The Originals, Season Four, Episode Two: No Quarter

Thanks to five years of labour on Hayley's part the majority of the Original family are alive and awake.  After the vampires feed to regain their strength, they have a decision to make. Should they flee New Orleans because Marcel's bite is deadly to them now or should they make an attempt to get Klaus? The Original family may betray each other and fight like cats and dogs but when it comes to an outside threat they stand together always and No Quarter, is no exception. 

It looks like the Mikaelsons are not going to have the element of surprise because Sofya reports back to Marcel that some of the people she had falling Haley watched her intercept Keelin. Marcel is quick to surmise that this means that Hayley now has her hands on a cure for his bite. The Mikaelsons coming back to town is a headache however not overly a concern because Marcel is still the HNIC for now. We all know that this is temporary right?

Having been out of the loop for so long, Rebekah and Elijah are forced to turn to Josh to get some idea of what Marcel is up to.  Josh just happens to be having a little alone time with his new boyfriend Eddie and yes, this comes with an on camera kiss. Eddie, unlike his supernatural boyfriend is all too human.  We all know already that Eddie is on borrowed time right?  At any rate, Josh sends Eddie away so he can deal with the Mikaelsons. After some quick questioning Elijah and Rebekah learn that Josh despite his relationship with Marcel, isn't really in the loop. Rebekah then suggests that she act as a distraction to Marcel since they have so much unsettled history. 

Rebekah heads off to confront Marcel as the rest of the family goes to Rosseau's in order to access the tunnels underneath the city where Marcel is hiding Klaus. The Original family must now decide what to do with Josh.  Kol isn't in favour of killing him because Davina cared about Josh and Marcel is in agreement because Marcel cares about Josh.  Kol volunteers to stay behind with Josh while everyone else heads through the tunnels to find Klaus. 

Speaking of Klaus, he's still crumbled in a ball enduring the pain of Papa Tunde's blade.  In order to distract himself from the torture he conjures up Cami. Even though Cami is a figment of Klaus's imagination, she goes into to counsellor mode because it seems that once again, Klaus has some demons that he needs to deal with.  Through the connection, Klaus can feel that his siblings are now awake but he still needs to free himself.  For some reason, Klaus seems to like it there because he's convinced to some degree that he deserves this punishment and to be perfectly honest, he's absolutely right. Cami quickly digs through the layers of Klaus's emotional shit and gets to the heart of the matter - Klaus is scared that he won't be embraced by Hope when they finally meet after all of these years. It's no surprise that Hope features largely in his thoughts given that she is his daughter and Klaus has a whole host of unresolved daddy issues.  It seems that Klaus is terrified that he won't be a good daddy and that he will pass on a legacy of violence.  The mere fact that he threatens to kill anyone who breaks Hope's heart shows that he hasn't learned any lessons from the time he spent policing Rebekah's sexuality.

Marcel and Rebekah meet and she asks for Klaus's freedom.  We all know that it's not going to be that easy right? Marcel is particularly annoyed that Rebekah believes that she can just stroll into town and trade upon their long relationship to get what she wants. Marcel feels absolutely justified in what he has done to Klaus.  Rebekah makes it clear that right or wrong, her family will keep on coming until they get what they want but Marcel still will not bend.  When it's clear that the conversation isn't going anywhere, Rebekah pulls out the knife that was used to curse her and threatens Marcel, who is a bit shocked that Rebekah would go to such lengths. On one hand while I feel that Marcel more than any other person should know about the siblings extreme loyalty to each other, he's not wrong to be a little shocked at Rebekah since the two of them did conspire to bring Michael to town to kill Klaus. 

As we all know, The Originals is not about to let Rebekah play the role of hero or act tough.  Rebekah is the Original damsel in distress and she quickly falls into this role when Sofya sneaks up and shoots Rebekah full of arrows. Did Marcel arrange for Sofya to eavesdrop on their conversation in case he needed back up or is Sofya stalking Marcel?  I think I'm going to go with the later since Marcel would have no reason to be afraid of Rebekah. 

