tv & movie thoughts

The Pitt

I'm loving the new medical show The Pitt, about an ER in Pittsburgh! It stars Noah Wyle as the ER attending, and as I watched the pilot, I kept going "this is exactly like ER! Except with tech, politics, issues & pandemic updated for 2025. This is literally what the ER would've been if it had been created only now! As it happens, ER also starred Noah Wyle in one of the main roles, starting out as a 3rd year medical student in season 1 through to attending physician over 11 seasons. It started in 1994 and ran for 15 seasons. I went looking online, and I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Noah Wyle & co (apparently many of The Pitt TPTB had created/been involved in ER too 30 years earlier!) had originally planned for a sequel to ER but couldn't get the rights to do that. So it was re-imaged as The Pitt, but it really does feel exactly the same as ER! Which I also loved the first 1-8 seasons or so, and enjoyed the rest.

The Pitt is now the series I look forward to the most every week, and I can't wait for each Friday to arrive to see the new episode! My only complaint is that there will only be 15 episodes in season 1, and so far no word whether there will be further seasons. I really like how they're doing character and plot - I feel like I have a good handle on all the characters after just 7 episodes than some other shows after many seasons (Star Trek: Discovery - am looking at you) and they're all unique and distinctive. I really like the balance between main characters and the plot (medical cases) of the episode.

Also, as I wrote this, I realized that since first seeing ER 30 years ago, I've always got Noah Wyle's surname wrong - I thought it was Wylie!

Elevation

From IMDB: "A single father and two women venture from the safety of their homes to face monstrous creatures to save the life of a young boy."

It's a straightforward and simple story about a dangerous supply run into the town in the middle of area infested with Reapers, mysterious and unstoppable creatures that have killed 95% of humanity. Only humans who have managed to get to 8000 feet of elevation or higher, are surviving.

It's trash with an interesting creature origin concept but not terribly original (or at least I felt like I'd seen a movie like it a hundred times already) as far as these types of stories go. Featuring Morena Baccarin and Anthony Mackie. The cinematogphy was great, and Rocky Mountains vista beautiful. Morena Baccarin being one of my favorite actors since her Firefly days (so much so that I used to run a fansite for her for many years!) and Anthony Mackie being likable in everything I've ever seen him in, the story being good enouhg so I was well entertained! I really liked Morena's character - she isn't the usal damsel in distress, but the research scientist and survivor who is focused on finding a way to fight the creatures. The movie runs for 90 minutes and I thought it well balanced in that respect - no scene dragged, or went by too fast, and it didn't outstay its welcome. The ending leaves the story wide open for a sequal, with questions and a strong implication that a further threat to humanity is on its way.

I liked it, the 90 minutes went by fast! It was really good seeing Morena Baccarin again in a role/movie/tv show I really actually liked! The last few I've seen her in either she didn't really do anything (Deadpool & Wolverine) or the writing was so bad (The Endgame) that I couldn't bear to watch more than a few episodes.

Until I Kill You

Anna Maxwell Martin as the main character, Delia Balmer, was a standout - I've seen her in many, many roles and this is probably her best work to date. She did an amazing job playing quite an unlikable (appearing cold, rude and brash to other people) but a very human character, who was easy to sympatize with as she goes through an awful ordeal that doesn't seem to have an end.

Shaun Evans played the boyfriend who turns out to be a serial killer, and is good in the role but the focus is on Delia at all times. I like Evans, he was great as Endeavour but I don't think I've seen him play a good guy after that show ended - only killers!

Until I Kill You is good tv series, typical reliable quality that I've come to expect from UK crime tv series.

Slow Horses

First of all, I LOVE the opening credits song! It got stuck in my head the first time I heard it and been on loop in my head ever since!

I found series 1 and 2 odd in that episodes 1-3 were kind of slow, and then episodes 4-6 speedy. Entertaining though! I'm not sure whether I was in a weird mood when I watched series 3, but I found it absolutely hilarious - all the scenes involving the Dogs had me cackling like mad, and so did lots of the other scenes involving any kind of action, preparing for action and even just one on one dialogue. I don't know, it think it was purely me - I don't think it it was really that funny.

