Night Shift (1982, Ron Howard)

Night Shift distinguishes itself immediately. The opening sequence is magnificent, featuring two crooks (Richard Belzer and Badja Droll) chasing down pimp Julius LeFlore and inciting the incident for the film. Director Howard has three credited editors on Night Shift—Robert James Kern, Daniel P. Hanley, and Mike Hill—and their cutting is deft. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel’s script gives them plenty of opportunities for layering the narrative impacts just right, and Howard and cinematographer James Crabe are big on keeping things fluid. The camera moves, the people move. There’s maybe one mediocre sequence in Night Shift, and it jumps out because the rest of it has been so sublime. Starting from the prologue, which leads directly into the opening titles.

The film’s got one great eighties montage sequence—the story’s about two morgue attendants who decide to offer their location and management services to LeFlore’s call girls, who are having a tough time without him. Shift’s filmed—in part and quite effectively—in Dirty Old New York. However, even with the spots of violence, it’s not about the city being dangerous. The characters sometimes find themselves in danger, but everyone’s jazzed to be living in the Big Apple. Or at least, not un-jazzed.

Anyway. That great eighties montage sequence is when the girls go to work for the the guys (Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton); as Keaton drives them around, buys them glamorous clothes because Winkler’s a Wall Street burnout who starts investing for the girls, and is able to get them into legit businesses… in less than four weeks. Don’t pay attention to the timing; just enjoy the movie. Especially with that accompanying Al Jarreau song.

For some wonderful, peculiar reason, Night Shift went with Burt Bacharach for the score, which is a great move on its own, but then Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager and friends wrote original songs for the film. There are some more familiar ones than others, but Bacharach’s on fire, with the soundtrack always lending to Howard’s constant movement themes. Again, Night Shift is all about fluidity.

Winkler’s the protagonist. He’s the nebbish burnout who no one takes seriously—not boss Floyd Levine, not fiancée Gina Hecht, not mom Nita Talbot—who finds himself demoted back to the night shift at the morgue so Levine can give nephew Bobby Di Cicco an easy gig. Di Cicco’s only in a few scenes, but he’s an awesome dipshit. No notes.

Starting on the night shift with Winkler is new guy Keaton, who’s a delightful jackass.

In addition to breaking in the new guy and fretting over the wedding with Hecht—the wedding is in nine months—Winkler also starts hanging out with neighbor Shelley Long, who just happens to be a call girl. They meet in the second scene, when Long’s identifying a body and realizes she knows Winkler, who does not remember her and who the investigating cop is sure is a john. Eventually, there’s confusion involving Hecht, who the film does no favors in the nagging girlfriend part. Overcoming how poorly Hecht gets treated is one of Shift’s initial hurdles. It clears, but just barely. They delay the fallout from Winkler and Long’s new friendship until they’ve got Hecht in a part to make her seem villainous in addition to pitiful.

Hecht being really good helps.

At the heart of the film are Winkler and Keaton. Keaton’s trying to convince Winkler they’re in a buddy picture, while Winkler just wants to be left alone. Lots of good friendship bonding, with lots of laughs (and then heart), for Winkler and Keaton.

For most of the second act, their friendship is the core; then things gracefully transition to Long and Winkler.

The third act opens clunky–Night Shift certainly seems like they went back and re-did some of the film to make it work better. It’s so clunky it entirely stalls the film. Then, in an effort worthy of Atlas, Winkler singlehandedly (though Vincent Schiavelli contributes) gets the film moving again. It’s all in a big comedy set piece with multiple moving parts moving across plot levels, and it’s glorious. The finish is then gravy, pay-off after pay-off.

Keaton gives one of the exceptional comic performances, Winkler’s a wonderful lead, Long’s outstanding. It’s so well-acted, so well-made. So surprisingly unproblematic in its portrayal of the subject matter (I mean, there are some problems, but a lot less than you’d think).

Night Shift’s phenomenal.

