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; Reacher; 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.
Chuck Todd interviews me about alternate histories
Season 7 of 24 ... another superb episode in this outstanding Day in Jack Bauer's life and exploits ... unlucky Hour 13.
CTU has been disbanded. All that was left of it, other than Jack, was Tony, Chloe, and Bill.
And now, there's one less.
I had a bad feeling when I saw the coming attractions last week. The look on Jack's face after the explosion said that someone very close to Jack had died. I figured either Aaron or Bill.
It was Bill. This season was his best season. James Morrison portrayed the character to the moral, rational, tough but sympathetic hilt. Bill Buchanan will go down as one of the best CTU, FBI, or whatever chiefs in television history.
Meanwhile, we've now got Jon Voight's bad guy completely in play. He's shaping up to be one of the primo villains in the seven Seasons of 24.
More bad news. And Jack's back on the run. There's tension between the President's daughter and the Chief of Staff. I still don't trust Moss completely, and the VP is a grade-A a-hole.
One glimmer of good news. Renee and Jack seem to have a bond.
We've all seen in movies, learned in history classes, how superstition and religious intolerance got in the way of science in the Middle Ages, even during the Renaissance.
It's hard to believe that we were just inhabiting a 21st century Dark Ages regarding stem cell research. True, it wasn't banned, but funding was withheld by a President, guided by ignorance. Who knows how many lives might have been saved, could have been saved in the future, by research into stem cells and their organ-building capacities, research that was not conducted due to a lack of funding these past eight years.
Thank goodness, that's over now. When historians look back at our time, and cite the best things done by Barack Obama, his lifting of the stem cell research Federal funding ban today will be high among them. On the one hand, it's unfortunate that excellence has to be highlighted by the bad policy it replaces. On the other hand, it's gratifying that the democratic process works - in the Middle Ages, there was little that could be done to remedy the rulings of an unschooled king.
Stem cell research is about saving and improving life. Its consequence is that more people will live, and live healthier lives. Today, in other words, is not only a victory for science and democracy, but for life.
Hey, just a week left to see Dead Man's Cell Phone in Hartford, starring my friend Mark Shanahan - who also narrates the audio book of The Plot to Save Socrates and lots of my other science fiction.
Mark's a fine actor, by the way, and one of the best things I did in my time as Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham was bring in Mark to teach courses on Hitchcock, Film in New York, and other intriguing subjects... The New York Times review has all the time and place details for the play, and below are two videos of me discoursing on the impact of the cellphone...
I previously wrote about Republican insensitivity to the health of children, among other things, in Why Are Republicans So Mean?, but two displays in recent weeks have gone well beyond even that level of meanness, and so require brief, special condemnation:
1. In February, when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to work after being operated upon for pancreatic cancer, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) opined that she'd be dead within nine months. "Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," Bunning told a group at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner. He apologized two days later (but misspelled her name).
2. And just yesterday - Friday, March 6 - Rush Limbaugh remarked about Obama's health care legislation initiative, ""Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill."
What is wrong with these people?
Have they no souls, no common decency?
I can understand - though I strongly disagree with - Republican tics like saying FDR made the Great Depression worse, or Obama is leading us into socialism. Those points are very wrong, but they're not making the mortality of a devoted public servant a sleazy talking point.
Is this where the GOP is heading? America deserves an opposition party that can do better.
The main story in tonight's Final 8th Episode of Battlestar Galactica, including the last scene, was the Admiral saying goodbye to his ship. There was also a good scene between Laura and Adama, in which she urges him to save what he can of the people on the ship, including the two of them, by abandoning it to yawning cosmos...
Which he does.
But there were at least four other elements that I found even more impressive in tonight's tale -
1. Ellen consoling and strengthening Tigh by reminding him that he's fathered a million children over the millennia. That one line tells us almost all we need to know about the long Cylon perspective on life and the universe. It may be even more impressive than the resurrections.
2. The Eights - Sharon, Athena - continue to be right on the cusp, truly schizophrenic Cylons in terms of good and evil, us and them. The models themselves have split - witness Sharon (bad) and Athena (good) - but in this episode Sharon herself moves from kidnapper to surrogate mother of Hera. By the time the hybrid child is delivered to Cavil, Sharon is crying as many real tears as Athena...
