Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 229

Vikings 4.18: The Beginning of Revenge

A brutal Vikings 4.18 this week, as Ragnar's sons with Lagertha and associates prepare for and begin to exact revenge for the killing of their father.

Lagertha's sacrificing of a Viking man as Bjorn made love to Lagertha's lover was a powerful scene, which put in high relief the savagery and sexual permissiveness which both characterized these Vikings.  This second point was repeated when two of Ragnar's other sons agree to bed the same woman, after she has married one of them.   That was actually my favorite scene of this dark episode.

And the darkest part, of course, was the protracted killing of the northern English king Aelle who so mercilessly and viciously killed Ragnar.  What Ragnat's sons did to him, in retribution, shows us the audience that these Vikings were not to be outdone when it came to meeting out revenge and death.

And though I'm naturally inclined to support our heroes, it's important to keep in mind that, after all, it was Ragnar who first attacked and invaded England, not vice versa.   So, on some moral plane, the English were entitled to kill Ragnar, if not in such an inhumane way.

And waiting on the deck of history is Ecbert, to get his just dues, too.  In the most horrendous scene of the evening, Ivar looks with rapt satisfaction right in the face of King Aelle, as the last of his life drains from him.  That's the face - Ivar's face - which will soon be looking at Ecbert, whose plan to pin the killing of Ragnar on Aelle has already failed, just as Ragnar intended it to fail, and as we already know.


See also Vikings 4.1: I'll Still Take Paris ... Vikings 4.2: Sacred Texts ...Vikings 4.4: Speaking the Language ... Vikings 4.5: Knives ... Vikings 4.8: Ships Up Cliff ... Vikings 4.10: "God Bless Paris" ... Vikings 4.11: Ragnar's Sons ... Vikings 4.12: Two Expeditions ... Vikings 4.13: Family ... Vikings 4.14: Penultimate Ragnar? ... Vikings 4.15: Close of an Era ... Vikings 1.16: Musselman ... Vikings 1.17: Ivar's Wheels

And see also Vikings 3.1. Fighting and Farming ... Vikings 3.2: Leonard Nimoy ...Vikings 3.3: We'll Always Have Paris ... Vikings 3.4: They Call Me the Wanderer ... Vikings 3.5: Massacre ... Vikings 3.6: Athelstan and Floki ...Vikings 3.7: At the Gates ... Vikings 3.8: Battle for Paris ... Vikings 3.9: The Conquered ... Vikings Season 3 Finale: Normandy

And see also Vikings 2.1-2: Upping the Ante of Conquest ... Vikings 2.4: Wise King ... Vikings 2.5: Caught in the Middle ... Vikings 2.6: The Guardians ...Vikings 2.7: Volatile Mix ... Vikings 2.8: Great Post-Apocalyptic Narrative ... Vikings Season 2 Finale: Satisfying, Surprising, Superb

And see also Vikings ... Vikings 1.2: Lindisfarne ... Vikings 1.3: The Priest ... Vikings 1.4:  Twist and Testudo ... Vikings 1.5: Freud and Family ... Vikings 1.7: Religion and Battle ... Vikings 1.8: Sacrifice
... Vikings Season 1 Finale: Below the Ash

 
historical science fiction - a little further back in time

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Frequency 1.12: Good Inter-temporal Police Work, But...

Good inter-temporal police work between Raimy and Frank in last night's Frequency 1.12, but ...

Somewhat predictably - because it's the next-to-last, not last, show of the season - Julie is still in mortal danger.  Because the Nightingale, having been eliminated as Julie's killer, thanks to being put behind bars in Frank's time, is replaced by his son as Julie's (likely) killer).,

This is a good touch - the stubbornness of the Julie-gets-killed timeline defeats, at least for now, Raimy and Frank's relentless efforts to change it.  Except - well, it's even more complicated than that, which is also more intriguing and different than just Julie still being killed.

This is an interesting decision on the part of the writers.  Why not have Julie still dead, even after the Nightingale can't kill her, and make that the mystery to be solved (or not) next week?  The answer, I'd say, is because giving Raimy - and we, the audience - a taste of what it's like if Julie had survived is even better.  It tells us, reminds in case we needed reminding, just how much Raimy now has to loose.

