Cinderella

Whatever you may think of this film, I can state without fear of controversy
that it contains a fucktonne of dresses.

Following on from Maleficent, the next Disney classic to get an in-house live-action remake (I think the first was The Jungle Book, some years back) is Cinderella, starring Lily James off of Downton and Cate Blanchett, with Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother, and directed by Kenneth Branagh.

The film is sumptuous. The sets and costumes are excellent and the effects for the Godmother's magic are suitably sparkly. James plays Ella just the right side of tooth-grindingly winsome, the Prince (herein named Kit) is decent enough, and the support is of a very high standard. Derek Jacobi as the King is both conservative and sympathetic, and Stellan Skarsgard and Nonso Anozie as the bad and good courtiers are great fun. While essentially played straight - which, as I think I may have said before is the new radical interpretation - the film inserts a scene in which Ella and Kit meet incognito to establish a spark, and reverses some expectations by having the King bless Kit's intention to marry the mystery woman on his deathbed rather than frocing a promise to do what is 'good for the Kingdom'.

The sisters really are just Blanchett's
backing group.

Cate Blanchett is of course a fabulous wicked stepmother, although it is a pity that the sisters weren't a bit more nuanced (I overheard a ten year old girl in the audience telling her father that the sisters aren't always portrayed as entirely wicked, so it's not as if the target audience couldn't deal.) Blanchett is also so very venomous that a third act push to give her a sympathetic backstory falls flat.

What the film does very well is take out some of the more cringeworthy aspects of the source, such that Ella isn't set on either attending a ball for its own sake, or because of some misty dream of meeting a prince. Instead, she is hoping to catch up with 'Kit the apprentice', whom she met by chance in the forest. It is only when everyone watches them dance that she realises who she is. It makes the character far more sympathetic, to me at least, that she is interested in a person and not a title (and this is also pitched as the thing that wins the King over.)

My main complaint is that, like Maleficent, they left out the songs, despite making a film that would be perfect for a song or two.

As an aside, if you want to introduce your kids to the subject of death, this is the film for you, knocking off both of Ella's parents and the King during its runtime.

Elsa once more displays her power over ice, snow, and all
kinds of fabric.

Speaking of children, Arya didn't really get on with the film, mostly because it had real people in it, I think. She did, however, love Frozen Fever. Short and sweet, Frozen Fever is a delightful snippet, but encapsulates a lot of my concerns regarding the idea of a Frozen II. It works because it's a short story about the characters, rather than a continuation of the main narrative which had effectively finished. I choose to be cautiously optimistic about the sequel, but the emphasis is on the caution.

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD - 'Aftershocks'

SHIELD and HYDRA have each taken a knock, and are fighting to recover their position. Coulson is determined to pursue HYDRA and make someone pay; HYDRA has begun to see that SHIELD is not the spent force they hoped. Meanwhile, Skye is in quarantine and Raina is on the loose and something other than human.

Trip is dead, to begin with, and to its credit and somewhat to my surprise, Agents of SHIELD remembers this. Coulson is going all hardass on his team, and May explains that this is because Trip represented all the ideals of SHIELD that Coulson believes in; his death is a tangible attack on the fundamental justification for everything that SHIELD does. What SHIELD does is under serious examination here, as Mac objects to Coulson's reckless gameplan, Simmons determines not to let scientific curiosity lead to any more deaths and thus devotes herself to the destruction of empowered individuals, and the team make a dramatic escalation in the battle against HYDRA.

Tension you could cut with a knife.

The A-plot is something of a heist movie scenario, with multiple twists and reversals building towards the eventual reveal of Coulson's gambit. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Simmons is checking to see if Skye is still Skye and vowing to destroy all mutants (this is a dramatic reversal, but utterly believable thanks to Elizabeth Henstridge's meticulously controlled emotional collapse,) while Fitz wrestles with his mental blocks to discover her transformation and conceal it, putting him on track to be directly at odds with Simmons when the truth comes out. He also gets to namedrop the Inhumans for the first time.

Fitz also gets another lovely moment with Mack, reaching out to his friend after Mack's traumatic possession:

Fitz: Well it's not good to keep things to yourself Mack. I know what you're going through.
Mack: Really? You know what it's like to lose control? To be trapped inside your own body unable to tell it what to do? To watch yourself hurt the people that you care about?
Fitz: Yeah.
Mack: I'm sorry buddy.
Fitz: It's okay.

This is the same understanding he shows to Skye later in the episode, telling her that she isn't wrong, just 'different', because being broken is something that he has struggled with, with only Mack to help him out. Now it's confirmed that Mack and Morse are seeking to steal 'Fury's toolkit' from Coulson; I'm going to be so heartbroken if they (specifically Mack, I have no attachment to Mockingbird and Lance Hunter's potential pain seems funny to me) turn out to be full evil.

Finally, Raina confronts the Doctor about her transformation.

Raina: I was supposed to become something divine, something transcendent. My grandmother said I'd be an angel, not some gnarled freak of nature covered in thorns.

"It's going to be okay, beautiful. I'll show you the way."

Disgusted by herself, she walks out into traffic and is almost captured by - I think - HYDRA operatives, but then she is rescued by Gordon, the eyeless Inhuman we saw at the end of last episode. I like this scene both because it establishes that to Gordon Riana's metamorphosis is not disfigurement, and because it means that not everything is about Skye.

