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.

The Last Ship S02E03

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

From the action bustling, pulsating opening two episodes of the season, this week it all goes very pedestrian, with threat levels dropping like a lead brick as the crew of the Nathan James start spreading the love in Norfolk. They meet up with some local SEALS and flying out the cure to various locations, whilst also looking to do some family hunting. It's all very "Little House on the Prairie" or "The Waltons" like, as there's plenty of long faces, sad faces and worried faces, interspread with a little joy as one crew member finds her mum. Awww. Bless. I guess we needed a little community building, which this show does very well, but this was heavily OTT on family stuff this week. There's so much loving, that evil mum's daughter gets a promotion to lieutenant after feeling heavily sorry for herself for most of the episode. Now, that's what I call therapy!

Elsewhere, evil doctor, who we haven't seen for ages, is going along the area (I assume it's same area) and nicking items from people he ends up secretly infecting. He joins up with a group of radicals who are immune to the plague and thinking they are super human. The way these guys have a personality complex, you think that this group of locals could cause a stink with their rolling pins and baseball bats. Ok, they might be more mean than that. Time will tell.

What I liked

Nothing amazing this week, but the family searching and soul searching was a needed element to the show to make us remember what the action is all for.

What I Didn't Like

Just a little too many long faces, American values, and lack of action sadly.

Huh?

The crazy doctor spends his time looking like Dr Evil, blending in with locals, who then soon die after coming into contact with him.

As if they'd never seen planes before, the crew are totally stoked to see their boys head out on missions to find survivors and spread the cure.

Lots of long faces in this episode.

How do you cheer up a lady whose mother was killed after leading a society hellbent on looking after the brightest?
Give her a promotion of course! 

The innume are crossing over into the realm of "The Chosen Ones", and also insanity.

And Finally

Compared to the opening two episodes, this was like tumbleweed blowing down the road, but it sets up some humanity for the season ahead.

Extant: S02E06: "You Say You Want an Evolution"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

This week was a lot easier to get through than last week's drag, but only marginally. The stupidity and simpleness of some of the dialogue and plot is like a piece of bread missing it's margarine; it's blander.

This week's episode can be brought to you by the words "DNA" and "DULL".

Things kick off with Molly talking a lot of DNA-WTF babble and asking JD to extract her bone marrow using a long pointy thing. JD highlights the stupidity of doing such a procedure, as we all agree, but nevertheless she needs it so that a minute later we can watch the most cheese infested graphic of various coloured dots of DNA on a screen. The blue ones are alien DNA. Oh right, that's useful to know ... but Molly needs more. Don't ask me why and what sort of logic she had for this, but she wanted those alien spores as a way of finding out if her mutation can be reverse. So, she heads back to the government company and literally nicks a chunk of data off the science lab computers before it stops her, due to her not having authorisation. Why it allowed her to take any should be a concern for whoever looks after data security at that place. She absconded quickly, thanks to her alien mindtrick, and off she goes with JD to hide out in the wilderness. There she invents the idea of transmitting the alien communication in the DNA across the city, as she now wants to speak to her son, and get a copy of his DNA to help her get better. Great. So, JD and Molly have a nice chat around a campfire, before she gets alien signals in her head, and we cut to them walking through the woods to where the aliens have been holding up in what passes as a nice holiday camp setting. Here, Adhu (that's Molly's alien son) talks all cryptically and blandly about how she should understand and that they aren't trying to hurt anyone. He shows Molly a great CGI graphic that will "explain everything" but just mostly shows us a planet blowing up. That's enough for Molly to get the big picture and start joining the alien camp, who never wanted to kill the pregnant women, and have now evolved so that doesn't happen. They see Molly as their new leader and Molly seems ready to do everything she can now to protect them from the soon to be released virus, much to JD's realistic despair.

Meanwhile, this week Julie develops a spine; she's had a nightmare about John's death. She begins to warm to Molly it seems also, whilst she helps transfer Lucy's "brain" to a room full of tens of robots ready to be unleashed on the hybrid aliens. Why they need them, when they say they have a virus, I don't know. Does anyone understand all this?

