Four seasons and we’re out! I think The Strain had a great arc in its time. It kept moving and didn’t wear out its welcome.

I have very few complaints with this series and the complaints I do have, came out in the wash. I might not have liked what every character did but it did feel grounded and everyone came full circle in the end. The main cast goes through a real ordeal and they changed as the story progressed. I liked the cast a lot and watching people be heroes is always great.  Each season had cool moments and escalations that kept the show new and interesting.

The only big question I have at the end is the most glaring: what was the rest of the country doing during this? I don’t think there’s much mention of what was going on outside basically the tri-state area. There’s no way the events in NYC could be ignored. The strigoi, after being in hiding for so long, basically strut around in the open for the last season. We watch everything occur in New York because that’s where the infestation started.  I can’t remember a time when it was mentioned that the strigoi made any moves in other states. That would have needed to be a massive operation to not have the military not at least considering to come in and level the insanity after what happens in season 3.

But, I digress. The show was about Eph and his immediate surroundings. Popping around DC in the beginning, Philly near the end and the hub of NYC. The show always looked good, the SFX were often impressive and the show was just fun to watch. They brought it in for a landing with the finale too, I’m happy with how it ends. Consequences, sacrifices, vindication, revenge, and a dash of redemption.

Now my problem is, where am I going to get my monster fix?

Another quality season of SYFY’s FaceOff recently finished. My favorite, Faina, just missed the final three. My biggest surprise as she was in the top cluster of contestants every challenge. She’s one of the best painters, but it wasn’t enough. The winner is very deserving though and the one who made it through instead of Faina (didn’t think she’d make it, she hit some rough patches) put up a really good fight.

So at the conclusion of Season 12 (!) a new spin off series began, Game Face. Four previous contestants are brought in to do what are essentially flash challenges. They have 90 minutes to make a character based on the criteria given. The bottom look goes home and the final two contestants do one two hour challenge for $10,000. It’s a great idea. We get to see what people have been up to and how they’ve progressed since the last time they’ve been on FaceOff. The pressure cooker competition is in full effect and it’s great to see artists design and work on the fly.

The final season has begun!

Season 4 moves the timeline out of the 80’s into the early 90’s (my best estimation based on the pop culture references is 1993). When we left our quartet they were plotting to start their next venture into a new and unproven market: the internet. The idea was a strong enough one for them to patch up old wounds and come together again. Now we find out that it didn’t last long.

Gordon and Joe stuck together to create their own ISP. Cameron agreed to work with them (Joe specifically) to create their own web browser. When she went back to Japan with her husband, the relationship fell apart. Cameron disappeared again while she worked on her own game (Pilgrim) leaving Joe floundering.

Donna, divorced from Gordon spread her wings elsewhere with Diane. She’s been extremely successful in a power position, leading her own teams as a rival to Gordon and Joe’s company (her web browser is doing way better). Diane is still together with John.

With the passage of time, the girls, Haley and Joanie, have grown up too. Joanie is a rebellious teenager and Haley is an introverted pre-teen.

While Gordon has been building the company, Joe more or less stayed in the company basement spinning his wheels trying to make the web portal of his dreams. Cameron left him in the lurch which gave the competition time to make advances on their head start. While Gordon has been spinning gold with what he’s been given, there are attacks on all sides in the increasingly growing space of ISPs. AOL is getting very aggressive which puts the squeeze on Gordon. During all this, Cameron has been in Japan and ends a 5 month disappearing act by coming to town. This sends Joe into a spiral as his muse comes back into his orbit.

The two episode premiere is a deep dive into the group. The brilliant team that keeps coming together and splintering apart. Gordon and Donna are still friendly even if their parenting skills could use work. Joe is more or less an emotional wreck and Cameron’s life has been secretly unraveling. Her next big game isn’t testing well (the video game space is changing dramatically at this time) and Cameron is stubbornly sticking to her guns that her vision is the end all be all for true gamers. Atari thinks otherwise.

Cameron’s return in crisis is more or less music to Joe’s ears. While he’s MIA with her, Gordon is doing all he can to keep the company running during a major crisis (due to competition). Donna also gets threatened at work despite making smart moves. No matter how successful she is, there is always someone hovering around ready to undermine her. While having dinner with Gordon she gets wind of a new idea Joe has about “indexing the entire web.” You see, not only are the amount of ISP’s growing, but the number of web pages is as well. Exponentially. Joe’s idea is the seed of a search engine. While there is some debate to this, I’m calling Donna’s move with her “Rover” team as a blatant steal. She knowingly nudges her team to brainstorm the idea in front of her so she can legally claim, if need be later on, that it was kismet. It’s something the industry was moving to and they got there on their own. She’s still got a rival at work to deal with so she hires John as a consultant to fend him off for now. Unbeknownst to her, John desperately needs the job.

Watching Joe and Cameron reconnect over the phone was some brilliant writing. I don’t think the fourth time will be the charm as they (and everyone else in this mess) seem to be cursed. But for now, it looks like they are naturally coming together and if they work together, what they did with Mutiny could be a spec of dust compared to what they are likely to accomplish. They will absolutely collide with Donna who struggles to tolerate the both of them. It’s going to get ugly and Gordon will be right in the beginning. It’ll be interesting to see where they take Haley’s newly discovered coding talents.

I don’t have much to say as I think Orphan Black went out on top. This show went to some crazy places and largely stayed strong through its entire run. 50 episodes over five seasons. That’s a long time to tell a story and the show runners got to tell a complete one.

I watched the premiere episode the night it aired in 2013 and that first scene on the train platform hooked me. It never let me go. A creative show with an amazing cast, Orphan Black gave me all I look for in entertainment. Characters to love and hate, adventure, suspense, laughs and shocks to the system.

Tatiana Maslany must be praised up, down, left, right, front, and back for her amazing work on this show. She absolutely crushed it in the season finale and she must have some relief knowing that her next big gig won’t be her playing 12 characters. I don’t know how she did it.

Season 5 and especially the finale gave me what I wanted, closure. The main story arc that kicked off with the first episode has been completed. The layers of Dyad and the Neolution have been pulled back and explored. It took a heavy toll through the years. Many did not make it and those that do have scars. I know that while my time following these characters is over, somewhere they continue to live.

Two big returns last night.

Game of Thrones- Everyone watches this and there are a million reaction articles up for the Season 7 premiere so I’ll be very brief. Solid return that sets up the board for the next six episodes of the season (that ain’t much so there can be no down time). After the crazy end of Season 6, we were basically shown where and what all the remaining players are doing. The North is gearing up a defense for the undead and the South is working on getting new allies to reclaim dominance over The Seven Kingdoms. The Dragon of Dragons has finally made it to her ancestral home. She was a very small part of the premiere so I expect major movement from her end of the board next week. It felt good to be back in Westeros and man does this show look good. Just about every shot is impressive.

The Strain- This one totally snuck up on me. It’s the final season too! I forgot how enraged I got over what Zach Goodweather did in the finale. Every time he appears on screen I’m annoyed and want him to be hung up by his ears. Despite my aggravation over the dumb kid, it’s turned the show to a new level of bleakness and grave stakes. The show started with finding about the threat, then rode on preventing the threat and now it’s on the verge of all hope is gone. It’s 9 months after the fallout and the nasties are well on their way to reforming the world. The team is busted apart with Eph broken over what Zach did and hiding out in Philly. Fet has managed to cling to a final chance for human survival. On a mission from Abraham, he’s running around North Dakota with a new woman and Mr. Quinlan looking for a nuclear war head. It’s looking bad but the good news is that Eph runs into someone who might give him a renewed sense of purpose. The fight isn’t over. Looking forward to what happens.

My movie watching has hit the skids lately but I expect that to change shortly. I have more to watch than I know what to do with. I still haven’t started the final season of Bloodlines, I think I’ll crack that open once I’ve mosied through Master of None. Probably do House of Cards after that. The amount of quality content on Netflix is absurd.

This season flew by and gadzooks was it good. Rock solid storytelling made all the more impressive considering how many characters are involved.

