Wayward Pines

I'm of two minds about Wayward Pines. This is kind of surprising, since I'm usually pretty decisive.

I can typically tell in the first few episodes or even minutes if I am going to like a show. But Wayward Pines is proving a difficult nut to crack. Not to say that the plot is particularly complicated, but when the best way to describe a show is "Twin Peaks meets LOST," you can pretty much guarantee there is going to be some wacky stuff going on. 

Here's the official description from FOX (cue press release voice):

Based on the best-selling novel, “Pines,” by Blake Crouch, and brought to life by suspenseful storyteller M. Night Shyamalan, WAYWARD PINES is an intense, mind-bending new thriller in which nothing is what it seems. Secret Service agent ETHAN BURKE (Academy Award nominee Matt Dillon, “Crash,” “City of Ghosts”) arrives in the bucolic town of Wayward Pines, ID, on a mission to find two missing federal agents. But instead of answers, Ethan’s investigation only turns up more questions. Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the life he knew, from the husband and father he was, until he must face the terrifying reality that he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

That's not really super specific, so here's my short version of the plot. Matt Dillon is in a car crash while investigating the disappearance of two fellow Secret Service agents. He wakes up in a hospital in Wayward Pines, Idaho, where everything is super creepy. There are hardly any phones that work, he can't find his wallet or any possessions, and everyone seems to be part of some vast conspiracy. Mostly a conspiracy against allowing him to leave. And it turns out one the agents he has been searching for (and had previously had an affair with) has been living in Wayward Pines for years...even though she just went missing a short time ago.

Wayward Pines has the "Federal agent finds himself in a super strange small town filled with crazy people where supernatural things happen" vibe of Twin Peaks combined with the "seemingly normal people find themselves trapped in a super strange place that doesn't seem to follow the laws of physics and is part of a must deeper mystery" aspects of LOST. 

Normally this kind of thing would seem like a slam dunk, but Wayward Pines meanders just enough that I'm not sure it will sustain the intrigue of the pilot. A plot twist at the end of the second episode is enough to keep me watching for now, but if episode three doesn't step up I might consider dropping it. But let's be honest--there's not a heck of a lot on TV this summer and my OCD will probably kick in so that I feel obligated to finish the season.  

It certainly looks good though; everything about the show, sets, and characters works and is just slightly weird enough to be off-putting. And the performances are downright great. Props to Terrence Howard for playing the local Sheriff with just the right amount of ambiguity that I am super interested in finding out his part in the overall conspiracy. I was also really excited to see Carla Gugino in the cast as the missing-now-found Secret Service agent. 

In sum, Wayward Pines has a great creepy feel that hints at a much larger mystery, but it's going to have to work to keep up the momentum established in the pilot. If you're looking for something to watch this summer, you could do a lot worse. 

Wayward Pines airs on FOX Thursdays at 9:00 PM EST. You can catch up with the first two episodes on FOX's website or on Hulu.

Constantine is the American Doctor Who

I know, I know.   A bold statement.  Especially given the number of other shows that could equally make the case that they are, in fact, as close as those of us in “The Colonies” will ever get to our own mad cap Gallifreyan adventurer (The Middleman certainly had a strong case to make).  But here’s the thing: all the main Doctor Who tropes are present in the new NBC show.  Wise but possibly ambivalent hero fighting dark enemies?  Check.   Companion who is mostly a rube but potentially possessing a vital power or skill that the hero will need?  Yup.  It’s-Bigger-On-The-Inside base of operations?  But of course.

All of which is not to suggest that Constantine is just some rip off.  If anything, having watched the first six episodes, I would argue that the show is trying to establish itself as something wholly independent of the rest of the comic book properties out there.  The mad Englishman with a special larger-than-it-seems home base and a crazy encyclopedic knowledge of terrifying things coupled with a potentially troublesome disregard for the people around him may echo our favorite fantasy adventurer, but this is a TARDIS of a different shape.

A flame-ier, angrier TARDIS...

The Comic Book

Wait, what?  “Clovis,” I hear you say, “Is this yet another comic book TV show that you can’t seem to stay away from?”  Of course it is.  Constantine is based on the DC Comics book Hellblazer about John Constantine, a 35-year-old con man, supernatural detective, and “petty dabbler of the dark arts” based in London.  But in order to understand this character and where he fits in with all those flying cape-wearers who are always saving the planet from alien invasions or some such, I’m going to have to take you through a couple of very brief points of fact about the DC Universe.

