Shadowhunters - 'Parabatai Lost'

The morning after, Shadowhunter style.

We begin as we ended last week's episode, with Jace and Clary free, Gretel the werewolf dead, and no real idea what the fuck is happening with Dot.

At least one oversight comes back to bite our putative heroes on the arse, as Jace washes up on the shores of the East River right next to Gretel's body, and instead of doing anything smart like, say, urging the bystander who finds them to yes, please call the police, he instead tells her not to, acts like a scary person and runs away before Luke and the other werewolf cops show up to reclaim their own and draw unflattering conclusions. Being the best and brightest that the Institute has to offer, he then goes to a werewolf bar to use a phone to call Clary, where he is pegged for Gretel's kidnapper and chased until he collapses and gets taken to hospital.

"Don't make me hex a bitch."

Meanwhile, Alec is fading after a part of him got lost trying to track his Parabatai bond to Captain Insensitive. This being TV, a coma naturally means flashbacks, and Alec relives his training with Jace, who was always a cocky little jerk, although the fact that it was instilled at a young age actually makes him a little more sympathetic, since it is clearly a taught rather than an acquired behaviour. We see them train and become a great team, Alec reluctant to undergo the Parabatai bond because he is in love with Jace, and Jace utterly insensitive to any such nuance.

Jace escapes the werewolves again at the hospital and tries to get to Alec at Magnus's loft, but when Aldertree finds that Alec has been removed from the Institute in, as is now traditional, direct opposition to his orders, Izzy has no choice but to make a deal; to bring Jace in, in exchange for helping him get to Alec in time to save him. It turns out that arresting him is about the only thing that gets him out of being eaten by werewolves, despite Luke's attempts to rein in the pack, so there's that.

"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this..."

This episode, Clary mostly dithers and worries about Jace while lying to Aldertree. For the alleged heroine, she's really a bit of a sideshow this season. Jocelyn is in more of this episode, now apparently keen to protect 'Jonathan', which makes a change from shooting at him, and getting chewed out by Magnus for dragging him into this whole colossal clusterfuck in the first place. Simon has way more going on as his mother, frantic with worry, tries to contact him and he makes contact only to learn that Raphael has smoothed things over so that he can get back to finding Camille and bringing her in to face the music.

There is definitely a degree to which Shadowhunters suffers from old teen syndrome. The characters are supposed to be in their mid-to-late teens, but the actors are all in their twenties, which means that whenever they act like teenagers, I feel like they ought to just grow up and stop being so selfish(1). In particular, it probably does make sense that they would just run when they had the chance, but I still hope that Gretel's death will weigh on them, as well as whatever the hell is happening to Dot, because straight up the Warlocks are the bitches of this particular demimonde and helping out a Fray seems to be the fast-track to getting terminally screwed over. As a result, I don't much care for mother or daughter at this juncture, and am more sympatico with the warlocks and the werewolves, and even Raphael's vampire faction than either the Clave or the protagonists.

(1) Because frankly, they are hella selfish. I know the older Clave members are supposed to be hidebound and hard-hearted, but they make a lot of sense to me(2), and where the young protagonists are right it is frankly by chance more than by intent.

(2) Although a fair few of them are also complete jerks in their own way.

Arrow - 'Bratva'

It's that man again.

After weeks of thematic linking, it's time for a literal connection between the present day and Oliver's Russian flashbacks. No spoilers; the episode is after all called 'Bratva'.

Quentin Lance returns after his time in rehab, ready to take on the job of deputy mayor. He's just in time, as Thea is off doing chief of staff things and Oliver is preparing to head for Russia to track down General Nuke-Stealer after he and his men shoot their way out of federal custody and head off to sell their bomb to a bunch of separatists. Oliver contacts Anatoly, who is understandably a little pissed that Oliver chose to tap Bratva resources in Star City, but then refused to return the favour.

Needing to track the nuke before it vanishes and thwarted by their inability to track or pursue a 65 year old flag officer on the grounds that he got through an unlocked door thirty seconds before them(1), OTA go a little bit off the res. Oliver (aided by Dinah) does a little Bratva leg-breaking, while Diggle uses one of Nuke-Stealer's men as a punch bag and Felicity gets Rory and Curtis to dress up as thugs and slips into a slinky, ice maiden number to blackmail the fuck out of some poor corrupt executive having dinner with his family. Rory checks Felicity on the latter and they have the 'with great power' discussion, coupled with the understandable 'no more Haven Rocks' talk.

"Does it hurt?"
"Only when I laugh, so you're okay to stay."

They get the General, but the bomb has been stolen back from the separatists and set to blow if tempered with. Felicity isn't able to disarm it, so Rory swathes it in his rags to contain the blast. Unfortunately, this uses all of the rags' remaining magic, so Rory decides to quit the vigilante game and I swear I am going to be hella pissed if he turns up dead in a few episodes time. He makes one last appeal for Felicity to stay good before he leaves.

Back in Star City, Rene coaches Lance for his big interview with sassy reporter lady who knows too much (am I doing badly with names this season, or are they just not getting used as often?) because that is a thing that Rene understands how to do. Lance gets angry when Rene reminds him that Sassy McKnowledge will totally go there and talk about his oft-dead daughters, so Rene tells her how when he as a young punk then-Officer Lance set him on the mostly straight and narrow, and thus persuades her to cut Lance some slack. Or maybe she's just feeling charitable, either because Oliver has finally put out, or because she's found compelling evidence that her boyfriend is a Bratva captain and the Green Arrow(2).

