Random Thoughts about TV, Film and Media (Page 6 of 11)

Yeah, I don't know how much Peele was actually involved in the Twilight Zone.  He's listed as a writer on Nightmare at 30,000 feet, he's the narrator, and he's a supporting actor in the final episode (Blurryman).  But the episodes were so lifeless that I can't imagine he was involved even with story development.

There's an episode about a kid running for president.  It has John Cho and Jacob Tremblay - good actors.  The premise itself is silly, but there's tons of satire that could be done with something like that.  But they don't inject any life into it.  They don't work hard enough to sell this idea either in a crazy alternate world, and they don't make any effort to make it make sense in our world (the writers don't seem to know or care that he's not old enough to be president).  The "twist" (if you can even call it that) isn't surprising or scary.  The lesson is "don't let an 11 year old be president" - it's just dumb.

The finale wastes Zazie Beetz by just having her run around with something chasing her for 20 minutes and some lame imagery from the original series.

The Twilight Zone has a ton of episodes that could either be remade, reimagined, or even just reshot.  The Adam Scott remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet does a decent-enough job of updating the material for today.  The Forrest Whittaker version did a good job of updating The Monsters on Maple Street for a post-9/11 world.  There's a lot of things we could say about the world, and they only touched on some big issues (race, gender, class) in the most surface way possible.

If you can't make your own content, just borrow what Serling did.  Even if you mess that up, it'll still be better than what you gave us.

Jordan Peele is great.  Whether it's his horror or his comedy, I feel like there's a sort of liveliness and creativity in his work.  It's why I was so shocked at how dull and lifeless it was.  Even the episode he co-wrote (with Dark Phoenix writer Simon Kinberg) doesn't really do or say much.  The episode he's featured in outside of being the narrator doesn't do much more.

Now maybe Peele just performed as an actor in Blurryman with no writing input (like John Cho did, like Kumail Nanjiani did, like Zazie Beetz did, etc), maybe he just did enough writing on Nightmare at 30,000 Feet to get credit and the hit-and-miss Kinberg wrote most of the story, and maybe he had nothing to do with the writing of the other 8 episodes he narrated on.  It certainly feels like it.  But if he did much more than that, Twilight Zone is his first major screw-up in Hollywood after quite a few hits.

I've never seen VOYAGERS, but Tom and Cory covered the entire season of the show in REWATCH PODCAST, so I can bluff my way through any conversation about it. (My God, Jeffrey is constantly crying! Hey, why is there so little backstory on the Voyagers and their organization? Phineas is so loaded with charm. The last seven episodes are a bit weak, aren't they?)

Anyone see the miniseries "Devs"?  It was written and directed by Alex Garland, and I thought it was well done.  And since it plays around with the multiverse, I thought it was pretty cool.  Anyone else check it out?

Parks and Rec is great.  It *really* struggled to find its legs, but once it did, it was so great.

Devs acts like it's dark and presents itself as dark, but I don't think it ends up being dark.  I think there are hopeful moments, and I think it ends on a fairly hopeful note.

The entire first season of PARKS AND RECREATION was filmed as a pilot. Due to a delayed approval and impending air dates, Season 1 was filmed in entirety before it aired, before the people working on the show had a chance to show it to anybody else. Also, Season 1 was written without a clear sense of who the characters are; the creators hired some top shelf comedians and then threw them in front of the camera and asked them to improvise various scenarios.

Usually, shows film a pilot and then there's some retooling before the rest of the series is filmed. That didn't happen with PARKS AND RECREATION, so there was no adjusting the scripts to suit the actors until between Seasons 1 and 2.

The creators realized that Leslie Knope in Season 1 came off as ineffectual and deluding herself into thinking her job was meaningful or that she was good at it. They adjusted the characterization so that Leslie was aware of how hopeless her goals could be but remained determined to punch away at them with enthusiasm and optimism and even when she lost, her efforts were touching.

They altered Ron's character so that instead of being a corporate Republican who thought big business should take over everything, he was instead a Libertarian who believed that everyone should be capable of hunting and growing their own food and building their own log cabins as the actor was a capable handyman survivalist. This made the character more sympathetic than his Season 1 incarnation.

