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You're Dismissing This As A Cat-Fight? You Sexiest Pig #FeudBetteJoan #FX #FeudFX #FullSeasonReview #Recap

You're Dismissing This As A Cat-Fight? You Sexiest Pig #FeudBetteJoan #FX #FeudFX #FullSeasonReview #Recap


All pictures courtesy of FX unless otherwise noted. 

No, I'm not dismissing it. Are you crazy? FX, Ryan Murphy, and his crew just delivered us some of the best drama of 2017 (albeit, still very much in its infancy) in similar fashion to what they did last year with American Crime Story: People v. OJ Simpson. Holy crap, did I just bury the lede in my own review/recap of the season, or are you still going to read on to see what I really think about the show? I don't know, but you should.

As of late, Ryan Murphy and his producing partners have jumped onto the anthology series bandwagon full-steam. In fact, one can call him the father of the current trend as American Horror Story ushered this in six short years ago. Feud (#FeudFX) follows that same trend. For its first season, Feud followed the storied, seething hatred between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (I swear I'm going to call her Joan Rivers and/or Collins at least once in this write-up, so consider yourself forewarned). It all started with a little book entitled “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” But let us get some technical stuff out of the way first.


Framing the show in a documentary arc, the show starts by setting up the parameters by which old Hollywood of the 1960s operated, particularly through a woman's lens. The show introduces us to a multitude of female actresses at the time, at varying levels of stardom. We get a taste of how they viewed the clash between Bette and Joan. At that time in Hollywood, most actresses were believed to have an expiration date somewhere around the 40 mark. Even for top-level actresses, the studio-system wasn't very kind once they reached a certain age. The roles dried up and so did the money. Few women felt this more than two of the top stars at the time Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. While other greats like Hepburn and Vivien Leigh were happy to stay above the fray, Bette and Joan battled for supremacy of who was the better actress.

The feud was, for the most part, manufactured from nothing, a ploy to pit two women against each other equally concocted by Jack Warner (president, one of the founding members, and partial namesake of Warner Brothers Studio) and Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. In brilliant portrayals of Warner and Hopper, Stanley Tucci and Judy Davis, at times, steal the show—a tall order considering the powerhouse performances of Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford. Why such a ploy? Who really knows. Here, it is presented to us as the ripe-sweetened juice of gossip that both sells movie tickets and magazines. Be not fooled that this was solely two women being puppeted by a man, for the women had equal parts in their own undoing.

As I said before, it started with the book (as most movies do. Did I mention I'm a writer? Check a link to my books below) “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” After a string of misfires and a few years with sparse work coming her way, Joan Crawford began to look for her own projects to revive her career. In fact, her ultimate goal was to choose a legacy project in hopes of winning an Oscar. She had already won one earlier in her career but it had done her little good in her older age. Most of the roles slid across the table to her came in the form of someone's mother or grandmother, which were often unchallenging roles that didn't even sniff at an Oscar. For something meatier, juicier, she needed to find a role for herself. Enter, the book.

Intent on playing the washed-up child actress Blanche Hudson, Joan takes the book to her director-friend Robert Aldrich played by the always dependable Alfred Molina who does a stellar job at playing the overworked, underappreciated film director. Far from the sleek veneer that name brand Hollywood directors of today seem to have, Robert (or Bob as they called him throughout) not only looks like a shoe salesman who occasionally makes pictures, but he has also hit a career funk. His last picture didn't do very well and he is already said to be on his career decline even though he is only middle-aged (we're talking 40s at the time).

Robert reads the book and sees an opportunity. Not only had Hitchcock's Psycho just come out within the last few years and made a, um... (pause! OK, should I go for the obvious and cheap joke here or should I avoid it and go a completely, unexpected direction. Go unexpected, Michael. It might turn out well)... sizable profit at the box office (Oh. You should've gone with the cheap “killing” joke. Too late now), Bob figured he could make the movie for cheap as it was well-contained in one location and already had Crawford's waning stardom attached to it. He dang near lost his mind when Joan gave him the ultimate idea: Have Bette Davis play my sister in it.


At this point, there was already chatter about how Bette and Joan didn't get along. Really, Bette didn't like anybody but loathed Joan because she was the prettier of the two and had been used by the studio to undercut Bette's negotiating power. “Oh, Bette wants to play hardball? Then forget her. Have Joan do it.” Bette thought Joan only got roles because she was something to look at, whereas Davis had to be far more talented. Was she more talented in real life is something you can determine for yourself by looking up their movies or watching them on TCM when they come on. Regardless, this is what Bette believed and what Joan knew she believed. And herein is the crux of the series. Don't let anyone tell you that this wasn't about hatred because it was. While Joan Crawford really only wanted to be loved and accepted, Bette wanted to have power and prestige, something which could only be gotten by bringing who she saw as her biggest rival to heel.

By this time, Bette had already won two Oscars and had been nominated ten times (Side note: When the Academy loves a woman, they really love them for a very long time. Women have always outpaced men as far as the sheer amount of repeat nominations, with Hepburn having previously owned the crown for most nominations for years before Streep overtook her). At the time, Bette was doing some rinky-dink play which is where Joan finds her. Although it never quite feels like Bette needs this movie as much as Joan does, she also thinks it is a novel idea to have them in the film together. And then the fireworks start to pop.


From here we see all of the undercutting and back-biting normally done in Hollywood filmmaking. But strangely, if you are well-versed in old Hollywood or if you have watched plenty of films about the behind-the-scenes action on films, there really isn't a lot of new stuff here. They argue over the dressing rooms, over who has the better lines, over who looks better on camera, on who should get top billing, on how a scene should play, over how much they're each getting paid, over how the studio will promote and etc. There's also discussion about how Bette was possibly sleeping with Bob, how she got her daughter (who was staying with her during the film) a role, and how much Jack Warner fought Bob at every step while Bob had to mortgage his house to make the picture in order for Warner to distribute it. Again, all very Hollywood-style drama you can see in many different forms and fashions. But the way it unfolds is marvelous.

Glimpsing bits of every character and their intricacies, we are halfway pulled to take sides ourselves as the women take subtle digs at each other that continue escalating through the season. I'm partially halted by what details I should and shouldn't include here as the show really does go broad stroke to quiet-understated-moment at the drop of a dime. But it does try to paint a portrait of two women heavily manipulated by the men and system around them while still trying to manipulate each other. Bette is, for all intents and purposes, a scene-stealing egomaniac going far above and beyond Joan who is, admittedly, made more sympathetic. Or maybe that was just my bias.

All throughout Joan is shown to be someone who, despite her best efforts, has been used by nearly everyone she comes into contact with, save for her trusted helper Mamacita. She brings the novel and idea to both Bob and Bette, yet Bette tries stealing top billing from her, then makes the ridiculous character choice to wear the iconic Baby Jane makeup. Here, it's shown that Joan even concedes the title role to Bette in order to feed the latter's ego. Joan is then not even nominated for an Oscar, let alone wins one, but Bette? Of course, Bette gets nominated and has so many fans and film critics alike heralding her performance as brilliant. The only time I actually didn't have more sympathy for Joan over Bette was during their asides with their families.

Joan and Her HusbandJoan is, as portrayed in the 1980s film “Mommie Dearest,” a cold fish outside of her film roles. She was married to two men that are mentioned. The first was the Pepsi guy who, through a few flashing, passing scenes of them getting married, is never quite rounded out as far as what happened. And if it was, I don't remember the brief mention. Her other man, the one she had at the start of filming “Baby Jane,” quickly left under suspicions that she was sleeping with Bob in order to dissuade the man from leaning more to Bette's side for any future arguments. She cast him aside like a cheap hooker, but he didn't seem domineering enough for her over-the-top personality.

Her children, of which she had three, are actually given less time than Bette's. All adopted, we never see Christine, the would-be author of the book Mommie Dearest. And while there seemed to be no interaction with them during this time frame, I can only assume we didn't see her character because of a potential legal battle with the still-living Christine. But with that, some of the horrors allegedly suffered by Christine go unseen and partially unacknowledged. And while we get a glimpse of Joan's twins, we really have but one scene in which we see how Joan treats them as less of their own people and more like her own dress-up dolls.

Bette, on the other hand, is shown a wide berth of interaction with her eldest daughter, Barbara. Granted, Barbara becomes part of the production and actually seems to live with her mother (at least for the production), but the story feels slightly uneven, tipping towards Bette's cruelness. With Barbara, Bette is shown to be unkind while also being uncaring and still egotistical. She suggests that her daughter play the part of the neighbor girl, but only so she can have more clout on the set. She rehearses lines with the girl and tries to teach her how to act but even then it feels more like she's doing it hoping that the girl won't embarrass her. There's an argument in there about youth vs. age, and how some of what Bette feels doesn't come from age, it comes from her own bitter personality she would've had regardless of how many Oscars she won. And finally, the relationship sort of ends with Barbara asking permission to get married to a man nearly twice her age (16 to a 29-year-old man) and needing Bette's consent. Bette makes mention of how it won't last and the girl knows nothing of the world and blah blah blah. Spoiler Alert: Barbara and the guy she married are still together today. Sometimes youth has wisdom that age has somehow forgotten. Anyway, Barbara eventually writes a book similar to Christine's, and she and Bette never speak again.

Barbara
But outside of Barbara, and the younger guy who she had been married to at the beginning of the production who asks for a divorce and is never seen again, Bette also has another daughter, an ill one. Mentally incapable of emotional maturity, the girl, at the behest of Bette, lives in a facility somewhere on the east coast. We get two scenes on that relationship in which we see Bette talking to the girl over the phone, and one in which Bette, in her advanced age, goes to visit her daughter long after the “Baby Jane” shoot. They color together and we, for a brief moment, forget how horrible of a human being Davis was to everyone around her.

Probably the best episode was the Oscar-night episode in which Joan sought to undercut Bette anyway she could. With a plan hatched by queen-witch Hedda Hopper, Joan stalked down at least two (I'd have to re-check because I think it was three) of the other Best Actress nominees and convinced them that they shouldn't go to the Oscars that night and instead have her accept the award for them in the case that they happened to win. As Hopper put it, “No matter that you weren't nominated, Joan. You'll be walking away with the Oscar.” And she did. In a great bit of cinematography, we follow the specially-silver-hair-powdered Joan around the entire backstage of the Oscars before the winner is announced to see Joan walk onto the stage and accept the Oscar for the woman who won for the Miracle Worker. And all the while Bette stands just offstage, behind the curtain with a cigarette stomped under heel but her rage still smoking. The funniest thing is, when you look back on it, why be so mad about it? It wasn't like Joan actually won, but all the pictures would show Joan holding the Oscar. Still, Bette lost to Anne Bancroft, not Joan.

And The Winner Is Not...
The series ended with Joan's last curtain call in 1977 when she, alone in her apartment save for her longtime helper Mamacita, died from cancer. But before her death scene came the old “We had a helluva time” trope that has been used so brilliantly in other pieces and doesn't disappoint here. Stepping out from her shaggy gray-haired oldness into the brilliant light of semi-youthfulness (back to around the time they filmed “Baby Jane”, so about a decade and a half earlier), she sits at a table with Jack Warner, Hedda Hopper, and Bette Davis as they discuss how miserable they made each other and how much fun they all had doing it. Neither Hedda nor Jack apologizes for their shrewd behavior against Joan, or Bette, for that matter. And they all instead have a good laugh at their cruelness. Why? Because in the end, such cruelty maybe helped to sharpen the talents of both women as they worked harder to prove the doubters wrong about them while staying relevant in an industry obsessed with youthfulness.

Hedda HopperWhat's my grade? I give it an A-. Does the series have flaws? Of course, it does. It never seemed like we quite finished the “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” story. Joan was out and suddenly, that story was just dropped. Was Bette the toast of the town again? Was Bob in the driver's seat for directing? What happened between he and Bette after that picture? Shrugs!

Even with those few complaints, there was not much else to complain about. You could make an argument that the season was an episode too short, or that it had far more cursing in it than an FX show normally has (we're talking the F-bomb was being dropped about as much as it would have been on HBO. Took me by surprise), or can even make mention that the current age of both Sarandon and Lange, in a comical twist, surpasses the ages of Bette and Joan during the actual filming of “Baby Jane” by about 10 years. However, there's something to be said artistically in getting senior-citizen-aged women (both are older than 66) to play middle-aged women (Bette would've been 55-56 during filming; Joan was 57-58), especially since so often in Hollywood younger women are tasked with playing middle-aged women. I could easily have seen Nicole Kidman as Joan and Julianne Moore as Bette, too, but even they are younger. In all, I liked the choices, and the series was yet another phenomenal entry into Murphy's catalog, even in spite of the fact that this still owes a great deal to the “Housewives” culture seen in reality TV that was rekindled by Marc Cherry's “Desperate Housewives” after the 80s saw the rise of “Dynasty.” Pitting two or more women against each other has become the default go-to trope in order to create strong-willed female characters. This show elevates that to a new paradigm to make a critique on both modern filmmaking and society.

Should you be watching? Yes. A multitude of reasons to watch spring to mind: potentially award-winning performances, great writing, the peel-back into a tough industry, an intricate dynamic between two women, etc. I'd be very surprised if it doesn't win some kind of Emmy or Golden Globe. A very short binge-able season, Feud: Bette and Joan aired on FX. Check FX on demand or I believe it is playing on VUDU or Amazon as well.

The REAL Bette Davis and Joan Crawford 
What do you think? Have you heard about Feud: Bette and Joan? If not, do you think you'll try and catch it on demand now? If you have seen it, how did you like it? Do you think it treated Bette and Joan equally or was one weighted over the other? And what was your favorite scene? And, have you seen “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and/or “Hush, Hush... Sweet Charlotte” and what did you think of the two movies? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary premiering soon on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “We women must stick together. No more biting and cutting each other down. No more backstabbing and—wait! Where's my knife?”(supporting actress clamps knife) 'Uh...'

P.S. OK, that wasn't actually a sign-off quote, but a scene. Don't act like you're confused about it, you got the setup. I'm trying to make this thing short, dang it. I'll think of an actual sign-off next time.

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What The Whatty What? #Legion #FX #FullSeasonReview

What The Whatty What? #Legion #FX #FullSeasonReview
All pictures courtesy of FX and 21st Century Fox

What the hell did I just spend eight weeks watching? Was this a comic book TV series or one really long Rorshach/Breckin-Meyers/AreYouCrazy test, because I'm not sure I passed. This review is coming hella late so let's just get into it already, right?
Legion (#Legion) is FX's and Fox's first step into comic book television programming based on their still very lucrative ownership of Marvel's X-men. Side note: Just imagine how crazy comic book films would be if FOX had learned to expand their properties long ago. Anyway, Legion stars Dan Stevens fresh off his wild success as Beast in Disney's newest Beauty and the Beast (2017). Though never mentioned or given that code name in this first season, Dan Stevens plays the titular character but his current name is David Haller. David has a problem, among many. He is—oh, how do I put this delicately? He's crazy. Like, bonkers out of his mind, “dude, you need to talk to Jesus... or at the very least Dr. Phil” kinda crazy. Or at least he thinks he is. All his life he's been told that there is something wrong with him mentally. This, in a rather brilliant opening sequence on episode 1, is shown through a series of flashbacks where he starts out as a normal child then gradually becomes a ne'er-do-well who robs convenient stores and blows the windows out of the back of cop cars. All that delinquency winds him up in the institution. And this is where we find our sorta/maybe/one-day(?) hero.
David and Lenny Living a routine and regimented life, David wakes up in the institution, takes pills, goes out to the common area, sits with his good friend Lenny and stares at nothing, waiting patiently through the rest of the day until lunch when he can finally have some pie. Cherry pie's his favorite. And really, who doesn't love some good sweet American cherry pie. Mmmm! Oh, his friend? Yeah, Lenny is this crazy Beetlejuice-lookin' chick played by Aubrey Plaza. They love to joke about whether this wheelchair-bound guy's spittle is aided by milk or some other lactic substance. At first, she seems like a minor character, but she gets really interesting.
Things change for the better weirder better... Better-weirder when he suddenly sees a new girl named Syd Barrett. Let me start by saying that I find her rather refreshing. She looks to have a very average body—not overly toned, not fat, not thin. She just looks average. Take offense all you want, but in Hollywood, the land of extremes where you're either plus-sized or waif-thin, seeing a woman with a Midwest body and a gorgeous face is refreshing. Moving on, Syd introduces herself in a group therapy session which seems very ala carte/take it or leave it. Her damage: she can't be touched. David immediately makes her his girlfriend by asking, “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?” They engage in a heated I'm-not-touching-you romance and then we suddenly...
I Suddenly Have a Crush
Zip forward into the future. Here, David sits at a table being interviewed by Clark, a purple-suited fella who works with a very silent partner undergoing permtastic-fro-ness called The Eye. They act as police or authorities talking about an incident that David was a part of. Note that this show, in setting up its format and language plays heavily with both time and space and dreams and memories, so you may very well get confused at times but that's fine.
Holding Hands... Sort of. We zip back to the institution where we see David and the girl continuing their romance until she has to leave and the day of the incident arrives. The night before, David has a smaller occurrence where he finds himself floating mid-air on his bed. The bed crashes and breaks which make the guards upset. They try to confine him to a different room. As they are moving him, Syd gets released. She's going home when he runs to her and, in the heat of passion, kisses her against her wishes. And then we have our first “what the *&$!#” moment. So, as David tells the story in the future and we switch back and forth, he explains that suddenly he became her and she became him. What? Yeah, from here on out, this review might get really confusing if you don't know the backstory of the comic, but I will try keeping it as simple as possible, while linguistically confusing you, per usual.
The incident occurs totally without him. See, he exits the building in her body. Meanwhile, as Syd is stuck in his body, things go crazy. If you haven't guessed by now, both of them are mutants. Her power is body transference through touch. Now in his body, Syd can't handle his massive amount of unbridled power and inadvertently causes the incident. Somehow, she manages to wall off all of the rooms—no doors, no exits, no vents of any kind for any room, sealing everyone in her ward inside. During this, she somehow kills Lenny, leaving her body half-merged within the wall. And you feel really bad for Aubrey Plaza for a minute, but can't focus on things because it continues getting weirder.
As it turns out, her power only lasts for a few hours. David sits outside eating and drinking when he suddenly gets his real body back. Now he's out and himself. On the reverse, Syd is also out but she is not free because some people have taken her thinking she was David. They want David for his power. Drumroll! And his power is...
Amazing  Ordinary Amy and DavidPsychokinesis, telepathy and basically anything dealing with the mind. In fact, it is believed that he is the most powerful mentally-enhanced mutant ever. And he has no idea who he is or how he got these powers. Now, get ready for an onslaught of characters that are all important. First, we have David's sister that he goes to for a brief stay. Amy Haller is his groovy older sister who has been looking out for him since they were kids. She knows some secrets but won't tell them because... well, they're secrets. We have the group of people who wanted to kidnap David and ended up taking Syd: Ptonomy Wallace who is a memory specialist that can remember literally every part of his life; Cary Loudermilk and Kerry Loudermilk who are actually one in the same (more on that later); and Dr. Melanie Bird who also has mental capabilities. They want David to fight a coming war that they are predicting between humans and mutants or other mutants. They want to train him to utilize his power and take his place as the lead mutant, but first, they have to figure out his damage.
Syd, Dr. Melanie, and Kerry
So, through a series of outlandish scenarios, this group, along with Syd, rescue David from the police/authority-looking guys (purple suit and The Eye) because those dudes want both Syd and David. They break away and take David to some place to train out in the middle of the woods. And so the show truly begins and gets to its thrust for the first season. In order to train him, they must first get down to the core of who he is—know thyself so that your pursuits may be true. In order to do that, they have to access deep memories that hide very important pieces of his past and figure out why he always thought his powers were a mental disease. But when Ptonomy starts digging through his head, and David and Dr. Melanie start walking through his memories, something goes wrong. They discover that he has a parasite that is literally hiding and re-writing David's memories. And suddenly your mind is blown.
Ahh. Why You Mad, Bro?That female friend named Lenny? Yeah, actually a fat white dude named Benny in real life. David grew up apparently hating his father because he was always gone. And because of this, David has a memory of a storybook entitled “The Angriest Little Boy in the World” which is one of the memory personifications in which he hid his own dark thoughts. Okay? To review, there is the normal David, there is the Angriest Little Boy, and then there is this parasite, all of them occupy David's head. When in his memories the Angriest Little Boy tries killing him, the parasite stalks him and the group, and David can't ever control what's happening.
I'll be brief here because it actually gets rather repetitive as a series but the group has to figure out how to get rid of the parasite without killing David; the parasite is trying to take over. As it turns out, the Lenny character—the woman he had envisioned as his best friend—is actually the parasite. Don't get me wrong, Benny—the white guy the character is actually based on—does exist. But the parasite, in reality, is this horrific Humpty Dumpty-lookin' mofo that David calls Devil with the yellow eyes. It has to disguise itself as the more palatable Lenny within David's mind. So the question then is how long has this parasite been connected to David. Answer: Almost his entire life.
Probably Spent His Easter Avoiding Being Painted, Hidden, Found, Cracked and Deviled
The Eye and purple suit are still pursuing David and the group, but David focuses on finding this parasite and doing the nasty with his girlfriend. Though not fully in control, David does figure out how to bring Syd into his personally created dreamscape where they can touch all they want. They have sex, it's mind-blowing (ha! Get it? Man, I'm really crushin' the humor) and they quickly become addicted. But when David discovers that The Eye has jailed his sister, he knows he has to go get her.The scientist of the group, Carey does some cat scan and MRI analysis on David's brain to find the parasite. Meanwhile, his other self Kerry goes with the group to try and get answers about David. See, Carey is a mutant who exists as two people. He is an older scientist while Kerry is sort of his sister that most of the time lives inside of his body, but comes out every so often because she loves the action of a fight. She also doesn't age like him unless she is outside of his body. It's cool but very bizarre.
Cary and Kerry; On of These Things Is Not Like the Other
Anyway, somehow the entire group gets stuck inside of David's mind after he rescues his sister and brings her to their childhood home on Lenny's direction. David/Lenny want answers about their parents. Amy finally tells him that he was adopted and that's when Lenny traps everyone back in an alternate reality in the institution. Here, it is important to note that Dr. Melanie has had quite a bit of experience with these alternate reality scenarios as her husband has been inside of one for the last twenty years, essentially Inception-ing himself into an imaginative kingdom/wasteland where anything can happen.
The group must get Melanie's husband Oliver Bird who comes up with the perfect solution to defeat or at least suppress the parasite in David's head. Meanwhile, Syd works to convince everyone back in the institution that this is all fake and they're really trapped deep inside David's mind as controlled by Lenny. Essentially they're on the third dream level of Inception. Yeah, that icy mountain one. Somehow they all get out while David talks to himself to problem-solve what's going on. He figures that this parasite is also a powerful telekinetic and was probably the enemy of his real father who he believes was also a powerful mind-enhanced mutant (side note: his father happens to be Professor Xavier of the X-men but in the comics, he doesn't know about the baby for a long time). David believes that the two of them fought, the parasite lost its real body and retreated into a nearby vessel: David's body.
Naturally, David gets out of his mental prison, saves the group from a machine gun outside, and yanks Oliver Bird out of his dream state. Though Oliver doesn't recognize his wife, he does know he's married. Anyway, one final battle between David and the parasite and it suddenly jumps from David's body into the other mutants, hopping around essentially playing Duck-Duck-Goose with their bodies. It ends up in Oliver's body and he escapes with Lenny in his car. You get the very distinct feeling that almost nothing has been resolved and that this entire first season was a prologue to a greater story. But one thing is good: Syd and David can be together. Or at least they could have had David not been sucked into a tiny snow-globe orb at the end of the first season.
Oh Yeah, Here's Ptonomy. Almost Forgot the Black Guy, Tokening It Up
What is my grade? I give it a B. It's only eight episodes but it does get a little repetitive concerning the parasite. Yet, it still moves fast. It's a conundrum in that little seems to happen, yet it's still entertaining. Maybe that was because I was struggling to figure out what was going on the whole time or because I just got enamored with the visuals, but either way, it had my attention. The entire plot is summed up with: “why are you blocking me from helping you? I'm not blocking you from helping me.” In fact, on numerous occasions, the conversation is literally, “Why are you fighting me? What memories are you hiding?” and “I'm not trying to hide anything, I swear.” It's a trippy series that probably only makes sense if you're really into mental calisthenics or you are really high (I enjoy the mental calisthenics myself). I think it's a series that gets much better upon second viewing after you know everything.
But there are a few flaws if you ask me. The very notion that Lenny got killed at the beginning of the series confused me later when you realize that Lenny never existed. Granted, the language they used there was brilliant as they just said that “that poor girl was stuck in a wall,” and knowing that Syd was literally stuck behind a walled off-door she created from her doing means that could've been the reference. But again, it still had me confused on if that was the intent or not.
Also, when really breaking it down and looking past the clutter, what else happened? I think here it boils down to the question of what you want out of the first season of a series weighted against the length of a single season. With only eight episodes (side note: Writer's Strike here we come. A post on that later) for the first season and just about as many characters, it played well to have much of the writing solely focused on character development. But outside of that, you're going into David's mind, the angriest boy chases, Devil with the yellow eyes chases you, then you're out. And you repeat it the next episode. And the next. But I think what makes the series is its 70s(?) atmosphere and the innocence that both Syd and David show through the process. They are the epitome of girl and boy-next-door that want desperately to be cool and only end up being themselves, which is cool in its own right—Holy crap! I'm totally putting that line in one of my YA books. If you steal it I will stab you in the thigh. Again, the casting here is impeccable and Dan Stevens sheds some of the blond Ken-doll veneer he has shown in films like The Guest and has in his IMDb profile pic.
Should you be watching? Sure. Again, there are so many comic book iterations out there, but all of them are different and go at different speeds. This is far different than Marvel's Netflix offerings, Agents of Shield, and any DC shows on the CW. It's thought-provoking and rich in beautiful imagery. But if you're looking for relaxation “no-brain-work” entertainment, this is not for you. It is not straightforward and the conversations stray off into tangents quite often. It's explorative. But, again, if you like that, this might be good for you. Check it out on FX on demand or Hulu, I believe.
What do you think? Have you heard of FX's Legion? If not, do you think you'll check it out on demand? If you have seen it, what did you think? Is it one of the best new shows this year, or did you tune out after the first dream level? And how many other personalities do you think David really has? And what about that capture bubble at the end? What the heck was that? Let me know in the comments below.
Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary premiering soon on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “Bend this spoon. Soon, you will realize that it is not the spoon that bends, but you.”

