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.

Primeval New World 'Truth' Dec 17

Last night's episode had fully compensated for 'Babes' sexual innuendo and then some, not to mention that it had revealed a significant chunk of the show's back story, but let's try and get it in order.

Now, the episode began with the dinosaur Pachycephalosaurus, and though it is a very interesting dinosaur in its own right, its job was just to be an engine for Evan revealing the truth, bits and pieces of it at least, and it just as easily could've been some other animal, prehistoric or futuristic, so we'll talk about it later.

Evan, now, he was the star of this episode and its main problem. Apparently (there was a lull in the action) after the dinosaur had sneezed on him, Evan began to break mentally down: he began to hallucinate, to see the dinosaur that killed his wife (Albertasaurus, the smaller, faster cousin of the T-Rex), his younger and married self alongside with his wife, and also Mac v.2 - roughly in this sequence. Some of the hallucinations, primarily those of the dinosaur, were auditory rather than visionary, so whatever the Pachy had spat on him, it was some potent sh*t!!

Pachy aside, in the episode Evan, or rather Niall Matter, released his inner badass - very impressive acting, you can honestly believe Evan's deteriorating mental condition, as he goes into a quasi-robocop mode, intent on blowing the entire Cross Photonics in order to change the time line and to save Brooke from certain death. This kind of ruthlessness was probably demonstrated only by Helen Cutter, when she intended to prevent humanity from evolving in S3 of the original series. Incidentally, this only reinforces my theory that Helen spent the rest of her screen time after Stephen's death in S2 growing more and more unbalanced - but for her, it took 10 episodes and she was always ambiguous; for Evan, who's the main hero of P:NW, it took about half an hour of screen time: guess the idea about women being tougher (more resilient) than men has some truth in it!

Evan, to make things even more tense, intended to change the future (and to kill himself and the rest of his field team) to make the world a better place, so it was really fortunate that Ange and Dylan managed to stop him before that. Otherwise, things would've changed in the future, but for the worse (or not).

Dylan, now, had less of a personality development than Evan or the rest of the CP team, not counting Lt. Leeds. Then again, considering that this case of personality development has opened new rifts in the CP team as well as re-activated old ones, this may not be so bad: one of the episode's final scenes is Evan admitting to Dylan that on this day he and his secrets have pissed every one of his friends, not counting Dylan herself. Toby, Mac and Ange may or may not jump ship of dinosaur hunters after 'Truth', but Evan will have to make it up to them somehow. A lot. And personal skills, unlike technical, are Evan's weak spot, as such episodes like 'Angry Birds' and 'Babes' have shown, so he and the others will be in a dark place for a while.

And in Mac's case it'll be particularly dark. I'm guessing that in the original time line where he didn't die fighting the dinosaur or at least managed to get back through the time anomaly, he ended up in the British army rather in Cross Photonics, and may've eventually replaced captain Becker as the head of the original ARC's security detail, or at least became a part of it. In this time line, Evan Cross intervened and Mac came to Canada, BC, and became a firearms expert instead. This, of course, probably caused more ripples in the timeline, but in Mac's case, he's most likely experiencing a case of 'what-might've-been', where he became a British dinosaur hunter and got killed at approximately the same age that he currently is. (It's kind of dicey, given that the mannequin stand-in for Mac v.2 looks exactly like what it's supposed to be - a mannequin.)

And why am I thinking this? Because the end of the very first episode of P:NW had Evan stare at the frozen corpse of who we now know to be Mac v.2 - and his uniform had an ARC logo on it. But that is something that will probably be developed more (or gotten rid off altogether) in the next episodes of P:NW.

Anyways, Mac now knows that Evan knew him before they met, sort of, and Mac isn't the sort of man to deal with unpleasant surprises easily: for him (and for many other people) springing this sort of a surprise is a definite breach of trust, and unlike Toby, he may quit CP, though it's anyone's idea where he'll go from there.

Toby, of course, will be with Mac all the way, seeing how she has rescued him from the freezer room. She may be gay or bisexual or whatever, but she now clearly counts Mac as important and close enough to save from a certain death. For a woman who's not the most trigger-happy or outdoors-savvy (that's Dylan), she can certainly think and act fast, especially if there's Evan losing his marbles and packing serious heat in the same room.

