Tag: analysis

Season 2 Cast Announced for Altered Carbon

~ Metacrone

AC S2 Kovacs Psychasec Screen

While Altered Carbon still has no official release date, Netflix has released a teaser video to announce the main season 2 cast. As previously announced, Anthony Mackie replaces Joel Kinnaman as the main character, mercenary for hire Takeshi Kovacs. As expected, most of the season 1 cast is missing from the list, but 2 fan favorites are returning. And Simone Missick, a fan favorite from the now defunct Netflix Marvel universe, joins the cast.

Here is the teaser video, with Netflix’s character descriptions and my comments to follow.

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Amazon Cancels The Man in the High Castle: Season 4 Will Be Series Finale

~ Metacrone

Plus Official Season 4 Teaser Trailer

Another one bites the dust.

As the title of the post says, the upcoming season 4 of Amazon Prime’s The Man in the High Castle, which will be released in the Fall of 2019, will be its last. Many suspected that this would be the case when the show was given an early renewal for season 4, after it had taken so long for season 3 to be released. Another high quality show lost to Jeff Bezos’ short attention span.

But, despite my sadness over the loss, I feel there’s some good news here as well.

For one thing, look at this amazing poster! For another, a teaser video was also released today. And, in an interview with Deadline, the executive producers of the show, Isa Dick Hackett and David Zucker, strongly hinted about the possibility of a sequel series or film.

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Travelers Cancelled by Netflix: No Season 4 Planned

~ Metacrone ~ 6 Comments

Travelers Cast Plus Brad Wright

Update: Fans have started a petition to save Travelers. Sign it HERE.

We’re all on Protocol 5 for the foreseeable future, fellow Travelers. Eric McCormack announced today, via Twitter, that Netflix has cancelled the Canadian science fiction series after 3 seasons. Travelers creator and showrunner Brad Wright confirmed the cancellation shortly afterward.

Watch Eric McCormack’s video announcement after the cut.

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Travelers Season 3: Could David and Marcy’s Fates Have Been Predicted?

~ Metacrone ~ 5 Comments

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Was There Foreshadowing for What Happened to Everyone’s Favorite Couple?

Spoilers Through Season 3 Episode 10, Protocol Omega

The short answer to the title question is, yes. The fates of David and Marcy were foreshadowed from season 1 all the way through season 3. Knowing this doesn’t take away the shock of what happened to them, but perhaps it does make it easier to process, if we realize that this was always the path they were on. There were timelines in which things could have turned out differently for David and Traveler 3569, but this timeline was unlikely to bend in that direction.

First, let’s look at a related side issue, the one pictured above. What does it mean that David fell in love with original Marcy in a different version of the timeline? Does it negate his love for Traveler Marcy?

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 10- Crosswinds: Sneak Peek, Extended Promo and Surprise Returns [Video]

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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Update 1/8/18- Added a 2nd clip and the episode 11 promo. NBC took down the extended promo, so it was replaced with the regular length promo.

NBC’s new scifi show Manifest will return from its winter break tonight (January 7th), with a new episode titled “Crosswinds”. Up until a few weeks ago, the promotional materials had the episode title listed as “Unaccompanied Minors”. The emphasis of the episode must have changed in the final stages of editing. It may not be as family centric as the original title and promo suggested, or the new title could suggest more focus on conflict and characters working against each other. Perhaps some hostilities that have remained mostly unspoken will be brought out into the open.

Or maybe some forward momentum will be lost, hopefully for UDS rather than the passengers:

A crosswind is a strong wind that blows across the direction that vehicles, boats, or aircraft are traveling in, and that makes it difficult for them to keep moving steadily forward. (CollinsDictionary.com)

Sneak Peek and Extended Promo videos after the cut.

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Travelers Season 3: Why Is It So Hard for the Travelers to Face Being Solo?

~ Metacrone

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From Philip to Boyd to Hall, the Travelers Don’t Like the Idea of Ending Up Alone

Spoilers Through Season 3 Episode 10, Protocol Omega

Being a solo Traveler or the last remaining member of a Traveler team has come up several times this season. Grace and 5416 are solo Travelers. The Archivist, A-18, appears to also be a solo traveler. Hall becomes the last member of his team when Luca and Kyle defect to the Faction. Hall dies soon after.

The Shanghai historian becomes the last member of their team when the bomb explodes. Both Philip and Boyd face the possibility of being alone, Philip because of the Seattle bomb and Boyd because her historian, Nathan, is kidnapped by the Faction. Even as part of a five person team, travelers face frequent danger, including the possibility of being overwritten by the Faction.

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Why Does Metawitches Keep Writing About Diversity and Violence Against Women When I Just Want to Read a Recap?