The Missing (2003, Ron Howard), the extended cut

There’s a moment in The Missing when Tommy Lee Jones appears to be dead-panning at the camera, clearly as exasperated being in the film as the people watching him in the film. He’s tired because The Missing makes sure to keep him busy, but he easily soldiers on because Jones is in Missing to soldier on. No one in The Missing can be relied upon for anything except Jones. And all Jones promises is not to embarrass himself further than the project’s conceit.

Too bad the conceit is so damning, particularly for Jones.

See, The Missing is about Jones returning to his daughter, played by Cate Blanchett, in 1885 New Mexico. Jones ran off to… join a Native American tribe? It’s unclear. He ran out on Blanchett and her mom and eventually ended up living with various Native tribes, but how they knew he ran off to join up is unclear. Given the thoughtfulness of Ken Kaufman’s screenplay, maybe they thought he jumped on a freight train like he was running off to join the circus.

Jones goes to find Blanchett, so he’s around when she needs an experienced tracker to go find her daughter Evan Rachel Wood, who renegade Indian Scouts have kidnaped. Eric Schweig plays the main villain, a witch. His gang kidnaps young women to sell in Mexico. The calvary is after them—led by Val Kilmer in one of the film’s rare good casting ideas—except the calvary are dipshits, and they’re going the wrong way.

It’s up to Jones and Blanchett to put aside their differences and team up to save Wood, with Blanchett’s younger daughter, played by Jenna Boyd, tagging along. Boyd’s supposed to be precocious. She’s terrible. Blanchett’s supposed to be… well, actually, Blanchett’s not supposed to be anything. Missing is terrified of spending any time with Blanchett, which tracks because her performance is embarrassingly bad, but still. The film’s ostensibly about Jones and Blanchett’s relationship, except the only time they have an honest conversation is like ninety seconds about halfway through the movie and then never again. They have other conversations pertaining to their character arcs, but they’re all bad because Blanchett’s terrible. That first conversation is the only time she actually works at the character.

She’s playing The Woman With No Name the rest of the time. Except she’s got a name. But also has a pretty cool Western wanderer outfit courtesy costume designer Julie Weiss, who’s otherwise just trying to make the Native characters’ costumes as close to cartoonishly racist without some respectability line. Missing thinks it gets a lot of mileage from having Jones culturally appropriating the Native Americans while villainizing the Native Americans who sold out to the white man. It’d be more cringe if the movie weren’t such garbage.

Mostly good photography from Salvatore Totino. Totino has a lot of bad moments, particularly with composite shots, but otherwise, it’s competent work. The editing not so much, but director Howard’s got no ideas for his set pieces, so it’s not the editors’ faults. Not entirely.

James Horner’s score is repetitive but has its moments. At least until the end of the second act when it craps the bed and basically sits out all the moments the film needs it in the third act. The music’s never good, but at least it seemed professional. Not in the finale.

The Missing seems like someone’s very bad idea for Oscar-bait, not realizing Jones wasn’t going to make a part for himself and Blanchett wasn’t capable of holding an accent, much less making up for zero character development. Sure, it’s about Blanchett never giving up on daughter Wood, but only after all the men who care for her fail her.

There are some abysmal performances in the film besides Blanchett and Boyd, like Aaron Eckhart, who is so bad he makes Blanchett look good. Eckhart’s utterly inept in the film—it’s not his fault; he’s just so obviously miscast it’s silly. It’s director Howard’s fault. Lots is Howard’s fault.

Sergio Calderón’s bad. Ray McKinnon’s awful. Max Perlich’s bad.

Wood’s okay. The movie spends a lot of time with her in the second act because it’s an excellent way to avoid character development for Blanchett, and Wood’s got some good scenes. Unfortunately, the movie gives her some really lousy material for the third act.

The Missing’s tedious and terrible.

