Agent Carter - 'The Atomic Job'

Hello world, I'm your wild girl...

Almost by chance, Wilkes discovers that he can absorb the Zero Matter energy from other affected samples in order to regain solidity. Carter and Jarvis break into a secure morgue to try to retrieve the body of the Lady in the Lake, only for Whitney Frost to beat them to it and claim the energy for herself. On the upside, this positions them to learn that Frost intends to steal an atomic bomb.

Wilkes realises that Frost must want to nab one of the two remaining test devices from the Isodyne trials, identical to the one that first opened the Zero Matter rift. While Frost enlists Chadwick to grease palms and secure the aid of a self-styled gentleman gangster in her heist, Team Carter set up their own job. Still working unofficially, with the War Office watching them for the Arena Club and Carter technically using up the holidays accrued by not taking a vacation day since Pearl Harbour, she and Sousa recruit SSR receptionist Rose and antisocial lab tech Samberly to break into a maximum security facility and steal the Uranium from the bombs in question.

Peggy secures a key from the head of Roxxon Oil - the scene where she applies her direct action bias to the problem, with Jarvis pointing out the fatal countermeasures sure to ensue in each case was a delight - and the team rolls into action. Rose is an unassuming badass, and Samberly a technical wizard when he can get his head in the game, but it's Jarvis who steps up to the plate when he's locked in the room with the bombs and obliged to disarm them himself. Meanwhile Peggy confronts Frost, a virtually unstoppable force with a lethal touch, and is lucky to get away with a rebar in the ribs. The team rush her to Sousa's newly affianced partner Violet for emergency treatment, at which point Violet sees that her fiance is still in love with Peggy, even if he wasn't admitting it to himself.

'The Atomic Job' is a cracking heist episode; not quite Leverage good, but then it's what Leverage does and Agent Carter is just slumming. It's a fun, exciting ride, packed with nice character moments and women who feel no more need to be rivals than the men. Even when she sees that her husband to be is in love with Peggy, Violet's reaction is sadness, not screaming jealousy. It was also good to see more women stepping up to show that Peggy isn't being presented as some sort of mancapable fluke of nature, but one of half of the species that is collectively as capable and flawed as the other half.

Sleepy Hollow - 'The Red Lady from Caribee'

"Did you know that you're COVERED IN BEES?"

Clearly I misheard last week, as while Ichabod dares the horror of a teppanyaki first date, Pandora is angling to harvest the fear of fear itself. She summons 'a red lady from Caribee'; an anthropomorphic swarm of Jack Spaniard wasps whose stings spread madness, fever and death. With the judge in Ichabod's relic smuggling case dead (and, given how cranky he's getting about Jenny and Joe's proximity to Atticus Nevins, how come Reynolds hasn't picked up that Abbie's roomie is up on a related charge?) and a PTA leader dead in fits of paranoia, and Reynolds starting to kick off, it's the usual race against time to bring down the swarm.

Grace Dixon's diary provides a tonic to slow the fever, as well as referencing Betsy Ross, who continues to be a bizarre, anachronistic mess and just way more disconnected than Ichabod's personal flashbacks. The old-school Sleepy Hollow flashbacks worked by linking past to present and revealing Ichabod's unknowing involvement in the secret war to him as much as to the audience. The Betsy Ross adventures feel more like a webisode spin off where everyone knows what they're talking about and are surely, at best, Ichabod's imagining of how things might have gone, with as much reliable accuracy as Brian's version of the takedowns he doesn't get to be present for in Limitless.

But yes, Washington was once afflicted by the same peril. Grace Dixon treated the fever while Betsy Ross took down the Red Lady. Triangulating the likely sting sites for the three victims, they locate the Lady's lair in a ruin whose plan matches a tree design on the tablet which Ichabod 'took for mere decoration'. Seriously, Bod? What have you been learning this past two years? The tree has six flowers, which they link to the six demons loosed by Pandora, which means that oops, time may be even more pressing.

They confront the Red Lady and Pandora in their lair, and while Abbie is able to pour hydrogen cyanide into the nest and kill the wasps, Pandora catches an arrow and disappears into an otherworldly passage which opens in the tree, after thanking the Witnesses for 'doing the hard work' and cleaning up after each of the beasts she released from the box.

On the other side of the storyline, Jenny and Joe visit the local Trinidadan occult supply store for tonic ingredients, where the owner goes all trancey and warns Jenny that she will be claimed by 'a shadow older than time'. Sure enough, when our dynamic deuteroduo confront Nevins and learn that he and Corbin senior had Swiss bank accounts for their ill-gotten gains, Nevins also opens the rock to reveal the true Shard of Anubis, a small, red gemstone. He handles this with a glove, which Joe fails to mention when telling Jenny which pocket it is in, and the stone is absorbed into her flash, giving her a healthy, Windscale glow and nightmares that play a bit like Katrina's experiences in Purgatory.

We're ramping up to the mid-season finale now, so I guess we'll see what Pandora was up to in a couple of episodes time. I'm guessing it will tie in with the Shard; perhaps an Egyptian/Sumerian crossover deity (there were plenty; those guys traded all sorts.)

Mr Robot - 'eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg'

"Are you me?"

Elliot's life is in somewhat of a spin. American Psycho-looking executive nerd Tyrell Wellick offers him a job at Evil Corp, hinting that they will be dropping AllSafe and consequently crippling the company by going in-house with their cyber security. Elliot refuses, but is not sold on fociety either after they threaten to dump Evil Corp data if the CTO they framed isn't released and Mr Robot explains his next plan is to blow up a gas pipeline and destroy Evil Corp's off-site tape backups in the process, with potentially huge collateral casualties. He is also somewhat put off by Darlene, one of the fsociety hackers, breaking into his apartment, using his shower and treating him like a confidant.

Darlene is... well, so much in this series is odd.

Elliot rejects the explosive plan, and begins to see Evil Corp goons following him everywhere. He seeks escape in morphine, but he dealer/sort-of-girlfriend Shayla is out of the anti-addiction meds he takes alongside it, which draws them both into the orbit of specialty dealer Fernando Vera, who drugs and rapes Shayla before warning Elliot away from her and explaining that he draws power from his own self-loathing. Although Shayla is willing to accept a certain level of degradation to protect her revenue stream, Elliot can not stand by and uses hacked information about Vera to have him arrested.

Angela is upset that Elliot is avoiding her. Her boyfriend Ollie assures her it's all fine before nipping off to meet up with his other girlfriend and leaving Angela in the presence of a webcam hacker by a peeping tom rapper who harrangued Ollie into buying an infected CD.

Huh.

All unaware of this, Elliot returns to Coney Island to confront Mr Robot. To Robot, everyone and eveything is a one or a zero - act or don't act. He refuses to listen to Elliot's not-psychotic plan to take out the backups until Elliot agrees to talk about his father, who died of Leukemia and at the end refused to talk to his son because Elliot broke a promise not to tell anyone that he was sick. Mr Robot comments that this was a breach of a sacred covenant and pushes Elliot off the pier.

'eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg' (I love these episode names, but they're a bugger to type out) deepens the uncertainty surrounding Elliot's sanity. I'm now convinced - largely by the way that Mr Robot stands directly between Elliot and the other members of fsociety when talking to the latter, such that they would be looking at Elliot if, say, Mr Robot were a figment of his imagination - that Mr Robot is a figment of Elliot's imagination. This makes the push off the pier more disturbing yet, especially in light of Vera's philosophy. If Mr Robot is a side of Elliot that gives him strength to act and yet hates himself enough to jump off a pier onto a rocky, debris-strewn beach, then Elliot too draws his strength from self-loathing. The Tyler Durden theory would also explain why Darlene seems to know Elliot better than he knows her, and why everyone else at fsociety either applauds him or ignores him.

The episode is also about false binaries: Mr Robot insists that everything comes down to act or don't act, but this reductionism is critiqued both explicitly and implicitly. Elliot rails against false choices as the driving force of capitalism, but also confronts choices that are no choice at all - leaving Shayla in Vera's grasp was never an option, whatever her stated wishes and regardless of the impact on Elliot's drug supply - and choices that are more than binary - Elliot returns to fsociety when he comes up with a third option, one that does not involve killing anyone. Perhaps we should call that option 'think'?

Limitless - 'The Legend of Marcos Ramos'

Fun with shredders.

A former FBI agent and Rebecca's mentor is shot dead in broad daylight and suspicion falls on Mexican drug lord Marcos Ramos (whose backstory is revealed in one of Brian's fantasy sequences including cheap eighties film filters and a swimming pool full of piranhas.) As the team works to track down Ramos and his favoured shooter, Brian runs into an old flame and seeks to rekindle the relationship, but wonders whether it is Brian or Brian-on-NZT that she likes.

'The Legend of Marcos Ramos' also reveals the darker side of Brian's deal with Eddie Morra, in the form of Mr Sands (Colin Salmon), a frankly sinister figure who explains that Brian does not work for the FBI; he was placed with the FBI to work for Eddie Morra, and by extension for Mr Sands. Should he refuse, his stabilising treatments will be cut off, and his father or anyone he loves could suffer. Morra might be a slightly shady benefactor, but Sands is clearly very bad people when he needs to be. Ultimately, despite great progress and Rebecca's advice that Brian and Brian-on-NZT are the same guy, and any girl who distinguished isn't worth his time, Brian breaks up with his ex to keep her away from Sands.

Sands and all that he represents bring a little darkness into an otherwise fluffy scenario, and I think that's a good thing. I don't want the show to get all brooding, since its strengths are its lightness, charm and the goofy fantasy sequences that Brian invents for the parts of an investigation he isn't allowed to participate in, but a little shade is important.

Heroes Reborn - 'Odessa'

Mr and Mrs Collins. He's an all-American dad who lost his son, and is
therefore tragic. She's British, and thus evil.

Tommy and Emily discuss his powers, but her boyfriend sees a demonstration. He blackmails Tommy to make his stepdad disappear, and when Tommy's mystery hypno stalker sends the stepdad away swears eternal brohood.

Luke and Joanne Collins find themselves in Tommy's old observation room at Primatech, where Luke soul searches until Joanne shuts him down and they break out, killing the half-dozen staff at some sort of monitoring station. On their way out they steal Noah Bennett's car, along with files detailing the addresses of all known Evos.

Noah came to Primatech's mostly abandoned facility to get those files in order to find the finder Molly Walker (who is going by the name Zoe and hustling for a living, until she is captured by a telekinetic craps hustler and his goth girlfriend, who turn out to know exactly who she is*.) He suspects that his daughter may be alive, but needs Molly to prove it. A dying staffer at the site tells him that Molly is also needed by Primatech's new parent company Renautas to 'monetise Evos' to 'save the world'.

As powers go, this one is a weird mamajama.

In LA, Carlos takes up his brother's mantle as he discovers that Oscar was running down corrupt cops - almost certainly the same people who set him up and killed him - and also working an underground railroad for Evos with their Evo parish priest.

And in Evernow, Ren uses his knowledge of the game to aid Miko/Katana Girl in infiltrating the tower where her father has been imprisoned. Surrounded by goons, she sheathes the sword to return to the real world, emerging not where she began, but in the lobby of a real-world skyscraper.

Heroes Reborn has the classic Heroes problem of being hella unwieldy. It's more of a feature than a bug, but it's hard to get involved in any one story when we spend so little time with each, nudging forward a few steps at a time, then jumping forward in the most unlikely fashion (such as the grand coincidence of Noah Bennett and Beardy Conspiracy Theorist being at Primatech at the exact time that the Collinses break out (also, the Primatech facility being a going concern, but with no internal alarms. What? Did they rule out teleportation as a threat? Because that's pretty dumb.)

* Sadly we have a change of actress here, but since the original is taking time out to go to university I can't really fault her.

The Night Manager - 'Episode 1'

Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), Jed Marshall (Elizabeth Debicki), Theresa Burr (Olivia Colman) and Major Corkoran (Tom Hollander)

Exotic locations, down-at-heels spies and the most fabulous suits this side of Kingsman; welcome to the BBC's new John le Carre adaptation, The Night Manager.

"Just to be clear, I fear pretty much nothing."

Jonathan Pine is the Night Manager of a fancy hotel in Cairo on the brink of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. He is entrusted by one of the hotel's resident guests, Sophie Alekan (Aure Atika), with making copies of documents revealing her boyfriend's involvement in a massive weapons deal brokered by British philanthropist and arms dealer Richard Roper. Feeling duty bound, Pine passes the copies on to a friend at the embassy named Ogilvy (a surprisingly sombre Russell Tovey,) but even as British intelligence operative Angela Burr begins to investigate, Roper is alerted and shuts down the deal. Ogilvy nixes his plans to escape to Britain with Alekan, with whom he has become involved. Burr is warned off the investigation and alerts Pine that Alekan is in imminent danger, but too late.

Look upon my location shooting ye mighty and despair.

Years later, Pine is working at a hotel in Switzerland when Roper brings a party to visit, including his number two guy, Corkoran, and flirty girlfriend Jed. Moved once more by a sense of duty - and perhaps a touch of vengeance - he contacts Burr and offers her the details of Roper's group and a batch of retrieved disposable SIM cards. She quizzes him on his motives for opposing a man like Roper. He tells her any Briton would act if faced with evidence that a compatriot was implicated in a deal that would cause untold death, but she assures him most wouldn't and then challenges him: "What are you prepared to do about it?"

Episode 1 of The Night Manager is mostly set up, and introduction to a flawlessly classy cast. Hiddleston is impeccably suave as the night manager, and if he doesn't quite sell as an Iraq war veteran yet, his suave walk through riot-torn Cairo and perfect deadpanning of Corkoran's veiled threats put him on the Jeeves level of unflappability. Very much the gentleman spy type, he's ably juxtaposed by the raw, brusque, counter-establishment Burr. More reminiscent of Kathy Burke's turn as Connie Sachs than of George Smiley, she's nonetheless very much the Whitehall spy, a hard-working intelligencer rather than a sharp-dressed gadabout. She is also notable as a woman of some, but not great, power in a very manly world. Ogilvy harshly dismisses Alekan as a tart and a whore when informing Pine that Her Majesty's Government does not stick its neck out to protect women from violent criminals, and Roper's party of toffs and millionaires blithely dismiss 'the ladies' to the lounge while they discuss 'combine harvester' sales.

