Tag: NBC

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot Recap

~ Metacrone

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There are worse things in life to wake up to than Alex Newell singing in the apartment next door. That’s what happens to Zoey Clarke (Jane Levy) when she develops a new musical superpower early on in the pilot of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, NBC’s new hour long musical series. Alex, who plays Mo, a DJ, fashion designer and artist, frequently sings and plays loud music even before Zoey develops her power. With her new talent, she can hear the songs that he only sings inside his head. Zoey is initially too much of a coding nerd to appreciate any of this.

When there’s an earthquake while she’s having an MRI of her head with a radio playing, Zoey acquires the ability to read minds, in the form of watching people sing fully choreographed musical numbers that explain their current state of being. The computer running the test does something funky as the world shakes, making portions of Zoey’s brain light up that shouldn’t be affected.

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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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Midnight, Texas Season 2 Episode 8: Patience Is a Virtue Recap

~ Metacrone

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With episode 8, Midnight, Texas goes off the rails, into full on camp. It’s an over the top episode, with over the top acting, villains, costumes, and even incest, one of the shocking TV sex crimes of choice for the last several years.

The Spanish Inquisition even gets a nod. And no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

The story picks up right where it left off, with Manfred struggling to remove Theophilus’ necklace. It’s stuck and only gets tighter when he tries to pull at it. He and Kai discuss who Patience screwed worse. Kai now realizes that his entire life has been a lie and that she’ll kill him along with everyone else, once she has what she wants. Manfred lost Creek and his body is going to become Theophilus’ new body. It’s a tough call, between them. Let’s just agree that Patience knows how to make sure that she’s not the one being taken advantage of.

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Midnight, Texas Season 2 Episode 7: Resting Witch Face Recap

~ Metacrone

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By the time we’re done watching episode 7, “Resting Witch Face”, the sleepy little town of Midnight, Texas has been turned upside down. Its darkest secrets have been exposed, friends and enemies have switched places, and another character has been lost. With only two episodes left following this one, the show is preparing its stage for a huge season finale.

As the episode begins, Joe is still out looking for Chuy, who is out of control and in his demon form. Walker has followed them. Fiji is hiding just how much her new affiliation with dark magic has affected her. Patience and Kai are supposedly dealing with the aftermath of the hotel being used as the epicenter of the town’s troubles in the previous episode.

And Manfred is still standing on his front porch, in tears, after watching Creek’s ghost disappear in flames. After a moment, he snaps into action and goes looking for Kai, who’s more than ready for a fight. They meet out in the street, shouting threats at each other. Kai tries to take Manfred’s powers from him, against his will. Only Patience is surprised. Lem stops Kai, then Patience takes him back to the hotel. Manfred tells everyone else that he saw Creek’s ghost.

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Midnight, Texas: Who Killed Creek? Could It Be Fiji?

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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In the shocking ending of  Midnight, Texas, season 2, episode 6, No More Mr Nice Kai, Manfred discovered that his once and possibly future girlfriend, Creek Lovell, was dead. Creek left town at the end of season 2, episode 1, Head Games, in order to go to college and find the peace of mind and personal safety that eluded her in Midnight. She came back to Midnight in episode 6 because she thought Manfred needed her and she missed him. Instead of being allowed to return to her new life, she was murdered.

The last time we saw Creek alive, Kai discovered her in the hotel, searching for Manfred. The next time we saw her, she was a ghost. She was able to speak to Manfred, but she quickly burned up and was forced to move on to the next plane of existence. The fire started in her throat, probably to stop her from speaking.

The normal way that ghosts move on to the next plane is to disappear. They become gray smoke, which then vanishes. This is how Lyric moved on. We saw it frequently in season 1. The only other ghosts who’ve disappeared in fire, the way that Creek did, were Bruce and Carolyn, the married couple who’d owned the hotel in the 50’s, who we met in episode 2. Fiji used an ancient spell to send them on their way, which required the bones of the dead, sage, and a goat’s heart. The flames burned the ghosts in the same order that they burned their bones. In the case of Bruce and Carolyn, that was bottom to top. Carolyn was able to give Manfred a message, “There are secrets behind the woods,” because her head and neck were the last parts to go.

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Midnight, Texas Season 2 Episode 4: I Put a Spell on You

~ Metacrone

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Midnight, Texas was a good show last year, but it’s improved to become a great show, within it’s genre, this year. It’s a fun, sexy, funny, slightly scary, thought-provoking romp through Charlaine Harris’ world. It’s True Blood Lite, and that’s not a bad thing. True Blood was amazing, but it also took itself too seriously at times and went off on some ridiculous tangents. Not to mention the gore.

