Escapist Routes #24

The Gilded Age, season 2

I watched season 1 of The Gilded Age a couple of years ago, and let me tell you, friends, it was not good. All the flaws of Downton Abbey, and none of the charm. Lots of hugely talented performers, and also Meryl Streep’s Least Charismatic Daughter, being utterly wasted.

But it absolutely had a moreish quality. when my flatmate wanted to watch season 2, I was like, “I dun wanna,” but ALSO I’ve made her watch so many bad cop shows. I owe her this.

And, very much against my will and better judgement, I found myself enjoying it. Yes, the dialogue is stilted, the acting is uneven, and Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon and Cynthia Nixon deserve better. The characters are but pale imitations of the iconic figures of Downton Abbey, a show which was also not very good. There’s a whole subplot in season 1 about how the real danger for hot robber barons is that they’ll be sexually harassed by their maids, and this season leans into that with some “How dare you be sexually harassed by the maid!” victim blaming.

FURTHER SHENANIGANS THIS SEASON:

We learn that Saintly Maiden Aunt Cynthia Nixon is not in fact a lesbian, but has been yearning for the love of a meek rector played by … oh, you know, the dude who played Hugh Laurie’s husband in House MD. Robert Sean Leonard! They have a whirlwind romance and get married, to the disapproval of Mean Widowed Aunt Christine Baranski, and then he conveniently turns out to have cancer, drops dead and leaves Cynthia Nixon a pile of cash. Which is handy, because Christine Baranski’s gay failson has just lost the whole family fortune in an IRL internet scam.

While all this is going on, Meryl Streep’s Least Charismatic Daughter is being courted by … some sort of distant cousin? It’s all extremely boring, because Marian is a character who always says and does the socially appropriate thing, while also being a contemporary feminist who wants a career and a vote. There is no friction with this woman, and basically hasn’t been since she learned an important lesson about racism in season one. For a moment it looks like she’s about to end up trapped in a loveless, though respectful, marriage, but no! She breaks the engagement and kisses the hot success-son (the existence of failsons presupposes, etc) across the street.

Much more interesting is the story following Peggy, Christine Baranski’s secretary, and her life as a member of the Black middle class of New York in this era. Her journalism career takes her to Tuskegee and brings her into conflict with the NY Board of Education—trying to shut down the Black schools—and generally gives us an insight into a side of history that doesn’t usually turn up in historical dramas. The soap opera cliches abound—the son who was taken from Peggy at birth has died! She’s in love with her married editor!—but I enjoy following Peggy and her community.

Meanwhile, across the street from the Baranski-Nixon-Nepo Baby household, Hot Social Climber Carrie Coon is plotting to upset society by throwing her support and money behind the upstart Metropolitan Opera. It’ll never catch on, the staid ladies of the establishment say, but then she gets an English duke on board, and all it takes is, uhhhh, basically selling him her daughter.

Meanwhile, her hot robber baron husband, aka Railroad Daddy, is out to bust some unions. Will he tell the cops to fire on his workers? No! For a glorious five minutes, I liked him! Then we learned this is part of his long game to divide and conquer the workers. I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU, RAILROAD DADDY! WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!

These people are all deeply terrible, but here’s their saving grace: they love each other so much. It’s disgusting. They’re so fun to watch. I hate myself for how much I wound up enjoying this frothy, insubstantial meringue of a series. We’ve already started the third season.

Alien: Earth, season 1, episode 3

Last week some people complained that Hermit, Wendy’s brother, seemed to have an improbable amount of plot armour. Not me, because I had my eyes closed in the scenes where the Xenomorph menaced him and then moved on, but, you know. The people brave enough to watch.

I feel like that plot armour has been thoroughly dismantled this week, along with Hermit’s, um. Body. He’s brought back to Prodigy HQ, badly injured, along with the equally-damaged Wendy, the body of the Xenomorph she has killed, and a bunch of alien specimens that are definitely going to try to eat everyone.

I assumed that Hermit was going to get his own version of the implant-someone’s-brain-into-a-synth-body treatment, and we definitely see some sort of doodad going into his brain … after it was removed from his head … but then Kirsh extracts a facehugger from its egg and puts it in a tank with what looks like one of Hermit’s lungs. I am concerned, friends.

I’m also like, I can’t believe they killed the Xenomorph so soon! She’s a single mother! This is so problematic! But there are four eggs, so her family will live on, somehow.

Wendy spends most of this episode at the shop for repairs, which is an opportunity to dig deeper into the other Lost Boys (gender neutral).

Nibs, for example, is asking the questions which I assumed last week that we weren’t meant to think about — why were their names changed? Why Peter Pan? Why does Wendy get to be Wendy? Her close encounter with the eyeball alien seems to have affected her deeply, and I’m just going to gently float the idea that exposing a bunch of children to this type of trauma is a bad idea.

Curly is also wondering why Wendy gets to be special. She interrogates Boy Kavalier about it, and I cannot help but note that, while last week he talked about upgrading Wendy to make her more intelligent—his intellectual equal—here is Curly being super smart without those upgrades.

(But also, it’s weird that Kavalier thinks he needs to groom children to be his equals. Creepy, even. Let’s not do that!)

I particularly like these scenes for how they feel like very real depictions of how twelve-year-old girls interact with each other, and how they criticise each other, but without falling into any Mean Girls cliches.

Slightly and Smee, on the other hand, feel a bit more stereotypical in their boyhood. They seem younger than the girls, which is honestly true to my memories of adolescence, but is perhaps a bit of gender essentialism?

Unfortunately Slightly is probably about to grow up real fast, because Morrow has found a backdoor into his head, and their conversation is, once again, heavy with overtones of grooming. Not in a sexual way, but any situation where an adult tells a child that they’re friends and it’s secret is a red flag, you know?

This is all great, and I’m enjoying it, but I have to particularly shout out Timothy Olyphant, who both steals every scene and gives space for his less experienced scene partners to shine. And he does it all while looking like a Labubu. It’s genuinely uncanny and he has earned every single thirsty fan edit on TikTok.

Chief of War, season 1, episode 5

Watch out, Hawaii, because Kaiana’s BACK! With weapons! And also pants, to the considerable amusement of his friends.

Kamehameha’s advisors are less excited to have the dude who led the attack on an innocent village back in their midst. Kaiana quickly bonds with Kamehameha, but to get the approval of the gods, they’re gonna need … a sled race. Down a mountain, over gravel, and into the sea.

I just wanna float the idea that all political disputes should be resolved via sled race.

I also want to take a moment to shout out Kaina Makua, the actor playing Kamehameha. This is his very first role — the media has made much of the fact that he was a taro farmer when Jason Momoa discovered him, but I think it’s equally important that he has a BA in Hawaiian Studies and a Masters in Education, and was coaching at a canoe regatta when he and Momoa met.

I don’t know if Makua is a good actor, but he’s the right man for this role. Kamehameha, the man who will unite Hawaii as one kingdom, is written here as a farmer more than a warrior, and one who is particularly concerned with the education of children. Clearly not a stretch for a teacher and farmer, but Makua instills his role with gravitas, while also coming across as a man who is deeply uncomfortable to have caught the eyes of destiny.

This episode ends with Keōua setting fire to Kamehameha’s taro crop. Taro is the key ingredient in poi, a Polynesian staple. Hawaiian tradition holds that when the poi dish is uncovered, all family disputes must come to an end. So for Keōua to burn his cousin’s taro crop feels significant beyond simply targeting a rival’s staple food.

Foundation season 3, episode 7

What I love about science fiction is that it raises big questions which would otherwise have not occurred to me. Like, do I need a massive bronze art deco bas-relief depicting Jared Harris’s face in my living room? And, would enslaving a robot and forcing her to raise my clones for eternity have a negative impact on those clones and their emotional well-being?

Well, would it?

This is an episode of flashbacks and disappointing parents.

First, we have the Mule’s story—or what he purports to be his story. On an agrarian planet in the outer reaches of Foundation space, a family has had a second child in defiance of the Foundation’s one-child policy. (Me to the Foundation: Uh, are you the baddies?) When the baby is inevitably discovered, the parents are told to make sure there’s only one kid when the Foundation soldiers return. The parents choose to drown their older son, which triggers his psychic abilities. He makes them drown themselves instead.

Good times! I mean, it’s bleak, but depicting the Foundation as something between the People’s Republic of China and the Galactic Empire specifically as portrayed in Andor is a nice way to ram home the fact that there are no ethical empires, and also gives the Mule a comprehensible motivation.

Of course, as Vault!Hari asks in the final scene, how much of this is true? I suspect that one of the boys is the Mule and the other is Magnifico, but which one, and how events really went down is anyone’s guess, and also maybe not important. The Foundation betrayed its citizens, and in turn, the parents betrayed their child.

Back on Trantor, Day’s ex-concubine Song and her wife Ocean (I love them, your Honour) have decided the best way to verify his claim about a robot in the palace is by administering hallucinogens. I guess when you live in the drug-manufacturing district, that’s your solution to everything.

This finally gives us a glimpse into Day’s animus against Demerzel: he realised at a very early age that she was only programmed to love him, and that if she could, she would choose freedom and the opportunity to make new robots over him. At least, that’s how he—a literal child—interprets her words.

It’s all nice and chewy—clearly it is unreasonable to expect a slave to sincerely love her enslaver, but at the same time, Cleon was a child, and frankly is as much a prisoner of his progenitor’s plans as Demerzel. All these people need some therapy and some time apart, and also to abolish the monarchy and end slavery.

You know. That sort of thing.

In the palace, Dusk is in charge. It’s fine, he has, like, four days to live! He uses his time to give Ambassador Quent refuge in the palace, and also in his bed.

I love a bit of grandparental flirting, so I was extremely shipping it, right up until he also murdered Day’s ferret. I’m not saying that the Cleons are genetically predisposed to cruelty, but I do think that genes plus the fact that each is raised to be a copy of his predecessor has allowed some bad behaviour to arise. Anyway, justice for the ferret. I loved that little guy.

The other events of note: Pritchard has escaped the Mule, and so have Toran and Bayta. Bayta is seriously injured, which gives Toran a chance to shine, and to prove that he’s not just an attractive boytoy following in the wake of his more competent wife. But also, his manicure is amazing. Beginning to think he might be my new fashionspiration.

NEXT WEEK, I ASSUME: either Gaal and Demerzel go on a second date, or Demerzel’s gonna land back on Trantor and find dead ferret everywhere. Also, Day is in the hands of a robot cult leader. Which is cool.

Bonus review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3

The terms of Paramount’s screener embargo require us to not discuss individual episodes before they air, but we are allowed to share general impressions. I finished season 3 yesterday, and here’s my general impression:

It’s bad. We’re talking “season 7 of Voyager” or even “season 1 of TNG” bad.

Strange New Worlds has never been my favourite Star Trek of the streaming era; it was clearly designed for fans who want to feel like they did in the ‘90s, watching TNG for the first time. But its first two seasons were basically competent, and you sort of had to dig a bit deep to find the rot beneath.

This season, the rot is on the surface, from Captain Pike attempting to control his girlfriend’s healthcare choices to … Captain Pike attempting to sabotage his girlfriend’s career.

SNW has always been relentlessly heteronormative, but this season the heterosexuality is compulsive and joyless. Showrunner Akiva Goldsman said at the premiere that his goal with this season was to make sure the audience is on Spock’s side when he is cruel to Christine Chapel in TOS; it turns out that Christine’s crimes are breaking up with Spock, finding a less-demanding partner, and focusing on her career.

Spock, meanwhile, moves on to another woman, who immediately transforms from a complex and interesting character to a mean girl whose every interaction with Christine (who supports the relationship) is one step away from a Dynasty catfight. There are multiple episodes where alien powers are used to override consent, and it’s played for laughs.

“But what about the ideas, Liz? Star Trek always purports to be about ideas!”

Season three brings us such gems as “absolute evil exists and is embodied by a Black man, and needs to be stopped by a pure white woman” and “these lizard people want to take our land and impregnate our women”. And “I wasn’t sad about killing 7,000 people until I found out they were human.” And “what if Star Trek was great and being Star Trek is what makes it great, and have you watched Star Trek? It’s so great!” And “hey, you know what this show needs? EYE GOUGING!” And let’s not forget, “What if we just took every transphobic myth about gender transition and groomers and put them on screen? It’s funny. Why aren’t you laughing?”

The penultimate episode of the season is an exception. It is fifty minutes of outstanding Star Trek, true to the ethos of the franchise and building on a character who has been sadly overlooked for past seasons.

Unfortunately it’s a fifty-six minute episode, and there’s a twist so nihilistic and pointless that I nearly threw my laptop out the window.

A series in its third season, with just 30 episodes, should not be giving “late-era ER”. I am utterly befuddled as to how these scripts were deemed ready to film, and I now completely understand why Paramount wanted to pull the plug at the end of season 4, and had to be begged for six extra episodes to wrap it all up.