Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 313

Mad Men 7.2: Flowers and the Hung-Up Phone

A really fine Mad Men 7.2 tonight, with all sorts of funny and sage moments, spread out over at least three story lines.

I guess the funniest was Pete talking on the phone to Roger, after Roger had hung up the phone.  This perfectly typifies the story of Pete's life, in the firm and out, making his points, playing the game with sincerity, often to have his words fall on deaf or closed ears.

Back in New York - the Pete thread was half in California, half in New York - we have a brilliant vignette of flowers, assumptions, racism, and their consequences.   Shirley's fiance leaves flowers for her - it's Valentine's Day - which Peggy wrongly thinks were left for her from afar by Ted.   This also has been the story of Peggy's life at the firm.  Always being cut short from what she may or may not want, smart as can be yet misunderstanding crucial things.  The error is understandable - Shirley is Peggy's receptionist - but it sets in motion an unpredictable, hilarious, and in the end profound chain of consequences.

When Shirley finally tells Peggy the truth, she directs her fury at Shirley for not telling her sooner, and wants her out of her secretary desk.   Dawn has already gotten marching orders - actually given to Joan, who must enforce them, as office manager - by the boring guy who's in Don's office, and who doesn't want Dawn doing Don's business on his (the boring guy's) time.   Joan has put Dawn in the front of the office as the receptionist people see when they first come in the office, and moved the receptionist who was previously there to the boring guy's (ok, Lou's) office.   But Bert doesn't want an African-American woman to be in the front of the office (Dawn and Shirley are both African-American).  He tells Joan to get her out of there.

What does Joan do?   The solution is given to her when Jim suggests that she move upstairs and work just as an account executive, and find someone else to be office manager.  In an ingenious, superb stroke, Joan makes Dawn the new office manager - a nice promotion.   It's unclear where Shirley will be - maybe Joan's secretary - but Joan has really excelled in doing the right thing in spite of the bigotry and pettiness of the office.

And, for dessert, we get one of the best sequences in years between Don and Sally, in which Don, for once in his life, is entirely truthful with Sally, and even manages to fake her out - to use that great 1960s expression - about pretending to be plotting not to pay the restaurant bill.

Just the kind of Mad Men worth waiting a year to see.

See also Mad Men 7.1: Vignettes and Playboy

And see also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy ...  Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine ... Mad Men 6.8: Dr. Feelgood and Grandma Ida ... Mad Men 6.9: Don and Betty ... Mad Men 6.10: Medium Cool ... Mad Men 6.11: Hand in the Cookie Jar and Guy de Maupassant ... Mad Men 6.12: Rosemary's Baby, Dick Cheney, and Sunkist ... Mad Men Season 6 Finale: Beyond California

And see also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

And see also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

  

#SFWApro

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

Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn

Well, Da Vinci's Demons 2.5 last night moved from the celestial mathematics of last week's episode to about as mundane as you can get for science as the solution to Da Vinci's life-and-death problems.  On the verge of being killed by his Maya-like captors in the New World, his life dependent upon his choice of the right instrument, Da Vinci's satisfies his captors with his selection of tools to sow corn.   Unknown in Europe at this time, corn would have been the last thing that any European in the New World would have thought of at this time - anyone, that is, other than Da Vinci, who took note of the corn fields as he was escorted to the ceremonial event.

It's not quite clear just where this happened, however.  The map we keep seeing at the beginning of the show is of South America, and Mayans didn't extend quite that far south, as far as we know.   But that sort of blurring of history and geography is ok in a narrative like this.

And, indeed, the story takes another nice jump away from the mystical into the plausible, much more satisfying as far as I am concerned.  The high priestess knows Da Vinci's name and face.  And she can speak his language.   How can this be?  The answer is that Da Vinci's mother sailed across the Atlantic and educated the priestess.  Nice touch.