And speaking of Roper's party, the double act of Hugh Laurie and Tom Hollander is the highlight of the closing third of the episode, bringing a booming and ebullient turn to the previously restrained drama. In fact, the bad guys in this piece are all notably louder than the good, with Alekan's boyfriend Freddie Hamid (David Avery) bringing a coarse volume into a programme previously dominated by the muted sizzling twixt Hiddleston and Atika. Laurie is wonderful as the totally affable Roper, his title of 'worst man in the world' lurking behind those weary eyes and in the soft-spoken threat of the discreetly thuggish Corkoran.

Naturally, the technical side of the show is impeccable, with lavish establishing shots of breathtaking locations and Hiddleston's eyes (oh, the eye porn in this series! and is it just me and my colour-blindness, or do Hiddleston and Laurie have basically the same shifting blue-green eyes?) posh frocks and just the fanciest suits. Say what you like about the BBC; this is their bread and butter and it's gorgeous. Whether it can sustain as it ramps up the tension remains to be seen, but this is a classy opener.

Shadowhunters - 'Of Men and Angels'

I can't help feeling that I've seen this shot composition in oils somewhere...

Clary rushes Luke to Magnus Bane for treatment (because only a Warlock can heal an alpha's bite, remember,) with Jace and Simon in tow to cock-block one another help out. simon is getting increasingly jumpy and keeps staring at blood, although oddly not so much at the huge quantities gushing out of Luke's abdomen as at traces on his fingers.

Alec and Isabelle's father and kid brother show up wearing suits, which basically makes them look like a pair of Mormons in a nightclub. Apparently the Lightwood name is in the crapper thanks to Alec's handling of the Clary affair and Isabelle boinking the fair folk. To restore the family honour, they want Alex to marry a girl from another prominent family. Isabelle begs him not to make this compromise, but after heart to hearts with the folks it is Alec who goes off the res to answer Bane's call for 'virgin Shadowhunter energy' (a freely admitted blag for wanting to see Alec) while Isabelle starts dressing like Mommy.

Jace and Simon go shopping for potion ingredients and Simon jumps Jace with a knife, which weirds them both out a bit. Jace is a dick and Simon is in denial, but in the end of the episode Simon leaves, giving a message for Clary that he 'has things to do'. Meanwhile, Luke fills in some backstory, explaining that he used to be a Shadowhunter, and Valentine's parabati, until Valentine thought he was making moves on Jocelyn and threw him into a pit of werewolves to die.

Apparently this is supposed to 'unlock' Clary, although since her memories have been destroyed it's not clear what they're unlocking until she suddenly turns her mother's 'JC' box (which is apparently a momento of a brother who died in infancy) into a pencil sketch.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Valentine in the books didn't go bad because he was jealous of Luke and Jocelyn's closeness, but because he was a power-crazed xenophobe. This series is just addicted to love triangles or something. Other than that, Jace remains a dick and Magnus Bane is more fun than everyone else combined; in their shared scenes Alec actually seems human. Not sure what's going on with Isabelle, but she seems to have been separated from the rest of the team. Simon... is sort of in search of a purpose for remaining in the series.

As we drift away from the book plot, the series seems ever more wishy washy about its direction. I don't know if it will actually find its own way.

Into the Badlands - 'White Stork Spreads Wings'

"Let us duel on this not-at-all-meaningful chessboard floor."

We open with Quinn leading a retributive raid against the Widow's manor after the attempt on Ryder's life. We established last episode that the Widow's forces are small, and with Sunny having slaughtered about forty of her nomad reinforcements, Quinn's clippers suffer only minor casualties, while the Widow loses most of her remaining bowler hats, and sends her girls out via a secret passage. She engages in a long, close fought duel with Quinn, and while eventually overwhelmed she escapes when he is gripped by a seizure. Meanwhile, MK sneaks away from lookout duty to swipe the Widow's book about his home city.

For the remainder of the episode, people are pissed. Like... everyone be pissed about something. The Baroness is pissed that the Widow got away and now the other Barons are up in arms and Quinn's Clippers are trying to hold two domains. Quinn is pissed about the same things, and the fact that the Baroness is right. Both are pissed that Ryder is still in a coma and the Baroness is extra pissed that some fool killed the Doctor. Jade, Quinn's new fiancee, suggests bringing in her old friend Veil and the Baroness is first pissed that her son is to be treated by a cog doctor, then pissed at Ryder because he tried to have the Widow killed and failed. Tilda is pissed at MK for being in on the raid. MK is pissed at Sunny for not teaching him to fight and Sunny is pissed at MK for being a total Anakin.

The Widow takes her girls into hiding and sends Tilda to extract their spy from the dollhouse, but she is too late and the girl jumps off a balcony to her death rather than let Sunny capture her. MK takes the book to Veil to read - because he sees her reading one book, so she must be able to read all books, right? - only to learn that it is in fucking Quenya or something. And the Baron decides that Veil is the one to save him from his brain lesion, which is going to end well.

With war looming, Sunny is sent to reach out to Zephyr, regent to Baron Jacoby and Sunny's former lover, and at this point I start to wonder why anyone is all that surprised that the Widow and her girls are badass. The chief enforcer of one of the seven most powerful men and women in the known world is a woman; why is it such a shock to Johnny Nomad that a girl can kick his ass?

Other than that little inconsistency, the worldbuilding and action in Into the Badlands continue to be excellent, with 'White Stork Spreads Wings' adding some broad character notes to the mix. Notably, I continue to root for the Widow in all this, since Sunny and his wheelchair-bound badass mentor are about the only really likeable characters in the Baron's camp and she has much better management skills; you can't see Quinn covering the rear while his colts escaped.

Agent Carter -'Smoke and Mirrors'

Mirrors in this episode are, like, important.

Carter and Jarvis are tracking Senator Caldwell and looking for evidence of wrongdoing, which seems to be provided by the presence of a driver with the same wound Carter inflicted on her would-be assassin. In the meantime, Jason Wilkes continues to try to prevent his own dissolution and Whitney Frost experiments with her ability to absorb people using her Zero Matter powers. Eventually, Carter and Sousa are able to capture Mr Hunt and obtain a few names, but before they can move on the Arena Club, Thompson's sinister mentor swoops in and places the entire office under investigation for getting too close to the truth. Team Carter therefore play a long-odds gambit and let Hunt escape, with a bug on his back, but although they learn a little the bug is destroyed when Frost noms down Hunt to feed her Zero Matter, leaving the agents nonplussed and Caldwell utterly shitting himself.

The meat of this episode, however, is taken up by contrasting flashbacks to establish the backgrounds of Agent Carter and Agnes Cully, the woman who would become Whitney Frost, and hammering home that, like Dottie, Frost is a dark reflection of Peggy.