Lucy's also done more evil robot stuff on Ethan it seems, getting him to believe all humans lie. As if! Of course we don't. Do we? Ahh, who cares. But it leads to Ethan creating some rather basic spider robots with webcams to spy on people, of which he captures at the end Julie sobbing. Nice detective work. She's bawling her eyes out after confronting her boss over John's death and having a rather scary (to her) ride up and down in a lift. Quite how she stayed grounded when it went up and down so fast, is beyond me.

What I liked

JD adds realism and conviction to a show that seems to be full of robot acting. His ex-wife makes an appearance and actually seems to also be quite dramatic with genuine emotions, unlike all the puppet stuff everyone else performs like.

Grasping at straws here, but Lucy's bad ass evil robot ways might pay off for some tension eventually, especially as there's likely to be tens more of her going around soon. The robot manufacturing room reminded me of cylon robots, but rather less threatening.

What I Didn't Like

So, the alien's come in peace? They've been misunderstood? It's hard to care really. For the sake of this show, they should be the bad guys. Making them even remotely misunderstood is going to lead to a rather awful frantic Molly strutting about and some rather bland resolution I reckon.

Lucy, although looking untrustworthy and evil, is dull. She looked expressionless and really could bore a lawnmower.

Huh?

JD is about the only person to question some of the absurdity on this show.

Does Ethan care or not? Sounds like he doesn't, but then he gives Molly a hug at end. Their relationship is rubbish, but not because of the plot.

Julie finally feels upset and inmorale over what's gone down with John and challenges her boss ... which I suppose leads to the lift thing later.

... yet Molly steals most of the data before it stops her. Probably the worst security ever.

I guess they are all lying on beds joined up on columns, but why is this the typical view of mass production of robots these days?

Yes, she was. Sadly for us, she came back JD.

Indeed. And it's likely to lead to some hybrids getting killed. Seems this whole season could have been one big alien misunderstanding, much like the decision to give this show a second season.

The lift going crazy scene. Despite going up very fast, and then down very fast, Julie maintained impeccable balance.

And Finally

Dull and dry stuff throughout, only made better by JD's wit and realism to question everything that's ridiculous about Molly and the show.

Falling Skies: S05E04: "Pope Breaks Bad"

Rating: 5

In A Nutshell

This is what we've been waiting for. Pope turning to the dark side, as he's tightroped on for several seasons. Finally, taking longer than us viewers have, he's grown tired of all the Tom Mason leadership and seeing the Masons do ok, but everyone else (namely him and his falling ex, Sarah) suffer. Pope raises up the tension, enlisting PTSD soldier from last week, into his hellraiser group. A heated confrontation with Tom really started to bare some home truths. "Why are all the mason's doing so well?", "Why is everyone who follows Tom dieing?" as well as "Why is the CGI on this show so poor?" yet Tom does the double bluff, offering a gun to Pope and holding it to his own head, but Pope won't take that bait. Instead, despite holding lots of anger and resentment, he still needs to follow the stupidness of the plots in this show, by later taking Tom's wife hostage, but bailing out of killing her, before, at the episode's conclusion, holding Hal hostage, with a view to killing Hal and Tom. Somehow, Pope managed to keep it all together, and at least twice fail to take down Tom, but at the end, he's changed his tune and wants to take out Tom and Hal in one go! Jeez Pope, your very convincing as a nut job, but your evil plans are very Wile E Coyote ridiculous sometimes.

Elsewhere in the episode, one of the mason's discovers there's a depot nearby that they hadn't figured out for the last whole season. So, they go there and find goods galore; radios, petrol & cars. It's a great find. Almost unbelievable. There's even a scene with a very laughable british lady communicating with them on the radio walkie talkies. And they just take her at her word? And ridiculous accent? Even more amusing than the actual plot, is that the guy, Ryan, who Tom asks to come along, turns out to be the obvious person to perish, long before even Pope could have predicted it. He succumbs to an alien horde of flies. Yikes.

