Tag: review

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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The Man in the High Castle Season 3 Episode 7: Excess Animus Recap

~ Metacrone

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In episode 7, Excess Animus, characters’ arcs continue to come full circle, just as Juliana and Joe’s did in episode 5. Kido delivers his brand of justice to the traitor Nakamura with extra zealousness, since he’d given the “hapa dog” a chance, despite his better judgement. But Kido also discovers that Tagomi hasn’t found him worthy of sharing important secrets, because of his ruthlessness and inability to see nuance.

Sabra faces more challenges to its seclusion, from bounty hunters looking for their friend who Layla killed and from Juliana, who hopes to recruit a few members to join her cause. Mark goes to Denver to take care of the bounty hunters, since he feels responsible for bringing that trouble to Sabra’s door.

Juliana has an unexpected reunion with her two oldest and dearest friends, Frank and Ed. It feels like they’ve each had a lifetime’s worth of experiences since the last time they saw each other. But everything has brought them back around to being on the same page again when they meet at Sabra, which is as tragic as it is wonderful. This reunion can’t last, and Juliana and Frank are both wanted fugitives. The odds of the three of them surviving until the end of whatever rebellion is coming are small.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 7: S.N.A.F.U. Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Episode 7 of Manifest continues the exploration of faith vs skepticism that we examined in episode 6. After Michaela’s calling leads her to stop the recipient of Evie’s donated heart from ruining his life, she becomes more certain than ever that the messages are good and she should continue following them.

But Ben continues to watch Cal struggle with his deepening involvement with and knowledge of the other passengers and the investigation. Cal’s life is in danger because of his callings, and Ben is unable to help him. It’s much more difficult for Ben to take the same leap of faith that Michaela now finds easy. Even worse, Michaela doesn’t seem to quite understand Ben’s difficulty.

The callings appear to be changing and manifesting in new ways. Are we going to be focussing more intensely on an alternate definition of the show’s title soon, as more than just the flight’s manifest (secure list of passengers, cargo and crew)? Are we waiting for Cal to manifest something in particular, for the passengers as a group to manifest a new ability, or for something entirely new and unexpected to manifest as a result of Flight 828? The calings and Cal’s abilities have been there all along, but Dr Clarke and Marko bring in new elements with larger implications.

Just don’t tell me that aliens laid eggs inside them, and the fetuses are creating the callings. And especially don’t tell me that it was all USD’s idea.

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Midnight, Texas Season 2 Episode 3: To Witch Hell and Back Recap

~ Metacrone

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As we move toward the darkest time of the year, it’s a dark time in Midnight, Texas, too. Multiple hearts get broken on episode 3, To Witch Hell and Back. Some are demon hearts, so we shouldn’t be too sad, because no one likes a demon, right? But some belong to our favorite Midnighters, who’ve survived many obstacles already to be together.

Fiji and Bobo continue to investigate the supernatural cause of Bobo’s accidents, now with Manfred’s help. Manfred has given up on his dream of reuniting with Creek, and placed all of his hope in keeping his friends happy and together. How much struggle and heartbreak will the three of them have to endure?

With a Hunter’s Moon on the horizon, Chuy spends the night on the couch pacifying his inner demon. Joe, still looking for fulfillment in his life, meets up with that hussy Walker, the demon hunter, to go kill some demons without telling Chuy. Call me crazy, but I just don’t see a relationship that starts with a lying angel ending well. Walker isn’t good for Joe.

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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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In the Flesh Season 1 Episode 3: Finale Recap

~ Metacrone

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Everything comes full circle in the season 1 finale of In the Flesh. Episode 1 ends with Bill Macy pointing his gun at Maggie Burton, a harmless old woman and PDS sufferer, and pulling the trigger. Appeals to his humanity don’t sway him, but he does have Maggie take out her contacts so that he can see that she’s partially deceased while he shoots her.

Episode 2 ends with Bill’s son Rick Macy pointing a gun at 2 feral PDS sufferers, and then at Kieren, when Kieren steps in front of the gun to stop the unjust killing. Rick refuses to admit that he’s a PDS sufferer, but he does respond to appeals to his humanity. He gives up when Kieren takes out one contact to remind Rick that the feral zombies are the same as Kieren.

Episode 3 ends with a third person looking down the barrel of a gun, but this one knows he’s on the side of justice, and doesn’t hesitate to fire.

There are several moments of truth in episode 3. Bill decides that Rick must redeem himself by killing Kieren, who he says is a disgusting, evil rotter. Rick decides to prove to his father that PDS sufferers aren’t evil by forcing Bill to face that his son is one. Bill draws the opposite conclusion from this.

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In the Flesh Season 1 Episode 2: Recap

~ Metacrone

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In Episode 2, Kieren’s best friend and secret boyfriend, Rick Macy, returns home from Afghanistan, now a PDS sufferer. As he was in life, Rick is torn between his father, Bill, who is toxic masculinity made flesh, and Kieren, who brings out another side to him, a softer side that’s hated by his father. In fact, Bill hates Kieren.