Also, Gordon is immensely cool. Like... the second or third coolest Gordon ever.

'Aftershocks' presents me with a complication, because I was just about ready to give up on Agents of SHIELD before this, but there is almost nothing in here that I didn't like, from little character moments to big action to the total absence of Ward. The reaction to Trip's death is so note perfect that it makes me doubly angry that he didn't have anything to do in the rest of the season, and in particular no significant scenes with Simmons to reestablish their connection.

Will the rest of Season 2 be more like 'Aftershocks' or the episodes preceding it? Only time will tell, I guess, but for now I'll be back next week to find out.

Chappie

In the future, everything is shit. We know this. In this particular future, South Africa has deployed a robotic police force with cute antenna ears to curb rampant crime, but the designer of these 'Scouts' is more interested in perfecting their artificial intelligence than in the combat applications which bankroll their development. Perfecting his artificial consciousness program he steals a damaged robot to install it in, but is kidnapped by a particularly inept gang who quickly adapt from wanting a means to deactivate the robots while they commit crimes to having a robot of their own.

These guys are Yolandi and Ninja, aka rave-rap band
Die Antwoord. Their screen characters share their names, or at
least in Ninja's case his stage name. His real name is Watkin
Tudor Jones, which is fucking awesome, 

The robot (Sharlto Coopley) - soon named 'Chappie' - is effectively a child, and learns rapidly under the conflicting influences of programmer Deon (Dev Patel), surrogate mother Yolandi (Yolandi Visser) and her partner, gang leader Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones). Unfortunately, Deon's rival at the company, Vincent (Hugh Jackman in an uncharacteristic jerk role) is out to destroy the Scout program to advance his own ED-209... I mean MOOSE combat drone, and the damage to his original body means that Chappie only has days to live anyway.

Taken on its own, Chappie is a decent enough film, but it suffers a little from comparison with Director Neil Blomkamp's earlier District 9, not because it isn't as good, but because it's kind of the same in a lot of ways, with its lost protagonist, urban warzone setting, a powerful gangster figure, and most notably a gung-ho militaristic antagonist. It is a distinct film, and in all honesty it would be easier to overlook the parallels if not for the great similarity in the landscape.

The film is built on solid performances, but suffers from a shortage of very likable characters. Yolandi and Ninja, and their cohort Amerika, are pitched somewhere between adorably eccentric and vicious killers, while Chappie himself walks the line between loveable Johnny 5 in Short Circuit and the hatefully overplayed Johnny 5 in Short Circuit 2. Actually, there's a lot of Short Circuit in here as well. In the case of the human characters, there is a deliberateness to this, as the film is less concerned with the nature of consciousness than with the impact that nurturing a being like Chappie has on the humans - even the apparently irredeemable jerkass Ninja - the process essentially being like teaching a child, but with the transformative steps writ large instead of almost invisible.

Chappie is a long way from being a perfect film, but it has a lot going for it, and compares well to the newer Robocop, of which it is a kind of mirror image. Man, this film is full of... parallels? Homages?

The Flash - 'Out of Time'

"Sure glad I don't look stupid doing this..."

There's a new Weather Wizard in town; Clyde Mardon's brother Mark is back for revenge on Joe, and only a wand (either a nod to the comics or Mardon's future weapon of choice) seems to offer any chance of stopping him. Evidence continues to pile up against Wells, leading Cisco to launch a fateful gambit. And Barry is having the worst sort of trouble... girl trouble.

And then there's that cliffhanger...

In sister show Arrow (still need to catch up on the end of Season 2) Season 1 was shaken up when Malcolm Merlyn was upgraded from sinister chessmaster to absolute badass. Despite a few past showings, this episode basically does the same for Harrison Wells, not just confirming our suspicion about his abilities and motives, but stepping him over the line and confirming that there is no double bluff, no twist face turn; he may possess a certain tragic nobility, but he's a proper bastard too.

"Do you ever think that maybe we could have a superhero show
that doesn't rely on a love triangle for its romantic tension?"

Of course, the cliffhanger presents the opportunity for the show to both have its cake and eat it, to have Wells murder one of Team Flash and then take it back, so that we know, but the characters don't. It also presents the potential to undo the other horrors of the week: the crippling of Joe and the Captain, the devastation of the precinct, and of course Barry and Iris kissing (even lips locked I wasn't feeling the love there, and it pains me that time travelling Barry may remember the kiss and mope for a few more episodes.)

Linda Park has not really grown on me, largely because the show is determined that she not be 'the one', I think, and so keeps showing her in an openly confrontational relationship to Iris instead of more sympathetically. It's a shame, because I would really have liked the two of them to click; there'd be more tension for Barry if they didn't turn into grasping, possessive harpies, and we might finally get this thing past the Bechamel Test.

On a more positive note - I hope - I'd like to talk about the Captain. He's your classic hardass boss cop; and also gay. It's not a huge thing, he's not really into musicals, he's just gay. And getting married. And an unsympathetic jerk to his underlings (especially Barry), and he took a bolt of lightning for Joe, because he's also a big, damn hero. (As the icing on the cake, they meet his fiance in the hospital who tells them he speaks highly of Barry.) I love this character.

