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jasonc

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  1. jasonc
    This isn't specific to Toronto. They do these pop-ups all over the world and have a guy whose job it is to arrange them!!
  2. jasonc
    this thread is becoming an ode to the naturalistic fallacy.
  3. jasonc
    I fucking love when you go on these writing binges Don. There's not a DC-area writer who more honestly and earnestly captures the experience of dining at a particular restaurant.
  4. jasonc
    A movie directed by a widely-respected cult director about a bunch of comic book heroes no one has ever heard of just broke a bunch of box office records. The reviews have been nearly universally positive. It has inspired a bunch of articles about how this is possible and what it means (e.g., this & this). Anyone here seen it?
  5. jasonc
    And Otto Porter is lighting the world on fire? It was a historically weak draft class and the book isn't closed on Bennett. It takes many guys longer to adjust to the pro game. Look at Kyle Lowry - he JUST figured it out.
  6. jasonc
    A lot of guys struggle their first year, Don! For a great rundown on the pros and cons of trading a package containing Wiggins for Love, see this. I'm in the camp of trading of Wiggins, for reasons similar to Sharp's.
  7. jasonc
    Deep Space Nine (DS9) follows TNG in the Star Trek television franchise, and precedes Voyager and Enterprise (which is in fact a prequel). You might say that the DS9-era represented the high water mark of the franchise, as TNG had proved both a financial and critical success, and the associated films were chugging along nicely. In terms of story, DS9 was deeply impacted by both the Battle of Wolf-359 and the Cardassian Wars. The show's lead character, Benjamin Sisko lost his wife at Wolf-359, an event that haunts him throughout the series. And the eponymous space station's position as a former Cardassian stronghold and subsequent strategic location near a wormhole to the gamma quadrant provides much plot fodder. I think DS9 is largely seen as quite successful, with many fans preferring the later episodes to the earlier ones. About ten years ago I bought season one on DVD and wasn't that impressed with the first ten episodes, but I'm ready to give it a second chance. I'd be interested in running through each episode much like Don did with TNG, but more towards the style I used in the Spooks forum. Please let me know if you are interested. I like using letter grades, along with a quick synopsis and analysis. But I'm flexible on the exact system used. I do think some rating mechanism is useful though. This is a point of contention between me and Don, but I'm hoping we can work something out. My position is that some sort of empirical score, while somewhat artificial, is still quite useful to quickly discern a general difference or similarity of opinion between us. You could read two analyses and still not be quite sure.
  8. jasonc
    I wrote above: So, no. It never really gets much better on a consistent basis.
  9. jasonc
    Season one was probably my favorite cast they rolled out. This was before they started becoming interchangeable.
  10. jasonc
    then why am i getting chinese beauties too??!?! ...nevermind
  11. jasonc
    Writer: Brackley & Vincent (with Anthony Neilson joining for the fifth episode) Season 10: Episode 5 & 6 Grade: B I did it! I finished Spooks. It's been an interesting journey. I started this in the midst of the worst winter Toronto has seen in years and a bit of a dark period personally. Now it's 80 degrees and humid outside and I'm feeling pretty good about life. As I enter my mid-30s I'm starting to realize that hurts last a lot longer than they used to. Anyhow, back to Spooks. I'll take these together since the last two are one story, focusing on the Russia/CIA plot. The story: So as we left off, the Spooks had determined that the CIA was secretly running the Russian's wife, trying to derail the talks between the UK and Russia. At the beginning of episode five, Harry decides to kidnap the top CIA guy in London (a deputy director, if that means anything to you - IT SHOULD!) Under some enhanced interrogation techniques, the CIA agent refuses to give anything up. Ruth, who is now working directly for the Home Secretary, gives up the location of the interrogation and some CIA agents come to get their man back and chastise the Spooks. Well they cart off the old deputy director and not long after the REAL CIA shows up and everyone freaks out because Mr. CIA has been kidnapped and it seems like he was just a red herring. Well they manage to get him back but he dies telling them to find his laptop. Harry is given over to the CIA because he unlawfully kidnapped one of their men. In the meantime, the Spooks hatch a plan to get the laptop using Ruth's new diplomatic access, and to rescue Harry. They manage to do both and find out the FSB agent isn't actually Harry's son. None of that really matters because the Russian woman calls them up and says there's a bomb going off in London soon and she needs their help to stop it. You see, she's actually been behind this whole thing as plot of a shadowy old KGB sect that does not want to see the new regime ally with the UK. But this bomb is too far and now the woman wants to help. She does, but is killed by her husband (she betrayed him too). The son is distraught and kills Ruth for reasons I didn't quite grasp. Harry is distraught because the love of his life is dead. The series ends with Harry back at his job as the machine keeps on turning. The analysis: What to