Tag: netflix

The Rain Season 2 Episode 1: Avoid Contact Recap

~ Metacrone

The Rain S2Ep1 The Gang Gets Scanned

It’s time to journey back to Scandinavia for season 2 of The Rain, Netflix International’s pocket apocalypse series in which rainwater contaminated by a man-made plague virus has killed almost everyone in Denmark. That country, and possibly parts of the countries it borders, have been closed off in a quarantine zone, while the company which created the virus, Apollon, tries to find the cure. The quarantine zone is a post-apocalyptical hellscape, while the rest of the world continues on as if nothing has happened.

Before the end of season 1, our intrepid gang of survivors, Simone, Rasmus, Martin, Lea, Patrick and Jean, discover that, after 6 years, the rain is no longer toxic. But, as was shown in that other famous viral plague series, 28 Days/Weeks Later, viruses have a way of mutating and spreading when they get a sequel. This was set up at the end of season 1, when Simone and the Scooby gang brought Rasmus, the still-infected patient zero, to their father Frederick’s company, Apollon, on the edge of the quarantine zone.

They aren’t at the Apollon compound long before viewers are shown that Frederick’s partner at Apollon, Sten, evil scientist and CEO of the company, intends to use the virus to hold the world hostage. He needs Rasmus alive and still infected in order to enact his plan.

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The OA Part 2 Episode 7: Nina Azarova Recap

~ Metacrone

The OA P2Ep7 OA & Elodie

The OA returns to San Francisco and follows the journeys of OA and Karim in this episode, picking up with the aftermath of their trip through the puzzle house. Both Karim and OA build toward discovering their true natures. Karim goes through the house in daylight with the police, visits Fola in the hospital and finally meets the crowd-sourcing wizard, Pierre Ruskin. OA wakes up with the trees, meets Elodie, and finally gets to know Nina Azarova.

Recap

Episode 7 begins the morning after the end of episode 5 (and maybe episode 6), with Karim returning to the puzzle house, this time busting through the front door with the police in tow. The stairs allow him to follow his previous route, but, since he started from the front door, instead of the secret tunnel, the magic is gone, and so is the model house. The cops prepare for battle when Karim gets ready to open the door to the room with the dirt floor and lost players, but now, all that’s behind the door is a cement wall. All three men are confused. The spiritual realm has closed to Karim.

He must have forgotten how the house works.

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The OA Part 2 Episode 5: The Medium & The Engineer Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 4 Comments

The OA P2Ep5 Homer Looks for OA's Skin in Dream

Episode 5, The Medium and the Engineer, is another action packed episode of The OA, from Homer’s dream to the time OA spends communing with tree roots to the trippy path that leads Karim to reunite with Fola. OA and Karim enter the house through the secret door and follow the labyrinth, which takes them each on a different journey. If I’m reading the signs right, both Homer’s dream and the house’s imagery are connected to Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically the 7th Circle of H-ll. In retrospect, there have been connections to Dante all along.

The mysticism in this episode is intense. I feel like I’m Fola in the hall of mirrors and need Karim to carry me out, or I’ll never stop analyzing it.

Recap

We start this epic episode with a very different Homer stumbling down a dusty dirt road, carrying a bundle of wood on his back. He knocks on the door of a stone house, which is answered by an old woman, who tells him, “I have skin, all textures, all shades, for a price.”

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The OA Part 2 Episode 4: SYZYGY Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

The OA P2Ep4 OA & Tentacles

In episode 4, SYZYGY, Karim and OA finally meet and the series finds a way to incorporate the telepathic octopus that the entire fandom has been clamoring for into the show. Or maybe that was just the tentacle fiction fans. 😘 At any rate, we get some almost naughty tentacle on OA action, an escape from Treasure Island in an orange car driven by a woman who can’t drive, a couple of bad dates, and references to Snow White and the Phantom of the Opera.

Only one of these things happens in a dream, and it’s not the octopus.

This is a pretty wild episode.

Plus, three wise, man.

Shall we get started?

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The OA Part 2 Episode 3: Magic Mirror Recap

~ Metacrone

The OA P2Ep3 Message from Rachel

The OA takes a break from…the OA in this episode, in order to revisit the home dimension and check in with Betty and the boys. Rachel leads the way on a transformative road trip whose purpose hasn’t become fully clear yet, but with this show, it’s best not to rush things.

Distorted images of the OA’s drawings of Betty and the boys decorate the opening credits. They fade to show Prairie’s body in her coffin, ready for her funeral. When OA jumped to another dimension, the body she left behind, now without its soul and gravely wounded, died.

Steve drives Jesse down a country road, as fast as he can manage without losing control, way over the speed limit. A cop pulls them over, but lets them go when he realizes that they’re the kids who stopped the school shooting and that they’re coming from Prairie’s funeral. He even tells them they’re brave and to get home safely. They don’t know what to do with authority figures who are nice to them.

