The Librarians... - '...and the Hidden Sanctuary', '...and a Town Called Feud', '...and Some Dude Named Jeff', '...and the Trial of One' and '...and the Echoes of Memory'

It is with a heavy heart that I turn to this review, of the final five episodes of The Librarians. The word is out and the series has been cancelled, but at least it got a suitable send off.

Normal.

'...and the Hidden Sanctuary' sees Cassandra taking a sabbatical in the safest town in America, to ty out what a normal life feels like and decide if it might be for her if she had to quit the Library to prevent a civil war. Unfortunately, while the town is almost impossibly safe, her arrival seems to coincide with a breakdown of its perfect order. With the help of a young boy who has realised since moving to the town that something is very wrong, but all the adults too scare to speak about it, she discovers that the town is protected by a bound faerie. Unfortunately, her arrival by magic door has fractured the binding, releasing the now heartily pissed of faerie. Only Cassandra has any chance of stopping the rampage, but first she'll have to convince the town that stoning her won't solve their problems.

"Does it say 'colonel' anywhere on my uniform?"

Then it's time for Jake and Ezekiel to explore the threat of civil war, as they travel to a town called Feud in '...and a Town Called Feud'. Feud is a town that thrives on Civil War tourism, especially around the bloody rift between two brothers, one a Rebel and the other a Union man. The owner of the local museum is determined to reunite the two halves of a locket symbolising their broken fraternal bond, but the ghosts of the dead seem set on perpetuating the struggle. Yet as the Librarians are caught up in the hauntings, all may not be as it seems. Meanwhile, back in the annex, Cassandra treats Jenkins to high tea and they look for more information on the Library civil war, which convinced Cassandra that there truly can be only one.

"Clean up, aisle seven."

Before we hit the big finish, it's Jenkins' - and John Laroquette's - time to shine, in '...and Some Dude Named Jeff'. Jenkins wakes up in a basement room, while his place in the annex has been taken by a slacker named Jeff. Jenkins discovers that Jeff has been studying the Librarians and idolising Jenkins for months, before finding a spell book on the internet which allowed him to Freak Friday his hero. Unfortunately, the book is also one of the most dangerous in existence, and Jenkins must call on the courage and resourcefulness of Jeff's D&D group to aid him in penetrating the Library's back door, in order to find Jeff and reverse the spell, before a monstrous force can destroy... well, pretty much everything.

This could be going better.

With the critical equinox closing in and no decision as to who will anchor the Library to humanity alongside Baird, the Librarians enact a spell to cause the Library to choose in '...and the Trial of One'. Unfortunately, this trial is to the death, and the three Librarians are forced to face their worst nightmares. Escaping these requires them to surrender the memory of their friends, thus allowing them to fight to the death. Baird is able to break out of her own nightmare to aid them, but the Library - perhaps already drifting away from humanity, because it's being a real dick about the whole business - has decreed that the trials will be completed, two Librarians will be killed, or else Jenkins will die. Despite their best efforts, the Librarians can not overcome the Library, and the enacting of this penalty ultimately drives all three to resign.

The Librarians?

Finally, '...and the Echoes of Memory' (and to an extent the final scene of '...and the Trial of One') reveals that Nicole Noone has been playing a long game all along. She kidnapped Flynn and faked his resignation, as well as engineering the loss of Jenkins' immortality to provoke the others to leave, so that she can rule a world in which the Library never was. Such a world is a dystopian mehhole of conformity and bureaucracy. In this monochrome nightmare, Baird struggles to hold onto enough memory of the Library to recruit the three Librarians, find Flynn and somehow undo what Noone has done before it becomes irreversible.

And so, it ends. It ends, in fact, with a reversal of time which undoes most of this season's action, although I like to think that most of it plays out anyway, and especially that Jenkins is still DMing for Jeff and his mates, because that shit was adorable. I also like to think that they were able to convince Derrington Dare that he was full of it, tweak the nose of the Saint of Thieves, and just straight up punch Rasputin in his face. I kind of want to write the revised events as fanfic now, because... I won't deny it, I'm going to miss The Librarians, in all its whimsical and closely plotted glory. It's been a highlight of the television calendar for the last four years, and now it's gone. On the other hand, at least it didn't outstay its welcome and fade away into something I wasn't sorry to see end.

The Librarians - '…and the Steal of Fortune', '…and the Bleeding Crown', '…and the Graves of Time', and '…and the Disenchanted Forest'

Time for another binge of Season 4 of The Librarians, and boy howdy do we have some excitement this time out. 

Fortuna channels Cassandra's 'Honey Bear' character.

We begin with The Librarians 'and the Steal of Fortune'(1), in which Jake takes Ezekiel to visit an old buddy who trains race horses. Unfortunately for the friend, his luck has turned bad, and he is in the process of losing his last horse to the owner of the race track and casino, Bernie Konopka. Investigating, the two learn that Jake's friend is not the only one to suffer a run of bad luck, as freak accidents abound and race after race brings no winners, except for the owner of the winning horse; Bernie Konopka.

Suspecting a magical artefact, the Librarians turn out in force, but find themselves falling prey to the bad luck curse. Cassandra is sucked into playing roulette and Ezekiel the slots, losing time after time, until Cassie busts out her mega maths and Ezekiel gimmicks the machine to let him win. Ezekiel steals the suspected artefact, but it turns up a dud, while Cassie is abducted and accused of cheating. She and Jake realise at more or less the same time that Konopka's apparent arm-candy is in fact the goddess Fortuna, who has been stealing back her blessings of luck in order to return to her full power and - dare she say it - rule the world. The only way to beat her is to do as Cassie did and beat the curse, but how can you win when all luck is against you?

