Jean-Claude Van Johnson

JCVD WTF LOL

Jean-Claude Van Damme, erstwhile action star, is retired. Really retired, 'not Nicholas Cage retired'. Despite this, a chance run in with an old flame lures him out from a life of segways and coconut water showers, and back to what he does best: Making shitty movies as cover for his work as an international freelance black-ops badass, codenamed Johnson.

Yes. Really.

The central conceit of this Amazon pilot is that all those cheap action movies shot in Eastern Europe are cover for their 'stars' to operate as deniable secret agents. Johnson's back up is provided by his ex, on-set hairdresser and sniper Vanessa, and the make-up guy Luis, a former child soldier with a literally unspeakable past (when asked about it he gets flashes of horrifying images and screaming, then dismisses it as 'not that interesting' in what is surely intended to be a running gag if the series is picked up,) and his mission to plant a tracker in a shipment of HK - heroin cut with ketamine, apparently - although the latter is less important than that he gets to go in disguise through a factory thanks to a coincidental resemblance to one of the actual workers, Filip (played by 'Filip Van Damme', IMDb tells me), fail to convince Filip that he is himself from the future thanks to the logic of Timecop trumping that of Looper because it is a million times better, get beaned in the head when he fails his own trademark splits, then fight an army of security guys.

JCVD is made up for an action reimagining of Huckleberry Finn which has to
be seen to be believed.

Jean-Claude Van Johnson is a staggeringly audacious project and the latest installment in JCVD's highly public process of self-deconstruction. In places it is reminiscent of 2008's remorselessly downbeat JCVD, but with way more action and humour. The jokes actually come thick and fast, from the films JCVD is offered - action reimaginings of 'Rikki Tiki Tavi', 'Anne of Green Gables' and 'Huckleberry Finn' - to the skewering of celebrity life and hipster fashion - he visits a pop-up restaurant called Dri Ramen, which serves only dry ramen noodles - and commentary on the changing style of action movies. In the final fight the guards start to rush JCVD en masse and their leader holds them back, ordering: "No, no! One at a time. We'll run into each other. It'll get confusing."

Again, I want to see this get picked up, if only because 'Johnson' replaces another agent called Brown, noted for his extreme methods. We later learn that Brown has threatened vengeance, and I kind of want to know which aging action star Brown would turn out to be.

The Tick

If the sight of a big, blue butt is a deal-breaker, switch off now.

It's Amazon pilot season, which means it's time to get random.

The Tick began life as a logo, became a comic book character, obtained perhaps his greatest success in an inimitable animated series. His live action incarnation was... less successful. More costumed sitcom than action adventure, thanks to budgetary concerns, it was a witty romp with a strong awareness of the world of superheroes it was parodying. The Tick's complete and repeated inability to penetrate a jerky Superman expy's 'glasses and hairdo' disguise even when he sees him take the glasses off was priceless, and the line 'you killed the Immortal' surely deserves some place in media history.

But that was then and this is now, and with the genre riding high it's apparently time for another live action reinvention. This time it's Peter Serafinowicz donning the blues, with Griffin Newman as his sidekick Arthur. The pilot hits a lot of familiar beats, including the Tick trashing Arthur's apartment looking for his hidden HQ, but there's a darker edge here. Arthur first appears in civilian clothes - something that never happened in either the animated or previous live action shows - and only acquires a very techno-looking incarnation of his moth suit in the closing seconds. His history is also tragically expanded, having been obsessed with tracking the supposedly deceased supervillain the Terror since his father became collateral damage in the defeat of the City's former superteam, the Flag Five. There is even a hint that the nigh invulnerable Tick, with the reflexes of an Olympic level jungle cat and the strength of a bus stop full of men, is a manifestation of Arthur's subconscious, although his pummeling of villains is real enough.

There's actually something almost sinister about the Tick's grin in the face of
Arthur's more gritty origin storyline.

For all its familiarity, The Tick is a new beast, and where its live-action forerunner eschewed one-off mayhem for sitcom, this version is front-loaded with arc plots and even mythology, opening with the arrival of the world's first superhero, possibly from space. Jackie Earle Hayley, fresh from being a creepy bastard on Preacher brings a potentially recurring creepy bastard presence to The Tick as the supposedly deceased Terror. It is also a very beautifully made series, with some truly sumptuous cityscapes serving to make the City itself more of a presence.

There is some significant tonal dissonance between the Tick's trademark superheroic nonsense - "You're standing there, in your way, but you're a better door than you are a window, so open yourself up, step through yourself and join me over here." - and Arthur's tragic history and mental illness (in the animated series his sister Dot worried that he wasn't dating; here she's worried that he's skipping his meds and might be involuntarily confined by the police.) That this is deliberate is clear from the juxtaposition of a radio discussion of the Flag Five being 'blinded with weaponised syphilis and then shot to death', and a later flashback to the brutal reality of the scene as it plays out in front of the young Arthur. The question, I guess, is whether that dissonance would be the series' hallmark or its undoing. In a more crowded superhero market, the creators are clearly going for something in a darker line of satire. It's a risky bid with the Tick, but could work. I do find myself hoping that we get a chance to find out.

Ask the Storybots

Hahahaha. Storybots.

Ask the Storybots is a frankly surreal educational TV series premiering on Netflix, in which a group of five storybots - beings that live in computers and answer children's questions via the educational apps the series is based on - set out each episode to provide the solution to a head scratching puzzle, like 'how do airplanes fly?' or 'where do French fries come from?'

Typically featuring a false start and then a trail of increasingly accurate answers, the main 'plot' of each episode is interspersed with learning songs and strange interludes with the easily amused storybot functionaries at HQ, who giggle at everything like Minions sensing a double entendre ("Hahahaha. Ninja.*") In addition to a number of jokes aimed largely at parents - the Storybots are introduced to the 'Underground' where potatoes grow by Molepheus, a mole in a black trenchcoat and little round glasses - each episode features a guest appearance, such as Jay Leno as King Yardstick (the ruler) and Kevin Smith as Super Mega Awesome Ultra Dude, a TV superhero who can't fly, but encourages the audience to "stay in school. That way when you grow up you can play awesome make believe in front of a green screen."

And it's taught Arya exactly why she needs to brush her teeth, so that's a result.

* Also, N is for Ninja now.

Beat Bugs

I find myself wondering which of them will be known to history as 'the fifth
Beat Bug.'

In an ordinary garden - well, ordinary apart from its terrifying, tentacle flailing purple octopus sprinkler of death - live five invertebrate chums. Rainbow Dash expy Jay, inventor and engineer Crick, eager young Buzz, optimistic slug Walter Walrus, and Kumi, who is kind of the normal one, although she does sometimes design things for Crick to build. Each episode, these alleged insects (and a slug) face the kinds of rudimentary friendship problems that microequines would scoff at, but then the dilemmas of life are really just vehicles in this series, the central purpose of which is simply and solely to introduce young children to the music of The Beatles.

