Lost in Space (2018) s03e02 – Contact

It’s only taken twenty-two episodes, but “Lost in Space” finally addresses some fundamental questions about its robots. Did something make them, or did they make themselves? The show skirts around the robots having agency and sentience to make the human eagerness to enslave them a little less creepy, presumably. Though Molly Parker salivates over the idea of doing it in this episode. It’s so funny how they brought it up once and then completely forgot about the morality issue.

Everyone’s got something to do this episode, even if it’s staring into the main action of the scene like you’re superfluous (both Parker Posey and Ignacio Serricchio do it). I haven’t checked, but I’m assuming season three is the last one for “Lost in Space,” so they’re trying to wrap things up. And doing it very quickly; thank goodness the robots come equipped with a walkie-talkie feature allowing communication across half a galaxy or so.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The episode starts with Taylor Russell finding real dad Russell Hornsby alive in his cryotube. It’s unclear whether he escaped the ship or if the ship moved him over to an escape vessel without waking him up. It seems like the latter, but there’s also not a lot of talk about Hornsby. See, Russell can’t bring herself to tell him he’s her dad, so instead, they talk around it. When they finally start getting on the same wavelength… well, the writing’s not good, but Russell’s sincerity carries through.

Zack Estrin has the writer credit. It’s not his first (though the last episode he got a credit on was episode two of season three, so exactly one season before), but he’s not particularly impressive. Combined with Kevin Rodney Sullivan’s direction and the frantic but good special effects, it all feels like “Lost in Space” is in a hurry to wrap up. The time for character development has passed.

And not just for surprise reveal characters, but the main cast as well. Mina Sundwall has reverted back to her sarcastic mode, which has some okay lines, just nothing for the character. She, Maxwell Jenkins, and Parker Posey are trying to find the robot, who wandered off last episode with the reveal of an alien civilization in the distance. There are some setbacks and fretting about Posey’s reliability as a comrade, but eventually, the episode gets to setting up its way out of the current predicament. Luckily, Jenkins and Sundwall get into position at just the same time Parker and Toby Stephens do in their plot.

Parker’s full of life again, ready to go get her kids and stop feeling sorry for herself. So she and Stephens are flying down to a planet to recover a destroyed robot, so they can torture it into flying them where they want to go. Serricchio is along for the ride, which just means wisecracks. There are some all right ones too.

One Aliens riff later, they find themselves in danger from an unknown robot. And over in the other plot, the robot keeps telling Jenkins they’re in danger. Shame the robot’s got such a limited vocabulary because if he could string two sentences together, they wouldn’t have needed the episode.

It feels like the end of the first act (of “Season Three”). It could be better, could be worse. But trying to wrap up the series in eight episodes gets “Lost in Space” a lot of leeway. As does avoiding having all the little kids in it. The action just sticks to the main cast; it also seems we’re leaning in on Jenkins as messiah, which will at least be a flex, something the show’s managed to avoid doing for almost its entire run.

Evil (2019) s02e12 – D Is for Doll

I’m getting more and more curious about what happened to “Evil: Season Two.” Something clearly happened. Because Mike Colter all of a sudden gets his becoming-a-priest arc back, complete with Leon Addison Brown returning (from eight or so episodes ago) as the Black reverend who’s trying to convince Colter to give up on the Catholics. It’s also a big return to “Evil” minimizing the Catholic Church literally being an international child rape cabal while emphasizing the number of assholes who work for the Church. It’s a bizarre take.

The supernatural mystery this episode is a haunting at guest star Ato Essandoh’s house. Essandoh (Alfredo from “Elementary”!) is barely in the episode. He’s only in it a little more than Elijah M. Cooper as his son, who’s the actual target of the ghosts. Essandoh and Cooper are only there to introduce an evil doll into the episode. An evil doll and some weird water damage. The former links up to Katja Herbers’s home plot, while the latter leads to Colter questioning his priestly decisions again.

Lots of priestly questioning. And even though there’s some resolution to it—with both sweet and ominous scenes for Colter. While he’s got friends’ support of the priest thing, nun Andrea Martin is trying to get him into the robe as soon as possible because they need to fight some capital E “Evil” next season. Michael Emerson’s fake redemption scheme is starting to come to light.

The Herbers home plot has daughter Brooklyn Shuck babysitting a kid (Zachary Golinger) with his own scary doll, and she ends up stealing it. Or does she?

Some significant developments in the plot for Kurt Fuller, who tags along with the team on their investigation this episode because he wants to write a book on the paranormal Church investigators. Fuller’s real good. He’s got some very dramatic scenes. He’s also got some intentionally unsurprising ones, as he finds a way to annoy the team members one-by-one while they try to work.