Midnight Texas can be watched by a general audience, but it’s not just fluff and vampires. The characters have chemistry and have developed a bond that makes the drama they go through compelling. The supernatural elements are often used as metaphor, which gives the show relevance. But Midnight never forgets to have fun, and if all you want from it is a relaxing Friday night, you can ignore the larger implications easily.

Midnight, Texas is my choice for this season’s best show that nobody’s watching.

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Midnight, Texas Season 2 Episode 4: Sneak Peek (Video)

~ Metacrone

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The Midnighters Find a Baby Weretiger

Minor book and show spoilers.

Calling all Midnight, Texas book readers! Midnight, Texas is doing the baby weretiger plotline from the books, with their own twist. For one thing, the baby is a girl instead of a boy, a welcome change in a show with too few female characters. For another, the Rev isn’t around to help raise the baby. Even if he returns, he’s no longer a weretiger, so he’ll be of little help in controlling the child.

My next question is, will the other character who came to Midnight as part of this plotline join the cast soon? This character was also part of the Sookie Stackhouse books, but was notably left out of True Blood. If they follow the books, this addition would bring a romantic shake up to the town that it could use right about now.

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Midnight Texas Season 2 Episode 2: The Monster of the Week Is Patriarchy Recap

~ Metacrone

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In this episode of Midnight, Texas, the #Me Too movement takes a distinctly supernatural turn, as ghosts, vampires, and vampire wives all stand up to the oppression of the patriarchy, with varying results. The moral of the story is, we are stronger when we fight together, but violence isn’t the answer. Or it almost never is. Maybe the moral is to use your powers wisely so the patriarchy daddy/husband vampire won’t find an excuse to try to take them away from you again. Or, put more simply, don’t get caught red-fanged. Channel Olivia or Fiji, not Dawnette.

The discussion as to why it’s fine for all of the men who hurt and exploited Dawnette to run around unpunished, and for Lem and the Rev to run around unpunished, while Dawnette has to quickly be made contrite and powerless again, will have to wait. Suffice it to say, broadcast audiences don’t want to see an angry, scary, powerful woman go unpunished, no matter how righteous her anger or deserving her victims. And a combination of misogyny, racism and classism dictates that a woman like Dawnette couldn’t be trusted to learn to control her power or anger, even though Lem did. They might as well have made her stripper name “Rebel China Doll”.

Episode 2 opens with Healer Kai curing a man’s elbow pain at the Crystal Desert Hotel, using the same basic procedure that he used to cure Manfred of his demon cancer in episode 1. He ends with sucking the negative energy out through the man’s mouth and into himself, but we never see him release it, just like the last episode. Kai’s two, ahem, loyal assistants, Lyric and Sequoia, are there to help.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 6: Off Radar Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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In Off Radar, we watch as the connections between the main characters on Manifest are either deepened or further strained. Everything is connected, but not all connections are going to remain strong forever. If the callings are tests, then they are, in part, a test of which connections the passengers are willing to risk losing, and which they’ll fight to keep.

In real life, radar uses reflected radio waves, broadcast over the air, to determine the speed and position of a targeted object. In Off Radar, Cal is the receiver, as he has been before in other ways. He’s receiving emotional, physical and mental information from one of the other passengers, a Bulgarian man named Marko. At the same time, Cal becomes gravely ill. It’s up to Ben, Michaela and Saanvi to interpret Cal’s symptoms and newfound ability to speak Bulgarian, determine if this is a calling, and what the calling wants.

It turns out Marko and ten other passengers have gone missing since the passengers were released by the Feds. Ben uses his data analyst skills to determine where they might be, then Michaela and Jared follow-up on the ground. This brings Michaela and Jared to a turning point in their relationship, when Jared demands that Michaela finally tell him the truth about the callings.

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NBC Cancels Reverie Plus Other TV News Items

~ Metacrone

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News on Reverie, The Passage (Video), Manifest, People’s Sexiest Man Alive (Video) and Syfy’s Deadly Class (Video)

NBC announced today that Reverie, the Sarah Shahi virtual reality thriller, has been cancelled after one season. The show premiered May 30, 2018 and struggled in the ratings during its 10 episode run.

Reverie also starred Dennis Haysbert, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Jessica Lu and Kathryn Morris. Extant creator Mickey Fisher was the creator and showrunner.

Sendhil Ramamurthy has already moved on to a new show, one of the fall season’s hits, New Amsterdam. Congrats to him.

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