It was an interesting weekend because we were following the track of the hurricane. Not Matthew, thought I’m aware that one is threatening the coast, but Chaba, on the other side of the world. It was of interest to us because, for a while, it had Okinawa directly in its sights, and that’s where our daughter and her family live.
The interesting thing about typhoons, unlike tornadoes, is that you have quite a bit of advanced notice, so we were able to communicate our concern and relay our advice. We’ve been through this a couple of times ourselves, here in southeast Texas, so we knew what things might be important. We had a Skype call with them on Sunday night/Monday morning, several hours before the storm was supposed to hit. Fortunately, it drifted farther west than early predictions indicated and it mostly missed Okinawa proper. It turned into a non-event for them, fortunately. Another interesting adventure living in Japan. That’s not to dismiss the storm: it caused a lot of damage and several deaths in Korea, and it is still supposed to strike “mainland” Japan, though much diminished.
I received an email from USA Network advising that they had the entire season of Motive available for binge-watching last weekend. So I did. It’s not a very well known show, but I’ve always enjoyed it. It is produced by CTV and filmed in Vancouver, though they down-played the Canadian setting in the early seasons. ABC picked up the first couple of seasons in the US, which is where I discovered it. I’m not sure if I saw Season 3 at all, because it vanished for a long time. Then USA got the fourth season, which apparently did fairly well for them. They even decided to request a fifth season, but by then production had already shut down, since CTV decided Season 4 would be the last. The final season really does bring the series to a satisfactory conclusion.
The conceit of the show is that, during the cold open, the audience is introduced to the killer and the victim, absent any context. We don’t know how their paths will cross or why one wants to kill the other. Then the murder investigation starts and the able detectives of the homicide squad pull it all together. Kristin Lehman (The Killing) and Louis Ferreira (Declan on Breaking Bad) are the detectives, though his character, Vega, is promoted to sergeant in the final season. Lauren Holly is the ME. Tommy Flanagan (Chib from Sons of Anarchy) appears as an Interpol agent for several episodes. Lehman is really good in this role. She has a natural style of acting that makes her seem genuine and honest. I bet they had a great time on the set. They had some strong guest stars as victims and killers in the final season, including Joanna Cassidy, Max Martini (The Unit), Alicia Witt (Justified), plus actors you’d probably recognize if you were a Canadian.
I also watched the first episode of Westworld on HBO, the series remake of the Michael Crichton movie that starred Yul Brynner. It’s a lavish series with an interesting cast that includes Anthony Hopkins (who made me think of Malcolm McDowell the first time I saw him), Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, James Marsden, Sidse Babett Knudsen (from the Danish series Borgen) and Ed Harris as the mysterious man in black. It’s a fascinating premise, exploring the notion of when does an android stop being an object and start being an entity deserving of respect and basic human consideration. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.
