TV shows I am binging

[Captain Comics]

In this peak TV period, I thought we could use a thread on TV like we do the "Movies I Have Watched Lately" thread. I'll start with two:

ALTERED CARBON: Stupid name for a good sci-fi concept.

In this far future, humans can download their brains/personality/soul/what-have-you into chips called "stacks" that are located at the top of the spine. Nearly everybody has these stacks, and if your body fails you can load the stack into a new "sleeve," or body. The richer you are, the better body you can get. And the ultra-rich clone their own bodies, so they are effectively immortal. They are called "Meths" -- as in Methuselah -- and are just as awful as you can imagine. In the end, the rich win. Imagine that.

The Meth we get to know best is played by James Purefoy (Rome, John Carter, Solomon Kane) and he thinks he's become a god, or at least the difference between him and a god is so minor as to not be important. His stack is backed up every two hours to his own satellite, and if his body dies the stack is automatically downloaded to a clone. But when he is killed in a locked-room mystery in the two-hour window -- he doesn't remember how it happened, because his current stack didn't experience it -- he pulls the stack of a great warrior (an "envoy") who has been dead (and the stack preserved) for 250 years to solve the murder.

There's a whole mythology behind the envoys (as well as everything else -- the show is based on a series of novels) and we constantly see past lives, where the protagonist is usually Asian. We also see his lover and his sister in these past lives, where of course their appearance isn't static, either, so there's a little hurdle at first figuring out who the players are every time the Envoy has a flashback. 

There are some people who think the whole stack/sleeve business is an affront to God, and mark their stacks to not be resuscitated. They are called Neo-Cs (Neo-Catholic) and the cop who is A) gorgeous and B) immediately attached to the protagonist at the hip by the plot is one (or her family is, anyway). The ethics of this technology is explored through these characters.

The rich live up in the clouds, of course, in graceful spires that top out above the clouds, so they don't have to see how the other 99 percent live. which evidently is in Blade Runner. Seriously, Bay City (San Francisco metropolitan area) looks just like that movie, with the constant rain, the explosion of neon signs and people scraping by with food carts and such .

Sex is very straightforward in this show. There's frontal nudity for both men and women. Once I got over being surprised I came to appreciate it. Sex is pretty meaningless in this world, and it's presented that way. Once you get over the taboos being broken, you take in stride and don't think much about it. Which is consistent with how the characters view it. But if you're into boobs, trust that every pair in the cast will be naked sooner or later.

My wife enjoyed this more than I did. The F/X and writing are top-notch, but I found the acting a little substandard. The guy playing the Envoy also played Rick Flagg in Suicide Squad, and his acting varies from bland to blander. His sister, played by a thin Asian actress who's been in a bunch of other stuff I've seen, is even worse. I'm no actor. and even I could tell she was mis-delivering her lines. Purefoy just looked bored with the whole enterprise. The actress who plays one of the Pussycats on Riverdale -- the one that briefly dated Archie -- in in here, too, so you'll probably recognize her.

I enjoyed it well enough despite my misgivings, due to the cool concepts and great future world on display. And, as I said, my wife really liked it.

THE FRANKENSTEIN CHRONICLES: We just started watching this, and have only seen the first three episodes. I like it because I love history, and the show does a great job of depicting 1820s London. I guess. Anyway. It's pretty sooty and poverty-stricken, which is probably true.

The story here is about a "Runner" -- what cops are evidently called -- who is hired by a lord to find out who is killing children and sewing their dead bodies together. This threatens a bill he has in Parliament to make doctoring a profession and regulate it -- putting out of business holistic practitioners, body snatchers, barbers and a host of other dodgy types. 

Our hero is played by Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship, Game of Thrones), a guy mourning the deaths of his wife and child, evidently from syphillis, which he gave them. So he's not doing so hot, either, as syphillis isn't curable in 1827, when the show begins. 

I'm not really sure how policing works in this age. They don't call themselves police, and they only arrest people when the victim can afford a prosecution. As noted, our protagonist is paid directly by a lord, and a local police station ("court of magistrates") is at his disposal. I know our police at the time were basically escaped-slave catchers, so I find this situation likely. I just don't know the rules of the game.

Our Runner meets William Blake, who dies, and Mary Shelley, who is an integral part of the plot. (She's about 30 here -- Percy Shelley's been dead for 4 years, Frankenstein has been in print for about 12 years, and she won't die of a brain tumor for another 20 years or so.) I'm not sure what her game is yet, but she is clearly lying to our hero.

There is a lot of super-religiosity on this show. Some of it I think is a bit too modern; our hero and his assistant are shocked and totally against it when a street urchin girl says she's pregnant and she's going to "take care of it." I don't know what the attitudes about abortion were back then, but I doubt anybody would give a toss what happens to a street urchin's pregnancy. If our heroes had expressed concern about HER safety I'd buy it -- most people who tried to prevent pregnancies in back alleys up until the 1920s died of sepsis. Anyway, they find her a place to stay that will keep her until the birth. Lucky street urchin!

