Colony is an interesting premise — aliens have invaded earth, taken over everything partly through more advanced technology, and now life is continuing under occupation.
Episode 1 introduced how many people are coping — some are collaborating and doing just fine. Others are struggling just not to be noticed by the aliens and sent to a factory to work (never to return). The main couple for the show are stressed out — their son was in a different part of California when the aliens took over and they haven’t been able to find him. The husband works with some smugglers to try and infiltrate the next zone over, gets captured, and now is given a choice.
Work for the aliens and maybe see his son, or get dead. As a former police agent who specialized in finding people, the aliens want his skills put to use finding resistance fighters. ** Spoiler alert ** At the end of the episode, you find out that the wife is part of the resistance.
Interesting premise, but the gritty nature of the filming (a little Blair-Witch-ish at times) makes it tough to watch. Plus, you feel a bit like you came in halfway through the story — you don’t know anything about the aliens.
It remains to be seen if later episodes make it “Star Trek the First Encounter” or “WWII, life in occupied Paris” with an updated location.
Luke Cage’s story picks up five months after Jessica Jones’ battle with Kilgrave, and he’s hiding out as a fugitive, working as floor sweeper by day and dishwasher by night, all for cash under the table. Staying low, flying under the radar. Hiding.
And mostly he doesn’t want to get involved in people’s troubles. Or in their lives at all. He just wants to be left alone. But forces around him get him involved in ways he doesn’t foresee. A hookup with a bar fly that turns out to be someone else. A kid with a gun who he tries to counsel but ultimately lets him run away.
All leading up at the end of the first episode to a decision that he doesn’t want to let life flow by him with no wake. So he pushes back with some punks hassling restaurant owners for protection. And the protector of the streets is born. He won’t do it for money, he’ll only do it so someone has their back.
Great first episode, but I’ve already watched Ep2 and I’m a little disappointed. It sure doesn’t take long for him to get re-involved in life, and I would have liked to see him struggle more (like Batman or Spiderman canon) to stay neutral. I don’t care for most of the supporting characters, but the main guy is great.
Quantico had its premiere last weekend, and I was struggling to decide if I want to watch it this season or not. Don’t get me wrong, I think the premise is great. If the 22-episode arc from last season was boiled down to ten episodes, I would think, “Awesome!”. But it isn’t/wasn’t. It is 22 episodes. Of spin, and counter-spin, and just when you thought we were getting somewhere, they reset and started the spins all over again. Was it this student? That one? Pretty much all you could be sure of was if they suspected someone one week, they weren’t the real one.
At the end of the season, with everything wrapped up, Alex Parrish is all cleared — and trying to figure out where to go next. She’s tagged by the CIA for an op — infiltrate the CIA and run on op on the inside. In the season opener, you find out that it is about a year later, she’s been to the Farm (CIA’s equivalent of Quantico), run an op, and now everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
It’s the same format as last year — an event is happening in present time, with flashbacks to the training to figure out what lead to the current set of events. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here, or at least some of them. Miranda, Shelby, Ryan, and Nimah are all involved either in the past or the future, most in both.
And that’s the problem. It is “same time next year”, and while I liked Season 1, I didn’t like how slow it was to get to the actual plot. Pretty sure I can already elminate at least one suspect since the CIA thinks it’s him from the start. And pretty sure I know who will be involved somehow. But the rest will take 22 episodes to figure out, and I’d rather be watching some of the other cases they’ve worked on in the last year instead of another grand conspiracy slowly doled out in bite-sized chunks.
I honestly don’t know what to make of the premiere of The Exorcist. Based on the description, I figured it would go maybe 4 episodes and nose dive. I’m not as certain, but that’s still my prediction after watching the premiere.
Now, the Exorcist comes in with a truckload of baggage and name recognition, depending on your view. The premise for the series is the old priest, scarred by years of fighting and losing, somehow spiritually tied with a young idealized Latino priest who has never felt called by God before. Together they will take on a demon possessing a young girl whose friend died in a car accident a few months before. Mom is worried about her, including that there seem to be really weird things going on in the house. AKA demon possession.
