Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 250

Sense8 and Gender

Here’s something that puzzles me about this show: It has very traditional ideas about gender.

Take the first “shocking” scene: Amanita having sex with Nomi using a dildo. Because sex means penetration? Isn’t that kind of a guy’s idea of hot?

Then look at the comic character among the eight: Lito, the Gay Guy. Isn’t it a little retro to make the gay character the clown? Especially since his situation–choosing between being honest about who he is and the career that fulfills who he is–isn’t remotely comic?

Then six of these characters have agency: they change the course of their stories and the master story with their actions. The two who don’t? The Girls: Kala whose big problem is that she’s about to marry a rich man who loves her, and Riley whose big problem is the men in her life who keep putting her in situations where she almost dies until she meets Will who keeps rescuing her. Kala and Riley don’t do anything to affect the course of their stories. (Although it’s nice that Kala builds Wolfgang a bomb so he won’t die, she’s still stuck with marrying the rich guy because she can’t seem to form the word, “No.”)

The other two women in this story do have agency, but one is a skilled kickboxer, which is a traditionally male skill so she’s crossing gender lines to get her power, and the other is a trans hacker who learned her skills as a boy. The skills that are typically described as female–nurturing, negotiating, working with detail–are either missing or are co-opted by Lito (who translates his people skills into “I’m a liar. It’s what I do”).

Even the gender roles in most of the relationships are retro: Will rescues Riley over and over again; Wolfgang the Rake smiles at Kala the Virgin and then tells her he’s no good for her (“I’m a monster”) which is pretty much the story of most of the romances written in the mid-twentieth century. Hernando and Lito’s relationship is probably more reflective of Lito’s career as an actor–somebody has to be the calm, mature, sane person, and it’s not going to be Lito–but when Dani enters the picture and then finds herself in danger, Lito becomes The Guy and goes to rescue her.

I don’t think I’d be noticing this so much but the showrunners keep telling us how much of a gender breakthrough this series is. I think a lot of Sense8 really is revolutionary, but it’s not the gender roles.

What am I missing?

Sense8: Episodes Seven and Eight: Amazing Stuff

So here’s what I’ve come down to when talking to people about this show. It’s an amazing six-hour movie, full of heartwarming, heartwrenching, funny, tragic, thoughtful, action-packed suspense and romance, but you have to sit through six hours of chaotic mess with moments of brilliance to get to the good stuff. Think of it as the price of admission.

There’s an interesting Salon article about True Detective that pretty much says the same thing I’ve been saying here: You can experiment with story but you can’t make things so chaotic a viewer has no idea of what’s going on. But in Sense8, once you reach Episode Seven, there’s more shape to the narrative, and even though it’s self-indulgent at times, great story happens. Those last six hours are must-see TV. Actually, that’s underselling it: this stuff is easily cinema worthy, better than most movies out there.

Episode 7: “W. W. N. Double D?”

I had no idea what this title meant until I saw the episode; now it makes me smile when I think about Nomi and Amanita doing their Nancy Drew thing. Also, my contract clause about that lobotomizing surgeon gets paid off, thank you very much. Satisfied viewer here.

Big improvement: We’re still getting short cuts, but it’s easier to see why the different scenes are together. Plus the first half of this episode shows all eight reaching a new stability, adapting to the changes in their lives. Which is fun, but then the last half blasts that stability out from under them again, which is lousy for them but great for story. It’s rudimentary structure, but by god it’s structure.

• The first chunk is basically New Allies: Sun goes to prison and meets women as angry and as lethal as she is while Nomi gets back in touch with an old friend named Bug she knew as a boy, and he brings her computer equipment and the offer of help if she goes into crime fighting. Bug is great, and this whole first bit is so up-with-the-people that it’s energizing. Plus Nomi is definitely starting to fight crime or at least Metzger, the surgeon who tried to lobotomize her, and for the first time Nomi-and-Amanita are more that just people who have a lot of sex.

• The next set of scenes should have “Happy” playing in the background. People’s lives have changed for the better: Lito, Hernando, and Daniela go to dinner in public with Hernando having a wonderful time as Lito’s bodyguard. Riley flies to Iceland in first class and Capheus joins her, rapt at being above the clouds; “You’re so lucky,” he says; “Not lucky, privileged,” she says, that shadow always on her face. Lito and Hernando and Daniela come home, laughing and talking about how it was the best dinner date ever. Riley’s dad meets her at the airport, singing to her and playing the ukelele. It’s all so lovely that you know something awful is coming. Yep, Joaquin is in the apartment in a demon mask, but after a scuffle, he’s ejected. Good guys win!

(One thing I loved from this scene: Joaquin saying, “I”m not the bad guy, I’m the sad guy.” It’s such awful dialogue and so perfect for the rabid, stupid, self-absorbed, and therefore lethal Joaquin. It takes guts to write that kind of dialogue and guts to act it, and it was just perfect.)

• And then the plot really kicks into gear. Nomi and Will start separately to do hard investigation and the show cuts back and forth between them as they get closer to Whispers; there’s a lot more detail but the important thing is that this story is moving with protagonist vs antagonist, two protagonists, both determined to get answers. It’s good, strong storytelling about people we’re invested in and with really high stakes that are established not with dialogue but by Nomi’s visit to lobotomized Nils. My craft-obsessed heart is so happy.

• Kala’s talking to Ganesha again, asking the god what’s going on and why he sent a demon with a very big trunk to her, and since she’s thinking of him, of course, Wolfgang shows up. Their scenes together and Riley-and-Will are the only visiting that makes sense to me because they are thinking of each other. Everybody else seems to show up . . . not sure why. Oh, well. Wolfgang tells her Ganesh doesn’t care: “Gods don’t give a shit about us. I know from experience.” Kala asks him to leave her alone, and he says, “I try not to think of you, but every time it brings me straight to you.” She says, “At least you’re wearing clothes.” They laugh. Heart melts. Such great romance.

• Meanwhile Riley’s with her dad at home, warm and loving. Capheus sees Kabaka with his daughter and remembers his mother defending him against all comers. Sun makes friends in prison. Riley’s with her dad and he made pancakes. And then suddenly the Hex Witch is behind her, telling her that she shouldn’t have come back. Hallucination? Somebody from another cluster sharing? Bad omen. But still, she’s home and her father adores her and she’s eating pancakes. So happy.

• And now we’re back with Kala and Wolfgang, switching back and forth between cold rain outside a cafe in Berlin and warm sun on a rooftop in Mumbai, talking, really talking, about what’s happening to them. Kala tells him that he showed up at the wedding because she prayed to Ganesh to stop the ceremony. Wolfgang says, “That’s what you think stopped your wedding?” and then takes it to the next logical conclusion: “You think our connection is a miracle?” It’s lovely stuff, but it’s especially lovely because they’re actually trying to find an explanation for the weirdness that’s happening to them. Kala tells him it’s like gravity, an inexplicable force, and as they lean closer, Wolfgang says, “Thank God for gravity,” and then Felix calls his name and the connection is broken. I like you, Felix, but that was terrible timing. Except Felix has great news: the fence wants the rest of the diamonds and they’re going to be rich. Wolfgang says, “I need to take a trip. To India.” That’s so positive of you, Wolfgang. Now get on that plane.

• So I’m having a wonderful time, but you know plot, it needs conflict. Enough with the good times, let’s raise the story stakes. Back in prison, the Bitch Prisoner is mean to Sun’s new friend. Be afraid, Bitch Prisoner, be very afraid. Nomi and Amanita trace Metzger to a coffee house and clone his phone, except somebody notices and calls Metzger to tell him; Nomi gets the number and calls back and gets Whispers, who calls her by name. THIS IS NOT GOOD. Kabaka takes Capheus away from the birthday party and shows him an employee who cheated him by watering drugs; then he takes a machete and whacks off the guy’s hands (congratulations on your new boss, Capheus). Lito, Hernando, and Daniela are having a lovely morning when Joaquin texts him with pictures of him having sex with Hernando from Daniela’s phone that he stole the night before during the scuffle: it’s blackmail time. Back in Germany at the locksmith shop, Felix is in a panic: he went to the fence, he tells Wolfgang, but he’s gone, disappeared, something’s very wrong. Then a pretty girl knocks on the door to the shop, Felix goes to answer it, and gets gunned down by Steiner. Jesus, that all went south in a hurry. GREAT STORYTELLING.

• But now we’re with Nomi and Amanita, breaking into Metzger’s apartment because Amanita read how to in a book. They’re great together. Nomi starts downloading info from Metzger’s computer while Amanita snoops through the house. Metzger has a picture with Dick Cheney (“He’s got to be evil”) but he also has a vintage copy of Nancy Drew. So confusing. Also, no porn on his computer. This is the first time I saw why these two were together; they complement each other so well. This is the way they should have been introduced, they’re wonderful. And then Metzger returns, his flight cancelled by Whispers since Nomi knows about him; he surprises them in the apartment, Jonas appears to Nomi (how? why? I dunno) and tells her to get out now because Whispers is coming, Metzger finds out Nomi called Whispers and says, “You’ve killed us all,” Jonas says, “He’s here,” and then Lobotomized Nils comes through the door, fully functional, chases them down the hall, shoots a random neighbor, traps Metzger against a mirror and shoots him in the head, and then puts the gun in his own mouth and pulls the trigger, his reflection showing Whispers instead. And that’s the end of the episode.

Really got to work on those endings.

Okay, Nils was once part of a cluster, looked into Whisper’s eyes, got lobotomized by Metzger, but is still controlled by Whispers because of the eye-looking thing? In which case, how many lobotomized zombies are waiting out there to be possessed by Whispers and do unspeakable things? This never comes up again in this season, so it’s a real question.

But the important thing is, that’s really creepy. Kudos to the writers.

Also, a big chunk of my viewer’s contract got paid off when Metzger bought it, screaming in terror. Very satisfying. Thank you.