Born into modest wealth, Carter was a tomboy as a child, playing at knights and scrapping with her older brother, much to her mother's dismay. Early in he war she worked as a codebreaker at Station X, where she accepted the proposal of a well-meaning stiff at the Home Office; the sort of man her parents approved of wholeheartedly, but whom her brother Michael - now a Captain in the British Army - could not respect, especially when Fred pressured her to reject a transfer to the SOE for which Michael had recommended her. In the end, it was Michael's death that spurred Peggy to follow her calling for adventure, instead of living the safe life others had planned for her.

Important.

In contrast, Agnes is shown growing up in a poor Oklahoma neighbourhood, her brilliant mind unappreciated by her mother, her mother's sleazy boyfriend/landlord or the local college. "No-one cares what's inside your head," her mother tells her bitterly, at the same time hinting that their 'provider' might not have left them in the lurch if Agnes has 'been nicer' to him, which is pretty creepy talk from a mother who just noted that sleazo's new belle is barely older than her daughter. Movies provided Agnes with an escape, first as a distraction and then after she was spotted by a talent agent.

Peggy's life-altering lesson seems to be that life is short and you can't rely on anyone to be out there fighting for you. Agnes' is that you can do as little or as much as your looks let you get away with. Honestly, however, with that backstory we'd be rooting for Agnes if she were only slightly less of a mouse-devouring sociopath.

Sleepy Hollow - 'Dead Men Tell No Tales' (and Bones - 'The Resurrection in the Remains')

Okay; I see what you did there.

And so we come to the Bones/Sleepy Hollow crossover; or as I like to think of it, proof that Brennan is a blinkered idiot. I mean, seriously, she prides herself on detached observation without assumption, which means that she looks like a bit of a pill every time Angela's psychic or a random ghost pops up to establish that the supernatural is totes for real even in the Boniverse, even without a massive supernatural hotspot in upstate New York; a mere four hours drive from the Jeffersonian. Actually, this makes Christopher Pelant make a lot more sense, because clearly he was a motherfucking wizard; I bloody knew it!

Anyway, it is the Ween of Hallows, and a group of revelers setting up a kegger in an abandoned church stumble on a dead med student lying atop the iron coffin of a headless redcoat. Cue a visit from a certain informal investigative duo still pondering the ultimate fate of one Abraham van Brunt, patriot captain turned Hessian demon cavalier and better known as the Horseman (Headless). Of course, we know that he was actually sucked into Pandora's Box, and sure enough they soon learn - thanks to an extra awesome turn from the Angelatron, reconstructing a face from a missing skull - that this was in fact the nefarious redcoat General and probable diabolist General Howe, of shadow assassin-summoning and Ichabod-torturing fame.

"It's not nonsense, it's a spell book."

In the dead student's digs, Booth - who was, it turns out, and old mate of August Corbin's - and Abbie discover a book of spells in runic script, which contains a hidden message - This book shall lead the Witness to the skull that grants the power to resurrect the dead. Cutting ahead to 'Dead Men Tell No Tales' this suggests to me that OMFG, by her lights, Pandora is a Witness. More prosaically, the student wanted to do some Flatliners style shit with near death experiences, and so nicked the skull of a British Army necromancer from his secret grave as a good luck charm, which notably is the kind of shit that seems a little outre in Bones, but is par for the course in Sleepy Hollow.

Anyway, back in Bones Ichabod produces an authentic letter from the Jeffersonian archives; an order from George Washington that Howe's body be returned to Sleepy Hollow (even if it is mysteriously in Ichabod's handwriting.) Of course, by now the skull has turned out to be the murder weapon, and Crane breaks the case by revealing that a missing tooth had in Howe's lifetime been replaced with a French-made porcelain prosthesis (and honestly I would have watched the episode just for his disdain at the concept of fancy porcelain teeth.)

"Franklin invented sex on the beach?"

Mystery solved, the corpse is packed off for Sleepy Hollow and the four investigators retire to the Founding Fathers for a celebratory drink before Abbie and Ichabod return to Sleepy Hollow (and to Sleepy Hollow.)

Unfortunately, Pandora hijacks the transport carrying Howe's remains and uses a runic medallion to transform the decapitated skeleton into a very active zombie, promising him revenge against an old enemy: "Crane," the general hisses, in case we thought that someone might have encountered Ichabod in his patriot days and not fixated on him in an unhealthy fashion. Truly the greatest trick that Washington ever pulled was keeping Crane out of the history books.

Gotta love that 18th Century shooting stance.

Howe's hijacking interrupts the team costume bowling match - at which Ichabod runs into Zoe, who is dressed somewhat disconcertingly as sexy (seamstress) Betsy Ross, but who is the only one to recognise his natty, hand-embroidered waistcoat as a John Adams costume - especially when the General resurrects a force of redcoat zombies who prove impervious to bullets. The books eventually identify them as Draugr, virtually unstoppable undead shock troops, and the only hint of a weakness is a reference to Howe's 'primal tomb'.

With no other means of identifying Howe's original burial site (clearly not Twickenham) our heroes turn to the country's foremost forensic analyst. While Christine's Jane Goodall costume still needs finishing touches, Brennan agrees to look over the bone and determines it was originally interred in Washington's secret, unused tomb in the Capitol building. Insisting on coming along for the archaeology, they find a tomb with a Masonic lock and a booby trap fueled with unquenchable Greek Fire, prompting Ichabod to realise that the Great Manhattan Fire was caused by (not just a seamstress) Betsy Ross putting down Howe's original Draugr regiment with a multi-barreled, rapid-repeating, Greek Fire crossbow; an instrument of pure gratuity that I chose to dub the Betsy Rossbow.

"We're here for a massacre or an Iron Maiden photo shoot,
whichever comes first."

Leaving the indomitably skeptical Brennan ("She would dismiss Moloch as a tall man with a skin condition") to coo over the anthropological ramifications, Ichabod and Abbie set about planning a means to dispose of the Draugr without, you know, burning Sleepy Hollow to the ground. Their plan is to use Ichabod as bait, lure the Draugr into the stone tunnels under the city and incinerate them there, where the Greek Fire can burn itself out without taking too many houses with it.

The plan is enacted just in time, as Pandora - displaying a scary snake face which may or may not be her real visage - and Howe plot to unleash the Draugr on the unsuspecting Halloween crowds, thus reaping the fear that Pandora needs. Even with the Witnesses successful, enough fear is generated to bloom another rose (this one white) and leaving just one, a red flower, to open. The fact that Pandora is talking about fear and love at about the same moment Abbie is pushing Ichabod to ask Zoe out on a date makes me fear for the new love interest even more.

Meanwhile, Jenny and Joe have been pursuing the B-plot and trying to get a meeting with the mysterious buyer who wants the Shard of Anubis. This man, the kingpin of illegal artefact shipment, turns out to be an old military buddy of Corbin Snr, and also the target of Agent Reynolds' big investigation, leading to a clash of Abbie's worlds.

