Reading/Watching Log #74

Here we are, at the start of 2022 and I think I’m finally ready to start processing 2016. Truly, the history books will look back on this time with abject bewilderment, and my current state of mind in dealing with day-to-day life in the time of Covid-19 is “just take one day at a time”. I’ve got two weeks off in March, and oh man – I doubt I’ll get out of bed for their duration.

What are my goals for this year? Less television, more books. I started leaning into this mentality at the end of 2021 and discovered that my creative juices began flowing almost immediately. Writing original fiction again feels great, and I definitely want to chase that feeling. Or as this post put it:

I’m also going to try and pay attention to my own TBR pile of books instead of checking out stacks of library books (this was my resolution last year, and I fell off the wagon in October) though it’s difficult to resist the siren song of the new release shelf.

And when it comes to shows, I’m going to try finishing up some of the stuff I started and never completed. When was the last time I watched How To Get Away With Murder?

Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo

Having established Raven’s origin story in Teen Titans: Raven and Beast Boy’s origin story in Teen Titans: Beast Boy (not the most creative titles, but you can read either one first) this volume brings the two characters together for a combined adventure that weaves together parts of their hitherto-separate narratives.

This ongoing series of graphic novels have crafted individual stories for various DC heroes focusing on their adolescence, though this is the first one that’s trying to build a greater, interconnected narrative in contrast to its standalone predecessors. They also throw in Damien Wayne as Robin for good measure, and I get the feeling that the volume featuring him (out for release later this year) will fit into this continuity.

The story itself is fairly ho-hum: both Raven and Gar have been called to Nashville by Slade, ostensibly to learn more about their inherent preternatural abilities, though it doesn’t take a genius to realize there’s a deeper agenda at play (we are dealing with Slade, after all). Before the inevitable shit hits the fan, the two teens run into each other at a diner and form an immediate attraction.

(To be honest, all my prior knowledge of these characters comes from Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans, in which a romance between them was completely off the table – though admittedly, that didn’t stop me hearing the actors’ voices in my head as I read this).

The meet-cute is a little trite, as is their impending romance (it’s love at first sight for Gar, which I guess is in character, though Raven warms up to him way too fast) but the main drawcard is Gabriel Picolo’s artwork. He not only nails the look and expressiveness of these characters, but does fascinating things with the colouring that goes into them: most panels are muted pastels or ink black, but Beast Boy and Raven given colours: green and purple, respectively. This colour palette is amplified accordingly depending on who’s most dominant in the frame or having the strongest emotional reaction to an event.

Altogether it’s a fairly harmless little story, that neither detracts from or adds to the extensive amounts of continuities that already feature these particular characters. (Well, except in making them an official couple, which I don’t think has been done anywhere other than the comics and Teen Titans Go. Honestly, I always read Raven as asexual, though man were the shippers voracious back in the day).

Eleanor of Aquitaine by Desmond Seward

I’m currently doing some original writing which involves a character that’s at least partially based on Eleanor of Aquitaine, even though it occurred to me that I actually know very little about her. That is, I’ve seen The Lion in Winter, and I know what she got up to when King Richard was being held hostage in Austria, but not a lot about her early life and her final years. More than that, I didn’t realize how revered she was during her own lifetime.

Seward provides a truncated but fairly detailed overview of her life, from childhood to old age, drawing attention to her accomplishments and ambitions – of which there were many. Despite her foibles, he gives her the “winner’s edit”, talking of her remarkable travels on the Second Crusade and her imprisonment in England.

First published in 1978, this biography has some weird ideas about King Richard’s homosexuality. Unlike John Harvey’s The Plantagenets, which flat-out denied that Richard was gay (but just had romantic ideals about other men) Seward admits to it but decides that Eleanor is to blame: “in view of [Richard’s] later reputation for homosexuality, it is not too much to suppose that the queen was one of those excessively dominant mothers who transform their sons into little lovers” and “it seems more than likely that her extreme possessiveness helped to bring out [her sons’] evil qualities, and it may well have been largely responsible for Richard’s homosexuality.”

That’s not how it works, dude.

Despite this, he speaks very highly of her: of her intelligence as a politician and ruler, the hard power she wielded in Aquitaine, and how she turned Fontevrault into a place for battered wives. Also, that she lived to the age of eighty-two, a remarkable feat for the Middle Ages. It’s a pretty straightforward recap of her life, but I definitely ended knowing more than when I started.