In real history, there likely were numerous voyages across the Atlantic prior to Columbus.  Certainly the Vikings did it - their presence in North America around 1000 AD has been confirmed by carbon dating of artifacts.   (I'm hoping Vikings on the History Channel someday get around to this.)   And the Phoenicians had the sailing know-how to get across the Atlantic, too.   So it would not be shocking to learn that a few ships from Italy made the voyage before Columbus, and one included Da Vinci's mother.

Another nice touch was including Amerigo Vespucci on the Da Vinci ship.   In reality, he arrived in the New World just a few years after Columbus, had something to do with a Medici, and as we know had the whole New World named after him - the Americas.

Da Vinci's Demons continues to shape up as good alternate or secret history.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.2: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 

 
an ancient voyage to the New World in The Plot to Save Socrates

#SFWApro

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

Gravity: Exquisite Scale

I finally saw Gravity last night.  It's worth all the awards and nominations it's been receiving, including being on the just-announced finalist list for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, for the Hugo, to be presented at the World Science Fiction Convention in London this coming August.

The scale was just right: two humans against the awe and peril of the cosmos.  The fact that it was two rather than more made all the difference, and gave us a chance to get into the thinking especially of Ryan Stone, the main character, well played by Sandra Bullock.   George Clooney's Lt. Matt Kowalski was also perfect in the crucial supporting role.

We're tragically accustomed to catastrophes in space travel, due to the Challenger and the Columbia space shuttle disasters.  But these actually were disasters of space travel not far off the Earth, and the only disaster the took place out in space was actually the close call, not disaster, of Apollo 13, made into a superb, realistic movie by Ron Howard back in 1995.

Gravity, a totally fictional story, is closer to Apollo 13 in taking place well off Earth, but with tragic circumstances for all but one of the crew.  All the icons of near-Earth orbit, old and new, are brought into play in this riveting story, including the US Space Shuttle, the Hubble telescope, the International Space Station, the Russian Soyez, and the Chinese Tiangong 1 space station, just launched in 2011. The interplay of these major players in near space - each has a significant role in the story - is one of the best parts of the movie.

Stone's struggle to survive and get back to Earth is also one of the more satisfyingly heroic stories to appear on the screen in some time.   This is due, in large part, to the sheer complex simplicity of the contest of one woman against the universe.   Although I guessed that Kowalski's return was a dream, his role in the story, including his sacrifice to give Stone a fighting chance, was also one fine piece of moving movie making.

Outer space in the movies has all too often been given over to military conflicts and vast battles.   These can be excellent, but also make a movie on the human scale of Gravity all the more inspiring.



#SFWApro

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

Book Review: The Silicon Man by Charles Platt before Transcendence

With Transcendence opening in movie theaters today, I thought it was a good time to continue here with my posting of science fiction reviews I first published in the 1990s, this time of Charles Platt's The Silicon Man, first published in 1991, brought out in paperback in 1993, and reviewed  by me that year in a highly philosophic analysis in the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems.

In Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age (1988, p. 180), I wrote that "A flat denial forever and anon of AI possibilities [humanlike intelligence] in nonliving circuits amounts to ... an unbecoming protein chauvinism." What I had in mind was the dogmatism of a position that says, just because the only intelligence we know is protein-based, therefore all intelligence must be so. I went on, however, to depict the attempt at creating real intelligence in computer systems as akin to putting "Descartes before the horse," by which I meant that since intelligence is a property of life insofar as we know, we're more likely to develop artificial intelligences out of artificial living entities than from any non-living artificial components.

Charles Platt's The Silicon Man, a science fiction novel, takes up the challenge of AI from another angle. Pointing out that something (like the mind) can be copied without the copier fully understanding how the original entity works ("You mean Gottbaum and his people copied my brain without knowing how some of it works?" "Yes. By analogy, an audio recorder can copy a piece of music without understanding harmony and composition. All that matters is that the copy is accurate," p. 147), Platt explores the implications of uploading a person's mind into a central computer. Of course, the analogy is imperfect -- music, regardless of its complexity and unlike the mind, is not a self-regulating, generative system -- and our scientific capacity to do this is vastly beyond our current grasp. But the lack of ipso facto impossibility of Platt's scheme -- an impossibility that one could take refuge in only on the basis of a protein chauvinism -- makes it and the book it is in worthy of very serious philosophic contemplation.

