jasonc
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Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent & Oliver Brown Season 9: Episode 5 Grade: B- This episode is about a plot to assassinate the U.S. President who was in London to mediate a historic agreement between Israel and Palestine. The spooks were assigned to making sure the negotiations went off smoothly, and when the assassination plot was revealed, to thwart that scheme. There have been other episodes about the Spooks installed in a hotel making sure negotiations go well, so this was a bit of a rehash with the President scheme grafted over it. The action beats were pretty good, and there is a nice about of intrigue as the assassin(s) seem one step ahead all time, suggesting a leak among the Spooks. This is a always fun stuff. The "reveal" at the end is that Lucas North's new girlfriend (who he sold MI-5 data for; which was also probably the source of the leak) is still seeing her old boyfriend (who may of been alluded to before, although not clearly, and so this whole reveal fell a bit flat). Lucas walks in on them and it turns out to be Jorah Mormont! And he's not crippled after all! So it appears Lucas has been played this whole time (although not in a particularly interesting way). I think the only thing I'm consistently surprised at is how handsome Richard Armitage is.
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George Lazenby
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- James Bond
- Sean Connery
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Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 9: Episode 4 Grade: D This is the review in which I express my displeasure in the way this season is going. The grade D reflects the notion that this entire episode (of which many parts were fine) was ruined by inexcusably lazy writing. The main conflict in this episode was a plot by the Chinese (an underused villain in Spooks, in my opinion) to kidnap a Chinese scientist in England who was pioneering a technique to desalinate seawater. That was all fine, and in particular the performance by the actor playing the Chinese agent the spooks turned was flawless. My beef is in how the writers have chosen to write Richard Armitage's Lucas North character of the show. They did something similar with Tom Quinn (the original male lead) was written off, but here is just much more clumsy, and frankly intellectually dishonest. When Tom was written off, there was an arc of episodes in which he slowly got disenchanted with the work he was doing. This was very much in keeping with his character an early episodes in which he lost pretty much everyone close to him. Lucas North's exit from the show is very different. The writers have apparently decided to have him betray the country by leaking a file to a third party. I originally thought (see previous reviews) that this was just work on his backstory, with North having a false identity. In fact, it's something very different. What happened was a man from North's past (Jorah Mormont) came seeking access to a MI-5 file, threatening to reveal North's past with his bosses. North dismissed him, but was seemingly reminded of something and went to see an old flame who he tried to rekindle things with. This didn't make a lot of sense because North was living with an apparently in love with a Russian woman before he was put in a Russian prison and tortured for eight years. Anyhow, I guess he realized he loved this woman and started pursuing her again, telling her things would be different. This is a big detail to add out of the blue. North then told Jorah Mormont to go ahead and tell Harry Pearce, he wouldn't believe Mormont. Mormont then came over the top and threatened then new/old girl. And guess what, North decided to go ahead with the treason, stealing the file and placing the blame on some dupe. The writers know this is completely out of character for North. This is a guy who was tortured for eight years for Harry Pearce and England and refused to turn traitor. So that's why they added this girl, but it's just a completely transparent attempt to explain this treason (and reason to write the character off, as the actor had grown beyond the show). This girl was never mentioned prior to this arc and in fact North had multiple love interests during that time to which he was quite torn up about losing. Why did he decide to seek her out now? There are several credible ways to write a character off a show. This is not one of them and is simply a slap to face of anyone who hoped the writers might be at least mildly considerate in the way they treat the characters they created.
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Writer: Richard McBrien Season 9: Episode 3 Grade: B The Spooks' mission in this third episode of season 9 centered around a Kazakhstani plot to obtain a dangerous virus to use against the Russians. At the start of the episode, we see the Spooks assisting the Russians to defuse this plot by incinerating the last batch of this virus. The Russians, however, take this chance to also kill off nearly the entire band of Kazakhstani terrorists, much to the chagrin of the Spooks. In an act of mercy, Harry Pearce, despite seeing one more terrorist on the radar screen, fails to report this to the team on the ground, thus assuring the man gets away and is not brutally murdered by the Russians. This turns out to be something of a mistake, as the desperate man learns of another batch of this virus, and they spend most of the episode tracking him down. This episode features a good deal of tension between Harry and the new home secretary, who orders the Spooks to continue collaborating with the FSB to catch the escaped terrorist. Harry still doesn't trust the Russians, and is of course vindicated later in the episode. The action in this episode is fast paced and there are a couple of cool points where the villain switches from the Kazakhstani terrorists to the Russians. There is also a bit more development in North's past life coming to haunt him (it's also fun that this happens in the form of Iain Glen who plays Jorah Mormont on Game of Thrones). Not a spectacular one, but a fine one. I should also say that it's interesting that writers and producers chose the show's great romance to be between two older characters (late 40s at least). This is quite uncommon for TV and a bold move. I guess the problem is the actors really aren't given much to sink their teeth into. I'm always a bit unclear about exactly why Ruth is holding back - her reasons are terrible, unless at the end of the day she's just not that into Harry.
