Review: Misfits 4.4

Curtis has to accept his fate.

Man, this shit's intense! After being built up for several episodes, the character of Lola (Lucy Gaskell) gets a chance to shine on her own, and boy does she bring the house down. It was also a look-in for Curtis who, spoilers aside, finally gets the chance to bow out. Unlike the mad time-travel antics of Simon and Alesha, Curtis gets to leave with some dignity and for the first time this series, Misfits made me feel something. However, it did leave me wondering whether that feeling was justified....
      Lola is chilling with Curtis when an old boyfriend (Andrew Gower, another Being Human alumni) arrives. She tricks Curtis into thinking that her ex has assaulted her. Rudy offers Finn dating advice. Lola pretends that she's getting death threats, and says that she's leaving. When Curtis offers to go round and see him, she offers him a gun and he takes it. When he goes round, Curtis accidentally shoots him in the stomach. It turns out that Lola's having it off with someone else as well, and that she isn't a trainee probation worker. Keen to discover the truth, Curtis goes to use his otherwise-useless power to bring her ex back to life again. The gang are there to help out, the plan being to resurrect him and then have Finn club his brain in when he goes Zombie. They manage to stop him before he escapes, but Curtis gets bitten.
     Curtis is forced to try and resist his zombie urges while still investigating the truth behind Lola's activities. He discovers a tape which reveals that whoever Lola used to be was brainwashed in the storm after playing her as a character. The character is intent upon using every man who comes her way, using her next boyfriend to kill the previous. Lola burns herself to get her present boyfriend to pop over. In the meantime, Curtis manages to escape the wrath of the probation-worker by flirting with him, to his surprise. Curtis, despite having the others considering killing him, still wants to break Lola out of her stupor while he still has the chance. He's knocked out by her new boyfriend, and taken to a warehouse. He can't kill Curtis, so Lola kills the boyfriend and then shoots Curtis. He bites her, and takes her out before saying goodbye to Rudy over the phone and comitting suicide.

The extent of Lola's manipulation is uncovered.

     Lola's character then, ultimately, served as a tragic plot device to see Curtis' doom. Curtis is unfortunate amongst the main five from the show's beginnings in that he doesn't really have that much of a characterisation - despite being the most likable and morally sound guy at the beginning, his character remained static and never got much to do besides having a line of love interests who either left him or died. 4.4. was both clever and disappointing in that it played up that side of his personality and ultimately used his fucked-up power as part of the solution.
     I was annoyed that after two episodes Lola was used much more as a device rather than a character, with her personality and history only lightly touched upon before she was offed. And that was rather true of a lot of things this week. The various tiny subplots running around beneath Rudy and Finn didn;t seem to really go anywhere, and that didn't help the main plot any. Whatever the reason for Nathan Stewart-Jarett's departure from the series, I'd hoped that it would have been in a slightly more thought-out way than this episode unfortuantely gave us. Whether the show can survive soley on its new characters is yet to be seen, but if Jess doesn't get anything to do then we're gonna fail.

Thanks.

Review: Merlin 5.7: A Lesson In Vengeance

I'm Morgana now. So that's cool.

Series Three was a frustrating mess, for the simple reason that seeing Morgana manage to get away with her shit week-in-week-out without any suspicions from the main cast until half-way through the series felt like an insult to the viewer's intelligence. Because the status-quo of the traitor's malificence had to be kept up, that meant that very often the plot didn't go anywhere, and thus it nearly struck the series into submission before the wise decision to finally off Uther. This episode, and its refusal to have altered the status quo by the end, sees a return to that form of storytelling. And that really, really pissed me off.
     When simple-minded stable-master Tyr Seward is sentenced to death for the attempted assassination of the King, Merlin starts to become suspicious. Everyone knows that Seward is not guilty, and when Merlin questions him behind the King's back, he discovers that he is being threatened. Of course, Gwen is acting all suspicious and totally uncharacteristic due to her mind-fuck last week, and also as usual, nobody except Merlin seems to notice. Gwen kills Seward to stop him from saying any more. The knights catch Morgana and Gwen conspiring in the woods, but she gets away before she's seen. While Morgana gets some super-painful poison, Gwen belies Arthur's suspicions - even as Merlin and Gaius find a piece of her cloak in the woods. She poisons him and then places the blame squarely on Merlin, who of course, after all this fucking time, still gets immediately arrested. Gaius works out that she's the traitor from a single conversation, and gives him some magic old-man potion so he can get out. Merlin heals Arthur, Gwen is still brainwashed and nothing meaningful has happened.
     The main problem in A Lesson In Vengeance came with our suspension of disbelief; it was strange seeing Gwen suddenly jump to instantly hate Arthur last week and, unlike Morgana, we can't see exactly why she does so. It's become the case that the writers are simply unable to write the series without a traitor of some kind, like they got six episodes in and just had a relapse. It's really frustrating to see, and after I spent so much time ranting then and so much time praising recently... it's like a personal attack, see. That's what it feels like. I know it's not, and I'm sure the Merlin writers are lovely people who wish to cause noone any harm, but goddamn do they need to forget this entire format.