If you think that's all daft, then the sub-plot involving Cochise is the icing on a melting cake. Suddenly we discover he's ill. Kidney failure it seems! He's happy to go off with his arriving father on one of their spaceships, say his last goodbyes and die. Of course, the Masons won't have that, and we have them convincing Cochise's father to donate a kidney, because it's better to fight than to die. The whole operation is quite akin to that kid's board game of the same name. The kidney just pops out! Sadly though, his father dies and he ends up having a fatherly moment with Doctor Mason instead, in scenes that would have been better moved, than moving. Worse still, we have to witness that darn annoying daughter of hers, Alexis, appear as a vision to her. Sigh.

So, we're left at the end with Tom on ANOTHER solo crusade of his, where he goes out all chesty voice, to save Hal and take down Pope. Will some ass kicking happen? Will someone other than Pope die? Is this show ever going to be anything better than "meh"? We'll see ...

What I liked

Badass Pope. Sure, it wasn't perfect, due to his cartoon like bad guy plan flaws, but he spoke a lot of truths, and he felt much more threatening than the aliens have recently.

What I Didn't Like

The whole Cochise sub-plot was comical and daft.

Another appearance by the alien who Tom sees as his ex wife this episode. Out of nowhere he's suddenly having a vision where she tells him nothing much of anything, except that Hal is in danger, something he'd have figured out anyway, as I'm sure Pope would have sent a message to the camp.

Huh?

Hello British! Some really odd sounding lady was on the radio. Tom trusted her instantly, which was daft in the first instance.

In an operation a 5 year old could have performed, Cochise is healed from his rather sudden kidney failure.

Shoot Pope Shoot! Dammit Pope!

Noooooo, not her again!!!

I speak in riddles. It's that ex-wife alien thing again.

Newly head shaved Pope threatens Hal, and also threatens to make the show interesting.

And Finally

Pope as a badass works very well, and makes a lot of sense. Something this show has failed to do for the last five seasons. However, there's still some daftness overload abound that just makes this show too soggy to really care a lot about.

Extant S02E05 - "The New Frontier"

Rating: 6
DECENT

In A Nutshell

Although far from anywhere near good, this was a much better episode than the last few, thanks to a faster moving pace in story, a high dosage of JD, and a couple of shock moments that always help any dire situation.

Things kick off with us being tricked into thinking Lucy was out in a club taking down a hybrid, but it was in fact a VR field test. She did an outstanding job in the test, especially as Lucy's much happier not having that inhibiting code that Charlie didn't add to her, which Julie still doesn't know about. We can be sure she will find out, as this episode there was plenty of mention of this fact, as if we didn't know Lucy was a sort of loose cannon. This is further highlighted with conversations she has with Ethan, and even later when she goes out for lunch with Charlie, and breaks off mid conversation to follow a suspected hybrid and stabbing him fatally in the back of the neck with a knife. At the end of the episode, all the government people are almost having a party over her successful first hybrid kill, which all of a sudden they seem to be able to detect hybrids based on the fact soly that they have a lower body temperature than normal humans. Don't recall that being mentioned before? Ahh Well. It was a genuine disturbing few seconds to see emotionless Lucy take the hybrid out. I was sure she'd got the wrong person, but I guess that's likely to happen in a future episode ...

Meanwhile, Molly is on the "Ethan!" emotional trip of last series, now that she, with JD, figure out that Julie/Charlie have Ethan. A tense confrontation at Julie's flat leads to a very senior government lady getting involved back at security HQ, where she interviews Ethan before getting Molly and Julie together. It's undoubtedly clear these two hate each other right now, and quite how Molly managed to get through the interview without going fully crazed out, I'll never know. She was quite heated in the scenes we saw, but she somehow managed to hold it together, as it was agreed that Ethan should spend some time with Molly on occasions.

