The Last Man on Earth, Season 1, Episode 1: Alive in Tucson & Episode 2: The Elephant in the Room

Year 2020: 1 year after the virus

Our protagonist, Phil, drives around in a bus with a megaphone on it, crossing through state to state trying to find another human being. He doesn’t have much luck, crossing off all 50 states.

He decides to enter Tucson and paint the signs to say there’s a living person there. Hey, if everyone’s dead from the virus at least there’s a considerable lack of corpses!

Time to set up home – of course the most expensive one around, who wouldn’t? Which he then redecorates with all the National Treasures he’s looted from across the country (again, who wouldn’t?)

He reflects on his situation through prayer and that inevitably turns to begging god for a woman.

On to him doing all the things he can because he’s the last person on Earth – causing random chaos, walking around in his underwear and leaving a small amount of destruction in his wake and loading up on junk food, porn and booze.

And gets weirdly fixated on a female mannekin. We get it, he’s desperate for sex.

More antics until his sad and lonely birthday and sad memories. And more ranting about god for being alone.

5 months later

His continued antics have reduced the entire house, and its treasures, to a rubbish dump. Those antics involve more and more booze. I don’t even want to think of his toilet arrangements

He continues to be obsessed with women. And contrary to his ranting at the TV he is reduced to talking to balls with faces painted on them. More obsessing about women, kissing a manikin and more booze.

He finally contemplates suicide by ramming his truck into a boulder but stops just before impact – because he sees smoke.

He hurries there and finds a camp site and, far more meaningful to him, women’s underwear. He faints when he hears a woman cough when she catches him fondling her underwear.

He wakes and they’re both overjoyed to see another human being; well in his dream anyway. When he actually wakes up the woman is less perfectly made up and she thought he was dying (and wetting himself). It’s a lot less dreamy. And when he gets close to her she, wisely, points a gun at him and, for some reason, critiques his grammar.

Eventually she puts her gun away and introduces herself as Carol, last woman on Earth.

Episode 2 The Elephant in the Room

Awkward conversation, Carol’s annoying habit of correcting grammar badly and Phil realising being all alone may actually be preferable. She also would rather he follow traffic laws – like stop signs. Honestly, last person on Earth looks preferable now.

He also takes her to the cess pool he lives in and she has reservations about him stealing priceless art. She’s also not keen on his extensive porn collection. He takes her back to her camp site while she announces her intention to put his life back together

Which involves cleaning (just move into a different house), shopping and following rules like disabled parking which don’t really apply when there’s no other humans around.  They continue to annoy each other until she moves in next door

And brings up the elephant in the room – repopulating the planet. Both make it clear that they would really really really rather not; but she’s determined to fix him until it becomes tolerable. She tries to seduce him with fresh vegetables to encourage him to help.

He steals tomatoes instead and, given the paucity of suspects and his tomato stained clothes, is obviously the culprit. She calls him a terrorist. She continues to ineffectually try and obtain running water.

After a long time trying Carol seems to give up and become as much as a slob as Phil having realised she’s pretty ineffective.

Guilt makes Phil try to get running water instead (he’s not much more effective) but he does succeed in getting water to Carol’s tomato patch. Reconciliation is in the air and he is utterly graceless about it. Oh but she also wants to get married before they have sex.

Dear gods.

I’m not going to poke at how neat and clean everything is for a world destroyed by a virus because this clearly isn’t the kind of show that expects you to look to closely nor does it care if you find the holes. The setting is a backdrop for shenangians, to poke it would be like going to the theatre and complaining that the buildings in the background aren’t real.

But I can’t say I’m a fan of the foreground. Does this make people laugh? Guy breaks stuff and obsesses about women… ok… and… funny? Ok the bowling balls and the fishtanks amused me. But that’s about it. Honestly I didn’t crack a smile the whole time.

And I can’t say I can even think “hey I’d do that”, maybe collect the art but randomly break stuff because? I don’t see the appeal.