They altered Andy's character to be less of a user and more of an inept buffoon unaware of his behaviour because they liked the actor and wanted him to stay on the show as a regular and couldn't have him be malicious if he were to stick around. They left Tom the same opportunist fool, but had all the surrounding characters tell him off. They left Ann about the same except her discomfort with Leslie was removed to make them truly sisters. And once the writers knew who the characters were, the show worked beautifully and Season 2 is really when it starts.

They couldn't figure out what to do with Mark, so the character was phased out by the end of Season 2.

The show was quite heavily retooled and Season 1 is an awkward OFFICE-clone whereas Season 2 has a very clear sense of identity as a loving satire on government dysfunction akin to SLIDERS' first season of social commentary.

ireactions, did you see the Community table read they did yesterday.  Really funny stuff.

I'm the guy who wrote a political column for years trumpeting every kind of conspiracy imaginable. I also was and am a fan of 60IF (look it up). While I'm a journalist at heart, I absolutely would not have given two shits about the veracity of a bunch of Internet comments and their authorship. In fact, you bringing it up makes me want to read your analysis again. And, frankly, I want to see the exchange between you and Harmon about this. Where is it?

ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

I think that's fair.  No worries.

But when you feel better with it, the table read was really well done.  It was nice to see the cast interact with each other and crack up.  Pedro Pascal was very fun.

I really appreciate you saying this. And it makes me feel better. However. We can't waive our personal standards of conducting ourselves with consideration and respect for people even if some of those people are creepy, unpleasant, rude, deceitful, homophobic, transphobic, racist. We still have to acknowledge that Informant is an excellent writer of fiction.

And with regards to this other party -- I have to be grateful to him because, well, he helped me save my memories of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. His writing was a model I was able to apply to my fictional friends. You asked me in the pre-embryonic stage of my project, "What are you trying to accomplish?" And I wanted a jokey, bantery college reunion with my old friends and followed this person's writing model by applying it to SLIDERS and it worked.

He has my thanks and he should have also had the immediate option of saying he didn't actually write whatever comments were posted under a theatre school nickname he used use which included references to female employees he would admit to sexually harassing three years after the comments were originally posted.

(I'm not implying that he actually wrote these comments and decided to lie about it afterwards; surely someone as willfully confessional as he would have admitted to it. Likely, it was a Season 4 writer engaged in a thought experiment to criticize their own work.)

I mean, Diesel Mickey Dolenz granted your wish to have your past set aside from the Hall of Fame archives. We can't have one standard for volatile and antagonistic people and another standard for Transmodiar and Temporal Flux and Sarah_Slider and Grizzlor and pilight and JWSlider3 and SlideOverride and Slider_Quinn21 and Brand_S and Recall317 and Darren Mooney and other people I like.

I confess that I am deeply unconcerned with the feelings of a power mad stalker, but I don't excuse my own behaviour as it is a reflection on myself and those who choose to associate with me. I am responsible for myself and will use that shame to ensure never instigating such conflicts again. And also, I've moved on -- I've found a new TV show that will sit next to SLIDERS in my heart now.

(It's PARKS AND RECREATION, a show about nice people trying to do nice things under impossible circumstances.)

you are a executive for syfy.  what do you do?

http://www.cancelledscifi.com/2020/06/0 … e-network/

ha!

Renewed for Season 2!

https://gritdaily.com/zoes-extraordinar … eason-two/

Twilight Zone Season 2 has some good stuff.  Been very impressed.

Grizzlor? What's Nicole Eggert like? I have always wondered.

A bit random here, but a kind of interesting twist of history.  Amazon is buying up Malls that have become ghost towns. They are refitting them into distribution centers:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-and … 1596992863

So the place you once went to find everything retail will become the place that can send you everything retail.  Malls will have surprisingly evolved.

There's a new show on FOX called NEXT.  Mini-series I think.

It involves AI gone amuck.  First episode came out Oct 3.   Speculative sci-fi.  From Manny Coto.  It's worth checking out if the concept appeals to you.

Nothing ground-breaking but i enjoyed it.

What did SliderQuinn21 think of the final season of HOUSE OF CARDS?

