What are you watching?

The Girl Who See Scents

The first 10 minutes seemed promising then I like a nut at the idiotic script; schoolgirl returned home after school and caught the murderer of her parents red handed. Understandably, she's shocked and stood petrified. She tried to escape after the murderer began squeezing her throat. He tried to stop her and she gave him a shove (a weak one) I when he stumbled.

He then proceeded to chase her through the small lanes / streets. There're houses all round. Not a single scream from her. Not a single yell for help. I Predictably she ran into the path of a car and was knocked down. She fell on her side facing the murderer. Slow motion camera panning. The driver came out but did not rush to her side. A cab stopped nearby, nobody ran to her side to check on her. Slow motion camera panning continued showing murderer holding her school name tag. The sound of sirens was miraculously heard two minutes into the accident. I ROTFLOL.

It's so dumb.

Edit. This detective drama is supposed to be tension filled, etc but it's a comedy for me.  The char did not scream when the murderer chased her through narrow streets with houses all around but she screamed when she saw the mess the murderer made of her home years later. The script is so half baked.

It's pretty hard to find kdramas with pragmatic writing. If a detective drama is not set in the modern age, then naturally there is a lot of obstacles in resolving problems / cases. The pace will be slow and difficult which viewers will perceive as logical / reasonable.

When it is set in the modern age, especially in a technical age where there're satellites, contact tracing, phone tracing, etc, the task of finding clues, narrowing down calls for help at a emergency call centre can be that much easier. So it's very hard to watch the ridiculous scenario of a call agent receiving a call for help from a woman who said someone was chasing her to kill her. The immediate response is to initiate the procedure / protocol for such calls. Instead, she acted all shock and stunned. Her colleague asked her what's wrong and told her to transfer the call to him. The call was unexpectedly disconnected and he told her to redial. She hesitated for long moments so he hit the redial key on her console. The ringing tones naturally gave away the woman's position.

She was attacked and beaten to death with the call agent listening to what's going on. Nobody at the call centre was doing anything. Stupid writing.

Continuing Trek with Voyager. Now into season 3. It's not that great. I don't have a frame of reference, but Robert Beltran's performance of Chakotay is ... I understand he was going for stoic, but comes more of as void. As I said, I don't have a frame of reference for Robert Beltran, but that's a pretty bad performance. It's like watching Steven Seagal trying to act. Kim and Torres are probably my favourites so far, but their characters are really high on the technobabble. Tuvoc is underused and Tom Paris has been done better. Kate does a good job as Janeway, but I seriously find her material to be lacking, which is no fault of her own. The doctor is fun. I liked seeing young Raphael Sbarge. His voice sounded very different back then, so I didn't recognize him. I've actually never made it past season 1 of Voyager, but I hope it picks up after Seven of Nine shows up. Comparably, Enterprise had won me over much earlier. Gonna power through it. I'm not looking forward to DS9, which I have lined up next. I had watched that one all the way to season 4 and it was still boring.

The Expanse is my favourite TV show but it benefits from having read the books I think.

Series 4 was my favourite book but it needed more episodes as so much was cut/changed from the book and the slow burn tension was taken in particular out of the relationship between Amos and McMurty. Same with when they were stuck with the killer slugs that was all rushed. 

The problems started when they cut and merged characters in series three and handed certain story arcs to different characters, this caused issues with series 4 and 5.

Naomi's story is very different in book 4 to what happens in the TV show and really ruins Series 4 from the get go.

Book 5 is great but again changes to characters roles and the merging of characters really hurt this series as well. It is also hurt by the shortened story arcs of Amos, Alex which had their ow Novella's to also fill them out. Naomi's was the only one that got the full representation and it was for the most part (the stuck in the spaceship) far too long for TV.

Anyway I hope you stick with it, unfortunately for me series 6 will be the last but there are 3 more books which are probably the most interesting if not the best.

Drummer is great but she is one of the merged characters which meant the elimination of a character called Michio pa which was a shame but in a tribute to that character one of Drummers crew on her ship is called Michio Pa. 

Bobbie rocks and is the character that probably got screwed over the most by losing content and having her story lightly changed.

