The Pacific

The series is just taking of, and it already holds much promise to become as acclaimed as Band of Brothers. The show even drew very clear and obvious visual connections to its counter piece, such as the sequence in which the boats make their way to the landing area. Normandy was much later and yet we as audience members are reminded of the blood bath immediately. And more specifically, we are reminded of the visuals presented to us by producers and directors before. A set of memories imprinted that now may confuse our very non-existent participation in either war.
What The Pacific did excellently, however, is the clear demarcation of this violence, and the one we are accustomed to in European Theater WWII imagery. The shooting at the single Japanese soldier, the use of human bodies as warning and to demoralize the troops...
It will take some time to see, how violence and the value of the human body will progress in the series...
Read review here.

Big Love - Over For Now

This final episode left me mildly entertained, but oddly surprised at the end. Oh no, not the J.J. thing. I believe I guessed right about three weeks ago, or so... Not that surprising, really.
I was surprised that all that female power-house struggle of the young was for nothing? Still they stand by the man? The only one striking out is the one woman who held power all along. Great moment Adalene, but we are not surprised you'd go that far if really threatened/hurt. Her borders were finally crossed and revenge was hers.
But I am going back to that last image of Bill and his wives, the emptying space in front of the podium, four people looking into nothing... It is not even that it leaves me mad, or I want to respond to the writers. I simply feel as if, this is just another excuse to string us along for another year of re-worked base-narratives that go nowhere, that lead nowhere, that answer nothing about these wonderfully created characters that always appear, if just for a moment, to actually change, transform, and grow. But constant retreat renders their actions almost useless and they remain, in the end, stuck where they began.
Should the following season be the last, and should it be done right, I think they seeded something great, though via obnoxious reinforced repetition, but... after being in it for all prior seasons, I am going to give it a chance. If the next season is neither the end, nor engaging with something brand new, I will walk on. This melodrama lives solely from its characters and their development. The meta-narrative is simply their show case. If they don't work, I don't really care what else could happen to them...
Read more and get a sneak on Season 5

War of The Russians

So it has been over 60 years ago that the War of the Worlds created a wide spread panic among listeners of Orson Welles's radio program, but the power of mediated sounds and images has not changed at all. A Georgian station decided to present a 30 min. 'what if' spiel on a Russian Invasion of Ossetia. They somehow forgot to keep rolling reminders of the nature of the programming on air. Way to go media power! #Facetious

Creationsim Caprica Style

Right off I will say that I don’t like it when love interests are unnecessarily introduced in any show, especially if there is no need for an additional point of conflict, as Adama has enough on his plate, no? BUT, I trust the writers and will either forgive or happily ingest what they supply.
Secondly I loath Tomas Vergis so much already that I know the writers and actor are doing it right, but I want the character to die… soon.
I think I am in love with this show… but hope to remain critical… if seemingly impossible re-reading my second sentence here.

“Know thy Enemy” made clear that the narratives are not a game to the characters. Christian style mortification, human vanity creating the afterlife to ensure death is not the end (you remember what happened to Babel, right?), Sister Clarice sharing her big moment of successful infiltration and avatar-program retrieval with opiates, Amanda alone, Graystone facing painful destruction and then there is Adama. Grounded, low-life, mob-attorney Adama, who is startled by V-World.

The only one beginning to enjoy herself, while mute in her body, is Zoe Graystone. Enjoying the early stages of flirtation, with a man she will never be equal to.

Reset Button and Auto Destruct

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Last week we had a wild ride to Mexico and back. Bordering insane, I quite enjoyed the border showdown between the Greens and the Hendrickson’s and felt that this display of parental love all around was fantastic. This week leaves me startled, oddly reset, and at odds with the producers that have decided to leave us with but one episode to clear this mess up. They are insane.
The political endeavors, a very smart and self-protecting Sissy Spacek out for blood, two men in a polygynous marriage, Adeline drugged, Wanda in a state of mental distress beyond understanding, Albee not realizing who is to blame for his lover’s death, seeking someone else to blame and going absolutely insane … In all of this Sarah’s leaving is the only foreseeable, controlled, logic plot point. Ben’s newly reset obligation to his family also expected. And while this monstrous amount of narratives drives me absolutely insane, none finding the devotion I believe necessary: I LOVE IT. Maybe I just want more then what they give…
Is it because I enjoy being tortured?
But everything we see here is not new, not unexpected, not really. Albee is a modern day homosexual Ophelia, stuck and insane, because he is left with the knowledge of happiness and love in a place where these do not exist. Wanda always has a premonition; she is haunted by knowing, and silenced by the (I think) unspeakable evil of what she is keeping hidden from sight, just like Cassandra was. The characters we have here in Big Love are by far the most classic figures of tragedy. And the trick is, that Utah offers all the necessary trappings for the story to unfold. Religious issues ranging from contemporary to century old conflicts, believes that have modernized and such that have not. We have hierarchies in place all around that allow for the most sophisticated plots without having to deal with courtroom dramas, hospitals, work places (which is where you can usually find these hierarchies). Big Love is an absolute exception in a world where family plots equal family comedy. Will it be a British or Greek tragedy? We will have to wait and see.