Ah, I see. I've never seen any of it. But I wondered what you would have made of trying to wrap up a show with the abrupt absence of the lead actor. A bit of a Quinn-in-Season-5 situation.

Yeah, its a good question.  Unfortunately, you asked about one of the few shows I walked away from permanently.

It's funny.  I can stick with just about anything, but there has to be a reason to stick around.  I'm going to spoil what I've seen of House of Cards so stop reading if you care, but the show is centered around Frank and his wife.  They're modeled after the Clintons (red flag one) as charismatic southern Democrats who lust for more power.  She's using him to get power.  He's using her to get power.  It's the Clintons.

The first season has Frank being investigated by a female reporter.  I forget exactly what he's being investigated for at first, but she's on his tail.  And even though I hated Frank, I could root for him to be taken down.  As Frank gains power, she's hot on his tail.  There's some cat and mouse.  It was fine.  Then, early in season two, he murders her.  I'm sure it was supposed to be shocking in a Game of Thrones way, but she was my reason for watching.  Her investigation was picked up by some guy but he wasn't as fun as her and it didn't work the same.  Instead of him, the foil in season two is some billionaire who is using Frank to make money or something.  And since I hate Frank, and I have to "root" for someone, I started hoping that the billionaire could take Frank down.  But it's only season 2 and House of Cards is popular and of course the billionaire got his by the end of season two and Frank has killed anyone interesting and the new reporter still isn't interesting and now Frank's going to be president or something and it was just too much. 

I can watch a show with an evil protagonist.  I watched Breaking Bad and Sopranos and stuff like the Wire and recently Oz.  But while I never liked Walter White on Breaking Bad (even at the beginning, I could tell he was a narcissist who wasn't doing things for his family), I had Jessie Pinkman as an everyman who got in over his head.  While Walter reveled in the evil, you could always tell that Jessie never really liked the evil stuff (and maybe wasn't smart enough to fully comprehend the evilness of selling drugs in the first place).  If Jessie had died in season one as was the original plan, I might not have enjoyed it as much.

I do this with sports too.  I have my teams that I love.  But the sport itself isn't interesting to me.  I will watch hours of my team, but if my team isn't playing, I can't watch.  I haven't watched the Super Bowl in years because my team wasn't playing in it.  If I don't have someone to root for, I can't watch.

I just watched WORK IT, a truly visionary film on Netflix. It features teen idol Sabrina Carpenter playing a high school student trying to start a dance troupe despite having no dancing ability whatsoever. It is a moderately charming teen dramedy that follows the formula of any sports film with an underdog learning a new skill for a competition. It's adequate and serviceable if you like this sort of thing. It's fine. But the really important thing about this film is that Sabrina Carpenter's character is a scientific minded, calculating, systematic thinker and problem solver whose name is Quinn.

I am really shocked, hurt and angry that Joss Whedon fired Charisma Carpenter off ANGEL for getting pregnant. Lots of lead actresses get pregnant, take a leave of absence and then return to their shows. ANGEL should have been no different.

In addition, ANGEL worked because David Boreanaz's brooding intensity paired well with Charisma Carpenter's irreverent wackiness. Angel as a character is so grim and detached, but that characterization is only effective when contrasted with a high energy figure of lunacy like Cordelia who punctures Angel's self-importance and self-loathing.

I never believed that Whedon fired Carpenter off ANGEL for multiple reasons: first, Whedon wasn't actively engaged with running Angel and was mostly on BUFFY and then FIREFLY and second -- I thought it would be deranged, self-destructive and self-sabotaging to remove Cordelia from the series. That's like firing John Rhys-Davies off SLIDERS, an absurd burst of suicidal vindictiveness, and I thought that whatever Whedon might be, he wasn't David Peckinpah and Alan Barnette.

I was wrong. Whedon fired Carpenter and permanently unbalanced ANGEL as a series and Angel as a character, forcing David Boreanaz to be both the solemnly dour hero and the charming wisecracker, the latter role for which he was horrifically unsuited and which had been Carpenter's. The series hemorrhaged viewers without fans of Boreanaz and Carpenter's double-act and the show was cancelled a year later. Charisma Carpenter was the heart of ANGEL and Whedon stabbed and killed his own show.

