Now four episodes in, Gotham remains a vexing enterprise, and this week it leaned heavy on the crutch that I like to call "Batman Easter Egg Wac-a-Mole." On "Arkham," we deal with it head on, as the titular asylum is at the center of a re-development scheme that could result in a gang war if it doesn't go the right way. On top of that, a small time thug who shares a nickname with the flightless birds of Antarctica starts to make his move against the city's mob power players.
In a different world, our gang of intrepid survivors would have been stuck in Terminus for the long haul. We would have episode after episode of the group trying to figure out their reasons and motives, who's a good guy and who's a bad guy, and at some point, several episodes down the line, we would have finally had confirmation that yes indeed, Terminus, is run by cannibals, and they're apt to restock the butcher's shop with the flesh of our heroes. At some point though, someone decided to hit the Etch-a-Sketch and say, "Screw it! We've got to find some way out of this place." As a result, we say goodbye to Terminus and hello to a brave new season of The Walking Dead.
As we open this week's installment of Scorpion, the team is being brought before the Director of Homeland Security to be tested. Obviously, that's forgetting the fact that they've been tested twice now and aced it both times, but I guess we need some sort of drama aside from the case of the week, and because at one point or another, any well-meaning group of outsiders hired to work for the government are held under close scrutiny by said government. Weirdos are weird because they don't do things the standard operating procedure kind of way; thinking outside the box is great, but you've still got to fit inside a box, right?
So far as second episode's go, Scorpion's was pretty typical; it gently re-enforced the central premise, teased some of the ongoing elements, and suggested strongly just what this series is going to look like on a weekly basis. But mostly, it was predictable. Terribly, terribly predictable. Predictability, in and of itself, is not necessarily a crime. Indeed on TV, well worn patterns and devices are part of the fun. And maybe I watch too much TV, but there was nothing that Scorpion was doing in this second episode that I didn't see coming a mile away. And that concerns me.
Is the crossover the lowest form of marketing? The writers room of Family Guy might agree with that if they clearly weren't having so much fun by getting to play with the Simpsons toy box. Family Guy's 13th season began tonight with the much hyped, the quite worrisome, yet still surprisingly anticipated crossover with The Simpsons. What famous gags would be revisited? What strange bedfellows would be sewn? And was all this the last grasp of two once venerable franchises trying to parlay their separate, though distinctive styles and fanbases, in order to standout amongst an even more cluttered TV landscape? Family Guy might have taken the time to answer that last question, but it was just too damn busy pointing out the oddity of the Griffins meeting the Simpsons.
Try pitching Breaking Bad in one sentence. Or Game of Thrones. Heck, try explaining something as nearly straightforward as Masters of Sex in one sentence. The elevator pitch is the Holy Grail of the Hollywood development process, and when you get that perfect project with that perfect line, you can just throw it out there and everyone will know immediately what you’re getting at. So in that spirit, here’s everything you need to know about Scorpion: it’s The Big Bang Theory meets Mission: Impossible. Boom. If that sounds like something that’s appealing then welcome, and if it’s something that sounds inane or stupid, then you are now free to return to your prestige dramas on premium cable.
To begin with, let me say I applaud the goals of No Good Deed. Our TV screens are filled with psychos, and more often than not their victims are women who by demand of the screenplay are too passive, weak or frightened to fight back against their attacker. It’s meant to empower the bad guy, and make we in the audience hate him all the more as we await the hero, usually male, to arrive with gun drawn to save the day. On the surface, No Good Deed wants to lampshade the damsel in distress motif and say that damsels can save themselves. Sadly though, even the most wily and proactive of damsels though can’t escape atrocious scripting and pacing.
Aging is a problem. Not necessarily the fact of getting old, which does represent its challenges, but more the fact that number of seniors in the general population is going up, while the number of people under the age of 65 is going down. Population by age used to look like a pyramid with the large base at the bottom made up of young people, but that pyramid now looks more like a column, evenly spread out all the way through. In a short time, about 30-35 years, that pyramid will be inverted, bringing with it a whole host of issues. It would seem then that now’s a good time to start thinking about elder care in new ways, and one researcher in Alive Inside thinks he’s tapped into something special to help combat not just old age ailments like dementia and Alzheimer’s, but to enhance quality of life for seniors everywhere.
With solid performances and decent drama, Me and You isn’t Bernardo Bertolucci’s best, but it’s an engaging and enjoyable enough film from a master of the craft. What it lacks in punch, it makes up for in effort.
Of course, one of the highlights of each new Transformers movie is the introduction of a new group of robots in disguise, but with a few exceptions, the film series has carefully avoided the hiring of big name actors to give voice to those robots. Now, it looks like director Michael Bay is switching things up for Transformers: Age of Extinction by hiring a pair of marquee actors to voice new characters. Listen carefully, and you might hear the dulcet tones of John Goodman and Ken Watanabe coming out of the mechanical mouths of a pair of good guy robots in the next Transformers adventure.
