Saturday, August 31, 2013

Sell A Contradiction Haven S1E09 As You Were

Previously on Haven: extremely creepy shadows and Trouble were, in fact, extremely creepy! No reference to Jung's shadow nature here nuh-uh no way no how. (I did not just get out of a camp in which I took a mythology and folklore class that leaned on Jungian interpretations what are you talking about.) Eleanor and Audrey had a brief talk about what the Troubles are for and Eleanor knew way more than she was letting on. Audrey talked about the dual Havens which Nathan lives in, over shots of butterflies and Beatrice/Helena. In conclusion, onions! have layers! Oh hi Lucy. Audrey! Has layers! Audrey and Duke are not sleeping together but they have some kind of a bizarre friendship, and so do Audrey and Nathan, complete with the intimation of maybe more someday. Oh, hey, and Nathan can totally feel Audrey's touch, which is I think the clearest early indicator we've got that her physical touch prevents a Troubled person from being susceptible/using their Trouble. The comfort scene with Marian Caldwell in the pilot is obvious in retrospect, but also plausibly simply about emotional release and so on and so forth. Anyway. We have established a nice long chain of events tracing back through most of s1 thus far, reestablished some of the side characters (hi Vince and Dave how very not nice to see you again GIVE US YOUR ANSWERS) and generally established that this will be some kind of a Pivotal Episode, either by character or by plot or both.


Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Back Up Against The Wall (Person of Interest S2E04 Triggerman)

Today's opening credits give us nothing of use; Reese is tailing a young man with a determined look, and that's about it. Familiar looking kid, and if this were a whodunnit that would be enough to put him at the top of the suspect list, but it's not. It's more of a who's trying to do it to him, and why, so this gives us nothing. The opening sequence gives us marginally more. It sounds, both in the voice and in the dialogue and word choice, like a mob boss lamenting the "good old days" which likely only existed in his head. Which doesn't mean he's not going to try to impose what he feels is the old type of rule, in other words, lots of death and pain and blood. Woo! Wait, no, that other thing.




Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Shadow Knows Haven S1E08 Ain't No Sunshine

Previously, on Haven. Jess Minion was not a witch, but she did rather cast a spell on Nathan. Audrey shipped it hard. She also was looking for her alleged mother with Eleanor! And the Troubles were back, and Nathan wondered, possibly with some foreshadowing, if they wouldn't go away this time. Meteor shower at the season three finale, I'm looking at you.




Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Another Dime in the Jukebox (Person of Interest S2E03 Masquerade)

Look! We have new credits now! How exciting. Many of the graphics are the same as s1 with a different computer overlay to them, or a different order, or both. Usually both. Less with the percentages and more with the random anonymized faces in the crowd, and they've been shortened down a fair bit. Finch's voiceover still gives us all the relevant (hah) information we could want, he designed the Machine for anti-terrorism but it sees everything, he and Reese work together on the so-called irrelevant list, etc. It's also much less about helping other people, this season, and much more about the fact that Finch and Reese have a Mission. I hope you all appreciate the self-restraint it's taking me to keep from making this post nothing but Blues Brothers jokes. Ahem. At any rate, they still have to give Carter and Fusco the hunted by the authorities lines, but the images accompanying them match Finch and Reese's a lot closer, they're more static, less actively hunting or being coerced by the boys, as an indicator of their newfound status within Team Machine.

Our first look at this week's number is a young woman, wealthy, possibly some kind of debutante or other social elite from her body language and wardrobe. Okay then! This should be all kinds of fun for Reese. We begin the case proper with some Machine scans of the city skyline and a phone conversation. One of those ominous ones where someone's going to get dead. None of the voices are familiar to us, so this probably isn't Elias or HR or any of the other usual players, but I'm sure the word choice here is intended to remind us of the micro-to-macro aspects of the show. Loose ends are apparently good for defenestrating? Certainly power-hungry peons are good for defenestrating. Poor random witness. With that, we move along to the library of infinite murderboards, hey Reese, you're in Finch's chair. And remarkably comfortable with what bits of his system Reese has access to in the intervening time. In this instance, he's there because he's working on Root's case, and it's amazing how over the course of a season this has gone from a symbol of Reese fucking with Finch to a symbol of him protecting Finch. Tracing her by the money again, which is about all they ever have to go on, though now at least they have an original name even if she hasn't used it in years. Plus her friend's name. Bear's there too, on a doggie bed, aww!


