Reviews – Page 25 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 3 – The Dog

“She’s not sick. She’s dead.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Fear the Walking Dead continues to get pacier in this third instalment, though there’s still a fair bit of the soap opera that pretty much dominated the pilot episode to the exclusion of most everything else. Like the second episode, this one follows the quasi-real time approach (with a significant gap in the middle) which is apparently going to be the show’s style – a nice way to extend a narrative that logically would be over pretty quickly otherwise. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 3 – The Dog”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far

“When civilisation ends, it ends fast.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Civilisation may be ending fast, but there was still fairly little plot advancement in this second ep of AMC’s cash cow spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. And yet, despite that fact, this was a much tauter, pacier instalment than the pilot, due in no small part to being told almost entirely in real time. Like 24, but with zombies. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot

“She was eating them!”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

There’s a fundamental problem with prequels, which is that you know how they’re going to end. Along the way, you often have to contort your story to make it fit with the pre-existing outcomes (“have the protocol droid’s memory wiped”). Of course, knowing broadly how a story will end doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable – otherwise nobody would have gone to see Titanic (SPOILER – the ship sinks). The challenge is to get your audience invested in the characters living through what you already know is going to happen, and hopefully show some spectacle along the way. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 10 – Mother’s Mercy

“He raised his hands, and they all stood up at once. Tens of thousands, the biggest army in the world.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

In previous years, the season finale of Game of Thrones has tended to have the feel of an epilogue, a time to take stock after the tumultuous events of the action-packed ep9. With the last couple of eps having well and truly broken that formula, it was no surprise that this years’ season finale was something quite different; a veritable bloodbath of major characters, and a cornucopia of cliffhangers. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 10 – Mother’s Mercy”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 9 – The Dance of Dragons

“Sometimes a person has to choose. Sometimes the world forces his hand.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

With the full throttle carnage usually expected from ep 9 of Game of Thrones having come early last week, this week the question was, what will ep 9 bring this year? As it turned out, it was much the same mix as last week, the Big Action Set Pieces split over two eps this year. As with last week, the ep started slow, then built to an unexpected epic battle in the third act; less epic than last week, perhaps, but that’s quibbling. By any other show’s standards, this might have been a season finale. In Game of Thrones, it was ep 9. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 9 – The Dance of Dragons”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 8 – Hardhome

“I’ve seen the army of the dead. I’ve seen the White Walkers. And they’re coming for us. For all the living.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Holy crap. If you’ve been waiting for the standard epic battle usually provided in ep9 of each season of Game of Thrones, well… it came early. And if you’ve also been missing The Walking Dead, this should have more than filled the void. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 8 – Hardhome”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 7 – The Gift

“You should hold on to your candles. The nights are so long now.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s ep of dramatic payoffs to long gestating political plots in Game of Thrones comes… another one. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing; this was every bit as gripping and well—written as last week’s. Tonally though, it was so similar you could have watched the two together and been forgiven for thinking it was one extra long one. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 7 – The Gift”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 6 – Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

“I’m Sansa Stark of Winterfell. This is my home. And you can’t frighten me.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s focus mainly on just two of its multifarious plotlines, this week Game of Thrones was back to business as usual with a lively ep taking in snippets of plenty of them. While there was little in the way of epic action, it was no less dramatic for that as all the patient political scheming of earlier episodes began to pay off in spades. And perhaps more than any ep I’ve seen yet, it was dominated by the show’s women, who were both the drivers and the victims in practically every snapshot this week. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 6 – Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”

Mad Men: Season 7, Episode 14 – Person To Person

“You spend your whole life thinking you’re not getting it, people aren’t giving it to you. And you realise you don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Tricky things, series finales. You never quite know what you’re going to get. They range from the satisfying (Sons of Anarchy, Star Trek the Next Generation) to the absolutely perfect (MASH, Babylon 5) to the maddeningly obtuse and disappointing (The Sopranos, Lost, Quantum Leap). So what could we expect from the conclusion to one of the most critically acclaimed, understated dramas of recent times? Well, in keeping with the show’s consistent tone of understated subtlety, what we got was… an episode of Mad Men. Not showy, not spectacular, but as excellent as ever and a perfectly consistent and logical ending to a story that could never really end in a conclusive way. Continue reading “Mad Men: Season 7, Episode 14 – Person To Person”

Mad Men: Season 7, episode 13 – The Milk and Honey Route

“I’m jealous of your ability to be sentimental about the past. I’m not able to do that. I remember things as they were.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Mad Men is not a show that does sentimentality. Emphatically not. However much you the audience may come to like these well-rounded but flawed characters, in the words of Game of Thrones, “if you’re hoping for a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention”. You might want things to turn out all right for the gang of misfits you’ve unwillingly come to love, but it ain’t gonna happen. First sign of a happy ending, and reality is going to jump up like a schoolyard bully and brutally beat them around the face until it all collapses into despair. Continue reading “Mad Men: Season 7, episode 13 – The Milk and Honey Route”