There's a lot of super-religiosity on display I have no problem with, as it was no doubt mainstream at the time. Not being part of a church would be very suspicious. 

They also have cast as our hero's assistant a black actor. I know that this is almost a necessity now, especially at the BBC, but I have to physically swallow my disbelief every time he's on screen and nobody seems to notice that he is black. I don't know how many black people there were in London in the 1820s, but I imagine whatever that number was they were all domestic help, or in some other subservient position. Here, our black guy is a Runner, a position of authority, and nobody even blinks. I would think he'd be such a novelty among the common folk that they'd turn and stare when he walked down the street in his middle class clothes, and I'd guess no white guy, criminal or not, would suffer being interrogated by a black guy. I just have to pretend he's white for his scenes to work.

I don't know where this is going, but my wife and I are enjoying it so far. Bean's his usual craggy, muttering self, albeit less physical than in previous roles. (He's not getting any younger.) We'll see it through to the end of the first season, anyway.

[Richard Willis]

I recommend The Americans to anyone who hasn't seen it. The stories and performances are fantastic. Matthew Rhys as the doubt-filled undercover Soviet spy and Keri Russell as his true-believer wife are both off-the-charts terrific.

[Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod)]

I actually watched the second season of American Gods several weeks back, so I don't remember much detail. But I recall it comparing favorably to the first season, which was a bit surprising given the drama during its production (more than one showrunner was involved, for example). 

And I highly recommend The Americans! One of my favorite recent shows.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I've been watching Quantum Leap after running across it on the Comet channel. 

I always wanted to see more of the "future" of 1999, but the show only gives occasional glimpses. One episode has Sam leap into a killer who is holding a family hostage -- and the guy Sam replaced escapes from the experiment headquarters and steals Gooshie's car, so Al has to track him down and bring him back.

The early season episodes use a technique where, when Sam leaps, each show begins with Scott Bakula doing a voiceover narration over clips from the previous episode. They dropped that. 

And although the credits frequently show Sam kissing a series of hot blondes, the early episodes had him worry about the ethics and morality of sleeping with them under false pretenses; he's essentially impersonating someone they know. Al, the devil on his shoulder, doesn't see the problem.

In one, Sam leaps into a newlywed cop on his honeymoon, and spends half the show avoiding bedding his very willing bride, a law student .. and the other half fending off her jealous, murderous first husband. 

This mission also affects the "future" of 1999, in that Al is testifiying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee that wants to pull the plug on the Quantum Leap project because it's not showing results. As it happens, Sam's been helping her study in the past and one tip changes the future; before Al's eyes, she becomes the chairman of the Senate subcommittee and doesn't cut the funding.

Sam gives her that tip after he's slept with her, though, and they stop worrying about it. Then in the Season 3 premiere -- in which things really go wrong and Al leaps into the past and Sam is the hologram -- Sam goes back to the Quantum Leap HQ and we learn he's married! That's one of the things that slipped out of Sam's famous "Swiss cheese memory." Sam's incredibly understanding wife swore Al to secrecy and preemptively forgives Sam for anything and everything he might do while leaping around.

Great, because I understand Sam wound up fathering a child along the way, too! Haven't seen those episodes; somehow, they weren't included in the rerun rotation.

[JD DeLuzio]

We've just started watching Tales from the Loop. So far, great, though difficult to discuss already without posting spoilers.

[ClarkKent_DC]

ClarkKent_DC said:

I've been watching Quantum Leap after running across it on the Comet channel. 

I always wanted to see more of the "future" of 1999, but the show only gives occasional glimpses. One episode has Sam leap into a killer who is holding a family hostage -- and the guy Sam replaced escapes from the experiment headquarters and steals Gooshie's car, so Al has to track him down and bring him back.

The early season episodes use a technique where, when Sam leaps, each show begins with Scott Bakula doing a voiceover narration over clips from the previous episode. They dropped that. 

And although the credits frequently show Sam kissing a series of hot blondes, the early episodes had him worry about the ethics and morality of sleeping with them under false pretenses; he's essentially impersonating someone they know. Al, the devil on his shoulder, doesn't see the problem.

In one, Sam leaps into a newlywed cop on his honeymoon, and spends half the show avoiding bedding his very willing bride, a law student .. and the other half fending off her jealous, murderous first husband. 

This mission also affects the "future" of 1999, in that Al is testifiying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee that wants to pull the plug on the Quantum Leap project because it's not showing results. As it happens, Sam's been helping her study in the past and one tip changes the future; before Al's eyes, she becomes the chairman of the Senate subcommittee and doesn't cut the funding.

