Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 10

Severance 2.4: Innies Out in the Snow

Well, as I've been saying, Severance's outstanding second season on Apple TV+ seems to be getting better and better, with episode 2.4 delivering one of the wildest stories so far, with our innie team of four -- Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irv -- now out in the snow, doing the furthest thing from frolicking, at least for everyone other than one couple.

[And here's the warning about spoilers ahead ... ]

I guess the most important revelation in this blinding story is that Helly's innie is really her outie Helena, a prime member of the Eagan family, daughter of Jame, CEO of Lumon. Irv pays the price of telling us this, by being banished from the severed floor by Milchick. Unclear how long he'll be banished from the show -- if at all -- but I hope he isn't.

Now all of the above was exciting enough, but the Helly/Helena story also delivers her finally making love with Mark. As I said last week, I thought the two of them should have kissed in episode 2.3, but in retrospect that was a good build-up to what they did in the winter wonderland in 2.4.

Helly/Helena's feelings for Mark also put in a different light what's happening on the severed floor with Ms. Casey, who was revealed at the end of season one as Mark's beloved wife Gemma. Depending upon how deep Helena's feelings for Mark are, she may want to keep him separated from his wife. And speaking of Mark, we saw him at the end episode 2.3 undergoing some kind of integration. We now know that the procedure didn't kill him. But did it work? And, if so, how entirely?

Helena notices something different in Mark after they sleep together -- is she sensing that Mark's innie is not quite the same? One thing about Severance that you can always to rely upon: no matter how many questions it seems to answer, it always also leaves some new ones on the table, whether on the severed floor or out in the north in the ice and the snow and the freezing ponds.

And see also Severance 1.1-1.2: Erving Goffman Meets The Prisoner ... Severance 1.3: The History and the Neighbor ... Severance 1.4: Deadly Ambiguity ... Severance 1.5: Second Lives ... Severance 1.6: Lumon on the Outside ... Severance 1.7: Overtime Contingency ... Severance 1.8: Fired, Kissed, Almost Fired ... Severance: Season One Finale: Stunning Revelations
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Published on February 08, 2025 12:27

Paul Levinson interviews Sarah Seltzer about The Singer Sisters

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 407, and my in-depth interview with Sarah Seltzer about her novel, The Singer Sisters.

Relevant links:

Get a copy of The Singer Sisters My review of The Singer Sisters Sarah Seltzer personal appearances at JCC-MidWestchester (Scarsdale, NY) February 28, and JCC-Rockland (West Nyack, NY) March 12 Dramatic reading from It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles with Paul Levinson, Anthony Marinelli, Amanda Greer, Frank LoBuono, and Denise Reed, at Big Red Books, Nyack NY, February 23.

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Published on February 06, 2025 11:22

Paul Levinson interviews David Browne about Talkin' Greenwich Village

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 406, and my in-depth interview with Rolling Stone writer David Browne about his masterful book, Talkin' Greenwich Village. We talk at length about Dave Van Ronk, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, The Blues Project, Bob Lind, and a little less about many others, including Hegel and his spirit of an age.

Relevant links:

Get a copy of Talkin' Greenwich Village My review of Talkin' Greenwich Village Catch David Browne at Big Red Books in Nyack, NY, March 6 Catch me at Big Red Books, Nyack, NY, February 23, doing a dramatic reading from It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, with Anthony Marinelli and Amanda Greer, real people who appear as characters in the novel, and Frank LoBuono and Denise Reed.

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Published on February 02, 2025 17:24

Severance 2.3: InniesOuties

Of course, every episode of Severance is about innies and their outies, but 2.3 was especially so, a potpourri of vignettes (I don't know why I'm getting so French) that effectively told a bouquet of stories.

[And voici my warning about spoilers ... ]

The ultimate innie and outie story is no doubt the attempt to re-integrate the two. We saw how that worked out for Petey last season, so Mark taking a shot at that at the end of the episode is a major event, indeed. As always, since there's no way Mark is going to turn into a vegetable after this -- at least, not for too long -- it will be significant and fun to see what comes from this.

Another innie and outie story in 2.3 is Dylan's, whose innie is now getting a little time with his outie wife, thanks to the goodness of Lumon. Of course, things don't work out as well as either Dylan's innie or outie might have hoped, but we do learn that Dylan's outie -- as we also saw last week -- is a bit of a loser. Not surprising, because who in their right mind would want to go through the whole severance procedure. I mean, the show is highly enjoyable, but that's in significant part because the procedure certainly is not.

