Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 2, Episode 9 – “Ten Thirteen” (2015)

We’re skipping a couple of Christopher Eccleston-less episodes and picking up again here. This is a detour episode, like some of the ones we had earlier this season, doubling back to catch up with characters who’ve been away from the main action. In this case, we’re circling back around to Meg and the G.R.

After the events of last season’s finale, the G.R. is in need of new leadership, and Meg is ready to step up. She has ideas that are outside of their usual practices, some of which make the old guard nervous. Her biggest plan involves Miracle, and we get ready to head into the season finale with the promise of a major clash.

I was interested in Meg last season, but I’ll be honest: until she popped back up here, I’d completely forgotten that we’d barely seen her at all this season. But now that she’s in the forefront in this episode, Liv Tyler steps up and reminds me what I liked about the character in the first place. She has this unassuming softness about her, but there’s a steeliness underneath that you’ll run into if you try to eff with her. She’s always related to the G.R. in a somewhat different way than their other members, and here, she’s really making waves, taking charge and trying to create something new.

I like how her story ties in with Miracle, both in the past and the present. It’s nice to get some of Meg’s backstory, exploring why she was targeted as a potential G.R. recruit in the first place, and the Miracle connection fits with what they establish for her. Her present-day plans for the town seem really messed up but are also in line with her state of mind. While characters like Nora and Matt are desperate for whatever promise Miracle seems to hold for them, Meg resents the town and its people. Where others see a blessing that they want a piece of, Meg sees an unfairness that demands restitution; she wants them to feel what the rest of the world has been forced to feel these last four years (It’s now been about a year since the series premiere, with another anniversary of the departures fast approaching.)

It’s another episode with just a short appearance from Christopher Eccleston. As with “Lens,” Matt is only in one scene with the major focal point character of the episode. He bumps into Meg while she’s setting up her plans for Miracle, and over the course of one small scene, Eccleston navigates Matt’s surprise and delight at seeing her, turning into suspicion and foreboding as it starts to sink in that she’s there for a very different reason than he is. I like how the tension slowly builds here.

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Days before Shang-Chi’s opening, GQ is providing us with a mini-treasure-trove of Tony Leung Chiu-wai press. My jaw honestly dropped a little when I opened up YouTube and saw that he’d done one of their “__________ Breaks Down Their Most Iconic Characters” videos, which are always cool to watch. I like what he says about Shang-Chi, I’m thrilled that the video included Hard Boiled and Hero, and I enjoy his remarks on the other highlighted films, especially Happy Together and Lust, Caution.

I then realized the video was a companion to a nice profile/interview in the magazine. As with the Elle Men Singapore piece, it’s less of a Shang-Chi interview than a Tony Leung Chiu-wai interview that includes talk about Shang-Chi, which is fine.

Some great tidbits in here. Here’s Destin Daniel Cretton on realizing the work he’d have to do to woo Leung for the role:

Cretton, the first Asian-American filmmaker to direct a Marvel movie, brought a different approach. “If we are going after an actor like that,” he says, “the character needs to be worthy of that ask. So using Tony as our guiding light, before he even said yes, lit a fire under us to create a character that’s worthy of him entertaining the idea.”

Leung talking about how he tapped into the character of Wenwu:

“Frankly, I couldn’t imagine someone in the real world with superpowers,” he says over Zoom one recent evening from his home in Hong Kong. “But I can imagine someone like him who is an underdog, who is a failure of a father.” At ease in a white T-shirt, a slender golden chain visible underneath, he has the ready and easy smile of a boy, a collection of elegant porcelain urns and vases arranged on a shelf behind him. He says he understood that Wenwu was ultimately driven not by evil but by a love for his children, which lent him a touch of humanity. “On the one hand,” Leung says, “he’s a bad father, but on the other, I just see him as someone who loves his family deeply.” And, he adds, “I don’t think he knows how to love himself.”