Sam gives her that tip after he's slept with her, though, and they stop worrying about it. Then in the Season 3 premiere -- in which things really go wrong and Al leaps into the past and Sam is the hologram -- Sam goes back to the Quantum Leap HQ and we learn he's married! That's one of the things that slipped out of Sam's famous "Swiss cheese memory." Sam's incredibly understanding wife swore Al to secrecy and preemptively forgives Sam for anything and everything he might do while leaping around.

Great, because I understand Sam wound up fathering a child along the way, too! Haven't seen those episodes; somehow, they weren't included in the rerun rotation.

I've gone through another round of Quantum Leap on the Comet channel and this time, they included those episodes! They were a three-part story, titled, simply enough, "Trilogy," during Season 5.

In "Trilogy (Part 1) – One Little Heart," Sam leaps into a New Orleans sheriff who has a 12-year-old daughter named Abigail. Abigail has an enemy in one Leta Aider, who firmly believes Abigail killed her husband (who died of a heart attack) and her daughter (who disappeared and may have been mauled by a pack of dogs). Abigail was the last to see the husband and daughter alive. By the end of the episode, the furious Leta has cornered Abigail in a house and accidentally set it afire. Sam's mission is to rescue Leta from the fire, which he does, but he doesn't escape himself -- instead, he leaps out of the sheriff's body just before a burning chunk of the ceiling falls on him.

In "Trilogy (Part 2)  – For Your Love," Sam finds himself in the throes of passion, actually leaping into someone in flagrante delicto -- and it's Abigail, 10 years later! Now 22, Abigail is engaged to one Will Kinman, who was around in the previous episode. In this new history, Leta's still mad at Abigail, now claiming she murdered a child she was babysitting. Sam's mission is to save Abigail from getting shot to death while a lynch mob whipped up by Leta tries to hang her to death. (Oh, boy!)

In "Trilogy (Part 3) – The Last Door," it's 12 years later, and Abigail is still in trouble; now she's on trial for Leta's murder! And Leta never married Will, but she has a 12-year-old daughter ... named Samantha Jo. (Hmmm ... !) Sam leaps into a retired lawyer who takes the case.

Parts 2 and 3 aired as a two-hour special back in the day.

There's something really creepy about Sam being the parent to Abigail in the first part and being her lover in the second part, especially as they played it as him really being lonely from all the leaping through time and really falling for her. And somehow, when he leaped into Will Kinman at the start of Part 2, he really merged with Abigail and got her pregnant. So in Part 3, as the retired lawyer, he's like the kindly uncle very interested in her welfare ... maybe a little too much. I don't know what the writers were going for, but I don't think they realized how creepy the whole thing comes off. 

[Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod)]

I've just started watching the Fargo television series. Don't know why I overlooked it before: it's excellent. Hulu has the whole thing, so I didn't have any trouble starting at the beginning.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"I've been watching Quantum Leap..."

My mentor (teacher) used to watch that show and tried to get me to watch it, but the way he described it made it sound stupid. It was one of Tracy's favorite shows, though, so we ended up watching the series (or most of it, anyway) as a couple. As I remember it, I had some sort of problem with each and every episode. I think eventually we just skipped forward to the end. We never did discuss why we did so, but I'm sure she got tired of hearing me point out the flaws and lapses in logic in, as I indicated, virtually every single episode. Even the completist in me wasn't going to argue about the decision to "leap" forward to the last episode.

Scott Bakula later became the captain on Star Trek: Enterprise, which didn't exactly thrill me at the time, but he did I better job than I expected. I really liked the fourth season of that show, but the whole series is Tracy's favorite Trek spin-off. 

[ClarkKent_DC]

Recently completed a binge of Pan Am, a glossy drama that was on ABC for one season a few years back. It was set in 1963, at the height of the Jet Age, following the lives and loves of a quartet of stewardesses (back then, they didn't call them "flight attendants"). This being about 20 years after World War II, there's a strong Cold War vibe; this show was also part of a short-lived wave of Mad Men knockoffs.

The lovely ladies are:

• Collette, a French Jew whose parents were killed in Dachau and who has a long-lost brother. At one point, a prince tries to woo and marry her.
• Maggie, an idealistic rule-breaker who relies on her gift of gab to get her out of the jams she creates for herself.
• Kate, who secretly is a courier for the CIA. As her handler notes, a Pan Am stewardess who travels all over the world is the perfect cover. Kate often has to slip away from her friends and gets into jams herself. Once, she falls for a dashing Yugoslavian, and her CIA bosses want her to turn him into a double agent, which he wasn't too thrilled about because he'd either have to say no to them or say no to the Soviets, an ultimate no-win situation. At another point, she winds up killing a Russian agent, and later still, helps capture her CIA contact in London, who was secretly a Commie spy. Kate's handler is so impressed, he recruits her to be a full-fledged agent.
• Laura, Kate's kid sister. Laura is a runaway bride -- she and Kate drive off in a panic from the church on her wedding day -- who opts to see a little of the world before going straight to being Mrs. Good Little Wifey in the 'burbs. Laura is insanely beautiful, so much so that she made the cover of Life magazine before she even went on her first flight. 

