The Man Who Fell to Earth: Season 1 Finale: Unique and Tender

I just want to begin by saying The Man Who Fell to Earth 2022 TV series was one of the most beautiful, unusual, almost tender pieces of science fiction that has ever come to the screen.  And the season finale on Showtime last night excelled in all those virtues.

[Spoilers ahead ...]

Newton finally became almost a mentch, admitting he had love for Faraday.  And although Newton keeps saying they're won't be any room on the ship from Anthea to Earth for any drones, Faraday is going to make sure he gets his family on board, anyway.

But speaking of family, I very much liked the way Faraday and Justin parted.  The two clearly love each other, too. The big story may be the tale of two different worlds, one on the verge of death, the other not that from it.  But the people we've met, and see in action especially in this finale, are very much alive and have lots of life ahead.

Back to Newton.  First, what an acting job by Bill Nighy!  And what delightful details.  One of my favorite lines in the overall series is Newton saying maybe it's time to kick the habit of smoking.  As I said, he's becoming a mentch.

And rather than commenting on the rest of the finale, let me instead say how much more there is to this story.  Faraday blasted off.  Wouldn't it be great to see what happens when he gets back to Anthea?  Wouldn't it be satisfying and fun to see what happens when he gets back to Earth?

The answer of course is yes.  So bring on another season.  And in the meantime, kudos to everyone who helped make this first season so good.  In addition to Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clarke Peters, and Naomie Harris were great in their roles.  Tell us more!

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling ... 1.6: Music of the Spheres ... 1.7 Game Changes ... 1.8: Battle at the Nunnery ... 1.9: Just Deserts

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.2: The Ending We Needed

Well, I just loved the second episode of The Man Who Fell to Earth, especially the ending.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

I mean, with the world and this country in the states that we're in, it was especially good to see this happy ending on the science fiction screen.  And it was set up perfectly.  Faraday aka The Man Who Fell to Earth had said earlier that it was time for Justin's father Josiah (always great to see Clarke Peters) to die.  He had lived his purpose.  And we'd previously seen that guy up in Alaska take his life, after almost killing Spencer.  So ...when Faraday walked into Josiah's room, and put his hands on Josiah, asleep ... well, I thought the worst.  And instead: Faraday cured him, draining out and taking in what had wrecked Josiah's body.  And he was whole and healthy again.   Good to see on this day.

And though Faraday was on the floor and his hands were curled, we know he's going to get better because we saw him in the first episode making that speech in the future.  And though I was annoyed with that kind of start when I first saw it last week, and said so in my review, now I'm glad I saw it.

It also was good to meet Thomas Newton at the beginning of this episode (always great to see Bill Nighy, too).  He came from Faraday's planet and has been on Earth 40+ years and got too distracted to carry out his mission.  That's totally understandable, and that's why Faraday so urgently needed to come here.  Newton's character in this new series makes it a sequel to David Bowie's 1976 The Man Who Fell To Earth movie, in which Newton was The Man Who Fell.  My only regret, of course, is, as good as Nighy is, it would have been great to see Bowie reprise his role.

Back to Spencer for a moment: I'm not sure, at this point, whether he's a good guy or a bad guy.  His conversation with Drew in the diner was unsettling (good to see Kate Mulgrew, too -- for some reason, women tend to have names that men usually have in this story).  At this point, it looks like those two could be bad news.

Last, for now: wasn't that scene with "Poppa Was a Rolling Stone" in the car and everyone singing great to see (and hear)?  Yeah, it was.  And I gotta say, those voices in the car worked really well with the Temptations.

See you back here with my review of the next episode next week.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start

first spaceship to Alpha Centauri from Mars

His Dark Materials 1.1: Radiation Punk

His Dark Materials debuted on HBO tonight.  It was good to see - especially Ruth Wilson as the mysterious and alluring Marisa, the very night after The Affair concluded, splendidly, on Showtime, where Wilson played the alluring Alison, of which I'll say no more in case you haven't seen it.

