Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 150

Evil 1.2: Miracles and Racism

A really excellent second episode of Evil on CBS last night, confirming what I thought after the debut of this series last week: it's the best new series I've seen so far this season on network television.

The subject of the episode was miracles, in particular the miracle of a young woman declared dead coming back to life.  As we saw last week, our characters are unafraid to confront the most profound problems.  Kristen Bouchard (very well played by Katja Herbers) spotlights perhaps the key problem with belief in miracles: why do they "happen to some people and not to others".  This an especially crucial problem for her, and not just professionally: we learn in the same conversation with David Acosta (also very well played by Mike Colter) that Kristen's young daughter may have a heart valve condition that could kill her before she reaches the age of twenty.

Meanwhile, the pendulum between spirit and science swings back and forth, just as it did last week.
Kristen's daughter sees George the demon!  Evidence, then, that he's real?  It might seem so, until Kristen learns that he's a character in a horror narrative that is streaming ("streaming," her daughter corrects Kirstin, not on television) and that Kristen has seen and her daughter and the other kids regularly watch.  This pendulum between occult and mundane keeps us on our toes about what is really going on.  In the centerpiece story, the young woman who comes back to life is African American, and our investigators discover that she was pronounced dead too soon, because the hospital tends to do that with African Americans.  Her coming back to life was not a miracle, but "implicit racism," as David aptly puts it.

Speaking of good acting, Evil also features Michael Emerson (from Lost and all kinds of sometimes great series) as Leland Townsend, who is a fit evil antagonist for Kristen and David.  He's a psycho, David explains, who "wants to kill hope".

I noticed something else about Evil last night.  Its creators are Michelle King and Robert King.  They were the creators of The Good Wife.  This makes me hope that Evil will be even better than just sometimes great.   I won't let Leland kill that hope.  Indeed, his complex character enhances the possibility that this hope will be fulfilled.

See also: Evil: Incubus Mystery


Posted by Paul Levinson Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Evil: Incubus Mystery

I caught up with Evil, which debuted on CBS last week.  Or maybe evil caught up with me.  No, I could up with Evil.

And though I'm not much of a fan of demonic possession stories - same as the lead character, Dr. Kristen Bouchard, the forensic psychologist with a sharp brain who needs money - I thought the first episode was really good.  In fact, it's the best new show on network TV I've seen so far this season.

The most interesting and best handled thread in this episode involves Bouchard being visited by an incubus (a male demon with sex on his mind).  She vividly dreams or sees the demon (George) look under her nightgown at her Caesarian scar and panties.  And then (of course, because this is still network TV) she wakes up screaming.  And mostly believing that all she had was a bad dream.  And when George visits her again, she realizes that she can't read the writing on the paper she taped to the ceiling, which proves that she's dreaming since you can't read in your dream.  Or so she says - I have no idea if that's true - but it makes a good plot point.

But when Bouchard pays a call on a psychotic serial killer who claims he's possessed, he knows what George the incubus said to Bouchard, all about her scar and those panties.  How could this be?  Is George really a demon that the psycho had access to?

I won't tell you the way that Bouchard refutes this and figures out the truth - in case you haven't seen this show - but it's clever and original.  And you should see Evil.  It's not only a good science vs. spirituality show - or better, science and spirituality working hand in hand - but it looks like it has the makings of a good mystery narrative as well.


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Emergence 1.2: Cleaning Up

A good second episode of Emergence this week, in which the main action are the bad guys or superior people or people from the future or whoever they are trying to clean up all traces of what happened last week.

They do pretty well.  They hire a guy to bury the debris of the crashed plane out in the sea.  The erase all data for Piper in the hospital that first took her in.  They even liquidate the deceased couple - who died in the car last week after Piper (presumably) caused it to crash - before autopsies could be performed.

But Jo gets them - or, at least, their current agent - by taking advantage of the swirling magnetism in the crashed car, and positioning a mallet in the air so it hits the bad guy in the face.  This enables Jo and Chris to escape.  But Jo realizes they're not home safe just yet, not by a long shot.

So the mystery is becoming a little more clear.  The antagonists are not super powerful or super intelligent.   They have superior knowledge and technology.   And Piper doesn't seem to be bad.  She's a victim of all of this, in her own way, too.  Though, at this point in the narrative, anything is possible.  Piper could be an anti-hero, but we and she just don't know it, as yet.

After two episodes, Emergence seems most indebted to Stranger Things for its ambience and story.  But there are differences.  Emergence takes place in the present.  And, so far, there don't seem to be any monsters created or unleashed, other than the human kind.

See you here next week.