Saturday, August 17, 2013

Still Life Haven S1E07 Sketchy

Previously on Haven, we met Duke and his issues with Nathan, Audrey and her ability to deal with the Troubles along with Garland's faith in her and hope that she'll have some positive effect on Nathan, Eleanor Carr offering to help her find out about her mother (ha. ha. ha.), our introduction to Jess Minnion, and Duke and Audrey admitting that the Troubles are back before Audrey really knows what that means. You're all hilarious. Today on Haven, we have a rather gloomy marina and an expensive looking boat. Yacht? Thing. You can tell exactly how much we don't know about ships in general, but the general attitude of a cruising yacht for the rich people is borne out by three people who are manning the ship and another four at least who are sitting around on their asses drinking beer and being assholes to the staff. Okay, so mostly just one of them and the others would like to know why the fuck they should trust him with much of anything, including having dragged them out there but especially their money. Wally seems like your standard sort of shitty investor and/or scam artist, trying for people to chip in on equity funds blah blah huge deal blah blah failed once and the other three guys are outta there.


As they leave, we see that they didn't even get out of the harbor, and the "galley wench" comes up with the beers, they ran out of imported. Wally thinks awful highly of himself, doesn't he. And now we see what the Trouble seems to be, as he goes rigid for a second and then starts doing an excellent imitation of a paper doll folded in ways that humans don't normally go. OW, we all say, and AUGH says Vicky the galley wench, although by her shock if she's causing this she's not doing it on purpose. Yeah, no, that's the appropriate response to someone's limbs breaking in multiple places from no visible cause.



Wednesday, August 14, 2013

No Colors Anymore (Person of Interest S2E02 Bad Code)

Rather than the traditional set of previouslies we get a Machine-drive set of video clips involving the situation thus far. It culminates in Reese and Carter going to Texas, and I may be imagining it but there seems to be a slight drawl in his voice when he tells her this. If I'm not, kudos and hilarity to Caviezel, that was actually pretty cute.


Saturday, August 10, 2013

When You Are Real Haven S1E06 Fur

Previously on Haven! We got a crash course on, mainly, the Troubles in Haven and Audrey's unique responses to it, or at least everyone comments that her responses are strange to the point of being unique, and valuable to the people in it. Of course we know that Garland's comment on her approach to Haven is, mm. Because of different things. But we didn't know that when we first saw the episode, and she doesn't know that yet, and the writers are sneaky bastards.


So, tonight on Haven we have what may or may not be a full moon, it's hard to see at that distance and with that cloud cover, but it's at least implied. Night time at the Haven Hunt Club! And someone who's been staying late to lock up, it looks like, coming out to his car. This can't possibly end well. The only question, it being Haven, is in what manner of bad it ends. Which we find out shortly, because the guy has only enough time to get in, adjust his mirror, see the damage done to his rear window, and swear before something eats his face. By the pelt and growling I'm going with wolf, though it could presumably also be a coyote. Welcome to Haven! If the car's a rockin, don't come a knockin and all that.


Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Listen to the Wind (Person of Interest S2E01 The Contingency)

We begin this season, not with the opening credits, but with the Machine's very first day of existence. January 1, 2002, staring at Papa Harold! He runs multiple tests at once, really: voice recognition and language parsing, facial recognition, and whoamI, which while it's the second question asked is an extremely common computing question. Usually done in text, obviously, but its purpose is to do exactly what the Machine spits back out: establish username and permissions. Yes, Finch is admin. No, we're not getting more of a username than that. Fuck you all very much. He looks just like a proud papa, and we zoom out and the Machine begins to acquire more and more data, pausing briefly not quite six months in on Day 161 (June 10, if my math is right) which is the day that Nathan Ingram first learned that the Machine discovers far, far more malicious intent than just terrorists. Pausing again on Day 1135, Nathan and Alicia by the harbor talking about going to prison in 2005, and a final time on Day 3546, or the day Reese and Finch met, followed by remarking on the likelihood of their ending up dead very soon. One last blip of Finch promising Reese that he has a contingency if something ever happens to him, and we finally get Days 3789-91, with the Root case and a quick summary of what happened with that, and when we finally come out of Machine view it's where we left off at the end of last season with Reese demanding the Machine's help to get Finch back. This is mostly not new knowledge - I don't think we'd had the birth of the Machine sequence before, and it frames what this season is all about - but it takes not quite a minute and a half, and it provides (assuming the new viewers have a basic grounding in spy genre and a vague clue what the show is about to start with) an excellent framework for What Came Before. I approve.