Ridiculous. I never thought I'd speak of Whedon in the same breath as David Peckinpah and Alan Barnette, but here we are.

I'll watch it if and only if you -- specifically you -- let me know whether or not it gets cancelled on a cliffhanger. You understand!

**

Syfy has sort of cancelled WYNONNA EARP. They originally renewed it for Seasons 4 - 5, but Season 4 was stalled due to studio financing issues. Syfy eventually offered additional funding for Season 4, but by that time, all the contracts had expired, much like SLIDERS in Season 5. The entire cast and creative team re-signed for the delayed Season 4 and nobody forced their brother into the show or demanded to be promoted from actor to executive producer or anything -- but this meant that Syfy was no longer obligated to air Season 5 (or fund it). Due to COVID and pandemic delays, Syfy has decided not to renew their funding for Season 5. Season 4 is conceivably the end of the show unless some other broadcaster offers to make up the funding shortfall. It could be the end. It probably is the end. There's a faint chance that due to the massive popularity of WYNONNA EARP that it isn't the end, but it's hardly certain.

Naturally, WYNONNA EARP's showrunners decided to force the show to end on a cliffhanger with the lead character's fate unknown knowing full well that no resolution will come just to make trouble for their broadcaster and to see if the broadcaster might pay more attention to them if they do something so ridiculous.

No, of course not. They've just filmed an ending that can serve as a series finale but can allow for a Season 5 if funding works out.

I've been half-watching MACGYVER (the reboot) while doing data entry. Like SLIDERS, it features a young genius (with interesting hair) improvising gadgets and solutions, using everyday objects to escape bad situations. And also like SLIDERS, it had a self-destructive, self-sabotaging showrunner who was super-talented but couldn't get out of his own way.

MACGYVER has its own David Peckinpah; his name is Peter Lenkov. He was MACGYVER's showrunner until the cast of MACGYVER got him fired and blacklisted from the industry.

Interestingly, MACGYVER started without Lenkov, but after the original pilot was rejected by CBS, Lenkov was hired to get it to air. He had a reputation for getting TV made on time and underbudget and meeting network dictates. Lenkov reworked the show significantly under CBS mandates.

While I don't have a clear picture of what Lenkov was asked to change, it looks like the unaired pilot's 'regular' cast were mostly Caucasian. Lenkov changed this. He hired a black & native American woman to play Riley the computer expert. He hired a black man to be Bozer the comic relief, but later upgraded Bozer to be the team's engineer. An Asian woman was MacGyver's boss for the first run of episodes; MacGyver's next boss was a woman with dwarfism and she was a force to be reckoned with.

And in terms of the scripts... they start out awkward and get better as Lenkov gets further into the show. The original pilot gave MacGyver a backstory where he'd been held captive by terrorists for five years and his quirks and aversion to guns and obsession with do-it-yourself engineering with everyday objects as the product of his trauma. CBS rejected all this, so Lenkov was forced to present MacGyver with no real backstory for most of Season 1.

MacGyver is a United States spy who for some reason doesn't carry firearms but has a partner who shoots all the people MacGyver can't defeat in hand to hand combat -- not due to any in-story rationale, simply because MacGyver in the original series didn't use guns. MacGyver is a spy who wanders into espionage situations with no equipment, constantly improvising smoke bombs and flash grenades and what-not -- not because it makes sense for MacGyver not to carry these things in advance, but simply because MacGyver in the original series didn't carry any equipment beyond a paper clip and a Swiss Army knife.

In the 1980s, this made sense a degree of sense with MacGyver improvising technology that would be heavy and difficult to transport. In 2015, with technology being increasingly miniaturized and consolidated into multipurpose tools, MacGyver's DIY hacks seem like a convoluted liability.

And without any backstory, there is simply no explanation for why MacGyver works like this or why any spy agency would tolerate such an unprepared agent -- or why MacGyver, despite his aversion to guns, works with Jack who who solves any and all problems with guns.

Eventually, the series under Lenkov staggers into some sense: MacGyver's specialty is defusing bombs and weapons of mass destruction. MacGyver was a bomb disposal genius in Iraq who would take crazy risks and Jack was assigned to keep him alive, a partnership that took them into the world of black-ops espionage, a partnership that is regarded with alarm and terror by their superiors -- and it's a backstory that's presented with warmth and self-awareness.

