Crazyhead Season 1 Episode 6: Beaver with a Chainsaw

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It’s party time! Raquel’s invite got lost in the mail, but Callum will surely find a way to make sure she attends his big demon coming out party.

I don’t know if I’ve said how much I love the opening of this show. The theme song (The Kill of the Night, by Gin Wigmore), and the entire soundtrack to the series, are fantastic. As is the neon and skulls 80s junkyard look that ends in the title card. It sets the perfect mood for a sarcastic and silly, but smart, comedy-horror show about normal young women who find themselves demon-hunting and more, with little guidance but the internet. Modern, but also a little bit of a throwback to historical roots, with DIY heroes who don’t come from some grand tradition that’s been handed down for generations. They’re on their own, a couple of junkyard strays who are fierce and feisty and frequently underestimated, even by themselves. But they shouldn’t be. And they’re learning that. I really want this show to continue so that we can see the characters come into their own.

Raquel, Amy, Tyler, and Jake are enjoying their trip to the shore, but Tyler can tell something’s wrong with Raquel, and he’s worried. He’s a good brother. If this gets another season, I hope they tell him the truth before long. For now, Amy tells him that Raquel and Harry broke up because Harry’s a Neo-Nazi racist. Amy always goes all out with her lies.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 2: New Colossus Recap

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This episode finds Nina in a boarding school for the blind in America. Her father has kept her survival a secret to keep her safe from the Voi. Her maternal aunt checks in on her periodically, while Nina and her father speak on the phone every Sunday. In the opening scene, the blind students are holding white snakes. Nina is comforting her snake, trying to make it more comfortable with being held. She can hear its heart beat.

Nina plays violin for her father during their weekly phone calls. He loves her playing, and would recognize her unique playing style anywhere. They both live for those phone calls. Every week they shed their skins and renew each other. Her father is in hiding from the Voi, and tells her she must be careful as well. She must stop speaking Russian until he tells her it’s safe again. He’s trying to find a safe home for them, but doesn’t know how long it will take. Until then, they both have to hide.

Nina gets called to the Headmistress’s office. Her aunt is there, and tells her that there was a terrible accident. Her father is gone, and Nina needs to leave the school.  Nina insists that her father has gone into hiding to escape the Voi, and he will come for her. She goes to live with the aunt, but without the money Nina’s father was sending for her support, the aunt can’t really afford to take care of a blind child.

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Crazyhead Season 1 Episode 5: Downward Facing Dog recap

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Tonight we pick up right where we left off in episode 4. Raquel is setting off on her date with Harry, and Amy is chasing Harry’s car down the street. When Amy calls Raquel to warn her that Harry is the guy from her dream, Raquel turns her phone off. Amy can take care of herself for a while.

Raquel and Harry attempt to make appropriate first date small talk, except neither of them is capable of appropriate small talk, period. Raquel finally goes to the ladies room to take a break from the awkward. A demon appears behind her as she’s washing her hands, and Harry jumps in out of nowhere to tackle it, then shove its face in the toilet. Raquel is freaked out and doesn’t know what to think. Harry explains that he’s a demon hunter who knew her dad. Sawyer asked him to keep an eye on her. Harry engineered their first meeting, but he really has come to like her, like her, and wants to date her. Raquel accepts his explanation and decides the whole thing is kind of romantic. They have an intense makeout session right there in the ladies room over the body of the unconscious demon. They continue their date, and now they have tons to talk about. Harry asks her to go out again the next day.

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Crazyhead Season 1 Episode 4: Penguin or Cow Recap

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Amy, Raquel and Jake go to Mercy’s house to see if she knows where Dylan took Suzanne when he grabbed her at the cottage. The girls send Jake back to wait in the car, while they go inside. His main functions seem to be getaway car driver and plucky comic relief. It’s fantastic that, even though he’s the boy, he’s no help whatsoever when it comes to fighting demons.

When they get inside, Raquel flicks out her extendable metal baton thing, and Amy picks up a rolling pin. Mercy’s on the phone talking about mom stuff. She hangs up and gets ready to put her son to bed. All four of them spot each other at the same time. Mercy says she’ll put her son to bed, then they can talk, or whatever. Raquel and Amy agree. Amy goes to get the school muffins out of the oven. Mercy puts her son into bed, and tells him to stay there, no matter what.

Mercy pretends to make a deal with Raquel, but then, as soon as Raquel’s distracted, gives her the mini-Dementor’s kiss that she gave Sawyer. Raquel tumbles down the stairs, where Amy finds her a moment later. Amy searches for Mercy. She finds her in the playroom. They fight and wrestle, using the toys as weapons. The rolling pin is less useful than one would expect, as is the toy knife. The giant stuffed snake, however, is quite helpful. Mercy tells Amy that it’s about more than just Suzanne. Amy has no idea what’s coming, no idea. Amy stabs Mercy in the chest with a toy fighter plane. Mercy smashes Amy in the face, grabs her son, and gets out of the house. She was especially pissed that they put her son in danger. Mercy and the boy go stay with Callum.

