New Fall Shows, Round 1!

Last week marked the official start of Fall premiere season, as new shows began airing on the major and cable networks. I managed to catch three shows; one was ok, one was great, and one I liked, but I'm not sure about. Are you intrigued? Let's get to it!

Z Nation: This zombie show airing on SyFy was one of my top 5 most anticipated new shows of the season. After watching the pilot though, I have mixed feelings. During the first 10 minutes or so, I was really disappointed. The whole thing has the grainy look and feel of a typical SyFy low budget Saturday night movie. You know the ones I mean--something like "Giant Mosquitoes Attack!" (which I think was actually a movie they aired several years ago).

But then a funny thing happened...the show got good. The budget and amateur direction didn't improve, but once we got into the actual story and met some new characters, I found myself impressed by the performances and the concept. And the zombie attacks were frequent, creative, and had awesome kills. I also respect that the show isn't afraid to cross the line. A bus full of school kid zombies? Done. Oh, and a zombie baby that chases around the characters and is shown gnawing on a person's intestines? DONE. This is not for the fair of heart...or stomach.

As if I needed ANOTHER reason to be grateful I don't have kids.

Bottomline: If you can get past the low production budget, there is a compelling concept and good performances in a zombie show that is not afraid to go for the gross-out.  Z Nation airs Fridays at 10:00PM on SyFy. 

The Mysteries of Laura: Debra Messing is back on NBC as a NYPD homicide detective who solves murders while juggling her responsibilities as a working mom. She has twin boys who are trouble-makers (they get kicked out of their pre-K school for misbehavior) and she is going through a separation/divorce from her cheating husband. He claims he still loves her...but can she ever trust him again?

She's taking bad guys down with whatever's handy...even a nerf gun.

Look, here's the deal. This is a good show. There is nothing wrong with it and it's essentially a cop procedural combined with a dramedy about the main character's personal life. And that's fine if it's your bag, but it's not mine. Other than Law and Order: SVU when I'm traveling (or drunk), I don't have much use for procedural dramas. So while there was nothing about The Mysteries of Laura that was bad, it's just not a show that I am particularly interested in. But if you enjoy procedural dramas, Debra Messing, or shows about ladies doing it their way, give it a shot. 

Bottomline: An enjoyable cop procedural centered around a woman who must reconcile her obligations to her family and her responsibilities as a homicide detective. The Mysteries of Laura airs Wednesdays at 8:00PM on NBC.

Red Band Society: This show was not even on my radar until it aired, but I loved the pilot and fully intend to keep watching. I saw a lot of comparisons between it and Glee, and I think that's fair--except Red Band Society is way better. There's no singing, but there is voice-over, characters who embody teen archetypes with a twist, and snappy clever dialogue with insults flying fast and furious. 

The show is about a group of teenagers who are semi-permanent residents of the fictional Ocean Park Hospital in LA. They have various maladies: cancer, an eating disorder, heart problems, cystic fibrosis, etc. There are also some adults in the mix, most notably Octavia Spencer, who plays the pediatrics nurse everyone is afraid of, but who actually has a heart of gold. But: YOU GUYS. You know who else is in this show??

Wilson Cruz, aka Rickie from My So-Called Life!!

I know, I know, a lot of you are thinking "who?" But MSCL is one of my favorite shows of all time and Rickie was an amazing character, not to mention one of the first gay teen characters on television. Anyway, whenever I see him in something I get really excited. So I hope Red Band Society is popular so he can keep working. 

The show has that same edgy and black humor as Glee, but is less shallow with more substance and heart. The subject matter is also understandably more serious; in the pilot the "new kid" is about to undergo surgery to remove his leg (because of cancer? I think?). Anyway, I can't lie--I teared up at the end.

Bottomline: A wickedly funny drama that successfully balances typical teen trials and tribulations with more serious subject matter. Also watch for the interesting adult characters and the tv trope of the"family of choice." Red Band Society airs Wednesdays at 9:00PM on FOX.

Coming later this week: capsule reviews of Madame Secretary, Forever, Black-ish, and How to Get Away With Murder. I also expect Clovis will have some thoughts about Gotham...

Warmed Over Leftovers, Anyone?

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends.  This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang, but with cryptic mysteries, several cults, and a bunch of dog murders.  Or, at least, that’s how HBO’s new series The Leftovers would have us believe it will go.  Allow me to explain with mild spoilers for just the first episode.

The end of the world will be shadowed dramatically. 

The Leftovers begins with a Rapture-like event on October 14 of some nameless roughly modern year whereby 2% of the world’s population, from babies to old women, suddenly vanish, clothing and all. Three years later, the small town of Mapleton, NY, is planning their “Heroes Day” remembrance parade to commemorate the missing and Police Chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) is concerned that a group called the Guilty Remnants, one of the many nascent cults that have sprung up since The Disappearance, will make problems at the event.  Kevin’s teenage daughter Jill (Margaret Quailey) is both despondent about her shattered family and wrestling with her own teenage demons while her brother, Tom (Chris Zylka), is estranged from his family and working for a charismatic cult leader who claims to be able to heal people.

The Guilty Remnants, meanwhile, are indeed planning a silent but antagonistic protest of the parade.  The GRs are notable for wearing all while, never speaking, and being required to always smoke a cigarette.  I know.  Weird.  But, you know.  Cult.  Regardless, despite being led to believe that the Garvey family was shattered by the disappearance of Mrs. Garvey, we learn that she is actually very much appeared but is a key member of the GRs and actively working to recruit a new member in Meg Abbot (Liv Tyler), a woman about to be married but for some reason not terribly excited about that prospect.  The four family members form our core characters and the myriad others radiate from their hub.

Just your average Chief of Police, chief-ing away.

So what we have is a thinly disguised interpersonal drama set against the backdrop of a fantasy story wherein something extremely mysterious has happened and lots of people with interweaving backstories connect.  If you’re thinking that this maybe sounds a lot like something else that you’ve seen recently there’s a reason: the show is the product of Damon Lindelof, the former Executive Producer and head writer of Lost.  And boy oh boy, does it ever show.

