Reverie, 'Black Mandala' - July 19

‘Reverie’ continues to make good with its’ episodes; this week’s episode, ‘Black Mandala’, shows the core characters’ team…continuing to act as, well, a team, in saving a Syrian refugee from an experimental interlocution scheme in the reverie, so yay for them!

…On one hand, this is unquestionably good: the relationship between TV and real life is too often too strained… or else we’re talking about the U.S. politics for the last few years, where everything is simply insane to a point where Thanos from MCU appears as a moderate Republican and a philosopher as well, so again, congratulations to ‘Reverie’ both for dealing with real life and with not plundering plot ideas from AoS for a change too. On the other hand, having read Arundhati Roy’s novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’, where one of the characters – S. Tilottama – is a daughter of a Syrian Christian refugee herself, I guess I became more inured to the Syrian plight.

Let me elaborate some more. Just like ‘The God of Small Things’, ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ is a truly masterful novel, yet I found myself disagreeing with the author: she set up S. Tilottama and Musa Yeswi as some of the more positive characters of her second novel, setting them up against Tilottama’s other suitors as well as major Amrik Singh, who are much more the villains here, especially Amrik Singh. That may be so, but I found Musa and especially Tilottama to be more righteous than one can digest and possibly the author tried to set them up to be more likable than they deserved; it probably didn’t work, for while the literary critics did sing Arundhati Roy her well-deserved accolades, the readers weren’t in an great hurry to spread the fame of her novel, (I acquired my copy on a sale in a Drug Mart), but perhaps we’ve digressed?

Well, yes, we have. My point is that for as long as I have watched the ‘Black Mandala’ episode – from beginning to end – I was constantly being reminded of the above-mentioned novel and S. Tilottama and Musa Yeswi. I just did not like those characters; major Amrik Singh was undoubtedly a villain, but somehow I just could not picture Tilottama (Tilo) and Yeswi as heroes. Maybe they were anti-heroes of some sort, but otherwise? Where does ‘Reverie’ fit into it?

Nowhere. ‘Black Mandala’ was a wonderful episode, very dramatic, directed very well, (though what was Mara wearing on her date with her not-so-ex ex-boyfriend? It just looked bizarre), but also? Forgettable, and that is possibly the main problem of ‘Reverie’ – people just do not care about it very much. AoS – or rather, its characters – had similar problems, especially by S5: while Kasius and Sinara – a pair of alien villains – actually do have some fans, Deke Shaw, who was or wasn’t Daisy’s love interest in S5 doesn’t, and in fact seems to have become largely forgotten by now. Daisy is being paired with anyone else, really, other than him: like John Garrett, and Daniel Whitehall, and Sunil Bakshi, Deke was forgotten. The problem is that he is certainly not a villain, and in fact might be S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new rookie, but the viewers do not care, and so, Deke Shaw might as well have not existed in AoS’ S5. Of course, if his role had been better defined on the show things might have been different, but they are not and so he is gone.

By contrast, ‘Reverie’ runs a might tighter ship with its plot, cast, and budget – not only its CGI are tightly controlled and dosed out in appropriate doses, the number of characters per each episode is quite small too – there’s the main cast, (including one Monica Shaw, who comes and goes on the set as the plot requires it), and there are the clients of each case/episode, who need Mara’s aid in getting out of the reverie for whatever reasons. Not too bad, but ‘Reverie’ needs more recurring characters as well.

Look back at AoS; part of its’ initial success were its recurring villains…or rather, a villain – Grant Ward, (and Kara Palamas, for some time). This allowed AoS to build a bigger plot arc for its’ seasons and be a better, more developed show…at least in theory. In practice, it was something else, but even so, each later season would usually have its big bad – Alveus, AIDA/Madame Hydra, even Graviton and his alien space ninja minions…it worked. ‘Reverie’ does not have anything like that…for all that it got right in its’ script, it still has some flaws to work out, and a lack of a greater plot arc is one of them.

…Oh wait, Mara is going to have some sort of a breakdown the next episode and be the one who will need help rather than the one to help. Never mind, maybe we can have Oliver return in this episode – 1x08 – and be behind it. Otherwise, this is just a variant of the same old story, save that by this week’s episode Mara seems to have put her friendship with Paul on hold and got back with her ex ex-boyfriend instead, so there’ll probably be more conflict in 1x08 as well. How exciting. Not.

‘Reverie’ got most, if not all, parts of a winning formula right. It just got them in too small a quantity, it seems. We will just have to hope that it does not get cancelled post-S1, as APB did. Until then, however – see you all soon!