Person of Interest - 'RAM'

Holy crap! That's the kid from Jurassic Park in the middle there.

A man in a suit saves a woman from hitmen, but it's not John Reese. The year is 2010 and Harold is working with an ex-Blackwater merc named Dillinger who is happy to save those in peril 'as long as the cheque clears,' and isn't averse to leveraging the gratitude of numbers who turn out to be attractive young women. Then the number of a young coder comes up; a man who was hired by the government to test the security of a system beyond anything in his experience; a man hunted by the CIA and dangerous private concerns.

'RAM' takes Person of Interest on a stroll down memory lane, with almost the entire episode in flashback as Dillinger races to snatch nice-guy nerd Daniel Casey from the sights of pre-betrayal Reese and his partner Stanton, and a team of British mercs working for Decima industries. Casey is the purpose of the episode in plot terms, and the stinger has Root tapping this long-hidden asset on behalf of the Machine in the way only she seems able to get away with, waltzing into his cabin and rigging it to explode while explaining he has a mission and men with guns are about to arrive.

"Don't mind me; I'm just looming."

On a more personal level, however, the episode expands on the backstory and motivation of Finch and Reese: Reese's increasing dissatisfaction with the CIA and Finch's cringing horror at the boorish thug he has hired to assist him in his good work really illustrate why the two of them make such a perfect partnership. We also get a glimpse of Shaw's early work, and an affecting look at the nature of Harold as he first tries to warn and then stays to bury Dillinger, even though his erstwhile partner has by this point thoroughly betrayed him.

After a lot of very character-based episodes, it's nice to get back to the arc, and nicer still that the episode also manages some extremely solid character work of its own.

Gotham - 'All Happy Families are Alike'

"Well, here we are, chained up in a warehouse. Again."

One of the oddities about Gotham - the city, rather than the show specifically - is that it has never escaped from the social aesthetics of the 1920s, and for all their modern cars and cellphones, Gotham's rock stars are its mobsters. This is reiterated when the TV news talks about the growing war between the Falcone and Maroni gangs, making it clear that the leaders of Gotham's underworld are not shadowy figures, living largely off the grid on cash-only purchases, or at least shunning the limelight, keeping their own hands clean, operating through layers of concealment and legitimate cover (for which see Daredevil's Wilson Fisk,) but big names who probably get interviewed for magazines and stuff.

Image of the week, if not the series.

The news in this case is that Falcone is on the out. Jim Gordon is disgusted, knowing that Maroni is incapable of bringing the kind of stability that Falcone has. Falcone is the villain Gotham needs, not the one it deserves. Thus he interrupts Penguin's attempt to murder his erstwhile benefactor in a deserted hospital, engaging in a massive shootout with Maroni's assassins - who arrive escorted by the Commissioner himself - and spiriting Falcone to his safe house, aided by the increasingly reluctant Bullock, and accompanied by Penguin and Butch, as having arrested them he can't leave them to die.

"So, I turned into a gun-toting, mummy's girl urban guerilla...
at some point."

Unfortunately, Fish Mooney has returned to Gotham and is the last person alive who knows where Falcone's safe house is. She plans to sell him to Maroni for her piece of the pie, but Maroni picks up the idiot ball and just can't not condescend one time too many, leading to a bullet in the brain and a firefight between Mooney's street rats and Maroni's surviving boys. Oh, yes; Mooney has recruited her new muscle on the streets, including Selina Kyle, who has taken some sort of personality bypass to replace her wildness with a desire for security and mothering. Gordon, Bullock and Falcone escape, while the decimation of both gangs leaves Penguin and Fish in a final rooftop struggle which sees Cobblepot emerge triumphant as 'the king of Gotham'.

Fair play, Erin Richards gives solid gold crazy.

Elsewhere, Barbara rejects trauma counselling from anyone but a doubtful Dr Thompkins. She talks a little about the Ogre before asking if Gordon ever hits Thompkins and then progressing rapidly into a degenerating spiral of mental breakdown and trying to murder the good doctor with a kitchen knife. In the ensuing fight, Thompkins incapacitates her attacker without rescue, for which props are given.

Regrouping at Barbara's place, Gordon comforts Thompkins, and gets some avuncular advice from Falcone, who once more tells him that he knew and respected Gordon senior. He announces his intention to retire, leaving Gotham's future in Gordon's hands, and presents him with his knife, which was originally Gordon senior's. His lesson: Even an honest man needs a knife sometimes.

In Barbara's favour, she does a little better than Eddie Nygma. Kristen Kringle cracks the riddling clue in his false Dear Jane letter, which turns him into Gollum.

Seriously; check that shit out, Precious.

And then Bruce discovers his father's secret entrance to the Batcave. Straight up, secret entrance, cave, with bats; and it opens to the strains of Prokofiev's 'Dance of the Knights', if the hints of some sort of prior Dark Knight weren't strong enough. I have to admit, I did not see this one coming, and I hope it doesn't turn out to just be where he kept the good brandy and the bad porn.

Either way, that's for Season 2 of course, which offers us the prospect of the Penguin's underworld, Victor Zsasz hitting the unemployment line, Batboy, the rise of the Riddler and fuck knows what they'll do with Barbara now. I hope to see Montoya return and for her and Thompkins to provide a much needed non-psychotic, non-token female presence, and for the show to find a beat other than procedural villain of the week, in which mode the show is almost the antithesis of the familiar offbeat detective format, featuring a dull detective and offbeat villains.

I also hope to see Gordon becoming less of a stiff, and bringing some order back to the GCPD. I want to see a solid arc with less rambling digression, and fewer characters - especially fewer female characters - utterly changing their personality on the turn of a die.

Gotham has a lot to fix in Season 2, but I will at least be planning to watch what happens.

Penny Dreadful - 'Verbis Diabolo'

"We are men of action; lies do not become us."

So, apparently Ives lost the pray off, as represented by drawing a scorpion in her own blood, so Sir Malcolm recommends she do some charity work in a soup kitchen of sorts. Here she meets the Creature and discusses philosophy and religion. Meanwhile, Evelyn Poole gives Sir Malcolm the mystic love whammy, while Frankensteni tries to rehabilitate the new Creature by leading her to believe she is his amnesiac cousin (and thank fuck, she's lost the bloody Oirish accent.)