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The OA Part 2: Spoiler-Free Review

~ Metacrone

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If The OA Part 1 was about Near Death Experiences (NDEs), then Part 2 is about dreams. The NDEs become another kind of dream, of which there are many, all of which can be examined for important information about ourselves, our culture, the future and reality itself. Part 2 takes the concepts introduced in the first part and deepens them, turning dichotomies into continuums and turning movement into quests.

The OA remains a mysterious show that needs to be approached with an open mind and a willingness to follow the spiritual metaphor, not the need for logic and continuity. Metaphorically, this is a world of magic and spirit, and our rules don’t apply. We learn the rules of the universe with the characters, and they are applied logically once introduced, but they are complex. I’m not sure that any one character has all of the information in Part 2.

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 3: Ouija Recap

~ Metacrone

Always a Witch 103 Johnny Ki and Carmen.png

Episode 3 begins with Johnny Ki explaining the threat he made to Carmen at the end of episode 2. He shows her a video his mom made the last time he saw his parents, then explains that his parents were killed in a boating accident. He was learning to drive and lost control of the boat, so he blames himself for the crash. He wants Carmen to help him talk to his dead parents so that he can get their reassurance that they don’t hate him and that they forgive him.

Carmen can’t speak to the dead, so she can’t help him. But she assures him that real love is unconditional, so, wherever his parents are, they still love him and have forgiven him.

Carmen tries to leave, but Johnny questions why she can levitate, but she can’t speak to the dead.

Because those are two really different powers?

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Netflix’s Bodyguard Season 1: Review

~ Metacrone

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Bodyguard is a 6 episode BBC crime thriller that’s been released globally as a Netflix Original. Created by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) and starring Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) and Keeley Hawes (The Durrells in Corfu), Bodyguard has no connection to the 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner movie The Bodyguard. Last fall, Bodyguard became a ratings sensation in the UK, where it was shown as a weekly series and broke viewing records.

There is good reason for that. The show is gripping and intense from the first minute, when we meet main character David Budd, an Afghanistan veteran with untreated PTSD who is currently working for London’s Metropolitan Police Service as a Principal Protection Officer (PPO), or as we layman think of it, a bodyguard, for important members of the British government. He’s traveling on a train with his two children and discovers a suicide bomber, Nadia (Anjli Mohindra) hiding in the bathroom at the end of their car. In the powerful opening sequence, David takes it upon himself to talk Nadia down so that everyone comes out of the situation alive, disobeying orders from the bomb squad as he works with Nadia to ensure that she’s captured instead of killed.

After his heroic success on the train, David gets noticed by his superiors, and promoted to protecting the controversial, right-wing Home Secretary*, Julia Montague. Montague is pushing for legislation that would allow increased surveillance by law enforcement agencies, an idea that’s unpopular with many in the public and in the government. She’s also ambitious and widely believed to be considering an end run around the usual channels in order to become Prime Minister.

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Always a Witch (Siempre Bruja) Season 1 Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Always a Witch, or Siempre Bruja, is a Netflix Original from Colombia. This Spanish language show (with English subtitles and dubbing) is a time travel fantasy about a young 17th century slave named Carmen who is also a witch. She uses magic to escape execution and travel to the present day. Much like the series Outlander, she travels between the two time periods, fights evil foes in both, tries to save the man she loves, must adjust to her new time period, and works to make life better for the people of the past.

Always a Witch is a fresh take on the time traveling witch concept, with a young cast and storytelling that’s grounded in Latin American culture. This show avoids the graphic nature of Outlander, keeping its content more suited to younger audiences, while still addressing the harshness of Carmen’s life as a slave, and the realities of the modern world.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 3: Past and Present Recap

~ Metacrone

Dark 103 Mikkel in 1986 Driveway.

Episode 3 picks up moments after episode 2 left off, with Mikkel having time traveled back from 2019 to 1986. He’s gone back to his family home, where his teenage parents brushed him off the same way his present day siblings do. They left the door to the house ajar, so now he wanders in, looking at the house that is and isn’t his home.

He finds Jana, his grandmother and Ulrich’s mother, lying on the couch. For a moment, they each confuse the other with the family members they’ve lost. Jana hopes he’s Mads, and Mikkel hopes she’s his mother. Jana goes to Mikkel and begs him to give her some kind of news about Mads. She becomes emotional, and scares Mikkel. He runs out of the house.

Nurse Ines Kahnwald works in the community hospital. Since she’s a single woman with no family obligations, the other nurses often ask her to take over their shifts when their schedules become inconvenient. Patient and good-natured, she doesn’t mind the extra work at all.

Young Charlotte Doppler finds a dead bird on the road as she rides her bike to school. She puts it in her bag to examine later.

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