Also of interest is where Frank is in the 2016 in which Julie is alive?  And, come to think of it, when will the son of the Nightingale try to satisfy his inherited obsession and try to kill Julie?

These questions are moving Frequency into a first-rate time-travel story, which makes me hope more than ever that it lives beyond next week.


See also Frequency 1.1: Closely Spun Gem ... Frequency 1.2: All About the Changes  ... Frequency 1.3: Chess Game Across Time ...  Frequency 1.4: Glimpsing the Serial Killer ... Frequency 1.5: Two Sets of Memories ... Frequency 1.6: Another Time Traveler? ... Frequency 1.7: Snags ... Frequency 1.8: Interferences ... Frequency 1.9: The Wife and the Fiancee ... Frequency 1.10: The Clarinet of Time ... Frequency 1.11: The Unkilling



                       more time travel
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No Second Chance: First Place Whodunnit

I'm continuing to feast on the international television and movies Netflix has been bringing us, ranging from Nordic Noir (Dicte and many more) to Cuban cop (Four Seasons in Havana) to Israeli undercover (Fauda).   France is well represented in this, too, with the superb Spiral, which I'll review after I've seen the 5th season on Netflix for free (cheapskate that I am), and Marseilles, which was quite good.

No Second Chance is another French winner, which arrived in France via New Jersey, where Harlan Corben, the American renowned mystery writer, lives and works.   Corben not only wrote No Second Chance, but has a nice cameo at the end, along with Dana Delaney, the only actor American audiences will recognize in this series.

The rest are French, and all excellent.  So is the narrative, which unlike a lot of high-octane kidnap stories, comes packaged with a first-class, whodunnit puzzler.  A father is shot to death, a mother shot and left for dead, and their six-month baby is kidnapped.   The mother, a medical doctor, recovers and sets out to find her baby.

But that won't happen until she or someone else solves the puzzle of what happened in the first place. Suffice to say it's not what it seems to be, as the main detective is just on edge of realizing.   There's a gap of time in the narrative - which was somewhat necessary for one of the crucial developments in the ending - but I think the story would have been even stronger and tighter without it.

But that's a small quibble about a compelling six-episode series,  crème de la crème for international and indeed all television.


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On Leaving Power

I read an article years ago about the pain of leaving power.   Possibly the fact that I can't recall the author's name is indicative of the author losing power, but the ideas seem especially relevant this week, as Barack Obama concludes his eight years as President.

The gist of the article was how starkly different, to the point of seeming unresponsive and even barren, the world around you can seem when you leave a position of power.  Obviously, the more powerful you are, the more you feel this literal draining and recession of the world.

The President of the United States is probably the most prominent example.   In addition to having a channel and megaphone for any and every idea you have, if you want to communicate it, you also have ways of getting these ideas implemented, that you never had before and never will again.

You also have people waiting on your every need.   Although Presidents including Obama frequently say how much they value their downtime and privacy, and that's true, the flip side is that when all you have is privacy, you miss being in the public light.

Possibly our world has changed to the point where a former President like Obama can continue to have some residual power, at least as far as people paying special attention to his ideas, if that's what he wants.

But my guess is Barack Obama will sorely miss even the onerous responsibilities of the Presidency, in ways the rest of us who have never been President or anything close to it can barely imagine.  For that reason, in addition to all the extraordinary good he has done and tried to do for the country, I wish Barack Obama all the luck in the world.

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The Young Pope 1.2: The Supreme Cool

A superb second episode of The Young Pope on HBO tonight, with a cardinal McLuhanesque lesson in media presentation: the more unseen, the more powerful, or, the supremely cool.

The episode doesn't tell us if Pius XIII read McLuhan, and his notion that the less presented, the more the viewer is attracted and involved, but Pius understands it, as well as if he had read the relevant chapter in Understanding Media, or sat in any of McLuhan's classes in the Coach House at the University of Toronto when McLuhan held forth there through the 1970s.  (I was there several times in the late 1970s, and again just this past year.)

McLuhan was a devout Catholic, and likely would have been offended by a lot of what the young Pope says and does.  But McLuhan couldn't deny that Pius knows his McLuhan, whether he explicitly acknowledges it or not.

