The Last Kingdom: Episode 3

The Last Kingdom
Episode 3
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Not OK)

In A Nutshell

It's all rather dull and as bleak as the English countryside on a winter's day. And, still, the conversations and reasoning behind anything Uhtred and Brida discuss just feels loose and hard to fathom. It's not good viewing this week ...

Uhtred and Brida are still locked up as Alfred returns victorious and with the king as good as dead. Aethelwold comically moans, as he does throughout episode, like an annoying fly, although you'd guess he'd become more of a pest at some point if he doesn't get swatted soon. He missed out on the action, but that's just as well, as he'd also probably be dead if he did. When Uhtred and Brida are eventually released, they discuss terms with the (almost) King Alfred with Uhtred is determined to get his land and status back (although don't they have the deeds in the vault anyway?). Alfred dispatches Aethelwold to a monastery and is anointed King as, for some reason, we see Uhtred having sex with Brida through one of the windows.

Ubba is unhappy that Guthrum led the battle with the Wessex army without him, but nevertheless, the king is dead, so it's sort of not so bad. They eventually go to negotiations with King Alfred which are not really easy to follow in terms of who is getting what and who wants what, but at least it was a little amusing. The negotiations though sort of just end, and one is left to guess that no decision was made? I didn't see any agreement. Anyhow, Alfred assumes they'll be back and so has Uhtred agree to an oath to help train his army for a year. We don't see him agree to it, but it's said later that he did.

A while later, Brida is approached by a messenger whilst collecting up Ragnor Senior's silver in the woods, and we later find out that Ragnor Junior is in town and wants to meet. A rather unconvincing "do I believe them?" dialogue from Ragnor Jnr later and everyone is hugging, with Brida agreeing to join Ragnor on the ship heading home, but Uhtred staying to honour the oath that he made with Alfred, of which everyone is very accepting, given it means he's training the enemy to kill vikings. All very odd and a pleasant atmosphere for such a screwed up set of logic.

What I liked

Just about the only thing that's positive and consistent with this show is that the scenery, atmosphere and costumes which are top notch.

Alfred continues to be just about the only person in the show with great presence.

The negotiations were entertaining.

Aethelwold is at least entertaining with his stupidity.

What I Didn't Like

Quite simply, it's all a bit dull. It's hard to gauge the direction the show is going in and the wishy washy decision making between Uhtred and Brida is now so flakey and odd, that I'm beyond caring what either of these two really think.

The Athelwold and Uhtred conversation at what must be a pub was just odd, but I guess it was there to fuel Athelwold's annoyance at Alfred and maybe as a tempter for Uhtred later.

The Ragnor Jnr meetup with Uhtred and Brida was ridiculously not tense, contrary to what they wanted to us to believe, as well as all very amicable despite Uhtred's oath to Alfred.

Huh?

Aside from the dullness of this episode, Brida's miscarriage is the most disturbing part this week.

Mushroom risotto this is clearly not.

Althelwold is the comedy relief in this show. That's a pig on the left btw.

And Finally

Well, last week showed a little promise but this week it was very lifelike of the dull, cloudy and sodden winters in England. Uhtred and Brida don't show enough cohesive logic and belief behind their words, with all the other characters except Beocca and Alfred really feeling much like they are fillers without any substanance. Aethelwold at least provides some comedy but it's all rather bland this week with little of any quality or note to recommend viewing.

Rating: 4 out of 10 (Awful, and just below even average viewing. As wooden as the scenery.)

Falling Skies: S05E10: "Reborn"

Rating: 4
Aweful

In A Nutshell

Finally, an episode to look forward to, not least because this is the LAST TIME we'll ever have to watch this rubbish. I don't know why, but I was hopefully it'll end with some drama and real tension, but of course, it didn't.

After a little opening speech from a future Matt Mason, I thought we were all going to go a little Star Trek: Enterprise finale on us for a moment or something, which would have been typical for this show, but they stayed in the present thankfully, although possibly listening to Matt for 40 minutes more might have been better than what followed.

The attack at the end of last week's episode was quickly thwarted by our 2nd Mass, thanks it seems to Marty (the crazy father who Weaver helped several episodes ago), who came storming out from somewhere with a machine gun. Well, he seemed to get all the credit for some reason, getting killed in the process. Makes a change that it wasn't a Mason who saved the day ...

We then have a biker crew arrive. Sadly, it's not Pope's gang, but some other people on their way to DC. Why do they let them through the gates before asking who they are in this show? Anyhow, the biker gang agree to help take down a massive wall around DC and provide a distraction for the 2nd Mass. Using the classic plot aide of service tunnels, Tom and the gang progress to DC Queen HQ by way of creeping past alien glowing eggs, like something out of an Aliens Film. No where near as creepy and dramatic though. Everyone is reminded not to touch the eggs, as they creep about, so it comes as no surprise when one of gang wants a closer look at an egg, and ends up getting killed by whatever was inside, sending everyone trigger happy, including someone who lets off a missile, which ends up killing the alien and him, but naturally not Tom, who evades the explosion. He's now cut off from the rest so that he can do his Tom saves the day thing I expect. Seizing the opportunity, Hal changes his mind once again on which girl he loves, and proposes to Maggie! Yup, this guy is not only indecisive but a real sleaze!

Tom comes out of the tunnels right next to that statue in DC and just around the corner from where the Queen is hanging out. With the distraction going on elsewhere in DC, it seems the Queen is amazingly unprotected. Yup, not even the one alien guard, which makes no sense quite frankly. But hey, it does help speed up the finale. Tom faces off with the queen who quickly gets him in some sort of web, with the weapon device Tom was carrying just conveniently out of arm's reach. You know that'll be no problem for Tom though. The Queen then gives us a rather dull speech about why it's all humanity's fault that they came back, telling us about the last time the aliens were here and how we killed her daughter or something. It was really a pathetic story that did nothing for her side of the tale. Naturally Tom defends humanity with a "you provoked us" speech which has little justification or fact to back it up. Very much a playground scrap this. "You started it", "No, he did!" blah blah.

Anyhow, as the Queen starts sucking out Tom's blood, he manages to reach the weapon with his hand, and uses it on himself, in order to get the weapon to go through his blood and into the queen who makes a noise and then blows up into a handful of dust. Very unthrilling. I thought they'd done stuff to that weapon to stop it attacking humans anyway?

So, that's basically it. Humanity has won the day. I assume all the other aliens around the planet also just left or died right then? We never see it happen.

What we do see though is Ann Mason, with the rest of the gang, collapsing injured from that missile blast earlier. She succumbs to her injuries in a heroic ending for her of sorts. Ben runs off, for some reason, and finds Tom, who tells him how he finished off the Queen, and Ben tells him about Ann. Tom rushes back, and remember how those ex-wife-vision-aliens saved him, marches absolute miles carrying Ann's dead body back to that river and demanding they fix Ann.

Then, for no really good reason, Pope shows up! Yes, he's still not dead, and gets more lives than Tom. He's very much injured but says he got looked after by someone. Was it the same family as Tom did a while back? Dunno, it's just a ridiculous tale he gives anyway. He offers Tom a gun to shoot him but Tom says the war is over. Pope makes a groan. Not sure if he died then or not. It's all just too daft and pointless really, no matter how much I loved Pope. He's been given a very pathetic ending, but this is the show full of pointless and flat storylines so we shouldn't have expected anything else.

In the final few minutes we skip to the not so distant future and see everyone all dressed up and happy, where Tom gives a final speech. Naturally everything is fantastic now the war is over. Anyone who has fired a gun is now in a military uniform looking smart. Matt is on a date with his girlfriend. Hal is with Maggie. It's all vomit inducing stuff as Tom waffles on about America and thousands of people nearby in DC all clap and cheer. Sigh.

What I liked

It's the finale. The last episode ever of this show. That's a big plus point.

The Queen looked big and mean but ultimately not really given much screen time sadly.

We saw Pope! But I wish they never bothered. It was a pointless scene.

Marty goes out in glory ... although I'm not sure how he got the credit for saving the day.

What I Didn't Like

Service tunnels ... convenient.

Tom is sent flying by Queen, but weapon lands within his reach ... convenient.

Tom uses weapon on himself, although I thought they'd manipulated the weapon to not attack humans? Or was that just not kill them?

Ann dies but is brought back to life.

No one else of any significance in the main cast faced any real life or death moment, except Tom (but that's par for the course) and Ann. Didn't feel like much was on the line.