3. And speaking of hybrids, Sam has turned into one, and for a while is almost running Galactica. Dangerous business.
4. Because after he's disconnected from the ship, Starbuck starts him up again, just by talking to him, and we still don't know how it is that Starbuck died but is still, apparently alive...
Life and death battle as Battlestar Galactica tragi-majestically comes to an end...
A fabulous, very satisfying all-island episode 5.8 of Lost tonight - one of the best Sawyer episodes, and, for that matter, one of the best Lost episodes of all time, also.
Speaking of which - time - Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Faraday, and Jin are back in the 1970s, and the island has stopped skipping, due to Locke's turning of the wheel. We get a great immersion in prime Dharma time - before Ben and his father have arrived. Horace (who met Ben's father and mother on the road in Oregon) is head of the Dharma island crew. He's married to Amy (played by Reiko Aylesworth - Michelle Dressler on 24, and a pleasure to see again), who is having his baby boy.
But the real love story, and it's a wonderful one, is between Sawyer and Juliet. She's got Sawyer's back, as he says, and he enables her to recover her confidence, culminating in her successful delivery of Horace and Amy's baby.
Has Sawyer really gotten over Kate? We'll find out soon, because tonight's episode ends with Sawyer going out to meet Jin, who has picked up Hurley, Jack, and Kate (having traveled back from LA and through time on that plane that fell from the sky last week). I've got to say that ...I'm rooting for Sawyer and Juliet, they were so good together tonight. But it won't be easy - and, Juliet may well have some feelings for Jack. But Sawyer and Juliet never looked happier. (And Sawyer was back in primo wise-cracking form - aptly calling Faraday "Plato").
Faraday may be due for some happiness, too. Charlotte disappeared before the island stopped skipping - she wasn't dead, Faraday told Sawyer and Juliet - she just disappeared. This seems to mean that she was never on the island. And the fact that Faraday sees Charlotte as a little girl in Dharma town means that maybe he will warn her a little more strongly this time not to come back to the island as an adult, which means that Faraday could go find Charlotte off-island at some point, and they could live happily ever after, as I suggested a few weeks ago.
But that's getting a little ahead of the game. For now, it's good to see true love ways on that time-jangled island. I could almost hear Buddy Holly's voice over the credits.
Well, 24 promised that it would do things this Season it never did before, and it certainly came through in tonight's Hours 11-12 - a double-power-episode - that gave us the White House and the President under breathtaking siege, with heroic action by Jack, Aaron, and, in another theater of the conflict, Renee as well.
First, however, a couple of plot elements I found hard to believe: (1) How did Juma and his cadre get into the United States? (2) How did they so easily overpower all the levels of Secret Service at the White House?
But thoroughly believable was the President giving herself up to save her daughter. Jack told her he would have done that too, but pleaded with the President not to, because she was President and he was not - but I think any parent, President or not, would have done the same as President Taylor.
Torture was also very much in the air and in keen intellectual dispute tonight. In another superb scene, Bill tells Jack he (Bill) can't bring himself to torture the Senator's aide, Ryan, a traitor who clearly knows that the White House will be attacked. The President has sent Jack on his way to prison, because he was torturing Ryan, who was about to break. Jack's shipment out to prison is interrupted by the terrorist attack on the White House, which he is now defending.
So is torture right or wrong, on behalf of stopping an imminent terrorist attack? First, I think it's important to point out that this was nothing like what was going on in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, where the torture was not designed to stop a terrorist attack only minutes away. My response to whether Jack or the President or Bill were most right in their three different takes on torture is that I'm not sure. I like to think that, at very least, I'm most like Bill, and couldn't bring myself to torture anyone myself. But if innocent lives were literally at risk, in a terrorist attack about to happen, would I have stopped Jack if I were President?
A difficult question - well served neither by apologists for the Bush administration, nor by Keith Olbermann's frequent attacks on 24 as glorifying torture. At very least, 24 presents this issue in the wrenching complexity it deserves - and 24 deserves credit not criticism for this.
Back to the story ... Next hour promises even more deadly surprises, and I'm worried that Bill or Aaron, or maybe both of them, may not come through it...
Just two more upcoming episodes of The L Word - this week and next, on Showtime - so I thought I'd check in with another update.
The central story line in this last season is who killed Jenny - found floating in the pool, in classic hot 1940s Hollywood style, in the first scene of the first episode this year. As the season has unfolded, it's becoming clear that just about everyone and their grandmother has a reason to hate and kill Jenny. She shoots her mouth off to Helena's new love, and may have ruined it for her. She steals Alice's treatment, and sells it as a script for half a million dollars - I'll get back to that in a minute.
But, first, when you have a murder, and everyone has a motive, I can't help thinking like Agatha Christie that everyone's the murderer. That would be a satisfying ending - much as I can't quite see Tina and Bette joining in on any killing (but it's not impossible). The other possibility is Jenny killed herself. If I had to bet, I'd put my money on that...
But speaking of money, and back to Alice, I can't buy that Alice didn't go even more ballistic when she found out that Jenny stole and made a cool half mil on Alice's idea. Why didn't she call a lawyer? For that matter, how come Tina, who's in the business, didn't get a little more upset and involved in this, too? The same for Bette. Everyone reacts, a little, but no one goes really crazy, and no one does anything to help Alice.
I'll be looking forward to see how this all plays out in the final two episodes - and will miss The L Word when it's over.
The most tender of the final Battlestar Galactica episodes thus far - but laced with a powerful wind-up punch ...
Just what you'd expect, come to think of it, in a story starring Sharon "Boomer" Valeri. She tells Tyrol that she's thought of him every night "since I died in your arms". She's in the brig now, about to be sent off with Six to stand trial, over her collaboration with Cavil. She takes Tyrol via projected illusion to a beautiful place, where they live, in love, and just for deep good measure have a teenage daughter...
It's all reminiscent of the place Kirk is inhabiting in that Star Trek movie in which he meets Picard ... and it's just as falsely convincingly real. And all the more effective for inhabitants of the sunless Galactica world...
Back on which, Tyrol gets Boomer out of the brig - he's desperate, his plea to President Laura fell on deaf ears. (But she'll soon get hers.) Boomer knocks out Athena, makes love to Helo (well, a little more rough than that), and ... steals Hera. It's apparently all in Cavil's plan - Boomer was sent back to Galactica to get Hera.
One good result of this is that it may have killed Laura. I'm sorry to say I'm not the least bit sorry to see her go - with the exception of the time she went wild against the mutiny, she's been a boring, deadening character this year.
Meanwhile, Starbuck has a lengthy interlude with a piano player, who turned out to be her father, who somehow had taught Starbuck how to play the Dylanesque Cylon theme when she was a girl. Does this mean she's a Cylon? Not necessarily ...
But what is the case is that Boomer's blast into the faster-than-light speed, so close to Galactica, may have put the ship over the non-reparable edge ... unless that organic resin can start kicking in.
Enjoy Lost? - every episode reviewed on Infinite Regress - here's a review of the latest episode ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben
I sold more books than Joe the Erstaz Plumber! But, then, again, I'm sure that most authors have - according to The Washington Post, a total of 11 people showed up to "Joe"'s (his name isn't Joe either) book signing at a Border's in Washington, DC, yesterday - and only 5 books were sold!
Now, book signings are not easy. Many any author will tell you the time they drove hundreds of miles to a reading and signing, only to find that the books didn't arrive at the book shop. Or, only three people were in the audience - two of whom were drunks who wandered in, and the third a book store employee.
But book signings in or near big cities always do a least a little better than Joe. Last signing that I did for The Plot to Save Socrates, at a Barnes and Noble in Yonkers, NY, brought in 27 sales (yeah, I was counting), and, let's face it, I'm not exactly a household name...
Somehow, Joe, who isn't a licensed plumber, is almost a household name - because the media couldn't resist giving big coverage to his know-nothing views (for example, that Obama's election would be "death" to Israel).
It's good to see the book buying public is a little smarter. Here's to Gutenberg and literacy!
Wow, what an episode of Lost! (5.7, if you're counting) ... in which we learn -
1. Our hope that Ben might not be bad is shattered ... at least, for the most part ... because Ben kills Locke! Now, maybe this is part of some more complex master plan, but it sure seems as if Ben doesn't want Locke to interact with Eloise (Faraday's mother), because that could lead to dangerous consequences of some kind for Ben. So he talks Locke out of the noose, but then, after he learns Locke is going to see Eloise, strangles Locke with the noose, anyway, and makes it look as if Locke killed himself... One of the best surprises this year on Lost..