Followed up with the slob-man-nagging-woman mind numbingly dull and repeated trope – this one dystopian style and taken to the umpteenth degree, and I’m not a fan.

I’m going to have to say this whole show is about as appealing to me as root canal surgery without anaesthetic and with very shaky hands-  but I rather think I’m not remotely the target audience.

Poisoned by Deceit (The One Rises #4) by Anna Wolfe

Silas receives a message – a summons even – from the witches of San Francisco demanding his help. Witches are going missing, young witches, and one of them is very close to Edie’s ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law.

As they head to San Francisco they have to uncover a plot that risks the Covenant and save young lives before they get in too deep. But just as frightening, Edie has to confront the shadows of her past, people she hurt long ago and an extremely powerful witch who has every reason to hate her.

As is common with this series, this book is far more about the characters than the story. The book is split into multiple point of view sections – Edie, Mark, Silas and Callie and, again, it does it really well. I know I’ve said it every book, but I don’t think I should stop praising it just because I expect it – it really does work. Usually this would be jarring but seeing it from several viewpoints really helps see every character to their fullest. Without this insight into everyone’s head, Edie would seem quite emotionless and cold, Silas would seem uncaring and distant, Callie withdrawn and impulsive and Mark just an arsehole. Because we see inside their heads we see far more of the motives behind each character and it makes for both excellent development and complexity – especially when two characters are at odds and you can see both sides have a point.

One good example of this is the trust issues that permeate this book. Because of various woo-woo Silas has secrets that he simply cannot share with the others. Not doesn’t want to, but absolutely cannot. But at the same time the very nature of his training means he requires complete and unflinching trust from the others, without a shred of thought for privacy. This makes for some excellent development and conflict as Callie repeatedly holds back and even Edie has reservations, tempered by her much longer association with Silas.

There’s a lot of complexities and motives among the group with no-one really wrong because everyone has a point and a good reason for thinking what they think and doing what they do.

This book and series continues to be a wonderful subversion of many annoying elements of Urban Fantasy – especially in relation to feeding and control. The bitten in this world hunger, they need to feed. What they feed on differs from bitten to bitten, but common examples are pain, sex, fear, blood, anger – even devotion. Usually if they can feed on it, they have powers relating to it – and a hunger or drive towards causing it

In any other Urban Fantasy, this would be the cue for lots and lots of sexy times as the sex hunger-ers had lots and lots of sex with very little consent and excused it all with woo-woo, lots of guilt or guilt and woo-woo. They may occasionally complain about it, but generally a wonderful time is had by all

Once Upon a Time, Season 4, Episode 13: Darkness on the Edge of Town

The Forbidden Fortress, Many years ago

Wait, we have a Forbidden Fortress? And am I the only one who finds ominous castles with names like that really unimpressive? It’s the very definition of trying too hard, dare I say, overcompensating for something?

Ursula enters Maleficent castle (taking down a guard - or, as Not!Pam says “knocked out, strangled or tried to impregnate” since she doesn’t know what the tentacles are for) and Maleficent objects to this. Someone invited Ursula and it wasn’t Maleficent (which is just rude). They’re interrupted by two large dogs which Cruella seems to control with her halitosis.  She was also invited. Maleficent is also not impressed.

Rumplestiltskin, the one who invited them all, arrives before they start fighting. He’s pitching his plan of the villains getting the happy endings. Time for his pitch (in which he reveals he knows what they all secretly want), they need a Dark Curse that will get them all their Happily Ever After.

This involves going through a series of traps each tailored to a villain’s talent to gain the curse. Of course, Rumple double crosses them and leaves them to die at the hands of the Chernobog, a demon that feeds on evil (actually a Slavic god as I recall). That leaves the 3 villains to fight it – and co-operate (it goes for the most evil which is apparently Maleficent).

To the present and Storybrooke and everything is idyllic (and yes, that includes Regina, now mayor again, burning Mary Margaret’s sappy artwork cluttering up her gloriously stylish office).

But there is something sinister underneath – the Blue Fairy and all her Fairy-Nuns are still missing (thanks to Rumple) and Killian and Belle are working on trying to release them, which means investigation. Which isn’t going to go well if Killian remains contemptuous of computers (and, Killian, that computer is way too out dated to be a magic box). Of course Killian is tortured by the guilt weasels because any attractive man who looks good in black leather and eyeliner simply has to have some darkly tortured angst to go with it. It’s a  rule. Bella has similar guilt weasels but softer – Rumple tricked them both, it happens. Belle is also sad because she did love Rumple, despite how it ended between them.

In New York, Rumple is living a far less idyllic life with the aquarium loving Ursula – both of them without magic outside of Storybrooke. And there is something deeply disturbing watching Rumple microwave ramen. Ursula’s also getting tired of him freeloading on her. But Rumple has plans

Plans which lead them to a fancy house in Long Island where Cruella lives – only her stuff is being repossessed and her husband just got arrested. He launches his recruitment pitch though she doubts both his lack of magic and his physical infirmity (Rumple walks with a cane). They’re off to track down the storybook’s author who is responsible for all their misfortune (as opposed to, as Cruella puts it, “bad judgement and gin.”) And they go for drive through

Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires #11) by Chloe Neill

Ethan and Merit have been on edge waiting for Balthasar, Ethan’s creator, to show himself. Finally the ancient vampire makes an appearance – and he’s as terrifying and powerful as they feared; he also feels entitled to his progeny’s achievements, including his house

But it’s not the only threat looking. The problems besetting Navarre house have finally been revealed as two of their vampires become attempted assassins in a very public attack. While Navarre has never been a friend to Cadogan, Ethan and Merit can’t stand aside while the vampire house is acting so strangely and has to investigate, even with Balthasar stalking them.

This is one of those hard reviews to write. It’s hard because I find myself with a feeling of, well, vaguely positive indifference towards the book. I didn’t dislike it, there were few things about it that I had issue with (though there are some which I’ll get to). The writing was well paced, the action seems nicely described. The two main plots were nicely interwoven, related and each got sufficient time and attention to be properly developed and come to a natural conclusion.

Merit continues to be a relatively fun character, active and in control without being overwhelming and eclipsing everyone else. There was also more presence from the other women around her, the other female guards, Helen who runs the house, Margot the cook, Mallory her best friend. They’re not present in huge amounts but this is a very Ethan and Merit focused book. I also like that Mallory is finally coming from beneath the shadow of her past misdeeds to be a less controversial and dubious presence in the book always haunted by her own guilt

I also appreciated that Merit managed to be intelligent and insightful in this book without the need for everyone else to suddenly lose half of their brain cells. It has been an unfortunate habit of the series to make Merit seem extremely intelligent by making everyone else… somewhat limited in their comprehension.

I love Merit’s adoration of all things edible and unhealthy and she almost makes me hungry reading

the book (or, in her case, hangry – her hungry anger has no caused emergency lunches to be ready at all times) though there’s a dubious element of this unhealthy eating without any side issues.

We had some touching on the Sorcerers with Catcher and Mallory’s upcoming wedding – and a lot of interest debate around it. I loved how they chewed over the idea that even with someone you love, getting married for “practical purposes” rather takes the wind out of things. But equally there’s the counter debate that people grow up, what they once dreamed of isn’t what they want and love and practicality can mean that a big romantic moment is less important – it’s a nice back and forth with the added good input from Ethan that her friends are adults who don’t need Merit to police their relationship.

Fangs for the Fantasy Book of the Week

It's another Monday and usually time for another episode of the Fangs for the Fantasy Podcast

Sadly, because we've been hit with the dreaded moose plague, we're not up to doing the podcast this week. However, we will continue our books of the week for the Monday review ans because we do intend to talk about them when we're back on the air and the mooses (meese?) have been banished

We will be covering everything when we come back!