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The OA Season 1 Episode 1: Homecoming Recap

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The OA is the intriguing story of a young woman who returns home after 7 years in captivity. She was blind when she left home, but now her sight has been restored. She’s unable to talk about her ordeal, and seems changed in indefinable, mysterious ways. The pilot, at least, focusses more on character and setting up the mood and world of the show than getting a fast-paced plot going. The feel of the show reminds me of The Man in the High Castle in that way, even though they are otherwise very different shows. It slowly builds tension and doles out clues, allowing us to piece together the mystery and understand the show’s universe.

The pilot begins with a phone video shot through the windshield of a car as it crosses a bridge in St Louis. A young woman in a flowing sundress dodges between cars to cross the bridge and climb over the side rail. She briefly looks back toward the camera with a blank face, then steps off the bridge to let herself fall into the Mississippi River below.

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Crazyhead Season 1 Episode 3: Shave the Cat Recap

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We pick up right where we left off, with Amy brushing her teeth, and Suzanne sharing the bathroom with Amy, while also busy being back from the dead. Then the blame game starts, but Suzanne is a good friend and gets over it quickly. She takes a quick look in the mirror to lament the effect being buried and digging herself out of her own grave had on her hairstyle, then it’s off to the kitchen for a snack. Nothing in the kitchen tastes quite right to the Goldilocks of the Undead, and she’s not even neat about it. Amy is a good sport about the insults to her cooking, though she did kill Suzanne with an exorcism and bury her in the woods outside of town, so she probably owes her.

Suzanne explains that she remembers dying and leaving her body, then being pulled back in. She figured she might as well just come home, but it was a long walk in filthy bunny slippers, ok? She doesn’t want to be alone, so she sleeps in with Amy. Even the Undead need snuggles.

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Crazyhead Season 1 Episode 2: A Pine Fresh Scent Recap

 

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Raquel and Amy are shopping for shovels so they can bury Amy’s dead roommate, Suzanne. They can’t find any, so Raquel suggests serving spoons. That’s a firm no from Amy. The cashier helps them out and calls for someone to bring shovels to the check out, while they try, unsuccessfully, not to look guilty as hell. Ironically, the inside of the store looks just like the one where Lisa Lancaster, Riann Steele’s character from In the Flesh, was killed and eaten by unmedicated zombies.

Callum assigns Mercy, a single mom, with the task of stopping Sawyer from interfering with his plans. Mercy rounds up Dylan and the stalking begins.

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Travelers Season 1 Analysis and Speculation

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Whew! What a wild ride this season turned out to be! I love it when you get to the end of a season of television, then have to go back and question everything you thought you knew about the previous episodes. They gave us a lot to think about over the hiatus. When Travelers returns, it’ll seem like a different show, now that the Faction’s role has been revealed. All of these changes open up so many new plot lines to contemplate, so many directions the show could take its mythology and characters.

The goals of everyone, as far as we’ve seen, continue to be saving the world, environmentalism, and respect for the sanctity of life. (In a global way, at least. It’s accepted that individuals of a certain class are disposable in order to further the greater good.) They all want a future living somewhere that’s green. It’s the method of achieving that future that’s at stake. At the very least, there will be a power struggle in the future to see whose Grand Plan will be implemented from here on out. There had to be competing philosophies before the director’s decision-making parameters were programmed. The faction or factions are revisiting those alternate philosophies, to see if changing the program’s if>then protocols will achieve better results. We could be in for experimentation and a rapidly changing future, a reign of terror as the faction tries to secure its hold on the director, or civil war as future society fights it out to decide who will be in charge of the director’s decision-making process, or if the director will be making the decisions at all. Another option is for a faction to steer the changes by human reasoning alone.

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Most Popular Netflix Shows by State: What’s Your State’s Favorite?

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The map above shows the most popular Netflix show in each of the 50 United States, according to research done by HighSpeedInternet.com. They describe their methodology this way:

Our team took the top 75 TV shows on Netflix, cross referenced the shows with Google Trends data, and determined which series was most likely to be streamed on devices near you.

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Travelers Season 1 Episode 12: Grace Recap

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Wow, these last couple of episodes have been an intense information dump, while still being filled with plot and character development. So much to sort through. Travelers is suddenly doing my job for me, with the characters throwing out every question and variation on the conspiracy they can think of. I’ll do some analysis here, but to keep it from getting too long, I’ll save the bulk of it for my Season 1 Analysis and Speculation post.

Ellis’ hack allows travel back to the future. That’s why it was so important to get him out and do it off the books. But Grace screwed it up with her reboot. She opened a two-way door between the future and the past, then left the director open to the rebel faction. If the rebels didn’t already have access to the traveler technology, they do now. Travelers will be able to jump back to the future now, and travelers and messages won’t necessarily be sent to further the director’s Grand Plan. This could potentially change the character of the show completely next season.

The episode opens a few minutes after Marcy ends, with David and Marcy having a cup of tea. David, as hung up on the mundane details of life as ever, is fussing about his broken teapot. Marcy dropped it when the forced personality reboot started. I suppose it’s symbolic of the warm, comforting Marcy he lost, though he doesn’t know it yet. Marcy doesn’t remember the tea. David hopes she’ll recover some of her memories. According to the mythology we’ve been given so far, she shouldn’t, but McLaren did still have a few of original McLaren’s memories, ones expressing strong love. Marcy is working with a damaged brain and an experimental procedure. Anything is possible. If McLaren’s example holds true, her love for David is what she’s most likely to remember.

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