Reverie Season 1 Episode 1: Apertus Recap

~ Metacrone ~ Leave a comment

reverie-episode-101-featured

NBC’s Reverie is a new show starring Sarah Shahi (Person of Interest) as former hostage negotiator Mara Kint, who’s brought in by her former boss, Charlie Ventana (Dennis Haysbert, Allstate Insurance commercials) to help revive the comatose user of a new form of technology call Reverie, produced by Onira Tech. The tech creates virtual simulations within the patient’s own mind, making them indistinguishable from reality. It allows the users to bring back, and interact with, lost loved ones, and reenact favorite memories. Some users find the simulated reality better than real life, and try to stay inside Reverie forever. While they’re living out their fantasy life in the dreamworld, their bodies have slipped into comas.

Mara’s job is to enter the coma victim’s dreamworld and talk them out of their Reverie. Because of the nature of the tech, they be involuntarily removed, and once she’s in, neither can Mara. Each patient has a biotech implant that interfaces with their nervous system, allowing the Reverie to feel real, but making it harder to keep the patients safe when things go wrong.

Reverie (the product) was created by scientist Alexis Barrett (Jessica Lu, Awkward). Alexis also created the Jarvis-like AI that runs the Onira headquarters, Dylan. Dylan and Alexis have a past. Mara is trained in the use of Reverie, and her visits are monitored, by Oneirologist Paul Hammond (Sendhil Ramamurthy, Heroes). Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. Kathryn Morris (Cold Case) plays Monica Shaw, a mysterious Department of Defense official who meets with Charlie to discuss the future of the project and its DoD is funding.

Continue reading →

Advertisements

The Crossing Season 1 Episode 8: The Long Morrow Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

In episode 8 of The Crossing, we finally get official confirmation that Emma was fridged way back in episode 4. No one onscreen cares much about her death, but I’m pretty pissed off about it. Lindauer brings Sophie back in from the cold to help him break Reese, with the promise that she can continue her research. Naomi and Rebecca get serious about forming a cult, while Caleb tries to stay grounded amidst the madness surrounding him. Does that ever work? Paul, who is an innocent Hufflepuff, gets framed for murder, but believes everything his evil wife Greta tells him. I wonder what caused his brain damage.

And, oh look, now that we’ve for sure gotten rid of the woman who was in charge of the refugee camp, a new, powerless, nameless female character is introduced and held prisoner by Jude and Nestor, for no reason, in another male abuse of power.

Does everyone feel more comfortable, now that the powerful women are either evil or dying, and the rest are powerless and also probably either evil, crazy or stupid? Comfortable isn’t the word I’d use for my state of mind, but I’m apparently hard to please, what with expecting women to be treated like equal human beings and all.

1

The Long Morrow starts by giving us an update on Reese. She’s being held hostage by Lindauer and his henchmen in a well equipped and organized lab. The doctor in charge of Reese says that they can’t wake her. Reese is bound to a gurney and in a self-induced twilight state where she appears unconscious but can still hear some of the noises from the outside environment. She dreams of a combination of her work as an Apex enforcer and snippets of her history in the present day.

Continue reading →

Agents of SHIELD Season 5 Episode 22: The End Recap and Season 5 Review/Analysis

~ Metacrone ~ Leave a comment

Episode 22, The End, closes season 5 of Agents of SHIELD, and, as promised in the promos, not everyone makes it out alive. It’s an emotional episode that ties up the Graviton story, at least for now, and settles the question of who’ll succeed Coulson as director of SHIELD, at least for now. The season is wrapped up nicely at the end of the episode, but there’s a clear set up for season 6. I’m still reeling from everything that happened in this episode, and wondering about some of the dangling threads that were purposely left hanging.

Coulson lies unconscious in the infirmary, not dead yet, but inching ever closer. Deke listens from the hall as the team argues about whether to save Coulson or save the world. They don’t currently have a way to get the centipede serum/odium mixture into Talbot, even if they decide to use it on him. Fitz suggests that having Talbot absorb someone who has the serum might work. Mack, of course, is upset that Fitz went there. Fitz tells him it’s a hypothetical suggestion.

There Fitz goes, using big words and getting all sciencey and theoretical again. Next thing you know, he’ll try to get Mack to believe in climate change or that the earth is more than 6,000 years old.

Continue reading →

Samantha Bee Calls Ivanka Trump Sexist Profanity, Spends the Next Day Dealing with the Repercussions

~ Metacrone ~ Leave a comment
sam-bee
On her Wednesday, 5/30/18 episode of the TBS show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Ms. Bee aired a story about the recent immigration issues concerning the separation of children from their parents. During the story, she showed a tweet from Ivanka Trump that included a photo of Trump with her son and called Trump “a feckless c**t”.
The segment was quickly met with harsh criticism from many sources, with some, including Donald Trump, calling for her show’s cancellation. Samantha Bee and TBS apologized for her choice of language. She spent the next day dealing with the fallout from the incident. But by last night, she was complaining that she’d had to waste time on sexism instead of focusing on immigration.
Samantha Bee, maybe next time don’t use vile, misogynist language to make your point, if you want to keep the focus on the issue you intended. I don’t care who the woman or man in question is, that word should never be used because of its implication that female body parts, and women themselves, equal something disgusting. And your implication that the abuse of women isn’t as important as racism is revolting.