Recruiting antiquarian linguist and occult dabbler Lyle, Team Fuckwit plot to steal the only known sample of the Verbis Diablo from the British Museum in a desperately dull heist which involves nothing more dangerous than pretending Chandler is being snuck in to see the Museum's collection of porn (because in Penny Dreadful, everything has to connect to sex somehow.) Speaking of, Dorian Gray is chatted up by a painfully abrupt transsexual prostitute in a scene which just cements my conviction that the character is basically just there to be the one getting laid if there's no other sex this week.

It is revealed that Lyle is working for Poole, but I confess to being off my game by this stage as Hecate Poole brings her mother a baby, whose heart is placed in a doll of Vanessa Ives, for which scene absolutely fuck you, Penny Dreadful; you are not good enough to earn that sort of nastiness. This is the show's problem in a nutshell; it's all shock and no substance. Given the ruthlessnes and brutality of our heroes, there could be a complex exploration of the nature of good an evil, but Evelyn Poole casually murders subordinates, bathes in the blood of slaughtered girls, snogs her daughter and puts baby hearts in ventriloquist's dummies, which pretty much eliminates any need of discussion. Sure, Chandler is a moody loner who occasionally blacks out and massacres a pub full of people, but the other guy eviscerates babies.

As well as subtlety, the show falls down on the characters, none of whom are really interesting enough to hold the attention. Ives continues to vacillate between strength and weakness with no real rhyme nor reason, and Chandler's New Mexican stoicism is a bar to involvement. While I hated the first season's fixation with running Dorian Gray through the full gamut of pants, I liked Chandler most when Gray broke through some of his reserve, and the focus on Sir Malcolm and his relationship with the missing Mina made him one of the more accessible - while still one of the least likeable - characters.

The Flash - 'Rogue Air' and 'Fast Enough'

One of these things is not like the others...

Team Flash finally locate Eddie and Reverse-Flash under Star Labs itself, but are distracted from a capture when Wells/Thawne releases Peek-a-Boo (seriously, I was sure that I misremembered that name.) This in turn leads to Barry's realisation that with the particle accelerator charging up and no means of stopping it, the metahumans imprisoned in the Pipeline - the Mist, Deathbolt*, Weather Wizard and Rainbow Raider - are doomed if he doesn't move them. The Excellent Plan that Can Not Fail(TM) is to transport them in a power dampening truck (MacGuyvered in a day by Cisco from a power booster in Wells' wheelchair, despite also complaining that he doesn't get future tech) with Captain Cold as his backup. Funnily enough, this goes wrong, and Snart and his sister break out the bad guys, but keep them from murderising Team Flash, in order to garner favours all around.

I'm also nerd enough to be delighted to see the Reverse Flash
rocking the super-compressed suit-in-a-ring.

I am pleased to see that this episode finally confronted the fact that Team Flash is operating a completely illegal and unregulated prison. In particular, Joe is clearly unhappy about it and points out that shipping them to Oliver Queen's island prison for metahumans is going from 'one illegal black site to another.' When it all goes wrong, Barry admits he was trying to be the tough call guy like Oliver, and it was good to see Joe affirming that the difference between the two is that Barry isn't the tough call guy; he never has been.

Hey hey, the gang's all here (apart from Atom, Canary, Red
Arrow... Okay, whatever, it's kinda awesome.)

In what is practically a stinger to the main episode, Barry calls on Firestorm and the Arrow to team up with him and lay an epic hurting on the Reverse Flash. It's an excellent fight scene, and emphasises the ensemble feeling both of the show on its own and of the shared universe of Arrow and The Flash. It gives a real sense that there is more going on away from Starling and Central Cities; that the shows inhabit two corners of a big world. Similarly, there's a fun teaser when they try to fly the metahumans out of the old Ferris Air strip, which was closed down when one of their test pilots disappeared.

This episode is mad keen on its ensemble shots.

The Flash completes its first season, and its first arc, in 'Fast Enough'. The Reverse Flash is in captivity, but his machinations continue as he makes Barry an offer that he can't refuse: Enable him to return to his own time and the same act will give Barry the ability to go back in time and save his mother, creating a new timeline in which he grew up with both of his parents.

Once again, the show leans on the strength of its ensemble, and even this momentous decision is not all about Barry. Joe tells him to go for it, but we can see it cutting him apart inside, and Barry is a thoughtful enough hero to realise that getting his mother back means losing his second father. Of course he goes for it in the end, but there's a catch; in going back he creates a wormhole that Thawne can travel through, but if he isn't back in time, it will collapse into a singularity and destroy the planet. They also have to build Thawne a time machine.

Science ensemble!

Barry makes the jump back in time, but sees his older self warn him not to interfere, leaving nothing for him to do except comfort his mother as she dies, then go back through the wormhole to punch Reverse Flash in the face. Once again, Thawne hands him a smack down sandwich, but then Eddie makes a bold throw and shoots himself in the heart (in this world a ticket to a lingering death with time to bid farewell to loved ones, as we also see with Nora Allen's cardiac stabbing,) thus severing the bloodline which would create Eobard Thawne 134 years in the future.

And here's where I start to feel short-changed by this resolution. Thawne is born in 2145, but refers to the people he kills as having 'been dead for centuries'. He also apparently fought Barry in the unthinkably far-flung future of 2024 before they came back in time, 121 years before his time. That he disintegrates without ever giving us a chance to find out why he hated the Flash, why he apparently came back in time to fight him in his own time, feels like a gip.

Are we just supposed to accept this? To take this disappointment without the slightest hint of an ongoing arc that might explain...

All right; this round goes to you, The Flash.

Oh, and then the wormhole collapses anyway and we end with Barry plunging into a black hole to try and 'unspin' it (which I'm pretty sure is not how black holes work.