The central philosophic issue it raises for me is, given that a human intelligence could be copied into a computer whose system could supply that intelligence with one hundred percent accurate simulations of everything ranging from making love to fine dining to evening breezes, what differences if any would be worth claiming between this simulated existence and its original "real" one? A related ethical issue is, given that such differences are negligible, would termination of fleshly existence in favor of silicon constitute murder, if involuntary, or otherwise suicide?

Platt's book focuses more on the ethical issue, raising the stakes by suggesting that a human intelligence in a computer might even be an existence superior to the old-fashioned one (for example, "infomorphs," intelligences in a computer, don't age, p. 223).

But I find the ontological question more primary. In several essays (1994a, 1994b, 1994c), I've delved into questions of what can't be done in cyberspace, though from the perspective of a flesh-and-blood body working in and through cyberspace (as anyone connected to any computer network can now do), rather than the intelligence in the body literally vacating it in favor of a total intra-cyberspace existence. My point in these essays is that in areas in which the body must be served -- as in making love, leading to procreation, and eating for nutrition -- then whatever completely convincing alternative cyberspace can provide is obviously not enough.

But what about the human intelligence totally within the computer? Can it be fully served by its simulations, and if so, what does this say about the relationship of human intelligence and the external material universe from which it emerged? Here we come upon the most fundamental questions about the nature of reality and its relation to perception. We can start with the tedious observation that, yes, we have no idea that what we perceive in our current external world is really there -- the whole universe could be our dream -- but once we move beyond this logically irrefutable but fruitless observation we're left with a very profound distinction between reality perception and simulated perception. The first is a relationship of perception (and the perceiver) to something not of its own making (well recognized by Kant's insistence that knowledge is a product both of our internal cognitive processors and the external data they work upon); the second smacks of Narcissus looking at endless mirrored reflections of his own mind. And thus the second kind of perception -- the perception of human intelligence wholly internalized in cyberspace -- seems to return to the sterile solipsism of the world is my dream.

Platt is aware of this issue, having one of his computer-internalized characters observe that "from the inside, as infomorphs, we obviously can't alter the structure -- the actual hardware -- of [our central computer]. That would be like a tape recording trying to alter the structure of the tape on which it was recorded" (p. 236). Actually, the analogy isn't the best, since a tape recording with a very loud sound might in principle cause a speaker to blow, which could in turn cause the tape-turning mechanism to malfunction, which might in turn alter the tape -- but it nonetheless suggests that even a perceptually intra-cyberspace existence, totally inside cyberspace, requires the existence of outside, real "hands-on" ministration (if, say, the hardware of the central system is in need of repair).

Near the end of the novel, though, Platt imagines the growth of infomorphs in computer networks achieving such power that they can in fact control physical events outside of their systems. ("You can rent [a vehicle], pipe your mind into it, and go wherever you want if you still need to interact with the real world," p. 255.) And this confronts us with what might be the most fundamental ontological question of all: If we can indeed copy everything -- every aspect of an entity -- then is the copy in any sense a copy, or is it better thought of as another original?

Well, there is what I call in Mind at Large (pp. 149-150) the paradox of copying: the copy, to the degree that it is a perfect copy, defeats itself because in so being a perfect copy it transforms the original into a duplicate, and therein the perfect copy is no longer a perfect copy (because it has obliterated rather than preserved the uniqueness of the original, and therein failed to copy a central aspect of the original). A perfect, artificially constructed human intelligence would inevitably have this effect on its natural progenitors.

On the other hand, there seems room enough -- and need enough -- for both of us in this universe. I recommend Platt's book for stirring attention to such issues. Like Isaac Asimov's robot series, it shows that, in constructing our future, we need not only technology and philosophy but its presentation in science fiction.

