Countdown to Thirteen: The Assets: Episode 2 – “Jewel in the Crown” (2014)

I’m definitely warming up to The Assets.  Now that the stage is set, things are getting going, and it looks like it might be a fairly gripping ride – I’m reminded a little of the first season of The Hour.  It follows American spies in the ‘80s instead of a British news team in the ‘50s, and I found The Hour more instantly engaging, but the miniseries is shaping up into a nice period spy thriller with good suspense.

When a KGB colonel decides to defect to the West, he confirms what Sandy has been fearing:  the presence of a mole within the CIA.  As they wait for the jittery defector to reveal what he knows, the agency begins going through the files of their active assets, trying to determine who would be most at risk of exposure.  Meanwhile, the mole debates how to deal with the colonel.

I didn’t mention it in my review of episode 1, but we the audience know pretty much from the first who the mole is (as such, it’s not exactly a spoiler, but I’ll avoid saying their name anyway,) and while Jodie Whittaker’s Sandy heads up one branch of the plot, they lead the other.  As such, while the first episode focuses more squarely on Sandy’s side of things, this one is a more even split between the two, emphasizing the mole’s dread at having a defector on the premises, unsure of how much he really knows.

But Sandy gets in some good stuff as well.  She’s the one spearheading the efforts to ascertain the danger to their assets, and through flashbacks to her initial grooming of a particular asset, we learn a little more about her as a CIA officer.  She’s a shrewd study of human character, and while some of her colleagues think she’s not wary enough toward possible new recruits, she recognizes potential when she sees it and seems to have a good eye for sensing when to invest in someone.  Even if she knows them mainly through their case files and the intelligence they send from the other side of the Iron Curtain, she cares about these assets and wants to do whatever is necessary to ensure that they’re not burned by the traitor within the agency.

Another familiar face, also British (I looked it up – apparently, The Assets was produced in the U.S. and originally aired on ABC, but the cast is super British.)  It’s none other than Noel Clarke, a.k.a. Mickey from new Who!  I love it when Who alumni are in other projects together, and it’s almost as fun when they’re in a project with someone who later goes on to be a part of Who, a la Matt Smith having a guest appearance in Secret Diary of a Call Girl with Billie Piper several years before he made his debut as Eleven.

Relationship Spotlight: Jessica Jones & Matt Murdock (The Defenders)

The team interactions is my favorite part of The Defenders, and I think Matt and Jessica in particular are my absolute favorites.  It’s a dynamic that shouldn’t really work but totally does, and I’m down with any future Marvel Netflix show that wants to find an excuse to have these two share screentime (a few Matt-Jessica-related spoilers.)

Jessica and Matt meet first in the “real world” rather than the superhero world.  At least, at this point, it’s known who Jessica is and what she can do, so when she’s brought into the police station, they know they’re questioning an enhanced person, but Jessica first meets Matt the lawyer, not Daredevil the hero.  There’s a bit of supporting-character crossover to get the stars to align for Matt to show up on the scene as her attorney, and even though he does his job quickly and efficiently to get her out of an undesirable situation, she doesn’t want anything to do with him.  Of course, when she catches him pulling parkour moves in an alley, that’s a different story.

Both are suspicious of what the other isn’t saying, and that leads both to keep an eye (so to speak) on the other, until both wind up in the show’s first unintentional team-up against the Hand.  Due to the circumstances, Matt ends up fighting without his suit (but still trying to be incognito,) and Jessica is the first in the group to twig that he’s really the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.  When Matt wants to pull away, nervous about protecting his secret identity, Jessica is the one who convinces him to stay.

On paper, it seems like the makings of either an odd couple or love/hate dynamic, because despite some deep similarities, they’re pretty different people.  Both are a mess, but Jessica wears hers openly and uses it to keep others at arm’s length while Matt is super-repressed, pretending he has it all together when there’s a darkness in him he can’t always control.  They seem poised to butt heads, and there’s definitely a certain combativeness to their vibe.  Jessica gets in Matt’s face when she thinks he needs to get over himself, gets to know him better by pushing his buttons, and snarks freely at him on all matters, especially his Daredevil suit.  Matt, in turn, gives nearly as good as he gets (nearly – sorry, Matt, but nobody snarks like Jessica.)

