Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 395

The Event: Penultimate

So word came down from NBC a few days ago that this first season of The Event would be its last, which is too bad, because, as I've been saying, the story's been getting much better.   And this also makes it difficult to review this episode with any sense of wonder about where things will be going for these characters in any kind of future.  On the other hand, if Plato or some kind of related Platonic view is right that all stories exist somewhere, in a realm somewhat beyond human comprehension, but still amenable to human perception, then I can review this next-to-last episode with that in mind....

(How's that for a preface?)

The big reveal tonight in episode 1.21 is that Sophia's aliens were here first.   That's actually a good reveal for a continuing story that tells us why then they left Earth in the first place, whether some aliens stayed here and are actually some of us, etc.  About all we can fathom, at this point, is that Demsey had something to do with this.

Meanwhile, the story is tightening on both sides - the aliens are proceeding with their nefarious plan to kill we humans with a souped-up neo-Spanish flu, but we're winning some rounds on the White House front.

Let's look at that first.  President Martinez, injected last week with the reversal serum by his wife, is recovered to the point that he can leave the hospital - against doctor's orders - and confront the treacherous Jarvis.   It's an excellent confrontation, in which Jarvis, weak but not without resources, reminds Martinez that Jarvis is still President, and only the cabinet can deem Martinez fit enough to resume office.

Sophia's aliens are well into setting up three distribution points for the neo-Spanish-flu in the U.S.  One good break for us, though, is that Leila, now infected, and the alien Dr. Mengele - actually, a woman in this story - are located in a place that Simon, Blake, Vicki, and Sean, now working together, are able to reach.   They get a little information from the doc, but will it be in time?   And although it seems that Leila is doomed, even that's not certain, because she's a hybrid, and, in principle, anything is possible where hybrids are concerned.

As I've been pointing out, this is a fine 24-like show, which deserves more time.  As it is, I'll look forward to next week.

See also The Event Debuts on NBC ... The Event 1.2: Aliens! ... The Event 1.4: 24 Back in Action! ... The Event 1.6: Not Only Aliens, Immortals! ... The Event 1.7: The Portal and its Implications  ... The Event 1.8: The "Republican" VP and the Anti-24 ... The Event 1.9: "Native Populations, Indigenous People" ... The Event 1.10: Satellite ... The Event 1.11-12: Hardball in Fiction ... The Event 1.13: A Little to Close to the Reality ... The Event 1.14: Upping the Ante ... The Event 1.15: Bluffs and Stakes ... The Event 1.16: High Placed Sleeper  ... The Event 1.17: Target Martinez  ... The Event 1.18: VP. President, Spanish Flu ... The Event 1.19: Triptych ... The Event 1.20: Two Poisons




                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic,  Mozy
The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Treme 2.4: Angry Albert

Well, we finally get an episode of Treme this season - 2.4 - which delves a little into Albert's current story. Ok, the 4th episode maybe doesn't justify saying "finally," but I was missing more on Albert this season nonetheless.

He's an Indian Chief. Not the Native American kind, who have been living here for innumerable centuries, but the Mardi Gras kind, consisting of African Americans who march in great, colorful costumes in the Mardi Gras and on other holidays, and date back at least as far as the middle of the 1800s.

I confess to not fully understanding the Mardi Gras Indian culture, but that's sort of the point - or part of the point - of Albert's story in Treme. Even his son Delmond doesn't completely get it, and is still learning in his re-developing relationship with his father.

What's clear is how important the tradition and the costumes are to Albert - he spends most of the year working to make the parades as remarkable as possible. Katrina disrupted this, and last season we saw Albert struggling and succeeding despite the hurricane and its aftermaths.

This year his main obstacle is the government, and its slow processing of the vast amount of help all New Orleans needs. Delmond, in a powerful Christmas dinner scene in a restaurant, suggests to his father that he may clinically depressed. Albert responds, angrily, that he's angry.

Delmond later apologizes, but the truth, I'd say, is that they're both right, and Albert has every reason to feel both angry and depressed (psychologists will tell you that the two conditions are closely related).

But on the surface, most of our New Orleans people are acting more angry than depressed. Janette, in New York City, is justifiably furious at her dictatorial, insulting boss. Antoine would rather not be teaching. Desiree gets a nice piece of jewelry from Antoine, but my wife observed that she'd rather have received a ring.

One aspect of Treme, which usually makes most be happy, including me, is the music (the food, too, but you can't taste is through the screen). And my favorite song from episode 2.4 of Treme is ... Jelly Roll Morton's "Tom Cat Blues" - on a vinyl played by Delmond (don't know if it was an original 1923/1924 78-rpm record - but it was certainly derived from it).