Re-watched season 1 because my local library has the Blurays. Re-affirmed that Viserys is a weak but well-meaning King and the Paddy Considine did a great job playing him. I didn't really understand how great until I watched season 1 and 2 back to back. His absence is truly felt once the character passed.

Ser Criston Cole is the biggest hypocrite every to hypocrise, prone to uncontrolled fits of rage and completely unfit to be Kingsguard. I still can't believe he survived murdering a member of a royal wedding party by literally beating a him to dead pulp. Viserys quietly gaining more and more sores and losing fingers over the season was somehow very funny this time around. And Alicent really didn't love at least Aegon, judging by the scenes where she is completely emotionally unresponsive to crying toddler-Aegon and that whole "imbecile" response in the carriage in response to Aegon's question about whether she loves him or not - I truly believe that the whole reply would be "Imbecile... Of course I don't." had the scene gone on.

A few season 2 thoughts:

Season 2 finished exactly where season 1 left off: on the verge of the same exact war! There's really bad things going on with the pacing of this show. The last episode of season 2 felt more like the penultimate episode than the finale of the season.

That said, I do like season 2 a lot. Acting, costuming, locales, settings... all good. Some of the scenes and dialogue are great too. It's just the pacing: like the writers are jumping from important event to important even without doing the character work that leads to and from them. I think maybe they are trying to tell a convoluted, sprawling story with many important, pivotal characters in too few episodes and the pacing suffers great from it.

I like the castles and the other settings and find the actors very enjoyable and the characters entertainingly awful. I'm not really rooting for anyone personally, the only reason I think Rhaenyra should be Queen and ruler of all of Westeros is because she is the heir Viserys officially named. The Greens can tell all the lies they want, and pretend to believe in Aegon's legitimacy all they want - the truth is that Alicent willfully misunderstood Viserys's last words in the way that benefits her personally the most. Personally I think actually all of them are unfit to rule and would be awful about it.

I'm disappointed that Aemond was made into a caricature of evil brother, both in behaviour and how he's styled and the way he moves. And the styling and moving reminds me so, SO much of the Wraith from Stargate: Atlantis! At first when Ewan Mitchell took over the role in his white wig, eye patch and long black leather coat by brain tried its damned to see a Wraith!

I'm glad the show finally remembered that Helaena exists! I certainly didn't until she had to choose which kid is murdered right in front of her eyes. I'm glad she got a little more attention after that.

Daemon was off in his own gothic ghost story for most of the season, and some of those scenes were the funniest. Like Simon Strong's non-reaction to Daemon's grand announcement that he's taken Harrenhal, or when the little Lord Tully insults Daemon up one side and down the other in the course of talking his own Tully bannermen into swearing fealty to himself and by extention to Rhaenyra as the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and Daemon couldn't do a damn thing about it if he wanted those bannermen under his command!

Also loved the bit where Larys Strong said to somebody something to the effect of "Nah, let Daemon take Harrenhall the penniless haunted ruin. The place will drive him barmy while keeping him bogged down in the Riverlands." Can't remember the wording but something like that. Hilarious.

I have zero idea how much time has passed since Viserys's death. Are we talking days or weeks? Or months?? There's zero sense of how much time passes in season 2.

Still not enough dragons for a show about Dragon Riders! I loved Meleys and Rhaenys remained my favorite until her death. Eve Best and Rhaenys will be sorely missed.

So all in all: I enjoyed season 2 despite its flaws and I'm looking forward to seasons 3 and 4!

This was one of my favorite action series back when it first aired, but it got much less compelling around series 8 and I quit watching at some point round there. I've now re-watched the entire series as well as the movie that followed it Spooks: The Greater Good. Here are some thoughts!