I am not even joking.

Each episode features a particular song reinterpreted by the cast, and the plot is mostly built around the lyrics. So in 'Help!' Jay acts all cool and independent, then gets stuck in a jam jar and finds that he does need help, while in 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' Buzz is so scared by a story Zumi tells that they have to call on the assistance of a dragonfly sleep therapist named Lucy, who has kaleidoscope eyes and a really unhelpful visiting address. And is voiced by P!nk.

Perhaps the oddest thing is the way that the lyrics have been trimmed to a) fit the plot, b) be less about drugs and getting old, and c) not require parents to try to explain what 'pornographic priestess' means; at least until they play them the original tracks. On that front, it definitely seems to be doing its job, and Arya is delighted to listen to and sing along with The Beatles in the car now, so props to creator Josh Wakely for following through on his vision, getting the rights to so much of the catalogue and achieving his goal. Hell, it's introducing us to Beatles songs we don't know.

Killjoys - 'Schooled'

Ah. Kids.

As our favourite team of space bounty hunters settle back into their routines and the show teases the shippers with a bit of Dutch and D'av wrestling, they get word on the destination of a last signal beamed from Red 17 before it was burned.

Prodigy is a super-school for the smartest Westerlian kids, so Turin gets Dutch an escort warrant to bring the latest round of gifted and talented to school. This means we get to go back to the isolated Old Town, where Pre is maintaining the Royale as a defiant hub of vibrant society. Learning of Pawter's escape and subsequent abduction, Johnny heads off to rescue her, while D'av and Dutch learn where to look for some of their escortees from Pre's bartender Sabine, who is aggressively blonde and frankly suspiciously clean. Frankly, I don't trust her.

Pawter arm-wrestles her way to freedom and Johnny starts a bar fight to get her out of a threatened arranged marriage, and agrees to bunk on Lucy while she figures out how best to fight the company's plans to wall off every Westerley city and maintain their servile underclass. Dutch touches base with Alvis, but there's no big movement on the story of Arkyn. Dutch also confesses to D'av that she's worried John will lose focus worrying about Pawter, but D'av reminds her that they make such a good team because 'you lead, I shoot and John gives a shit.' Coupled with D'av's admittedly double-edged beatdown of a father for bullying his son (issues much) this reiterates a central theme of Killjoys: As in Camelot, violence is not strength and compassion is not weakness.Our heroes' lives are complicated by caring instead of shooting any problem in the ace, but also enriched.

I admit, I'm not wild about the more romantic direction of this relationship -
see elsewhere on this blog for my lauding of strong, platonic relationships - but
fair play, these two are pretty adorable.

The crew take the designated kids to school, and D'av bonds with one of them, Jake - he of the hitty father - whose brother is at the school. He assures him that a brother will always be there for him, and John reminds him about that time D'av stabbed him. Still, it's a sweet bonding moment while Dutch avoids the 'small people'. Unfortunately on arrival they find nothing but empty classrooms, a set of empty cryopods and Delle Sayah, the representative of the Nine with the spiky relationship with Dutch (Dutch flippantly explains her presence by claiming that she 'missed our hate-flirting,) and as it turns out a chequered history with fellow pretty princess Pawter. She gets in a dig at Pawter needing to use drugs to get through her exams, a neat reminder that our redhead is deeply flawed, which is important as a sexy doctor from practical royalty working as a doctor in a slum could easily become an unbearable Mary Sue.

Anyway, it turns out that the kids were killed when their cryopods - fitted out as part of a secret 'seed bank' programme to turn the kids into living repositories of Qreshi culture in case of... reasons - malfunctioned. At first it looks as if the killer was the teacher, but it turns out that she was also killed, and her appearances the result of Jake's brother Olan messing with them using holograms. Olan tries to steal Lucy and turns off the life support, forcing Dutch and Delle Sayah to work together to switch it back on. The system uses breath-based biometrics, which is basically an excuse for a kiss, but whatever gets a bisexual lead past the network, I guess. Delle Sayah also admits that she and Khlyen were working together for, again, reasons. The implication that Delle Sayah might have had Khlyen for a 'tutor' as well is strong.

John talks Olan down, and it's interesting that he is able to reach Olan for much the same reason D'av connects with Jake. D'av is an older brother, and Jake needs that; John is a younger brother, and that's the only thing that can get through to Olan. Poor Olan is seriously messed up, because Khlyen's message ripped through the school systems, frying the cryopods and lodging in his brain, but they drop him off with Alvis to help extract the message less forcefully than Delle Sayah might do.

Elsewhere, Fancy releases Khlyen and they head for Telen, home of Chez Jaquobis, to work out why D'av might be goo-proof.

"Must be Qreshi."
"How can you tell?"
"She hasn't got shit all over her."

The plot, as they say, thickens. Khlyen is still a colossal ass and unapologetic nerd-murderer, but definitely more towards the Operative end of things than the diabolical mastermind he initially appeared to be. He and Delle Sayah are clearly Up To Something(TM), but their Something is looking more likely to be a callously pragmatic response to an altogether more apocalyptic Something planned by the Black Root than the apocalypse itself. As Dutch points out, Delle Sayer's 'seed bank' only makes sense if she's expecting a war or a winter, so clearly their faction is anticipating the imminent need of some serious hatch battening.

On the personal level, I hope to not see Dutch/D'av kick off again. It wasn't all that interesting and D'av has had much more interesting character work since it ended. There was some tease of future developments with bartender Sabine, but I don't trust her commitment to personal grooming under occupation. On the other end, I'm enjoying Dutch's hate flirting with Delle Sayah, but I don't want that to come to anything big either. I like that Dutch's core relationships are pseudo-familial and that she doesn't need a man, or a woman, to complete her, so much as she needs a solid sense of self after what Khlyen put her through. Similarly, while I have mixed feelings about the move of John/Pawter towards more romantic territory, I do like that it's something that is emerging from friendship, and that Pawter seems always more in need of a lift than a rescue.

Actually, I can't think of a single character in this show who needs a partner to 'complete them'. Both of the main female characters are more about resolving their past, and the Jaqobis brothers are more seriously invested in the brother thing. Any sexual or romantic pairings have taken a distinct back seat to friendship and family, and I dig that.

Dark Matter - 'Stuff to Steal, People to Kill'

"It's like looking in the mirror... then punching your reflection and stealing
their badass coat."

