Tag: recaps

Maniac Season 1 Episode 2: Windmills Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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In episode 2, Windmills, we get to know Annie Landsberg, whose world is both the opposite from and the same as Owen’s. While Owen’s life has been filled with ongoing trauma dealt out by his large, abusive family, Annie has very little family, but has been shaped by a few key traumatic events and the loss of loved ones. Owen lives in poverty by choice, in order to maintain his integrity and mental health, while Annie has no choice but to eek out a living, in what’s clearly a difficult economy, on her own.

Owen has learned to retreat inside himself as a defense against the family he’s outnumbered by, while Annie has learned to posture and be aggressive when threatened. In episode 1, we saw her use her trench coat to appear larger, and her voice and facial expressions to drive away potential threats before they became serious. Since she’s on her own, she tries to scare away anyone who might hurt her before they can get too close.

Having grown up in a family full of aggressive posturers, Owen is immune to the tactic, until the aggressor gets serious about inflicting harm. He most likely can instinctively tell when that switch has flipped. At the end of episode 1 he walks right through Annie’s defenses as if they aren’t there, shocking her into taking a different approach with him.

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Maniac Season 1 Episode 1: The Chosen One! Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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I’ve gone back and forth on whether to write about Maniac, Netflix’s new black comedy which was created by Patrick Somerville and Cary Joji Fukunaga and stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, but I decided to wait until I’d watched the whole thing before making a decision. During the first few episodes, I thought I wouldn’t, because it reminded me of Legion and other surreal, but aimless, shows that I’ve been burned by in the past. Professional reviewers were even comparing Maniac to those shows. But as the season continued, Maniac became something else.

Maniac is a surrealistic, quirky, scifi black comedy that can get very dark and can go off on tangents that don’t make sense at first. It’s also, at least for now, a limited series, which means it’s written as a self-contained story. And what Maniac is, at its heart, is a lovely, optimistic, long form, indie romantic comedy, with a beginning, middle and end. Both indie films and works of surrealism have difficulty coming to a satisfying conclusion (and sometimes even commercial works do, looking at you, Castle Rock S1!), so the ending of Maniac is a major accomplishment, in my book.

I kind of fell in love with this show, and it appears that I’m going to have writer’s block until I write about it. There are 3 other partial recaps in my drafts folder that are going nowhere right now, so let’s give Maniac a try, shall we?

Like most Netflix shows, and many other shows as well, the first three episodes serve as an extended introduction to the season. In episode 1, we get to know Owen Milgrim (rhymes with pilgrim, which is a seeker or wanderer), played with depressed, understated misery by Jonah Hill. You feel like he’s always on the verge of crying, and it’s taken a monumental amount of strength for him to reach this point in his life. He’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but refuses treatment.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 16 Comments

Oh-My-Gosh, you guys! Manifest is a hit! If you were avoiding watching because you figured it would just be cancelled like all of the other broadcast scifi shows, I think you should give this one a chance. 10.4 million people watched Monday night, which is an increase over the number of people who watched its lead-in show, The Voice. No show has ever built on The Voice’s audience before- everyone has always experienced a drop. It matched the debut of last year’s big hit broadcast drama, The Good Doctor.  And according to TVLine’s poll, 92% of viewers say they’ll keep watching.

Of course, Mr Metawitches and I watched it, too. The mister liked the show a lot. He’s much closer to your average viewer than I am, though he doesn’t care much for run of the mill cop-lawyer-doctor shows, either. But he also doesn’t like the dark, twisty, gross turn that scfi and fantasy have taken in this decade. He’s looking forward to watching the mystery unfold on Manifest this season, as well as the relationships between the characters.

This show appears to be a turn away from the dark and twisty mentality, toward a more positive, family-oriented outlook with characters who want to be good people and do good in the world. What professional reviewers would call hokey or cheesy these days. In fact, I think I saw one or two use those words.

But, honestly, I’m ready for hokey and cheesy to come back. I think a significant portion of the viewing public are, too. The world is a dark place, and we want to believe that there’s good in the world and good people who can be trusted.