We see Helly in and out, too. But my favorite scene with Helly was after she and Mark take the elevator down to innie-land (actually, innie-floor), and they're close to kissing. Helly clearly wants Mark to kiss her, and she makes that moderately clear. But Mark (the idiot) doesn't. And given that Helly was the one who kissed him last time, he certainly should have. Not to mention that Helly is very kissable.

And then, of course, we have the people who are only outies. Milchick is gifted a series of portraits of Kier, rendered as a black man. To his credit, he doesn't really like them, though he puts on a good show to Natalie, who has the best facial expressions in the business. This was actually a very important scene, because if Milchick turns against Lumon because of its racism, well ... (And he was also carrying those blue balloons.)

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. I'll see you back here next week with my revue of 1.4.

And see also Severance 1.1-1.2: Erving Goffman Meets The Prisoner ... Severance 1.3: The History and the Neighbor ... Severance 1.4: Deadly Ambiguity ... Severance 1.5: Second Lives ... Severance 1.6: Lumon on the Outside ... Severance 1.7: Overtime Contingency ... Severance 1.8: Fired, Kissed, Almost Fired ... Severance: Season One Finale: Stunning Revelations Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

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Published on February 01, 2025 13:48

Dexter: Original Sin 1.8: Dexter's Discovery

Dexter: Original Sin continues to be an unguilty pleasure to watch, with many outstanding elements in episode 1.8. But I'll focus ahead on the one that struck me the most.

[And here's the spoiler warning ... ]

It was Dexter's discovery, voiced near the end of the episode, that he not only has a hunger to kill those who deserve it -- in his inimitable way -- but he could sense the darkness in other killers as well. In this case, Captain Spencer, who has not only kidnapped his own son, and cut off his finger, but in episode 1.8 kills I don't how many people exactly, just to cover his own tracks. (He has had his son's shirt planted in his victims' house.)

But this actually makes another crucial point. Not all "darkness" is the same in Dexter's world. Dexter gets pleasure from killing, but not from killing innocent people. Not even innocent people who might reveal Dexter's killing. After all, it was Deb who killed LaGuerta in the original Dexter series, not Dexter. Harry's code, which Dexter internalized, strictly forbids the deliberate killing of any innocent person.

So what Dexter realizes he can recognize in others is the general "darkness" of being driven to kill other people. And this, of course, is something that can both fuel and guide Dexter's hunt for victims. (I have a vague recollection that Dexter may have collided with another beneficial serial killer -- that is, a serial killer of other killers -- but I can't quite recall where in the original series that happened, if it happened at all.)

Other notable parts of this important episode include Deb learning the truth about her boyfriend (I told you he was bad, an obvious point), and Laura Moser nearing her end. Which I very much regret, because I think she and Harry are a good couple. But, hey, you can't change history, unless you're telling an alternate history storyfar , which all the Dexter stories so far are definitely not.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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Published on January 31, 2025 21:00

Dexter: Original Sin 1.7: First Big Shocker

Well, at the title of this review of Dexter: Original Sin 1.7 might well suggest, this was the first episode in the prequel series which had a real shocker at end.

[And, of course, I have to warn you about spoilers ahead ... ]

It came out of left field. And it's close to the last thing I would have expected -- that's why it's such an unexpected twist. Not much, really has built up to this. Though ...

We've seen Captain Spencer seriously unhappy about his ex-wife. He'd have no compunction about making her suffer (psychologically), which he strongly feels she made happen to him. But to the extent of kidnapping their son, and cutting off his finger? True, he hesitated -- as young Dexter discovered -- but even so. What kind of father who loves his son would do that? Unless loving his son was just an act, but I don't think so.

I'm hoping we'll find out more about Spencer's motivation as this season continues. As it stands now, the main question is what will Dexter do about it? Probably tell Harry. But what other people in the Department? LaGuerta, Batista, etc? Who was Captain in the first Dexter series that began back in 2006? Tom Matthews, right? So we know that Aaron Spencer didn't stay in that job between Dexter: Original Sin and the original Dexter.