The Leftovers layers on the mysteries.  What was The Disappearance?  We don’t know, but we’re told that it emphatically was probably not actually the Rapture, or else how else to explain how it is that in addition to all the sinless and blameless babies that Disappeared along with them went a fair share of jerks, scumbags, moral miscreants and other general bad people.  (A news program runs a humorous “In Memoriam” segment of the famous who Disappeared including Pope Benedict, Condoleezza Rice, Solomon Rushdie,  Jennifer Lopez, and Gary Busey.)   Why does the religious healer receive visions that tell him “the Grace Period is over”?  Why does Garvey have disturbing dreams about animals embedding themselves into his car?  And what’s up with the pack of dogs that supposedly went feral and now live in the woods and why is a man with a massive speech impediment trying to hunt them all down and shoot them?  “You can’t just shoot our dogs,” Garvey tells the man upon seeing him go after a pack of the dogs that seem to appear out of nowhere.  “They’re not our dogs,” the man mumbles cryptically.  “Not anymore.”

All of this adds up to a show with a fair amount of potential, especially given that this is HBO which is far more willing to let its shows be experimental and intense than national networks are.  And the first episode does a good job establishing the world and teasing out the key questions of the series as well as making us if not care about the main characters, at least have more than a passing interest in seeing what happens to them.  The big problem will always remain Damon Lindelof himself.

"We're going to have to have everything not-explained to us by Allison Janney, aren't we?"

Lindelof really, really wants to write smart, provocative shows that use fantastical and supernatural elements to tell very relatable human stories.  That’s a fine goal, but the problem is that he tends to trip over his own shoes when he attempts to meet it.  He wants us, the viewers, to be more interested in the characters he creates than the mystery that brings them together.  That’s absolutely what should happen, but unfortunately the man has a history of succumbing to a need to add complexity upon complexity for no reason other than to make the story interesting or cool.  Lost collapsed under its own bloated weight for this exact reason.  To put it simply, you can make a show about a big supernatural event and then tell the audience not to care about that event.  Characters and interactions will always trump plot when creating a TV show, but you can’t expect people not to want to know about the thing that was the show’s pitch to begin with.

I’m watching The Leftovers for now, mostly just to see if Lindelof and the other writers have achieved a sense of maturity about how they write fantasy and sci-fi.  If they can avoid the strawman arguments that Lindelof tends to set up in his own writing by having one character argue religion and another argue science as if that were a debate that had never happened before, they’ve got the kernel of a good story here.  If, on the other hand, a smoke monster shows up at any point, I’m out.

TV Sluts: Live! And in Person!

Clovis originally wrote the beginning of this post...and then had to leave town for work. *sad trombone* So I'm actually posting it (I'm = Maggie Cats) and writing the introduction to the introduction. Got it?

Oh, whatever. Just go with it.

Clovis:

Two things happened this week that are both rare and heavenly: Haley’s comet will make a pass-by to earth (no visuals, but there was a meteor shower!) and three of the TV Sluts managed to find ourselves in the same room at the same time. What did we do? Watch television, natch.

Damn, those are some good-looking tv bloggers. From left to right: Arsenic Pie, Maggie Cats, and Clovis.

Arsenic Pie, Maggie Cats and I all caught the first two episodes of Salem, WGN’s bloody and provocative new thriller set in Salem, Massachusetts during the infamous witch trials. How is it? Well, it ain’t your father’s Crucible, that’s for sure.

Salem covers the real history of the witch trials in only the broadest of strokes, something we should frankly expect from a show that takes one of the most poignant episodes of the real horrors of fear-mongering and suspicion in early American history and goes, “yeah, but sexy witches are totally more fun, right?”

Obviously the show places fast and loose with the facts, but fans of history and Arthur Miller will recognize some of the high points – In this incarnation, we see the events through the eyes of John Alden, a soldier who has recently returned to Salem after a long time as a POW in an Indian camp, to find Salem has become a hotbed of witchy activity. John Alden is not to be confused with John Proctor, the upstanding moralist in Arthur Miller’s play, but in real life is one of the contemporaries who wrote about the witch trials and thus how we know many details about that event. (Fun fact, he’s also my great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather. True story.)

So who’s leading this sudden upsurge in witchery? Unbeknownst to everyone but us viewers, it is Mary Sibley, John’s former love who has married into wealth and power in his absence and apparently also developed a taste for witchcraft after having a magical abortion in the woods. Yes, you read that right – this show doesn’t just go there, it has a summer home there plus a timeshare with options on New Year’s. In the first two episodes alone we see Mary’s demon abortion, apparitions of an Old Hag attacking a teenage girl, a demon orgy in the woods that looked like something out of evil Burning Man, a frog that is repeatedly expelled and shoved back into a man’s body, and a broomstick appropriated to a use that is far from its traditional expectation.

Watching Salem is kind of like this.

In short, Salem is what American Horror Story: Coven should have been – utterly crazy, completely unafraid of gore and terror, and willing to go the extra mile to bring the squicky and the sexy into the same room with each other. I make no secret of how much I enjoy watching train wreck shows – for that reason alone, I’m going to keep up with this one. But what did the other TV Sluts think of it? Take it away, Ladies…


Arsenic Pie:

Will you all think less of me if I say that I liked Salem? I didn't like it in an "OMG this is so thought-provoking and riveting" way, but I liked it in more of an, "OMG. This is so awesomely ridiculous that I cannot look away" way.

Aside from the completely anachronistic "I call bullshit" line from our hero, John Alden, I was interested in how the show mixed fantasy with actual events. It's an interesting take to say, "No, there were legit witches in real actual Salem doing all kinds of bad in order to get rid of people they didn't like" instead of the intense Arthur Miller "Joe McCarthy is an asshole" theme. I think that we are more familiar with the latter, and with the teenage Abigail Williams as the primary accuser. I'm not actually sure which character in the show is supposed to correspond with which character in The Crucible and which character in The Crucible corresponds to real life. I will defer to Clovis on that point.

I am more familiar with the play (English major what) than I am with the actual people in Salem. The Crucible was Arthur Miller's own particular brand of fan fiction, and he took people from the real trials and put them in his play but I'm not really sure how that translates to historical fact. Giles Corey, a character on Salem, appears in the Miller play, as does Brigid Bishop, who I believe at least gets a mention. In the play, Mercy Lewis is just one of the little nasty Salem accuser girls and not the one who is "bewitched" and it's Betty Parris who becomes bewitched. So, I did like that they changed things around. The play does rather beat one over the head with its morality stick whereas the show is morally ambiguous. Also, there are a lot of gross-out moments on Salem, which, sadly, there is a deplorable lack of in The Crucible.