I'm actually amazed that I couldn't find a
picture of Bat-Mite dressed as Green Arrow.

And in flashback land – at this point I'm waiting for Prometheus to start having flashbacks of his own to explain his training – Talia teaches Oliver to be a proper badass and Oliver offers to kill the boss Bratva guy after he has Anatoly beaten up for speaking out against Kovar.

As noted before, Arrow is weird, because it isn't weird; not properly. It's even phased out NTA's magical hero, and yet it exists within the same world as The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, and in the same Multiverse as Supergirl, which means that it is totally within the realms of possibility that Oliver Queen could be stalked by an off-brand version of Bat-Mite, because that is totally a thing in continuity now. The fact that they're dealing with something as down to earth as the Bratva and that nuclear bombs are still quite a big deal for them make the foundering sub-Gotham of Star City feel like a very small and mundane corner of a world that is leaving it behind, economically and ontologically (and in a way that never seems to happen to Gotham itself.)

(1) Seriously, he ducks through a door, they spend at most half a minute punching out his bodyguards and then immediately declare him lost. No sound of a car, no recce outside the door, just "Damn, he got away." Out of shot, out of mind, I guess.

(2) Although surely the old Russian photos would be the first, 'Hood' iteration of the costume. 

The Librarians - '...and the Curse of Cyndi', '...and the Eternal Question', '...and the Fatal Separation' and '...and the Wrath of Chaos'

"I'm a bloodsucking fiend; look at my outfit."

Okay, it's been a little while, but I've got the rest of Season 3 of The Librarians watched now, so let's bring it on home.

'...and the Curse of Cyndi' (or possibly 'Cindy'; the character in question changed her name one way or the other,) takes the entire team to a cult compound in search of an artefact responsible for the cult's meteoric rise. The Centre of the cult is Cyndi, a seemingly ordinary young woman and unlikely focus of absolute devotion, who effortlessly sucks Flynn and Jake into her orbit, although she has no effect on Ezekiel. Jenkins suggests that the cause is an obsession potion, and that Ezekiel is immune because of his total devotion to himself. As the team seek out the maker of the potion, however, it is Ezekiel who is able to reach Cyndi herself, convince her of the lie of her existence and that there is a better way to live with loss and rejection than mass ensorcelment.

MVL of the Week: Totally Ezekiel. This is one of those episodes which reminds us that Ezekiel is more than just a one-note trickster, and like '...and the Point of Salvation' it once more does so in a way that emphasises his determination to hide his better self from his teammates. He would rather be thought of as too much of a selfish jerk to be affected by a love spell than have it be thought he possesses a sensitive soul. Moreover, it is critical that he presents himself to Cyndi as a friend, and the show never suggests that he might have done otherwise. It is established that he is in love with her, and clear that she is utterly for any kind of affection. Ezekiel gives her the validation that she needs in an utterly selfish fashion and, and this is rare, without anyone ever making a big deal about it. It would be utterly reprehensible to take advantage of Cyndi, but not doing so is not admirable, it's just right.

Also, I love that the moral of the story is 'when other people cast you aside, seek solace in egoism.'

"I actually am a bloodsucking fiend."

Solace is also being sought in '...and the Eternal Question', as Cassandra learns that her mathemagical tumour is about to kill her. She invites Jenkins on a date, which is kind of awkward, as he explains that as fond as he is of her, he swore his love eternally to another, who did not choose him. He is also a little distracted, helping Flynn to decoy Eve off on holiday.

Back on the ranch, as it were, a golfer and his wife spontaneously combust after his cancer was miraculously cursed at a spa, the Librarians discover that the spa is run by vampires, but vampires who walk in the sunlight and do not appear to feed on blood. They learn that the owner of the refuge came there with her children from Spain and found that the place seemed to free them from the curses of vampiric life. Cassandra forms a bond with the daughter of the family, Estrella, who is shocked that the golfer and his wife seemed to have been turned, let alone that they were able to survive away from the sanctuary. When Estrella's brother turns out to be experimenting on guests to try to become an unstoppable, daywalking predator, Jenkins appears to settle the hash of his goons, while Estrella and Cassandra take down the brother.

Cassandra collapses and agrees to surgery, despite knowing that she might lose her gift and fearing that she might then become a liability to the team. In fact, she soon discovers that her gift has grown with the removal of the tumour, allowing her to project thoughts into other people's heads.

MVL of the Week: Actually, all three of these episodes are pretty easy, as they each focus on a different character, much as '...and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy' was Baird's and '...and the Trial of the Triangle' Flynn's. This was Cassandra's show, exploring both her fear of irrelevance and her openness to the supernatural world. Where Jake and Ezekiel immediately begin collecting crucifixes, she doesn't need to be told that Flynn once loved a vampire to put her trust in Estrella.

Honourable mention to Jenkins for being a total badass.

"We're relic hunting fiends; just look at our outfits."