"It's like looking in a mirror..."

The Librarians 'and the Bleeding Crown' opens with the entire population of a small town becoming old overnight. The Librarians encounter Darrington Dare, a Librarian from the 1880s who was a huge inspiration to Flynn, and appears to have been pulled forward in time in pursuit of his nemesis, wizard and cloning pioneer Ambrose Gethick (played by The Musketeers' Howard Charles.) Dare is an effortlessly capable polymath, but has no time for friends and comrades, matching it to a secondary theme in '...and the Steal of Fortune', that Librarians can't have a normal life. Indeed, Dare tells Flynn that, with the extraordinary threat of Apep now past, it is his duty to dismiss the other Librarians lest a civil war break out, as once happened, resulting in the ignorance and superstition of the Dark Ages.

Dare and Flynn track down Gethick, who turns out to have captured Eve and the other Librarians in order to drain the Library's own power from them using the Bleeding Crown of Elizabeth Bathory to destroy Dare, who is impervious to all other magic. With the empowered Gethick too much for them, Flynn turns to his friends, getting the immortal Jenkins to overcharge the crown and causing Gethick to explode. Dare leaves and, contrary to prior history, connects with friends to live a long and happy life, but leaves a note for Flynn telling him he must still dismiss the other Librarians.

In an episode which might as well have been called The Guardians 'and the
Graves of Time'.

In The Librarians 'and the Graves of Time', Eve tracks down Nicole Noone, who is in pursuit of a group of Eastern European heavies who are breaking into her graves - she having been forced to 'die' from time to time in order to conceal her immortality - to steal artefacts. The rest of the team eventually join them, but then are split up, leaving Flynn and Nicole in pursuit of 'Koschei's Needle', a weapon which can kill anyone with a single wound, and even take the life of an immortal. The rest of the team wind up in the hands of the heavies and their boss - played by one-hit wonder Chris Heyerdahl - who tells them that he is the last descendent of the Romanovs, who were destroyed by Rasputin using sorcery taught to him by Noone.

The team go after Noone and Flynn, but it turns out that the supposed Romanov is in fact Rasputin himself, and that it was to kill him - not, as feared, Galahad - that Noone wanted the Needle. Noone is stabbed, but Eve and Flynn dummy Rasputin into stabbing a pipe full of radioactive waste, which the Needle - which turns out to be a kind of vampiric dagger - conducts into Rasputin until he explodes, which appears to be becoming a theme. To save Noone and make amends for misjudging her, Jenkins transfers his immortality to her, rendering him mortal once more. As if this were not enough of an upset, Flynn resigns from the Library, in order that there should be at least one fewer potential combatants in a Library Civil War. Of course, this upsets the planned binding ceremony between Flynn, Eve and the Library, and I wonder if Jenkins won't end up bound to restore his immortality and leave the others free(ish).

While '...and the Graves of Time' provided some important plot stuff, it felt
sooo good to get back to the ensemble after a Flynn-heavy couple of
episodes.

Anyway, all this melodrama leaves a somewhat shaken team at the top of The Librarians 'and the Disenchanted Forest'. With each one convinced that the others should step down if anyone has to, Eve takes them to a team building camp where weird things happen. The idyllic rural retreat proves to be rife with disappearances, and while Eve tried to ignore the potential cracks in her team, Jake becomes one of them. Cassandra tries to live out the summer camp pranks she has seen in movies, much to the annoyance of Ezekiel, but the come together - along with a team of DOSA agents - to seek out and rescue Jake, at least partially restoring their team mojo.

It turns out that the forest is at the heart of all forests. The tree spirits have been protecting it, while the owner of the camp has been covering up the disappearances as people quitting. Destroying the heart tree would doom all forests, but with Jake's linguistic gifts the tree is able to communicate this. It entrusts a 'zero seed' to Eve, and the DOSA agent in charge offers permanent 'Area 51 status'. Jake then shows a journalist he has become close to the Library and explains that she can't talk about it, and that he can't be with her, putting him at the top of the list if there is to be a singular Librarian at the end of this.

So, it's all change this season, and honestly there's an end of an era/series finale sort of vibe going on. No word on a fifth season yet, and there are two episodes as yet unaired anywhere, but I would not be surprised if this was it for out intrepid bibliophiles. If so, it's been a good run, and I'm glad it seems to be going out on a high, with some strong episodes in this run, and a strong thematic spine of renewal and change.

(1) Actually the second episode of the series, but shuffled around to allow '...and the Christmas Thief' to be shown at Christmas.

The Librarians - '... and the Dark Secret', '... and the Christmas Thief' and '... and the Silver Screen'

I don't think proper priests do like this.

What's that you say? A new season of The Librarians? I don't mind if I do.

We begin this series with 'The Librarians and the Dark Secret', in which a group of bad, bad Catholics(1) calling themselves the Order of Shadows, and devoted to destroying the Library in order to snuff out reason and learning, and bring about a new Dark Age. They have found a map which shows the locations of the four cornerstones of the original Library of Alexandria, which can be used to tear down the current incarnation of the Library. The Librarians' only hope is a secret Jenkins has been keeping from everyone; a prisoner held in the Library after seeking to destroy it. That prisoner is Nicole Noone, Flynn's first Guardian, thought dead but actually displaced in time. Can they trust Noone now, or is she pursuing a grudge of her own against the Library - and perhaps the Librarian - that never came to bring her back?