But about His Dark Materials, to begin with, a proviso about me.  Although the trilogy by Philip Pullman came out around the same time as I first started getting my science fiction stories and novels published in major places - the mid-late 1990s - I never read them.  I should have, and it's even more surprising that I didn't, since alternate realities are one my favorite science fiction/fantasy genres (the other being time travel).  But, in a way, I'm now glad that I didn't read the trilogy, because it allows me to approach the HBO series as a first encounter, unencumbered by comparisons to the appearance of the narrative in an earlier medium.

The ambience of the TV series including the set-up is a pleasure for the eyes and brain.  It's a kind of steampunk, except there are helicopters and all sorts of other present or close-to-present trappings, so maybe radiation punk would be a better label (there's also talk about some kind of dangerous "dust").  Animals talk and are bonded - in a "sacred" way - to humans.  That is, each person has her or his own sentient animal, known as a "daemon".  The academic town of Oxford is in this alternate world, as is London, much more than academic, which we haven't seen as yet.

It's too soon for a Dark Materials novice to get what's really going on, but we've seen enough to know there are no shortage of heroes and villains, and lots of compelling people in between.   Marisa, for example, seems to be such a mix, but Lyra seems as pure as the snow.  James McAvoy as Lord Asriel is looking to be entirely good, but Clarke Peters (Treme and The Wire!) as the powerful Master not quite so.  These subtleties make for good story telling.

Which I'll be watching and reporting about back here, on likely a weekly basis.

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary

Chance: Couch to Action

First television review of 2018:  What more could you ask for?  Hugh Laurie playing a specialized shrink, with a fondness for William James, a penchant for not just treating his patients' maladies but doing something about them in the real world - that is, punishing some of the people who are physically abusing his patients - and an accomplice/guide who is at once street smart, enormously capable in the martial arts, and has the keenest sense of injustice and what to do about it you've ever seen on the screen.   Welcome to Chance - the shrink - and D (short for Darius) as his partner in righting wrongs.

But lest you think that Chance is some kind of super-hero show, it's also the furthest thing from it, as Chance and D ultimately have only their flawed and all-too-human strengths to rely upon.  They take chances all the time - which makes the series especially aptly named - and sometimes fail in their endeavors.

The acting by Laurie as Chance is superb - not surprising - and Ethan Suplee as D (first time I've seen this actor, or recall seeing him, but I won't be forgetting him now) was outstanding.  The supporting acting was great, too, with Clarke Peters, who was excellent in The Wire and everything since, putting in a fine performance as D's employer (an antique dealer), and Stefania LaVie Owen just right as Nicole Chance, who takes after her father in all kinds of ways.   On fathers and daughters, we've seen this before in many a television series - Lie to Me, Californication, and Bosch are three that come immediately to mind - but Chance and his daughter have the most riveting storyline.

The first two seasons are both entirely different yet deftly woven together.   Chance falls in love with a likely psycho - fetchingly played by Gretchen Mol - in the first season, and hunts a straight-up psycho with much more to his story in the second season.  Highly recommended for fans of detective, shrink, and Hugh Laurie shows - you won't be disappointed, and you'll be eagerly awaiting a third season on Hulu, as am I.

winner Locus Award for best first novel ... introducing Dr. Phil D'Amato

The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock/Truffaut

Hitchcock/Truffaut, a 1966 book of interviews of film genius Alfred Hitchcock by film genius François Truffaut, is generally recognized as one of the best, if not the best, book about the strategies of film making ever published.  I certainly do, and just this term at Fordham had reason to cite in one of my classes Hitchcock's distinction  between surprise and suspense mentioned in the book.  (Surprise is when the viewer doesn't know what's going to happen - a bomb suddenly explodes on a crowded bus.  Suspense is when the viewer knows there'a a bomb ticking on a crowded bus.  Hitchcock correctly thinks suspense is usually a much stronger way to go.)

