The House That Netflix Built

Tomorrow is the day that Netflix unveils a brand new season of Arrested Development, seven years after the series was cancelled by FOX. I've been eagerly looking forward to the new episodes, and prepping for all the callback humor by rewatching the entire series from the beginning. But another way that I've been passing the long wait is watching Netflix's first foray into original programming, House of Cards.

House of Cards is an adaptation of a 1990s BBC show (itself an adaptation of a series of novels) about corruption in politics. Kevin Spacey stars as an ambitious congressman with elaborate machinations to amass more power and move up in the ranks. Two women in his life are equally driven and shark-like: his scheming, Lady Macbeth-style wife played by Robin Wright, and a young and impatient reporter played by Kate Mara. There's also great acting from Corey Stoll (who impressed as Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris) and Constance Zimmer (who never really got much to do during her run on the David Kelley series Boston Legal).

Add to this impressive stable of actors a solid team behind the camera. The producer and director of the first two episodes is David Fincher, the dark visionary behind Se7en, Fight Club, and more. His presence in turn attracted a number of other high caliber directors with a number of HBO series under their belts. (And also Joel Schumacher, the man who brought nipples to the Batsuit in Batman and Robin -- but he doesn't do anything horrible here.)

Liberated from commercials, and from having an audience who would be forced to wait a week between episodes, House of Cards is a bit different than anything else on TV. Its protagonist is truly not a good guy, which calls to mind the brief brilliant-but-cancelled series Profit. Spacey's character narrates directly at the camera and the audience, a convention almost never seen outside of theater. Episodes are routinely peppered with unexplained scenes that establish tone and metaphor, in ways more typical of a novel. There's a little something of everything in the mix here.

Most of the time, the mix is very effective. The series is compelling to watch, and you easily find yourself rooting for someone who would be the villain in any other tale -- even when he goes too far over the line. But there is occasionally a price for being this experimental. A mid-season episode, for example, in which Spacey's character returns to his college and reunites with old friends is painfully dry, and contributes almost nothing to the ongoing narrative established to that point. Also, the breathlessly paced finale still manages to disappoint a bit by teeing up a lot of exciting threads without delivering on many of them. That element -- a cliffhanger ending -- is all too much like traditional television.

The good news is, House of Cards was bought out of the gate by Netflix with a minimum two season commitment, and that second season is being filmed right now. At some point down the road, I'll be diving into the continued twisted adventures of Frank Underwood. Before then, you should definitely consider catching up yourself. I'd give the first season of House of Cards is a B+ overall.

TNG Flashback: Booby Trap

Star Trek: The Next Generation's increased emphasis on character in season three continued with its next episode, "Booby Trap."

The crew finds an ancient alien battle cruiser adrift in an asteroid field. But in going to investigate, the Enterprise becomes trapped in the very same snare that doomed the aliens -- a network of machines that drain a ship's own energy to produce a radiation lethal to the crew. Geordi LaForge is tasked with figuring out a way to beat a trap that uses your own efforts to escape against you. To help get inside the engine, he turns to a holographic simulation of the Enterprise while it was still being constructed, and of Dr. Leah Brahms, one of its brilliant designers.

While this episode does have a science fiction jeopardy in play (the only story element featured in the original 1989 episode preview, in fact), the real story here is about Geordi's ailing love life. The opening scene shows him on a bad, overwrought date, which later leads to a wonderful conversation with Guinan that exposes his problem -- he tries too hard, and just isn't himself around women. The episode then goes on to show Geordi in his element, dealing with an engineering crisis, and having a very natural relationship with a woman along the way. (Natural, but probably not quite "healthy," since the woman is a holographic simulation.)

This story flows so smoothly, it's hard to imagine that the first draft was actually written to feature Picard instead of Geordi. Show runner Michael Piller realized that the core of this story was about a "man who loves his car," and thought that it was an awkward sell for Picard to be getting romantic with a holographic woman during a crisis anyway. He switched the story over to Geordi, and the results were a clear improvement.