ANYWAY, Salem also diverges from The Crucible in that its protagonist and primary accuser is a grown-up LADY, Mary (forgot her last name). In The Crucible, obviously it is the teen bitch-whore Abigail Williams. Mary, the only inexplicably English and posh colonist in Salem, was a member of the poorz and a SCARLET WOMAN because she was having RELATIONS with John Alden and she became pregnant. Enter her BFF Tituba (who is never hot in The Crucible, but she's gotten a teevee makeover), who is a witch and she convinces Mary to give up her baby to the forest in exchange for what turns out to be social elevation. Mary ends up married to some really old man, but no fear. She totally keeps him under wraps BY SHOVING A MAGICAL FROG DOWN HIS THROAT to keep him quiet. Mary's entire agenda is to punish the swells of Salem for keeping her down all those years, and I am pretty sure she's hoping that the witchy folk can take over Salem and build like Hogwarts or something. Anyway, she's a horrible human being.

I think the most interesting character thus far is Anne Hale, who is the daughter of Reverend Hale. She is both UPPITY and FORWARD, and is not content to work on her sampler. Oh, no. Girl wants to hit on John Alden and draw photos in the graveyard. Shocking. I think there's a lot of growth potential for her character, but her arc is a bit predictable at this stage. Cotton Mather, who leads the witchcraft investigation (legit -- how was that ever a thing?), is kind of an idiot and a hypocrite at this point, albeit hot, so I would like to see some more development with his character. As for John Alden -- I don't know. He just kind of reminds me of Russell Crowe.

Survey says: I think I will keep up with it unless it completely jumps the rails. Well, I think it already sort of went off the rails, so if it goes off further into Dracula land, I may give up on it. It kind of reminds me of Sleepy Hollow in the sense that it's mixing historical events with fantasy while being aware that the show is kind of silly.


Maggie Cats:

You guys. This show is crazy. And by that I mean crazy awesome. But seriously, it's also just crazy. The first two episodes alone fulfilled my "WTF" quota for probably the next 6 months. It's like somebody went into my brain and plucked out all the things I wished a show would be but was too embarrassed to admit, even to myself.

I went into Salem with no prior knowledge; I can't remember if we ever read The Crucible in my high school (we must have, right?) and I don't think I ever saw the movie with Winona. The actual Salem witch trials never really featured heavily in my interests, despite the fact that I was a History major with a semi-focus on early America. So I can't speak to the, ahem, historical accuracy of the events...though I am pretty certain that the Salem witches weren't real witches, so from my perspective the show can basically dowhatever the hell it wants. AND I LOVE IT.

Clovis described it as a train wreck, but I tend to disagree. Unlike American Horror Story, which basically throws every ridiculous plot device at the screen and sees if anything sticks, Salem unfolds in such a way that I think the writers know exactly what they are doing. The plot may be insane, but it doesn't feel random. Sure there's buckets of blood, sex, demons, and all the other good stuff, but it none of it feels out of place in the world the writers have created. And yet, it still manages to shock and surprise.

In short, Salem is not for the faint of heart. But if you enjoy the macabre, the surreal, and adult themes (i.e. sexy times!), and aren't squeamish, I think Salem might be the show for you. You know us TV Sluts will be watching.

Our impression of the banner at the top of the blog. 

Salem airs on WGN America (check local listings for stations) on Sundays at 10:00pm EST.

Save the Something, Save the Something Something

So, last night, I got caught up on the latest season of Lost Girl, and having affirmed that I am not delusional, and that the show keeps getting sillier at an exponential rate, I turned my attentions to NBC's latest offering, Believe. 

TICKETS TO ONE DIRECTION ZOMG!!!!!

This show was heavily hyped during the Olympics in February, so I figured I would tune in so at least see what it was all about. After all, it's got pretty good cred, having been executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón. I can see why The Peacock wants to get in on the sci-fi fantasy genre, given the success of shows like Orphan Black and True Blood, and the cult following of Joss Whedon. The show overall has potential, but I felt the pilot was formulaic, predictable, and its "touching" moments bordered on trite. 

The basic premise follows the exploits of River Tam, Bo (if this is an obvious reference to Lost Girl's Chosen One heroine, it was not lost on me). Bo has special abilities that she's unable to control, but the pilot was overly vague about what those abilities are. I guess she's some sort of mix of psychic, empathic, telepathic and and Aqua Man.

Take that, whale! That'll teach you to beat up on helpless plankton!

Bo's real parents are maybe dead, or unknown, or something, so she's been shuttled around to different foster families since their demise. Bo and her guardians are, of course, being hounded and pursued by an Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy, whose company may have created her/owned her, but anyway, they are after her. The pilot opens with Bo in a car with her latest foster parents. An Evil Secret Agent Lady (she is unnamed, so I'll just call her Mila Jovovich from here on out) runs the car off the road, and then breaks the necks of foster mom and dad in a really unlikely fashion (Mila's secret power is she gets two improbable neck breaks per day) and Bo ends up in the hospital. Bo befriends a young doctor who is experiencing a lot of self-doubt after he was unable to save the life of someone's grandpa. D'awww. Bo helps him rediscover confidence in himself by telling him he will save the life of a singer named Senga. He finds out later that Bo was right and the singer's name was Agnes. Which is Senga if it's backwads. F'real. For effin' real. Doctor Guy notices this when he sees Agnes's get well balloons (which spell her name) in the mirror and it says, "SEGNA" but when I see и, all I see anymore is a vowel so it didn't have quite the same effect.   

Help me, Bastian! The Nothing is destroying Fantasia! 

MEANWHILE, the good guys, whom I have affectionately named The Multicultural A-Team, because I have no idea who they're working for and why, have hatched a plan to spring OUR HERO, Tate, from death row. Tate has been wrongfully convicted of murder and he's about to be executed, when the MAT's leader, Winter, enters his prison cell disguised as a minister. He offers Tate a chance to escape from prison if Tate agrees to help Bo. Tate hems and haws for a reason I'm not really sure about. I mean, he says he was wrongfully convicted of murder and this guy walks in and tells him he'll help him escape and Tate's all like, "Gee, IDK" instead of "Hells yeah!" Anyway, at he last minute, Tate agrees to help Winter rescue Bo, and Tate escapes with the help of Winter's associates, Channing and a couple of other dudes who die later so I don't know their names. 

