Tag Archives: American Television

TV Review – Sense8: Amor Vincit Omnia

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TL;DR – The Series Finale brings closure in a way only Sense8 could by focusing on family and the power of love. If you have liked the show up until this point you will want to see how it ends, if you haven’t I don’t think this will change your mind.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Sense8 banner

Review –

Endings, no one wants their favourite show to end, lest of all when it is not ending on their own terms. The television landscape is filled with shows that I have deeply loved and we will never know how they ended, and while every now and again we get a Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Farscape many more shows have left the world on a cliffhanger never to be seen again. For a long time, it looked like Sense8 was going to join the long list of shows that never got to say goodbye properly, which was a real shame. While it didn’t always work, the show was always fascinating and it had a level of detail you don’t normally see as the show gallivanted across the globe. However a show like this was expensive, and while I was disappointed I understood when it was announced that it would not be picked up for a third season. However, if it is one thing you should never underestimate that is the power of fans, and in this case, that power has used for good, and today we get to see the outcome of that with a special final episode Amor Vincit Omnia or Love Conquers All.

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TV Review – Westworld: Les Ecorches

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TL;DR – As we move towards the end of the season the different timelines have started to fall into place and I can see the heart of the story it wants to tell, but I don’t know if I am in for the ride to the end.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

 

Les Ecorches banner

 

Review –

At the end of last week’s Phase Space (see review) I was beginning to wonder how all the timelines crashing together was going to work given what we knew already this season and I postulated that there must be either multiple copies of some of the hosts or that the timelines were not adding up. Well today in Les Ecorches we discover that I was both wrong and right, as we find out that there were two different occupations of the Mesa that included Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) and Ashley (Luke Hemsworth) that had been spliced together, however we do discover that someone has had a couple of clones made, so part marks? And as always a reminder that we will be looking at the episode as a whole so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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TV Review – Westworld: Phase Space

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TL;DR – It is the second half of the season and finally the timelines are starting to crash into each other in interesting yet not completely clear ways

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

Phase Space banner

 

Review –

One of the things Westworld is known for is its many intersecting storylines and timelines, and Season Two has been no exception up until now. We have the story of Dolores’ (Evan Rachel Wood) rebellion as she builds an army to possibly take over the world, also Maeve (Thandie Newton) and her hunt to find her missing daughter as she puts together a ratbag team to help her, we have the Man in Black (Ed Harris) trying to get to the heart of the final narrative Robert (Anthony Hopkins) planned for him, and then we also have Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) whose history database got messed up by the head shot and so we see him jumping across different timelines. Well in today’s episode we not only get all of these stories we get them just as timelines come crashing together … maybe.

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TV Review – Westworld: Akane No Mai

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TL;DR – In a return to form we finally get to visit Shogun World though it is a bit more familiar than we thought.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

Akane No Mai

 

Review –
One of the things that have changed in the way I look at media since I have been making this site is that over the years I have become more and more adamant about not watching trailers until after seeing a movie or TV show. There is something that has happened in recent years, which we talked about in our end of year awards, where big reveal that could have worked better as surprises get revealed in trailers. Well avoiding the trailers or not, there was no way to get around the fact that at some point in Season Two of Westworld we were going to take a detour into Shogun World after that Easter Egg in the season finale last year. Well at our halfway point today we finally get that moment and it is perfectly fine.

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TV Review – Westworld: Virtù e Fortuna

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TL;DR – We start to delve into the larger world of the parks near Westworld, and discover what everyone could be hunting this season.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

Virtu E Fortuna

 

Review –

What is life, is it the drive to accumulate as much power as possible before we die, is it to live as honourably as possible, is it to care for your family at all cost, or is it to feel alive in whatever way possible? This episode looks at what drives us as humans (maybe not just humans), indeed what would you do to stay alive?