It's possible some of the Joneses may be adopted.

There might be some mucking with the order of episodes again, as we seem to have skipped '...and the Steal of Fortune' to get to 'The Librarians and the Christmas Thief' in time for the season. In this episode, we meet Ezekiel's family of thieves. Devotees of a figure called the Saint of Thieves, they celebrate the holiday of Thankstaking, and all look down on Ezekiel for his failure to steal anything worthwhile, since his dedication to moral thievery and now to his Library commitments prevents him doing the kind of stealing that they respect. As with many episodes focusing on this most superficial of the Librarians, it is one of the deeper and most emotional episodes, as any time you scratch the surface of Ezekiel the hidden depths just gush out and smack you in the feels.

'...and the Dark Secret' is arc led, but '...and the Christmas Thief' is character driven, and the better for it. As ever, John Kim digs deep to convince us that, for all his smarts, he would be willing to risk everything by showing his mother the Library. He does also get the chance to be recognised as one of the greatest thieves in the world, to defeat the Saint of Thieves, and make his mother and Santa Claus proud. The Librarians also have to 'borrow' Santa's sleigh to retrieve the magic door from Ezekiel's mother, which is really the sort of thing that lies at the heart of how much I love this series.

Also,I love noir.

Similarly, '...and the Silver Screen' does one of my favourite things and traps our heroes in a work of fiction. Eve and Flynn's date ends up with them trapped in one of her favourite noir classics. They try to follow the plot along to the end in order to escape - because this is The Librarians; of course they have protocols for this sort of thing - but it doesn't work, leading them to wonder if the film actually ends the way it was supposed to. That's a fascinating exploration of authorial intent right there. 

Also, the junior Librarians get trapped in a western trying to help, then wind up in a scifi B-movie, both of which are huge fun, before stumbling into the noir thriller to save the day with lassos and rayguns.

I found '...and the Dark Secret' to be a bit of a wobbly start, but the stand-alone episodes - in as much as The Librarians have actual stand-alone elements; traditionally, everything links in the end - were superb, not least because they moved Flynn back out of the limelight to let the junior team do their stuff. I don't hate Flynn, but I've grown to love the team, and our opener this year was very much about Flynn and his relationship with Noone. It also took out John Noble's dubious monsignor a little too quickly - few things are better for losing John Noble, although Sleepy Hollow certainly got worse, if not for keeping him around too long then for reasons relating to it - which means that the Order of Shadows and the Keystones probably aren't the arc plot. Which does beg the question what, if anything, is?

Oh, right! Flynn and Eve marrying the Library.

(1) No real priest would go around stabbing construction workers, or being played by John Noble(2).
(2) It is entirely possible, even likely, that John Noble would play a brilliant priest.

Once Upon a Time - 'The Garden of Forking Paths' and 'Beauty'

Once Upon a Time, where the wicked rule and the good meet in woodland
camps.

Season seven digs in, literally, as Victoria Belfry sets out to transform the community garden that Lucy loves into a luxury condo block. The excavation reveals a void and Lucy is in there, determining that this is just like when Henry went searching in the mine for Snow White’s glass coffin. And… she’s right. It is. To the point that I am seriously starting to worry that they’re just trying to retread their whole plot.

Anyway, Lucy finds the broken toe of Cinderella’s glass slipper, while in flashback we see that Cinderella ditched her rendezvous with Henry to join a resistance against Lady Tremaine led by Tiana (whose Seattle persona is Jacinda’s bestie, Sabine,) with Henry, Regina and Hook2 quickly following. They plan to attack Tremaine’s manor, where she is hoarding magical goodies, but Cinderella recognises a recent addition and makes an early scouting run. The item is the coffin of Tremaine’s second daughter, Anastasia, who died in an incident for which she blames Cinderella and her father, which is of course entirely unlike Regina blaming Snow White for her lover’s death.

Also, what was really under the garden – which Jacinda saves through community action – is the same coffin, along with the body of Anastasia, whom Victoria thinks she can resurrect using the heart of the truest believer.

 

And then they dance to 'Tale as Old as Time' and I completely lose my shit.

And so, to ‘Beauty’, which mirrors… absolutely nothing in the previous seasons. Henry tries to work up the courage to ask Jacinda out, helps find Lucy after she ducks out on trick or treating with a disinterested Ivy (Belfry’s put-upon still living daughter,) and ends up drinking heavily with Ivy in a move which bodes ill for both the progression of the arc plot and the redemption which is hinted at for Ivy. This is all by the by, however. What really signifies, begins in Storybrooke.

Rumplestiltskin buys a travel book for Belle, and they set out to see the world, and at the same time seek for a means to make him mortal again. This quest leads them to a place on the edge of the enchanted realms, to wait for a sunset decades in the waiting, where they build a house and share their lives and OH DEAR MERCIFUL LORD THEY’RE DOING UP! Yes, Belle having realised that it is her death that will give Rumple the key to mortality has come here to live their life, and finally die.

In Hyperion Heights, Tilly goes off her meds and begins to remember. Weaver tries to protect her from Belfry, but when he doesn’t recognise Belle’s chipped cup she shoots him, telling him that he told her to and calling him Rumplestiltskin. When he recovers in hospital, he covers for Tilly and warns Belfry that she might not want to push him, ‘dearie’.