I know there was a distraction in DC, but you telling me the Queen would have been left with zero guards?

Pope scene totally pointless and ruined everything that had been built up in the season between him and Tom.

Hal proposes to Maggie, despite not giving any hint of going back to her since he met his new girlfriend.

Huh?

As soon as someone said not to touch the eggs, you knew someone would.

The Queen is big naturally, but not really anywhere near as interesting as one might think. And totally unguarded? Seriously?

The Weapon conveniently happened to lodge just within Tom's reach, who uses it on himself to kill the Queen. Didn't they reprogram the weapon to not affect humans?

If we thought last week's Pope finale was rubbish, then bringing him back for this scene was another step too far.

The only thing missing from these cheesy scenes were medals being handed out.

And Finally

What can one say? It was pretty much a given that this season, being it's last, would in some way expedite a route to a resolution, and indeed it did. There wasn't much really that went down in this episode as it was a fast tracked to success. Some episodes this season have almost crawled along, with no attempt made at winning the war, and they were all the much better for it, but when it came down to the 2nd Mass concentrating on the enemy, things never really seemed t0o insummentable. The finale lacked any real gravity of the dire situation they were in, the risks, and the absolutely number of aliens in DC. It seemed a walk in the park, which ironically that section of DC actually is.

Extant: S02E11: "Zugzwang"

Rating: 4
Aweful

In A Nutshell

Extant is adrift at sea at this point. Clinging to what remains of a decent opening episode to the season, it's only just keeping itself above water, mostly thanks to singlehanded greatness by JD but even he can't save the show anymore now that he's been fully integrated into Molly Madness Mania and started to become just about as dull as she is.

Things start off all reasonably strongly thanks to the stiff upper lip authority of the new head of GSC (although she was more senior than Toby anyway) Fiona, as she waltzes through the building stiring up the staff and making sure they roll up their socks after more breaches in security than quite frankly any of them should still be employed for.

"What do we want?" She asks.
"Hybrids Dead" the staff reply.
"When do we want them dead?" she shouts.
"At least two episodes ago!" they reply.

Ok, none of that speech went on but it should have. She might look in control and serious but she's also stupid as she's entrusting Lucy to be her personal security and spends her time talking to supercomputer A.I. Taalor for advice who is so pro-humanichs that you'd think she'd suspect his advice by now. His final recommendation of the episode for her is to get humanichs on the street to protect humanity. Seems like an OTT idea. We know hybrids are all over the world, but you'd think from this show that there's only a handful of them lurking within this one part of the USA.

Julie and Molly are all loved up together still, as she hands over Ethan to her. This makes little sense, as it's not exactly Julie's decision is it, and there's no mention of if it's for weekend or not. Seems no one is checking what Julie does with Ethan anymore. Charlie and Julie, despite now having humanichs everywhere in their lab, and so obviously being very fake spies as they slyly and amusingly watch everything the two remaining humans do, Charlie and Julie decide to lure Lucy to a date in order to hack her to find out who is sending her instructions. The rather quick and simple date with Charlie goes to plan, and the fake chip implanted into her, but things quickly go south rather predictably, when their hack is discovered. Lucy then turns on her evil chip, and kidnaps Julie, leaving her in an airtight and oxygen depleting storage box for Charlie to try and find. I'd wish him good luck, but I get the feeling he'll not need it.

Meanwhile, the only interesting part of last week's episode concerning if Calderon was good, bad, or maybe somewhere in the middle, is rapidly extinguished. After Molly pulls out a box (from somewhere??) that contains the only leftovers from her previous house, Ethan finds himself playing chess with Calderon using the chessboard from the box. Quite how they jumped at it being Calderon I don't know. He sends them his coordinates, and off they go to the middle of nowhere, where thanks to some dead birds, Molly figures out there's an invisible security fence hiding his establishment. Sure enough, there is, and in they go and end up briefly being held up by Calderon and his robot partner, before things are turned on their head and JD, Molly and Ethan have control of the situation. It's never made clear for ages that Calderon's partner is a humanich, so I don't know why he didn't have her do some special combat moves instead of just simply stick her hands up. Anyhow, Calderon turns out to be mostly all talk and rather dull when it comes to being much use. He blames Taalor for John and Toby's deaths, claiming the A.I. has gone nuts and will do anything to protect humanity, including killing billions of people in the process. After watching Calderon perve on JD and Molly having sex overnight at his place, we then hear him attacking Ethan, who could easily have broken Calderon into two but didn't. JD and Molly dress in super quick time to rescue Ethan, with Calderon claiming he only wanted Ethan's speech chip for his partner who is mute. Ethan fixes the mute and Calderon is then predictably and rather boringly super nice and helpful. He breaks cover to retrieve the pendant from a security box in town, giving it to Molly before he's arrested.