So, that was the first season of The Flash, which overcame its villain of the week beginnings to build a strong arc, even if it did take a little too long to confront the darkness of the Pipeline. I'm looking forward to next season, and wondering how they're going to take Caitlin from happily married to Ronnie (and if the Professor is a Rabbi, does that mean that Firestorm can conduct weddings?) to Killer Snow without derailing both characters, and whether Green Lantern and Jay Garrick will make an appearance.

* Who confused the hell out of me, since I haven't been keeping up with Arrow.

Olympus

Sexy princess threatens to literally put a snake in our Hero's belly. Sadly, this
is like the pinnacle of subtle imagery for this show.

What the fuck is this shit?

Remember when I was talking about Dominion? SyFy's crazy angels vs. humanity SFXfest, and how it was bonkers but fun, even if the characters were a little bland and/or inconsistent? Imagine if the same creative approach was given to a Greco-Persian mythological mashup that kind of is to the unexpectedly awesome Immortals as Dominion is to Legion, except without the actual connection and deeply shit instead of rather more fun than it deserved to be.

Because oh my life this series is bad. Sub-Hercules CGI struggles with terrible actors to claim the title least convincing, and I've only really made it to Episode 4 - or possibly 3; it's that good - on the strength of Matt Frewer's turn as the perpetually disappointed-in-the-world Daedalus and because I'm trying to work out if Sonya Cassidy, as the Oracle of Gaia, is taking the piss or not (as a Brit in a Canadian/miscellaneously exotic cast, she may just automatically sound as if she's rolling her eyes with every line.) Either way, she steals every scene that doesn't have Daedalus in it, not that Tom York's Hero (he's credited as 'Hero' and called variously Athenian or mercenary, because apparently speaking his name would make you spontaneously combust) is putting up much of a struggle.

The plot is a paper thin quest narrative held together by chance (I'm sorry; destiny,) and the progression is constantly being delayed, both in production terms and in universe, by sex. Minos and Ariadne separately seducing the Oracle and Hero was basically a way to kill an episode, but at the same time King Aegeus is being distracted from a suicidal battle plan by the strategic application of sexy priestesses. It's so overwhelmingly gratuitous that it almost validates itself.

And yet, I still haven't deleted the rest of the episodes. Why? I don't know. It's not the boobs; there are more of those in Game of Thrones or, so help me, Penny Dreadful. The thing has a kind of train wreck compulsion to it, although I can't binge on it.

Come back, Dominion!

Person of Interest - '4C', 'Provenance' and 'Last Call'

"I'm sorry, sir; the captain has turned on the no kneecapping sign..."

Confirmed in his desire to crawl into some sort of alcoholic beverage container, Reese is on his way out of town when a system malfunction diverts him to a different flight and a text to a cellphone he appropriated after punching out a mouthy businessman directs him to the passenger in seat 4C. At first he thinks that Finch is pulling strings, but it soon becomes apparent that the Machine itself is in charge of this operation, and is sending Reese - ably assisted by Holly the sassy cabin attendant - to intercept the many, many assassins targeting the programmer and internet black market kingpin in 4C.

'4C' is a delight of an episode, which serves up a deliriously silly story with a straight face and a devil-may-care grin, while also serving to realign Reese with his destiny. It shows a far more subtle and complex side to the Machine, not merely bypassing Finch but also the established signalling system, controlling Reese's movements, and setting the team against its own official side in order to head off a disastrous air crash.

Allegedly she has a .38 somewhere in that outfit.

Reese recovers his mojo - and scores a date with sassy Holly after they bond over their shared calling of 'helping others' - and heads back to work in a new Italian suit for 'Provenance', although this is really Shaw's show.

The Machine throws out the number of an art dealer, who turns out to be a sophisticated thief whose accomplices always turn up dead. There are wheels within wheels, however, and when the team prevent her theft of the Gutenberg Bible, they learn that she is a largely non-violent professional, working under duress for a ruthless cartel who are responsible for the actual bodycount, and who are holding her daughter. With Shaw on point, it's time for a heist!

Also, this happens.

'Provenance' gives Sarah Shahi a chance to work after a quiet week, primarily playing off guest star Elaine Tan, although the top moment has to be Reese accompanying Harold to an exhibition as his +1. When Reese goes on ahead, the woman taking the invites whispers "He's gorgeous," to which Harold gives a cheeky eyebrow wiggle. Fusco is on fine form as well, overseeing the arrest and disappearance of both Reese and Shaw at points during the convoluted plan to steal the Bible but never actually hand it over.

So weird without a tie...

'Last Call' is the last episode in this mini-marathon, and it's Harold's turn in the spotlight. We open with him working in a 911 call centre and bonding with the supervisor over his cool efficiency. We learn that the supervisor, Sandra Nicholson, is an exceptional emergency call operator, but has been targeted by an extortionist who is threatening a boy's life to force her to delete 300,000 calls from the call centre's servers. Like the team, or like Holly from '4C', Nicholson is a genuinely good person, and with another innocent life on the line the team must move fast.

'Last Call' gives Harold a chance to be a geek hero, even managing to win out in a showdown with a gun-toting villain. Reese is a little gung ho, ignoring Shaw of all people telling him to wait for backup. Meanwhile Fusco gets a little more meat. Working with another detective who has sought out his help, he finds that his case is dovetailing with Harold's as they close in on the extortionist's agenda. We also introduce a new recurring villain, and a personal nemesis for Harold.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Runaway' and 'Eos'

It's Brains!

When a computer fault plays havoc with a high-speed train, Scott drags Brains into the danger zone for some breakneck engineering in 'Runaway'. While one resident genius is working on the hardware, John Tracy has at the software, revealing a hidden knack for the fundamentals of algorithms and code (although the episode also shows Alan, the youngest Tracy, being pushed through a pretty demanding home school curriculum.) Naturally, disaster is averted, but the fault is traced to the actions of a rogue AI based on code which John wrote himself.

"Rotate the pod bay doors please, Eos."

In 'Eos' the AI reacts to John's attempts to find it. Designating him a threat based on his intelligence and familiarity, the AI - adopting a feminine voice (and yes, it's Theresa Gallagher again) and the name Eos - hacks aboard TB5 and goes all HAL 9000 on him. After a scramble to disable Eos before she can get back to Earth and spread unrestricted, John gets into a position to destroy her, but instead opts for a more touchy-feely approach, essentially adopting her as a partner and companion to help him run TB5.

These two episodes cause me serious concern for the emotional well-being of the Tracy brothers. They appear to have spent most of their lives on an island, being rigorously home-schooled by their father and grandmother (and possibly Brains, and Kirano senior for a time,) with only one peer outside their immediate family. Kayo is the only female company most of them ever have (I'm assuming here that they are all straight, largely because it's a mainstream animated series, but honestly it would be even worse if they weren't; can you imagine being gay on an island with no guys your age and only your brothers to come out to?) and she certainly seems to view them all as brothers. Possibly Lady P, although she seemed to have a thing with Jeff in the original, for all she's been youthed here, so that just feels weird. Small wonder they all seem to go a little glassy eyed when faced with sexy female disaster victims, stranded crane drivers, slightly murderous mercenary mine owners and artificial intelligences.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - 'How is Lady Pole?'

Let's be honest; she's not good.

Mr Norrell is the English Magician, and his hangers-on are determined that Britain will accept no substitutes. After all, there's not much credit in being the personal friends of an English magician, rather than the definite article. When Mr Segundus, late of the York Society, introduces the self-taught Mr Strange to the scene, Messrs Drawlight and Lascelles are up in arms, but a display of his prodigal talent and a respectful request for an apprenticeship win over Mr Norrell himself.

Yet these are genteel matters compare to the fate of the titular Lady Pole, who is alive and wed, but now bound to the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair to dance helplessly at his revels every night as she sleeps, growing more and more exhausted and distracted, and quite unable to speak of what troubles her without recounting fanciful anecdotes. Mr Norrell will not help her and no other can do; the only other person who knows is Stephen Black, Lord Pole's butler, himself now caught in the Gentleman's web. Her husband merely locks her in her room, so that the only person who will at least credit that there is a problem is Arabella Strange, who knocks heads with Mr Norrell at an auction and catches the eye of the Gentleman as he spies on Strange.

Episode 2 of the BBC's adaptation of Susanna Clarke's grand epic kicks it up a notch to announce the arrival on the scene of the second magician of prophecy. While Mr Norrell is determined that magic be 'respectable', you can see the extras and supporting characters straining for him to do something exciting. The disappointment when his magical sea defences are entirely invisible is evident, and the catharsis when Strange cuts loose at the Horse Sands is almost palpable.

Meanwhile the enchanted Lady Pole and Stephen Black are shown as tragically powerless figures, and the audience yearns for them to get their chance to kick back against their fey oppressors (and at Lord Pole to boot.) The brief visit to the manor of Lost Hope is a masterpiece, a weird and distorted world of ruins and fragments where the Gentleman and his cohorts cavort with the hapless mortals in their power. Ironically, in her madness and her resistance to the attempts of others to have her confined, Lady Pole finds more backbone than as a whole and unensorcelled woman, but it is Arabella Strange who steps up to represent for the sisterhood, not just in believing in Lady Pole's plight, but in refusing to take any shit from her husband.

The series continues to impress with its combination of special effects and magical storyline with the utter commitment to period detail which lends an intense verisimilitude to the entire tale. 

Gotham - 'Beasts of Prey', 'Under the Knife', 'The Anvil or the Hammer'

Behold! The three-episode arc! It's that guy, from Heroes.

In 'Beasts of Prey'*, Gordon gets handed a case that the original detectives let slide. He drags along a reluctant Bullock, who is able to identify a key piece of evidence as the calling card of the Ogre, a serial killer that no-one knows exists because whenever a cop goes after him, he kills their loved ones. Being creepy-protective boyfriend as he is, he tries to get Thompkins to leave town, but she refuses and instead tells him to protect her by catching the guy. At least she didn't try to talk the villain out of doing bad things, which is a step up for Gordon's love interests.

Meanwhile, Bruce and Selina are tracking down Reggie Payne, as Alfred is still reopening his stitches if her smiles too hard. They get the names of his employers, but when he threatens to tell what they know, Bruce is tempted to push him out of a window, and Selina actually does.

Having witnessed her kill a guy and decided that that
isn't on, Bruce naturally invites Selina to a swanky
dance.

Penguin is planning to send assassins to kill Maroni, in a plan which begins with intimidating a musician to get him to dump the daughter of the woman who owns the diner where he plans to have the deed done. There has to be a simpler way to whack a mobster.

Also, Fish escapes from the Dollmaker by using the heavies in the cellar as a meat shield while she and her real allies get to da chopppa. She takes a bullet in the process, but the oh-so terrifying Dollmaker is trampled by accountants. Fearsome.

Bruce proves that he has no clue in 'Under the Knife', not because he invites Selina to the Wayne Foundation Charity Ball despite her having killed someone, but because he sends her this puffy fail of a dress when her whole vibe cries out for classical elegance; something in simple black, perhaps, and a more modest set of heels.

Some things can never be unseen.

The Ogre calls Gordon out, and Gordon responds with a press conference announcing his existence to the world. Thompkins is under protection, but the Ogre is working from old news and targets Barbara instead. Oh no. What if Gordon can't save her. Woe. But wait! She comes off all spiky and angry and likes the look of his Fifty Shades of Gotham sex dungeon-cum-armoury. The Ogre is so into that, so while he does kidnap her he's doing it because she's, like, totally his soulmate.

Maroni strikes at Penguin's limited feels, romancing his mother all night before brutally dropping the extent of her boy's viciousness on her. Penguin strikes back by murdering a florist.

Finally, Edward Nygma sees the signs that Miss Kringle is being knocked around by her meathead cop boyfriend. He tries to warn the meathead off reasonably, eliciting a lecture on how women need to be 'managed', especially someone like Kringle who 'has a mouth on her'. While the audience is still reeling from the level of masculine inadequacy needed to perceive Christine Kringle as threateningly mouthy, Nygma confronts Officer Meathead again and stabs him repeatedly in the chest.

You know I can't go on,
Thinking nothing's wrong...