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Oof. Reading this made me feel like a dumbass, there were so many concepts and plot-points that were completely beyond my comprehension. Also, I’ve no idea how Benioff and Weiss are going to adapt this for Netflix, as so much of it takes place in virtual reality, flashbacks or dialogue.

Set during and after the Cultural Revolution in China, a young physicist witnesses her father beaten to death by Red Guards, only to eventually find sanctuary in a secret facility that’s searching for extra-terrestrial life. Several years later, a nanotechnology professor is recruited by the police to investigate the apparent suicides of several scientists. The trail leads him to a virtual reality game in which players try to survive the bizarre weather patterns of an alien planet, which fluctuates between freezing cold and extreme heat.

How do these two narratives connect? That’s the gist of the book in its entirety, which unfolds out of chronological order and demands your full attention in order to grasp what’s going on (I wasn’t particularly exemplary in achieving this). I can understand why it’s become such an award-winner: there’s so much stuff packed into this book that it’s a little mind-boggling: philosophy, history, scientific theory – like I said, it’ll be a challenge to adapt this.

But I guess it made me realize that I’m not really a hard science-fiction person. Aiming for accuracy in sci-fi (or perhaps any kind of story) isn’t my greatest concern, as long as the plot and characterization makes logical and emotional sense. Still, I’m not sorry that I read this; it’s been discussed so often lately that at least I now have an understanding of what everyone’s been talking about.

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

The third and final book of the trilogy that has no definitive name (the covers call it the Grishaverse, which I hate, and Netflix seems to have settled on Shadow and Bone) is interesting to read with the reality of an adaptation in mind. There are some things which may not translate so easily, such as the true nature of Alina’s third amplifier, or the way in which she finally deals with the Shadow Fold. It’s also increasingly difficult to grasp how the Crows are going to fit into all of this.

But maybe I’m being pre-emptive, as the series has only just been greenlit for the second season. By the time we (hopefully) get to the third instalment, the Darkling will have taken over Ravka, Alina’s allies will have been divided, and she and Mal will be hiding out in extensive underground caverns with the Apparat. That’s the starting point for this book, and until we get to the final confrontation in the Fold, it’s basically just a lot of wandering around.

Not that that’s a bad thing, especially as it’s filled with a decent amount of character development, but this made me realize for the first time that Eric Heisserer was onto something when he introduced the Crows to the proceedings: without them, there’s very little meat in the original material. Still, I’m curious as to how the Ice Court heist will be handled: concurrently with Alina’s adventures, or held off until a possible season four?

In any case, Bardugo wraps up her story with a few questionable decisions, but just the right amount of bittersweetness. As the Six of Crows duology will prove, this world is still far from perfect, and I have to admit that Alina never really came into her own as a heroine (I’m not sure she ever makes a single important decision by herself) but as a fairly straightforward by-the-numbers YA fantasy/romance it does what it set out to do. It’s a little odd to think that people thought it was going to be more than that.

This particular edition came with an extra short story that explores some of the Darkling’s backstory. Namely, that he and his mother were forced to live in secret, moving from one Grisha encampment to the next, hiding even in the midst of their own kind given that each one possesses terrifying shadow-summoning powers. More than anything it outlines the reasons behind his motivation in eventually creating the Second Army: a relative safe harbour for Grisha kind... though it’s interesting that the biggest threat to Grisha in this particular story is the Grisha themselves.

It’s a pity this couldn’t make it into the Netflix series, as it was far more compelling than the lazy Fridged Wife nonsense they came up with in its place.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

My first film of 2022! Having watched this on the heels of re-reading the novel for the first time in years, there was naturally going to be a lot of comparisons made. And given the book’s length and depth, it’s astounding that the film is as faithful as it is.

A few key characters are missing (Wade, Ella, Will Benteen, Archie) and some are severely pared down (Suellen, Careen, Jonas Wilkerson) but all the major beats of the plot are present and accounted for, and the film can boast some of the finest casting in cinematic history. No one can possibly think of Scarlett and Rhett without thinking of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, and the likes of Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel and the supporting cast are pitch-perfect in their roles.

In fact, I actually prefer Havilland’s Melanie to Mitchell’s Melanie. They drop elements like her horror that Beau might have to go to school with Black children, and have her treat Belle Watling in the way that a self-professed Christian woman should behave (in the book she’s mortified at being approached in the street, here she accepts Belle’s money for the cause with graciousness).