P.S. I know it's paraphrased from The Matrix, but I didn't have the energy (too lazy) to look up the exact quote. But David was totally giving me a Neo vibe the entire time. In fact, if you look at, practically the entire first season can be neatly overlaid onto The Matrix. Dr. Melanie (Morpheus), the black guy is that one black guy from The Matrix that didn't come back in the sequels. Though he doesn't technically betray them, Oliver Bird is similar to the Ignorance is Bliss guy in the Matrix (dang it, I can't remember his name). Syd, Trinity—too easy! And David has totally been “living in a dream world, Legion.” And here you thought I was going to include an Inception quote. Tsk tsk! I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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Tried To Think Of A Smarter Headline But The Idea Was #Taken #NBC #3weekroundup

Tried To Think Of A Smarter Headline But The Idea Was #Taken #NBC #3weekroundup

All Pictures Courtesy of NBC

Another lame attempt from me to be kitsch-funny? You know what that means. It's time for another three-week roundup review of a new series. On deck today we have NBC's Taken. So, does the series based on the hit movie capture your fancy, or does it not have the skills to keep your attention? Read more to find out.

NBC's Taken (#Taken), as said, is based on the film franchise of the same name starring Liam Neeson and one of my many Hollywood crushes, Maggie Grace. While we sadly won't see Maggie, we do see a much younger Brian in this prequel series from Taken creator Luc Besson. Hoping to translate the driving verve of the film to the small screen, the show describes itself as “showing us just how Brian got those particular set of skills” used in the films to rescue his daughter and ex-wife before she was brutally murdered in the third installment. Oh, spoiler alert, I guess. Anyway, here we pick up with what looks like a thirty-something Bryan Mills played by Clive Standen. Starting almost immediately with the kick-assery, he is on a train with a younger girl who happens to be his sister. A man stares at his sister as she is beautiful but young. He says something to the guy to warn him off.

Suddenly, he sees two men enter their train car and knows they're up to no good. He whispers how she is supposed to do something that makes a distraction while he goes to check on this guy. If he yells her name she is supposed to get beneath the seats for protection. Note: women, children, and tough guys never follow instructions here. Never! Wimpy men will do it, though. But no woman, scared, strong or otherwise ever listens to the person who deals with dangerous people on the daily. And here it is no different. It's a cliché, but because it shows a woman's strength, it is acceptable. Naturally, the guys are bad, they try shooting her, Bryan kicks butt and saves everyone on the train by taking out the two guys. Everyone except his sister who is standing out in the center aisle while everyone else reacts in a panic. Bryan holds her dead body in his hand as the guy who had been staring at her hands Bryan the card she had been writing for their parents. Now that I think about it, I can't remember why she was writing the card, though I think it was for their anniversary.


Anyway, he already suspects that this was no random terrorist attack, a theory strengthened by the sudden appearance of a surveillance vehicle outside of his parents' house on the day of the funeral. He chases them away but they escape. He knows that he must then get as far from his parents as he can and goes back to his own home.

Meanwhile, a secret group is keeping watch over him. Run by Christina Hart played by Jennifer Beals, the group discovers that the people who posed as terrorists and shot Bryan's sister were associates of a very violent drug cartel boss that they've chased for the last few years. Instead of warning Bryan of this, they are willing to use him as bait to lure out the boss and take him alive. Why? Though they've had many chances to kill him, they need him alive because he is working with a conglomerate of other terrorist cells around the world and they need him to talk, otherwise they'll never find the other terrorists.

As soon as Bryan gets home, this secret group sends out a small team to keep watch over him, knowing that the big baddie terrorist they want has issued some thing about capturing Bryan or killing him. But our guy is too clever not to know this plan. He sits at home, in the dark, with guns in hand just waiting for some punks to show up so he can Dirty-Harry their asses. And they do, and he does. He shoots all of them, fatally killing one or two and badly wounding two more. He gets close enough to one of them to interrogate them face to face, and steal their phone. As it just so happens, that guy seems to be the leader of the group for a reason I'll tell you in a second. Bryan must get the heck out of there and quick as who knows more will come. Meanwhile, the secret group watching him searches his now-abandoned place and sees the dead guy in the back all so they can say this line: “Guy's got skills.” And we all grin and secretly whisper either to ourselves or fellow in-house viewer, “A particular set.”

Bryan escapes to a motel which is cool because the secret group can still track him by listening to his phone calls, but the terrorists/cartel baddies can't. Until Bryan calls one of the other guys associated with his past mission. See, the whole reason that our hero's sister was killed is because Bryan and a team of military officers raided a complex a few years back in order to save a journalist or CIA operative or somebody. The detail is only semi-important. What is important is that the cartel leader's son was in that complex and held a gun to the head of the guy Bryan and his team were there to save. Naturally, Bryan killed him and became a hero. Ever since then, the cartel boss has wanted revenge.Back in the motel, Bryan dares call the guy they saved on that mission and tells him to take his daughter and leave now because they'll be coming for him. The guy argues a little about how he doesn't want to and Bryan says that some guys had come to his place and they'll definitely be coming for him. The guy says OK.

And then things turn because the next thing Bryan knows, that phone he stole from the meanie he killed is buzzing with a text from the guy he just called to warn. The text is about the man being stunned that Mills is still alive. Just to test that he isn't crazy, Bryan texts the saved journalist/CIA guy to find out where “Bryan Mills” is right now so they can go and take care of it. He gets a call back from the man he just warned where he tells the man where he is. The man then texts the baddie's phone the address. It doesn't take long for Mills to show up to the man's parking garage and bitch-slap him a few times, “You told Harpo to beat me? How long have you been working for them?” And the guy is all repentant and saying, you don't know what they said they'd do to my daughter.

Well, some more craziness happens which winds Mills up in a trap and knocked unconscious. He awakes to find himself dangling from a chain with his hands cuffed above his head, torture-style. In the center of a barn, he hangs as armed guards stand around him while a shadowy figure approaches. And this is when I realize that I've either been watching too much TV or this was an overly simple plot or both as I knew who the cartel boss was all along. See, I should've mentioned earlier that the boss was rarely ever seen full-frontal-face, so he could, in theory, walk around public without notice. However, I noticed him right away as he is a bit actor who has been in tons of projects both for the big and small screen. Hardly a star, you would recognize his face if you were paying attention in any meaningful capacity. By now, you've guessed my hint and know that the cartel guy who emerges from the shadows is the same guy Bryan saw eyeing his sister on the train.

Meanwhile, outside the barn, the secretive group is watching everything going on and Jennifer Beals' character has already put together a team to go in and take down the cartel guy. So while the big baddie is explaining how he wanted Bryan to feel the pain he felt by taking away someone special to him, a special forces team is moving in with precision. Before the baddie knows it, Bryan is off his chains, all of his lower-level men have been shot dead or taken out by other means, and Mills is knelt over him about to kill him. He laughs because Mills is the only one who doesn't know that they can't kill him because they need him to talk, remember. But Bryan Mills doesn't care because Bryan Mills is that guy. He tries killing him anyway and is shot by the special forces secretive group.

Part Of The Team
He awakes to a bed where Beals' character lords over him. Hardly a lethal shot, he'll be recovered from the flesh wound in a week or two. But she invites him to join their secret special group whose name they either didn't mention or I was too distracted writing something else to hear. All I know is that similar to Scandal's B6-13 or the MIB or MacGuyver, this team does some of the heaviest espionage and tactical lifting but the bigger, initialed agencies—CIA, FBI, NSA—take the credit. She says that he is a natural-born protector and he agrees and embarks on this new odyssey.

Episode two involves the not-so-mysterious death of a senator who collapses from a heart attack that is suddenly made mysterious by one of Beals' (yes, I'm just going to call her by her real name for the rest of the review) old CIA contacts. The woman is nervous and scared because she knows the secret, but she has to keep moving because whoever killed the senator is hunting her down, too. Inclined to believe her friend, Beals takes a clandestine meeting with her where Bryan is supposed to run sniper-cover, in case the situation gets out of hand and it is a trick. Things go awry when one of the operatives that had been following the woman shoots her dead and her last word is "fort."

Going off of that and off of the guy that Bryan took out and killed (he has a bad habit of killing dudes), they manage to trick two undercover spies posed as hospital staff into trying to kill Bryan, thinking he's the captured team member that will turn. But Bryan gets them and questions them and whatnot. They also talk to the dead woman's husband and he mentions something about fortunado which he thought was a restaurant. Going off that, they quickly solve the case that another political figure/business leader had the senator killed with some kind of new bio-weapon that they also inject him with and threaten to let him die unless he gives a full confession. Bryan has killed a lot of people and he gets a slap on the wrist for that before truly bonding with the rest of the team.

Episode three takes a current-day plot of terrorism and turns it on its head. A Muslim man on a national watch-list suddenly goes missing while playing soccer with his son one day. Believed to be radicalized, they expect a national threat, possibly in D.C., in no time at all. Bryan and the team hop to finding him, first going to visit the wife and child. The young boy is damaged by all of it as he now says he hates America because of the way they treat his father and how they took him. Meanwhile, the guy is actually strapped down with a bomb vest and is set to go off after a little while. But in luck, his son was recording himself doing his soccer moves and playing (for later study), and caught his father's kidnapping in the background. They not only have a license plate but a blurry picture of the guys that took him.

As it turns out, the guys that took the man are actually white nationalists; one of them was even an FBI hero who was hailed nationally for stopping a serial killer. In order to get him to tell them where they hid the Muslim man, they put him in a locked room with his captured serial killer. It's pretty cool. They get to the location but then have to figure out how they're going to defuse the bomb. So, the Muslim guy and Bryan start running around this building looking for a way to save this man. Bryan finally realizes that if they jump into water, it'll fry the circuits and the bomb will defuse. They get to a drain at the very bottom of the building and jump into the water and the day is saved and the people are saved and everything is OK. When Bryan returns to the man and his son, the son is reluctant to shake Bryan's hand but he does and gives him a child's “I'm sorry, mister” look that Dennis the Menace would occasionally give to Mr. Wilson. The boy's and his father's belief in America is now restored.

Meanwhile, Beals has gone to the doctor to discover that she has a grape-sized mass in her brain that could be cancer. She discovers that, in her empty life, she has no one to write down as the contact person for if she has to go into surgery. She goes to the husband/widower of her friend who got killed in episode two and they start to form a bond. It is unclear how much of a relationship, if any, they had prior to this. For me, something doesn't sit right about this man. Maybe he'll just be an innocuous love interest for her so that she isn't screwing some of the guys (and gals) under her command, or maybe he will end up being a traitor. Either way, it's intriguing.

What's my grade? I give it a B. As with most networks, it is another procedural, case-a-week format which does work here and leans credence to the character continuing to develop the particular set of skills. However, it can get boring and blend into the gamut of other cop/spy shows with similar premises. With Luc Besson there as producer, it does have a Taken-the-film feel to it while still maintaining a certain TV show lingo more common to viewers, but it does have its own style, too.As far as characters go, you know everyone's motivations and Clive Standen is a worthy predecessor(?) to Liam Neeson's older, more grizzled character, but there is something missing here. Where Neeson had charm, Clive hasn't shown much yet. Yes, his sister's friend, a black woman who totally has the hots for him, does give him the opportunity to show some kind of charming oaf act that Neeson exhibited when around Lenore. However, during those scenes, you are more inclined to think of when or if she'll die to make room for Lenore who you know will some day soon make an appearance on the show.

Should you be watching? Die-hard fans of the Taken series won't be disappointed with this new, younger prequel even if their whole fascination with the film was seeing an older guy kicking butt. Standen displays the chiseled ire and curmudgeonliness of an older man and looks good doing it. However, if you are not a fan of the films or are a casual TV watcher and want more dramatic less-predictable fare, I would say you might find more engaging story elsewhere.

What do you think? Have you heard of Taken? If not, do you think you'll tune in now? If you have seen it, how do you feel? Is it a worthy addition to the Taken franchise, or in desperate need of re-tooling? And what do you think of that guy that Beals' character is talking to? As always, let me know in the comments below.
Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “Has Jack been kidnapped?”'No, no, Jack's fine. You, on the other hand... I'm gonna have to stab you.'

P.S. You probably don't know what that comes from and are either racking your brain trying to figure out if it comes from TV, film, or a novel, or if I completely made it up just to mess with you. If you were Bryan Mills you'd already have the skills to figure that. Shame you're neither version of Bryan Mills. I'll think of a better, much more clever sign-off next time... or will I? Chances are good that I won't, but we'll see.

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A Spin-off Loaded With TV Veterans? I'm Down #BlacklistRedemption #3weekroundup #NBC

A Spin-off Loaded With TV Veterans? I'm Down #BlacklistRedemption #3weekroundup #NBC

All pictures courtesy of NBC 

Another new show means another review/recap of either the first full abbreviated season or the first three episodes. Take a wild guess of which category this one fits into. Today, we'll be looking at NBC's The BlackList Redemption. So, does this show live up to its suggested title and redeems the middling but still strong plot of The Black List, or is it already DOA and waiting for a double-tap just to make sure? Let's explore.

The Black List: Redemption is the much-talked-about spin-off of The Blacklist which stars the always in high form James Spader, and Megan Boone. In this new show which was set-up as a potential spin-off a year ago, Boone's Elizabeth Keene's husband Tom Keene is the star as he ventures back into his own world of espionage and danger around every corner. For those not in the know, Tom Keene (played by Ryan Eggold) was himself a spy originally put in Elizabeth's life to watch her. Through a few ups and downs and a few times trying to kill each other, they somehow found love with the real people beneath all of the lies. This espionage never quite bothered Tom as much as one would think, due to his upbringing. Though much of his childhood was shady, he did know that he had a mother and father at one point. Back on The Blacklist, he discovered that not only were his real mother and father still alive but that they were both working for this organization called Halcyon. When he found out all about his father, I don't know. But he did and now he sees that his father may need his help.

His father, played by Terry O'Quinn, is Howard Hargrave. Here, the Lost veteran is playing the conspiracy coot that thinks someone is out to get him. Only problem is that he may actually be right in this case. See, he was reported dead in a plane crash a few weeks ago. He faked his own death in order to make the people he thinks tried to kill him that he actually did die. And who does he think is trying to kill him? Susan Hargrave, his wife.

Susan Hargrave is played by another TV and film veteran Famke Janssen. Still looking hella sexy, she plays the widow-now-made-boss of Halcyon, her husband's company. They specialize in practically anything and everything that the government thinks is either too risky or that people who don't want government involvement to truly know about. In other words, they are mercenary spies for hire by any kind of organization, though they do mostly government black-ops stuff. Howard believes that Susan has wanted to overthrow him at the company for a while now and this was the perfect time for her to do just that. He also believes it goes deeper than just her. He doesn't trust her for many reasons and that drove a wedge in their relationship. Another reason they weren't close in the moments before Howard's faked death is that he, unlike her, had never given up on finding their long-lost son—Tom, but they knew him as a different name. Seldom common (usually its the reverse sexes), the father obsessed over finding their missing son who had run away or was kidnapped. At some point, Howard discovered Tom Keen was, in fact, his son. Again, I can't remember when he figures this out, but it's led to some very strange questions.