Although it's a Geordi episode, other characters get solid moments too. Picard's enthusiasm for exploring the alien ship speaks to his love of archaeology, and even the other characters comment on how great it is to see this boyish side of him. There's marvelous comedy in Worf, Data, Riker, and O'Brien all weighing in on playing with "ships in bottles" as young boys. Data and Wesley have a wonderful exchange upon seeing Geordi return early from his disastrous date. And Guinan tells an intriguing story of her attraction to bald men, because "a bald man was kind to me once." (It's left vague whether she might mean Picard -- although Guinan says in another episode that she never met the captain before coming aboard the Enterprise. The time-traveling events of the later episode "Time's Arrow, Part II" might be seen paying off this conversation here.)

After a long string of first- and second-season episodes where the holodeck accidentally puts people into jeopardy, it's nice to see here a logical use for the technology: to test out ideas in a simulation before putting them into practice in reality. That said, Geordi really hasn't learned his lesson about holodeck use. A slip of his tongue in "Elementary, Dear Data" created the menacing Moriarty; here, it's another unthinking turn of phrase that results in the creation of the Leah Brahms hologram.

Other observations:

• Ron Jones delivers another fantastic score for this episode. He blends live and synthesized trumpets together to personify the alien trap, and crafts an almost pop-music love theme for Geordi and Leah. Still, producer Rick Berman wasn't a fan of all his music for this episode; Jones' music for the final sequence was thrown out. Instead, pieces of his earlier score for "Where Silence Has Lease" were used to cover the Enterprise's escape from the asteroid field.

• Look very closely in the scene where the Away Team searches the alien ship with handheld flashlights, and you can spot the cords running to those lights from the actors' sleeves. In 1989, it took more juice than a small battery could provide to get a light that bright.

• This episode spawned a clever idea for a sequel. You don't really think about the horrible violation of privacy when Geordi conjures up a holographic romance with an actual person, but it makes total sense. And as for the "margin of error" the computer gives here for the faithfulness to Leah Brahms' actual personality? Let's just say that somewhere, mistakes were made.

"Booby Trap" is another solid episode that delves into character as a crisis is resolved. I give it a B+. The show was definitely coming into its own.

One Console to Rule Them All?

Three months ago, everyone was mocking the big reveal of the PS4:



Now, we can all transition to mocking the big reveal of the XBox One:



As with every console I've ever purchased, I'll be waiting for the "must have game" to convince me to buy it. For these consoles -- as with the Wii U -- I haven't seen it yet.

My Horse Two Cents

"Silver Blaze," the first of "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" is the story of a missing prize horse, and the trainer whose murdered body was found out in a field near the horse's stable. Holmes and Watson travel by train to investigate the mystery, which may involve a rival horse stable, a band of gypsies, and a strange man snooping around the stable on the night of the murder.

As a pure mystery, "Silver Blaze" is one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most effective stories so far. Many of his mysteries lack for sufficient credible suspects. Often, there is one culprit favored by the police (who is of course the wrong one) and only one other possible character in the mix (who Holmes unsurprisingly reveals as the guilty party). This story has at least three possible suspects right away, and a police Inspector Gregory who does see holes in the theory framing the man already in custody. And hopefully without spoiling anything, I'll say that in the course of the story, a fourth suspect emerges.

There's also a nice break with tradition in how the background of the case is recounted. Ordinarily, Doyle brings in the client to converse with Holmes, and the first 1/3 to 1/2 of a story is a recitation of the facts by a heretofore unknown stranger. This time, Holmes provides the background details of the case himself as he and Watson are traveling to the site of their investigation.

There is a bit of a narrative slip near the end, in my opinion. It's always more powerful to actually show events happening where possible, rather than tell them. Holmes pulls someone aside at one point to have a private conversation out of Watson's earshot. They then return, and Holmes immediately recaps half of what was just said. Of course, the reason Doyle does this is so that he can preserve the other half of what was said as the reveal a few pages later. But weighing the drawing out of the mystery a short while longer against having the third recapping in the story of things that happened previously, I'd choose to expose the plot if it were me. Then again, I'm not a renowned writer whose work is still being read a century later.

I give "Silver Blaze" a B+. A good effort with enough compelling twists to set it apart from other Holmes tales.

TNG Flashback: The Bonding

From a certain point of view, "The Bonding" might be one of the most important episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That's because it was the first episode written by Ronald D. Moore, and was in fact the very first sale of his writing career. Because of this episode, Moore would spend the next 10 years writing some of the best episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and then would go on to create the reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica.

