Let's Talk Television: Vive la Résistance!
9-1-1 continues to burn itself down by taking the audience to task for caring.
A Quick Note About Programming
Welcome to a Monday edition of Let’s Talk Television. Yesterday was May the Fourth, so I posted about Andor, pushing the recap to Monday, however, we are still ending the week on Saturday, May 3.
New This Week
The Last of Us (Max)
Alert: Missing Persons Unit (Hulu)
Andor (Disney+) — three episodes
9-1-1 (Hulu)
Doctor Odyssey (Hulu)
Elsbeth (Peacock)
Law & Order (Peacock)
Law & Order: Organized Crime (Peacock)
Law & Order: SVU (Peacock)
Leverage: Redemption (Prime)
Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc (Crunchyroll)
Let’s go steal a recap.
I love a heist and this week is full of them.
On Andor, we visit Planet Fabric AKA Ghorman AKA France circa WWII, where Syril (Kyle Soller) is undercover as a rebel sympathizer. A part that is basically just Syril being Syril (overeager and hapless with a chip on his shoulder) but he successfully gets himself recruited to feed the resistance information. Meanwhile, Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) sends in Cassian (Diego Luna) to check out the validity of Ghorman’s volunteer rebels before he agrees to send in professional rebels to help out. Cassian goes in undercover as a fashion designer which is amazing, and he is on Gohrman while Syril is on Coruscant which is not quite Anakin never meets Grievous in Clone Wars levels of convenience, but is very convenient.
Cassian gives the Ghorman rebels a passing grade, if dismissively, so Luthen sends in Vel (Faye Marsay) and Cinta (Varada Sethu) to run their operation against the Empire (stealing proof that the Imperial building being built on top of their anti-Imperial memorial is in fact a weapons armory). The rebels do not take well to being told what to do (because they are French) and though the heist is successful, it is not bloodless: Vel (and we) lose Cinta to friendly fire, which is heartbreaking in every way.
On Leverage: Redemption, Astrid (Alexandra Park) and Parker (Beth Riesgraf) are pitted against each other to save Sophie (Gina Bellam) in a game set up by Bligh (Lucy Taylor). Everything about this episode is perfect. Parker is told to steal Marie Antoinette’s watch while it’s on display at a women-only museum party where everyone is dressed as Marie Antoinette, and Astrid is told to protect the watch from a thief. I am not going to tell you what happens because I want you to go watch it but I will say that all the men are away and off screen for the entire time, Parker is assisted by Brianna (Aleyse Shannon) and Tara (Jeri Ryan), Astrid is assisted by another lady agent Sharon (guest Donna Duplantier), and Sophie is a proud mama.
Finally, in Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc, Sebastian and Snake are stopped on their way into the secret dungeon under Sieglinde’s estate so Snake sends Oscar (one of his many snakes all named after authors). Oscar excitedly reports back that there werewolves in the basement and Sieglinde is helping them. Snake and his snakes are my favorite and I love how much they get to do this season!! At the end of the episode, Sebastian heads down to see what’s what—to be continued next week.
The scales of justice are heavy.
On Elsbeth, Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) is having a crisis of confidence in the justice system that lands her in prison when she takes matters into her own hands. This is apparently setting up a musical season finale in prison featuring various people Elsbeth got locked up. I CANNOT WAIT.
On Law & Order, one murder leads to another leads to evidence of thirteen more, all ordered by drug dealer Antonio (guest Jamie Gomez). But when their witness is murdered the only way to catch him is to go after his son Ernesto (David Castro), a middle school teacher with no ties to the drug running and/or murdering. Sam (Odelya Halevi) stands up to Baxter (Tony Goldwyn) on Ernesto’s behalf because she relates to being a chosen child of immigrants who might bend rules to protect said child’s future. Nolan (Hugh Dancy) is sympathetic, which is either growth or his love of Sam is stronger than his love of justice (or both), but Baxter is okay with sacrificing Ernesto to get Antonio. So they do.
Ernesto doesn’t believe what they cops and prosecutors say about his father, but agrees to wear a wire/camera and look for evidence. The last eight minutes or so of the episode are devastating. Ernesto’s faith in his father is destroyed, Antonio screams that everything he did was for Ernesto and he’s betrayed him, and then his mother refuses to see him before he goes into witness protection. Justice is served, I guess, but Sam’s read is correct and Ernesto’s life is ruined.
On SVU, Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) is called in to investigate a kidnapping that turned into a subscription service to watch a little girl be treated like a dog. The original “Missy Mayhem,” as the site is called, was the kidnapper couple’s daughter who ended up dead and buried in the backyard. Olivia was with Amanda (Kelli Giddish) to drop off their kids when she was called so it becomes an SVU plus Intelligence But Really Just Amanda joint op the result of which is Amanda gets to be the smartest person in the room again. The kid is rescued, the couple get 25 to life and the DA is going after the Missy Mayhem subscribers, too. But Olivia remains distressed because how anyone could do this to their own kid? Amanda answers if you don’t know after all these years who can, which, oof.
We get another brief glimpse of Noah (Ryan Buggle) in the episode but no reference to that time he, too. was (inexplicably) treated like a dog. Do the writers ever watch the show?
Finally, in Organized Crime, we continue the refrain of trauma all the way down. Reyes (Rick Gonzalez) goes undercover with Los Santos while Elliot (Christopher Meloni) looks into the Secret Secret Italians and it results in death by cop, but this time it’s not Elliot but Eli (Nicky Torcha) who takes the shot.
Isabella (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) finds a gun in the closet of her younger grandson, Pietro (Luca Rickman), and confronts her older grandson, Roman (Alberto Frezza), who tells her it’s all her fault for getting her brother arrested/imprisoned in Italy. Isabella also tells Elliot, which gets him in trouble with Eli and Eli’s TRO and sets up the tragedy.
Elliot goes to talk to Roman, unarmed and alone. At the very same time Los Santos hits them, including Reyes, who sends a warning to the NYPD, who send the gang unit and their newest member, Eli. Roman takes a shot at Elliot but is stopped by a shot from Reyes. Pietro then turns his gun on Reyes, prompting Elliot to intervene and Pietro to threaten Elliot. At which point Eli runs in and shoots Pietro dead.
So, to recap. People Elliot’s lost in the past three weeks: Bunny, Carlo, Bryanna, two altar boy hitmen, and Pietro to death. Isabella once she learns about Pietro’s death. Jet to a new job. Eli and Becky to a new apartment. And Olivia to something something blurry hospital vision potential cut scene who even knows but I’m counting it for now because the line “things I lost” references her.
Waving at feminism
On Doctor Odyssey, the ship is booked for two competing book tours that, as the captain says, both attract women. But on one side are trad wives and on the other are sex positives. They avoid each other until they can’t, resulting in a food fight (I hate food fights and this one includes shrimp which is really gross), but when the trad wife queen bee has a medical emergency they all come together.
The trad wife had an IUD placed because she is overwhelmed by how much work her lifestyle requires and doesn’t want more kids to add to the burden. Unfortunately, the IUD traveled where it wasn’t meant to and caused an infection so it needs to be removed in emergency surgery. At first her husband freaks out as expected but in the end he loves her more than the lifestyle and supports her decision by getting condoms from Max (Joshua Jackson). When he tells Max that he wants his wife to be happy with her choices Max says it’s kinda feminist of him and I guess kinda? The husband is written to be a good who prioritizes his wife’s health and happiness over his dreams of eleventy children but he’s very barely a protofeminist. Meanwhile, the sexpert is going through early menopause, which makes penetrative sex too painful, and she’s tried everything except a gynecologist/gynecological exam (I blame the American healthcare system). Avery (Philippa Soo) does tests, diagnoses the menopause and with the diagnosis comes treatment and with treatment the sexpert gets her groove back.
The Five Stages of Grief
Is Black Butler the only anime to feature Queen Victoria as a recurring character? Probably. Is Black Butler the only anime where Queen Victoria’s servants cheer her up by talking to her through a hand puppet of her dead husband Prince Albert? Almost definitely. In that historically accurate? Almost definitely not, however, it’s canon to me.
On The Last of Us, Ellie (Bella Ramsay) moves through all the stages at different points in the episode but she is mostly focused on anger in the form of getting revenge for Joel’s death. On Andor, Bix (Adria Arjona) also cycles through mostly depression but also bargaining before ending on anger and revenge. She steps up into an active rebel role, gives her torturer a bit of his own torture, and then she and Cassian blow up his facility. YES BIX GET YOURS.
Also on Andor, Saw (Forest Whitaker) describes his weapon of mass destruction as his sister, which is a call back to both Clone Wars (where Anakin and Ahsoka taught him and his sister how to be terrorists resulting in her death) and Rebels (where Sabine named the weapon of mass destruction she designed after the late Satine Kryze, much to Satine’s sister’s chagrin). Anyway, Saw is clearly stuck in anger forever possibly with a healthy side of depression induced psychosis.
On Organized Crime, Elliot hasn’t been in confession since Kathy was killed and only goes now because they think the priest is a Secret Secret Italian. He basically threatens the priest, which is badass (and dangerous), but I think this all counts as a crisis of faith. On MPU, the perp is a man who lost his whole family in a theater fire and when caught he threatens to burn it down again with the owner and her author/lover and the cops inside, Jay (Scott Caan) and Mike (Ryan Broussard) try to talk him down. They vaguely mention loss but make no actual reference to Nik. Pregnant Sidney (Fivel Stewart) also doesn’t reference her mother, only that her dad has lost too many people so she can’t go to Europe with her baby daddy but her two dads tell her to go, they’ll be fine, and I don’t think I can watch this show anymore.
Speaking of losing your family in a fire and shows I don’t want to watch anymore, on 9-1-1, Athena (Angela Bassett) starts in denial by avoiding planning a funeral for Bobby (Peter Krause). She moves into bargaining when she catches a case where a jailed mom thinks she’s found her kidnapped son only her son wasn’t kidnapped, he died in a fire and there was no body because it burned up. That’s when Athena moves into anger and so do I. She shouts and cries that Bobby wasn’t supposed to leave her and I shout and cry that with this “maybe he’s not dead” plot line the show is again yelling at the audience (for being too engaged and invested with the show, which, isn’t that what you want????) and it’s offensive.
If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention might be true in Game of Thrones but is gaslighting in 9-1-1.
How am I meant to keep watching this show? What is it going to be about now? Because if it’s about putting yourself back together after great loss, that was literally Bobby’s storyline and Bobby’s storyline ended in a horrific and premature death so guess what? That’s not inspiring.
I know grief. I know loss.
When I was sixteen years old I went to Universal Studios Hollywood with my father and my three brothers. By midafternoon my father had had enough but I hadn’t and I convinced him to leave me and two of my brothers at the park alone. In retrospect, this was a terrible idea, especially given that he didn’t give us any money and I didn’t have any of my own. But the attractions were all free with the price of admission, there was a shuttle back to our hotel when we were ready, and I was a sixteen-year-old girl willing to flirt my way into free ice cream and soda. Nothing bad happened to us.
My strongest memory of that day was of the Backdraft attraction. It wasn’t a ride. It was a recreation of the warehouse from the climax of the film and every half hour they set it on fire. I went three times. At the time, I don’t think I’d even seen the film. But I loved the effect. I loved the dancing flames and the rush of too hot heat on my mostly bare skin—it was August in LA and I was sixteen, I wore tiny shorts and a midriff-baring shirt.
Now, I’ve seen Backdraft at least ten times. It’s exactly the kind of terrible (affectionate) that I love. Overwrought and self-important, unrealistic and often silly, but at its heart it’s about love, loss, sacrifice and honor, and all the ways they intersect. At the very end of the film, after the scene in the warehouse recreated in Universal Hollywood of the past, there’s a funeral for the fallen firefighters, the hero and the villain. The companies march with bagpipes and much pomp and circumstance, in the rain because it’s Chicago and also a movie. There’s hundreds of firefighters and two civilians: Lieutenant McCaffrey’s widow, Helen, played by the luminous Rebecca DeMornay, and their young son. Helen is stone faced in shock until she’s handed a flag. She crumbles into tears and so do I. Every time.
That August in L.A., my mother had been dead for years already. Within five years, my father would be dead, too. I know grief. I know loss. I’ve known them since I was a child.
Bobby’s funeral is just like Stephen McCaffrey’s. There are bagpipes. The firefighters march alongside the coffin, the fire engine slow and silent, the family at the head of the parade, Bobby’s widow and her two civilian children. They ring a bell in his honor. It doesn’t rain, because it’s L.A.. Athena doesn’t break down, not like Helen, not at the funeral, but we see her grief. May (Corinne Massiah) cries and so do I.
I intermittently watch Backdraft. It’s one of those weirdly comforting movies. Weirdly because what’s comforting about danger and murder, about divorce and death and the cycle of seven year old boys losing their father, about fire described as a living thing that needs to eat? Well, what’s comforting about 9-1-1 emergencies? The people who answer the call. There’s that old oft repeated refrain that the definition of hero is someone who runs into the fire.