'...and the Fatal Separation' takes the team to Shangri-La, where Jake has been training for a month with the Monkey King, because of course he has. When Shangri-La is invaded by ninja, Jake summons the team to help. Cassandra and Ezekiel hilariously pose as relic smugglers, but Eve is dummied away and accosted by her ex-boss and mentor, a general who now runs DOSA and wants her to betray the Library to them for the good of the nation. She also claims that Eve was placed in the Library by arranging her encounter with Flynn, although that seems hinky given that she received a magical invitation and all. Back in this week's plot, Jake has to fight his sifu, who has been driven into a rage by a relic, while Flynn discovers that Charlene arranged to be captured by the ninjas as the ideal place to hide from Apep. It all ends well, but then Charlene has to sever her connection with the Library so that she can not be used to attack it, which results in the loss of her immortality after a fond farewell to her knight, Jenkins.

MVL of the Week: Jake takes a serious level in badass this week, but he does have to share the spotlight with a arc-service far more than the others did.

"Just look at our outfits."

Which brings us to '...and the Wrath of Chaos', as the team are dummied into the wilds while Eve lets DOSA into the Library. Flynn attempts to hide as many artefacts as possible, while Jenkins tries to delay the invaders, only to be confronted by the head of Medusa, nicked by Eve for the purpose. The three Librarians rescue Jenkins from a cage designed to be Librarian proof (the right answers trigger security measures; only the exact opposites will work,) while Eve's insistence that DOSA's Apep containment is substandard causes the General to check and be possessed. She then brings a bomb to the Library, where Eve reveals that she has been working with Flynn to set a trap for Apep, although only Jenkins knows that Eye of Ra-ing the God of Chaos requires that Flynn sacrifice his own life.

In the final confrontation, the Librarians unleash their secret weapons on Apep - the 'gift of inner soul' awarded by the Monkey King, Cassandra's ability to transmit thought, and the last of Cyndi's love potion so that Apep can 'have a heart'. The god is thus granted all the essential qualities of a human being, and his life can be sacrificed to contain the evil he sought to unleash in the Eye of Ra. Flynn and Eve point out how easily the General was tricked into becoming the host of Chaos and rather gleefully take back all their things, while the Librarians swear off using magic save as a last resort, having seen how easily it can corrupt or be abused.

MVL of the Week: The ensemble, for sure.

This final batch of episodes are a slightly mixed bag. '..and the Curse of Cyndi' is top notch, as Ezekiel episodes often are. '...and the Eternal Question' is decent, but '...and the Fatal Separation' is trying to do too many things at once and the finale does not cap off the season as beautifully as the first two seasons. I still love the show, but that's probably why I'm tougher on it than I might be if it were purely disposable to me.

Legion - 'Chapter 3'

The best part of waking up...

Things take a turn for the weird(er) in 'Chapter 3' of Legion.

With his sister in Division 3 custody, David is eager to move forward with his training, but we open with a slow montage of life in the retreat, over which an automated coffee machine tells the story of an old woodcutter and his wife who unknowingly adopt a crane as their daughter. we will later learn that the voice is that of Melanie's husband, who was killed in a disagreement with one of their early partners, a mutant who now works for Division 3. David and Syd see this former partner when they project to Amy's interrogation during another attempt to scan David's brain activity.

The definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a
different result. Well... insanity or chaso theory.

Potonomy tries to work through the gaps in David's memory, but although they manage to see more, David realise that they are not seeing the same things that he is seeing; they are not seeing the yellow-eyed devil. Also, he periodically teleports them to a different room during the memory-work session, which is a thing.

It's noteworthy at this point that after they find themselves in the wrong room on waking, Potonomy asks David 'What are you?' suggesting that he is something more, or other, than a mutant.

With the pressure on to move forward with Amy's rescue, Syd accompanies the next memory session, with David sedated to reduce his resistance to the process. He is initially reluctant, fearing that she will feel differently about him if she sees him as he was when he was a junkie (including his sexual relationship with Lenny.) Sedated David appears in the memory world as a child, which is clearly confusing for Syd, since this is the one place she can touch him. She sees the devil, and the world shake and crack around them, which the others do not; although Melanie does get her hand bitten by the memory of the book The World's Angriest Boy in the World.  Syd and child-David are pursued through ducts by the boy from the book and the yellow-eyed devil, and David falls comatose.

Imaginary Lenny is trying on a new look.

As I suspected might happen, the show this week confronted Melanie's reductive approach to mental illness and superpowers. Imaginary Lenny showed up looking oddly sleek and casting doubts on whether he actually has powers at all. After that, David confides his fear to Syd that maybe just because he has superpowers doesn't mean he is definitely sane. This added nuance and the increasing sense of danger within the memory work, plus the threat to Amy, picks up some of the slack that 'Chapter 2' fell into. It's clear that far more action is going to take place within David's mind in this series than in the outer world, and I think I can live with that.

Emerald City - 'Mistress - New - Mistress'

"We've been thinking about putting in solar panels."

Destiny looms, in the next episode of the latest Oz adaptation.

Dorothy continues towards Oz, but a near-miss with Eamonn the Unspeakably Rowdy reveals that the Wizard wants her found and killed, although she still has no idea why. In search of answers,she and Lucas travel to East's palace, where Dorothy's possession of East's jewelled gauntlets - known as the Elements - convinces her major domo Suleiman that Dorothy was secretly trained as East's successor.

