Category: Television

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There Will Be No Final Season ?

This is sad, although not entirely surprising. Thankfully the 4th season and its final episode did wrap up the story to a degree (and in my opinion got its footing back after a lackluster 3rd season) that one can walk away from it with a certain degree of satisfaction. The story wasn't over, but it was an ending we can live with, still leaving the door open to something further (see: The Expanse)

The questions of consciousness and free will that were explored in the first two seasons are ones that will stay with me forever. To this day I cannot listen to  Dr. Ford from the soundtrack and not get a little misty eyed, contemplating everything he was attempting to accomplish and how it all went so horribly, horribly wrong.

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I'm as Disappointed as Anyone

But as this graph suggests, I don't think current viewership would've justified or sustained a fifth and final season.

But let's say for a moment that HBO did renew for a 5th season. What do you reckon viewership would look like? Did HBO make the right decision? Or was there nothing left to salvage?

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It Started So Well…

I stumbled upon this via Amazon Prime. The first season did a good job of putting a new spin on this well-worn story. Engaging characters, lush sets and cinematography, beaucoup interpersonal and familial drama (some with a oversize "ick" factor), some decent eye candy (who unfortunately seem to get killed off all too often), and aliens who were decidedly not what you normally encounter in this kind of story.

Boston Dynamics at work.

When I was finished with that first season, I was disappointed that the second and third seasons were not available via Amazon; that I'd have to subscribe to EpixNOW to see how the story played out. I was engaged, so I laid out $15 for a six-month subscription.

And then…Season Two happened.

Dude, that was my reaction too.

[Spoilers ahead, not that I'm sure any of you care.]

So the aliens presented in Season One weren't actually the aliens. They were just the aliens' tools. And the real aliens? As revealed in the final episode of Season One, uniformly Caucasian, English-speaking humans…who (revealed in Season Two) share DNA with several earthly humans in the story. How could this be?!

"For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!"

Sorry, wrong fandom.

Early into the second season, it's determined that the attacking humans are indeed human, albeit with a plethora of genetic defects. (This explains why the alien robo-dogs were abducting babies and cutting fetuses out of pregnant women – it was for the stem cells.) In the blink of an eye, all the sick aliens are back to full health but still on the offensive, killing as many of the remaining human residents of planet earth as possible. Because reasons.

I made it about halfway through the second season before I hit the internet and got the whole story (at least through where we currently are in the third season) and gave up actually watching any more of it.

Time travel, parallel universes…and pretty much every worn out sci-fi trope out there.

Le sigh. And it had such promise.

Maybe there's something else on EpixNOW I can watch. If not, $15 is less than the cost of three coffees, so it's not like I threw away a lot of money.

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A Little Humor from 9-1-1

While nothing would please me more than if Buck and Eddie came out as boyfriends (I'm not the only one who's gotten that vibe from these characters, but again, maybe it's just personal projection because I want to see them together), teh ghey is already fully represented in the show by the characters Hen and Karen, and I'm fine with that.

HOWEVER…

I don't mind them being shipped by the fandom, and I think these are brilliant:



























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Satisfying

Set in the mid 90s, Season 3 of For All Mankind wrapped up this week with a very satisfying ending.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

I love how the writers of the series are creating a wholly believable alternate timeline, one that mirrors of events in our own—but always with a twist.

Case in point, the Oklahoma City bombing. In the timeline of FAM, it's not Oklahoma City, but rather the Johnson Space Center in Houston that was the target of the bomber(s). The results were no less horrific, and at least one main character—and possibly more—did not survive.

The American/Russian team on the surface of Mars received an unexpected guest. This guest turned out to be the first human on Mars, beating all the other teams to the surface not by days or hours, but by months…and they were from North Korea.

Baby Momma Kelly safely made it back up to the orbiting Phoenix, where she successfully gave birth to her Russian-American love child.

The truth finally came out about who caused the drilling disaster that led to the events of the final two episodes. Granted, it was by his own admission, but it still resulted in his exile from the rest of the crew—spending his remaining days and nights on Mars in—of all places—the North Korean capsule.

As with any drama, there were more than a few WTF moments over the past ten episodes, but not so many or so egregious that they took you out of the story as it was unfolding.

It will be interesting to see how the First Lesbian President of the United States story plays out next year, not to mention the fate of the first crew on Mars, now forced to remain an additional fifteen months with limited supplies while they wait for a rescue ship from Earth.

Margo's Russian love interest, who had been imprisoned in the Soviet Union for most of the season, was finally spirited to the West. And in the most prescient moment of the series thus far, Margo, now facing imminent FBI investigation for—you guessed it—espionage—ends up in Moscow in the final scene of the season, that was prefaced with "2003."

 

 

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I Hate to Admit It…

…but I agree with everything Mr. Murrell has to say about Season Two.

I mean, I enjoyed the second season of Picard while I was watching it. I was able to ignore the issues brought up in this video on a weekly basis, but looking back on the entire season once it finished I was so very…disappointed. It could've been so much more.