What to Watch

The current contents of my Sky Box (not including deleted content still retrievable; italics indicates a series that I review episodically; bold indicates something I keep on the box to watch with my daughter):

Star Wars: Rebels - 1 episode
Agent Carter - 1 episode
Melody - 20 episodes
The 100 - 1 episode (Huzzah! New 100 episodes to watch with Hanna!)
Lip Sync Battle - 10 episodes (some UK, some US)
Gotham - 2 episodes
The X-Files - 1 episode
Bones - 5 episodes (the 5th is the Sleepy Hollow crossover.)
Agents of SHIELD - 3 episodes
Beowulf - 4 episodes
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - 1 episode (this is one weird mamajama)
Lucky Man - 2 episodes (and I think I may be an episode behind on reviewing this)
Sarah & Duck - 39 episodes
Thunderbirds are Go - 4 episodes
Blindspot - 6 episodes
Doctor Who - Christmas special, watched
Stick Man
Continuum - 3 episodes (this is all that remains of the series, but it's lost me again)
Sleepy Hollow - 4 episodes (down from 20, the next in line is the Bones crossover)
Dominion - 10 episodes
True Detective - 5 episodes
Humans - 8 episodes
Clangers - 23 episodes
Penny Dreadful - 3 episodes
12 Monkeys - 5 episodes
CBeebies Peter Pan
Pajanimals - 25 episodes
Alphablocks - 88 episodes
CBeebies Bedtime Stories - 23 episodes
CBeebies Prom

I need to get caught up on some stuff; that or scrub it.

Limitless - 'Pilot' and 'Badge! Gun!'

Regular Brian and Smart Brian; Brian Brian and Brain Brian, if you will.

Brian Finch (Jake McDorman) is an amiable slacker; not dim, but unfocused, frittering his youth away on his dream of becoming a musician while the rest of his family grow up around him. Then one day, while working as a temp, he runs into his ex-bassist Eli, a financial analyst who offers him a notropic drug called NZT-48 which allows him to access his brain's full potential - every connection working together, every memory in perfect recall. He completes his two week temp assignment in hours, gives his supervisor advice on dumping her deadbeat boyfriend and diagnoses his father's mystery ailment before the pill wears off and he crashes hard.

Then he tries to get another pill, only to find his friend murdered and the FBI chasing him for the crime. With the help of Eli's emergency stash he escapes and sets out to prove his innocence, with some help from sympathetic FBI agent Rebecca Harris (Jennifer Carpenter). The side-effects of NZT begin to bite, but Senator Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper, reprising his role from the original movie) appears basically from nowhere and offers him the solution - an occasional injection which eliminates the side-effects of NZT - if he never tells anyone that they had contact. It seems like a small price to pay for not having his brain catastrophically, even terminally, rewire itself.

I'm a sucker for a fantasy sequence.

With his innocence proven, the FBI is keen to study Brian's immunity, as the volunteers for their own NZT trials were killed by the drug. Harris insists that, rather than drag him in and make him a lab rat, they should use him as a resource. She explains that her father was a drug addict. He showed up promising to be better with the NZT shine in his eyes, and a few weeks later was dead.

In 'Badge! Gun!' therefore, he kicks off his new job; sadly not by playing Baccarat with master criminals (and Uno cards), but by sitting in a small room learning Farsi. This doesn't really fire his enthusiasm, so he gives his minders - whom he names Mike and Ike, although the NZT means that he must actually remember their names and is just being a bit of a dick - the slip to work on cases, much to the anger of the Chief (played by former Maid Marian, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio,) whom I've just realised is called Nasreen Pouran, so go inclusion even if she is played by an Italian.

Around the procedural elements of the episode - Brian helps to track a bomber by building models, then postulates the existence of a bio-weapon targeting descendants of Genghis Khan and obtains vital evidence against a CEO by appealing to the hatred of a workforce - we continue to build our characters. During his excursion to build model bombs for comparison, Brian takes a bus, gives one man advice on connecting with his son, helps a young couple work out their problems and generally makes friends with everyone, establishing him as a slightly maverick soul, but basically a good man. Harris continues to bat for him, while Pouran and Harris' partner Boyle are grudgingly impressed and Mike and Ike clearly hate his guts.

Most interestingly, when he tries to search for the connection between Morra and NZT, just associating them in a search window crashes his computer. Showing up like a blue eyed Jesus in the Pilot, Morra's influence now adopts a decidedly sinister cast, and his explanation that Brian will soon be in a position where he needs someone rather threatening. Just in case this wasn't enough to question his motives, the nurse who administered Brian's injection suddenly shows up as his Dad's visiting nurse.

Limitless has definite potential. I like the leads, and they're soft-pedaling on the whole '10% of your brain' bullshit, which is good.

Mr Robot - 'eps1.0_hellofriend.mov'

This series makes the most of a protagonist who looks like literally no-one else on our screens.

Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) is a cyber security technician who moonlights as a hacktivist, exposing malfeasance almost more as a compulsion to reveal the ugliness of the world than because it's right or necessary. He is also a delusional schizophrenic with social anxiety, and this is important. He has very few friends: his boss likes him and he also works with his childhood friend Angela (Portia Doubleday), and he hooks up with his dealer Shayla (Frankie Shaw) from time to time, largely it seems because he only meets her while already high.

Elliot is drawn into a wider world when the enigmatic hobo Mr Robot (Christian Slater) invites him to become part of fsociety, a hacker collective working on a nebulous project aimed at destroying the credit information held by the massive conglomerate E Corp. The largest client at Allsafe, Elliot's place of work, E Corp stands for the megaelite conspiracy controlling the world. Can it be brought down? Can Elliot trust Mr Robot? Or even his own senses?

Mr Robot is a cyber-aware conspiracy thriller, sort of like Person of Interest on a budget, but in a lot of ways its selling point is not the conspiracy of 'the top 1% of the top 1%' or the hacking, but the vexed question of Elliot's reliabilty as a narrator. His voice over hangs a lampshade on this, opening up by admitting that he is talking to himself. Moreover, he tells us that he has conditioned himself to see and hear any mention of E Corp as 'Evil Corp', and throughout the show that is what people call it; what we see, what we hear is filtered through Elliot, a self-described delusional schizo whose worldview refuses to accept that anything can exist that is unequivocally good (he finds a cafe with great wifi and immediately looks for the porn servers its connection is supporting.) No-one else ever substantially interacts with Mr Robot and the rest of his crew, and they are explicitly invisible online, almost as if they didn't exist.

The show is thus also an effective psychological thriller, and so hangs hard on Malek's core performance. Fortunately, it's a doozy. Malek plays the anxiety and alienness of the outsider to the hilt, and it helps that he looks like no-one else on TV, with the traces of Brendan Fraser about the eyes countered by the lantern jaw and odd haircut (or am I just not with it on that one?) The support playing is also good, although the other characters are intentionally ciphers, viewed only through Elliot's distorted gaze.

With aspects of PoI, The Matrix and Fight Club vying for screen time, the show could become cluttered, but the opener keeps it tight and together and I'm interested to see where we go from here.

Into the Badlands - 'The Fort' and 'Fist Like a Bullet'

Left to Right: The Baron (Marton Csokas), The Baroness (Orla Bady), The Idiot Son (Oliver Stark), The Teenage Weapon (Aramis Knight), Sunny (Daniel Wu), The Doctor (Madeleine Mantock) and the Widow (Emily Beecham).