Elsewhere, there are witches committing magical suicide and the weather is going cray cray, as weather was what East controlled. Anna, the new girl on the Wizard's Council of Nuns, is the only one to realise that this is messing with the omens of the Beast Forever's return, and that all of the Council's calculations are therefore off. This wins her favour with the Wizard, although she kind of blows it by realising that one of his supposed powers - command of an army of giant automata - may have been a teensy bit exaggerated. She is banged up, but not before - correctly - predicting snow in midsummer.

Witch stylin'.

Also exaggerated is Dorothy's degree of being a trainee witch, but she agrees to try to tame the weather, intending to leap into the Witch of the East's control tornado and whisk herself back to Kansas. First, however, she has to be purified, which involves having a bath and putting on a floaty red dress. Then she has to walk on water and tame a giant snake - essentially the magical equivalent of username and password - to enter the tornado and end up in... midwinter beside a river full of shopping trolleys. It's not what she was expecting, but even less so is she expecting to find evidence that her mother was here. Returning, she sparks a brouhaha with Suleiman when it becomes apparent that she isn't the trainee and that the Witch did not die peacefully, but by her own hand. He does reveal, before they cheese it, that her mother was an interloper brought to the tornado to be got rid of, and should have stayed in the land of trolleys.

In our final thread, Jack and Tip travel to the city of Ev in search of more of the medicine which apparently stopped Tip becoming a girl. They find an apothecary, but he won't make more of the potion. He tells them that what Mombi was dosing Tip with is a black elixir; illegal magic that keeps the drinker from being what they truly are. Tip may only remember being a boy, but his 'real' self is the girl.

Which is... a hell of a thing, and I think the series does very well here. Tip wants to become a boy again, while Jack tries to kiss him, because Tip still identifies as male, while Jack is... pretty shallow really, and more to the point has immediately redefined Tip by apparent, biological gender.

Jack: Not an ally.

I'm not saying that Jack deserves to be pushed off a roof, but it was a dick move, and accidents happen.

So, Dorothy seems to be a witch, but nevertheless, Tip is by far the most interesting thing in this series so far. I don't know how contemplative the genderswitching in Oz is, but Emerald City appears to be looking at more than just his biological sex. While a boy is what he was made by Mombi, it is also the only thing he has ever known himself to be, which is why I'm going to continue using he until the character indicates otherwise.

Person of Interest - 'B.S.O.D.'

Thirty seconds may be a new minimum time to start shooting things.

Person of Interest returns for its short and heavily spoilered - thanks, Wikipedia - final season, finally arriving in the UK.

We pick up where we left off - after a short 'this is the day we died' style voice over from Root - with Team Machine making their way back to the subway station, the Machine itself in a suitcase, and all the might of Samaritan pursuing them. Battered and bloodied, Reese and Finch make it back, but the case is damaged and losing power, while Samaritan uses its own soldiers and 'civilian assets' (read 'ordinary folks manipulated by their media feeds') to hound Root until she takes refuge with old contacts in the Russian mob.

Finch tries to restore power to the Machine's life support, but she panics and tries to decompress into his laptop, which has nowhere near enough room for her. Root's contacts betray her, but Reese shows up in characteristic nick of time. She's so pleased to see him that she barely snarks at all, and having dealt with their hunters they steal a bunch of games consoles from the Russians and head for home, where they make a supercomputer home for the Machine out of product placement.

"So, any games console would do?"
"No, these games consoles have a unique sponsorship deal. I mean,
architecture."

At the precinct, Fusco experiences the power of Samaritan, as the FBI derail the internal affairs investigation into the deaths of Elias and Dominic with a bogus ballistics report. The official version of events becomes that Dominic's people tried to spring him, and Fusco shot Dominic in self-defence. Unofficially, neither Fusco nor the IA investigator buy it. Fusco follows Reese's advice and keeps Mum, even when he finds evidence of the sniper, but the investigator pushes and gets 'adjusted' when his pacemaker malfunctions.

In flashbacks, we see the birth of the Machine and Finch's initial decision to erase her memory every 24 hours to prevent her growing into something that would threaten humanity. In the present, he determines that, if the Machine survives, he will not hamper it with the restrictions that left it unable to fight back effectively against the unrestrained Samaritan.

Oh my goodness, it's good to see Person of Interest again, even if only for a short season. I suspect we're going to be laser focused, with relatively few numbers of the week, as the show completes its transition from do-right procedural to deep, dark conspiracy thriller. I also get the feeling it's going to be dark; and when I say 'get the feeling' I mean 'read in the Wikipedia brief character notes'. Perhaps the most interesting thing, however, is that we're definitely angling towards a scenario in which it takes an AI to beat an AI, rather than a triumph of the human spirit, aligning it more with traditional cyberpunk than mainstream TV SF.

The Magicians - 'Knight of Crowns'

"Royalty, bitches."

Somewhat out of nowhere, it's the return of surprisingly good, heavily desaturated urban sorcery serial The Magicians.