And it is with ‘Beauty’ that season 7 has landed. It’s new, it’s punchy, and it takes the story in interesting directions, as well as hinting that we’re not just going to be stuck with the same old shit in a different town.

Once Upon a Time - 'Hyperion Heights' and 'A Pirate's Life'

New beginning, new adorable moppet believer.

So, for six seasons I haven't been reviewing Once Upon a Time, but I figure that since Hanna and I - well, mostly Hanna; I've not seen everything since about Season four - have now caught up with the series, we could watch it together, and thus we come to the firts two episodes of Season seven: 'Hyperion Heights' and 'A Pirate's Life'.

We begin with Henry Mills, a slightly successful author, getting an unexpected visit from his self-proclaimed daughter Lucy, who tells him that he needs to come to the gentrifying Seattle neighbourhood of Hyperion Heights to be reunited with his true love, her mother Cinderella, and break the curse which has robbed him and the folk of the Heights of their memories. Flashbacks reveal that, after the happy ending of the original six-season arc, Henry went off in search of his own story and almost literally ran into Cinderella, a fiery Latina who stole his motorcycle and tried to assassinate a prince, only for her stepmother Lady Temayne to jump in after she had a change of heart and pin the killing on her anyway.

"We should probably exchange insurance details."

In Hyperion Heights, Henry is accosted by a strange girl, who is the cursed analogue of Alice, a woman who drugged him in the fairytale realm and now works for Weaver, an apparently recursed Rumplestiltskin introduced half-drowning a man in a bucket. Now, the attentive will have picked up that Once Upon a Time already had a Cinderella, who fell foul of Rumplestiltskin and was on the whiter side, and that Once Upon a Time in Wonderland had its Alice. Well, as Henry remarks early on, there are many versions of every fairy tale, and they are all out there somewhere(1), so what we have here is a chance to reuse some of the old stories since the past six seasons have come perilously close to running the well dry. This is a little disappointing as compared to the option of looking to lesser known fairy tales, but I suppose they are looking to keep it as Disney as possible.

This is Alice. She spikes drinks.

Henry meets the local bartender, Roni, who is his foster mother Regina, if only he knew it. Jacinda - Cinderella's Earth name - tries to get out from under her stepmother's thumb - Lady Tremayne presenting as Veronic Belfrey, businesswoman and mastermind of the gentrification which, Lucy explains, is forcing the fairy tale folk out of the neighbourhood and replacing them with regular Earth folk - by running away with Lucy. Henry, well-meaning, but a dope, turns them in. Jacinda loses custody and Henry loses any shot at a snog. His only apparent allies are Officer Rogers - a cursed Captain Hook and the Heights one honest copper - and Roni, who refuses to sell out to Belfrey after seeing Jacinda stand up to her. Rogers himself is promoted to Detective and partnered with none other than Detective Weaver, or as I like to think of him, Gene Huntlestiltskin.

Like the anti-Cheers, this bar is literally a place where nobody even knows
their own name.

A few things come clearer in 'A Pirate's Life', as flashback Henry is captured as Cinderella's accomplice, but uses a message bottle given to him by Hook to summon help. Hook and Regina rescue Henry, but are all mysterious about Emma. Then Hook is bushwhacked by an alternate version of himself from a universe created by a wish - because why the fuck not - who wants to take his life and steal Emma away from him. He gets Lady Tremayne to use a stolen wand to change him into the semblance of his other self, but has a change of heart when he learns that Emma is pregnant. Killian Jones Hook goes home with Emma, while other Hook - healed of a stab wound by Emma after he allows himself to believe in her - teams up with Henry and Regina to find both Cinderella and Hook's missing daughter.

Lawful evil is just the worst.

In the present, Belfrey tasks Weaver and Rogers with getting rid of Henry. They search his flat, with Rogers giving away that he has visited before. Meanwhile, to make amends for his mistakes, Henry arranges for Jacinda and her friend Sabine to get pick-up work at Lucy's ballet recital, which Belfrey has turned into a $200 a ticket charity gala in order to shut Jacinda out of Lucy's life. At the recital, Weaver tells Rogers to plant a stolen bracelet on Henry, but having been inspired by the swan pendant on Henry's keychain, Rogers doesn't go through with it. Weaver tells Belfrey not to make the mistake of thinking that she owns him, and Rogers that he is looking for someone with a moral core.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?

Henry, Rogers and Roni get together in Roni's bar and form an anti-Belfrey coalition, sadly not called Operation anything, so Henry must really have lost his mojo to the curse. Rogers also recounts his cursed backstory, in which his daughter is replaced in memory by a kidnapped girl he has been looking for since he joined the force, and a woman whom the swan reminded him of once saved his life by holding pressure on a wound until the ambulance arrived.

This big reboot is a gamble for Once Upon a Time, and it's hard to say whether it's writer-driven or the result of unavoidable cast changes. Either way, it's interesting, and gives us a fresh take without Emma constantly talking about her superpower and acting all holier than thou. It remains to be seen if it will go the distance - to quote one of the source properties of the series - but it's got potential.

(1) Although a stickler might point out that, as a work of literary fiction, Alice really only has the one identifiable source version.

Preacher – ‘Sokosha’

What? No. You're crying.

Okay, I apparently left this one for a while, so...