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Writer: David Farr Season 9: Episode 2 Grade: A- This episode had everything working against it - a writer with little experience with the show and a dreadful beginning, but turned out to be one of the better Spooks episodes I've seen. The beginning was another terrible bit of exposition. The team had a hotel lobby staked out for a potential assassin, and in one of the very first bits of dialogue we here Lucas North tell his team: "Five of them may work in the Surrey Hills and work in the oil industry, but one of them is a trained assassin." I'm pretty sure with this team all over the hotel lobby, they had worked this out already. But I'm glad I gave this episode a chance because it truly did redeem itself. Farr's episode was cleverly plotted. This was the first full episode with Beth as part of the team (the private contractor from the last episode that helped Lucas out), and it turned out her past came back to haunt her, and she had to lie about it to remain a government spooks. Of course she was found out, repented, saved the day, and was allowed to stay. But the way it played out was quite interesting, with the same set of events being shown from three different points of view. This is the first time Spooks has played with non-linear plotting and it worked well. There is also a new enduring mystery with a recent reveal that Lucas North may not be who he says he is. He apparently switched identities with a man long ago who now wants it back. This allowed for a nice parallel between his and Beth's situation throughout the episode, giving it something of a first for Spooks - a coherent theme! Of course, it does raise the question of why the British government is so bad about vetting the backgrounds of their spies. You can't win them all.
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Writer: Jonathan Brackley & Sam Vincent Season 9: Episode 1 Grade: B- The season premier of season nine begins with Ros' funeral and quickly transitions into some of the more lousy story-telling you've seen on TV recently. Lucas North reports in to HQ about the missions he's on (an assassination of a terrorist on a cargo ship) by explaining the entire conceit of his mission to the operator, who surely knows this already as it's a long-planned mission. This is an example of thinly veiled exposition that is enough to take the viewer out of the episode. The rest proceeds as pretty much every Spooks episode does, with a terror plot narrowly averted. The (sorta) complexity is that Harry had tried to resign earlier in the episode, realized he was needed and ended up not resigning. He also proposed to Ruth earlier in the episode and she declined. I suppose the best scene was the one at the end where Ruth explains why she could not marry Harry. She tells him that it wouldn't be real - they'd have to pretend. The only truth they know is their daily life-saving work, and they don't need to be married for that. Peter Firth does some genuine acting in that scene. A for that performance. B- for the episode.
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Writer: Ben Richards Season 8: Episode 8 Grade: B This was a bit of a sloppy episode, but an eventful one. It wrapped up the overarching plot of season 8, with the "Nightingale" scheme uncovered as a group of important world intelligence officers conspiring to bring Pakistan and India to war for reasons that were entirely clear. The hand-waving seemed to be that it was better to create a war one could control than allow a war to happen on its own. I don't really get the distinction. The other major annoyance was how they dealt with the Sarah (bad accent actress) character. After capturing her, they held her in a hospital room with one guard, despite knowing that the Nightingale group had overcome much greater security many times in the past. Why not bring her into headquarters? Or leave more guards? Regardless, she was killed (for real this time), and so was Ros at the end when she died trying to save the home secretary. I thought Ros' death was well done as she died for someone that seemed rather incompetent and unimportant. But it was her duty to save him, showing just how far she had come. I'll miss Tobias Menzies who played the home secretary with aplomb. You may know him as Edmure Tully from Game of Thrones, where he does a similar dance of feigned authority and incompetence.
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Re: French Press. It is great - the owners are good friends. But no, in fact they use Verve to roast their coffee.
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Writer: James Dormer Season 8: Episode 7 Grade: B A return to form for Spooks! So, I was way off above. Sarah is not dead! In fact, she apparently just discharged her firearm and scampered off while Lucas had his eyes closed, waiting for the dark angel of death. I don't know if she'll ever been onscreen again, but her presence sure loomed over this episode, like the can of pringles I consumed while watching it (once you pop, you simply cannot stop). You might have thought this would be a by the books case of Hindu terror cells threatening Muslim targets in London, with Lucas North running a reluctant informant within one of those cells. But you'd be wrong because it turns out the global intelligence group "Nightingale", of which Sarah is a member, was pulling all the strings. And you also got a nice little jolt of morality at the end with the informant telling Lucas (i.e., "liarman") that he (Lucas) is no different than a terrorist sitting in the back, getting others to do his bidding.