When it comes to the work, though, they make a pretty superb team.  It’s noteworthy that, in a superhero show, one of my favorite sequences is completely devoid of action:  it’s the one-two punch of Jessica and Matt investigating the architect together, both playing to their own strengths as they interview his daughter and find important answers to questions about the Hand’s plan.  They’re remarkably in sync, they get good results, and they do so without losing the fun back-and-forth between them.  They kind of just fall into it like they’ve been doing this for a while, and without a lot of fanfare, these two people with very confirmed trust issues find themselves working alongside one another.  (It’s interesting that Jessica and Luke’s past history would lend itself to making them a natural duo and, given the mutual Hand connection, the same would be true of Matt and Danny, but when the dust settles, the most prominent partnerships are definitely Matt-Jessica and Luke-Danny.)  Don’t know when we’ll get to see them together again – if it won’t be until whenever The Defenders comes back or if there will be any guest appearances in the next seasons of Daredevil and/or Jessica Jones – but I’m ready for it.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Edge of Spider-Verse (2014)

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this comic-book volume.  All I really knew going in was that it featured the debut of Spider-Gwen, a character I’ve heard about and am interested in getting into.  While Spider-Man itself is a comic franchise too long and entangled for me to start exploring too much, I did enjoy the stories collected here.

The basic premise is that some interdimensional baddie is trolling the multiverse for Spider-Men, trying to take out incarnations of the web-crawler in various iterations.  At the same time, Peter Parker (presumably original recipe, or at least as close to that as comic canon can get?) is also dimension-hopping, trying to get to his parallels first and convince them to join him in fighting the baddie (this volume, however, is mainly about setting up the different Spider-Men, not any actual team-up.)

There’s a lot of variety in the different universes here, and I like pretty much all of them.  The first gives us Spider-Man in a noir-ish setting, complete with gangsters, a retro/gritty costume, and Mysterio masquerading as a traveling magician.  Cool and stylish.  Next up is Spider-Gwen, the aforementioned reason I checked out the comic in the first place.  It’s probably the most straightforward take on the story, simply imagining what would’ve happened if Gwen had been bit by the spider instead of Peter (also, I really dig her costume.)  Spider-Man #3 is my least favorite, a hero of the scientist-who-intentionally-experimented-on-himself variety, with a bonus high-tech suit.  The story of the villain he’s fighting is interesting, but I’m not as interested in the man himself.  The fourth story is the most disturbing, a dark twist on the classic tale.  There, the pushed-to-the-edge bullied kid (named Patton instead of Peter) gives into the dark impulses of the hunger the spider-bite awakens in him, using his powers to exact vengeance on his tormenters.  Finally, we go high-tech again, with a now-deceased Spider-Man’s daughter taking up her dad’s mantle and forming the required symbiotic bond with the spider that enables the suit’s powers.

Since I picked up the volume for Spider-Gwen (and, with her prominently featured on the cover, I assumed she’d be featured in more than 1/5 of it,) it is a bit disappointing to see how little there is of her, but I do like this book.  Even though it’s clearly a preamble to a main event, it shows a lot of creativity in bringing the different Spider-Men to life, and I enjoyed pretty much all of them.  However, I can see why this brief appearance eventually led to Gwen’s own comic.  The format of it is very “classic Spider-Man,” juggling crime-fighting with being a teenager (and the added complication of being hunted as a vigilante by her police-officer dad,) and I’m interested in checking out more of her.

Warnings

Violence (very graphic in some of the universes) and some strong thematic elements.

Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

It just so happens that, while the tone and circumstances of this film are fairly different, it does share some similarities with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Both are comedies centered around people desperate to get somewhere – and willing to travel by any means necessary – with a lot of money at stake.  But while the folks in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World resort to a lot of slapstick undercutting to cover a comparatively short distance, the central character in Around the World in 80 Days goes much further with a lot more pinache.  (Side note:  both are also sprawling films with lots of celebrity cameos, although Buster’s part here isn’t nearly as small.)

In Victorian England, Phileas Fogg bets several gentlemen at his club £20,000 that he can circumnavigate the globe in – you guessed it – eighty days.  Armed with his everpresent watch, plenty of cash to grease the necessary palms to get his way, and a fastidious schedule, Fogg and his trusty manservant Passepartout set off across the world, encountering plenty of obstacles and getting into some surprising adventures along the way.

It’s an enjoyable fillm – long, but amusing.  David Niven as Fogg and Cantinflas as Passepartout have great comic chemistry together and lead the film quite capably.  As I said, there are also numerous celebrity cameos from the likes of Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich, John and Hermione Gilguld (the latter of which played Mme. Armfeldt in A Little Night Music,) Glynis Johns (Desiree in A Little Night Music!), Frank Sinatra, and Red Skelton.

I should point out that a movie from the ‘50s set in the Victorian era handles other cultures about as well as you’d expect.  Stereotypes abound, as do numerous instances of white actors playing characters of color.  Let’s put it this way:  Shirley MacLaine, the female lead, plays an Indian princess.  If there’s a silver lining to this aspect of the story, it’s that it’s at least partly making fun of Fogg’s overinflated view of English superiority.  Also, not for nothing, he regards white Americans as just as “savage” as the people of the other countries he passes through.

It’s in the American section that Buster gets in on the action, rather fittingly playing a train conductor.  Tying in with Fogg’s impression of America as a barbarous, uncivilized wilderness, he’s constantly irritated by the constant delays on the train he rides across the country:  stops for cows, farmers, buffalo, Native Americans, etc.  The assorted “train fail” humor, combined with Buster’s presence, naturally reminds of his fantastic train gags in films like Our Hospitality and The General – there’s even a scene where there’s the danger of a bridge possibly collapsing under the train!  While Buster doesn’t get a whole lot to do, that connection still makes me smile to see him playing the conductor, and he does get in on some funny scenes, my favorite being his reaction to two passengers dueling in one of the cars.

Warnings

Violence, drinking/smoking, thematic elements, and racial insensitivity.

Torchwood: Series 1, Episode 3 – “Ghost Machine” (2006)

Torchwood got off to a rocky start for me – despite some hints of its potential, it was largely uneven for the first couple episodes, and up and down throughout quite a bit of its first season.  However, there were a handful of episodes that I thought worked, and for me, this was the first one to reassure me about what the show really could be.  Forget glimpses and moments; this was a fairly solid episode altogether, and it’s what helped me stick with the show until I made it to the next solid one.

When Gwen confiscates an alien device from a young delinquent, it activates in her hands, showing her a young boy frightened and alone in a Cardiff train station during the London evacuation.  The team realizes that this “ghost” is a remnant of emotional energy converted by the device into an apparitional presence.  Other places in Cardiff are similarly charged with lingering emotion, and Owen comes across a ghost he can’t let lie – past, present, and future collide before it’s all said and done.

One thing I do appreciate about Torchwood is that, due to the nature of the Rift, it’s not always about fighting aliens.  Just as often, it’s about alien technology in human hands, which offers more variety in the case-of-the-week narratives.  Here, I really like the concept of the ghost machine.  It’s not exactly original, but it’s well-done; the scenes of both the past ghosts and the present encounters are really effective, especially Gwen’s talk with Tom and Owen witnessing Ed and Lizzie.  I also like the added note that the machine makes the user, not just see the ghosts, but feel what they’re feeling. 

It’s that note that really sinks into Owen’s part of the story.  I could buy him getting invested in what happened with Lizzie and Ed, anyway, but having felt Lizzie’s emotions, it makes all the more sense why he gets so obsessed with it.  The empathic nature of the machine forced him into Lizzie’s shoes, so in a way, when he looks for Ed in the present, it’s for both their sakes.  By now, I’ve seen Torchwood enough that I can find the good parts in Owen amongst the early unpleasantness (with the exception of “that scene” in the pilot,) but my first time through, this episode was my first indication that, while still damaged and jerkish, Owen could be more than just an a-hole.