You Can't Tell Me She Doesn't Want To Jump Her Son's Bones. Granted, She Doesn't KNOW He's Her Son, But...
Continuing, Howard wants Tom to go undercover within the Halcyon organization (Susan already offered him a job last year and she does again) in order to figure out what Susan is really up to. For whatever reason, Tom agrees to do this. I say that with skepticism because Tom is a spy by trade, yet he seems too trusting of his long-lost father here, but I digress.

Tom agrees and goes on the first mission for Susan. A former CIA agent has recently been kidnapped by some ruthless international cartel guy. Very rich, the man has taken both her and her son and is interrogating her over something about other undercover agents and whatnot. They have to get the woman and her child back before she divulges anything of importance to the government.

Meeting the team, we finally sorta see why this show is called redemption. Along with Tom, who himself was a bad guy for a few seasons on The Blacklist, the team consists of other former baddies. We have Mr. Matias Solomon who, fans of The Blacklist will know, tried to kill both Elizabeth and Tom while Elizabeth was carrying her and Tom's baby, and in a church no less. Supa bad guy! We also have Nez Rowan who was also a woman on the run and committing some pretty serious crimes as the FBI chased her around The Blacklist territory. And finally, we have Dumont, the nerdy tech geek that all of these shows need to have him explain stuff and do all the gadgetry stuff. Rarely leaving to go into the field, there's been no talk about what he's done in his past, and I can't remember him making it on Red's Blacklist. With all of these criminals looking for redemption, they come together to do some of the toughest jobs in exchange for Halcyon keeping their butts out of jail and off the various intelligence agencies' radars. Essentially, think of the A-Team or the Expendables but with less buff guys, and seemingly more smarts.


Back to the cartel/terrorist guy, the group decides that the best way to the man is through his woman, a supermodel who takes a daily swim always at the same time in her indoor pool in her beau-bought apartment building (it's New York so it could be a townhouse, brownstone, full-building or a thousand other real estate terms). They bomb the pool, blow a hole in the floor, drain the pool directly beneath her and catch her in a net beneath. They knock her out, take her to an apartment where they put on a little charade that allows her to escape and call her terrifying boyfriend. In reality, they inserted a camera-contact into her eye, giving them video back to them of where she is going, not to mention tracking her movements.

The gangster brings his terrified girlfriend across the pond to a UK castle where he has the woman and child. The redemption gang go over there (usually, only three of them, though Susan goes sometimes) and sneaks through old tunnels that had been built to stave off and escape an attack by Napoleon. They get to the house right as the woman is blooding from her stomach and in bad need of medical attention. The rescuers of the woman and the rescuers of her little boy get split up during the brouhaha that winds up killing practically all the thugs, including the main guy. Tom takes her to the hospital where the doctors have found something strange about her X-rays. He steps out of the room for a second to hear about if they found her son or not. They have and he's safe, but she doesn't know that. As soon as Tom returns to the room, she is gone, escaped out the window to finish the task given to her by the gang guy.

Still believing the man has her son, she goes to her undercover safe house where her fellow undercover CIA agents are. That strange thing inside her? A bomb. She threatens to blow the place up if only to save her son.

Tom and SolomonTom, Solomon, and Nez all show up in the nick of time and prove to her that her son is OK. But the bomb still must be removed and nobody's a bomb expert in the room. Tom gingerly slips it out and snips the wires, saving everyone. The day is saved and the team has successfully completed its first mission. Susan goes to her husband's funeral and talks about how she is still in mourning. Tom goes to his father and listens to the man's paranoid rants about his mother and how he must keep close watch on her because she's up to no good.

Episode two gets even more personal for both Tom and Susan as they are now tasked with rescuing a journalist in some foreign country (I think it was one of the stans). Accused of being a US spy, he was arrested, taking to jail, beaten and forced to record a confession of his guilt, though he swears he is not a spy. Apparently, the ruler of the country is known for doing this kind of thing. It gets personal when Halcyon gets involved. The man's family contacts Susan directly, who takes the case for free as this boy and his family were friends with Susan, Howard, and Tom since the boys were little. In fact, this boy used to be Tom's best friend before he went missing. Though it isn't explored in great detail, Tom feels a certain way about this person from his past coming back into his life in need of rescue. So, they have to get into the country, get into the jail in which they are keeping the journalist and break him out.

Things go awry when they are in the jail and try breaking him out but a guard comes and calls his radio to signal the others. Pinned down in the kitchen, they are almost killed when they can't get the door to the exterior open and their tech guy can't hack the code from halfway around the world in time (what good is he if he can't do that? Seriously). Outside, Nez improvises and hooks a chain from a van to the door. They zoom off with a door rattling on the ground behind them.

To a safe place, the three spies gameplan over what to do next because the entire nation will be looking for them. All they need to do is to get to the embassy which is a few blocks over. They hope to wait until nightfall. But the journalist wants to go and get his research he left back at his apartment building, with a neighbor lady who doesn't know he hid it in her place. It's vital that he gets the story told. The group turns away for just a second and when they turn back he is gone, and you are left to wonder if they're going to do that particular trope every single episode as they were already battin' a thousand, two for two.

Journalist Guy Being Interrogated
The journalist does get his research but the others catch up with him and then the cops start to show and things get hectic. As they make a daring escape through the streets, bullets fly and riddle the cars. The journalist is hit and dies 20 feet inside of embassy lines. A failed mission, they get back to the U.S., and, as it turns out, the journalist was a spy. He was a real journalist being used as a CIA operative who had collected intel on possible war crimes within the country. He died a hero but no one, not even his parents can know about that. Susan does a little hitting on Tom as she has been doing for a while now and things get very creepy (this is how the show Taboo should've felt) as we know that Tom knows it's his mom and she doesn't, but he doesn't spurn her advances nearly hard enough, especially not for a married man. Sometimes, he has this “willing to risk it all” look on his face but it hasn't happened... yet. Strangely, there is actually a name for this, when one family member feels a romantic attraction to another long-lost family member. There have been a few cases in the news in recent years.

Episode three was the most interesting so far to me. The U.S. Government crashed a plane on purpose onto Russian soil (don't worry, the plane was full of pre-dead people dressed up to look like regular passengers. I'm also assuming the plane was either piloted by people who parachuted out or it was a drone). Why did they do this? Because they were trying to get as close as possible to a Russian black site that they haven't been able to map with satellite imaging. They think the Russians are hiding some kind of nuclear bomb threat. But what Keen discovers is that they're really hiding an entire make-believe American town named Independence (funny enough, there is an Independence, Ohio not too far from Cleveland and Akron, though I don't think this was the specific town they were spoofing). This serves as a testing/training ground for Russian sleeper agents to blend into American society more thoroughly. In the town, they must talk in only English, act like, sound like, look like Americans, and they must remain completely faithful to their cover stories given to them by the Russians. Right up Tom's alley, he slides into it easily, along with Nez. While Tom refuses to sex-down his “new wife” in the shower, Nez gets the go-ahead to graduate from the program and become a full-fledged spy on American soil.

But when Nez discovers that the identities given to everyone were of real American citizens and that they are to receive plastic surgery to look more like those citizens, she and Tom must escape and try to stop an imminent attack. One of the other graduates has already gone to America and killed his doppelganger. Now that he looks just like him, he is the new American. They determine that these Russian sleepers have a bomb attack planned to make America think that they've been attacked by their own people. Solomon, who stayed behind on US soil, has all three of the American would-bes shot in the head before they can detonate the bomb. The day is saved once more. But the most intriguing part comes at the end when Tom meets with his father and tells him of this secret mission. See, this case had been started by Howard before he faked his death. It was kept secret even from Susan. Why? Because Howard thinks Susan is from this program. That's right, after the death of their child, he thinks that Susan was somehow replaced with a phony who has been made to look and sound like her but isn't her. Now that is some top-level Mission Impossible type of shiznit. Even more, Susan just got info from a PI that Howard hired before his fake death. She now knows that their long-lost son is alive, and tells that straight to Tom, who still gives no reaction.

What's my grade? I give it a B. While the writing is OK, it doesn't quite have the allure or bite of The Blacklist, season one. Also, it's very limiting in its scope as far as world-building goes. In other words, it relies too heavily on you having to have already been a fan of The Blacklist franchise in order to get it. I've seen all the Blacklist episodes and still got confused on a few things. Worst of all, the characters seem watered down, which is similar to how the latest season of The Blacklist has felt. The hatred between Solomon and Tom should be palpable, but it isn't. Dude, this black guy literally tried ending your entire family multiple times. You should want to kill him every chance you get even if he is on your side now. While Famke is good, Terry O'Quinn is neutered, kept to the confines of a tiny apartment where he must live out his days as a presumed-dead crackpot. So far, we've only seen glimpses of him that haven't amounted to ten full minutes over the course of three episodes. And, as mentioned earlier, you don't know why Tom is so trusting of this man over and above his mother who wants to jump his bones. There has yet to be a good dilemma scene where he assesses both sides to see who is more believable as both have called the other crazy for believing (or not believing) their son's existence. It almost makes you question why Tom is in such demand from Susan in the first place as he doesn't seem to be that great of a spy (Elizabeth was fooled but it didn't take long after Red came into her life and she officially started as a field agent for them to be at each other's spy throats).

Should you be watching? If you're already a fan of the Blacklist, sure. It's a worthy supplementary series to The Blacklist while it is on its winter/spring hiatus. But if you aren't already a fan of The Blacklist, I can't see what this show might have to actually offer you. It's certainly not groundbreaking spycraft, so... I'd say maybe check it out one episode just for Famke and tech nerd Dumont, but otherwise, I probably wouldn't recommend it.

What do you think? Have you heard of NBC's The Blacklist: Redemption? If not, do you think you'll check it out now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Was I too rough on it or is it in big trouble like Dembe is on The Blacklist? And who do you think is telling the truth, Susan or Howard? As always, let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “Is this where I find redemption?”'No. But you can get two calzones for the price of one.'“I'll take that, then.”

P.S. What? Calzones are delicious. Ad with malls across the U.S. Suffering, who knows if I'll ever be able to visit another Sbarro and get me a pepperoni and cheese-stuffed calzone. Mmm... Calzone! I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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If You're Lost You Can Look And You Will Find Me #TimeAfterTime #ABC #3weekroundup

If You're Lost You Can Look And You Will Find Me #TimeAfterTime #ABC #3weekroundup

All pictures courtesy of ABC

The time has come for yet another review/recap of a new show. This time, we're going after NBC's Timeless ABC's Time After Time (#TimeAfterTime). So how does the newest time show stack up to, uh, the other time shows? Is it a fun romp-hop across the twisted rocks of time's great river? Or is it just another show that'll one day have you saying, “Remember that one time where, like, there was this show and, uh... Dang it! I can't remember what happened,” kinda show (gosh, that sentence was terribly worded)? Read on to find out! NOTE: I was slacking on my posts and while I wrote this weeks ago, I didn't get to post it until the show was already canceled, sorry. I also didn't edit it.

ABC's Time After Time follows the exploits of two time travelers as one chases madly after the other. Why? Because one is a historical serial killer: Jack the Ripper. Now, before I go on (I know, it's only three sentences into the review and I'm already getting off on a tangent? Yikes! This is not a tangent), I must note that much of the advertising for this show is actually misleading but in a somewhat good way because they don't bury the lead. The lead, the draw, the thing that really is supposed to pull you in is the fact that one of the time travelers is the notorious late-19th, early-20th century killer dubbed by newspapers as Jack the Ripper. However, what most of the commercials and promo material did not tell you is that the guy who is supposed to be his best friend on a quest to stop him is none other than... H. G. Wells. That's right, literary legend H.G. Wells, writer of such books as The Time Machine, The Isle of Dr. Morneau and The Invisible Man. A young version of him (pre-publishing fame), in this fun and twisted account, is best friends with a man named Dr. John Stevenson, a surgeon in 19th century London. Played by Revenge's Josh Bowman, John or Jack (you see how clever they are? Honestly, I know it's a little cheap, but I would've made the same joke myself) is charming, dashing and also deadly, not to mention sleek enough to look like a man who is intelligent enough to adjust on the fly. He is also the complete opposite to H.G.

H.G. Wells, played by Freddie Stroma, is somewhat of an awkward-looking baby-faced hero. Honestly, the guy often has a shocked expression on his face that looks closer to a child who has just learned that he got that number one best toy for Christmas but his parents forgot to get the batteries. His child-like dismay speaks nothing of his overall intelligence, and had me asking whether the character is like that on purpose or is Stroma just very... British. I know, that's probably offensive. But, for whatever reason, the man plays younger than he is. But this is all excusable as you get more used to both characters.

We open the series in the yellow-tinged streets of London. A night filled with young women ripe for the picking, John does exactly that. He sneaks a willing woman into an alley and stabs her to death in the most brutal—yet, surgical—of ways. He then sneaks off into the night to H.G.'s home. Wells, playing host to a few men who were happy to entertain his fanciful predictions about the future and his dream for a Utopian society, waits until his friend gets to his home before telling all the men of his latest project outside of his books.

His latest project, as some might guess, is a time machine that looks similar to one of those submarine exploration pods that you saw at the beginning of Titanic. It has a chamber window, some buttons and levers and other stuff. But, Wells points out, the most important part of it is a key and key hole that control it. Now, the way the key works on first thought is very simple, but when you see the machine in practice it becomes a little more complicated because you start to think about it. The machine can work without the key, OK? However, the key, when used, allows for the user of the machine to dictate if the machine stays where the traveler has gone. Without it, the machine will snap back to the time from which the traveler originated. Got it? I'll be explaining it again once we start time traveling.


So, all of the other men save for John/Jack dismiss the time machine as foolish and wishful. But Jack wants to know how it works and all sorts of things. As Wells is explaining it, the men are called back upstairs. The police have come in search of the ripper as he has struck again, and the body is still warm enough for them to know that his latest kill happened moments earlier. They're searching all the homes within walking distance. The other men are quick to leave while John/Jack slips back down into the basement. While the cops start to search Wells' house, they stumble upon the good doctor's medical bag he left at the door when first he entered. It contains a bloody blade used by Jack. They all hear a boom, rush down to the basement and find it empty of both John/Jack and machine. The cops think he escaped out the back door and rush back upstairs to find him while Wells stays, flabbergast that his invention worked. And then boom!

Not explosion boom but abra-cadabra boom. The machine reappears and thrusts Wells back as it lands back in its same place. Without hesitation and thinking nothing of that maid woman, he gets the key, hops in, reads the date to where John/Jack went, and goes there himself. The machine's viewing window freezes over, as I guess traveling through time is cold (I've got to brush up on my theoretical thermal dynamics). In any case, it makes for a rather cool reveal as he wipes at the frost to see that he is in... our times, of course. Where did you think he'd go?

Wells fumbles out of the machine with the key and lands smack in the middle of one of New York's great museums in March of 2017, in his own exhibit of all things. He looks at the guided tour group, sees the banners of an older him hanging from the wall, and eyes the many depictions of things and characters from all the books he had yet to write. All fascinating and awe-inspiring his bedazzled eyes don't last long as he is quickly escorted away by security to the office of the assistant curator. Enter Jane Walker played by the lovely Genesis Rodriguez (probably best known from Identity Thief). Jane is the assistant curator who finds Wells cute and charming because... well, she's an eligible bachelorette in modern New York City, and have you seen some of the guys on the dating scene in NYC? She also finds his 19th century chivalry—after he apologizes for assuming that he needs to talk to a man because she's a woman and she can't possibly be in charge—rather charming. She informs Wells that he is just as bad at this as the other guy that came through before him and that whatever stunt they're pulling is not going to get him any free publicity. She thinks he's part of some period-piece play on H.G. Wells. They throw him out and he gladly goes because he has to find Jack.


Meanwhile, Jack is having himself a ball in the city. He hasn't any money until he finds a pawn shop and pawns his own watch that is an “antique” and in “mint condition,” so much so that the pawnbroker could swear it was just made a year or so ago. They negotiate a few thousand dollars for it. Jack, the sly devil he is, then goes to a nearby hotel where he uses the cash, his charm, and that velvety British accent to persuade the front desk attendant to bypass the credit-card-only policy and work something out for him to get a room. In no time, he even has visited the store for some new duds.

Meanwhile, Wells has tracked Jack through the city to the hotel. He gets there where the woman tells him he can wait for his friend in a nearby bar. Jack returns and the two talk about how crazy the future is. Wells has sat at the bar and watched the destruction happening in the world and can't believe that his prediction concerning humanity and technology evolving so much that they would force us into a Utopian society has not yet come to fruition, and reality couldn't be any further from the truth. In fact, the closest that humanity has gotten to utopia is a New York nightclub named Utopia—a den of sin and dancing (NOT a strip club). Jack makes the argument that not only is he returning back to the 1800s but that the future is precisely where he should be. We appreciate the violence, the viciousness the barbarism that lives within his heart. In his “time I was an amateur. Here, I haven't even begun.”

Things get tense when Jack finally calls for Wells to give him the key to the machine so that he can have the machine and travel to any time he wants just to kill. Wells refuses, they tussle and Jack gets a running start on Wells. The would-be author chases him out of the hotel bar where a taxi promptly runs into him. Jack escapes while Wells goes to the hospital. The only thing found on his person, Jane's business card left in his pocket leads the hospital to contact her. She comes because, again, have you ever tried dating as a single woman in New York? Still injured and woozy, Wells thanks her for her kindness and keeps to the story she assumed of him: that he's a member of a new play. They leave the hospital together where she stretches her compassion-for-stray-puppies syndrome to the max and invites him to her place just to clean up because he looks out of sorts and might still be suffering from the hit.

Back at her place, they talk some more about how she got to New York from Texas to become somebody and have great adventures but still hasn't had any. He gets washed and shaved up and she even gives him something to eat. They talk about her single status and he thanks her for letting him stay the night. She then shows him the gift her Texas dad sent her: a gun. Come on, people! Have you ever been to Texas? After a good night's sleep, the news shows that John/Jack has actually committed a murder at the Utopia nightclub and wrote “The Key” on the wall. Wells finally tells Jane that he is the real Wells and that is his real time machine in the center of that display and that the guy who did the murder was actually Jack the Ripper. She doesn't fully believe him but they have this semi-magical trip to the museum during after-hours where they walk by a space exhibit not scheduled to open for three days. They get into his time machine, go three days into the future and walk back to the exhibit which is all built and put together correctly and she suddenly believes. She totally reminds me of Jasmine from the film Aladdin about ten seconds into that first magic carpet ride. Eyes all aglow and crap!

And then the stuff gets placed in front of the fan. Again, the crap hasn't fully hit the fan, but it's in the best position possible to give that fan a really good smack (wait, that is what that saying was always referring to, right? A pile of sentient crap smacking a fan? And it would have to be a Lakers fan, too, right? Because they're the worst). If you haven't guessed it, some idiot carelessly left a newspaper around that showed the headline of the Ripper now known as The Key killer claiming his third victim who just happens to be Jane. And your mind is blown because you're thinking, “Holy crap! In the future we'll all go back to reading newspapers instead of getting our fake news online?”


Now, they have to get back to three days in the past and stop Jack from killing her three days into the future by using even more newspapers. And then you're thinking, “Where the hell did they get all those newspapers from before they went back in time? Because even though there are still NYC newsstands, they zoomed ahead in time and got to the museum three NIGHTS later. Those stands would've had to still be selling one and two-day old papers late enough into the night for the museum to be closed but still early enough in the day for people to want to know what the hell happened yesterday that they missed out on. Then you realize that those are probably the ransom-date newspapers that movie kidnappers have their victim hold up in a picture to the cops to let authorities know the victim is still alive, or they're the newspapers that that crazy bird man that lives in apartment 4 lines all of his 22 birdcages with because those exotic birds gotta piss on somethin', why not it be the New York Post.”

Anyway, they discover that the second victim has yet to be killed, so if they can just catch him in the act where the body was found they can stop him. They find him on the roof of a club somewhere about to kill another woman when they run out and stop him. He then holds the woman hostage. He and Wells tussled and one sliced the other but it was fine. Jack ended up escaping back into the night once again. And grammarians are losing their shiznit realizing that I just changed tenses in a paragraph.

Jane and Wells return to her place for the night where they are already falling into this weird domesticated routine. She says some stuff about how they'll catch him and how she has to go to the bathroom, leaving him in the kitchen to figure out how to feed himself. But of course John tracked them back home and kidnaps her, writing on the bathroom mirror about the key. He takes her to another apartment. Impatient people will immediately jump to asking, “Where the hell did he get this new apartment from?”