"The wars were so long ago nobody even remembers. Darkness and fear ruled until the time of the barons, seven men and women who forged order out of chaos. People flocked to them for protection. That protection became servitude. They banished guns and trained armies of lethal fighters they called Clippers. This world is built on blood. Nobody is innocent here. Welcome to the Badlands."

Into the Badlands is an ambitious action series, loosely (and I mean, really loosely) based on the Chinese classic Into the West (better known to Western audiences as the source for dubiously dubbed Japanese TV series Monkey!/Monkey Magic.) It is set in a post-apocalyptic future which blends the ethos of bushido with elements of Mad Max and a mix of pseudo-Oriental and almost Zoroesque Spanish-American visual styles. The Badlands - constituting the majority of the known world for most of the characters - is a vast expanse of territory controlled by the Barons and their Clippers. Baronial estates are worked by 'cogs' and supported by dependent townships, with nomad gangs travelling between territories and working for the highest bidder.

Sunny's on-screen body count reaches double figures by the end
of episode one, and probably the fifties in episode two. For
some reason, forty-five careers kills was earlier touted as
something impressive.

Sunny is the regent (chief clipper) of Baron Quinn's opium-producing estate, a ma of some principles, but ultimately loyal first and foremost to the hash code of the Clippers and to his Baron. Quinn is the most powerful of the Barons, but a paranoid and terminally ill despot who fears to turn over control to his son Ryder. He is supported by his wife Lydia and by Sunny's strength and counsel, but on the point of war with the Widow, a woman who murdered her husband to become Baron and who controls the oil industry. The contention between them is a little odd, seemingly arising from the Baron's dismissal of a woman in authority, despite the fact that we are told in the narration that some of the original barons were women. Similarly, it seems odd that society would regress to 19th century gender roles in the wake of war and disaster, but outside of the Widow's estate it seems all women are wives or chattels, and all the clippers are men.

Into this arena comes MK, a young orphan with a mysterious past. Seemingly hailing from outside the Badlands, he claims to know the way back, and possesses some strange power which turns him into a lethal engine of destruction when his blood is spilled. The Widow wants him for the latter, but Sunny sees a chance to send his lover, a young doctor named Veil, and the unborn child they aren't supposed to have to safety as the Baron grows more and more ruthless (including murdering Veil's parents, his long-trusted physicians, simply for knowing how sick he is.) He briefly escapes from the Baron, with Sunny's help, but after a run in with the Widow and her daughter Tilda (Ally Ioannides) interrupts an attempt on the lives of Sunny and Rider, allowing Sunny to take him on as his apprentice, to teach him enough to protect Veil.

Young love is, apparently, unavoidable, even in a show base on a book which
really doesn't feature any romance.

As of the end of episode 2, 'Fist Like a Bullet', the Widow is planning to move on the Baron, MK and Tilda have a little Romeo and Juliet action going on, and Sunny is laying plans for his family's escape. The Baron is also planning to marry a young woman named Jade (Emily Bolger, apparently he really goes for Irish women), his eighth wife, but we've not seen much of her yet.

The plot of Into the Badlands is nothing much to write home about, and the alleged parallel with Journey to the West not immediately obvious. I mean, I guess Sunny is Sun Wu Kong, but MK appears to be the Xuanzhang/Tripitaka analogue, which makes his depiction as a romantic lead and engine of unholy destruction especially weird, and does that mean the Baron is the Celestial Emperor? Buddha? It's also not clear who we're supposed to be rooting for, if anyone, as the Baron is clearly a dick and, although the aggressor, the Widow is at least pushing for some sort of gender equality, albeit by forcing her daughters to become killers.

Clearly not the most practical of shit-kicking outfits.

Where it scores far more highly, however, is in the action stakes. Sunny gets the lion's share of the action scenes, I'm guessing because Daniel Wu has martial arts chops (I don't know for sure, but he's done action roles for Jackie Chan and that doesn't usually suggest stunt doubles.) The other combat headliner is the Widow, but she does a lot of her killing shot from behind, so I suspect that much of that may be done by a stunt player who knows how to murder in heels. Each of the two episodes has two major set pieces: In 'The Fort' a roadside battle against a nomad gang, then an atmospheric, rain swept smackdown against a group of the Widow's clippers. In 'Fist Like a Bullet' we open with the Widow proving her chops against half a dozen nomad assassins, but the big number features Sunny taking on thirty-to-forty nomads in a multi-level warehouse fight. This series seriously loves its martial arts action, and so far, so do I.

It's not just punchy though. There are some dramatic stakes and an inventive take on the post-apocalyptic premise. The acting is all pretty good - MK and Tilda are a weak point, but in part because they've not been given much to do yet - and the aesthetics of the piece are gorgeous. I also like the juxtaposition of the grim setting with the bright, colonial palette.

Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands - Episode 3

I can't help feeling that the steward of Heorot didn't get the message about
dropping the 80s make up theme.

Beowulf and Rate head off in search of Slean and Scorann (who is Rate's brother, not that I recall knowing this before,) accompanied by... well, no-one actually. Even Beowulf's sidekick is just kicking his heels in Heorot and occasionally antagonising the captive skinshifter for no real reason.

While the hunters bond a bit and Scorann helps Slean to grow up, Rheda must preside over the trial of the skinshifter's wife, whose life is forfeit if she knew what he was. After fighting off the unwelcome advances of another Thane, she tricks the accused's daughter into admitting that they knew what her step-dad was, but the skinshifter breaks loose when told that she is to be executed. In the confusion as he is cut down, Healer Girl helps the wife and daughter escape, leaving no means of learning who is behind the whole nasty business.

Scorann and Slean break out when Beowulf and Rate attack their guards, although Scorann is mortally wounded, choosing death in battle over a chance of recovery. Slean recognises the kidnappers' employer as his uncle's man, and thus deduces that his uncle planned the whole thing to discredit Rheda, allowing him to step in.

Return to the Shieldlands continues to be complete bollocks, but mildly diverting bollocks.

Shadowhunters - 'Dead Man's Party', 'Raising Hell' and 'Moo Shu to Go'

Queen of the vampires, rockin' the stereotype.

Clary and her inordinately amenable posse of Shadowhunter hangers on set out to track down Simon through the tried and tested method of Isabelle getting nekkid with a Vulcan. Okay, actually he's a 'Seelie', or faerie as we might say if the series weren't desperately trying to avoid that word, but the ears man; oh the ears.

Meantime, Clary learns moe about her powers, and that Jace and Alec are parabatai: mystically bonded hunting partners, closer than brothers, although Jace in particular is definitely throwing that whole parabati before totty* doctrine to the winds and generally treating Alec like he's the asshole for occasionally suggesting that maybe there's something to their centuries old creed that could trump, say, doing whatever the hell Clary asks regardless of how incredibly stupid and wrong it is. But don't worry, because Alec will earn this later.

Chief vampire Camille and her number two Raphael play a little sexy vamp/thug vamp with Simon, partly to see if he knows where the all-important Mortal Cup is and partly because Camille is bored/for the fan service (as much as we need that with Isabelle going all out to, erm, pump her contact for information.)