Transatlantic (1931, William K. Howard)

Transatlantic is a pre-code Modern Marvels Melodrama. Set in some fascinating technological, man-made invention or creation, a varied group of characters get together and have some drama. Sometimes there’s a murder, sometimes there’s not. Transatlantic has a murder. Unfortunately, it takes its sweet time getting there too, which gets frustrating; the film doesn’t even run eighty minutes, and it’s got at least fourteen minutes of artistically null montage padding.

I need to specify that montage padding is artistically null because the film’s third act has artistically potent montage padding. Transatlantic’s editing is fascinating; for most of the film’s runtime, it seems like editor Jack Murray and director Howard are doing a lousy job filming the script. Howard can’t direct the script, and Murray can’t cut the dialogue. It’s real obvious; lead Edmund Lowe has a bunch of desperate one-liners to close scenes, and no one can get them right. They’re painful.

Thankfully, even Transatlantic knows not to overuse (too much) a device.

The film’s got exquisite Art Deco production design, and even when Murray’s cuts are obviously between location second unit footage and the sound stage, the film’s visually impressive. Howard never goes too wild with the action set on deck; Transatlantic takes advantage of it only looking like an ocean from the water. Set most of your action in dining halls and staterooms; it’s like you don’t have to be on an ocean liner at all.

After an eight-minute opening boarding montage, the film quickly establishes its cast and their situations. First, there’s kindly old lens grinder Jean Hersholt. He’s European; he came to the United States, worked for years, saving his money, and now he’s taking daughter Lois Moran back to see the Old Countries. He invested his money with banker John Halliday, who’s also on board. Halliday’s traveling with his wife, Myrna Loy (who isn’t, it turns out, young enough to be his granddaughter), but wants to cat around with Swedish dancer Greta Nissen.

Loy knows about Nissen, causing her distress, but she’s also the money in the marriage, so Halliday doesn’t want her going too far.

Finally, there’s Lowe. He’s the Gentleman Thief skipping the States, so he doesn’t have to testify against a pal. He’s not working this trip—when fellow criminal-type Earle Foxe offers him in on a score, Lowe turns him down flat. Lowe takes an interest in Loy’s martial distress (they once knew each other, all very obscure) while also befriending Moran and Hersholt. Especially Moran.

Lowe’s medium charming. If he could deliver his zingers, if Howard could shoot them, if Murray could cut them, he’d be high charming. A compelling performance in Lowe’s part would entirely change Transatlantic, which usually suffers from a lack of performance personality.

Luckily, around the halfway point (in the film, not the voyage), Howard, Murray, and cinematographer James Wong Howe start showing off. There are two Nissen dance performances; the first isn’t any good, the second’s got dynamite shots and cuts. It’s a precursor to the superior third-act action sequence, which has Lowe tracking the bad guy through the ship’s bowels. Gunfights, fisticuffs, chases, all sorts of things. It’s a movie-saving finish.

Lowe’s okay, Loy’s not good, but she’s sympathetic, and Halliday manages to be an effective creep while also not giving a good performance. It’s inconceivable he and Loy are married, but he also can’t sell his hard-partying grandpapa behavior. Moran’s middling, ditto Nissen. Though Moran’s at least got some moments. Nissen does get that good dance scene. Hersholt’s bad.

Billy Bevan plays Lowe’s steward, who can’t stop repeating the same description of ocean liner life. The film hangs on to the bit so long, and through so many unfunny uses, it finally works in the end.

Kind of like the movie.

The Boys (2019) s03e04 – Glorious Five Year Plan

Following the conventional (Dan O’Bannon) wisdom about second acts ending with things in the worst shape for the heroes… it’s hard to imagine how “The Boys” will further ratchet the situations before the season finale. Everything has gone wrong across every storyline, gloriously so. No pun intended.

There are two main plots, two subplots. Or like, one and a half subplots because one of them is the hard cliffhanger. The episode’s also got an incredibly dangerous soft cliffhanger, but only one life or death one.

