Category: Television-Fiction

Posts about TV shows.

Revenge is actually mine, says Emily Thorne

Season three, episode two takes a turn for the church

I’m out of town and don’t have time to do a full write up for Revenge S3E2, “Sin,” so we’ll jump right into some Memos to a Character.

Dear Emily, Romans 12:19: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” When you decided to devote your life to this course of revenge did you foresee the way it would turn you into a cold and remorseless villain? You may not see yourself that way, but the people who lived at the generosity of Father Paul do. This was the first of your takedowns that gave you the opportunity to see what you do to people. Will it change your way of thinking or will you continue to take from the Lord his vengeance?

Dear Charlotte, Ezekiel 16:44: Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’  Despite all that he has done to tear apart your family, what you said to Conrad was exceptionally hurtful. You are the only Grayson with clean hands. Don’t become your mother.

Dear Jack, Galatians 5:13: For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Keep this in mind as you and Charlotte grow close. She is your dead brother’s ex-girlfriend who is the biological sister of your childhood sweetheart after you thought she was the biological sister of your dead wife who you thought was your childhood sweetheart. Also mind the age difference. I would like you two became close friends because you are the only decent people in this saga, but that is as far as you should really go. She has the genuine qualities of the father she never knew. You were also shaped by your father and became a father to Declan. As a team I think you two could be good morality checks for Charlotte’s parents and Emily. They need it.

Dear Nolan, I John 2:16-17: For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Who do you think you are Derek Jeter? Do you send your conquests home with a basket full of autographed computer disks? Keep trying to rein in Emily when her quest for revenge takes her down a dark path. That is where you will find your purpose, not in the arms of strangers.

Dear Conrad, I John 1:8-9: …8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Your visit to the church tells me your exposure to mortality is causing you a crisis of conscience. Follow it. Confess your sins. The ramifications will shatter your family and the world around you, but you will experience the truth you need if these indeed are your final days.

Dear Victoria, Ecclesiastes 5:10: He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. I’ve never learned more about you than when you said you have to keep up the appearance of being wealthy. You spend so much of your life trying to keep up appearances. Family, happiness, wealth. It’s almost like a job for you. There will come a day when you realize these things are not appearances but values.

Dear Daniel, 2 Timothy 2:22: So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. I am in awe. Resisting a redhead the way you did was damn near a miracle. You are strong where I am weak, and it shows you are beyond a life of youthful passions. I am very happy to see you pursuing work with Margaux’s magazine. Stepping away from the Grayson shadow will bring you rich rewards. I am, however, suspicious of the timing though I can’t quite put my finger on why.

Dear blueberry muffins, Zechariah 9:12: Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. Watching you be passed around the Hamptons summed up the Hamptons better than I ever could. Come to Minnesota. We will treat you right and give you the reward you deserve, the reward of being eaten.

Sincerely,

Kevin

Revenge Rights Wrongs

Season three premiere erases season two

The most shocking reveal from the Revenge season premiere is that only one line from season two still matters: “I’m Amanda Clarke.” Everything else, every way that the show went haywire, has been wiped away. Charlotte’s baby? Gone. The Initiative? Poof. Carrion? Flown the coop. Ashley? Buh-bye. Governor Grayson? Sent home sick. I can’t remember any other show erasing storylines so completely.

“Let’s never say the words ‘Carrion’ or ‘Initiative’ ever again,” Emily says when she picks up Nolan outside the prison. “Amen to that,” he responds.

So do we. New showrunner Sunil Nayar dismissed most of these unpopular storylines in the first five minutes. Perhaps to mock how silly Conrad’s political story was from the beginning, Nayar had him hinting at presidential aspirations before the alleged onset of Huntington’s Disease forced him to resign. Poor Ashley was the unsuspecting victim in Nayar’s final clear-cutting. To really drive a dagger through season two, Nayar paired Victoria and Emily to turn aside her last desperate attempt to stay in the Hamptons and deport her to television Narnia, although her deliciously sexy accent will always have a place in this writer’s heart.

In that same scene outside the prison Nolan takes Emily’s left hand and asks her the question that returns the series to its roots: Are the “rules of engagement” to Daniel still on? Of course they are. She is trying to delay setting a wedding date while Daniel looks for a new job. What will happen between now and then looks to be the guts of season three. Indeed, in the next scene Emily boldly proclaims that if all goes as planned this year’s Memorial Day party will be the last the Graysons ever attend.

This is the most welcome news we could have asked for. Revenge is back where it began with Emily plotting the Graysons’ demise.