The Saint of Killers comes gunning for Jesse, but Viktor’s daughter puts him off just enough for our ‘hero’ to escape. However, his friends are not so quick, and Denis ends up in the crosshairs; Denis whom Tulip misidentifies as Cassidy’s father, only to learn that he is in fact the vampire’s son(1). Despite his mission and all that, Jesse proves that he isn’t an unmitigated jerk and agrees to meet the Saint. This is all set to go very badly, but Jesse turns it around by showing the Saint the video of the God audition to prove that his ‘fee’ was never sanctioned.

Jesse then offers an alternative. The Saint, it turns out, can not enter the Kingdom of Heaven ever, because he doesn’t have a soul. Jesse offers to bring him one, and is given an hour (I think; as I say, been a while since I watched it,) to do so. He contacts a soul broker, who purchases parts of souls for resale on the occult black market, but can not find a matching donor for the Saint’s specific spiritual DNA... until he offers his own soul. 10% of Jesse’s soul later, and the Saint is primed for a true afterlife, but also – as Jesse no doubt foresaw – vulnerable to the Voice, allowing Jesse to trap him in the back of a van and drown it – although presumably not the Saint – in a swamp.

‘Sokosha’ shows that Jesse is not without empathy, compassion, and even a willingness to sacrifice; he’s just really self-righteous and a dick pretty much most of the time.

(1) Preacher’s thing is kind of letting you think that a thing is a silly thing and then turning it around on you, in this case Cassidy’s abusive relationship with Denis all apparently stemming from the fact that neither one of them has ever unbent enough to learn the other’s language (and the father’s cardinal sin of not aging as his son becomes old.)

TV Roundup: iZombie - 'Looking for Mr Goodbrain'; The Magicians - 'Cheat Day', 'The Cock Barrens', 'Plan B', 'Word as Bond', 'Lesser Evils', 'The Girl Who Told Time', 'The Rattening', 'Ramifications' and 'We Have Brought You Little Cakes'; Emerald City - 'Lions in Winter', 'The Villain That's Become' and 'No Place Like Home'; Dark Matter - 'Being Better is so Much Harder'

Quite a big one this time out, as I spent the past weekend doing some catchup.

Half outed as a zombie, Liv tans and dies and she looks weird.

First up, two episodes of iZombie season 3 that weren’t out when I did my big marathon. When Ravi’s ex-boss/anger hookup turns up murdered, Liv eats her brains and turns into a bar-crawling sex addict, as well as being haunted by memory flashes of Ravi’s O face. Under the influence she has sex with Chase Graves, ruining her budding relationship with that one Philmore-Graves soldier, and meanwhile Ravi’s indiscretion with a hack journalist and faux zombie truther leads to D-Day coming ahead of schedule. Major becomes a zombie again after a zombified ex-prepper suicide bombs his farewell bash, killing most of the squad and his ex-zombie new girlfriend. 

With the world falling apart and D-Day closer than ever, Graves’ PA initiates the Doomsday scenario, releasing Aleutian flu into the city so that Philmore-Graves can spike the vaccine with zombie blood and then offer conversion to the sick, creating a critical mass of zombies to declare to the world. It’s a bold and radical shift in the direction of the series, and I am perhaps more curious than excited to see where it goes from here.

So, this shit is horrid.

From there we move to the closing chapters of Emerald City, 'Lions in Winter', 'The Villain That's Become' and 'No Place Like Home'. These truly are the closing chapters, as the series was cancelled after one season, and finally bring Dorothy up to full spin. Lucas/Roan and Sylvie both give her the heave-ho in favour of Glinda, but persuade the Witch of the North to give her a job caring for the child-soldier witches who have burned out under her demanding training regime. Dorothy gets hacked off, unlocks the power of East’s elements by hmrrmphm and escapes. She goes back to the munjakin, having worked out that the chief’s imprisoned wife actually created the stone giants.

 

Yeah, so... Eamonn is the Cowardly Lion analogue, having killed Ozma's
parents while wearing his lion hat and cloak or something.

West invests Ozma/Tip with East’s magic, because that was totally a thing, right? Then they recruit a bunch of battle witches from… that place, and take over Emerald City while the Wizard is off warring with Langwidere, who tries to keep the guns she promised to make for him. The Wizard’s commandos take Langwidere hostage and Jack accidentally shoots her in the head, before discovering that in fact she was a robot made by Jane. He goes a bit loco and tries to kill the wizard, then Jane reveals herself as Dorothy’s mother, the witches attack, Sylvie crumbles the Stone Giant, but Dorothy activates the giant in Emerald City to smash that thing that is important to Glinda and…

All right, clearly, I’m not remembering this series very well. I was never all that taken with it, but it held my curiosity at least. However, I can’t say I’m gutted to see it go.

Next, I finished up Season 2 of The Magicians, and by finished up I mean 'watched the majority of.' Having lost pace after Episode 4, I got caught up on Episodes 5-13: 'Cheat Day', 'The Cock Barrens(1)', 'Plan B', 'Word as Bond', 'Lesser Evils', 'The Girl Who Told Time', 'The Rattening', 'Ramifications' and 'We Have Brought You Little Cakes'. This is basically three seasons of crazy in a nine episode marathon, so I don't think I'm going to try to do anything more than the highlight reel.

God foetus isn't keen on being aborted, it turns out.