Quentin trades some of his blood to a healer for her to come and help his friends, only to discover that they are doing much better than expected. The Beast apparently underestimated the potency of Alice's god power; she recovered from her own injuries and was able to revive Margo and Eliot and stabilise Penny. They're all pretty pissed with Julia – understandably enough – although Quentin makes a fairly crap argument in her favour, as he is the one who knows what was done to her. Margo takes Penny to a healing spring to reattach his hands, while the others take stock and decide that they need to get coronated, head to Castle Whitespire and consult the Armoury, a vast library of battle magic which may have given Rupert Chatwin the means to alter the course of WWII, for a means to fight the Beast. At the spring, Penny gets his hands reattached, but antagonises the guardian when asked for payment and gets stuck with defective fingers as a result.

Team Filory head for the Crowning Place, a rocky lake shore where they meet the eponymous 'Knight of Crowns', a Last Crusadesy type who apologises for dying while waiting for them and quizzes them on 90s showbiz trivia to establish their terrestrial credentials, eventually handing over the crowns in appreciation of Eliot's recitation of Patrick Swayze's 'last dance of the season' speech from Dirty Dancing. Insisting on at least a modicum of ritual, Quentin crowns Eliot as High King Eliot the Spendid, then Eliot crowns Margo High Queen and Alice as Queen (dubbing them 'the Destroyer' and 'the Wise' respectively,) and Margo dubs Quentin 'the Moderately Socially Maladjusted.' They also use the occasion to do some much needed apologising for being arseholes, and Alice makes moves to letting Quentin repair their relationship.

Penny returns to the spring to offer the world's worst apology, and the custodian tells him that it is important that someone in his future position understand that actions have consequences. I'm guessing something to do with the Library in the Neitherlands, but we'll see I'm sure. At Whitespire the royalty discover that the Armoury has been well and truly looted, and realise that the only place they can learn the necessary battle magic now is Brakebills. Unfortunately, the high King of Filory can't just up and leave, which means that Eliot has to stay behind. Given the time difference, this could mean that we will never see Eliot again, which would be a crying shame.

It is the creepiest thing that the man who basically killed Narnia and crushed
his sister's head like a satsuma is basically a traumatised manchild who loves
playgrounds and curly straws.

Back on Earth – interleaved with the above and weirdly in roughly concurrent time, so maybe we will get more Eliot (yay!) – Julia cements her deal with Martin/the Beast: He helps her to destroy Renard without trying to murder, harm or control her, and she gives up the Leo Dagger; specifically, she sets it down, so there's still a chance of her picking it back up again, if not a good one. They begin to track Renard through a string of murdered ritual practitioners and Martin proposes creating a net to hold the god, if only for a short moment, thus providing a suitable stabbing opportunity. Martin, who has a creepy love of children and play areas, tries to persuade Julia to join him in his nebulous great cause by severing her shade, the part of her spirit that feels pain and love, but she refuses.

'Knight of Crowns' does a lot of set-up work, and it will be interesting to see how the pacing goes from next week. Season 1 did a lot of setting up before really cranking the pace, and I'm hopeful that we'll see this season pick up faster. After all, we know Brakebills pretty well by now, and have a pretty solid grasp on the magical underground outside its ivy-warded halls, so not much should be needed there. Overall, 'The Knight of Crowns' confirms that all within the series is still present and correct, from Quentin's well-meaning incompetence to Eliot's snark, which at least bodes well for future instalments.

Choices - MacGyver

"So... basically we're doing extraordinary rendition now?"

MacGyver; you have failed this blog.

Yeah, so after three episodes I'm calling time on MacGyver. I might watch a few more episodes if there's nothing else grabbing me, but… It's just not very good, and certainly not sharp enough to contend with the current field. Part of it is the aforementioned attempt to be too much like the original, and part is that I just don't remember the original Mac doing quite so much official government violation of sovereign borders. Most of the time he was just doing his thing and had to help someone out, or stumbled on terrorists while back packing. This new Mac... he's all about the illegal, unethical sanctioned on the QT abduction of foreign nationals from extra-territorial locations.

Legion - 'Chapter 2'

Less an institution, more of a retreat.

In the second episode of Fox's not-MCU yet not actually X-Men series, things have not improved much for David Haller. He's still largely confined to an institutional setting, having tests run on him by Melanie Bird and her specialists.

He does 'memory work' with Potonomy – one of the mutants who rescued him – to reconnect the fragments of his past which have become dissociated by years of medical and recreational drug use and abuse, mislabelling as schizophrenic breaks and deliberate repression. He recalls a children's book that his father read him called The World's Angriest Boy in the World, about a child who murders his mother, as well as sessions with his psychiatrist talking about a girlfriend who repeatedly leaves him and returns in a cycle of emotional manipulation. A man named Cary runs him through an MRI to study his brain activity, all in an attempt to discover the means by which he can control his own power.

He also gets to spend time with Syd, who reveals that she does have contact issues on top of the risk of her power swapping her mind with someone else. She explains that she was picked up by Melanie's people because they detected her use of his powers and thought that she was him, while he was taken by Division 3, one of a number of government divisions studying mutants. She also admits that she remembers killing Lenny while she was in his body. Melanie tells him that he is one of the most powerful they have ever come across, and assures him that any time he thought he was mad, that was his powers in action.

 

"Well... You're creepy."