Episode 8: “We Will All Be Judged By the Courage of Our Hearts”

You know, this title sounds like another garbage title, but it’s a line of dialogue from one of Lito’s movies that comes back to haunt him, so I like it now. Actually, all of this episode is terrific.

So this episode ia about friendship and its price (look, A THEME):

• Kala’s in a movie theater and everybody else is laughing, but she’s crying for no reason. Back in Berlin, Wolfgang is in despair as he sits by Felix’s bedside in the ICU. Kala goes to the ladies’ room to cry and sees Wolfgang sitting by the bed, now she’s in Berlin, and Wolfgang tells her how he met Felix. His conversation is summed up in a flashback, and I loathe flashbacks, but this one is terrific. I hope they paid those two kids a lot of money because they are priceless. “Where are you?” Wolfgang asks her. “At the movies with my family.” Wolfgang nods. “Makes sense. Felix loved the movies.” Cut to a Conan movie. This show really loves its action movie heroes–Conan, Van Damme. Then he says, “I don’t know why he liked me,” and there’s Wolfgang in a nutshell; he knows he’s a monster, unlovable, but there’s Felix, running to defend him with a bat, screaming Conan quotes. I love these kids, I love Wolfgang grown up and falling in love with Kala. Also, his father deserved to die, psychopathic sadist son of a bitch.

• Dani calls Lito to tell him that she fixed everything. Then she hangs up and Lito tells Hernando that everything’s going to be fine. Hernando knows better, but Lito insists it’s good news. Hernando looks at him like he’s insane. Meanwhile, Capheus’s best friend Jela is having problems with his wife because he home all the time now; Capheus tells Jela he’s quitting Kabaka and they’re going back to work. Hilarity ensues.

• Sun’s having problem sewing but her friend helps, even though it means she won’t get to out in the sun. Bitch Prisoner tries to stick her with her sewing and Sun trips her; the guard notices and Bitch Prisoner’s going to have to do her own sewing. Sun says to her friend, “Today you get to go outside.” Sun gets outside and talks to her friend, but here comes Bitch Prisoner and her gang to pick a fight. Bitch Prisoner gets her ass handed to her, but Sun gets slashed across the stomach and put in solitary. But another prisoner brings her dinner and says, “We know what you did for Susan,” and when Sun unwraps the napkin she finds the paintbrush she was using, a symbol of friendship with the others. Prison is so much better than Sun’s family.

• Will’s in Chicago but he sees Riley in Iceland. They have the most classic romance in the series–the damaged flower and the cop who protects her–but it’s done beautifully. They talk like friends, Will trying to clean up the mess in his apartment, Riley loving his vinyl collection, Will saying, “You should come to America some time, I could show you around the city,” Riley saying, “I could show you around Reykjavik,” and it’s lovely and quiet. Then they touch by accident and that leads to a great first kiss. So much of the impact comes from the fact that this is the first time they realize they can touch, in spite of being on different continents, so there’s a lot of amazement and joy colliding with a lot of desire:

That’s good romance writing.

• Kala’s back with her family and Raj’s family and the wedding planners and Raj’s father doesn’t look happy. Capheus’s mother is cooking and he has to tell her that he can’t get any more of the medicine that’s keeping her healthy. Then the Thug shows up and tells Capheus that unless he agrees to turn Kabaka’ daughter over to him, he’ll kill Mom. It’s not fair. Lito and Hernando are waiting for Daniela to give her back her things. She has a black eye, and she tells them that she’s agreed to marry Joaquin in exchange for her camera and the pictures; they’re safe. Hernando says, “No, you can’t.” It’s not fair. So that’s three characters who have everything at stake and are going to have to choose to either do nothing or fight back. I vote “fight back.”

• Riley goes to the cemetary to visit the graves of her husband and baby daughter. I really think this actress is wasted on this role; she manages to make twelve hours of looking sad compelling, so imagine what she could do with a character with agency. Still, her loss is a terrible thing, and it’s not fair.

• You know who has agency? Nomi. The show cuts to Will showing Diego how Zombie Nils gets out of bed, and ties him to the white van and Whispers’ Biolgical Preservation Organization (basically Hydra for biologists). Then he’s talking with Nomi in San Francisco which Amanita thinks is cool; Nomi and Will compare notes and realize they’re getting close to the bad guys which means they’ll come after them next. It’s marvelous: in five minutes of great conversation, they move the plot forward about fifty miles. Then Whispers shows up at the door in SF. THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD. Nomi escapes out the window while Amanita stalls the Bad Guys with an iodine-soaked tampon, but Nomi’s cornered in the alley just as Will is called to the captain’s office. He can’t fight for Nomi, he’s surrounded by cops, but he’s in the alley with her anyway, and then Sun shows up. “Who are you?” he says, but there’s no time. He tells Sun what moves the cops are going to make, and she takes them out. He tells Nomi “Throw the gun. Get on the bike,” siding against the cops and with his Cluster. Nomi escapes on the bike, steals a car and then screams, “I don’t know how to drive!” “I do,” Capheus says, and does a ridiculous Van Damme car escape and I don’t even care, I love these people so much. THIS is what I signed on for, and it’s fabulous. Back in Chicago, Will get suspended without pay. It’s not fair, but boy is it good TV.

• In Mexico City, Lito is filming a scene. He’s spectacular. Hernando shows up and says, “We’re over.” He can’t stay with somebody who would let Dani marry Joaquin to save his career. “In the end,” he says, “We will all be judged by the courage in our hearts.” It’s a cheesy line from a cheesy movie, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Lito says, “It’s not fair,” but in this case, it is. In Mumbai, Raj’s father meets Kala at the temple and tells her that she must tell Raj she can’t marry him. Since I agree, go Dad. Then religious zealots do an “Et tu, Brute?” on him while Kala screams. I’m thinking he asked for that one, too.

An episode with a theme, hell, two themes. Who knew? And strong plot movement and great action and wonderful connections between characters and a flashback I love. Really WHO KNEW? I could quibble, but I don’t want to. This is where I just flat out loved this show.

Sense8: Episodes Five and Six: Demons Everywhere

Warning: HUGE SPOILERS IN THIS POST.

First, the good news: Sense8 was renewed for a second season yesterday, August 8, which is the day all eight of the cluster were born. Yeah, they don’t all look the same age to me, either, but I’m not quibbling.

Second, Stracynski has walked back his comment about having a five-year plan, possibly because people kept pointing out that having a five-year plan was worthless if people quit watching after the first episode. I’m pretty sure they still have a five-year plan, I’m just hoping they also have a second season plan because they kinda didn’t have one for the first season.

Third, sorry this is late. But I did get you a nice protagonist analysis for all eight, so that’s something. Yeah, I was still late. Here’s Five and Six.

Episode 5: “Art is Like Religion”

Another title to make me turn the channel. I’ve got eight people I’m worried about, and the show wants to talk about art and religion? Still this is the episode that gave us Wolfgang, swimming naked in Berlin, and Kala, getting married in Mumbai. Some critics were complaining that the nudity was gratuitous, but it actually pays off in the next episode, so nope. Besides it had to be shocking enough that Kala, already wobbly under the weight of her wedding dress and jewelry and in emotional upheaval because she was seconds away from marrying a man she didn’t love, would faint dead away. It worked for me. As for the rest of the episode:

• I wish they’d quit making Lito the clown; he deserves better. This time they’ve linked him with Sun, who just got her period, so Lito gets mood swings, stomach cramps, and bloat.

• Will gets yelled at by his boss for trying to see Jonas; Wolfgang gets threatened by his uncle who suspects he pulled the diamond heist. Not sure why they’re paired since the captain will probably suspend Will but the uncle will definitely try to kill Wolfgang. One interesting detail: The diamonds Wolfgang stole were from Mumbai, which is where Kala is from. Diamonds as a metaphor for stealing the woman of great value from the rich man in India? If so, they never do anything else with it. Argh.

• Capheus and Riley meet for the first time; he has tea in her London apartment and she enjoys the heat in Nairobi. It’s a lovely, pleasant interaction which really doesn’t do anything except put two of the most pleasant of the eight together to smile at each other. Better is Capheus trying to deliver the bag for Kabaka, getting set upon by thugs, and calling for the “Jean Claude Korean Lady.”

• There are several quick cuts–Lito getting emotional in traffic because of PMS, Kala getting ready to be married and looking like death, Sun talking to her kickboxing teacher. The stuff with Sun would be fun if it weren’t so sad. I loved the “You are of two minds.” “At least.” exchange, and Lito and Sun flipping from traffic in Mexico City to a placid garden in Seoul, with Lito still talking on the phone to Hernando: “There’s a Korean lady standing next to me and she’s not crying the way I’m not screaming!” Okay, Lito’s really good at the comedy, but still, PMS?

• The Cluster seems to be coming together more. There’s a semi-chaotic series of bits where Will is talking to Nomi’s mother because he’s trying to find her to help her, and then Nomi is Will, telling her mother, “Her name is Nomi,” and then Kala’s father makes her a sweet dessert and Nomi tastes it in her coffee. That Capheus passes Kabaka’s test and that has nothing to do with any of the cluster. Then we’re with Wolf and Felix in a Berlin bar, and Felix is mouthing off about diamonds (that’ll be important later), and Wolfgang shushes him and goes into the restroom and Kala in Mumbai hears him and tells him to get out of her bathroom, and he starts going through stalls, thinking she’s some German girl who wandered into the men’s room, and then she recognizes his voice, and then Felix comes in. Then Will chases after a witness while Lito does an action scene, and they switch places back and forth. I know this paragraph has no unifying idea, but there’s a reason for that: ARGH.

You know what would be good? To know what triggers the switching places stuff or the “visiting” stuff. Riley and Will end up together because they’re thinking about each other. Sun and Lito . . . I dunno, they’re both emotional? Obviously when somebody is in trouble, one of the others is drawn in, except that Capheus gets the hell kicked out of him and nobody comes to help. I can’t see a pattern in the way the Cluster works.