See also: Emergence: May Just Make It

 
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Deuce 3.4: Major Changes

I mean, it's the final season (even thought it's only the third) of The Deuce, right?  So we had to expect major changes.   More than Lori failing at everything other than sheer porn that she tried (though, if you ask me, I thought her singing was pretty good).  More than Candy being read the anti-porn riot act by Andrea Dworkin (a real person, by the way, who died in 2005).

So, it wasn't that surprising to see what happens to Frankie.  On his birthday, no less. It's been building up to this all season, and there even were intimations of that in last year's second season.  He doesn't pay his due respect to people with guns, including and especially the mob.

And so, he gets shot at the end of the episode.  And it looks like he's dead, or dying, in his twin brother's arms.   But then the coming attractions show him alive in bad shape in a hospital, or at least someone with a mustache who looks like him.  It's probably Frankie - as far as we know we've been following the story of twins in The Deuce, not triplets (in which case, maybe the whole series would've been called The Trio).

But you know what?  It doesn't really matter if Frankie is dead, or very badly hurt, in which case, he could die before the series ends, anyway.   But even if Frankie survives, that's still going to amount to a very major change in the series.  He won't be the same.  Which means that his brother Vincent, who has been much more of the main character in this narrative, won't be the same, either.

I'm also sorry to say that I expect some other deaths before the series is over, anyway.  Life is hard and dangerous, especially when you're in the kind of business that the twins and everyone around them are in.

See also The Deuce 3.1: 1985 ... The Deuce 3.2: The First Amendment! ... The Deuce 3.3: Love and Money, Pimps and Agents

And see also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Stumptown: Strong Out of the Gate

Continuing with my reviews of new network television series which seemed appealing enough to watch the debut, we come to Stumptown, which opened shop on ABC last Wednesday.

I watched it mainly because I wanted to see Michael Ealy (Sleeper Cell, etc) and Camryn Manheim (The Practice) on television again.  They both were good as Portland, Oregon police (Detective Miles Hoffman and his Lieutenant Cosgrove).   And it turns out that so was Cobie Smulders, in the lead role of Dex, a hard-hitting, sass-talking private investigator with a heart of gold and a sense that morality when necessary is more worth following than the literal law.

These characteristics will be recognized as shared by many a famous, classic detective.  But they were male, and Stumptown has a fast pace, sometimes frenetic, and a touch of wackiness, all its own.  The start of the first episode has Dex kidnapped in the back of the car.  As a military vet, she's physically dexterous, and it's fun to see how she gets out of this jam against all odds.

The key to whether a series like this can manage long-term success are the power of the cases Dex investigates.  The acting and relationships are there - Dex is already in bed with Miles - and so is the energy and refreshing Portland ambience.   My wife liked the first episode, too (always a good sign for a series).   I'll definitely watch the new few episodes and tell you what I think.

 
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Affair 5.6: Best Episode of the Season So Far - Finally, about Joanie

Frankly, The Affair this season, up until tonight's episode 5.6, was almost a waste of time watching.  But tonight's hour - devoted completely to Joanie in the future - made Season 5 all worthwhile.

The science fiction aspects, which I've commented upon before, were excellent.  Indoor strawberry gardens to make oxygen, phones in the ear, Google-like-glasses (worn by Joanie to see what the dock looked like on the night her mother died), were all fun to see.  But they weren't the best part of the episode.

That came from Joanie, wonderfully acted by Anna Paquin, discovering that her mother likely did not commit suicide and then being certain that she was murdered, by Ben.   She makes this journey with the help of EJ,  a great new character (a researcher into trauma, with a great sense of humor and other endearing qualities, well played by Michael Braun).  He and Joanie not only wind up in bed together, but he helps her, well, get over her trauma at the loss of both of her parents.  And he therein frees her brain to figure out what happened to Allison.

I've been thinking all season that it would have satisfying if Cole had been alive - as Joanie says, he was only 72 when he died (of a heart attack, or a broken heart, and she aptly puts it).  But his death was worked very well into tonight's narrative.  It's a large part of the motive for Joanie to look into her mother's death.

Tonight's episode is a turning point in the season and thus the series.  I wouldn't mind seeing Noah again only in the future with Joanie, and I wouldn't miss anyone else too much from our present, in California.  That won't happen.  But let tonight's episode at least begin Joanie getting good long segments.  She and the series deserve it.