say? This was perfectly competent storytelling if not elevated story-telling. In theory, going up against a shadowy KGB cabal and the friggin American government is a pretty cool way to go out, but in never really came together. Extracting Harry from the CIA and stealing the laptop was shockingly easy. I expected more of a Mission Impossible-like scheme. Like I said about the beginning (as Rocks recently reminded me), it's fine. The production values are high. The acting is competent. The pacing and dialogue are effective. It's just not great and I guess during the television renaissance of the past decade, I have pretty high standards. My biggest beef of the episode was the Tom Quinn cameo. I was looking forward to this for the past seven seasons since he was written off the show. While he was on, he was my favorite character. Something about this handsome, sensitive guy who wanted to do right so badly but was beat down so many times just called to me. And when he seemingly exited the show I googled him and saw he made a cameo in the final episode. To be honest, it kind of kept me going to the end. It turns out it was a cameo and nothing more than that. At the end we hear that Harry has dispatched private contractor to kill the KGB cabal. We see someone ring their door, pan up and it's Tom Quinn. And that's it. I guess the message is that even when you are out, the service has still changed you. Tom Quinn lost that battle. He left for ideological reasons and still became what he despised - a cold blooded killer for hire. We've seen MI-5 ruin its agents lives, but maybe it's not the service but the people that get into it. There are a lot of messages we could glean from this final scene. But it just reminded me of the show's greatest failing. It's a show that never shied from killing off main characters. Listen, Joss Whedon is one of my favorite writers. Not TV writers, but writers. He's a genius. One of his classic characteristics is killing off main characters. The writers were surely drawing upon Whedon in episode 1 of season 1 in which a character we thought would be one of the main cast was killed. Whedon did this in episode 1 of Buffy, even intending to put that character in the opening credits to really fuck with the audience. But with Spooks, with only a few exceptions, we never really give a shit when a main character dies because we don't really know them. Zaf and Tariq died in recent episodes and it felt like a formality. You know, maybe that's the point. MI-5 is a machine no one can escape, even when you think you're out. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
  12. jasonc
    Don: I've never seen 24 - but that certainly sounds plausible if not probable (especially given Spooks started a year later). And I was using the definition "an organizing theme or concept" when using conceit. I try not to use the least likely definition of a word, but Michael Pollan, who I read frequently, loves to use conceit this way and it rubbed off. Chin
  13. jasonc
    Depends on if you like fantasy. If you do, this is the best fantasy TV probably ever. And generally one of the top 10 shows of the past decade.
  14. jasonc
    ...well at least you know i didn't cheat. shit.
  15. jasonc
    North: Michigan East: Florida South: California West: Washington
  16. jasonc
    Writer: Sean Cook Season 10: Episode 4 Grade: D Well, that was uncomfortable. In never thought I'd say it, but this episode left me missing Brackley and Vincent, who while certainly not great writers, manage to put together competent episodes of TV. This one was just awful from top to bottom. This episode grafted something like the tenth Islamic terrorist bombing story onto the already streched thin overarching CIA/Russia plot line. With regard to the latter, we are now pretty confident that the CIA is involved in killing an MI-5 agent, attempting to kill a Russian diplomat and his MI-5 asset wife, and generally betraying a personal trust with Harry that's lasted decades. That last bit is a minor annoyance of mine, as we've seen over and over that old allies and enemies of Harry's pop up from time to time. This is generally consistent with his character as you'd expect an old school spy to have met a lot of people over the years. But when these people are dropped into the middle of a TV season, it feels like a contrivance. I much prefer shows like Breaking Bad which called back characters that had been established earlier in the series. But really, that's just the tip of the iceberg with this season. This episode felt like an operation in amateurish TV writing. The first scene featured Erin spending a perfect moment with her family. As it ended I muttered to myself, "well, she's dying in this episode." And I wasn't far off. The cookie-cutter terrorist bombing plot was just like so many other - there was a bombing planned that MI-5 was trying to stop by using an Al Qaeda mole. In return for his help, the spooks promised to help his daughter immigrate to England. Once again, it just felt like a distraction from the Russia plot. And worse, everything in this episode was sloppy. Besides the aforementioned overt foreshadowing, the pacing was confounding. For instance, Harry hatched a plan to see if the CIA was really involved that should have taken days to work, yet the very next scene was the resolution of this plan. A bad guy walked through a warehouse and two (John Woo) white doves flew off. I rolled my eyes. Two characters spoke on a park bench at at the peak of the conversation a group of pigeons blasted off around them. I rolled my eyes again. Fortunately there are only two episodes left.