I confess, I was disappointed by this turn of events. While we've been expecting him to snap and murder Officer Meathead for a while now, the fact that it was the same sort of impulsive stabbing that we've seen so often from the Penguin was a let-down. One feels - I feel - that the Riddler should maintain a distance from his crimes, killing - when he does - with his mind and not a knife. He is pathologically obsessed with his mental superiority and his victims die because they're not smart enough. Having his inciting incident be one of opportunistic violence feels off kilter. He didn't control the environment, didn't outsmart his opponent; he just surprised him with a small knife for peeling fruit.

Much more than this, however, it makes him too similar to the Penguin, where they need to be clearly distinct.

We may never know if it was the drugs or the lack of
substantial character traits that led Barbara to go so
spectacularly Stockholm.

But anyway, this brings us to 'The Anvil or the Hammer', in which the Ogre investigation leads to a swanky roving sex party. It's all a bit silly, but we do get a splendid scene of Bullock trying to look all fancy.

Nygma uses his forensic lab to dispose of Officer Meathead's body, then composes a farewell note for Kringle to make it look like he just ran off. One wonders if he also composed a resignation letter and whether the first letter of each line in that also read 'Nygma'. I'll let him off; he's just warming up.

Bruce tries to steal incriminating files, but bad guy Totallyhasaname is onto him and spins him a line about 'the talk', which all Wayne heirs get when they become interested enough to realise that their company is as corrupt as the GCPD. Fortunately a young executive called Lucius Fox is on hand to assure him that while the Board might have thought Thomas Wayne was on, err, board, he wasn't who they thought. This leads to a heart-to-heart with Alfred and an admission of his role in Reggie's death. I am once more led to feel that Gotham would be more successful if it would pick one of Bruce and Gordon and follow one of them, instead of trying to do both, since they require radically different pacing.

The Ogre persuades Barbara to name his next victims, leading to a fatal confrontation over the bodies of her parents. Oh no! Barbara's parents! They... disapproved of Gordon and... were in that one scene that time and... And we have not a reason in the world to care about this shit. We don't know the parents as anything more than momentary victims, and Barbara has been such an inconsistent presence that she barely feels like a character. When the Ogre turns her it's impossible to know if it's the drugs, the trauma, or just another writer with a different spin on the character. Some have suggested that she will end up as the series' Joker, since they just throw them at us from all angles. I think that everyone is the Joker and the whole thing will turn out to be a dream he had while Harley was taking a shower.

* It's like 'Birds of Prey', but totally devoid of awesome female characters.

Person of Interest - 'Aletheia'

Unlike Shaw, Root's comfort zone seems to be pretty all-encompassing.

Person of Interest pulls a bit of a Commando Cody on us this week, resolving the cliffhanger of 'Lethe' with the reveal that actually Root broke out of her cage without us seeing (which also means no Bear this week) to come in guns blazing. She is captured, leaving Shaw to escort Arthur and Harold to collect the drives which hold the core of the Samaritan's program. With Arthur and Harold in the vault, Vigilance holding the lobby and Hersch and his goon squad outside, things are looking bad for the team, especially as the remaining cavalry, Reese and Fusco, are locked in a sheriff's cells for brawling.

Cards on the table, I've been a little bit in love with Amy Acker since Angel (does it make me more of a nerd that I kind of wish I could say I saw her first in the Northanger Abbey episode of Wishbone? Although, it was pretty messed up watching a smart-mouthed Jack Russell playing her love interest,) but I am worried that PoI has way too much of a crush on Root. She's smart like Harold,  precise like Reese and hard like Shaw, which sort of questions the need for the rest of the ensemble. I kind of want her to be wrong once or twice just to bring  her more level with the others. Sure, she got captured and tortured here, but she turns the tables on her attackers and successfully places the blame for everything that went wrong on Harold's lack of trust.

Taken on their own lights, however, the interrogation scenes are exquisite; the things that affect her, the things that don't, and her overriding disdain for Control, whose understanding of the Machine is so profoundly lacking that she can't accept that no-one knows where it is and still wants something as archaic as Root's username and password. Her turn as the voice of the Machine herself is chilling. Arthur (played beautifully by Saul Rubinek, who has the kind of wise and woobie face that was born to portray geniuses with degenerating faculties) gets it, calling the Machine Harold's 'child' ("Does it make you laugh? Does it make you cry?") and mourning the necessity of destroying the Samaritan to keep it from the wrong hands.

Notably, this episode brings in not only the entire team - with Fusco and Reese making an eleventh hour appearance - but also pretty much the entire rogue's gallery, beginning with Control and her agency, then Vigilance and finally the revelation of Decima's involvement, and eventual retrieval of the Samaritan operating system (and another display of their frankly cavalier attitude to the retention of reliable personnel.)

In a subtle twist, when Reese announces his intention to leave at the end of the episode, he explains that he feels betrayed by the Machine's failure to save Carter (although she did try to contact Harold moments before the shooting.) "We trusted blindly, but I'm not so sure he cares who matters and who doesn't." This makes two people who have attributed a gender to the Machine, and with Arthur, three who have ascribed it the qualities of life and intention.

Discontinuum

Speaking, as I was, of shows I've lost interest in, Continuum Season 3 never really grabbed me, hence the lack of reviews. So now you know, and you don't need to worry anymore.

Atlantis - 'The Queen Must Die'

This doesn't feel like winning.

Medea betrays Pasiphae, allowing Jason to capture her and Hercules and Pythagoras to execute her. Icarus's treachery is revealed, but he comes through in the end and the show finally confirms that Pythagoras is gay (yay!) All ends happily, and then Pasiphae comes back to life and OMG season 3 (that isn't going to happen!)

Or something.

Okay, you may have noticed that I've been hemorrhaging interest in this show, and the extended finale kind of sums up why. Atlantis was always at its best as tosh, and the increasing darkness of the second season has bled out the fun which made it worth watching, leaving only the negative space of it's hit-and-miss plotting and action. 'The Queen Must Die' features two of our heroes stabbing a defenceless woman to death in the rural equivalent of a dark alley (Pasiphae's powers have temporarily left her,) their bestie's mother no less, and there is no emotional kickback from it. When she turns up scarred and resurrected, all the drama they poured into the scene is wasted, and in the interim there's more emphasis on whether JerkJason did the nasty with Medea before marrying Ariadne in a wood than the fact that Herc and Pythagoras murdered (seriously, there's some attempt to portray it as an execution, but they are basically shivving her up in a gully and foolishly leaving her body for the scavengers.)