Moving farther into the second hour of the two-hour premiere, we find that Jane has awakened in the strange new apartment which belongs to a woman who Jack seduced into letting him come up to her place, and now has tied up in her own bedroom. He plots to kill the woman if H.G. doesn't deliver the key to him in timely fashion. Jane plays his game of stalling and regales him with stories of Jack the Ripper and how he becomes famous, but technically he isn't famous because he is never caught. And because he is never caught, no one ever knows that it was him who committed the murders.

Now knowing that he receives no credit for his invigorating experience, he sets out to rack numbers by killing as many people as he can through all of time. He also wants the exaltation that is due him. While he's about to explain something sinister, Jane bops him over the head with a coffee table bowl that, for some reason, didn't in the slightest look heavy enough to me to knock him unconscious, but that's exactly what happens. He falls to the ground, she goes to untie the other woman and they try making their escape to the front door.

Slow-moving and hardly cunning enough to escape the killer, Jack catches them, Jane tumbles down the stairs but is OK, but looks back up the stairs only to see the other woman back in the ripper's clutches. Being the good-girl she is, she goes back up and waits. Jack then separates the two women and, for some unexplained reason, pretends to stab the other woman before leaving, scaring the crap out of Jane.

Meanwhile, H.G. Wells is having a night all his lonesome. Before he can get halfway down the street to find Jane, he is confronted by a black woman who knows all about him and his quest. How? He's visited her before when she was a young kid in college—his future, her past. Vanessa Anders, played by Nicole Ari Parker (like fine wine, she is), is not only the owner of the H.G. Wells exhibit at the museum (she owns the time machine and everything in the touring exhibit) but she is supposedly his great great granddaughter, though she's seen no proof of this. She even shows him a letter he wrote to himself and gave to her in order to prove this anomaly. Unfortunately, it's very short and says nothing, but because it's in his handwriting, it must be true.

Still, they have to find and save Jane. So, while Vanessa is busy getting the time machine moved from out of the museum to her house, Wells tries piecing together how they can free Jane, and why he traveled in time multiple times in order to warn Vanessa about his coming in the first place. Clearly, something bigger is happening. But right now he has to worry about Jane. And as it so happens Ripper calls, and tries to set up an exchange meeting: Jane for the key.

They try this meeting twice: first in broad daylight, which goes awry because Vanessa's people, the ones Wells swore he didn't need and didn't want following him, interrupted the exchange, causing Jack to get away. The second meeting was in the museum where the time machine still sat, not yet moved to Vanessa's house. This, too, went wrong and could've gone worse because after a security guard tasers the doctor (Jack had a knife to her throat and there was a scuffle that could have easily gotten someone stabbed or sliced) Jack gets up, takes the guard's gun and shoots him. He escapes the museum. Fortunately, Jane is safe again.

But there's another strand. Let's backtrack to just after the failed park meetup. After Jack fled Vanessa's people and Wells, the latter started walking through the streets of NYC alone. At least Wells thought he was alone, until he bumped into this military-looking big dude. He notices that the man seems to take the same turns he's taking, following him block after block. He stops to ask the man if he is following him, but the guy says no, and the trusting Wells thinks nothing of it. Here, you partially get a sense of why he looks so boyish: he's meant to look more innocent than smart. He's like a Richard Castle (of Castle) but less wit and grown-man confidence/swagger. More on that later, but back to the military guy. At the end of the two-hour premiere episode, we see this military man back at his apartment (or it could be a mission house. Not sure) with a stalker's wall with pictures of both Wells and Jack dating back to the first day of their arrival. And the plot thickens more than a Louisiana gumbo.

Episode three, if you can call it that, starts to settle into the backstabbery (no pun—wait a minute... yes, pun very much intended) of the series. While it has yet to become something close to a procedural, which is good, it does seem to head that way, which is fine so long as they continue their jumbling of the genre. On this episode, while Wells, Vanessa, and Jane (who has fully committed herself to her first true NYC adventure) all fuss with trying to make the time machine Ripper-proof and have it snap back to Vanessa's house no matter if Jack has the key or not, the ripper is busying himself with one of those snazzy ultimatum plans. Jack says that if they don't hand over the key and the machine, then he'll kill someone else in a matter of 24 hours. Here, just like with the key, things on the primary level seem reasonable. OK, he's going to kill someone if he doesn't get the key. They should give him the key, or they'll be responsible for someone's death. But when you think about it, he's going to use the key to kill more people anyway. He's already stated as much. So, why then would he, a bona fide smarty-pants, think that this plan would work? Don't know but we all go with it because it continues to keep the show going, and go it does!

Wells and the gang crack the priceless gem at the center of making the time machine work. Without it, he couldn't bend space-time and travel through it. In luck, Jane used to date a gemologist who deals in the rarest stones on earth. They go to him to repair their cracked gem. While there, they run into the military guy. The military guy had a brief visit with his mother earlier in the episode where he told his ailing me-ma that she was right about Wells and Jack the Ripper coming through time. His job is to kill both of them and he goes to doing just that. He shoots at Jane and Wells as they make a daring escape through the gemologist's building and back to Vanessa's place.

Meanwhile, Vanessa is dealing with some drama all her own. See, Vanessa just happens to be extravagantly rich, we're talking Oprah rich. But it wasn't self-made—she inherited it from her parents—and she seems to be rather uncomfortable with her wealth. As power and wealth only marry equals, she is dating and engaged to a past astronaut, future senator (he's still running) who she hadn't told the full truth until this episode. When the team gets the gem back and puts it into the machine, they display it for him and he sees how it disappears and reappears, and is amazed. But once he has some alone time, he calls into some shadowy organization and says that he now has more access to the time machine. Aw snap! Guy totally knew all along, and sounds sinister.

On the other end, Jack/John looks for his next victim. A man that likes to play with his kill before dinner, he strolls through a street market in his fresh new clothes (a suit he stole from one of his victims) and bumps into a woman who happens to claim the profession of psychiatrist... or psychologist, whichever. I know one actually goes to med school. Anyway, it's not that he seduces her, but that she entices him that leads them on this all-day informal date around the city. They sit and talk about how it is to be in the medical profession in their respective fields. She thinks surgeons are all ego and power-of-god-in-my-hands arrogant, and he doesn't argue against that but makes it a more pinpointed philosophy about how he loves the thrill of the life-or-death scenario of surgery. For a while, you think that he might not kill her and instead keep her around while he kills other women. But at the end of the episode, he takes a knife and is committed to filming himself killing her. Completely sweeping aside the question of, “How the hell did he learn to use a smartphone so fast,” we watch as she comes into the kitchen to kiss on him some more after their coital passions only for her to stick him with a needle before he can stick her with the knife. He falls back, she takes the knife and says something about how she thought he might've been going soft for a minute before he passes out and awakes strapped to a table. Apparently, she and whoever she works for, has also been expecting him and Mr. Wells. And the plot goes completely crazy.

What's my grade? I give it a B, leaning toward B+. OK, a few qualifiers here. First off, again if you are too prissy in your viewing habits and will only watch something extremely highly rated or completely historically accurate, then, first off, TV ain't for you. As someone who loves history, there is no show that is ever completely historically accurate. They always get something wrong. But more importantly, the way in which you view a particular time period that you haven't lived through is based solely on the books you've read that originate from and are about that time period. Be as pissed as you want to be, but anger gets to be unfounded when people haven't read the same history that you have.

Also, remember that NO ONE is the end-all, ultimate authority on time travel. I don't care how many books you've read on it or how many movies you've seen about it, until it is real, and one can experience it for themselves, we have no idea how real time travel would ever actually work. Maybe you have to be going super-fast, or maybe you don't have to be moving at all. Maybe you have to go through a black hole or something. Again, we don't know. Hell, we've never even seen an actual black hole, yet fools will sit around and say, “Oh, well this is how a black hole works.” No, you don't know how it works. You have a theory, not a scientific theory, a theory theory, one that is not proven nor highly accepted and can't be tested. Earth was the center of the universe was highly accepted as fact for a while, too, and not just by religious zealots but by scientific minds. So, again, there is no authority on time travel, save for what you are and aren't willing to believe.

With those two qualifiers out of the way, there are still a few things the show totally miffs on. First, the business with the key makes little sense when you sit and think about it long enough. To review, the machine is, essentially, tethered to the time from which the traveler departs. So if Jack left from 1893, then the machine will take him to 2017, before snapping back in time to 1893 when the key isn't used. The first thing here is that we are unsure on whether the key must stay in the machine or not. Does the key just have to be in the keyhole (it'd be wrong to call it the ignition) when you travel? But even then, it's still flawed. Because while this may account for the time jump and the machine staying put, it doesn't account for the spatial jump, nor for the traveler and non-machine jump. Confused? Well, of course you are because it was confusing language, but let me explain.

So, when both Wells and Jack jump, they end up in the machine but during modern times. No, that doesn't mean that the machine is transported to modern times, but that just they are. This is the traveler-non-machine jump. Just the traveler technically goes through time, transporting from one machine in the 1890s to the machine in 2017. We know this because this machine, while it is technically the same one, is on display in New York City. So this would mean that either the machine jumps or the person jumps, but for the past person to end up in the future machine, makes you wonder where the heck is the past machine? This is less akin to Back to the Future and more akin to the films About Time or The Time Traveler's Wife where the person is traveling back in time and not a full machine. This is actually a big dilemma because of the main thrust of the show and the feature of the key.

If the time machine that is displayed in the future is the one that Wells originally built in his time period (again, this is forgetting the fact that apparently no one in all those years thought to see if it worked), then what would Jack need the key for in the first place. In theory, if he can jump through time and always end up in a different time period inside of that time period's machine, then he wouldn't need to worry about procuring the key, you see? For example, the machine must exist in, say... 1980 because it exists in 2017. Even if it wasn't fully restored then, wouldn't he be able to jump back to 1980 and end up in that time period's time machine just as he did when he ended up in the 2017 version? And if not, then there would be technically two time machines out there both in whatever time he jumped back to and in 2017. That, on its own, is enough to make you wonder. However, with the speed at which this show has been moving with the twists and turns, this issue may very well be addressed later in the season when they are slated to go to other time periods.

Moving on, I find the actor who is playing Wells too boyish. I understand the man is 30 or turns that this year, but he doesn't play like that, and I think that's mostly due to the directing. He plays like a nerd and not a good, new-age nerd. This reminds me of a younger Castle as mentioned above, however he doesn't hit the marks that castle does. There is no charm there and what is there doesn't translate into a connection with the character. It's rather funny, because through the first two-hours (two episodes), I thought he was American playing British, because his accent and many of his mannerisms seemed fake. But then when I found out he was British, I cringed, because I also discovered that Josh Bowman (the Ripper) is also UK-born and pulled off a fantastic WASP American on the show Revenge a few years back. And while both gentlemen have good resumes, Bowman's work on Revenge probably helped him more as he seems much more like a fun villain who will become more charming and unhinged as the series continues. His suaveness is also possibly influenced by the fact that the Ripper is such an open canvas on which to paint. He gets to create the character from scratch while Wells is an established historical figure. Still, Wells, as our hero, seems off. Though, I will argue that maybe he has a little chemistry with Jane (Genesis).

Should you be watching? This is a tough one. For once, I believe that ABC has premiered a new series on its proper night. While this could easily slip into the 10pm time slot on Mondays that Castle held for so many years, it also fits perfectly into the 9pm hour on Sundays where it currently airs. I also like its pace, something which I actually took a mark off of Timeless for as the first episode seemed to throw the whole bowl of spaghetti at the wall (but I adjusted and still enjoyed the show to its end). Also, there are other time adventures to look forward to and you can do a lot with this concept and it looks like they will. However, there's so much mystery revolving around the main thrust of the show that it is difficult for me to recommend this to anyone who is looking for anything more than PG-13 escapism. If you'd rather not have the blood and guts of Walking Dead and want something that's just going to be more fun than heavy, then this might be for you. But with so much of our most esteemed entertainment going dark and heavy with themes of tragedy and whatnot, it is difficult to see where this will fit in the crowded TV marketplace. But this is on ABC, the Disney-owned network. I would say that if you enjoy Marvel movies or Agents of Shield (not the darker, more DC-oriented Netflix shows) then you will probably like Time After Time. Catch the first three episodes at ABC.com or on ABC on demand on your cable provider.

What do you think? Have you heard of Time After Time? If not, do you think you'll check it out now? If you have seen it, what did you think? Am I being too hard on the show? Or do you hate it? And what do you think is going on with that military guy or that female doctor who is holding Jack captive? I personally think she might also be a serial killer, an admirer of sorts. Anyway, let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “I don't have time to learn how to program this damn clock!”

P.S. I was going to go with more Cyndi Lauper lyrics, but I decided to do something original. Well, that flopped. Now I guess I understand why Generation X is so obsessed with making remakes or sequels of everything they saw as a child. Oh, you didn't know? It's OK, because I didn't know either. Yeah, Time After Time is a remake of a 1970s film of the same name. Originality, we hardly knew ye. I'll think of a better sign-off next time... after time.

P.P.S. Now that the show has been canceled, I actuallly feel for it. While it had plenty of flaws, I actually thought ABC might have stumbled onto something that could've been good. Oh well.

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Taboo? I Probably Should Feel Ashamed But I Only Feel Sleepy #Taboo #FX #Post-mortem

Taboo? I Probably Should Feel Ashamed But I Only Feel Sleepy #Taboo #FX #Post-mortem 
 
All Pictures courtesy of BBC and FX
For the love of all that is right, why? Why? Why, Tom Hardy, did you choose this project of all the good projects out there? Sorry, I'm jumping ahead of myself here. It's mid-season and another mid-season show has just ended its limited run. You know what that means: a snarky and snide review/recap of the entire season. Yaaayyy! What of Taboo? Is it a show you need to go online or to your cable box on-demand menu, and binge-watch, or does Taboo not even reach the highest of tawdry, let alone dip a toe into the pool of a salacious scandal? Let's find out together—well, not together. I already know and you're reading it, so... You know what, you get how this works. Let's go!!
FX's Taboo stars Tom Hardy as James Delaney, a prodigal son returned to Britain to roam the filthy streets of London in 1814. He returns under inauspicious circumstances as he has come home to honor the death of his father. Thought dead himself—killed in a sea voyage or made into barbaric animal of sorts—the shock of his return is felt throughout most of the city as it has far-reaching implications. Son to a wealthy man, Father Delaney died still in the ownership of one of London's premiere shipping companies. The company goes everywhere from the recently revolutionized American states to east India to Africa (we all know what they're doing on that continent). At first assumption, the company would go to his half-sister Zilpha Geary played by Oona Chaplin (yes, she is the granddaughter of Charlie). Of course, in those days most inheritances still went to men, so the company would technically go to Zilpha's posh-whipped husband Thorne Geary (I know posh didn't really exist back then, but follow me here). That is until James returns to exact his Monte Cristo-ian revenge upon those he felt wronged both him, his father and his “wildling” mother. Oops, did I say wildling. Sorry, that's Game of Thrones, the show that Taboo tries to be. Let's continue, shall we.

There is also Sir Stuart Strange played by the always committed Johnathon Pryce (funny, he actually played the high priest/prophet guy on Game of Thrones), who heads up the East Indian Company, a rival shipping company (we're talking about THE premier shipping company of Britain at the time; yes, they're real) that had hoped to buy out and/or destroy the Delaney company outright. With Thorne Geary already in their back pocket, this would've been very easy to do, until James returned. And, uh... that's about it.

Look, as far as plot, it is very simple: man returns to get some revenge. After that, there isn't a whole lot of intrigue. Yes, there are plenty of pseudo-side stories that, for me, never got interesting but there's so little plot to me that actually connects that it starts to make you wonder why this was so long. Every episode of the eight episode series is an hour and a half long, which, frankly, drags the story out to excruciating lengths, but if that's what you have to do in order to get it on TV...

So, to the side stories. The first is that his father had a mistress/supposed wife he met up in the far country up north... or south, I can't remember. They got married in secret and she only shows up after a few episodes to try to stake claim to the Delaney home and business, which is actually in debt. But if you're looking for some kind of Avatar/Braveheart fight between the two of them on who owns what, look elsewhere. Upon learning that she wants the property and the business, James sorta shrugs it off and says we'll discuss it when the time is right. Does he try to throw her in a dark, dark wood? Nope. Instead, she says I want the house and he invites her to stay in the house with him. What? Welp, OK. He figures he can protect her from, and might need her as ally against Sir Strange, but even her “helping hand” doesn't materialize to anything substantial until the final two episodes where she is both tortured a little and half-helps clear his name.

Speaking of the last two episodes—three, really—another subplot forms in which this scholarly black gentleman pops up and starts conducting an investigation into the sinking of an East Indian Company ship. The ship was, at the time of its sinking, carrying a cargo of slaves, though it was not supposed to be, and had briefly changed its name in order to take the illegal shipment. He wants to know who ordered the slaves on the ship and why the vessels sank the way it did. What was most interesting, however, is that Delaney was on the ship—one of the reasons why he was presumed dead. But even though they have this mystery/investigation as a plot device, they never quite do anything with it. The black guy asks a few white men some questions, they give him that look of “dude, really? Come on. You black in the 1800s,” and he smirks back like, “but I'm also educated and have never been a slave,” and that's about it there, too. Americans With Guns
Then we have the side plot about the Americans, which, frankly, I didn't fully understand. So, there's some American spies who want to disrupt Britain's business and its continual spread as an empire, and I guess they're fighting for some land in America before the Brits get it, but even with that, eh! Knowing my history, both the revolutionary war and the war of 1812 or Mr. Madison's war had taken place and America had won both. So why they are trying to mess with Britain in any way is bizarre to me. More over, it was the French that we bought the Louisiana territory from, not the Brits, so... I don't know. I'd have to brush up on my history again, but, to me, it's similar to after WWII when America and Britain shifted to look at Russia, instead of Germany. We had just beat them in two wars, why keep looking at them? Same here, America beat Britain twice. Why look at them again? Even more to the point, the East Indian shipping company was said to be the one with spies in reality, almost like a pre-CIA or MI6. Wouldn't it, then, make more since for them to be spying on the Americans... in America? I don't know.

INSERT FILTHY COMMENT ABOUT BROTHER-SISTER LOVIN'
Finally, the one side-plot that I'm sure many people first thought of when reading the word Taboo, Delaney wants to sleep with his sister again, as they had quite the affair before he left. But even that is tame by comparisons of other shows we've seen as of late. Game of Thrones used the plot device in the most vicious and memorable way. Even Cruel Intentions had its twisted incestual plot device always lurking over the characters actions. Here, however, I could take it or leave. It felt inconsequential and, to me, the show proved exactly that when, on the finale, his sister kills herself after they had screwed like mad dogs on episode six or seven. Even the male-rams-butting-heads that Delaney should've been with her husband Thorne came to a soupy climax, the flavor of violence and hatred muddled as Delaney made another friend of the man. He spared him in a pistol duel after the East Indian Company set Thorne up to fail by giving him a gun with no bullets. It was like watching those new Steven Seagull movies where, instead of kicking ass, he settles things reasonably, and you're like, “What? Dude, Under Siege that son of a gun! At least Under Siege 2 him! Gah!” SMH.

And then, if that's not the worst of it, his sister kills the man so she can go and sleep with her brother with impunity. And the way she is so giddy about having killed her husband and how subdued Delaney is, you think, “Wait, we might be in for some kind of naughty Fifty Shades of Grey here. She looks like she wants to be punished. Finally, I feel ashamed watching a show called Taboo.” Nope! You get it not! In fact, after one and a half episodes (which, was maybe a week in show time) Delaney casts his sister's affections aside in some half-noble belief that she should have a better life than he will give her at the moment, and how he's destined to die and he needs to keep with his pursuit of villainy, and yadda yadda yadda. And because she can't have anymore brother-meat (ooo, that's nasty!), she hurls herself off a bridge while her voice-over waxes poetic about how much she loved him and how she hopes to meet him in the afterlife. Again, she resisted him with a lover's longing in her eyes for at least the first three episodes before hopping on his lap and tempting him with one of those, “This is what you want? Well, you'll never get it,” that all film/TV vixens do to the men right before giving up the drawers. Here, it only turned into an eye-rolling “come on” moment because of the characters' lack of real power or character outside of the two men in her life.

Even considering her death under the microscope of Delaney's revenge plot, it makes little sense. I know that I never got the notion that he wanted anything other than to sleep with his sister and make her his again, so any revenge exacted upon her comes as a hollow twist: there to try to keep your interest but serving no meaningfulness to the plot before or after.