See also The Affair 5.1: Death, Nobility, and Science Fiction ... The Affair 5.2: Tears and Floods ... The Affair 5.3:  The Raya App ... The Affair 5.4: 2053 ... The Affair 5.6: No One Happy
And see also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle ... The Affair 4.8:  I Don't Believe It ... The Affair 4.9: Two Alisons ... The Affair Season 4 Finale: Best Scenes
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest
 
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Why Trump Should Be Impeached and Removed from Office

It will come as no surprise at all to anyone who knows me, that I hope the House of Representatives impeaches Trump, very likely to happen, and the Senate votes by the required two-thirds majority to remove him from office, less likely to happen but still possible.  Here are my reasons:

The charges against Trump, which he has already admitted to, and appear in the transcript released by the White House, which detail Trump telling the President of Ukraine that US aid crucial for the Ukranian defense against Russia was dependent on Ukraine providing Trump evidence of alleged wrong-doing by Joe Biden's son Hunter, is far worse than the charges raised against the three other Presidents in American history who either were impeached or for whom impeachment seemed very likely.

Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 by the House but acquitted by the Senate on the charge of violating the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted the President's ability to fire members of his cabinet.  The Act was soon amended, repealed a few decades later, and ultimately held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 by the House for lying under oath about consensual sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky, but acquitted by the Senate early the next year.Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974, rather than face very likely impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate for approving a coverup of the Watergate break-in (an attempt to steal information from Democratic Party headquarters).Trump's wrongdoings, laid out in the transcript of his conversation, are obviously far more serious than either Johnson's or Clinton's.  Nixon's was similar to Trump's insofar as Nixon was involved in attempts to obtain political advantage over his opponents.  But Nixon's wrongdoing was a cover-up of a break-in, whereas Trump's entailed the actual wrongdoing of extorting a head of state for political advantage.  Further, and even more important, Nixon's wrongdoing was totally domestic, in contrast to Trump's, which obviously was international, and endangered American national security in all kinds of ways, including letting a foreign power know that the American President was engaging in extortion.

I was in favor of Trump leaving office the day he assumed it.  His daily attacks on legitimate news media as fake news, reminiscent of the Nazi denunciation of unwelcome reporting in Germany as der Lügenpresse (the lying press), are just one of his many attacks on American democracy (and one I've especially investigated in Fake News in Real Context).  But he has provided by far the most egregious reason for removal from office in American history in just that one conversation with the Ukrainian head of state. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Emergence: May Just Make It

Emergence, which debuted on ABC last week, is another example of a recently well-worn theme back on network television yet again:  a child or teenager who mysteriously appears, and turns out to have some kind of superpower.

But Emergence is lifted by its star, Allison Tolman, who did so well in Fargo a few years ago.  And Emergence has her playing a police chief (Jo Evans), which, even in a small town on Long Island, is something you still don't see all that often on network TV.   And with Clancy Brown, who's been so good in so many science fiction series on television, as Jo's father, there are at least a few good reasons to watch it.

The first episode laid out the groundwork of the series narrative nicely.  A plane crashes.  Jo find a girl who apparently was on the plane sitting off to the side, without a scratch.  She professes to have some sort of amnesia, but probably she doesn't really have it.  She's kidnapped by a couple pretending to be her parents.  The kidnap car badly crashes, for no apparent reason.  Piper (the girl, not her real name) again emerges unscathed.  Later, she removes what is likely some kind of tracking device in her neck.

She wonders if she caused the crashes.  Likely she did.  Jo knows she's stumbled onto to something important, and we the audience know it's going to be far more important than she realizes. 

So there you have it.  A pretty good, if not startlingly original, set-up for a series.  For me, the tipping point in favor of watching another episode is that this story is apparently is science fiction, which I almost always prefer to life after death or magic.

I'll keep you posted.

 
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer

Continuing my sampling of new shows on traditional network TV, my wife and I tried Prodigal Son, which debuted on Fox earlier this week.  We're going to keep watching it.

It continues a now well-established tradition on network television: the serial killer, and the hunt for (usually) him, well represented by everything from The Following to Criminal Minds in recent years. Prodigal Son offers a new twist: the father (Dr. Whitly) is the serial killer, and his son Malcolm is with the police (first the FBI, now NYPD) hunting them down.  Malcolm good at it because he may have inherited some serial killer tendencies himself.  Or, at least, he understands them not only from knowing his father all too well, but because he feels them from the inside out, i.e., in himself.

The cast is outstanding.  Malcolm is played Tom Payne (no relation to the patriot, and spelled differently, anyway), who played no less than "Jesus" (or, to be clear, someone by that nickname) on The Walking Dead.  His father is played by Master and Johnson's Michael Sheen.  And just for good measure, Malcolm's sister Ainsley, a broadcast reporter, is played by Halston Sage, who was great on The Orville (and now we know why she suddenly left that show).  And, hey, Lou Diamond Phillips (last seen by me in Longmire, a great series) is Malcolm's superior, and goes back a ways with both Malcolm and his killer dad.