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Writer: Dennis Kelly Season 8: Episode 6 Grade: C+ This was sort of a strange episode. 90% of it was about dealing with some sort of plot device where the Spooks had to uncover some fraudulent bank activity so the government could seize assets and use that money to not default on its own debt. There was a two minute scene where this was all explained, its ramifications (economic crisis) outlined and all that. It couldn't help feeling like a completely one-off though. Then, Sarah Caufield came clean with Lucas and just when we thought she would kill him, killed her self. This little move has been pulled A LOT on this show and its getting stale. While I'm happy to be done with the Sarah character and her awful accent, this show is getting quite tedious. The writers are clearly having trouble coming up with a crisis of the week (this was a nadir for that phenomenon) and what with (spoiler alert) Jo getting killed off a few episodes earlier, the show is running out of sympathetic characters (unless you are shipping Harry and Ruth - I'm not).
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Writer: Atrick Riley Season 8: Episode 5 Grade: B- I got behind on writing these up and it's a shame because Season 7 is when things finally got good. Of course, when a TV show only gets good by season 7, you probably aren't watching a good show. Seven was really the turning point as it became much less episodic, calling back minor characters that you thought were one-offs, showing a bit more of foresight. It was also nice that Adam Carter finally died, giving way to a new male lead in Lucas North (played by Richard Armitage). Armitage is probably only the legitimate star the show's had and it was clear that things got better when he signed on. He's just really handsome and has the magnetism of a movie star. Season seven also gave a character a real arc: Ros Myers, the badass agent cum section lead. We saw her go from a potential turncoat to perhaps the most valuable member of the team. It was an interesting arc, and I found myself liking her despite thinking she was a bit robotic to begin with. This episode we are talking about here is the follow-up to a big reveal that North's new GF (CIA agent Sarah Caufield, played by Irish actress Genevieve O'Reilly) is not who she seems to be. Now, I have to talk about this actress for a moment. She's a perfectly fine actress, and she's got a banging body (English TV allows nudity). But she's an Irish actress trying to do an American accent and it absolutely shows. It's puzzling. She dips from a generic American accent, to a deep southern drawl, to Brooklyn accent within the same sentence. It's highly distracting. I was happy to see it's not just me who noticed it. If you type in Sarah Caufield into google, it adds "accent" to the end of the search. See: http://lostinbritishtv.blogspot.ca/2011/06/joy-of-hearing-american-accent.html Anyhow, this was a fine episode. It was easy to follow, logically plotted and there was a fine amount of intrigue. The major plot hole (there's always one) is that the spooks are supposed to have a really good scanner for anyone entering HQ, yet somehow some chip that emitted a wireless signal wasn't picked up. And this thing has picked up way more stealthy devices. Whatever. I think I'm going to take a break from this show and check out True Detective.
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Jon snow does not suck. He is the great hero of his time and the true heir to the Iron Throne. -
sounds like it's restaurant eve
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I always appreciated that you could get grilled veggies with your burger here instead of fries for no upcharge.
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I'm looking forward to the day when I can bounce my grandkids on my knee and tell them about the time I saw the great Taylor Jordan pitch.
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What I find interesting is your penchant for playing fast and loose with statistics. Craig Kimbrel (closer for the #Barves) is averaging 21.21 Ks per 9 this season. 13.16 last season and 16.66 in 2012. The reason, among other factors is that he's a closer and it's easier to strike people out when you are coming in an inning at a time. That's why he's not on the list with the guys you mention. The other reason, and that for the 21.21 figure, is the extremely small sample size. Other than Strasburg, the guys on your list pitched, on average, 5 innings and many of them are relievers. Randy Johnson, Wood, and Martinez are starters who pitched over 200 innings. Correct me if I'm being wrongheaded, but in my book it's fine for friends to tease each other about their sports teams (I've been doing this for most of my life), but it's hardly "high level" to post misleading information. Based on the talent of the two teams, yes, the Nats are clearly the better team this year. That, to use your word, is indisputable. I don't understand why I can't get a few digs in when the Braves manage to win one.
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Sometimes the better team just wins...
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I'm digging this game so far! The great Julio Teheran!
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oh boy...
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But as you noted above, fielding percentage is a deeply flawed statistic. There is even a poem about it.
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- Andrelton Simmons
- Atlanta Braves
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And see this article: "Is Andrelton Simmons Having The Best Defensive Season Ever?" by Jeff Sullivan on fangraphs.com The upshot is that we don't know, but if so it probably has to do with being able to play much deeper than the average shortstop, because he throws 97mph+ accurately.
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Go to 21:45 for evidence re: hands
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I think it's the arm that really gets you. It's one thing getting to some of these balls, but popping up and throwing a laser to first seems almost like magic. But you'd know better than me Don - I was always relegated to right field :/
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Andrelton Simmons, 4.6 WAR in 2013. UZR = 24.6. Best defensive SS since Ozzie Smith. Probably better when all is said and done. seriously, some of these defy what the body is supposed to do:
