Of Swords and Parasols

1. One more episode of Beauty and the Beast, and all my summer shows are over. Not entirely certain what to make of this season of BatB. There are parts I really like, but the main plotlines of the season just haven't grabbed me. Also, massive waste of Gloria Vostis and Natasha Henstridge.

2. When Dark Matter and Killjoys started, I preferred Dark Matter of the two, but it's pretty firmly the opposite by the end of the season. Dark Matter just has too many microaggressions against Two-as-leader, and while it isn't exactly fond of rape threats, it came up enough for the show to lose points for it with me. Also, much as I like MOST of Dark Matter's crew, I liked One less every single episode, whereas D'Avin in Killjoys, who I initially also disliked, grew on me a fair bit. I mean, I like him less than pretty much every other named and main or recurring character, but I'll take him over One easily.

Both shows broke out the big guns for the finales (though I think the rebellion in Killjoys was a bit too background for the whole season to work the way they wanted it to in the finale). Killjoys is absolutely forbidden to open season 2 with sad music playing as the camera does a slowmo pan over the bodies of dead recurring characters (the show had it's chance with the "what's behind the door?" tension. It isn't allowed to pull anything like that.), and while I'm not pleased with the reveal of the traitor in Dark Matter, there aren't many ways that could have gone without my objecting.

Fingers crossed that both will get renewed.

3. Continuum is back, though, for it's fourth and final season. I wasn't big on the new future introduced towards the end of season 3, but we'll see how things go. If nothing else, I do at least trust the show to have a good ending. (Though I hope Kiera/Brad isn't end game.)

4.Years after Moon Embracing the Sun was the big Kdrama of the Moment, I'm getting around to watching it. I remember being moderately interested in it when it aired but not enough to watch it at the time, and that it seemed everyone either loved it, or hated it because everyone else loved it. It also came out in what seems to have been a bit of a Flower Boy craze in fusion sageuks after Sungkyukwan Scandal (another that i need to see, though most of my interest is Park Min Young) and it really shows.

I'm 8 episodes in and enjoying it, though in a somewhat passive way, largely because of my disinterest in the adult version of the main character. Kim Yoo Jung as Yeon Woo in the childhood (really early teens) part was really great, and I loved the character then, but Han Ga In as the adult Yeon Woo is rather...blank. I mean, part of it is because the character has amnesia, I think, but the acting is (IMO) rather bland. There have been a couple scenes where the character grabbed me, but they were exceptions, not the rule. There are a lot of other characters that I like, but it's hard for me to get invested when I don't feel anything for the female lead. I don't dislike her or anything, she just doesn't grab me.
Sseeing Kim Min Seo as Bo Kyung is a little odd, as she's also in Hwajung, where she also plays an evil scheming lady who wants to be queen. Though i'd say that, despite the type, the characters are completely different. I actually wouldn't have even realized it was the same actress because she looks and acts so different in the two series, but she has a rather distinctive face.

Speaking of faces, I don't know what casting was doing with the child actors, to a certain degree. It's like they actively sought to find young actors who bore a strong resemblance to the adult actors, then randomly assigned the roles without paying attention to which adults the younger actors actually resembled.

5. Fall shows start up again soon, though I'm not sure there are any new ones that I'll be checking out. Nothing grabbed me when I glanced through new shows a while back, but I might have missing something.

6. I rewatched the K Project anime as a refresher before season 2 airs, and also watched the Missing Kings sequel movie, which was pretty good, despite someohw managing to make Seri's skirt even shorter. I'm never forgiving the series for the reveal about Shiro's true identity, but I do still like it, mostly for the characters. I went ahead and watched the series dubbed and...most of the dubbing was ok, but Reisi and Fushimi's dubbed voices would have made me dislike the characters even if I didn't already have issues with them. (Reisi I would like if he wren't prone to manhandling prisoners and din't seem to enjoying showing off his powers to those weaker than him so much. Fushimi just annoys me. A lot.) I'll probably rewatch Noragami before the second season of that airs, too, though I watched the first season much more recently than my first watch of K Project.

Well, that didn't go where I was hoping it would, but I mostly enjoyed this season.
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Continuum season 3 teaser:

73 x Continuum (mid-season 1)
33 x Covert Affairs (mid-season 3)

  

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 Know what's cool?  Amazon having decent prices on a lot of new/still airing TV shows with female (often in multiples) leads that not enough people are watching.  (What's not cool is having to remind myself that no, I actually DON'T have a lot of money to spare, most of what looks like fun money in my account is for WisCon.)

Season 1 of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries for $26.94.  1920s flapper runs around solving mysteries and flirting with stoic detective.  Exceptionally fun, and i think the only show I've seen in which the heroine is promiscuous for no reason other than that SHE LIKES SEX (no angst or self-punishment or any such) and with an ongoing romance plot where the female half of the equation regularly hooks up with other men without once being judged by the dude or the text, or showing us her sexlife through his POV.  Also, hats and adorable sidekicks galore.

Call the Midwife Season 1 for $22.86.  1950s London, midwives who work out of a convent.  Based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth (which are also a good read).  Sometimes lovely fluff, sometimes whimsical, sometimes utterly depressing, there's a large variety of personality types between the midwives and the nuns both, and tons of focus on women's relationships and the  changing world.

Parks and Recreation Season 1 for $11.49.  Presumably well known enough that I don't need to explain much?  Hilarious and sometimes awkward adventures of a small town civil servant who aspires to be president and make all women in the government ever proud.  Equally hilarious friends and coworkers galore.

Pretty Little Liars Season 1 for $14.96.  Take a Chrisopher Pike book, update it a bit, and then make it all about 4   BFFs trying to solve the murder of their friend, passing the Bechdel test in about 4 out of 5 scenes, while also having a ton of focus on their relationships with each other and their mothers, lots of gothic imagery, and just all around cracky and sometimes cheesy awesomeness.  Oh, and one is a lesbian WOC who gets a lot of action.

The Bletchley Circle for $15.59.  3-part miniseries (which will hopefully eventually have a second season?) about 4 women who were Bletchley Park codebreakers who reunite in the 50s to catch a serial killer.  A bit too devoted to the procedural aspect for me at times, but rather fabulous and a good look at what it was like to go back to being "ordinary" women after the war, especially if you did awesome stuff you can never tell anyone about.  Also, if you ever went "how would people treat Sherlock Holmes if he were a woman?" well, its a few decades later and Susan has considerably better people skills, but this is the closest to a direct take I've seen on that.

Continuum Season 1 for $26.14.  Time travelling cop saving the future from time travelling terrorists!  It has something of a bad habit of focusing more on the male supporting characters than the female, but most characters are interesting in their own right, and Kiera's awesomeness makes up for the rest.

Body of Proof Season 1 for $15.63.  Like Bones, something of a "female Sherlock Holmes" protagonist, with the brilliance largely focused on one medical field.  And, aside from Bones, the only case of a "genius/wrangler" setup where the wildcard genius is the female lead.  Protagonist is a former brain surgeon who can no longer practice due to injuries sustained in a car crash, and now works as a medical examiner and solves crime.  Adorable partners and coworkers galore.

Nikita Season 1 for $16.93.  Best known series in the list?  Unbelievably awesome ex-assassin working to bring down evil organization and save friends.  What  makes Nikita herself extra-awesome is that someone decided to take the trope of the damaged, stone-cold badass assassin on a mission and ditch the "stone-cold" part and create a character who, despite all the angst and traumatic background and badassery, is a warm and caring person who always sees the good in people and inspires loyalty as much for her warmth and determination to help you as for her badassery and drive.  Other great assassins and ex-assassins and soldiers and evil psychologists galore.

The Good Wife Season 1 for $25.55.  I've only seen the first 4 episodes of this so far and so can't say a lot about the series as a whole, but what I've seen I've liked a lot, despite early reservations about the premise.

Honorable mention:

The Hour Series 1 for $26.34.  Honourable mention because the technical main character is a dude.  (Who is quite annoying in the first season, but I found him more likable in the second.)  If you ever thought you might like Mad Men, but wished there was more focus on the female characters and that the men were less douchey, you'd probably like this.  Despite my description, this really isn't "BBC trying to have their own Mad Men," which it often gets described as (though the first episode does have something of a "wants to be Mad Men" feel to it).  I'm sure MM was something of an inspiration, but its less about nostalgia and deconstructing nostalgia, and more of a cold war-like thriller from the POV of journalists, many of whom are struggling with their assigned roles, and the creation of a new form of news programming.  Fair warning:  Series 2 was made with the belief that a third series was in the bag, and ends with a cliffhanger, and then BBC went and cancelled it.

Continuum 2.2: Way too much dudes trying to bond with other dudes, not enough Kiera shooting things and pwning people. Still a fun episode overall, and I particularly liked the flashbacks (flashforwards?).

Defiance 1.3:( spoilers )

Lightfields: Like the Marchlands series from a few years ago, Lightfields is a 5-episode gothic miniseries from ITV loosely based on the failed FOX pilot The Oaks, focusing on 3 different families who live in the same house in different time periods, linked by the aparently vengeful ghost of a young woman who died under mysteries circumstances. I've never seen the pilot of The Oaks (having enjoyed 2 miniseries based on it, I suppose one day I should find out if there actually is a way I colud watch it) but based on my understanding, Marchlands is a fairly direct remake, while Lightfields simply runs with the general idea.