As always, those wishing to avoid the nerdy comic book talk can skip ahead.  I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back and hear just about the TV show.

The thing about DC Comics that separates it from the other big comic book company, Marvel, is that DC has for years made a big show about all its characters existing in a multiverse.  (Marvel has a multiverse of its own, but a much more consistent effort is put into place with their books to streamline the characters and give them a common space to exist in.)  This is the narrative device that allows DC Comics to keep cannon a lot of completely out of date stories.  It’s what explains, for example, how it is that Wonder Woman can exist in our modern age and yet still have fought Nazis during World War II. The Nazi-fighting version was a different reality Wonder Woman from a different dimension in the multiverse.  Comics, everybody!

I could keep explaining, but it's just going to make you want to do a lot of this. 

In 1993, DC Comics created Vertigo, a specialty imprint that would produce comics that were more adult; more like literature than the flashy superhero adventures the company was primarily known for. Vertigo was the home to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta, among lots of other riskier and, frankly, weirder stories.  Hellblazer was born into this world and while John Constantine would sometimes still find ways to interact with the occasional Superman or Batman, he mostly occupied a different reality in the multiverse.

Constantine as a character was known for being rough around the edges, unrelentingly cynical, and deadpan but also remarkably cunning and capable of getting out of the toughest scrapes, a key skill when the majority of your enemies are demons great and small, including the biggest baddie of them all, The First of the Fallen.  (Read: The Devil.  Sorta.)   Writers at various times have portrayed him as the ultimate pragmatist, willing to take anyone down if the ends justified the means, but also as someone who is essentially motivated by a desire to be a good person and make the world a better place.  Of course, the world isn’t often saved by people who are being nice guys.  You can’t make an omelet, etc. etc.

This actually qualifies as a light-hearted moment for most of Constantine's life. 

The TV Show

Okay comic-phobes, you can come back!  The good news for traditionalist is that the TV series did a phenomenal job casting John Constantine.  Seriously, you guys.  Matt Ryan looks exactly like how his character is supposed to.  I know that may seem like a small thing, but in this age of whitewashing and making changes because somehow the source material isn’t “relatable”, seeing Matt Ryan in his Constantine trench coat and loosened tie for the first time made a lot of folk feel like this show was on target.  

Seriously, you guys.  Nerd-squee. 

And then there was Liv…

The first episode serves up similar story notes from the comic books.  Constantine has voluntarily confined himself to an English psychiatric hospital after botching an exorcism that resulted in a young girl, Astra, being dragged into Hell. His rest cure fails to work, however, when a cadre of supernatural forces warn John that Liv Aberdine, an American woman who is also the daughter of one of John’s old magic partners, is in danger.  John manages to exorcise the demon that is chasing down Liv, but the experience is too much for her and she flees his company after providing him a scrying map showing John other locations throughout the country where something evil is afoot. 

And therein was the first problem for the new series.  Simply put, Liv shouldn’t have.  The part didn’t mesh with the story; there wasn’t a lot of there there and the actress was replaced with a new character, Zed who shares some of Liv’s psychic abilities but is a bit more world-weary.  Fans worried that the abrupt change in lead casting was a bad portent for the show.  Personally, I think John and Zed make a better pairing precisely because Zed has her share of secrets she’s keeping from John.  Plus it underlines a very major point in the comics: John isn’t a good person to be around.  He’s trouble and he’s not afraid to put you in between himself and it.  John acknowledges this to his only other compatriot, Chas, a man who is loyal to John but has the mysterious ability to survive being killed making him one of the only people who can probably stand to be around John for long.  Add to that the host of angels who are rapidly losing patience with John and not so squeamish about maybe handing him over to the demons who would love to have his head and Constantine's got a lot of motivation for screwing over otherwise fine people. 

Pictured (l to r): Angel, Hero Jerk Face, Woman of Mystery, Undead Cab Driver (really). 

Aside from the casting drama, there’s a lot to find in Constantine for folks looking for some light horror.  Storylines are taken from the comics, so fans will find plenty to wink at. (See below for more on that.)  At the same time, the show manages to keep exactly the right tone in relation to the demons and ghosts that make their way into Constantine’s life.  He’s not afraid of them, exactly; but he does take them seriously.  His deadpan humor is fully imported from the comics, but Matt Ryan gives his lines a gravity that shows just how unsure of himself Constantine is in the wake of that failed exorcism.  Most importantly, the show has been very careful about keeping the sanctity (pun not intended) of their main character in tact: John’s defining character trait in the comics is that he smokes.  This is a problem for network TV where characters aren’t allowed to smoke given network standards and practices.  As such, we’re given just enough subtle clues to suggest that John has just put out a cigarette that observers will understand how much this is a part of his character.  Likewise, the punk-rock sensibility from the comics is still on display.  In a scene where John must fight a demon without listening to its voice, he blasts The Clash on his iPod to drown out the sounds.