As we tip over the midpoint of Dark Matter's 13 episode second season, the Raza crashes into an alternate universe thanks to a malfunctioning blink drive, and are almost immediately captured by the Mikkei Combine, who have been hunting the murderous mercenaries aboard this universe's Raza, who have been making hay with their own fully functional blink drive. Cue an attempt to steal the alternate Raza's jump drive and out-doublecross Mikkei's Commander Truffault, who of course wants the working drive for herself and is not shy of murdering a few people to get it.

Cue lots of fun with Two and Three pretending to be Portia Lin and Marcus Boon, while fending off a mutiny by guylinered swine Jace Corso and Wellick and Tash, a couple of mercenaries from the big heist episode of Season 1 whose main universe versions were both killed by Two. The fight between Two and Tash is much closer this time, however, as Two suffers a bout of the shakes. The AU Android is unexpectedly helpful, confiding that - in addition to a duty to protect the crew, even from each other, she feels especially indebted to Portia, for making her who she is, hinting that Lin was the one who changed her programming.

Back in the prime universe, Devon has vanished, so I guess no-one got him to A&E. An obscured resolution to a vague character. Then Two collapses.

Season 2 is definitely toning down Two's superhuman qualities, and her collapses would seem to be a sign of her nanites failing. I'd say this is because characters with vulnerabilities are more interesting, but then they bring in Nyx...

Mr Robot - 'eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4', 'eps1.4_3xpl0its.wmv' and 'eps1.5_br4ve-trave1er.asf'

The effortless cool of Christian Slater masks a lot, but not all, of Mr Robot's
extremely dickish tendencies. If he is imaginary, then like Tyler Durden he's
the Elliot that Elliot wants to be, without actually being a better version.

I'm still watching Mr Robot, and it's still good, so why aren't I reviewing it?

In part, it's because it's so dense. I know that my usual semi-recap approach would miss things, and so be necessarily incomplete. Also, I'm running behind - again, the denseness of the narrative and the unsettling visual style make it hard to binge - which always makes it feel more apt to review a season at a time.

That doesn't mean that I have nothing to say about the show, however. It's one of the most unique things on television at present, and there's a lot to talk about. This not-a-review loosely covers episodes 5, 6 and 7; 'Daemons', 'Exploits' and 'Brave Travelers', to abandon the archly stylised file-name titles for ease of recall.

'Daemons' revolves around Elliot's assumption of tactical authority within fsociety, and the collapse resulting from eliminating his drug supply to protect Shayla from her dealer/boyfriend/abuser. Much of the episode takes the form of Elliot's internal narrative, as hallucinations and delirium take hold, but honestly when is that not the case? I'm still pretty sure that Mr Robot is only in Elliot's mind, and at least half-convinced that everyone else is as well. As Elliot hallucinates proposing to Angela with a key, the 'real' Angela has a soul-searching night on the tiles with Shayla, culminating with a drunken make-out session. Real, or part of Elliot's fantasy? It seems to affect Angela and drive her to upload the hacker's disc at E-Sure, but contains such obvious elements of male fantasy that the question remains. Elliot certainly thinks he's insane enough, periodically noting that his running narration is effectively talking to imaginary people.

'Exploits' follows the Steel Mountain job, and reveals the dark heart of fsociety as Elliot brutally manipulates low-level employees to gain access to the facility, and f-society plan to fake a text from a manager's pregnant wife to get her out of the way. This leads Elliot to a confrontation with Tyrell, who literally views people as insects and dismisses Elliot's infiltration as meaningless. This is proved to be true, as despite his success, the Dark Army decline to come through on the Chinese backups and the whole plan is blown (as would any other have been.) Tyrell is on an upswing, however, as he and his wife launch a social assault on the new CTO and his wife which is essentially a colder and more ruthless implementation of the same methods fsociety have used.

'Exploits' is also notable for several scenes which cast doubts on my theories of Mr Robot's Durdenity, as he speaks to Darleen and the other hackers on their own. Of course, if it's all in Elliot's head, no big change.

Shot from low down, everything in the frame looks huge, making Angela
look like a child in the principle's office. This kind of visual storytelling is
bread and butter for this show.

The sudden kidnapping of Shayla launches into 'Brave Traveler', as Vera blackmails Elliot into hacking him out of prison in 24 hours. This impossible task brings Darleen face to face with someone she can't shout down and forces Elliot to launch a series of desperate social hacks on the fly. Mr Robot warns him that it's a zero-sum game; the best case scenario is that only Shayla ends up dead. He's right, and despite a tour de force effort by Elliot and Vera's escape along with the rest of the prison population, it turns out that Shayla was already dead. This is a gut punch for Elliot, and the audience, and the scene drags out the reveal to maximise the effect. Did we ever believe that Elliot could be an island? We don't now. He may not make any big reaction, but Malek sells the abject pain of the discovery.

Meanwhile, Tyrell's scheming hits a roadblock as the CTO shoots him down cold, and Angela seeks justice for those killed by Evil Corp's negligence in what are practically separate plots. There is a brief meeting of roads as Angela talks to Elliot for guidance and innocently asks after Shayla, but for now they are almost unrelated stories. This disconnection, however, is par for the course with Mr Robot, a series that is pathologically reluctant to use a two-shot when a series of alternating, awkwardly framed singles could better convey the distance between two people talking face to face.

Mr Robot has no grand landscapes or baroque architectures, no special effects to speak of, but it is still visually stunning. Using unconventional framing and blocking to heighten the sense not just of separation, but of a person or people out of alignment with the world, the camera emphasises the core themes of the outsider, of power relationships, and of missed or crossed communications. When Angela comes to Elliot they speak on the sidewalk - because his apartment is full of gangsters - and the camera frames each in turn, almost never together, as well as putting each one low in the corner of their shot. It sometimes feels that the camera is almost an intruder; perhaps the us that Elliot is talking to when he narrates.

Well written, well acted and brilliantly composed, Mr Robot is a genuine original.

Killjoys - 'Shaft'

"Who's the cat who won't cop out,
When there's mossipedes all about?"

How do you feel about bugs? I hope you like bugs, because otherwise this one is going to be a toughie.

The team - with Alvis along as guest Killjoy of the week - are dispatched on one of Turin's unsanctioned warrants to rescue another crew who were sent into the Westerly badlands to 'salvage' a scarback monk, and whose original distress call was intercepted by Khlyen. They find one of the crew and a whole lot of moss - odd for a desert - and an uncharted mine in which the survivor's husband has apparently gone crazy and kidnapped his sister in law. Bringing Alvis along as a former miner, they go underground, and discover that the moss is a byproduct of the mine's special indigenous species of large, flesh-eating, nigh-unkillable moss centipedes, which bleed the same green goo used in Level Six's, or something similar.

Nice.