What I liked

Charlie and Julie's plotting was at least a decent subplot, but you just knew that Lucy would be one step ahead of them. I bet Lucy is finally silenced (again) by something rather pointless, like a short circuit, because she's far too intelligent for any complicated hacks.

Lucy is an obnoxious bitch but at least we all know what she's about by now.

There was a nice mystery as to who or what Calderon was about but ...

What I Didn't Like

... Calderon turned up to be very boring and ordinary. A sophisticated elaborate security system, and hidden clues to finding him and we get someone who didn't know much more than about the pendant and couldn't even fix his humanich's speech chip.

Molly and all her "I'm worried I'll kill you JD" rubbish. She's really willing to suddenly forget all the hybrid and humanich crap, just to save JD?

Huh?

Lucy loves secretes. We love intriguing storylines and mystery but there's fat chance of that in this show.

No one wanted to see this; except Calderon who pervs on Molly and JD.

Julie is trapped, but at least she's got a handy countdown to death.

Calderon, a name only spoken  a few episodes ago, gives himself up, and becomes just another underused rubbish cog in a rather lagging plot.

Puck up those lips, GSC Chief Fiona is not to be messed with as she gives a rousing team speech this week. Well, she tried.

And Finally

Barely keeping itself above dullness, the show continues to suffer from the same issues of last season, when there were at least 5 episodes more to the season than anyone really wanted or needed. This all feels very much like filler and stretching out ways to make something vaguely interesting more dull by having too many concepts outstay their welcome.

Extant: S02E07: "The Other"

Rating: 4
Not OK

In A Nutshell

This week's episode can be brought to you by the words "Moody faces" and "Ho Hum"; this is a dire episode of boredom proportions.

Things start off ludicrous, as JD kidnaps Toby in the parking lot of the security building. To think he'd even get in there and pull off such a feat is hard to fathom, in what is most likely the most secure facility on the planet. Toby, JD and Molly have a rather predictable stalemate, as Toby has no intention of any peace with the hybrids. Instead, he goes all Super A.I. on us, using some rather bizarre levels of security "passwords" to gain access to what can only be described as "one very intelligent supercomputer". Why they haven't bothered with it before, I don't know, but now Toby asks it's help to find the hybrid's location, which it promptly does. See, that was easy. Why didn't they use this thing several episodes ago and we could have got to the finale a lot quicker!

A new human/robot is born, and called Lucas by Lucy. I was going to guess she'd go for "John" but alas no. It's a rather simplistic hello between everyone, that almost goes south when Lucy notices that Charlie's computer mentions an deactivation date. She's obviously upset about that, which Charlie reminds her makes her human. Given the way she goes around causing mischief, it's just as well there is a shutdown date. A tad later, after Charlie has a stiff drink because he found photos of Julie and John (seems he was stupid enough to never notice anything in the past between them; is he really this dumb?), Lucy gets frisky with him, but he pulls a stop on it before it's not only the tops that are getting naked on us. Shame, this scene was the highlight of the episode!

Molly and JD return to alien camp and basically spend a lot of time pulling long faces, moaning and having little tiffs with the other aliens. It's really quite dull stuff, and about as alien for emotional stuff as one could get. JD and Molly's tender goodbyes (he's off to get his daughter who's been arrested - not sure what he thinks he can do about that) was at least believable, compared to JD shaking hands with Molly's alien son. There's little conviction with anything the aliens have done thus far for us to believe anything that they say and do. Seems every episode they have a different mood swing. Heck, every scene in fact they seem to swing any way they like!

Things close (thankfully) with Lucy and Lucas in army costumes (not really sure that's necessary to convince us they are warriors) and doing reconnaissance on the alien camp. They come across one of the obnoxious aliens, take him down, and inform Toby that they are bringing the alien back as a prisoner.

