Tag Archives: tv dramas

Entertainment Buzz, TV Reviews & Discussion

In the Flesh: A New Take on Zombies

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BBC Three’s series In the Flesh presents a whole new take on the Zombie theme of television and movies. The ideas are wholly unique and highly compelling.

The series protagonist is Kieren Walker,  an 18 year old who committed suicide but then was among those who rose from the grave during The Rising. Unique to this series, though, is the invention of a drug that repairs cognition and awareness in the zombie, making them what the people call sufferers of Partially Deceased Syndrome.

The series follows Kieren, his friends and family as he and others with PDS are integrated back into society. The show is bleak and depressing, but also incredibly sweet and shockingly moving at times. The series portrays the very worst of people and the very best, and there are both of those who are living and dead.

The show deals with mental health, oppression, persecution, hate and love. It’s often difficult viewing, but is very worth it in the end.

Thus far, the series has three episodes in season one, six episodes in season 2, but may or may not have a third season, due to the closure of BBC Three, which aired the show originally in the UK.

Both seasons are available to purchase via Amazon Instant Video. Check your chosen retailers for DVD availability.

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By HodgePodge
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Entertainment Buzz, Highlights of the Week, TV Reviews & Discussion

Head-scratching Existence of Extant

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Extant, the new CBS futuristic scifi thriller starring Halle Berry, opened with a sleek but rather head-scratching  premiere Wednesday night.  In the opener, an astronaut returns home after 13 months alone in space, to reunite with her husband and their android son, who is her husband’s R&D project.

Most women would not just be puzzled, but would be legitimately freaked out if they returned pregnant from a space mission in which she wasn’t in contact with any other human beings. Molly Woods (Halle Berry) is shaken, but not as disturbed as is warranted. Later, we discover that while on her mission, she experienced what she assumed to be a hallucination of a former lover/husband being on her spacecraft with her, and when she saw the security footing of herself making out with no one at all, she deleted that embarrassing site from the craft’s system. Obviously, something bizarre happened. Cue the suspenseful sound effects! Or not, because it just wasn’t all that riveting.

Along with the mystery of Halle Berry’s space-bound immaculate/creepy/science project impregnation, the story follows the emerging and creepy patterns of behavior exhibited the young AI son Molly and John are kind of raising as a real boy. If they’re going for a Damien from The Omen kind of vibe for the kid, nailed it! That aspect is admittedly chilling, though it still doesn’t inspire that edge of your seat sensation.

A more coherent tie between the two plot drivers of the AI child and mystery baby would help to bring the story together for a more satisfying block of entertainment.

If it gets some legs under itself and improves in pacing and storytelling cohesion, the potential is enormous. But unless that happens soon, the existence of this series and how it landed a huge talent such as Halle Berry, could remain a boggling mystery.

 

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By HodgePodge
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Entertainment Buzz, TV Reviews & Discussion

New Levels of Inanity for Teen Wolf

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Suspension of disbelief in Teen Wolf has the job of allowing viewers to enter the world of werewolves and supernatural creatures that cause mayhem, leave bloody bodies lying around and turn average people into supermodels.  What suspension of disbelief cannot do, is make viewers believe a young werewolf can hold a teenage boy by the arm over the side of a building, with his teeth, and not shred the kid’s arm to ribbons due to a thing we call gravity. Uh oh.

That was the icing on the cake of disbelief in the season 4 Teen Wolf episode titled Muted.

The inanity began with semi-feral werecoyote Malia showing up to math class. Wacky things happening in the supernatural world is one thing, but in what universe would a school place a student who hadn’t been to school past 3rd grade into an advanced high school math class with kids proven to be the brightest in the school?

The bogglingly bad plotting continued with lacrosse tryouts. The kid who is supposed to be so brimming with goodness and remarkable character that he could spontaneously make himself an alpha, was so insecure about making team captain, that he ended up putting a freshman in the hospital, out of jealousy that he isn’t as good as the younger kid without using his werewolf powers.

