Escapist Routes #25

First, this is late because I had to go to Sydney for work, which seriously disrupted my evening television routine. I know, it’s unacceptable, and I tried to tell work that I had important TV to watch, but apparently I have a “job”.

Second, I was going to break my usual pattern and throw in a review of last week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — review? maybe “rant” would be a better word — but fortunately my friend and co-host Anika (and mother to a trans child) saved me the trouble:

(No) Thanks, I hate it

The money quote:

In addition to being transphobic, “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” also manages to be racist, ableist in multiple ways, sexist, and just generally … bad. Trans and mixed race fan creators have come out and said they will not be reviewing it because they cannot bring themselves to watch it, and a writer for the series — notably not one of the writers credited for this episode — has issued an “I’m listening and I’m learning” apology on social media. It’s by far the worst episode of the streaming era, and honestly I’d rank it in the top 5 Worst Star Trek Episodes Of All Time. And not just because there are multiple jokes about how feminist career women can’t cook, amirightfellas?

Anyway, this season has seen Strange New Worlds go from “mostly mediocre, sometimes good” to “entirely mediocre, sometimes very bad”. Given that season 4 is in post-production and the fifth (and thankfully final) season is weeks away from filming, I am not optimistic for a course correction.

The Gilded Age, season 3

My problem with season 3 of The Gilded Age is this: I watch this series because Railroad Daddy and Hot Social Climber Carrie Coon desperately love each other and overall have a really healthy relationship. And season 3 is about digging into the cracks of that relationship and widening them, to the point that the season ends with their separation.

Now, I’m not gonna say that Hot Social Climber Carrie Coon has never done anything wrong, ever, in her entire life. She did, after all, bully her daughter into marrying a duke, and it’s by sheer luck (and Julian Fellowes’ predictable sentimentality/love for the British nobility) that it turns into a love match.

On the other hand, Railroad Daddy’s whole “I’m out here earning a living and keeping us rich by oppressing the working class and you fritter our money away on balls and sell our daughter for an advantageous marriage” schtick is unconvincing. He walked Gladys down the aisle, and now he’s taking his guilt out on his wife.

I know that the Russells are based on William and Alva Vanderbilt, who did end up divorcing, but I need these two to work it out. For my sake. If Gladys’s marriage can work out — unlike Consuelo Vanderbilt’s miserable marriage to the Duke of Marlborough — then so can this.

Across the street, Mean Widowed Aunt Christine Baranski is struggling with the new status quo where she is the poor relation dependent on the generosity of Newly Rich Widowed Aunt Cynthia Nixon. Naturally Mean Widowed Aunt manages this change with all the grace she can muster, ie, she is cruel to her gay failson and passive-aggressive with everyone else. And Newly Rich Widowed Aunt tries a range of different strategies to deal with her bereavement, from temperance meetings to spiritualism, and finally intersectional suffragism.

Slightly more interesting is the plotline following Peggy and her aspirational middle class Black family. She meets a nice doctor who admires her very much, but his mother does not care for Peggy or her family, as she is notably darker skinned and her father was enslaved.

I am going to say something nice about Julian Fellowes: he understood very early on that he was not qualified to write about Black Americans, and so The Gilded Age has a second showrunner in Sonja Warfield, who handles those storylines. It’s to their credit that this hardly ever feels like two separate shows mashed together, and it’s not Fellowes’ fault that the Peggy storylines always feel fresher and more interesting. I don’t understand why Peggy’s love interest speaks with a British accent (no, the actor is American), but he’s very pretty, so I will forgive him.

Oh, and Meryl Streep’s Least Charismatic Daughter is still around, still allegedly the main character. This season she gets engaged to Larry Russell, only to call it off when she learns he has visited a gentleman’s club (which is not quite a brothel, but not not a brothel). This is a frustrating storyline which could have been resolved if the characters had a conversation, but I will give the series points for reflecting the morality of the time and Marion’s own experiences and values.

Finally, I have to give a shout out to the show’s fandom, which treats it with all the respect it deserves and has a tremendous amount of fun doing so. I am delighted to have this nonsense appearing uninvited in my feeds, well done The Algorithm just this once.

Alien: Earth, season 1, episode 4

I must have misunderstood the final scenes last week — lifehack, do not try to watch the catcam and TV at the same time — because it turns out it was our friend the sheep who was getting doodads implanted in its brain, not Hermit. Or, as everyone addresses him to his face, The Brother.