9th February - 16th February: Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop
16th February - 23rd February: Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs
23rd February - 2nd March: Dark Debt by Chloe Neil
2nd March - 9th March: Fury’s Kiss by Karen Chance
9th March - 16th March: Ash by Malinda Lo
16th March - 23rd March: Grave Visions by Kalayna Price
23rd March - 30th March: Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger

30th March - 6th April: The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich

6th April – 13^th April: Vengeance of the Demon by Diana Rowland

If you have missed any of our previous shows, all our archives can be found here

Bitten: Season 2, Episode 4: Dead Meat

Elena is strapped to a gurney with random people silently taking samples from her (90% of the POC on this show are sinister agents of Alistair’s, I’d like to point out) while a woman assures the drugged Elena that everything will be fine, they’re just examining her. Oh well that’s perfectly acceptable! They also strip her down to her bra for Reasons.

There’s lots of sinister sample jars all around her. Alistair arrives to declare her blood is the answer to allow them to achieve the “undoing”

I’m going to take a wild guess and assume we don’t want him to achieve the undoing. The undoing sounds like a bad thing.

He touches her and burns his symbol into her neck with the palm of his hand.

Next time she wakes up, she’s in a cell. After looking all around for a route of escape she manages to tear a small hole in the wall, but it’s braced with metal and there’s no way she could fit through it. But it does allow her to speak to Savannah in the next cell. Before they can have a conversation, guards with tasers and a catch pole come to collect her.

Back at Stonehaven, Jeremy, Clay, Ruth and Paige are all looking for Elena and Savannah (and, hope, reflecting on their terrible performance last episode). They manage to get in touch with Savannah through Paige and trying to convince Savannah that Alistair is a bad guy. Despite the kidnapping and being put in a cell, Savannah is having trouble remembering this. They also learn that Elena is there

Back to Elena and the female doctor trying to be all friendly and enthusiastic about her experiments. Elena tries to reason with her but she’s all gung ho for the undoing as well

Savannah has another chit chat with Alistair in which he uses his “I am the lock,” “I am the key” mantra to bring her back into acquiescence when she refuses to go along with the idea that the witches just want to control her and how being locked up is a totally good thing. He’s also using his faked hypnotically induced rage to try and focus Savannah’s growing magic

Alistair considers this good news and tells the sinister doctor lady who doesn’t understand why he doesn’t just brand her and bring her to the “inside mind” whatever that means. Woo-woo means this is a bad idea, apparently. Also the blood tests the doctor’s doing haven’t don’t what they want them to. They haven’t used Elena’s blood because she hasn’t turned yet – all the ways they used to turn the other wolves  haven’t worked on Elena –which the doctor takes to mean Elena is super special. The doctor, Sonja, gets super duper excited by all the potential of experimentation but Alistair gets all sinister – they need Elena’s wolf blood, science isn’t his goal. Sonja professes her devotion.

12 Monkeys, Season 1, Episode 7: The Keys

Surreal and spooky beginning, flash images, darkness and Cole talking to someone about keys and he seems to be saying goodbye.

2015

CIA headquarters and a speaker discusses a viral strain being extracted from the body that was in the Night room, (which is probably Cole’s. And was destroyed by fire, or will be destroyed by fire). The body was found in the Himalayas, the virus extracted and then the CIA scientists messed with it. This virus is what they want to unleash in Chechnya in Operation Troy. And that the virus is “safe” because it kills so quickly so that it can be used in isolated areas the infected won’t be able to reach new targets to infect

Why are the CIA doing this foolish thing? Well, Wexler, the computer hacker/wikileaks person keeps revealing America’s big bad secrets and at least one of those secrets involving this area of Chechnya is big enough to bring down the CIA and see them all imprisoned. They, unsurprisingly, want Wexler dead

Over to Cassie with the news reporting on Wexler. She’s still having Red Forest hallucinations. She’s so lost in it she doesn’t even realise she’s pouring hot water from the kettle over her hand until Cole stops her. They didn’t get much from last week, but they did find a picture of a possible monkey which they connect to an Edward Garret – a professor of Middle Eastern antiquity (yes this connection seems awfully tenuous)