Stop it, writers. You're making me hate that smirk.

      Nothing more to say, really. If you want to get a glimpse of what happens in this episode, just go to any Series Three review and replace Morgana with Gwen, and then take away all shred of likability. I'm sure Angel Coulby had a lot of fun playing her evil side, but it doesn't make sense from any standpoint - in-universe, narratively, structurally - it's a format that needs to die, and quickly, and if the same thing happens next week I may just refuse to review it.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 5.1: The Eleventh Hour

So, you know how I started reviewing Doctor Who half-way through Season 31? Well, I needed something to fill space, so I thought I'd go back and fill the gap. Here goes...

Eleven emerges, and I loved him pretty much immediately.

Doctor Who - Season 31, Story One - The Eleventh Hour
Written between 7th and 10th October 2012

It's no big secret on this blog that I found both Russell T Davies and certainly the Tenth Doctor rather, shall we say, perturbing - especially as they entered the latter stages of their tenure. I didn't like the way that The Doctor was being written and I certainly didn't like the way that the series had become so focused on the modern pop culture at the expense of decent concepts and ideas. There were a few good ideas in places, but there was also a hell of a lot of shit, and so when I woke up on Easter morning in 2010, I was looking forward to something bigger, better and, more importantly, different.
     Different was exactly what we got. Gone were the massive sweeping shots of London, the dingey backstreets and graffittied counsel estates. Doctor Who was suddenly this very country-based, middle class affair with an overall air of fantasy and fairytale. Gone were the chic trends and modern fashions - this new Doctor likes tweed and spacey wacey timey wimey junk. The stylistic and thematic changes put in by the new regime were apparantly almost immediately, and it's just as impressive now as it was then. The story's split role as an introduction to the overall Moffat era, its characters and as an adventure in its own right was handled incredibly smoothly, and The Eleventh Hour is perhaps the most successful opener since Season 25's Remembrance of the Daleks, and even by this point, Moffat's best script for the series.
     Matt Smith's portrayal is the first that, I felt, had to try to win me over. The Classic Doctors, I loved them already. Nine and Ten, I was too young to care. Eleven was all shiny and new and I felt all big and clever - so this new Doctor better be good, or I'd be very unhappy. At first I was knocked by the crazier parts of his persona, especially the way he strangely disposed of strange food. The "moment" so to speak when he first grabbed my attention, similar to "Run" or the Lion King speech, was the line, "This must be some scary crack in your wall." Suddenly this ridiculous replacement had soul, vision, a life of his own. Eleven's characterisation has done a reverse-Sylvester, and is a lot darker at the start than he would eventually turn out to be. In Season 31, I really loved the way that The Eleventh Doctor captured what Davison had tried to do so many years before - an old man in a young body, still trying to act as if he was young and naive despite the myriad of things he'd seen and done.

The old chic is dead, long live the tweed.

     Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill (although less of the latter, as he only really becomes an important character in a few weeks) actually make an interesting entrance. All of the prior NuWho companions had been introduced in a fairly simple manner; companion meets Doctor in strange circumstances, they have an initial adventure, then he invites them along. This is altogehter more interesting and possibly quite disturbing at the same time. Following what we'll find out is a very common theme in the Moffat era, The Doctor unwittingly manages to psychologically affect a young Amelia Pond in such a way that she becomes obsessed with him and even into adulthood refuses to accept that he isn't real. Both the magical crack in her wall and The Doctor's influence have made Amy a very vulnerable individual hiding under a bolshy outer shell. This epsidoe sparked up some controversy because that bolshy outer shell happened to include Amy's career as a kissogram, which highlights another Moffat theme - intense fetishisation of women.
     It was fresh, it was new, and it was damn awesome. The Eleventh Hour signposts a few of the problems of Moffat's era, but on its own it's a solid hour or so of brilliant writing that serves not only as one of the best post-regeneration stories in the series but also as one of the best episodes of the entire New Series. Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Mr. Moffat were here to stay, and we loved it.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: The first normal-length episode in two years, and Moffat's first blunder.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Full Circle

The Marshmen are the Alzarians' ancestors.