Still confined to Spring Hill thanks to an exploding lojack, Pawter fends off Jelco's sleazing and pokes around his office, but all the good stuff is locked with a genetic key. Jelco admits that he is from a Qreshi 'low family', and obviously has some hang ups, lording it over Pawter in part because its his chance to get all superior with a member of the Nine. He even forces her to operate on his congenitally defective heart, which gives her an opportunity to sedate him, drug his guard and use his blood to unlock his desk and retrieve plans to wall off every city on Westerly.

"That's self-rescuing pretty princess, thank you very much."

Although clearly moved when Lucy relays Johnny's message that he is coming to get her out, Pawter proceeds to rescue herself by using the same genetic sample to unlock her ankle band and sew it into Jelco's chest cavity, so that she can walk out of Spring Hill and he can't follow. She does then get hit on the head, so Johnny's chances of a big damn hero moment are still open.

Deep in the mines, the hallucinogenic effects of the centipede goo have Dutch seeing Khlyen, but D'avin and Alvis get her out in time and Johnny takes a mossipede for testing. In addition, Alvis finds the body of the monk the first team were to salvage, complete with a passage from the Scarback religious texts about twelve monks going to fight the Devil on Arkyn. This passage adds 'and one came back,' setting Alvis to go to Leith and read up on obscure apocrypha.

I don't know if I gained anything by switching times, but this episode made a bit more sense than the last. Pawter, a bit of a non-character for much of Season 1 and referred to by Jelco in this episode as a 'pretty princess', continues to be pretty awesome, and I coudl certainly live with her being the bonus crew member for an episode or two, since that seems to be a thing now. The religious aspect of the conspiracy - or perhaps the pragmatic aspect of the scarbacks - is also interesting, and I'm keen to see where it goes.

Stranger Things - 'Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly'

So on top of not knowing what happened to Will, we now don't know what
happened to... Never mind.

Episode... I'm sorry, Chapter three of Stranger Things begins exactly where the last one left off, with Barb being grabbed while her best friend has sex. Oh karma, so close and yet so far from the mark.

Unlike Will, we stick with Barb, as sadly this is her big and her final moment. Trapped in a waterless version of the pool, filled with evil alien root things amid a gentle fall of what might be snow, but is probably ash, she comes face to lack of face with a pale, monstrous humanoid and that's about all she wrote. Roll credits on the coldest of cold openings.

The following 45 minutes is just packed with happenings, and despite a relatively sedate pace, Stranger Things never lacks for occurrences.

Mike leaves El at home while he and the other boys go to school, intending to search for Will with El's help later. Lucas is skeptical, not just of El's claimed knowledge of Will's whereabouts, but of everything about her, while Dustin wants to experiment with the telekinetic powers that make her nose bleed, unconsciously mimicking the scientists who held her and made her crush Coke cans. At school, Lucas mocks Mike's supposed infatuation with El, and they have a run in with the kind of school bullies who mostly only exist in eighties movies. During their absence, El explores and experiences flashbacks, including the brutal murder of two orderlies, which elicited a rare show of kindness from Dr Brenner, her head keeper and surrogate 'Papa'.

Nope! Nopenopenope!

Nora is convinced that Will is trying to contact her through the electricity and buys more and more lights to prove it, despite her family's lack of funds. This set up attracts the attention of Mike's little sister Holly during a goodwill visit from their mother, and nearly lures her into the grasp of Mr Pushes Through the Goddamn Walls. Jonathan is doubtful of her claims, and has other problems, as he is seen developing his pictures and exposed as a stalker, leading to a run in with Steve and his increasingly cool hair in which his camera is smashed. This also leads Nancy, worried about Barb's absence, to realise that he took a picture of her remaining at the poolside after the party.

Sheriff Hopper continues his dogged and rational search for Will at the Hawkins Lab, where he immediately spots a doctored security tape and starts digging, despite the hostility of the librarian, who seems to be one of a number of ladies of a certain age to have been done wrong by Hopper. He find references linking Dr Brenner to CIA-sponsored LSD experiments and specifically MKUltra. What they don't see is the alien root mass in the lab basement, surrounded by drifting ash.

Smart.

Getting what seems a definite response from Will, Nora sets up an alphabet on the wall with lights, because she's actually pretty smart, just knackered and desperate. 'Yes', he tells her, he is alive. 'No', he is not safe. Where is he? 'Right here.' What should Nora do?

'Run.'

As Nora flees from the faceless thing and El also tells the boys that Will is at his house, tragedy strikes. A deputy finds a body in the river, and it is Will.

Stranger Things is a busy show, not just filled with events but with incredible imagery and repeated themes. This week's door count includes Holly following the lights to Will's room, and Nora being guided to sit in a cupboard (just as El is when Mike needs to hide her from his Mom.) The thing's tendency to come through walls is almost a refutation of the concept of doorness, marking doors as both portal and as barrier as a human concern that it can't be doing with.

Human concerns are front and centre in the show, however. Hopper wants to bring his town back from the brink of insanity. Nora wants to find her son, and will believe practically anything that offers a chance. The comparison between the brightly lit, well-to-do space of Mike's family home and the drab, dismal interior of Nora's speak volumes of the social gulf that Mike and Will have bridged without thinking about it, but which Jonathan is all too aware of. Even Nora and Steve gain a bit of dimensionality in her concern for Barb and his increasingly uncertain juggling of apparently genuine affection for her and the need to stay cool and in control to impress his friends.

And then there are the children. Finn Wolfhard - and seriously, even the actors' names sound somehow eighties - conveys Mike's wonder and intelligence, but also a really fierce anger burning underneath it. Millie Bobby Brown's El is a picture of measured performance, brimming with pain and unspoken anger. The two characters seem to click at once, and I wonder if that isn't because they recognise that inner rage in each other somehow.

Stranger Things - 'Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street'

Being nice to the odd kid in class is one of those things that could go either
way in the eighties.

Things take a turn for the even more sinister in episode two of masterful eighties period piece, Stranger Things.

The boys bring Eleven into Mike's basement, with the plan that she will rock up to the door in the morning and Mom will sort everything out. It becomes apparent, however, that she is not comfortable with this, or with confinement, although to the boys' utter consternation she clearly has no problems with nudity, almost changing in front of them until directed to the bathroom. Mike apparently gets her, giving her the 'real world' tour in much the same way as Elliot in E.T., although it's not clear how much this is him understanding her removal from societal norms and how much is him acting out a role.

He dubs her El (for short) and when she recognises Will becomes convinced she knows something about what happened to him. She tries to explain this using the D&D board to indicate the presence of something monstrous pursuing Will; not on the grid, but on the other side of the board. Is Will even alive? Perhaps. After all, his brother Jonathan reminds the Sheriff, 'he's good at hiding.'

D&D: Gateway occultism.

Sheriff Hopper - who did have a thing with Nora once, and who despite his skepticism continues to display the qualities of an excellent copper - isn't convinced that the heavy-breathing call was from Will. It's far more likely to be some douchebag who things spoofing the bereaved is a right laugh. Will's mother gets a new phone, but receives another sinister call, then one of Will's favourite songs - The Clash's 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' - plays from his room when no-one is in.

Government agents poke around and lights flicker and something seems to lurk in the corners like a Hound of Tindallos. El rejects the call for her to turn herself in with a firm 'no' and a burst of telekinesis, and Nancy gets laid.

Yeah, there's this whole thing where Nancy agrees to go to a party at her boyfriend's house, and she dismisses her sensible friend. Jonathan, somewhere between a teenage sage - advising Will 'you shouldn't like something because people tell you to' - and a creeper - taking photos of the party from afar, shies from actually shooting the object of his affection having sex, instead taking a melancholy snap of sensible Barb sitting by the pool, then leaving mere moments before Barb is snatched by something. To be honest, the bulk of this subplot is not very interesting.

Doors are important in Stranger Things, and not just physical doors. Doors bar the way, and doors let things in. El hates confinement, and we see that she was locked in a cell by her Papa, not so long ago. Plans involve doors - sneaking through doors, knocking on doors; Jonathan and Will's father slamming the door on Jonathan, not wanting to be involved - and there are apparently doors that are not even doors. 'Chapter Two' also loves it some windows, which repeatedly allow characters to view a scene they are not party to, with Jonathan's camera acting as an ersatz window, insulating him from the party even when the partygoers are outside. The dichotomy of access and exclusion is redolent in the series.

It also strike me that Stranger Things is also part of the quite recent move of the eighties setting to the realm of full-blown 'period,' worthy of the same level of exacting recreation as the Regency or the Old West.

Dark Matter - 'She's One of Them Now'

"Sure is handy they built this doodad into a briefcase.

This week, the crew is troubled by matters serial.

Season 2 is getting increasingly serialised, and in 'She's One of Them Now', the crew of the Raza once more set out to deal with the repercussions of a previous episode, while another episode's consequences come back to bite them. Having identified the woman who wants the tech that Five stole way back when, they decide to pay her a visit, hacking her transfer travel system to do so. This is a mechanism intoduced last season, which allows a traveler to send their consciousness into a short-lived clone body far, far away, and then retrieve its memories by reversing the transfer, although there is no live feed. If the clone is killed outside a transfer pod, the memories are lost.

Three, Four and Five copy in and identify the card as part of a 'blink drive'; an experimental (and highly stolen) instantaneous transfer system, which they decide to nick. Clone Three and Clone Four let themselves be captured so that Five can get away with the gizmo, but she comes back for them, only to kill them in order to return them to their bodies with no memories. This means that they don't know that Reynaud has a device that can send a lethal pulse back along the transfer connection to kill their bodies. She sends one such pulse, but hits a now-empty pod, and despite realising that Five is loose with her tech does not fry her brain, even when it is clear she has escaped.

Oh Devon, we hardly knew ye, and cared even less.

Elsewhere, Nyx gets some words of comfort from the Android, and tries to bond with Devon, who admits that he once killed a twelve year old girl because he was too high during surgery. While the rest of the crew decide to try out the blink drive - which shockingly goes awry - she arranges to meet him for a drink, but he gets bushwhacked by the Seers, who stab him when he claims he can't give Nyx up. This would be more of a punch if we had any real reason to care about Devon, but he's had so little to do it just feels like they're clearing out a spare who was only there to fix Six, or perhaps like Nyx won the final phone vote after Arax was knocked out last round.

The heist A plot, showcasing Five's mad skills and courage, was good, soured only by that odd failure to use the kill-shot. I'm not disappointed that no-one really died, but it felt odd to try to set up Reynaud as a ruthless antagonist and then have her fail to follow through on that threat.  The Android was once more lovely, both comforting Nyx and babysitting the team's former fixer. The B plot was less successful, more or less coming down to Nyx and Devon doing a PSA on drug use. It was underwritten and failed to set up sympathy for when Devon got stabbed.  Season 1's great strength was in its characters, and so far the Season 2 newbies have not matched the core crew's arcs.

Gotham - 'Pinewood', 'Azrael', 'Unleashed', 'A Legion of Horribles' and 'Transference'

Karen Jennings: An original character who is interesting, sympathetic, and
therefore dead.

Okay, so it's time to wrap up Season 2 of pre-Batman quality rollercoaster Gotham.

'Pinewood' leads Bruce and Alfred to investigate the titular Wayne Enterprises programme, long-since shut down, which conducted genetic experiments which killed most of the recipients and left a girl named Karen Jennings with the hand of a velociraptor. Jennings, who had been in Blackgate for murder after killing her abusive father, was rescued and placed in hiding by Thomas Wayne, and could identify the head of the programme, a man known only as 'the Philosopher'. As it happens, this is the same name that Barbara - of all people - helps Gordon to get from the Lady (Michelle Gomez) as the contractee for the Wayne hit. Unfortunately, Victor Fries shows up in a new suit of body armour and kills Karen, but they are still able to link the alias to Hugo Strange.

"Know that men call you liar..."

Playing his cards close to his chest since he has no official standing, Gordon rocks up to Arkham and is all 'I totes know you dunnit, lol.' Strange covers his tracks, then brainwashes a reanimated - and superstrong, because that's how reanimation works, yeah - Theo Galavan to believe that he is Azrael, servant of St Duma, and sends him to punish Gordon's sins. With a sword. Despite the obvious stupidity of sending a man with a sword and a suit of body armour (seriously, how much time and money is Strange spending on fabricating bulletproof costume armour for his reanimated crazy people? And where is he getting this done?) into a precinct full of armed cops, this is the GCPD and he goes through the bullpen like a blender. I seriously don't know where they keep getting recruits, because the attrition rate is fucking insane.

Ahh-hahahaha!

Azrael's fake sword is broken while he's stabbing Captain Barnes, so he goes after the real deal, the sword of sin, buried in his grandfather's grave. Tabitha leads Gordon to the sword and gets shanked trying to snap Theo out of his Azrael persona, but does remind him he was supposed to be killing Bruce Wayne. He heads to Wayne Manor and has a sword fight with Alfred, which made me happy. Then Bruce hits him with a car, establishing early that the 'no killing' rule does not apply when Batman is in a car. Not that it actually kills him, because reanimated, yeah, but then Penguin turns up with Butch and a rocket launcher, and that really made me happy, because I don't think Galavan is coming back from this. He was a crap Azrael anyway; his sword wasn't even slightly on fire.