Speaking of Belle, she does better here as well. The book gives us a mysterious passage in which Rhett angrily speaks of a young ward whose education he’s paying for, something we never learn anything more about. The film gives us the other half of this story, in which Belle confides to Melanie that she has a son in Charlestown. It doesn’t take a genius to put two-and-two together, and Ona Munson is later given a beautiful scene that clearly demonstrates her love for Rhett right before he leaves her forever.

(And surely this is why film adaptations of books should exist in the first place – not just to translate, but to enrich and expand the original text).

Only Leslie Howard is a bit lacklustre as Ashley, perhaps because there are really two versions of this character at work in the book: the heroic white knight that Scarlett fantasizes about, and the brave and gentle-natured but essentially weak-willed man who actually exists. Howard tries to straddle both, and so can never quite commit to either. (He’s most interesting when the narrative points out his similarities to Rhett, but the film hasn’t the time or inclination to do that).

The screenplay is smart in knowing which of the iconic scenes to leave completely unchanged (Scarlett shooting the deserter, Rhett helping the women escape Atlanta) and which to tweak a little bit (Gerald’s death plays out quite differently, though the necessary parallel to Bonnie Blue’s fate remains) but also adds a few little notes of its own that vibe perfectly with the text: Rhett’s line “has the war started?” after Scarlett throws the statuette in a rage is completely original to the film, but something that Mitchell probably wished she came up with herself. Ditto his heartfelt letter to Melanie in which he returns her wedding ring to her, with a deadpan postscript: “I also return the ring of Mrs Charles Wilkes.”

The film is both better and worse than the book in depicting the antebellum South. On the one hand, they cut down some of the overt racism of the book (I noted that Scarlett’s attacker in the shantytown has pointedly been changed to a white man) and exorcise the Klu Klux Klan entirely; on the other they romanticize the old south in a way that’s more difficult to ignore than it was in the book (where most of Mitchell’s assertions are so absurd that you frankly can’t take it seriously).

But seeing the warm glow of nostalgia cast over the plantation homes and the slaves coming in from the fields naturally has more visual power than a few words on the page, and there’s a reason why the film usually comes in for more controversy that the book.

As an adaptation, it certainly does what it set out to do, effectively supplanting the book in the cultural zeitgeist. When you hear the words Gone With The Wind, your imagination inevitably races to this first. It always stuns me to remember that the film went into production only two years after the publication of the book (and before Vivien Leigh had been cast, at that!) though perhaps the speed of its creation is what lends it its immediacy and passion.

It’s a frustrating, sweeping, engrossing and oft-appalling watch. As ever, I’m bewildered by the idea that I’m supposed to feel anything even remotely resembling pity for the Confederates when they begin to experience one-tenth of the suffering they’ve inflicted on their slaves for generations, and the film feels like it’s on firmer ground when the focus is on the interpersonal relationships between Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie and Ashley.

It’s one of those films you have to watch at least once, if for no other reason than to understand Carol Burnett’s spoof.

Cleopatra (1963)

Nobody does it like Old Hollywood. There’s so much glitz and glamour packed into the four-plus hours of this historical epic that you can easily see how the production went massively overbudget – and given the on-set scandals, the lack of a script and the myriad of reshoots, it’s a miracle that it’s as coherent as it is.

In many ways it’s essentially two films: the first is about Cleopatra and Caesar (ending with the Ides of March), and the second about Cleopatra and Marc Antony (ending with their suicides) though naturally the lynchpin between the two halves is Cleopatra herself, spurred throughout by her ambition and desire for power.

It’s at its best when depicting the political intrigue rather than the love affairs, which are in any case so wrapped up in each individual’s personal ambitions that the intrigues and countermeasures between each pair of lovers essentially amount to the same thing. In many ways it’s a standard morality play about the dangers of accumulating power and romantic passion, with the three leads all doomed to die of their own personas (it kind of makes me wish they had given more time to the cool-headedness of characters like Octavius and Octavia as counterpoints, though the film is already over four hours long!)

To the screenplay’s credit, it bases much of the events on the records of Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian and Petronius, though I have to admit that I’ve never been an expert on this particular branch of history. It certainly hits the most famous notes: Cleopatra rolled up in the rug, the Ides of March, the Battle of Actium, the asp among the figs – and is able to maintain emotional consistency in its key characters. Essentially, the triumvirate of Cleopatra, Caesar and Antony are so bad for each other, and even as they provide each other with the tools to advance, they also doom each other – whether it’s Cleopatra over-relying on the men, Antony feeling like an inadequate replacement for Caesar, or Caesar buying into Cleopatra’s godhood nonsense.