Doctor Who - Season 18, Story Three - Full Circle
Written 16/8/12

As I a child I always wanted to see this story, for the simple reason that writer Andrew Smith shares my name. The first fan-written story, Full Circle was commissioned to introduce new companion Adric and to begin JNT's first arc, the E-Space trilogy. What does having a fan-writer mean to the serial? Well, there are a few problems here or there, but fundamentally it's much more interesting and well-done than you'd expect. It's a story of tolerance, of trust and of the dangers of ignorance. And about stealing river fruit.
     On their way back to Gallifrey, the Time Lord Twosome encounter a spacial anomaly which, despite the TARDIS telling them they're in the right place, has sent them to a green-tinted parallel world. They land on the planet Alzarius, where the human-like natives retreat from the Mistfall into their spaceship, which they believe carried their decendants from the planet Terradon. A young Alzarian called Adric ends up encountering the TARDIS, and together they enter the ship and witness an attack by the native Marshmen. The Doctor discovers that the Alzarians are run by an oligarchy known as The Deciders, who have been hiding information from the public concerning their inability to actually run the ship. Looking at DNA samples of the crew and the Marshmen, The Doctor discovers that the Alzarians are in fact the Marshmen's decendants, and he finds the way to deter them. Having finally set the ship on its way, The Doctor and Romana go forth to try and find the exit to this world - not knowing that Adric has stowed away onboard.
     Adric, named after an anagram of revolutionary particle physicist Paul Dirac, is pretty much an accidental author-insert for the at-the-time teenaged Andrew Smith. Adric was supposed to be an effort by JNT to represent the show's key demographic, and it's perhaps unfortunate that the result is a character less identifiable and more irritating. In a few words, Adric is pompous, arrogant, incredibly assuming and yet ridiculously incompetant in all walks of life besides Mathemathics. He's fine with Tom, for the most part, but his real moments of annoyance come here and later in Season 19.

K-9 was used well this week.

     Season 18's high-concept sci-fi themes continue here, and for me this is the first one that really works - a highly adaptable species that is able to evolve into different forms over the course of only a few tens of thousands of years. The Marshmen look awesome, and their humanoid appearance lends credence to the idea that they are the Alzarians' ancestors. I also loved the idea of the Deciders and their endless bureaucratic procrastination, which evolved not out of their human failures but simply because they weren't in fact decended from the ships' original inhabitants. I wish that there'd been a few minutes more focus upon the overall arc story, but I get the feeling that this trilogy is a lot more loose than JNT's other arcs.
     Full Circle was a great 100 minutes. While it did unleash Adric upon the world, it also had a lot of interesting ideas and the interactions between characters were good fun. At the end of the day it probably wasn't very memorable, and that's an issue that so far has been plaguing this season, but the first part of the E-Space trilogy was a brilliant start and I'm looking forward to the last two parts of my look at JNT.

Thanks.

Review: Misfits 4.3

Grr.