Anyway, the Shadowhunters break in, which is apparently against the treaty which the vampires already broke in some way by scrobbling a mortal in their protection or... Look, I don't know. Camille rails at her minions as they get slaughtered, and Raphael unexpectedly turns (slightly) face, ensuring that Simon gets out alive.

Meanwhile, Valentine is probably monologuing at mercifully unconscious Jocelyn and other werewolf cop probably tells Luke to watch his back. It's been a while since I watched this episode, but both of these things happen more often than not.

My detective spin-off from this series would totally be Magnus Bane PI. He's
way more fun than any of the other characters, and an outrageous liar.

In 'Raising Hell', Clary dreams about someone named Magnus taking her memories. On waking she mentions this to Simon, who wonders if this is the 'Magnus Bane' that Camille mentioned when he told her Clary's memories had been taken. Do ya think?

Clary runs off to tell Jace (apparently the show has some sense of shame, now offering shirtless Jace as equal opportunity fanservice after the boob-heavy 'Dead Man's Party') and Simon decides fuck this noise and swans off out of the Institute like a magnificent and slightly suicidal bastard. With Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn (is that just Brooklyn and there's one for each of the five boroughs? Or is he just a high warlock who is 'of Brooklyn'?) in hiding because of Valentine, there is only one place to find him: At a Downworlder rave.

Baiting a trap, they set off to the same club where they ran into a bunch of vampires last episode. I guess they only have so many club sets, but they hang a lampshade on this by claiming that their last visit was on 'vampire night'. They lure Bane out by offering him a necklace that he once gave to Camille and which now belongs to Alec and Isabelle's family, but he explains that he can't return the memories because he fed them to a Greater Demon for safekeeping.

Just because none of the characters seem to note this, I want to be clear that I'm not missing something: He gave the memories which include the location of the Mortal Cup, the most powerful artefact in the Shadow World and arch-weapon against demonkind to a motherfucking demon to look after. Is that what we're saying? Not that I want to hold this against him. The flamboyantly hedonistic Bane is way more fun than anyone else in the series, with his flirty ways and outrageous bullshit name dropping (he is established as being 'over 300 years old' yet claims to have shagged Michelangelo and been around when the Dead Sea was 'just a lake with a bit of a cold.') I bet he knew Ichabod Crane.

Parabatai tracking: Just add 'the way you look tonight' and we're in fanfic
territory.

Anyway, a Circle assassin pops up. Alec kills him, and although impressed, Bane portals out like a proper magnificent bastard. Clary nabs his shirt button and Jace and Alec do parabatai tracking to find him, which involves holding hands and gazing intensely into each other's eyes. This allows them to turn up at Bane's lair just in time to save him and a warlock girl from more assassins. Bane moves the entire lair - because he fucking can, that's why - and then agrees to help summon the demon, in part because he's way into Alec. He gives Clary a set of chalks and tells her to draw an insanely complex summoning circle, which she does, perfectly, first time, of course. They all hold hands and summon the demon, which demands a memory of the person that they most love in payment for returning Clary's memories. Clary gives up a memory of her mother, Izzy one of Alec. We never learn who Jace or Bane would have recalled, because Alec's memory is of Jace, and when this is displayed to all present he freaks out, because apparently he is Narnia deep in the closet, to the point he would rather fuck up the summoning of an incredibly dangerous Greater Demon than face his feelings. Despite the fact that Izzy has already proven that sibling love is totally applicable.

Go Alec, you consummate professional.

The demon breaks loose and grabs Jace, so Clary has to stab a bitch, killing the demon and with it her memories. The focus of most of the last five episodes of a thirteen part series has been on getting those memories, but fuck that noise apparently.

And then Valentine speaks to Clary through her mother's necklace, because of course he can.

Mother of the year.

In 'Moo Shu to Go', Alec and Isabelle's mother arrives and is a complete bitch to her daughter (apparently schtupping the faeries is frowned upon.) She tasks Jace with making a diplomatic approach to the Seelie, who are pissed about something. They learn that what's got them riled is that Valentine killed the scouts the Clave asked the Seelie to send to locate him with a poisoned exploding Shadowhunter (no, really.)

Grounded for not grounding anyone else, Alec is persuaded to accompany Clary to her mother's apartment to retrieve a box which might contain something important and which hasn't been mentioned until now. Simon joins them, leading them via a secret shortcut and displaying wicked parkour skills and strength (and keeping mum about how last episode he got all cravey over his bandmate's blood while she was asking him out, then stared at the Hotel Du Mort until Raphael ran him off.) Alec then fails to prevent Clary and Simon being kidnapped by werewolves.

The werewolves - who are mostly biker types, plus Luke's colleague - take them to the pack den; a slightly grotty Chinese restaurant at the docks, where the alpha demands the Mortal Cup or Simon will be torn apart by one of his heavy hitters. Simon escapes his bonds thanks to vampire strength and contacts the Shadowhunters by dialing Clary's number, having left her bag behind. This is handy, as the either the presence of water, or the fact that Alec is finding it suddenly uncomfortable to stare into Jace's eyes, or possibly the fact that Jace is being a total dick to Alec, means that even parabatai tracking isn't working.

"He's now the leader of the pack."
Vrmm vrmm.

Luke shows up to rescue Clary, but the shadowhunters snatch her off him. When they are surrounded by werewolves, however, a wolf comes out of nowhere to take down the alpha and claim leadership. Surprise! It's Luke! (Are you surprised? Really?) What surprised me was the degree of glowy, ethereal light involved in the werewolf transformations. I guess it saves on the effect budget compared to popping bones and sprouting fur.

Luke is now alpha and can protect Clary from the pack, but royally fucked up from the fight. In fact, only a warlock's magic can heal an alpha's bite, apparently, so it's back to Magnus Bane.

Shadowhunters continues to deviate ever more from the plot of the novels, mostly for the sake of having shit happen every week, like the demon summoning or a big fight with werewolves. I'm really not convinced that a lot of the changes are for the better. I'm curious to see if the contents of the box ultimately move the plot forward or if we're going to stay hovering at ignorance and guesswork.

* I know; I'm reaching.

Gotham - 'Strike Force'

"I think of it as The Shield, season 8."

There's a new boss at the GCPD: Captain Barnes (I'm not sure who the new Commissioner is, or if there is one yet, but they're obviously not using Sarah Essen's old office,) a tough ex-Marine intent on making a clean sweep. At the same time, the Galavans approach Penguin to be their underworld strongarm, take out the other mayoral candidates and make an unsuccessful hit on Theo for effect. When he refuses, they reveal that they have his mother.

Faced with the death of one candidate and the drive by attempt on Galavan, Barnes and Gordon recruit a team of four talented rookies straight out of the Academy to form the GCPD Strike Force, a no-bullshit, shoot-to-kill team to tackle the worst that the Gotham underworld has to throw at them. Aptly enough, their first encounter is with the GCPD's natural predator, Victor Zsasz. It's depressing that their exchange of flesh wounds counts as a major achievement, given he's one guy with handguns against four armed bastards in body armour, plus Bullock and Gordon.