The other important theme in tonight's episode is the power of Sister Mary.  She is the closest to the Pope, and some even think that she thinks she and the Pope are co-Pontiffs.  At this point, it's difficult to say what she's really thinking, but she may have in mind that's she's in effect the first female Pope, working through Lenny aka Pius.

The young Pope of course wouldn't want that.  He loves his power, at least as and maybe more than God.  And I await to see how the story unfolds next Sunday.

See also: The Young Pope 1.1: Beyond Iconclast

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Timeless 1.11: Edison, Ford, Morgan, Houdini, and Holmes (No, Not Sherlock)!

A crackerjack return of Timeless with episode 1.11 tonight, featuring our team at work at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and running into (in one way or another) Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, and serial killer (though as is made clear several times, not known by that label then) H. H. Holmes.  And just for good measure there's a famous women from MIT, but I didn't catch her name.

Houdini has the most screen time, and it's put to good use, as he uses his budding talents to unlock a door to a room where two of our heroes are in peril, and lift a gun from the pocket of Flynn, now thoroughly a bad guy again, but at least consistent in his reasons.

There are lots of good scenes and glances, including the slight look from Lucy when Wyatt says goodbye to the MIT woman, with whom there is definitely a touch a chemistry.   The famous characters all look as they should, including Henry Ford, who looks much younger than we think of him, because he was indeed much younger back then, when he was working for Edison, and hadn't yet invented his first Ford.   (I'd show you some photos, but I have more television to watch tonight, and don't have the time to find and insert them.)

So our team, rent asunder back in ancient 2016, is now back together in 2017, though the ever-resourceful Flynn is tempting Wyatt to leave the fold.  And as we're just days away from Inauguration Day here in the United States, I can't help thinking, where is a time-travel team from the future when we need them?  Or who knows, maybe they were already here, and we're seeing the result...

See you here next week!

See also Timeless 1.1: Threading the Needle ... Timeless 1.2: Small Change, Big Payoffs ... Timeless 1.3: Judith Campbell ... Timeless 1.4: Skyfall and Weapon of Choice ... Timeless 1.5: and Quantum Leap ... Timeless 1.6: Watergate and Rittenhouse ... Timeless 1.7: Stranded! ... Timeless 1.8: Time and Space ... Timeless 1.9: The Kiss and The Key ... Timeless 1.10: The End in the Middle



Edison, Ford, and J. P Morgan play big roles in Chronica,third novel in this time-travel trilogy
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The Young Pope 1.1: Beyond Iconoclast

Quite a show on The Young Pope, which debuted on HBO last night, and stars Jude Law as Pope Pius XIII.  He's Jude Law's age and looks like Jude Law - of course - and just for good measure is an American, and a New Yorker, at that.

The episode begins with Pius addressing the adoring masses in Rome, and saying he wants the Church to be a spearhead of freedom, for everything from abortions to priests openly marrying.  This extraordinary scene turns out to be a dream - which we should have guessed when the heavens cleared of rain right before Pius began to talk.  But the scene at the end, when Pius tells a priest that he doesn't believe in God, was no dream at all.

So the young Pope is not only young and a New Yorker, but an iconoclast that goes eons beyond anything we've seen or heard even from the real current Pope Francis.   But part of the power of The Young Pope is that he's an extension of what Francis has wisely started.

Where The Young Pope will go from here is anyone's guess.   We don't know how and why Lenny Belardo was selected.  We don't how much support he'll get for his reforms - which seem far too light a word for what he's thinking - and how long that will last.   Most of all, we don't yet know exactly what Pius XIII ultimately wants, if he knows that himself.

But we can expect a searing, provocative examination of the current basis of a religion of 1.27 billion adherents, which daily has profound influence on many more in the world.


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The Investigator: Running an Investigator

Caught The Investigator on Netflix yesterday, a 4-hour true-crime documentary (with actor reenactment of some scenes) that details the investigation that Mark Williams-Thomas (an investigative reporter and former police officer) made last year into the disappearance of Carole Packman in England in 1985.

Her body was never discovered, but her his husband, Russell Causley was convicted of her murder and is now serving a life prison sentence for it in England. Their daughter Samantha, 16 years old at the time of her mother's vanishing, and now in her forties and a mother herself, got Williams-Thomas involved, in the hope that he would provide some answers or closure to questions that understandably haunt and torment to her to this very day.  Causley has maintained his innocence, but Sam is not so sure.