So, I was delighted to see Harvey compliment Candy and her film making natural savvy by saying what she was talking about was straight out of Hitchcock/Truffaut.  She of course hadn't read the book, and Harvey knows that.  So his compliment was high praise indeed.  And that's high praise for The Deuce, for mixing a little high culture into its pop culture of pornography.

It was also great to see Clarke Peters holding forth as a retired pimp.  There's of course a lot of The Wire in The Deuce, with David Simon involved, and that includes not only the flow and ambience but the actors.   Peters is having a good year - I was just enjoying his performance on The Tunnel, Season 2, on PBS.  I hope he's a regular character on The Deuce.

But the creme de la creme of this season finale was Harvey and Candy going to see a porn film which all but made the X-rated movie legitimate back then - Deep Throat.   Linda Lovelace played by Heather Cole was there, and I swear I saw the real Andy Warhol there, too, though of course that's impossible (on the other hand, people are saying this is Halloween weekend).

There's powerful, simmering material for a second season, and The Deuce has been renewed.  Count me in.

See also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" and Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

Covert Affairs on USA Network

Covert Affairs checked in with a strong pilot on the USA Network last night.   The series stars Piper Perabo - said to be the new Julia Roberts - as new CIA agent Annie Walker.  She does have a lot of Julia Roberts, her beauty and smile, and also something of Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in Alias, one of my all-time favorite series due to its Chinese box-in-a-box complexity and style.   Bourne Identity producer Doug Liman is producing Covert Affairs, so it also has a lot of the style and pace of that fine movie, too.

The pilot had car chases and pursuits on foot you don't often see with such power and speed on television.   The plot had some good twists and supporting acting, including Anne Dudek (best seen on House) who plays Annie's older sister, Kari Matchett (best seen, at least in my view, on ABC's Invasion a few years ago) who plays Annie's boss, and even Clarke Peters (The Wire, Treme) as Annie's professor.   Christopher Gorham as Auggie Anderson, Annie's bright, young, blind colleague was also pretty good, and the character is refreshing.  No blind detective on television has been as compelling as Longstreet, from back in the 1970s, so it will be interesting to follow Auggie's role on the show.

As Auggie tells Annie early on, the CIA lifted its hiring freeze after September 11, so most of the people at Langley are new hires and young.    They're also often involved with each other - Kari Matchett is problematically married to Peter Gallagher's character, head of Annie's division - because that way secrets can (usually) be kept a little safer, at least not likely to be divulged to a reporter or worse, an enemy agent, during pillow talk.    We'll no doubt see that proposition sorely tested during the series.

Annie's heart was broken right before she joined up - and that was indeed her motive for becoming an agent - but the guy is still watching over her, stalking her, who knows about his ultimate intentions.

More than enough story, color, and action to keep me watching.

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book 

Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven, then you ain't been there."

"New Orleans" played over the closing credits of Treme 1.2 tonight - I don't know who the artist is, I didn't see any musical credits in those closing credits.   Sort of like the story of Treme and New Orleans - all kinds of genius but not enough credit.  Anyway, I'll let you know when I find out the name of the artist - it may be up on HBO's Treme site one of these days.*  Gary "US" Bonds' version, from 1959, is one of my favorite records (you can listen to it below)

*Added on 4/20/2010:  And the credit is now up on the HBO web site.  It's the late Willy DeVille.

Treme 1.2 began with another great rant by Creighton, this time lambasting everything from "digital media" (ouch!) to Harry Potter, all because his university canceled a whole bunch of more practical degrees in engineering and the like.   He does seem reminiscent of some Professors of English I've known over the years, down to the slaving over a yet-to-be-published novel.  (In contrast to professors of communication and media studies - we teach digital media, publish our heads off, and never complain.)

In between this end and beginning were the good stories of our struggling assortment of people.  Janette and her chef serving mouth-watering dishes to her parents, from whom she's seeking a bit of funding.  She gets a lot less than she needs.   Antoine getting the gigs with his trombone but still hurting for money.   Davis losing his job at the hotel, because he gave three college student-tourists directions to having a really good time (which they did, seeing the "real" New Orleans).  Delmond playing a brilliant horn, but that doesn't prevent him from being arrested by a white a-hole cop for smoking a roach.