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Kiss Me First Season 1 Episode 5: The Witch Is Coming Recap

~ Metacrone

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In episode 5, The Witch Is Coming, Adrian speaks directly to the audience for the first time, perhaps trying to seduce us into joining his next venture, after Red Pill is done self-destructing. He shares his personal manifesto, giving viewers insight into his motives and background. As it turns out, the theme of episode 4, friends (and family) let us down, is the theme of Adrian’s life, one he’s reenacting in his cults. Each suicide or murder is a proxy for his own issues. As a real life human, he remains invisible, perhaps because he wants to erase himself most of all, but can’t until he’s done with his revenge on the world.

Adrian’s voiceover:

Take a life, any life. Take your life. Think about all the people you’ve encountered today. This week. This year. Then think about how many people you’ll encounter in your entire existence. Family, friends, colleagues, enemies, lovers. The ones who stuck around. The ones who got away. Fleeting, stolen relationships. Endless friendships that ended. Consider the ones you loved and couldn’t tell, or were afraid of, or secretly yearned to humiliate, or maybe suck out of the world. Then consider how it would be if it were all possible. If you weren’t lost, buried in your stupid life. But making it, shaping it and molding it until you had everything you deserve. And you were loved as you should be. 

This is what the cult and the game offer. If you play along with Adrian, he promises that eventually, after you’ve done everything he asks, he’ll be the one who’ll love you forever, unconditionally, in the beautiful mansion next to turquoise waters that Tess is arriving at now. It’s the sort of place that’s owned by the very wealthy, who can afford to mold and shape their lives, and pay people to stay with them. But, as the Beatles taught us, even the wealthy can’t buy real love.

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Kiss Me First Season 1 Episode 4: Friends Let Us Down Recap

~ Metacrone

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The battle between Adrian and Leila becomes more intense in this episode, as more real world players characters are drawn into their fight. Several Red Pill members meet for the first time in the real world, with varying results. Adrian’s plans continue to include violence, death and isolation. Even when his victims see through his machinations, like Leila, they are often powerless to stop him from manipulating and hurting people.

At the beginning of the episode, Tess has been gone for 4 days after the argument she and Leila had at the end of episode 3. Leila is hoping she’ll come back soon. Tess left her phone behind and Leila answers when it rings. It’s Adrian calling, of course, and he thinks it’s Tess that answers, or pretends to. When he finds out that it’s Leila who’s answered and that Tess is missing, he drops all pretense. Leila asks if he’s going to kill Tess when he finds her. Adrian insists that he “never kills anyone. That would be so unsubtle.” Lord knows, we wouldn’t want to lose the subtlety points when the judges score the game.

Leila asks why he doing this, but Adrian just says, “Let that emerge.” He leaves her with a challenge, “Who’s going to find her first?” Then he hangs up. Leila doesn’t want to be part of Adrian’s sick games, but she also won’t walk away from people who need her. Adrian is counting on that. Leila takes the bait, and tells the phone, “Me.”

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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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The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 Episode 4: Other Women Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week, it’s Aunt Lydia’s turn. June is back under her control at the Red Center, and it’s Lydia’s job to turn willful June into submissive handmaid Offred. Her goal is for Offred and the baby to go back home to the Waterfords, so they can finish the pregnancy in the best environment for the baby. Lydia uses every punitive and manipulative tool at her disposal to break June, and continues once June is back in the Waterford home. Serena Joy and Rita aren’t spared from Lydia’s training either. Lydia is relentless, actively encouraging June toward a mental breakdown and dissociative disorder.

The main themes of this season are motherhood, isolation and loneliness, but other women is another one. Each of the women that we’ve come to know is facing a challenge this season, and they each need to decide who they are as a woman, and how they relate to other women.

Does a woman see herself as an island, only responsible for herself and her own needs? As a sister, mother and daughter, responsible for the well-being of her family? Or as a member of her community, however she defines it- the handmaids, Gilead, the human family?