The first episode was fast, suitably complex, and surprising at times - like when Malcolm chops off a guy's hand to keep him from getting blown up by a bomb he's strapped to.  The family dynamics are effective - Malcolm doesn't want to even see his father, but he's drawn into seeking whatever guidance on serial killers he can get from him (my wife said this reminded her of the Silence of Lambs motif).  More than enough to keep anyone with a pulse's interest.

I'll be back with another review soon.

 
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

What a Day for a Daydreamed Story

originally published in The Dreams Journal, 23 January 2016

I write all the time – except when I'm sleeping. It's not that the dreams I occasionally recall serve as raw material or inspiration for my writing. As far as I can tell, what happens when I sleep has no connection to my writing at all, other than getting me well rested when I get enough sleep. Don't get me wrong – it's not that I don't like sleep. I love to sleep. But it's as far away as bright sunlight is to the dead of night when it comes to my writing – all parts of which, including its deepest origins, take place for me when I'm awake.

It's a good thing, too. If I get eight hours or less of sleep a night, that gives me sixteen or more hours of time to write and daydream, which is the source, in one way or another, of everything I write.

Here's an example: A few years ago, I walked up to my car in the parking lot of the Chauncey Square shopping center, having just finished a great swim in the New York Sports Club pool upstairs, and I did a classic double take. Parked right next to my car, then a 2006 silver Prius with almost 100,000 miles on it, was another Prius, same year and color. I couldn't tell, of course, if this other car also had traveled 100,000 miles, but it certainly had enough wear on it, and, if you looked closely enough, I could almost imagine I saw the same scuffs and dents, in the very same places as on my car.

This was the trigger for my story. And, in the ten-minute drive back home, I daydreamed "The Other Car," a magical realism little tale about a man who was encountering the very birth of an alternate reality in which he was the major player. One of the many great things about daydreaming is that it is inherently multi-tasking, and allows you to do other things as you tell yourself your story. So I got home perfectly safe and sound, something I'd have been unlikely to do if I had actually fallen asleep at the wheel and dreamed the plot of "The Other Car".

It is true that when you're asleep and dreaming, you sometimes are aware that you're dreaming, but there's very little more you – or, at least, I – can do with that, regarding my writing. I get good ideas as I'm falling asleep, and rush to write them down, but that's still really daydreaming not dreaming, because I'm still awake. The same is true about waking up in the morning with a way in my head of moving past a plot impasse in my story – it might seem like I had just dreamed that, but, actually, that part of the story came to me after I had woken up.

The problem with dreaming a story when you're fast asleep is you have no way of recording it. The best you can hope for is memory, notoriously unreliable when it comes to dreams, and writing down your recollection of what you dreamt, after you've awoken. In contrast, recording is always available to the daydreamer. I prefer writing to voice-recording my stories, and have been known to pull over to the side of the road and feverishly write down some lines, sometimes even paragraphs. Smart phones are a fabulous help with this – you can jot down a note, email it to yourself, and it's right there for you when you get home to your slightly bigger screen.

Daydreaming, like writing, is best done alone – at least, again, for me – which is why driving, with no passengers, has worked so well with me. So are long walks. Swimming, which is what I had been doing before encountering the other car, is good, too. I hate to interrupt my laps, but, on occasion, I've gotten out of the pool, walked to my locker, taken out my phone, and written down a crucial scene. (I'd save a little time leaving my phone by the side of the pool, but don't want to risk its accidentally being kicked in or deliberately stolen.)

By the way, I love spending time with my family, but, just as with sleeping, it's important to recognize that neither is conducive to writing at the same time. That's why I always say to anyone who asks that the single best thing you can do to clear your path as a writer is be willing to be anti-social on occasion. There are a million worthwhile and enjoyable things to do in life. But if they require your interaction with other people, you won't be writing at those times.

Of course, a conversation could spark an idea for a story or a way to move forward in whatever it is you're already writing. Any experience, like my seeing the other Prius, can do that.

The key is leaving yourself space and time between the conversations to let your daydreams take over. I wrote "The Other Car" in less than a day, and, I was so happy with it, I asked my artist friend Joel Iskowitz to do a cover, which he did, and I published the story on Amazon Kindle the next day. The ease and speed of publishing on Amazon has made the synapse between finished story and publication almost as short as between the brain and fingers that wrote the story.

You can do it all in a day now, as befits writing from daydreams, from which you can dip in and out of reality at the speed of thought. Or, to paraphrase John Sebastian, any day is a good day for a daydream if you're a writer.



"Flat-out fantastic ... I'd highly recommend all science fiction fans take a look at it." - Scifi and Scary"the end was stunning" - Ignite
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music