To tell that story it appears the third season will model itself after season one with a teaser followed by a jump to two months earlier. This is a great decision, one I speculated about last month. Revenge has been best when it is building toward a specific point in time. This season it is two months from Memorial Day, which will line up to be just before Emily and Daniel’s decision to get married on August 8. All that remains for the timeline is to see if the third season ends there or pivots the way season one did after the fire-and-ice engagement party.

The last topic I want to cover before hitting some Memos To A Character is the possibility for the show’s end. The pilot opened with Emily quoting Confucius’s famous quote, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” In this episode she tells Nolan of her intention to exact her ultimate revenge on her 8-8 wedding day. As he draw’s Emily’s interlocking infinity symbols in the sand, he calls it, “A fitting end to a path of revenge.”

Is the show trying to tell us something? I wrote last year that it needs an end date so it can know how much time it has to tell Emily’s story. Surely this can’t be the reason for the premiere to be talking end game, but it had a definite impact on what happened. Jack gave her an ultimatum to finish her plot this summer and leave town or he will out her true identity. Remember that Emily will be shot in her wedding dress two months from now. Will it be the second grave Confucius refers to? If so, who is in the first? And if that is something we see in season three, what will be left for season four??? Time will tell, and that’s why this year’s premiere has me excited for what’s to come.

Now, Memos To A Character.

Dear Emily, you really did get shot in the tummy. I’m sorry this happened to you. I was wrong to speculate you might be wearing a vest because when you were floating there in the water (wait, you float?) you sure were bleeding. I hope medical attention comes quickly because you will lose a lot of blood from those wounds.

Dear Victoria, a warm welcome back to you. “Emily. It’s a shame you still feel the need to drop by unannounced.” That is the you we know and love. Not really sure what you mean but judging by the look on your face it isn’t a compliment nor a welcome.

Dear Patrick, what’s your deal, bro? We only saw the back of your shoulder last season and you kept your mom company while her husband settled in up in Albany. But why you no stay when he come home? Are you out of the story for good or just waiting for the right time to hop back out to the Hamptons?

Dear Jack. Sigh. You weren’t your usual dumb self so I will give you some credit. How about your kiss with Emily though? That was pretty intense and breathy, I hope you had some mints. I was relieved that despite how great it looked you said you don’t have any feelings for her. You know I don’t like love triangles, so thanks for that. I don’t know why you want Emily to get her revenge over with so fast but it at least will help the story move, so thanks for that, too.

Dear Aden, you prick. Your quest for revenge not only failed to save your sister, it failed to get you Emily as well. But you did get to take out your anger on Takada so have a Coke and a smile and shut the front door, okay? That means go away.

Dear Padma, you are so still dead.

 

Sincerely,

 

Kevin

 

Free yourself from Hostages

Hostages has a great premise: Force a doctor to choose between the president and her family. Will she slip him a fatal poison on the operating table or will she risk her family being killed and let him live? Or will she turn the tables and fight back against their hostage takers?

Who gives a damn. This show is unlikeable.

While most pilots come out swinging with an extended opening sequence, Hostages went for a family sitting on a couch for 38 seconds. KA-POW! No, not ka-pow. Dad looks up and sees a masked man. That’s it. To recap: A show named Hostages opened with a family being held hostage. Therein lies the problem I have with the pilot: It is simply an extended version of everything you knew if you saw the promo. It is not an introduction to what will unfold over its 15-episode season. If that’s what CBS and its writers were intending, they failed big time.

The first time we see Dr. Ellen Sanders as a doctor is in a press conference with the president. He selected her over the chief surgeon from Johns Hopkins to remove a nonmalignant mass from his lung. This is also the first time we the president whose fate Sanders will determine in the face of danger to her family. Instead of making him a character, Paul Kincaid is meaningless but for holding the title of President of the United States. Because this is television I don’t have to care about whether he lives or dies, but I was surprised and disappointed to see the show not even try to make me care.

The night before the surgery, a traitorous FBI agent leads a team of ninjas onto the Sanders’ unguarded property. As the hostage-taking unfolds we start to see cracks in their all-American family. Her husband is having an affair, her daughter is secretly pregnant and her son is dealing weed. They are not the Seavers. They are two brats, a jerk and a working mom. We have no reason to hope the crisis draws them together. Hostages needs viewers to hope the family does exactly that because, like with the anonymous president, the show’s drama relies on it. If I don’t care about the family then I don’t care if the mom kills the president or not. If I don’t care about that, then why am I even watching this show?