Janine is doing her best to spread her love for her lost child out to her community, making her world a better place. Emily has tried to live as an emotional island, but Janine is challenging her to rethink that. Serena’s inability to have children has forced her to focus outward, but June’s pregnancy is giving Serena hope that she’ll be able to have a more intimate relationship with a child.

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Castle Rock Season 1 Episode 9: Henry Deaver Recap

~ Metacrone

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So…The Kid’s name isn’t Matthew Deaver Jr, but he is Ruth and Matthew’s son, the alternate timeline counterpart of the baby who died in this timeline. Instead, he’s named Henry, and has lived a life that mirrors the Henry Deaver from this timeline in many ways. We were given both Kid’s memories and the other Henry’s missing experiences this episode, though not because Andre Holland’s Henry remembered them. Our Henry is exceedingly stubborn. I’m beginning to think he might never accept what he remembered in the anechoic chamber as his real memories.

And I’m beginning to think we might never find out for sure who the girl on the rooftop in the series main graphic is, though we were given some good clues in this episode. Is it Ruth? Is it the 200 year old ghost of a French settler turned cannibal? Is it Ruth possessed by a cannibal ghost? Is it some version of Molly? Or the girl who was slicing her own wrists inside the portal? Stay tuned for the season finale.

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The Innocents Season 1 Episode 8: Everything. Anything. Recap and Season 1 Speculation/Analysis

~ Metacrone

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Everything. Anything., the season 1 finale, begins much the same way as the season premiere did, with the camera floating across the fjord to give the audience a panoramic view of the beauty and isolation of Sanctum’s setting. As with the premiere, Bendik’s Halvorson’s plans are spiraling out of control and he’s trying desperately to stop the chaos. Sanctum is his kingdom, and he rules it with an iron fist covered by a velvet glove. But even on an isolated island, the past has a way of coming back to haunt you.

Live by the sword, die by the sword, as they say.

The shots of the fjord gradually transition to a montage which recaps the season, reminding the viewer where we are now and how we got here. Sohn’s The Wheel plays over the montage. It has a pretty melody and vocals interrupted by staccato silences that sound to me a lot like a record skipping. The contrasts in the song fit the contrasts in the show’s physical and emotional environment well. Every character’s life has been interrupted and rendered out of sync by the events of the season.

On a side note, John is still naked in the morning. I find it hilarious that everyone else at Sanctum is wrapped in multiple sweaters and layers from head to toe, 24/7, but they got John naked as soon as he stepped onto the island. The harem’s been deprived of a broad-shouldered specimen like him for ages and they’re going to take advantage of it. While they launder his clothes, of course. Slowly.

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The Innocents Season 1 Episode 7: Will You Take Me, Too? Recap

~ Metacrone

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In this episode, we finally discover the meaning of Lewis’ oft repeated question, the episode title, “Will You Take Me, Too?” When June and Elena are reunited, Elena’s actions on the night of the Penines 5 are revealed, as is her connection to Lewis. It’s hard to know whether to count Elena as a perpetrator or another victim.  She didn’t have premeditated intent, but should she have had better control?

We also inch, ever so slowly, closer to understanding Ben’s intentions. We’ll have to wait until the finale to find out exactly what his plans for June are, but he definitely has plans to use June to save Runa. I think he wants June to shift into Runa indefinitely, the way she shifted into Elena and was becoming indistinguishable from her. With June wearing Runa’s body, he’d have the best of both worlds. Presumably the June version of Runa wouldn’t have dementia, and they could have shapeshifter children together.

I knew someone else gave Kam the idea of shifting into another person and staying them forever.

As the penultimate episode of the season, this episode continues to move the chess pieces into place for the finale. John and Harry make it to Sanctum, but John is hurt. While Harry recommits to June, she’s more scared than ever after shifting into Elena and discovering how bad things could get. She can’t trust that the two of them are enough to keep her from hurting someone anymore.

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