It all impacts their decision-making and leads to the inevitable. That’s the thing about these big larger-than-life historical figures: you know that they’re just catapulting toward their own immolation. If it all wasn’t written down in the record books, you’d never believe it was true.

Chaos Walking (2021)

I was disappointed in this one, not because it was bad but because it wasn’t bad enough. Having read with fascination reports of the film being completely unwatchable despite its strong source material, talented cast and significant budget, I was chomping at the bit for the chance to see everything implode on-screen. Who doesn’t love a good train wreck now and then?

But it turns out that a lot of the film’s supposed issues got cleaned up between the reshoots and post-production. You can still spot a few gaps though: in one scene Daisy Ridley’s character orders Tom Holland to always stay in front of her; in the very next scene we see her marching ahead of him... and since we only see the back of their heads in this shot, it’s obvious that Holland’s line pointing out this discrepancy has been dubbed in.

Little things like that are strewn throughout the film, giving it an edge of “we’ll fix it in post” editing. The gist is that Tom Holland lives on a colonized planet in which all the women have been wiped out by the native alien life-forms, leaving the men to farm the land and struggle with what’s known as “the Noise”, in which everyone can see and feel each other’s thoughts.

With such a lack of privacy, it’s only a matter of time before Holland’s discovery of a young woman – the sole survivor of a shuttle crashlanding – is known to the rest of the community, and the two take to the forest in order to reach a secondary settlement and contact Daisy Ridley’s people before the mayor of Prentisstown can initiate an evil plan to signal the rest of the colonists, kill them while they’re still in cryosleep, and salvage their ship.

That’s a lot of high-concept stuff for one single film, which doesn’t even take into account the gender politics and inevitable dark secret lying at the heart of Prentisstown. In many ways the story simply bit off more than it could chew, miscalculated general audiences’ fatigue for dystopian stories, and failed to imbue its characters with any sort of interiority. Holland gives it his all, but the performance isn’t that far removed from Peter Parker, and you can tell the reshoots from the original production by how disinterested Daisy Ridley looks.

(Also, between the terrible wig and the even worse orange pants, I’m not sure what she did to offend the costuming department so badly).

Yet for all of that, it’s not hideously unwatchable. Even half-formed, its commentary on toxic masculinity and the role of women is fairly interesting, and there’s some solid world-building throughout. There’s some funny banter between the two leads, precipitated on the fact that Holland’s character is mentally incapable of hiding his attraction to Ridley’s, and Mads Mikkelsen naturally puts in good work as the sinister villain. Also, there’s a Jonas brother.

Ironically, it probably would have been more entertaining if it had been a complete shambles; as it is now, it’s just a mediocre movie. Ah well, at least I can still look forward to The King’s Daughter, filmed all the way back in 2014 and only just being released in 2022. It has an endangered mermaid in it, right? That’s the type of trash I’m looking for.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

The best way to watch Resurrections is not as the fourth Matrix movie, but as a coda to the original trilogy. Knowing that it doesn’t stake out new territory, but rather is concerned with tying up loose ends, is the mindset you need in order to enjoy it.

Thankfully, it does not commit the crime of the Star Wars sequel trilogy and perform a Happy Ending Override, in which all of the hard-won triumphs of the original films are rendered null and void, for even though there was still trouble after the end of Revolutions, Neo and Trinity’s deaths were not in vain. A lasting peace was held, and humans/machines can now exist in harmony.

The stakes aren’t as high this time around, which was another wise decision made by Lana Wachowski and her screenwriters. It would have been as easy as it was tedious to make this yet another “save the world from the machines” narrative, trying to outdo the scale of the last movie’s assault on Zion and the heroic sacrifices of its leads. Instead, it’s simply about reuniting Neo and Trinity and giving them the happy ending that they were denied at the end of Revolutions. That’s it! For me at least, the restraint was welcome.

I can also respect that the film acknowledges the events that took place in Reloaded and Revolutions, despite those films not being hugely popular and occasionally reduced to discontinuity by fans. But Wachowski sticks to her guns and weaves elements of them into this new narrative, from minor cameos to larger structural choices. It’s a shame that neither Hugh Weaving or Lawrence Fishbourne return, but I felt the new actors brought a surprising amount of heft to the iconic roles, and the Watsonian reasoning for their change in appearances worked for me.

It starts with Thomas Anderson back in the Matrix for unknown reasons, believing that the events of the last three films were a series of hugely popular and ground-breaking games designed by him.  With more than a few meta jabs at Warner Brothers, he’s reluctantly roped into designing a fourth one with a team of long-time fans, only to be approached by a young woman called Bugs who claims that the narrative he’s concocted is all for real, and it’s time to bust him out of his false reality... again.

Though this was arguably the most interesting component of the whole story, the move into the real world pretty much shelves it as a concept, and Neo instead joins the straightforward rescue narrative of finding and awakening Trinity from her similarly virtual life – helped along the way by what felt like the entire cast of Sense8 (it wasn’t that I didn’t like seeing them, but after making a game of how many would turn up, it started to pull me out of the story).

I’ve already discussed the role of Trinity in some detail, so I won’t repeat myself here, only to say that despite Wachowski clearly being cognizant of the Trinity Syndrome trope, she doesn’t really resolve the issue of it by giving Trinity’s character the time and space she needs to defy its limitations (though that said, she was under no obligation to do so – this is a trope coined by fandom to describe a specific writing phenomenon, and I’m on the record for believing that the less creators interact with fandom, the better their stories will be).

Like I said, if you are prepared to take this story for what it is – a distant coda to the love story of Neo and Trinity – then there’s no reason not to enjoy it. The truth is, there was never going to be another The Matrix: the concept, the viewing experience, the cultural impact... it was lightning in a bottle back in 1999 that had no chance of ever being replicated. Resurrections is a fond reunion and a final farewell.

3Below: Season 2 (2019)

The second and final season of 3Below is very much like the entirety of the Tales of Arcadia extended universe (comprised of three different interconnecting shows and a movie): good without ever quite reaching greatness. This in particular was a bit of a slump in quality, from a premise that wasn’t all that promising to start with: two aliens from a royal household and their taciturn guardian escape an intergalactic takeover spearheaded by their evil uncle and take refuge on Earth, disguising themselves as humans and trying to blend in with the population.

I mean... I can’t think of another example off the top of my head, but it feels like we’ve come across that story a lot. Aside from integrating themselves with the human beings (and various other aliens living incognito) the story meanders quite a bit between two deeply uninteresting villains: a paranoid government agent who is essentially Amanda Waller, and the siblings’ uncle, your standard megalomaniacal overlord.

The good stuff is that Eli Pepperjack and Steve Palchuk become the siblings’ strongest allies, upgrading themselves from supporting characters in Trollhunters to main characters here (paying off a running gag of them a. being the only two people to notice all the weird goings-on in the township and b. insisting that they’re not friends despite spending every waking moment together). Toby also has a larger role to play this season, providing the connective tissue between this show and its predecessor (and, by the looks of it, the next one as well).  

But despite a stacked voice cast, which includes Tatiana Maslany, Diego Luna, Nick Frost, Glenn Close and Hayley Atwell, and some great visuals (the neon blue of the Tarrons looks amazing) the narrative is just missing something.

Two pet peeves: firstly that the siblings have spent the entirety of the show waiting for their badly wounded parents to be healed by regeneration pods... and a few seconds after they’re brought back to life, they immediately sacrifice themselves. Urgh – it reminds me of how the Ewok movies killed off the brother and the parents three minutes into the sequel.

Secondly, that the Akiridions are depicted with four arms, even though nothing interesting is done with this design. You’d think that they’d be masters at multitasking, or that there would be some fun scenes in which they’re doing something with one pair of arms while attempting something sneaky with the other... but there’s nothing like this. Most of the time they favour their upper arms and have their lower ones clasped behind their backs. Why bother?  

It’s never truly bad, just oddly unimaginative at times. Ah well, onto Wizards of Arcadia.

The Wheel of Time: Season 1 (2021)

I’ll admit to not being a book reader of Robert Jordan’s magnum opus, nor remotely interested in becoming one. As far as I know, The Wheel of Time is a High Fantasy epic that went on in perpetuity until the author died and Brandon Sanderson finished the project up for him. I respect other people’s taste in literature, but yeesh: there is nothing in that sentence that motivates me to pick up any of those books.

But I’d also heard that there were some interesting ideas at work: namely that Jordan took the standard fantasy tropes and deconstructed them: specifically that the Chosen One destined to save the world could just as easily be the person to doom it, if the right paths are not taken. The concept leads to a strange mix of clichés and subversions, which gives the adaptation a strange vibe that’s hard to explain.

As you’d expect, there’s an array of wide-eyed teenagers (played by much older actors) in search of their destinies, a sisterhood of magic wielders who are either revered or reviled by the people around them, a somewhat intriguing blend of Eastern and Western religions, and plenty of mindless bad guys (basically variations of the Orcs and Ringwraiths).

Rosamund Pike very much elevates the proceedings, bringing plenty of gravitas to her role and subsequently the entire cast – you could almost say she sets the tone, which is essential when it comes to the inherent silliness of the fantasy genre. If the actors aren’t stone-faced in the wake of monsters and prophecies and body-twisting magical calisthenics, then the audience simply can’t get on board.

The rest of the cast is fine, though at one point Maria Doyle Kennedy turns up and in just one scene essentially says: “okay kids, here’s a free acting lesson, you’re welcome. Sorry for stealing the show right out from under you.”

Yet for all of that, I never felt quite grounded in its reality. The costumes are clearly costumes. The CGI isn’t great. The sets are quite small and cramped. It’s hard to put my finger on what exactly feels off, but it’s there, all the more so when a few modern elements creep in (though their inclusion is clearly deliberate at times). Characters sometimes start acting like dickheads for no apparent reason, and there weren’t enough eyes to roll when it turned out the blandest of all the protagonists is the Dragon Reborn – I mean, there could have been some commentary on how this is a good thing considering what’s at stake should this Chosen One be emotionally unhinged in any way, but they don’t really explore it.

The final few episodes fall apart a bit: we have no emotional investment in the citadel that the protagonists chose to protect, Rand’s last temptation against the source of all evil is lacklustre, and one of the leads drops out of the action entirely (it had to be Covid-related, right?) to be replaced next season with a completely different actor.

For all of this (or perhaps because of this) I was fairly engrossed throughout. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it, but I have to admit that I’ll be back for season two.

Debris: Season 1 (2021)

Why did I watch the first season of a television show that I already knew had been cancelled? Well, for starters Anjali Jay was in it, and yes – I will watch thirteen+ hours of television in order to consume approximately four and a half minutes of her.

But there is something fascinating about projects that are apparently good enough to be greenlit for a first season, but not good enough to manage a second. What works and what doesn’t? Where did things go wrong? How much is left unresolved? Was there potential or was the whole thing a misfire from the start?

Debris apparently had a five-year plan with a standard Mystery of the Week format being strewn throughout a larger Myth Arc, very much in the tradition of The X-Files and Fringe. Two agents from the CIA and MI5 respectively are brought together to investigate the fallen debris of a derelict spacecraft that was (up until very recently) drifting high above the Earth’s atmosphere.

Though both are acutely aware that their agencies are play-acting at cooperation and fully expect the two of them to answer only to their own organizations, Bryan and Finola forge a bond once they realize that important information is being kept from both of them – namely, the reasons behind why their governments are trying so hard to accumulate the debris.

It’s not a bad setup, so what went wrong? First of all, there is zero chemistry between the two leads. Neither are bad actors, and it was nice to see Jonathan Tucker (who has a resting intensity face second only to Freddy Carter) get his own show, but there’s absolutely no spark between them whatsoever. I’m not even talking about a romantic/sexual spark; there’s no energy in their interactions at all.

Finola is given a dead father and an estranged sister to deal with, while Bryan has your standard veteran’s tragic backstory (does it involve a dead girl? Of course it does!) and neither one really comes to life as a character.

Naturally the debris has preternatural qualities which inform the plots, often in quite ridiculous ways. It can do whatever the heck the writer needs it to do (highlights include teleportation, de-aging, setting off a Groundhog Day loop and cloning abilities) and more often than not the solution to whatever problem they come across is to tap into their feelings. I’m not kidding.

Given that there’s no satisfying problem-solving at work (a standard episode has a bunch of effectively eerie things going on, only for the leads to pull a completely random solution out their asses) there’s no real sense of fun to be had in theorizing. They could literally explain this stuff with anything and it would make minimal sense.

Ultimately, it was too derivative. There was very little here that we haven’t seen a thousand times before, proving once again that actor and character chemistry can make or break a show. The adventures of broody Bryan and joyless Finola simply weren’t that compelling, and there was no fun banter or touching bonding moments to speak of.  

There was one original element that I liked: radio transmissions of the debris being discovered on Earth would play over each episode’s end credits. It was a cute way of adding some context to the big event, and occasionally foreshadowed what would happen in future episodes.

But alas, that was it for Debris. Now it’s a curiosity piece; another genre show that didn’t quite get the traction it needed to continue. We’ll never know what was up with Finola’s dad, or what the aliens were trying to do, or why there was a Finola double in that cave at the end. At least I got to see Anjali Jay.