2.Ben also kills Abaddon (who is in Widmore's employ) - too bad, I actually like Lance Reddick in this role better than in Fringe.
3. Back on the island, after the plane crash of last week, we see two other results in addition to Jack, Kate, and Hurley alive and ok: (a) Locke is back alive, in seemingly perfect shape, and (b) the other people on the plane - including Cesar, and Ben - have survived, in various wounded and ok conditions. Cesar is ok. But Ben is badly wounded. So Locke is again revealed as someone the island regenerates. The first time around, the island let him walk again (and Locke as Jeremy Bentham back in a wheelchair in our world was a nice touch). This time, the island brings Locke back to life...
4. Which leaves us with yet another question about Ben: if he knew the island would definitely bring Locke back to life, maybe Ben wasn't so evil to kill Locke, after all... You gotta hand it to Ben and Lost - once again, just when we're pretty sure Ben is evil, a facet emerges that maybe puts Ben in another light ... And we haven't even found out, as yet, how Ben got beat-up before the latest plane trip...
5. And last point about plane trips... Didn't Jack say in the Season 3 finale that he'd been flying around, lots of times, hoping his plane would crash? Jack didn't give quite that impression in his conversation with Locke tonight. In fact, Jack rejected Locke's plea that he round up the Oceanic Six and take them back to the island. But Locke's death is reported pretty soon after Jack's meeting with him - Jack sees the notice in the newspaper on his plane ride back from Sidney. When, exactly, did Jack get in all of that traveling around by plane? I suppose Jack might not have intended the plane rides to bring him back to the island, just to crash, but still...
6. But it was great to see Locke talk to Walt, back in New York...
5-min podcast review of Lost 5 Hr 7
Enjoy Battlestar Galactica? Every episode reviewed on Infinite Regress ... here's a review of the latest episode:Final 7: 'Since I Died in Your Arms'
I'm listening to Bobby Jindal - Governor of Louisiana - give the Republican response to Barack Obama's superb address to Congress and the American people tonight.
I've got to say that Jindal's speech - in delivery as well as content - is one the lamest "opposition" speeches I've ever heard any Republican or Democrat give.
Jindal says Republicans don't want to raise any working person's taxes - he must have missed when Obama just said that no one earning under $250,000 a year would pay a cent more in taxes.
Jindal says don't let anyone tell you our best days are behind us - I just heard Obama talk about America resurging to its greatest heights in the future.
One point that Jindal did get right is that the President and the Democrats think the government can help in this crisis. Jindal and the Republicans want what - the government does nothing to help? Apparently nothing to help with high-speed rail lines...
Back to Jindal's outrightly inane points, he cited Katrina as an example of the "bureaucrats" being bravely overruled. And those government officials would be .... Republicans.
If Jindal has any chance of getting the Republican nomination for President for 2012, it would reside in a majority of Republicans sleeping during his speech tonight.
24 completed its first story line in fine style tonight - lots of action, angst, and fast-moving strategy.
My favorite scene was Jack and Renee, in the hospital. We saw part of this in the coming attractions - Renee slapping Jack, saying she just wants to know if he feels anything about the people who die. What came after was even better. Renee putting her head on Jack's shoulder, Jack comforting her, Renee pulling away, Jack walking away and warning Renee if she ever pulls a gun on him again she'd better use it, Renee retorting I would have, this time .... As I've said before, I think they make a good couple (though, enough already about goading poor Jack about Terry)...
Clearly, Jack and Renee will be back together as the season continues.
But the battleground is changing. Sean and Erica both were the moles, and they're taken care of (Dawn, one of my Infinite Regress readers, was right about Erika, after all!) (looks like I was wrong about Janis - but you still never know).
Chloe and Bill were both heroic in this part of the story. But, with the White House under attack next week in a two-hour episode, everyone's going to have all they can do to save the country. Excellent that Tony is back (another fine scene with Jack and Tony sitting on the steps across from the Washington Monument). Should be good - and, there's got to be a major mole in the White House itself, and I'm still not liking Ethan (that is, I'm thinking he may be a bad guy).
A perfect, beautiful, exquisitely played episode of Big Love last night - 3.6 - probably the best episode ever on the series. In part, because, at last, it focused only on Bill's family...