References

Levinson, P. (1988) Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Levinson, P. (1994a) "Will the Delta Clipper Turn Deep Space Into Cyberspace?" Wired, February, p. 68

Levinson, P. (1994b) "Picking Ripe: There Are Just Some Things You Can't Do In Cyberspace." Omni, August, p. 4.

Levinson, P. (1994c) "Entering Cyberspace: What To Embrace, What To Watch Out For." Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 17 (2), pp. 119-126. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos

Fargo debuted on FX this Tuesday, in the spot of the just-concluded next-to-last season of the excellent Justified.  I saw the 1996 movie, thought it was superb, but recall little other than the general setup.   So I approached the television series with not much in the way of specific expectations.   If the premiere is any indication, it looks like we're in for an experience even better than the movie - whose story has been changed at least somewhat for the television series.

The story on Tuesday night was basically a tale of two psychos.  One, Lorne Malvo (perfectly played by Billy Bob Thornton) is a already a criminal and a killer.  But he's a psycho beyond the way that any hired killer is a psycho, in that he has no tolerance for people being bullied or pushed around - at this point, one man in particular, no relation to him.  He has so little tolerance for this that he kills the bully after encountering the bully's victim in the hospital.

The victim - Lester Nygaard ( also played perfectly by Martin Freeman) - turns out to be the second psycho himself.  Inspired by Malvo's exhortation that Nygaard should act like a man, Nygaard hammers his wife to death after her customary ridicule, this time of his inability to fix their washing machine.   And just for good measure, Malvo shows up and kills the sheriff who's come to Nygaard's house to investigate the murder of the bully.

This is the situation that the pregnant deputy Molly Solverson inherits.  This is the character - named Marge Gunderson - that I most remember from the 1996 movie, which more than anything else was a story about how a highly intelligent, highly pregnant police officer could investigate a deadly case in the cold of Minnesota.   I'm glad this character will also play a central role in the television series, but it's already looking to be more than that.   Less humor (though still plenty), more action and violence, equally great Northern dialogue make Fargo a contender for one on of the best television shows to come down the pike in a few years.

#SFWApro


A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code




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

The Following 2.13: The Downfall of Mike

Well, The Following 2.13 concluded on a resoundingly tragic note last night, as Mike pumps bullets into Lily, to the horror of Ryan and Max.

Neither lifted a weapon to stop him.  They hoped their appeal to Mike's humanity might have stopped him, and it almost did.   Of course, it could be argued that what Mike did was in humanity's best interests, given Lily's propensity for dealing out death.   (I'm assuming here that she's indeed dead - you clearly never know for sure on The Following - and short of someone's head being blown clean off, you never know for sure on any television show.)

But was Mike's pulling the trigger multiple times - which he certainly did, even if Lily somehow survives - in his best interests?  Ryan thinks not, and sees what Mike did as turning Mike into Ryan, which for Ryan in a Shakespearean moment is a bad thing.  More practically, what will Max do about having witnessed this execution?  I can't see her arresting him or turning him in to the authorities - but I can't see her just forgetting about it, either.

As for the series, as I said in my review of last week's episode, I was liking Lily as a killing-cult leader better than Joe, so she'll be missed.  But Joe became a little more interesting last night, in the intense conversation with Ryan in which Joe indicated that he knew he didn't have many more days left on this Earth.   I had thought, earlier in the season, that it might end with Joe being killed and Lily surviving. But with Lily now presumably dead, will this season end with Joe being killed - for real, this time - too?

One point to bear in mind is that Joe was at his fatalistic worst before he learned that Claire was still alive.    Might that give him more of a will to live?

Should be a compelling season finale next week.

See also The Following Is Back for Its Second Season ... The Following 2.2: Rediscovering Oneself ... The Following 2.3: Coalescing ... The Following 2.4: Psycho Families and Trains ... The Following 2.5: Turning Tides ... The Following 2.8: Coalescing? ... The Following 2.9: The Book Signing ... The Following 2.11: Lily not Joe

And see also The Following Begins ... The Following 1.2: Joe, Poe, and the Plan ... The Following 1.3: Bug in the Sun ... The Following 1.4: Off the Leash ... The Following 1.5:  The Lawyer and the Swap ... The Following 1.7: At Large ... 
#SFWApro


Like a Neanderthal serial killer in the current world? Try The Silk Code

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

Bones 9.21: Freezing and Thawing

A strong triple-threat Bones 9.21, with a great case, and two relationships pitched into interesting and important developments.