Basically, like Dylan, Toby didn't develop too much if compared to Evan or Mac in this episode. In this instance, she's the lesser half of the ship 'Moby", just as Dylan's the lesser half of ship 'Dyvan', now that the ship 'Evange' has sunk - Ange told Dylan when the gas dispersed and Evan was out cold, that she's leaving CP again.

Then again, though, even at the beginning of the episode Ange didn't appear all that keen to have a 'ship with Evan, nor did she go with him, Dylan and Mac to capture the latest time-displaced animal - guess that the woodland outing in 'Babes' provided her with enough field experience to decide that she doesn't like it. That said, she was clearly hurt (emotionally, not physically) to realize that Evan still cared for Brooke more than for her; maybe not as sharply as Emma Frost, when she realized that Scott will love Jean, first and foremost, when Jean 'the Phoenix' Grey disappeared (due to various Marvel comics time lines let's leave it at that), but still. No woman really likes to hear that she has a more favored rival, and to Ange Brooke was that rival, maybe even when she was alive (what was the relationship between the two women? Maybe we'll learn in the next episodes, who knows?).

Of course, if Ange really does leave CP, does that mean that she'll go and work for Sung (or whoever) instead? More importantly, will she stay on the show? I think that yes, she will, but I also think that this issue - will or will not Ange remain working for CP as a CFO - should be resolved quickly, rather than drag it for the rest of the S1.

Finally, there's Lt. Leeds, and I have to admit that in his case, his character appears to be developing into a more secondary character than the rest of the cast: he probably has the least amount of screen time, right alongside Ange and Toby, but even Ange and Toby had more screen time than Ken Leeds recently, and I don't really like it. Unlike 'Fear of Flying', 'Truth' showed that Leeds can stand up to Evan, at least from time to time, and to get him out of trouble too, especially legal-wise, as this episode has shown. So, maybe the good RCAF lieutenant will have his day...

Finally, the dinosaur. Well, the dinosaurs, but Albertosaurus appeared here only in flashbacks and hallucinations, so let's talk about the Pachy instead. It's a neat dinosaur, not quite belonging to any established group, save for that of its own, the Pachycephalosauria. It has several species, but at least two of them, Stygimoloch and Dracorex (featured on the original series from S3 onwards) may be Pachy's juvenile specimens, and the same situation may be with other species of pachycephalosaurids as well.

In addition, Pachycephalosaurus is a very unusual plant-eater - it may've been one of the biggest omnivorous dinosaurs (rather like the modern wild pigs than the deer or the antelopes) of its time. Considering that most of the dinosaurs can be classified as herbivores or carnivores easily enough, the Pachy's omnivory can be considered to be quite unusual.

Finally, in this episode of P:NW, the dinosaur's 'role' was strongly influenced by the 'Jurassic Park' movies franchise. It rammed the car - just as it did in 'Lost World', (where it appeared on screen for the first time) and its sneeze that launched the real conflict of the episode easily reminds of the even bigger sneeze in the first 'Jurassic Park' movie.

Thus, 'Truth' had a lot of tense, personal drama & action, had important character development in several, if not all, primary characters, and a very interesting dinosaur for a cameo, but no sexual innuendo and little humor. Ah well, you cannot have everything.

PS: This week's P:NW video featurette has plenty of humor, if you want it after watching the ep.

Moment of silence

Today (Dec 14, 2012) a terrible tragedy has occurred in the tiny town in Connecticut: around 26 people, most of whom were children around a kindergartener's age, were killed by some lone nutcase of a douche-bag. Let' honor their memory with a moment of silence.

P:NW 'Babes in the Woods' Dec 10

This episode introduced a new character: Natalie, one of Toby's friends from her modelling days. That's right, Toby the computer geek/girl genius used to be a burlesque model in her college days. She was, or is, also gay, a new character development, when compared to IP's previous shows.

When compared to Samantha, the deceased girlfriend of Mac, Natalie appears to be more intrigued by the time anomalies; where Sam, in "Fear of Flying", was okay in staying away from the big glowing time portal, Natalie was ready to touch the time anomaly and maybe even to go through. Considering that in the original show people that went through the time anomalies usually were the villains of the show, this does not promise anything good in regards to Natalie's moral character. (Of course, just like Sam, she may end up eaten by the next dinosaur, mammal-like reptile or some other creature that comes through the time anomaly, but still...)