Mind you, by this point Pasiphae has sort of fallen back into being the bitch of her nasty adviser whose name I can't even recall, standing around looking conflicted while he snarls: "You must kill Jason, the people/gods demand it." He keeps bringing up Jason's blasphemy, despite the fact that everyone in the conversation knows that they framed him for it.

The one highlight was Icarus/Pythagoras, which was pretty brave for prime time.

Anyway, it's done now, with just a few flashes of the Argo and Jason making out with Medea while Ariadne stands on the beach on Naxos looking forlorn to hint at what might have been.

Mad Max: Fury Road

NB: I have a more detailed and spoilery review of this film at the Bad Movie Marathon, but this ought not to be taken as a sign that it is bad. Like, at all.

Mad Max was a film that revolutionised Australian cinema and almost created its own subgenre of post-apocalyptic SF (and also kickstarted the career and slow slide into weirdness of Mel Gibson, but you can't have everything.) It was notably low budget (c.A$400,000,) and after its unexpected success produced a successful mid-budget sequel (Mad Max II: The Road Warrior, A$4.5 million) the franchise choked on a turgid blockbuster threequel (Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome, A$12 million) and went quiet for almost thirty years.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a $150 million (that's 3/4 the budget of the new Star Wars movie) mega blockbuster, which given that history seems at first to be the wrong way to go, but the result is a gritty, primal tour de force, full of high octane action and properly strong female characters (and not just Charlize Theron's action girl Furiosa, but the a solid half dozen varied and significant female roles, and as many more in support.) The Brides in particular could have been so much baggage, but each of them has her own strengths and weaknesses, her own arc, and her own moment to shine.

Angharad the Splendid, Capable, Toast the Knowing, Cheedo
the Fragile and the Dag, which is apparently Australian for
'Mother of Dragons'.

And the film is visually jaw-dropping, from the vast sweeping vistas of open wasteland to the FX powerhouse of the titanic dust storm. On the smaller scale, every aspect of design is seamless and purposeful, from the costume on up, but most especially in the amazing array of hybrid vehicles and weaponry which serve not only as colour, but to define the battle strategies of each group. I saw it in 2D, but I have heard that even the 3D is awesome and effective.

Is it perfect? Well, what is? What Fury Road gives us is something both true to its roots and quite unique in itself, as well as the indicator that it may finally be time to get beyond Thunderdome.

Atlantis - 'The Dying of the Light' and 'Kin'

Things are not going well.

Tensions are high in the heroes camp. As Pasiphae subjects Atlantis to a rule of iron, Jason is consumed by the revelation that he is her son, losing his compassion and coming to blows with the grieving Hercules. Injured and then captured after a friend betrays Pythagoras, he is forced to fight for his life in Pasiphae's brutal gladiatorial games. In desperation, Pythagoras - who is basically the hero of the show in all but name by this point - seeks the advice of the new Oracle, Cassandra, and is led to Jason's father, the leper Aeson, who may be the only person who can reach the good still in Jason.

Now, honestly, there is a problem here. Medea explains in 'Kin' that those touched by the gods are drawn to each other, but it's all a bit sudden, and the idea that this magnetic pull a) depends on knowing that Pasiphae is his mother and b) can totally reverse his personality, yet c) be overridden by a hug from his old Dad. I'm not saying I'm not in favour of some paternal props, but it's all a bit quick. I guess they're cramming before they run out of series. Thus, within the space of a three episodes we've gone from Jason rejecting Pasiphae and Medea, to Jason making out with Medea in the woods, then connecting with his mother in jail, and finally turning from them and heading back to his friends.

Ever reluctant to expand its roster, the show kills off Aeson pretty much as soon as Jason is back on side. As to what it does to its greatest romance, it breaks my heart. Poor Pythagoras is going to be heartbroken to learn that Icarus has betrayed him, even to save his father's life.

Atlantis is really suffering from early-onset Cerebus Syndrome. It's going to wrap up next episode, and I don't think I'll miss it.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - 'The Friends of English Magic'

It's been a while since I read the book, but as I recall, it's pretty accurate to
depict Strange (Bertie Carvel) as slightly baffled as to how he got anywhere,
and Mr Norrell (Eddie Marsan) as simply pissed off to be there.

English Magic is not what once it was. What once it was is not yet clear, but what it is is gentlemen eating fabulous dinners and discussing theories over the port, while poo-pooing the idea of casting spells (because some stereotypes aren't very empowering.) Enter Mr Norrell, practical magician and hoarder of magical texts. Spurred by his ambitious valet Childermass and a challenge from the gentlemen of the local magical dining club, Mr Norrell animates the statues in York Cathedral and finds himself hailed as the saviour of English magic. Sourly determined to rid magic of its trappings of charlatanry, he unwittingly sets in motion a sequence of events that will bring about the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, that two magicians will restore magic to England: Mr Norrell, and the dilettante sorcerer Jonathan Strange.

This adaptation of Susanna Clarke's spine-cracking opus has far more pace than the novel (after one hour of an absolutely faithful adaptation we'd be halfway through the footnotes in Chapter 1,) although that still makes for a measured affair. Some reviewers seem unable to forgive it for not being Poldark, but if you're not here for heaving bosoms and shirtless ex-vampire/werewolf/dwarf Aidan Turner, there's a lot to like. While actual porn is thin on the ground, the costume and scenery porn is lavish, and part of the success of the production must be that it looks like a BBC Dickens adaptation, just with more moving statues and scrying mirrors.

Thoros of Threadneedle Street!