• Sun and Capheus meet and talk in Seoul and Nairobi, and it’s one of the loveliest scenes in the series. She’s distraught and withdrawn; he’s amazed by Seoul but has his own problems. There’s a wonderful bit where she politely explains that her plate is full so she prefers to think of him as a hallucination, and he says he understands, but he can’t leave even though he tries. Their exchange about responsibility and promises made never rings as exposition or Big Ideas because they’re both heading into serious trouble because of what they owe their mothers. And it illuminates so much more of their characters. This is the stuff that brings me back every time.

• Sun takes her dog to her teacher because she can’t take care of him from prison (break my heart), Kala gets ready for her wedding, and Wolfgang goes swimming in the nude looking depressed. None of them are happy; everything moves slowly and silently, and there’s a real feeling of dread there. And then everybody gets five seconds: Lito’s with Hernando and Daniela, Capheus is stirring soup for his mother, Will walks into a cop bar in Chicago and sees Riley in a bar in London, Nomi and Amanita go back to their apartment and find it robbed and trashed by Whisper’s men, and Kala goes to her wedding. Then right before she takes her vows, Wolfgang walks out of the pool naked and up the steps and into her wedding, and says, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re not in love with him,” and she faints, and he faints, and the screen goes to black.

At some point in this series of posts, we need to talk about endings because these episodes don’t have any.

That bit at the wedding is definitely NSFW, so click on this link knowing you’re going to get full frontal nudity. Full back-al, too, come to think of it.

Episode 6: “Demons”

Great title: It’s what Kala calls Wolfgang as she turns away from her closet to find him naked in her bed, patting the sheets and inviting her to join him. Honestly, pull out Wolfgang’s scenes and Kala’s scenes and cut them togehter in one narrative and then give them an ending, for cripe’s sake, and you’ve got one hell of a romance/action movie. For the rest:

• Remember how Will walked into the cop bar and saw Riley in the last episode? He goes up to her (she’s in a bar in London), and she looks up, and he says, “I was just–” and she finishes “–thinking about you.” That’s key because it’s the first clue to how these people are going to connect purposefully. God knows why Capheus came to tea with Riley in the last episode, but at least Will and Riley connect when they think about each other, and there’s pretty good evidence that’s what was going on with Wolfgang and Kala at the end of the last episode. That was a really nice pool he was in and he did not look happy. But mostly I love this scene because they actually talk about how weird everything is. Riley says, “Are we going crazy?” even though she’s clearly enjoying the experience in general and Will in particular, and Will, practical guy that he is, puts his number into her phone and says, “Call me and we’ll see.” She hits the button, his phone rings, and to make absolutely sure, he gives his phone to Diego to answer. “It’s some girl with a weird accent,” Diego tells him, giving the phone back. “She sounds hot.” Boom, it’s real. Then Riley asks good questions, like “Have you had any more visitors?” Will tells her Jonas said there were eight like them–see, this is the stuff they should be sharing when they talk to the others, it’s HELPFUL–and then Will asks the wrong question and Riley says she has to go to bed. This is a bad move on everybody’s part.

• There’s an intercut section between Nomi and Sun that appears to based on Nomi’s line, “This isn’t fair, I didn’t do anything,” but it has serious consequences: Sun confesses to her brother’s crime at a press conference, and Nomi decides to fight back against Whispers. (YES. YES, YES, YES, and it’s about damn time somebody did.) Then Riley gets back to the apartment where she’s staying and Nyx is waiting for her, which also isn’t fair because she didn’t do anything.

• Nyx tries to kill Riley with a plastic bag and almost manages it until Will starts to suffocate in that cop bar in Chicago and takes out Nyx and his henchmen, freeing Riley to run. Unfortunately, he also takes out a couple of cops who were trying to help him when he started to convulse. This is not helping Will’s rep in the department. Lovely plot complication though.

• Nomi and Amanita go to stay with Amanita’s mother, who’s a crunchy-granola professor who teaches evolution, which is convenient for expositing Big Ideas. (It would have been so much more fun if she’d been middle class and conventional and still adored Amanita and thought Nomi was great. That happens.)

• Kala wakes up to her family gathered around her bed. They’re nice people but I’d be running for the woods screaming by now. Kala does say she doesn’t like being alone, but Jesus. They tell her Raj is downstairs waiting to talk to her, which is not what she wants to hear, but she dutifully gets rid of them and starts to get dressed. Except when she opens her closet, she’s in Berlin in Wolfgang’s closet, talking out his boxers, and he’s naked in his bed behind her. She turns around and he’s naked in her bed. This is the kind of visiting that’s just fun to watch; it’s not that they’re doing this location swapping stuff, it’s location swapping in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. Then Wolfgang smiles at her and pats the bed beside him, and she tells him, “You’re a demon.” When he says, “From the moment I saw you, I wanted you, and I think you want me, too,” (yeah, the constant visiting is pretty much a tip-off of that), and when she says, “You don’t know what I want,” he says, “You looked,” paying off the naked wedding scene. And then she smiles in spite of herself, and says, “You are a demon.” Watching these two is just nothing but fun, in part because they’re such opposites: he’s a dour atheist thief and killer who hates his sadistic family, and she’s a happy, devout pharmacist who loves her warm and supportive family. It’s a great romance dynamic which I did not expect to see in this series.

• Speaking of great couple dynamics, Lito is with Hernando and Daniela at a wrestling match and they’re not just having a wonderful time, they’re having a wonderful time together. Call it a triple dynamic; I think these three crazy kids can make it. (Honestly, this is the first time I thought an onscreen menage a trois was a good idea.) Then Hernando does some Big Idea ‘splaining, telling Daniela that the fight between the wrestler dressed in white and the wrestler dressed in black is a Manichean conflict (ya think?) and then goes on to explain that demons are just fears we’re afraid to face. At which point Lito looks over and sees Joaquin wearing a demon mask. Yep, that’s gonna pay off later.

• Then we’re back to goulash scenes. Raj still wants to marry Kala. Kabaka wants Capheus to take his daughter to her leukemia treatments. (You know, if the girl is that important to him, why isn’t he taking her in his heavily armored motorcade?) Sun is denied bail. Diego tells Will the other cops are starting to think he’s crazy. Capheus has to tell Jela that Kabaka has hired the bus for the week. Sun goes to prison, and of course there’s a Sun/Lito swap where Sun’s being interrogated by a creepy prison doctor and Lito’s being interviewed by a fawning entertainment reporter and hilarity ensues (not).

• So I have no idea what was happening in that last amalgamation of scenes, but I know what happens in the next series. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen an actual clusterfuck. I’m not sure what unites four of them this time: physical exertion? awareness of their bodies? Nomi wakes up and has sex with Amanita in San Francisco as Will is lifting weights in a hard workout in Chicago as Lito and Hernando are working out with weights in Mexico City, and Wolfgang is back in the water, this time a spa? in Berlin, thinking about Kala because she walks behind him in the nude as he basks, and I’m pretty sure she’s in Mumbai (doing god knows what). And then they start to . . . mesh. It’s hard to explain but at one point, Hernando is kissing Nomi while Lito kisses Amanita (that would be Lito and Nomi switching bodies, right?) and then Lito is in Chicago kissing a surprised Will doing push-ups (that’s visiting), and they all end up in the spa with Wolfgang who pretty much just lies back and thinks of Kala, and there’s a lot of heaving Renaissance-beautiful flesh. It’s all beautifully done, but it gives rise (ha) to a lot of questions, like is this going to happen every time somebody has sex? Because that could be a problem. Then everybody pretty much comes, Will looking around to see if anybody in the gym noticed, and we move to Capheus feeling uncomfortably hot as he watches Jean Claude Van Damme lifting a bathtub. Or something. Still, I finally know what a clusterfuck looks like, so I’m happy. It looks like this:

•Nomi has one of those Big Idea conversations with Amanita’s crunchy granola mom, but one of the things Nomi says is something I’d think they’d all be wondering about. Nomi thinks she has a brain tumor and that’s why she’s seeing all those people, and she wonders if what’s happening is like Alzheimers, that eventually her “sense of me-ness will disintegrate.” That’s a big question here, and this is the first time anybody’s raised it, but taken in context with the previous clusterfuck, it’s a real concern; the lines between their lives are blurring, and they not only have no idea how to control them, most of them have no idea what’s happening. Wolfgang and Kala are probably working on some version of “This person is a fantasy,” Riley and Will have actually talked about it, but everybody else is still firmly in WTF? territory.

• Riley and Sun have a heart-to-heart while Sun is despairing in prison and Riley is despairing after her near-death experience with Nyx. There’s a lovely bit where Riley points out the inscription in her park “I have conversed with the spiritual sun”–and they comfort each other in their situations, both of them in trouble for somebody else’s crime. Riley also drops the foreshadowing that there’s somebody in Iceland who told her she was hexed, and that bad things would happen if she didn’t leave, and then her mother died and she thought it was her fault. Sun says she thought it was her fault when her mother died, too. It’s a quiet scene, and I think it’s one of the reasons that viewers respond to Riley even though she doesn’t do anything: she’s a good person who joyfully connects with anybody who shows up in her life. Then Sun is back in prison, dreaming of her mother who tells her to be careful because people will be hunting her (and I thought, “You bitch, you knew this was coming and you didn’t tell her?”) and then Mom turns into Angel and tells her she’s the future. Fade to black.

Really, somebody has to talk to the writing team about these endings.

Sense8: Episodes Five and Six

First, the good news: Sense8 was renewed for a second season yesterday, August 8, which is the day all eight of the cluster were born. Yeah, they don’t all look the same age to me, either, but I’m not quibbling.

Second, Stracynski has walked back his comment about having a five-year plan, possibly because people kept pointing out that having a five-year plan was worthless if people quit watching after the first episode. I’m pretty sure they still have a five-year plan, I’m just hoping they also have a second season plan because they kinda didn’t have one for the first season.

Third, sorry this is late. But I did get you a nice protagonist analysis for all eight, so that’s something. Yeah, I was still late. Here’s Five and Six.