- I still LOVE the opening credits theme music!
- the first series aired in 2002, and all the computer and technical stuff is so primitive! LOL
- I much preferred the Grid in the first half of the series: it felt unique and distinctive. As the series progressed, somewhere after series 5 maybe, the Grid got very boring and it looks like a million other offices now.
- This was the first role I saw Rupert Penry-Jones in, and after this he was in The Strain where I was very happy with his performance as well.
- This was the second role I saw Matthew Macfadyen in, and had at first terrible trouble seeing him as a spy/action man. But I really became to like his character as the series went on, even though most of his personal storylines were bad.
- All in all, I think writing for characters was better in the early series. They all felt more like real people, each with their motives, strengths and weaknesses, desires and needs. Later on, the characters, with the exception of Sir Harry Pearce, became more one note and not as real feeling to me.
- I also liked that in the early series, the characters almost never had guns on them. Although often that felt unbelievable, though, but I'm not sure whether that's because I'm used to all fictional spies/action heroes/law enforcers being armed to the teeth at all times. On the other hand, they never seemed to wear bulletproof vests even when knowingly going into a situation that likely would end in gunfire.
- I also preferred the styling of the actresses in the early series - just normal clothing and hair for office work, no deep cleavage or fuck-me heels. They were dressed for the character and her job, while the later series dressed the actresses sexily for viewers.
- My favorite characters are introduced in the early/mid series ones: Adam Carter, Tom Quin, Zoe, Danny, Malcolm, Jo and Harry Pearce. Richard Armitage as Lucas North was also great, but I didn't like his final storyline at all in series 9.
- I think series 1-4 and 7 are the best, while series 6 and 10 are so bad I had trouble getting through them, particularly series 10. I liked it best when the stories were more or less episodic, instead of having series arcs. And I liked when the opponents were more varied in the early seasons than just Islamist terrorists.
- Ros Myers. I didn't like Ros at all the first time around, because I don't much like Hermione Norris - she's always comes across as cold and distant in all the roles I've ever seen her in. But now re-watching, that works in an excellent way for Ros Myers!
- This time around I liked Ros Myers a lot! She's cold, distant, controlled and principled. But some of her storylines were weird and didn't really fit what had been revealed about the character before. When she was first introduced, she was an agent who turned on her own father whom she loved very much - but still she turned on him about the same minute she found out he was part of a cabal of white men attempting coup United Kingdom. She felt guilty as hell betraying her father but she did it without true hesitation because of her values and principles when she realized he was a traitor to the country. Then the very next series, she herself turns traitor to the country at the drop of a hat when approached by another cabal, Yalta, this time wanting in power to ignite the war between West and East the cabal is believes is coming soon anyway. Yalta wants to ignite the war themselves to try and control the outcome and the new world order that will follow in the wake of that war. Yalta says it's for "the greater good" and Ros swallows it, betraying her country and her co-workers the other spies who rely on her for their own lives and safety of their families. But she somehow gets off scot-free in the end after totally unbelievably spinning the whole thing as being a mole in the Yalta despite never telling anyone anything about the whole thing, and nobody believing her and everyone knowing she's lying. After a little while as an operative in Russia as an outcast or something, she returns back to UK and becomes the section chief of MI-5 Section D.
- Ros and Adam's romantic relationship was so weird. Neither would admit to being in a relationship, being serious about it. But Ros is weirdly jealous and possessive as Adam has to woo and sleep with an asset, the wife of a notable Iranian diplomat/spy in order to get information on an active threat plot. And Adam had just lost his beloved wife, and apparently fell in love with Ros and also kind of in love with the asset a few weeks/months after his wife's murder when he still must've been actively grieving her.
- I felt really bad for Adam and his wife's son. Both Adam and his wife (whose name I can't seem to remember!) are spies, actively putting their lives in danger about every other day. I kept wondering why they had had a child when that child seemed to not ever be on their list of priorities unless there was a direct threat to the child's life. The little boy had to do with absent parents all his short life, then his mother was murdered and a little later, also his father. And it was his father's boss who came to tell him that his father had also died. I felt so bad for the son when the boss came to the park, the son looked quietly at the boss and knew. The son couldn't have been more than 10 at the time. I keep wondering how he fared going forward.
- I feel like somewhere around season 8 in particular, the character writing got much less for most characters - only Lucas North and Harry Pearce were still written for as people, and in season 10, everyone else was bodies standing around except for Harry Pearce.
- if you haven't seen this show, fair warning: don't expect characters to survive! I think of all the main characters the series had over 10 series, only 3 survived to the end (including the movie Spooks: The Greater Good). And only one of them stayed on in the series all the way through, while the other 2 briefly guest-starred or did a cameo many series later.
- the movie Spooks: The Greater Good, which was made 4-5 years after the end of the series, was entertaining. Nothing spectacular or original, but I liked it much better than series 8-10.