The main hook for the show is its ties to Breaking Bad and they put in some juicy bits for fans this year. We’ve seen Mike before but the major piece this year is Gustavo Fring. Along with Fring comes Hector Salamanca. Fascinating stuff. They write the coolest scenarios for Mike and that leads to him meeting Fring, who’s butting heads with Salamanca. What we watch unfold is a direct line to Breaking Bad.

You can’t have Saul without Jimmy of course. The flawed man I love to hate and constantly find myself rooting for no matter what. His brother Chuck, I hope eternally that I get to see him get what his arrogant ass deserves.

With that said…Jimmy goes to really dark places this season. Much of Jimmy’s arc this year is his feud with his brother and it comes to a head. Last year got pretty nuts but I was reeling at the last scene of this season. The fighting goes (fittingly) to the court room and I pretty much steer clear of any courtroom drama shows, they just aren’t my thing. What they did here blew me away it was so riveting and the fallout is nuts. Of course, I’m completely invested in these characters so that makes a world of a difference.

In the middle of all of this (or woven in I should say) is Kim. The only anchor Jimmy really has. She’s a kindred spirit to Jimmy, the share similar experiences in being suppressed and shoved aside despite being so damn good at their profession.

Their ultimate success so far is striking out together in their own practice. Kim wisely insulated herself last year knowing what Jimmy is like. When the verdict comes down from the trial and Jimmy is forced out, it’s a very telling moment for his personality. He’s going to struggle to pay for his part of the office. Kim sees it as just a building, they can move on. It’s much more to Jimmy. It’s a physical landmark to his achievements from under Chuck’s thumb. He’s completely distraught over the idea of losing it. So he gets creative to keep it.

And creative Jimmy is dangerous. We know Jimmy is good (goodish?) at heart but time and time again we see how myopic his view of the world is. That total jerk of a human being is always right underneath the surface. Total disregard with what others could go through as long it benefits him. When he gets his way it’s all about him, just disregard or ignore anything else because I’m making moves. Jimmy has a way of rationalizing things (I’m doing it for us!).

The steam rolling he and Kim give Chuck, which in the end is fascinating to see her take Jimmy’s methodology over her own. She’s run simple scams on some tools for fun with Jimmy, but this was something else. Kim was really onboard to stop Chuck. Then the Irene play Jimmy did. That was straight up grimy and it came as a real relief for me to see him do the right thing in the end.

The very end though? Oof. Chuck’s arc this season is a masterclass in storytelling.

Better Call Saul has a slow and deliberate way to its story arcs. It moves at its own pace by taking the time to set things up. The payoff often takes awhile to come around, not a lot of instant gratification. Each piece moves on its own. For example, Mike’s story arc finishes before all others, there’s a decent amount of show to go when we leave him. But he’s not completely gone as his involvement is passed off to Nacho. That whole web is set up with Fringe early on too. The first half of the season was Mike doing his awesome covert ops stuff and then that morphs into Nacho’s ultra dangerous plot.

Saul is edited slow, it’s completely against the MTV grain of hyper cutting and breakneck pacing. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the show and I think that turns off a lot of people. I don’t think nearly enough people know how great Saul is. I’m so impressed with this season and I can’t wait to see what happens next. With how things are going, it makes me wonder how much is left to tell. Maybe two seasons until we run up against the BB timeline?

I tip my hat to everyone involved in the production: cast, crew, et al.

With my DVR on what it would consider a vacation from all the shows it normally records, some surprises showed up this week.

First, the final season of Orphan Black. That was a fast year! Final seasons are always extra stressful as it all comes down to the show runner’s sticking the landing. A bad ending can taint a whole series. OB still has a long way to go to get to the end. The sisters are all spread out and the Neolution movement has new management and they are getting aggressive. The hunt for the cure is still on, Sarah is badly hurt and there is some kind of human experiment running around Neolution’s main camp. There’s a lot of mysteries left to solve.