Episode 5: “Art is Like Religion”

Another title to make me turn the channel. I’ve got eight people I’m worried about, and the show wants to talk about art and religion? Still this is the episode that gave us Wolfgang, swimming naked in Berlin, and Kala, getting married in Mumbai. Some critics were complaining that the nudity was gratuitous, but it actually pays off in the next episode, so nope. Besides it had to be shocking enough that Kala, already wobbly under the weight of her wedding dress and jewelry and in emotional upheaval because she was seconds away from marrying a man she didn’t love, would faint dead away. It worked for me. As for the rest of the episode:

• I wish they’d quit making Lito the clown; he deserves better. This time they’ve linked him with Sun, who just got her period, so Lito gets mood swings, stomach cramps, and bloat.

• Will gets yelled at by his boss for trying to see Jonas; Wolfgang gets threatened by his uncle who suspects he pulled the diamond heist. Not sure why they’re paired since the captain will probably suspend Will but the uncle will definitely try to kill Wolfgang. One interesting detail: The diamonds Wolfgang stole were from Mumbai, which is where Kala is from. Diamonds as a metaphor for stealing the woman of great value from the rich man in India? If so, they never do anything else with it. Argh.

• Capheus and Riley meet for the first time; he has tea in her London apartment and she enjoys the heat in Nairobi. It’s a lovely, pleasant interaction which really doesn’t do anything except put two of the most pleasant of the eight together to smile at each other. Better is Capheus trying to deliver the bag for Kabaka, getting set upon by thugs, and calling for the “Jean Claude Korean Lady.”

• There are several quick cuts–Lito getting emotional in traffic because of PMS, Kala getting ready to be married and looking like death, Sun talking to her kickboxing teacher. The stuff with Sun would be fun if it weren’t so sad. I loved the “You are of two minds.” “At least.” exchange, and Lito and Sun flipping from traffic in Mexico City to a placid garden in Seoul, with Lito still talking on the phone to Hernando: “There’s a Korean lady standing next to me and she’s not crying the way I’m not screaming!” Okay, Lito’s really good at the comedy, but still, PMS?

• The Cluster seems to be coming together more. There’s a semi-chaotic series of bits where Will is talking to Nomi’s mother because he’s trying to find her to help her, and then Nomi is Will, telling her mother, “Her name is Nomi,” and then Kala’s father makes her a sweet dessert and Nomi tastes it in her coffee. That Capheus passes Kabaka’s test and that has nothing to do with any of the cluster. Then we’re with Wolf and Felix in a Berlin bar, and Felix is mouthing off about diamonds (that’ll be important later), and Wolfgang shushes him and goes into the restroom and Kala in Mumbai hears him and tells him to get out of her bathroom, and he starts going through stalls, thinking she’s some German girl who wandered into the men’s room, and then she recognizes his voice, and then Felix comes in. Then Will chases after a witness while Lito does an action scene, and they switch places back and forth. I know this paragraph has no unifying idea, but there’s a reason for that: ARGH.

You know what would be good? To know what triggers the switching places stuff or the “visiting” stuff. Riley and Will end up together because they’re thinking about each other. Sun and Lito . . . I dunno, they’re both emotional? Obviously when somebody is in trouble, one of the others is drawn in, except that Capheus gets the hell kicked out of him and nobody comes to help. I can’t see a pattern in the way the Cluster works.

• Sun and Capheus meet and talk in Seoul and Nairobi, and it’s one of the loveliest scenes in the series. She’s distraught and withdrawn; he’s amazed by Seoul but has his own problems. There’s a wonderful bit where she politely explains that her plate is full so she prefers to think of him as a hallucination, and he says he understands, but he can’t leave even though he tries. Their exchange about responsibility and promises made never rings as exposition or Big Ideas because they’re both heading into serious trouble because of what they owe their mothers. And it illuminates so much more of their characters. This is the stuff that brings me back every time.

• Sun takes her dog to her teacher because she can’t take care of him from prison (break my heart), Kala gets ready for her wedding, and Wolfgang goes swimming in the nude looking depressed. None of them are happy; everything moves slowly and silently, and there’s a real feeling of dread there. And then everybody gets five seconds: Lito’s with Hernando and Daniela, Capheus is stirring soup for his mother, Will walks into a cop bar in Chicago and sees Riley in a bar in London, Nomi and Amanita go back to their apartment and find it robbed and trashed by Whisper’s men, and Kala goes to her wedding. Then right before she takes her vows, Wolfgang walks out of the pool naked and up the steps and into her wedding, and says, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re not in love with him,” and she faints, and he faints, and the screen goes to black.

At some point in this series of posts, we need to talk about endings because these episodes don’t have any.

That bit at the wedding is definitely NSFW, so click on this link knowing you’re going to get full frontal nudity. Full back-al, too, come to think of it.

Episode 6: “Demons”

Great title: It’s what Kala calls Wolfgang as she turns away from her closet to find him naked in her bed, patting the sheets and inviting her to join him. Honestly, pull out Wolfgang’s scenes and Kala’s scenes and cut them togehter in one narrative and then give them an ending, for cripe’s sake, and you’ve got one hell of a romance/action movie. For the rest:

• Remember how Will walked into the cop bar and saw Riley in the last episode? He goes up to her (she’s in a bar in London), and she looks up, and he says, “I was just–” and she finishes “–thinking about you.” That’s key because it’s the first clue to how these people are going to connect purposefully. God knows why Capheus came to tea with Riley in the last episode, but at least Will and Riley connect when they think about each other, and there’s pretty good evidence that’s what was going on with Wolfgang and Kala at the end of the last episode. That was a really nice pool he was in and he did not look happy. But mostly I love this scene because they actually talk about how weird everything is. Riley says, “Are we going crazy?” even though she’s clearly enjoying the experience in general and Will in particular, and Will, practical guy that he is, puts his number into her phone and says, “Call me and we’ll see.” She hits the button, his phone rings, and to make absolutely sure, he gives his phone to Diego to answer. “It’s some girl with a weird accent,” Diego tells him, giving the phone back. “She sounds hot.” Boom, it’s real. Then Riley asks good questions, like “Have you had any more visitors?” Will tells her Jonas said there were eight like them–see, this is the stuff they should be sharing when they talk to the others, it’s HELPFUL–and then Will asks the wrong question and Riley says she has to go to bed. This is a bad move on everybody’s part.

• There’s an intercut section between Nomi and Sun that appears to based on Nomi’s line, “This isn’t fair, I didn’t do anything,” but it has serious consequences: Sun confesses to her brother’s crime at a press conference, and Nomi decides to fight back against Whispers. (YES. YES, YES, YES, and it’s about damn time somebody did.) Then Riley gets back to the apartment where she’s staying and Nyx is waiting for her, which also isn’t fair because she didn’t do anything.

• Nyx tries to kill Riley with a plastic bag and almost manages it until Will starts to suffocate in that cop bar in Chicago and takes out Nyx and his henchmen, freeing Riley to run. Unfortunately, he also takes out a couple of cops who were trying to help him when he started to convulse. This is not helping Will’s rep in the department. Lovely plot complication though.

• Nomi and Amanita go to stay with Amanita’s mother, who’s a crunchy-granola professor who teaches evolution, which is convenient for expositing Big Ideas. (It would have been so much more fun if she’d been middle class and conventional and still adored Amanita and thought Nomi was great. That happens.)

• Kala wakes up to her family gathered around her bed. They’re nice people but I’d be running for the woods screaming by now. Kala does say she doesn’t like being alone, but Jesus. They tell her Raj is downstairs waiting to talk to her, which is not what she wants to hear, but she dutifully gets rid of them and starts to get dressed. Except when she opens her closet, she’s in Berlin in Wolfgang’s closet, talking out his boxers, and he’s naked in his bed behind her. She turns around and he’s naked in her bed. This is the kind of visiting that’s just fun to watch; it’s not that they’re doing this location swapping stuff, it’s location swapping in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. Then Wolfgang smiles at her and pats the bed beside him, and she tells him, “You’re a demon.” When he says, “From the moment I saw you, I wanted you, and I think you want me, too,” (yeah, the constant visiting is pretty much a tip-off of that), and when she says, “You don’t know what I want,” he says, “You looked,” paying off the naked wedding scene. And then she smiles in spite of herself, and says, “You are a demon.” Watching these two is just nothing but fun, in part because they’re such opposites: he’s a dour atheist thief and killer who hates his sadistic family, and she’s a happy, devout pharmacist who loves her warm and supportive family. It’s a great romance dynamic which I did not expect to see in this series.

• Speaking of great couple dynamics, Lito is with Hernando and Daniela at a wrestling match and they’re not just having a wonderful time, they’re having a wonderful time together. Call it a triple dynamic; I think these three crazy kids can make it. (Honestly, this is the first time I thought an onscreen menage a trois was a good idea.) Then Hernando does some Big Idea ‘splaining, telling Daniela that the fight between the wrestler dressed in white and the wrestler dressed in black is a Manichean conflict (ya think?) and then goes on to explain that demons are just fears we’re afraid to face. At which point Lito looks over and sees Joaquin wearing a demon mask. Yep, that’s gonna pay off later.

• Then we’re back to goulash scenes. Raj still wants to marry Kala. Kabaka wants Capheus to take his daughter to her leukemia treatments. (You know, if the girl is that important to him, why isn’t he taking her in his heavily armored motorcade?) Sun is denied bail. Diego tells Will the other cops are starting to think he’s crazy. Capheus has to tell Jela that Kabaka has hired the bus for the week. Sun goes to prison, and of course there’s a Sun/Lito swap where Sun’s being interrogated by a creepy prison doctor and Lito’s being interviewed by a fawning entertainment reporter and hilarity ensues (not).

• So I have no idea what was happening in that last amalgamation of scenes, but I know what happens in the next series. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen an actual clusterfuck. I’m not sure what unites four of them this time: physical exertion? awareness of their bodies? Nomi wakes up and has sex with Amanita in San Francisco as Will is lifting weights in a hard workout in Chicago as Lito and Hernando are working out with weights in Mexico City, and Wolfgang is back in the water, this time a spa? in Berlin, thinking about Kala because she walks behind him in the nude as he basks, and I’m pretty sure she’s in Mumbai (doing god knows what). And then they start to . . . mesh. It’s hard to explain but at one point, Hernando is kissing Nomi while Lito kisses Amanita (that would be Lito and Nomi switching bodies, right?) and then Lito is in Chicago kissing a surprised Will doing push-ups (that’s visiting), and they all end up in the spa with Wolfgang who pretty much just lies back and thinks of Kala, and there’s a lot of heaving Renaissance-beautiful flesh. It’s all beautifully done, but it gives rise (ha) to a lot of questions, like is this going to happen every time somebody has sex? Because that could be a problem. Then everybody pretty much comes, Will looking around to see if anybody in the gym noticed, and we move to Capheus feeling uncomfortably hot as he watches Jean Claude Van Damme lifting a bathtub. Or something. Still, I finally know what a clusterfuck looks like, so I’m happy. It looks like this:

•Nomi has one of those Big Idea conversations with Amanita’s crunchy granola mom, but one of the things Nomi says is something I’d think they’d all be wondering about. Nomi thinks she has a brain tumor and that’s why she’s seeing all those people, and she wonders if what’s happening is like Alzheimers, that eventually her “sense of me-ness will disintegrate.” That’s a big question here, and this is the first time anybody’s raised it, but taken in context with the previous clusterfuck, it’s a real concern; the lines between their lives are blurring, and they not only have no idea how to control them, most of them have no idea what’s happening. Wolfgang and Kala are probably working on some version of “This person is a fantasy,” Riley and Will have actually talked about it, but everybody else is still firmly in WTF? territory.

• Riley and Sun have a heart-to-heart while Sun is despairing in prison and Riley is despairing after her near-death experience with Nyx. There’s a lovely bit where Riley points out the inscription in her park “I have conversed with the spiritual sun”–and they comfort each other in their situations, both of them in trouble for somebody else’s crime. Riley also drops the foreshadowing that there’s somebody in Iceland who told her she was hexed, and that bad things would happen if she didn’t leave, and then her mother died and she thought it was her fault. Sun says she thought it was her fault when her mother died, too. It’s a quiet scene, and I think it’s one of the reasons that viewers respond to Riley even though she doesn’t do anything: she’s a good person who joyfully connects with anybody who shows up in her life. Then Sun is back in prison, dreaming of her mother who tells her to be careful because people will be hunting her (and I thought, “You bitch, you knew this was coming and you didn’t tell her?”) and then Mom turns into Angel and tells her she’s the future. Fade to black.

Really, somebody has to talk to the writing team about these endings.

Cherry Saturday 8 – 8 – 2015

Today is Sneak some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Sense8: Bright Shapes, No Container

This is supposed to be about Episodes 5 & 6, but I got so caught up in trying to figure out what the overall plan is here that I didn’t take notes when I watched them again. So you get my thoughts on 5 & 6 tomorrow or Sunday. Here’s what I think about the plotting:



What I am coming to realize, as I watch these episodes for the third and fourth time, is that there’s no structure here. It’s not just that there’s no classic linear structure–protagonist is thrown out of a stable life, battles the antagonist, wins or loses–it’s that there’s no structure, period. Taking the first half (six episodes) of the series as an anthology that sets up the Eight vs. Whispers in the back end, you still have eight stories that are bleeding plot.

A patterned structure or an anthology structure is a perfectly fine way to structure story because it gives what any reader/viewer needs: the sense that there’s somebody in control and that everything they’re seeing will make sense. So if you want to do an anthology of stories about eight people who are slowly drawn together into a larger narrative, that’s great, as long as you have eight stories. Just giving information about eight people is not telling story, it’s set-up. And by Hour Six in a twelve-hour series, we should be way past set-up and into story. Still the characters are so good that I probably would have stayed for six hours of set-up without all this bitching if there really had been eight stories there. Instead, we got one character sketch of a damaged woman, two great protagonists with no antagonist, three great protagonists with antagonists that arrive late but are wonderful, one great protagonist with a weak antagonist but a terrific romance plot and one great protagonist with a great antagonist and therefore a great story. One out of eight in the first episode, five out of eight by the end of the sixth hour. That’s not good.

Riley: Riley’s not just sad, she’s damaged, hanging on by her fingernails, buffeted by the men in her life: her boyfriend who drags her off to meet Nyx so he can rob him, her friend Jax who betrays her to Nyx, Nyx who tries to kill her, Will who saves her, and her father who loves her. She has no agency; she just copes with the aftermath of what both the bad and good guys lay on her. She has plenty of Trouble, but aside from the scene where Nyx tries to kill her, no Conflict, and even there, she doesn’t fight back, Will does.

The Fix: Give the woman some agency, for god’s sake, and let her fight back against Nyx throughout; it wouldn’t hurt to tie Nyx to the Sense8 main plot, either. The problem is, they WANT her without agency, they want the Damaged Flower. So Riley’s pretty much out of luck.

Will: He sees things, he meets Riley, he tries to find out what’s happening (and good for him, he’s the only one who does for a long time) and that gets him in trouble with his bosses, his partner begins to have doubts, he talks to Jonah and gets some info, he researches Nomi to see if he can find her to help her, he wakes up strapped to her gurney and sets her free, he sees Riley in the bar and they phone each other to find out if what’s happening is real . . . . It’s all over the place. Nobody is in opposition to him, and without an antagonist, there’s nothing to shape his story. I’ll watch it because it’s Will and I’m worried about him, but he has Trouble, not Conflict.

The Fix: Give him an antagonist, preferably Whispers, but if it must be a minion, get that FBI guy in there who’s working for Whispers or Jonah, Jonah is creepy as hell. Will has everything he needs for a story except for an antagonist to push against.

Sun: Sun has a great antagonist in her dickhead brother, but that doesn’t become clear until Episode Four. Then they send her to prison and she doesn’t see her brother again for a couple of episodes which means the energy drains from her story. She does have another antagonist in the sadistic woman prisoner who torments her and her friends, but since Sun can take care of her without breaking a sweat, there really is no story there. The potential for one is huge if Sun gets out and takes down her brother, but for now, she’s just resting in prison, leaving psychically whenever somebody in another country needs beat up. It’s not enough.

The Fix: Either get her out of the slammer so she can go after her brother, or keep her in there–there’s really good stuff going on in that prison–and focus on the antagonist there as a placeholder for the big picture plot.

Nomi: Nomi has conflict; that bastard Dr. Metzger is trying to lobotomize her with her mother’s approval. At first, there are just a lot of scenes with Amanita the Perfect Girlfriend and weeping in the hospital. But then in Episode Five, Nomi fights back and she gets a real story that has the bonus of segueing perfectly into the Sense8 central conflict.

The Fix: Start that earlier. Now Nomi ends up in the hospital because she falls off a motorcycle and they take a head scan; it’s just bad luck. Have her investigate what’s happening to her and tip off Whispers that way and get dragged off to the lobotomy ward; tie her plot to the main plot sooner.

Lito: Up until Episode Five, Lito has no conflict unless you count Hernando wanting to go to premieres and Daniela moving in, all of which is really Trouble and not serious Conflict. Then Joaquin shows up. Now we’ve got ourselves an antagonist and a conflict, and Lito has a real story.

The Fix: get Daniela in early and Joaquin by Episode 2.

Kala: Kala does have an antagonist: Rajan, her fiance. She doesn’t want to get married, but he’s so sweet, so charming, so in love with her, and so loved by her family, that he’s hard to leave. The problem is, she doesn’t try very hard; mostly she just looks sad and stressed. It’s not enough. The story that does work for Kala is Kala vs. the Demon, aka Kala vs. Wolfgang. She’d go through with the marriage if it weren’t for Wolfgang showing up and making her feel hot and bothered and then fall in love. He even does a great job of ruining her wedding. So the romance novel that is Kala and Wolfgang is actually good story.

The Fix: Give Kala some agency and a lot more time dealing with the demon that is Wolfgang. (You know, if you’re advertising that you’re doing gender-challenging, cutting-edge storytelling, writing two women characters without agency kind of dulls that edge.)

Capheus: Capheus started out the Good Son, but as soon as Kabaka threatens and bribes him into busing his daughter to her leukemia treatments, Capheus has an antagonist who shoves him into the path of murderous gangsters so that he bounces back and forth between murderous nutjobs like a pinball. His story really is Capheus vs. Kabaka; if he could say no to Kabaka, most of his problems would disappear, but if he says no, his mother dies. As it is, his is one of the stronger narratives.

The Fix: Get his antagonist in there earlier.

Wolfgang: And we have a winner. Wolfgang’s first scene is with his psychopathic cousin Steiner and his murderous uncle, and that’s very shortly followed by Wolfgang doing the thing that’s going to piss them (and his dead father) off the most: stealing diamonds that Steiner has cased by cracking the safe his father couldn’t and his uncle says can’t be cracked. Then they come after him and conflict ensues. That danger increases when the family goes after his best friend, Felix, and it’s complicated by the fact that he’s falling in love with Kala. As he says to her near the end when she begs him not to go fight his family, “As long as they’re alive, they’ll come after anybody I love.” And then he kisses her and goes in to fight in a great climax. It’s perfect, classic storytelling, and it’s pretty well paced throughout the series. It’s only flaw: It never intersects with the Sense8 plot, overlapping only when Lito shows up to help him defeat Steiner and Will and Kala help him in the climactic battle. Even so, it’s a great story. (Somebody’s going to read this and say, “Yes, but Wolfgang’s story is not art.” Yeah, it is, did you watch the way that was filmed and acted? It was beautiful. Violent as all hell, but beautiful, the Wachowskis at their best.)