  17. jasonc
    Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 10: Episode 3 Grade: C+ Damn it! Just when I started to have a little faith that this show might find some sustained greatness, it does this to me. As you might recall, things were heating up in the last episode of the series with a main character murdered as he got closer to a dark secret linking the overarching plot of the season (who is running Harry's old lover?) to the plot of that episode (a stolen laptop). Tariq's murder was indeed highly suspicious as he called in a code red to Harry moments before dying. Yet somehow his death was largely glossed over in this episode. There was even some breaking of the fourth wall as early in the episode Harry tells a subordinate that something more important had come up (a terrorist threat) and that the subordinate would have to work on Tariq's death on the side, if he had anytime. Rarely do you see a A/B plot distinction drawn more distinctly than that on your TV set. And the A plot was an overt job of treading water as the writers slowly wind the serious down. At one point, the terrorist, who was terminally ill with cancer was somehow talked into letting his target go to engage in a one-on-one with a spook. It didn't make any sense. Neither did this episode. The side work on the mystery of Tariq's death suggests CIA involvement and moreover a high-ranking CIA official may be the one running Harry's ex-lover and the one trying to sabotage UK-Russian relations.
  18. jasonc
    Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 10: Episode 2 Grade: A- Wow. There are times when the last season of a television show is its best. This is usually the case when the writers know the show is going to end and no longer have to worry about stringing out a story line over future seasons and can move the lives of the characters forward without holding anything back. Is it possible that's what's happening in this final season of Spooks? Because, this may have been the best episode I've seen. To catch you up on the plot, the episode before had seen a high-ranking Russian official and his wife come to town to broker a new era of cooperation between England and Russia. The problem was that the wife is (and has since the Cold War) been an MI-5 asset run by Harry Pearce himself. And she seemed to think she was being sent instructions by him but was rather being run by someone with all of Harry's passwords. To make matters worst her and Harry's son (who to all else is her son with her Russian husband) is a FSB agent and knows about her treason. The present episode contains two plot lines that are probably connected. The B plot concerns the Russian wife. She and Harry finally meet in person so that he can explain to her she's being run by someone else and is probably in a great deal of danger. The son follows and learns that another FSB agent is also onto his mom, necessitating he kill this dude to protect his mom. There's a rather well-shot scene as he kills this guy whose only crime is being good at his job. It's set to instrumental music as Harry and the mom are meeting at a ballet recital and the killing occurs backstage. It's a beautifully filmed sequence with the elegant music juxtaposing against a brutal murder. And it's only slightly offset by the contrivance of Harry and the mom meeting in an empty ballet with a single dancer and no director, stagehands, and no one backstage to witness the crime. This is the main reason I dinged this episode down to a A-. The existence of Harry's son also helps out the Harry-Ruth will they won't they by giving them a reason for tension between them, beyond previous nonsense about them being "too close." The A plot is a classic Spooks. In the opening scene they lose a laptop with the identities of high-level assets. The thief begins decrypting these names and releasing them online. One of them (Margaret) is part of a Russian organization and thus they have to leave her in while she gathers some last second intel. She manages to make it out at the last second. It turns out however, that despite all her help and loyalty the Spooks have to end up burning her, essentially throwing her to the wolves. It's a pretty moving scene as the new section chief (Erin) explains this to her, while Margaret begs for her life. The episode ends with Tariq going through security footage at home, finally finding a lead about the thief of the suitcase (who probably is also the person secretly running the Russian wife as both seem to have unfiltered access to everything the Spooks are doing). As he finds this his computer begins to shutdown. He finds a bug in his router, calls Harry, leaves a message and then runs out for a cab. As he's getting in the cab, a guy runs into him, who it turns out injected him with some poison. Tariq dies. RIP Tariq. This was a shockingly compelling episode. Most of the action sequences were right on. Tariq - who they did some emergency character development on earlier in the episode having him get angry with a more privileged spook because Tariq fought his way up from the bottom - was always a loyal and unassuming dude so his death hurt. And finally, the conceit of Spooks has always been about the personal toll the job takes on the agents. The show got back to that here, and not just with Tariq paying the ultimate price. We see Erin dealing with the emotional turmoil of burning an asset by shutting down. She has an emotionless whiskey with Harry before going back to her husband and kids. She seems to have figured out what no Spook so far has - how to have a vibrant personal life and successful professional one. She might also be a sociopath. We also see Ruth and Harry's fledgling relationship take another hit. And finally we see the ultimate mix of business and pleasure as Harry's illegitimate son has to kill to keep his mother (Harry's paramour) safe. Style and substance? I didn't think you had it in you, Spooks.