Natalie is also one of the titular 'babes', and she is also quite eager to resume her relationship with Toby, at least at the end of the episode. Mac, who probably will end up Toby's boyfriend, doesn't mind, but I think that he has his own issues to worry about. In "Undone", as you remember, his own girlfriend got eaten by the Lycaenops (which is most definitely not a dinosaur, no more so than a monkey is), and he spent at least two-thirds of the next episode "Clean up..." getting over it; he was morose, taciturn, and clearly unhappy with the way Evan was handling the dinosaurs and co. Now, he is cracking jokes, is busy downloading model pics off the internet and is generally acting nonchalant. Just how much time has passed for him to get over Sam at last? Or is he going to another extreme of dealing with his loss - trying to overcompensate? Honestly, if the latter is the case, I'm not impressed with Mac's behavior at all - he should go and have therapy instead.

For Toby's part, she wasn't particularly happy with Mac's behavior either: meeting Natalie and the rest of the girls has clearly opened some old wounds and memories for her, her CP partner (they and Natalie got separated from the others in this episode) acted like a horny college student most of the time (when he didn't try to take on a brown bear with a taser), there was a sense of a love triangle in the air, and there were man-eating dinosaurs out and about. Oh, and Evan acted like a jerk, again.

Evan, for most of his part, is a good man and a good team leader, but occasionally he comes off too abrupt: he was so with Ange and Dylan in the beginning of "Angry Birds", and here with Toby. Yes, it's obviously good that Evan has no problems with Toby's modelling past, but did he have to be so direct and unemotional? "Yes, Toby, you were a model but we don't care. Now let's get going and deal with the time anomaly." Nice personal skills, Mr. Leader!

On the other hand, Evan appeared to have no problems in dealing with Ange: after the events in the last episode, she did decide to stay...and to actually see for herself, what was the excitement in catching dinosaurs and similar beasties. This, of course, put her into a confrontation path with Dylan, who sees herself as Evan's girl Friday in such outdoors outings and doesn't see what Ange is bringing along for such a ride? Plus Dylan's got the bigger taser of the two.

To make matters worse, Evan appears to be thinking about moving on from his wife's death - he left his wedding ring behind when they drove to this mission, and I doubt that he was worried about losing it in the great outdoors; he certainly didn't in "Sisiqutl". And since he had a history with Ange (well, a much longer history with Ange than with Dylan), I'm guessing that he's thinking about her first. He's thinking about Dylan too, he certainly helped her with the dislocated arm, but as a guy I doubt that he fully understands that he's setting himself up for a love triangle, and as Dylan's behavior indicates at the end of the ep, she doesn't really want to play Betty to Ange's Veronica (or Veronica to Ange's Betty? Who was the dominant girl in Archies?), so the next episode should be really awkward to her and Ange and Evan.

Ange, I should add, while she does hold her own against a dinosaur at the end, but somehow I doubt that she'll have the same enthusiasm for dinosaur hunting as Evan, Dylan or Ken Leeds have, so I am not quite sure if she'll go to the great outdoors next time, or any time soon. It is also interesting what Ken will think about the new shift in the relationship between Ange and Evan, especially since last time, on their not-a-date, he asked Ange if she wanted to be his instead. Sigh. The next episodes may have some manly posturings between Ken and Evan with Mac egging them on due to his new mindset (and he may be still angry with Evan).

Finally, the creatures from the episode. The dinosaurs were based on the Ornitholestes model from Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), just with a completely different coloration. It isn't fully established yet if they had feathers or protofeathers on their bodies, but they did lack nasal horns: the initial specimen that was used as a basis for the WWD model had broken nasal bones instead. Considering that over a decade had passed since the release of WWD, IP people could've gotten this straight and created hornless Ornitholestes instead. Of course, maybe it was some other dinosaur, Proceratosaurus, for example, but the model was certainly that of Ornitholestes from WWD.