Delmond's father Albert (Clarke Peters) has the most powerful story tonight, as he confronts and beats a looter.   He's also gradually reassembling his tribe.   And he does all this while being a pretty decent father to Delmond, and doing his best with daughter, now back in Texas, who doesn't approve of his Indian doings.

Toss in a great scene with Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello on the producing end of a recording session - the mix of real and character musicians is one of the best parts of this show - and you have a second fine serving of this series.



6-min podcast review of Treme




See also Treme!

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The Plot to Save Socrates



"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book 

Treme!

Seeing as how The Wire was one of the best shows ever on television, I figured I'd give Treme a chance.  It's another creation of David Simon, who did The Wire.   It has even has Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters from The Wire (Bunk and Freamon), and lot of other incandescent talent (Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Khandi Alexander, more) and New Orleans music.   It debuted on HBO tonight.  I loved it.

The story starts in New Orleans, three months after Katrina.   What The Wire did for Baltimore, Treme does for New Orleans, more specifically, one particular part of it, Treme.  The details, the colors, and, most of all, the musical performances, are true and stunning.

Pierce plays Antoine Batiste, a trombone player.   He's constantly short-changing cabbies - promising to pay them someday, in one case, leaving his "bone" as collateral (in that case, he gets a gig from Kermit Ruffins, playing himself, the real musician, and pays the cabbie back right away).   The music he's part of, ranging from clubs to funeral processions, is just the thing.

Treme is as much about the music as New Orleans, which is only right, since New Orleans is so much about the music.   One of the best scenes, near the close of the first day, has dj Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) playing Louis Prima's "Buona Sera" under all kinds of action.   The song plays pretty much in its entirety - the kind of thing you might see and hear in a movie, not usually on television.  Prima was born and lived the first part of his career in the 1930s in New Orleans, so his music was especially apt.

McAlary is a wannabe musician as well as a disc jockey.  He breaks into Tower Records, which is pulling out of New Orleans, to get copies of his band's CD, which he left there on consignment.  While he's there, he helps himself to a CD in which he was playing guitar, as well as a CD he says was stolen from his car  (so he's "karmicly" entitled to it).   He's sleeping with restaurant owner Janette Desautel - played by Kim Dickens - seen in Lost, FlashForward, and, most memorably so far as Matt's mother in Friday Night Lights.    But she could be even more memorable in Treme.

Even Elvis Costello's in Treme.   Kermit seems not to know of him, but McAlary certainly does, and is determined to get to better know Costello -  certainly can't hurt McAlary's musical  aspirations.

Goodman's a college prof, married to Melissa Leo, a civil rights attorney.   Each in their own way is fighting for New Orleans - against the media's misreporting, and various official misconduct in the wake of Katrina.

The Wire's realism had strong rays of optimism, but was mostly about the soul-lacerating, dead-end life of Baltimore's drug culture.   Treme's realism is about a city determined to survive what Goodman aptly insists is a "man-made disaster" - a levee system not up to the task.   The people and the music will make this story one of triumph.

And I'll be back here next week with my review of the next episode.


8-min podcast review of Treme

Damages Concludes Season 2 with Great Acting and Surprises

Tip-top Season 2 finale for Damages on FX last night, with some excellent surprises.

We've been treated for the whole season to scenes of Ellen shooting Patty. At first, we didn't know it was Patty. But then we saw Patty was indeed the person Ellen was talking to, and, worse, waving a gun at. In the past few episodes, we've seen Patty staggering out of the apartment, bleeding ... and the FBI guy phoning in that Ellen had shot Patty.

But could Ellen really have killed Patty like this? She had motive - she was sure that Patty had tried to kill her last year. But would she shoot Patty, unprovoked, at point blank range?