But it’s also comforting because Backdraft tells a complete story and that complete story is centered on Brian, not Stephen. To repeat myself from last week, Stephen dies because the story is about Brian. And this episode of 9-1-1 suggests I was right: Bobby dies because the story is about Buck (Oliver Stark). Chimney’s (heartbreaking) arc in the episode ultimately sets up more for Buck than Chimney (Kenneth Choi). Athena has the most to do in the episode, and it has nothing to do with Buck, but is also not about Athena. Because Athena isn’t Brian (the younger brother who takes up the mantle of the fallen hero), Athena is Helen (the wife left behind to suffer stoically).
It will surprise no one to learn that I think Helen is the most interesting character in the film. She probably has ten minutes of screen time tops but all ten minutes matter. She has nothing even approaching a storyline of her own but I know what it would be if the story was about her. And because I know grief, because I know loss, when Helen and I cry together, it is cathartic. It is comforting.
Athena isn’t a Helen. Athena is a hero, too. And maybe it’s unfair but it’s not comforting to watch her cry. Athena’s sorrow and rage brings me no comfort at all, it only makes me sad and angry, too. Stephen was created to die, that’s what the story is. Bobby was not. Brian’s life and Helen’s tears are comforting. Buck’s life may work out to be comforting, inspiring even. I can imagine him as Bobby’s legacy the way Brian is Stephen’s. I can see the vision. But Athena’s tears will never be anything but awful. This version of Athena’s story doesn’t work for me because it doesn’t work for her. I can’t forgive that.
Lost This Week
The main loss is Cinta in Andor. Kaya (Carra Patterson) transfers precincts in Elsbeth but she will still be on the show as a recurring guest. We also lost Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa (love of my life) due to schedule conflicts. However, we gained:
BENJAMIN BRATT! If they must recast to get Bail into this story (where he belongs!) then this is THE BEST option.
Also Watching
Top Chef—Restaurant Wars always delivers—and I started watching Last Chance Kitchen since it’s just ten minutes. I also restarted a random rewatch of CSI where I’m mid-season four.
AND I went to see Thunderbolts, the MCU movie I have been waiting for for years, and it is Made For Me.
Mental Illness Sidebar
Update on last week’s sidebar for The Last of Us, Gail the only therapist in the post-apocalypse (Catherine O’Hara) survived and she met with Ellie, which just as well as it did with Joel. Later she tells Tommy (Gabriel Luna),“Take it from a psychotherapist of forty years. Some people just can’t be saved.” Gail is a very interesting character.
OC starts with Elliot in therapy, my favorite thing. His therapist signs off on a conditional return to work (after he and his family were shot at outside his home, yet another thing he now has PTS for), meaning he has to meet with her weekly for three months. Said therapist is already long-suffering despite this being their first meeting and I love everything about it.
Elsbeth is also having PTS from the judge being shot in front of her on the steps of the court (the most dangerous place to be in TV NYC).
And Buck says he has had so much/too much therapy that he knows all the lingo and tasks and doesn’t need it now. Later he helps Chimney talk through his grief so that’s actually accurate.
Ship of the Week
In Philadelphia, Sidney is going to Europe with her baby daddy. In New Orleans, Brianna has a crush on Tara in every way possible. In Los Angeles, Chimney is struggling after Bobby’s death and it’s affecting his relationship with Maddie. On the road to Seattle, Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) talk about that time they kissed. In NYC, Nolan looks at Sam with so much love that I’m bracing myself for a drastic plot twist.
In the middle of the ocean it’s Avery/Tristan “no strings” vs Avery/Max “all the strings.” On the sexpert’s advice, Avery proposes having sex for pleasure and nothing else to both Tristan (Sean Teale) and Max after she’s turned down both of their advances for fully fledged relationships. Tristan says yes, Max says no. Avery enjoys sex with Tristan up to the point where she doesn’t and Max tells her the real reason he can’t have sex with her is that he loves her. It’s a good use of trad wife versus sex positivity with Avery and Max in the middle but Tristan still deserves so much better.
In space, Vel is in mourning but maybe the time-skips will allow her to get together with Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau). Dedra (Denis Gough) and Syril finally kiss on screen and it’s so cringe that I’m shipping him with the French Resistance girl who recruited him on Planet Fabric. And Bix and Cassian are perfect and perfectly tragic in every way and win the crown. Read more about them in my post on Andor!
Show of the Week
It’s Andor, but go watch Leverage!
What are YOU watching?