As a side note, between this and their other horror show, the incredible Hannibal, NBC seems to be interested in carving out a horror niche that I’m very much in favor of.  Both shows take significant risks for network television and it’s exciting to see these stories being played out.  Unless you’re Maggie Cats, after all, you can only watch so much Law & Order before you need something else on TV.

The Easter Eggs

As with Gotham and The Flash, DC Entertainment has again dropped a number of Easter Eggs for fans.  Many of them are more overt than other DC shows; John openly talks about Mucus Membrane, his former punk band.  In the pilot, Liv picks up a golden helmet before John warns her to put it back down, saying more than likely it will wear her before she could wear it.  The helmet is an exact copy of that worn by the character Dr. Fate.  In episode five, John and Zed work with New Orleans cop Jim Corrigan.  Near the end of the episode, Zed has a disturbing vision of Corrigan dead and bleeding but with a green light emanating from him.  Savvy viewers will know that Corrigan will eventually die and become The Spectre, a character who is the spirit of vengeance.

Other references are far more subtle.  In John’s Bigger-On-The-Inside base camp filled with magical items, you can see Pandora’s Box in one glass case.  Not far from it, there’s backwards writing on a chalkboard, a clear reference to the comic book character Zatanna who recites phrases backwards in order to cast magic spells.  One of John’s former associates now works at Ivy University, a school often referenced in DC Comics and home to several other superheroes.  A close-up shot of Constantine’s business card gives an Atlanta-area phone number.  Call that number and you’ll get a recording of Matt Ryan as Constantine referencing someone named Alec Holland. 

The Bottom Line

You know what I’m going to say here – watch this damn show.  Yes, that’s because it’s a comic book character and I’m firmly in the camp of believing that if comic book properties continue to be successful, they’ll stop becoming a special niche and will instead become a genre.  We’ve made great strides on this so far – Constantine stands on its own as a horror show; Gotham is doing a capable job as a police procedural; Agents of SHIELD, despite the slow start, has been doing reasonably well as a spy drama; the success of the Marvel cinematic universe all together has show that comic book characters don’t just have to be caped adventure stories with one-note plots.  Progress is being made.

As of now, Constantine is slated to run for 13 episodes in its first season.  It hasn’t been called up for more episodes or for a second season, though NBC and DC have both indicated that doesn’t mean the show will be cancelled.  For my money, the risks taken on bringing a show like this to television alone are worthy of supporting it, but I honestly think new viewers will be intrigued by the complexity of the characters and the gradual deepening of the storylines. 

Also, repeat after me: the movie never happened.  The movie. NEVER. HAPPENED.

Oh go be sad about it in a park, Keanu. 

New Year, New Doctor

Well, that's that then. So long Matt Smith!

You are just too adorable.

He had a good run. I have been consistently disappointed in the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who*, but never disappointed in Matt Smith. From the moment he asked a young Amelia Pond for fish fingers and custard, I thought of him as the Doctor. Did I miss David Tennant? Of course. Did I love Matt Smith. Absolutely.

But even in the TARDIS, time marches on and Matt Smith has decided to carry on with his career. On Christmas, we bade farewell to the Eleventh Doctor (I guess really the Twelfth?) in the special episode, The Time of the Doctor, and said a brief hello to the next actor to take on the role: Peter Capaldi.

I don't want to harp on the episode, for the most part I enjoyed it. But it would be remiss of me not to mention that it didn't seem to make a lot of sense. Plot holes big enough to drive a TARDIS through have been something of a hallmark with Moffat episodes (as well as an annoying tendency to repeat themes and types of female characters), and The Time of the Doctor was no exception.

A town called Christmas? Ugh. I did enjoy the cyberman talking head though.

If I may quote my favorite internet gay uncles (Tom and Lorenzo):

We’re gonna cop to some laziness here, as well as some Moffat fatigue, because we’re not even going to bother listing all the things that made no sense or were left unexplained. If Moffat couldn’t be bothered to write a story that holds together, should we really put all that much effort into showing how it falls apart? Besides, one thing we know for sure, you either loved or hated this special and there’s not a thing anyone can say to convince you otherwise. When someone who hadn’t seen it yet asked us how it was, we told them it was a lot like the Lost finale: nothing made sense but you’ll get a good cry out of it at the end.