The case begins with the mystery of how a dead body can be composed of pieces that apparently died at three different times.   The solution involves cryogenics - the freezing of bodies and brains for later revival, at a time when we can do that, and, in the case of the frozen brain, construct a body to go with it, too.  This is not science fiction -- not the freezing part, in any case, which has been occurring in labs around the world for years.  When you inject into this scenario an unrequited love, you get a story which is a fine scientific mystery.   Bones 9.21 did a fine job with this, offering up one of the best scientific murders mysteries of the season, and indeed the series.

The personal relationships were also excellent.  One involved Cam and Aristoo, and what happens when Arastoo's parents come to town.  About Cam, I should mention that several readers took me to task for being so critical of her last week, and pointed out that her behavior regarding Wendell was the fault of the writers.  Of course it's the writers' fault - Cam is not a real person, everything she says and does is the result of the writers.   In any case, she behaved well with Ariatoo and his parents tonight - and it was nice to see Shohreh Aghdashloo playing Arastoo's mother.  She did a great job as Behrooz's mother on 24 a bunch of years ago - speaking of which, I'll be reviewing episode of that classic series when it's back on Fox with a new, short season in May.

Back to Cam - and, again, this is the writers' fault - there is a serious inconsistency in her character which makes her even less sympathetic.   She's willing to break the rules and sleep with an intern, but not allow another intern to use marijuana to help ease the pain of his cancer.   The writers should resolve that - otherwise they're leaving us with little choice but to conclude that Cam is a hypocrite.

But the most important personal story tonight is about Bones and Booth, who may be offered a job in Germany, to head up a counter-terrorism center.  He doesn't want this.  Bones will support him whatever he does, but the ambiguous way in which this thread ends means that there will likely be emotional fireworks ahead.

All in all, an outstanding episode, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Bones 9.1: The Sweet Misery of Love ... Bones 9.2: Bobcat, Identity Theft, and Sweets ... Bones 9.3 and NCIS 11.2: Sweets and Ziva ... Bones 9.4: Metaphysics of Death in a Television Series ... Bones 9.5: Val and Deep Blue ... Bones 9.6: The Wedding ... Bones 9.7: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ...Bones 9.8: The Bug in the Neck ... Bones 9.9: Friday Night Bones in the Courtroom ... Bones 9.10: Horse Pucky ... Bones 9.11: Angels in Equations ... Bones 9.12: Fingernails ... Bones 9.13: Meets Nashville, and Wendell ... Bones 9.14: "You Cannot Drink Your Glass Away" ... Bones 9.15: Hodgins' Brother and the Ripped Off Toe ... Bones 9.16: Lampreys, Professors, and Insurance Companies ... Bones 9.17: Spartacus in the Kitchen ... Bones 9.18: Meets Day of the Triffids ... Bones 9.19: The Cornucopic Urn ... Bones 9.20: Above the Law

And see also Bones 8.1: Walk Like an Egyptian ... Bones 8.2 of Contention ... Bones 8.3: Not Rotting Behind a Desk  ... Bones 8.4: Slashing Tiger and Donald Trump ... Bones 8.5: Applesauce on Election Eve ... Bones 8.6: Election Day ... Bones 8.7: Dollops in the Sky with Diamonds ...Bones 8.8: The Talking Remains ... Bones 8.9: I Am A Camera ... Bones 8.10-11: Double Bones ...Bones 8.12: Face of Enigmatic Evil ... Bones 8.13: Two for the Price of One ... Bones 8.14: Real Life ... Bones 8.15: The Magic Bullet and the Be-Spontaneous Paradox ... Bones 8.16: Bitter-Sweet Sweets and Honest Finn ... Bones 8.17: "Not Time Share, Time Travel" ... Bones 8.18: Couples ... Bones 8.19: The Head in the Toilet ... Bones 8.20: On Camera ... Bones 8.21: Christine, Hot Sauce, and the Judge ... Bones 8.22: Musical-Chair Parents ... Bones 8.23: The Bluff ... Bones Season 8 Finale: Can't Buy the Last Few Minutes