The Brother has a whole new lung and a strong sense that taking his sister’s brain and putting it in an android raises some ethical quandaries. Which is fair! The Sylvias are beginning to have similar qualms, and respectfully I think they should have thought about that before beginning the human experimentation phase of the project, but no one ever asks me.

If they had, I might have said that letting The Eyeball Alien take over an innocent sheep is problematic, and also they maybe could have foreseen that sending a bunch of children into a disaster zone might have psychological consequences. On which note, let’s check in on the Lost Boys:

• Wendy: reunited with her brother, becoming fluent in Xenomorph, definitely not a bad sign or anything

• Nibs: competing with Wendy (who doesn’t know it’s a competition) to be Kavalier’s favourite

• Tootles/Isaac: please let this lovely boy have a proper education instead of just letting him … eat? knowledge?

• Smee: look, he seems fine, let’s try to keep it that way

• Curly: convinced she’s pregnant, displaying violent tendencies, probably the most fragile of the kids, save for…

• SLIGHTLY: being alternately groomed and blackmailed by Morrow while Kirsh listens in, somebody save this child

I like that the series lets the kids question Wendy’s main character energy. Slightly objects that she’s allowed to have her family in the compound, and obviously he has other things going on, but ALSO, he’s right. Isaac has chosen a new name. Wendy is special, but so are all the hybrids.

Foundation, season 3, episode 8

HE’S ALIVE! BROTHER DAWN IS ALIVE! And he even has all his legs, although I had trouble hearing the dialogue about how they came to be injured. His spacesuit started shutting down sections? Do I need to get my hearing checked?

Keeping up with the Cleons:

• Brother Dusk: hours away from “ascension”, although with two thrones empty, his death may be postponed. He talked Demerzel out of decanting some fresh clones by telling her about his Death Star, which I guess is handy, but also, there’s something sinister about his glee at being, he thinks, the last Cleon left.

• Brother Day: put on trial by the robot cult led by the gay failson from The Gilded Age. He has come to the realisation that he needs to free Demerzel, and I think he is the only Cleon capable of that understanding — their years of estrangement mean he doesn’t have the blinding love for her that makes other Cleons more selfish. Unfortunately, the cult has decided to feed him to the mushrooms instead — it’s not that Gay Failson doesn’t believe there’s a living robot, it’s that, like many cult leaders, it’s more fun if your god isn’t actually around to interfere with your shenanigans.
  Day has also figured out how to activate robot Bluetooth, which I suspect will come in handy later.

• Brother Dawn: ALIVE. Not really well. Curiously immune to the Mule’s influence, possibly because he’s hanging out with Bayta, who also seems immune. Because of her bond with Magnifico? I’m so glad he’s alive, but now I have to go back to worrying he’s a dead clone walking.

HERE’S MY FOUNDATION CONFESSION: I don’t really find any of the Foundations interesting. Last season we had Brother Constant, and I loved her, but this year they’re all a bit bland. Obviously Gaal’s scheming is great and I love it, but without Hari and Salvor, she feels very isolated. Please reunite her with Dawn, or better yet, let her and Dawn get cocktails with Bayta.

Chief of War, season 1, episode 6

I have to applaud Chief of War, because just as I was thinking, “Man, I feel like Jason Momoa is kind of dragging this down by being so identifiably Jason Momoa in a crowd of less famous faces,” the series asks if it is actually a good thing that Ka’iana is back with a bunch of weapons and some trousers.

Like. Yes, the weapons are handy, especially now that Keōua has pledged his allegiance to Kahekili, but the pants are weird, and ALSO Ka’iana has promised the Europeans they can harvest and sell the local sandalwood — but he’s being kind of cagey about that, and hasn’t actually told anyone else about his deal, so I have to assume Kamehameha and team will object.

ALSO and most unforgivable, he is being a dick to his wife. Kupuohi is like, “Hey, I have connections to Keōua, I can try to negotiate a peace,” and Ka’iana goes from “No you can’t” to actively sabotaging her negotiations. Sir. Please show some respect.

I cannot help but notice that episode 7 is titled “The Day of Spilled Brains”, so absolutely nothing is going to go wrong in the near future.