Quentin tries to vanish into obscurity and ends up getting very drunk and having ill-advised shapeshifty sex with Emily Greenstreet, the girl whose affair with Professor Mayakovski ended in Alice's brother being niffined. Julia finds the Hedge Witch who formerly banished Reynard and learns that she used the power released by the birth of the child he got on her (by rape, of course, because Reynard is a douchebag) to fuel the spell. Julia discovers that she has the potential to do the same, as she is pregnant.

In Fillory, Eliot is attacked by a pro-Fillorian assassin(2), and Margot insults a visiting diplomat – Prince Ess of Loria – when he shows up to demand a royal wedding. She has sex with Ess, but when Penny discovers that they have not been transported to the titular Cock Barrens, but merely illusioned away, she gets mad and declares war. The gang reunite to carry out a bank heist, during which Eliot's dopelbanger is killed by a security Magician, but escape with sufficient funds to bankroll Fillory's army and pay for Julia to have Reynard's child exorcised. Unfortunately, the operation also excises Julia's Shade, and thus indirectly leads to the extermination of a forest of pro-Lorian talking trees. With the kingdom up in arms, Eliot sees no alternatives but devastating war or personal combat with the King of Loria. Fen is able to give him a sword and a spell to make him a master swordman, but the Wellspring is still kind of fucked and so magic is failing erratically.

 

Total sucker fro a decent musical moment; you may have noticed.

Julia and Kady track down Reynard's son, a senator and presidential hopeful, and bring him to Brakebills. Learning that Niffin Alice has been caught in the demon trap on Quentin's back, Julia tries to force him to release her to attack Reynard, but it all goes wrong when Reynard uses the Beast's time-freeze on them and the senator surrenders himself to save the others. With niffin Alice wearing on his body, Quentin releases her and takes the chance that she might go psycho on him. She doesn't.

Margot uses a spell to give Eliot a musical boost by getting the court to perform 'One Day More' with him on the way to the duel, then negotiates with the fairies to get the Wellspring cleaned. The opening bid from the fairy ambassador is the Wellspring for the child of Eliot and Fen makes her scoff, which insults the ambassador so much that there can be no further discussion of terms. Eliot wins the duel, but spares the King of Loria on learning that monarchs are allowed a wife and a husband. He also has Margot locked up on discovering the deal that she made (which he does after Fen is dragged off by the fairies.)

 

An actual fucking dragon.

Quentin and Julia visit the Underworld – with the help of a dragon voiced by Igrid Oliver – where the dead members of Free Trader Beowulf help them reach Elysium to rescue Julia's lost shade. There they discover that Our Lady Underground is real, and is in fact Persephone, currently absent from duty. Julia opts to rescue Alice's shade instead of her own, enabling Quentin to restore Alice to life, much to her annoyance on account of how as a niffin she basically knew everything.

Penny signs up with the Order who run the Library of the Neitherlands in order to relearn magic after having his hands restored. A Hedge Witch curses a book he retrieves in order to force a Librarian to take something out of the Poison Room, the rare book section, which also holds a volume on god-killing. With the help of a fellow reluctant librarian he gets into the Poison Room via the fountains, only to find out that it is literally poisoned. Still, he gets the book. The senator realises that his life is a lie, and that Reynard has murdered his wife to punish him for talking to Julia and Kady. Distraught, he uses his inherited trickster powers to force Kady to kill him and ritually steal his power to make a godkilling bullet, only for Julia to not use it when Our Lady Underground turns up and makes an appeal for her son's life. Persephone returns Julia's shade and Kady is understandably pissed that this was the finale to all the shit she had to do to set up the kill shot, including murdering a decent man and getting Penny a terminal dose of magical poison.

The other ram god; a different kind of dick.

Just as all seems well, everyone in Filory gets turned into rats and Eliot is expelled. Tracking down the first and last portal to Fillory, they find it in the keeping of the supposedly dead Ember, who explains that he agreed to get out of the Beast's way and is trying to work on a new, better world. All that is going wrong in Fillory is down to the chaotic Umber getting bored and having no ordered god to balance him. In a last ditch effort to have magic not end, the gang bring Umber and Ember together. Umber kills his brother and sets out to destroy Fillory, but Julia binds the death energy of Ember into a blade with which Quentin slays Umber.

In punishment for this, the greater gods of the cosmos shut off magic altogether. Only a few inherently magical beings remain, one of them – the Lamprey – set on revenge against Alice for something she did as a niffin. Julia, however, is still able to conjure a spark of magic, for reasons unknown.

 

The Great God Luigi.

And there's a tonne of stuff missing from that, like Josh being hired to use culinary magic to make the Fillorians like Eliot and ending up king of a drugged-up court with everyone else missing, to Margot going into the fairy court to try to retrieve Fen and the baby and then losing an eye as the cost of coming back, and, oh yes, the fairies taking over Fillory at the end.

The Magicians remains a pretty unique piece of television, with its magical themes juxtaposed with a washed out colour scheme and downbeat central thesis that magic doesn't complete you. Professor Mayakovski suggests that life is inherently shit, and that magic is a way of making it one minute iota better; still shit, but just marginally less so. Season 2 also opens out the world and reveals that the titular magicians, classically trained or otherwise, are all just small potatoes in a cosmos where universal forces(3) will straight up cut you off from magic if you stab their children (even if those children have been murdering their own brothers and acting like colossal dicks to the world(4).)