I need to go back to watch John Sayles’ Lone Star again. That started with a lot of different people with different plots (can’t remember how many), and then slowly, inexorably, they drew together, and you began to see the pattern, but you really couldn’t see how they were all one story until the very last scene. If Sense8 had done that, I’d have forgiven a lot of the chaos that came before. As it is, the more I watch this, the more I’m realizing that this is a show made of terrific characters in often wonderful and sometimes amazing scenes, beautifully shot and beautifully acted, but with no controlling story. It’s the authority in the text thing: I get no sense that anybody is in control of this narrative. I keep thinking of the Roethke line, “The shapes a bright container can contain.” This show is full of bright shapes, but it has no container, or at least no container that enhances and embraces the shapes it holds. And that’s a crime because the shapes are marvelous.

The Fix: Give them all the same antagonist. That would be Whispers.

One way to check a plot is to imagine it from the antagonist’s POV. So Whispers lobtomizes anyone in a cluster because . . . I’m not sure. Something about hating the future, being afraid of the power they hold? I know he wants to lobotomize them, I’m just not clear on why. So okay, he gets there too late to stop Daryl from giving birth to the connection (still don’t understand that), and then she shoots herself so that he can’t find them through her. So now he has to find the eight. This is clearly part of a larger project to hunt clusters in general, so I don’t see any indication that this cluster is the One Cluster To End Them All because he doesn’t seem to pay them much attention; in fact, he seems helpless to find them until Nomi falls off her motorcycle and hits her head, which means an MRI, which sends in Dr. Metzger, who just happens to be attending at Nomi’s hospital. Does Whispers have some kind of computer program that flags him whenever a cluster MRI goes online? Do MRIs go online? Does he have surgeons ready to perform lobotomies at his order in a lot of hospitals? So now he’s got Nomi. Wouldn’t it be smarter to use Nomi as a stalking goat to draw the other seven out or at least find out who they are? Why antagonize somebody who doesn’t know who he is but who can lead him to the others? But no, he wants her brain dead so he sends in Metzger. So at this point I have an antagonist with a secret motivation who sends in a minion to kill his only lead. Terrance Mann does a terrific job of making Whispers one of the creepiest villains I’ve seen on screen, but the script kneecaps him by making him fairly dumb and fairly powerless. His big move at the end is to accidentally look into Will’s eyes, and that’s defeated by keeping poor old Will knocked out on sedatives for the rest of the climax. If you can be defeated by NoDoze, you’re not exactly a super villain.

So in the end, you’re left with a story about eight people who were chosen somehow, and yet at the climax, the Big Bad only knows three of them (two because they ended up in a hospital and the third because he accidentally looked into his eyes), plus most of the time, he’s not even there; the first half of the series is mostly Dr. Metzger threatening Nomi with lobotomy and the FBI guy telling Will to back off and siccing Will’s captain on him. By halfway through, all eight plots should at least begin to converge on the main plot, drawn together by a common antagonist, and yet six of the eight are completely detached from the Whispers-Is-Coming-For-You-With-A-Lobotomy plot, and five the eight are never directly attached to it.

Look, I don’t care what kind of structure they use. If this is an anthology series about eight different people growing to understand that they’re linked as they step forward and take control of their individual changing lives, I am so there for that. If this is a supernatural thriller about eight people who are discovering they’re linked just as a Big Bad starts taking some of them out, I’m there for that (but somebody’s gonna have to die if I’m going to believe he’s a Big Bad). The problem with Sense8 is that nobody knew what it was, they just knew they had great characters and great scenes and great ideas and went with it. It’s still immensely watchable, but it’s not good storytelling.

Sense8: Episodes Three and Four: Stability Lost, Joy Regained

One way to look at a story is that the protagonist moves from stability to stability. That is, he or she is living in a world that he or she understands how to negotiate and feels safe in because of that, even if it’s a miserable world to live in. The story starts when something happens that shatters that stability, and the protagonist battles the antagonist (and the cause of the instability) until one of them wins, the story ends, and the world becomes stable again, albeit a new kind of stability that reflects who the protagonist has evolved into during the struggle of the story.

In the case of Sense8, the instability is caused by Angel giving birth to the connection that links the Cluster–and does anybody know how the hell she did that? because I still don’t–and the eight start having visions of Angel gazing balefully at them–I died for you ingrates–coupled with migraines. It’s not a fast start to the story, and it doesn’t get any faster in the first two episodes because the writers want to set up the individual stories. Episodes 1 and 2 are really anthologies, a collection of eight stories, each with its own protagonist and antagonist, linked by the beginning of their supernatural connection. They are, essentially, the set-up for what’s to come. (Note: Not a good idea. Do not do this.) Episodes 3 and 4 then rip those stable lives out from under the characters and start them on their stories. So let’s look at Three and Four, at stable lives disrupted, at each of the eight’s increasingly impossible struggle to get back to the solid ground they once knew, and then at the incredible joy that takes them unaware as they finally all connect without realizing it.

Episode 3: “Smart Money’s on the Skinny Bitch”

Love this title: it’s got action, character, a hint of conflict. Plus, it’s about Sun who has been woefully undercharacterized as the quiet, self-imolating, good daughter in service to a cold father and a dickhead brother; she’s so underutilized she wasn’t even in Episode 2. But in Episode 3, she finally becomes “the skinny bitch,” an underground kickboxing champ. Seems like a stretch? We’ve got eight people who are psychically linked, chased by a guy who can track them if he looks into their eyes. A CFO who’s also a secret kickboxing champion is not a stretch in this show. And she’s glorious at it, too. (Light theme-mongering: “There’s nothing in the rules about gender; smart money’s on the skinny bitch;” I like it so I’ll allow it.) Then Sun gets a visit from Capheus in the middle of her fight; he’s getting beaten to a pulp as he fights to get back his mother’s stolen AIDS medication (motivations in this show are not complex).

Okay, this is what the series promised me, the eight connecting and working together, so there’s a clause in my viewer’s contract filled. Great stuff. Love it that Will shows up when Capheus picks up the gun, too. Sun doesn’t do guns. Sun doesn’t need guns. I love Sun. (This is also the second time they’ve paired Sun with Cepheus. Remember the chicken? That’s starting to look like Chekhov’s chicken now.) Other notable moments: Daniela’s ex, Joaquin, threatening Lito with the steak knife (worst ex-boyfriend ever); Amanita setting fire to the hospital to save Nomi (best girlfriend ever).

Episode 4: “What’s Going On”

This is the episode that made me a diehard fan. Terrible things happen to each of the eight this hour, but underneath all of it is this incredible sense of joy as they begin to unconsciously connect, culminating in them all singing “What’s Up?”. Anybody who watched the karaoke scene and still didn’t buy into the Cluster has a heart of stone. The set-up for the clip below for those of you who aren’t watching this (what are you waiting for?): Kala wakes up on the couch Riley is sleeping on to see two people having noisy sex in the next room, which is more than she’s ready for. She pulls the covers over her head and then Riley pulls them down and goes up to the roof in London as Kala goes up to her roof in Mumbai. Riley turns on her iPod to 4 Non Blondes “What’s Up?” as Wolfgang, drunk on his ass in a bar in Germany, is shoved by Felix into doing karaoke to, yep, 4 Non Blondes. As he sings, badly, the others in Cluster are drawn in, hearing it, too, and singing along, including Will, searching the internet for info about Nomi so he can save her; Nomi, drugged for her lobotomy and dazedly mouthing “What’s going on?”; Lito in bed with Hernando and Daniella, looking a little unsure as to how he got there; Capheus driving his bus and beaming as usual; Sun showering before going to meet her father and her fate ; and Kala, alone on that rooftop in Mumbai. The best part: The way Wolfgang lights up when he sees Kala. Sue me, I’m a ‘shipper.

Then Will wakes up as Nomi, strapped to that gurney for the lobotomy; thank god he knows how to pick locks; this is the stuff I signed up for: GO TEAM CLUSTER. I don’t know why Amanita is waiting downstairs with a wheelchair, but I’m so glad to see her, I don’t care. Great escape from that son-of-a-bitch surgeon; I’m looking forward to seeing him get his (IT’S IN MY CONTRACT). Meanwhile, Will wakes up on his couch in Chicago and laughs because he found her, saying “What just happened?” This is the good stuff.

Oh, and in the realm of antagonists you want to see run over by two buses and then kicked in the head: Nomi’s mother. That scene in the hospital is one of the places the show does what it sets out to do in exploring gender politics. Before that scene I was annoyed when people insisted on called Caitlin Jenner “Bruce;” after that scene where the hag keeps calling Nomi “Michael,” I was outraged. People get to determine their own identities, you bitch. Now that’s getting a point across the right way.

Other moments of joy: Riley hearing her father’s voice and his good news on her phone, Capheus and Jela’s happiness at the new popularity of the Van Damn bus, and Felix dragging Wolfgang off to buy shoes (and his story about what happened when he lost his virginity). And I personally loved Sun’s blowing smoke at her father.

And so at the end of Episode Four, we have eight people whose stable lives have been irrevocably smashed and who are waking up to both the terror of the new and the huge possibilities unfolding before them:

Will keeps seeing things and is risking his job to see Jonas in prison. Upside: He’s falling in love with one of his hallucinations.

Riley is witness to two murders and a robbery and is being hunted by the drug dealer who is probably in league with the guy whose couch she’s sleeping on (Lito’s director tried to warn her). Upside: She has a loving father and a cute Chicago cop who keeps appearing out of nowhere to smile at her.

Nomi is now on the run from Whispers, still wondering if she has a brain tumor because her hallucinations are getting really vivid. Upside: One of those hallucinations can pick locks. Also Amanita.

Lito is in a three-way relationship that is either the best or the worst thing that’s ever happened to him; also Joaquin wants to kill him, and strangers keep appearing and disappearing in his life. Upside: Pretending he’s not gay just got a lot easier since Daniela’s in his bed.

Sun is getting ready to confess to her dickhead brother’s crimes; no going back to VP/CFO now. Upside: She won’t be with her horrible family. Also, when somebody at the sex club tries to ambush her, Will protects her, which is new for her. (I want the dress she was wearing in that scene.)

