Y tu Luna también: Maya and the Three: Episode 8 – “The Bat and the Owl” (2021)

*A few spoilers.*

This one doesn’t quite bring Big Penultimate Episode Energy, but it’s still pretty darn good. Rather than being the episode to ramp up the drama higher than ever, it’s more like the calm between storms—our heroes got knocked around hard in the last episode, and now is the moment for them to gather themselves and consider the final battle to come.

After getting rescued from Lord Mictlan by an unexpected source in the last episode, Maya and her friends are scrambling to catch their breaths. Maya blames herself for their losses, and she’s at her lowest point. With doubts creeping in, she doesn’t know if she can bear to put her friends in danger again. But Lord Mictlan is coming for her one way or another, so she has to decide what she’s going to do.

That summary is very Maya-centric, but that doesn’t mean the other characters don’t get in on the action. We learn a lot more about Lady Micte, which deals a lot with Maya’s past but also gives us further insights into Lady Micte herself There’s also some lovely friendship stuff between the gang—Chimi’s ferocious protectiveness really gets me—and we get a pretty awesome tag-teamed speech rousing the troops for war.

And despite the well-earned heaviness going on here, there’s still some humor as well, especially back in Teca. We get this fun modern-family dynamic going on, where the king and queen have the goddess of death over for dinner and Maya gets a glimpse of what having two mothers is like. The jokes are welcome, because there’s a lot of pain here, regret and doubt and mourning. Luckily, this miniseries is about nothing if not the fact that people are stronger together, and Maya’s friends do their best to encourage their not-quite-fearless leader to lean on them.

Really nice scenes for Zatz in this episode. In addition to getting the opening flashback, there’s a beautiful scene between him and Maya. Both suffered harsh losses in the last episode, and both comfort each other here—as warriors, friends, and maybe more, relating to each other about grief and saying goodbye. For his part, Zatz is still sad but less raw than Maya, and Diego Luna brings a nice sensitivity to these moments of Zatz quietly coming toward peace and trying to help Maya find it as well.

He also gets in on the rousing battle speech, and there’s a delightfully cute bit between him and Maya near the end of the episode. As a general rule, I’m always prepared for a show/film to give me more Luna, but Maya and the Three has done a nice job of optimizing Zatz’s screentime—he’s not always on screen a lot, but the scenes he has are consistently strong.

Joel Fry-days: Diggers (2023)

This is an odd little short, more about mood/notion than tangible story. It’s also the shortest one I’ve watched so far, with the credits starting right around the six-and-a-half-minute mark. So yeah, this review may very well be longer than the short itself.

Two men walk into the woods to dig a hole. In between their work, they discuss their lives.

As I said, not much in the way of a story here. Certain questions are left ambiguous, and certain surprises pop up late in the game. For the most part, though, this is just a little piece between these two characters, with the question of the hole they’re digging widening amid their gentle banter. Joel Fry and Cary Crankson (the other actor in this short) both get a story credit alongside the writer/director. Not sure if that means they were actually writing it together or if it means a fair amount of the dialogue is improvised.

But for all that there’s not a lot here, I still found myself liking it. It put me in the mind of Shakespearian grave diggers, or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Watching them dig and talk, there’s some softly pleasant humor as they misunderstand each other, and they hint a little at the philosophical of the mundane. Not I think this approaches the feat of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, obviously, but that’s the vibe I got.

Joel Fry plays Griffin. From the banter, we know more facts about him than we do about the other digger, Michaels. Griffin’s been saying for years that he’s going to quit smoking, he’s a relatively new dad, and his wife makes him put piccalilli on his sandwiches. These small details give us a bit of a snapshot of this man, while the tone and tenor of Fry’s performance gives some texture to those details. 

Griffin is dwelling heavily on how being a dad changes things for him, but he balks when Michaels asks him about fatherhood. “Well, when you say ‘fatherhood,’ it makes it sound like I’ve been doing it for ages,” he counters. “It’s only been six months.” He’s not able to engage with the question until Michaels amends it to “dadness.”

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. I like the feel of it.

Joel Fry – Maybe. It’s not a must, but I enjoy what he does here.

Warnings

Thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 1, Episode 4 (2014)

*Spoilers from episode 3, as well as the end of Twenty Twelve*

Okay, you know what? The series 1 finale is actually pretty good. Stuff happens! Some good narration from David Tennant too. Might be a low bar, but I enjoyed it. And while I think it makes a difference that we get more direct ties to Twenty Twelve here, that’s only part of it.

The newspaper article about Ian is more than just harping on his (apparently exorbitant) salary. It also details allegations that he misused funds when he was on the Olympic Deliverance Commission, and the whole thing is turning into both a professional and personal shitstorm. Lucy is languishing on Britain’s Tastiest Village, which has become a bit of mess, when she really wants to be working on the comedy-drama script she pitched alongside the show’s writer in episode 3. Siobhan brings Barney to the BBC to present their ideas for the logo rebrand.

When Ian’s time with the commission was nearing its end, he’d mentioned to Sally that he was interested in taking a holiday in Italy when it was all over. Sally being Sally, she went above and beyond, planning the whole trip for him—that’s where the allegations came from, because she all did this while she was on the clock. What’s more, at the last minute, Ian invited Sally to come with him to Italy. Now the whole story is being dragged through the press, including pictures of Sally, and reporters are waiting outside the BBC for Ian every morning.

Ian responds to this with some of his usual fecklessness. His attempt to send Sally an apology bouquet backfires in a big way, and there’s an entertaining scene where Ian has to sit listening to all the higher ups spitball figures on reasonable reductions to his salary. But at the same time, this experience helps Ian discover a bit of backbone and ingenuity. We see him taking some much-needed proactive steps here, on behalf of himself and another character.

Our character of the week is Simon Harwood, played by Jason Watkins. Simon is the BBC’s Director of Strategic Governance—he’s who most characters in the show report to on a day-to-day basis, although there’s a Big Boss who gets namedropped. His main quirks are 1) passing duties onto someone else and 2) enthusiastically agreeing with the person who last spoke, regardless of how much they contradict the previous person he agreed with.

It’s clear that Britain’s Tastiest Village has all but collapsed due to its various complications, yet it’s still limping along. If Lucy’s heart was ever in it, she’s completely over it now. And Siobhan and Barry’s presentation is amusing. They manage to accidentally reinvent the Star of David, so Siobhan evidently doesn’t know any more about religions than she did on Twenty Twelve.

After being a little down on David Tennant’s narration in the first three episodes, this is honestly a good episode for him. He’s got some funny lines in the season finale! Here are my favorites:

• When Ian gets to the BBC in the morning, a gaggle of reporters are waiting outside for him – “He’s already late for work, but he’s about to discover he’s not as late yet as he’s eventually going to be.”
• There’s a minor subplot about concerns over the wardrobe of a female news commentator “who’s been accused of wearing clothes that are inappropriately watchable” – good line!
• This sums up the state of affairs with Britain’s Tastiest Village – “Despite Lucy’s concerns about the basic premise of the show itself, the question of who’s going to present it is much more important than that.”
• This line cracked me up – “Elaine Pearson walks Ian through some of the advantages of cutting his current salary (which we are unable to reveal here for ethical reasons) to a level comparable with someone who earns a lot less than that.”