Yolapukka

Oh my, Gordon, good work. *Slow clap* I am loving the episodes so far. I am also so excited for the subsequent week's installment that I have trouble discussing what I just watched because I'm too intrigued by what comes next. Joe's wheels are starting to turn, not a good a sign for anyone else. I kind of enjoyed the fact that Donna didn't care for Joe's girlfriend. Personally I find her likeable, but she so far does not strike me as a character who is intended to last beyond this season. That blathering about the origins of galoot, was kind of charming in a pretentious, psuedo-intellectual who-does-that(?) sort of way. Speaking of one season characters, I miss Debbie, Joe's secretary. She always amused me. Poor Bos, life is not being kind to him. I keep worrying that he's going to off himself, first pulling up to that lonely motel and then giving his car away. I was hugely relieved that each scene led to something sad in a different way and that he was in next week's previews looking well and relatively serene. Tom seems like a worthwhile sort, if a bit of a dick at times.... which seems par for the course around Mutiny anyway.

It really is very, very awful. I find Ksenia's acting choices are so off-putting that I can't engage with the character at all, what she is doing might be effective in a small role but the more I see of her, the more grating and distancing I find her. The writing for the triangle is just plain bad. I find her shallow even in what should be a heart-rending moment, (umm. maybe stop trying so hard to be heart-rending?) which comes off instead as facile, bathetic melodrama. I didn't laugh at the moment, but the tearful clutching of the braid did make me eye-roll to an uncomfortable degree. it was ridiculous. They are all ridiculous. I wanted to give weepy, loose-lipped drunk Andre a good swift kick. I'm guessing that the show-runner didn't want to give the traitor, Arnold a happy love story and has instead revised what is known about his attachment to Peggy to make him into a gawping fool who is insensible of the notion that the woman he seeks to marry can barely tolerate him. Of course, the mercy-fuck she threw at him has done nothing to clear things up. The sex scene was ugly to see and the whole story around Peggy is gross and boring. Please make it stop.

I'm shocked! Shocked!!! that Abe's latest cunning plan did not go off as hoped and he wound up in a predicament. He is, once again, the Spy Who Got Caught Too Much. Actually, it was at least Mary's improved plan that did not go quite right rather than Abe's phenomenally stupid idea of stabbing Hewlett to death in the home they shared. Hers at least had a conceivable chance at success had it not been for that bellowing loon, Rogers, hiding his impressive bulk amongst the bare trees and burnt-out buildings in order to successfully identify most of the key players in the spy ring. I'm not really certain, going by his incoherent words, as to whether Abe is to be his prize or his pupil. I strongly suspected that Hewlett would not survive the season, so I am pleased that he did, though it could be the end of his character anyway, as I don't have a lot of faith in this show's chances of renewal. I was pleased to see Anna showing concern for him and being disillusioned with Abraham's short-sighted callousness. The scenes with Washington and Ben were a bit too pat, but at least they were an improvement over their earlier falling out. Lots of Ben, lots of Caleb, i'm all in favour of that, especially if Caleb uses a hand cannon. I guess the season would not be truly over unless we saw Simcoe wild-eyed and howling with crazed bloodlust while his face was spattered with gore.

There was a bit of dialogue in the opening Cameron and Joe scenes about having a month to get ready for Comdex. So the jump wasn't even twenty months after the finale, but twenty months after the preceding fall, just around the time everything went to hell due to Cardiff's finances. I'm glad that they are now acknowledging time changes by using an onscreen title.

I have come round to the viewpoint already expressed by others throughout the season that I know how it all ends but I'm no longer sure that I can rely on that information. I don't think there is much of a plan as to where the story is to go beyond drawing out the things we already know or confounding expectations by making wildly ahistorical leaps. Turn is coming to the end of season two and barely has a functioning, useful spy ring, it's less about spying than merely talking about spying. There has been too much emphasis on forced, ineffective chemistry. At least in Benedict Arnold's scenes with Peggy I believe the two of them were meant to be awkward and slightly funny. Not so with Andre and yet I find them ridiculous too. I'm honestly wondering if the point of the character of Peggy Shippen is to make Anna's pulchritude seem less overstated by comparison. She's pretty enough, but with a brittle cold manner, even in scenes about her supposed passion for Andre and her pinch-mouthed fart-faces overwhelm her delicate features, as does her pageant makeup. I don't understand her appeal, she's like a teeny-tiny Margaret Dumont. At least her coldness worked as a counterpoint to Benedict's excessive enthusiasm and crazy assumptions. If she winds up marrying him because otherwise there is a baby that will be born on the wrong side of the blanket, I'll puke. Abe and Anna continue to be flat and unappealing together. Abe can't even rescue a damsel or protect his friends as well as being The Spy Who Got Caught Too Much. His Sekrit lair is ridiculously undisguised. I enjoyed Anna barely needing Abe's help to get herself out of a dire situation. I really don't think the show needs much of Abe either, at least as written. He's far too hapless to be gathering intelligence effectively. They need to make him actually succeed by intent rather than by accident, which is not how it seems so far. Either that or just make him do a lot of running. Jamie Bell sprinting is one of the great joys of this show. They need to contrive reasons for him to do so as much as possible. Hewlett is one of the few characters who I would sorely miss. I too ship him with Anna.