I have to confess there was a lot about the plot of this episode that I didn't understand or plain didn't get. The Doctor spends 300 years in this one small town? Really? And I have never been a fan of skipping HUGE periods of time in the course of an episode (something Moffat has also done before with this Doctor), and here it just seemed like a cheap device.

But none of that really matters in the long run, I suppose. If you didn't cheer when the Time Lords zapped the Doctor with some extra regeneration energy (I guess they just have that shit lying around or something), then you don't have a heart. And the goodbye to his past companions was very sweet. The regeneration into Doctor number Twelve was both achingly slow and shockingly quick and from the 20 or so seconds we saw of him, Peter Capaldi did a great job.

While I mourn the loss of Matt Smith from Doctor Who, my takeaway was one of excitement for the new season and the new Doctor. Bring it on, Moffat.

I'm excited!

The new season of Doctor Who (the 8th of the new series) will air in the UK in August 2014. Hopefully, we'll get it on BBC America at the same time!

*except the Neil Gaiman penned episodes and the recent 50th Anniversary special.

Summer Laziness

So I know this review is about....(checks watch)....6 weeks too late, but I just couldn't help it. Blame it on the heat, blame it on laziness, blame it on whatever you want, but I just couldn't work up the motivation. It's nothing against the show itself, which I actually enjoy, for some reason I have just been stuck in a summer rut. But now! Look, a review of the CBS series, Under the Dome!

My Dad looked at me last week and said, "I figured out what bothers me about Under the Dome. It's the same plot as The Simpsons Movie."

Ok, fair enough. Yes, a giant dome descends over the town of Chester's Mill, which is also what happens to the Simpsons' hometown of Springfield. And wackiness ensues. But that's pretty much where the similarity ends. Also, the tv series was actually ripped off (I mean, adapted) from a Stephen King novel, so there's that.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the "naked skateboarding around the dome" scene happens in the season finale.

I get tired of saying that the networks are all looking for the next LOST, but once again, the ghost of the dearly departed series hangs over the proceedings. Basically, everyone is always trying to find the next big science fiction show that will leave the audience guessing and waiting breathlessly for answers. It doesn't hurt if there is also the potential for tie-in merchandising. While Under the Dome has much in common with LOST, from the mysteries to the large cast, we are thankfully spared boring flashbacks. If only Once Upon a Time took the same approach.

Alrighty, the basic concept is pretty simple. Chester's Mill is your typical small town USA (or is it??) and one day a giant invisible dome descends over the town separating it from the outside world. You can see through it, air comes through, but pretty much nothing else, including sound. Oh, and it interferes with electromagnetic signals meaning you don't want to get too close with your cell phone up against your ear. Your entire head could explode.

For the most part, I am pleased with the show. The central mystery (what is the dome??) is pretty interesting and I think the writers do a good job of teasing out clues. It's clear something sci-fi or supernatural-like is happening here, especially since some teenagers in the dome are having seizures and whispering creepy things like, "the pink stars are falling." Ok, then. There's also some indication the town elders, the sheriff, the councilman, and the reverend, knew something like this was coming and are involved in some way. I love a good conspiracy.

But where Under the Dome needs to improve is in its smaller character subplots. Some of them are truly ridiculous, like the crazy teenager who kidnaps his girlfriend and locks her in his bomb shelter. Yeah, it's THAT dumb. Or the lesbians whose daughter is full of angst and not pleased about being stuck in this small town for the foreseeable future. Actually, it seems most of the plots that bother me involve the teenagers. So less angst, more seizures for them please.

They always find a way to keep the pretty people apart.

I also had a problem with how the town as a whole reacted to the dome. With the exception of one dude freaking the fuck out, everyone just pretty much went about business as usual. Uh, excuse me? If this really happened, you know people would be rioting and stripping the local Wal-Mart of every piece of food and survivalist gear they could get their hands on. In Chester's Mill, people still wander around paying for shit and one guy's idea of stocking up is to buy an extra pack of cigarettes. Come on people, get with the program. How do you expect to survive a zombie apocalypse with that attitude?

But these are all minor quibbles. For the most part, Under the Dome has an interesting concept, and while it may not have the most diverse cast (except for the lesbians), there are a lot of characters I am invested in. Also, it's summer, so the original scripted programming options are kind of limited. If you want to catch up, I say check it out online or on On Demand and enjoy the ride.

