Hey, I heard you missed me. I'm back! Gimme something to write about, man.
I was gone for a week or so spending time with family who came into town. Lots of dietary regrets. Well, a few. I don't necessarily regret the beer, or the cheesecake, or the fancy sugar coffees. But I'll be straight with you...the only reason I don't regret any of it is because it didn't result in a big backpedal. I kept off the weight.
I've always had a heap of shade to throw at fitness enthusiasts or habitual diet folks who seem to schedule their entire life around the gym, or around their Weight Watchers points, or around their time-sensitive eating schedule. Before getting serious about my own physical state, it was off-putting to hear that someone would let their (admittedly admirable) diligence for personal maintenance become the fulcrum of their waking hours. In my head, it was comparable to talking at length about clipping your toenails: bully for you, but leave me out of it.
I've changed my mind on that. Because this stuff is harder than clipping your toenails, obviously. It's ludicrous that I would make that comparison in the first place, back when I couldn't be bothered to even look at a treadmill or put down my Quarter Pounder. In the shiny light of our technological amusement park of a society, exercise and proper diet became hard. When we conquered the cold, when we conquered the hunger, when we conquered the darkness, that's when exercise had to become something deliberate that you have to schedule time and money for. Once fast food, the corn revolution, and the microwave came about, a proper diet was just too much work. We've played ourselves.
But I'm here. Today has finally started to become that fabled "tomorrow" that I always penciled in as "the point when I start getting a handle on things." Right now, it's tomorrow. It's a magic moment, right here and now. Because in 43 days and 25 entries of this ongoing whatever-this-is, I've lost 25 pounds. Yeah, that's a pound gone for every trip to the gym. A pound gone for every long Crossing the Stream post that I forced myself to do.
And I'm not anywhere near done. That's simultaneously uplifting and scary.
"Lost in Space" Season 1, Episode 5 - "Eulogy"
I keep forgetting, because of the glamorous budget and blockbuster effects on display, that "Lost in Space" is at heart something of a YA serial. Episodes might have some heady themes, but it also survives on the "monster of the week" or the escalation of peril found in a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or the Hunger Games films. At this point, in the back half of the eight episodes for the season, the show's dynamic has shifted in the wake of Robot's fight with the giant lizards. And...I just typed that sentence. The fight for survival has been an easy way to unify all of these ideologically scattered characters, but now that some regularity has settled upon the Jupiter survivors, perceptions and secrets are starting to take the forefront.
It's kind of cheap that the Robot secret is traded so handily for the black hole secret, but...eh. At least now the stakes are better defined and the damning omission is as big as narratively possible. Maureen opens the episode with the "I'm explaining this stuff to a child" style of astrophysics lessons using a baseball as Planet X, a wine bottle as the sun, and a coffee mug as the black hole gumming up their orbit. We've devolved from Geordi LaForge to Billy Bob Thorton in Armageddon. Still, Watanabe's immediate deduction about Maureen's secret, and his immediate logical acceptance of it, is refreshing. I'm glad there's a possibility we can avoid the inevitable "Burn the witch!" moment for Mrs. Robinson.
Speaking of maudlin, Angela is a character, now! Yay...? It makes perfect sense, of course, that someone would inevitably attack Robot for what he did aboard the Resolute, but I'm still not fully aware of Dr. Smith's motivations in all of this. She seems to want the Robot's protection before contact with the Resolute foils her new identity, but how that lines up with wanting Robot cast out or damaged is still a mystery.
Dr. Smith's constant reframing of actual events in order to manipulate people on a one-on-one basis is sold almost entirely by the amount of vulnerability Parker Posey allows the con artist to show. It helps that Smith takes her new role as a therapist seriously enough to do actual research, lending credibility to the idea that everyone would be fooled by her half-hearted explanations for everything. That's a nice touch, but it really loses steam when her sense-memory exercise with her new patient is at "The Sopranos" level of bad therapy sessions. It shouldn't take much for Don's discovery of the real Dr. Zachary Smith's personal effects to hang her. It would be so easy for the character to be the hokiest thing on a show that features a literal deus ex machina, but her ever-present conscience keeps her complex and interesting, especially here when it overtake her sinister machinations and she sends Will out of the Jupiter before Angela appears with the gun.
The flashing red emergency lighting aboard the Robinsons' Jupiter in the wake of the shooting, a callback to Angela's sense memory exercise, is perhaps one flourish too many, but it serves a technical purpose of hiding the clunkier aspects of the CGI Robot's counterattack. It definitely should have been the end of the episode, though. I mean, come on. I will say the heartbreaking slow motion fall of Robot and his shattering on the rocks below was also one hell of a visual highlight. And the farewell before he takes those fatal steps off the cliffside was a big moment in the career of young Maxwell Jenkins, who gets to do some honest-to-goodness acting
Random Notes:
-Is there any rhyme or reason to which episodes get the credit sequence? This one happens to be long as hell, clocking in at 65 minutes, and still gets the full "history of NASA" bit.
-The 3D-printed gun falling into the hands of now a third unlikely character before finally being shot is proof positive that Chekov is alive and well.
-Robot's communication seems to be improving via his best-buddy interactions with Will. My current bet on his vocabulary expansion is that "Danger Robinson family!" will be unlocked by the end of the season.
-Vijay's poem might stink royally by common standards, but in terms of "written while possibly dying" it's surprisingly lucid.
-"I'm a badass princess!" There's a comma in there, somewhere.
Rating: A
I was gone for a week or so spending time with family who came into town. Lots of dietary regrets. Well, a few. I don't necessarily regret the beer, or the cheesecake, or the fancy sugar coffees. But I'll be straight with you...the only reason I don't regret any of it is because it didn't result in a big backpedal. I kept off the weight.