Bos! Is! Back! I'm sure that his return is total fan-service and I'm very glad of it. I liked how there was a bit of the shoe being on the other foot between Donna and Gordon, though it didn't feel right that she skipped out on what was supposed to be a special family evening. I hope we're not seeing him headed for a bit of a crack-up (a-gain) due to falling down a rabbit hole while he tries to come up with something good by tinkering in the garage and messing around with coke. It was very unsettling that he had no memory of that story his coworker was telling in the bar. Love Donna. I like how she clearly does not want to put on the boss hat and neatly ducked around the possibility when Cameron seemed to be headed in the direction of asking her. I'm guessing Cameron will want Bos to be their much needed boss. Joe playing online with Cameron was creepy. Not to mention a little despicable since he'd just asked his girlfriend to marry him. I like her so far. She does have questionble taste in men though. I like the crisper colours compared to last years muted palette. However, the overuse of the Dutch angle bugged me.

To me the hypocrisy and cover-up lies in their continued promotion of their rigid notions of gender roles as the best way to raise happy, wholesome children when they had already lived through a horrifying example of things going in the opposite direction. It would not have been hypocritical (to me) if they continued to cling to their values while they were still processing Josh's revolting predatory behaviour, but I can't understand how they could continue to do so afterwards and to seemingly double down on their dogma. They had the molester and girls who included some who had been molested by their brother give public voice to the very principles that he twisted, principles which insinuated or outright stated that girls who were prepubescent children were responsible for managing the sexual impulses of older males and if they did so, all would be right. From the beginning Michelle and Jim-Bob were hypocrites, hiding the truth of what their notions of purity, appropriate behaviour and purposeful ignorance had failed to prevent and had possibly enabled.

That was better than last week's episode, I was entertained by the intent of the show, rather than by inadvertent silliness. The best was Caleb's half-baked mission to save Abe, which was delightful and engaging as all things Caleb always are. Too bad Abe had some other cunning plan and refused rescue, It probably involves a bin of turnips and changing his name to Baldric. Hewlett was also marvellous, too bad narrative necessity kept him from firing a pistol at Simcoe's head at close range when he arrived to save Anna from the villain's dastardly clutches. I would have missed that nasty bastard anyway. I could ship Anna and Hewlett or Mary and Hewlett or really almost any woman with someone who is not Abe. Except maybe sour-faced Peggy with her false eyelashes and blathering, she annoys the crap out of me. She and Abraham would be well-matched in personality. Shut-up Old man Woodhull, Mary has you outmatched and outwitted. Shut up Peggy. Shut-up Rogers. I've had more than enough of Rogers and his yelling, but all the same I did enjoy the way he dealt with that Goodfellas-style ambush. I don't hate Washington as portrayed by Ian Kahn, but I really need to see a lot less of him. I find it hijacks the momentum of the actual spy story which I thought was kind of the point of this show. I only found his presence tolerable due to the scenes with Benedict Arnold.

Here's a clip from #208; Providence. http://www.amc.com/shows/turn/video-extras/season-02/episode-08/sneak-peek-episode-208-turn-washingtons-spies-providence Apologies in advance if anyone has trouble viewing it, The AMC site underwent some sort of "upgrade" that has left it highly dysfunctional. I like seeing Hewlett in a patriot uniform.........

I'm finding this show entertaining, but it's diverged from reality to the point where it's gone sprinting past fictionalization straight into fantasy twin peaks-style weirdness. While I watched, I was wondering about the possibility that Washington's dead brother would end his inspirational pep talk by shooting a toy blunderbuss that fired red, white and blue confetti. The obsession with making grounded, pretty Anna into the irresistible femme fatale that inspires all the menfolk's quests has crossed over into parody. I actually laughed when poor Hewlett saw her face in the stars. I preferred it when he was merely talking to his bucket about the constellations as if it were Anna. Old man Woodhull is a spiteful prick. I expect him to confess that his motivation in leaving Abe to rot in prison is that he too is in love with Anna. It's probably why he opposed their youthful romance. I wonder if Mary will turn her back on Abraham and fall in love with Anna?