Oh man, I love everything about this story, about Leung’s first day on set:

On Leung’s first day on the set of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, in Sydney, he emerged from his trailer, dressed and ready, and asked to have his chair put near the camera. Every day he repeated this process. “He would never be on his phone,” says Cretton. “He would just come and sit all day, watching everything that we’re doing—what shot we’re setting up, what we’re doing with the stand-ins. And by the time it was ready to go, I’d literally have nothing to tell him. Initially, I’d be like, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re thinking,’ and he’d say, ‘Oh,’ very politely, ‘yeah, I know. I’ve been watching this whole time.’ ”

When it came time for Leung to shoot a scene (which has since been cut), Cretton says a reverent quiet descended across the set. It was a hot day, and for Leung it was even hotter; he was attired in the long robes and wig required to play Wenwu as a young thief, stealing cattle, in what becomes a massive battle scene. Immediately after the first cut, Cretton looked to Schwartz, the producer, and said, “I don’t even know what to go tell him, because we don’t have to do another take. There’s really no reason to.”

This bit from Simu Liu made me smile – I’ve seen enough of Leung’s old wuxia/action stuff to find this utterly believable:

In between takes, Liu would listen as Leung shared stories of his formative TVB days, pointing out the differences between the elaborate pains with stunt safety Marvel took with harnesses and special effects and his old days in Hong Kong action films, doing stunts on wires so thin they seemed they might snap.

I was morbidly curious about what Leung doing press for Shang-Chi would look like, and honestly, what we’re getting is so much better than a slew of press-junket videos and red-carpet interviews. Just a few carefully-chosen, in-depth piece that focus on the film, celebrate his entry into American movies, and introduce him to Western audiences who might not be familiar with his work.

Siege and Storm (2013)

The second book in the “Grishaverse” series, as well as the second in the Alina trilogy. Since season 1 of the TV show goes up through the end of the first book, I’m now following the characters into uncharted narrative territory, and it’s exciting to see where the story goes (book premise spoilers.)

After the events of Shadow and Bone, Alina and Mal flee Ravka, but Alina feels the pull of her troubled homeland. Her last encounter with the Darkling spurred him to acquire a devastating new power, and he uses it as a weapon against any who would cross him. Realizing that she’s the only one with a hope of stopping him, Alina contemplates going back. But it’s going to take more power than she has now – like the Darkling before her, she sets her sights on ancient, mythic animals able to amplify Grisha abilities.

After reading Shadow and Bone, it was fun to go into this book not knowing what was going to happen. The story takes us in plenty of unexpected places, offering up some gripping surprises as well as some “wait – really?” moments. I wasn’t expecting to follow the amplifier thread from the first book, but that seems to be emerging as a major driving force of the entire trilogy.

We’re able to glimpse some of the lands beyond Ravka and meet some new characters. For my money, the BIPOC-coded foreign lands/cultures are rather thinly-sketched so far, which is disappointing. However, I really like some of the new characters, especially as concerns the privateer Sturmhond and two of his crew members, the loyal/lethal twins Tolya and Tamar. Sturmhond is a really engaging character, hard to pin down, and he adds a great new dynamic to the characters. I love waiting to see what he’s going to do next.

The book takes Alina to some neat places. I appreciate the darkness of it – as Alina gains strength and confidence in her abilities, she also feels a sharper tug of desire for more power. I like her worries over whether or not she’s going down the same path as the Darkling, playing with forces she shouldn’t mess with, and it’s interesting to see her wrestle with what her power might be turning her into. I also like the way that, while Alina is the prophesied savior who might be Ravka’s only hope to destroy the Fold, she’s also a powerful symbol for the people, and numerous factions want to co-opt that symbol for their own advancement. In that way, I’m reminded a little of how Katniss is both a revolutionary leader and a propaganda tool in The Hunger Games.

The romance stuff is hit-or-miss, if only because I prefer Alina’s interactions with the guys who pretty obviously aren’t her endgame over the one who is. There’s a definite air of “Alina’s a little busy trying to figure out if she can stop a dangerous megalomaniac, so can you not get in your feelings right now over her not being able to spend as much time with you as you’d like?” Then meanwhile, she has really enjoyable, unpredictable interactions with another guy who may or may not be into her to an indeterminate level. And as for Alina and the Darkling, while it certainly gets a little The Last Jedi-era Reylo at times, the book never loses sight of how messed-up their dynamic is, which I appreciate.