While in the MRI, he has a vision of his sister trying to find out why he is no longer at the Clockworks, and being threatened with committal when she rejects the receptionist's assurance that no David Haller was ever admitted, nor did David's doctor ever work there. As she leaves, rattled by the suggestion that she might suffer paranoid delusions – or that she might be thought to suffer them – she is followed by the man from Division 3 who wasn't incinerated during the rescue. He tries to leave to rescue her, but Syd persuades him to stay, train, and then rescue Amy when he is more capable. Amy will be more or less safe, as she is the bait for him.

Despite a slower pace, Legion continues to be an intense, cerebral, slightly surreal examination of the superhero mythos. The X-Men has always used mutation as a stand in for any and every prejudice, but in its explicit connection of superpower and mental illness, Legion walks territory that is likely to be uncomfortable for a lot of viewers. For myself, I think the most uncomfortable thing is Melanie's blithe and reductive assurance that everything in David's life that he thought was mental illness was actually a sign of his powers; he is a telepath and probable telekinetic, so apparently he can't also be mentally ill. I strongly suspect – or perhaps fervently hope – that the show will confront this assumption, implicitly if not outright.

Supergirl - 'Luthors'

"When you're in the big house, you take the laughs were you can get 'em."

It's time for who do you trust? Hubba hubba hubba, money money money, who do ya trust?

As Lillian Luthor's trial for the attempted mass-murder of aliens (which I guess is a crime,) dominates the headlines, she reaches out to her adopted daughter for reconciliation. Metallo takes the stand and starts shooting green death out of his chest, and he and Lillian vanish after dropping a crane to force Supergirl to choose between capturing the bad guy and saving the innocent. Video evidence implicates the hell out of Lena Luthor, who is arrested over Kara's lone voice of protest. J'onn and Alex regretfully concede that she looks guilty AF, while James gets on his high horse about Kara trusting Lena not to commit cries more than she trusts him to run around in an armoured suit fighting superhumans without getting hurt.

He has a point about her being overprotective, but it's somewhat lost in his insistence that she trust him while absolutely shutting out her thoughts and opinions on Lena Luthor, whom she knows pretty much as well as anyone does. And indeed, she is right, and Lillian has framed Lena to try to coerce her into using her DNA (as she turns out to also be Lionel Luthor's illegitimate daughter,) to open Lex's secret armoury of anti-alien macuffinry.

"Personal space is just something that doesn't apply to other people in your
book, right?"

Metallo busts Lena out, knocking down Guardian to do so, but Winn is able to uncover proof that the real Hank Henshaw hacked the video feed to make Lena look guilty, and also to track Metallo via an instability in his synthetic kryptonite heart. Kara rescues Lena, but Hank and Lillian escape as Metallo explodes. Lena thanks Kara for her trust, before flashing back to a chess game as children to drop the hint that she might just be much, much better at this whole evil thing than anyone else in her family.

In personal subplot land, Alex introduces Maggie to her friends to a resounding chorus of routine acceptance (J'onn apparently knew all along that Alex was gay, but didn't feel it his place to say anything. Bloody telepaths.) Eve reveals that Mon-el spent their entire date talking about Kara and Kara decides to give things a shot with Mon-el, only for their kiss to be interrupted by the arrival, not as I had predicted of those alien bounty hunters, but by Mister Mxyzptlk, who declares his love for Kara.

Congratulations, Supergirl. You went there, to a there that I didn't even think of as an option you might reject(1).

This guy. Spoilers: He doesn't actually look like this in the show.

'Luthors' is a not uninteresting episode, but highlights a problem with the current arc plot, to whit that the friendship between Kara and Lena has only come up in episodes where shit happens to Lena. If we're going to buy it as an ongoing part of Kara's life, and a relationship that she'll butt heads with her other friends over, we really need to see it as an ongoing thing, even if Katie McGrath just pops in every so often to keep the connection live in our minds. Essentially, we shouldn't be kicking off each Lena Luthor episode with 'oh, yeah; they're mates.'

Other than that, and the total disinterest I have in the Kara/Mon-el relationship, this is another decent episode, with the more investigative slant and the instability issue setting it apart from previous clashes with Metallo.

Next week is going to be… weird.

(1) This shoves Arrow even more to the outliers of its own 'verse, although if we get an appearance by Arrow-Mite, they're not going to be able to deny that they really wanted Batman anymore.

Agents of SHIELD - 'Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire'

"Come on then! I'll throw a shrimp on ya!"

They say that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. It's understandable that your average spod on the street might ignore this truism, but I find it less forgivable when an Agent of SHIELD like Jessica Simmons blithely wanders off to view the perfect house which dropped into her lap via email.

Fortunately, it turns out to only be Daisy, who needs some help with a bullet wound courtesy of the Watchdogs, who are totes Up to Something Big™. Daisy coerces Simmons, officially at gunpoint, into helping her get hold of a copy of the list the Watchdogs are working from to track registered Inhumans via their GPS locators. Top of their list is James, who is working in a fireworks store. Simmons wants to help him to not get dead, but Daisy is pushing him to join her cause and hunt the Watchdogs.

Meanwhile, Coulson and Mack are following the trail of Momentum Alternative Energy to Robbie's uncle Eli, who is unwilling to give them the time of day. When they manage to capture Robbie by tricking him into colliding with the invisible Quinjet, Coulson takes the chance of making a deal with Robbie to work together. They learn from Eli that the man he put in a coma was responsible for the experiments which killed multiple researchers at Momentum by attempting to utilise the Darkhold, a book of ultimate knowledge. Green energy from black magic; who could have seen that going wrong?

"Did two fire dudes just fall into a fireworks warehouse?"
"You had to see that coming."

Scumbag James turns out to be a scumbag (shock, horror,) having decided post-Hive that all Inhumans are bastards. He has been working with the Watchdogs, letting them hack the database via his GPS, and has set Daisy and Simmons up for an ambush. In return for his aid, he gets to die last. Fortunately, Coulson gets an alert that an asset (James) may be in danger and shows up with Mack and Robbie, who is basically not fussed about a pyrogenic Inhuman what with the whole tempered in the flames of Hell thing he has going on. They fight, fall into a fireworks warehouse and Robbie drags James out unconscious and chained up.

Coulson recruits Daisy and Robbie for a mission to recover the Darkhold. When they stop to pick up May from Dr Radcliffe's, Simmons immediately makes Ada for an android, which could mean even more trouble on her next lie detector test.

Season 4 continues to struggle a little with two so-far unrelated plots: The Watchdogs and the Darkhold. It's actually a plot point that they are having to choose between two evils to fight (although in part this must be self-inflicted now that they're official again,) but unless something comes of it it's still just cluttered plotting. I'm more interested to see where the show goes with the Darkhold, and in particular the obvious crossover with the magical concepts introduced in Doctor Strange.

Star Wars Rebels - 'Legacy of Mandalore'

"Leave it, Ezra; it's fam'ly!"

Okay, folks; brace yourselves. Things are gonna change around here.

Armed with the Darksaber and accompanied by Fenn Rau, Kanan and Ezra, Sabine returns home to persuade her mother, Countess Ursa Wren, to help her bring the Mandalorians into the rebellion, hinting that they have something big planned. Things go reasonably well at first, with Ursa explaining that, far from rejecting her daughter as a traitor, she never wanted her to come home because away from the rest of the clan she was safe. Unfortunately, Mandalorian Meanie Governor Saxon has Sabine's father hostage and Ursa is persuaded to cut a deal: The two Jedi in exchange for Sabine's safety.

Naturally, Saxon decides to alter the deal, as it were, accusing Ursa of consorting with Rebels and intending to take down the entire Wren Clan. Rau breaks the standoff, and the Rebels and Clan Wren throw down with Saxon's supercommandos. Ultimately, Saxon faces off again Sabine, he wielding the Darksaber and she Ezra's lightsabre, just in case there was any doubt that non-Jedi could use a regular lightsabre. Sabine defeats Saxon, Clan Wren turns against the Empire and Sabine… Sabine opts to remain with her clan; to help them defeat the Imperial Mandalorians and reclaim their own world, before – hopefully – coming to stand with the Rebellion.

 

Not the duel you might have been expecting.

This, obviously, is huge. Sabine is the first main crew member to depart the series, although if it's true that they are wrapping up Rebels in preparation for a new show, not such a big thing I guess. Maybe we'll see her again(1) in the series, however. I hope so. All-in-all, it's a good move for the character, although some of her character arc feels it has been a little rushed or erratic due to the early seasons' focus on Ezra. It's been good to see her get serious screen time lately, and this season has really impressed me with its commitment to the narratives of the non-Jedi characters.

(1) I admit, I was rather hopeful about references to Laura Dern playing a pink-haired Resistance leader in The Last Jedi, but the elegant dresses seem a little out of character and, in retrospect, I'm glad. As much as I'd like to see Rebels characters show up in the new movies – either main series or Stories – I'm pretty sure that all of the Wrens have been voiced by actors of Indian heritage, and I'd like to see that continued in live action.

Emerald City - 'Prison of the Abject'

"Were you looking for a veteran British character actor?"

We're off to see the Wizard,

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Because, because, because, because, because,

Because of the dubious beard he has.

We open with Dorothy trying to teach the amnesiac Lucas about knock-knock jokes, only for him to be overcome with blood poisoning. She gets directions to an apothecary named Mombi, who turns out to be a witch who lives in a house with a magically activated thorn-bush door, which I'm pretty sure is illegal in the Wizard's Oz. Depressingly, I'm far less certain of the legal status of Tip, the boy she keeps locked up 'to protect him', but Tip certainly feels that free is what he's meant to be, and intends to be so with the help of his friend Jack.

The fearsome Geometric Guard.

In the Emerald City, the last remaining Cardinal Witches gather for the funeral of East, which will seal away her soul and magic. In a PR move, the Wizard opens the ceremony to the public, knowing that it's some freaky shit and will damage the witches' standing with the people. Glinda of the North also brings a new councillor/nun from her orphanage to make political side-eye at Councillor Knocked-Up, and tells him that since he banned witches from taking apprentices, no-one knows how to maintain the spells on the Prison of the Abject where potential witches are held(1), so nyeah.

Speaking of, the Wizard's goon Eamonn leads a group of guards through the Prison in pursuit of Dorothy, and kills a would-be mutineer who for some reason mistakes Mr Intense for a shiftless eccentric.

Mombi takes Dorothy and Lucas in and treats the latter's wounds, despite identifying him by his sword as one of the Wizard's witch-killing guards, only for Dorothy to get all confrontational about Tip. While Mombi is sleeping, her guests try to help Tip escape and the boy gets away, although he refuses to let Jack steal anything. Mombi goes all Black Canary and Lucas flips out, stabs her and bashes her face into a pulp. As Dorothy leaves, Lucas follows, face all bloodied, and tries to engage her with a knock knock joke, which, fair play, is hella creepy.

Out in the woods, Tip runs out of medicine and, as much to his surprise as Jack's(2), turns into a girl. Back at the house, Mombi starts to recover, because only a witch can kill a witch, if you recall.

"Of course I'm a girl now; look how much hair I have."

Emerald City is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm starting to suspect that it is secretly brilliant, but that a wealth of strong ideas are mired in the unfortunate collision of director Tarsem Singh's unique vision and the constraints of an Anglo-American television budget. The casting is a dead giveaway – all unknown talent and jobbing thespians, with D'Onofrio the only significant 'name' – although the problem is definitely not the actors. Rather, it lies in a production where every element is heavy with unachieved spectacle. I am reminded somewhat of the original production of Neverwhere, a decent effort that had everything necessary to be amazing except a realistic expectation of what was possible on a television budget, although at least Emerald City wasn't stuck with Neverwhere's video filming problem.

I'm still on board with Emerald City for now, but with Person of Interest and The Magicians coming back, and my family due to move in with me in a month's time, we may be approaching another crunch.

(1) I'm pretty sure this is the same spell that she used on Lucas and Dorothy last episode, which makes them roll around on the floor, convinced that they are trapped in a James Bond opening sequence.

(2) Although serious Baumheads were almost certainly all going 'duh!'

Timeless - 'The Capture of Benedict Arnold'

It must be nice to have Washington on your side.

This week, the team travel back in time to the War of Independence to prevent the assassination of George Washington by the brainwashed Rip Hunter and… No, wait; damnit. That was Legends of Tomorrow.

Okay, this week, the team travel back in time to the War of Independence, where they know Garcia Flynn is up to some shenanigans involving Benedict Arnold, the man who tried to surrender West Point to the British and became a byword for treachery after his death in comfortable retirement in England. Before they go, Agent Christopher gives Lucy a flash drive containing a record of her family, in case the team ever comes back and finds that her children have been erased.

The team are captured by Patriot forces, but freed when Flynn – having murdered and replaced Washington's spymaster Rowe with consummate ease(1) – explains that they are his homies. Flynn believes Arnold to be up to the eyeballs with the original Rittenhouse after finding a letter from Arnold in the clock that Ford's key unlocked, and promises to surrender himself to justice and tell Wyatt who killed his wife, if the Lifeboat team will help him to kill the weed at its root. This involves the four of them pretending to defect to the British, ostensibly to capture Arnold for trial, but in fact to beat him up until he agrees to introduce them – or at least the white folks, since that's the kind of dude Rittenhouse is – to Rittenhouse himself.

"There are things I will not tolerate. Uppity negros. Feisty women. Assassins
from the future set on protecting the democratic rights of the masses. And also
sloppy clockmaking."

Rittenhouse turns out to be a creepy clockmaker with a heavily trod-upon son, who explains his father's belief that democracy is a smokescreen to convince the masses that they have power, while a secret cabal wields the only effective form of government: Tyranny(2). Rittenhouse spots them for assassins in a heartbeat and decides that he's going to have Flynn and Wyatt shot and Lucy for a sex slave. Dude; even evil can be classy, you know. He also shoots Arnold with Wyatt's gun, because this is the price of failure, and clearly has plans in his little clockmakey brain to mass produce knock-off Brownings in the 18^th century. Fortunately, Rufus creates a ruckus, allowing Flynn to kill Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse Jr escapes, however, and Lucy prevents Flynn killing him as well, since he's just a child and since Rittenhouse clearly indicated that he was not a sole operator.

Flynn takes this philosophically and kidnaps Lucy. Meanwhile Rufus is left to deliver the recording of this to an increasingly suspicious Rittenhouse organisation, who have threatened to bump off his family if he messes with another recording and are unlikely to be philosophical about him giving his seal of approval to the assassination of their own articular founding father.

Perhaps a little disappointingly, Timeless hits its terminus post quem in the 18^th century, as if this is the founding of Rittenhouse then there will never be a need to chase further back. I always figure that for a weakness in a time travel show, but then again we have been told that the story of Rittenhouse is the story of America, and there is always a chance – should the series be renewed – to reveal even earlier roots. On the upside, this false denouement provides the solid shakeup that the formula has been wanting; with the team separated and Rufus facing near-certain death in the present, it seems a pretty sure thing that we won't just be getting another temporal brouhaha of the week next episode.

This week, the team's vacillation over the rightness of their course and the justifiability of murder was interesting, not least because of Rufus' resentment of Lucy's moral position. Murder appals her, and he clearly feels – having shot someone for the sake of the timeline – that her absolutism is a judgement on him (and less emotively, Wyatt.) The fact that of the three of them, he is also the only one being personally threatened by Rittenhouse in the nownow is also clearly a thing, with the mission for him clearly far more than just a matter of historical pragmatism.

(1) Apparently Rowe and Washington never met, but I continue to be amazed at how smoothly Flynn fits into a time, and yet how badly Team Lifeboat do the same.

(2) I increasingly expect to see Flynn putting on the white hoodie and parkouring around the past.