The OA Part 2 Episode 1: Angel of Death Recap

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Recaps of The OA Part 1 can be found HERE.

Welcome back, kids! Are we all ready to ride along with The OA as she questions the nature of reality and causes chaos in the world around her? Part 2 continues where Part 1 left off, with no time jump, though the extended opening segment introduces viewers to the new character Karim Washington, so it takes a while to find out what happened to the OA. Most of the rest of the original cast returns in some capacity.

While part 1 explored the interior of the mind, with themes of reality vs fantasy, the darkness inside, free will, captivity and willing sacrifice, Part 2 expands those themes, taking the dreams, visions and stories of Part 1 and turning them into an interdimensional reality where the boundaries between the dream world, the real world, and other worlds barely exist. It’s not quite as mind-bending as Part 1, but it’s still fun, with new ideas to ponder.

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The OA Part 2: Spoiler-Free Review

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If The OA Part 1 was about Near Death Experiences (NDEs), then Part 2 is about dreams. The NDEs become another kind of dream, of which there are many, all of which can be examined for important information about ourselves, our culture, the future and reality itself. Part 2 takes the concepts introduced in the first part and deepens them, turning dichotomies into continuums and turning movement into quests.

The OA remains a mysterious show that needs to be approached with an open mind and a willingness to follow the spiritual metaphor, not the need for logic and continuity. Metaphorically, this is a world of magic and spirit, and our rules don’t apply. We learn the rules of the universe with the characters, and they are applied logically once introduced, but they are complex. I’m not sure that any one character has all of the information in Part 2.

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 9: Songs About Texas Recap

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Before we get started, let me state my bias, straight out. Maria DeLuca (Heather Hemmens) is the best character on this show. No contest. If the writers disappear her again, or mistreat her too badly (that includes retconning her character to ruin her), I may riot, then stop watching.

Back to your regularly scheduled recap.

This week’s episode of Roswell, New Mexico, titled Songs About Texas, moved several giant steps closer to getting its Scooby gang together. Episode 9 was directed by Shiri Appleby, the original Liz on original Roswell, and was filled with callbacks to its predecessor.

Max, Michael, Liz and Maria accidentally end up together on a road trip to Texas to check out potential clues to an alien mystery. Relationship progress ensues. A Native American elder tells them about an alien who once lived on the reservation. These points are true of the current episode Songs about Texas, and the original series episodes 285 South and River Dog (S1 Eps 6&7).

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 3: Ouija Recap

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Episode 3 begins with Johnny Ki explaining the threat he made to Carmen at the end of episode 2. He shows her a video his mom made the last time he saw his parents, then explains that his parents were killed in a boating accident. He was learning to drive and lost control of the boat, so he blames himself for the crash. He wants Carmen to help him talk to his dead parents so that he can get their reassurance that they don’t hate him and that they forgive him.

Carmen can’t speak to the dead, so she can’t help him. But she assures him that real love is unconditional, so, wherever his parents are, they still love him and have forgiven him.

Carmen tries to leave, but Johnny questions why she can levitate, but she can’t speak to the dead.

Because those are two really different powers?

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 8: Barely Breathing Recap

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Roswell, New Mexico 108 Michael and Max Visit Isobel in Psych Ward

Episode 8, of Roswell, New Mexico, Barely Breathing, is a very different episode from episode 7. In episode 7, characters and relationships broke down, and secrets took their toll. In episode 8, secrets are revealed and information is shared. New alliances are formed and characters begin to let their anger go. Isobel hits rock bottom, but is given a chance for rebirth. Alex Manes finds something he’s wanted for many years, but it may not benefit him in the long run.

And we finally meet Mama Evans, played by scifi veteran Claudia Black.

Recap

Isobel gets the opening voiceover this week:

“Safety is so easy to take for granted. Especially when you grow up loved, cherished, protected. Safety is a feeling you only value when it’s been stripped from you. When someone you trust spills your secrets, when someone invades your home, or when you’re a little girl staring at the stars in the desert one night and the devil tries to drag you into hell. Or worse, when the thing that makes you unsafe isn’t an invader at all. What do you do when the evil you fear is inside your own mind? When there may be no way to kill it without killing yourself?”

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Netflix’s Bodyguard Season 1: Review

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Bodyguard is a 6 episode BBC crime thriller that’s been released globally as a Netflix Original. Created by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) and starring Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) and Keeley Hawes (The Durrells in Corfu), Bodyguard has no connection to the 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner movie The Bodyguard. Last fall, Bodyguard became a ratings sensation in the UK, where it was shown as a weekly series and broke viewing records.