The question of what will now happen to Spencer raises another question: who else of the characters we've come to know either won't survive this first season of Original Sin, or will have very different jobs when the 10th and final episode this first season concludes. We know, of course, that Masuka, LaGuerta, and Batista stay in the same business well into the original Dexter series. And we also know that, by then, Harry and his wife and Dexter's mother are gone. (As for Harry, I bet that's one of reasons we saw him smoking in tonight's episode 1.7)

Questions like that are what make a well-done prequel series like Original Sin so good to watch. And I'll be back here next week with my review of 1.8.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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Published on January 24, 2025 21:07

Severance 2.2: Multiple Dylans

An extraordinary second episode of the second season of Severance on Apple TV+ today, pushing this season to be well on its way to exceeding the first in sheer ideational power, which is high praise indeed.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

Severance, of course, is about how the same person can be two people, expressing different emotions, living two different lives. We see this powerfully played in Helly/Helena (fine acting by Britt Lower). Mark's innie is falling in love with Helly, who kisses him in Season 1. Helena the outie turns out to be the daughter of Jame Eagan, CEO of Lumon, and a direct descendant of the almighty Kier who started all of this back in the 19th century (and, yes, there's a Big Love-ish flavor to Severance). Jame shows his appreciation of his daughter by calling her a "fetid moppet," one of the nastiest things I've heard a father call a daughter on a TV show or anywhere place. Maybe because of this, and who knows what other reasons, Helena takes great interest in the video of her innie kissing Mark's. As Milchik tells Mark's outie, the good emotional things that can happen to an innie eventually seep through to the outie.

But this doubleness, if that's a word, is both multiplied and lampooned with Dylan G. in this episode. First, we see a character -- on the outside, pretty high up in Lumen -- who looks a lot like Dylan. That would be Mr. Drummond. Then, as Dylan's outie goes looking for a job, he's interviewed by a Mr. Saliba, who looks so much like Dylan that he (Saliba) even says so. In fact, I thought for a moment that Saliba was being played by Zack Cherry (who plays Dylan) -- same for Drummond -- but it turns out Saliba is played Adrian Martinez, and Drummond by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (whom I first saw in The Widow a few years ago). So, I don't know, but this had to be deliberate. Or, it could be, at least in part, because Severance's creator and writer Dan Erickson looks a little like Dylan, too.

There's also great dialogue, as always, in this episode of Severance. For some reason -- maybe because I gave a lecture there a few years ago -- my favorite line was delivered by Mark W., who, fired after his very brief employment at Lumon because the company wisely decided to rehire not only Mark S. but all his original innie colleagues, at least until "Cold Harbor" (whatever that is) is completed, Mark W. angrily says, "I broke a lease in Grand Rapids".

And, just to top off this brilliantly entertaining episode, we're given a big hint at the end by Harmony that she may know something about how and why Mark's wife Gemma died. The way Harmony drove away, there's a chance she killed Gemma, or knows who did.

See you back here next week.

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Published on January 24, 2025 16:32

Prime Target 1.1-1.2: Da Vinci Code-Like Thriller

Just saw the first two episodes of Prime Target on Apple TV+ -- I'm surprised Prime Video didn't pick it up - a Da Vinci Code-like thriller, in which mathematics -- the quality of prime numbers -- is the stuff of deadly espionage, a source of the secrets of the world, more precisely the universe, that at very least lead to the murder of mathematicians who know too much about it.

Now, I won't pretend to understand much if any of the mathematical equations we see our protagonists scribbling on tablecloths. So I won't pretend to pass judgements on whether the equations have a scintilla of validity. I will say that I read some interesting essays on the philosophy of mathematics decades ago, and I discovered that there was a split among let's call them philosophers of mathematics, between those who thought mathematics were in effect a language that described fundamental realities in the universe, verses those who argued that the deepest mathematics were just a sort of mental gymnastics.

I always sided with the first group, but I don't know enough about math or physics to prove it or even tell you why. Also, since too much knowledge, at least in this series, might be fatal, I might not be telling you the truth right now, anyway, for obvious reasons.

But the first two episodes moved quickly, and made it easy to suspend my disbelief and accept that the CIA or MI6 or whatever it is that they call the KGB these days in Russia has agents out there, determined to make sure that genius mathematicians didn't act on their knowledge and therein control or at very least change the world we live in.

Hey, it's a welcome relief from what's really going on these days, and that's what's entertainment is supposed to do, right? So I'll certainly be watching the third episode of this thriller -- which should also be called science fiction -- next week, and will report back here with whatever I can make out of the narrative and the prime equations.

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Published on January 22, 2025 21:58

Silo 2: The Rest of the Season: Connections to Foundation

Well, I reviewed just about every episode of the first season Silo back in the Spring and Summer of 2023, and then the first episode of the second season this past November 2024, and then ... there was something about this second season that made me feel I wanted to know more before I wrote another review, and here I am with a review of the rest of season two, including the finale, up on Apple TV+ just a few days ago.