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TV Review – Westworld: Reunion

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TL;DR – This first episode is like watching an oncoming storm approach. It is beautiful but also full of trepidation as it unleashes its torrent.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

 

Reunion

 

Review –

What is life? It is a question as old as time itself. Were we created? Did we evolve? A little of both? Well in this week’s episode we take a look at some of those questions when the created become the creators and the created fight back. While Journey into Night (see review) had to do a lot of setting up to get the season started again, Reunion doesn’t have that baggage and as such it barrels full steam ahead into the season.

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TV Review – Westworld: Journey into Night

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TL;DR – This first episode is like watching an oncoming storm approach. It is beautiful but also full of trepidation as it unleashes its torrent.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Journey into Night

Review –

I didn’t get the chance to see Westworld Season One when it first aired because it was locked away on the only cable provider here in Australia and I just simply couldn’t afford to access it. So for me, it was just this show that was rumbling across the internet each week. Well a year later, and that same provider finally had to compete with something and they put out a half-ass streaming service for Game of Thrones (see review) and one of the bonuses was Westworld was watchable for the first time. So I sat down to see what it was all about and I was entranced. There were these fascinating stories that encapsulated you and that is before you realise that we are dealing with different timelines. There is the look at what makes something alive and how far you will go to make something sentient. There was a hunt for a child that you can’t remember, the greed of corporations, nudity that is first used for titillation but then used to make you deeply uncomfortable with the whole scenario. Now all of this was captivating but then that episode happened and everything changes, and at that point, I knew I was hooked. Well, today Season Two starts and I happy I get to see them live with everyone else, so let’s go back to the universe of Westworld and deal with the fall out of The Bicameral Mind.

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TV Review – Lost in Space: Season One

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TL;DR – Blllaaaare baba bi bop bum barrrr, Blllaaaare baba bi bop bum barrrr, blllaaaare baba bi bop bum barrrr, blar, blarrrrrrr

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Lost In Space Banner

Review –

Rebooting an old and much-beloved TV series is a fraught proposition. Now from a business perspective, it makes perfect sense because you have an inbuilt fanbase to launch the show to. However, it also comes with a lot of baggage with fan expectations and a wealth of information that you have to wade through and decide what you will keep and what you will ignore. So for every Battlestar Galactica or Doctor Who you have a Knight Rider and Bionic Woman that failed to get that balance right. Today we have a chance to look at a series reboot that actually gets that balance right, both showing it understands and respect of the original, but also a show stepping out and doing its own thing. Now as we go on there will be some [SPOILERS] as we will be looking at the season as a whole, so just be warned if you have not seen it yet.

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TV Review – Lost in Space: Impact

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TL;DR – Blllaaaare baba bi bop bum barrrr, Blllaaaare baba bi bop bum barrrr, blllaaaare baba bi bop bum barrrr, blar, blarrrrrrr

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Lost in Space

 

Review –

Can you reboot a TV series that has been off the air for 40 years, and which the last attempt to bring it back to life on film was mixed at best and the last time on TV didn’t make it past the plot? Well, that is the question being asked here in this new Netflix series, and right from the start, we can see that Netflix is not here to play games. Today we are going to look at the pilot episode Impact, an episode that shows you how to do the first episode, and do it right.

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TV Review – Safe House: How Brooklyn Nine-Nine is Finding New Heights in Season 5

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TL;DR – Safe House shows that five seasons in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is getting better and better, blending humour and emotion into an amazing episode.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Brooklyn Nine-Nine banner

 

Review –

Now, I have to say that Brooklyn Nine-Nine might be one of the best gems out there on TV at the moment, and one of the few shows that I actively seek out these days. It is created by Dan Goor & Michael Schur who have been the creative minds behind The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, and more. So right from the start, you have an amazing creative team that extends out to all the writing staff. As well as this, you have an amazing and diverse cast that is committed to working together as a team. They all have an amazing rapport with each other, which feels effortless. It is from this platform that they keep getting better each season.

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