Ink Master is back with a quick turnaround. This time, it’s shop vs shop. Nine teams of two are in competition so these artists have to be excellent at working together in order to survive. As usual, there are some clearly weak contestants that are simply not going to make it. The added wrinkle is that when one team gets eliminated, another team comes in to take their place (I guess this will happen 4 or 5 times). At least one person on that team will be a returning contestant who failed on their season. That’s a big change for the show as it’s combining the occasional team up challenges with the Redemption angle. The first replacement team has come in and they’ve rattled the rest of the cast by having a well known and respected artist.

Face Off is another one with a quick turnaround. I could have sworn it was coming back at the end of the summer, but I’m clearly wrong. The wrinkle this time: two teams. These “shops” mimic how working in a real effects house is like. One person is elected to be the shop foreman. Since it’s six people on a team, there are more creatures to make at once. This also exactly how the season finales are done and it seems so obvious to do now that they’ve done it.  One shop is chosen as the winner of the challenge with one artist from that team being selected as the week’s best artist. That leaves the losing team, which means one of them is on the chopping block. I’ve got my favorites already, we will see if I’m right. My long shot is the kid from NJ. He doesn’t have a lot of experience but I think he has the talent. The longer he stays on the more he’ll learn so I think the show is very promising for him.

Blood Drive on SyFy starts today. Essentially grindhouse cinema on TV. The first one is about cars that run on human blood instead of gas. Fun idea, we’ll see how wild and wacky they go. A great chance to see what the practical gore produces can do outside of Evil Dead vs Ash!

This turned into a great season, it was so much fun. A lot happened, new characters came in (with great casting) and some old ones came back. The place was crawling with villains at one point but they managed to keep things tidy.

The season finale was fantastic. They got it all right with great closure and growth for story arcs and characters. The Penguin and Riddler relationship turned rivalry turned out great. The Court of Owls was a major point for Bruce and it really advanced his character. Gordon and Leslie had a full and complete chapter that solidified Gordon as a hero. The list goes on and on with all the characters that got time on screen and something meaningful happened.

Major changes are in store for next season. It’s going to be a new slate to draw on because major characters lost a lot of what they were after. The big power groups have been broken apart so much of the old standbys for the show are no longer going to work. That’s very exciting, real repercussions. The hits just kept coming in the last 10 minutes with Solomon Grundy being set up, Celina inching closer to Catwoman and an epic hero shot of Bruce to close the season. The writers hit their stride this season and I hope that they can keep the momentum going.

The Soviet Division

This has been a fascinating season. This stretch has been bleak for Elizabeth and Philip. Balancing their spy life and keeping Paige level headed would have been hard enough without all of the complications that happened. The Center pushed them almost nonstop and a lot of people got hurt. They’ve been living this secret and dangerous life for so long that the end, which looked like varying levels of trauma in whatever they decided on, was barreling down on them. The stress has been unrelenting and nearly unbearable.

With the decision for them to leave at the end of episode 12, the reality of detaching from a life they’ve lived and manicured for nearly 20 years cames front and center. There’s a lot to take in, manage and unravel. How feasible is it on leaving? How soon could they leave, what needs to be set up for them to break away?

First the kids. Paige has done well recently. Philip and (especially) Elizabeth have been able to guide their daughter to a level of understanding and mental fortitude they weren’t sure they were going to be able to. They’ve kept her from the violence (Paige knows nothing of the darkness her parents have done) but have instilled the morals and outlook they have. They help people in secret. Getting such a clean break from Pastor Tim is a God send. Through fight training, Elizabeth has gotten Paige through a major trauma and given her some peace of mind. Not only does Paige take a serious shot to the face from Elizabeth during training and shrug it off, but she steels herself to walk through the same lot she and her mother got attacked in. In another small but significant scene, Philip apologizes to her for not giving her a normal childhood (which he now has to completely deny Henry of next). I thought he was going to tell her then and there about moving to the Soviet Union but he doesn’t.

With being so close to Paige, she’s the least of their worries on leaving the States. She could most likely help them with Henry when the time comes. Henry is living his American teenage life and when Philip pulls the rug out from him on going to boarding school, he’s rightfully upset. Philip doesn’t (and can’t) offer him any reason why. “This family stays together!” is the beginning and end of it. It is a true statement though, Philip wants to keep his family together, unlike what’s going on with the Morozov’s.