All in all, it’s a strong second installment. There’s plenty that I’m excited to see onscreen in the adaptation, and the ending has a big enough bang that I’m glad the whole series has already been published; I wouldn’t have waited to wait for the next book to come out!

Warnings

Violence, light sexual content, drinking, and strong thematic elements.

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Another new Shang-Chi featurette, featuring more behind-the-scenes clips, interviews, and a handful of new shots we haven’t seen before. I love that, during shooting, Simu Liu’s parents mostly just wanted to know about him working with Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Michelle Yeoh.

There’s also an article that reveals a little more about what was involved in bringing Leung into the film, a subject that I still find endlessly fascinating (even now, after more than two years of hype, it’s still a little hard to believe he’s actually in it.) Destin Daniel Cretton talks about the casting process for getting Leung on board (sounds like it almost didn’t happen,) and both he and Kevin Feige have all kinds of praise for Leung’s work in the movie. You love to see it!

Cretton says, “He’s a legend, and there’s a reason he’s a legend and a big reason is that he’s the hardest working actor on set. He is the most dedicated actor I’ve ever worked with. The most focused actor I’ve ever worked with.”

And Feige adds, “Meeting him in person, which I only did very briefly on set was incredible, and just watching him work, and watching all of the other cast around him, learn from him and take that craft within themselves.”

Character Highlight: Matteusz Andrzejewski (Class)

This will be a pretty short write-up. Matteusz is the last major character from Class that I want to cover, but he’s definitely the least prominent one in the group, more a rider for Charlie than his own full character (a few Matteusz-related spoilers.)

Matteusz’s job on the show, first and foremost, is to be Charlie’s boyfriend. He’s there to be asked to the prom by Charlie, to deal with the fact that the boy he’s into is an alien, to make Charlie reflect on his decisions, and to occasionally be threatened by the baddies in order to keep Charlie in line. He’s more of a function than a character, much more about Charlie’s character development than his own. He’s someone for Charlie to worry over, whether he’s expressing horror at the Cabinet of Souls (a Rhodian artifact that could be used as a weapon of genocide) or admitting under psychic inducement that he both loves and is afraid of Charlie. But he’s a positive force in Charlie’s life too – it’s due to his influence that Charlie doesn’t use the Cabinet of Souls, and he gets a rather swoony moment of assuring that Charlie that, if Charlie ever loses himself, Matteusz will find him again.

But that’s all mainly about Charlie, not Matteusz. His own storyline, what little there is of it, falls along sad gay lines, getting kicked out of the house by his conservative immigrant parents over his relationship with Charlie. Rather than really exploring Matteusz’s relationship with his family and what this experience means for him, though, it’s used more as a vehicle to get Matteusz to move in with Charlie and Quill.

This can be a tricky thing about having LGBTQ characters in ensemble shows. Often, there’s only one major gay/queer character in an ensemble, so while straight regulars can get into relationships with one another, the queer character needs to have a love interest brought in especially for them. This can relegate their relationship more to the margins, because we just don’t know the love interest as well or care about them as much as the regulars.

Matteusz isn’t quite in that situation, since he is a regular, but he’s the one who gets the least attention, dimension, and screentime. There’s certainly a sense that, if the show didn’t need someone to be Charlie’s boyfriend, there wouldn’t necessarily be a fifth student in the group. I haven’t checked out any of the ancillary stories for Class, the novels and the audiobooks, so I don’t know if he’s able to come more into his own there, but on the show, he tends to be the afterthought of the ensemble.

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I’ve watched a handful of Shang-Chi press videos and have found a few good Tony Leung Chiu-wai-related nuggets. Asked to describe Shang-Chi in one word, Simu Liu calls it “groundbreaking,” for multiple reasons, one of which is that it's Leung’s English-language debut. Also, both Liu and Fala Chen, who plays Jiang Li in the film, talk about the power of acting opposite Leung’s eyes, giving the impression that both are in awe of and at least slightly in love in him. In Chen’s interview, I really like what she says about Leung’s acting process and working collaboratively to create the fullest characters/relationships possible.