My acting coach told me to channel McConnaughey.

So, Bo's in the hospital and Winter arranges for Tate to get into the hospital by posing as an accident victim who has really badly applied and eyeshadow bruises, and he finds Bo in her hospital room. It doesn't take much convincing to get Bo to leave with him, but that's when Mila Jovovitch shows up, posing as a nurse. 

Tate starts to wheel Bo out in a wheelchair, but her rescuer and kidnapper soon see through each others' ruses and throw down on each other in the hospital hallway. Bo shoots Mila in the butt with a syringe she randomly found, and that drugs Mila and gives Bo and Tate time to run away. Undaunted, Mila runs through the hospital shooting at them, but not before she puts a silencer on her gun. Hello? Even if the bystanders at the nurse's station can't hear you shoot at them, THEY CAN STILL EFFING SEE YOU. Mila, you are the worst assassin. Mila realizes she is shooting at people and has wobbly drugged person vision, so she randomly finds another syringe full of something else that will undrug her, and then shoots herself in the butt with that, but it's too late. Bo and Tate have escaped. On the bus. The bus. That's their escape plan. Route 10 at 3:15. I also think Tate had no bus fare, but hey, a minor detail. He might have a metro card. 

ANYWAY.

Winter is the former partner of Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy, and they had some kind of falling out. Car chases in SUVs ensue, and Bo ends up in hiding at this abandoned warehouse/pigeon factory with the MAT. Unfortunately, Mila Jovovitch finds them and she shoots two members of the MAT and makes her way upstairs, where she finds Tate, Winter, Bo, and Channing. They are about to escape, when Bo decides it's a good idea to leave their panic room and go get her stuffed turtle. Which I can kind of understand. I would like to have a stuffed turtle.

I'm NOT Yulia Lipnitskaya! Let me gooooooo!!!

Mila knocks Tate down and is about to shoot at him. This is when Bo remembers that she can summon birds. HOLY SHIT SHE IS GANDALF. 

The pigeons all form this full-on Hitchcockian pigeonado (PIGEONADO!!!!) around Mila and that gives Tate and Bo a chance to escape. The MAT escapes this time, but Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy will not give up in his quest to capture Bo for his own nefarious purposes.Again, it is unclear about what those actually are.  It's also revealed at the end that Tate is likely Bo's father, which wasn't that difficult to guess. As for Mila, our last glimpse of her is her getting a call from Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy boss, after she's been outwitted by Tate, Bo and MAT.

You had one job.

All in all, I would give the pilot a C-minus. I guess there's potential here, but Believe hasn't done much to set itself apart from the Female Chosen One genre, and I feel at this point the production is taking itself a little too seriously. I get that they are trying to be inclusive with diverse casting choices, but the main characters are still a white male and a young white female. The non-white characters are ancillary to the white characters, so it's kind of feeling like people of color stunt casting/tokenism. The writing is kind of bleh and relies on some already hackneyed plot points. Again, if NBC wants to attract the Buffy crowd, and entice them to watch Believe instead of Orphan Black, they've got their work cut out for them. It's unclear if Bo is a mutant, alien, superhero, or angel and I feel like she needs to have more agency in the coming episodes, because right now she's as capable of saving humanity as the Wonder Twins.

I want to Believe, but the show has to iron things out more in order to attract its target viewership. 

Believe premiered on March 15, with a special subsequent episode which aired March 16. Its regular time slot is 9 p.m. Sundays on The Peacock.

Putin on the Ritz

Well, you can't blame them for trying. It seems the networks have seen the success of Showtime's Homeland (and it's multiple Emmy wins) and now television series about US intelligence agencies are breaking out all over.

It's January so it's time for midseason premieres! In the Fall, the networks all tout their shows as the next big thing, but in reality they know most of those new shows are going to fail. There's always a back up plan and the networks have a bunch of new series waiting in the wings to take the empty time slots. This means that January is chock full of premieres, so let's get going on some of these reviews, shall we?

First up, The Assets!

I wasn't wowed by this one, and apparently most of America wasn't either. The first episode of this eight part miniseries debuted with the lowest rating in the key demo (a 0.7 among 18-49 year olds) of any drama to air on the big four networks. The lowest rating EVER. That's pretty impressive. No word yet on Putin's reaction to the series. 

Here's a basic plot summary from ABC:

The Assets is an eight-part miniseries based on the real life events of CIA counter-intelligence officer Sandy Grimes (Jodie Whittaker). 1985 serves as the backdrop to the final showdown of the Cold War when Sandy and her partner Jeanne Vertefeuille (Harriet Walter) vowed to find the mole that would turn out to be the most notorious traitor in US History, Aldrich Ames (Paul Rhys). Sandy is in a race against time to save the Soviet intelligence officers from being caught and killed. Living her own double life at home, this beautiful wife and mother vowed to stop at nothing until she uncovered the truth. The Assets will look inside the true, personal stories of the conclusion of the Cold War as told by the keepers of the nation’s secrets: the CIA.

It's basically Homeland set in 1980s. So instead of Middle Eastern terrorists, it's Russians. And the main blonde agent is kinda boring. And not crazy. And doesn't make goofy faces when she cries.

This is like 70% of the reason why I watch Homeland. The other 30% is hoping that Mandy Patinkin will sing.

I didn't hate it; the show had a lot of stuff going for it. The espionage stuff is all pretty neat, and there were some tense scenes of spy vs. spy shenanigans involving the CIA and the KGB. I also liked that the Russians weren't made to look like buffoons--they pose a genuine threat and out-maneuver the CIA at every turn in the first episode. It's also clear by the end of the first episode who the mole in the organization is.  Since it's a matter of public record now, keeping it secret would have been kind of silly. After 30 years, the cat is out of the bag.

There are some problems though. There was a lot of "huhs?" going on in the living room of my Dad's house for the first half of the episode. There's a difference between trusting the intelligence of your audience and being purposefully cagey. I guess they were hoping there would be a big "aha!" moment at the end when the pieces come together, but I wonder how many people actually made it that far.

In the end, I'll most likely keep watching, but if the pace doesn't pick up in the second episode or the characters don't become more engaging, I'm out.

The Assets airs Thursdays at 10:00 pm EST on ABC. You can view episodes online at the ABC website.

Second show: Intelligence!

It's kind of ballsy to name your show Intelligence. Especially if the underlying concept is kind of silly and completely derivative.

These two have seen it all before. And really so have you.

Hit it, promo monkeys!

In Intelligence, Josh Holloway stars as Gabriel Vaughn, a high-tech intelligence operative enhanced with a super-computer microchip in his brain. With this implant, Gabriel is the first human ever to be connected directly into the global information grid. He can hack into any data center and access key intel in the fight to protect the United States from its enemies. Marg Helgenberger stars as Lillian Strand, the director of the US Cyber Command who supports Gabriel and oversees the unit's missions. She assigns Riley Neal (Meghan Ory), a Secret Service agent, to protect Gabriel from outside threats, as well as from his appetite for reckless, unpredictable behavior and disregard for protocol.

Sound familiar? If you're a fan of NBC's Chuck, it should. Ok, so Josh Holloway's character isn't playing geeky 30 something....he's more of an ex-Delta Force superhuman crime-fighting machine. But still.

Intelligence is basically a standard CBS procedural masquerading as something more. They want it to be new! and exciting! But don't be fooled. Instead of a crime lab or whatever, it's the US Cyber Command (say what?). Sure, the first episode looked great--but almost every drama premiering on the networks these days looks good. I will admit that it had some great action sequences and fight scenes though, but nothing else about it really connected with me.

What you have here is last night's leftovers dressed up in some fancy packaging in an effort to make it more appetizing. And I count Josh Holloway among the wrapping. He's a looker alright, but still playing his usual wise-cracking tough guy character. Unlike Sawyer though, Gabriel has a quest! He needs to find his missing wife whom everyone is convinced was a traitor against America and died years ago. But he will never give up hope. Or something.

One more quibble. Other than a few Asian bad guys, everyone in this show is white. This was a HUGE problem for me, and rankled me throughout the pilot episode. In this day and age, it is basically inexcusable to have an ensemble show without any minorities. Get your shit together, CBS.

Oh, look! A show full of blandly attractive white people. SHOCKER.

Bottom line: unless you are hankering for another US agency procedural (this time dressed up with some admittedly awesome action scenes), skip it. Go watch SHIELD; while that show isn't perfect, at least has a sense of fun and some interesting ideas.

Intelligence airs Mondays at 10:00 EST on CBS.

Agents of Snark

Nerds in the know have been waiting for this week with bated breath since just shortly after Robert Downy Jr. and company destroyed New York last summer. The reason? The premier of ABC’s new show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (sidebar, typing out that acronym every time I reference the show is going to get old wicked fast.) The anticipation for this show? Galactic(us). The hype? Hulk-sized. The payoff?

Um. Good? Ish?

Let’s start with the technical aspects. The show is competently written, shot, casted, etc. We are introduced to our heroes, including the cocky super agent, the snarky super-computer expert, the nerd-bait twin British scientists and, of course, re-introduced to Agent Coulson, played with continued understated aplomb by Clark Gregg reprising his role from several of Marvel’s movies. But wait, you say! Wasn’t Agent Colson killed off in The Avengers as part of a cheap bit of plot phlebotinum? Turns out there’s more to that story than that, which gives us another required component of a new action-adventure story – the secret Byronic mystery of what happened to Our Hero. “He can never know the truth,” cameo-ing guest star Cobie Smulders mutters to a S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor. Cue intrigue and the sincere hope by fanboys that Smulders’ Agent Maria Hill returns to the show just as soon as How I Met Your Mother wraps its final season.

Her undercover persona is that of a Canadian pop star who sings about shopping at the mall. 

As for the plotting and the actors, what can you expect? As per usual, we have a collection of impossibly gorgeous people acting impossibly gorgeous while gorgeously thwarting evil and tossing around witty rejoinders faster than Hawkeye could notch those arrows in the movie. The pilot resolves around our nascent team hunting down a man who has inadvertently revealed himself to have super powers after he saves a woman from a burning building. Of course, nothing is as it seems and the burning building, the saved woman and even the reluctant super hero are all revealed to have much more going on.Along the way, the Agents recruit the aforementioned beautiful computer-ista who is also trying to hunt him down, though possibly only so that her blog could get a few more hits if she lands an interview with him or something. Her motivations are a little unclear. 

Nothing says "malcontent government overthrowing computer expert" like an unbuttoned cardigan.

So we have action, some high-falutin’ special effects, a bit of the old trademark Whedon dialogue (“with great power comes…,” intones one of the characters, “…a ton of weird crap you are not prepared to deal with.”), and a hint of mystery. Add to it that this is all Joss Whedon, King of the Nerds, being given mostly free reign in one of the nerdiest of playgrounds ever and it should be a recipe for EPIC nerdgasm.

And here’s the thing: For a lot of people, I think it will be. I was left a little…underwhelmed, maybe? I thought the episode was good, even if I honestly had a hard time paying attention to all the scenes. I noticed after about twenty minutes I was reaching down to play with my phone instead of devoting myself to each scene.  I’m a huge comic book nerd and a devoted Joss Whedon fan, but I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been approaching this entire series somewhat cautiously since I first heard about it.

Whedon is uniformly smart in his writing, but smarts doesn’t a good TV show make. I didn’t personally find anything about the pilot that hooked me aside from the Marvel pedigree and the creators’ names. It also didn’t help that the one character that I was most intrigued by is the one that lasted the shortest amount of time, dying before the end of the first episode This could easily be chalked up to pilot-syndrome. First episodes are notoriously hard to make and can easily crush under their own weight or fail to adequately capture what the show’s creators are intending to show going forward. Whedon is also a notoriously slow starter; look at any of his shows that made it past one season and tell me that they didn’t really start to find their sea-legs until much later into their run.

I share Coulson's non-nonplussed reaction to the large hyped-up attention ball in the center of everyone's vision.

I’m not ruling out Agents going forward. Joss Whedon has entertained me enough over the years that he’s bought the benefit of the doubt from me several times over. As to whether or not the show will be your new appointment television (there’s going to be an open spot in a lot of dance cards after Breaking Bad goes off the air this Sunday), that will likely depend on how much you’re willing to stick with a hero-less superhero story and the extent to which Marvel and Whedon’s partnership continues to be a productive one. They’re on top of the world right now, cinematically speaking, with several movies coming out in the next nine months and several more planned through 2018. Whether a weekly show is a rainbow bridge to Asgard too far remains to be seen.