I saw one episode when it was on, and remembered Christina Ricci as Maggie. I did not remember Margot Robbie was Laura, but that was well before she became a star from Wolf of Wall Street and Suicide Squad. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Tracy and I loved Pan Am, but we haven't seen it since first run. We never saw Mad Men, but Pan Am was part of a wave of "copycat" shows; another was The Playboy Club, which we also liked. If Pan Am had lasted, season two would have entered the era of JFK and the Beatles. Too bad. It also has a soundtrack album I can recommend.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I one episode of Pan Am I saw during its original run had them flying over the Caribbean when a passenger got a heart attack, so they had to make an emergency landing. They were too far away from Florida, so they chose Haiti, even though nobody answered when they called to the airport there. That was because it was closed, thanks to a recent hurricane and a more-recent revolution. 

Getting back off the ground was problematic, because of that hurricane leaving debris on the runway. While Collette and the second officer go looking for a doctor, the pilot -- an ex-Navy man -- figures out how to get back into the sky. The other junior pilot, also ex-military, kept grumbling that it's impossible. But the captain, full of that Jet Age "we can do it, I don't care what the book says" spirit, figures it out ... although it means burning off lots of fuel and dumping everyone's luggage to lighten the load. (The heart attack victim dies, and they even leave behind his body.) Plus, Collette brings aboard a refugee, which brings lots of complaints for the passengers. 

Back in the States, the district manager is out to fire whomever brought the refugee aboard. Collette admits it, but then Maggie says it was her, and then Laura says she's lying I did it, and then Kate takes the blame, and by the time Collette insists they're all wrong it was me, the manager is fully buffaloed by their "I am Spartacus" routine and they all get off the hook.

Speaking of John F. Kennedy, an episode I watched in this go-round had him visiting the U.S. Embassy in Berlin and Maggie desperately wanting to meet him. She talks her buddies into crashing a party at the embassy -- who can say no to Pan Am stewardesses, she argues? -- but unfortunately, Kennedy leaves and Maggie nearly misses her chance. She learns he's at the airport and races there, not caring that she'll miss her own flight. Why? We learn Maggie was a volunteer for the Kennedy for President campaign, but she was in the bathroom when he came by campaign headquarters to thank everybody after he won. She pleads with a Secret Service agent to just let me shake his hand and give him these Cuban cigars, please -- ! Of course, the agent doesn't let her.

In a later episode, we see everyone's reactions when Walter Cronkite broadcasts the bad news out of Dallas. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I had forgotten that show got as far as the assassination. (It's been a decade since I've seen it!) I guess what I remembered about the promise of season two was dealing with the aftermath of the assassination (and the coming of the Beatles to America). 

[ClarkKent_DC]

I completed the six-season run of Drop Dead Diva, which I never noticed when it was live on Lifetime.

The premise (which is helpfully explained in a pre-credit sequence in each episode), is that Deb, an amiable, beautiful, well-meaning bimbo, dies in a vehicle crash (she runs her car into a truck full of fruits and vegetables) on her way to audition to be a model on The Price Is Right. Unwilling to accept her fate, she punches the button to get returned to Earth from Heaven. However, her spirit lands in the body of Jane, who recently was murdered in a workplace shooting.

Jane is unlike Deb; she's dowdy, brunette, short, plus-sized, six years older and way smarter, being a lawyer in a high-powered firm. Worse, Deb's fiance Grayson works at that law firm, and she's aching to tell him she's been reincarnated as Jane. Jane's guardian angel, Fred, warns her not to. 

So Deb has to make a new life as Jane, even though she never stops thinking of herself as Deb. She does not have Jane's memories, but from time to time, when the plot calls for it, she gets flashes of Jane's legal knowledge. Deb does tell her situation to her BFF, Stacy, who is an even more beautiful, amiable, well-meaning, kind-hearted and sweet bimbo. Stacy is Deb's sounding board and practically the sister she never had.

Deb does Jane's job in a Deb kind of way. This show scratched that itch I had for something like L.A. Law, where they take on a lot of oddball pro bono cases, fighting for justice for the little guy. There's a lot of "Jane saves the day" stories where the odds seem stacked against her and her client, but she makes the right persuasive argument or pulls some legal sleight-of-hand to get the win in the end.

That's balanced with the stories about Deb's social life and the lives of her co-workers, as this show is very much in the "workplace as family" vein, so much that it seems they never work on paying cases. Deb winds up dealing with Deb's mother and Jane's mother.There's the push and pull over telling Grayson the truth, which goes in varying directions until they get their happy ending in the series finale.