First, though, I should mention that I'm really enjoying the fast pace of Big Love this year. Like Lost, 24, Heroes, and Damages, Big Love has learned to wrap up story lines, before they even edge slightly towards tiring us. Roman's out of prison and court, Bill and Ana got married and split, and lots of other crises have been well introduced and better resolved.
Which left last night's story wide open to really delve into other, long brewing family matters.
One of the most compelling aspects of Big Love has always been how Bill's family, despite it being so different from most families in America, grapples with the same problems. That was never shown better than last night.
Sarah (wonderfully played by Amanda Seyfried) is pregnant. This would be very difficult for a teenager about to go off to college in any family. But in the Henricksons, that pain is magnified more than three-fold, like most of the other crises they struggle with.
Barb discovers Nicki's birth control pills, assumes they are Sarah's, and starts going ballistic. This puts Nicki in a tough position - she knows Bill and her sister wives will be angry, to say the least, if they find out Nicki's been sabotaging her wifely responsibilities. In one of the best sequences in the entire series, Nicki comes through for Sarah, and tells Barb and Margene she's been taking the pills. As bad as Nicki has been at times, this shows what she's made of at the core, and how much she loves her family. She also comes through for Sarah and the family after Sarah loses her baby, supporting Sarah, and encouraging her to tell Bill and Barb.
Barb's and Bill's reactions were also a high point of this show, and the series. They love their daughter, and support her. I don't see how there could be could anyone without tears in their eyes after watching that heart-rending scene. Barb and Bill put love for their daughter above any religious teachings, and that's a redeeming message indeed.
On just a slightly lighter side, Margene and Ben run into each naked in a room (nice derriere Ginnifer Goodwin, or who's ever that was in that scene). Ben writes a Margene a love note, which Teenie sees ... Teenie talks to Margene, who talks to Ben. This, of course, is a problem that could only arise in a polygamous family, and it was rendered very well last night, too.
And on the subject of polygamy - we see Bill, struggling with his faith, not wanting to lose it, when he gets a few seconds alone with the sky.
An unforgettable episode of Big Love, reminiscent of the best of The Sopranos. I expect it will be seen for years to come, and will make an indelible contribution to the evolution of television narrative.
Another really powerful, winning final episode of Battlestar Galactica tonight - this one, Final #6 - which was all about the absolute necessity of hybrid, and the impossibility of either Cylon or humans surviving now on their own...
1. Caprica 6 and Tigh's unborn baby Liam dies. It wasn't really because Ellen, in fine bitch form - the same personality as a Cylon as a human - tries to pull Caprica and Tigh apart. It wasn't because Tigh didn't love Caprica and the baby enough (he certainly deeply loved and wanted the baby). It was because a pure Cylon was not meant to be. Pure Cylon is not the way of the future. Not pure human, either.
2. The death of Liam makes Ellen realize that her attempt to get the Final Five Cylons off on their own won't work, either. They could neither procreate, nor get resurrected.
3. And Galactica herself can only survive by becoming hybrid - via the Cylon living resin mending its cracks and growing with it...
So hybrid is the only way to go. But human-Cylon life still has potent human-only and Cylon-only enemies...
Yes, another really satisfying, lyrical episode of BSG tonight. And with at least two priceless scenes ... Adama comforting Saul on his loss of a son (and Saul saying he knows it's not like with Zach) ... and Caprica 6 explaining to Ellen that Saul didn't love Ellen any less ... That one made me realize again why Caprica 6 has always been my favorite Battlestar Galactica character.
An oddly paced, fascinating, powerful but unsatisfying episode 5.6 of Lost tonight, that raised more questions that it answered, even though the answers that were given were good.
Answered: How Los Angeles connects to the island, and how our people can get back there. Good neo-Victorian scientific setting, and good explanation by Faraday's mother.
New questions raised:
1. Why did Kate leave Aaron behind?
2. Who beat up Ben?
3. How did Hurley and Sayid know to come to the airport?
4. Who was the woman with Sayid?* (And, for that matter, who was the other Iraqi - I think we saw him last in the excellent "House of Saddam" on HBO - the actor, that is...) *Played by Zuleikha Robinson, of Rome fame - thanks to Mike for mentioning this in the comments.