For Lightfields itself, part of the story is set in 1944, when a teenaged girl named Lucy dies in a barnfire. Her slightly older and considerably more worldly friend, Eve, who fought with Lucy shortly before her death, becomes obsessed with the idea that someone set the fire deliberately, and sets out to prove it. In 1975, Eve's younger sister, Vivian rents Lightfields (the farm run by Lucy's father) for the summer along with her teenaged daughter, Claire. Initially unknown to Claire, Vivian has been institutionalized more than once for depression, and when she begins to see Lucy's ghost, she doesn't know if it's a ghost or a hallucination, and begins to fear that she may have been involved in Lucy's death (she has no memories of the summer she spent there as a child). In 2012, Lucy's younger brother, Pip, returns to Lightfields, now owned by his son, Barry, for the first time in 68 years, and fears Lucy's ghost is attempting to hurt him through his great-grandson, Luke.

I liked the 1944 and 1975 parts a lot, and the 2012 part well enough, though not as muchh as the other two, and I found the resolution to what really happened to Lucy more satisfying than I recall finding the resolution of what happened to Alice in Marchlands, though I cant really say which series I prefer overall. One thing that I found a bit odd is the fact that Claire is biracial (white mother, black father) is never once mentioned in the text, even when a few local kids bully her. Then again, I actually have no idea how she would have been treated in England in the 70s, and am probably projecting American attitudes of the time onto the show. There are definite trigger warnings for depression for the 1975 parts, and I spent a lot of the later part of that plotline going "OMG NO DON'T", and bits that make you genuinely worry about the safety of a kid (though nothing nearly as harrowing there as The Secret of Crickley Hall) but if you can handle those and like gothic horror and teenaged girls running around Doing Stuff, I recommend it.

Revolution 1.15: All the promotional material for this episode made me suspect it was primarily the writers trying prove that they have a clue what to do with Aaron and Monroe. Having watched the episode, it really was a very desperate (and, IMO, failed) attempt to convince me that Aaron and Monroe serve a purpose and the writers have a clue what that purpose is, while throwing a couple women under a bus trying to do so. Also, I really dislike the potential of one plot development.

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Still, this was the first episode of the series where there was more that I didn't like than what I did, the last 2 minutes were pretty ace, and the previews and promotional material for the next couple episode sounds like it's going back to being the show I'm signed up for after forgetting for a couple weeks.

77 x Continuum (eps 1.1-1.3)
56 x Naniwa Shounen Tanteidan (eps 1-4)


  

icons @ my LJ

Continuum 1.9: This show has now thoroughly confused me by actually being pretty good instead of just fun for two episodes in a row.

( spoilers )Covert Affairs 3.4:

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Political Animals 1.3: Why can't this show be ongoing instead of a miniseries? I want to keep it in my life a bit longer.

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Sinbad 1.4:

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White Collar 4.4:

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I'm also watching 2 airing jdramas that I keep meaning to post on but forgetting to. Naniwa Shounen Tanteidan is a comedy/mystery series about a 6th grade teacher who solvs crimes with the aid of 4 of her students and, sometimes, 2 police officers (one of whom inevitably has a crush on her, and is essentially a human teddy bear) who might be the only jdrama police officers allowed to be good cops without the series actuslly being about police officers. It's adorably and giddy and fluffy depsite having a plot that repeatedly exposes 12 year olds to dangerous criminals, dead bodies, and random other trauma. (Admittedly, most of it ends up not being as bad as initially believed.) It's delightful to watch but doesn't look to really do anything revolutionary. Rich Man Poor Woman, OTOH, is utterly addictive and reminds me of a lot of the jdramas from around the late 90s-2005, which I watched at about the rate of a drama a week for months when I started watched doramas in I think early 2006 (it was shortly after the first Hana Yori Dango and before the second was announced.) RMPW is half romantic comedy and half office drama, about Hyuga Tohru, an eccentric and abrassive near-genius who runs and IT firm and has a medical condition that prevents him from remembering most nams a faces, and Sawaki Chihiro, a college student with near-perfect memorization skills who has difficulty with social andp rofessional situations. She also happens to share a name with Hyuga's mother. There's lots of Drama and Shock Reveals that alternately make you go "...what...?" and "THIS DRAMA!" and they regularly consult shoujo manga (there's literally a scene where Sawaki is drunk and sees Hyuga in a cloud of sparkles) and I'm pretty sire they polled Oguri Shun fans to see what they wanted him to do if he was ever the lead in a romance drama. There's also a female romantic rival who seems to think "romantic rival" means "future BFF who thinks you're absolutely adorable" based on their interactions so far. It's utterly addictive. I should warn, though, that whoever does the women's hair in this should never be allowed near hair again. There are times when I think they're actively trying to make very attractive women look plain by bad hair alone.