The young priest doesn’t really believe at first, until he dreams about the old priest and his experiences, and then witnesses the girl himself in full battle mode.
The two priests are played by Alfonso Herrara (young priest) and Ben Daniels (old priest). I am not familiar with either one, but they had some gravitas in the pilot, some strong acting potential there.
Geena Davis and Alan Ruck as the girl’s parents? Thelma / Dottie (Thelma and Louise, A League of Their Own) and Cameron (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) would not be on my likely list. She only has one real scene where there is any emotional resonance going on, and another where there’s some character revealed. But Ruck is about as catatonic as Cameron was when the car’s odometer wouldn’t go backwards.
The only bright spot that I saw was the daughter, Brianne Howey. She was downright sparkly and creepy at the same time.
Now, to be fair, I was never likely to be a fan of this show as they up the horror factor. But the main reason I can’t tell what’s happening is that the show preview for next week makes it look like there will be two parts to the series:
Ongoing story trying to save Casey from the possession; and,
Cases of the week as the two priests investigate other happenings going on in Chicago.
Supernatural has the ground easily covered for the case-of-the-week in a far more accessible format, and when Constantine tried to tred the same ground two years ago, it was cancelled after half a season. I just don’t see either pillar carrying the show long enough for it to catch on with anyone.
As I mentioned in my last post about Blue Bloods, I have a pretty high tolerance for a show with cheese factor, so I wasn’t immediately turned off by the idea of rebooting MacGyver. I figured I would give it one episode to test it out, but I fully expect it to not make it past the mid-season mark. Having watched that first episode, I find it hard to believe it got past the pilot.
Lucas Till plays MacGyver, and his acting and fight scenes are relatively okay. Not much more being asked of him than his X-Men outings. The bigger problem for him is that the reboot has taken the original narration device and kicked it into major exposition overdrive. Along with an odd documentary style text overlay where they label some of the things he’s building (like an episode of MythBusters or something). Highly disruptive to getting into the story. Way overload.
His partner is played by George Eads of CSI fame, and while I didn’t mind him on CSI, he is incredibly annoying here. Every relationship he has is irritating to watch.
Their boss is “Director Thornton”, played by Sandrine Holt. She’s been in a fair number of shows for a season or two, none of which I watched, and a lot of guest spots, many of which I’ve seen and didn’t really notice. She’s background for most of the guest spots, not key plot development potential, and I have no idea what her “role” is supposed to be in the team. Close, distant, completely weird dynamic and I never got a bead on her.
They have a new field analyst in the episode, Riley. Played by Tristan Mays who I’ve never seen before, she is the only bright spot in the whole dang episode. A bit sassy, a bit confident, a bit street. She’s great. Her character goes from “bad criminal girl” to “hey, thanks for giving me this great job” in a single episode, but hey, whatever. The writing sucked, the plot was worse, but she shone. I suspect her character turns out to be Eads’ daughter, but I won’t be watching to see it.
There are two baddies in the episode and I thought one might stick around. The first “baddie” is Vinnie Jones who was the heart of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but equally shone in his episodes of Elementary playing Moriarty’s henchman. I expected him to disappear in one episode perhaps, and he does. The second “baddie”, and this is a spoiler alert, is played by Tracy Spiridakos.
I really liked her as Charlie on Revolution, and as she is revealed to be a traitor to the group, I was hoping for some “oomph” from her in the episodes. Maybe some sort of super baddie for the future. She’s not listed for any of the other episodes though, so likely a future occasionally returning character. Too bad, she could have added some meat or gravitas to their weekly stakes. Equally unfortunate, the episode uses about a tenth of what she’s capable of doing. The opening scenes are very different from who she is later, and you could be forgiven for thinking it is really two different characters as the arc linking the two is relatively off-screen and a stereotype/action trope to boot.
Poor acting. Poor plotting. Bad dialogue. And way over the top exposition / narration. I don’t mind cheese, but stinky moldy cheese is too much even for me.