Capheus is in the employ of a major crime lord and in way over his head. Upside: He has a feeling something really good is going to happen today.

Wolfgang’s heist to foil his psychopathic cousin has him under suspicion from his family, who are not the kind of people who let bygones be bygones. Upside: He’s rocking karaoke in his new shoes and half in love with an Indian woman who walks randomly through his life at odd moments and makes him smile like a loon.

Kala is still trying to hold on to the arranged marriage she doesn’t want, but there’s this German guy who keeps showing up and almost kissing her. Actually, that’s the upside: The German guy is really hot. Also he sings to her.

Damn, I love these characters. I’m still hostile about the writers and my viewer’s contract, but I’ll stick for the characters. Also, for the love of god, Wolfgang, kiss the girl.

My still unanswered questions:

• I’m not completely clear on the whole visiting and sharing thing. I get the visiting; that’s just astral projection until they start touching each other, which is a lot harder to explain. But then sometimes they switch bodies? They must switch because Capheus is looking around the shooting range and then trying to get up from the center of the boxing ring, while Will and then Sun are staring perplexed at the dusty Kenyan landscape. There’s also a bit later on where Lito asks permission to take Wolfgang’s body, so it’s some kind of consciousness swap. Or they can project themselves into each other’s world with solid bodies, although nobody else outside the cluster sees them, which is why Diego interrupts Will kissing the air later. This is confusing. I have no problem buying supernatural premises, but I do need some kind of consistency. If Will can kiss Riley in his apartment, can he get shot when he shifts with her to London and the gunfight? He must be able to because he beats the crap out of the guys trying to kill Riley in a later episode. You know, I should have a better idea of how this works in general after twelve episodes, and I still don’t know what the hell Daryl Hannah was doing in the first scene.

• Jonas the Exposition Fairy explains that anybody outside the cluster can show up if they’ve made eye contact with somebody in the cluster but they can’t share bodies. On the one hand, that helps explain Whispers looking into your eyes being a death sentence and how Jonas can flit from Nomi to Will with the back story but can’t reach anybody else. On the other hand, it still doesn’t make sense, He looks into your eyes and can track you, like some kind of ocular lojack? Nope, don’t get it. Your magic has to make sense, you can’t just wave your hands and say, “Advanced humans.”

• If Will could hear and see Sarah Purcell asking for help when he was a kid, does that mean he was part of an earlier cluster? I know, she’d looked into his eyes, but if he could hear her, then somebody already gave birth to a cluster that activated him, right? No? How did Whispers find Sarah? Because that’s not just a dream, Sarah tells him not to look into Whisper’s eyes because that’s how he got her; it’ll be another twenty years before Jonas tells him that.

• Speaking of those scenes with Sarah, they’re annoying, but they’re not flashbacks, they’re memories. Almost as annoying as flashback, but not quite. What’s not annoying: the amazing quality of the child actors in these scenes, particularly the young Wolfgang and the young Felix, but really, all of them. Not an annoying moppet in the bunch.

• There’s a whole counterfeit drug motif going on here that I can’t pull together. Capheus’s mother is suffering because somebody sold them counterfeit drugs and that’s how he ends up in the hands of Kataka who cuts off the hands of the employees who try to cheat by diluting drugs, Kala’s company is concerned about the counterfeits, and Sun’s brother has been embezzling through pharmaceutical stock devaluation. Riley does the drug that Nyx gives her and that’s how she connects first with Will, Riley’s boyfriend’s drug robbery almost gets her killed, Capheus become Van Damn (sic) when he goes to get his mother’s AIDS meds back, Will injects himself with sedatives to save the cluster and Riley later does it for him . . . . There’s a drug motif, but I’m not seeing the pattern. Annoying loose ends.

• All the men in this show have extremely tight brotherly relationships–Wolfgang with Felix, Capheus with Jela, Will with Diego, and Lito with Hernando (who’s also his lover). Not so much the women: Sun and Riley are completely isolated, and there’s no one in Kala’s huge family she can tell the truth to so she has to talk to a statue of Ganesh; the only one with a relationship like the men’s is Nomi, and Amanita is her lover. I’m not sure what to do with that, either, even though it’s blatant. More loose ends.

• Father’s are bastards in this show (Wolfgang’s psycho-dad, Sun’s withholding executive who expects her to sacrifice for him even though he’s never paid her any attention, even Will’s dad is a jerk a lot of the time), but mothers are awful, too, like Nomi’s bitch mom and Sun’s invalid mother who guilts her daughter into taking care of a little brother they both know is a loser and then dies so Sun’s stuck with the promise. I loathed her almost as much as I hated Nomi’s mother. Maybe more. Even Cepheus’s mom, who clearly adores him, tries a mother-on-the-cross move by telling him she should stop taking her meds so she’ll die and he’ll be free. Really? You know he’s not gonna buy that, Mom, get off his back. The only completely healthy parent in the bunch is Riley’s dad who greets her at the airport in a later episode with a ukelele solo, although I’ll cut Kala’s dad a break since he has no idea he’s guilting her into marriage: that one’s on Kala. Not on her: her future father-in-law’s plans to outlaw her religion. All of that should be adding up to something, but it seems at the moment to just be “Childhood sucks.”

• Music is hugely important in this show, and more than just as a soundtrack, but they never bring it together. Riley’s a brilliant DJ, but aside from her intro, you never see her working. Her father is a world famous musician. Will collects vinyl. Rajan courts Kala with a musical extravaganza at their pre-wedding party; Wolfgang seduces her with karaoke until her sister interrupts. The first time the entire cluster connects at the same time is through song, even if they don’t realize they’re connecting. And Netflix just did a promo for the show about brain waves being music. I really expected that whole music motif to pay off, but it’s just another loose end.

• One more thing that bugs me (actually two). All the antagonists in this are flat-out evil sons-of bitches, psychopaths, to the point of being cartoons. All the life partners, though, are absolutely perfect. Amanita, Hernando, even Daniela sacrifice without hesitation for the people they love; they’re always cheerful, often cook, and constantly offer support, encouragement, and the occassional hospital fire. Nobody ever has a cranky day, they all live to serve. I think that may be a fallout from the complexity of everything else going on here; once again lack of story real estate means the writers fall back on shorthand.

• The thing that surprised me most about this series: How romance-heavy the plot is. Both the romances are traditional hetero–Will and Riley, Wolfgang and Kala–because the trans woman and the gay guy already are in Perfect Relationships–but they’re done really well so that when Wolfgang tells Kala to go back to Rajan because he’s too much of a monster to be with her, or when Will at the end of the finale tells Riley he loves her with such passion and certainty, you believe it. For all the stuff they screwed up in this, they nailed the hetero love stories. They’re not so good at the established relationships–Hernando and Amanita are pretty much there to serve and protect and don’t get much of a story of their own–but they’ve got the falling in love stuff down. Now pair the spares because I don’t want Sun and Capheus left out of this.

Okay that’s a lot of bitching again. Never mind. The show has finally gotten up off its ass and it’s moving, hell, it’s singing, and I’m loving it.

So what did you think? (Back with Episodes Five and Six on Friday . . .)

Sense8: Episodes 1 and 2: Skip 1, Watch 2

Having spent two posts bitching about Sense8‘s mistakes, I thought it might be time to explain why I think everybody should watch it on Netflix: because when it gets it right, THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD.

The premise for the show is surprisingly simple: Eight people in eight different cities throughout the world discover that they are linked mentally so that they can see each other, have conversations with each other, even touch each other without ever being in the same place and–bonus for times of danger and stress– can share each other’s bodies for defense (and, it turns out, other things), which is good because they’re being hunted by an international organization that wants to lobotomize all of them, led by the ultra-creepy Whispers. So as a viewer, the contract I signed after the extremely confusing pilot was that I was going to watch these eight (aka the Cluster) meet each other, bond, and then defeat the despicable Whispers, and in the process get a cathartic hit of team-building and the-family-you-make joy. (Bonus I wasn’t expecting: Romance. Really good romances for everybody but Capheus and Sun, and really, he’s so full of light and she’s so full of sadness that I’m up for pairing the spares on this one, just to see her smile.)

BUT the writers’ idea of the contract was providing the viewer with “a global story told on a planetary scale about human transcendence and what it ultimately means to be human in a contemporary society.” I got the “global story” from the pilot, and that’s a terrific part of this show, the whole one-world, brotherhood-of-man-and-woman bit, plus the visuals in this series are cinema-quality. “Planetary scale” is pretty much “global story” again. “Human transcendence and what it means to be human”? That’s theme, not story, a statement about the human condition, not protagonist vs antagonist. And that’s where Sense8 trips, over and over again–theme-mongering, characters discussing Ideas, and Jonas as the Exposition Fairy–trying to fulfill a contract that steps on story. Where Sense8 excels is when it breaks free and goes back to the protagonist vs antagonist scenes that embody that theme, characters who are experiencing supernatural visions, conversations, and eventually physical intimacy with people who aren’t the same room with them, most of them not in the same country, and who must learn to accept each other or be hunted and killed by that bastard Whispers, not to mention all the individual antagonists they have to deal with. When it embodies its theme in character and conflict, Sense8 becomes not only groundbreaking TV, but really great storytelling.

MAJOR SPOILERS FROM NOW ON.

Listen, really, you should watch this show without spoilers. You’ll have soldier through the first two episodes, but then it takes off, and it’s so worth it.

You’re still gonna read this and spoil the series, huh? Okay, on your head be it. BUT THIS IS A MISTAKE.

Episode 1: “Limbic Resonance”

The title pretty much sums up this episode: a lot of stuff we don’t understand about a concept we don’t care about. Nice bit at the end with Riley and Will, the first of the cluster to actually speak to each other. Otherwise, meh. You know what, don’t watch the pilot. Here’s a recap, organized for clarity:

Daryl Hannah (Angel) gives birth to the connection of the eight who will be known as the Cluster, coached by Naveen Andrews (Jonas) before Terrance Mann (Whispers) comes in to take her prisoner. Daryl shoots herself, which, given Whispers’ creepiness, was probably the smartest thing she could do.

And then the cluster is introduced (in order of first appearance):

Will Gorski: American cop in Chicago, archetypal hero. Best friend is his cop partner Diego. Finds a kid gangbanger shot, takes him to the ER over his partner’s objections and then forces the ER to help the kid which saves his life. Really, he’s a Hero. The only thing saving this character from complete stereotype is Brian J. Singer, who sells the hell out of Will as your basic good guy who doesn’t realize he’s really Gary Cooper. The first connection he establishes with anyone in the Cluster is with Riley at the end of episode one.

Riley Blue: Icelandic DG in London, meets drug dealer Nyx through her boyfriend, Jax, who, unbeknownst to Riley, is a murderous jerk. The first connection she establishes is with Will at the end of episode one, when they become the first of the Cluster to actually speak to each other, realizing that they’re in different cities and that something Really Strange is going on. Tuppence Middleton drew the thankless task of playing the Damaged Flower plus the Girl to Will’s Hero, and she still manages to make Riley likable and sympathetic.

Lito Rodriguez: Spanish action star in Mexico City; in the closet and tormented by it (looks at his picture and says, “You’re a liar”), in a great relationship with Hernando (smart, funny, patient, basically a dream guy) who won’t show up until Episode Two. Terrific funny-but-real performance from Miguel Ángel Silvestre.

Sun Bak: Korean VP and CFO in her father’s company in Seoul, patronized by her dickhead brother, ducking calls from the bank while she stares at a red folder. The closest she comes to a connection in the first episode is when a chicken from Capheus’s bus lands on her desk and then disappears. Beautifully underplayed by Bae Doona, showing the heaving mass of rage that’s under Sun’s placid, obedient exterior.

Kala Dandekar: Sweet, innocent, Indian pharmacist living with her loving and omnipresent family in Mumbai. Worships Ganesh to whom she tells her secret: she’s engaged to a wonderful man her family loves but she doesn’t. The only connection she establishes in the first episode is hearing the thunder at the funeral Wolfgang is attending. Another thankless Girl role, saved by another good actress, Tina Desai, who makes Kala fun and bright and even sensual under her Good Girl exterior.

Wolfgang Bogdanow: German thief in Berlin. Runs a locksmith shop with his best friend Felix. Son of a criminal family, harassed by his asshole cousin, Steiner, at his grandfather’s funeral; sent to pay his respects to his dead father, he pees on Dad’s grave. Later he and Felix break into diamond merchant’s high-tech building and Wolfgang cracks the safe his father couldn’t. BIG father issues, but good thief. They get out with the diamonds just before Steiner arrives. Flashbacks show Wolfgang’s abusive father; definitely the kind of guy who deserves his grave peed on. Big mystery to the family: Who killed Dad? Yeah, Wolfgang gets a LOT of story real estate in the first episode, which is okay, Wolfgang is fun to watch because he doesn’t talk much, just does things, and because he’s under-played by Max Riemelt, who lets all of Wolfgang’s passion simmer quietly under his deadpan exterior.

Capheus: Kenyan bus owner/driver with his partner Jela in Nairobi. His loving mother is dying of AIDS and his Van Damn bus is losing customers to the rival Bat Van. Capheus doesn’t do much in the first episode, but Ami Ameen who plays him embues him with such joy and light that you don’t care; you just want to see him smile. His only connection to any of the others in the first episode is that chicken on Sun’s desk.

Nomi Marks: American blogger/hacker living in SF with her lover, Amanita. Except you don’t know she’s a hacker yet, so she’s just a blogger who has sex with Amanita, who does all the heavy lifting in the relationship. It’s a terrible intro to a strong character, but Jamie Clayton does what she can, really coming into her own in Episode Three. Amanita is amazing from the beginning, but then Freema Agyeman used to travel with the Doctor, so she’s used to the weird.

By the end of Episode 1, all of the Cluster have caught glimpses of Angel, the woman who gave birth to their connection in the first scene, and most of them have migraines as their brains adapt to it. None of them connect until the end when Riley, drugged out on Nyx’s Limbic Resonance Hash, sees Will, first through the window of his squad car in Chicago and then in the derelict church where Angel killed herself. Riley and Will are the first to speak, but they’re interrupted when Riley’s boyfriend and his pal try to rob Nyx and gunfire ensues, spattering Riley with blood. End of first episode.

Yeah, that was a little abrupt.

Episode 2: “I Am Also a We”

This title sounds like something Whispers would say before he ordered lobotomies. Or maybe Yoda, right after he says, “There is no try.” So ignore the title, there’s some good stuff in Episode 2, which means you should watch it. No? Fine, but watch the rest of the series. Here’s Episode 2:

Nomi ends up in the hospital with her Mother From Hell, who has barred Amanita from the room. Enter Dr. Metzger; we hate him right away, but not as much as we hate Nomi’s mother. Yet. Metzger is German for “butcher;” we’re building a Chekhov’s armory here. Metzger tells Nomi there’s something terrible wrong with her brain and she needs aggressive surgery or she’ll start having hallucinations and die. Then he locks her in her hospital room and forces medication on her. Nomi gets a visit from Jonas, who is about as creepy as Metzger and Whispers; he gives her the good news that she’s going to be lobotomized unless she escapes. Amanita gets a phone call through and promises to rescue her. Amanita is wonderful.

Kala’s at a party celebrating her imminent wedding; her fiance starts a Bollywood dance. Fun, but no conflict, and also badly timed because Nomi’s back in SF under threat of a lobotomy. Meanwhile Wolfgang is naked, having sex with a woman we won’t see again in the series. Kala’s at the party buffet table full of Indian food, talking to her sister about her fiancé and feeling overheated for some reason. Wolfgang is having a cigarette with the woman we’re not going to see again and tells her he has a craving for Indian food. Kala’s future father-in-law tells her restauranteur father that he doesn’t like Indian food. Kala’s fiancé smooths things over, and takes her outside to say goodnight. The woman we won’t be seeing again is now with Wolfgang at an Indian restaurant in Berlin; she asks if she’ll see Wolfgang again. He says he’s not looking for a relationship, and then he sees Kala for the first time, walking past him in the Indian restaurant in Berlin in her elaborate party dress in Mumbai before she disappears. Back in Mumbai, Kala is alone with her fiancé who’s being incredibly sweet and who kisses her for the first time before he says good night. Kala’s sweet and polite but not thrilled. Fun stuff here: the cutting back and forth between innocent, law-abiding Kala dressed to the teeth, and hardened criminal Wolfgang, mostly naked. Call it Chekhov’s foreplay: these two crazy kids have got to get together.

Lito shows up with actress Daniella Velasquez at a premiere, being wonderful with the fans and with Daniella (who unbeknownst to her was chosen by Lito’s lover as his beard). After the premiere, Daniella makes a pass and Lito turns her down, which leaves her dumbfounded: men don’t turn her down. He goes home to Hernando, a great guy, funny, intelligent, and patient with drama king Lito. It’s a great scene between two men who clearly love each other; only problem is that Hernando would like to go to premieres instead of Daniella, but Lito’s locked himself in the closet for the sake of his career. Then Daniella shows up at Lito’s apartment with champagne and two glasses and photographers. Lito lets her in to get rid of the press, and Daniella barges upstairs to Lito’s bedroom to discover the real love of his life. First she’s surprised, then she’s thrilled, she loves gay porn, so she goes to get a third glass. Hernando says, “I think perhaps I misjudged Miss Velasquez.” It’s the beginning of a beautiful threesome. No, it really is. I love this relationship, and that’s a great, funny scene.

Riley goes back and washes the blood off her face (remember the shooting at the end of Episode One? try to keep up, okay?) as Will shaves in Chicago, and they see each other in their bathroom mirrors, Riley in her black bra and Will mostly naked; they have a moment. Then Will goes to work and finds out Jonas is a terrorist (not really, that’s the story Whispers is telling the cops). He goes to see his father and tells him he’s seeing things, and his dad tells him to shut up or he’ll get kicked off the force. Jonas tries to talk to Will, and is his usual creepy elliptical self—“We all experience many births and deaths in our lives”–so Will tries to arrest him. which results in a car chase and a car crash. I blame Jonas for being dramatic instead of informative. Chekhov moment: Will says, “I’m still a cop, I can’t let you go.” Oh, Will, you have so much character arc ahead of you.

Of course all of this stuff was intercut which was annoying. Also, where the hell were Sun and Capheus? Yes, I know it’s tough keeping eight protagonists plates spinning at the same time. That’s why you don’t do eight protagonists.

Still worth it for the foreshadowing of Kala and Wolfgang, and for the deliriously funny Lito/Hernando/Daniella stuff. Also, Dr. Metzger needs to die, preferably taking Nomi’s mother with him.

Okay, now go watch Three and Four and I’ll talk about them later this week because this is stuff I want to discuss and it’s lonely here, talking to myself. Also, the series hasn’t been renewed yet, so it needs eyes on it. So let’s meet back here Tuesday, and we’ll take apart Episode Three, “Smart Money’s On the Skinny Bitch” (GREAT TITLE), and Episode Four, “What’s Going On” (not a bad title until Wolfgang starts singing kareoke and then it’s a FABULOUS title).

Go on, go watch Episodes Three and Four. They’re on Netflix. You’re gonna love them.

Cherry Saturday 8 – 1 – 2015

Today is National Mustard Day.

Look, they can’t all be winners.

And in an addendum to yesterday’s post about my famous cousin, Russ Parsons, here’s proof we’re related:

I’m not sure what year that was, but I’m guessing mid sixties. Neither of us has changed at all. (That’s his little sister, Boo, on my lap.)

Cherry Saturday 8 – 1 – 1015

Today is National Mustard Day.

Look, they can’t all be winners.

And in an addendum to yesterday’s post about my famous cousin, Russ Parsons, here’s proof we’re related:

I’m not sure what year that was, but I’m guessing mid sixties. Neither of us has changed at all. (That’s his little sister, Boo, on my lap.)