Marcel quickly realises that Rebekah was there to act as a distraction and that her siblings are probably breaking Klaus out of prison and so he takes off. Elijah, Freya and Hayley have found Klaus, though Klaus still isn't conscious and is working out his issues with ghost Cami.  The spell guarding Klaus is so strong, Freya is forced to channel Hayley while Elijah acts as look out. Ghost Cami is loudly screaming at Klaus that he needs to take the knife out now. By the way this whole taking out Papa's knife thing is new. When it was first introduced, that knife stayed where it was until someone pulled it out. 

Colony, Season Two, Episode Eleven: Lost Boy

Lost Boy is centered by a violent act of resistance orchestrated by the Red Hand. We watch as each character responds in various ways on how these reveals who they are no and where they stand on dealing with the alien invaders.

Lost Boy opens with Karen giving an ominous speech about what will happen to collaborators. From the moment Bram hooked up with Karen last week, I knew that Bram would end up being a useful fool.  This feeling is confirmed when the Resistance drinks a toast to their upcoming act of rebellion because this is what they do before an attack that leads to death. Bram however isn't given a good bye fuck before being sent to his death. Bram is teamed up with Patrick, and they head into the green zone together. Patrick is cool as he goes through the check point but Bram looks suspicious as fuck.  I kind of wonder how it is that the Red Hats didn't hold him under suspicion given how nervous he's behaving?

 Bram and Patrick spend a New York minute cutting shrubs before entering a home.  Patrick is quickly shot dead, leaving Bram with the decision of either running for his life or pulling the trigger himself. At this point, the writers let the audience in on a secret which Bram keeps from his family, he kills the Ambassador King. Not only does Bram kill, he boldly puts the signature blood red hand on the door of the house. Bram wants both revenge for the loss of his girlfriend and he wants to feel like he's doing something important.  The fact that he ends up lying to both his mother and father indicates that he knows damn well that his actions were wrong and put people he cared about in jeopardy.  

Karen's mission was always a suicide mission and so there were no plans made for how the Red Hand soldiers would escape the Green Zone once word spread of their murderous actions.  Bram knows at this point that there's only one way to get out of this situation - Aunt Maddie.  Maddie is immediately suspicious when Bram shows up the door.  She's suspicious enough to keep Bram away from her son, even as he insists that in order to be safe they need to leave.  Maddie does take the time to question Bram and he has pat answers but of course, they ring false. Bram claims that he was just released from prison and found his family home empty. Maddie actually thinks she's dropping a bomb when she reveals that Will and Kate are collaborators and on the run. Then Maddie does something which surprises me, she decides to take Bram to the gate when he explains that if he's caught in the Green Zone now, the guards won't listen to his explanation, given that he's just been released from prison.  At the gate, Maddie is asked to step outside of her car by the guard and informed that Red Hand youth have been killing high status collaborators.  The look of betrayal is all over her face, even as she insists that Bram is her nephew and not a danger to her.  The moment they get away from the gate, Maddie stops the car and orders Bram to get out. 

Will's perspective begins before Bram decides to become a murderer.  Will's playing a game of catch with Charlie, in his own way trying to normalise their situation and emphasising that they are still a family. It's Charlie who has noticed that Bram has been sneaking out.  Rather than being silent in solidarity with his brother, Charlie decides to snitch. 

Doctor Who Season 10 Trailer

Okay Whovians, as you might know the new season starts soon. I trust that I am not alone in dealing of feelings of withdrawal. It's particularly bittersweet because this will be Capaldi's last season as the Doctor.  Don't worry, there will be plenty of time to argue about who should replace him.  In the meantime, to help you get through the wait until April 17th which is the start of the new season, I thought you might enjoy having a look at the preview if you haven't already seen it.  From the looks of it, Matt Lucas is going to reprise his role as Nardole.  It looks as though the Doctor, Nardole and Bill (Pearl Mackie) the Doctor's new companion are going to have an awesome set of new adventures. 

Well, what do you think?