Perpetual second fiddle Eddie Marsan impresses as Mr Norrell, bringing the requisite absolute nonentity to the great Magician of Hanover Square, while Bertie Carvel belies his stage roots to give a spirited performance as the more dynamic - but so far shiftless - Strange. Norrell's shifts from private rage and animation to public awkwardness, and his horror at finding that London has heard that, far from conjuring statues to life, his great feat was to magically clean all the laundry of York, are deftly underplayed by Marsan. Carvel contrasts with a wide-eyed amazement at everything, which means that his receipt of spells and prophecy from a man under a hedge authentically seems no more startling to him than would be finding a sixpence on the road.

The supporting cast is also excellent, including Sam West as Sir Walter Pole and erstwhile Richlieu Marc Warren popping up to raise the dead as the Gentleman with the Thistle-Down Hair. There's not much in the way of female characters, but that was an issue with the book and a simple side-effect of Clarke's adherence to the traditions of the period style in which she was writing. The minor characters are even more Dickensian than the central dramatis personae, with particular mention going to Norrell's hangers-on Mr Lascelles and the almost grotesque Mr Drawlight, to the entire port-swilling Yorkshire society of magicians, and to ubiquitous scruffy religious crazy person Paul Kaye's turn as street magician and agent provocateur Vinculus.

'The Friends of English Magic' is a strong opening episode, although compared to the book it is oddly silent on the legend of the Raven King, who is referred to, but not at any point explained in even the most basic of terms. I don't think it's ever going to win over anyone who came here for the bosoms, but it was never meant to, and despite the costume porn connection, it really is comparing apples and curtain fabric.

Person of Interest - 'A Perfect Mark', 'Endgame', 'The Crossing', 'The Devil's Share' and 'Lethe'

Yeah; PoI season 3 is on Netflix now. Can you tell?

Oh, yeah; this won't end well for this couple. For a show that
is so much about redemption, PoI is damned cynical.

My mini-marathon opens with 'A Perfect Mark'. The A-plot is pure fluff as the Machine throws up the number of a jobbing con-man who didn't quite make the cut for Leverage (which I must get around to when I've finished this season.) He's looking for one big score so he can disappear into the sunset with his girlfriend, but the score turns out to be against HR and that's bad. There's plenty of action and thrills, and a twist ending, although not the one I wanted to see.

But the HR link ties to Carter's investigation, as top dog Alonso Quinn is finally revealed thanks to Carter's rookie partner, Lasky, who has come on leaps and bounds since she flipped him, only to make the ultimate this episode. This kicks up hard into 'Endgame', an episode which unexpectedly fails to resolve the HR question, and in fact uses its title to put the fear into us.

The greatest trick PoI ever pulled was convincing the
audience that Reese and Shaw were the badasses.

Carter is full-on lone crusader as she sets out to spark a war between HR and the Russians which leads to a flood of numbers from the Machine as the two organisations determine to wipe each other out. In the midst of this confusion, Carter gets the testimony she needs to indict Alonso Quinn, only to go to the wrong judge for her warrant. Flashbacks to the breakdown of Carter's marriage to a damaged soldier and the slow repair of his relationship with their son serve to ramp up the tension, so that when Carter reveals that she did finally call Reese for help, it's almost a denial of catharsis.

Bastards!

But don't worry, because we're getting to that.

In 'The Crossing', Carter and Reese have to Warriors their way across town to the Federal building with Quinn, after HR dragon Simmons posts a massive bounty on the Man in the Suit. Root flirty-taunts Finch from her cell at the library with the prospect of 'another' of his agents being killed, hinting at more who went before Reese, but there's peril for almost everyone this week.

"You want me to hold your hand, Fusco? Oh, I forgot, we 
broke your fingers."

"Yeah, you did. Which made it no big deal for me to break 
my thumb." [Slips his hands out of his cuffs]

Shaw is forced to chose who to help, first leaving Carter and Reese to fend for themselves while going to the aid of a captured Fusco, and then having to abandon him in order to save his son. Fusco looks pretty much boned, but comes back with the kind of badassery that he, as essentially the comic relief, is usually denied. Even Finch is vulnerable, venturing into the field to try and clear the way for Carter, while Reese risks everything to save the woman he believes saved his life.

And they win. They all survive, Quinn and his minions are swept up by the feds, Carter makes detective again, and then Simmons comes out of the shadows and Carter takes a fatal bullet for Reese, leading into a fucking Johnny Cash montage at the opening of 'The Devil's Share', and you know that nothing that opens with a Johnny Cash montage ever ends well (and it's 'Hurt', goddamnit; the whole song.)

I find it adorable that Root is also now using the Reese-
patented, Machine-approved  knee shot, even when blazing
away with guns akimbo.

With Carter dead, Reese and Shaw go hell for leather to find their friend's killer. The action is interspersed with flashbacks of Reese, Shaw, Fusco and Finch talking to unseen interviewers to explore the characters' emotional landscape: Finch's guilt over the deaths of others, Shaw's desire to get the job done rather than worrying about hurt feelings, Fusco's willingness to take the law into his own hands and Reese's cold lethality. All parties concerned are looking for Alonso Quinn, and when all other roads are closed, Finch is forced to make a deal for Root to use her unique access to the Machine.

I would also watch the fuck out of this show.

And then we wrap up, not with Reese's revenge, or even Shaw's or Fusco's, but with Carter's, as the memory of Carter and what she stood for motivates Fusco to beat down Simmons and then arrest him, so as not to betray the good influence that Carter had on him.

Which brings us to 'Lethe', in which Root - having returned voluntarily to her cell and clearly having some contact with the Machine - presses Harold to look into the number he's ignoring, that of Arthur Claypool, an IT consultant for the NSA now suffering memory loss and confusion due to a brain tumour. Flashbacks to Finch's adolescence as a budding computer genius suggest Claypool will have known him, and sure enough they were at MIT together. Forced on the run with Shaw and the wife he can't remember after his Secret Service bodyguard are taken out by Vigilance, Claypool reveals that he was working on the Samaritan, a project similar to the Machine that was shut down when Finch got there first.

It's not looking good for our heroes.