Turns out, in a well-plotted and motivated twist, that Ellen didn't shoot Patty at all - she fired over her head. So why was Patty bleeding? She had been stabbed in the elevator on the way to see Patty, which also explains why she had looked so shaken during her ensuing conversation with Ellen.

Also surprising but well motivated and very satisfying was the way Wes (well played by Timothy Olyphant) not only walked away from killing Ellen, but became her defender, and even saved Patty's life (after the FBI guy left to bleed to death in the elevator on the way down, after Ellen had left).

So Damages can chalk up a second powerful season. With especially superb acting this year by William Hurt and John Doman - who was great as the Acting Commish on The Wire - speaking of which, it was good to see Clarke Peters (the incomparable Freamon on The Wire) play a political, ruthless bad guy this time on Damages.

Other special shoutouts - SNL's Darrell Hammond as the demented killing machine the Deacon - I hope he comes back next year. Ted Danson was great again as Frobisher, and Michael Nouri as Patty's husband (now thrown out, like just about everyone else in Patty's life). Rose Byrne was attractive as Ellen, but the character felt a little more limited in range than in the first season. (It may well that she won't be back in the 3rd season).

Glenn Close was incomparable this season, as she was last, and I'm looking forward to more of this in Season 3.



See also: Lying about Damages ... 2.2: A Good World of Hurt ... Damages 1-10

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The Plot to Save Socrates



"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Life on Mars #5 Meets the Wire in New York

"When you walk through the garden, you better watch your back ..." Hey, they could almost have played that superb Tom Waits "Way Down in the Hole" theme song from The Wire in last night's episode #5 of Life on Mars, which had two* Wire veterans on hand, Clarke Peters (Lt. Freamon on The Wire) and Chad Coleman ("Cutty" on The Wire). Even Whoopee Goldberg had a cameo. *(And an anonymous commentator just mentioned that Chris Bauer, Frank Sobotka from The Wire, played the priest in this episode of Life on Mars - so that makes three Wire people.)

Freamon and Cutty were among the best characters on The Wire. Both were customarily excellent in Life on Mars - in a show that couldn't have been aired at a better time, about the evolution of race relations in America - but Peters' character Bellow had by far the more significant role.

Bellows is Sam's mentor in 2008. Sam works with Bellows as a much younger detective in 1973. This is a great time-travel set up, with possibilities of seeing how Sam's relationship with the young Bellows shaped and/or changed their relationship in the future - classic time travel. But the ending - which I don't want to give away - never explored this.

There was a nice piece of surprise business with Lt. Hunt in 1973, who is turning out to be a pretty appealing character, after all. He increasingly is pulling back from the edge of being a psycho, out-of-control, violent cop - to reveal a human being with a reliable sense of right and wrong.

And what has been revealed about Sam? He's still firmly in a coma as far as I can see - and yet, and yet, the story is also playing with something more. Or, put otherwise, if Sam is just in a coma in 2008, it's a complex coma indeed.

See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover ... Life on Mars Goes On in America: What Happens When a Time Traveler Runs Into His Earlier Self? ... Life on Mars #4: All in the Family ... Life on Mars #6 Meets Itself on Television ... Life on Mars #7: Is Annie Real, Or, Is Life on Mars a False Memory

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

The Wire Season 5 Episode 3: McNulty and Marlo

I saw the third episode of this final season of The Wire as soon as it went On Demand, on HBO. That was Monday. And, once again, I was going to wait until after the regular HBO showing this Sunday to talk about it .... But, hey, here am I, once again, unable to resist posting a review of this superb episode ... So,

DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T HAVE ON-DEMAND, UNTIL THIS SUNDAY NIGHT ...

I titled this review McNulty and Marlo - not because the two have anything to do with each other in this episode, but because they both play major, parallel roles...

McNulty has picked up the pro-active make-things-happen and damn-the-consequences approach he played so well in the very first season of The Wire. It's good to see McNulty really on top of his game again.