That’s one thing I really appreciate. Among arthouse cinema fans, there’s a feeling that Marvel is beneath Leung and that he basically just collected a fat paycheck for this movie. (First of all, I would point out that Leung was in Come Fly the Dragon and Fantasy Romance, so it’s not like he’s only a highly-decorated dramatic actor – there's no need to be so precious.) But between the reviews and the comments of people who’ve worked on the film, it sounds like Leung put his usual level of care and craft into this role. And by all accounts, we’re in for a real treat.

News Satire Roundup: August 22nd

Sunday, August 22

·        Recap of the Week – Facebook VR technology

o   Great way to describe Mark Zuckerberg – “The guy who brought you ‘Everyone you went to high school with is QAnon now!’”

·        Main Story – Afghanistan

o   John side-eyed Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arguing the U.S. would still “basically” have an embassy in Afghanistan “in a location at the airport” – “An embassy does not belong in an airport because it’s not a fucking Wolfgang Puck.”

o   Also earning side-eye? Biden’s revisionist history that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was never about nation-building – “Oh, if our mission was never nation-building, then I guess our not-mission was not-accomplished.”

o   Loved this line – “It doesn’t get much more ‘the month after 9/11’ than a white Democrat in a fuck-you burqa applauding the Bush administration’s commitment to human rights.”

o   Awesome response to Trump’s rosy summation during his administration that they’d have Afghanistan “spinning like a top” – “We did leave Afghanistan ‘spinning like a top’ – you know, those things that famously spin forever and never collapse.”

o   John felt that the U.S. paying for helicopters that the Afghan military wasn’t equipped to use was emblematic of our whole time there – “We came in, built something on the American model almost wholly dependent on American support, and put next to no effort into ensuring it was sustainable after we left.”

o   John agreed that we should have pulled out of Afghanistan but had a lot of problems with how we’re going about it – “The problem is, though, just as we went in focused entirely on U.S. interests, we are leaving the exact same way.”

o   On the Trump administration’s “peace talks” with the Taliban, in which the Afghan government had no seat at the table – “You never want two people in a room deciding your future without you, especially if one of those people is the fucking Taliban.”

o   Tucker Carlson’s argument against the U.S. taking in Afghan refugees was so gross – “So first we invade, and then we’re invaded.”

o   Truth – “No amount of brute force or perseverance is going to clear up the clusterfuck that we helped fuck into existence. And I realize that’s a quintessentially un-American idea, to acknowledge that we can’t always control something that we want to control or achieve something that we want to achieve, but the truth is, we can’t.”

·        And Now This – Tamron Hall celebrates being 50

o   Mostly meh. This one made me laugh – “Listen I am- as the kids say, I am 50.”

·        Finally – Jim Adler, “the Texas Hammer”

o   John revisited an old ad that the show previously made fun of, about would-be macho lawyer Jim Adler, who dubbed himself “the Texas Hammer.” Why? Because an Alabama lawyer named Mike Slocumb made an eerily similar commercial, earning himself a lawsuit from Adler.

o   John could see why Slocumb would envy Adler’s “clear and concise” ad campaign – “You learn two facts about him: he’s the Texas Hammer, and that is it.”

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Sweet interview with Jayden Zhang Tanyi, who plays young Shang-Chi. He has some nice things to say about working with Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

Less than a week until Shang-Chi opens! I really hope I’ll be able to see it within the first couple of days. I’m gonna be watching all the showtimes on the app for my local theater and pounce on the first sparsely-populated showing I can get. I’m torn – obviously, I want the movie to do well, but I also know I won’t feel comfortable going if there’s too many people in the theater. I’ll especially keep my eye on the late-night showings. Do tons of people go to MCU movies after 9 pm on a weeknight? Can that be my in? That’s what I did with Black Widow, but not until the Tuesday after it came out. Really hoping I won’t have to wait that long!