Escapist Routes #26

I, Jack Wright

This is a six-episode UKTV series from earlier this year, in which the death of a millionaire brick magnate leads to the revelation that he had secretly changed his will a year earlier — disinheriting his third wife and most of his kids, and leaving the bulk of his fortune to his granddaughter.

The reviews make a lot of comparisons to Succession, which is ridiculous because these people aren’t rich enough, and the writing isn’t good enough. But it’s mostly a pleasant little mystery and a nice way to pass a few nights, especially with great performances by Nikki Amuka-Bird as the third wife and John Simm as the eldest failson — except that it ends with a cliffhanger, and honestly, I do not think there’s enough there there to justify another season.

Alien: Earth, season 1, episode 5

I think that in a few years’ time, the whole “pause the serialised story to go back and do a flashback episode showing the development of the status quo” format is going to seem as outdated as the early 2000s’ “begin in media res, then start the story X days or hours earlier” schtick does now. But I like it a lot as a storytelling device, especially when it allows Noah Hawley to do a mini Fargo reunion and drop a bunch of character actors in a spaceship to see how they die.

And it’s an opportunity to reconsider some of our assumptions. Like, we all hate and fear the eyeball alien because it’s introduced as a cat murderer, and because sheep standing on their hind legs and making eye contact is creepy as hell.

But here we see that she (she’s a she!) was trying to warn Chibuzo about the ticks (related: this is why we don’t have open food and drinks in labs, guys!), and may in fact be an ally against the xenomorph. And, like, yes she killed the cat, but only after she had exhausted all the other apex predators she could have possessed.

We also see that Weyland-Yutani is not sending its best and brightest on these missions, which makes sense because the company sees the crew as expendable. I saw complaints on Bluesky that the writing of the engineers — particularly Malachite, who seems to have very little education — is a sign that the series holds working class people in contempt, but I disagree. I think it’s a marker of how these corporations target the vulnerable and uneducated, and in fact, prefer their employees that way. (Again: Chibuzo is educated, but also disregarding very basic lab safety protocols. The doctor is an addict. Zaverni seems naturally smart, but out of her depth and untrained for emergencies beyond what protocol to follow. The company is keeping the best and the brightest safely at home.)

Similarly, I think Schmuel has multiple scenes where he tells Malachite how the corporations work, not because the script thinks the audience doesn’t get it, but because he’s the sort of working class hero who seeks to radicalise his comrades, and the best tool he has is explaining, over and over again, how they are being exploited. In another age, he’d be a union representative; as it is, all he can do is scream into the void.

The least expendable crewmember, it turns out, is Morrow, because he had some sort of connection with the current Yutani’s grandmother. Or, rather, she invested a lot of money in him, and now that’s paying off. But I think it’s more relevant that he had a daughter, who died a few years into his sixty-year mission. Because there are a whole bunch of parentless kids running around out there in New Siam…

Foundation, season 3, episode 9

Obviously we knew Brother Dusk was a monster when he crushed Day’s ferret with his bare foot, and then he, uhhhh, destroyed three planets and murdered billions of people. But somehow, having Day’s lamb served up for dinner was a step too far for me. And I like lamb! Just not, you know. When it’s still pet-shaped.

(I realise I am a hypocrite, but nevertheless.)

I hope that next week sees Brother Dawn arrive at the palace with his stolen robot skull (RIP Gay Failson From The Gilded Age The Cult Leader), and he frees Demerzel, and the first thing she does is murder Brother Dusk with extreme prejudice.

I also wonder how we’re going to wrap all this up in one episode, because apparently Demerzel needs to offer the Second Foundation sanctuary in the palace library, and I feel like there’s a lot of ground to cover between “where everyone is right now” — mostly on or around New Trantor — and fighting the Mule to the death in the library. Is it possible we’re getting an extra season of Mule shenanigans?

(I know roughly how this storyline plays out, in that I read the Wikipedia summary of the book it’s based on, but there are, for example, way more women in the AppleTV+ version.)

Chief of War, season 1, episode 7

This episode is titled “The Day of Spilled Brains”, so I assumed matters were going to come to a head with Cliff Curtis, and someone was going out, Captain Cook style.

But in FACT we have the arrival of the white American slavers from earlier in the season. Ka’iana is inclined to straight up kill them, but Kamehameha has just gone and made murder illegal, so Ka’iana has to pout and sulk while Kamehameha instead sends the Pale Men on their way.

Of course, one of the notable problems with American slavers, I would say maybe one of their defining traits, is that they don’t listen to men of colour. Instead, in the episode’s final scenes, they load up their canons with shrapnel and massacre the villagers. It’s a brutal scene as unsuspecting civilians fall to a weapon they could never have seen coming. I would go so far as to say it is deeply grim.

Alongside all this, the rift between Ka’iana and his family deepens. Which is understandable, because they’ve all had very different experiences over recent years, and also he and Kaʻahumanu keep flirting. Which I deeply do not appreciate, because I feel like they are interesting and complicated characters without this unnecessary wrinkle.