This time, he's trying to make his colleagues and bosses think there's a serial killer loose in Baltimore - the only way McNulty can think of to keep the cops focused on Marlo and the drug business. The only person wise to what McNulty is doing - because he was there when McNulty started hatching this plan - is Bunk, who is none too happy about it.

In fact, Bunk, as he often does, has one of the best lines in the show - right up there in the entire series - urging McNulty to "think his weak shit through"... (Wendell Pierce as Bunk is just perfect in his delivery.) This in addition to reminding McNulty that they both have families to support...

But McNulty, of course, is not to be stopped. He does manage to get the struggling Baltimore Sun to print a story about a possible serial killer - but it gets buried. (There's all kinds of good stuff about the newspaper in this episode, too, with Clark Johnson's Gus Haynes and other paper staff.) In a great last scene in this thread, Bunk's hoping the level-headed Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) will get McNulty to see the light, and back off ... and ... Freamon loves McNulty's plan! He just thinks McNulty hasn't gone far enough in making the story big enough to grab some media attention ... Not such weak shit at all ...

Meanwhile, Marlo has much less screen time, but is undergoing a very significant evolution. As Proposition Joe (well played by Robert F. Chew) puts it, Marlo's not easy to "civilize". But Marlo's beginning to get there, as he goes to a tropical island to get money that Prop Joe has expensively cleaned for Marlo. All in the gradual way Marlo is moving not only into Avon's but Stringer's role.

Many other excellent threads in this show, with Michael, Carcetti, Daniels, and more, in what is shaping up to be a really satisfying concluding season, right up there with the very first...

See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart ... 10. The Wire Bows out Gracefully

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Meadowlands: Episode 6: Jumpin' Jack Wrath

Real reveals on Sunday's Episode 6 of Showtime's Meadowlands - the best episode since the debut.

Plays on words and people were what made this episode tick. Does "Cape Wrath" sound like "Jack's Dead" to you? Maybe, a little. But that's what Freddie uses to try to get Danny to forget about Cape Wrath, which, we learn by the end of episode (Samantha tells Danny) is the name of the overall project of which Meadowlands is a part. So now we can see why the name of the show is Cape Wrath in the UK and Meadowlands in the US - America is, in the long perspective of world culture, part of the British realm of creation.

But back to the show ... Freddie is hoping to get Danny to forget about Cape Wrath by associating that name with Jack's Dead, something Freddie and we know Danny would love to forget. These mind games, it turns out, are what Cape Wrath and Meadowlands are all about.

Danny asks Samantha, near end of the episode, if he's brought his "family to hell". You've brought them to heaven, Samantha answers, because Meadowlands is witness protection-plus - that is, witness protection plus psychological manipulation to make all the criminals who got there feel ... good.

Which brings us to Samantha, and her back story, which is the other key to what's really going on in the show. Samantha goes to London to see her dying father, Professor Campbell (played by Clarke Peters, last seen as Detective Lester Freamon on The Wire, one of the best characters in that all-together spectacular series). Campbell is an eminent neuro-scientist, Samantha was his first experiment in reconstituting shattered souls, and ... now it all begins to make some sense. Of course Samantha is the person heading the Cape Wrath project.

The question, of course, is how sane is Samantha now, and therefore how seriously can we take her claim to Danny - assuming she wasn't lying - that he and his family are truly in the best place they could be....

Well, Dr. Yorke and wife Abigail are in interesting place, that's for sure. Abigail wears a dress Evelyn picked out for herself, gets the good doctor to call her Evelyn and they have a good time together in bed - but the doc feels guilty afterwards. My advice to the doc: get over it, enjoy it, Abigail played by Emma Davies is all right.

And I think Meadowlands is all right now, too - or at least fully back on a good, tingling track ...

reviews of other episodes: Meadowlands Opens ... with Tongues and Grooves ... Episode 2 ...
Episode 3 ... Episode 4 ... Episode 5 ... Episode 7 ... Episode 8

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book