  19. jasonc
    i've enjoyed reading your pac-northwest stories astrid. i'm experiencing a great deal of envy.
  20. jasonc
    I'm sure that was an aberration Astrid. Having lived in Vancouver, LA, and Hong Kong, and spending a week in Shanghai, I'd say Vancouver/Richmond's Cantonese is world-class and often offers a better value than Hong Kong and parts of LA.
  21. jasonc
    Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 10: Episode 1 Grade: C+ Brackley and Vincent, who were responsible for much of the ninth season, more or less run this final season of Spooks. Given that I felt season nine was a big letdown, I'm not entirely optimistic about how the tenth and final season of this remarkably long-running, sometimes quite good, often quite bad, series will end. Brackley and Vincent, if last season is any indication, seem to be happy to take a middle ground, steering this show into one that is half spy procedural and half serialized. In other words, it's somewhere in between a Law and Order with spies and the new wave of fully serialized TV (e.g., Orange is the New Black, Game of Thrones, House of Cards). It's a shame they are conservative in this regard, because they have proven quite aggressive in other areas of story-telling (i.e., killing off main characters with reckless abandon). This episode was more of the same (but no one was killed off). Harry is still reeling from the aftershocks of the season nine finale. He's been ousted from the spooks while he is on trial for his decision to favor an agent (he has romantic feelings for) over state secrets. There's actually quite a good bit in a trial scene where he goes over the agent's (Ruth) abilities and track record, demonstrating she's no mere personal relationships but an asset herself, one rivaling the secret he lost. The trial is adjourned as it comes to light Harry's expertise is needed (and fast). He rejoins the spooks who are now helmed by the beautiful Lara Pulver ("Her" from BBC's Sherlock). She's quickly demoted down to section chief (Lucas North's old position) as Harry takes over again. The crisis is that a Russian diplomat, whose wife happens to be an old (and longest-running) Cold War era MI-5 asset, is in town for secret meetings to negotiate a new "very special relationship." The explanation given is that the US has too many enemies and Britain wants to get in bed with a less contentious ally with connections in the Middle East. Seems implausible. The Spooks have found a plot against diplomat (and ostensibly his wife) and try to protect him. There are also a bunch of FSB agents running around trying to do the same, one being the asset's son. The ending is rather predictable with the Spooks saving the day and the heavily foreshadowed and not-at-all surprising reveal that the FSB agent's father is Harry. This was played up at the end as big deal and a cliff-hanger, but the audience doesn't have enough invested in these relationships to really care.
  22. jasonc
    This scenario came up in the last Game of Thrones episode (The Viper versus the Mountain). Ser Barristan Selmy (who all in Westeros agree possesses an unimpeachable sense of honor) opted to confront the person in question first, before going over his head. Ser Barristan was correct - that is the right thing to do.