The Boys’ plot in this episode is a Russian field trip. They’re looking for the gun the Russkies used to kill Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) back in the eighties, intending to turn it on Antony Starr, which ties in with Erin Moriarty and Starr’s superhero plot. “The Boys” is incredibly precisely constructed this episode; Meredith Glynn gets the script credit, her first “Boys” as writer (she’s an executive producer this season). It’s a really good script; some of the supporting cast gets short scenes, but they’re good short scenes, and they build.

Now, Jack Quaid knows Karl Urban is juicing with the superhero serum. His morning begins with Starr humiliating him—Starr’s just decided he’s dating Moriarty to raise his points–and, when they get to Russia, the anti-Homelander Russian state media is running the story making fun of Quaid for getting super-cucked. Seething anger builds in Quaid, leading to big decisions.

While Quaid’s still good, he’s not great with the anger stuff. Not sure if it’s a limitation of the script, Julian Holmes’s directing (which is otherwise good), or just Quaid not being able to do it, but when he’s got to be angry, he’s throwing a tantrum. There’s a “cute” quality. Too much Meg Ryan, perhaps. Though my good lady wife pointed out Quaid got his dad’s Innerspace butt.

Anyway.

The subplot to the Boys is Tomer Capone and Karen Fukuhara getting increasingly sick of Urban, to the point even Laz Alonso’s concerned about morale. Fukuhara’s excellent this episode. Capone’s good too (thank goodness, last episode’s stumbling was momentary), but Fukuhara’s great. She’s got to assassinate some Russians in trade for superhero-killing gun intel.

Meanwhile, Moriarty and Dominique McElligott (who’s not in this season anywhere near enough) are putting together their rebel strike force to take on Starr once Urban, and Quaid bring back the state-of-the-art bang bang. Moriarty enlists ex-boyfriend Miles Gaston Villanueva in what ends up being an excellent subplot for both of them. So much of “The Boys” hinges on the casting and Moriarty’s in that essential group.

The superhero plot is more behind-the-scenes drama than epical plot; Jessie T. Usher is getting into it with returning team member Chace Crawford, whose evil Karen wife (Katy Breier) knows how to get into Starr’s good graces at Usher’s expense. Then there’s some more for Colby Minifie to do as the team’s executive liaison.

The superhero subplot involves superhero company CEO Giancarlo Esposito and his secretly adopted, secretly superpowered government official, mole Claudia Doumit trying to run damage control on Starr. It’s another excellent subplot, with series-best acting from Doumit and season-best from Esposito.

Then, of course, the episode also gives Urban and Starr a bunch to do. No wasting the transfixing scenery incinerators here. They both get excellent spotlights, multiple ones for Starr.

It’s an outstanding episode. I’m looking forward to seeing how things get worse because of the incredible creative skill involved, but I’m also dreading them because of the taxing emotional investment. “The Boys” is—even more than witty, gross, hilarious, icky—heavy. It’s always very, very heavy.

Gloriously so.

The Boys (2019) s03e03 – Barbary Coast

We’re firmly in season three with The Boys now, with this episode setting up a couple longer storylines and a few immediate ones. First, the world’s reacting to Antony Starr going megalomaniac on live television—the white men positively responding because they’re garbage—and Erin Moriarty discovering she no longer has any leverage thanks to her better ratings.

Of course, her ratings don’t matter since a more unhinged Starr’s giddily sharing his plans for a scorched Earth (literally) with her.

So while Moriarty’s dealing with going from a position of power to Starr’s prime target for abuse, Jack Quaid’s busy getting back into it with Karl Urban, Laz Alonso, and Karen Fukuhara. Tomer Capone takes a personal day to deal with ex Jordana Lajoie’s problems, only it turns out that plot will feed directly into the next episode.

It’s an unfortunate subplot, mostly because director Julian Holmes doesn’t seem to know how to break Capone out of his worse acting impulses. As a result, Capone’s scene opposite Lajoie was like a spoiled madeleine, reminding of his weaker performance earlier in the show.

Capone and Fukuhara are both getting sick of working for Urban—who’s recovering from his superhero serum this episode, unable to control his heat vision, and irate about it. Capone’s better with Fukuhara than without, especially since his side quest involved a lot of kink-shaming for comedy with his Russian dominatrix crime lord former boss, Katia Winter.

Everyone but Capone goes to Laila Robins, who’s hiding out with Cameron Crovetti since Starr lost it last episode. Unfortunately, there’s not enough bridging material between Starr declaring his hostile superiority and everyone reacting to it or everyone discovering Claudia Doumit works for Giancarlo Esposito. Neither Doumit nor Esposito show up in this episode, with Esposito sorely missed in Moriarty’s plot. She keeps hearing what Esposito would tell her about Starr, who’s got all sorts of schemes to make her miserable, whether it’s bringing ex-boyfriend Miles Gaston Villanueva onto the superhero team for drama or even bringing back Chace Crawford, who assaulted her and kicked off the show back in the first season.

Compounding Esposito’s absence is his character appearing in a flashback. Urban found out something Robins hasn’t been telling him or The Boys, so he confronts her about it, and she does a story time with a flashback. The flashback itself is pretty good, although Sarah Swire isn’t nearly as good as Robins; Swire plays the younger version. But then Justiin Davis does an Esposito impression in his performance as the young version of that character, and it does not work.

The flashback’s revelations also put Urban in an even worse place, meaning he’s going to take everyone else with him—young and old—to that place. It’s a confined episode, but with a lot going on and lots of smaller season three plot setups. The stuff they can do without all the guest stars.

The episode does more with man’s inhumanity to man than gore, though there’s a harrowing sequence for Crawford and Starr, where Crawford (or maybe just the audience) discovers his wife Katy Breier is a villain in the making.

Then Jessie T. Usher gets a somewhat surprisingly proto-storyline with brother Christian Keyes. It’s a packed episode and mostly fine, but it doesn’t have the wow factor of the previous couple. Instead, it’s all either setup or exposition; there is some great “Boys” humor before everyone has a bad day, though, with Quaid needing help calling in sick to work.

Moriarty’s easily the episode standout, even as she’s entirely reactionary.

Miss Meadows (2014, Karen Leigh Hopkins)

There are so many things wrong with Miss Meadows, it’s hard to know where to start. There are easy pickings, like Jeff Cardoni’s music. There are complicated pickings, like the film’s suburban mama bear fascist “everywhere you look there’s a pedophile no one will take care of, check that pizza shop basement” message. There’s the acting. Wow, is there the acting. But with the acting, much has to do with director Hopkins, her script, and Joan Sobel’s editing.

Because Miss Meadows isn’t just tedious; it’s exasperating.

The film opens with Hopkins’s best moment. Lead Katie Holmes walks down a suburban street where she gets accosted by a guy in a pickup truck, who threatens her with a gun if she doesn’t get in. So she shoots him dead. But before that interaction, she does a tap dance number. Hopkins cuts from Holmes walking to close-up on the tap-dancing feet, so it seems like it’s not Holmes (it’s probably not), but then they cut to Holmes tap dancing. She can do it, after all.

Best directing in the movie.

It’s like two minutes in, and Miss Meadows runs eighty-nine minutes. The story peaks in the first act, as Holmes meets local sheriff James Badge Dale, and they have a whirlwind romance. She’s a prim and proper substitute teacher (who threatens school administrators to keep the position, which the film drops right after introducing it), who also just happens to be a vigilante of the Charles Bronson Death Wish variety. Wherever she goes, she just happens across sexual predators or spree killers, and only Holmes can save the day.