And how do they meet him? By going to a fancy party in a museum that, somehow, Cassie has managed to score. Cole is rather delightfully out of his element but is happy to eat all the things. He’s also awed by the art – since the museums were quickly raided or destroyed during the outbreak. Cole also wants to slow down and relax a little, enjoy the moment while Cassie wants him to focus on the mission and is bewildered by his distraction, especially when he pulls her to dance (he can’t dance but she shows him). It’s actually really sweetly awkward but, much to Cole’s sad eyes, Cassie gets back on the mission

She talks to Prof. Garret and he reveals the symbol is Druze, in particular an offshoot of the Druze faith that moved to Chechnya. It references a pact to be the guardians of time. He can’t tell her more because the Druze are super-duper secretive. She asks about the army of the 12 monkeys and his face falls – and he says “you’re a beautiful woman, you should have stuck with that.” Ok, let us hope something stabs him

Cassie passes on to Cole who is still have strange milk-glass-smashing visions. So Cole kidnaps him. He also ends up with a bloody nose – which he passes off as Garrett grazing him to Cassie, but is probably down to lethal time travel. All he reveals though is that the 12 monkeys have been asking about his time in Chechnya. Aaron joins them for this little get together with a lot of closeness with Cassie (which she doesn’t seem that comfortable with) and noticing Cole in his tux (which Aaron certainly isn’t happy about).

Helix, Season 2, Episode 7: Cross Polination

Alan wakes up and sees his bloodied fingernails for a brief flashy recap of everything that just happened. Frankly, just about anything he did could have cause the damage but I’ll go with climbing out of the oubliette

1601

Wait, 1601? Yes, it’s flashback to Michael in the distant past, narrated by the immortal French girl to Julia. Michael fell in love with and married a peasant girl – though she loved someone else, cheated on him and had an illegitimate child, much to the mockery of the people around. Michael decided the appropriate response was to burn his wife and her lover’s house down – with them in it.

Day 7

In Paris the girl finishes the story to Julia who is duly suspicious of the idea that this man will stop Ilaria. I kind of wonder why the girl thought this was relevant information on how Michael will stop Ilaria. Finished with the prologue, she now explains how Michael can help – he has perfected the science of causing infertility (hi there Utopia!) which only effects mortal men (which confirms that Michael is the father of all the children in his cult). A way to reduce the mortal population without genocide (well… depending on your definition of genocide. Forcible sterilisation of a group is generally considered an act of genocide). Julia decides to find Michael

To that island where Amy reports to a rather frazzled looking Michael that most of the infected who were released last episode are being hidden. Michael is all stressed because Agnes isn’t around to put everything just as he likes it – so he turns to Amy, her granddaughter (and his daughter/granddaughter/great-granddaughter) to do it. She warns him that people are scared and “people” are talking about leaving the island. (And by people she means she is).

The missing infected also worries Kyle; they’ve found 4 “Mycotics” which leaves 79 out there and the sedative is wearing off. Michael arrives to address the crowd in the makeshift infirmary and he says, for their own protection, none of them should leave the room. One of the followers, Malcolm, questions leaving their family outside – and Michael calmly says the health will be directed back to them while the infected will, basically, be left to die.

The crowd does not react well – one of them throws an egg at him. Michael has Landrey lock the room. He goes to his office to talk to his paintings of generations of daughters/sexual partners. Amy arrives to ask if Malcolm should be imprisoned in a “contemplation cell” (which, frankly, sounds more ominous than “death hole”) but no, Michael is all for hearty dissent which is a complete u-turn and something he contradicts 10 seconds later by shushing Amy and telling her about all her peacefully, obedient predecessors. He then starts grabbing her neck in a very threatening manner

Kyle and Alan go looking for Sarah and find a shoe in the lab – Alan picks it up and has a psychic vision flash. What? The psychic vision tells him where Sarah is. I’m going to assume this is a memory coming back from being under the drug since he kidnapped Sarah