Lenkov is clearly aware of the problems here and trying to alleviate them. If one continues to watch MACGYVER, one eventually accepts that MacGyver's ludicrous employment and methods are simply what they are and can only be questioned so much.

As a writer, Peter Lenkov seems incredibly capable of making a good show out of a bad situation. His hiring is progressive and thoughtful, and he writes well for the TV format, crafting adventures that are succinct, pleasant, economical and enjoyable. He finds a way to justify the absurdities that he's tasked to produce. He isn't a visionary, but he has a good sense of humour and pacing and can create viewer satisfaction. He isn't Tracy Torme or Marc Scott Zicree, but he's certainly Tony Blake and Paul Jackson: he is a professional writer who produces professional writing.

However, Seasons 1 - 3 under Lenkov seem to have a serious problem in worker retention.

Season 1 sets up Nikki Carpenter, MacGyver's rival and ex-girlfriend (Tracy Spiridakos), having her appear in three episodes -- only for Spiridakos to never return to the series again.

Season 1 has Sandrine Holt as MacGyver's stern, long-suffering boss, presented as a stalwart and loyal employer and ally -- until episode 12 when she's abruptly exposed as a traitor to the spy agency and imprisoned. The character never voices an explanation for her betrayals; no previous episodes had any hints of her disloyalty; the characters speculate as to why, but the actress vanishes from the show without further elaboration, and a later episode has the character menacing our cast from off camera. Sandrine Holt's sudden removal from the series is bizarre.

Season 2 introduces a new spy character, Samantha Cage (Isabel Lucas), an extremely professional spy who is alarmed by MacGyver's haphazardness. Cage and MacGyver have an incredible chemistry that is crisply professional but with such mutual respect that romantic sparks start to fly even if unspoken. Twelve episodes in, Cage is shot in the stomach. She is said to be recovering off camera in the next episode; then the show plays a pre-recorded video of Cage saying she's undergoing physical therapy overseas and the character never appears again.

Season 2 introduces a new girlfriend for Bozer -- the character of Leanna (Reign Edwards) who appears sporadically throughout Season 3 and vanishes with a line of exposition about having a job elsewhere. Season 3 inexplicably writes out Jack, the second lead of the show and MacGyver's bodyguard with actor George Eads reportedly storming off the set and refusing to film anything more until he was released from his six year contract.

MACGYVER seemed to have serious trouble holding onto cast members, often dispatching characters suddenly and seemingly arbitrarily with no explanation from the actors or production and no resolution to their storylines.

The problem turned out to be Peter Lenkov whom MACGYVER star Lucas Till reported to CBS -- repeatedly -- for shockingly abusive behaviour. Lenkov would demean and verbally assail female crew members, screaming at them for hours in person and over the phone. Lenkov created a hostile onset environment, constantly mocking Lucas Till for being ugly. I defy anyone to Google the name Lucas Till and find him to be anything other than a picture of masculine beauty.

Lenkov harassed writers and actors who were suffering from health problems, demanding that they travel when they were sick and in need of spinal surgery or chemotherapy. A MACGYVER staffer remarked to Vanity Fair, "I've never been on a show with such extreme turnover. We can't get people to stay. It's a toxic environment and it starts from the head down." I had to triple check to be sure this wasn't a quote about SLIDERS and David Peckinpah.

"Extreme turnover." This would appear to be why Sandrine Holt suddenly quit in the middle of Season 1, why Tracy Spiridakos started a recurring role but failed to recur after three episodes, why Isabel Lucas quit in the middle of Season 2, why Reign Edwards faded out in Season 3, why series regular George Eads walked off the set in Season 3, and why ongoing arcs and recurring character plots would end so suddenly and abruptly and inconclusively.

After Season 4, MACGYVER star Lucas Till's repeated complaints to CBS' HR department finally triggered an investigation. CBS fired Peter Lenkov from all his shows and a new showrunner was chosen, but MACGYVER would unfortunately not make it past Season 5 and was cancelled in 2021.

