The Wheel of Time Season 1 Episode 4: The Dragon Reborn Recap

January 16, 2022January 17, 2022 ~ Metacrone

Much of episode 4 takes place in the Aes Sedai encampment, where Moiraine, Lan and Nyaeve stop for the night after meeting up with the sisters in episode 3. Moiraine reconnects with Liandrin and the other Aes Sedai sisters, has her wound healed and evaluates Logain, the potential Dragon Reborn. Nynaeve learns more about the Aes Sedai and their Warders.

Rand and Mat travel with Thom the gleeman, stopping at a local farm for the night. Egwene and Perrin travel toward the White Tower with the Tuatha’an and learn about their peaceful philosophy, the Way of the Leaf.

Recap

The episode begins with a flashback to the recent past in Ghealan, where Logain (Álvaro Morte) is waging war on his own people. This is the war the Two Rivers villagers discussed in episode 1 that’s taking place in the south. Logain’s peasant army has stormed the gates and is sacking the king’s castle. The king’s retainers attempt to move him to a secure location, but he’s a dedicated leader and refuses to leave the battle. Logain approaches, all power and intensity, repelling attacks with barely a twitch of his finger.

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The Wheel of Time Season 1 Episode 3: A Place of Safety Recap

January 2, 2022January 4, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

After a brief flashback to Nynaeve’s capture by the trolloc, episode 3 picks up where the previous episode left off, with Nynaeve’s knife at Lan’s throat and the four villagers on the run from the sentient evil of Shadar Logoth. Once they get past their initial hostilities, Lan convinces Nynaeve to help treat Moiraine’s infected wound. Perrin and Egwene encounter a pack of wolves who chase them toward a group of travelers. Mat and Rand find a mining town with an inn, where they have some educational encounters.

Recap

Before the opening credits we jump back to the trolloc battle in Two Rivers, moments after Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) was taken. As a trolloc drags the Wisdom out of the village by her impressive braid, Egwene can be heard crying for her in the background. Nynaeve’s captor drops her on the ground while he stops to brutally murder and cannibalize a wounded trolloc comrade.

I’m sure it was a mercy killing.

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Hanna Season 2 Episode 5: A Way to Grieve Recap

November 29, 2021 ~ Metacrone

In episode 5 Hanna wrestles with the real-not real game that is life at the Meadows. As she grows closer to the other trainees, the feelings about Erik’s death that she’s held back for months resurface. Marissa works to escape from solitary confinement, while Mannion seeks a way to help her and Hanna.

Recap

After her failed escape attempt in episode 4, Hanna resigns herself to life at the Meadows for the moment. But she hasn’t been brainwashed into thinking this is a good or normal life, the way the other trainees have. The photos and memorabilia from her fake life are continuous reminders of the life with Erik that’s gone.

Both of her parents sacrificed themselves so that she could live. She doesn’t need to pretend that she was loved, the way the other trainees do. There’s no way she would betray her parents by replacing their memories. If Utrax wants to succeed with her, they should present the new identity as a cover story, not as an erasure of her past.

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Hanna Season 2 Episode 4: Welcome Mia Recap

November 28, 2021November 28, 2021 ~ Metacrone

In episode 4, Marissa finds a way into the Meadows and meets with Hanna. Hanna and Clara work through their differences. Jules and Sandy plan a heist followed by a party. Leo teaches the trainees about the Face/Trigger method of approaching a target.

Recap

Marissa (Mireille Enos) wakes up in an inn in Northern France covered in bruises from her fight with Hanna in the truck on the ferry. She assesses the damage, then calls the organization who screened her apartment for bugs in episode 2. When Stephen Mannion (David Avery) answers, she gives the code name Vesuvius and says she needs help with a problem concerning Utrax she’s been trying to solve on her own. Mannion replies that Utrax no longer exists. Marissa tells him it’s still alive and he accepts her word. But their conversation is interrupted by an incoming call from John Carmichael (Dermot Mulroney), so she hangs up.

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The Wheel of Time Season 1 Episode 1: Leavetaking Recap

November 27, 2021January 3, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

Amazon Prime’s new high fantasy series The Wheel of Time is based on the 14 novel series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. The series takes place in a future universe that looks like the late medieval past, after a cataclysmic battle between good and evil thousands of years ago brought societal collapse and confined the use of magic to women. Men are driven insane when they wield the One Power. Time is cyclical and as the Wheel of Time spins it creates the Pattern of Ages, with human lives as both the threads of the tapestry and drivers of the Wheel.

Souls are reborn, with some able to channel power and meant to change the course of history. 3500 years ago, one such soul, who became known as The Dragon but was a man named Lewis Therin, fought the Darkness and won, but at great cost. The world has never recovered. Now prophecy states that the Dragon has been reborn and will stop the Dark One again. The Aes Sedai, a powerful magical sisterhood, seek to find him before he comes into his power. He must be carefully managed so that he doesn’t destroy the world a second time.