The Morozov mission is more or less a clusterbomb of misery. Tuan’s rash plan nearly gets Pasha killed. Philip and Elizabeth’s intervention most likely saved his life. Such a gruesome scene, Tuan is basically unaffected by it. With Pasha and his mother, Evgheniya, going back home he sees it as a mission success, even if Alexei still refuses to return to the Soviet Union.  This mission created great pain and has pulled a family apart. It’s a similar result (and heavy burden) to what Elizabeth did last year. Plus, the whole goal was to get Evgheniya back to blackmail and exploit. Her hell is going to continue. Elizabeth and Philip are direct causes of it. Plus, they get way more attention than they wanted. The guard outside of the Morozov house gets involved with saving Pasha and he gives Philip a rather curious look…recognition perhaps?

Tuan is all in. He’s how Philip and Elizabeth started, tunnel vision with no experience of quick decisions and consequences. In a scene that I thought would end with Tuan laying flat on his back, he brazenly tells them of the report he sent to the Center about the mission. Essentially, he was right and they compromised everything by being weak. Elizabeth handles it with amazing grace and care. Instead of pulling rank and crushing him, she lays out reality to him. After quickly shooting down being moved to Vietnam (“If you want to.”) to work, she says she understands why he’s done all this. He is a kid with serious abandonment issues who’s looking for a purpose in his already too traumatic life. He needs a partner. Someone to share the stress of this life that he (currently) wants to have. He will not make it on his own. “Make them send you someone.” As Tuan sees himself being left behind for whatever Elizabeth and Philip will do next, he seems to get the message.

Stepping away from Elizabeth and Philip for a moment, Martha gets a scene. She’s in a park with her handler near some kids playing. Martha is getting a better grasp on the Russian language which gives us the sense that she’s on the path to settling in. Her handler points out a young child (maybe 3) near them and says that she’s an orphan and that Martha can adopt her. United two souls who right now have no one else. The idea of a family (which she brought up a few times with “Clark” before it all went to hell) has an immediate impact on Martha. The promise of not being alone, of a future and an honest purpose.

Stan and Dennis put their mark’s hockey player boyfriend to the lie detector test. Thankfully for them, the guy was puffing himself up to exaggerated heights. They feel confident that he isn’t a Soviet agent and their mark isn’t compromised. Renee also moves in with Stan after a water pipe bursts in her apartment building. Philip, still suspicious of Renee, laments to Elizabeth. “What if she is one of us and they end up having a kid? And Paige thinks she has it bad?”

The Americans has always been about the lives of two spies living in a foreign land. How they’ve entrenched themselves in a completely different culture to subvert a government’s efforts against their own. Gone so long from home, they have limited contact with their own people. While they always know why they are there and that they must do morally questionable things for their people, the motivation and confidence in doing so has waned. Through time and what I would call torture, their resolve has ebbed. Philip wants to flee in the worst way possible. Elizabeth, the one who has been able to stand more resolute, has been pushed to her limits. She’s recently done things she can’t emotionally shake or rationalize away.

So the two are at another crossroads. They agree they need to leave and make moves to get themselves in a place where they can. It’s far more complicated than having a discussion and packing their suitcases. They still have their obligations and need to do them until they leave. They still work for their country. Philip does his routine tape pick-up from Kim’s house. He breaks her heart when he tells her he’s “getting a job in Japan.” When going through the tape of her father he finds major news. He’s getting a promotion to take over the anti-Soviet branch of the FBI. This is unbelievable direct access to information. One of their oldest missions has turned into their most important one. Philip is stuck in a quandary. He’s desperate to leave this behind to the point where he considers not passing on this information to the Center. Dump all his obligations and ditch. No one would know and it would ease his departure, otherwise, it’s a brick wall. The Center denies them from leaving because they have to keep getting those tapes or he further compromises Kim. He’d have to recruit her to do the job for him. Both are nightmare scenarios.