Worse yet, they’re releasing a couple thousand felons early because of overcrowding, and it’s all the violent pedophile ones. For a while, the movie’s so on the nose you think it’s going to be about Holmes realizing Black and brown people get banged up for all sorts of bullshit by the corrupt criminal justice system and having to reexamine her hobby. But, nope. Miss Meadows does not, to its “credit,” villainize Black or brown men. There’s one Black guy—Dale’s sidekick, Stephen Bishop—otherwise, all white people. Holmes talks shit on the phone about the school she’s teaching at with all these poor kids. The Catholic Church is (not wrongly) demonized, but Holmes’s a good Christian girl who can’t stop talking about God. Apparently, the cops don’t do enough, including Dale, so it’s up to ladies like Holmes to keep the streets safe.

Of course, the one time Holmes really needs to be keeping someone safe, that person’s only a target because of Holmes’s shortsighted bravado.

It’s a messy, dull script with really long, really boring scenes, where Hopkins points the camera at actors and runs them to the ground. It’s worst with the kids in Holmes’s class; Hopkins isn’t good at writing the kids, but she’s worse at directing them. It’s excruciating, with Holmes not helping. When it seems like Holmes is in on the joke, she’s potentially charming. But there’s no joke; Meadows is just an ostensibly quirky Death Wish clone, and Holmes’s charmless in it. Especially once Dale becomes convinced she’s the vigilante. When Holmes has to act opposite suspicious Dale, Meadows crashes through the floor, plummeting towards the next new bottom.

Barry Markowitz’s photography is surprisingly good, and Jennifer Klide’s production design is solid. Otherwise, Miss Meadows is a complete waste of time. Including Jean Smart’s cameo; it’s definitely not her fault it’s pointless—it’s Hopkins’s fault; I didn’t even realize you could waste Jean Smart like Hopkins does.

At least it’s not eighty-nine and a half minutes. Or, heaven forbid–ninety.

The Equalizer (2021) s02e14 – Pulse

The opening recap features Chris Noth, which had me hoping they’d finally resolve his character on the show. They do. In some ways, it’s the biggest episode of “Equalizer” so far; Queen Latifah takes on a Bond villain, Chris Vance, who’s got a Bond weapon of mass destruction to unleash on unsuspecting New York City.

As Latifah’s much-ballyhooed nemesis, Vance is a disappointment. He’s fine in that vague eighties and nineties Euro-trash way, but he’s a Bond henchman at best. And, you know, a James Bond TV show henchman. So it’s concerning if they auditioned him opposite Latifah and picked him, though maybe even more concerning if they didn’t. There’s no pay-off to him.

And since Noth doesn’t come back—even though there are a couple flexes like he might at the last minute—there’s no real pay-off there either. Instead, the pay-off will be Tory Kittles, apparently not leaving the show. It’s entirely unclear what he’s going to be doing on the show going forward, but he’s still around. He gets two scenes. As his ex-wife (even Latifah’s surprised to see guest starring again), Tawny Cypress also gets two scenes. Presumably, the show will reveal what’s going on with Kittles. The team may have room to grow.

Though they’re also auditioning a Noth replacement with Brett Dalton. Dalton’s a CIA guy who proves reliable by the end of the episode; well, trustworthy, but maybe not reliable. Either Dalton tested with Latifah, or he’s better at procedural banter than Vance is at Bond villaining.

The episode’s fairly solid, given the constraints. Noth put the show into a bind with his character, and they’re doing the best they can. It’s an overly complicated plot involving the United Nations, Russian scientists, and Chinese interpreters—plus Latifah’s former CIA protege, Maria Rivera, getting in touch and a bewilderingly pointless subplot for Adam Goldberg. But they get through it. It’s good Kittles is still around. Dalton is fine. Vance seems like a seasonal appearance recurring villain.

The most compelling moments come at the beginning of the episode with Lorraine Toussaint informing Latifah her subplot about rekindling an old relationship is still going on, just not on screen, and Laya DeLeon Hayes curious about Latifah and Kittles’s relationship status. Except then, Toussaint and Hayes leave and don’t have anything else in the episode; those subplots are left for next time (or even later).