There is good reason for that. The show is gripping and intense from the first minute, when we meet main character David Budd, an Afghanistan veteran with untreated PTSD who is currently working for London’s Metropolitan Police Service as a Principal Protection Officer (PPO), or as we layman think of it, a bodyguard, for important members of the British government. He’s traveling on a train with his two children and discovers a suicide bomber, Nadia (Anjli Mohindra) hiding in the bathroom at the end of their car. In the powerful opening sequence, David takes it upon himself to talk Nadia down so that everyone comes out of the situation alive, disobeying orders from the bomb squad as he works with Nadia to ensure that she’s captured instead of killed.

After his heroic success on the train, David gets noticed by his superiors, and promoted to protecting the controversial, right-wing Home Secretary*, Julia Montague. Montague is pushing for legislation that would allow increased surveillance by law enforcement agencies, an idea that’s unpopular with many in the public and in the government. She’s also ambitious and widely believed to be considering an end run around the usual channels in order to become Prime Minister.

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The Passage: Season 1 Review

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Episode Recaps are HERE.

Fox’s series The Passage, based on the Justin Cronin trilogy of novels, finished its 10 episode first season this week with a leap forward into the apocalypse. The series spent its first season on character and world-building during the period immediately preceding the fall of the human race, so that viewers will enter season 2, if there is one, with a firm understanding of this universe’s viral vampires and the mistakes that were made to bring about the end of the world. The challenges and rivalries that the future faces are set in place, so that season 2 can hit the ground running.

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 10: Last Lesson Recap

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The Passage 110 Shauna The Face of the Future

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and the virals are doing just fine. Episode 10, Last Lesson, is the denouement to the season, showing what the world looks like after the virals’ breakout, leading up to the time jump book readers have been clamoring for all season.

My episode 9 recap is HERE.

Recap

This episode picks up moments after episode 9 ends, since the two episodes are meant to be viewed as a two hour finale. Lacey picks her way through the compound, putting down anyone who’s turning into a viral with a single shot to the head.

All of those shots fired by the professional security force, and no one could figure out to shoot the virals in the head but wise, no-nonsense Sister Lacey. Never send a man to do a woman’s job. 😉

Amy’s voiceover: “When the new world began, everyone had to live with the choices they had made, and their terrible consequences, but there were moments of grace.”

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 9: Stay in the Light Recap

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Welcome to the two-part end of the world! Part1/Episode 9, Stay in the Light, of The Passage, chronicles the fall of Project NOAH and the escape of the virals. To find out who lives, who dies, and who finds themselves slightly altered, read on.

Recap

We begin at the beginning, in Bolivia, 2015, with an infected Tim Fanning coming down to the end of the line before he turns. Jonas, Tim, Richards and a large tactical team are waiting in a hangar for their transport out of Bolivia. Fanning can feel that something is happening to him that’s changing him, and he doesn’t like it, but he has no frame of reference to help determine what it is. He asks Lear to kill him, and keeps asking, but Lear refuses, since he isn’t ready to give up hope.

The Bolivian locals want them to kill Fanning before he kills all of them. Fanning wonders if customs will let him back into the US, but Jonas says that it won’t be a problem, since they’re flying private. He has a team of doctors waiting for them.

In voiceover, Amy says: “I didn’t used to believe in monsters, but I do now. There were so many times that they could have turned back, that they could have said, ‘stop.’ But they didn’t. By the time anybody bothered to try, it was too late.”

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 7: I Saw the Sign Recap

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Episode 7 of Roswell, New Mexico, I Saw the Sign, shows the fallout from the revelations of episode 6 and from the alien presence in Roswell since 1947. The picture of how every generation of humans has been affected since the spaceship crashed into the New Mexico desert is being revealed, and it’s already clear that very little good has come from the mini alien invasion. The aliens themselves haven’t fared any better than the humans, though there are still many questions left to be answered on both sides of the equation.

This is Maria’s episode, and we find out just which ‘ship she’s willing to go down with, after she raised Dido’s White Flag with Isobel in episode 4. Her mom, Mimi, has mental health issues which have proven undiagnosable, but Maria won’t give up on her. Mimi is obsessed with aliens, like so many in Roswell, but in her case, she’s also a psychic. It’s no coincidence that Maria mentioned White Flag to Isobel in particular. Whoever is scrambling Isobel’s brain is also scrambling Mimi’s, and probably the brains of all of the other lost women of Roswell: Rosa, Mrs Manes, Mrs Ortecho, and more that we don’t yet know about.

We watch two women get sent to the room with The Yellow Wallpaper this week. How many of the women I just listed are already there waiting for them? How many have been put someplace even worse, like the fiery crate Liz was forced into and the fiery car Rosa, Kate and Jasmine were put in?

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