Hey, I have old-fashioned as well as new-fashioned tastes ...

And here's a taste of Jelly Roll's Tom Cat Blues ... 

See also Treme Is Back! ... Treme 2.2: Bounce and Jazz ... Treme 2.3: Crime and Music

And also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour ... Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, Nashville ... Treme 1.5: Delicious! ... Treme 1.8: Passions and Dreams ... Treme 1.9: Creighton ... Treme Season One Finale: Happy Sad Life

And: My Favorite Moment in Treme (Season One)


                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Criminal Minds 6.23: The Good Lie

The benefits of lying have been explored on network television drama of late, with an episode several weeks ago on Bones, and now another this week on Criminal Minds.  Episode 6.23 focuses on a long-range serial killer at work for years.   One of his victims may be Derek's niece.

Derek's niece went missing several years ago, and is presumed dead.  Her mother - Derek's aunt - needs closure.   Derek is pained by not being able to give it to her - not being able either to find his niece's body or identify her killer.

The timing could be right with this serial killer, who buries his victims off the Jacksonville coast in Florida.   Derek's niece is not among them, but it's known that the killer was responsible for more deaths than there are remains.   In a climactic scene, Derek questions the killer, and shows him pictures of possible victims.

The killer sees that Derek has more than just FBI interest when he shows a picture of his niece.   The killer says yes, she was one of the his victims, and describes his pleasure in the killing.  But, unlike with the other victims the killer says are his, the killer does not identify Derek's niece by name.  Derek knows the killer was lying to him - his missing niece was not one of this killer's victims.

But when he sees his aunt shortly after, Derek tells her that the killer did admit to killing her daughter.  Derek is finally able to bring her some relief.

Was it right for Derek to lie to her?  I'd say no doubt it was.   The moral of this story is that truth ain't all it's cracked it up to be - there are times when lying is more humane, and therefore more ethical, then telling the unvarnished truth.   Sissela Bok's  Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life wasn't a source of quotes in this episode, but it surely could have been.

See also Criminal Minds in Sixth Season Premiere ... Criminal Minds 6.2: The Meaning of J. J. Leaving ... Criminal Minds 6.3: Proust, Twain, Travanti ... Tyra on Criminal Minds 6.13 ... Criminal Minds 6. 17: Prentiss Farewell Part I ... Criminal Minds 6.18: Farewell Emily ... Criminal Minds 6.19: Fight Club Redux Plus ... Criminal Minds 6.20: Emily's Ghost ... Criminal Minds 6.21: The Tweeting Killer ... Criminal Minds 6.22: Psycho and a Half

And Criminal Minds 5.22 and the Dark Side of New New Media


                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic, Mozy


The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love

Well, I thought last night's Bones 6.22 was a just-about-perfect episode, even though my prediction that the team member who would succumb to Brodsky's bullet would be Cam was incorrect.   I'm actually glad about that.

I had ruled out the assistants, saying they each played too minor a role to deliver the requisite trauma from their death, but I was wrong about that, too. Mr. Nigel-Murray's killing was handled so well that it did indeed carry this powerful story.

The way of each of the team responded, each in his or her own way, was utterly real and convincing. This includes Booth's almost matter-of-fact insistence that Bones spend the night in his apartment, for safety's sake.

So was the way Bones comes into Booth's bedroom in the wee hours of the morning – seeking comfort from her being haunted by Nigel-Murray's last words, please "don't make me go".  Bones is sure that Nigel-Murray was speaking to her, and she's deeply wounded in wondering why he thought she would want him to leave. Booth's response, that Nigel-Murray was talking to God or the Universe – he just wanted more time on this Earth – was perfect and heart-rending.

It was also perfectly logical that Bones ask Booth if she could lay on his chest in bed, and his answer, that's what I'm here for, was just right, too.

We don't see what actually happened, but I think it's clear from the expression on Bones' face as she starts to tell Angela what happened, that the comfort was more than psychological.  It was just as it should have been.

It was wise of Hart Hanson to tuck this amazing development into a story about the loss of Nigel-Murray, which gives both Booth and Bones the option of saying and maybe even believing that what happened in Booth's bed was a result of both Booth and Bones being in state of shock, and not indicative of a new path for the two of them.

Nah – I think everything has changed, and that's all to the good, at least as far as Booth and Bones and fans including me are concerned.