SeaQuest DSV/2032 was a show I saw in the late 1990s. What I remember is 1) that it's about the underwater adventures of a submarine and 2) has Stacy Haiduk (whom I had just seen playing a vampire in Kinded: The Embraced which was a tv series I was obsessed with for a bit back then) playing one of the supporting characters and 3) Stephanie Beacham playing the Doctor and 4) being profoundly disappointed that the good Doctor didn't look (so, no big hair that screamed "RICH", thousand dollar make-up, designer clothing and fur coats) or act anything like Sable Colby from The Colbys soap opera (also played by Stephanie Beacham) 🤣

I've now re-watched 6 out of the first 7 episodes (I quit the episode with the kids about 15 minutes in, it was so bad) and man, the stories are... not great. The plots are so simple, but worse than that, the writing is simplistic. There's never a deeper thought anywhere to be found! It reminds me very much of Star Trek TNG but it's missing all the nuance and deeper thoughts. There are so many interesting opportunities that the stories could explore a thing, or make a statement, or even consciously decide to not make a statement but the show doesn't even notice them. There's nothing here worth seeing the first time, never mind the second, as far as the stories and plots go.

The acting is okay, nothing great but nothing too awful either. They have some notable guest-stars (Roscoe Lee Browne, Yaphet Cotto etc.) and of course, Roy Scheider was a big star and plays the main character, the Captain of the SeaQuest. And there's Ted Raimi, who will forever be Joxer from Xena to me. But I can't remember whether I saw Xena or SeaQuest DSV first, so have no idea which character came first to me. Anyway, so far there's almost no meat to any of the characters either - nothing new added since the pilot. Oh, and there's the token kid/teenager who just happens to be a genius, of course, and whose parents dumped him to be SeaQuest's problem, because apparently the only way to keep the kid in check is to trap him in a submarine underwater.

The interesting thing about the series is the setting: an advanced, huge submarine with minority military and majority scientists crew and which keeps order in the underwater world and investigates mysterious things or is sent to close stations down and find surprises on them. The setting is awesome! The seas are colonized and people are living in underwater stations. It makes me wish very much there'd be a show with the same setting but with much less simplistic story telling! The feel of the setting is the same I get from space adventures! I'm also very interested in the political system of the world, how that world differs from our current times - the hints the show gives say: considerably!

Everything seems to happen and be located in the moon pool room, with the Bridge being the other notable location. The Doctor, who says in the pilot that she's a medical doctor and head of the sciences, also appears to be an expert in everything in addition to being a medical doctor. Often it would make sense to have another expert in an entirely different field to handle the explaining/thinking either she or the genius teenager is doing. The show does make a point of there being lots of scientists from lots of specialties being on board, after all! But no, it's always the Doctor or the genius kid. And the science talk never sounds quite convincing - unlike in TNG, which somehow managed to make the invented science sound real and plausible.

I'm not sure whether the show is supposed to be for adults or children. All the main characters are adults, several of them middle aged and there's only one kid. But the story telling is horribly simplistic, with nothing going on below the very surface level of the stories.

Another weird and interesting note is that the SeaQuest design, the boat itself, looks very much Minbari or Vorlon (from Babylon 5) to me! Both the shape and lines of the boat and its skin pattern. Every time SeaQuest the ship is shown, my brain automatically goes "that's a Vorlon ship!" and then "oh wait - it's not B5 i'm watching!" According to IMDB, SeaQuest DSV and Babylon 5 both started the year 1993. Oh, and the military crew jumpsuits are almost identical to what McQueen wears in Space: Above And Beyond.

I'm not sure I can keep watching - the stories are so simplistic, I don't get anything out of them.

So, that's all she wrote for DSC! End of the series.

I don't feel much of any kind of way about not seeing these characters in new adventures.

As a season finale, I suppose the episode was okay? Typical DSC fare. I was very bored by the early episode fights Burnham had with the Breens and Moll. The fights were too long and often looked very CGI and fake. Moll remained one-note, predictable and unlikeable to the very end. Her and Lak's entire relationship felt like they were in love because... the plot needed it. There wasn't a single reason to care about them as individuals or as a couple. And, it's possible I missed it, but I don't think we were shown or told why Lak is so different from the other Breen? More relaxed and open minded enough to fall in love with a non-Breen? I don't think he got any character work, actually, beyond "I'm in love with a human". Moll at least got some development, even if it didn't make her any more likeable or changed her nature in any way.

Also, I don't understand why, if Lak is the scion of the Breen emperor without whom no-one can be the new emperor, then shouldn't Lak become the new emperor?? Why didn't he? And why was it treated as a given that he wasn't the new emperor and that his uncle or whatever he was, was totally entitled to be the new emperor as long as Lak was alive and in the uncle's control? And it was fine and dandy for the uncle to treat Lak awfully and nobody cared, but when his uncle tried to destroy Lak's dead body when there was still a chance of revival by a god device, suddenly half of the uncle's own troops turned against him?? Just. I remain unconvinced by the whole Moll/Lak thing and all the Breen royal succession things.

Just like I remain unconvinced by DSC crew supposedly being a "family" despite Burnham spouting that nonsense every other minute. Right. That's why they are never (seen) interacting with each other if they are not in duty, showing them just being people who enjoy each others company. That's why no-one but Burnham plus very few mains got attention and development and even the other main characters got increasingly less as seasons wore on and what they got felt like forced on them, was often (or rarely) never mentioned before or after. And never mind the bridge background crew. They were just bodies. They got a few meaning glances at each other per episode and one personality trait/hobby/worry dump per season if that and even *that* little bit was done in the clumsiest way possible in middle of an action or emergency scene which came to a screeching halt so that a bridge grew character could dump some surface-level-relevant-to-the-situation but actually irrelevant thing about themselves to the viewers. And I'm still mad about how they did Airiam and her plot. And I still don't believe that the entire Discovery crew had all chosen to follow Burnham into unknown (future), perhaps to die. The character relationships between them and Burnham just weren't there except for Saru, maybe. I'd believe it of any other ST crews (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, even ENT), but not Discovery.

I was also so very bored by the loooong musical montage at the end in Saru's wedding. So bored actually sped through it, stopping a couple of times to hear if they were actually saying something - anything! - but apparently it was just empty hugging the whole thing trying to sell the "family" thing. Still didn't buy it.

I am happy that I was wrong when I said in one of my earlier DSC posts that now that Saru has big career change and is in love and getting married, he is certain to die. I'm very glad that didn't happen - the show did at least one thing right!

The best thing about season 5 was Rayner. I liked Rayner a lot! Wish he'd had more screentime! He's probably my favorite character of the entire series. I also like Book very much, although I don't care for the writers destroying his world and having him act abusively by latching on to and trying to force a familial relationship on Moll who rightly refuses to have anything to do with him until their final scene together. I also liked Culber and the Jinaal thing a lot, and enjoyed the actor's performance as Jinaal a lot more than him as Culber. It would've been nice to be shown more of his resurrection/self-discovery/existential crisis (so that we'd actually see him having thoughts about it all for more than one minute in one conversation) before he shoved himself into a deadly mission because of it, to have a sudden epiphany, from his time as Jinaal, that saved their lives. There have been quite a few bits in this season and previous that I've liked, but they're just that - bits. The whole isn't that great for me.