 Did I mention that when the dome comes down it cuts anything in its way in half? Obligatory Twister cow quote: "Another cow." "Actually, I think that's the same one."

Under the Dome airs Mondays at 10:00pm EST on CBS. 

Decoding Doctor Who

Last week, fans of Doctor Who got to see the long-hinted at farewell to Amy and Rory, the current Doctor’s only real long-standing companions.  The mid-season finale, “The Angels Take Manhattan” was a greatest hits of the current era with Amy, Rory and the Doctor once again teaming up with River Song to fight the Weeping Angels, this time in 1930s New York. SPOILERS AHEAD – I’l let you know when I’m done with them.

The departure of Amy and Rory has been a known quantity for a while now, however the exact circumstances of that departure were carefully guarded prior to the episode airing. What we saw was a plot by the Angels to abduct people and send them back in time, as per their traditional motivation, and then house all of these time-tossed unfortunates in an apartment building in Battery Park. Once Rory is attacked by the Angels, the rest of the team goes back to find him, inadvertently messing up the timestream every which way such that the Doctor can purportedly no longer go back to that place and time ever again without undoing all of the universe.  There were a number of twists and turns to the plot, and a fair amount of dramatics, but the end result is that Amy and Rory are permanently sent back to the 1930s to live out the rest of their days there, forever away from the Doctor, but at least with each other.

As an emotional note, the farewell to these characters is earned and bittersweet. Amy tearfully saying goodbye to the Doctor by referring to him as her “raggedy man” was a nice throwback and you got an appreciation for how much the Doctor hates goodbyes. The episode also hit on an even more interesting theme – that the Doctor is so emotionally unable to deal with endings that the people around him have to go to great lengths to hide it when they fail him or even to show that they’re getting older. Given what little we know about the Doctor’s background in possibly destroying his entire race, this gives some compelling emotions for Matt Smith and other future Doctors to play with.

As a plot device, however, the story fails on a number of points. For starters, we’re assured that the TARDIS simply cannot go back to the point where Amy and Rory are sent and that to go there at all would unmake the universe. Ergo, Amy and Rory are forever in the past. The problem, however, is physics. The writers of this episode seem to forget that humans are, each of us, time machines, albeit ones that only travel in once direction. Why the Doctor couldn’t just wait until, say, 1940 and then go back up his two best friends remains a mystery. I can’t believe that the show is forever swearing off World War II stories after all.

Okay, spoiler-phobes. You can come back now.

So with a fond (Pond?) farewell, we see off Amy and Rory and anticipate the arrival of the newest companion played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. Which leads to the inevitable question of just what is going on this season in Doctor Who?

The shape of things to come

Show runner Steven Moffat has somewhat remarkably said that, unlike the past two years, this season will carry no long-form story-arc and instead will treat each episode like a big blockbuster movie. Simply put, I think he’s lying through his Scottish teeth at us. While we haven’t seen anything as explicit as a widening crack in reality or the appearance and disappearance of The Silence yet, there has been one major feature that has bound together each episode: has anyone else noticed that the Doctor is slowly disappearing?

Just follow me on this one: Each episode has had either a major or minor moment focused on the notion that the Doctor, who just two seasons ago had gotten so notorious that he managed to stand on a rock and talk an entire invading space fleet of bad guys into not obliterating him with a ray gun of some kind, is routinely running into people who don’t know him and can’t identify him. Starting in the first episode, “Asylum of the Daleks”, the Doctor is effectively erased from the memory banks of every Dalek everywhere. In “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, the collector’s computer-of-instant-knowing-things has no record of the Doctor. Last week, we learn that River Song has long ago been freed from prison because it seems the man she murdered, the Doctor, actually never existed. It’s implied this is some kind of computer error, but I think it’s more than that. I think The Silence is slowly erasing the Doctor from all history.

We know from last season’s finale that there is a terrible question in the universe, something that references “the fall of the eleventh” and that a question that could unmake reality (or something) will be asked and that question just might be, “Doctor who?” We know The Silence is dedicated to eliminating the Doctor as a threat to creation, and so it stands to reason they might be behind all this.

If it’s the case, then, that there is in fact a long-form arc to this season about the Doctor’s identify, conveniently timed to dovetail into next year’s 50^th anniversary of the show, it makes sense to also wonder how the new companion will factor in. We’ve already seen Jenna-Louise Coleman in a somewhat puzzling role in the first episode this year as a woman who (again, SPOILERS) was turned into a Dalek and didn’t even realize it. Might she have something to do with all this erase-y nonsense as well?