It's really frustrating: MACGYVER reflects well-intentioned and good-hearted values, but they were espoused by a man who was clearly as toxic as David Peckinpah. Annoyingly, Lenkov wasn't like Peckinpah in terms of quality: Lenkov put his A-game into scripting his show, but he was just like Peckinpah in constantly alienating the actors he needed to film his scripts.

Maybe someday, a MACGYVER re-reboot will present a version of MacGyver with some rationale for his job and methods that makes sense in the present day and be handled by a writer and producer who isn't deranged.

I'm about ten volumes into Invincible.  It's all that's available to me on Comixology Unlimited with out buying more (so it's not really unlimited, Amazon).  After that, I'm going to start on the series.

I think it's a really cool universe.  I've heard it referenced a lot, and I'm glad I took the plunge.

I'm also reading the 2015 Darth Vader comics and trying to read Civil War II.  Among other things.  I'm really enjoying diving into comics.

Where did he write that?

One of SLIDERS' contemporaries is a TV series called DUE SOUTH (1994 - 1999). Like SLIDERS, DUE SOUTH featured an eccentric genius in action-adventure stories that plunged him into strangely alien urban environments. DUE SOUTH was also repeatedly cancelled by its network: cancelled after Season 1, cancelled after Season 2, retooled for syndication much as SLIDERS was retooled for cable, and also like SLIDERS, DUE SOUTH saw its lead actor make an effort to take over writing, producing and directing; DUE SOUTH also lost key cast members and the original creator. But unlike SLIDERS, DUE SOUTH was financially and creatively successful and had a strong run and a series finale.

Why did DUE SOUTH succeed and thrive where SLIDERS withered and died? It's because, unlike SLIDERS, DUE SOUTH had the full financial and creative support of the studio and a leading man who was obsessively committed to his show.

DUE SOUTH is about Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a wilderness police officer who goes to Chicago on the trail of his father's murderer and for reasons too complicated to explain here, he remains in Chicago, partnered with Chicago police detective Ray Vecchio and working for the Canadian consulate.

Every week, Fraser applies his knowledge of survivalism, biology, chemistry, physics and engineering to solve crimes with Vecchio being cynical, skeptical, loyal and supportive. Fraser is a genius, having absorbed a hundred lifetimes of knowledge during a childhood spent in his grandparents' library and an adulthood of isolation in the wild with little to do but read and fight crime and read. Fraser is unfailingly polite, thoughtful, oddly chaste, diplomatic, formal -- a cliched stereotype of Canadians except there are tragic and traumatic reasons for his duty-driven, sexless persona. Ray Vecchio is brusque, impulsive, rude and crude -- but he loves Fraser as a brother and sees Fraser as the living definition of human decency and also comes to know the fallible human behind the superhuman front.

CBS hated it. Showrunner and creator Paul Haggis noted that CBS constantly demanded that DUE SOUTH remove the humour of contrasting Canadians and Americans; that the comedy be removed entirely; that Fraser's traumatic history be stricken from the series -- but DUE SOUTH was filmed in Toronto, far from Los Angeles, and CBS couldn't control it. CBS was further appalled when Fraser's dead father rejoined the cast as a regular character in the form of a ghost and when the first season ended on a three parter that delved into Fraser's grief and dark side. In frustration, CBS cancelled DUE SOUTH after Season 1.

DUE SOUTH's studio rejected CBS' cancellation; Alliance Entertainment ordered a second season even though they had no American broadcaster. They began writing and filming; the show had been successful with overseas broadcasters and Alliance successfully sold the second season to UK and European channels and CBS itself ended up buying Season 2 as a mid-season replacement and financing the season. However, the show's continued survival came at a cost. Due a slight delay, DUE SOUTH lost its original creator, Paul Haggis, who had moved to another show. But DUE SOUTH continued and maintained its tone; Haggis had trained up his subordinate writers and his writing staff stepped up to maintain all the quirks and eccentricities of the show. Series star Paul Gross wrote two episodes of Season 2 and wrote two fan favourite episodes.