Skimming around those two storylines was JD, who is investigating Molly's husband's death for her. He finally is convinced something bizarre is happening, and he's not pinning it on some outrageous plot writing. One of his mates gets him the "black box" from John's trashed car, and then another mate hacks it, to find that indeed it was an odd accident, but also that Julie made an encrypted call just after seeing John that fateful day. What exactly that tells us that we don't know, I'm not sure, but JD wanted to meet Molly to discuss it. However, on route, Molly bumps into the guy she had one of the crazy sex trips with a few weeks ago. He wants more, but a sane Molly doesn't. Then things go really weird as the guy starts seeing his mum (it's laughably played), and those alien signs appear on his skin. An alien glowing eyes on Molly later, and he's running in front of a car, just at the same time JD turns up. "WTF?!" JD asks, which given he couldn't see her eyes or the alien markings, I'm not sure what he thinks Molly has done, but anyhow, she confesses she might have done it. Sent that man to his death, that is.

What I liked

JD; once again, thanks to him being much more heavily involved in the episode. Aside from a rather clunky couple sentences with Molly during one scene, everything else this guy said and did was dynamite.

Safe to say the Lucy hybrid kill was quite abrupt and a surprise just a few seconds after she was munching on a meal.

Some actually pleasant moments with Ethan this week, as he's interviewed by the government lady. The subject of which is about a humanoid being deserving of human rights, was worked quite nicely.

What I Didn't Like

The crazy Molly moments. The ones where she looks like she's got an intense headache and acts all tripped out. I get what's going on, but they really do comes across as like it's a child acting them.

Molly and the glowing eyes moment. It was a surprise I guess, but it was so badly acted.

Huh?

If you like your JD with a generous amount of clothes missing, you'll like this scene.

Lucy's emotionless hybrid kill was a different way to have your lunch.

All that technology and he can't draw? Jeez Ethan.

Molly scares us, and that's long before her eyes started to glow.

AND FINALLY ...

No JD daughter at all this week at all! Strange, but it was all good, as things went along quite fast paced, given us little time to concentrate on the weakness of this show which most of the time feels like it's acted by dummies. Lucy's shock hybrid kill just barely seconds after drinking some juice, worked very nicely. Molly's cliffhanger with the glowing lights was intriguing, if horribly performed like some sort of village pantomime.

Falling Skies: S05E03 "Hatchlings"

Rating: 5

In A Nutshell

The excitement of knowing this is the final season is still keeping me going! This episode is much "meh" but thankfully not too bad overall.

Things start off with everyone heading off on a jolly walk through the woods, avoiding mummy and daddy bear, towards where the skitters were all on mass at the end of last week's awful CGI visual shot. Using some chemical spray they've used before, they send their new remote control drone up over the critter pool, and BOMBS AWAY!, it kills the majority of them. But, alas, all is not good, because the numbers soon return. Seems the critters are restoring their numbers from someone. Perhaps via copy/paste on the CGI maybe?

We then get a rather cringe investing scene with Maggie and the girl whose alien-mutated brother they tricked last week. Seems the girl has figured that no one can help her brother anyway. She seems to really jump on the fact that Maggie can communicate with her brother via her spikes. It's very awfully acted. I almost had to watch from behind the sofa, it was that bad. Anyhow, eventually of course, the alien brother and sister simply escape, or walk out the camp without anyone noticing, sigh, and the pursuit of them leads them to find an overlord. A few bang bangs later and brother, sister and overlord are dead, yet the overlord isn't quite, so he's taken back to camp, where's he rather barbarically tortured. Maggie and Ben then "spike up" together to infiltrate the overlord's mind with some acting that's like off a b-movie, which leads to them discovering the location of a skitter creation site. It's housed in some disused warehouse (naturally). We witness the 2nd mass taking that out in mere minutes, but not before Pope's poor girlfriend, Sarah, succumbs to nasty alien killer mist. Pope is enraged that killing skitters was more important than saving his lover's life. All hell is going to break out next week as we end with a scene of a very cheesed off Pope.

What I liked

Not much really. They didn't go anywhere with the brother/sister thing really that we hadn't seen before. The Pope/Sarah moments were probably the best. Quite sincere and funny.

What I Didn't Like

Where do I start? The fact that overlords are now as easy to take down and play with as plasticine? The awful b-movie acting? Tom always shouting and raving like he has a hamburger in his mouth? The ease that they took down this skitter factory? There's so many questionable stuff this week.

Huh?

Forgot to get any screen shots :( Ahh, didn't miss much anyway.

And Finally

Nothing amazing. Very much everything you've seen before regurgitated into another typical episode of ridiculous dialogue, acting and the usual grim looking people shooting and killing aliens.

The Last Ship: S02E02

Rating: 6
GOOD

In A Nutshell

This episode is essentially a continuation of last week's episode. Hardly worth splitting them up really as it only served to lesson all the tension built up last week, and the reasons behind it all. One can sum up this episode very quickly; the crew take back the ship and kick some serious ass! It all feels very much like good guys versus bad guys, no matter how they dressed up the realities that the government lady faced to build her superior nation, surrounded by civilisation being wiped out all around her. Despite this, there were at least a few moments of members of her guards showing some sympathy with the ship crew, instead of being hard arsed trigger happy tough guys. It was hard to work out what the point of that was, when her guards were essentially gun hungry bullies most of the time. Can understand the civilians being able to change their minds, but the guards? Thankfully there was only a little of that and it didn't detract from the action, of which this episode didn't disappoint.

The Captain's family get back to the ship, not before the crew have retaken it, stopped the scary baby operation from occurring and taken down the government lady, in a series of high octane, yet conveniently choreographed scenes. It was a genuine surprise, and disappointment, when the lead rebel guy was gunned down when confronting the government lady, which of course led to the captain getting to engage with her. Despite everything being against her, and refusing to apologize or truly give up, she still picked up the walkie and told her people to "stand down", of which there couldn't have been too many left given the slaughter of her guys throughout the show. Her daughter had already been shot in the stomach in a hard to grasp wrestling scene with a female guard who was all mean until the gun went off, and then ran away frightened over what had happened. One minute tough. Next minute a wreck? That was odd.

Onboard the ship, it was great yet comic book stuff as the crew took out all the "bad guys" of which the Lieutenant Slattery spent most of his time in the backup bridge, helping his guys take down the ship in true american military style. Why he stayed in there so long I don't know, but he did get a fight scene with the guy who led the bad guys attack on the ship, ending their brutal battle with an axe to the chest. Yikes!

So, it ends with a true patriotic musical few minutes, as everyone comes to terms with what's happened, licking their wombs and mourning the fallen. It's cheesy, but it's a well matured cheese that although goes OTT on military ways and the American spirit, it still has enough character and decent action to work. Can't quite work out what happened to all the civilians in the government building. I'll assume they are now on the ship, as are the captain's children. Be interesting to see where this series goes next.

What I liked

Lieutenant Slattery in the backup bridge was a little laughable but you gotta love this guy, and the actor. He really makes his scenes mean something.

Action, and lots of it. Sure, it's way too unbelievable at times with all that shooting going on, but it's darn good eye candy.

What I Didn't Like

Wasn't happy that Rebel leader (aka Lost's Man in Black) was taken out so meekly. I'd have loved to see him have a recurring role, but alas, it had to be the American Navy guys who had to win the day.

Was a little too perfect a recapture and easy takeover of building, but, hey, sometimes you just got to overlook these things :/

Huh?

The ONE guy left to defend the power plant, holds off what were tens of "bad guys", disposing of them like candy sweets. He also gets out of the station unchallenged. That's ... either lucky ... or well scripted.

Axe to chest always works

No No No, not the "lethal dead in 2 seconds suicide injection". Yup, she goes with a whimper.

Poignant scenes like this might be patriotic and military OTT, but they do remind us all of the seriousness and genuine emotions that this show intends to deliver to us.

And Finally

Not quite up to the level of the opener, due to a lack of intrigue and mystery, as this was just like a western style shoot them up. It was, however, enjoyable.