Primeval New World 'The Great Escape' Jan 29

And so, P:NW has recovered from its' hiatus slump by bringing us the latest great episode, "The Great Escape", pun intended. If one discounts some minor issues associated with Titanis (more on that below), "The Great Escape" truly great.

First, the conflicts. Evan still hasn't made it up with Ange or Mac. While the situation with Ange is confusing and tense and Evan probably doesn't know how to solve it, honestly, the situation with Mac can probably be resolved with a single heart-to-heart, so if Evan isn't in touch with his feminine side enough to do that, then maybe Dylan has to pick up the slack: Cross Photonics' dinosaur-hunting team is getting ridiculously understaffed.

That is where the military comes in. As it was revealed back in the episode "Angry Birds", Lt. Leeds has sort of doublecrossed the Cross Photonics team by keeping one at the end of the ep, rather than sending it back home, to the Miocene or Pliocene time period. Now, however, it appears that his own superiors have doublecrossed Leeds and cut him out of the loop (see the previous episode for some more of that), and Leeds isn't taking it lying down, as he saves the day at the end of the episode, or at least Evan and Dylan from being captured by the military in the character of major Douglas.

It should be pointed out at this moment that one of the improvements that P:NW has done in comparison to the original series is that it got rid of the rather 2D secondary characters of original "Primeval". Major Douglas isn't a cardboard character akin to captain Wilder from S3 of "Primeval" - instead, he appears to be a decent and a competent military man, who honestly wants to do the right thing - but is willing to do anything to achieve it, no matter what the cost is. This puts him, of course, on a collision course with Leeds, who also wants to do the right thing, but who is always aware of the cost and who just is not as ruthless as his superior officer is. (Determination now Leeds got plenty.)

Right now, of couse, the score is tied: Leeds was captured, but Dylan and Evan got away and the poor Titanis shall not be experimented on live every again - the resolution of this conflict will probably become apparent in the next episodes: there are just three left, so a lot of resolutions are waiting in the wings.

While Lt. Leeds character development dominated the ep, Evan and Dylan continued to bond too. I really do approve of ship Devan, but Evan's MS skills are ridiculous: in "Fear of Flying" he was almost able to rig a plane to fly again, and here he is able to hijack military radio equipment using some rather impromptu tools. Yes, of course, the Thunderdome is the Thunderdome, but still...

That said, both Dylan and Evan had some nice interactions with each other, as they tried to figure where each other's attitudes lie in relation to each other: Evan's save all humans vs. Dylan's animal loving, and it's nice to see Evan getting along with at least one of the women in his life at this point.

Finally, it should be noted that the way "The Great Escape" referred to the previous episodes of the season is clever, giving the audience ample hints as to what this episode will be about - Leggy the Titanis, "Terror Bird", which already appeared in this season.

Sadly, here we come to some of the minor issues of the episode. Firstly, the model for the terror bird has changed again, this time to that used in the episode 4x06 of the original series. Clearly, when it comes to the terror birds, IP has just too many options: WWB (2001), "Prehistoric Park" (2006), "Primeval" (2007-11) and now P:NW (2012-13) each had its own model of the terror bird, so by now the show's producers probably have too many to pick and choose from, and that's what has happened to Leggy here.

To make things even more messed up, the scientific team at IP is not very good with terror birds themselves: not too long ago they thought that Titanis and Phororhacos were one and the same bird. They are not, and now the episode's script writers took to calling it a "dinosaur". Seriously, WTF? Yes, a bird is a dinosaur, but it is also a bird. A terror bird and a stegosaurus, for example, were two different creatures even if they both laid eggs. And it is not like 'a bird' is a mouthful or an obscure scientific term as 'a mammal-like reptile' or 'a therapsid' are, so what gives?

That said, "The Great Escape" was still a very good episode: the plot was tight, the action - also, and Lt. Leeds finally got his long expected character development, so kudos for that. Cannot wait and see what the next week's ep brings us.

Primeval New World 'Breakthrough' Jan 22

And P: NW is back, vigorously, only not so much. With just four (not counting this episode) eps left until the season’s finale, “Breakthrough” has more in common with the pilot episode, rather than the others.

Let us elaborate. The pilot episode of P: NW was a good episode, but it suffered from a jerky, uneven script. “Breakthrough” suffers from the same malaise, though perhaps it is elaborate, for the old team has been broken in the previous episode (“Truth”). The fallout of Evan’s little breakdown is felt even now, for Ange is missing, and Mac is undecided and has an existentialist crisis: how can he be both alive and dead at the same time? Personally, I think that he should unfreeze his dead self and touch it, to see what would happen, but that is not likely to happen.