Worf leads an Away Team to a planet whose inhabitants annihilated themselves long ago in a violent war. One of their still-active mines is triggered, instantly killing a member of the team, Marla Aster. She leaves behind her 12-year-old son Jeremy with no other parent, and the crew rallies around him to help him cope with the loss. But then an energy-based lifeform from the planet appears on the scene, creating a simulacrum of the boy's mother who attempts to take Jeremy from the Enterprise to live in an illusory world on the planet.

The story of how Ron Moore sold this episode is a true Hollywood tale that combines his obvious writing talent with knowing the right people. His girlfriend at the time had been a junior casting assistant on the pilot of The Next Generation, and knowing what a huge Star Trek fan he was, used her connections to arrange for him a tour of the set. He prepared for the occasion by writing the script for "The Bonding" and bringing it with him to force into someone's hands. It stayed in the slush pile for over half a year, but when new show runner Michael Piller took over, he was literally without any stories ready to go before the camera, and willing to look anywhere for relief. He found "The Bonding" in the slush pile, did a minor rewrite pass on it, and based on the good results, convinced Paramount to begin an open script submission policy for Star Trek. For the rest of The Next Generation's run, literally anyone anywhere in the world could submit a script for consideration (even without an agent), so long as they signed a release form.

What's great about this episode is that even though it seems centered on guest characters -- a hitherto unknown crew member and her son -- it's really about how the main characters react to events. Marla Aster's death causes "ripples in the pond," and nearly every character has at least one interesting scene showing how they're affected.

At the forefront, you see Worf trying to do right by this boy, as humans did for him when he was taken in as an orphan boy. You see Wesley forced to reexamine his feelings at losing a parent as a young child, and a very real conversation between him and Beverly about his father's death. You see Picard struggling with the fact that children are aboard the ship at all to be put in this situation. You see Counselor Troi get to counsel people in this episode -- and actually be good at it. There's even a tight little scene in which Data asks Riker about Aster's death, contrasting it with the death of Tasha Yar in a wonderful nod to continuity.

Supporting this very character driven material are some excellent camera placement decisions by director Winrich Kolbe. There are a lot of very tight close-ups on actors that allow you to see every muscle in their faces at work. A scene in which Troi offers advice to Worf is notable for an uncharacteristic obstruction in the frame, as we look on the characters through a grated wall. A tender moment in which Picard reaches for physical contact with the boy Jeremy focuses specifically on that gesture, not even showing the captain speak as he offers consolation. It's wonderful work.

So great is this character material that I find myself wishing there was no science fiction plot in this episode at all. The idea of a guilt-ridden alien posing as Jeremy's dead mother isn't a bad one, but it does seem to detract from the drama. Apparently, this element of the story was actually less prevalent in Ronald Moore's original script. He had Jeremy first escape to the holodeck to recreate his dead mother on his own, and then the aliens swept in, seeking to reproduce that simulation down on the planet. Gene Roddenberry objected to this, saying that humans in his future -- even children -- would not struggle so much to cope with a death, and so the alien subplot was punched up.

But it's the boy's stoicism at his mother's death that rings most hollow within the episode. Roddenberry's ideals may be noble and/or inspirational, but conflict is the life's blood of dramatic writing. The boy's woodenness is awkward in the finished product, and it's not helped by the performance of young actor Gabriel Damon. He's not really "bad," but he is limited. There are very few child actors of any given generation who would really be capable of pulling off a role this demanding. This episode merely got one who could say the lines without sounding too stiff.

Other observations:

• The disaster that claims Marla Aster's life in the teaser takes place off screen, and we see the reactions of the bridge crew instead. While this may have been primarily a budget saving move to avoid the need to show an alien planet, it does fit with the overall tone of the episode -- showing how our characters react to a death.

• Composer Dennis McCarthy does employ some interesting music with sinister undertones for the facsimile Aster, but his Klingon music in this episode falls far short of the great work done in other episodes by Ron Jones.

• Ronald Moore came to the set for one day of filming on this episode, and tells a wonderful story of meeting Patrick Stewart for the first time on the Blu-ray commentary track. By that point, Moore had already sold his next script for the show ("The Defector"), and found himself telling Stewart what he was working on next. Stewart's advice to/request of the young writer: "The captain doesn't do nearly enough shooting and screwing on the show."

"The Bonding" wonderful showcase for a number of the main characters. It's also a far more interesting look at the consequences of having children aboard the Enterprise than the first season's "When the Bough Breaks." Still, this episode could have been stronger still if the reaction of the young boy had been allowed to be more realistic, and if even more time had been given to the emotional drama. I give it a B+.