Dealing as it does with the likely murder of a woman, and the protestation of innocence by the man convicted of it, The Investigator has some resemblances to Making a Murderer, but the two are very different.   The body was found in Making a Murderer, so there's no doubt at all that a murder was committed.   And while Steven Avery, in Making a Murderer, may be brighter than he looks, he's clearly not some criminal mastermind.

Russell Causley is - or at very least, masterful in how to run Mark Williams-Thomas rather than vice versa in this investigation.   Williams-Thomas knows to be wary of everything Causley says, but he can't help responding to them, anyway.

In the end ... well, I don't want to give anything more away, except to say that someone who may also have had a role in the murder may still be at large - if indeed there was a murder.




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The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero"

Well, Cole fans are gong to be happy - or mostly happy - about tonight's episode 3.8, because it was mostly about him and Alison.  Needles to say, big spoilers follow, but I'll say it anyway,

First, on the who stabbed Noah front: we can now take Cole off the list of suspects. In a nice touch, the police have him in the system going to New Jersey - but it turns out it was not to attack Noah.  It was to talk to Alison's doctor in New Jersey.

Now why would Cole keep that a secret, including from Luisa?  He could easily have said he wanted to check up on Alison's mental health, given her interest in getting some visiting rights with Joanie. But the real reason was much deeper and more disruptive - he still loves Alison, deeply.

That's a big reveal.  And just as big is that Alison feels the same way about Cole.   That explains why she's so ok with getting a divorce from Noah - it was more than just her needing that for Joanie.  The scene near the end where they both tell each other that they still love each other - and not in just a nostalgic way - was real Affair magic.

Not so magical, though, was the very ending, with Cole pulling back, and back to Luisa.   In the best line of the night, Alison tells Cole he has to decide between being a "happy asshole" or a "miserable hero".   Cole goes with the miserable hero - but I don't think this is the end of Cole and Alison, by any means.

And we're back, with just two episodes left, to the question of who stabbed poor Noah in the neck? The choices now are (a) Noah stabbed himself, (b) it is Gunther after all, (c) the French teacher, who's a psycho, or (d) one of the students at the dinner, also a psycho.

I'm now going with (d).   See you next week.

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

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

podcast review of every 2nd season episode


podcast review of every 1st season episode


the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy
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Four Seasons in Havana: Five Stars

As the new year gets underway, Netflix continues to revolutionize television in many ways, one of the most important being the way it makes available to American viewers (and viewers around the world) television series from other countries and cultures.  In the past months, I've reviewed outstanding examples from Israel (Fauda), France (Marseilles), and Nordic Noir narratives from Denmark and Iceland.   The stories are not only riveting, but when you watch them subtitled (not dubbed) in their original language, you get a chance to increase your international vocabulary over what you learned in high school and college when you weren't paying that much attention.

So I had high expectations when I started watching Four Seasons in Havana - four 90-minute detective stories, rendered in Spanish, made in Cuba and Spain, following the exploits of Lt. Conde - and they were not only met but exceeded. Conde (well played by Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría) is a philosophically minded, hard-bitten but full of heart, existential mid-level detective, wise-cracking one minute, challenging Cuban authority the next, doggedly pursuing the murderer, and always with an eye for a beautiful woman.  He usually succeeds in both quests, but not usually in a way that brings him any lasting satisfaction.

We've seen hard-boiled detectives like Conde - actually, I'd say he was medium-boiled - many times before, but what makes Four Season in Havana different and memorable is that it takes place in Havana.  As is well known, a lot of the culture of Cuba was frozen in the late 1950s, with American cars from that era carefully maintained for decades.  One of the best things Barack Obama did as President was finally lift the American embargo on Cuba, so that snapshot in time is likely to catch up to the present pretty quickly.  This means that Four Seasons in Havana gives us a fascinating glimpse of a Cuba that may soon be gone - and with it, not only antique cars, but old telephones, big desktop computers, more radio than television, and a love of music (such as Creedence Clearwater Revival) that, while still admired in America, has long been old hat.

So in addition to the crime stories being appealing in their own right, we get in Four Seasons in Havana the dividend of the next best thing to an actual visit to Havana, which I now hope more than ever to do myself one day.   Whether you feel that way or not, see the series.


silk noir

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