Next week then is the time travel/reset button episode, which is a make or break moment if I ever saw one.

Person of Interest - 'Liberty'

Either John Reese is looking for a sailor or Jim Caviezel has badly misjudged
his outfit for the South Pacific audition.

So, by a pleasing coincidence Season 3 of Person of Interest kicked off this week on Sky, barely a fortnight after I finished Season 2 on Netflix.

'Liberty' opens with Reese protecting a kidnapped playboy - hilariously by jumping into the back of the kidnappers' van in a ski mask and waiting for them to notice the extra body - and Shaw and Fusco saving a nasty piece of work from several nastier pieces of work. This is all prelude to the main event, however, as the Machine provides the number of a sailor on shore leave... along with several thousand other sailors.

Alongside the A plot, we also catch up with Carter - busted back to uniform after HR disappeared a gun from a man she shot in self-defence, although not for keeping a major organised crime figure in private protective custody, since she's kept that one hidden for now - and Root. Currently undergoing psychiatric treatment at the expense of her 'Uncle Harold' (she tells her psychiatrist that 'it's complicated', which given her actual relationship to Harold is putting it lightly) she has been contacted by the Machine and designated 'Analog Interface', and seems to be being sent on an enigmatic mission which is likely to involve bad things happening.

In fact, thanks to this reviewer we can see the breakdown of potential bad things which flash up as a decision tree representing the Machine's advance into consciousness (and if Root is to be taken as gospel, feminine divinity):

MONITORING ASSET...
RETASKING IN PROGRESS...
PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS: UNKNOWN

GENERATING PREDICTIONS:

BLUE(a):

OPERATIONAL RELEVANCE - 1.94, 2.06, 1.91, 1.99, 1.91%

YELLOW(b):

ASSET ACTIVATION - 28.44, 28.56, 28.41%
ASSET CAPTURED - 62.79, 62.91, 62.76%
CRISIS AVERTED - 17.71, 17.56, 17.64%
AUX_ADMIN(c) - 2.06, 2.08%
MARRIAGE/PROCREATION(d) - 0.0% / RECLASSIFICATION: NON-RELEVANT - 0.04%

RED:

DEATH: ASSET - 12.54, 12.66, 12.51%
VIOLENCE - 30.19, 30.31, 31.27, 34.98, 40.06%
DEATH: CARMICHAEL, RONALD W.(e) - 78.09, 78.21, 78.06, 78.14, 78.06%
DEATH: ADMIN(f) - 12.54, 12.51%
MASS CASUALTY EVENT(g) - 9.84%
GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR(h) - 2.84%

My observations:

a. Apparently this is 'relevant' operations, i.e. anti-terrorism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Root is not predicted to be much of an anti-terror asset. I guess that c.2% probability is a 'set a thief to catch a thief' scenario.

b. Yellow is 'non-relevant' operations, i.e. Team Machine. The Machine is not predicting great guns here, so I guess it's a little desperate vis a vis the 'crisis' involved.

c. Probability of the machine gaining a new admin? Of Root being that admin?

d. Actually, I wonder if 'aux_admin' refers to a partnership with Admin (Finch, if he still is), with the marriage/procreation percentage being for Finch and in general. Bad news for shippers and the Root Testosterone Brigade (You know they're out there), but overall probably good news for Harold. Maybe the Machine is looking to secure its supply of future partners.**

In all honesty, the decision tree stuff is just gravy after we opened on Fusco in
this fake beard to masquerade as a Central Park carriage driver.

e.That's Root's sleazy shrink.

f. Finch! No!

g. I know I shouldn't care more about Finch than 'mass casualties', but I do. I'm just glad it's not predicting death chances for Bear.

h. There is literally more chance of the sexy, sassy bad girl character causing a thermonuclear war than hooking up with someone. I love this show.

** And I know I'm way behind in the broader scale, so don't spoil me, bro.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Adam and Eve are quintessential 60s survivors; a musician and a devourer of literature still mired in a psychadelic haze. Yet they are not what they seem, for they are centuries older, two of a dwindling population of vampires battling to balance their need for blood with the lethal pollution of their food supply by humanity's folly. Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive follows the two over the course of about a week as their carefully ordered lives are disrupted by Eve's anarchic sister, threatening their very existence.

In many ways, Only Lovers Left Alive is a movie about drugs and music which happens to have vampires in it. Faced with a human population full of chemicals and environmental toxins, Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) feed only on 'the good stuff'; carefully sourced, decanted blood free from contamination which they acquire from their 'dealers', a Detroit doctor for Adam and 16th century poet Christopher Marlowe* (John Hurt) for Eve. They are disdainful of the destructive natures of the 'zombies' - and it is telling that only humans are ever referred to by a monstrous title - and Adam in particular is almost consumed by the tragic destruction of the scientists and musicians he has sponsored over the centuries.

As an essentially character driven piece, the film rides on the performances of Hiddleston and Swinton, who are both excellent. Hurt, Mia Wachowski as Eve's sister Ava and Anton Yelchin as Adam's human fixer Ian are also superb, and in the film's enclosed world, wrapped in Velvet Underground-esque jangling guitars and long, loving montages, that is enough.

