Escapist Routes #44

I shouldn’t complain about the end of my summer break, because most adults don’t get to ease into the working year with a few weeks of chill half-days. Sadly, this era has ended, and I had to work full days? Every day this week? And now I’m coming into a second busy week?

Thank goodness for television! This week, I’ve watched Ponies, and new episodes of:

• The Night Manager

• Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

• Fallout

• The Pitt

• Hijack

And also A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but I still have nothing to say about that, save that I haven’t seen a series less interested in women as people since the first season of The Mandalorian.

One other thing — I started this year with 26 subscribers, and had a vague goal of getting to 30. Now I’m up to 35! Maybe I can get to 40 by 2027?

Let’s watch TV!

Ponies, season 1

The wives of two deceased CIA agents begin working for the agency to find out how their husbands really died. In 1976. In the USSR.

It’s not fair to call Ponies “Temu The Americans”, but there’s no doubt that it has big shoes to fill and doesn’t quite pull it off. Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson give great performances, the thrills are thrilling and the comedy is comedic. Set and costume design are absolutely outstanding.

The problem is that Ponies is simply not clever enough. I knew this would be a problem when CIA guy Dale tells CIA Director George H. W. Bush (jumpscare) that the USSR does not employ women as spies. That’s a bold claim coming from a nation that executed Ethel Rosenberg, and also a big, flashing sign that a woman we don’t expect is going to be spying for the Soviets. The heroines march around Moscow speaking loudly in English and just being overwhelmingly American. (Emilia Clarke really is very convincing.) The KGB skulk around being overwhelmingly evil. Elton John turns up.

I had fun while watching Ponies, but if it gets a second season — and I kind of hope it does, if only because it ended on a humdinger of a cliffhanger — I may have trouble remembering anything that happened in season 1.

The Night Manager, season 2, episode 5

I have to put the memes away for a minute, because I have a very important question:

Is The Night Manager aware that its central romantic and sexual tension is between Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie?

Obviously it has toyed with the attraction between Pine and Teddy, but does the show realise that this is just a placeholder for what they really want (Richard Roper)? Because, I’m sorry, Roper ordering a steak for Pine is sexier than the sexy dancing a few episodes back. And the sexy dancing was not unsexy!

There is also some plot happening: Hiddles stashes Roxana in her family’s old house (miraculously dust-free despite being abandoned for decades, Colombia is a magical paradise), uses the recordings from Roper’s dog to make Teddy’s loyalties waver, and a great big truck of weapons is on its way to the recipient. Also Roper kills his dogs, which is NOT sexy and honestly now I hate him, he does NOT deserve Hiddles or any of the sons who crave his love.

(Okay, but again: does the show know that Roper isn’t a substitute father for Pine? More of a … daddy figure? I simply have to know.)

FINALLY. Roxana takes action and chooses a side. Obviously it’s Roper’s. I hope Tom Hiddleston is learning an important lesson about the dangers of pretending to have a whole team.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, season 1, episode 4

SFA’s Tour Of Star Trek Tropes For The New Trekkie gives us two classics: the Klingon episode and the courtroom drama. Only our characters are cadets, so it’s a debate class drama, but obviously this is where baby Starfleet officers learn the skills they’ll need for when an omnipotent being puts humanity on trial, or they have to go into court as a lawyer to defend their buddy’s human rights.

My particular interest for these posts is looking at the ways SFA combines Star Trek tropes with those of current YA literature. (Please note I said current; I swear if I see one more person comparing Starfleet Academy to Hogwarts, I may turn into the Joker.)

A lot of media for young people is an empowerment fantasy. Imagine if you, a child or teen, had agency. That you have some control over your movements, your actions, that you could even influence politics or save the world. This is really important for young people, but it’s also a hard needle for a writer to thread.

Ellie Marney, for example, pulls off her “college undergraduates work with the FBI to bring in a teenaged serial killer” trilogy because it’s set in the 1980s (and we all know adult supervision as a concept wasn’t invented until 1996), and because AFBIAAB means of course a US agency would exploit and endanger young adults. It’s also a heightened reality, having more in common with a Thomas Harris novel than real life.

Starfleet Academy has so far only dabbled in the empowerment fantasy. Four episodes in, and the young characters have only saved the ship once. Otherwise, they can nudge events, but it’s very much the adults in charge.

This week’s episode, the first to focus on Klingon refugee Jay-Den, gives us a completely different version of the empowerment fantasy. What if adults listened to young people, took their ideas seriously, and then took responsibility for the outcome, good or bad?

Imagine being a yoof in 2026 and getting that story. We have so much media about kids saving the world, now, and so many young people taking that burden on themselves — consider Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg; the survivors of the Parkland school shooting who have become advocates for gun control; the campus protesters pushing their colleges and universities to divest from investments in the weapons industry. The empowerment fantasy is important, but so is the one where a young person has an idea, and the adults take on the burden of doing the work.

This episode is actually my favourite of the six screeners I received. It’s not without humour (Caleb’s obligatory “master debater” joke, Darem’s “we all want to punch Caleb in the face. Even Caleb wants to punch Caleb in the face.”), but it’s a very serious story about a young man who is trying to honour the culture that raised him and the culture which took him in.

It’s a queer allegory about acceptance. (But also, is it an allegory, or is Jay-Den just gay? Note that his parents are a poly triad.) It’s a space opera with space politics and a space battle and other cool things which let me use “space” as an adjective. It gives us a metaphor for climate refugees, and the way more privileged people blame them for their plight, and interrogates the Federation’s more paternalistic tendencies.

I dunno, man. It’s not just good Star Trek, it’s good science fiction, and it’s specifically good science fiction for a young audience.

Fallout, season 2, episode 7

I feel very foolish, because in retrospect it was completely obvious that Maximus was going to end up joining the New California Republic’s army, and yet I was taken completely by surprise.

Not that he has literally joined them; it’s more of a “stole some armour” situation, but it feels like the first step. He was born in the NCR, and seems to still have a lot of its values. He’s looking for a Good Person(TM) and searching everywhere but in the mirror.

Something else which surprised me, even though it shouldn’t have because it was literally revealed a week ago: STEPH HAS BEEN CANADIAN ALL ALONG. I promise I didn’t have my phone in my hand as I watched last week’s episode, but the cat came up for scritchies and I really had no choice. My bad, guys, sorry.

“Sorry” is not what Steph is saying, despite national stereotypes. Before the nuclear apocalypse, the United States had invaded Canada for its resources, violently oppressing the population. Boy, I sure am glad that this is science fiction and no one would be stupid enough to even joke about that in real life. Steph escaped into the US with her mother’s words ringing in her ears: “Don’t think of them as people. Think of them as Americans.” And it looks like she has had two goals ever since: her own survival, and revenge. Which is rough if you’re living in the vault she’s running, or being forced to marry her.

Equally interesting is what we learn about Betty: that, despite her work subverting democracy in season 1, she is more interested in the long-term survival of the vault dwellers than running Vault-Tec experiments. I suddenly need to know a lot more about Betty’s time in Vault 32, and how she changed.

I guess I’m also curious to know what led Hank to become … well, Hank, although obviously no Kyle McLachlan character is going to end up normal. His insistence on acting out happy domestic scenes with Lucy, even though she knows he murdered her mother (and a lot of other people!) is chilling, and continues to give the series a grounding in real world horrors.

And then there’s the Ghoul. He’s not looking to give cold fusion to a Good Person(TM), because he doesn’t believe in Good People. Probably because the US President of his old life was played by Clancy Brown, a man with a sinister yet unspeakably sexy aura. I just feel like this cannot possibly be good, you know? I was on edge even before we learned the Nice Congress Lady Who Opposed Corporate Interests is now a disembodied head running Hank’s mind control mainframe. Seems bad, guys. Onto the finale!

The Pitt, season 2, episode 4

Not to sound like I agree with Dr Al-Hashimi, but this week I had my annual appointment with a sleep specialist, and he used AI medical scribe Heidi to record our conversation, create a transcript in realtime, and then convert that transcript into a letter to my general practitioner which summarised my current status and our plans moving forward.

As a former professional transcriber, I’m obviously horrified. As a person who spends a lot of time at medical appointments, and a lot of that time watching doctors painstakingly use two fingers to type up their notes, I’m rather impressed. Especially because the specialist was diligent about confirming the AI’s notes with me, correcting the single error that came up, and ensuring that I could see the transcript as it was generated.

However! Unlike Dr Al-Hashimi’s patient the other week, I was conscious and fully compos mentis, and also (frankly) this feels less like “AI” and more like a sophisticated update to technology we’ve had for a while now. Remember Dragon NaturallySpeaking? It mostly doesn’t suck anymore. Mel is right to tell Santos to dictate her charts.

So I’m giving Dr Al points for just this one thing, but now I have to ding her again: she has been at her job for three hours, and Santos has been an R2 for four days; as a manager, it is completely out of line for her to threaten Trinity with repetition of her R2 year at this point. Especially in public with coworkers and patients around to hear.

Santos takes it badly, because she’s a prickly asshole of a cinnamon roll, and she was already having a rough morning with the suspected child abuse case. I personally wouldn’t go venting to my boss about my other boss (Victoria knows what’s up!) but Trinity carries a chip on her shoulder and her heart on her sleeve. More of a problem is that she lets the threat throw her off to the point where she’s briefly disengaged from patients and missing things.

Here’s where Mel shines. Mel is such a sweetheart that it’s easy to forget she’s actually equal to Cassie in the hierarchy of residents. She effectively helps Trinity re-engage, and also gives her the useful tip about dictation. Trinity takes the advice with her usual total lack of grace, but I know she’s gonna come good by the end of the season.

I guess Ogilvie probably will, too, now his ego has been punctured like his patient’s artery. But I don’t want to see it, I need a character I can hate. Did you see last week, how Joy came to life when he wasn’t around? Of the new baby doctors, I propose we keep Joy and send Ogilvie packing.

OTHER BUSINESS:

• Dana gives Robby a brief talking-to about his Langdon avoidance, while Dr Al-Hashimi brings Landon out of triage and back into the ER proper

• Last week’s diabetes patient turns out to have been rationing his insulin because the US healthcare system is evil; this does give us a chance to see Robby’s situationship, Noelle, helping Samira out with options for the uninsured

• Robby is avoiding psychologists like it’s both his job and his hobby

• Cassie agrees to a date with a patient she is about to discharge. To quote the philosopher PinkPantheress, this seems illegal. But also, dude came in with a suspected broken foot, and she’s proposing an art gallery trip? That very night? Girl, what?

• We learn that Victoria has a massive following on TikTok as “Dr J”, which is (a) delightful; (b) probably going to go badly for her somehow — but I’d subscribe in a heartbeat. And PittTok has taken a break from its usual shipping drama and antisemitism to talk about ethics for medical professionals on social media, which is super interesting to me, a nerd

• Whittaker spots an unusual heart attack situation and saves the patient—obviously I’m happy for him, but also, I’m a bit tired of him being The Most Competent and Robby’s Specialist Boy. I keep harping on about this, but I would like Whittaker and Mel to be more flawed. But ideally without anything bad happening because I love them? It’s a problem!

Hijack, season 2, episode 3

I had started to guess that Idris Elba was being blackmailed into hijacking the train (because why would you hijack a train????), and that his son was dead, and it’s always nice when a show rewards my instincts. I thrive on positive reinforcement, even when it’s imaginary.

Questions I have at this point:

• why a commuter train?

• which passenger is secretly working for the bad guys and murdered Plant Based Bike Guy? My money is on the young English teenager with the anxiety disorder. They’ll never see it coming.

• why is everyone on this Berlin commuter train speaking English?

• we know Toby Jones is dodgy, because he’s a character played by Toby Jones, but how?

• what scrapes and hijinx will Idris Elba get up to as he gets out of this situation, and will he be required to take his shirt off? For plot reasons?

• but seriously, why would you hijack a train?

This is quality television, my friends. You may not like it, but this is what peak television looks like.