The Magicians, Season 2, Episode 9: Lesser Evils

So Fillory. As Margo put it, it’s lucky they don’t have polling in Fillory because this is a hot mess of awful with their army deserting because of the mass tree killing, the treasury still kind of empty and magic still cutting out because Ember shit in it. This is looking pretty terrible.

Except there turns out to be one loop hole – rather than a war they can have a duel between kings! And it will make them super popular – as Margo puts it, Eliot is already seeing the statues.

Except he can’t fight. And the king of Loria can.

This is a bad idea. They quickly brainstorm for other possibilities and come up with magic: namely, Fenn’s blacksmith ancestors have a sword and spell that was especially prepared for High Kings who didn’t really want to go to the effort of actually learning how to fight. This goes along with a big speech from Fenn about how her husband and child are all important and her family (reminder again about how not into this Elliot is)

He’s still nervous though so it’s over to Margo and her spell which makes everyone have an impromptu Les Miserable performance.

And it’s awesome.

Ok, time to be torn. On the one hand, it’s Les Mis. Anyone who doesn’t love the score of Les Mis has no soul. Secondly it’s an awesome performance (except… I think Margot may not be there… either that or Eliot and Fenn are just leaving her in the shade). How can you not love every second of this? Of course I love every second of this. It’s awesome. Rewind it and watch it again, it’s awesome.

On the other hand? This show, with all its gross gay stereotyping, just sent the High King into battle singing a musical. And I really want to just love it, I want to ignore that, I want to just revel in the music but… I can’t really get pasty that issue.

Also it’s almost worth it to see Prince Es’s and King Idri’s faces as they approach the duelling field singing. Also Prince Es also starred in Les Mis.

Aside - can we talk about what the Lorian's are wearing because wardrobe - what are you aiming for with the king here?! 

Did the Wardrobe people raid Rick Ross's used clothing dumpster?

So time for a duel between Elliot and Idri and they quickly end up relocating to the forest (because, apparently, running away isn’t actually banned). They fight back and forth until the magic goes down and Elliot hides in a tree which King Idri then begins trying to cut down with a sword. This may take some time.

This does give them some time to talk. King Idri thinks his people are so used to hardship they won’t even notice the missing wellspring while Elliot thinks Fillory seems to be almost trying to destroy itself. They both commiserate over how annoying being king is. Elliot also talks about the utter sexual frustration of being married.

Grimm Women and Power

Grimm has now been running for six seasons and like any show that has been running for that length we can see some disturbing patterns developing - patterns beyond the standard Oh Hell No which we have been calling out for a long time.

One of those patterns that has clearly developed is how women are treated on Grimm - especially women with power.

Or not - because for much of the early seasons of Grimm we simply didn’t have strong women. Nick lived in a very male world and the only women who really dinged the radar were Adalind (a villain) and Juliette (ignorant and so uninvolved in the story). It was a recurring issue for far too long in Grimm before Rosalie was finally introduced alongside the eventual semi-inclusion of Kelly and Truble to add some occasional female power

But the “occasional” here is relevant. Kelly and Truble were both reduced to guest roles, not allowed to cast too great a shadow on the men of the plot - and Kelly was eventually killed off. To add to the insult of this, there was no real come back of this. Juliette - or Eve - was even accepted back by the gang despite this murder: bad enough this awesome, strong female character was so poorly used but to the have her death so casually handwaved?

Truble didn’t die - but my they put her on the bus with regularity. I wonder sometimes if there’s one writer they keep in a cupboard who eventually breaks out, yelling “no more damsels!” and then we get 3 episodes of Truble before they’re restrained

Rosalie is better - but even then there’s some gender coding in deciding that she would be the physically weaker, more cunning, Fuchsbau to Monroe’s dangerous Blutbaden. Rosalie is definitely one of the more powerful characters on this show in terms of intelligence and cunning but it would have been interesting to see her be cunning and intelligent - and dangerous.