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

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



                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic, Mozy


The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

NCIS 8.23: Answers and Questions

Here's what we apparently learned in NCIS 8.23 tonight:
The possessor of the blue eye, which was delivered to DiNozzo and which opened the MTAC door, is CIA agent Trent Kort.  He's still alive, kicking, and a player in the hunt for the port-to-port killer.Who is - Navy Lieutenant Jonas Cobb, trained to be a CIA assassin - hence Kort's knowledge of him.   Kort tells Gibbs, Vance, and Mike Franks about Cobb in MTACAnd Mike Franks, called back to DC by Gibbs, is the death in the family.   He tangles with Cobb in front of Gibbs' home, wounds Cobb, but succumbs to Cobbs' knife.Thoughts and analysis:


As traumatic as Franks' death is to Gibbs. and to the team, I don't think Franks' death is the one that's been hinted at, talked about all over the web, so fundamental that it changes the NCIS team.  The team is, after all, punched in the gut but still intact.   The great scene in the elevator, when DiNozzo, hugging Ziva, invites Abby and McGee, also hugging, to join them for a four-way hug, expresses this perfectly.


We leave EJ tonight on the verge of being Jonas' next victim - but her death, as much as it would affect DiNozzo, would also not shatter the team.


Which means, someone else, someone much more important to us and the team than Franks or EJ, may well die next week in the season finale.  I offered an unfounded guess in last week's review, but it was a feeling not a logical conclusion.   I still have that feeling - here's the review.


Other points:  Vance's antipathy to Gibbs may be due to Cort's supplying Gibbs with info about Vance.  But there seems to be yet more in this Vance vs. Gibbs season.    Also ... I think we should be ware of any info we learn from Kort ... who, after all, we have no reason to trust. 


That's why I said "apparently" learned in the first paragraph.


See also NCIS Back in Season 8 Action ... NCIS 8.2: Interns! ... NCIS 8.3: Tiff! ... NCIS 8.4: Gary Cooper not John Wayne ... NCIS 8.5: Dead DJ, DiNozzo Hoarse, and Baseball ... NCIS 8.6: The Written Woman ... NCIS 8.7: "James Bond Movie Directed by Fellini" ... NCIS 8.8: Ziva's Father 
... NCIS 8.9: Leon's Story ... NCIS 8.10: DiNozzo In and Out ... NCIS 8.11: "The Sister Went Viral" ... Bob Newhart on NCIS 8.12 ... NCIS 8.13: The Wife or the Girlfriend ... NCIS 8.14: Kate ... NCIS 8.15: McGee and DiNozzo's Badges ... NCIS 8.16: Computer Games ... NCIS 8.17: Budget Cuts ... NCIS 8.18: Gibbs vs. the Kid ... NCIS 8.19: The Deadly Book ... NCIS 8.20: CIRay ... NCIS 8.21: Mask and Eye ... NCIS 8.22: "I'd Rather Have a Lead"

And see also NCIS  ... NCIS 7.16: Gibbs' Mother-in-Law Dilemma ... NCIS 7.17: Ducky's Ties ... NCIS 7.18: Bogus Treasure and Real Locker ... NCIS 7.21: NCIS Meets Laura ... NCIS Season 7 Finale: Retribution


                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Event 1.20: Two Poisons

The Event continues to run on 24-like high octane - someone even says something about "24" seconds in tonight's episode 1.20.  Just substitute the incredibly cold-blooded Sophia and her aliens for the nefarious international groups that Jack Bauer confronted.   Tonight, Sophias two poison's come close to succeeding.

One is in President Martinez, and it's brought him to the point of having only hours to live.  Simon has the antidote, which he stole last week from the alien doc.  Can he get it to Martinez in time?  With the help of Sterling, he gets the antidote to the First Lady Christina, who lies to VP Jarvis (who thinks he's drone bombing Simon and Sterling).  And Christina injects the antidote into the President.

I knew she wouldn't be taken in by Jarvis's lies.  She's too smart.  And she's likely a good alien herself - or maybe a hybrid (she had that expression on her face after she came clean with her husband about why she didn't want a DNA test) - and therefore would be likely to believe Sterling and Simon, who of is himself a good alien.

One poison apparently counter-acted.

The other, not completely.  This is the Spanish flu - a virus not a poison, but hey, it amounts to the same - that Sophia wants to unleash on the Earth's populace.  Sean and Vicky are in a race to stop Sophia's agents from setting the virus loose in a shopping mall.   They do this - barely - but Sophia has a chance to get the virus tested on a bus.   She concludes from this that there may be a way to slow down the virus's lethal impact, which is needed to spread the virus worldwide.  She'll see what impact it has on a hybrid - aliens are immune to the virus, humans are ultra-vulnerable, so a hybrid test subject makes good sense.  And Leila is at hand ...