If I had a quibble with the film it would be that the blood = drugs theme is too direct, the feeding scenes too reminiscent of Trainspotting, but it would be a minor quibble.

* There's a reference to his waistcoat which feels almost like a nod to Shakespeare in Love, but that seems odd from a hardcore indie like Jarmusch.

12 Monkeys - Four episodes in

Aaron Marker (Noah Bean), Jennifer Goines (Emily Hampshire), Pallid Man (Tom Noonan), Ramse (Kirk Acevedo), Jones (Barbara Sukowa), Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull) and James Cole (Aaron Stanford)

I confess to a certain skepticism where TV versions of self-contained films are concerned, but when I saw the trailers for 12 Monkeys I figured what the hey? Fargo rocked the small screen last year, so let's give it a go. As a note, the series refers to its influence as La Jette, the original French short film/slide show with narration, not the movie 12 Monkeys.

We open with 'Splinter', and virologist Cassandra Railly's apparently chance encounter with a man who claims to know her and that they will meet in several years time, before vanishing into thin air. This really sets the scene for the series ahead, in particular the intertwining quests of the two main characters. The time traveller is James Cole, sent back in time to prevent a viral outbreak that will almost annihilate humanity. Warned by Cole and given proof of his bona fides when he scratches the face of her watch and a matching scratch appears on its future version, Railly sets out to do the same, but where her story is linear, Cole's is not.

Each episode, Cole drops into Railly's life and they attempt to further their cause through radically different approaches. In particular, Railly is looking for a cure or containment, whereas Cole is a simpler soul who believes with a desperate fervor that it will all be sorted out if he just kills the right person. That was his mission, and his reward is for this version of him never to have existed and suffered through a viral apocalypse.

It quickly proves less simple than he had hoped, as his goals switch from Leland Goines (Zeljko Ivanek) to his daughter Jennifer in 'Mentally Divergent'. A maths prodigy driven insane by a massacre of which she was accused, Jennifer is the only clue to the location of the plague's source, the enigmatic Night Room. She is also hunted, however, by the Pallid Man, the nigh-preternatural point monster for the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

Losing Jennifer, Cole is next sent to find the only other link to the Night Room, an aid worker known to be in Haiti in 2014. This episode 'Cassandra Complex' is however mostly about Railly, and how her determination to find a global pandemic pathogen that doesn't exist yet has destroyed her career and alienated her from friends and even her former fiance (whose presence in the cast shot suggests he will be more important further down the line.)

We then leave Railly for the bulk of the episode 'Atari', in which a scavenging army finds the base from which the scientist Jones is 'splintering' Cole back into history. This one is a straight up action episode with a time travel twist, as Cole and his hetero life partner Ramse (and eeee! it's Charlie from Fringe!) try to fight off their erstwhile comrades in the West VII (named for their quarantine zone.) The episode digs into the relationship between Cole and Ramse, establishing the latter as the conscience of the pair and one of the ruthlessly pragmatic Cole's only links to the rest of humanity. Jones early explains to Ramse that he is expendable, only present because Cole - whose importance to the programme is not yet explained in the series - insists on it, but it's hard not to suspect that Ramse is key to keeping Cole on mission.

12 Monkeys is not a straight adaptation, nor expansion of the movie, but a much more complicated beast telling its own story in its own way. As is de rigueur these days, the story expands through a series of flash backs and flash forwards, from the two 'presents' of 2015 and 2043 as far back as 2006 and 2035. In a lot of ways, Cole and Railly are the least interesting characters in the piece, acting more as pivots for the rest - particularly Goines, Jones and Ramse - to work around. This is not to say there is nothing to them; Cole's evolving story is a brutal tragedy, and Railly is locked into a self-destructive quest for world salvation.

Four episodes in, I am definitely liking 12 Monkeys, although not loving it as much as Fargo.

Person of Interest - Seasons 1 and 2

L-R - Detective Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson), Root (Amy Acker), Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), John Reese (Jim Caviezel), Detective Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and Agent Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi)

An ex-Special Forces soldier and CIA assassin is picked up by an Army interrogation expert turned New York homicide cop for beating down a gang of spoiled bullies. Released, he is contacted by a reclusive billionaire with an unusual proposal. Thus begins Person of Interest, an Equalizer for the surveillance age.

The central conceit is that Harold Finch was asked to create a programme to trawl through data in search of threats to national security. What he creates is The Machine, an almost godlike system with access to practically any networked device, capable of predicting any threat to the United States and sold to a secretive government cabal for one dollar. As an unintended side-effect of its programme, the Machine also predicts premeditated threats to private citizens, and it is these threats that Finch seeks to neutralise.

His main problems in this endeavour are that he is a slight, nervous intellectual with a gammy leg and no combat skills, and that the Machine only presents him with a social security number, with no indication of what the threat is, or even whether the number presented is for the victim or the perpetrator. The first of these is resolved by hiring ex-CIA badass John Reese to be the brawn to his brains, the latter by legwork and networking. Joss Carter is the cop who first pursues and later works with Reese, while her partner Lionel Fusco is a once-dirty cop at first coerced into helping Team Machine, later a willing participant.

The show is primarily an anthology, but with a strong arc plot. The arc antagonists of Season 1 are a mysterious gangster named Elias, who is seeking to control the entire New York underworld, and an organisation of corrupt NYPD officers known as 'HR'. While Elias is caught and imprisoned, and HR badly weakened by the team's efforts, the finale introduces Root, a young woman with a chameleon's gift for impersonation and whose technical skills rival Harold's own, but whose experiences have led her to believe that people aren't worth the effort of saving.

I said to my girlfriend, "I'd recommend this series,
but I know your favourite character doesn't come in
until Season 2."

Season 2 brings in a resurgent HR, the Special Counsel's office responsible for operations proceeding from the Machine's intelligence product, and Decimer, a shady corporate group seeking to control the Machine. Together with Root, these groups shift the focus from a general threat to the public to a specific threat to the Machine itself. Season 2 also introduces future regular Sameen Shaw, an agent for the Special Counsel who is betrayed by her superiors when her partner questions their motives, and more importantly the real star of the show, the Belgian Malinois Bear (played by Graubaer's Boker.)

The series is framed using the Machine's perspective, multiple camera angles and facial recognition blocks tracking people around the world, and this is used to delve into the characters' backstories as the Machine analyses older files for information on potential threats and victims. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the series is that through only these file snippets and the jumble of recorded voices used to relay the social security numbers to its administrator via payphone, the Machine is transformed into a character in its own right.

While Reese and Finch are pretty settled characters, mostly explored through backstory, Carter and Fusco provide a much richer ongoing character development. Carter is forced to evaluate her priorities when given evidence that the 'Man in the Suit' responsible for a number of redacted homicides is doing real good. Fusco is if anything even more interesting. Introduced as a simple dirty cop, he is seen struggling for redemption and later shown to have been a good man brought down by loyalty more than greed.

Season 3 is kicking off on Channel 5 next week, and if it keeps to standard will warrant an episode-by-episode update.

Gotham - 'Rogue's Gallery'/'What the Little Bird Told Him'

Welcome to Hell, Officer Gordon...

After the dramatic mid-season climax of 'Lovecraft', Jim Gordon is now a security officer at Arkham Asylum (which is apparently a GCPD job of sorts, given his speeches about refusing to quit.) His boss, Director Lang, is clearly out to scapegoat him for the continual outbreaks of violence in the underfunded, underequipped and undermanned Arkham (recall from the first half of the series that the Waynes' plan to turn it into a state of the art mental health facility were honoured in name only by just opening it back up in all its grimy, 1970s/movie psychiatric institution glory,) although whether to force Gordon out or just to cover his own arse is unclear.

When an inmate is rendered braindead by a crude imitation of electroshock therapy, Gordon calls in Bullock to investigate, with the added assistance of women's wing physician Dr Leslie 'Lee' Thompkins (Firefly's Morena Baccarin.) Cue interviews with a parade of inmates which is... amusing, if not entirely sensitive to the realities of mental health issues.

The homemade villain costuming this series shares with The
Flash is actually really growing on me.

This A plot flows on into the next episode (screened as a double on Channel 5) as Lester Buchinsky, aka the 'Electrocutioner' (the always awesome Chris Heyerdal, who makes his first appearance as Prospero in the Arkham inmates' frankly amazing production of The Tempest) escapes and seeks revenge on his former partner, Don Maroni.

Gordon confronts the Commissioner and makes a hail Mary throw, offering to catch Buchinsky in 24 hours if his shield is returned. He does so by taking Maroni into protective custody, and by wearing heavy galoshes. It is pretty much his finest hour so far, and coupled with the ever growing Gordon/Bullock bromance, I might finally be convinced by the show's central character rather than turning out for the supporting cast.

Seriously; what is up with those outfits?

Alongside this, Fish Mooney makes her move, 'kidnapping' her own honey trap, Liza, and blackmailing Falcone into leaving town. Despite being constantly interrupted by the Electrocutioner's attacks, Cobblepot turns the tables on Mooney by revealing Liza's alliance with her, leaving him to be rewarded with Mooney's holdings, while Mooney and Butch are taken away by Zsasz (and his weird cadre of oddly-dressed hitwomen) and Falcone strangles Liza himself, symbolically reclaiming his power and discarding the last of his decency. The Penguin grins like a smug snake, again, despite really only pulling through on luck.


In subplot land: Montoya breaks up with Barbara on the reasonable grounds that Barbara showed up at her recovering junkie girlfriend's place and started popping pills. While it's a shame that Gotham's only gay relationship (so far) is shown so negatively, it was set up that they were together when they were co-using, and thus it makes sense that they don't actually have a healthy dynamic. On the upside, this development kind of salvaged Montoya.

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like, 'it's better than yours',
And yeah, like, that's because it's laced with mind-controlling
botanical psychotropics.

Barbara immediately tries to place a double-rebound booty call to Jim - because she's classy that way. Meanwhile, Cat has found Ivy, sick and starving on the streets, and as Ivy refuses to see a Doctor, Cat takes her to Gordon and Barbara's place to recover (not to Wayne Manor, and in fact these two episodes are conspicuously free of either Bruce or Alfred.) While they are there, Ivy answers Barbara's phone call, in a scene which makes me want to see more Ivy and, as is par for the course, less Barbara.

"I am a sympathetic character!"

I may have mentioned that I am not a fan of this show's interpretation of Barbara might-one-day-be-Gordon. She's basically there because the name is known, but they don't know what to do with her except have her complain or get kidnapped.

While I'm not a fan of Fish Mooney, her right hand guy Butch got a good subplot this week. Charged with dealing with a rival capo and his childhood friend, he first tries reason and is in return offered Fish's holdings if he rolls on her. He meets with his friend again, ostensibly to agree to his offer. He offers a heartfelt apology for cheating him out of a score - the steaks from a haul of stolen meat - when they were boys, and after his friend forgives him, Butch shoots him dead. It's gangster cinema at its finest and most subtle.

"It's a riddle."

Finally, socially inept (possibly autistic) CSI Edward Nygma offers a token of his affections to file clerk Kristen Kringle in the form of a riddle, or more explicitly a cupcake with a bullet in it. His attempt to explain is interrupted by a thick-necked detective with the classic 'is this guy bothering you,' and this dismissal is clearly psychologically important for him, as he overhears Kringle expressing to the detective that he freaks her out. It's a breaking point for him, as he has clearly never been told this before. This is the sort of thing that happens when Arkham Asylum is at the cutting edge of your understanding of mental illness.

We've known each other for two days now, so...

Just to wrap up, Barbara goes home to stay with her parents (the ones who don't approve of Jim) and Jim and Thompkins lock lips in the GCPD break room after three days, as many conversations and - to give them their due - an adrenaline-surging chase to escape a tide of angry Arkham inmates.

The Flash - 'The Nuclear Man' and 'Fallout'

"So, you can teleport?"
"No; they cancelled that series. I just catch fire."

When Firestorm apparently attacks a physicist, Team Flash is on the case. It soon emerges that Ronnie and Stein are seeking to be separated, unable to truly control their powers, but there may be a very short window before they go nuclear.

The A plot of the week focuses on Caitlin and her desire to get Ronnie back now that a chance has emerged. It also provides a touching motive for Stein, whose enforced separation from his wife has made him appreciate her all the more. Despite having caused some harm, the cliffhanger ending leaves the audience concerned for both halves of Firestorm, as they release a nuclear explosion, as well as Barry and Caitlin.

Over in the B plot, Joe gets Cisco to help him re-examine the murder scene and try to identify the two speedsters. Using some dodgy science to develop images from the silver nitrate backing of a mirror into holograms, they locate surviving blood-splatter under the wallpaper and identify one of the speedsters not as Harrison Wells, but the adult Barry Allen.

The C plot is less interesting. Barry's first date with Linda Park goes well. There are some puns about moving too fast - there is some concern that consummation may be deeply disappointing - but when Barry is called out of the second date while Linda is trying to move things to the next level and Iris suddenly goes all stalker on him... Not impressed with Iris, and in all honesty I wasn't that taken with Linda, who apparently literally has no time for a man who won't put out on the second date, because she's a busy, important sports reporter.

In 'Fallout', we follow through these three strands. Ronnie and Stein are very pleased to be apart, but soon begin to display sympathetic connections, especially when Stein is kidnapped by General Eiling (who also demonstrates a rather nasty anti-Flash grenade.) Barry's attempts to rescue Stein are thwarted by another anti-Flash weapon, but Stein and Ronnie voluntarily rejoin into a more controlled, more powerful incarnation of the Firestorm entity before heading off on the Littlest Hobo/Fugitive/Incredible Hulk bit. Caitlin and Mrs Stein are surprisingly cool about this.

Barry patches things up with Linda (yay?) and tells Iris he no longer has feelings for her (yay!) I'm not sure my reactions are what the makers were after. Iris agrees to get inside dirt on STAR Labs.

In case you still had any doubts.

Cisco and Joe tell Barry what they found - in a priceless scene in which Wells expounds time travel theories and Cisco translates into movie references for Joe - and he immediately assumes that he's going to go back in time and save his mother, because the glass is mostly half full for Barry; it's why we keep wincing when life punches him in the gut.

Speaking of coming disappointments, Wells initially hands Stein over to Eiling to protect Barry, and on learning that Eiling knows the Flash's secret identity, abducts him - in his Reverse-Flash persona - and takes him into the sewers. He announces that yes, he is 'one of them', and he protects his own, before introducing Eiling to an old friend.

"My God!"
"Not god... GRODD!"

The Firestorm two-parter is A-list Flash, and in particular props for another sympathetic metahuman with problems. Much like Plastique, Firestorm is destructive by nature more than intention, and I'm glad they didn't just kill him off. Eiling's weapons, however, once more makes it clear that Barry needs to stop standing still during a fight. It never helps.

There's a lot of good movement on the Reverse-Flash arc, and Grodd, which is all to the good. Man, I am going to be sad if Grodd turns out to be rubbish.

Continuum - '30 Minutes to Air'

Family; an important natural resource.

We open with a future flashback of Travis being arrested while sneaking a visit to his family. The seemingly heartless goon gets even more of a tragic backstory, I guess.

In the here and now, a young woman is arrested for hanging a giant pro-Liber8 poster off an arms manufacturer's building, and she turns out to be Dillon's daughter (Dillon being the chief.) He is all gung-ho to make an example of her, and goes on TV to say so, only Liber8 invade the studio and seize hostages.

Season 3 of Continuum continues to be... complicated; perhaps too complicated. Liber8's plan involves gaining access to the studio's broadcast codes in order to piggyback to a server black-site belonging to the weapons makers, who also own the studio having bought them out to kill a story. Dillon is using his daughter to go undercover with Liber8. Carlos and Kiera are still at odds, Green Alec is being a dick to everyone (including Kellogg, Emily and Red Alec,) Dillon is smug as shit, Betty is apparently trying to make good but keeps being shut down by Dillon and Travis is shooting his own guys, because people's rebellion, yeah?

Oh, and the future is becoming shittier and shittier; it's never even sunny anymore.

In short... I've run out of people to root for. Everyone sucks, with the possible exception of Red Alec and Emily, who are only a selfish, entitled time traveler and a cold-blooded killer. Go them!

The Musketeers - 'Through a Glass Darkly'

We are fucking badasses, yo!

The King is being a dick, as usual, in a manner vaguely related to a coming solar eclipse. Rochefort notes that the Great Astronomer Marmion will be putting on a bit of a show for the event, which the King declares they will attend. Shockingly, Marmion and his sinister, plague-masked attendants turn out to be setting a trap, and force the King to play a game for his life and the lives of his family, in revenge for the blockading of their village without food in a time of plague.

The Musketeers save the day, Rochefort claims the credit and, shockingly, the King fails to learn any substantial lessons.

This episode suffers from a shortage of developed background characters and an over-reliance of chance. Rochefort seemingly lures the King into this trap, but for once is no part of the skulduggery (although his guards are useless,) which kind of leaves no indication of how they were invited. It's also unclear how Marmion has managed to go from village nobody to scientific marvel of the age in a relatively short space of time, and his tragic backstory is somewhat spoiled by the fact that when making intolerable choices as to which of his sons would eat, apparently he kept himself alive. When he starts his game, Milady walks free by pure chance, and while a large number of anonymous courtiers are killed it's difficult to care when they are just faces in costumes, which kills off a lot of the potential tension in the episode. Even Aramis survives a fall from a window by dropping onto an awning, quite by chance.

And then there is the King...

We open the episode with the King demonstrating the science of a solar eclipse by simultaneously showing off that he's bonking Milady and hinting that he will eventually ditch her, and yet he wonders why people hate him. He once more poo-poos the Musketeers (including D'Artagnan, who is chided for 'encouraging Marmion to play with my life', when Marmion's original plan was just to shoot the King, and D'Artagnan had all but persuaded Marmion to hand over his gun for the chance to force a Musketeer to execute the King.) Honestly, I'm starting to get ticked off with him myself, but it's increasingly obvious that he's not likely to change any time soon.

Also, if you're looking at the middle badass in this picture and thinking that
she's shockingly mannish, there is as much wrong with your eyes as with
your priorities.

In other news, however, there is development. Milady has been ditched for running out on the King (to get help) and dressing like a man (to rescue him like a total badass) and shared peril has pushed Constance and D'Artagnan to publicly shack up. Future tensions involving Aramis are hinted at, with the Queen being a little too eager to show the rescuing Musketeer that the Dauphin is okay and just look at his little face! at the same time that he is blanking his erstwhile lover, the royal nanny Marguerite, who may well be onto them and is certainly in the pay of Rochefort. Athos clearly suspects things are hotting up again twixt Aramis and Anne, given his pointed directive for the former to get the latter out of danger and then 'hurry back'.

The 100 - 'Many Happy Returns' and 'Human Trials'

So, clearly groups in this thing are going to be fluid, so I'll try to be clear who I'm talking about without a constant frame of reference.

'Many Happy Returns'

Clarke and Anya: Our feuding tough girls spend most of the episode like a pair of bad girl stereotypes in a prison break movie of dubious quality, tied together, pursued by warders, constantly fighting and increasingly covered in mud. There is, however, not a trace of sleazy exploitation; the relationship is hard and spiky and genuine. It becomes clear that Anya despises Clarke because she's basically rubbish and still whupped her clan, and that she is heavily invested in proving her superiority, even down to ripping a tracker out of her arm with her teeth and damn the blood poisoning. When Clarke gets one up on her it's using tech (a slickly palmed Mount Weather tranq dart,) but that and the sight of Camp Jaha are enough to finally convince Anya - reluctantly - that an alliance against Mount Weather might be worthwhile (but see below under 'everything is Major Byrne's fault.)

I violently dislike this woman, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to or not.

Back at the Ranch: Camp Jaha has a new electric fence, and Raven is set to work with Ark engineer Wick on a radio beacon to contact the other crash survivors (if any.) Wick is heavily pimped as Raven's new love interest, but platonic or romantic they have a nice little theorist-vs.-practitioner rivalry. Wick makes her a leg brace and they create a beacon suspended from a weather balloon which guides Clarke home (but see below under 'everything is Major Byrne's fault.)

The Rescue Rangers: Bellamy, Finn, Murphy, Sterling and Monroe stumble on a crash sight. Everyone is dead, save a girl called Mia; a friend of Sterling, as it happens. Finn convinces Bellamy to leave Mia hanging from a cliff while they go after Clarke, but Sterling is already abseiling down to her. When the rope slips and Sterling dies (because, you know, I think none of the 100 has otherwise died this season) Bellamy gets a bee in his bonnet and refuses to leave, because Sterling was one of them and died to save Mia, and because Bellamy is getting the point that Abby (see next episode) is struggling with, that making the hard decisions is about saving who you can, not who you want to.