CBS pulled out of DUE SOUTH again at the end of Season 2. Over two years, Alliance sought financing and finally succeeded in bringing DUE SOUTH back but on a slightly lowered budget for two seasons of 13 episodes each and with series lead Paul Gross taking over as executive producer and showrunner as well as actor. Season 3 started out differently: due to the two year hiatus, all the sets had been lost, meaning the show had to justify burning down or altering the familiar locations of Seasons 1 - 2 to explain why everyone's homes and offices were different.

Season 3 also lost Paul Gross' supporting partner; David Marciano (Ray Vecchio) had moved back to Los Angeles and had no wish to return to Toronto. Season 3 cleverly brought in a new actor, Callum Keith Rennie, who for Reasons must pretend to be Ray Vecchio while the original Ray Vecchio is undercover and Marciano made a brief appearance to create a transition. Rennie and Gross had a sparklingly delightful chemistry that was reminiscent of the original but with its own style.

Season 3 also had a slightly different visual language. Seasons 1 - 2 had been a very quick, purposefully filmed series. Every shot conveyed immediate plot and character information. Under Paul Gross, however, the series shifted more on emphasizing actors with prolonged shots where the performers controlled the pacing of the scenes and the writing had far more digressions and tangents into the contrasts between American and Canadian culture.

DUE SOUTH wasn't precisely the same show as before, but the lead actor was the same, the lighting and music were intact, the location filming in Toronto was the same. Some fans found Season 3's more easygoing, comedic take jarring and obnoxious; some saw it as an evolution of the original. By the middle of Season 3, however, DUE SOUTH had tightened up its editing and the pacing now resembled Seasons 1 - 2 even though the writing had an different angle.

Season 4 was the same and series lead Paul Gross and the studio came to a mutual agreement that Season 4 would be the last: the financing had been hard enough to acquire; Paul Gross could only maintain showrunning and being the lead actor for so much longer before he burnt out, and Season 4 offered a grand two part finale in which David Marciano returned to say good-bye.

I wish Jerry O'Connell had loved SLIDERS as much as Paul Gross had loved DUE SOUTH. I wish Universal had cared about SLIDERS the way Alliance clearly cared about DUE SOUTH.

It's possible this is more widespread, but MACGYVER is the first TV show I've seen to directly acknowledge COVID-19 when most shows I watch like BATWOMAN simply ignore it.

MACYVER had to abruptly stop filming Season 4 due to COVID-19, ending Season 4 with episode 13 what looks to be seven episodes that were incomplete. Episode 13, planned as a mid-season finale, was reworked into a full season finale . There was no cliffhanger; MacGyver stops the bioterrorists and declares that the Phoenix Foundation will devote itself to the problems of the world for which the bioterrorists wanted to cure by killing 50 per cent of the global population.

Season 5 opens with the characters talking about how they have been shut down for an unspecified period of time due to the "global pandemic" and vaguely indicates that the pandemic is totally over by Season 5 through some unspecified resolution. Nobody discuses vaccination or whatever.

The unfinished seven episodes were completed but with some minor rewrites to indicate that MacGyver and his friends haven't been on missions for a period of time. The onscreen text says that it's been "10 months and a pandemic" since the Season 4 finale but cleverly doesn't specify if the pandemic is within those 10 months. There's some dubbed in dialogue from a character whose back is turned to the camera saying they were "shut down" during the pandemic.

However, the characters are still continuing the discussions and arguments they were having in Season 4, Episode 13, because Season 5, Episode 1 was originally written and filmed to be shown a few weeks after the previous episode and the Season 5 production has merely filled in the unfinished material that wasn't completed before the Season 4 shutdown. Outside of one dubbed-in line and the onscreen text, there is no real sense of the characters having been apart in the performances or dialogue.

Even the 10 month time gap (with room for more) speaks to an odd and difficult situation. The showrunners had no idea when COVID-19 would be over or how it would be resolved. It may seem crazy now, but last year, Temporal Flux and I were pondering if there would ever be a vaccine. And as someone who's had two doses of Moderna in April and June, I was expecting last March that I wouldn't get my first dose until August and my second in November.

It's oddly reminiscent of AGENTS OF SHIELD where the showrunners clearly had no idea what was going to be the cliffhanger of INFINITY WAR and also had no idea how it would be resolved in ENDGAME, took a guess at the timeline and guessed wrong. In addition, MACGYVER had to open Season 5 with episodes filmed before the pandemic and alter them minimally and claim they were set after the pandemic.

In TV and comic books and other forms of serial fiction, serieses like MACGYVER, X-MEN and BATMAN will declare a massive change to the status quo. The X-MEN and BATMAN will become a global operation finding new ways to battle injustice and build a better world; they will step away from their usual formula of stories... but invariably, there's a return to the original, basic formula. Sometimes that return is abrupt, sometimes gradual, and sometimes it's in the middle. MACGYVER is in the middle.

Season 4 of MAGYVER has MacGyver tormented by the climate crisis and the planet becoming uninhabitable; he goes so far as to join a bioterrorist group planning to kill half of the global population in a nuclear holocaust. He stops them, but steals all their research and goes to Washington to show legislators how the world is in serious danger and how if governments and corporations don't act, the next bioterrorist group might not be stopped so fortunately. In addition, MacGyver's private spy agency, Phoenix, sees its financial head, Russ, injured in action. Russ tells MacGyver he's in charge now, and MacGyver declares that all the threats that the bioterrorists were focused on averting will become Phoenix's top priority, implying that Season 5 will see MacGyver focused on missions that are relevant to famine, global warming, shrinking landmasses and ecological catastrophe. MacGyver won't be doing the same old thing any more.

Season 5 opens with MacGyver on another generic espionage mission about infiltrating a hotel for terrorists and his next adventure is about stealing a bioweapon hidden in a painting and yes, MacGyver is indeed doing the same old thing all over again. To be fair: Season 4 ended abruptly and suddenly in mid-production. The creators had to find some way to make their mid-season finale feel conclusive, so they had MacGyver declare his commitment to battling the global carbon situation even if they were possibly promising a story direction that they wouldn't be able to deliver.

With Season 5, they felt they had to set the season premiere *after* the pandemic at some unspecified point in the future with the supporting characters saying that this is their first mission since COVID-19 led to them shutting down their spy agency for awhile. With the world in misery and with Season 4 having been extremely dark and topical, MACGYVER's creators for Season 5 wanted to offer familiar, gentle escapism and of course they went back to basics right away. There's also the fact that the creators had no way of knowing what the most relevant ecological and social justice concerns would be post-COVID-19, so they elected to not guess at that, already in a bad situation of guessing that COVID-19 would be over somehow in three to four months in their scripts.

Also, Season 5 opens with episodes that were meant to air in the previous season before the conclusion of the bioterror story arc.

And I myself don't know how interesting or broadcastable it would be if MACGYVER's fifth season consisted of MacGyver sitting in Greta Thunberg's living room making signs for her protests and marches for 46 minutes every week.

And yet, it's disappointing. BATMAN and X-MEN gradually returned to their status quo over 1 - 2 years; MACGYVER went back to basics without even one episode to transition. In the end, MacGyver's commitment to all the ills of the world ultimately consisted of making a big speech and then seemingly forgetting all about the climate emergency even though he spent most of Season 4 in tormented bleakness over it.

Episode 6 of Season 5 opens with MacGyver and his team stopping some villains in an opening dated "March 2020" with MacGyver crowing how happy he is that the bioterrorists are defeated and how he and his team are back to fighting simple bad guys. "2020 is going to be great!" he exclaims and the show smash-cuts to April 2020 where MacGyver and his friends have quarantined themselves to MacGyver's house and are not going on any missions. MacGyver is shown working on a ventilator out of a soda bottle and kitchen tongs and he is clearly losing his mind. Again, to be fair, global carbon emissions were lowered during the pandemic due to the lockdowns; maybe MacGyver felt he could take a break.

The charitable implication is that MacGyver was trying to balance social justice work with espionage missions shortly after Season 4; that he then spent about 12 to 18 months making cheap but functional medical equipment for the world -- and that post-pandemic, he's trying to get his bearings and work out what the top priorities should be. The more realistic reading, however, is that MACGYVER is an action-adventure show and that expecting MacGyver, a fictional character, to battle world hunger, was expecting far too much from a series of lightweight escapism and fantasy.