This brings us back to Sean.  He is able to disarm the flu-bomb by shooting its dispersal mechanism.  Not likely that would work, when cutting the wrong wire could trip it off, but ok.   And Vicky once again stands by him, in the face of yet another death.  My hypothesis about Vicky: she's pregnant with Sean's baby (though I can't recall - did we see them sleep together at least once?)

Looking forward to more of The Event this season, and still hoping it will be back again in the Fall.

See also The Event Debuts on NBC ... The Event 1.2: Aliens! ... The Event 1.4: 24 Back in Action! ... The Event 1.6: Not Only Aliens, Immortals! ... The Event 1.7: The Portal and its Implications  ... The Event 1.8: The "Republican" VP and the Anti-24 ... The Event 1.9: "Native Populations, Indigenous People" ... The Event 1.10: Satellite ... The Event 1.11-12: Hardball in Fiction ... The Event 1.13: A Little to Close to the Reality ... The Event 1.14: Upping the Ante ... The Event 1.15: Bluffs and Stakes ... The Event 1.16: High Placed Sleeper  ... The Event 1.17: Target Martinez  ... The Event 1.18: VP. President, Spanish Flu ... The Event 1.19: Triptych


                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic,  Mozy

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Treme 2.3: Crime and Music

Well, it's been clear, and I've been mentioning in previous reviews, that crime is rearing its ugly head much higher in this season of Treme than in last season.   In Treme 2.3, the worst crime we've seen so far dominated the episode,  as Ladonna is raped, robbed, and badly beaten.

It's not clear what Ladonna remembers, but the medical examination confirms the rape.  She has not yet told her husband - or anyone - and it's also not clear whether she's taking the "Plan B" (morning after) pills she's given in the hospital, in case she's now pregnant.

Ladonna did put in a call to the police, when she was first approached by a suspicious character as she was locking up her bar.   The cops, at very least, certainly did not respond with alacrity.   What will Lt. Colson do when he finds about this insufficient police response?  Presumably he'll be livid, and launch some kind of investigation, as indeed he should.   Sooner or later, there'll be at least three people hunting Ladonna's attackers:  Colson, Antoine, Ladonna's husband ... and likely Toni, too.

In other difficult but happier stories, it's good to see Janette back in New Orleans.   But her house has been looted and trashed - more crime - and she's having no easy time of it with the officials (that's because she came in without an appointment, but even so).

Musically, it's great to see Antoine progressing with his band, and the hilarious banter around his feeling that they're missing a beat.   It's soon realized that what the band is really missing is a guitar, and it's good to see Sonny on his way to filling that position.

And my favorite music in Treme 2.3 is Louis Armstrong's "Mack the Knife" - hey, the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht song has always been one of the my all-time favorites, ever since I heard Bobby Darin's hit version in 1959.   Darin's was a #1 song, Satcho's only got to #20, but it was released 3 years earlier, giving it a little precedence.  (Good to see Steve Earle out on the streets, too, in another number.)

And here's a taste of Louis Armstrong's Mack the Knife ...

See also Treme Is Back! ... Treme 2.2: Bounce and Jazz

And also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour ... Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, Nashville ... Treme 1.5: Delicious! ... Treme 1.8: Passions and Dreams ... Treme 1.9: Creighton ... Treme Season One Finale: Happy Sad Life

And: My Favorite Moment in Treme (Season One)


                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Death not Death in Fringe

Michael Ausiello lists Olivia in Fringe as a death already aired or broadcast in his May sweeps scorecard.  Really?

The excellent Season 3 finale of Fringe that I saw had Olivia killed in 2026 by Walternate all right, but, shortly after, Peter travels back to 2011, for the purpose of preventing that killing from ever happening, and, according to the Eternal Bald Observers, that worked (see my review of the finale).

So, is a death which can be undone - in this case, by time travel - really a death?   Is a death than can be reversed by any method really a death?  Let's say, in V, that Erica is shot dead at point blank range, but the Visitors bring her back to life.  Is what happened to her a "death"?

The reliable meanings of words are essential in all aspects of human life.   Some words are inherently ambiguous - love has different meanings to different people, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  But death?

Death carries the narrative wallop that it does because we assume that it means permanently gone.   If it means less than that, that it is misleading to simply list it on a scorecard as a "death".

Jeff Pinkner, one of producers of Fringe, did a little better in his description of the finale than Ausiello, saying that Olivia died "in the course of the episode".  This is at least technically true - she did - and it's more accurate that just a listing her as a dead on a scorecard.