We've got a season 3 coming in, so presumably magic will come back in some way as otherwise the show would now be called The Management Accountants or something.

 

Five got badass.

So finally, for now, to the first episode of season 3 of Dark Matter. In the wake of the bombing of the corporate summit and the theft of the blink drive, Truffaut, Five and the Android end up under fire in the Raza, while Three ends up with an Enemy Mine sort of scenario as he and a GA cop fight off a security drone in a disused warehouse, and Two and Six are stranded in the crippled Marauder. Meanwhile, Ishida Ryo – the badass formerly known as Four – releases an old teacher from prison to be his adviser, angering his axe-crazy captain of the guard who feels that treason against the throne should be punished, even if it was against the Emperor you lately helped to assassinate and replace.

The rest of the crew eventually reunite, after Two has hallucinated a pseudo-Sapphic farewell from Nyx – now confirmed dead – and discuss options. Three wants to do pirate shit. Six wants to hit Evil Corp from the shadows. Two wants to go after Ryo. And Five... Five has created a virtual version of Three's late ex Sarah. Can't imagine that going wrong.

Dark Matter continues to be an also-ran for me, Season 3 losing further ground to my space opera of choice, Killjoys. It's not that anything about it is actively bad, but surprisingly little happened in this episode except that it got everyone back together and tried to make me feel bad about the death of a character I felt basically nothing for.

(1) Oh, The Magicians. You do you.

(2) A member of Fillorians United, or 'FU fighter'. Honestly, they could have done worse with an organisation called FU.

(3) Which, somewhat bizarrely, manifest as the very humanocentric image of a plumber.

(4) In a voiceover intro to the final episode, Umber explains that basically he's pushed and prodded to make a lot of shitty things happen, including the rattening, expelling Eliot for trying to make Fillory actually work, and making the River Watcher pissy enough to curse Penny up good.

Preacher - 'Viktor' and 'Dallas'

Another double-bill of God-seeking and bloody violence this week, as I catch up on two episodes of Preacher.

"There are three lights. Well, one."

Cassidy is worried about Tulip, who went off and hasn't come back. Jesse assures him that this is what she does when they fight, and is more interested in the secret society who seem to be taking an interest in his business; or at least in business that he considers his. Then Cassidy sees an infomercial about the aftermath of Katrina, featuring actors including the false God who appeared on the angel phone in the church. They track him down by pretending to be casting for Game of Thrones, but discover that his agent lost touch after he got the part as God. They watch his audition tape, which concludes with his execution in order to allow him to transition to heaven and take up the job. This is a dead end, but the coincidence of this happening in New Orleans intrigues Jesse.

Meanwhile, Tulip meets crime boss Viktor and is invited to take some time to consider her options. She tries to talk to his goons, the staff and even his daughter, but they all treat her as if she were the scum of the Earth; even Viktor's torturer gets all holier than thou. Finally, she beats us a henchman, steals his gun and tries to force Viktor to 'let [her] go,' but he refuses and she is recaptured. When she continues to be a no-show, Cassidy confesses the reasons for his concern to Jesse, who storms off to rescue her.

Meanwhile, in Hell, Eugene is picked on by the local bully and Hitler stands up for him. Hitler's Hell is a scene in a café where he met a gallery owner, but he has learned to stop interacting with it. Apparently mellowed by the years, Hitler seems like a pretty chill dude at this point. The warden – somewhat snowed under by equipment malfunctions and the Saint’s escape – invites Eugene for a chat, telling him he seems like a nice guy, and that sort of behaviour won't fly in Hell. Mindful that she says she will be watching, Eugene joins in when the other inmates deliver a beat down to Hitler for going soft. Oh, Eugene.

Jesse busts into Viktor's place, freezing all the guards with the Word before getting into a brutal fight with the torturer, who likes to work with headphones in(1). He attacks Viktor, but Tulip tells him to let go, because Viktor is her husband.

And so to 'Dallas', in which we see the aftermath of Carlos' betrayal, with Jesse and Tulip living a rough life on the straight and narrow (in Dallas,) only for Jesse to discover that Tulip is still doing crimes, and is on the pill while he believes they are trying for another child. He opts to return to his father's church and she eventually hooks up with Viktor, only to abandon him when their former handler locates Carlos.

Yeah... this isn't going to last.

In the present day, Jesse strings Viktor up in the torture room, while Tulip – unable to intercede, thanks to the Word(2) – takes Viktor's daughter to visit Cassidy and their reluctant host. After much soul-searching and an intervention by Cassidy as the most unlikely conscience ever, Jesse opts to release Viktor, who goes home to rea with his daughter. Of course, this is not a happy ending for them, since Jesse's careless throwing about of the Word attracts the Saint, who shoots up the house and murders Viktor, but the daughter tells him that she knows where to find the Preacher.

So, Jesse continues to be a dick, while Tulip and Cassidy struggle to keep him on some sort of even keel. The fact that an unrepentant contract killer and a largely shameless vampire hedonist are the voices of his conscience is a concern that seems slow to impinge on Jesse’s peace of mind, and all in all I’m not convinced he was a very good preacher. Of course, it’s part of the point that he is a melding of good and evil, a man with both light enough and dark enough in his soul to coexist with the awesome power of Genesis without exploding. It’s interesting that neither of his companions represents the light in him – the nearest anyone came to an angel on his shoulder is currently shouting ‘zieg heil’ and kicking Hitler in the nards – and also that the combination of righteousness and rage manifests so specifically as a sort of smug, angry dickishness. He’s a monumentally unlikeable protagonist, and yet remains compelling, or at least involving enough you can be bothered to want to slap him instead of just hoping for him to take a bullet from the Saint.