I've always had a heap of shade to throw at fitness enthusiasts or habitual diet folks who seem to schedule their entire life around the gym, or around their Weight Watchers points, or around their time-sensitive eating schedule. Before getting serious about my own physical state, it was off-putting to hear that someone would let their (admittedly admirable) diligence for personal maintenance become the fulcrum of their waking hours. In my head, it was comparable to talking at length about clipping your toenails: bully for you, but leave me out of it.
I've changed my mind on that. Because this stuff is harder than clipping your toenails, obviously. It's ludicrous that I would make that comparison in the first place, back when I couldn't be bothered to even look at a treadmill or put down my Quarter Pounder. In the shiny light of our technological amusement park of a society, exercise and proper diet became hard. When we conquered the cold, when we conquered the hunger, when we conquered the darkness, that's when exercise had to become something deliberate that you have to schedule time and money for. Once fast food, the corn revolution, and the microwave came about, a proper diet was just too much work. We've played ourselves.
But I'm here. Today has finally started to become that fabled "tomorrow" that I always penciled in as "the point when I start getting a handle on things." Right now, it's tomorrow. It's a magic moment, right here and now. Because in 43 days and 25 entries of this ongoing whatever-this-is, I've lost 25 pounds. Yeah, that's a pound gone for every trip to the gym. A pound gone for every long Crossing the Stream post that I forced myself to do.
And I'm not anywhere near done. That's simultaneously uplifting and scary.
"Lost in Space" Season 1, Episode 5 - "Eulogy"
 |
| "Good morning, BALTIMORE!" |
I keep forgetting, because of the glamorous budget and blockbuster effects on display, that "Lost in Space" is at heart something of a YA serial. Episodes might have some heady themes, but it also survives on the "monster of the week" or the escalation of peril found in a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or the Hunger Games films. At this point, in the back half of the eight episodes for the season, the show's dynamic has shifted in the wake of Robot's fight with the giant lizards. And...I just typed that sentence. The fight for survival has been an easy way to unify all of these ideologically scattered characters, but now that some regularity has settled upon the Jupiter survivors, perceptions and secrets are starting to take the forefront.
It's kind of cheap that the Robot secret is traded so handily for the black hole secret, but...eh. At least now the stakes are better defined and the damning omission is as big as narratively possible. Maureen opens the episode with the "I'm explaining this stuff to a child" style of astrophysics lessons using a baseball as Planet X, a wine bottle as the sun, and a coffee mug as the black hole gumming up their orbit. We've devolved from Geordi LaForge to Billy Bob Thorton in Armageddon. Still, Watanabe's immediate deduction about Maureen's secret, and his immediate logical acceptance of it, is refreshing. I'm glad there's a possibility we can avoid the inevitable "Burn the witch!" moment for Mrs. Robinson.
Penny's aggressive pursuit of Vijay is an inventive way for the writers to explore a teen's struggle against all this new danger and worry while still keeping Mina Sundwall the reliable comic relief of the core cast. A lesser show would have her try to commit suicide out of hopeless despair once she finds out about the black hole, just for shock value. But Penny isn't a sullen teen stereotype. Not until her plans of adolescent romance dry up with her waterfall, at least.
The other consistent source of levity is Ignacio Serricchio as Don West, scoundrel extraordinaire. Don's immediate search for a new hustle, from asking the Japanese biologists if he can sell the alien lifeform samples to leveraging a payday out of his Jupiter's auxiliary fuel supply, is some top notch use of the chaotic-good space pirate, such as a Han Solo or a Malcolm Reynolds. This thread also gives an opportunity for Judy to do something, and for Victor to show what a real sleaze he is. Though, I sure got that message already from his slightly insidious town hall meeting about the Robot. It's still not clear to me if John Robinson was invited at all to that.
I don't talk enough about the cinematography of this show, but the sweeping low-angle tracking shots of the chariots blazing across the plains of Planet X, set to Van Halen's "Panama," is a rousing balance of light survival adventure. Judy's impromptu "Whoo Girl" moment is just what the doctor ordered to break up some of the maudlin stuff going on elsewhere in the episode.
Speaking of maudlin, Angela is a character, now! Yay...? It makes perfect sense, of course, that someone would inevitably attack Robot for what he did aboard the Resolute, but I'm still not fully aware of Dr. Smith's motivations in all of this. She seems to want the Robot's protection before contact with the Resolute foils her new identity, but how that lines up with wanting Robot cast out or damaged is still a mystery.
The flashing red emergency lighting aboard the Robinsons' Jupiter in the wake of the shooting, a callback to Angela's sense memory exercise, is perhaps one flourish too many, but it serves a technical purpose of hiding the clunkier aspects of the CGI Robot's counterattack. It definitely should have been the end of the episode, though. I mean, come on. I will say the heartbreaking slow motion fall of Robot and his shattering on the rocks below was also one hell of a visual highlight. And the farewell before he takes those fatal steps off the cliffside was a big moment in the career of young Maxwell Jenkins, who gets to do some honest-to-goodness acting
Random Notes:
-The 3D-printed gun falling into the hands of now a third unlikely character before finally being shot is proof positive that Chekov is alive and well.
-Robot's communication seems to be improving via his best-buddy interactions with Will. My current bet on his vocabulary expansion is that "Danger Robinson family!" will be unlocked by the end of the season.
-Vijay's poem might stink royally by common standards, but in terms of "written while possibly dying" it's surprisingly lucid.
-"I'm a badass princess!" There's a comma in there, somewhere.
Rating: A