[And there will be no Silo spoilers ahead until the very end ... ]

What especially struck me about this second season of Silo, as it progressed, is that it had a cadence and essence that reminded me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy (and I mean the original printed trilogy, not the series, now waiting for its third season, also on Apple TV+, which in many crucial ways is a very story than the one in the novels).

Now, Silo takes place on Earth, and a very limited part of it, at that, while Foundation takes place in the galaxy writ large, so what could the two have in common? For me, one of the best parts of the Foundation trilogy is the search for Second Foundation, which requires Ebling Mis to spend the rest of his life looking for answers in the library on Trantor. [And here I guess I should warn you about spoilers for the Foundation trilogy, in case you haven't read it.] Ebling pores of over documents, to say the least, trying desperately to glean information from a galactic culture that no longer exists.

And as people in both silos start to do that in this second season -- more in the second silo than the first, but really in both -- I got the same feeling I did when I read equivalent passages of the very different story, in a very different settling, in the Foundation trilogy. (And here I should say again -- as I've said in reviews of previous episodes -- that I haven't actually read Hugh Howey's stories.) But there's something very powerful -- emotionally as well as intellectually -- in the struggle to make sense of what's right before your very eyes, what your forebears have left for you, intentionally or not, which offers life-saving, civilization-saving information. It doesn't matter whether it's presented in codes or symbols or letters of an alphabet. The effect is the same.

It gets, in the my mind, to magic of written words, and all written communication, whether on paper in books or on screens. These squiggles on surfaces provide essential keys to our very existence, and the science fiction stories which focus on them are narratives in which these words and numbers are as much as or even more than the heroic people who must decode them.

[Ok, now I'll talk about the very end of the 10th episode of the second season ... ]

This is of one the better twists I've seen in a science fiction story on the television in quite awhile. The jump to our outside world in Washington DC -- pretty literally our -- was stunning stuff. It reminded me of I think the finale of the 3rd season in Lost, when we suddenly saw our world, back in Los Angeles, not in the past, not in a flashback, but in the present, as three people from the island made it back home.

The move in both series -- Silo and Lost -- was at once jolting and immensely refreshing. And I'll see you back when Season 3 of Silo is up on the screen.

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Published on January 18, 2025 20:12

Severance 2.1: Ultimate Fake News?

A thoroughly disconcerting -- and therefore, excellent, because that's what it's supposed to be -- episode 2.1 of Severance, the return of this cuttingly bizarre series on Apple TV+.
First, I really enjoyed the long opening sequence of Mark S. running through the severed hall at the opening of this episode. It was on the extended trailer which I watched a good couple of times, and I enjoy more every time I see it. In part because it reminds me of the halls on the ground floor (I think) of CBS on 57th Street in Manhattan -- I was watching a debate (on TV) there between John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election -- stepped out for a moment to get a sip of water, walked down a hall and around to find a fountain I thought I saw when I was coming in, and it took me way too long to get back to the room with debate. It also reminds me of some hallways in hospitals, which makes it even more unlikely that I liked it Severance 2.1, though I very much did.
[Now there might be a spoiler of two ahead ... ]
As to the story, it was nice and funny seeing Mark S. in a severed room with a new team, including a new old guy (played by Bob Balaban) named Mark W. -- which is why I'm calling our innie Mark S., because you never know, especially in a series like this, when a character like Mark W. will come back. (Actually, that applies to any and all of the characters in this series.)
But it was reassuring to see our Mark reunited with his innie team, and also reassuring to see how much Milchick -- aka Milk Shake -- lies all the time. In fact, it struck that Severance from the very beginning was a series about the ultimate fake news, about news so fake, it's about your very self and being, split into two, with one not knowing what the other is doing. That's why notes passed back and forth between the inside and the outside hold such power.
And it was good to see Miss Huang, a new character, in the series. She clearly has a lot of importance, and at this point it's possible that she may be running the show. "And a child shall lead them" may be a central part of the story this season.
I'm off to watch the next episode of another great series, but I'll see you back here next week with my review Severance 2.2
See also See also Severance 1.1-1.2: Erving Goffman Meets The Prisoner ... Severance 1.3: The History and the Neighbor ... Severance 1.4: Deadly Ambiguity ... Severance 1.5: Second Lives ... Severance 1.6: Lumon on the Outside ... Severance 1.7: Overtime Contingency ... Severance 1.8: Fired, Kissed, Almost Fired ... Severance: Season One Finale: Stunning Revelations Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

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Published on January 17, 2025 19:12