(1) Speaking as someone who painfully tugs his own earphones out at least once a week, I want that guy's earphones, which did not come out once during the course of said brutal fight, even when impaled on a rail from a foosball table.

(2) Dick move, Jesse.

Sense8 – ‘Who am I?’, ‘Obligate Mutualisms’, ‘Polyphony’ and ‘Fear Never Fixed Anything’

"Who am I? Do you mean where I'm from? What I one day might become? What I do? What I've done? What I dream? Do you mean ... what you see or what I've seen? What I fear or what I dream? Do you mean who I love? Do you mean who I've lost? Who am I?

"I guess who I am is exactly the same as who you are. Not better than, not less than. Because there is no one who has been or will ever be exactly the same as either you or me."

Okay, so... I'll be honest, I didn’t; review the first three episodes of this series before because I figured we'd binge through the season and I'd do it in a oner. Then the news of the cancellation and unresolved cliffhanger hit and we lost momentum. Now there's the promise of a last hurrah and resolution, so... Here we go.

Season 2 of Sense8 retains much of the feel of Season 1, with our multicultural cluster of Sensates(1) each doing their own thing, but there's a much stronger arc feel, not least because three of our characters are deep into the arc so that their thing is arc thing.

Will and Riley are still hiding from Whispers, with Will playing cat and mouse as each tries to locate the other. Whispers pins them down to Iceland, thanks to an elaborate ruse with yoghurt and seagull soundtracks, while Will ultimately gets the drop on him, allowing the cluster to set up a meeting with one of his superiors. Unfortunately, Whispers reverses the advantage by murdering his boss after he makes a deal with the cluster, forcing them back on the run but leaving Will with actual blockers instead of heroin.

Never alone.

Capheus is going about his business, but having attracted the interest of a journalist has become quite a celebrity, even beyond his neighbourhood. He is approached to consider running for office, and while he protests that he is not a politician, he is told that people don't want a politician; they want a leader. He goes to the journalist, possibly for advice, but is driven off by her jealous colleagues, who hint that he is a fiction she created and crudely asserting that his interest must be carnal and is thus hopeless, because she is gay(2), leaving him a little adrift.

Wolfgang and Felix hover on the edges of a potential gang war, and are unexpectedly offered a club to run. The owner's secretary makes eye contact with Wolfgang and starts turning up naked and sexy in his brain, revealing herself as part of another cluster, one apparently aligned to some extent with BPO for protection. I practically punched the air when Wolfgang actually told his cluster-mates about this instead of keeping it as a pointless secret.

Kala remains somewhat disconnected, although her pharmaceutical knowledge is key to understanding the blockers, and she begins to discover not only that her father-in-law's religious intolerance is deep-seated and hateful, but that her husband is more interested in making delivery dates than providing good quality drugs.

I'd completely forgotten that Sun fought the same cop on a roof in her
underwear.

Sun is forced to escape from prison after her brother hires guards to murder her. She goes on the run with the old lady who killed her abusive husband, although her partner in crime then hands herself in so that Sun can get away. Sun goes into hiding with her old martial arts teacher, who is then visited by what seems to be an honest cop, who fought Sun in their student days and was roundly thrashed.

Nomi remains in hiding with Bug, doing the cluster's hack work, until Bug suggests a way around her problems. Reaching out to 'the Guy', he arranges a meeting in a cinema showing one of Lito's films (giving us a lovely scene in which Bug remotely fanboys at Lito,) with a contact who shows in a V for Vendetta mask and offers 'e-death' – Sense8's version of The Dark Knight Returns' clean slate – in exchange for an unspecified but non-tawrdy future favour. Nomi's records and warrants promptly vanish.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure everyone else in the bar just saw Lito neck eight
tequillas.

Lito's career founders as he is typecast as doomed, gay characters, causing him to reject an invitation to be president of the Sao Paulo Pride Parade. He also reminisces about one of his first gay lovers, a photojournalist who turns out to have been part of Angelica's cluster and a victim of BPO's purges. Lito returns to the bar from last season to drink shots with the cluster (not sure how that works to an outside eye) in part in memory of Jonas, who is killed having outlived his usefulness. The bartender tells him that Lito's kiss inspired him. He proposed to his boyfriend and they have enjoyed the best year of their life. This not only shows Lito what he can achieve as a gay actor, but propels the cluster into their next big act of rebellion.

Their last run at Whispers revealed how big the organisation is, which they realise means that there must be lots more Sensates out there. Thus, Riley agrees to DJ a gig for one of her old contacts, in order to put the message out. Three conspicuous figures – one in saffron robes, one some sort of biker and Sylvester McCoy in a Barber hat – see the gig, and Riley draws McCoy to 'visit' the stage, prompting him to flee, but getting their message out before she and Will escape along the Thames ahead of Whispers and his goons.

Man this season is a rollercoaster ride, with first the cluster and then Whispers getting the whiphand week by week(3). Next episode is going to be a downer by that pattern, but on the upside, Sylvester McCoy!

(1) Although this term is actually dropped for the most part in favour of 'homo sensorium'.

(2) She may well be, but the immediate read of this is 'won't sleep with us'.

(3) Or however often we manage to catch it.