The episode ends with a kicker of a twist, as Claypool's 'wife' turns out to be the relevant list's 'Control'. With the probability of its team being wiped out, and Reese drinking heavily and fist-fighting with Fusco, the Machine - as shown in decision trees - retasks Root (currently still locked in the library,) while it - she? increasingly 'it' seems inadequate - searches for traces of the rival Samaritan programme that Control believes to still be active.

'A Perfect Mark' effectively wraps up the number of the week section of the season in amusing style, but the four that follow are PoI at its best, playing the conspiracies hard, and cutting down HR only to have Team Machine crippled by loss and laid bare to their other foes. 'Endgame' is Taraji P. Henderson's show from start to finish. If at first it seems odd to delay Carter's death to the end of the next episode, 'The Crossing' makes it clear that this is not to lull the audience, so much as to allow the time to fully mature the other characters' relationships with her, so that her death truly impacts everyone. It's powerful stuff, and that in turn creates the tension for 'The Devil's Share', in which the audience can share the rage and loss which could drive almost any of the characters to kill.

'Lethe' begins with the air of a number of the week, throws in Vigilance as a curve ball and ends with deadly danger for most of the team. If it hadn't been late, I would have gone straight on.

Penny Dreadful - 'Fresh Hell'

Ah, nuts; Dorian Gray is still in this thing. And... well, the rest of them. The new (as regular) characters at the extreme right
are Evelyn Poole (Helen McCrory) and Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale).

Regular readers may recall that I was less than impressed by big-noise Gothic-historical frock-porn gorefest Penny Dreadful's first series. Regular readers may also have gathered that I kind of enjoy watching shit that I don't actually like*, so I'm going to give Season 2 a go.

After an epic night of larging it, Ethan was just prime for a
cheeky Nandos**.

'Fresh Hell' opens with the aftermath of Chandler's 'funny turn'. For a man who wolfed the fuck out and ripped apart an entire pub full of people in a noisy and spectacular fashion, he's noticeably undisheveled and besmirched by only a few spatters of gore. I'm just impressed that the show passed up an opening for some nudity. Perhaps this is a sign of increasing maturity.

Being a responsible and sensitive soul, he reacts to the reminder that he sometimes blacks out and kills a whole shit tonne of folks who happen to be in the vicinity (seriously, I'm sure no-one really remembers, let alone cares about, the thuggish Pinkertons sent to bring him home, but at least some of those people were just out getting a drink and a meat pie) by deciding to slope off to pastures new. Before he does, he stops by for a chatette with Vanessa Ives. She's reluctant to see him go, but no doubt to his disappointment (and again to the show's credit) doesn't attempt any carnal dissuasion, thus relegating her to second least responsible character possessed of an appalling supernatural force, behind Chandler.

Anyway, apparently feeling bad about the lack of nudity so far, three bald, naked women with white skin and scars attack the coach where Ives and Chandler are talking. There is a fight, and eventually the women are driven off when Ives shouts in tongues at them, morphing into dark-haired chicks in cloaks (apparently they, like Chandler, incorporate their clothes in their transformation, which I find weirdly hard to accept.)

"It's a project, Dad; something we can do as a family."

Elsewhere, Frankenstein and his creature are getting Brona ready to become the creature's bride, while at the same time the creature secures employment at a dysfunctional family waxworks to support them. Speaking of dysfunctional families, there's a really messed up vibe between the creature - now going by 'John Clare' - and his creator, hints of Frankenstein fancying his new creation, and a suggestion that Clare may instead fall for the blind daughter of his employers. Anyway, by the end of the episode 'Brona' is revived, but she hasn't spoken so we don't know if her terrible accent has survived.

You can tell she's evil because she's bathing in the blood of a
murdered girl and smoking.

In conference, Ives explains that the women, whom she and Chandler insist are nothing like vampires despite basically looking just like them, are 'Nightcomers'; witches. They are scarred because their demon master rakes his claws in their flesh to mark them as his***. The Nightcomers are led by blink-and-you'll-miss-it Season 1 recurring character Evelyn 'Madam Kali' Poole. In Season 1 she appeared as a medium and briefly flirted with Sir Malcolm; in Season 2 she's gone full-on Bathory with a blood bath and her gaggle of sexy witch followers, chief among them her inappropriately blood-lusty, quasi-incestuous daughter Hecate, which is one of those names that recalls a powerful female figure of myth but is always rattled out in an inappropriately cutesy rhythm so that it sounds like a character from a children's book: Heck-uh-tee. It may be the accurate choice, but I'd go for Heck-ah-tay myself.

I think we might be going to see a lot of this sort of thing.

Poole's big scene is a conference with her minions about their failure to capture Ives (they blame her unexpected use of the Devil's language, and the presence of Chandler, 'Lupus Dei') the chosen bride of their master Lucifer as we may recall, in which she casually offs a quarter of her workforce after giving her a speech about how triumphant Roman generals would be reminded they were mortal. This speech makes no sense in context, and her casual demand that the remaining Nightcomers 'get rid of that bitch' just makes her seem like a sulky adolescent with all the management skills of Darth Vader.

Before the climactic scene of the bride's rebirth, there's just time for Poole to engage Ives in some sort of long-distance chant-off, the two of them each praying in their own room - one spartan, the other oppulent - while imaginary (maybe?) Nightcomers appear behind Ives and the weather gets all pathetic fallacy. It would be far more tense if we were given any sense of the actual stakes involved in the clash.

Apparently the TV watching public at large - or a substantial proportion of them, at least - really dig Penny Dreadful. On the strength of 'Fresh Hell'****, I am not a convert. Vanessa Ives remains the helpless bitch of her own alleged awesome, Chandler is increasingly unsympathetic and basically no-one has any enigma left to them at this point. Possibly the best thing I can say about this episode is that there was no Dorian Gray, although I'll be amazed if we get through the season without either Evelyn or Hecate Poole riding that bike (simply because they're there now and haven't yet.)

* And besides, Dracula, my Gothic-historical frock-porn gorefest of choice, was cancelled, for which I blame Thomas Edison.

** Nothing says finger on the pulse like a joke that will be incomprehensible in a year's time.

*** Because demons are into non-consensual B&D.

**** An odd title, quoting as it does a woman who wouldn't even be born until the very twilight of the Victorian era.