As much as I want a few familiar faces filling out the cast, Reyes is not one I need to see again. They will have to do some thorough ret-conning to make her palatable to me and even then she's still going to have a bit of stink clinging to her after her treatment of Irving. She wasn't really given much of a character anyway, just someone to show up and fill in plot-points as not-Irving. I do hope we see some announcements about who is going to be in the cast beyond the core of Mison, Beharie and likely Greenwood as well. I'm hoping Orion has a recurring role and possibly an important arc.

Having had most of a day to think about it, I've come to the conclusion that this weeks episode was a dumb fucking load of crap. It was bad enough to have me no longer caring about the show's low ratings. Abe's an immature moron, they really need to stop using him as the lead character. I've had patience for his mistakes and uncertainty because it had an actual arc and we saw him improve in skill, confidence and commitment. Now, however, it's clear that he's a nitwit the patriot side is stuck with. It was also an amazing stroke of idiocy to kill off Sackett (unless it was a fake-out, which I doubt) when they'd done such an effective job of establishing his idiosyncratic, wise character and importance. Here's an idea, if they are going to fictionalize this story to such a blatant extent, they should have made the character up entirely, rather than giving him the name and position of a man who died almost 30 years later. Also, the strategy of sending the french representative out with the document before the distractions intended to mislead Rogers made no sense whatsoever and it ended as disastrously as it unfortunately should have. It was just one incident after another of stupid piled on stupid. Ben and Caleb seemed less stupid than others, but that is not saying much. At least the arrest of Hewlett made sense, though I hated it.

The scenes of Abe getting caught were so ridiculous, I thought it was another of his worst-case scenario fantasies. His actions were ridiculous and the staging was outright silly. I honestly can't be arsed to care about his predicament since it all looked so sloppy. Poor Major Hewlett, entrapped by Simcoe's malicious plotting. He is a genuinely decent man in trying times. I loved that he quickly realized what Anna needed from him when Simcoe rode in. I'm not pleased that Sackett was killed off. The character was an absolute delight and IRL his death was decades later.

It takes me out of all her scenes. To me, the problem is not that she is wearing make-up at all, but that it's applied with such a modern hand. I've noticed Mary among others wearing make-up in some of the scenes of formal socializing but it didn't look so badly wrong, so I'm not sure what the problem is when it comes to Peggy. I'm fairly certain she has false eyelashes, which are a very recent enhancement. It's very anachronistic, it looks dated, but the wrong kind of dated. She looks like a suspect on "Murder She Wrote".

That was really quite a brilliantly vile move on the part of Simcoe to attach Major Hewlett's name to the bloody tongue note. I would guess he bears an active grudge against his former commanding officer and he is trying to aim patriot ire at him. Was that a sword or an unattached bayonet he used to dispatch the officer? I wonder how much worse he would get if he heard gossip about Hewlett paying attention to Anna? The scenes between Hewlett and Anna were lovely and I give both actors a lot of credit for making it spark. She seems to find him genuinely likeable despite having good reason to hate him after her property was seized. Poor Ben, he has no idea how badly his chats with Benedict Arnold about their mutual disdain for Charles Lee and other backstabbers are going to turn out for the patriot side. Caleb was absolutely marvellous in every moment. Too bad for that dummass privateer. He should have listened and not wasted time wind-bagging and guzzling his purloined booze.

I find Anna an interesting character... until the scenes about the thwarted love between her and Abe start and then they both get incredibly boring. It's also a horribly reductive motivation for her spying when she has so many good reasons to act in support of the patriot cause. I don't know how this relationship is going to play out that results in a win for the viewer. Perhaps, after sacrificing her marriage to remain near Abraham, Anna will conclude that his loyalty to his wife is strong enough that their situation will always be unsalvageable and intolerable but, because they share a common cause, grits her teeth and works with him anyway. I think I'd enjoy her looking at Abe like she found him stuck to her shoe. The pair of them come off as bored adults clinging to adolescent infatuation, not fated lovers brought together by a grand passion. Their physical interactions seem awkward and guarded, even in private moments and when they touch each other it seems more about sex than intimacy. It doesn't help that his scenes with Mary crackle with tension and strong emotion, even if they are an unhappy couple. It's a delight and it makes me grin like an idiot, not least because it reminds me of one of Bridget Jones' funniest mishaps and the scene in the Pride and Prejudice miniseries that inspired it. At least none of those white shirts are wet, I think I'd completely lose it otherwise. As much as this is highly fictionalized, I do appreciate that they haven't entirely abandoned the idea of informing the behaviour of the various characters by what is known about their historical namesakes. I appreciated the nod to Simcoe's abolitionist leanings since the character, while entertaining, does verge on cartoonish, sociopathic moustache-twirler and needs some layers and humanity to keep him interesting. Also, it was welcome to see Washington have some pained moments rather than simply showing up to be inspiring and implacable as the great general and noble leader.