Philip confides in his partner. There’s a lot of reflection in this finale. With the decision to leave made, Philip and Elizabeth look around themselves more. At their American life. They have 2 good kids, the travel agency jobs they use as a front pays well, they have a great place to live. They have comforts they simply do not have at home. Philip’s escape is being weighed on a scale of morals. Elizabeth’s escape takes a turn on something she never thought possible, or at least would not admit it. She’s come to love and accept American capitalism. If she can live like this and help her country, it’s worth it. It’s a reflection of the Morozov’s. With them, the mother is desperate to leave and the father must stay. Elizabeth is very aware that she’s watching Philip be torn apart and that she’s contributing to it. That pushes her to offer an alternative to him. We stay but you stop. Run the travel agency while I continue our real work. Rationally and

Rationally and feasibly it makes sense. They are so far dug in that leaving is a road paved with landmines. While they are confident about Paige, they’re not sure if Henry would be able to cope. They could have their own Pasha. Getting Philip out clean and clear means more terrible things to his conscience and may not even work. If Elizabeth can soldier on for Philip, they could all live the lives they want right where there are.

I didn’t see this season play out the way it did. As usual, the writers met and exceeded my expectations for my favorite show. I don’t think there was a bad episode this year and I was enthralled from start to finish. It’s going to be bittersweet to see how the show ends in 2018.

Arrow- Overall a good season with the ultimate payoff being the end of the flashbacks. The last half of the season cut down of the frequency and finally getting to the end of that vision arc is long awaited by everyone. Prometheus proved to be a good villain for the year that pushed Oliver and the team into dark places. Melodrama is basically impossible to avoid on this show but I think they kept from going overboard. Along with the completion of the backstory, the finale is open to the possibility of a cast change (I think there are too many characters now). Looking forward to next year.

Modern Family- The long and frequent breaks killed any kind of momentum they generated. Not exactly a serial show but some kind of airing consistency is nice to have. It was easy to forget this show and I’m having a hard time remembering much of what happened (especially at the beginning). I only remember one truly awful episode in the last batch of shows so that’s good. They maintain a steady amount of laughs and with Manny and Luke graduating high school the show is going to get new angles to mine. Joe is growing like a weed and they’re even going to skip Lily a year to get her more interesting things to do. With the 2 season renewal, I get the feeling the end of the series will be at season 10.

Archer- I think the only thing I liked about this season was the animation. I liked the drug trade season from a few years ago way more than this. “Dreamland” was remarkably not funny and the end was even a colossal bummer. I didn’t get this season at all.

Hawaii 5-0- My guilty pleasure cop show remains a pleasure. I think one episode a year there’s a truly bad episode, otherwise, it’s often a good run. They bring back characters a lot, give the main cast a spotlight arc here and there which I really like (except for Lou, he kinda bores me). Keeps things varied and interesting and avoids the tired Danny and Steve bickering like a married couple shtick from getting overbearing. Please stop doing that, I don’t think anyone likes it. While the action (fire and fist fights, on foot chase scenes, explosions) tends to be good, they gotta step up their car chase game. It’s usually very fake looking. The truck rescue set piece in the finale is more of what I’m looking for. Putting Kono on a righteous mission has got me looking forward to next year.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine- I didn’t see that ending coming! This show has found its groove and all the characters bring something to the table. A careful balance of using the right characters at the right times and they manage to come up with great story arcs inside and outside of the precinct. Fox is up to its old stupid tricks though, they aired this show in the weirdest ways. Starts off in time for the standard Fall schedule for five weeks then goes away for a month. Another five weeks and then off for the holidays. Comes back for a double episode in January and then it’s gone until April. Four weeks of regular airing and then Fox burns through the last six episodes in three weeks with double episodes. What kind of schedule is that? That’s what they do with a show they cancel and shove out what episodes are in the can to make fan shut up so they can move on as fast as possible for no reason. You’d never think season 5 was coming the way they treat this show. If I didn’t have this season set to record I would have thought it disappeared mid season and forgotten about it.