The biggest plot–and potentially most momentous for the show’s future-—is Christine Lahti hanging out with weird, evil rich guy efficiency expert Tim Matheson. Matheson’s got plans for Lahti; some of them make her uncomfortable, which is a little odd given her arc over the last few episodes. It’s like she escalated, then they forgot and took her down a few notches. Presumably next episode—the season finale—will have major cliffhangers for her. It’s kind of Lahti’s show at this point. No one else’s plotline is anywhere near as consistently compelling.

Also, Herbers isn’t doing great with her character’s newly zen demeanor. It doesn’t come off insincere; it comes off shallow.

But it’s a good episode, especially for one with so much rampant Catholic whataboutisms. They intentionally and forcibly pshaw child rape at least twice.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e15 – The Endless

The Endless is the best episode of the season so far and one of the best showcases for Kiernan Shipka as an actor ever. She’s trapped in another alternate universe, only this one is where she’s an actor on a television show, seemingly “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” She quickly discovers this alternate universe doesn’t have any magic, which is going to make things a lot more difficult, and none of her new costars believe her.

Shipka’s playing the Hell version of Sabrina—Morningstar—which doesn’t matter once she’s in this alternate universe because Hell doesn’t exist since it’s television. Albeit a television show where everyone lives on set and then wakes up to a new script on their nightstand and act all day long. It’s a follow-up to the cliffhanger a couple episodes ago, where Shipka finds herself in a world where Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea play her aunts. Broderick and Rhea played on the previous “Sabrina” show, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” The now Christian Nationalist star of that show, Melissa Joan Hart, does not cameo.

The episode gives the entire cast—save maybe Gavin Leatherwood, Jaz Sinclair, definitely Lachlan Watson, oh, and Michelle Gomez—well… okay. It gives Shipka, Ross Lynch, Miranda Otto, Lucy Davis, Chance Perdomo, and especially Sam Corlett some great scenes. Turns out they’d just given Corlett more comedy, he might’ve done better in the show in general and Shipka’s Hellish variation’s affection for him would make sense.

So Shipka has various mysteries to solve—what’s the green room (where you go after being fired), how’s the head writer on the show, and why are her new aunties Broderick and Rhea so low-key creepy at times—only she doesn’t feel capable because she’s not the regular Sabrina. There’s character development and gravitas and drama and action and lots of comedy. The show manages to maintain the combination of fun and ominous until the last act of the episode, when the reveals come very fast. It’s not so much a rush as an escape, but Shipka’s acting keeps it going. She’s absolutely fantastic this episode.

Great episode. More than makes up for the previous one’s messiness.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e19 – The Mandrake

This episode gets off to a rough start wrapping up last episode’s cliffhanger—Sabrina and the gang discovering a shrine to her in the mines, which is at least hundreds of years old. Kevin Rodney Sullivan’s direction is peculiar in a bad way (unless there’s a good reason for it like they reshot all of Ross Lynch’s one-shots). Then there’s Joshua Conkel’s script, which has Gavin Leatherwood forgetting Lynch’s name even though it’s been established Leatherwood obsesses over Lynch as a romantic rival for Kiernan Shipka.

Luckily, once that not good scene is over, The Mandrake turns out to be rather excellent. Shipka decides she’s going to get rid of her powers and so she and cousin Chance Perdomo make her a mandrake root clone, which is going to magically syphon off Shipka’s powers. Only they don’t think it works so they go off to try something else. Meanwhile, turns out the cloning did work and so now there’s a different Sabrina (Shipka) around; it’s got all her powers, the non-clone one is depowered. After some fun scenes with the saccharine sweet clone, Shipka gets to start being weird and evil to her mortal friends. It’s very cool (eventually), with a great Invasion of the Body Snatchers reference, even if the scene with Shipka the clone and Lachlan Watson is icky as hell. Watson gets to play hero later, which is great.

Meanwhile, at the witch academy, Richard Coyle is instituting his “Church of Judas,” which is basically just a He-Man Woman Haters club for warlocks. Miranda Otto tries to tell Tati Gabrielle not to trust dad Coyle but, continuing her lousy arc as of late, Gabrielle doesn’t listen when she should and instead needs the point hammered in three times. Lucy Davis is sort of part of this subplot, working behind the scenes; some excellent moments for Davis as far as acting goes, just not the best use of her (or the audience’s) time; it’s filler.