Sleepy Hollow

Greetings, fellow tv-nerds! It's that time of year again....the start of the Fall tv season! It's like Christmas for those of us who love television, with lots of new new shiny packages just waiting to be unwrapped. You never know what might be inside; it could be good, it could be bad....but either way, here at the blog we try to make it fun.

Last night was the first big premiere of the season with Sleepy Hollow over on FOX. All day long I have been getting messages from people asking me what I think....so here goes.

Surprise! I liked it!

I'd characterize it as a fun retelling of Washington Irving's, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Was it perfect? No--in fact some parts were downright silly. But none of the faults were so glaring as to really distract from the elements I enjoyed.

Before we get into specifics, here's the premise (from Wikipedia since work won't let me access the FOX website from my computer, stupid government firewall):

After Ichabod Crane "dies" during a mission for General George Washington in 1781, he awakens in 2013 Sleepy Hollow, New York. But so does the Headless Horseman, whose head Ichabod lopped off before his perceived death. The horseman begins his nightly killing spree, and Ichabod must partner with newly appointed Sheriff Abbie Mills.

So far, there is a lot of stuff I like here. A tall, dark, handsome and British lead character, magic, ghosts, witches, spooky New England settings, and flashbacks to Revolutionary war times which I always find interesting. Waistcoats and corsets for everyone! FOX was wise to premiere the show early (since it hauled in some great ratings), but it really felt like a perfect companion piece for Halloween.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. One thing I think the pilot got wrong was giving the audience too much information regarding the mythology right off the bat. After the first hour, we know a lot about the specifics of why Ichabod and the Horseman are linked and even a lot of the how. Basic plot spoiler alert: turns out the Horseman is actually one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (and maybe actual Death himself) and of course Ichabod and Sheriff Abbie now have to prevent the world from ending by deciphering portions of prophecy in the Bible's Book of Revelation and fighting against the Horseman and other demons.*

Oh, and there are warring covens of witches (one light, one dark) who are also fighting against each other to prevent or cause the apocalypse. This means, of course, that there will be lots more supernatural monsters making an appearance in future episodes. I understand that the creators want to set up the show as a series (with a reason for different bad guys and creatures to show up each week), but throwing so much information at us in the first hour 1) takes away a lot of the sense of mystery and 2) makes it all seem really silly. Especially when one character tells another, "The answers are in Washington's Bible!!!"

But despite it all, the show worked for me....mostly due to the performance of Ichabod, played by Tom Mison. I don't remember seeing this guy before (except in the British miniseries Lost in Austen where he looks completely different), but in Sleepy Hollow he is really great. He has the gravitas to pull off what could be a ridiculous character in ridiculous situations, but he manages to bring just enough humor to the role to make him feel like a real fish out of water. I believe that he has been asleep for 250 years and has been thrown into a strange and alien world full of witches and demons. I'm not so impressed with the acting of the
Nicole Beharie (who plays Sheriff Abbie), but I appreciate the multi-ethnic casting which also includes Orlando Jones--Make 7Up Yours!

So, in a nutshell, Sleepy Hollow at times goes a bit too far down the silly rabbit hole, but it also has some genuine chills and a sense of creepy fun. I'm interested to see what happens next, and really that's what you're looking for from a pilot. Give it a try! The pilot is available on the FOX website and on On Demand.

Sleepy Hollow airs Monday evenings at 9:00pm EST on FOX.

 * Am I the only who gets really ticked off when tv shows and movies refer to the Books of Revalations? It's singular people (Revelation), NOT PLURAL. Not that I am a biblical scholar or anything (hahahaha), but COME ON. You're being sloppy.

Break Out the Spreadsheets

Can you believe it is almost the middle of September? I don't know about you, but my brain is still stuck firmly in summer mode. I keep thinking, "I have weeks until the Fall tv season starts....there is no rush to whittle down the DVR!"

...and then I looked around and realized the new and returning shows were premiering soon. As in NOW.

So in an effort to help you, my dear reading public, I spent 5 seconds googling a Fall tv premiere date calendar. It's amazing the amount of time I am willing to spend to help you all out. I mean, I could have like, picked my nose or a wedgie in the time it took me to find this information and link to it. That is the meaning of SACRIFICE.

 TV Guide really gets all the credit though.

So what new shows am I planning to watch? I'm glad you asked! Here are some things I am definitely tuning in for (and their premiere dates).

Sleepy Hollow: Monday, September 16 at 9:00 on FOX. Hot old timey guy wakes up in the modern world and has to help catch the headless horseman? SOLD.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Tuesday, September 17 at 8:30 on FOX. Andy Samberg in a buddy cop show. Sounds promising.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: Tuesday, September 24 at 8:00 on ABC. Two words: Joss and Whedon. Seriously, you don't need any other explanation, do you?

Reign: Thursday, October 17 at 9:00 on CW. The Tudors meets Gossip Girl. Yesssssssss.

Zombieland: THE SERIES

Well, well. Looks like Amazon.com isn't content to sit on their laurels as one of the world's largest retailers of movies and tv series. Now they are following Netflix's lead and jumping on the "original programming" bandwagon. According to Entertainment Weekly, Amazon has produced a stunning 14 original series--and this past weekend all the pilots were available for viewing. FOR FREE.

You can see a full run-down of the new series over at EW.com. I didn't have the time to watch all of them (I do have a life you know), but I was able to set aside 30 minutes to check out the pilot for the show I am most looking forward to--Zombieland: The Series.

Set in the same world and following the same characters, the story of Zombieland (the series) take place a month after the events of the film. Remember, the characters are named after the places they originally hail from, and Columbus is still our earnest narrator and protagonist--walking the audience through the rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse and still pining for Wichita, the cynical hot chick with emotional walls so high it would make the citizens of Ancient Troy say, "damn, girl." They are joined by Wichita's tween sister, Little Rock, and badass twinkie-obsessed, Tallahassee.