And then there was the grizzly bear that Mac and the girls encountered in the woods. Got to admit that was a nice touch, but the bear wasn't CGI'd - it was image imposed. I don't have a problem with that, a fully grown grizzly can weigh 200 kg (males even more), be 2 m long, over 1 m tall in the shoulder and are armed with teeth and claws much bigger than those of a lion or a tiger - and it is not an animal that is easily trained to work with people either. Obviously the staff of P:NW had no intention of working with a live grizzly on the set... but did they have to superimpose its image so poorly. Last time I saw such a poor job was on a Disney show "Suite Life of Deck", but that was a children show, so it doesn't count.

So: interesting plot twists, an intriguing new character (if she doesn't get eaten by the next dinosaur that comes to Vancouver), amazing outdoor location, great acting (as always), and decent animals as well. A good episode, better than its predecessor too.

Primeval New World "Clean up on Aisle Three" Dec 3

Last night's episode, "Clean up..." was a very good episode, but it just wasn't up to the standards of the previous episodes. Regrettably, it is the fault of the dinosaurs, but we get more about it later.

The actors, for their part, did a good job of following the script, which made a nice transaction from "Undone". As I said before, deaths of Samantha and her partner created a rift in the CP team, and by now it hasn't fully healed yet. Mac, in particular, has attitude problems towards Evan and his "do not kill dinosaurs" rule, but he manages to come through at the end of this episode by not killing the dinosaur he set out to capture. Sadly, because the dinosaur was rather ridiculous and unrealistic, this action was rather undercut, and the broken door to the dressing room didn't help matters either. Mac's big moment was diminished.

On the other hand, Evan and Dylan continue to develop their relationship, which is much smoother than any seen on the original "Primeval". Sure, they are taking it slow (Dylan even had a part-time boyfriend before the beginning of this episode), but considering that in the original series many relationships just went nowhere, this is quite acceptable. This is only the first season, the good ship D/E will have many opportunities to sink or swim in the future.

As will the good ship A/K. If Mac appears to have somewhat recovered after the gorgonopsian episode in "Undone", and will remain on the CP team, Ange has had enough. She never particularly cared about the dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles and so on, and she isn't submissive enough to go with Evan's flow, so she's leaving CP. Of course, after a talk with Dylan, Evan is trying to salvage his relationship with Ange, friendly and professional, with some Chinese take-out, but this is an IP show we're talking about, so Ange just may up and leave in the next episode and we'll never see her again, and the show will continue with someone named officer Allison Merryweather in the future without being diminished at all: the original "Primeval" had replaced characters throughout its entire course, and "Sinbad" (2012) had replaced its leading lady from Nala (Estella Daniels) to Tiger (Tuppence Middleton) without any detriment to her script.

Character-wise, of course, Ange is unlikely to quit the show, as her "not-a-relationship" with Ken Leeds demonstrates in this episode. It also reveals more insights into Ken's darker side: just like Evan, he had been in a leadership position where people have died, and we still don't know what he did with the juvenile terror bird from "Angry Birds".

And this brings us to the dinosaurs. Officially they're daemonosaurus, basal meat-eating dinosaurs from the late Triassic. In reality, with their chimpanzee-like intelligence, wolf-like social organization and piranha-like teeth, they're just as unrealistic as the beetles from "Fear of Flying". Yes, there were probably intelligent, social, meat-eating dinosaurs in the Mesozoic, but they lived in the Cretaceous, not in the Triassic. The Triassic dinosaur carnivores (like Coelophysis) probably weren't social, they were cannibals. Social hunters generally aren't cannibals; sure, they kill each other and their young, but they do not eat them, just make a point. Solitary carnivores, - i.e. weasels, ferrets, stoats, tigers - do. As a last resort in lean times, but they do, and so did the Triassic carnivorous dinosaurs. Thus, I doubt that they were social.

And I also doubt that they were particularly intelligent. Until the end of the Triassic, the scene was dominated by dicynodonts (Lystrosaurus, Placerias) and by basal archosaurs, called raisuchians (Postosuchus, Saurosuchus) that were big, but much smaller than such dinosaurs as Plateosaurus. Daemonosaurus simply didn't need to be smarter than an average squirrel: it would probably survive anyways.

So: good script, good acting, but completely unrealistic dinosaurs. I seriously hope that the future episodes of P:NW will avoid this mistake.