Kieren visits his own grave and becomes reacquainted with his undead hunting partner, Amy Dyer, who tells him about the day trips she’s been taking to get out of the house and move on with her life. She’s attracted to the Undead Prophet, so they debate the merits of the group. Amy helps Kieren find the strength to face the townspeople and makes quite an impression on them herself.

Dean finds a pair of feral PDS sufferers in the woods, leading to a showdown between Kieren and the HVF, with Rick in the middle. We learn that the government’s paying a hefty bounty for feral PDS sufferers who are brought in uninjured. We also learn that not all feral zombies are vicious killers.

Bill Macy accepts his PDS sufferer son back into his life, but refuses to acknowledge who his son is, either as a partially deceased person or in any other way that varies from his macho expectations for Rick. Rick goes along with the ruse, as he’s clearly always tried to live up to his father’s expectations. It’s already killed him once. Now, not only does he deny who he is, he allows his father to feed him cup after cup of poison and to almost convince him to murder other PDS sufferers like himself. When Kieren and Amy try to remind him of who he is and what his needs and limitations are, he denies reality. More tragedy is sure to follow.

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In the Flesh Season 1 Episode 1: Recap

~ Metacrone

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Let’s take a break from Nazis, and have some fun with sentient zombies during these last few days before Halloween! In the Flesh is a BBC/BBCAmerica show from 2013-14 that was cancelled after 2 short seasons, leaving it with a grand total of 9 episodes. Each season tells a complete story, so no worries about being left on a cliffhanger, though threads were left open for season 3 to continue the story. (Bring it back, please!!) The show was created and written by Dominic Mitchell, who’s gone on to write and produce for Westworld.

In the Flesh is currently streaming on Hulu and included with Amazon Prime, or if you’re in the UK, on the BBC website. Even if you’re not in the UK, the other videos on the site aren’t geolocked, and there’s a lot of great stuff there.

This  is my favorite zombie show ever, rivalled only by season 1 of The Walking Dead. It was recently featured in IGN.com’s article The 15 Best Horror TV Shows of the Last 10 Years along with my other relatively obscure personal favorites Crazyhead and Dark, both on Netflix. (I will recap season 1 of Dark, hopefully before the end of the year. Or before season 2 is released. Or the timeline changes. I have a draft started.)

In this universe, the recently deceased all rose on one specific night in 2009, for unknown reasons, then rampaged the world, killing humans and eating their brains. Eventually scientists figured out that they were eating brains because they were missing a specific brain chemical. Once a medication was created to replace what was lacking, the zombies’ mental state returned to normal. Their physical state remains more zombie-like, though it’s improved from the feral state.

But in the intervening years, many people died, among both zombies and the living. Volunteer militias were formed in small towns to cope with the zombies, since the military was spread too thin. These Human Volunteer Forces, or HVF, were the big heroes of the day, and some are having trouble returning to normal life.

The populace as a whole has difficulty accepting the Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers, as the zombies are now known, back into their midst. The PDS sufferers grow resentful at being blamed for actions that were outside of their control. They are victims of a chronic disease, not criminals. Some begin to feel that they should wear their PDS proudly, as a badge of honor.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 3 Episode 6: History Ends Recap

~ Metacrone

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Episode 6, History Ends, is a profound episode, full of movement and transitions, but also quiet mourning and contemplation. The episode takes place during the 2 days after Joe’s death, and before John Smith’s swearing-in as Reichsmarschall. We see Juliana silently, but intensely, mourning him and trying to process what she’s done, and what this act says about her. She always has a bottle of liquor and a cigarette in her hands, and looks at as few people as possible. Her time is spent tying up loose ends in San Francisco, including sending a message to her mentor Tagomi. Then she enlists Wyatt’s help to get back to her other family, Hawthorne and Caroline.

The Smith family, on the other hand, should be able to breathe a little more freely, with the Rockwell/Hoover/Adler threat taken care of and John’s newest promotion. Helen is back to her old self, even feeling a bit frisky. But John is feeling renewed pressure from Himmler, and hasn’t properly grieved Thomas. Helen’s therapy has helped her move on and find renewed purpose, while John has another Thomas’, from other realities, dangling before him. With all of his loved ones and confidantes dead or threatened, and nowhere on this world for him to go, traveling to a better reality has got to be appealing to Smith.

But for now, he has to help Himmler destroy American history, and possibly the rest of his family. In this episode Smith gets word that Joe, his surrogate son, is dead, which causes him to revisit the betrayal he still feels over the murder of his surrogate brother, Erich Raeder, who was also under his protection. He’s lost his actual son and brother and his replacement son and brother, and he might not have the strength to lose more. He’s begun closing himself off to Helen and the girls, so that when he loses them, it won’t hurt so much. He focussing all of his energy on his work and on the Thomas in the films.

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