiding place in the air conditioner is by no means completely immune from detection. We'll see...

Meanwhile, Dexter has a confrontation with the Trinity killer, in which Dex is the victim. He picks up the urn containing Trinity's sister's ashes, to provoke him, and he's provoked. John Lithgow goes from helpful deacon to enraged almost-monster in the blink of an eye, and comes pretty close to choking Dexter out. It's instructive to see Dexter's extraordinary control in these situations. He's able to keep his meek cover, essential to what he ultimately wants to do to his adversary, but at the price of risking his own life.

Speaking of risks, Laguerta and Batista are risking a lot lying to Captain Matthews about ending their relationship - at least, I think they're lying, because they love each other far too much to end it, and they love their work too, so neither wants to be the reason the other leaves homicide. But pretending you're no longer in a relationship, with so many eyes on you, can't be easy.

Debra's not having an easy time of it, either. But she's finally realized that Lundy was killed by the Trinity killer, which gives her focus which is the best thing for her - but points her right at her brother Dexter, who is trying to take care of the Trinity killer all on his own...

See also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 3.5

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

6-min podcast review of Dexter

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World

Skeeter Davis's The End of the World played under the closing credits of Mad Men 3.12 tonight, and it came pretty close to that in many, but not all, ways...

We knew it would be coming. But the logical time was the Season 3 finale - which will be on next week. Instead, Mad Men surprised us with a kick in the heart tonight, which started as a cold day with no heat in the offices of Sterling Cooper, proceeded to too much heat being pumped out, and soon showed us the television in Harry's office, which told us it was November 22, 1963.

It was painful to see those news clips again - worse than painful, as it always is, but also always instructive. Don's says everything will be fine, but of course it won't. In many crucial ways, our country has still not recovered from the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I know that some of the tears I quietly shed as I watched the funeral of Teddy Kennedy this summer were for JFK.

And, yet, incredibly but not surprisingly, that wasn't the worst of it for Don. The assassination and the emotional cauldron it creates makes Betty realize she no longer loves him. Significantly, it's not just what Betty found out about Don's assumed identity - in a crucial scene the night before assassination, she still looks with love at Don as he takes care of their baby in the middle of the night. But after the assassination and Don's reaction to it, Betty gives Henry an incandescent smile that's the happiest we've seen from her in the three years of the series. Another brilliant performance from January Jones, and Jon Hamm, too.

What will become of Don now? What does the finale have left to tell us? If I could imagine that Mad Men could continue without Don, I'd almost see suicide as his next move.

But maybe not. Don still has some reserves of strength. People land on their feet in strange ways on Mad Men. The same terrible end of November that split Don and Betty have pulled Pete and Trudy closer.

What an episode. I'm looking forward to watching Dexter now - I could use a breather from the angst - a contest of serial killers would be relaxing.

But what an episode ... in addition to all of its other superlatives, it may well be the best fiction ever on the screen about the impact of November 22, 1963 on a stratum of Americans, influential and otherwise...

And I'll be back here next week, after I've seen the Mad Men finale.

Listen to a little of Skeeter Davis's The End of the World ...

7-min podcast review of Mad Men

See also: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

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e-mail received from a reader:
Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom

I of course happily replied...

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