When we catch up with the fab four, they are still in LA and have decided to look for other survivors. But I guess people who need people may not be the luckiest people in the world....because things don't really go too well. Luckily, they have made friends with Detroit, the sassy voice of On Star guidance system, who helps guide them to remaining survivors in the LA-area and spins tales of a community back East that is "zombie-free."

The series plays out in a manner very similar to the film--it has the same look and the same feel. Rules for survival still flash on the screen, and it's still chock full of black humor. The main characters continue to marvel at the absurdity of the world around them and there's lots of awesome cartoonish violence and profanity (yay adult content!). For the most part, the characterization is also intact, though it does seem that Tallahassee has been dumbed down somewhat.

The only real problem I noticed has to do with the cast. Not that they were bad actors (they aren't), but they lack the chemistry of the movie-star original actors. There's not that many Woody Harrelsons, Jesse Esenbergs, or Emma Stones running around, if you know what I mean. I'm hoping as the series progresses, the cast will gel more and we'll get that same snap, crackle, pop as the movie. But this is really only a mild quibble.

I'd say if you enjoyed the movie Zombieland, then the series is definitely a ride worth taking. Whether it's worth the cost Amazon will charge, well, I leave that to you. I'm personally willing to wait to see if it ever gets made available to Netflix, but I can see the series becoming necessary-viewing for some of you.

Final thought: I think the thing I love the most about Zombieland is despite the horror of living in Zombieland, well, you always have to remember Rule #33: Keep Hope Alive. At the end of the day, this show is about the survivors. And that's still something special.

Syfy, My Time of Not Taking You Seriously Has Come to a Middle

NERDZ! 

I call your attention hither! 

We may or may not be a group of diverse individuals who set aside our differences for the common good.

It has finally arrived. The much-hyped, overly advertised, heavily plugged premiere of Defiance! What could be more anticipated, you ask? I have that answer. Joe Rogan is getting paid to do drugs in various countries and Syfy is filming it!! Yes, in addition to randomly throwing every sci-fi genre at nerds in Defiance like some sort of geek Jackson Pollock painting, the network that is also bringing you Deep South Paranormal  (not kidding) is also in direct competition for that coveted What Would Ryan Lochte Do demographic. This is a zenith for television. Nay. A zenith for humanity.

But how HOW can we get Joel McHale to mock MORE clips from our network?

But I digress. Until we can watch Joe Rogan do peyote in Peru (BECAUSE IT'S LEGAL THERE), we will have to content ourselves with the teevee event of April.

Thus it is. Defiance.

We all know this show was hatched in a board room and that's it's been created to sell action figures and video games, so I'm giving it a large amount of leeway. Suffice it to say, Defiance is the bastard child of Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, with some steam punk thrown in for good measure. Because why the fuck not? 

Anyway, the offspring of this mash-up is living on a film set in Toronto. The production values are high and the look and feel of the show is very cinematic. Syfy is drunkenly throwing money at this production like a sailor at a strip club. As this is the pilot, we need two hours to meet and greet the characters, as well as stick around long enough to follow their exploits in their first adventure.

Our Mal Reynolds character is Joshua Nolan (Grant Bowler). We meet him as a boy, as his day at the park with Mum and Da is interrupted by a pesky alien vessel hovering overhead. 

And mom's always complaining about ants.

(Disclaimer: This shot is not in any way a reference to ET.)

These alien folks are known as the Votans and all you really need to know about them is that they suck. They fought humans in this epic war and then they finally called a truce and there was peace and stuff like that there. The Votans are actually a collective (yep) of several races all mashed together, and they live on Earth like some social experiment gone bad.

Thirty-three fun-filled years later, Joshua is attempting to flee to the tropical paradise that is FUCKING ANTARCTICA, apparently after having mistakenly used a married alien female for a penis cozy. Oopsie. There were some wars and stuff, so the planet was such a hot mess afterward that it had to be terraformed. Yes. They terraformed Earth. How. Meta.

Accompanying Mal is his adopted redheaded stepchild alieny teenagerish daughter, Anne of Grumbly Attitude. Actually, her name is Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), and she's narrating the show via her journal. She is our Plucky Young Ingenue. She is Irathient. I'm uncertain what that entails, but she seems rather feral. Also, Josh murdered her parents. BTW.

The planet has gone to SHIT, but there's still Johnny Cash. Thank God Almighty, there is still Johnny Cash. There's also still GPS and satellite radio somehow. Apocalypse FTW. Since there is all sorts of space junk flying around in Earth's orbit, the planet gets jiggy with wrecked spaceships on a frequent basis. This is known as "Arkfall." Ship debris crashes over head, and Josh and Irisa investigate to see if there's anything salvageable. Josh takes out his sonic screwdriver and somehow activates Plot Point 1: the Blue Buckeyball of DOOM. Josh and Irisa take the Blue Buckeyball of DOOM but are interrupted by a steampunkalicious group of thugs, also known as Spirit Riders. 

Yep. I am wearing a top hat and goggles. That is happening.

The Spirit Riders attempt to kidnap Josh and Irisa, although they escape, but not before Irisa gets her bad self shot. They escape into the woods, where Josh has to fight off giant beetle-warthog-rat-spider thing. They are rescued by some nice humans and make their way into what was St. Louis -- Defiance. Earth is a mere shadow of its former self, but the Gateway to the West is still standing. Defiance is a rollicking frontier town, with eight alien races a-feudin'. We meet Lady Mayor Amanda Rosewater (seriously, that is her name), emo Castithan teen Alak and his parents, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, and our friendly local mine owner, Rafe McCawley (Graham Greene).

Millions of light years across the galaxy and still all these pesky poors. 

Lucius doesn't like Rafe and vice versa, but it sucks a bunch because Alak Malfoy is in love with Rafe's Pretty Daughter (j'accord).  Plot Point 2. There are also other Castithans in Defiance. Apparently, there are castes of Dirty Malfoys and Snooty Malfoys. The Dirty Malfoys  (band name? I think yes) approach Lucius and Narcissa and Narcissa is nice to them, and we learn from this exchange that Lucius is not at all shady. Like. Not at all. Josh and Irisa find themselves in the local Redi Care, tended to by a doctor from another alien race, Dr. Ywell. She's of the Indogene, and Indogenes look like Uncle Fester, except their skin turns into Quilted Northern when their emotions are running high.