To make matters worse, as they are hunting for the dinosaur, Evan and Dylan have to content with Evan’s old rival, sheriff Carter from Eureka...I mean Colin Fergusson...I mean Howard Kanan...sorry about that. Eureka was a great show, pity that it ended (albeit on a hook). Anyways, Howard is not only the black sheep of the Carter family, he’s also Sheldon Cooper from “Big Bang Theory”, though older, and without his loyal Leonard to keep himself grounded, after Evan surpassed him in the photonics technology field. Oh well, Sheldon never liked being upstaged by Leonard or anyone else either.

Unlike Sheldon, however, Howard has went one step further and pulled a Helen, by actually going through a time anomaly with a time detector that he had made, admittedly, but still... Considering that before that he lived a hermit in his mansion and now will have to fare for himself in the Cretaceous, dealing not just with tyrannosaurs, but also with the K-T extinction, it is an open question as to whether or not he will make it there or have a nervous breakdown and die. Still, Howard did provide a foil and a personal opponent to Evan Cross, so I’m grateful to him even for that and hope that he will return in a later episode or season (also because those one-episode guest stars are getting annoying). 

Even if Howard does not return, he already has done a lot: Evan has finally started to think about his personal future and whether or not his anti-dinosaur quest is beginning to cost him too much: it already cost him Ange and Evan is naturally reluctant to bring a stranger into the fold into a CFO position as well, while his secret project is fully underway. Cross Photonics is not yet Stark Industries, it seems.

Dylan, meanwhile, tries to make Evan feel better by claiming that he and the rest of his team (herself included) are making the world a better place, by not killing the prehistoric animals but returning them to the past. Sadly, there are problems with her speech.

First, Dylan rambles. It may have been intentional to the plot, but also rather incoherent: a speech about protecting her family’s sheep with barbed wire, but wolves were still caught in it... wha? Evan came into this gig solely to avenge his wife and to prevent anyone else being killed by a dinosaur or any other prehistoric animal, remember? Considering that several times by now he and his team have failed, where and how does the sanctity of life came to playing a role in this?

Mind you, it is a good thing that Evan did not say anything to Dylan about this: the last thing he needs to do is to antagonize another member of his team, with Ange already gone and Mac on the ropes. But honestly? Dylan is rapidly becoming one of my least favorite characters of the show, sadly. Her latest bon mot claiming that as an herbivore the Triceratops is harmless is just adding insult to injury: think rhinoceros, which is one of the world’s deadliest animals; or if the rhinoceros too foreign for Canada, think a moose cow, protecting its calf from any threat, real or supposed, with hooves the size of dining plate and really sharp, eh? But since Dylan, as part of her Predator Control training, usually had to deal with carnivores, she had probably forgotten about this...

The flowers for the Triceratops are really just adding insult to injury: while flowering plants were becoming widespread at the end of the Cretaceous, when this dinosaur did live, they were still nowhere as prominent as in the modern times, so I doubt that the horned dinosaur would have eaten them on a regular basis. But that’s just Dylan for you, and the soldiers picking flowers from various front yards were just an attempt at humor in the current episode, I reckon.

While Dylan had to deal with the military in person of Ken Leeds, Toby also had to deal with the military – in person of his secretary. That woman could be either purposefully obstructive or just obtuse, but either way, she has become a communication obstacle between Leeds and the CP team that Toby will have to deal with in the future. 

Of course, this raises a question as to why would the military initiate a conflict with Evan and CP – so far Evan was relatively co-operative with Leeds and doesn’t appear to hold a particularly anti-military stance, but Leeds’ superior, the unknown and unseen colonel, has taken a dislike to Evan all the same, and Leeds is getting caught in the middle...

Finally, Mac came back to help Toby ‘put the dinosaur back in the box’, quote unquote, so that is good. It is also nice to see him and Toby getting along, since means that the team Moby is progressing smoothly (as does team Devan, but lately I am starting to dislike Dylan a lot, as I said above). The only thing that I feel commenting about is Mac’s disappearance act at the end of the episode: military training or not, how did he vanish in the blink of an eye? Did Helen Cutter give him sneaking lessons or something?

Other than that, however, the Toby-Mac interaction was the smoothest part of “Breakthrough”, anything else was reminiscent of the scene where Dylan is observing the Triceratops with no other person in sight, and suddenly there’s a banging sound, rather like a gunshot, and there’s still no action, no reaction from either Dylan or the dinosaur. Otherwise the scene is great, but that strange sound ruins everything and makes it disjointed.

So is the case with the bigger part of this episode: the dinosaur was excellently done, both in CGI and as a dummy, the music was appropriate to the end by further underlining the tension running throughout this episode, but the plot itself was just too disjointed, especially by the standards of the previous episodes and came short of being great.

Update: Jan 17, 2013

It is almost the middle of winter, so it is time for me to update my blog – I have not done this for a long while now. 