I'll dispute the perfect part because although i think Katia is a limited actress, the writing choices for her character were as bad or worse than her acting choices. She got ridiculous amounts of screen time in which to be a Very Dull Girl where the point of her character was to be nothing more than lovely, hapless and smug and admired by all by virtue of being lovely, hapless and smug. Perhaps that's what Goffman thinks makes an awesomesauce leading female character. Maybe Goffman will look back at her performances and write a character that suffers from a strange intermittent upper body paralysis combined with narcolepsy. Maybe she'll solve crimes while close-talking and gazing soulfully. Katia did better with Katrina when the writing turned away from portraying her as the repository of all womanly virtues and she had to deliver lines that showed a spark of snarky humour or her character displayed genuine anger, though the latter came at a time when the actress was probably feeling actual genuine anger herself, so I don't know how much credit she deserves for that.

I seldom watch enough of GH to comment anymore, regrettably today was an exception. Holy Fuck(!) Tony Geary is awful. As bad as the writing is and it's truly, truly dreadful hackneyed lazy shite, he is much worse and his acting is so bad that it has to be seen to be believed, except that I wouldn't wish that horror on my worst enemy. It's not even fun, just dull, it can't even be enjoyed as UCG or camp and it's like a big double-bird F-U to anyone that ever referred to him as an actor in his life. Even still-stilted Sabrina in a scene with the dreadful Felix was better. The best part of the episode was Lulu finding Valerie looking after Rocco after spending several eye-bugging scenes going on about the iniquity of her cousin for forming and acting on a grudge against poor addle-brained Luke, the adorable homicidal coot. When she opened the door, her eyes started whirling like kaleidoscopes and it was funny to me. Shut-up Spinelli, shut-up Maxie. Run as fast and as far as your wooden-boy legs will take you Nathan. Nu-Kiki sucks, but at least there is no more troll-facing.

I appreciate Mary and she's a character I find interesting and convincingly acted, but I continually feel like every bit of development or well-turned bit of dialogue is just a gesture on the part of the writers to give her slightly more complexity than the cliche of the betrayable wife without actually lifting her out of that trope. I can do without the triangle, it was the least of the first season's plot-lines, but it seems the star-crossed love between Abe and Anna will continue to be the tender heart inside the tale of espionage. Bleah. So far, at least, it's not eating the show to the degree it did in season one. It's good that I enjoy Anna otherwise, but I hate that her character is used so reductively as a femme fatale. I had to roll my eyes at yet another man determining to dash himself on the rocky shoals of her heart. It verges on a comedy sketch about a film noir vamp in the colonial era, I'm glad Heather Lind has no apparent urge to play up Anna as a wily seductress, instead keeping her reactions straightforward and appropriately guarded. I think Abraham is showing more definition, which isn't a reference to the shirtlessness. He seems like more of a character with a viewpoint and less a reactive everyman caught in the middle of conflicting loyalties. Glad to see Simcoe back. I think the character is a horrifying delight. Also, as a Canadian, I think I will be less discomfited by the bat-shit crazy antics of this fictional version of him since he is now leading the Queen's rangers

Well isn't that cheerful. So welcoming!

That's probably the same reason so many female walkers seem to have favoured maxi-skirts in life. You'd think the hems would be shredded and they'd be tripping constantly as they shuffled around, but no.

A small herd of big top performers and carnies needs to happen.....

I need to see clown walkers now!

I think a shorter season is great when there is a strong vision for a show which provides the viewers with an enjoyable ride, but there is no room for missteps or course correction. In the case of this past season, I think we would have simply lost the stand-alone episodes and had a focus on Katrina's journey that was more sustained and monomaniacal than it already was. As much as I like to think of all things Katrina and especially the CFD as filler, that crap was positioned as the main story arc of the season and I think it would have been episodes like Weeping Lady, Mama and Magnum Opus with a different perspective that was either Abbie-centric or cast Katrina in a poor light which would have either not made the cut or been radically different in a shorter season. I tend to think this is the kind of show that can do a lot when they have a little extra room to play.

My theory is the opening episode will start with the Unfair Wolves pulling up to Alexandria with trailers full of walkers intending to unleash death and destruction on the community. They take wandering Father PP hostage and strap him to the hood of a truck, and present themselves at the wall threatening to breach the compound by driving a truck adorned with him straight into the gates. There is loud creak followed by a low rumbling sound. The trucks are destroyed by traps, devised by Morgan, the Wolves somehow escape the initial mayhem that renders most of their pet walkers to paste and spend several minutes of the episode dodging their own pursuing walkers, elaborate Rube Goldberg type traps, hidden pits and spike traps until finally being brought down by large metal cow replicas tossed over the walls at them. Father PP dies. Someone notes the absence of a high-pitched whining sound that had been annoying everyone for months.