  23. jasonc
    Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 9: Episode 8 (season 9 finale) Grade: B- Season 9's merciful finale was a rather straightforward (and rather predictable) culmination of the overarching plot of Lucas North's eventual betrayal of the Spooks in order to secure a life with his new/old paramour and hide his secret identity. The episode begins with a masterful deke. Lucas calls in saying he wants to give himself up. This rightfully sets off some alarm bells with the Spooks, but they feel they can't take the chance he's serious, so they send a team to get him. It is, of course, a deke, and he manages to kidnap Ruth while they are following the decoy. Lucas then, rather despicably, offers up Ruth as a trade for the Albany file (which he plans to give the Chinese in exchange for a new life). Lucas knows that Ruth is Harry's soft spot, but Harry plays this down saying Lucas it taking a chance but his plan must be to find the other people who know about Albany and find their soft spots. After all, Lucas knows Harry is impenetrable. Here we learn what Albany is - a genetically codable pathogen capable of making genocide quite easy. The rest of the episode unfolds in typical Spooks fashion. It turns out Harry is weak and eventually gives up Albany when Lucas threatens to kill Ruth (he's completely gone at this point, not at all the character we once knew; in fact, they throw in the fact that Lucas actually knowingly went along with the bomb plot in Dachar). The final confrontation involves Lucas and Harry with Lucas committing suicide. The first male lead of the show - Tom Quinn - was written off really well. Over time we saw him lose the people important to him, until he completely broke down. Writing off Lucas North was completely different. We saw his history completely (and hastily) rewritten to get the actor off the show. The only good thing I can say about season 9 is that it sets up an interesting final season with Harry on trial for allowing for a state secret to be leaked to a foreign government on account of his personal relationship with an employee.
  24. jasonc
    Writer: Anthony Neilson Season 9: Episode 7 Grade: C This penultimate episode of the season is largely focused on the the Spooks' discovery of North's recent activities and their efforts to either thwart or help him. With the last episode depicting North murdering a civilian in order to give himself a chance to complete his mission to help Jorah Mormont and thus ensure the safety of his new girlfriend, it's impossible to root for him anymore. I found myself just hoping this whole sordid affair would be over soon. The B plot involves Ruth investigating a concerned municipal worker's (and failed MI-5 applicant) fortuitous discovery of top French assassin on UK soil. This bit is fairly well done, and served to callback her feelings about the life she left behind in Greece and the toll the job takes on the Spooks. Concerning what is almost certainly the second to last time we'll see Richard Armitage on the show, North finally "comes clean" with Harry, explaining the nature of his dealings with Jorah Mormont. It seems that before he joined MI-5 and thus before he was a Russian captive for eight years, he had worked in Dakar at a casino with the real Lucas North, a man who had been accepted to work at MI-5. The man we know as Lucas had fallen in with Jorah Mormont, doing various shady tasks, the final being a delivering a bomb to the British embassy, which killed 8 people. To escape, either he or Mormont killed the real North, stole his passport, and assumed his identity. The rest is history. This reveal is interesting, and you might understand how North might do what he did to protect his history. However, show makes it clear that for him it's all about this new girl, which still makes no sense to me. Later in the episode we learn that the file Lucas stole for Mormont wasn't the real thing and he tries desperately to find it to save his lady's life. In the course of this he convinces Harry to let him go deal with Mormont, which he does (killing him). The next episode surely resolves this whole fiasco. Can Lucas be saved? Will he get the Albany file? What is the Albany file? Postscript: I should have noted that the prior episode depicted the return of Malcom (who had apparently been entrusted by Harry with a decoy copy of the Albany file)!
  25. jasonc
    Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 9: Episode 6 Grade: B This could have easily been an excellent episode (an A by my scale) if not marred by the character issues I describe (ad nauseum) above. The deal is that it comes to light that the Spooks' HQ ("The Grid") has been completely and utterly bugged and hacked, with the Chinese and Russians (working together) having access to all of their systems and full knowledge of everything going on. Their goal is to get access to a new joint MI-5-CIA computer system that's due to be installed any minute by sort of a alternative cute girl reformed computer hacker in the employ of the CIA. Fortunately, Tariq figures this out and thus the Spooks have to pretend that they don't know they are being surveilled (because apparently the hackers can just go ahead and take all of their confidential information, which they are not doing now because that would involve revealing themselves) while simultaneously trying to figure out who the hackers are. During all of this Lucas is escorting the alt. American hacker. During this process he hears from Jorah Mormont who needs him to get the Albany file ASAP or he's going to kill the girl. There's a lot of fat in the fryer and it makes for some pretty good action and suspense. The only real misfire (other than what I'll discuss below) is that these writers really don't know how to write these American characters. I think they are going for some sort of culture clash/unlikely friendship between Lucas the the hacker, but she comes of as some caricature of an American hipster. She's also just wildly annoying. This is also the episode where Lucas goes completely off the rails. It's baffling how someone who was completely loyal and sympathetic would completely throw all of that away for a character that was introduced a few episodes ago. It's awful and was clearly done because the actor wanted to leave the show. Long story short, Lucas ends up murdering the hacker for this new love interest (she finds out about his recent extracurricular interests). It marred an otherwise good episode.
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