scifi TV

Lunchtable TV Talk: Sense8 – “This is the real fucking world – nothing’s fair”

Standard

After the first episode of Netflix’s Sense8, I was disappointed and did not even want to continue watching. I am not alone in this sentiment. The show is uneven in its pace and not every thread makes sense (maybe it does not have to – that might not be the point). The cited Hitfix article praises the show as being ambitious and sometimes great despite its weaknesses, and as I made my way through the show, I felt the same way. There were many touching moments, many hilarious moments, and many concepts that struggled against the ordinary to find greatness.

I won’t get into the premise of the show – it’s scifi, it’s about strangers in different parts of the world suddenly experiencing a mind-body connection that enables them to see, hear, feel each other. If that vague idea sounds interesting, watch it to find out for yourself if it means anything to you.

Hitfix also pointed out that many of the supporting characters contributed more entertainment value and depth than supporting characters generally do. This is particularly true, just as the article says, of Freema Agyeman’s tough, clever Amanita. (She’s better known for her role as Martha Jones in Doctor Who – and for me, who has oddly never seen any of the storied Doctor Who franchise, Law & Order UK, as prosecutor Alesha Phillips.)

The same cannot be said always for the stories of some of the main characters. I found myself most irritated by the story of “Riley” – the supposedly Icelandic character. Her character cites some vaguely “Icelandic” things – half the stuff she says comes back to sentences that begin with, “In Iceland…” – but most of it is the kind of drivel spouted in tourist handbooks. At least the people Riley encounters when she returns to Iceland from her home in London are actual Icelandic people – including her father, portrayed by an Icelandic folk and blues singer, KK.

It might be that much of this show feels inauthentic in that all the characters around the world speak English. There are moments when the characters’ lives collide, and only in those moments, the characters speak in their own native languages (the Korean girl speaks Korean, the German guy speaks German, etc.), but almost immediately “adapt” to understand each other but the entire show is in this lingua franca of English. Given how much of television is now being presented in languages other than English, it feels lazy and assumes laziness to make Sense8 this way when it is otherwise, progressive and full of diverse identities. Does using English help more people in a broad audience connect to a broader spectrum of diverse characters? Does it break down barriers rather than create one in the form of language? Possibly. This show does not always hit the mark, but its sights were set high enough that adding the layer of language might have just been too complex for an already complicated story. That said, though, I feel that “original” language has added so much to other shows that I wonder what might have been added (or taken away) here. (I have already written about original language use on TV, the new subtitling revolution – and I don’t love fake accents in place of the actual language – again, the “Icelandic” girl who is actually a Brit using a put-on Icelandic accent instead of just using Icelandic with subtitles….) Lovely scenery of Iceland, though.

The show is best when it reveals its many small moments of insight – even if they are not “deep” or hidden insight – moments of clarity that reflect on the duality and universality of the main characters’ lives overlapping. One small example – in episode 9 when Lito, the Mexican soap star, states while drowning his sorrows in a bar, “I was living in two separate worlds”. He could just as well be referring to his status as a Sensate, colliding into multiple worlds although he might be talking about his public life as a famous actor and his private life as a closeted gay man and the struggles and losses that has caused for him. “A secret self”, as Lito discusses with the bartender before it degenerates into self-hating homophobia.

Ultimately the unanswered questions, the potential and the little insights may provide a path for a second season. Fingers crossed.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Helix – “Do you know the way to San Jose?”

Standard

What does it say that I rolled my eyes and felt real dread when I realized this week that I had forgotten to watch last week’s episode of Helix? Meaning… this week, I would have to watch two episodes to catch up. Um, I can’t explain why I feel I have to keep watching something I have not liked at all from the get-go. But if we understand that this is my nature, and that I persevere, and move beyond it – let’s try to understand what the purpose of this show is.

Nearing the end of its sophomore season, Helix is incomprehensible. I found it hard to follow the first season, and when I try to explain what it’s about to other people, I find that I can’t. I found the characters and premise impenetrable during the first season – I won’t even try to explain what the plot was because I am not totally sure I get it. It’s… a bunch of CDC researchers at a facility in the Arctic investigating an outbreak of some sort. The outbreak seems to turn people into violent zombie-monsters afflicted by something that looks a lot like the bubonic plague. Or maybe that is what this year’s virus makes people look like – last year I think it was something else but either way – viruses are a-flying.

A bunch of mysterious characters come into and out of the scene with hidden motives and agenda. There’s a massive, shady corporation (Ilaria) involved somehow, and eventually it becomes apparent that there have been scientific experiments on local native people and then the emergence of immortal people. It was a confusing mess and did not become clearer with time.

Almost a year ago, I included this muddy first season in a roundup of shows I could not fathom why I was watching and included Helix in this, although Helix was not and still isn’t the worst offender of the bunch (that title is taken by The Following – and no, a year later, I still have not stopped watching). There were reasons why I kept trying with Helix – I thought it was not sure what it was trying to be and might sort itself out. Scifi? Horror? Thriller? Drama? All of the above?

The second season is not a whole lot better, but the change of scenery made it a bit more palatable. The stories that have been unfolding over the course of the season are all starting to come together a with a bit greater clarity, and some of the obnoxious characters from the first season are starting to feel at least more familiar, if not likeable, compared to the cult-follower tribe of island dwellers who became the antagonists in this story in the second season. The cult leader, played by Steven Weber (who has of late shown up almost everywhere), is compellingly egomaniacal – maybe only because it is Weber behind the character. He is an immortal and has some freaky stuff going on on the isolated island he runs.

There is a clear story emerging pitting the immortals against mortals, i.e., the immortals intend to deploy some kind of mechanism that will render mortals as infertile in order to stem population growth. They believe they know best and can reverse this mass infertility once the planet’s resources are restored to sustainable levels. Essentially, they play God and think they are entitled to do so because it is certainly in their best interests as immortals. Somehow amidst all of this, there is another virus on the loose – maybe the same virus or strain of the same virus. I honestly can’t tell you because for one thing there is so much going on at once that I don’t pay attention or watch closely and for another the storytelling does not hold my interest strongly enough.

It is very possible that if I sat down and started watching it all again from the beginning and paid closer attention and had all the episodes to binge on, it would be a more satisfying experience.

On balance, I will keep watching (I’m not a quitter, even though I need to learn when to quit – for real!), but I don’t recommend that anyone else do so.

I will say that the show’s quirks – I assume they are intentional – are what keep me coming back. Rather funny dialogue and a wacked-out and extremely eclectic soundtrack are unusual but effective hooks (for me, anyway). Many shows feature stellar soundtracks to the degree that the music choices are one of the only things I love about them. Helix’s music choices – ranging from the strangely and incomprehensibly poppy theme song to some of the songs woven into the episodes. It makes me wonder how these incongruous choices are made.