There were some nice touches - Frank Lapidus as the pilot of the plane (which makes sense - he is somehow one of the ushers to and from the island), and Jack meeting his grandfather.
And other less obvious questions - why, for example, did Faraday's mother, played by the fabulous Fionnula Flanagan, not react more to Desmond's message from her son?
All in all, it was good to see some of our people back on the island - but it may have happened a little too fast. This was one of those episodes that made me wish I had the self-control to DVR this one, and the next few, and watch them all at once, in a more satisfying story arc.
As it is, I'll just have to wait, looking through time for next week's screen...
Just caught a glimpse of Sean Hannity on Fox tonight - I thought I was watching a remake of Triumph of the Will.
Apocalyptic "Omen" music playing in the background ... Democrats pressing for the stimulus package, proud when it passed ... Republicans heroically standing up against it ... fighting against -
Socialism in America!
Images bathed in red, Hannity raving on about socalism, except -
Socialism is the government nationalizing, owning, taking over industry. No private ownership, no corporations, no private enterprise.
How is the stimulus package anything like that, close to it, even moving towards it? The government is loaning money to the auto companies and the banks. When it makes money available for building of infrastructure, that money will be going to companies such as Caterpillar, which will be hiring more workers, etc.
No government ownership.
Words have meaning. As George Orwell made frighteningly clear in 1984, the path to totalitarian strangling of liberty and decency resides, in significant part, in striping language of its meaning - war is peace, freedom is slavery - with an eye towards confusing the public.
No, this country is not moving towards socialism at all.
But displays such as Hannity's are about as far as I've ever seen anything on American media veer towards Nazi and Communist modes of propaganda.
He's the least conflicted, most effective hero by far ... Sylar has escaped from the government's goons at least twice now. And, despite what he says, he's taking good care of the kid he picked up last week. I know Sylar's capable of doing something awful any time, but so far in 2009 I'm finding his character commendable.
HRG, on the other hand, is the epitome of conflicted. I was glad to see Matt and company at least turn the tables on him. I have a feeling we may be in for a surprise - let's say it turns out that HRG has some powers of his own, after all...
Oh yeah - this is Heroes 3.16 I'm talking about.
It also had a good scene with photos of all the heroes up on a police suspect board. Nathan is pretty despicable, but he's bound to come through and see the light and stop Danko. Until that happens, though, even torture is permitted. Heroes is indeed moving into 24 territory (though, actually, at this point in 24, more people are against torture than are endorsing it).
Good to see Ando and his power - but I'm beginning to miss Hiro's time travel. It's also one of the few things that Sylar can't do...
Well, I was wrong about Janis - though she certainly gave being the mole in the FBI a fine run for its money in tonight's Hour 9 of Day 7 of 24 .... another powerful, kick-in-your-stomach per minute hour...
But creepy Sean's the mole after all - though, who knows, maybe there are two moles, and Janis is really working for someone other than Larry, too? Probably not...
It's great to have Chloe on the case behind a computer in a government office. I'm still expecting some sort of confrontation between Chloe and Janis.
I'm a little worried about Chloe, actually. It's a never a good sign when you say goodbye to your husband and sweet little toddler in the car, and you walk into a dangerous situation. But it was good to see Morris again, and meet their little boy Prescott.
Someone who also likely doesn't have much of a future is Dubaku's girlfriend Marika. Sean's treachery got in the way of Jack and Renee protecting her.
But, for that matter, I expect we won't be seeing much of Dubaku, either. Alive or dead, he doesn't have much to threaten, or contribute to the story. We'll likely see more of the real powers behind the evil - the bad guys in the government.
Fortunately, we'll have at least one other good guy on our side: Aaron!
After the shoot-em-up breathtaking final episodes of the past few weeks, Battlestar Galactica put on a riveting, soft spoken intellectual powerhouse of a Final Episode #5 tonight, with deep, real answers ... and, of course, a question or two.
This was mostly Ellen and Cavil (John)'s episode on the Cylon ships, and Sam's on Galactica. They both tell the story ...
Ellen created Cavil (she calls him John, much to his displeasure) and together they created the rest of the Cylons who look and walk like humans. Cavil hates his human body. Ellen considers him and all the humanoid Cylons a triumph, the best of both beings. They have free will and love...
This conversation between mother and rebellious son is one of the best in the entire series. It rivals the conversations Isaac Asimov wrote between R. Daneel and his human associates. (Added Feb 14: And in responding to a comment below by Livia, I realized that Cavil's speech about the exploding star was also reminiscent of Rutger Hauer's great musings about what he had experienced as an android, in Bladerunner.) We learn a lot about Cavil - he's the oldest looking skin job, but in many ways is still the youngest.
Back on Galactica, Sam's wound to the head has decanted his memories - of just about everything we need to know. The counterpoint of Ellen and Cavil, and Sam and his listeners, takes us through every season and century of BSG.
But ... Kara still doesn't know how she came back from Earth and the dead.
And now that the Final Five have been ID'ed in these final episodes, why not introduce one last product of Ellen's genius - Daniel, a humanoid Cylon rendered extinct by Cavil.
Who is he? Gaeta? It also turns out that the final five have no memories of earlier existences, and, therefore, relationships...
Cylons and humans have become even more intertwined, and this may come to include the Galactica herself. She's cracking, and Tyrol suggests an organic resin which will grow with the ship. Adama resists - at first - and then agrees...
And so the spiral cycle continues ... with a brand new beginning or bumper for the show. Pretty daring in itself, this far into the series and this close to the end...
Two more incidents worthy of note in Judd Gregg's walking away from the Commerce Secretary position he had volunteered for in the Obama administration.
1. Let's start with Chris Matthews: Has he lost his mind completely? He has just given Gregg a "Hardball" award for knifing America in the back? Matthews thinks it took courage for Gregg to stand up for his principles and walk away. It would have taken far more courage to stand by his self-initiated commitment to Obama and America, and do his best in the job he petitioned for.
2. On a happier note, Obama gracefully reflected on Gregg's desertion when Obama was talking about Lincoln in Springfield last night. The speech, by the way, was superb - one of Obama's very best in lyricism and historical acuity. Obama imagined Lincoln sitting in his office, children playing at his feet, getting a call from someone who wanted to be Commerce Secretary...
Of course, Bell did not invent the telephone until 1876, or 11 years after Lincoln's assassination. Keith Olbermann, who was covering the speech live last night, was quick to pick up the little error, and said wasn't it nice that Obama was musing what it would have been like had Lincoln lived long enough to use a telephone .... Nice pick-up and attempted recovery of a little fumble by the President.
But I give Obama plaudits for painting the Lincoln picture, even with the small anachronism. And if we want to make it historically accurate, just substitute a telegram for a telephone call...
I've got to say I have no respect for Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), who just withdrew as President Obama's Commerce Secretary nominee.
Gregg says he realized he couldn't be a team player in the Obama administration, much as he admired the President.
The truth, obviously, is something else: The Republicans, including Gregg, have abandoned Obama's stimulus package, passed in different forms by the House and the Senate, which will soon vote on a bill both houses of Congress can agree upon.
The Republicans, who are most responsible for our economic mess, are now doing their best to see that nothing constructive is done to address it. They're hoping Obama fails. They think this is their best path back to the White House, and to majorities in the House and the Senate.
In fact, it's a sure path to further misery.
Gregg actually did Obama and the nation a big favor by withdrawing. His administration and therefore our country will be far better off without this obstructionist GOP loser.
Two provocative time travel loop situations on the pulsing Lost - 5.5 - tonight, which of course deserve our more careful scrutiny and reach-for-some-sanity analysis -
I. Jin and Rousseau interact on the island 16 years ago. That's current Jin, who has been jolted back in time in the latest island skip, and young Rousseau, pregnant with Alex, as she was 16 years ago...
So - how come older Rousseau doesn't recognize Jin when she sees him earlier in the series, a season or two ago?
First, I'm assuming Rousseau did at least catch sight of Jin - he certainly remembered her tonight (and last week). I'm too lazy to go back and check the DVDs. If it turns out that Jin saw Rousseau in an earlier season, but she not him, then there's no problem in her not remembering him, certainly no paradox. But let's have some fun, and assume that Rousseau did see Jin some time in the past few seasons...
