But I Wanna Esplode! Helix 1x03 274

Previously on Helix! An unknown mutation zombie disease, going with most of the zombie/slash/outbreak tropes so far, including the one where anyone who says "People have to know what's going on up here" dies. So that's cheerful!

No jaunty music when we come back from the very brief previouslies, and mostly they're brief because the first two episodes were fairly concise and general to establishing setting, tone, and characters. Very minimalist, to go with the first couple of shots of water dripping from the tap. Very serene, in a way, water dripping is often used to indicate serenity, except it also serves to contrast Julia's experience a moment ago which was anything but. Julia's unconscious on the floor, as it turns out, or semi-conscious when Alan gets to her. She claims she passed out while taking a shower for standard decontamination procedures, and from her behavior it's hard to say whether or not she consciously is putting it out of her mind, unconsciously blocking it because it was traumatic, or lying through her teeth because it was traumatic and she doesn't want to think about the possibility of having been exposed to the black goo of doom. We do get very rapid cut flashbacks,  but that could still be subconscious mind. In any case, Alan will walk her back to her quarters because it's not safe to be out there alone. He's not wrong, either.

The Librarians S01E02 ...And the Sword in the Stone

There will not be finishing off the Librarian with your henchthugs; there will be an Eve Baird slamming heads together until they drop. Literally! Giving rise to look, if you want something done right, fucking do it yourself. Isn't that ON the Evil Overlord list? If not it should be, and lord knows Lamia should be plotting what she'll do if Dulacque shows signs of weakness. I am just saying. This is only sensible. Jake and Ezekiel pelt on up to stare in horror, Eve is all LOOK YOU MORON I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR MAGICAL WOUND I WILL TREAT THE SYMPTOMS. Which at least gets Flynn to move his ass over to another artifact that'll delay death. Good! We like delaying death, especially when the entire Library looks like it's about to Do Something Bad. Besides get raided. So, yes, the magical healing oil of Bathsheba, which I'll let you look up the stories about her, but suffice it to say I totally would believe in that kind of an artifact. One of the more obviously named artifacts so we can all gloss over it and move onto the important part, which is hey guys, we don't need to find Cassandra, she kinda betrayed us. Okay, um, what about the still-oozing wound? Charlene will help! Honey, Charlene's busy trying to help save the Library itself, she wasn't counting on you getting stabbed by Cal, this is why you have a Guardian. Moron. Corridor of Doors! Deep in the Library! Go, all of you. Yes? Yes.

So Very Alive And Full Of Goo Helix 1x02 Vector

Day 2 of zombie outbreak hell starts with interviews with the people locked in the room with Vector!Peter. Apparently he held them down and vomited black bile into their mouths. Ew. And worse than that, there are three more who ran after the attack. Peter's behavior suggests that the goal may not necessarily be something conscious (things are of course happening that we'll find out about later) but a drive by the virus to spread itself in this case by bodily fluid contact, and again I say Ew. Buuuut I'm also getting ahead of myself.

So Very Alive And Full Of Goo Helix 1x02 Vector

Day 2 of zombie outbreak hell starts with interviews with the people locked in the room with Vector!Peter. Apparently he held them down and vomited black bile into their mouths. Ew. And worse than that, there are three more who ran after the attack. Peter's behavior suggests that the goal may not necessarily be something conscious (things are of course happening that we'll find out about later) but a drive by the virus to spread itself in this case by bodily fluid contact, and again I say Ew. Buuuut I'm also getting ahead of myself.

The Librarians S1E01 ...And The Crown of King Arthur

We open in Berlin, to much swearing, because oh FUCK YOU GUYS that's the same fucking alley between sound stages you used in fucking Leverage for the SAME FUCKING CITY. If you're having crossover problems now, join the club and pull up a comfy chair, 'cause we're gonna be here awhile. (Worse, I'm pretty sure I know the exact area of Portland that is, because it looks awfully similar to Grimm's sound stages.) Rather than a librarian in the shape of Noah Wyle (yes, I've seen the movies, there will be references, I recommend watching them for the sheer camp value if nothing else, though you don't need it for the backstory here), we have anxious law enforcement raid music! And a group of people in full raid gear with a blonde woman leading the way. Hi, Eve! I'll just say here that absolutely the only reason she doesn't have a helmet on is because the camera needs to identify her somehow, and while some people miiiight be able to look at body type and the way she moves and say, oh, that's a woman and the rest of them are men and she's taking point so she's the leader, that's not something you generally bank on in the first thirty seconds of your pilot. I deeply appreciate that that IS the only way to ID Eve, too. Well, that and the fact that all her team has assault weapons and she's got a handgun. But again: this is not actually a procedural law enforcement show, and given the audience likely to be watching Librarians you don't want to rely on everyone's knowledge of the visual tropes. Which is interesting, because the entire directing style is very deliberately similar to typical procedural while Eve's the only main character onscreen. Apparently they have a WMD in the giant warehouse! Oh what great fun. And all of Col. Baird's men, with the exception of the guy I'm pretty sure is the new guy, are utterly loyal to her and do not need more than the basic verbal commands. And she has utter faith in them, given that she knows exactly how long it should take the other guys to get into position out of her line of sight. Like. This is such delightful competence porn.