And if I were to write the end, I just might have Agamemnon killed in the end. His never-ending hysteria is what truly hurts my senses.

I'm Awake...

I certainly am now, after watching ‘There is Another Sky’. This episode demonstrates once again that Caprica is well thought through, rich in imagery and characters, and, for those of you feeling it is too slow, perfectly paced! The wealth of characters needs to be crafted carefully; else we’d have another ‘Lost’, where everyone leads NOWHERE (sorry fans of ‘Lost’, but we all know writers lost control of that one, more then once).
In last week’s episode, Tamara Adama realizes she exists only in V-World and takes ‘life’ in a stride; father Adama makes amends with his family, and Graystone presents a fruitful solution to the Holo-Band fiasco. V-World gets its own little entry (which is actually fantastic, as the plot is rich enough and visually stylized already), teenage Capricans show their privileged faces to us and really address the instability of the 12Worlds for the first time. Finally, the defense robots make a little more sense, although I am waiting for a clear narrative here still. Who wants to go to war with whom…? I wish there was a guide for the twelve worlds…
This episode allows us to figure out the game that is Caprica, as much as it allows the characters within the show to figure out their worlds anew. Everyone has been picked up and tossed where the story led them. Uprooted people that need to re-orient themselves (sexy-married Mob-Adama being the exception among regular cast members it seems). Adama’s family ceremony, Graystone’s move to the new –and oddly ignored- project, they all move forward. They are all awake, taking charge of their own lives. No standing still, no passivity, not even Amanda Graystone. Interestingly, the writers have decided that whilst talking about a robot, there is no need to cloud the ethics, work for diplomatic word choices when presenting the cylon… Always critiquing the world surrounding us, while subtly in BSG, is here more to the point, in your face... it is more urgent. But we still are watching entertainment, a show, one that passes many people by. The fine art of Sci-Fi fable is at work here, but it remains part of the machinery that it critiques. Granted, the critique comes from within, but participation is nevertheless required.
Caprica is humanity before its fall, before being humbled by its own mortality.
Nothing is simplified on Caprica: there was no child, but a child will be found.

And because that is, for all the geeks in you: did you see Kat from BSG was back as Pryah? Working for Graystone… Was she a cylon then? Or does this suggest that Daniel planted her Avator? But then how did she become a skin job? Or… is she the model that had to be ‘boxed’? Because she remembered being human? Have fun with that one. ☺

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/02/big_love_recap_bird_gang.html
Here is another look at last night's episode of Big Love.

Fallen and Risen Again

First of, just two questions because we all love to speculate, right? So what about JJ? Whose babies is he planting, or if that is not it, what is the evil plan behind it all? The creepy son did seem to show emotion right there when he looked at Nicky, but there is no doubt he will do whatever the plan is asking for. Right? There is just that quick flutter of his eyelids, the close up holding on that moment. Nicky is not screaming, but begging, pleading, for her to be allowed to claim her life as a woman. This show knows how to pull our strings and play them beautifully, although Nicky will possibly remain a psychological miracle to me forever. Her actions so unexpected at times, make this series so good, so realistic, too. For the broken is erratic, is full of logic that destructs itself, bit by bit by bit.
And then there are the Greens. I retract my earlier statement. Their evil has for the first time reunited what was broken, or so it seems. They came back at the right time, and for a long enough while, with potential for the future? Mom, Dad, Bill, Joey, and Ben all at their lowest, ready to rise to the occasion and try again to make things right. But then Mommy steps up to save her son and that, well, that was just pure genius. She demonstrated her motherhood, gave quick-thinking Bill an edge, and single handedly saved them all. The genius in the scene lied with the simple tones, the music that did not push the action, the quiet that allowed us to hear single calls for action, not screams, not tumult, just shock and surprise.
But all this is taken back to zero in the shows final moments today. Margene is ignored by Ben, and Barb stands alone, in thought. Pondering why she was not trusted again? Protection? But there is no argument. We are past family meetings and talking things out. This is where we are: the brink of the end. Ultimate loss of communication. Each one to deeply concerned with saving their own life, in whatever form necessary.