What I liked

Charlie and Lucy get frisky. It was brief, but then so is anything good in this show.

JD continues to have the best lines and the best realism compared to everyone else on the entire show.

What I Didn't Like

Aliens are very dull. They just walk about with eyes glowing occasionally, bickering, changing their minds and looking about as emotional as the rear end of a donkey.

Toby's security department is a joke, especially as it's now revealed there's a super A.I. computer that can locate the aliens in five minutes. Why didn't they save us from all this long drawn out crap all series by just asking the flipping computer?!?!

Huh?

Toby goes all "CHUCK" on us with a super computer room full of enough lights to floodlit a city.

She may be a robot human, but she's got the goods!

JD has enough of the aliens, much like we did in episode two.

A handshake between JD and an alien was as probable as the two jeeps making sweet love.

Lucy and Lucas take a hybrid hostage! Wow! Sigh. Admittedly, this was one of the better scenes of the show.

And Finally

Dull, pointless, and some darn right ridiculous logic and plot developments. When the pace slows, this show goes downhill quicker than Ethan on his skateboard.

Atlantis S02E10: "The Dying Of The Light"

Rating: 4

In A Nutshell

Mind Numbing stuff, but basically Pythagoras sneaks into Atlantis AGAIN, so he can get help from Melas to find out how to help Jason who has been "blackened in the heart" by knowing Pasiphae is his mother. Sigh. Melas suggests getting Jason's father to restore his heart's balance, and so, off goes Pythagoras to where the dad is hiding out as a leper in a salt mine. Jason's dad, Aeson, moans about the world and how he's a bad father and rubbish at being a father, before then changing his mind and joining up with Pythagoras. Yawn. Then, literally as Pythagoras is about to reunite Jason with his dad, Pasiphae and Soldiers (got tipped off, see later) turn up and attack, scattering Pythagoras/Aeson, Jason and Ariadne in all directions in the woods. Jason ends up being united and rescued from injury by Medea who he's just incidentally started dreaming about, and she now seems genuinely more interested in saving him than killing him this week. Hercules, who walked off in a huff earlier, turns back up to help Ariadne and gets united with Pythagoras and Aeson. Oh, and earlier again, just after helping Pythagoras in the city, Pythagoras's brother (I think he is) finds out his dad has done some crime and is sentenced to death so tells Pasiphae's army general where Pythagoras is going in return for his dad being spared, only to fall pray of the classic double bluff from the general. Yawn.

What I liked

The arguments between the main three was a little different if totally devoid of convincing sentiment.
Hercules I can't work out if he's upset or just miffed with Jason.

I like John Hannah as an actor, but the poor chap looks like a YTS apprentice in this show.

What I Didn't Like

Pretty much everything about this episode ...

Much akin to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, it's neigh impossible to really understand, care, or truly feel Jason's turn to the "Dark Side", if you can call it that. Sure, he'll be mixed up with the revelation of his mother, but although we could understand that, his behaviour still comes across as random, petty and just a little rubbish, rather than anything you'd call "blackened".

Medea & Jason's love thing; it's all a little bit like other TV shows I've seen before. Can't recall which show it was, ahh, that's right, Roswell. We saw all that "drawn to someone because that's the way it should be" rather than going for your real love. It's really quite dull and hard to grasp because Medea has been changing sides so often and for so little explanation that I'm beyond caring now.

Ahh, the classic paragraph of chanting to get to use a "force push" like in Merlin. Magic can be really dull in this show! Even Pasiphae with her "force choke" was the first time she's used magic in weeks, when last week she was happy to use a sword she had little chance of actually knowing what to do with!

Huh?

So, all the guards just follow about whoever is in charge? Aside from the chief guards, who we see more of and clearly make their views known, the rest are just like fodder with no brains or anything particularly human about them. The people of Atlantis are supposed to be people who love their rulers etc so why do these knowingly just follow Pasiphae?

They still failed to say about Jason coming from our time/world. I guess that'll never happen. I'd also totally forgotten about his father.

And Finally

Predictable, hard to fathom out anyone's reasoning or emotions, and really devoid of anything we'd feel like caring about.

Rating: 4 out of 10 (No hint of any humour this week, which was about all that could possibly be interesting in this show).