For the bad guys to win? FBI Special Agent Duncan Carlisle is no one special. He is just an angry husband whose wife is suffering from cancer. Is he the ringleader of a presidential assassination plot or just a pawn? At first he seems like the ringleader, but when he is revealed to be partnering with someone inside the White House that becomes less clear. I love shows that put viewers in the position of liking the bad guy. Hostages doesn’t even give us that. Carlisle is the kind of loser who in real life might get it in his mind to kill the president only to end up getting arrested on Pennsylvania Avenue.

If I don’t care about the president, or the family, or the bad guys…?

I can get behind a great story. That is the number one reason I watch any television show. But Hostages passed on illuminating any of the things that had to happen leading up to the opening scene. Why did the president insist on this doctor instead of the one his wife mentioned from Johns Hopkins? The political benefit of trusting his life to a woman? Maybe it is something more sinister. His aide, Quentin, is part of the plot, so did he intentionally steer the president in this direction. Why? We don’t know and the show never made any attempt to lay the groundwork for exploring it.

Nor do we know why they want the president dead. Killing the president is a pretty severe obsession, don’t you think? All the pilot gave us was a vague reference to Carlisle’s wife having cancer and wanting to get back to “the way things were.” You can’t skip over the motive in a show about trying to kill the president! It needed to be a major part of the pilot.

We don’t even get to see why Ellen is a great doctor. The president doesn’t just get a binder full of female surgeons to pick from when he needs surgery. Something had to make her stand out. A colleague tells Ellen she is a rockstar who was picked because she is the best, not because she is a woman. Not good enough. We need to actually see her being a great doctor. How hard would that have been? A basic doctor-performs-a-miracle scene is the staple of television staples. Hostages couldn’t even give us that much.

Throw me a bone, reel me in, give me just one hint that there is a bigger story here! I want to like it!

But I can’t. This show is arrogant. It throws you into an opening scene that lasts all of 38 seconds with characters you ultimately cannot like. It expects you to be riveted just because it wants you to be, taking for granted all the storytelling that goes into developing a compelling drama. It asks you to completely overlook the fact that a doctor about to perform surgery on the President of the United States is allowed to just waltz home the night before to a completely unguarded home. It asks you to be dumb.

The worst moment came when Carlisle and his team (who we know absolutely nothing about) took their masks off in the Sanders’ living room. The daughter panics and tells her father that they are more likely to be killed if they see the bad guys’ faces. There’s nothing better than a self-aware television show.

One thing did catch my eye. I’m not sure if it was because it was really there or I was looking so hard that my imagination went into overdrive: Does Dr. Sanders know why she was put in this situation? The way Carlisle calls her by her first name and how she completely breaks down in front of him could suggest these two knew each other before he took her family. Perhaps she was involved with his wife’s care and the whole assassination plot is his way of getting back at her? That could explain why the president received so little attention.

At the very end, does the television news crawl matter when it says, “…corporations are people. Terrorist has cooperated since clandestine guilty plea.” Ultimately, because of all the faults listed above, I just don’t care.

Good pilots surprise you. They tease you and they tantalize you. You don’t want a good pilot to end. When it does you want the next episode right now because it left you craving more. Were you on the edge of your seat when Hostages ended? I wasn’t. Nothing I saw made me want to see another 14 weeks of Doctor Ellen Sanders playing cat and mouse with Duncan Carlyle.

Snap reaction: Sleepy Hollow series premiere

Sleepy Hollow Premiere – Snap Reaction. Typed in real time, unedited.

Teaser:
Yes, the revolutionary soldier with a black mask and an ax.

Car stopped quick.

Hey, the guy from Lost. What was that character’s name? In the Hatch, Desmond killed him. Inman. Kelvin Inman?

Upside down?

Aw why’d you go and ax Inman?

Is this the guy from Flash Forward?

“When I cut off his head.” Not sure I can go for this.

Act One
Can’t help but notice the camera focused on the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill.

Orlando Jones?!?

Crane seems awfully alert and witty for a guy who just woke up after 250 years. Not at all freaked out by a car, for example. “That building used to be a livery stables.” Used to be? He’s adjusted already?

Someone else from the past, a spooky-faced priest, no less, is good.

She tells him a flashlight is like a gun, “Point. Shoot.” so he sticks his finger in front of it and points it at his face.

There is they pyramid eye again, on a gravestone.

Cool. Wizardry!

Terrible camera trick with the priest getting beheaded. What he knows the location of is a new mystery.

At this point I should mention I have no background with the headless horseman story at all. Movie or anything.

Act Two
Another camera angle riding the wheel of a police cruiser. That’s two.

Second time we’ve seen the bird.

Is this on the WB or a major broadcast network with this cop?