No GIR That's Bad Helix - 1x01 Pilot

So, we open with whiteness, because that's not an overarching motif or anything, the whiteness that swallows everything. It's two days before The Event. And then we have some zombie horror staple, people in clean suits walking down a corridor while a computer says very loudly over the very loud machine humming, Contamination! Contamination! Yes, we get it, computer, we get it, shut up. This is why all alarms of this type should come with an Okay-We-All-Know-Noise-Off switch. This is intercut with flashes of Peter all black-bloodied up, I'm having fond memories of X-Files and the oil slick of doom. Different corridor! The flashbacks become more clear, Peter was running, dragged into this room, and now we have something that's going to become a staple of Helix as we know it, the juxtaposition of jaunty pleasant music and horror. We have a horrific scene playing out mute before our eyes, but when I say mute I mean very little sound is coming from the scene itself especially when compared to the machine humming and the loudass Glados knockoff a second or three ago, but rather the sounds are coming from the jaunty fun soundtrack playing over the background. I've got a pair of brand new roller-skates, do you know the way to San Jose, etc. Though only one of those will become a set of arc words. Well, I'm unnerved, as no doubt they meant me to be, how about you?

Age of State of the Blog

Those of you following me on Twitter may have noticed a recent downtick in activity, especially of the sort that talks about blogging at all. Some of you may have noticed the broken arm and the subsequent WOW I AM HIGH ON VICODIN tweets.

(We're not talking about how much of February I may not remember clearly.)

So! I know we promised to start posting eps around this point for Helix and Librarians, and Kitty is just about ready with her first two eps (I believe she's just got to pull screencaps), but I am... behind. Very, very behind. On the plus side, I have a plan of attack and expect to be able to post ONE ep around March 25th; on the minus side, I actually do have a bunch of stuff I'm trying to catch up with all at once. But I can type and think clearly now, which is a nice change from basically all of February, and I should hopefully be at a point where I can work down a few minutes of an ep most days, more on the weekends.


The story, for those who want it, is that I slipped on ice that'd gotten snowed on while I was in for my fiddle lesson the beginning of February, and while I managed not to land ON the fiddle case (and indeed it wasn't even out of tune), I broke my arm. In two places. And had THE WORST urgent care experience of my LIFE, up to and including failure to take X-rays of my wrist that would have told them about the bone chip. Because I am me and have epic skills, I did this just exactly enough to require Vicodin, a sling, and perpetual ice, and not enough that I needed a cast or surgery. I know. I was impressed too. I'm coming up on six weeks out from it, though, and I've been improving pretty damn rapidly. Those of you who've been around awhile know that this means I'm going to inevitably push, but I will try not to fall flat on my face when it comes to blogging. Or, you know. Fall on my wrist. Again.

The State of the Blog Awakens

As promised, the state of the blog post-Haven, post-holidays, and post-sleeping like we're teaching ourselves to hibernate.

What we're never doing again: That. We are never, ever working to weekly deadline again. It was fun while it lasted, but we're frankly not getting any younger, and we're rapidly becoming the sort of stodgy 30-somethings who want our weekends back for housework. And TV marathons. And sleep. Shut up. Besides, we want to try to bring you better quality analysis, including a lot of the technical aspects that we know we let drop in recent posts in an effort to ensure everything got out on time.

What we'll be replacing live +24-blogging with: Anna is going to start up with The Librarians s1 & s2; Kitty will tackle Helix which has a limited run of two seasons. We'll aim to alternate weeks starting the middle to end of March, after we build up some backlog, so that we have time to continue writing at a reasonably leisurely pace.

The other great thing about this is that we're going to post during any currently-running show's hiatus, which will allow us to evaluate each ep in light of the larger whole of each season. With the move toward a significantly more serialized form of storytelling on TV, this is honestly the best way to continue giving you recaplyses without second-guessing every single week's developments. Sometimes this is fun! A lot of the time it leads to disappointment.

As a result, we're also considering branching out some: we've had at least one request for Jessica Jones, which will have to wait for us to finish watching before we make a decision yea or nay. (Hopefully this week/end!) There's a couple other shows we might do, but frankly we think you'll have plenty to keep you busy reading from now until the next time our lineup changes.