tinydancer79
It does not matter if we talk about business security, fertility, fighting for acknowledgment, love, or the right to be in the open. They all strive to make their life sustainable in a world that is hurting them. It hurts them by conventions, social norm, laws, regulations that protect no one, and religious pressure. It keeps them trapped in a past within their present. No real life, just an image of it, a faint promise ringing in your ears of that which is not and may never come.
What strikes me here is that the future they work towards, no matter how often they call upon ‘heavenly father’ no longer is in the afterlife. That was the struggle they faced last season, last year, last opening credits Then, marriage, and babies, priesthood, family and Roman still most often preoccupied their minds. Nothing is light now, no heaven to aspire to. All of their wishes now lie right here, on earth. And didn’t we see it coming, when Bill turned his back, on his knees, to the Holy rising behind him. His eyes firmly fixed on the ground. Who he now makes peace with is the man he blames for all the bad in his life. That, is acknowledgment. This season is the awakening.
Only few episodes left this season. Much is unresolved. Where does Alby go from here? Does he get that his wife did this or will he blame Bill? AGAIN: What is up with JJ and that creepy Walker family from Kansas?
9 Episodes is all they gave us this time around. But it works. The story is streamlined, straight forward, no deterrence, no new churches, just a few lose ends I believe they will resolve or bring to the next season. Just a good old fashioned burning all bridges. The less they carry over, the better, I think.
I sure hope this, in my eyes best season, will not be diminished in the aftermath by becoming redundant. For it would be to easy, to send the family through another trauma induced reunion once again. So momentum has to keep up. Only one question then remains. Where do we go from here?
-I can hardly wait.

Lost

tinydancer79
I am not sure where this last season is going, but am afraid there is no other way, but sit and watch.

surfacing

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Alhtough a necessary move to bring Barb to finally take charge meeting Anna once again, no less with a baby did not much but diffuse today’s episode. The Hendrickson’s just never have a minute of private rest. After all, how could you even in prime time soap drama, losen on the conflict. But this episode was finally the awaking of what bubbled under the surface for three, long, often painfully Bill driven seasons.

How cheap does the struggle of Viagra now look, how farcical in hindsight? How unbelievingly light this serial started, the foreshadowing never reaching a point of solution. Now is when true struggle finally finds its way to the surface, the pain of those following a screaming, illogical, more-then-struggling patriarch, who appeals to emotional weakness in his family, time after time. Today, after all is pointing towards the women understanding their own suffering in the face of promised after-lives for the first time, he tells them that all he wants and all they need is to no longer hide. But look at the problems arisen.

Many of them do not stem from having to hide. Not Bill’s struggle with a female power figure (yes, I will remind you that he mistook her for a secretary and that is how all started). And neither does his problem with Barb, where the hypocrite himself betrayed the promises he made before, unable to hold himself to the same standard as his wives, no matter how often he promises. Margene wants to be herself within the family, not the lowest one in the food chain. That, we are reminded of by Anna’s reappearance. Not the horrible events at the motel, where no one really hides anything. Not Nicky’s past, not Bill’s. Nicky has it just right: they are broken. The homosexual love ended so brutally (and in harsh contrast to religion), electroshocks and re-orientation manipulation, Nicky realizing, finally, what she really has lost (well, okay, I am not so sure why she had to lose the eighties), and most terrifying: the singing J.J. and the frightened eyes of a woman you thought had seen it all before, her horrors beginning again, looking no older then the child that almost was turned into nothing but number seven. A number on the ladder to god.

And in all of this, the Mormon church is REALLY beginning to look like a cult. One wonders how controlled, smart, and forgiving the authors, raised in Utah, struggling probably themselves to grow up, must be to have so slowly built up to this. What is this? A simple truth, when religion and religious believes become excuses, illusions, and fetish, they should be called for what they really have become.

On a side note, the side note: Mexico, more gayness, smuggling and old fiends returned… Could have lived without. Hope it doesn’t muddy the waters.

But here we are: Barb is in power, Nicky is a savior, and Margene is the advocating the right to individuality.

Sorry guys, all Bill had was: “You, of all people?”