Amos is my favourite character and his stand-off in S4 with McMurty is really great in the books but cut way too much in the show. The proto-molecule/extra terrestrials arc plays a big part in book 7 to 9 (9 still to be released) and I really enjoyed both 7 and 8 but they are not making those books into the TV Series which is really disappointing. There are minor hints that "something" will happen with those, maybe a movie or the show may move to a new platform other than Amazon.

My favourite quote from Drummer




 

the 1992 movie was so horrible that I never got into the series, but from what I have heard about it, the series was vastly superior in every way.   The movie was just camp.  Really bad camp.

Watching the one tv show I go out of my way to watch every week. 'Resident Alien'

Suuuper hooked on The Americans right now.
This show is Mad Men level of great character drama. I'm so surprised how good it is. The first 20min I didn't like it at all and almost turned it off. But then the chemistry between the spy couple sucked me in. FAST.

The actors just sell the complicated relationship between two people who've been fake married for 20 years, only to actually fall in love with each other in front of the audience's eyes. Which makes their jobs so much harder.

I love how this show is really about the pitfalls of marriage and being parents. All told through the framework of some of the most fucked up disturbing shit I've ever seen on TV.

How these characters are slowly pushed to their breaking point by the job's constant strain and trauma is fascinating to watch. Truly heart breaking stuff at times.

I'm in the middle of S3. Can't wait to find out the places this show will go with these characters for three more seasons.

Sticking with Voyager. Season 4 does pick up a bit, but is otherwise a production traiwreck. Torres was pregnant half the season and wore that overcoat to hide her belly, which also meant she was in fewer shots the entire season and had a smaller role. They tried to make a sort of Teacher/Student relationship with Seven and Janeway, trying to get them to connect in a Kirk/Spock kind of way, as a duo, which doesn't work, because I get the feeling these two weren't at the best terms during the show. It's kinda ... visible. Parish put on weight, Kim put on weight and Chakotey is as expressionless and bland as ever. Neelix is mostly annoying, but Ethan Phillips is giving it his best all the way and it's admirable, to say the least. The doctor is probably the highlight of the season. Season 5 is a lot better. Still a few garbage episodes, but I skipped parts of them the least of any season so far. Tuvoc, while mostly sidelined, what content he does get, is pretty good. Which makes me want more Tuvoc.

You nailed it with the Janeway/Seven dynamic.  The reason behind that is because Kate Mulgrew was quite threatened by the appearance and presence of Jeri Ryan on the show...This gorgeous young blond suddenly brought into the cast and onto the set (to raise viewership).  She felt threatened and very insecure....and so they appeared to to try to act professional during shooting, during interviews now, they both admit that there was a huge amount of tension and friction between them personally.  Jeri Ryan has done numerous interviews over the years since Voyager ended and has gone on record with saying that Kate Mulgrew was a total B**** and made things very awkward and uncomfortable for her.....going out of her way to make it known that she did not like her or want her there.  And it was all because Kate Mulgrew thought/felt that her moment was stolen, her credibility and position as star of the show was threatened and she had a fragile ego....she was no longer in the spotlight as "The First Female Captain of a Star Trek Series", instead heads turned (literally) towards this gorgeous blond half human cyborg, and she didn't like that at all.
Try as they might to appear professional though, knowing that now.....if you go back and watch their scenes together you can feeel the tension between the two actors as real people that should not be between them as characters.

HOwever, good thing is I have seen interviews done with both of them together in the last two or three years....and while they admit their struggles then and agree on the reasons for them....they now seem to have put all that behind them and have both moved on.

Still....my favourite episodes always featured Jeri Ryan/Seven of Nine as the featured character for the episode.  I especially liked the one where she displayed "multiple personality disorder" or somethign like it.  Her range of acting int hat is amazing.


And my favourite DS9 episode is the one where Sisko appears to be living in the 1950s (not unlike Picard in "The Inner Light") living a whole different life of a totally different person.  HIS (Avery Brooks') range of acting in that one epside was by far the best acting of the entire series, and that is an episode I still think of today.