It's not a real comic book series if folks are going to stay dead.

Speaking of fire, Bruce persuades Selina to break into Indian Hill looking for Brigit, who has been persuaded that she is Firefly, Goddess of Fire, and that Selina is there for her to experiment on, although Selina manages to knock her out between episodes going into 'A Legion of Horribles'.

Strange continues raising corpses, although Fish Mooney is unique in remembering who she actually is rather than being imprinted with a new supervillain persona. Unfortunately for Strange, his employers in 'the Court' (who wear owl masks, so presumably the Court of Owls) are concerned that sending costumed lunatics out into the city might endanger their main purpose - find a way to live forever - and order him to burn down the facility, along with Bruce, Lucius Fox and Gordon, who have been caught trying to sneak in and save Selina, who is busy saving herself by convincing Firefly she is her servant.

"A little song, a little dance; stepmom's head on a lance."

Strange buys time by getting one of his monsters - the future Clayface, one suspects - to impersonate Gordon. Bullock and Alfred both smell a rat, but only Barbara is both sharp enough and crazy enough to notice the difference and entertain the possibility that someone has whipped up a phony Gordon in the space of a lunch break. Then again, she hangs out with Penguin and Butch, giving advice on the tasteful placement of mummified stepmother heads. Penguin and the GCPD all descend on Arkham with the intention of saving Gordon and Bruce and/or executing Strange on account of some dissatisfaction with his therapeutic method.

Seriously, the series needs more of this sort of thing. More gatling guns, and
more Alfred having sword fights; less villains being incompetently diabolical.

Things go to hell as Fish uses her newfound psychotropic mind control bad touch - because
reanimated, and with the DNA of the notoriously mind-controlling cuttlefish no less - to break out. Selina refuses to let Strange execute his prisoners, but Strange sets off a bomb. Fish and a bus full of experiments are ambushed by Penguin, Butch and Ol' Painless, but Fish's appearance scatters the goons and she bad touches Penguin.

Gordon and Fox stop the bomb, Strange is arrested and Gordon heads south to look for Lee. And an old homeless woman opens the back of the bus and lets out the monsters, including a long-haired double of Bruce Wayne. OMG!

Once more, Gotham pulls out the stops for the closing stretch, and I am more than ever convinced that this, like Agents of SHIELD, would benefit greatly from a shorter season. It's actually pretty good at crazy, comic book action. It's when it tries to be all clever and conspiratorial that it falls down. Also, on the strength of the last few episodes, damn Ben McKenzie and David Mazouz got good. McKenzie plays Clayface Gordon and Gordon on truth serum to the hilt, while some flashbacks to Season 1 remind me how much Mazouz has grown, in terms of acting range as well as physically piling on the inches.

Dark Matter - 'We Should Have Seen This Coming'

Meet the new Android; largely similar to the old Android.

Lost in space. Surrounded by corporate douchebaggery. Low on gas. The crew of the Raza are hurting for funds since the GA stripped most of their assets, but Nyx has a plan for a heist, and like Three, she pretty much had us at 'heist'.

Sadly, it's not an elaborate heist; just your standard drop out of FTL, shoot a bit, board, raid and out. Except that there's a couple of things Nyx is holding back, such as the fact that she used to live on the ship they're raiding, that its crew are intellectually advanced 'seers' who combine data processing and intuitive ability with a vast database and a mechanical neural gestalt to predict the future. She's also here to rescue her brother, Milo.

"Okay; let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

Unfortunately, Milo is one of the most gifted of the seers; much better than Nyx, who left before they perfected their techniques, and whose predictive powers are immediate and intuitive. This means that his old crew want him back, and although he blocked them from predicting the initial attack, with him out of the system they can predict every jack move and bluff the crew throws at them. This proves to be true, and they are forced to let Milo return in order to retrieve Six and Three and the marauder from a planet with a toxic atmosphere. This hands down defeat is a little disappointing, and overall it feels as if the purpose of the episode was really just to have Milo drop some knowledge before going back to the seers and committing suicide. Key reveals are made to Four - one of you will betray the others - and Five - something big is coming, and the Raza is going to be at the heart of decisions that shape the galaxy.

Key character points: Three accepts that, while he doesn't forgive Six, he can work with him again; Nyx's manipulation of the crew is apparently accepted without much comment, presumably because so much of the episode was just set-up; Two is getting the shakes; and the Android has opted to rever to her original persona around the ship, because it feels more like herself.

'We Should Have Seen This Coming' is a bit of an infodump, and while the crew are often on the back foot, it was a little dispiriting to see them so utterly outmatched. In particular, it would be nice to see gaps in the seers' abilities because then there would be implied gaps in Nyx's, where at present she is basically too perfect.

Killjoys - 'Wild, Wild Westerly'

"When were you a warlord?"

So, I have decided to switch my recording time for Killjoys from 8pm on SyFy to 9pm on SyFy+1, in the hopes that it won't be cut for violence in a way that makes the series not make sense. I'll let you know how that works out.

Anyway, 'Wild, Wild Westerly' opens with the team seeking a warrant to re-enter Old Town. They have a surprise run in with their old boss - the one that Khlyen stabbed, but who is neither dead nor Level Six - and then get a docket for eight escaped prisoners, but first have to bypass a high-tech force wall which exercises an unhealthy fascination on Johnny - because that's how he is - and the new garrison commander, Smarmy McSleazhat. He has a name, but I'm convinced that's an alias. He's a nasty, supercilious, superior piece of shit who probably tortures puppies for shiggles. He can't keep them out while they're serving a valid warrant, but he is clearly among the ranks of those Company officers who feel that the RAC is an unnecessary liability.

"Did I mention how much I missed working with you guys?"

They find one of the escapees at the Royale while Dutch fights the interim owner to win the place back for Pre, but their quarry kills himself rather than be taken in and handed over to the Company. When they contact the monk Alvis, however, they learn that the remaining escapees have holed up back in the prison with, it turns out, a tank of hideous nerve gas. Dutch tries to talk them down, but a company drone drops in and kills the escapees. McSleazehat - okay, his name is Liam Jelco and we later learn that he's a torture expert, as well as just the kind of arsehat who'd gas a civilian population just to expedite the solution to a corporate problem - demands the return of the gas as part of the warrant, probably intending to use it on dissidents in Old Town. Or some puppies. When Dutch won't just hand it over, he puts out a hit on them.

Aspects of gender relations in Killjoys that I love, number 2 in an occasional
series: Pawter greets her friend Johnny when they meet, rather than her ex,
D'avin.