There are two ways we can explain her not recognizing him - which, she should have, given that Jin stopped her from going down in the hole after the smoke monster tonight:
a - Rousseau in every season up until this one was slightly out of her mind - and the last we see of her tonight, she's already a little on the way to losing her mind. A non-paradoxical explanation would have her mind gone enough by the time she sees Jin in the past few seasons, that she just doesn't recognize him.
b - But if Rousseau still has enough of her mind and memory to have recognized Jin in a previous system, we'll have no choice but to go into my World 1 and 2 explanation - you know, the one I tortured your intellect with for Desmond 1 and Desmond 2, Compass 1 and Compass 2, and even Denzel 1 and Denzel 2 in my explanation of Deja Vu.
Here's how it would work for Jin and Rousseau: Older Rousseau 1 meets Jin 1 for the first time in both their lives, in whatever earlier season they met. Jin 1 gets thrown back in time, and changes the world - or at least a few people in the world - when he meets the young Rousseau (and the French crew). At that instant, Rousseau is changed into Rousseau 2 - who will recognize Jin when they later meet. But we haven't seen that scene, because the ones we saw featured older Rousseau 1.
If this explanation is correct, then we can also assume that the French crew died in a slightly different way for Rousseau 1. Jin's going back into the past changed things a bit for them, too.
II. A different, sad time travel loop unwinds tonight between Faraday and Charlotte. She's dying from the time skips, and remembers that, when she was girl on the island, a crazy man told her to never come back to the island, because it would kill her. And she recalls that the crazy man was ... Faraday.
There's nothing at this point paradoxical or inexplicable about this loop - the older Faraday just fails to convince Charlotte as a little girl not to come back to the island.
But being a sucker for a happier ending, I see a way Faraday might save Charlotte, after all. Communicate through time to his older self - just as we've seen with Desmond - to be more convincing to Charlotte to not return to the island. This would then create a Faraday 2, and the same scenes we saw on the island with Faraday and everyone else last season and this season - except no Charlotte. Because she's safe, off the island, and Faraday can find her when the series ends...
See ... time travel can drive you crazy, but it can also make you happy ...
Two good Fringe episodes in February, which moved the series along for its return for seven more episodes in April...
Here's what we have -
1. Olivia, last week, has run her course with John. No more adventures in the tank, no more mind melds, no more seeing John from the inside of her mind every now and then.
2. Jones, the teleporter, moved around a whole bunch of intriguing things tonight. We had seen him teleport from Germany to here, in an episode in the Fall, and tonight we see that again, and then some of its consequences.
A word about teleportation. It's had a colorful history in science fiction. Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, one of my top ten all-time favorite science fiction novels, did a great job of "jaunting" - "Gully Foyle is my name, Terra is my nation..." Star Trek's beaming made an indelible contribution to the teleport genre. Last year's Jumper - based on Steven Gould's novel of the same name - got mixed reviews, but I liked it just fine. And then there's Hiro in Heroes...
Back to Jones - it certainly takes a toll on him, much more than most of the Star Trek beamers. Gully Foyle was a junkie - and jaunting may have helped in that regard.
3. A typewritten manuscript which may explain a lot of what's going on has surfaced - it's decades old - and it was typed on Walter's typewriter.
4. And, of course, Olivia is a key part of this, and not because she's an FBI agent investigating these strange affairs.
And so, the stage is still set - better than in the Fall. And like the eternal bald observer who shows up in every episode, we witness and wait for more...
I just saw Julio Osegueda on Countdown - he was the enthusiastic Edison State College student who asked the final question at President Obama's town hall meeting, earlier today, in Fort Meyers, Florida.
And what a wonderful town hall meeting it was. Obama kissing Henrietta Hughes on the cheek, after she asked him for help in getting a place to live, Julio jumping up and down at the end, so thrilled to be able to ask the President a question. Real emotion, real people. It has to be moving, heartening, inspiring after eight years of the fake compassion the Republicans like to dole out.
Julio's a communications major (yes!), and a Yankee fan, too! My wife said he's the Democratic Joe the Plumber, the real Joe the Plumber. Julio's the real thing, not the ersatz plumber, the deadbeat, that Republicans sprung on America in the campaign season, and some media continue to give a microphone to now.
This, in a nutshell, is the enduring difference, at least in our age, of Democrats and Republicans. Neither is a perfect political party, and there are good and bad politicians in each. But whereas Republicans deal with make-believe heroes, and try to get us to worry about make-believe threats, the Democrats at least work in reality. Real people, real hope. There's just nothing else like it.