Mom is calling. brb

Now liveblogging the phone call.

We’re both watching TV.

Dad is hollering for something. “He must have found some kind of animal.”

“Rabbit sticks? What?”

Been to any ball games? No.

Now they’re mentioning a mouse in The Formerly Yellow Room, which is where I sleep when I’m there. They clam up.

Went to Spencer Fair. They served Minnesota State Fair cups. Say it’s becoming more of a “city people fair.” I take offense.

Making plans for cousin’s wedding.

Job hunt.

Old science teacher won a $50 gift certificate, said I can have it. He doesn’t remember what it is. Restaurant. Said there are three.

Tell them I want The Formerly Yellow Room fumigated. End of call. Back to Sleepy Hollow

Crane is digging into the cop, there’s another storyline.

She’s going to give us a little taste. Probably something about an unsolved crime, like her partner was hinting at earlier in the diner. Four white trees and a voice. Shocking. Drover her sister to “battle demons.” There’s a connection between them now. He can call her Abby.

Oh, the sheriff has some hidden files, eh?

And they’re about witches. And she’s in one with her white tree experience. Local farmer saw the same thing and guess what: Thought it was the four horseman of the apocalypse. Explains his reaction when he saw the headless horseman.

Orlando Jones seems to know more than he’s letting on.

Oh yeah, next shot confirms it. There’s another mystery.

Act Three
Ah, yes. This explanation helps a lot.

That laid out the show in a good, compelling fashion.

I wonder how much people who know and working to silence him will be part of the show. Probably a lot?

I like that “it’s on” now with what the show is about. Being vague would have been annoying. Putting it out this fast indicates to me there’s enough story that they don’t need to drag this stuff out.

Don’t have a good feeling about possibly Flash Forward guy here.

How many times are we going to shoot the man without a head.

What was that about? Did he say that because of the phone conversation he just had or because he knew what the headless horseman wants?

Best act so far.

Act Four
Wow he dug that hole fast.

The horseman is a terrible shot. Probably because he doesn’t have a head.

Whoa cop girl is bad ass!

What’s FF guy up to? Another storyline.

Is FF guy Brooks?

Orlando Jones is cooperative all of a sudden.

Yes, Brooks is.

HOLY HOLY HOLY THE WHAT? I’m not going to sleep tonight.

Great, quote Revelations.

WTF with the Rolling Stones? That totally killed the ending.

Mistresses: With or without Savi?

Why not both?

Alyssa Milano on Mistresses
Photo credit: ABC

As I learn more about television I am surprised at the number of times I read something like this from a writer:

We left one of our main characters in a life-or-death cliffhanger at the end of the season. When we sat down to break the next year we looked at each other and said, “How are we going to get ourselves out of this one?” 

I always assumed shows let their character’s fates hang in the wind for viewers while knowing exactly how they would resolve it. It turns that isn’t always the case.

Enter the season finale of Mistresses. Savi wakes up in the hospital after a serious car accident to learn that her baby survived and her co-worker, Dom, is its father. As Dom confesses his love, she flatlines. Joss, Dom, Harry and April watch helplessly. Doctors rush in. She’s not responding. It does not look good.

Cut to black.

I criticized Revenge for teasing us about Emily getting shot in its season three promo. We all know main characters on primetime dramas don’t die. But watching the end of Mistresses I believed, just for a moment, that the cliffhanger would not be whether she lives or dies, but that she dies. Major.

I was wrong, we don’t know Savi’s fate. Odds overwhelmingly favor her survival. But what if…? How could a show, a surprise summer hit, no less, kill its main character, who is played by its biggest star, and go on?

Maybe like this…

mistressesseasontwoscripts
Mistresses Season 2 Script

Or this…
mistressesseasontwoscripts_p3
mistressesseasontwoscripts_p4

These aren’t real of course, I wrote them and made them look like TV scripts. But they provide a way for Mistresses to let the Savi character die without booting Alyssa Milano from the show. In the first, we see the characters as they were three years ago before they ever made the mistakes they dealt with in season one. At first the jump back in time isn’t clear, but by the time we’re back in the hospital with Savi we know the story moved backwards. The rest of the season two premiere after this would hop back between then and now to show how they handle the immediate aftermath of their friend’s death and set up the story for the rest of the season.

The second one moves Savi’s fate to the end of the episode (you’ll notice how it skips from act one to act five). It could use the acts in between to show a time in their lives when they were all happier before crashing back to the present to see their friend die.

Each one keeps Alyssa Milano in the show, lets her character die and opens the door to new stories. It would be unconventional, but I think it would be fun.

Image credit: ABC