My review of Bag of Bones, which airs on Sunday and Monday on A&E, just went up on FEARNet.
The WiFi on my iPad seems to be working again. At least on a different network it is more stable, so maybe there was just something funky going on with the other network. That’s a relief. Like I said, it’s not like it has any user serviceable parts.
My wife and I have been watching the original Prime Suspect, starring Helen Mirren, from about 20 years ago. We finished the second and third series this week. Whereas the first one was primarily about the difficulties for a woman in the British police department, the subsequent series have tackled quite different but equally huge themes. The second one was about race. A murder is discovered in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood and there are a lot of questions about whether the police take the death of a black girl as seriously as they would if the victim were white. To complicate matters (and Jane Tennison’s life is nothing but a series of complications inserted between gaps in her demanding job), Jane has been saddled with a black detective who just happens to be her ex-lover. I was a little disappointed that the cold case that was mentioned early in the series didn’t play into things at all, other than to incite suspicion among the locals. It would have made sense for the culprit to have been responsible for her death, too.
The third series is about sexual identity and sex crimes. Jane is now working vice and the murder of a rent boy drops her into the worlds of transvestites and pedophiles, some of them with ties into the police department and houses of politics. This time Jane is saddled with a Scotland Yard insider who is reporting to the upper echelons if she stumbles across anything in the current investigation that might cross paths with an embarrassing situation that the department hopes they’ve put to rest. I had no idea that Johnny Lee Miller (Angelina Jolie’s first husband, star of Eli Stone and last season’s villain on Dexter) was British. I recognized him straight away and marveled at his mastery of the accent. Now I have to rethink his other roles and marvel at the mastery there. David Thewlis had a guest role as a very bad guy who turns out to be just about the only character who didn’t have a hand in the murder at some level.
Survivor has reached the stage in the game when things go south very fast. The core group of six is left to devour itself. I was hoping they’d have the gumption to get rid of Brandon instead of Edna (she’s weak so she won’t win challenges, and she doesn’t have any friends on the jury, so she’d be a safe keep), but they toed the company line. Based on the previews, next week is spent with the Bickersons and they are teasing us that Edna might give Ozzy a run for his money on Redemption Island. Wouldn’t that be a twist. I got a big kick out of Cochran’s non-reception when he got to Ponderosa. You could hear crickets when he showed up. I think that has to be one of the most brutal receptions ever. They warmed up to him a bit in subsequent days, but not much.
I’m still liking Ted Danson as the new weird guy on CSI. And I liked that there was a case that brought in the FBI that didn’t cause constant bickering between the two agencies. Sure, there was friction, but they found a way to work together and get the job done. They’re sure making it look a lot like Catherine won’t be around much longer.
The season finale of Sons of Anarchy was a game changer. Just when it looked like Ron Perlman was going to spend the winter looking for a new job, something happened that mislaid all the best plans of mice and men. How could Jax not kill Clay? By having Clay turn into a vital pawn in a game that involves the Irish, the cartels and…surprise, surprise…the CIA. And Lincoln Potter’s months of preparation for the big RICO case went out the window at the same time…except it’s still there as the stick to whack Jax with if he decides to do something stupid. And Potter got his last dig in with the bag full of sex toys, so not all was lost. I wasn’t a big fan of the musical montage that occupied most of the final 10 minutes of the episode, and I was hoping Opie would show up at the last second, but all in all it was a raucous season. The MC was shown to be exactly what it is, a bunch of thugs, albeit ones that we’re encouraged to root for. However, when push comes to shove, they’re killers and criminals of the highest order. We can never forget that.