Under fire from Grounders, the Rangers are rescued by Olivia blowing Lincoln's fog-horn, and Bellamy is saved from falling by Murphy, of all people. With Monroe shot and probably poisoned, the team heads back to Camp Jaha, but Murphy and Finn go on. Bellamy gives Murphy a gun, and we all groan.

Jaha: Jaha is found in the desert and taken in by a family whose son is scarred by radiation and thus outcast from the Grounders. He bonds with the son, but in order to make the journey across this 'dead zone', the parents trade Jaha for a horse, there being a bounty on Sky People.

Everything is Major Byrne's Fault: This week, Major Byrne, the voice of authoritarian fuckwittage, first shot down the signal balloon on the grounds that it makes Camp Jaha a target and tells the Grounders where they are. Wick points out - quite rightly - that they fell to earth in a football stadium. Nevertheless, Byrne gives orders to shoot anyone approaching the camp, which results in Anya being killed just as she agreed to give a recommendation which might have secured the audience which Kane has gone to seek out, and Clarke hit in the face with a rifle butt.

'Human Trials'

Back at the Ranch: Abby spots Major Byrne hauling in her 'Grounder' and recognises Clarke, which sadly results in zero consequences for Byrne. Abby wants Clarke to take it easy, but Clarke is determined to rally a mission against Mount Weather before her homies start being used for dialysis. As if this weren't emotional enough, the Rescue Rangers make it home, reporting the loss of people but plethora of supplies at Mia's part of the station. Byrne of course opens by taking their guns, but Clarke runs in and hugs Bellamy. It's not something Octavia or the audience ever expected. Even Clarke and Raven have some serious bro-hug action going on.

Abby okays a mission to catch up with Kane and bring him up to speed, but nixes sending anyone to stop Finn and Murphy going postal on a Grounder Camp which is now confirmed to contain none of their people. Bellamy confides in Clarke that Finn has changed - like, a lot - and so they break out of camp with help from Raven and Wick. There is yet another charged scene where Olivia demands not to be left behind, since she is the only one who knows the Grounder territory at all. Bellamy simply hands her her pack, showing that he gets that she is not a little girl anymore.

Abby is slower on the uptake. She slaps Raven for helping Clarke to do exactly what she unabashedly helped Bellamy to do, and earlier almost went ape on Bellamy for bringing out the trufax that she's willing to trot out expediency if her daughter wants to take a risk, when she ignored it if someone wants to take a risk for her daughter. Like Bellamy, Raven has some home truths for Abby:

Abby: “She thinks that because of what she’s been through, she’s changed, but she’s still just a kid.”
Raven: “You’re wrong, Abby. She stopped being a kid the day you sent her down here to die.”

I really hope that Abby is getting a clue here, because after last episode's Major Byrne blamefest, this week (almost) everything is Abby's fault.

We heard a rumour that some folks still thought we were,in our way, quite
reasonable. We can't have that.

Mount Weather: When the President fesses that she left, Jasper and Monty are planning to head out after Clarke, but a radiation leak puts Maya in a coma and of course Jasper has to martyr himself when the sinister Dr Singh suggests an 'unorthodox procedure' to save her.

Meanwhile, deep below the mountain, an even more sinister Weatherian is turning Lincoln into a Reaper by conditioning him to fear a whistle using electroshock treatments and getting him hooked on a drug so bad that he'll fight and kill for it.

Kane: Kane plants his mother's bonsai tree and sends his guards back while he goes on to talk peace alone. He gets coshed for his trouble and thrown in a pit with... Jaha!

Finn and Murphy: Finn and Murphy come to Lincoln's village. Finding the warriors off tracking Reapers, they try to sneak in. Finn sets fire to the food store then takes everyone in the village hostage while he searches, threatening to execute a young woman when he finds a bunch of scavenged Ark jackets. The healer whom Octavia held hostage for Lincoln tries to keep his people calm, but one makes a bolt for it and when Finn shoots him it basically triggers a massacre, into which walk the Rescue Rangers Mk II.

Finn is all 'I found you, let's hug', but Clarke reacts basically the way you'd expect someone to react on finding their decent, upright, peacemaker boyfriend slaughtering villagers while Murphy of all people pleads with him to calm the fuck down.

-

So... Man, I do not know what is going on with Finn, because he has gone from zero to completely off the res in no time at all. Still, it's nice to see that Murphy genuinely seems to have changed for the better, even if purely from a survival imperative, because so far no-one else seems to have gone that way and it's been pure downhill since a little girl reacted to Bellamy's inspirational speech by shanking Wells in the neck. Maybe Murphy and Finn got brain swapped or something; or soul swapped.

Of the 'adults', only Jaha, Kane and Sinclair (aka the dude from Battlestar Galactica who is still playing supporto-guy) currently have my vote. Abby's self-righteous hypocrisy is nauseating and Major Byrne is a self-justifying psychopath who wants to keep being the giant in the playground. None of them seem able to grasp that the 'kids' they sent to Earth in an unguided box are now adults too, even the youngest of them mature beyond their years.