What was going on in my life? Due to some political turbulence, a new construction site has been started and abandoned halfway between my apartment building and a local park, so there was a sudden influx of birds in my neighborhood – nuthatches, woodpeckers, even a juvenile hawk (I think). This was very exciting for me, though not for the local grey squirrels, which have to deal now both with these newcomers and with some new squirrels, mainly red, so the fights between these rodents are more common now.

P: NW, meanwhile, is still on hiatus (it will be returning next week, though, if nothing goes wrong), though watching the marathon back in December on Space was fun, as contrasted to Spike.

Now, Spike is the channel that once hosted shows such as “1000 ways to die”, “CSI”, “Tattoo Artist”, and of course “Deadliest Warrior”. Sadly, most of them (such DW, 1000 and “CSI”) have ended one way or another, a fact that does not stop Spike from showing them over and over again. I am not sure if this TV channel has some issues with Rogers’ cable company, but there is little new material, other than the “Joe Schmo show” and the upcoming Bellator MMA special. Clearly, Spike has problems securing new material lately, which makes me wonder for how much longer it will last.

As for DW and its own issues, well... I like harping on them, and that is not quite fair. For example, take the S3 episode “Indian Ghurkhas vs. French Foreign Legion”. In the original run, it had been released as a double feature with the last episode, “Vampires vs. Zombies”, and was overshadowed by it as well. Now that I could see this on its own, I was more impressed. The weapon testing was fair, the team members’ performance was above average, and the weapons provided were clearly in a good (to put it lightly) condition.

That said, the previous seasons and their episodes, (like “Jesse James vs. Al Capone” ep), did not have such expensive props as the S3 did, and they were still OK. This makes me wonder that DW may have gone bankrupt because of the financial overdraft, as well as the issues with Richard Daly (who was not a Green Beret after all), and the pro-American bias, as evident in American-related S3 episodes, especially the “US Army Rangers vs. NKSOF” episode, Winning the match by 0.5% is a sort of a hair-splitting approach that is not well liked by most audiences.

Still, “Indian Ghurkhas vs. French Foreign Legion” did not have such issues, and as such, I can appreciate it as a good episode in a show that had gone slightly downhill before it died – but it does not explain why all that the Spike is showing are marathons of shows from the past...

The second marathon I watched was on Discovery – that of the “River Monsters” series. Unlike DW, this show has gone for 4 seasons in a row, and a number of specials, so I honestly think that it will go on in the future for at least one or two more seasons.

As far as nature shows goes, RM focuses on Jeremy Wade, the master angler, who goes around the world (mostly to the tropics of Asia, Africa and South America) seeking various monstrous fish of those waters. In the episode “The Mutilator” he went to Papua New Guinea to expose the detrimental effect of the red-bellied pacu (the omnivorous relative of the piranhas) on the local environment. In the episode “Pack of Teeth”, he went to South Africa to prove that the African tigerfish (another relative of the piranhas) were dangerous pack hunters even to humans, let alone to the other fish. And in the episode “Chainsaw Predator” he went to Australia to try to capture the local freshwater sawfish and to see if it was truly dangerous to humans.

In other words, RM is more than just about fishing; it also often addresses various scientific and environmental issues that are connected with fishing, of course, but also to the greater picture of the human encroachment on the environment, you know? Plus, JW tends not to kill its prey, unlike the characters in such shows as “Swamp People”. I do not have anything against “Swamp People”, I just like RM better.

That said, RM did have its share of problem episodes. “Asian Slayer” was downright frustrating, as JW went out and caught nothing, overwhelming his audience with various background animals and native customs instead. “Cold Blooded Horror” had JW mistakenly equalize the giant Japanese salamander with the local water spirit, the kappa, even though kappa’s depictions usually show it as a terrapin-monkey hybrid instead. (It doesn’t even have a remotely salamander-like feature, like an oar-like tail, so WTF?)

Finally, the month of January 2013 showed the premiere of S3 of “Lost Girl”. Basically, it is about a succubus who has discovered her true people (other Fae) in the beginning of S1 and has been struggling to fit-in there ever since. Like so many Showcase shows, “Lost Girl” has a strong mystery genre element as well as a strong element of a gothic romance, as Bo (the succubus) is trying to figure out her relationships with Dr. Lauren (a human) and detective Dyson (a werewolf). When “Lost Girl” does not go over the top with the romance, it is quite fun to watch; when it does, then it’s a soap opera where some of its members tend to sprout new body parts or whatever when they get emotional. For now “Lost Girl” manages to keep the soap under control, so I am enjoying it quite a bit.

(Speaking of soap operas, the squirrels outside are beginning to settle down somewhat – maybe they can learn to get along, unlike, say, Bo and Tamsin, LG’s latest new cast member. But I would not bet on it.)

Conclusion: Spike is having problems, DW had issues but now it became an enjoyable blast from the past, RM still is a fun show, and “Lost Girl” too is fun to watch. Oh, and P: NW is coming back on January 22, 2013, apparently, so life is getting better in the TV land.