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Hanna Season 2 Episode 3: To the Meadows Recap

July 2, 2021November 23, 2021 ~ Metacrone

In episode 3, the adults and kids work on their trust issues while Terri tries to help Clara find her place at The Meadows, Marissa and Hanna track a drug shipment and Leo guides Sandy through using her new religion to help work through her issues with Clara. Carmichael supervises Sonia’s investigation of Hanna’s mayhem at the Passway facility.

Recap

Carmichael watches the trainees out in the exercise yard while listening to a news report about the incident that Hanna caused at Passway Pharmaceuticals in Belgium. Two people are dead, but Passway is denying all responsibility. Police assume the real Monica Gastner, the young woman whose identity Hanna stole to get into the trial, was the woman actually at the facility, so they’ve taken her into custody.

Carmichael calls Louis Dumont, the Director of Passway Pharmaceuticals, who’s sent him Monica’s file. Monica has a history of anxiety and depression, but no previous record of violence. The police have been at Passway all night questioning people. Dumont says that he’s kept them away from the area where Carmichael’s drug shipment for the The Meadows is stored, so it’s not in jeopardy. Carmichael doesn’t want to take any chances, telling Dumont to move up the shipment and take care of it personally.

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Hanna Season 2 Episode 1: Safe Recap

September 29, 2020September 30, 2020 ~ Metacrone

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Hanna, the series based on the 2011 film of the same name, returns for its second 8 episode season on Prime Video. Season 2 picks up not long after the end of season 1 and follows Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) and her new sister, Clara (Yasmin Monet Prince), as they try to survive on their own in the Romanian forest without Hanna’s adopted father, Erik (Joel Kinnaman).

S1 Big Bad Marissa (Mireille Enos) is still involved with Utrax and is soon brought back into Hanna’s orbit. She’s also asked to consult in the new school that the rest of the Utrax trainees have been taken to, where they undergo socialization training so they can blend in when deployed as assassins. The trainees are given new identities and carefully managed by John Carmichael (Dermot Mulroney), the director of The Meadows, and his team of operatives.

While S2 still has plenty of action and movement across Europe, it’s focus is on the characters’ struggles with their identities and finding (or holding onto) their places in the world. S1 introduced us to Hanna when she was new to the outside world, as she struggled to make sense of herself and the urban forest environment she was plunged into, while wars were fought around her and over her.

In S2, Hanna understands her own abilities and history, at least according to Erik’s perspective. Now she’s discovering for her herself how she might fit into the world outside the forest. Marissa goes through a similar struggle as she continues to dig deeper into the truth about Utrax. She faces more decisions about what she’s willing to live with and what she needs to fight for.

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Movie Review: One Child Nation

February 1, 2020February 1, 2020 ~ Metacrone

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😸😸😸😸½ Rated 4 1/2 out of 5 Happy Lap Cats

One Child Nation is a very personal documentary, made by director Nanfu Wang when she had her own first child and began to seriously consider, for the first time, the implications of China’s one child policy, which she had been born and raised under. Wang had relocated to the US years before her son was born, so her pregnancy was unaffected by the harsh government program, which was in force from 1979 to 2015. But the internalized trauma from growing up in that environment, from events she didn’t even realize she’d absorbed, began to affect her attitude toward her own pregnancy, so she set out to examine the wide-ranging effects of China’s long-term push to gain control of its population size.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 4 Episode 2: Every Door Out… Recap

December 23, 2019 ~ Metacrone

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“Every door out… is a door in.” In season 4, episode 2, Dr Mengele and his portal experiments return. The program has advanced significantly in the last year, with regular teams of Nazi spies making the trip to the Alt-World for both espionage and sabotage. Thanks to Hawthorne Abendsen and the Reich’s enhanced interrogation methods, Mengele has also made a map of the multiverse. John Smith understands the potential waiting for them in each world- if the Nazis can send someone to a new world, that world can send someone to the High Castle world as well. Everyplace is a potential threat.

Including schools and homes in the American Reich, since children have been taught to spy on and turn in their loved ones. Some, like Amy, are very enthusiastic about enforcing the rules. Jennifer isn’t happy about being back in the Reich, so John has to play referee between his two daughters to keep them both alive.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 1 Episode 6: Three Monkeys Recap

November 13, 2019November 15, 2019 ~ Metacrone

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Buckle up, Buttercups, it’s VA Day in the Reich and things are about to get crazy. Obergruppenführer John Smith has not just one, but two potential traitors over for dinner with the family, Joe Blake and Rudolph Wegener. He has ulterior motives with both, because when does he not? Juliana begins her job at the Nippon building and learns she’s working in the office of Trade Minister Tagomi.

Recap

It’s VA Day and every house in the neighborhood is proudly flying the swastika and stripes. Joe arrives at the Smith house with a bouquet of flowers for Helen and is introduced to the whole family, including the dog, Max. He mentions that he saw John in the parade earlier in the day. Thomas offers to show Joe around. It’s obvious that life couldn’t be better in the American Reich.

Over in the JPS, Juliana finishes dressing for her new job, just as Frank wakes up. She asks how the memorial service was and he says it was fake. She thinks they need to spend some time together, but he doesn’t want to make her late for the dojo, so she suggests they plan on dinner. Frank asks if he heard her on the phone earlier. As she’s walking out the door, Juliana says it was a wrong number.

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