Some rudimentary psychology for you. Everyone has at their base three personality states - Child, which runs on the id and acts submissive; Adult, which is the central and rational version of the self; and Parent, which aims to control others. It's another version of the Id, Ego, Superego idea and Misfits is using that perfectly when it comes to Rudy. This time we're introduced to the idea that Rudy hasn't just released Frudy upon the world, but has also got a Dark Side - or, as I will say, Drudy. It's new dynamic, and an interesting one that this episode uses to add a slice of variety to our regular characterisations (and to give Joe Gilgun a chance to be a bit more serious).
     Drudy has just been released from some very accepting prison after having beaten someone up in a club, and comes back to re-integrate with Rudy and take over his body. Social worker Lola (Lucy Gaskell) arrives to act all sexy around Curtis, while Drudy makes his mark by thieving from Jess's locker. He manages to get inside her head when they talk, and he creeps her out. Finn gets seduced by his step-mother, but gets abandoned by Jess, leading him to walk out on her. Frudy comes back to find Drudy has returned, and a short exertion of Rudy's central personality almost allows him the chance to escape. While Finn is shown up in public, he also has another run-in with the probation worker who's acting as bit more mental. Finn's stepmother comes back again and she's more desperate for a relationship; he's too much of a chicken to break it off.
     Curtis flirts with Lola and Jess flirts with Alex, after which Drudy freaks Jess out some more. Finn is forced to stop his stop-mum from telling the truth to his dad, but he doesn't get their in time and he has a father-son chat. He reveals that he isn't Finn's real father, and thus disowns him. The probation worker discovers someone has stolen a wedding cake, and tears a strip off of the three - meeting his match with Drudy. When they talk, Jess catches on that his personality has changed. Drudy explains some of the mechanics while Jess explains some some of her background. Drudy nearly strangles Jess so she stabs him with some scissors. Before he dies, she convinces him to let his two other selves go. They bury yet another corpse, and Finn makes it up with Jess.

The probation worker meets his match in Dark Rudy

     This week's episode wasn't very funny, but I feel that it took a very successful Being-Human-esque movement from comedy to drama and used the various characterisations to make it work. It was the best episode so far this series, for the simple reason that I enjoyed all of the characterisations. While yet again Curtis got relegated to putting his penis into people (which, 1.4 aside, is basically his only consistent ability so far), the other three characters got a lot to do and a lot of background. It wasn't laugh-a-minute, but it did have the oomph of good characterisation from all hands. Good show.

Thanks.

Review: Merlin 5.6: The Dark Tower

After a season of neglect, Angel Coulby's Gwen
got a hell of a lot more to do.

Usually I can tell if an episode of Merlin is good or not within the first 15 minutes. The Dark Tower presented something all over different, and for the vast majority left me incredibly confused as to whether the story was absolutely first rate genius or tripe of the most smelly and unpleasant kind. Julian Jones' characters seemed to have gone all weird on us for some reason, but unlike last week's shitstorming stupidity on the part of Merlin, the characters were different in annoying subtle ways. Frustraingly, this actually helped the story do what it was trying to do character-wise, and for once Morgana's scheme turns out to be absolutely brilliant.
     Gwen and the Knights, sans Arthur and Merlin, head out to pay respects to the Queen's dead father. On the way back, their troupe is ambushed by a fairly resourceful Morgana, who poisons a few of them with magic vision-giving venom and takes Gwen to the hallucination-inducing Dark Tower, a place of legend that Knights are taught to fear. While Merlin is suddenly super-confident and helps Arthur get through to the Tower,

4 days ago

4 days ago

Morgana tries to make Gwen like her by leaving her alone in a chamber that shows all of her friends laughing at her. Elyan drives forward through the traps despite Arthur and Merlin's cries for him to stop. In a fight with a magical flying sword, Elyan is fatally wounded, and dies in Gwen's arms. As they return to Camelot, it is revealed that Morgana's mindfucking has turned Gwen into what Morgana was in Series Three.
     While I was pretty pissed when I read the synopsis for next week about how Morgana's got a spy within Camelot (for reasons that I'm sure I'll spell out in full detail next week), I do love how we can see Gwen's slow turn to the Dark Side. For once, Morgana actually used psychology is a good way and the way it mirrors her own transformation is actually pretty awesome. Their interactions, beyond the slightly slashy tone to it all, were by far this episode's best quality.

Seriously, these guys have zero security.
Morgana keeps ambushing them, it's something you think
they'd catch on to.

     Meanwhile, the guys on the team seemed to lose their normal characterisations, especially Merlin. It was really baffling for me, especially as this is written by series-creator Julian Jones. Merlin stopped being the slightly nervous yet brave young man and instead spent the episode as the tough-faced action hero who speaks in heroic and prophetic statements. I think it was a mix of the writing and something that Colin Morgan had perhaps eaten that week, but it threw the episode off completely and left me wondering what exactly was going on.

     This episode left me both optimistic about what Merlin is able to accomplish with its characters and pessimistic about how weird the characters seemed to be even under the leadership of the series' creator. At the moment, the final series seems to be hovering on the edge of a few good ideas, and even though next week will be an advancement on a plot idea that's literally been used in 50% of the series' stories, I still don't know if Merlin has lost its momentum or is simply hiding it.

Thanks.