Indeed, the drama within the Dollhouse is tense and smart and uncomfortable, finally touching seriously on ugly issues like the traumas and personhood of the imprints. Which makes it all the more frustrating that the “A” plot is so damned stupid and problematic. When Ballard expresses discomfort over Echo’s sleeping with Apollo in the course of the mission, Echo counters that sex is fun, particularly with Apollo. Really, show? Really?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, don’t watch television, or have been generally avoiding everything to do with ABC for the last several months, you’ve definitely heard of Flash Forward. The premise is simple: One day everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes, seventeen seconds and has a vision of six months in the future.
Okay then. Global Dynamics is about to run its Super Duper Ultra Crazy Mega Zelda Collider and something, anything is going to go wrong. Something does.
In interviews, Alan Ball has stated that the writers very deliberately split the characters up into isolated groups of two and three. This was a terrible idea, and they must know it—Ball has said that they won’t be doing the same thing for Season 3. True Blood is an ensemble piece, and hacking apart your ensemble is just plain dumb.
“Have an Ice Day” features Tess on her first day as interim boss of Global Dynamics. Tess is waiting on a delivery of the longest ice core ever recovered, drilled out of the arctic sheet. Given the title of the episode, this can’t end well.
Due to bull-headed, demidivine circumstances beyond our control, this week’s a True Blood recap double feature. And it’s just as well, really, because “New World in My View” and “Frenzy” are very much of a piece, making up the climactic third act of this second season. When our weary Dallas party finally reunites with the god-crazed Bon Temps staycationers, grand plans are set in motion and hijinks inevitably ensue. This being True Blood, however, “hijinks” means meat-altars, extemporaneous impersonations of Satan, and pleasant games of Yahtzee.
It’s just another Friday in Eureka? Sure, if it’s Groundhog Day.
Eureka presents viewers with their first (and hopefully last) flashback show. It is under the guise of some contraption that somehow takes your spoken memories and projects a visual interpretation. Like a clip show.
“I Will Rise Up” rises from the midseason doldrums to give us one of the best hours of True Blood this year. And it does so not with thrilling plot twists or throbbing drama, but characters who act like they know one another.
There are two primary storylines to any episode of Eureka. The first of “Shower of the People” is the strange drowning deaths of two GD scientists. Not strange simply because they drowned, but because they are drowning in their cars, in Cafe Diem’s bathroom. Not normal places for a drowning. It is crazy-Eureka-type drowning. That’s the best kind.
So, the conclusion to last week’s episode (“If You Build It…”) featured the arrival of the source of the mysterious signal. It was a ship, which immediately invited all sorts of thoughts about aliens. Moments later Henry Deacon walked up to the ship, wiped away some soot, and revealed an American flag. The ship was ours, except nobody knew it was coming. Where does that leave us now?
© 2018 Fantasy Magazine