Other little bits that I like.  The “Splott” conversation still cracks me up, and the gun training montage is good, though more for its entertainment value than for its likely effectiveness – there are plenty of times in Torchwood’s first season where Jack doesn’t quite feel like Jack, but having sexually-charged gun-training sessions with his employees totally seems like something he would do.  And although Gwen/Rhys doesn’t always work for me, I do pretty much always like Rhys, and in this episode, I like the reminder Gwen gets of how much she loves him; she could use that every so often.

On the flipside, I think the twist with the machine in the second half doesn’t really make sense, given what’s already been established about how it works.  There are a few cheesy scenes that I know are supposed to be serious, which just makes them cheesier, and as usual for the early episodes, there’s not enough Ianto.

Countdown to Thirteen: The Assets: Episode 1 – “My Name is Aldrich Ames” (2014)

This based-on-true-events miniseries is off to a decent start, I’d say.  First off, it gives me my first chance to use the Starring Role tag in a Countdown to Thirteen post, so I’m expecting to see a lot more Jodie Whittaker in the remaining seven episodes.  And while the opening of this Cold War-era spy drama feels a little boilerplate, I think it has potential.

In recent months, the CIA has been losing assets within the KGB at an alarming rate, which officer Sandy Grimes only learns after one of her own assets is compromised.  As she wrestles with what hand her decisions may have played in the agent’s capture, she readies herself to discover how the KGB is furrowing out the assets.

The first episode, I’d say, is slightly unremarkable but still gets the job done.  Other than Sandy, not many of the characters are very distinct yet, and there’s a bit of a generic feel to the proceedings.  However, there’s enough here that it could shape up pretty nicely; the main story takes its time getting rolling, and there’s a nice blend of suspense and puzzle.  (Also, there is as yet no gross creep in the proceedings – the baddies definitely aren’t nice guys, but their motives are political – which is enough to make me ready to see more.)

As I said, Whittaker has a lead role in this miniseries, so she’s our Sandy.  At the moment, it appears that she mainly works in an office at Langley, handling the moving parts of spy operations but not carrying them out herself.  This is obviously a different beast than the female-led spy shows I’m more familiar with, a la Nikita, Agent Carter, or Atomic Blonde.  It doesn’t look like Sandy’s going to be doing too much in the way of actual butt-kicking.

But that’s okay, because it appears that she’s more about using her smarts from behind the scenes.  Episode 1 shows her to be an intelligent, dedicated CIA officer, someone who’s prepared to take risks if she deems that that’s the way to go, but someone who cares about what happens to the agents caught in the crossfire if her plans don’t pan out.  She’s also balancing a high-pressure, top-secret work life with a more “typical” family life at home – shades of Susan in The Bletchley Circle, although Sandy seems to have a more understanding partner than Susan, which helps on that front.

A couple of familiar faces so far (all British – is this a British production of a story about the American CIA?  Interesting.)  Stuart Milligan, who played Richard Nixon in series 6 of Who, is one of Sandy’s colleagues, as is Christina Cole, who I mainly know from playing the “mean girl” in adaptations of classic female-driven novels.  Seriously, I’ve seen her as Mrs. Elton, Caroline Bingley, and Blanche Ingram!  The woman knows how to be classist and bitchy.

Accent Watch

Generic American, not too bad – I caught a couple slips, but for the most part, it sounds convincing.

Recommend?

In General – Hard to say yet.  As of now, I’m not convinced, but now that things have kicked off, I feel like it’s going to go uphill from here.

Jodie Whittaker – Probably.  Again, it’s early days, but my first impressions of Whittaker in the role are of a capable, determined woman who’s both steely and compassionate – I like what I see!

Warnings

Violence, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements