Well Seasoned

Everyone laments how "Hollywood has no original ideas" anymore, churning out little but remakes and reboots. So I have to acknowledge that maybe I'm part of the problem when I recommend a new series on Netflix, The Four Seasons.

The Four Seasons tracks three couples over the course of four group vacations taken throughout one year -- in the spring, summer, fall, and winter. (Classical music fans will know exactly what Vivaldi music accompanies these trips.) Relationships experience turmoil and fractures over the seasons... though comedy often ensues.

I think myself pretty well "read" in film history, but I wasn't aware of the 1981 movie from which all this was adapted. Written and directed by -- and starring -- Alan Alda, The Four Seasons apparently told a similar story. In my book, it's kind of the perfect thing to remake 44 years later. I presume that many people are like myself and had no awareness of the original. But even if they were, the changing nature of the world means that some differences would be baked right into the adaptation. The Four Seasons series leans into that in one way by changing one of the original movie's pairings to a gay couple. But brushes with social media, broader global awareness, and a widening generation gap all play small roles in the story.

The show has quite a cast, starring Tina Fey, Will Forte, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Marco Calvani, and Erika Henningsen. Much of the surface appeal of the show is getting just what you'd expect from some of those names; there are moments of the show virtually guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. But at the same time, don't go in expecting a conventional half-hour sitcom. This is a heavy dose of humor mixed with a lot of relationship drama. Couples argue and reconcile, come together or break up, in a wide variety of situations over the course of these 8 episodes -- two each devoted to one of the titular four seasons. If you come to this because you liked 30 Rock, The Office, Saturday Night Live, or "whatever thing you liked that star in," I expect you will like The Four Seasons. You'll just also think, "but it's not as funny as that other thing." (Nor is it intended to be.)

Intriguingly, the show hit well enough (by murky Netflix metrics) to be renewed for a second season. So regardless of how closely the first season did or did not follow the original movie (which I have yet to watch), they're going to have to blaze their own story trail to continue things for another season. (Well, four seasons, I guess.) The writers of the series (which also includes Tina Fey) seem to have considered this possibility, with the final episodes teasing new potential ground for the story to explore.

I'd give The Four Seasons a B+. Moreover, it's probably going to be my "have you watched this?" option to inject into TV talk for the foreseeable future. I mean... by this point, I think everyone knows that Star Wars: Andor is not to be missed. But how many people have even heard of The Four Seasons?

Well... now you have.

Enterprise Flashback: The Shipment

The Xindi story arc on Star Trek: Enterprise was inspired by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But it being Star Trek, with inspiration also coming from the franchise's core moral code, some nuance surrounding the enemy was called for. "The Shipment" was a big step in providing that.

The Enterprise travels to the planet where the Xindi are refining fuel for their planet-killing weapon. Yet even as they have an opportunity to strike a blow against their enemy, they learn that not all Xindi are their enemy. A local scientist they capture knows nothing of humans, and is appalled to learn that his work is being co-opted for a genocidal purpose.

"Not all Xindi" might seem like a simplistic message, but at the time this episode first aired -- 2003, as the United States lashed out in all directions in response to 9/11 -- it's one that really needed highlighting. (And it's sadly an "evergreen" message that bears repeating.) The Xindi Gralik Durr is an interesting character. He's not a straightforward analog for an Oppenheimer; he's much farther down the chain of people whose life's work unknowingly feeds a war machine. And it feels like classic Star Trek in all the best ways that when he learns the hard truth, he quickly reforms and wants to make amends.

But despite Gralik Durr's nobility, he remains a rather shallow character. There isn't much sense of what he risks by helping Archer and company, nor hint of whether and how his "resistance" might continue once Enterprise takes off. And he isn't the only thin character in the episode. Even though the MACO Major Hayes reappears (again played by TV "that guy" Steven Culp), the episode doesn't devote any time to fleshing him out either -- or even having him contribute meaningfully to the mission by his presence.

Instead, time that could have bulked up character is given to odd world-building details, dropped in as if by a dungeon master who is really disappointed his players didn't more naturally come across all this background work he put in. By that I mean: why is it important that there was a sixth, now-extinct Xindi species? We don't need proof of the Xindi's genocidal proclivities; this whole story arc kicked off with that. We don't need reminding that Xindi sub-species don't get along with each other; episodes regularly start with mustache-twirling meetings of the Xindi's Evil League of Evil (including this episode). Why is a whole subplot devoted to tinkering with a captured Xindi hand weapon? It's novel and weird, I guess, that the gun is "slug worm operated," but it isn't clear there will be any impending ramifications to this knowledge in the plot at large.

It also feels a bit odd to me that the entire climax of the episode revolves around a plan to "tag" this new shipment of fuel in a way that Enterprise will be able to track... only to have that tracking fail the moment the shipment leaves this planet. Sure, sometimes plans fail, and that's bound to happen a few times over the course of a 24-episode story arc. But it undermines Gralik Durr's decision to help if that help amounts to little. And it's weird that Archer is the one to sneak aboard the Xindi ship to plant the tracker (as opposed to Reed or Hayes, also there with him on the planet).

Other observation:

• This episode must have come up short in the edit. I say this because it begins with a "previously on" clip package to orient you to the Xindi arc, for the first time this season. And while that does sound useful in principle, this package is a weird assembly of that telepathic alien hitting on Hoshi, as though the only important detail viewers need to watch this episode is "how we found out about this planet." (Which Reed actually answers anyway, in a bit of early exposition.) Why not remind us where the hand weapon came from that's the focus of the B plot?

I feel like the instincts of this episode to provide nuance to the Xindi are good. The specific message, that some Xindi are horrified by the actions of their leaders, is better still. But I find the execution a bit lacking. I give "The Shipment" a B-.

Enterprise Flashback: Exile

Star Trek will sometimes build an episode from the trappings of other story genres, reshaping them in a science-fiction mold. I was not a fan of the time Star Trek: The Next Generation took a run at Gothic romance... though enough time had passed that you can't blame them for trying again with Enterprise's "Exile."

Hoshi Sato is contacted telepathically by a reclusive alien who claims he can help the crew learn more about the Xindi. In exchange, he asks that she stay with him in his mountaintop castle as he works... though he intends to convince her to make that arrangement permanent. Meanwhile, Enterprise proceeds separately to a nearby sector where they may have located another of the mysterious spheres -- and learning more about it could be the key to understanding the region's strange anomalies.

"Exile" isn't just any old Gothic romance; it's rather specifically Beauty and the Beast. Tarquin, the "beast" of this story, is a monstrous figure who has been made an outcast. His abilities are tied to a strange artifact. Our female protagonist sees the potential for good in him... even though she stays in his secluded castle against her will. He gives her a book to get into her good graces. I find it all such an extreme one-to-one for Beauty and the Beast that the story suffers at all the points it can't follow the same plotting.

Because Hoshi is a main character on a television series, she can't actually fall in love with this guy, and certainly can't stay with him in the end. So the writers have to manufacture a reason they can't be together... and they land on making Tarquin terrible: a creep at best, a sexual predator at worst. His actions can easy be read as deception (he does not initially let her see his true appearance), gaslighting (he poses as people she knows, making her question reality), coercion (he tries to isolate her emotionally and physically from her friends), and assault (he reads her mind without permission). Plus, he's a serial offender; he wants to make Hoshi his fifth "companion."

Points to Hoshi for standing her ground, realizing when she's being tricked, and figuring out how to threaten him back to win her freedom. (And points to the writers for never really having her be tempted by his "offer.") But there's also no real story arc here for either character -- neither the "learning to see past the surface" moral of Beauty and the Beast, nor any substitute either. There's no hint that either one of them is going to be changed in the future for having encountered the other.

The B plot has its moments. The visual effects of the Enterprise hull liquefying and exploding are well executed. Archer and Trip nearly losing their ride while they're exploring the sphere is a fun scene. The revelation that the Delphic Expanse was artificially created feels like an intriguing twist -- even as the concurrent revelation that there may be 50 spheres or more suggests that our heroes still have a long way to go in solving their problems.

Other observations:

• In the opening scene, Hoshi's bathroom is weirdly laid out specifically for the camera. Only in TV land would a mirror NOT be positioned directly above a sink.

• In an episode featuring a villain who gaslights Hoshi, it's not great that both Reed and Phlox initially tell her she's probably imagining things.

• When Tarquin asks for an artifact important to the Xindi upon which to focus his telepathic abilities, it's a good thing we've already seen the proof that he is telepathic. That sounds like straight-up con artist stuff.

• The marginalizing of Travis Mayweather continues. In this episode, he's replaced at the helm in arbitrary scenes with a speechless, no-name pilot... even though there are other scenes where he does appear. also without saying a word.

• While Tarquin's telepathic powers are well established, it's completely unexplained what technology he possesses to actually threaten Enterprise at the end of the episode.

While Hoshi sticks up for herself in this episode, it's hardly what I'd call a "good Hoshi episode." Good moments for the Xindi arc overall are muddied with the pervasive ick factor of the alien Tarquin. Overall, I give "Exile" a C+.

Wild Assertions

The current entertainment pipeline often sees movies passing from theaters to streaming in a matter of weeks -- so even when you fall behind, you don't fall that far behind. But occasionally, we get a reminder of "the old days," when it would take many months for a movie to become watchable at home. I had almost forgotten that I wanted to watch the animated film The Wild Robot when it finally showed up on a streaming service.

The movie from DreamWorks Animation is based on the first of a series of children's books of the same title. In it, a robot abandoned in the wilderness comes online on an uninhabited island. In trying to fulfill her purpose to help, she befriends the local creatures, becomes mother to an orphaned goose... and ultimately attracts the attention of less-nurturing forces.

I enjoyed the movie overall, though I fear that praising it is going to come off as a series of backhanded compliments. For instance, one thing I really appreciated about The Wild Robot is how it doesn't try to push the boundaries of animation. These days, it seems like every animated movie is built around trying to pioneer some new way of rendering the most realistic animation you've ever seen. And while there is some clear effort put into the environments of this film (particularly in the extended forest fire sequence at the climax of the story), the character animation is refreshingly more simple.

I think this choice was perhaps forced on the production in at least two ways. One is that it's all based on a picture book. The movie is not trying to emulate the art directly -- it's not that basic. But I think those illustrations probably served as a reminder to streamline and simplify wherever possible. Secondly, I think all the talking animals of this story blocked off the possibility of too much hyper-realism -- at the same time that an abundance of pre-existing "talking animals movies" blocked off other ways you could have presented the characters. In order to chart its own course, distinct from Disney, Pixar, what-have-you, the movie needed to embrace a simpler animation style.

The story is sweet, with a few nice moments where the sentiment lands well. It is not the product of the well-oiled story machine that was Pixar in its heyday, nor Disney in its... though neither are Pixar and Disney themselves these days. The Wild Robot has some lovely things to say about found families, environmentalism, and more -- and that feels "good enough" even if it doesn't feel sharp enough to really tug on your emotions throughout.

The voice casting is the area where I can most unreservedly shine a spotlight. Lupita Nyong'o stars as the title character, deftly walking the tightrope of lending emotion to an ostensibly emotionless character. Surrounding her are Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, and Catherine O'Hara -- a deep bench of wonderful voices who lend pathos, comic relief, and texture to the world of the story.

Ultimately, I'd give The Wild Robot a B. That's not "can't miss" viewing, but I think it is good enough that just about anyone would find something to like in it, and find it worth the time.

Enterprise Flashback: Impulse

When Enterprise set up the idea of the Delphic Expanse, teasing us with the strange things that might happen there, they hit the audience with two specific "ghost stories" to sell the spookiness of the place: that the crew of one ship was turned inside out, and that an entire Vulcan crew was driven insane. Being a network show, they were never going to follow up and show us more about that first idea. But the second one takes center stage in "Impulse."

The Enterprise encounters a dense asteroid field, full of an element that can be used to protect the ship from the hazards of the Expanse. But as the crew makes plans to mine it, they discover a Vulcan ship adrift deep inside the field. When a team boards the ship, they find the entire crew compromised by an affliction that has turned them into rage-fueled monsters... a condition which begins to affect T'Pol.

"Impulse" is a straight-up horror episode, featuring Vulcan zombies. Boiled down that simply, it sounds pretty hokey -- though it's actually better than that, thanks in large part to the series' consistently high production values. Veteran Star Trek director David Livingston really leans into the stylistic shift, working with the production team to establish moody lighting, over-exposed film, arch camera angles, lots of fog, and superb makeup to give us a zombie story that legitimately honors the genre.

I do find myself wishing that there had been something a little more distinct about the fact that these are Vulcan zombies, some kind of Star Trek spin on the classic trope. (We don't even get that they're strong zombies, as they should be compared to the humans.) It's possible that what I'm really feeling is fatigue over the parade of zombie television in the decades since this episode was made. But if all this episode is going to do is "play the hits," it at least does so well -- zombies staggering inexorably toward the camera, clawing as people escape up a ladder, protruding through a barely-opened door... and all set against the ticking clock of an "infected" person slowly being turned. The episode even ends with "one last jump scare" as T'Pol has a nightmare about what she's been through.

But a huge measure of the tension is undercut by the "24 hours earlier" trope tacked on at the beginning of the episode. "Impulse" doesn't begin with the creeping dread of finding the Vulcan ship drifting in the asteroids; it begins with T'Pol already succumbing to zombie-ism, teasing us with the threat that she might die screaming on Phlox's Sickbay bed. (Jolene Blalock acts her ass off, full-on screaming into the camera... before we awkwardly smash cut to "it's been a long roooooad.....")

We know T'Pol isn't going to die here. But the show's insistence on teasing us with this schmuck bait compromises so many other aspects of the episode. We don't know the "zombie rules" going into this situation, but by showing us that teaser, we've been told that only T'Pol is at risk of "being turned"; we lose any tension that the humans on the mission might be threatened by "zombie bite." We've also seen exactly how bad T'Pol is going to get before arriving in Sickbay, which ultimately deflates any tension over how long the team might be trapped aboard the Vulcan ship. I'm hard-pressed to think of any horror movie that uses a flashback structure, and I'm pretty sure this is why: it just undercuts everything the genre is trying to do.

At this point, it's become comical how much this series hates several of its own characters. Travis Mayweather is involved (barely) in the B-plot about mining ore from an asteroid, but there's no possible justification for why he -- their best pilot -- didn't fly the shuttle to the Vulcan ship. (We just can't have him getting anywhere near the A-plot.) And just when you think nothing more can be said or shown about Reed's ineptitude as a tactical officer: Archer saves his life in a hand-to-hand fight with a zombie, and then later messes up "hotwiring" a console on the Vulcan ship, locking them out and angering T'Pol.

While I praised the horror-specific aspects of the production, I should still highlight that this episode is also good in many of the ways the series typically excels. We get the visuals of a super-dense and dangerous-looking asteroid field, a transporter accident that fuses rocks into the walls and floor, a shuttle crash on an asteroid, lingering shuttle damage, and a huge ship explosion. There's also multiple solid action sequences that involve fist fights, shoot-outs, crawling and climbing, and scurrying across a narrow beam over a chasm. Once again, this show does action well -- even if that unfortunate "24 hours earlier" tease has deflated much of the tension from it.

Other observations:

• This episode is something of an inversion of the earlier "Strange New World." There, an "infection" turned the humans against T'Pol; here, one turns T'Pol against the humans.

• For the larger Xindi story arc, we learn that the very ore which can protect the ship from the anomalies of the Expanse is toxic to Vulcans. T'Pol says Archer should leave her behind and protect the ship, but Archer says he can't save humanity by losing what makes him human. That would have been a better line if the Xindi arc hadn't taken Archer as far down the "Jack Bauer road" as it already has.

• As much as I hate the use of the "24 hours earlier" trope, they at least have the good sense not to repeat the same scenes when the flashbacks catch us back up to where the story began. 

• On movie night, Phlox once again talks during the film. (I guess the writers aren't willing to count him completely out of the "worst character on Enterprise" contest, despite the stiff competition.) T'Pol once again has a perfectly Vulcan way to shush hum.

I really love how Enterprise went for a horror movie here, and how far the behind-the-scenes team went to realize that vision. I'm disappointed in how much the writers let them down with a poor script structure and a lack of any "Trek-specific" spin on the zombie trope. Overall, I give "Impulse" a B-.

Enterprise Flashback: Rajiin

The first two seasons of Enterprise ran for 26 episodes. The third season dropped to 24 (one more reason I think they were chasing the hit show starring Kiefer Sutherland), but that's still a huge amount of story to provide for their long story arc about the Xindi. So much that inevitably, a few episodes were going to feel like "filler." That's where I'd put "Rajiin."

Enterprise travels to an alien market, where they buy information on how to synthesize a rare mineral that could protect the ship from the anomalies of the Expanse. While there, they rescue a woman from being sold into slavery. It appears she may have some information about the Xindi... but it fact, she is an undercover operative, working for the Xindi to gather intel on the humans.

The "bookends" of this episode expose for me why I think it's mostly filler. We check in again on the "evil Xindi war council," bickering some more about their Earth-destroying weapon. It's not that the planet killer won't work; it's just that (only four episodes into the season) it's taking too long. So we're told right out of the gate that everything that's going to happen in this episode is in service of a "plan B," something by definition that's new, unrelated to the ongoing story, and isn't likely to be a thing going forward. So twice now, these villainous scenes with the Xindi have not only failed to deliver anything more than generic mustache twirling, they've actively undermined the build of interest in the plot to come.

That plot looks like it's going to be classic Star Trek (I'm talking original series), with the captain finding an alien woman who seems attracted to him. It's a nice subversion to make Rajiin a super-spy who takes full-body medical scans with her hands and is out to manipulate them all. But then the subversion quickly falls into predictable Enterprise patterns: she's gotta have an overtly sexual encounter with everyone she meets -- Hoshi, a security guard, and of course T'Pol -- which feels extra icky, in that it plays out like yet another sexually-coded assault on her. (Don't "worry," there's reciprocal ick when she's captured, thrown in the brig, and Archer manhandles Rajiin for information.)

None of this plan makes much sense, when you scratch beneath the surface. Did embedding Rajiin aboard Enterprise all hinge on them happening to come to that particular alien bazaar, and happening to have a run-in with that slave trader? The whole goal here -- getting body scans of humans -- highlights the fact that at the end of the day, the Xindi don't really know much about humans. Did they know that human morality would include feeling sympathy for enslaved people? How did they know about the "honeypot" cliche? You don't have to try reasoning through any of this for long, though; the episode culminates in a big firefight in which Reptilian Xindi board the ship and blast everything in sight (with an admittedly cool-looking weapon) to retrieve their operative. 

Aside from that big concluding action scene, though, Enterprise is not up to its usual standards when it comes to production. The alien bazaar is a disappointment, cobbled together with stuff from the prop closet, and not even supported by music of any kind (neither diegetic nor conventional score; it's weirdly quiet). Slow motion (a rarity in Star Trek) is used not once, but twice -- and is incredibly awkward both times.

Other observations:

• The massage scenes continue, as Enterprise writers continue to play out the idea that every backrub eventually leads to sex. (They "hang a lantern on it" this time, by having Trip and T'Pol talk about how people are gossiping... but that's still exactly where this story is going.)

• It's a fun moment when the crew trades a suitcase of spices to an alien in exchange for information. That alien is a particularly gross creation (in a fun way), as all he wants to do with the spices is sniff them and sneeze.

The extended action sequence at the end of this episode -- the big shoot-out aboard Enterprise -- is well-executed. Pretty much everything else about this episode is dull time-filler, a way to feature the Xindi story without actually progressing the Xindi story. I give "Rajiin" a C+.

Something Fishy

Now that I've blogged about the bird-watching game Wingspan and its dragon-themed spin-off Wyrmspan, I'm caught up to talk about its latest spinoff, the fish-themed Finspan.

Like its predecessors, Finspan is an engine-building game in which you play cards with hopefully complementary abilities, building up the resources to play even more cards... hoping in the end to score more points than the other players. As you would expect, the gameplay is generally quite similar despite some cosmetic differences.

You once again play your cards in three lines -- though Finspan cosmetically twists this 90 degrees by having you play in columns (representing ocean depth) rather than rows. You once again can use your turn to survey all your cards in one line (this time, "diving" past them) to collect any repeating benefits they award. And you have a limited number of turns to work with in the game -- this time, 24 split evenly across four rounds.

Finspan makes a few adjustments that are not simply cosmetic. While all three games have eggs you spend to play new creatures, these actually hatch into tokens which then can be moved around your ocean. Movement itself is a "resource" of a sort, because if you can join three young together in one spot, they form a school that doubles the number of points they're worth at the end of the game.

Unlike Wingspan and Wyrmspan, Finspan eliminates the concept of "food types" that are used to play new cards. It's a curious choice that on the one hand makes the game simpler by eliminating multiple resources the players must accumulate and plan around. On the other hand, it removes some flavor that might make the game a bit more accessible to inexperienced gamers, removing concrete concepts like berries, grubs, and grains (for birds; meat, milk, and others for dragons) and abstracting them -- to play new fish, you just discard other cards, or eggs, or young.

Finspan also makes the "combo-building" nature of these games more explicit by dividing each of the three columns into three zones: shallow, mid, and deep. When your diver descends in a column, you get a specific bonus in each zone simply for having any fish there (regardless of whether it has a power of its own you can trigger). It gives players something to shoot for independent of what the cards say they do: spread out across the different depths of your ocean to maximize your rewards.

Because of the streamlining of food and highlighting of combo-building, many experienced gamers have rallied around the idea that Finspan is the "simplest" of the Span family of games. I'd say the difference is subtle, if real at all; Mandy Patinkin would probably still have a hard time learning Finspan. And I really don't find the game in any way "less satisfying" to play. (Not that I always prefer more challenging games anyway.)

In fact, I certainly prefer Finspan to Wyrmspan, in part because of how it highlights that theme can really matter in a game. In my review of the dragon version, I commented that collecting fictional dragons wasn't nearly as compelling to me as reading factoids about actual birds (especially because in Wyrmspan, while they wrote a mountain of fictional information about the fictional dragons, they didn't bother to actually print any of it on the cards). Finspan brings us back to the real world, and once again each card features an intriguing little factoid about a fish you may or may not have ever heard of. It cements for me that in the Span games, the real-world themes are a significant part of the appeal to me.

Where I've called Wingpsan maybe an A- or B+, and Wyrmspan maybe a B or B+, I feel that Finspan ought to slot solidly in the middle. Call it a B+, no "maybe" about it. It's quite possible that no gamer's collection needs to include all three. But it's just as possible that a fan of any one of them might want to check out the others.