Prior to this, the crew found Pawter maintaining a clinic among the ruins, supplied with drugs by Alvis luring drug dealers into trying to beat him up and then robbing them. Johnny persuades her to try to reach her mother on Qresh for help, and the old garrison commander gets her into the Company bunker to make contact. Unfortunately, Jelco shoots the decent old fella in the head fro warning the population about the bombing, and leers menacingly at Pawter. He hasn't called her 'my proud beauty' yet, but I'm assuming he's just waiting until his twirling moustache grows in.

Alvis tries to gas the bunker, but they talk him out of it for Pawter's sake. They leave after another tense confrontation with Jelco. Pawter insists that she's staying in the bunker where she can help, and Johnny kisses her as an excuse to slip a communicator behind her ear. They then head for Arkyn with Alvis, to explore the Scarback Monk connection from D'avin's indoctrination visions, but are detoured by a signal from Turin, their boss at the RAC. He claims to be trying to root out the Level Six conspiracy, but that he needs their covert help to do so.

Back at the bar, the interim owner tries to roughhouse Pre, who reluctantly gives way and lets him have the bar. No, wait; that's just the impression you get if you cut the shot where Pre stabs the guy in the hand with his own knife. This is what I mean about the cuts. I keep expecting people to get back up when they've been shot in the head, had their neck snapped, or otherwise died horribly what is, for me, off camera.

Other than SyFy's misguided timeslotting and consequent bowdlerisation, I'm really enjoying Killjoys still. It has an interesting, organically revealed world and strong, likable - or hateable - characters, and a fair few shades of grey in between, as well as conspiracy on top of conspiracy like a mad Da Vinci sandwich.

Trailer Trash - Rogue One

Star Wars trailer uses a variation on the theme of the Imperial March.

It's super effective.

So, despite the nagging sensation that we're beginning the risky business of hotly anticipating a star Wars prequel, the second trailer for Rogue One - or in full, Rogue One A Star Wars Story - has the internet hotly anticipating the forthcoming release of a Star Wars prequel. The cautionary part of my brain keeps trying to remind me that the Phantom Menace trailers looked boss, but that aside, here's my take on the trailer.

Eeeeeee!

More coherently: Jan Ors expy Jyn Orso looks to be a criminal - this being Star Wars, probably a smuggler - offered a surprise chance to make good. We've got a sizable squad who don't get much legroom in the trailer, but I'm hoping for a bit of an ensemble with this one. Orso's past dovetails with the detailed criminal underworld created for the expanded universe, and if I'm honest the expanded universe, with its broad cast of characters given equal weighting with the 'heroes', is a vibe I'm keen to see the Star Wars Stories recapture.

We do get some expansion, particularly of deuteragonist Cassian Andor; Forrest Whitaker's character, who looks to be almost a surrogate father to Jyn; and Donnie Yen's blind martial artist, whose devotion to the Force may indicate a level of Force sensitivity without being a Jedi, which would be interesting. We've not really seen that much, with the standard reaction to such ability being 'quick; train as a Jedi.' Oh, and a snarky assault droid. I like the apparent dynamic between Orso and Andor, which looks to have her as the serious rogue, and him as the straight shooter, but also more of a joker. You don't often see that.

On an aesthetic note, the whole thing continues to look like a proper Star Wars film made with modern tools, and in particular there is just something about it that clearly marks it as the Imperial era rather than the Republic or New Order period. I also like the fact that the entire squad is apparently riding packed into the back of a ship the size of a taxi. Honestly, that speaks volumes about the state of the Rebellion at that point. Actually given the shiny control room Mon Mothma is rocking, I have to wonder if they're allocating funds appropriately, or if - like a mismanaged NHS trust - they're blowing the operating budget on bureaucracy and management perks.

What was I talking about?

Right. So, our primary villain seems to be Sneery McWhiteshirt, who is definitely not Thrawn and probably not a Grand Admiral, but fuck it; we're getting Thrawn in Rebels, so we're happy. Besides, Thrawn being involved in the Death Star project makes no sense.

"What is your next step, Grand Admiral?"
"Well, I thought I'd leave this thing hollow and float it around as a decoy, then use the money we save to pay for ships and spies."

And also Vader. I worry about Vader's involvement in this, since canonically he should basically go through the entire cast like prune juice through a Klingon, but people dig the heavy breathing I guess. I mean, not in phone calls, but... Man; I wonder how many Imperial officers got choked out for hanging up on Vader because he got distracted at the start of the phone call. You know; he calls while he's driving, hits a roundabout and all they hear is ten seconds of heavy breathing. They hang up, and the next thing they know their successor is having their body moved out of the flat.

What was I talking about?

Right. Yes. Rogue One A Star Wars Story, a tale of the clash between mismanaged public funding and military overspending. Or something.

The Magicians - 'Have You Brought Me Little Cakes'

We come to the season finale of The Magicians, and wow there's a lot happening.

"So... this is recursive."

As partially told in the form of Quentin writing a new Filory novel, we get a potted history of the group's adventures in the magical realm. Quentin and Julia arrive in the realm in its heyday, and become embroiled in the stories they know when they turn out to be 'the witch and the fool' who rescue Jane from a trap. They then visit a blacksmith to commission the Leo Blade to slay a master magician, the price being a place at court once they become kings and queens of Filory, as is par for the course for visitors from Earth.

They then encounter the Watcher Woman, a terrifying figure from the books who turns out to be yet another alias used by Jane Chatwin to push herself to learn magic in the first place. She notes that Julia's memory has been blocked, something shiny replacing something horrible (I fucking knew that goddess was no good!) but refuses to remove it. They then bounce forward to join the rest of the group in what can only be described as Filory's whatever the opposite of a heyday is. Everything has gone to shit, even the sunlight. They are able to claim the Leo Blade, but as future High King, Eliot is required to marry the blacksmith's daughter, forsaking all others.

Penny rescues Victoria, who shows him the 'ride along' spell, and also Christopher Plover, who has been held captive by the real Beast, Martin Chatwin, not that anyone has much sympathy for Plover. Julia and Quentin find Ember, one of the twin gods of Filory, in a dissipate state, and learn that his brother, Umber, was killed by the Beast. He gives Quentin a bottle of his 'essence' to imbue him with power enough to wield the Leo Blade, but also unblocks Julia's memories, revealing that rather than some corn goddess popping up to heal their ills, the Free Trader Beowulf's ritual summoned the trickster Reynard the Fox, who tore out Richard's heart so he could use his body, nullified the group's magic, killed the minor characters and raped Julia. Kady was apparently 'saved', although whether she ran or was ever caught is not explored. Marina helped clear up and, at Julia's request, blocked her memory.