Continue reading →

New SciFi Show: NBC’s Reverie Starts Wednesday, 5/30 [Video]

~ Metacrone ~ Leave a comment

Are we ready to take a chance on the next broadcast network scifi show? Reverie is created by Mickey Fisher (Extant, The Strain), executive produced by Steven Spielberg and stars Sarah Shahi (Person of Interest), Dennis Haysbert (Allstate car insurance commercials, President Palmer on 24), Jessica Lu (Awkward), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes), and Kathryn Morris (Cold Case). That’s a pretty great pedigree.

NBC’s description of the show’s premise:

“This grounded new thriller follows Mara Kint (Sarah Shahi), a former hostage negotiator and expert on human behavior, who became a college professor after facing an unimaginable personal tragedy. But when her former boss, Charlie Ventana (Dennis Haysbert), brings her in to save ordinary people who have lost themselves in an immersive, highly advanced virtual reality program in which users can live out their wildest dreams, she finds that in saving others, she may actually have discovered a way to save herself.”

In one of the videos below, star Sarah Shahi describes it as “a psychological thriller set in a virtual reality world.”

Continue reading →

Sense8: The Series Finale Official Trailer…One Last Mission

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

7 Sensates…One Last Mission…To Save the 8th

Netflix has released a full length trailer for the series finale movie that wraps up season 2 of Sense8, the innovative story of a diverse cluster of telepathically linked humans that comprise a possible next step in our evolution, created by the Wachowskis.

Watch the trailer after the jump.

Continue reading →

The Rain Season 1 Episode 8: Trust Your Instincts Recap and Season 1 Review/Analysis

~ Metacrone ~ Leave a comment
TR108AndersonsAtApollon1
Simone stands between her father and Rasmus, and the world and Rasmus.

In episode 8, Simone and Rasmus are reunited with their father at the Apollon headquarters, and the survivors reach the wall that separates the quarantine zone from the world, but nothing else goes as planned. The survivors face new and unexpected challenges at the Apollon headquarters, and have to make some difficult decisions, but they get some good news, too.

At the start of the episode, Thomas drives the survivors toward the grounds of the Apollon headquarters. The 100 foot high wall isolating the quarantine zone can be seen in the distance as well.

Simone remembers when her father charged her with taking care of Rasmus. He told her that Rasmus was the key to it all. In the present, she tries to put her hand on Rasmus’ shoulder in solidarity, but he cringes forward to shake her hand off.

Continue reading →

The Rain Season 1 Episode 7: Don’t Talk to Strangers Recap

~ Metacrone ~ Leave a comment

In episode 7, everyone’s bad day continues into the next day, except for Beatrice, whose fight is over. Patrick is now a guest of the Strangers, and they’re too desperate, for reasons of their own, to exhibit much politeness or patience with him. Rasmus has cast himself as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, and is unable to cope with his beloved’s death, or let go of her body. He’s the same trainwreck that he’s been since the moment we met him, a force of nature who can’t be stopped and feels no remorse. As Simone will try to tell him, the rest just revolve around him, trying to keep him safe, and falling to the wayside as they fail.

The episode begins with the chief Stranger, Thomas, interrogating Patrick about the location of the rest of his group. When Patrick won’t answer, he does a little demonstration of old school interrogation methods. Once upon a time, they used to believe that insanity lived in the teeth, and kept removing them until sanity was restored. He pulls out one of Patrick’s molars, with pliers and no painkillers, to make sure Patrick’s understands.

Continue reading →

The Crossing Season 1 Episode 7: Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments
The one and only promo photo released for this episode. He’s dreaming a golden dream.

In case anyone hasn’t heard yet, there will only be one season of The Crossing. This episode is an example of the uneven writing that probably turned viewers away and got it cancelled, along with a main character who’s a patsy and a screw up, and not even charming while he’s doing it.

The women of The Crossing continue to be fascinating and amazing, but, after only 7 episodes, the show has developed an alarming tendency to disappear them. One of the supposed leads, Emma Ren, disappeared a few episodes ago. Now Sophie Forbin is also gone, fired from her job and hospitalized with a heart attack. This week we don’t even get an update on her condition. The other important female character, Reece, is written so inconsistently that you’d never believe she’s from a superior race. Tonight, even though she was told point-blank by Beaumont that the 1st wavers are hunting her, it doesn’t occur to her that she’s able to get her daughter back so easily because it’s a trap. Reece also disappears for long stretches of time, despite being a lead.

Continue reading →