There are also two things that particularly bother me, now that the series has ended. First is, Tilly became and remains a teacher?! When the show started, she had three defining characteristic: she's extremely intelligent, she's extremely ambitious and is going to Command a big important starship, and she's socially awkward. I can see her gaining Captainship of something like Discovery or Enterprise once she has years and years of experience and that has brought her confidence, or I can see her being a brilliant scientist, making brilliant discoveries and developing amazing tech, and again gain confidence. What I can't see is her making teaching her career! For little while, sure, if Starfleet needs her to do that. But as a passion and a career? Nope. Not at all.

The other thing that bothers me - Zora. So they just send an sentient, intelligent, feeling being to spend literally an eternity alone in isolation? That's how you get insane villains/computers/ships rampaging for revenge a few thousand years down the line. Starfleet and Federation aren't cruel enough to make horribly cruel desicions like this, but DSC writers clearly are. Or more likely, they just didn't think it through, just like so many other plot and character things during the run of the series.

I might or might not have continued watching further seasons, but I don't feel that I'll miss the series or the characters, and at least right now, I don't feel like I'll re-watch it either. Maybe seasons 1 and 2 at some point, but I have zero urge to re-watch seasons 3-5.

The show depicts the Roman general Aulus Plautius's conquest of England on the orders of the Roman Emperor Claudius in 43AD. In England Aulus Plautius must contend with warring Briton tribes, their Druids and their Gods. I'm half-way through seasons 2 and looking very much forward to the rest. The series ran for 3 seasons.

• this series is absolutely nuts. Entertaining, but absolutely nuts. I appreciate the shows commitment to batshit crazy.
• the show presents the Druids and ancient Briton Gods as being real entities, not just characters paying lip service to the religion(s) of the past as often in historical shows. So I count the show more in the realm of fantasy than history.
• some very violent, gruesome scenes... killing, sacrifice, burial rites.
• lots of humor and one such that I particularly loved was in the first season when the ex-Druid The Outcast was admitting to the Girl that he had been wrong about her, and absolutely COULD. NOT. get the word "wrong" out of his mouth. Still makes me giggle whenever I think about that!
• so much humor that isn't outright funny scenes or jokes or anything like that but comes from characters expressions or manner when something happens or just like they taste something. Or when two almost-no-name characters, Roman soldiers, go AWOL (or were they the ones to mutiny?)  and end up in an abandoned/murdered village and find a "witch doctor's" stash and spend the episode stoned to the gills and having conversations. It was somehow just so funny how it was written and acted. The show isn't a comedy by any stretch of imagination, but does have a lot of humor.
• there are also some surprisingly poignant moments; such as when the new Numidian Second-in-Command in season 2, who has been drugged unawares along with the other legionnaires, remembers that the Roman Legionnaires murdered his family and village when he was a child in Numidia and realizes that he is now one of the people who murdered his loved ones and that he is doing it to others now. I got the impression he had sort of repressed the fact until then but now, when he is stoned, it comes up to the forefront.
• I'm not sure I root for any character, but some of the actors are very likable and interesting in their roles: Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Divis (The Outcast mentioned before), Mackenzie Crook as Veran / Harka and Annabel Scholey as Amena. Kelly Reilly was on too short a time. Zoë Wanamaker is always great in everything I see her in! And I'm always happy to see David Morrissey but he doesn't clock me as an Ancient Roman, so while I'm happy he's playing the Aulus Plautius, I'm not sure about him playing a Roman. The same goes for the actor of his original Second-in-Command - they are both as English as they come!
• the show's opening credits songs are entirely unfitting: "Hurdy Gurdy Man" in season 1 and "Season of the Witch" in season 2 and so are all the songs used in the show - they're similar in vein to the opening credits songs. The original score in season 1 is very good, but I haven't noticed it actually at all in season 2 so far.
• the show's opening credits visuals are gorgeous! Might have to cap them to use them as wallpapers.
• I appreciate that all the various characters and tribes each have their own agendas and it's fun watching them collaborate and collide and change