Maybe if Paul Holahan’s direction were better… there’s a big action sequence at an oil refinery, and it feels like a generic action show from the eighties. Kind of appropriate because Vance is there, but still. Holahan’s action direction is bad in general, actually; he messes up a fairly standard fight scene at one point.

Anyway. We’ll see what they do really post-Noth. They’ve got four episodes left this season to re-establish the ground situation. After all, it’s not like they’ve got a high bar to clear.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e07 – Contingencies on Contingencies

This episode has such an exhausting amount of Toby Stephens being macho someone calls him on it to his face. Stephens is convinced the robot—now on Alpha Centauri with the humans—has gone rogue. Raza Jaffrey, who points out he almost stole a space-camper and abandoned over a hundred people to the elements, tells him to take it down a notch and think it through.

Complicating the issue isn’t the robot’s guilt or innocence, it’s his “victim.” Douglas Hodge, the guy who enslaved the alien robot, lied to the people of Earth (and the colony), tried to kill a bunch of mechanics, and so on; he’s got the only key to saving the colony from the imminent alien invasion. If this guy had died or been incarcerated after his first blatant act of murderous villainy, the show could’ve been a season shorter. For all his macho posturing, Stephens never held him to account for trying to kill his kids or whatever either.

Instead, Stephens wants to take it out on the robot. If they just included the subtext about the robot being a better dad than Stephens, it might be something; the whole family is like, “Maybe the robot’s not a bad guy,” and Stephens telling them he’s smarter. Though “Lost in Space” is always about Stephens never being smarter.

Too much Stephens and too much green screen hurt the episode, which is otherwise a fine Leslie Hope-directed outing. Easily her worst episode, but not her fault and still better than most.

The episode begins with the Robinsons arriving at Alpha Centauri to discover… the alien robots haven’t beaten them there. Everything’s jimdandy, other than Mina Sundwall having to decide between nerdy poet Ajay Friese and bro Charles Vandervaart. But all the stakes are otherwise chill. Even Parker Posey just gets to get into an SUV and autopilot off to her own little plot of land.

At least until the robot goes rogue and Sundwall and Taylor Russell decide Stephens is wrong, so they go looking for it, bringing along Ignacio Serricchio. They’ve got a race against time, race against Stephens plot going, while Molly Parker and Russell Hornsby try to figure out how to prepare the colony for an eventual attack. We get some backstory on Parker and Hornsby. It’s relatively boring stuff, which tracks since it never should’ve been a plot point in the first couple seasons—mixed-race Russell and her mostly ginger family. The biggest question gets resolved with an institutional cop-out to alleviate responsibility or accountability from everyone. “Space” really has no idea what to do with its long-running story arcs.

Eventually, there’s some Rock’ Em Sock’ Em robot action and a deluded callback to the first episode for Russell, plus potential character development for Sundwall. Though the script—credited to Zack Estrin—has a chance to give her the agency for it and instead transfers it to Friese, which could be better.

But it’s a compelling episode. Way too much hinges on believing Stephens is a brash, thoughtless asshole, but what can you do.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e06 – Final Transmission

Yet another short episode. And it’s got a huge dramatic beat in the latter half, but not for the cliffhanger. In fact, everything after the dramatic beat just serves to reduce the impact of that beat. It plays very awkwardly, which isn’t director Julian Holmes’s fault, just the script’s. Katherine Collins gets the credit; as per her usual, there’s a lousy sappy monologue from one of the cast members. It’s worse than usual because it’s not in dialogue but pre-recorded monologue, so they’re trying to edit to match.

Despite crashing on a bog planet—Dagobah without matte paintings—for once, the space-camper is almost ready for flight. They just need to clean things up and wait for Ignacio Serricchio to arrive. He’s busy walking with his pet chicken in a long shot. Maxwell Jenkins and Toby Stephens go up top to watch him approach and have a painful conversation about Jenkins getting older. I think he’s as tall as Stephens or taller, but I don’t remember them mentioning it.

There’s a better check-up scene between Molly Parker and Parker Posey, harkening back to their original bonding scenes in the first season. It’s okay, but a reminder the show never really gave the two of them anything to do together.

Then we get some earth-shattering news (well, not really) about how the Cylons found Earth in the first place (and when), and it changes everything, meaning Jenkins is going to have to go out and have a showdown with the alien boss. There are a handful more revelations (“Lost in Space” really does go with “It’s okay to enslave artificial beings”) before the huge dramatic beat and fallout. The fallout is everyone scrambling to get to the next episode so they can have their narrative stakes and eat them too.

The episode features Stephens’s worst acting on the show (I’d say so far, but it’s almost over, right… this season’s it). A lot of it is the script’s fault, though the show has never written Stephens’s character to suit the performance, so what can you really do about it. We’re in the final three episodes, not much.

What’s so much worse about it is when the show acknowledges the deficiency—Parker Posey comments on it this time—only it never improves.

There’s also some middling acting from Jenkins, but it’s big swing stuff—embracing his Messianic possibilities—so it’s easier to let it slide. The Stephens stuff isn’t even disappointing; instead exasperating and tedious.

The episode resolves one of the show’s longest-running “mythology” arcs, and it’s the weakest weak sauce. You’d think with so much activity on this arc, they’d have something better planned for the finish.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e05 – Stuck

It’s another short episode, but it’s also a Leslie Hope-directed episode, and she does not disappoint. Even saddled with flashbacks to when Taylor Russell was a baby, and Molly Parker has taken her home to mom Colleen Winton’s farm to raise her. It’s where we find out Parker gave up being an astronaut to have Russell and, even though most of their relationship development’s in the flashback, it’s a reasonably good episode for the two of them.

The Robinsons’ space-camper has crashed on an unknown world, having diverted away from the Alpha Centauri colony at the last minute to keep the evil robots from finding it. Everyone except Parker and Russell could eject, but their seats malfunctioned. So the episode’s the two of them in danger—not only is Parker sitting on a seat of dynamite, they’re sinking into alien goop, and the engines are offline. I wonder how many times the engines work on “Lost in Space.” I feel like it’s less than a third of the time.

Anyway.

The rest of the cast is paired off on adventures, even if it’s just Ignacio Serricchio and his pet chicken. The pet chicken sequences are outstanding, with Hope finding humor in the absurd dangers.

Toby Stephens and Mina Sundwall go looking for the robot together, bonding along the way. It’s a good sequence for Sundwall, not so good for Stephens. It’s probably Stephens’s best work this season so far, but—once again—it relies on his character not actually being anywhere near as with it as he’d need to be to survive so long “Lost in Space.”

Maxwell Jenkins and Parker Posey have the least amount of material, which has Jenkins trying to recover his backpack from a precarious hanging situation while Posey yells at him to hurry up. There’s a little bit of character work for Posey, who’s on—if not a redemption arc—at least a considered failed redemption arc. Though it’s a little weird her confidant is a kid. They don’t quite make that angle work.

But the stuff with Russell and Parker is where the episode excels, thanks to Hope, Russell, and Parker. While “Lost in Space” isn’t really anyone’s showcase, Russell’s gotten the best arc throughout the series, with this episode just drawing attention to the differences in her story and the other kids’. Jenkins has his tween boy adventurer thing, which isn’t character development, and then Sundwall’s got a love triangle. Unfortunately, that love triangle is thinner than the relationship stuff she had before because they can reduce it to tropes.

It’s so well-done, it makes up for the finale’s solution being something they could’ve done the entire time and even talked about doing. They just had to put it off for dramatic tension’s sake.

Hope’s direction is “Space”'s greatest discovery.