~ Metacrone
night television tv video
Photo by Tookapic on Pexels.com

Because life is political, so is entertainment, and so is our blog. Because we know that the creators of the shows that we love can do better. If no one points out where the issues lie, how will they know where they need to improve?

We live in the real world, where mass media has an effect on people’s attitudes. It’s important to examine closely exactly what we’re being shown and what messages are actually being delivered. It’s the only way that change happens.

Whenever we start analyzing how a show is doing in regard to its male/female ratio and other forms of diversity, and compare how characters from different demographics are being treated, we are always met with the response:

But aren’t the male (and white) characters being treated the same way as the women?

This is where attention to detail becomes important, plus the ability to count, and the ability to distinguish between a named character and a background character. When we’re discussing violent acts, this argument is frequently made, because there will be so many more men running around on screen than women that, of course, in raw numbers, more violent acts are happening to men than women.

Let’s break this situation down.

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EW’s (& Metawitches) Best TV Songs of 2018

~ Metacrone

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EW.com is posting their series of end of the year articles with their picks for best of everything in the entertainment world for 2018. I usually don’t get involved in those judgments, because I’m never able to pick favorites or list them in top to bottom order without long-winded explanations full of exceptions to my choices. Sort of like what’s happening with this explanation.

BUT- over the weekend, EW posted their picks for the 5 best songs of 2018 which originated on TV shows, and I have to hand it to them, as these are all great songs. I only knew of about half of them before. I have a song that I think should be added to the list, from back when Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was still putting effort into more of its songs.

I may add to this list if I remember more songs from 2018 over the next week/ish.

EW Picks, My Commentary:

“This One’s for You” sung by Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban, from the 2018 Tony Awards

How is it that these two beloved, multi-talented performers, who’ve both been around for decades, have never won anything? Well, for example, Sara Bareilles’ Broadway show, Waitress, was shut out of a Tony win the year Hamilton swept the awards. Great for Hamilton, not so great for all of the other deserving shows and artists.

This song uses humor and a great melody to emphasize their camaraderie with the losers of the night, which, inevitably, was most of the audience, and to highlight the unsung heroes of Broadway, the ensemble players, who don’t win awards but form the backbone of every show. It was ironic but classy and good-natured, setting the tone for the night.

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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD Renewed for Season 7, with One Agent Missing

~ Metacrone

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Is This a Sign of the Effect That Avengers 3&4 Will Have on Agents of Shield?

This is good news! Disney/Marvel/ABC announced today that Agents of SHIELD has been renewed for season 7, even though season 6 won’t air until Summer 2019. Many had assumed that the shortened, 13 episode season would be the series last, so early confirmation that the network is still supporting its original foray into Marvel TV programming is very welcome.

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Castle Rock Season 1 Episode 10: Romans Recap and Season 1 Analysis

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

 

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(My quick review of Castle Rock episode 10: Romans and Season 1 is HERE.)

That was an enlightening exciting disappointing season finale.

Later in this post I’ll give my favorite explanation of events, which tries to incorporate everything that happened and didn’t happen, because I can never resist a little pseudo-fan fiction writing of my own. I could tell you at least half a dozen others that I’ve made up since the episode was released. Every viewer has their own versions, just like we all had theories through out the season. It’s part of the fun of a mystery.

But I didn’t watch this show as a choose your own adventure/write your own ending show. I resent writers who try to pass off lazy writing and an unfinished story as an artistic choice. And make no mistake, that’s what creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason have done. They thought it would be cool to leave the ending up to the viewer, and didn’t even decide on an ending between themselves.

This show was set up as a mystery, and the payoff at the end of a mystery is discovering answers to the bulk of the questions the series has posed. That way, viewers who are matching wits with the characters and writers have closure and satisfaction. This would have been an acceptable, but still disappointing, season finale for the first season of a 3-5 season mystery series that was going to explore a complex science fiction/supernatural mystery, like Orphan Black or 12 Monkeys.

Since season 1 was advertised as a self-contained story, I call BS. They can leave questions about the nature of their universe open, but this season’s mysteries needed to be solved. They could have left us with an amazingly ambiguous but thought-provoking ending, like the best anthology series often do. But this wasn’t thought provoking. It was just flat. We’re left going in the same circles we’ve been running in all season, not contemplating some deeper philosophical truth.

For the showrunners, this isn’t a show that’s about something. This is a show that wants to stump the viewer with unsolvable, unpredictable mysteries and dazzle them with cool ideas.  I think of it as the Legion syndrome. You could just as easily call it the Lost syndrome. The creators were so busy showing off how talented they are and what huge Stephen King fans they are, that they forgot to tell a coherent, compelling season long story with a consistent through line, an earned conclusion for each character and a satisfying ending. You can’t solve the mystery because the clues purposely don’t add up.

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