Gordon knows that Penguin is the candidate killer, but can't act directly because of what Penguin has over him. Barnes has no such compunctions, and wants the Strike Force gunning for Cobblepot. Meanwhile, Penguin and Butch are looking, carefully, for Mama Kapelput.

'Silver St Cloud' is one of those names that screams 'character out of the
comics.'

Elsewhere, Alfred punches Selina Kyle - who has reverted entirely to independent street criminal - in the face 'for Reggie' and tells her to keep away from Bruce, triggering some sort of emotional meltdown in her. This would probably have hit her less hard if she weren't recovering from an extended and inexplicable bout of Minion's syndrome. Anyway, Bruce will no doubt be fine, as on top of a rigorous new training regime of running home through dangerous downtown Gotham, he's been introduced to Galavan's ward, the micro-honey trap Silver St Cloud.

ETA: You know what I completely forgot to mention? Eddie Nygma scores a date with Kristen Kringle by acting all domineering. He drops the ball when the subject of her ex 'leaving town' comes up by saying "I'm glad he's dead," and then starts talking to himself, but apparently she's all kind of into that. Poor Eddie; if only he'd realised sooner that the way to a woman's heart is through her crippling emotional problems.

Gotham continues to max out at okay. Barnes and the Strike Force are a new element, but the Galavans are still frankly annoying. They're like Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins, but without the gravitas and credibility. Without a visible support or intelligence network, their ability to work around everyone, identify their weaknesses and lean on them perfectly comes off as the kind of informed brilliance that really, really annoys me. Barbaritha continues to be an annoying piece of fan service, and both Galavans are just so smug you want to see Alfred punch them, or Zsasz shoot them. I know people who want to see some of the larger and more cannibalistic DC villains - Killer Croc or King Shark - introduced to the series for no other reason than to eat them.

King Shark. Man, I miss The Flash. I wonder when it's back on.

Heroes Reborn - 'Brave New World'

A new generation of emo: Clockwise - Conspiracy
Nerd, Aurora Girl, That Guy, Mrs Not-in-Episode-
One, Brooding Hispanic, Mrs and Mr Vengeance,
Katana Girl, Ice Cream Girl and Vanishy Boy.

And speaking of once-great series that I never saw the end of because I lost interest and which have now been relaunched, Heroes Reborn picks up some years after the end of Heroes, and exactly a year after the June 13th terrorist attack on a human/Evo unity summit destroyed most of Odessa (the one in Texas, rather than Ukraine) and sparked a global backlash against Evos (which appears to be Heroes Reborn for metahuman.) This being Heroes, we are first introduced to all the characters.

There's our old buddy Noah Bennett, now selling cars under a new assumed name until an as-yet-unnamed conspiracy theorist tracks him down and tells him his memory has been altered. This leads him to the Haitian, who tries to kill him, apparently on Bennett's own orders, because 'it's coming'. Sadly, in the ensuing struggle the Haitian is shot, just in case he spoiled the pronoun game.

Then there's Mr and Mrs Vengeance (their name isn't really Vengeance, but as with all ensemble shows I will be using nicknames until the show itself tells me what they're really called,) whose son died at Odessa and who are now hunting down Evos, starting with the members of a support group in Chicago. A kid named Tommy escapes, but they track him via his ice cream parlour loyalty card and try to take him out, along with super-perky, nice-but-popular girl... Emmy? I think. She seems decent, but is dating an idiot, narcissistic jock because... rules? Anyway, Tommy makes them vanish and go... somewhere. Somewhere not too far away, I guess, because they're in way too many of the publicity shots to be gone for good.

Carlos is a dead-beat former war hero. He learns that his brother Oscar is the superpowered masked hero El Vengador when Oscar is caught in an ambush by another group of anti-Evo vigilantes. Oscar dies, leaving Carlos to look after his son, who may also have powers.

Miko is a Japanese girl who does a lot of origami and doesn't know where she went to school. A gamer named Ren tracks her down based on clues in a game called Evernow, revealing to her that a sword hidden under her father's study is the key to her destiny. She finds the Kensei sword and is transported into a computer game; which is a hell of a thing.

And then there's some girl who is either making eyes appear in the Aurora Borealis or preventing more of a face appearing or something.

So, all the Heroes ingredients are there - lots of characters, varied powers, big arc mystery - but I have to say that the fact that apparently there are people who know and are purposely concealing the truth for reasons makes the whole thing more annoying. Still, I'm watching for now, which is a step up from Season 4 and 5.

Agent Carter - 'Better Angels'

It's that man again.

Peggy Carter is feeling bad for not being able to keep nice Dr Wilkes safe, which visiting SSR chief Jack Thompson naturally interprets as a surfeit of womanly feels when she argues that the sudden glut of evidence against him - Russian passport under the floorboards, Russian pistol under the bed - are as obviously planted as they are. Thompson shows up, rewrites Carter's report to implicate Wilkes and tells the West Coast agents to drop the case.

With official channels temporarily clogged with testosterone, Peggy turns to Howard Stark for scientific support on the Zero Matter question, which means we are treated to another round of the truly marvelous (no pun intended) three-hander between Hayley Atwell, James D'Arcy and Dominic West. As the retroincarnation of his son, there is the danger of Stark running roughshod over the regulars, but once more he's worked in perfectly, rocking his science mojo and getting our unsuitable leads into the "strictly pale and male" Arena Club, not by pretending to be one of them but by dragging a crowd of girls into the masculine preserve as cover for Peggy planting bugs.

When evidence proves hard to come by - the bugs are shorted out by the Club's security protocols and she can't swipe the future newspapers that the club uses to lean on people - Thompson locks down on further investigation and orders Peggy back to New York. He also hands over the Zero Matter film to his dodgy mentor. Interestingly, he does this because Peggy comes at him hard, pushing his frustrated masculinity into a corner, and it will be more interesting still to see how he reacts to seeing that her accusations were true in the closer. Sousa points out that this is no way to handle Thompson, although he later turns down a drink which might have been a good way to get inside Thompson's armour.

Original science bros.

On discovering that Peggy is being stalked by a manifestation of Zero Matter, Stark uses a special photographic emulsion to make the manifestation visible (and audible)... as Jason Wilkes. So far intangible, he none the less bonds with Stark over shared technical language as they work on his... condition.

Elsewhere, we see Whitney Frost manipulating her husband into ordering a hit on Peggy after Carter questions her, then Zero-Matter-eating her touchy-feely director. It comes as little surprise to learn that Frost is the Hedy Lamarr of evil, a brilliant scientist whose work during the war hasn't prevented her being serially undervalued afterwards (when she suggests retiring from acting, her husband promises that after the election she can retire and have 'all the babies you want.') Like Dottie, but in a completely different way, Frost is a dark reflection of Peggy Carter, choosing to embrace instead of fighting her invisibility.

So, Season 2 now has a clear binary antagonist: The Arena Club, striving to maintain their white, male deathgrip on power (it's so sad that we basically know they'll get their way) and Whitney Frost, who is using her husband - and through him the Club - to further her scientific work, and her obsession with Zero Matter. With Thompson teetering between antagonistic ally and part of the problem, the season is shaping up well.