NST has 5 episodes out, but only 4 have subs, and RMPW has 4 episodes currently out, all with subs.

Continuum 1.5-1.7: This show is really kind of not good at all, but whatever, I love it despite it's tendenc to be kinda of faily at anything but women with agency shooting things.

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Covert Affairs 3.1-3.2:

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The Hollow Crown: BBC miniseries (clocking in at around hours total) adapting Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. I've read plays but recall little about them, so I can't really comment on how faithful they are or aren't. It took me about 40 minutes in part 1 to stop just going "oooooooooooooo" over the costumes and settings, and I think I mostly enjoyed it (well, the first 3 parts, I haven't watched Henry V yet as it just aired in the UK todays) for the performances and visuals. I'd be interested in seeing what others those more familiar with the plays think. I think there will be more adaptations of Shakespeare plays airing on BBC 2 over the next couple months, but am not certain which.

Also, I first saw Michelle Dockery and Tom Hiddleston in Return to Cranford (and mostly associate him with that, despite being prone to refer to him as "Loki," though I associate Dockery more with Downton Abbey) where they were basically BFF who grew up like siblings and she got her jollies through trolling him and was trying to marry him off to Jodie Whittaker, so their being enemies here was just odd.

Political Animals 1.1: (I think this is actually a miniseries, but we can hold out hope for it being popular enough to get a sequel.) PA is basically an AU version of Hilary Clinton that may have actually started life as a Hillary Clinton/Murphy Brown fanfic. Sigourney Weaver stars as Elaine Barrish, the secretary of state (working for the president she lsot to in the primaries)and ex-wife of a former philandering president, and Carla Gugino stars as Susan Berg, a journalist who has been critical of Elaine in the past (to the point where she got banned from the White House for several years) but who has developed a certain appreciation for Elaine and is suppressing a scandal of the parrish family's in exchange for an exclusive week with Elaine. There are a bunch of other charcters floating around (Perhaps most notably Ciaran Hinds as Elaine's ex-husband and Ellen Burstyn as her mother, who appears to have a very adventurous sexual past. Sebastian Stan is also hanging around as one of Elaine's sons. I know he's popular in these parts.) but the main focus in the pilot was on Elaine and Susan's professional lives and balancing them with personal drama. It's a bit soapy but not detrimentally so, and it's amusingly devoted to making sure we realize that it intends to be a feminist show. Not that it isn't, but I kind of wanted to pat the writers on the head every time Elaine or Susan had a "we will now call society on it's sexism and/or double standards now" oneliner. (I mean, it actually does this well, but fairly obviously.) I have a few issues with the portrayal of homosexuality (or rather, with the plotline they seem to be going with with the one canon gay character, realistic as it may be) and how the POC characters seem to be heading (and I wonder if Adrian Pasdar being of Iranian descent had any affect on one plotline), but both of those could end up being done well by the end of the season.

Sinbad 1.1-1.2: A very fun show in which a Sinbad adaptation actually has a cast with more POC than not. (Kind of sad that the latter part is surprising.) In this version, 20-ish Sinbad messes up on an amazing enough level that not only is the Emir's brother (Sayid from Lost) sending every soldier in the country looking for him, but his own grandmother curses him so that a golden collar will strangle him if he spends more than a day and night on land (though, it seems you could get around some of that if you could manage to keep a small boat anchored just off shore...). But basically, you know you messed up if your granny who clearly loves you very much puts a deadly curse on you. (His granny is kinda really badass.) There are a lot mor female characters than I was expecting. Granny, of course, but also a fabulous evil sorceress, a thief, an African lady with A Mysterious Secret, possibly Sinbad's mother, a pirate cannibal queen with the potential to be a recurring character, and i think I've spotted what looks to be a female hunter in a promotional image or two. Sinbad's crew also includes an amusingly (for now, I can see it getting old) naive doctor, a drill sergeant for a cook, andthe show's token white dude, who has the potential to be fairly interesting. It's hard not to compare it to the 90s show (Which it clearly does better than in some areas, but also lacks the giddy cheese and crack of the 90s show. And, well, this Sinbad just isn't as blithely coky. Though he is a very pretty boy, and well cast.) but it's exceptionally fun and I hope it remains so.

White Collar 4.1-4.2: Oh look, after being in every episode for 3 seasons, Jones finally got moved from the guest stars list to the regulars list.

( spoilers )