Just say no to god 'essence'

Victoria and Josh punk out. Quentin finally accepts that he's not the hero, and gives Alice the essence, a) which is exactly the euphemism you think it is and b) there's a point to that, to drink, imbuing her with divine power. They travel to the source of Filory's magic to ambush the Beast, but Alice finds the knife gone from her belt when she goes to attack. She gets seriously fucked up, Quentin, Eliot and Margo are tossed around like ragdolls and Penny's hands are cut off at the wrist. Ouch.

Then Julia pops up with the Leo Blade, having realised that she too was - violently and unwillingly - 'gifted' with the 'essence' of a god, which gives her the power to wield the blade. She puts the knife to Martins' throat. Hurray, huzzah, and home for tea and crumpets!

This is not as good a situation as it seems.

Except not.

No, Julia clearly stole the blade from Alice not to ninja the kill, but because the Beast killed Umber. He knows how to kill gods, and that's knowledge she is willing to deal for, whatever the cost.

Seriously, it's a good thing the show got picked up for a second season, or I'd be bouncing off walls at this point. Alice is looking pretty dead, Penny maimed and everyone else hurt, and the Beast is loose in the company of a fairly monomaniacal Julia. One could argue that she is determined to expunge the evil that she helped to bring into the world, but it's hard to definitively call the Beast the lesser of those evils and clearly emotion is clouding her judgement. Not that it's easy to fault her for that, given all that happened. Reynard is clearly a shit and needs to die, but one the other hand Martin ruined Narnia - a pretty textbook sign of evil - and squeezed his sister's throat until her head exploded, so he's not some brooding, misunderstood antihero.

And Quentin? Well, Quentin is as much of a useless dick as ever, but a more likable one at least.

Agents of SHIELD - 'Among Us Hide...' and 'Chaos Theory'

Punching therapy.

So, here I am back with Agents of SHIELD for a bit, as everything else wraps up.

This episode, it's all about work therapy. With Hunter having endangered Andrew and fucked the kill shot, he's on the bench and May taps Morse to help her bring down Ward, despite her not having a clean bill of health yet. They work on tracing young Von Strucker, who has fled to a friend of his father's, Gideon Malick, 'the man all the others were afraid of,' whom I totally failed to realise was one of the World Security Council assholes from The Avengers. May notes that Bobbi is quick to use non-violent methods and suspects she's getting a little gunshy, urging her to not only get back on the horse, but to punch the horse in the face and kick it in the nads when it's down.

Doughnut therapy.

Conversely, Hunter's anger management issues are subject to some stakeout therapy when he joins Mac and Daisy to tail the ACTU's strike leader, suspecting that he may be Lash. This is not entirely successful, as Hunter hops out the van and kidnaps Mr Man so they can run a blood test, which proves that he isn't an Inhuman at all. This is because, as May learns when they finally reach Von Strucker, who is bleeding out from some HYDRA inflicted injuries after Malick shockingly betrays him, Lash is actually Andrew.

Also, Coulson bonds with Rosalind and SHIELD discover that the ACTU keep Inhumans in suspension while they look for a cure. Ethical debates ahoy.

Therapy therapy (with a view to punching a hole in your heart therapy later.)

So to 'Chaos Theory', in which Fitz stumbles across Simmons' admissions of her feelings for him when she asks him to recover her phone's hard drive, and May goes after Andrew to try to talk him down.

Lincoln comes in to warn the team that he's worked out Lash must be inside SHIELD, using Jiaying's ledger to track the Inhumans. As everything falls together, he also warns them that Inhumans don't shapeshift. Andrew, who was exposed to the Mist because SHIELD can't do a basic safety assessment on the possessions of a known paranoid crazy with access to bioweapons, is still in the process of turning into Lash, but Lash is the person he will eventually be.

Andrew takes May captive and explains that he was drawn to be near other Inhumans, and then to kill them. He insists that he only kills 'bad' Inhumans, although a sharp observer would note that what he means is that he only kills Inhumans that he doesn't know. shit kicks off when Lincoln goes after Andrew, but it all works out in the end and they get him into a containment unit. Lincoln ponders a permanent gig with SHIELD. Coulson and Rosalind knock boots, and it is revealed that she was setting him up for a meeting with Malick.

The villain I don't care about gets his face-to-face with the villain I'd forgotten
about.

Increasingly, I'm convinced that Agents of SHIELD, and in fact a lot of US shows, would benefit from a 10- or 13-episode season, because there's a fair amount of sog and I still have most of the season to get through. In quality terms, more focus is always good, although I suppose that it's less advertising revenue and maybe less appealing for a buying network. As it is, nice-guy metal manipulating Inhuman hasn't been in the series for several episodes, which takes both some punch from the threat to his life and some wow from the control he has learned.

And I still don't care enough about Ward to respect him as the main antagonist.

The Musketeers - 'To Play the King'

There's something so creepy about dressing children as tiny, fancy adults. The
wig makes it much worse.

It's the Dauphin's sixth birthday, which means it's time for Paris to par-tay!

Of course, when I say Paris, I mean the prisoners of the Chatelet, and when I say par-tay, I mean jailbreak. As the Red Guard flail and the Musketeers track down escaping convicts, Grimaud leads a team into the prison to kidnap a defaulting locksmith and force him, at threat of his wife's life, to open the impenetrable door he created to protect the King's treasury.

The Musketeers track a group of inmates to one of Sylvie's interminable rallies, at which she and her cohorts once again agree that it's terrible and something needs to be done. The convicts take hostages, but the Musketeers kick them in and Athos covers for Sylvie's sedition. Then D'Artagnan goes after another inmate, who turns out to be an ex-soldier who thinks he's the King, and whom he leaves in the care of some nuns instead of returning him to the garrison, where the escapees are being held until the Red Guard restore order. Aramis, meanwhile, goes with Constance to track one of her worthy causes, the moneylender's wife, letting them uncover the plot.

"I am untouchable!"

The Dutch moneylender from last episode delivers final notice on the loan Feron secured 'for the King', revealing the Governor's treachery to Treville, but the King is completely obsessed with the Dauphin's party. Treville leaves the letters for the king to find, and Feron's attempts to remove them are thwarted by the Prince and the Queen, pushing him to murder the moneylender in his own chambers, which in turn distracts him from alerting his captain that Grimaud needs more time. Feron has the devil's own luck, however, as the mad man breaks into the palace to kill the 'imposter', burning the letters and providing a handy scapegoat for the murder before being shot while trying to kill the Queen. Feron then brazens it out with Treville, telling him he'll let all Paris know of the King's impending mortality if his position is threatened.

On the upside, Grimaud's men are caught before they can take the money, although Grimaud himself escapes. Athos' growing dissatisfaction with the status quo leads him back towards Sylvie. Treville squares up for a showdown with Feron, while Grimaud prepares himself to take revenge on the Musketeers for interfering with his plans. The whole thing is building up towards a proper downer of an ending to this final season.