And see also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ...Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ...Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max ... Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson ... Bones Season 7 Finale: Suspect Bones

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ...Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ...Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ...Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ...Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

#SFWApro



Like scientific mysteries and science fiction?  Check out The Pixel Eye

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

Game of Thrones 4.2: Whodunnit?

At last, a satisfying shocking killing in Game of Thrones 4.2 last night. After death coming down on Stark after Stark, and the villains suffering only a lost hand, we get to celebrate the poisoning of one of the most despicable characters in the series and indeed in all of television:  the just-married King Joffrey.   George R. R. Martin tweeted "You're welcome" after the show last night, and millions including me were thankful indeed that we won't have to see this sick vicious twit of a character again.

But two intriguing questions ensue - actually one question, in two parts: What will happen to Tyrion, denounced by Cersei as the killer, and who really killed Joffrey?

Tyrion clearly didn't do it.   Jamie and Tywin will likely see this, once they get over their shock, and I doubt if they'll let anything really bad happen to Tyrion, whatever Cersei's true beliefs.  (I've read only the first novel in the series, so I have no knowledge of what will happen.   Given, of course, what has already happened, anything is possible.)  Indeed, the early scene with Tyrion and Jamie suggests that the two may have the beginnings of some real rapport.

So who did the deed, if not Tyrion?   There are motives everywhere you look, especially with the Starks.   Sansa has more than ample reason to want Joffrey dead.  Did she act on it?  I don't think so.

Was the killer on hand at the wedding party, to witness his or her deed?  Probably - it's much more fun that way.

Is the killer someone we don't know, an agent from the north, or maybe Daenerys?  Possibly, but it would be more fun to already have seen the killer, in plain sight, maybe even a moment or two before the deadly cake event.

I'm putting my money on Oleena, who couldn't have been happy, deep down, about her beloved Margaery married to Joffrey, despite the power that would give the Tyrells.  But it's also not clear who will wield the power now with Joffrey gone.  Will Margaery, as Queen?  Will Stanis have a new claim to the throne?  If Joffrey's death gives Margaery more power, then that gives Oleena a pretty powerful motive.

Whatever comes down the road, we should be for some wild times in Game of Thrones, and we haven't even gotten to the dragons and the ghost hoard.

See also  Game of Thrones Season 3 Premiere ... Game of Thrones 3.3: The Heart of Jaime Lannister ... Game of Thrones 3.6: Extraordinary Cinematography ...Game of Thrones 3.7: Heroic Jaime ...  Game of Thrones 3.9: A Critique 
And see also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2 ... Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things  ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ... Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ... Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

And here's a Spanish article in Semana, the leading news magazine in Colombia, in which I'm quoted about explicit sex on television, including on Game of Thrones.

And see "'Game of Thrones': Why the Buzz is So Big" article in The Christian Science Monitor, 8 April 2014, with my quotes.

 

"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now." 

#SFWApro




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

Mad Men 7.1: Vignettes and Playboy

Mad Men was back with its seventh season last night - it will be its last, though presented in  two seven-episode parts, over two years.   As was the case with much of season 6, this first episode of the final season offered a compelling series of interlocking vignettes, rather than a single overarching narrative. Indeed, the plot barely moved forward, making the episode more like a sequence of still life paintings, brilliantly rendered, hanging on diverse walls, than a story across time.