Second Sons

A number of plot lines took the bench for this week's Game of Thrones, so that we could spend more time mainly on a pair of significant developments: the marriage of Sansa and Tyrion, and Daenerys finding new allies in the Second Sons and Daario Naharis.

I myself enjoyed the former storyline more, a cascade of delightfully dark scenes. Elements from the book were well realized, such as Tyrion's embarrassment at having to ask Sansa to kneel for the ceremony. Peter Dinklage played Tyrion's drunkenness at the reception masterfully. And the moment where he threatens Joffrey was absolutely chilling.

The new additions satisfied too. We got another feast of Lady Olenna's droll wit, as she taunted Margaery and Lorys with the horrors of their family tree. But better still was the pair of scenes with Cersei this week. First, we got her lengthy and flowery threat to Margaery; then, having apparently just worn out her patience for anything more, her curt dismissal of her groom-to-be, Lorys. It was a fun way to thwart expectations to start into a carefully considered, metaphorical story only to have Cersei pull the plug on the whole thing.

Over in Yunkai, things played out pretty much exactly as written in the book, but it still made for an interesting display. They have revised the appearance of Daario, and much for the better. (He's described in the book with a blue-dyed, three pronged beard.) In any case, his adoration for Daenerys was conveyed quickly and well.

The story of Melisandre and Gendry seems to have found its way back to a place book readers will find familiar. Excising the extremely minor character of Edric (I had to look up his name), the show has decided to graft Gendry into that role in the story. Seems like an excellent elision to me.

For those hoping for a more action packed hour, the episode ended with Sam slaying one of the white walkers in a tense sequence. The gathering crows set things up in an effectively creepy way, and the visual effects team delivered on the powers of both the walker itself and Sam's dragonglass dagger.

Because of Memorial Day next weekend, it's going to be two weeks before the story continues. I enjoyed this episode enough to hold me over until then.

Delving Deeper into the Darkness

A few days back, I wrote a review of Star Trek Into Darkness that tiptoed around revealing any details of the plot. That preserved the surprises for people, but made it incredibly difficult to articulate exactly what shortcomings I perceived in the film. So here's Take 2, or my "Captain's Log, Supplemental," if you will.

Just to be crystal clear here: this post is going to spoil absolutely everything about the movie. If you haven't seen it yet, and you keep reading this anyway, that's on you.

Let me start by reiterating that I gave the movie a B in my first review, and I do stand by that. It has problems, but is pretty good overall and worth seeing. I begin with this because there really isn't much more I need to say about what I liked in the movie; those things I could talk about before without giving anything away. Still, it's worth saying again that the cast is exceptional. This new ensemble playing Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura are all absolutely perfect for the job. I would eagerly watch a weekly television series starring this group -- though the film careers of enough of them are taking off that you'd never actually get them all onto the small screen. My point is, they're all such perfectly credible incarnations of the characters that I feel like having a new series with them would be like getting all new episodes of the original Star Trek.

And that's the real problem with Star Trek Into Darkness. It's not new.

J.J. Abrams' previous film took a huge risk in upending everything that longtime fans knew about Star Trek. We all know that the crew didn't "meet as kids," if you will. But that was only the beginning of the changes. The movie set up an alternate timeline in which Vulcan was destroyed and anything could happen. And it did it so well that even me, a life-long Star Trek fan, was completely on board. Let's do it! Let's boldly go where no one has gone before!

Instead, they went straight back to where we've already been, by telling an alternate version of the story of Khan. They missed the opportunity to take their spiffy new universe out for a spin. But more to the point: if they absolutely felt they had to do a remake of a classic Star Trek storyline, why not choose one that could have benefited from being remade? There are plenty of classic, middle-of-the-road episodes. Don't retell, say, "Spock's Brain," because nothing is going to shine that turd. But on the other end of the spectrum, don't retell "Space Seed" and "The Wrath of Khan," because you aren't going to do any better with it.

Star Trek Into Darkness was at its best when it was in its most original territory. The idea of a bloodthirsty Admiral capitalizing on the destruction of Vulcan to try to militarize Starfleet was great. We've never seen anything quite like that on Star Trek. (We also never would have while Gene Roddenberry was alive, because he never would have gone for such corruption within Starfleet under any circumstances.) Still, the story concept in fact is classic Star Trek, because it's an allegory for a moral question very relevant in today's world: when facing a terrifying new enemy, how much are you willing to compromise on your core values in pursuit of a sense of security? Sure, this topical message got buried a bit in the constant action sequences, but at least it was there. So far, so good.

But then Khan was brought into the mix -- and for a rather flimsy reason. Apparently, a savage mind was needed for savage times (overlooking the fact that Khan was defeated in Star Trek II precisely because, as brilliant as he was, he was not capable of thinking beyond his own time and making full use of space combat's third dimension). We got virtually none of Khan's back story in this movie, seemingly because the movie was banking on us already knowing that back story from having seen Khan before. It even had Leonard Nimoy show up in a fun but unnecessary cameo to tell the audience what the movie had not effectively shown for itself: Khan's as bad as they come. I just don't think this was a good way to go, making the audience reflect on one of the best stories classic Star Trek ever told.

Worse, this story then took us to essentially the same ending. Yes, the role reversal of having Kirk sacrifice his life to save the Enterprise instead of Spock had a certain cleverness to it. And it was a bit fun (to a point) to hear some of the exact same lines of dialogue. But here again, as with Khan's back story, the film is trading on years of Star Trek history to supplement what it's not providing itself. When Spock died in Star Trek II, it was the culmination of a decade-long friendship between him and Kirk, three-plus years of which we saw depicted on screen. The emotional reaction was entirely earned, and we the audience felt it too. In this case, Spock and Kirk have only known each other for about six months, and it's been a rather contentious relationship the entire time. We're asked to believe Spock is moved to tears when he didn't even break his stoic facade when his entire homeworld was destroyed -- a torture that included seeing his own mother die right in front of him. Spock's emotional reaction is only believable if the court accepts facts not in evidence: the vast background of the original Star Trek timeline.

And it was a huge mistake to have Spock scream out Khan's name in rage. It worked -- barely -- in Star Trek II, even though we all realized how borderline hammy William Shatner's performance was. But I think somewhere around the time George Costanza screamed it in a Seinfeld episode, it stopped being a moment that could be taken seriously. If Kirk's death scene had been able to generate any real emotion, that moment totally undercut it.

While trading on Star Trek's past was the movie's big flaw in my mind, there were other little problems along the way. Most of them had to do with sacrificing logic on the altar of things that looked cool. For what reason was the Enterprise hiding underwater in the opening sequence? (Because it would look cool when it rose up out of the ocean.) How exactly did the ship fall to Earth from an orbit roughly the distance of the moon? (Does it matter? Cause, you know, great moment when the ship plummets through the cloud layer, then rises back up.) Why does Khan stop to grab a trench coat when he's fleeing Spock in the final chase? (Because it will look neat flapping in the wind.)

There were a few plot holes too. For me, the biggest was the conceit at the end of the movie that Khan's blood was needed to save Kirk's life. Spock has to take Khan alive, we're told, even though there are 72 other genetic supermen in stasis available for McCoy's use. In fact, they're scooping one of them out of a tube to put Kirk in it at literally the moment McCoy says they need Khan alive. (So pay no attention to what's going on in the background!) And as a side note, I shudder to think at the repercussions of McCoy having possibly created an unkillable Tribble.

It's also a bit disappointing that a movie which includes Klingons, Khan, and more action sequences than any previous Star Trek film somehow managed to essentially have no ship combat. The Enterprise got the crap beaten out of it in the space of a few seconds (seriously marginalizing its role as the unofficial "eighth character"), and that was about it.

Having now read me going on quite negatively for so many paragraphs, you may be asking yourself: he gave the movie a B? It sounds like he hated it! Well no, I really didn't. The action, though illogical, was generally quite exhilarating and fun. And (though I've said it before, it's worth saying again) the cast is absolutely superb in their portrayal of the classic characters. Overall, I did feel like I was watching Star Trek. And not bad Star Trek. Just Star Trek that was too familiar.

When the next Star Trek movie rolls around, I will remain eager to see these actors in action. I just hope that the script steps out from the shadow of the original series. They really don't need to earn their "Trek cred" with me anymore. Move on and tell a new story, please.

(With less lens flare, please. Seriously, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is about the most ironic title they could have chosen.)