A lot of this is just unabashedly ripped off from Firefly. They speak mostly English, but their language is peppered with some Chinese-Russian sounding hybrid, and cuss words are spoken in said creole.  Fuck you Thanks, Joss Whedon. Much like Mal, rough-around-the-edges-but-lovable Josh is a veteran of the epic war, and was a member of some elite division of Space Team Six called the Defiant Few. Defiance is a rough frontiery town, the type of which you would see in a predecessor of this genre. I'm sure there's a cantina around here somewhere. There is for sure a whorehouse! There's also a teen club where things get all West Side Story up in there between Alak Malfoy and Luke McCawley. 

What tired Romeo and Juliet storyline? Where?

Mayor Amanda (Julie Benz) is torn. Does she wants Josh or does she want Josh and Irisa to leave town?Or both? Josh is broke and needs to earn money. Since the show is called Defiance and he is in Defiance, it's safe to assume he'll be sticking around. Perhaps the mayor has some holes he can fill?

Audiences, put your hands together to welcome your sexual tension.

Anyhoosle. He meets the whorehouse proprietress, Kenya (Mia Kirshner), who tells him to get into cage fighting to earn some ready cash. Also, for those interested, Kenya's sister is Amanda. Yes, Josh wants to bang sisters. Which one will he choose? The younger, rebellious, free-spirited one, or the practical, hard-working, responsible older one? Oh, cliches. You and your unpredictable twists and turns.

Kenya's hero is Inara, and while she may be "inspired" by the Whedon character (wardrobe and all), in the first half hour or so, she's the most likeable and interesting character we meet. Josh is scrappy, so he fights a big blue muscley guy and predictably knocks him out. Then Josh takes his earnings and has a bunch of sex with Kenya. Because why the fuck not?

Meanwhile at the Ape People Ranch, apeshit gets real and Redneck Ape Guy sees a flash of light and finds Rafe's oldest son, Luke, who has gotten died. This starts folks a-feudin' because Younger Son tells Rafe that Luke was fighting with Alak Malfoy. Things quickly digress into Hatfields and McCoys realness. Josh alibis Alak, Irisa pulls out her shiv, people throw punches, Rafe's Pretty Daughter confesses that Alak was in her pants at the time of said death, and the Lawkeeper ends up also dead. 

Well, shit.

So. That's the set up for Hour Two. After all of this exposition, we get to the meat of the episode.

Josh volunteers to play Dog the Bounty Hunter to find Luke's killer. Josh reveals he's a "tracker" by trade (this means he can do CSI) and they lock up Irisa as collateral. The Malfoys are in some weird bathy sex cult and Lucius wants to kill Rafe's Pretty Daughter. Narcissa wants Kristy (her actual name) to marry Alak so they can get control of the mines. The mines! The mines!  BWAHAHAHAHA!

Sherlock Josh deduces they are looking for an Indogene with a bad leg. We know Amanda has one of those up her sleeve because earlier we saw her assistant, Ben, limping. Plot Point 3. Not only is he a great secretary, but Ben is also a serial killer. They give chase and Rafe shoots Ben and he collapses into an Indogene Heap. He dies a bunch, but not before he can warn of an impending attack. 

There is also an army of Evil Cylon Robot Orcs headed up Defiance way. They are called the Volge and they are attacking for an unspecified reason. Defiance prepares for the Battle of the Volge. Ben, ass that he was, destroyed the stasis net around the city, so they are vulnerable.

Josh plans to leave with the reward money and Irisa, but he decides to return and fight.  Remember the Blue Buckeyball of DOOM? Josh retrieves it from the forest and devises a plan for the Indogenes to use it to rig up a superweapon. The battle is a typical "hold the line" until reinforcements/superweapon/Gandalf the White arrives to save the day narrative. The Spirit Riders steam punk their way into Helm's Deep (avec Irisa) and lend their assistance. This battle is rescued by the Blue Buckeyball of DOOM, which in this case, only spells DOOM for the Volge. It goes off and knocks them all on their asses. Nasty buggers, those Volge. Defiance is saved! Awkward group cheering scene! Josh stays and becomes the new Lawman in these here parts.

In the train-car-turned-diner (see, the post-apocalyptic world still has hipster hang-outs), the former mayor, Evil Judi Dench, and her companion in DOOM, Random Steampunk Man, unmask that it was their pro-DOOM plot to send the Volge into Defiance. For whyses to be revealed in due course. Motivation likely along the lines of chaos, panic, anarchy and DOOM. 

DOOM! Because why the fuck not?

As pilots go, this was more or less average. I wasn't bored to death, but I wasn't blown away or overly engrossed. It's heavily influenced by other media of this genre, so, sad to say, I didn't see anything terribly unique or original. I am a little confused as to whether they are ripping people off or if these are les homages. Clearly, the show owes a huge debt to fallen comrade Firefly and I guess there's a lesson to be learned about where networks' priorities are when they decide to put their money and PR machine behind a show. Much like Earth's gravitational field, Defiance is littered with the corpses of what came before. It has elements taken from Firefly, and maybe it's an unfair comparison, but Defiance isn't as good. I feel it wants to be good, and considering that this is the network that brought us Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, that is a step in the right direction.

That said, the show has kinks to work out, but it has promise. It is more or less entertaining,  but it remains to be seen if it will become the huge, iconic cultural phenom that the rabid execs at Syfy are foaming at the mouth for it to be. It has its production values up to the level of the class of program it wants to compete in, so it very well could become the next Battlestar Galactica, albeit significantly less depressing. I gave the pilot a lot of wiggle room because it is a pilot, but this fledgling series really should only be going upwards, based off what I saw in the series launch. If it headed in the opposite direction, it would be a waste of potential. And money. Lots and lots and lots of money.

Positive points are lack of pretension and, much like its leading man, the show doesn't take itself too seriously. But has Syfy moved on from its days of man-eating shark movies featuring Joey Fatone? Defiance could become one of the few bright spots on a network continuously devolving into Under Fae. If not, there is always Haunted Collector.

P.S. Due to all the nerd titillating, I am really hoping for George Takei to show up at some point.

P.P.S. Oooh, myyy.

Defiance picks up the time slot normally occupied by Being Human (in hiatus until the premiere of Season 4 in 2014). It airs at 9 p.m. on Mondays on Syfy. The pilot is also on the Syfy web site, which was awesome for me because my cable box, much like Indogene Ben, is way dead.