The remedy for this: complex, superb stories such as Fringe require more sophisticated and less misleading treatments than simple listings on a scorecard.  Memo to Ausiello:  create a new category for such metaphysical complexities, or just use an asterisk to note the complication.

And coming this August ... my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology ...




See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened
 
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ...  New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best


                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic




The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book



Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

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

Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things

Tyrion has the best line in Game of Thrones 1.4, with remark about a "tender spot in any heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things".

Jon, himself a bastard, certainly has a tender spot for the portly boy, a confessed coward, who has joined the Night Watch.  Not really joined, sent there by his father, who despises him.  Jon nobly  makes this coward's welfare his personal business, and it's likely that the coward, if he survives, will be a coward no longer.  His name, by the way, is Samwell, recalling Lord of the Rings, but that Sam was a little less portly and never a coward.  This Sam, therefore, is a little less interesting and a little cliched.

Over on the continent, Daenerys's lady servant has a keen interest in dragons, as she shares a bath with Daenerys's brother Viserys.  She questions him about dragons, and learns that they're all dead, though Viserys has seen their skulls in the king's hall.   Dead?  More likely broken, as a major force, and not beyond repair.  Daenerys soon comes to realize that her brother is broken, or in no spirit to lead an army and reclaim the throne that she wants back as much as he.   That's a good development for the overall story - Daenerys alongside of her husband fighting for the throne will be more formidable than Viserys trying to command the horsemen army.


Bran is crippled, but Tyrion, stopping at Winterfell on his way back south from the northern Wall, leaves Bran instructions that will enable him to ride a horse, and stand as tall there as any man.  Catelyn Stark, however, now in King's Landing, remains sure that Tyrion put the assassin up to killing Bran - because the assassin was wielding Tyrion's sword.  In a fine dramatic last scene, a half dozen men with a lifetime of loyalty to Katelin and her family pull their swords simultaneously from all sides on Tyrion, now back in King's Landing, with a view to bringing him back to Winterfell to face justice for twice attempting to kill Bran.


Or so Catelyn thinks.  We'll see more next week.  I'm not too worried for Tyrion, however - the dire wolves know the truth.


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

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic



The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Fringe Season Three Finale: Here's What Happened

I'll cut to the chase, and tell you what I think happened in the end of the superb Fringe Season Three finale:

Walter, 15 years in the future, indeed knows how to send Peter's mentality back to 2011.   Once back in our time, Peter tears holes in both of the universes, creating a bridge so that our main players from each universe - Walternate and Fauxlivia from over there, Walter and Olivia and Broyles from here - are able to meet, converse, and possibly begin to come to terms with each other.  To enhance the possibility of this succeeding, the Eternal Bald Observers remove Peter from this bridge, and presumably both universes.  Why?   Because Peter is the source of the war between the universes - or, more precisely, Walter's taking Peter as a boy from over there to over here.  (Possible alternate interpretation: the EBOs are explaining what happened, not what they caused to happen.  But my guess is they caused it.)

That's the long and the short of it, I'd say.  Next question: how did we get there in tonight's finale?

Well, Peter's mentality seemed in effect to travel from 2011 to 15 years in the future last week.  This week, it at first seemed that we were just getting a glimpse of that future, with all of the characters appropriately aged.   But, in fact, Walter in that future figures out a way, via Peter in the machine and the wormholes that accompany/cause/are caused by the tears in the universe, to send Peter's future mind back to 2011.   And that happened just as Peter connected into the machine in 2011, which resulted in Peter waking up in 2026.   So there was time travel going on after all, just more from the future to the past than the present to the future, although they slosh back and forth both ways.

The reason Peter in the future wants to go back to the past is not only to save our deteriorating universe, but do something to make sure Walternate doesn't kill Olivia in the future.   Walter, who understands time travel better than any one else on television, explains to Peter that Walter can't go back in time, because he already did what he did (set Peter on the course of activating the machine in 2011), and Walter would not be able to surmount the paradox of going back in time to undo what he did, when what he did is what got him to go back in time ... That's why I love time travel.

But Peter is not so restricted, since he was not the one who set all this in motion, so he - or his mentality - can indeed go back in time.

But now he's apparently no longer in the joint universe that his going back in time created.  Because the Eternal Balds removed him.

But where time travel is involved, anything that's done can be undone, as we just saw tonight.  And it looks as if Fringe has shifted from a story of alternate realities to one of good old-fashioned, delicious time travel.

And coming this August ... my essay 
@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman";}@font-face { font-family: "Arial";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: black; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology ...




See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future
 
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ...  New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best
                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic


The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book



Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music