Sad to say but for me, the last episode came in somewhat of a blur, and I hardly remembered it. I do know that, after being captured, imprisoned and questioned about what he knew about something dealing with the Americans, Delaney said virtually nothing. The whole sinking of the slave ship thing got resolved because somehow Father Delaney and Sir Strange had given orders to put the slaves on the ship and did some stuff that inevitably led to its sinking, leading the black guy to go to Delaney's house, up to his study, see a letter and give that all-too-familiar magical negro nod when the main white character has done something good. He even says, “Justice!” And we're all like, “Oh! That's what this whole thing was about: Justice! Of course. I totally get it now.” There's also a huge set-piece shootout with explosions and plenty of deaths down at the harbor, but even that I couldn't quite figure out because, again, it had something to do with the historically confusing American plot. So, some redcoats started shooting at the undercover Americans that tried to undo their business; Delaney, who is on the American's side has ordered this chemist (I'm actually fascinated by him because I think he'd make a great 19th century Walter White) to make bombs and explosive powder which he does; Delaney and his men use it to escape. But along the way a few people die including a male cross-dresser that had been helping Delaney, and some other people. Delaney, along with his father's secret wife (you just knew they were going to sleep with each other and I can't remember them doing such), and a brothel madam all escape on one of his ships with full crew on board.

From there, you have what is common in shows and films like this, a double-ending, in which two poignant moments follow one after the other, either one an acceptable ending on its own. Bare with me for I can't remember which comes first but I think it is the Delaney one. Delaney is seen on the ship talking to what we can only assume will be his first mate who asks about the guns and the explosives and whatnot that was supposed to be for the Americans. Delaney tells him that they have to go somewhere that sounded Spanish to me, so I'm guessing somewhere either in South America, or, um... dang it, where else do they speak Spanish. Wait, it'll come to me... No, I can't think of it. He also tells him that—surprise, surprise—they are the Americans, and we see a grand old flag raised on the mast, replacing the British jack. Here, I guess the show is trying to make some salient point about how Delaney may have been an American the whole time and how he personified America ruining the British world empire, but I'm not quite sure if that point is adequately made. In any case, I don't think it has the impact the show wanted it to have. But we do get this amazing view of the sunset before them as they sail away. All this to set up future possible stories.

Our second ending is the simplicity of one final get-back where Sir Strange sits down in his office and his secretary brings him a letter/package of some sort. Naturally, he sits to read it, opens it up and BOOM! Yes, it was from Delaney and his chemist, and was a bomb. The end. Oddly, I rather enjoyed this quick end to the frail haunt that was Sir Strange, because, while he was good, he wasn't all-time evil or manipulative.


What's my grade? You really have to ask? I give this a C-, and that is only because I know how some people like the slow-build of things and I do think Tom Hardy was captivating every time we saw him on screen. Also, the show is a visual masterpiece in its 19thcentury grunge-bleakness. So, you definitely have something to look at. However, there were so many things that I didn't enjoy about the series that I couldn't overlook them all.

First, as said, the main plot is simple and should be easy to follow, and it is, however, unlike in some iterations of Count of Monte Cristo, this revenge plot meanders and fizzles rather than pops. Though he says his intent outright a few times, we never get a sense of the evil of the men who betrayed him. Yes, they technically killed his father. Yes, they hated his mother because she was different and was some kind of witch, supposedly, but we don't ever get a flashback scene of what exactly they did to her or what his father did to her. I say that knowing that the show delves (albeit briefly) into this sorcery and poetic imagery because Delaney is seen multiple times doing some kind of craft himself, communing with his deceased mother in the wild. Even his sister is shown at what can only be described as a 19th century exorcism, yet there is no scene where they show the horrors we are supposed to believe these men may or may not have committed, creating a lack of character connective tissue with the audience.

Speaking of, all of the characters were both muted and mooted, in my opinion. This is a show that relies very heavily on its visual pretenses, which is good for a visual medium. However, it does that, in many cases, to the detriment of the viewers if you ask me. There's more dead silence or people wailing than there is snappy, crisp, memorable dialogue. Truthfully, the only time you do remember some dialogue is when it comes just before some sex, like Delaney's demand that his sister take her dress off NOW, or when it comes at the end of a character's arc. Even worse, half of the show is whispered, something which I absolutely hate about period films. I don't understand why people in Victorian-era and down to 1099 AD must always whisper-mumble everything. Is everything a secret? Do people think we only just recently developed loud voices? Gah! It drives me mad.

As for them being mooted, no one makes a point to really stick out here, or do anything worth writing home about for that matter. Again, to compare it to Game of Thrones, everything the entire season inches closer and closer to a penultimate and ultimate episode that leaves you breathless and chatty. Here, most of what happens had me shrugging so often because the characters don't seem to develop in any way. There's no taunting of the pull between doing good and exacting revenge. Most of the scenes are anticlimactic because Delaney isn't even there when a great deal of the people die and he never has an evil laugh about it all or even a good “that was satisfying” smirk, either. Do something, man. Act unreasonable for just a second. For instance, when his sister admits she killed her husband so she could get some of that nasty brother-lovin' his immediate reaction is not to rip her clothes off right then and there like he wants. No, instead he goes to check on the body to make sure the man is dead, then makes plans to have the body removed. What? But... but... Whatever, dude! I would've even settled for him ripping all her clothes off, having her ready for him, and then him whispering something mean in her ear about how she can't have him, then leaving. Bwahahaha! That would have been deliciously sinister, not to mention would have set up that demanding encounter where they do have sex all the more rich. Instead, this fool acts far too reasonable, even politely suggesting that they shouldn't have each other now. Where's the backbone. He even viciously slices a guy to death during the day and can only muster a look of “well, that happened.” It's maddening.
Wearing a Hat, Talking to a Horse. Life Goals!It's a series that runs too slow where it feels like nothing happens, though there is stuff happening, and where at least five full minutes of each episode is dedicated to watching Tom Hardy walking around 19th century London in a black coat and top hat. In fact, it should have been called Man in a Black Coat and Top Hat.

Should you be watching? If you weren't before, then I'll say you shouldn't now. Look, I am always apologetic for having certain opinions because I know how tough it is to be a creative in this industry, and I also know how so many good shows today don't get good until later seasons, but I can't for the life of me understand how this show is so highly rated on IMDb, nor how it has been renewed for a second season. The only reason I see for its renewal is that BBC also aired it in the UK and it must be a hit over there—maybe it's more tuned to British entertainment sensibilities—because a hit it was not over here. Again, I know that some TV shows take time to adjust and really get their rhythm and catch on, but at a cost of 10 million dollars (or it might have been pounds which is even more expensive) for the first season of eight episodes, I can't fathom making changes that will boost this show to the level of a West World or Thrones or even Mr. Robot. You can catch the full first season of Taboo on FX on Demand on your cable provider or online at FX or BBC.com.

What do you think? Have you heard about Taboo? If not, do you think you'll check it out now or stay away? If you have, what did you think about it? Am I being too tough on the show? Is it one of your new faves or does it deserve to be canceled? And what did you expect from a show with such a name? As always, let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “You are a woman in need of a serious spanking. And I just so happen to have a strap for that. ”
P.S. Could they have fit a line like that in? Yes, of course. Did they? I mean, come on! I thought Taboo meant something people didn't discuss, something against regular standards and practices. If the show had focused on one thing, rather than a bunch, maybe it would've been something special. By the way, that line is actually from one of my books, A Negotiation of Sorrows due out winter 2018. I'll think of a better, more PG sign-off next time.
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A Joyous Skip Down The Yellow-Brick Road This Ain't #EmeraldCity #Post-Mortem #Review

A Joyous Skip Down The Yellow-Brick Road This Ain't #EmeraldCity#Post-Mortem #Review #Recap
 
 All pictures courtesy of NBC
Sigh! Well, this kinda thing seems to happen far too often these days, but at least we give them a chance, right? So, we've reached the mid-season/winter-season finale or spring-season premiere—hell, I don't know what networks are really doing with all these mid and full season finales—again. That means that outside of the awkward and clunky sentences like above (I promise you far better sentences in my books and other works, though, no promises!), we also are slated to get a new crop of mid-season replacement shows here to keep us busy with the TV watching and the obsessing and the complaining about how terrible networks treat their fans and their shows. Doesn't that sound like fun! Yahhh! (Howard Dean voice; hopefully my last political reference for this season ending in May). So, amongst all the new shows such as Taken, 24: Legacy, Training Day, blah blah blah, we had what could have been the crown jewel Emerald City (see what I did there?) that promised us one more heartfelt trip down that yellow-brick road. But did it reach the heights of that sparkling somewhere over the rainbow, or did it swirl and bluster and leave us to feel trapped under a house—er, in the house for the winter. Let's journey together to find out.

NBC's Emerald City (#EmeraldCity) starred Adria Arjona as Dorothy Gale, our whirlwinded-wanderer who only wants to find her way back home. I commend them both for making the character older (a shrewd move so it could have sexy parts) and for making the character Latina (something I hate when they do just to fill a minority quota or something, because if they make a white character non-white, they'll definitely start making non-white characters white). Adria was a pretty good choice looks-wise and did have a certain innocence quality to her as a grown woman that could make the viewer feel for her at times. However, much of that was undone and I'll tell you why later.

You know the story, or at least you think you do but let me clear up a few things for you here. Being an adult, Dorothy now is a nurse at a local hospital. While I am still a little shifty on this, I think she lived with her mother in a trailer, though she was also seen sleeping at her Aunt's farmhouse as would be familiar. In any case, during a big storm she must go to the trailer to check on her mom. Something crazy has happened there and the place looks out of sorts. As the storm comes, Dorothy goes back outside to find a cop holding her at gunpoint thinking that she did something suspicious. The cop's dog also gets involved. There's some action-y stuff that goes on and somehow Dorothy winds up in the cop's car along with the dog. Do we see a big whirlwind taking them into the sky? No. We see the wind surround the car, a few close-ups I guess for low-budget TV purposes (though it came on a major network, so...) and boom! The tornado spits her out into the great land where blue birds fly. Disclaimer: I saw not one blue bird in the entire series. Rather than the house landing on the witch, the car plows through her and, thusly, our story is born.

Take Our Land But You Shall Never Take Our Free--Oh, you're taking that too?After this, Dorothy emerges from the car and some hairy, fat, Braveheart-looking dude finds her and is all, “You killed the Mistress of the East.” He takes her back to his village which you totally expect to be filled with Munchkins from the lollipop guild, but isn't, and you're suddenly feeling bad for all those little people actors and actresses in Hollywood, until you realize that this is a twist on everything.

Before I go further, let me inject a big disclaimer here as this will undoubtedly come up later. L. Frank Baum, as many know, originally wrote a full series of books surrounding Oz. They were, essentially, the Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter of his day and he worked his butt off to promote them. However, we all know that the most memorable two are The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz which were squished together to make the classic 1939 film version starring Judy Garland. There, however, were seven or nine books or more but I haven't the energy to properly research (I'm flogging myself for being too busy and too lazy). Each book detailed another part of Oz's story and all the goings-on in this mythical land. Well, there may be a reason why many of those stories never made it to the big screen or TV in a meaningful way, and why the original movie is so beloved.

Also, I mention this because while the books have been out for over 100 years, sad to say that I don't believe many people have read the series in its entirety, and most only remember the Judy Garland film and more recently the Sam Raimi-directed, James Franco-starring Oz the Great and Powerful. Therefore, certain characters that might first appear familiar to viewers really are not familiar at all. If you're only familiar with the film, you'll say that they changed a lot and probably not in a good way. Even if you're familiar with all the books you still might not find the show's interwoven stories reminiscent of what's on the page. But this is what they gave us so this is what we shall go with. From here on out, I will do most of my references through the lens of someone who expected to see a different telling of the familiar story as seen in the 1939 film and not the books, while peppering in some truths only the readers would know. Got it? Good.

Back to the non-little-people village of Braveheart wannabes. The fat guy hails her as a pseudo-hero for having killed the witch, then quickly half-turns on her because as he and everyone in this land knows, “Only a witch can kill a witch.” But she insists she isn't a witch so he takes her to some cave where there are a ton of witches trapped in a strange tar bog dying a slow death. He rambles needed exposition (always forgivable this early in a show or movie) telling her all about how this land is one of magic but magic is outlawed and it could've gotten her home. There are witches but they no longer do anything because the land is under rule of the great and powerful (wait for it)... Wizard of Oz. Ta-dah!

The Wizard and his Blue-Bonnet Servant Girls
And we're all like, “what?” Yes, we know the wizard doesn't really have powers from all the different iterations, save for that strange The Wiz live one where Queen Latifah looked like Benico Del Toro in Guardians of the Galaxy. Yet, somehow, he was able to (un)magically get these giant stone soldiers to move around the city and guard the lands from what was known as The Beast Forever, which the show totally shoots itself in the foot over at the end. Like a baby with an over-flowing poop-filled diaper who has been running around the entire house unchecked for 30 minutes, it's a mess! (Tangent: Did everyone see that video where the reporter is talking live and his kids come in and then his wife frantically runs in? #JoysofParenting). Now, for whatever reason he has outlawed the use of magic after thinking that it somehow led to or attracted the Beast Forever and the witches' magic proved useless during the attack. The tar pit with all the witches in it has some skinless red guy growing in a tree along with Fat Braveheart's wife who was put there for being a witch. Oddly, she was put their by a witch, the very one and the same that gave Dorothy such a headache in the film.

The Wizard is played by fan-favorite Vincent D'Onofrio who seems to have gained back every pound he lost when he trimmed down for that last Jurassic World film (not mad at him. Get yo' grub on, playa!). What does offend me is that outrageous wig that is so clearly a wig it deserves a spot in the hall of fame next to that cheap rug worn by Chevy Chase's uncle in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. No curtain behind which to hide, he's the frightened leader of Oz who rules with iron fist after having a pathetic life back home in Kansas. His back story: he was one of the four scientists working on a storm-cloud science machine. The grunt of the group, he saw to it that the machine they had to make storms (yes, you heard that right) didn't go out of control. It did and it sent him and two other female scientists to the land of Oz. When first he arrives he encounters Fat Braveheart and his wife. The guy's witchy woman does magic while he's teaching the kids science and he gets pug-faced and upset. But there are hints all over the place in this scene and throughout that foreshadow what really happened, so long as you're paying attention.

Also living in the city under his rule is the Wicked Witch of the West, or rather Mistress of the West, or more aptly, Crackhead Non-threatening Hoe-house Madam of the West. Harpo, who dis lady? Played by the eccentrically gorgeous Ana Ularu, West, as she is called, never lives up to any of the pictures we've all formed in our head of the Wicked Witch. She's not green yet, which, if this was supposed to be a prequel story, you can understand. But she also never comes off as all that menacing. The way her character is written and directed has her trying to be sly, but not devil-sly, so she never creeps you out like an oily snake. Her drug use and nagging to and about the Wizard unfortunately (and boy will this sound sexist) comes off more as a nagging wife, an Al and Peggy for a magical realm, rather than true hatred. She oddly does more helping of every pseudo-protagonist in the realm than hurting, and the only thing frightening about her is her lack of true sinister appetites.


As said, she runs a brothel frequented by the Wizard, yet supposedly hates his guts because he not only ordered no more magic, but has a stone soldier positioned over the witches' sacred temple in the center of town, ready to destroy it on command. She blames him for the destruction of so many witches and the fact that not her nor any of her sisters can bare children. He also was responsible, supposedly, for her mother's death. With him frequenting her sin den, it makes you wonder why she hasn't simply killed him already. There truly is nothing stopping her from doing that. Yes, the people, who hail him as hero would revolt but... uh... they don't have magic, so...? The only reason I could truly come up with for her living in the city and doing nothing to this man she truly hated was the one that the show either wasn't brave enough to do or never saw it as a possibility, which was that the two of them were, at some point, sleeping together and she still had feelings for him or something, or they loved to get high together. Again, why has she not killed this man and is living in the city alongside him? Why?

This fact and theory is made even more painfully obvious when, in the finale, she raises most of the witches in the tar bog in order to fight the Wizard and retake the kingdom, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Now that I think about it, all of my biggest disappointments with the show came from the witches. Glinda, the Good Witch was, in no way, shape or form a good witch. Played by veteran actress Joely Richardson of Nip/Tuck fame, if you ask me she is the real Wicked Witch. For starters, her crackhead sister is really only there to serve: serve the Wizard, semi-serve Glinda, service the men and women of the town with sexual deviance. Glinda, on the other hand, is her own woman. While she also gifts the Wizard with many orphaned servants that look like blue flying nuns, she also is the partial catalyst for one of the bigger secondary plots. She is also trying to kill the Wizard and reclaim witch dominance and has an actual plan to do it, as opposed to her sister who just lies about and luckily has a plan fall into her lap in the last two episodes of the 10-episode mini-run. More on Glinda and her wickedness later as I have to give you some plot and catch you up to her deception.

But Where the Brick At Dough?
Back to Dorothy, Fat Braveheart tells her that the Wizard could maybe get her home so she should go see him and follow this DIRT road that is covered over with the shed, yellow blossoms or pollen from poppy plants. Along the way she meets a man hanging up in a field crucifixion-style, tarred down and with a crow sitting atop him. Our “scarecrow,” or at least that is how viewers may see him, surprisingly has no memory of who he is, and has cuts and bruises all over him beneath the tar. Played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who, given the right part should make a fine leading man, the scarecrow, or Lucas, immediately bonds with Dorothy once she bothers to take him down from the cross. But as soon as they are each freed, the Wicked Witch of the West pops up to agitate. Surprise, she survived that car hit.

Which of these three women looks like she slays every day?
The best designed character on the show (we're talking, she slays like Beyonce), the Wicked Witch of the West is still alive and, as it turns out, she controls the weather with some ruby and gold gloves. Dorothy, who left the police car not only with a gun from the car but with the cop's dog who Fat Braveheart named Toto because that's the indigenous word for dog there, points her gun at the woman. The witch quickly takes it and wonders how it works and what it does. In the most ignant (not ignorant, because that word is too good for it), ignant (double ignants? Oh boy!) move I've seen so far this year, the witch turns the gun to herself and curiously pulls the trigger and blows her own brains out under Dorothy's direction. Thusly, a witch kills a witch. Then, Dorothy magically gets the golden gloves, which go invisible on her hands and only pop up through the serious at the most convenient times as Dorothy has no power over them for much of the series. Her and Lucas go merrily down the road to Oz to see the wizard for a new brain—er, his memory back, and to get home.

Finally, along the way they run into a house where is kept a boy locked away by magic. Way on the outskirts of the city, an old witch is keeping this young Indian (at least the actress looks Indian to me) boy trapped in a house whose door is a thicket of dead bushes that only opens at magic's command. Tip played by newcomer Jordan Loughran, has a friend outside of the house that runs to him and talks with him about escaping. Tip's friend, Jack played by Gerran Howell looks like a nervous lot whose background is mostly unknown, dubious at best. He plans to hack at the bushes to somehow free his friend, until Dorothy and Lucas come along.

The unfriendly witch keeping Tip prisoner caves to Dorothy and Lucas' pleas of help and food and all that jazz. She begrudgingly lets them into her house where they discover she is keeping Tip as prisoner. And, are you ready for this because here is where the story gets crazy, in an act of heroism, they beat the witch to death after trying to poison her. They all escape into the wild where Tip tells them of how the woman would constantly make her drink this strange elixir everyday which she thought made her weak or something as she looked small, thin and frail. Tip and Jack part ways with Dorothy and Lucas and are left on their own in the woods for the night.

Jack on the left and Tip on the right, being Just One of The GuysDid you catch it? You reading closely? No, that subtle change in pronouns in the previous paragraph wasn't on accident. That's right, the very next morning, after Tip has not taken the elixir that the witch had given her, it is actually revealed that the elixir was a magic spell to keep her as a boy. Tip is actually a girl. Now, before some of you more conservative-thinking readers get up in arms about them “fitting a transgender message into the Wizard of Oz,” let me note that Tip and this storyline are actually part of the original books. However, unlike the books, while Tip does still want to be a boy and sets out on a journey to the wizard to try to reclaim her real body and not this fake girl body she was born with, this Tip seems more evil throughout the series. For starters, as soon as Jack sees her ample cleavage in the moonlight and starts thinking “how you doin'” (yes, that's a Joey reference. This whole story is nothing more than a twisted play on Friends) to his once male friend, she rages on him when he goes in for a kiss, and pushes him off a balcony where he plummets to a bloody fate. Fear not, however, for a white, lady scientist who works for the king of Ozman has the mechanical know-how to Bionic-Man his butt into a partial robot. At this point he could be the tin man or he could be another character in the book, but he does have a few times in which he rusts in the forest and is saved by the King's daughter who owns him like a slave and falls in love with him.

Got the characters? Good, because from there, it kind of slows into nothing much. Again, I know how difficult it is to keep a series going and make it interesting and move it along, but once you have the basics of the main characters, you are left too much time wondering why they're wandering for so long. Dorothy and Lucas encounter a young witch girl that can turn people to stone or make stone crumble. She gravitates to Lucas for reasons unknown until all three end up in the clutches (read: helping hands) of West who, instead of killing Dorothy for revenge against her dead sister takes all three into a strange dream state to help Lucas remember what happened. He remembers that he was part of the Wizard's guard, had been secretly smuggling young new witches for Glinda and had nearly slaughtered the guards that got in his way. West realizes that not only has Glinda been lying to her, but that their mother, the only witch that could ever birth a witch and who had given birth to over thousands of witches (total Holland Tunnel down there) is still alive. Now she's more pissed with even less of a plan as she still doesn't see her sister about joining a rebellion against the wizard. Yeah, It's The Sexy Times!!Dorothy escapes, so does Lucas. She sees the wizard but to kill him. He tells her that she has finally returned. Apparently, she was born there as her mother was one of the two female scientists that came with the Wizard when they transported in their strange weather machine. He'll help her so long as she goes to kill Glinda. She agrees, gives him the policeman's gun, and instead takes the little girl and Lucas to see Glinda in hopes of somehow stopping Glinda? I'm not sure what the plan really was there because it seemed like the Wizard expected the little girl to hug Glinda and turn her to stone and I'm like, “what? You're leaving this whole evil plan up to the power of a child's huge? Uh... OK.”

Not entirely true, he seeks to make guns and commissions the king to do it, but the king dies from the little girl who can turn people to stone right before her and Dorothy leave. Now, the King's daughter and owner of the tin man is queen. Her quirk: she wears hundreds of different expensive masks to hide her face from the world. Why? Is she ugly? No. As we find out later on the finale, she is actually a robot. The king's real daughter died long ago and the king wanted a robot of his daughter (because forget his wife and son) and commissioned the white scientist lady (the same who patched up Jack/Tin man) to make a mask for her to hide her never-aging face, to which I was like, Why not just make a new flesh-like face that showed some age? But whatevs!

This Little Girl was the Best Part of the Show
The Wizard wants to use those guns to kill the witches because he heard that she was killed by a gun, not knowing that she shot herself. It all becomes tedious and murky when Dorothy, Lucas and the little girl arrive to Glinda's and the good witch kisses the would-be scarecrow to break her own forgetfulness spell, and reveal that they were lovers, and he was transporting those little girls for her as he secretly worked on the rebellion. But once she realizes that Dorothy is in love with her man, Glinda orders that Lucas kill Dorothy because, you know, jealousy and stuff—all the trappings of a good witch. But Dorothy tries to kill her with some white sheets, escapes the white witch castle and is back on her way to Fat Braveheart's village after finally realizing something: The Wizard had no magic to move those stone warrior men throughout the kingdom, but Braveheart's wife did. So she wants him to help her get his wife from the tar pit because she thinks she can use the East witch's gloves to move the stone men again. Why? Shrugs.

Meanwhile, Tip, who has yet to come to grips with her feminine body gets sold to Glinda who will treat her as an orphan but doesn't know who she is nor that she is a witch. Instead, Tip chooses to work at West's brothel because she'll have freedom or some other existential crap. As maid to West, she frees Dorothy and blames it on the loyal head maid to West. Naturally, West believes the treacherous boy/girl newbie over the long-trusted servant and kills that woman in a scene that was supposed to make West seem more evil but only made her look gullible and made Tip look like a true evil genius.

It's a Mask, so... Yeah. Not Enough Magic For Talking Animals After West and Tip witness the round-up of all little girls in the city and the persecution of them as possible witches, which includes a very stupid scene of West keeping a fiery young witch girl in a pit while whining about how cruel the Wizard is, a dagger comes from out of nowhere in the last two episodes. The dagger makes West realize that Tip is not only a witch but the long-lost daughter of the true King of Ozman who was slain long ago when she was a baby. All Tip can remember is seeing a lion slice into her parents. The lion was and currently serves as the head of the guard for the Wizard's army. West has Tip drink her dead sister's spirit to learn her magic spells and it kills her. Distraught, West then attempts suicide before Tip resurrects and feels no different. There's a short scene of Tip learning how to find the true essence of her new magical abilities and she turns back into a boy in the process—what she always wanted since escaping the house.

West gathers her some witches from the tar pit and seeks to take the city from the wizard with a now back-to-girl Tip who should be Queen of Oz. In luck, and to make her even less meaningful to this story, the Wizard isn't even in the city when West and Tip arrive with their witch hoard. It's a pretty easy battle.

For Perspective, the guard has the spear, and the rest is cityInstead, the wizard and his guard and the guard from the robot queen are all lined up in a field outside the city walls because Dorothy was able to get Fat Braveheart's wife to give her the spell to raise a statue—this only after Dorothy freed her from the pit and helped that skinless red man stuck in the tree who had been there longer than any of the witches and was still surviving. Back in the field, Dorothy confronts the wizard and just wants to go home as she had to defeat Lucas and leave him on a cross in some farmer's field somewhere after he tried to kill her as Glinda ordered. Glinda comes from out of nowhere and attacks with a literal swarm of witches, but the Wizard starts shooting them all, and howling something about using the guns to finally kill the Beast Forever, and you stop and are like, “Huh? Does he think that the witches are the actual Beast Forever? Did he never see the Beast Forever? How many times did this show make Baum roll over in his grave?”

Glinda calls him an idiot for thinking the witches were the Beast Forever and has all the bloodied witches rise again as she says, “Only a witch can kill a witch,” which was the BIGGEST RULE OF THE SHOW!!

Almost Forgot this picture of Jack After He is fixed by the Scientist Lady. The Wizard and Dorothy escape back to his castle where he has promised to put her back into the restored weather machine that brought him, her mother and that other scientist there but they are interrupted when the same white lady scientist that fixed Jack/Tin man arrives and shoots the Wizard. Then it's revealed that this white lady is actually Dorothy's mom and not the minority woman that looks Latina just like Dorothy back in Kansas. Hm. Welp... OK, I guess ( and here you thought I was just being racist by mentioning her being white; yes, I know how interracial relationships work but it was a poor twist that came from nowhere and for no reason). She shoves the girl into the weather machine and says she'll return with her but doesn't because Pa Kent must die in a tornado, or um... My bad, I got my senseless plot twists about people living in Kansas mixed up. She stays because why not?

Dorothy returns to find that it has only been a few minutes—hour tops—since she's been gone and her other non-mother mother (the Latina or Native American woman) is still alive but bleeding in the storm cellar. She takes her to a hospital, sits with her aunt on the farm, sees her aunt's black-dark hands and looks out into the empty field. Now, at this point, I couldn't be bothered to try figuring out the black-fingered symbolism so if someone knows what this refers to, let me. But we do see Lucas suddenly standing behind her and a returned Toto who only appeared throughout the show at his convenience. We flash to Oz where we see that skinless red man putting on some skin that looked like clothes and morphing into the real Beast Forever and menacing all of the magical land with a bird-like shadow. And back to the farm where Marty McFly says to Dorothy, “We gotta go back, Doc! Back to the land of Oz!” Or... something like that.

Here's Those Perfunctory, Meaningless Gloves That Showed Up at Random and Served Little Purpose
What's my grade? I give it a C-. I know this 10-episode recap was lengthy but at times the show seemed to drag out more, if you can imagine. I can appreciate what the writers and creator/director Tarsem Singh tried doing, and I always try to give at least 50 points out of 100 for effort, but this didn't hit it for me. Straight out of the gate you got the mixture of fairy tale wonderment like that of ABC's Once Upon a Time, trying to blend with HBO's Game of Thrones to create a more adult-oriented story. The problem here is that too seldom are the characters made to be more than what you see. As said, everyone seemed evil at one point or another, which made it difficult to root for anyone. Instead of elevating a classic childhood movie dating back generations, it managed to rip all of the joy, excitement and wonderment from the material, while also not having a very poignant message to tell. If you're going to make something dark, make something that speaks to humanity about its experience. This was an adventure without fun and adventure.

No, this isn't the final image of the show, it's how I feel: both confused and a little tarred. As I said, the characters are rather bland and none of them hit the marks you expect from them. The Wicked Witch ain't wicked; Tip comes off as bratty; because of his memory loss, Lucas not only has little personality but falls in love with Dorothy way too quickly (by the third episode their skipping around holding hands? What?); Glinda, though her intentions with the witches may be good, seems evil; The Wizard is definitely a bastard (though you can make the argument that he is closest to his original character). But worst of all is Dorothy. While I haven't seen Adria in anything else and I look forward to more of her work, here, she is given nothing to work with. The entire series she looks like Kristen Stewart in the Twilight series, no facial reactions whatsoever. Is she floored by this magical experience, left breathless at the performance of magic? Eh! I think it probably greatly came from the direction, because she travels through the series with an air of, “Oh, and then this happened,” that elicits nothing of the emotional matrix we should see her going through. So when she does kill, it only comes as a shock to fans who still see Dorothy through crystallized memories of Judy Garland's hopeful but dismayed film version. Emerald City's Dorothy comes off as flat as the pages in Baum's book.

Should you check it out? Eh! Wasn't going to mention this, however, this series had originally been scrapped by NBC back in 2014 or 15 and went through a development hell of its own before NBC caved and said they'd air it, but give it a crap time slot on Fridays at 9pm. Granted, it had the lead-in of Grimm, which had thrived at 9pm for two seasons and is now on its way out with its final season. This, was just OK. If you come to it as a fan of the Wizard of Oz films or come looking for a familiar story or even come looking for a bright fantasy, I suggest you look to Once Upon a Time. Emerald City tries to be Game of Thrones and doesn't quite hit the mark. It will, however, tide you over in the off-season of that show. Ultimately, I would say that unless you are a fan of darker interpretations of everything from your childhood, you can probably safely skip this one. Unless it surges in on-demand binge views on Hulu or cable, I doubt this'll make it to another season with its lackluster ratings.

What do you think? Did you see Emerald City? If not, do you think you'll check it out on demand (on both NBC.com, most cable providers, and Hulu)? If you did see it, do you agree with me? Did it do L. Frank Baum proud or did it miss the mark on many levels? And what did you think about the characters? Who was your favorite. While I hated West, I think I might actually have a crush on the actress. We live in confusing times. Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments below.
Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series #Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “You mean to tell me you couldn't fit in not one single song? What's wrong with you people.”
Image Belongs to Pink Floyd and the current holders of the Wizard of Oz 1939 rights.   
P.S. Seriously, though, the frickin' Flash and Supergirl are going to have a musical episode but they couldn't fit in not one road song betwixt Dorothy and Lucas and the girl, not even a lullaby to the little girl. Sigh! At least they fit in that blink-and-miss-it reference to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Rainbow. I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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You've Been Played Once More #Inauguration #Trump #Brexit #2017 #President

You've Been Played Once More #Inauguration #Trump #Brexit #2017 #President



Congratulations, America. No, congratulations to the US and Britain. Actually, congratulations to the world (including Putin and that North Korean mole-rat), you all fell for it. Again. You, the citizens of this troubled but potentially great world, failed to heed the warning of so many that have for years talked about those who are really in power. Most specifically, you failed to believe me when I wrote a lot of truth in my own novel The Provocateur. No, this is not a promotion of that book. And no, I don't want to go into the details on why I wrote it as a fictional novel, but I will say that the Provocateurs are real, and that yes, they did choose me to write that book for them. Why? I don't know, but I do know that they have the control. Of what, you ask? Everything.
For years, rumors of a small group of people who control or are trying to institute a “New World Order” have been researched and studied, theorized on and about, given countless names and monikers, said to have been associated with the elite or wealthy or governments big and small around the world. People were led to believe that so long as everyone woke up and paid real attention, they would see that we have been fooled. Far be it from me to be the person or voice you actually believe in, but it is real. And for those who voted for Trump, you fell once again for their tricks. For those who voted for Hillary, you also fell for their tricks.
But how could that be, you ask. It's quite simple really: the group really in power, The Provocateurs are the ones who choose the winner. ALWAYS! In fact, they run pretty much everything and even now are effecting and affecting you and your future. Let's back up and review some of the things told to me for the book.
Who are The Provocateurs? One is quick to jump to other groups, names and secret societies that have circulated the internet for years. “Oh, that's just another name for the Illuminati or the Knights Templar” or some other conspiracy theorist group—pick your poison. Don't get me wrong, some of that information is actually true, but a lot of it is misinformation that the Provocateurs release in order to mock anyone willing to believe in it, and to make sure that they have control of even those people that think themselves enlightened, “out of the box” or “awake to the truth” thinkers. The most recent rumor about the Illuminati is a cute bedtime story, but The Provocateurs they are not. To call them such would be to undersell the power of The Provocateurs, as well as the history of the group. They've been around not for centuries, but for millenniums.
So they're the rich people, right? Those Rothschilds and whoevers, or its those leaders of industry. You know, the ones who gather in those secret, highly-guarded meetings like the Davos or Bilderberg conferences? Or the Washington, or Wall Street elite, those people who routinely make the laws and skirt them for not just money but power, too? Right? Right?
No.
That is always the most mind-blowing, mind-boggling, mind-numbing thing about all of this for people who first learn about The Provocateurs. You'd think that clearly it would be billionaires who control the world with no one over them. The supreme overlord of GE, the world's biggest company, has to secretly be ruler of most of the world, right? Or, to that point, how could one have such power and influence without money or a powerful position? Well, The Provocateurs do it. In fact, they are the ones that control the billionaires, the ones who decide who will and who will not be rewarded with such an honor and pressure (think about it: How could any family stay wealthy through countless generations?No, they aren't all “just really good at business.”) This not to say that The Provocateurs don't have money, but that they find any currency of little importance. As far as public office or high positions in private enterprises, why limit their power and be restricted to such things as rules, laws, and the will and wants of investors or voters? Many of these laws they have influenced and are responsible for getting passed, so we know they sure as hell wouldn't abide by them.
OK, well then they must be a big network of people controlling stuff, right? No, again. They're a very small group, a group that couldn't be in every place and every corner of the world, but make it feel that way. I'm sure that even you have had an eerie, almost unnatural feeling that the world is a lot smaller than it actually is on some days. And I'm not talking about the “coincidences” where you travel half-way around the world on vacation and see someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know. No, I'm talking about that dizzying feeling you had as a child when you spun around for a few seconds to make yourself feel the rotation of the earth: something seems... off. That's how they make you feel. That's how they influence you through everything and even everybody that you come into contact.
May God Help Us All, Including him, his family, supporters and non-supporters alike
Let's bring it current: How does this factor into Trump, Clinton, Putin and Brexit? Their plan was simple and is still being followed as I said in my book. Every so often, they like to test their clout to make sure that they still have the same kind of power they've always had in order to shape the future as they wish. In order to do this, they have to push and pull things to an extreme. So, get two candidates that are extremes for either side. Do they appear as extremes? Not at first. You have an old white guy (not necessarily breaking new ground in the leadership position) and a white woman who has had experience in the government. And then all they have to do is push. Push both you and the candidates. We tend to think of control as this loud, boisterous, driving thump of authority, when it really is a still, small voice speaking to us, to anyone—willingly or unwillingly—listening. How did they do this? Did they put those words in Trump's mouth? Sometimes. Research suggestive mind control for that, or watch that God-awful Will Smith and Margot Robbie film Focus (not the other God-awful Will Smith and Margot Robbie film. You know the one). But all they really have to do is keep hammering in two slogans, or rather, a word and a slogan. In fact, the same word and slogan that they planted the seeds for way back in 2007:
“Change” and “I'm Unhappy.”
Change and I'm unhappy has motivated the last three major elections, the Brexit, the break-up of the Soviet Union and impending empirical spread of modern Russia that they have planned (not to mention countless divorces). Oddly, regardless of how this next four years go, it will also be the driving force of the next election, too. That is simply how it has been scripted. So long as any outside force can influence you consciously or subconsciously to believe that you are unhappy and that something needs to change, you will act upon those feelings, because they feed into our most base instincts. The funny thing about happiness is that a while back, The Provocateurs worked with some of the founding fathers and mothers of modern psychiatry and psychology in order to classify happiness or satisfaction with one's self as a higher, more evolved instinct, a trick to help stigmatize mental illness, but that's a completely other story.
The trick for the Provocateurs is to convince you of something regardless of whether it is the truth or not. Do you really need change? Maybe or maybe not. But see, here's the secondary trick: convincing you that any change needed is purely external.
I'm from the Midwest: born and raised in northeast Ohio. I'm within walking distance of a few farms. About 15 minutes down the highway, I can get off in another town and look at what is now a vacant lot of what used to be a very large factory (if I remember correctly, it was a car factory of some sort). I've seen first hand some of the “blue-collar decay” that Trump and Hillary talked about on the trail. However, the one thing I've always noticed is the lack of willingness to internally change from the people out of work due to a shuttered business. Not all, by many of those who decry the closing of factories in their town rarely hop to self-improvement as their first answer. Nor are people willing to move to where the work is, instead insisting that wherever they live will be restored to glory if only for the right break. Regardless of whether they are “boot-strappers” or “welfare recipients” both often look to the government or businesses first as the cause and ruling body of their life. That, to some extent, is true, but you have to be putting forth every best effort if change is what you want. Some voters recognized this and pointed out such hypocrisy, while others defended their beliefs by listing some of the things they did. Unfortunately neither mattered because the message of external change had already been internalized. Same thing goes for unhappiness.
Again, this is not to delegitimize any actual reasons for such feelings, but to say that both the feelings and the actual reasons have all been carefully coordinated long before you got around to feeling them. Same goes for Brexit. Not only did The Provocateurs have Brexit planned years ago, but this was planned as far back as before the EU came to be (they never enter into anything without having at least three viable plans to get out of something). In some ways, maybe it is comforting that there is never really any chaos (at least to them) because practically everything that happens is part of their scheme.
That then brings us to President Pussy-Grabber. The question is why did they make him president? For many simple but good reasons. First, you have the “caps off” scenario, or in other words the anything- goes nominee. With current partisanship being so volatile, either party can be pushed to an extreme for any and all future candidates. Also, there is no cap on who can be president, save for their documentation as a natural-born citizen. As I pointed out in my book and contrary to some conservatives beliefs, Trump's election has fully swung open the door to elect a gay or transgender president—the very thing some (not all) of them fear. Why? Because the personal character of a president no longer matters; in fact, the entirety of the human shell no longer matters, but rather the show you put on to satisfy and invigorate a subset. Be accused of rape (Bill) or talk about harassment (Trump) or say racist things (Nixon), none of it matters so long as you are trying to do right by the US. Do you have to be Christian? No, so long as you act as if you have faith in something other than the faith that dominates the current opposition (in this case, Islam, though that will change before the end of the Millennials' lifetime). Of course at this point, it sounds crazy even for liberals to be closer to electing a gay president when a straight white male won after a black man. But note the genius of The Provocateurs plan, because if Hillary had won, we'd be contemplating the same thing, “Now that we have a female president, we can have a (insert ethnicity) or a (insert sexuality) president.” Hence, in either case, they win by having made the country's political circus a polarized pendulum.
Let the thievery and history re-writes begin!
Picture courtesy of TMZ.com Then there's the supposed “unpredictability” of Trump. “I like him because he says what he thinks. He's authentic.” Right. Anyone can be controlled. N. E. One. Oddly enough, Trump is being pushed and puppeted more than at least three of the previous presidents in the last 40 years. George W. had less whispers near his ear and in his organizations before becoming President and during his tenure. Trump is no less of a politician than any of the others, though he is slightly less experienced at the bureaucracy. But again, he has been fed a certain narrative from his time as the kid of a millionaire. They've got into his ear long ago, and were able to set him on a certain pathway then. Every so often, they check in on people they choose to make sure their influence stuck. It has. Will he be a different president? Sure. Is he independent of their control. Hell no!
“But neither was Hillary.” If that's your response, hello. Pay attention! That is the point. There is no change. In fact, this speeds up The Provocateurs' plan for what they want next as I discussed in the book. Often, whenever we do a pull-out of any war or conflict we are already in, we, in-turn, cause a larger war. Isolation actually leads to more, bigger conflict and The Provocateurs know this. Their plan is conflict. Oddly enough, in going against the prevailing thoughts on war and how to defeat one's enemies, the Provocateurs do not look for division, but unity. Here, and throughout the world, we are unified through our disdain for everything oppositional, and that goes for both sides. Unity in the Provocateurs' plan often leads to far more division. Yet, they've made all of us want the very thing that they will and have been using to destroy us.
What does this mean? Well, nothing, I guess. Can anyone change it? No, save for a Provocateur. Is this the end for America? Are the doomsayers right? Or will the MAGA crowd be vindicated like never before? Well, I will give you the same signs that the Provocateurs gave me. The numbers are 8, 7, and 22. From what I've seen, it will take either 8, 7, or 22 weeks, or months for Trump to show the truthfulness of his election. I happen to think that those will be the good times before something terrible happens. But notice that if we get the longer stick of that, the 22 months, many people will feel they have been vindicated by that time. Near two years of good-to-great prosperity in the country should prove all the naysayers wrong, right? Even the seven months (or maybe it is July 22 of one of these years) is a good amount of time for people to point and say, “see, he's not as bad as everyone thought he'd be.” And maybe he won't be. But for all of those that say some people who fear his presidency (I don't fear it at all) are overreacting, just remember that you may want to say that it is not the end of the world or that something like “nuclear war would never happen” or that “life goes on” but at some point, one day soon, cooler heads won't prevail. At some point you can never say never. At some point the worst thing that can happen... will happen.

This post has been different mainly because I try to stay away from the political commentary that is so often pungent, divisive, and acrid to potential fans of my work as a creative. I probably won't write on politics again, at least not for a long time (few months or a year). Also, I am fully aware of the backlash (albeit hypocritical and ironic seeing as how the Republicans now have not one but two Hollywood presidents to their name in Reality star Trump and B-movie star Reagan) that creatives like actors, directors, singers, etc. suffer whenever they speak on any kind of politics. However, it needed to be said... again. And no, this is not to try to sell books, though if you want to read the book The Provocateur you can buy it here: The Provocateur. Honestly, it is a lesser work of mine. Hell, I'm more concerned with trying to get people to read my episodic novella The Writer (with season three coming this summer), my next written serial Extraordinary (premiering this winter/spring), any of my other novels or getting an interview with Leonardo DiCaprio and the other producers of Captain Planet because I really want to write that film and have wanted to for a while (I think I can balance a “liberal” message with conservative viewers while still making the film fun; you can help me with this by re-tweeting my tweets to Leo #shoe #footprint). But hey, I'm just a writer.
You want to call me a crazy crackpot? Go right ahead. A liberal snowflake? You're very wrong about that, but fine (curious enough, similar to Trump I don't drink nor smoke). A neck-bearded basement-dweller? Whatevs! But don't say you weren't shown the signs. Eight, seven, twenty-two. Whatever happens, you shouldn't let this little blog post provoke you.
Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “...And did it myyyyyyyy waaayyyy!”
P.S. Seriously, though, does no one see this? Yes, the song is about doing it his way and getting what he wants but history may look back with gaped mouth and scrunched brow on the fact that the 45thentered his presidency with the first song chosen by him to dance to starting with the lyrics “And now, the end is near...” Really! The Provocateurs are laughing at us. A better song would actually have been Usher's “My Way” especially since America is so often referred to as female. The lyric: “You (current politicians) can't satisfy her needs. She keeps running back to see me do it My Way.” But hey, what's done is done. And they didn't even use the classic Sinatra recording. SMH
P.P.S. This goes out just to any Republican critics. Note that whenever democrats protest or are critical of Trump, many of them aren't critical of you or the party per se, but rather the man that Trump has proven to be time and again. I'm an independent, but would people really act like this if Jeb had won or Cruz or Carson? No. There wasn't this much unrest when either Bush was elected. It's not about your party (although, some do feel that you allowed your party to be hijacked by this man and should feel some admonishment) but about the general disgust felt for this particular human being. Amazon
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Shows I Didn’t Review #3weekroundup #newshows #CBS #USA #FOX

Shows I Didn’t Review #3weekroundup #newshows #CBS #USA #FOX




Greetings, readers and viewers out there in TV and film-dom. Well, the election is finally over—what a wild ride that was; special post on that in the new year—and the fall season of shows is slowly but surely creeping to its dramatic winter finale before the holidays take over and make goo of all of our brains and bellies. Since September premiere week what seemed like eons ago, we have taken a journey through some pretty crazy TVland-scape. Surprisingly, much of the new stuff we’ve seen has stuck around for longer than a few fleeting weeks, keeping with the trend of the last few years to give shows a longer chance to gather an audience, or let the shows run their short-order course of between 10-13 episodes, before replacing them in the new year. But I didn’t get to watch or review everything and share my vaulted opinion, which I know you clearly need in your life. So, let’s begin with one of the new shows that I did happen to watch, Pure Genius.

CBS’s Pure Genius takes groundbreaking concepts and mixes them with so-so plotting and characters. Yes, I gave you my judgment on the show before explaining what the show is about. Let’s backtrack and explore the show. Pure Genius is a fictionalized possibility of a very real future or even present. In it, a young tech billionaire opens what he names Bunkerhill, a hospital/institute positioned on the cutting edge of medical science and technology. With his billion-dollar backing, coupled with his I-know-everything-because-I’m-a-rich-genius attitude, he seeks to revolutionize the healthcare industry by thinking outside the box and combining his technological abilities with the genius of his doctors in order to save every patient, cure the incurable and do the impossible—think Dean Munsch’s hospital/clinic C.U.R.E institute on season two of Scream Queens, only way cooler looking.
The billionaire, or James Bell, is supposed to be a mix of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, but doesn’t always hit that mark of visionary, instead, falling flat as regular rich A-hole. He has a crush on his head female doctor, Dr. Zoe Beckett, but can’t break from his socially awkward nerd-cocoon to actually connect with her on a personal level. His new hire, Dr. Walter Wallace, is an old dog with old tricks and knowledge that is supposed to keep not only the team but Bell grounded. He’s like Yoda in that he’s not the one doing the original training (Bell isn’t a doctor) but does have sound advice about how to use the force. He’s also a renegade, but a conservative renegade in that he doesn’t fully commit to Bell’s technological revolution—he’s seen too much tech come and go without saving many more lives than previously. While he does accept many of the newfangled inventions, he argues and has friction with Bell, believing it is human interaction which makes healthcare effective.
Through the course of the series, we see plenty of feelgood cases each week, all presented as being impossible to treat or miraculous (science-miraculous, at least... if that is a real thing), and see the inner-turmoil of Bell as he struggles through the preliminary stages of his own incurable disease. While there are amazingly captivating cases that use some of the latest medical advances to make the show feel more futuristic and brilliant, there is surprisingly little new territory mined here. Outside of a billionaire non-doctor genius with enough money to buy any new tech he deems necessary to solve any new problem he and his team encounter, there is nothing uniquely grabbing about this show. To compare it to other medical dramas, it isn’t as character driven as a Grey’s Anatomy or Chicago Med, doesn’t have a huge gimmick to it like The Night Shift (almost everybody served in the military) or Code Black (an ER where patients outnumber doctors and/or supplies), and it’s not solving crimes like an ME show. The closest comparison it has is Hugh Laurie’s House, but even that had more character and oomph! to it to me, not to mention that show isn’t on the air any longer, but I digress.
Overall, I give Pure Genius a C+. It is average, it folds right into the rest of CBS’s programming, and, while having a young cast, doesn’t have many names that stick out to the average viewer. It also does nothing to dispel my theory about there being too many geniuses on TV right now. Not only is everybody on practically every show based either in New York or LA... or Miami, but they are all world-class, best-in-the-country geniuses at what they do. This sucks the tension from shows like these where they are nothing more than a medical procedural/case-of-the-week show. After finishing each episode, was I looking forward to seeing the next? Eh!
Should you be watching? Well, there are plenty of good medical dramas out there, though I’d contend that Grey’s is on its last leg and I just couldn’t get into Code Black, but if you enjoyed FOX’s House or if you want a med show that isn’t centered around the ER, then give Pure Genius a watch, and see what you think. Again, I think this show fits well into CBS’s brand, so though I don’t know the ratings on the first four weeks, my hypothesis is that this will last for the rest of the season.
On to more shows that I haven’t had the time to check out or felt the need to watch. Note that because I haven’t really taken the time to watch these shows, each one of my “reviews” should be taken with a big grain of salt. Really, this is more of me telling you why I didn’t find the time to watch these shows. Oh, and pretty much all of them are on CBS.

To start: Kevin Can Wait. Indeed, he can. CBS’s Kevin Can Wait did not in any way, shape or form look appealing to me in its advertisements. Starring Kevin James, the ads mainly played off the fact that he once had a successful show on CBS entitled The King of Queens. While I admired the commitment to showing blue-collar Americans being funny in their lives as opposed to the upper-middle class and work comedies that dominated through the late aughts and early tens, I was never a fan of King of Queens. It was just an OK show to me, similar to a slew of 90s comedies like Grace Under Fire and the Jeff Foxworthy Show—not all that great, but not all that bad.

So when Kevin James made his triumphant return to TV with virtually the same show—a family man with a very hot wife, albeit a better job this time around, I shrugged my shoulders, looked across the landscape of TV I had already committed to, looked at all of my own work projects, and realized just like that black woman who escaped that house fire a few years back did: “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” But if you’re looking for a nice multi-cam family sitcom that is a callback to the 90s and 70s family sitcoms, then you might like Kevin Can Wait, and maybe you can make time for it.
Practically the same review goes for Matt LeBlanc’s new show Man with a Plan. Friends has long been over and we’ve all gestated our grief about that, not to mention that we still have the countless re-runs on every network channel and TBS to keep us warm if ever our own smelly cat runs away or we find ourselves on a break with our significant other (read: human I keep around solely for my amusement), but the failure of Joey, the short-lived spin-off still lingers heavy in my mind. Using Joey as the star, the additions of his sister and, I believe her kid (or maybe that was one of his friend’s kids) took an adult comedy and spun it into a family sitcom with disastrous effects. At the time, Matt didn’t seem cued-up for such a transition and it showed.

When his new family sitcom Man with a Plan was advertised, I tried dismissing that bad memory in favor of giving him a new shot. Alas, while I did get over the ill-fated Joey, I couldn’t bring myself to get excited for LeBlanc’s new comedy. It is not that it looks bad, but that it simply looks generic. There doesn’t seem to be anything new about it, and it doesn’t even have a cute little spin to it. Similar to Last Man Standing, it looks as though you could pluck it from today’s airwaves, put it in the 90s, and have nothing about it change, and it might even get lost in the shuffle. Don’t get me wrong, I get that comedy is comedy and funny is funny, and that people often don’t need new and fancy to love a show, but with shows like The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family having dominated the airwaves, having something so regular come along doesn’t make me jump at wanting to spend half an hour each week watching it. Marketing School 101: Sometimes you need a new package for an old product. This is an old product with the same packaging it’s always had.
But again, if you find those kinds of family comedies or CBS shows to your liking, then I say go for it. Unlike the Seinfeld cast, the cast of Friends have all gone on to prove that they can thrive at life beyond the show, and even if you’ve never seen LeBlanc’s other series Episodes, you can be sure that he’s still got plenty of acting and comedy in his blood.

We continue forward to CBS’s The Great Indoors, starring Joel McHale. A workplace comedy similar to Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing on ABC, this sees McHale working at an outdoors’ store dominated by younger workers. I didn’t watch this show for many reasons. For one, dear God I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much complaining about one generation as I have with Millennials. It’s almost as if older generations literally have no ideas or anything left to do but complain about Millennials. They’re not even complaining about Generation Z, the teenagers currently filling our high schools, no-no! It’s all on Millennials as if they were the ones to ruin the world. And yet, for the last 24 years (and counting with Trump, not that Hillary would have been any different) the world has been run by Baby Boomers, and Gen Xers have greenlit remakes for literally every film and TV show that they themselves held dear during their childhood and teenage years in the 70s and 80s (there’s actually a Breakfast Club remake in the works. Seriously! Seriously! SMDH), but I digress.
The show centers around McHale working in a non-office office filled with Millennials where he is the “oldhead” who is wiser and more experienced. Essentially, while they may have some book-brains, everyone he is working with is an idiot in his mind because of their youth. Even taking out the possibility of offensiveness, and forgetting the fact that as the population ages, the treatment of Millennials now could only lead to more ageism a few years down the road, the show seems too much like a watered-down version of a mix between Last Man Standing and Community. The reason why Community was canceled, I think, is because of the superiority complex built into the show. I had talked to some viewers of the show when it was still on and they were not die-hard fanatics, but so-so fans (the kind that keeps a show going for longer than three seasons), and they said that they never felt that McHale’s—and to a lesser extent, Chase’s—character grew to realize that he was an equal to everybody else. Where it started out as funny, it got to feel more like a bully laughing at the peons beneath him.
The Great Indoors has a similar feel to it from the commercials alone. Again, this will appeal to a great many Americans I’m sure, but I just don’t have the patience for something like that right now. I’d rather watch Two Broke Girls or Big Bang Theory or Speechless. But if you hate those stupid Millennials or if you are a hipster Millennial that doesn’t think you fall into that category that is constantly mocked, then, by all means, give this a try.

Jumping from CBS to USA, we take a look at Shooter. I know that of this list, Shooter probably has had the latest fall premiere, really of all the new shows I can think of off the top of my head that aren’t holiday-themed. While I know that it just recently premiered and only has one or two episodes under its belt, I will say that I didn’t tune in to the premiere and can’t currently see myself peeking in to give this the three episode grace period I’m used to. Why? Frankly, I don’t have much reason not to, but there are some minor misgivings I can point to.
First, I know that this is based on the Mark Wahlberg movie of the same name. For those who didn’t see the movie or haven’t seen adverts for the show, an ex-US military sniper is accused of shooting someone he didn’t (I think it is supposed to be a high-ranking government official), has this false and treasonous accusation turn his life upside-down, and goes on the run to solve the crime like only he can—using all of his military and gun skills to shoot through, kill, intimidate and unmake anyone unlucky enough to come in his way or be related to the crime in question. Also, I vaguely remember Wahlberg being very hurt in the film and having to also deal with his health, as the people framing him for this shooting are also trying to kill him to make it seem like he was a suicidal, homicidal, PTSD-sufferer who became a zealot and snapped. I say vaguely because of my first misgiving with the show.

I didn’t much care for the movie. I know all movie stars can be hit and miss throughout their careers, but, for me, Wahlberg is the most polarizing star from one film to the next. Pair him with another great in their own right like Will Ferrell in The Other Guys or Daddy’s home, or Matt Damon and Leo in The Departed, or Denzel in 2 Guns, or even The Rock in Pain and Gain, and he is phenomenal. (As an aside, I only now realize that out of all the movies I’ve liked Wahlberg in, the majority of them are comedies, with the exception of The Departed, Invincible, and Four Brothers). Practically everything else he is in feels substandard, run-of-the-mill filmmaking that could just as easily have been a straight-to-DVD release (some of it not squarely on him but the director/producers), or he finds himself in a film where he is swallowed up by far superior actors. Date Night, The Lovely Bones, We Own The Night, The Perfect Storm, that dreadful Planet of the Apes remake, Contraband, Broken City, and Shooter are all films that I saw once and don’t care to see again. I felt like he was swallowed up by the other great performances in The Fighter, so... yeah. As another aside, I only now realize just how many Wahlberg films I’ve seen. My god, I’ve seen a lot of his films. Hmph?
Shooter, to me, was similar to the many Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Steven Seagull, Mel Gibson straight-to-DVD films that have come out in the last few years. Yeah, if you’re a fan of any of them, go and check their IMDb page, and discover well over a dozen films you probably never knew came out because they couldn’t get a theater to show them and had no marketing budget. I always thought the idea behind Shooter to be nice for film but a little pedestrian for TV. It’s another mystery but at least this time it has a regular guy rather than a world-class genius.
Then there is the fact that Ryan Phillippe is starring as the titular character. No, I am not a Ryan hater. I actually like him and thoroughly enjoyed what he did on Secrets and Lies, which is partly the reason why I didn’t want to watch this show. As much as I’m sure many people enjoy anthology series that currently dominate the airwaves, I still like the old-fashioned season-after-season-builds-upon-the-same-characters theme for most shows. I wanted Secrets and Lies to continue in the same story the second season, mainly to see what would happen to Phillippe’s character after confessing to a murder his daughter committed. While we continue on with the detective, we get a rather unsatisfying conclusion to that story with a reference about how his character died in jail before they figured out who the real murderer was. I wanted him back on that show.
And finally: I simply don’t have the time. As stated, I do have a heck of a workload and, for the first time in a few years, am procrastinating on getting anything done as I struggle with plans for the future. Also, I already have a ton of shows that I watch regularly while having ditched other older shows; a DVR half-filled with movies that I haven’t watched dating back since April; and a life out in the real world. Adding yet another hourlong drama to the mix when I’m not enthralled with the concept hardly seems feasible at this time. So, something has to suffer, unfortunately, that happens to be some of the late-season premieres. Sorry, but if they want more people to tune in to a show, don’t premiere it in November when people are gearing up for the holidays and most of them already have their viewing patterns set. That won’t be a problem for every viewer, and fanatics who have been looking forward to this show for some time will catch it, but then again they were always the ones that would watch it anyway. Maybe you are a fan of Ryan Phillippe or think the concept sounds interesting, or remember the movie and enjoyed it. If so, then feel free to check it out on the USA network.

Also, I feel I have to give at least a note on FOX’s attempt at remaking the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Once every seven or eight years or so, I will take a look at Rocky Horror around Halloween time. While I enjoy it, it is not appointment viewing for me by any means, nor a tradition. Rocky Horror holds that strange place in my viewing conscience where I must be in the right mood at the right time of year and even on the right day sometimes to enjoy its zaniness, and I suspect that I’m not the only one who feels that way. It is the type of story that is made fun of because it is supposed to be made fun of and came out of an era in which things were still changing but a story like this could still be considered counter or subculture. Here is where this new rendition of Rocky went wrong.
The first mistake here was actually in casting Laverne Cox to play Frankenfurter. Initially, when hearing of this casting I applauded it as I thought she could recreate the role for a new generation. But as I waited patiently throughout all of 2016, I slowly began to realize the tragic mistake they made in casting her. This has nothing to do with her acting ability but is totally about her gender and sexuality. Rocky Horror came from a time in which it was fun both for the squares like Janet and Brad in real life to treat the different and bizarre people-groups like entertainment vessels. While this sounds every bit like bullying, the film put this into perspective to say that this underlying culture was in on the joke. Therefore, in its own unique way, the film made it a safe space for both members of the White Bread Rally and the Alternative lifestyle groups to laugh, find some understanding and get along with each other if only for a short time. The ridiculousness of Rocky Horror’s caricatures of straights, gays, transgenders, and bisexuals allowed viewers to leave the film saying, “Well, nobody’s really that ridiculous on either side of the aisle. Everybody’s really just a person.” Somehow, I felt that sentiment vanished when placing an actual transwoman in the role.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but Laverne has some very large breasts which, regardless of the rest of her anatomy, when fully clothed, puts her firmly into the camp of having a womanly figure. Where Tim Curry (and many other actors who have done the stage play for years) bring some androgyny to the role so that the character feels like a mocking send-up of what we think a transvestite or transsexual would look like. Here, Laverne just looks like a buxom woman, and not even like an over-the-top drag queen that could possibly lend some humor to the character. That, coupled with the fact that half the audience knows she’s a real transwoman makes the whole situation uncomfortable to laugh at again. Every time I started to laugh, I was quickly reminded of the real struggle and fight that transpeople endure to be treated as the gender they want, and how Laverne is the very embodiment of that struggle and partial triumph. In that way, it felt akin to a Trans Minstrel show—a sentiment made all the more prevalent by having the black Laverne dancing and singing for our viewing pleasure. It was a Transperson acting over-the-top Trans to prove that “Yessa, Massa, I am a weird alien creature that you should be a-frighted of.” It just didn’t feel right.
Also, with the exception of Riff Raff and Tim Curry as the narrator, I found most of the performances silly in a not-good way. Nothing came together as it should have and the story was lost in all of it. Ultimately, I half-felt like they were trying to make the film sexy, which ain’t Rocky and ain’t neva gon be Rocky Horror. Laverne looked too glam for the role and so did Milian and Justice, along with the movie theater usher. Where the original made fun of both sexual oppression and freedom, Rocky seemed to almost take it too seriously and tell us, “No, this IS sexy, see?” rather than entertain us with a wild and silly play on Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein.
So, to sum it up, some of the shows I watched this new season were pretty good, while others were so-so and I thought one was really bad. Sadly, I’ll probably never see some of the shows I mentioned above, unless they are good enough to make it into syndication years from now and I catch them in the six or seven o’clock hour as I play the TV in the background while making dinner—Hey, that is how I watched most of Everybody Loves Raymond. Until then, I haven’t the time nor energy to care. In fact, as I write this and lazily research the shows on this list (I just don’t put forth the effort with stuff I’m not about to watch; almost didn’t watch and review American Housewife and only now regret that I did), I realize that I incorrectly explained Joel McHale’s show The Great Indoors. It is a regular office comedy where he used to be a field reporter/journalist for outdoorsy magazines, now he is working for a new hip magazine. Nothing to do with sports apparel or outdoor stores. Sorry. Yawnnn! Gosh, E!, why did you have to abruptly cancel The Soup last year? Oh well.
What do you think? Have you seen any of the shows I mentioned on this list? Or The new Rocky Horror Picture Show, for that matter? What do you think of them? Are any your new favorite jam, or do they all fall in the dud category? And are those all the shows or did I miss some that even I don’t know about? I will say that I will earmark Shooter as the only one that I’ll potentially watch in the future only because Shantel Vansenten is in it and I've been wanting her to get some lead actress shine for a while, but some of my commitments would have to diminish. Anyway, let me know what you think and are watching (and loving) in the comments below.
Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “Uh... Uh... No bueno?”‘No, that’s definitely no bueno.’

P.S. Dear goodness, out of all the Mark Wahlberg films I’ve seen, I can’t remember practically a signal line of dialogue from his characters, save from that wimpy line about fake money being ‘no bueno’ from the terrible film Contraband? That doesn’t bode well. Seriously, why have I seen so many Mark Wahlberg movies? I’ve seen practically his entire filmography and had no clue. Here’s a challenge for you: pick a star who you don’t think you’ve seen very many movies of and actually go see how many movies of theirs that you have seen. I thought I had seen a dozen Wahlberg movies, tops! I’ve actually seen 30 of his movies and he is only credited with 46 acting roles, three of which aren’t even out yet. Oh my goodness! Am I a Mark Wahlberg super-fan? Ahh! This P.S. has gone on for too long and it’s totally freaking me out. I’ll come up with a better sign-off next time.

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This Is What Represents American Women? Hmm? #AmericanHousewife #ABC #3weekroundup

This Is What Represents American Women? Hmm? #AmericanHousewife #ABC #3weekroundup
All pictures courtesy of ABC

Oh. My. God! I cannot begin to even... I mean, it’s just so... gahhh! I’m getting ahead of myself here. Before we dive into this review/recap of the first three episodes of American Housewife in another three-week roundup review, let me just send a big shout-out to the Cleveland Cavaliers who raised their 2016 championship banner tonight—first championship for Cleveland in 52 years. Let me also congratulate the Cleveland Indians for reaching the 2016 World Series once again, their first World Series appearance in nearly 20 years. This day, October 25, 2016, will forever go down as Cleveland’s Day, regardless of whether the Indians (who are currently up by 3 as I write this) win the first game, or the World Series, or not. Suffice it to say, as someone who is an Ohio native and grew up partially in Cleveland, I am ecstatic tonight (though, you’ll probably be reading this on Wednesday, if at all). This should be noted because my mood should’ve rose tinted literally everything that came at me for a full 24-hr period. And then this show came along. So, without further ado, let’s get to the review/recap and figure out if America should be enchanted with American Housewife or if we’re all going to wish we had not one but two things better to watch (at least as sports fans) every single time this airs.
American Housewife stars Katy Mixon in the title role as Katie Otto, an under-appreciated, overweight housewife living in the high-priced suburbia of Westport, Connecticut. Frankly, she hates the town but lives there because they have a really good school system, especially for her youngest child—think ABC’s other new show Speechless where the family moves to be in a better school district for their disabled son. In a neighborhood gluttonous with new, 21st century McMansions, Katie and her family live in a modest two-story that is able to comfortably fit five children in, what I have to assume, is each child’s own room. A family of five (because what family isn’t, right?) she and her husband have three children: one boy, two girls. Like all sitcoms, the show revolves heavily around the family and how they interact with each other and get on each other’s nerves, mainly on Katie’s. Let’s go through the family characters first and then we’ll start on the plot of the first episode.
We are first greeted by their youngest, their daughter Anna-Kat. Somewhere between seven and ten (I think), she is first seen peeing in the front yard. She is said to have something wrong with her and OCD is briefly mentioned but not cemented as her ailment, so we don’t really know why she does the things she does; they also say anxiety, but this seems more like a disorder of some kind. She’s more so dismissed as simply being weird, similar to Brick on ABC’s The Middle. But she does have a thing for germs and dislikes holding her classmates' hands, so that is another check in the OCD box. Oh, and she’s Katie’s favorite.
Next, we have Oliver, the middle child, who totally looks like he just walked off stage from playing the role of Oliver Twist in an off-off-Broadway production. Similar to Mike Seaver from Growing Pains or Alex Keaton from Family Ties, he is a conservative, miniature, future-businessman who values hard work, dressing well and money. His main goal, as told to us by Katie, is to be filthy rich when he gets older, and he’s well on his way judging by the school clubs he’s in and the way he lives his life.

Rounding out the kids is Taylor, the eldest daughter. Similar to Speechless’ youngest daughter in Dylan, not only does she have a very unisex name but she’s into sports and not that much into education like her brother. Supposedly 14, she also was just recently visited by the puberty fairy who blessed her with a womanly body (paraphrased from Katie). Though they haven’t "went there" yet, it’s clear where this is going: all the boys will want her and blah, blah, blah. Goodness gracious, is this the earliest I’ve ever “blah, blah, blahed” through a three-week roundup? Oh, this is not gonna be good.
Finally, though he is not a child, he is a huge enabler by which Katie must live or else she’d realize just how ridiculous she is, her husband Greg rounds out the Otto clan. Played by veteran comedy actor Diedrich Bader (someone who will always be partially loved in Cleveland after making us laugh for years on The Drew Carey Show), Greg is just there to actually be deadpan funny and not really carve out a character identity of his own, but play it straight or not straight to whatever Katie throws at him. Got it? The biggest character-defining moment I can think of concerning him is that in one scene he wears a “my wife is married to a feminist” t-shirt. Whereas Katie is a character, Greg is a reaction to her character. Unlike his wife, he works as a professor at a local college and can Skype into work when he absolutely can’t be there.
OK, now to get into the plot of the show. Our introduction to this show lets us know just what kind of character Katie is, what kind of person created the show, and where this could go very fast. At the outset, we find our titular character glowering out her front window at the house across the street that just recently put up a “For Sale” sign. She laments this tragic turn of events because her neighbor Fat Pam is finally moving away from the “skinny bitch haven” that is Westport, Connecticut. (OK, I don’t think that was a direct quote from the show, but the first two words I’m sure made it in there in some combination). See, without Fat Pam to serve as a buffer for the other neighborhood twig-ettes to fat-shame, Katie becomes the “Second Fattest Housewife in Westport” and will only have one fat woman fatter than her that she, herself can fat-shame. It’s a dire situation. Did I mention that all of this is told to us through the use of voice-over inner-monologue from Katie, a common ABC trademark used across the channel in everything from The Middle to Black-ish to Grey’s Anatomy and a few others? But here, unlike on many of those other shows, it comes off as super annoying. I know I just jumped ahead to my grading, but I just couldn’t hold that in for one more sentence let alone two more episodes.
As said before, Katie hates Westport because not only will she become the second fattest housewife really soon, the town is dominated by yoga-pants-wearing, skinny-butted, yacht-and-labradoodle-owning jerks that make money and live lives of superficiality... supposedly. This totally isn’t the Otto way of living. Instead, the Otto’s rent a modest house and are “good people” according to Katie.
On a busy morning, she has to tell her youngest Anna-Kat to stop peeing on the lawn, try convincing her son Oliver to donate canned goods to his school’s homeless food drive and make sure that her eldest Taylor is stocked up good for feminine products. As she enjoys her morning breakfast, she sends Anna-Kat upstairs to her father to make him check her homework as he sits on the toilet, something Katie is jealous of because her husband takes too long of a morning constitution and no mother ever could do that.
When Katie goes to drop off her youngest daughter at school, a school which I’m assuming is one of those weird all-grades schools because in later episodes it looks like she picks up every one of her children at the same school, because there’s definitely the same crossing guard there to annoy her, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Where was I...? Did I even complete that last sentence? For all the times I misuse em dashes and parentheses and I didn’t do anything to that sentence? Huh! Oh, right, Katie runs into some of the other skinny-yoga-bitches I told you about before (did I forget to mention that this review/recap would have slightly more cursing than usual? It’ll have slightly more cursing than usual) that judge her as they sip green drinks and cackle outside of the school at the drop-off area. A few good eye-rolls and side-eyes later, and Katie finds her group of the “keepin’-it-real-and-ethnically-diverse” moms. Her friends Angela (played by Carly Hughes) and Doris (played by Ali Wong) are the cool black lesbian and the soul-crushingly wealthy Asian, respectively. They’re always up to go and eat food at their favorite diner while they judge those skinny bitches and laugh at how vain they are—totally different than what the skinny bitches do. The skinny ones cackle and judge right to your face. Big difference. While at their fave diner, they see yet one more double-Fitbit-wearing skinny girl who looks out of sorts like she is either just passing through or came to visit someone she knows in town. This woman is important as she is Viv and she is played by Leslie Bibb. More on her a little later, but let’s get back to the plot.

After Katie complains to her friends about soon earning the title of the second fattest housewife in Westport, she does the same thing to her husband as she plots a way to not become the second fattest housewife in the town. Her main idea is to scare away all good potential buyers, forcing Fat Pam to keep the house and not move away. From this, we get such brilliant gems as tampon wind chime and making sure that they appear more Islamic-y or terrorist-y. No, seriously. But when her husband suggests seeking out a fatter person to buy the house, she, Greg and Anna-Kat engage in fake-gossip warfare during the open house. Apparently, there’s an arsonist in the neighborhood (lie), Anna-Kat loves coming to talk to her dead friends in the house (lie), and one of the families before got coincidental-cancer after living in the house. Then they see that same two-Fitbit-wearing heifer from before as she is looking to move to town. Katie is about to give up when she sees a ghetto black man’s dream: a fat blonde white woman with a cute face and hips as wide as your grandpa’s Buick. That woman has to buy the house! And the house goes into escrow, but when the woman comes by to talk with her new neighbor once again, she lets her racism and bigotry show when she talks about avoiding “those Blacks,” you know, the rich ones, and those Gays—the ones with the capital Gs.

Now, Katie must make a decision on whether she can live across from that terrible of a bigot or if she will suck it up just to not be the second fattest housewife in Westport. While she initially chooses the latter, by the end of the episode she changes her mind, enlists her gay black friend Angela to do a make-out sesh in front of blond-and-big-boned, and gets Viv back in the house. Viv, a past-fatty herself, is now this thin blond bimbo who lives to walk-run, and walk and run, and sometimes just run a lot without the walking. She can’t wait to get her hands on Katie to help her lose all the weight and she instantly earns Katie’s ire.
There’s some side-story stuff in there about how Anna-Kat has trouble making friends because she doesn’t touch hands until her father tells her that sometimes friends are more important than germs. She shakes some people’s hands and gets puking sick. There’s also a story about how Oliver helped one of the weird neighbors they call Naked Ned with some kind of landscaping/gardening job and earned some money from doing it. Katie tells him that he has to share some of that cash with the canned goods drive at school and he makes a deal.
Episode two revolves around just how tired Katie is on a daily basis. I’m really not going to get into the big argument on whether she should or shouldn’t be tired as a housewife, but I will say that watching this episode felt more tedious than I’m sure Katie could ever feel. After a night of interrupted sleep that saw Oliver thinking he was having a heart attack, Anna-Kat doing something cute but ridiculous, and Taylor waking up for a five a.m. run, Katie is greeted in the morning by the news that her old job just opened back up and her boss is going to keep it available for her if she wants it. So, as she considers what she wants to do on that front, she is guided by Angela and Doris to try taking a nap during the middle of the day.
Crossing Guard Irks HerAs is always in a sitcom, hi-jinks commence when all she wants to do is go to sleep. First, one of her kids leaves their lunch in the car, so she has to go and take it to the school where she gets into a confrontation with the power-hungry crossing guard. Then she returns home to a husband who is home from work because he thinks he is coming down with something and can’t go to college that day. But then he remembers that he signed up to read to Anna-Kat’s class that day but can’t go because he could expose the kids to something, so Katie has to go.
When Katie gets there, she loses it while reading a book about a mom who is overworked. She laments that she wants to return to work and how big of a deal she was at work before she had to have kids, and the class isn’t impressed. She returns home to try sleeping again, and degrades the fact that her husband works because “at least he gets a break” (again, I’m not going to get into that debate that asks what she’s doing all day at home while all of her kids are at school, because it doesn’t seem to be that she writes or runs an online business or anything, but I digress) and she never does, and this happens before she is called back to school because Oliver got suspended for the day for doing insider trading in his young mock stockbroking class (is that really a suspendable offense? Seriously, writers?). To add salt to sugar, Anna-Kat is found out as not having all the required immunization shots and sent home for the day, too. And just for the heck of it, Katie decides to pull Taylor from school for no reason and chides her for having signed up for basketball and soccer, focusing on sports more than school work. She returns home after trying to teach her children a lesson by making them pick up trash on the side of the road, only to embarrass her husband by telling his Skyped undergrad class that he isn’t wearing any pants while teaching them. The episode ends with her swearing that she doesn’t want to miss the good times after her husband takes over with the kids, therefore she won’t take that job. She tells Oliver and Taylor to limit the extracurriculars and that’s it.
Episode three focuses on Katie’s insecurity about having Viv as not only her new neighbor but as a role model and best buddy of Taylor. When the 14-year-old starts hanging with Viv who is super athletic just like she is, Katie can only see that relationship as something she must crush and crush immediately. The quickest and easiest way to do this is by proving how better she is at... running? A Halloween-themed episode, the town is having a Zombie run where participants are split into two groups: runners or zombies. A glorified game of tag, the runners are decorated with flags that the zombies must tear off of them similar to flag football. Whoever survives the race with at least one flag intact wins.

Katie not only believes that she can win this race after not having run since grade school, but she thinks Viv is in some deeply-rooted conspiracy to take her place, in her daughter’s mind, as a great mom. So, she has to win this race. While Greg and Anna-Kat decide to be zombies, Katie zips through the race by cheating with far more flags than she should have (supplied by Doris), and finally gets near the end where she and her daughter talk. Turns out, Taylor was hanging with Viv out of pity because Viv’s husband is never around, her step-sons don’t talk to her at all, and she’s got no friends in town because she’s new (yes, this will lead to Viv becoming part of the group of Katie’s friends and I know this without having to watch past episode 3). This is when Katie realizes that her daughter isn’t becoming like Viv but is pure Greg because she’s so nice and kindhearted. But when Anna-Kat comes and rips her last flag, Katie both laments it and is proud because she knows that Anna-Kat is just like her: sneaky, conniving and all-around deplorable.
What’s my grade? I give this a D. I have mentioned multiple times on this blog how much I hate criticizing the creative work of others because I know how hard it is to put something, anything out, especially something of quality, but yikes! I wanted to end this new Fall show season on a high (I still have Falling Water to review, so we’ll see how that goes), but this show has got to be the worst new show of the season. There’s so much bad here that I don’t know where to start, but I’ll try my best.
For starters, it is a cobbled-together mess of a ton of other far superior comedies. I already mentioned that it has the smart but conservative business child of Growing Pains and Family Ties, but it also has the fish-out-of-water/family-that-doesn’t-belong-here vibe of Speechless and the child with a disability. There’s the older hot daughter like from Roseanne, and the nosy neighbor similar to Family Matters’ Urkel. Throw in a heaping helping of “boy do I hate my neighbors because they’re different than me” from the short-lived ABC comedy The Neighbors, too. Worst of all, it feels like the very short-lived dramedy GCB also from ABC. For those that don’t remember (most don’t because they didn’t watch) GCB or Good Christian Bitches was an hour-long dramedy that originally aired on Sundays that starred, surprise, surprise, Leslie Bib as a woman who moved back to her childhood home in Texas after a divorce and supreme life ruin. There, she ran into a group of Christian women that were grown, catty mean girls who had no right to talk because of their own overbearing problems kept swept under the rug. This show has that feeling to a T.

Similar to where that show went wrong (outside of the fact that they tried to make Christians look bad... on Sunday nights, which was supposed to be their answer to the Desperate Housewives gap) this show is trying to juxtapose the ego of the main character that you’re supposed to like with the ego of another group of moms (yoga-wearing bitches) and to a greater extent, the entire town. The problem sets in when you have this voice-over work going throughout the show and it reveals Katie’s true feelings. Frankly, Katie is just as much of a bitch as everyone else in the town. She thinks she’s better than the other moms and why? Because they try to stay fit or thin? Or because they have money? She has this constant refrain of “I’m real and they’re not,” which would be better proven if she didn’t say it often and narrate as such.
I was totally going to do another Gone Girl/Gillian Flynn homage here (as I did in my summer episodic novella series The Writer season 2) but I really didn’t have the energy after writing about this show like I thought I would. Instead of the cool girl, this time the rant would be on the cool mom. Unlike the “cool girl” which Flynn argues is the product of the male’s fantasy (though, I’d argue many women want to be the cool girl even before a man comes into their life), the cool mom is a manufactured pressure put on solely by the mother herself, and not society, and definitely not the kids. Take note that this is NOT to be confused with the good mom which is more enforced by women, but the cool mom. Katie reminds too much in the first three episodes of that high school football mom who wants all of her sons to play on the team and date cheerleaders because that’s what she did, and she’s constantly trying to relive those “glory days.” Yeah, no. She feels like the kind of mom that’s all about letting you and your friends smoke weed and drink in the basement all you want because “at least when they’re home I know it’s safe,” which is the same sentiment that that one woman whose son just died at a party in her house had. Katie feels more obsessed with being her kid’s friends or worse, having them be miniature replicas of her, than she is about being a parent that allows their child to grow and figure some things out for themselves. One of the lines of the show spoke about how she saw it as her main job to make her youngest daughter fit in a little more and make her two oldest children fit in a lot less. In other words, the only reason she really had children was so she wouldn’t feel alone, and sees them growing into their own people as a threat to that.
If this rant seems too much like complaining, well I’d turn around and say that I’m only mirroring the show because that is yet another thing that annoys me. Not only does she seem to have an average American life, but she complains about all of it because... well, that’s what she does. Granted, I could see if you’re complaining about your life if you are constantly trying to do something amazing and better and wholly different, but she’s not. It’s not like she’s trying to start a business or have another baby after years of trying or even trying to lose weight. I could see if her husband was a D, but he’s not. When she laments how busy she is and how he has it easier because he gets to go to work, he tells her she should take her old job back if it makes her feel happy. Does she? No. And the reasoning she has doesn’t even fit the same reasoning of an actual housewife to me. Her lack of real empathetic draw makes her grousing inner-monologue of complaints about how great her daughter is and how she used to have youth too, less funny and “as a parent I can totally understand,” and more cringy and “well, why the heck did you have and keep your kids? Try to change your life already, lady, if you hate it so much.” You’re mad at your daughter because she just got breasts? You have not only breasts but a man who absolutely loves you and is still very much attracted to you even after having kids when most couples say the passion dies. Again, this would be a joke that maybe played well on a different show, not here.
And the last thing I really don’t want to harp on because I know that it is Katy’s voice and she can’t change that, but the narration is very annoying. I have seen her on other shows and in movies and enjoyed the voice there, but here... I don’t know if it’s the way she delivers the lines or what they’re showing on screen as she says stuff or the background music, but her voice comes off like a nausea-inducing squirrel chirp (I know they don’t chirp!): it wiggles into your ear and goes manic on your brain. Frankly, it makes all of the narration feel far more down-your-nose judgmental than anything because it sounds like that polite high lilt voice that every mean girl who is trying to be cute and condescending at the same time in a movie or real life uses. Every time I hear her saying her lines and smiling that fake smile, all I hear is, “Oh, you drive a used Prius. How cute,” like that’s not good enough. She seems more akin to Kristin Chenoweth’s character from GCB than Mama Heck from the Middle or even Minnie Driver’s character from Speechless—two endearing Middle-Class moms who, like Katie, are just trying to keep it all together.

Should you be watching? No. Again, family comedy is sometimes hard to find in this day and age and, when looking anywhere but ABC, you probably won’t find much in the way of a sitcom, but with the nine other family sitcoms that ABC is offering this season, surely you can find something that fits and reflects your family better than this. Ultimately, while most family sitcoms look inward to the family where the notion goes, “Yes, we’re all different from each other, but we’re really all the same,” and that makes the family bond work better, American Housewife goes outward for the comedy to the world to say, “All of these people around us are different, and think they’re better but we are the ones that are better than them, therefore we have to stick together so we don’t become like them.” And that doesn’t feel quite as good as it should. But check it out for yourself. American Housewife airs on ABC Tuesdays at 8:30pm EST.
What do you think? Have you seen American Housewife? If not, do you think you’ll tune in for a few episodes? If so, do you like it? Was I too harsh on it? Who is your favorite character? And do you think the show has benefited or lost out on its renaming from its original title “The Second Fattest Housewife in Westport?” Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).
Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend . #AhStalkingIf you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “American Woman... stay away from me-ee. American woman... just let me be-ee.”

P.S. That is all I can remember from the Lenny Kravitz song, but it totally applies to this show. I have to work on other projects and often have to drop some of the new shows I watch even when I like them, but on certain occasions, I still take a peek at them through the season to see if they've changed. This one, while I am actually leaning toward the thought that it will not only last but get renewed, I don't think I'll ever watch again.

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