But that brings us to the dangerous women of this show who have actually managed to hang around. Adalind and Juliette/Eve

Every thinking writer knows that simply setting up a woman to become a damsel in need of continual saving is not a marker of good writing anymore. Women are demanding more nuanced characterisation and less female victimhood. Grimm’s way of meeting these demands is to create powerful female characters; however, it comes with the caveat that strength equals  evil which, while moving aside from position women as eternal victims, reifies a sexist trope that a strong woman cannot possibly be good and is inherently dangerous to men. It’s a way of disciplining women into submission by the simple virtue of strength/power being equated to evil and a lack of attractiveness. Yes, we see you Grimm.

Adalind was introduced in the very first episode as an antagonist.  It became clear very quickly that Adalind was not someone to be played with.  Over the years, Adalind, whose hatred of Grimms was absolutely epic, made no secret of her desire to rain down misery upon Nick’s life. As a Hexenbiest, one of the more powerful Wesen, Adalind absolutely had the chops to back up any threat that she made and when her power couldn’t directly cause a problem the spells in her arsenal absolutely could, as evidenced by her poisoning of Juliette.

It’s telling that despite Adalind’s animosity towards Nick a lot of her spells actually directly attacked Juliette, thereby hurting Nick by proxy. Adalind, for example, used a cat to put Juliette into a coma and she also crafted a spell to give Juliette the hots for Renard (also, who needs a spell for that?). This, of course, furthered the narrative around Juliette as damsel in distress for the majority of this series, even as it affirmed Adalind’s oh so evil persona. Adalind’s final bad act ended up in rape by deception which resulted in the pregnancy redemption. The Adalind at the end of this series is the exact opposite of the Adalind who we met in the beginning. Gee what could have induced such a drastic change?

All of these tropes are really emphasised when we look at Nick, Adalind and Juliette because it really brings home which women are allowed to be powerful.

The 100, Season Four, Episode Seven: Gimme Shelter

For awhile now, The 100 has been beating a drum about changes to earth making it uninhabitable for humanity.  Each episode has been filled with dire warnings but thus far, we really haven't seen it impact the cast.  They've been like bears preparing for a long winter, stock piling water and food while droning on about how desperate the situation is. The problem with this is that we know that unless The 100 is suddenly canceled,  whatever problem the writers throw in front of their characters, will be solved, it's always only a matter of how. For the first time, rather being told how dire the situation is, Gimme Shelter began to show us how desperate the world had become.  

Raven has warning everyone about the dangers of black rain and it turns out that it's even more dangerous than she thought and will force our merry band of survivors to make some tough decisions. For some, they will find themselves morally in a grey place with no easy answers. 

After denying her desire to kill Ilian, Octavia has decided that it's time to get the hell out of dodge.  It's not long before Octavia notices that Ilian is following her and she decides to confront him and send him on his merry way.  Ilian believes that wherever Octavia is going that she's going to need help. They don't get to argue about it for long because the black rain starts to fall and they are forced to seek shelter.  Octavia and Ilian make it to a cave and are forced to rapidly rinse off in a stream because the rain burns.  After they're cleaned up, Octavia tells Ilian to make a fire because he's good at that, while she cleans off her horse. 

After they are settled in, Octavia is still not trying to hear a damn thing that Ilian has to say.  Ilian talks about how he has no place to go and that he cannot go home because it is filled with memories of him killing his family. I'd have to say that's a pretty fair assessment.  Ilian then tries to encourage Octavia to talk about her demons but Octavia is not in a sharing mood.  Ilian tries to suggest that there's still good in Octavia based in the fact that she didn't kill him but this simply triggers Octavia.  When she cannot take it anymore, Octavia tries to run out into the rain, causing Ilian to chase her and haul her ass back into the cave. Ilian basically has to hold Octavia down to stop her weak ass suicide attempt. Octavia responds by kissing Ilian much to his surprise. It's only when Octavia tells Ilian that she needs to feel something different that he finally consents and they have sex.  On a side note here, I'll take more shirtless Ilian please. 

Dream Eater (Portland Hafu#1) by K Bird Lincoln

Koi can read other people’s dreams – it’s a curse she’s had from childhood; a curse that brings consequences every time someone touches her. It’s made life almost impossible, but she’s finally getting it together… though she’s not ready to look after her father with Alzheimer’s

And then Ken comes to town and he seems to be carrying a whole lot of mystery with him – and one of her university professors has some terrifying dreams. And he’s fixated on her.

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Koi. There’s a lot about her characterisation, her struggle, the affect her power has on her and how she is struggling to make a life despite that often in the face of scorn from her sister.

I really think her experience is closely related to disability. She struggles a lot with daily life, crowds, dealing with people and in general making it very hard to go out, shop, go to school. At the same time she is criticised sharply and condescended to by her sister who doesn’t understand why Koi can’t just do better – not knowing what she has to struggle with and just seeing her failing.

I like the nature of Koi’s power as a really unique element that I haven’t seen in many places and Koi’s experience of them is a good element. She does have a tragic-dead-mother and a father with Alzheimer’s – but while both weigh on her and shape her character, she isn’t consumed by it. They’re not used as quick and lazy characterisation for her, they have meaning, they’re actually shaping her

Unfortunately while I like these elements, Koi herself tends to annoy me. One of that is unfortunate word choice. Authors ”said” is an acceptable word – stop looking for synonyms.  In this case, stop using “snapped”. Koi seems to be constantly snarling and snapping at everyone around her. And I don’t know if this is intentional or just bad word choice. Especially when later, Koi decides she absolutely has to put herself at risk because she wants a burrito. And maybe that would make it a little better if we’d better establish how much she needs to eat after using her power.

It doesn’t help that I really don’t like how she interacts with Ken. It seems to bounce between over the top unnecessary sexual attraction (which, yes, I get it – Koi’s power means she can’t touch people easily so meeting a guy she can kind of touch without consequence is a wonderful thing. But my gods that’s an overused trope!) and then back to really excessive antagonism which feels like someone has decided to take a long love/hate attraction storyline, speed it up and shoe-horn it into the story.

Time After Time, Season 1, Episode 4: Secrets Stolen

Time to keep up the most important part of this series – John is half naked again! Still confined by Brooke she spends a goodly amount of time in a towel while Brooke tries to make friends with him

Yes, despite the fact that John is Jack the Ripper, Brooke wants him to trust her, wants him to be her friend and possibly with benefits. Oh Brooke, I get that he’s hot but he’s also a serial killer. Look but don’t touch there.

She wants to experiment on John – she’s a biotechnician and wants to use DNA to alter brain patterns. Including de-serial killering John. The problem is, she assumes that John actually wants that. She’s done a lot of research on him – she knows his name, his birth even the son he had (which even he didn’t know about) but hasn’t figured out that he quite likes being a serial killer. She’s also pretty loose lipped, telling all about Vanessa and her relationship with HG Wells. My isn’t she well informed

John decides he wants nothing to do with this and tries to leave. Failed attempt one ends up with him in a cage with a man wielding some dangerous amounts of roid-rage – looks like an old experiment of Brooke’s. He commits the terrible crime of punching John repeatedly in the face before he’s being stopped

His second attempt works, though, despite Brooke’s bodyguard being disturbingly resistant to tranquiliser (or… well… realistically resistant. Really, tranqs don’t generally put you down all that quickly, not without being dangerous. There’s a reason why hospitals employ anaesthesiologists and don’t just dart you) and ALSO committing the supreme sin of face punching (not his beautiful face!)

Brooke is not amused.

We must now catch up with HG and Jane who is rapidly joining the Wet Lettuce Sisterhood with her general dampness. She’s concerned that she’s flirting with HG but he’ll think she’s a forward sluthussyjezebel because of his Victorian values

Uh-huh, Victorians talked a good game but my gods they could be dirty sex pigs behind closed doors. You’re a historian Jane, don’t buy into this whole moral probity veneer.

They gush a bit and he talks about how routine sex is in the modern world which means all the passion is missing (only if you’re doing it wrong HG). But it was hilarious to watch him play with the internet and discover pop-ups and dodgy pawn.

You think learning about the second world war will reduce his idealistic faith in humanity? Let him browse the net for 20 minutes, we’ll break him so hard.