It was thanks to being put the hospital that the young freshman ended up being stalked by the creature of the week, a wendigo. The wendigo, which subsists on a diet of human flesh,  surprisingly was the most plausible aspect of the episode.

But young, injured freshman lacrosse kid being stalked by the wendigo is how the viewer gets to the ludicrous final scene in which the boy is dangling from the side of the building with the teen alpha screwup trying to save him while preventing them both from becoming wendigo chow.

Is the teen wolf now a Gumby wolf, too? If he was fighting off the wendigo with his hands, just how flexible is he, that he could reach back behind himself while holding a kid by the arm with his fangs, with his head bent over the side of the building?

At this point, all Teen Wolf viewers can do is shake their heads in misery and console themselves that it can’t really get worse.

Or can it? Stay tuned!

Teen Wolf airs on MTV at 10 pm Eastern.

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By HodgePodge
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Entertainment Buzz, TV Reviews & Discussion

Angelic Train Wreck: Dominion

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The pilot for Dominion is a classic tale of a good idea gone really, really bad. The post-apocalyptic world presented the producers with an unending cache of possibilities, but the developers chose a selection of boring clichés and offensive visuals to create their universe.

Cheap is a good word for this creation, and it describes not just the production values, but the apparent attitude with which the story’s world was built.

Was archangel Michael’s somewhat reluctant participation in an orgy really necessary?  Was it necessary to create a world in which people would throw orphaned children into the lowest caste of a rigidly divided class structure, and put them to work in their laundry facilities?

But most importantly, was it really necessary to have the scary, evil opponent in a gladiator style fight be an obese woman possessed by a homicidal angel?

These types of “creative” choices say an awful lot about the attitudes of the show’s developers and what viewers can expect in the future from them. Hint: nothing good.

This vulgar mess of a production is all the more disappointing given the potential of the show’s premise.

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By HodgePodge
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Highlights of the Week, TV Reviews & Discussion

Bizarre But Fitting End to Fargo

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(Beware: Spoilers Ahead For the Finale)

Fargo wrapped up its ten-episode run on FX last night with with a tense, often gruesome hour and a half time slot. As bizarre as all previous episodes, the finale was also a real nail biter.

A very pregnant Molly wrestled with how involved to get in solving what was essentially her case, seeing that nobody else made the connections and stayed on it the way she did. Gus, watching her wrestle with it and fearing for her life, finally overcame his own fears with regard to Malvo and really stepped up.

The relationship between Greta and her newly anointed grandfather, Lou (Keith Carradine), was a satisfying thread to the family that Gus and Molly weaved throughout the series.  The jeopardy the family faced created the bulk of the tension in the episode.  The question of Lester’s survival provided not so much tension, but real curiosity, and at times, of course, the viewers were very much ready for his survival to be nonexistent.

The end to Malvo was a surprise and rather satisfying. The end to Lester was likely a little disappointing to those hoping for something more vicious.

The final moments, despite constituting a happy end for the Solverson-Grimly family, nonetheless felt a little somber. Fitting, since there wasn’t much joy in what they’d all experienced, just an end to the carnage.

(And no, it has not escaped our noticed that the brilliant law enforcement officer is named Solverson and the somewhat gloomy Gus is named Grimly. The psychotic, bad guy killer Malvo was equally subtle. Well played, Fargo. Well played.)

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By HodgePodge
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Oh, Nostalgia

The West Wing

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Going back to watch early episodes of The West Wing, it is interesting to see the issues that some understood and examined but that went over the head of many others.

Back in 2000, many people were concerned and outraged by the military policy called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, as that issue came up in key plot lines.

The startling inadequacy of Mercator projection maps, created for navigation only in the 16th century, that still fill geography classrooms is discussed in the show.

Growing income inequality and concerns for rising tuition costs were also featured in some episodes.

Discussions of Islamic fundamentalism and unfair maligning of all Muslims as a result was filmed before 9/11 occurred, with the air date happening to fall just a couple weeks later.

The show undoubtedly upset a number of people on the far right, but it made a number of people think, and that makes it a shame that it flew under the radar for people who didn’t watch.