Among the highlights of this new form of television story telling -

Don's slowly deteriorating relationship with Megan:  It was already on the beginnings of the rocks last season, and is moving along to break-up ever so exquisitely slowly.   Megan, out in Los Angles and receiving Don's visit, barely wants to sleep with him.  She might have been more open to Don, had he not been rushing back to New York the very next day on a red eye.  But, understandably, she can't quite see where their relationship can go with this series of in effect one-night stands.  For his part, Don flirts with a blonde real estate agent in LA who looks like a young version of Betty, and a woman on the red-eye, who looks like an older version of Megan, and whom he might even have wanted to have some sex with, if it had been confined to something on the plane.Don's business is more blurry than a watercolor: he's still on leave, but pitching some kind of business, while he's still a collecting a check from what's left of the grand old firm.   The merger has made the firm even less recognizable than it was last year, giving it a faintly alien quality accentuated by Don, Roger, Bert, and Harry not on hand in the office - for different reasons - and Ken with a patch over his eye, courtesy of the hunting accident he had last season.   (Actually, I'm assuming Bert and Harry were absent for different reasons, because no reason was presented.)Peggy and Joan are still have difficulty getting their good ideas accepted, again for different reasons.   And I've got to say that I found Joan's character more interesting than Peggy's in episode 7.1, because Peggy's problems seem a rehash of what we've seen in just about every season.The visual details were outstanding, as they always are.   My favorite was seeing a copy of Playboy in Don's possession.  Let's see: its January 1969 - Nixon is being inaugurated - would have been cool had that copy of Playboy been the March 1969 issue with the McLuhan interview, and a tip of the hat to "the medium is the message" line that we heard lo those many seasons ago on this series.  It wasn't, but its these resonances, real and imagined, that make Mad Men such a fine piece of television.And it's great to see this series right back where it belongs: on television, not in our recollections - at least, not until after 2015.

See also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy ...  Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine ... Mad Men 6.8: Dr. Feelgood and Grandma Ida ... Mad Men 6.9: Don and Betty ... Mad Men 6.10: Medium Cool ... Mad Men 6.11: Hand in the Cookie Jar and Guy de Maupassant ... Mad Men 6.12: Rosemary's Baby, Dick Cheney, and Sunkist ... Mad Men Season 6 Finale: Beyond California

See also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

  

#SFWApro

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

Da Vinci's Demons 2.4: Copernican Revelation

Another outstanding episode of Da Vinci's Demons - 2.4 - last night, in which the resolution of a life-and-death conflict at sea hinges on Da Vinci's sudden insight that the planets revolve around the sun not the Earth, some fifty years before Copernicus published his On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.

Of course, the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE) came up with a heliocentric theory of the solar system long before Copernicus or this fictional Da Vinci, and it would have been nice to see Da Vinci, who has been portrayed as very well versed in the classics, at least mention Aristarchus in this episode.   But the narrative was nonetheless well played.

Da Vinci already correctly sees that the Earth is round, not flat, as did many of the most knowledgeable thinkers of his day, including Columbus.   He tries to explain this to the uneducated people on the ship he commandeered for the voyage west, and pins his argument on what he thinks the planet Venus will look like in the sky.   But Venus does not look the way Da Vinci expects - because his expectation is based on Ptolemy's model of the planets revolving around the Earth, not Aristarchus's that the planets revolve around the sun - and this gets Da Vinci into hot water out on the sea.   His realization that the planets revolve not around the Earth but the Sun is too late to save most of his frightened shipmates, who kill themselves rather than risk falling off the edge of the Earth, but at least Da Vinci will have more accurate cosmic bearings from now on.

So we once again get a good lesson in the history of science tied into Da Vinci's adventure. Meanwhile, back in Italy, we have two good continuing stories.   In one, Lorenzo makes his way on the road to redeem his city of Florence.  In the other, we learn the truth about the evil Pope and his imprisoned brother, in an instructive series of flashbacks.

So far, I'm enjoying this second season of Da Vinci's Demons much more than the first, because of the second's grounding in science, and I'm now looking forward to Da Vinci's arrival in the New World.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.2: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Rado ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Rado

 
what some other ancient Greeks were thinking in the time of Aristarchus

#SFWApro

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