The other big, nearing the end of the season development comes as Shipka finally figures out Michelle Gomez isn’t actually her guardian… angel, but a Machiavellian villain. It’s not the best stuff material for Shipka, who’s too busy with her clone subplot; however, when Gomez and Leatherwood realize Shipka’s unintentionally going to unleash literal Hell on Earth, great material for Gomez. The episode ends up successful enough you’ve got to wonder what happened with that opener.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e12 – The Epiphany

It’s a new year for “Chilling Adventures,” literally, with the episode picking up after winter break as Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) has decided she’ll no longer be attending Baxter High and going to witch academy full-time. New Baxter High principal and actual Biblical figure (albeit unbeknownst to Shipka) Michelle Gomez approves the move, Zelda (Miranda Otto) is indifferent but supportive of the move because she’s high on being a new faculty member at the academy (not to mention her naughty time with newly and indifferently widowed high priest Richard Coyle), but Hilda (Lucy Davis) really thinks Shipka should be hanging out with her mortal friends to get some grounding.

Only Shipka’s intentionally avoiding them because she’s terrified the Dark Lord is going to call on her to do his bidding and it’ll somehow hurt the mortals if she’s around them. Great scene for Shipka and Davis; it’s the first time in what seems like forever we’re getting back to Shipka’s perspective.

The main plot is Shipka competing against kind of too good to be true warlock slash love interest Gavin Leatherwood to be the academy’s “top boy,” which is only gendered because Coyle is misogynist trash. They have to compete in three challenges and Shipka’s got a lot of studying to do for them, but that studying always gets interrupted by one of the Plague Kings trying to kill her.

The Plague Kings are a big misfire, both in terms of foes—Shipka just needs to use regular magic on them to get rid of them, which doesn’t make them seem tough, just inconvenient given circumstances—the costume and make-up design is terrible (they’re all in pseudo-trenchcoats, looking like something from a mid-nineties action movie), and the acting is… not good. Nelson Leis has the most to do as Beelzebub and he’s terrible.

Someone on “Sabrina” must’ve read Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben… there’s good ideas out there for visualizing these guys… just saying.

The other big plot is Lachlan Watson’s character, assigned at birth as female, identified as enby (and ok with AFAB given designation) transitioning to male. It’s a great moment for Watson, though Sinclair immediately misgendering him is a bit of jaw-dropper. Like, I get it, show how people are human and are going to make mistakes because their brains misfire or whatever, but it’s pretty harsh.

Later, when explaining it all to Ross Lynch, Sinclair’s got it down. But then that explanation just turns out to be prelude to her accidentally using the Shining on Lynch and discovering they’re going to get hot and heavy in the future.

Watson also tries out for the basketball team—with Madame Satan Gomez telling the sexist basketball coach what’s up in a way you hope she eventually eats him—and Shipka magicks Watson’s abilities so she shows up the other boys, which maybe isn’t going to go well in the future but Shipka doesn’t seem to be thinking about it.

It’s a good episode, Plague Kings aside, with one hell of a cliffhanger.

Evil (2019) s01e06 – Let x = 9

So in addition to Christine Lahti becoming bride to the unclean one through some really good third grade poetry imagery because “Evil” is really condescending to its target audience, the Christians who vote blue, the episode also confronts the whole “child rape” thing with the Catholic Church. Confronts as in lapsed Muslim skeptical charming aloof guy Aasif Mandvi makes a crack about it; a serious crack about it sure but a crack. “Evil” really wants to pretend people haven’t figured out the Catholic Church basically functions the way it does to protect child rapists. Like, when did it start. Was it before the Borgias? After? Because it started hundreds of years ago.

And “Evil” wants you to forget about it because Mandvi is the most successful character on the show and because it’s like “American Horror Story” for your grandma or something. It’s a CBS-ed horror story. With conspiracies and symbolism and blah blah blah.

But it’s also one of the most successful episodes in a while because Katja Herbers gets a bunch to do and she’s awesome at it. The scenes themselves vary, but she’s always good. Until the second half twist—surprise, sexy grandma Lahti’s new stud is none other than decently not sexy grandpa Michael Emerson, who also has kind of been stalking Herbers since the beginning of the show in order to further his life goal of promoting evil in the world. Can Lahti give him up for Herbers and the four adorable granddaughters, who Emerson has drawing secret symbols and singing creepy religious songs? Oops, I spoiled it in the first sentence. But whatever, doesn’t matter. “Evil”’s very deliberately plotted. To the point it supersedes everything else going on in the show; in some ways it feels like a very standard eighties nighttime mystery drama—Herbers and Mike Colter’s workplace romance—and very edgy for the USA Network in 2005. Like if they’d done a “Da Vinci Code: The Series” and it was surprisingly mean-spirited. But with some patronizing exploitation.

Still, the acting can be great. Herbers is great here. Colter is not. But he’s okay, it’s the script. And Mandvi’s awesome. Of course he’s awesome, he gets tapped selling the “eh, it can’t be all priests, right?”

I mean, icky. But also… CBS tame for 2019. Both sides but we’re pretending politics don’t exist.

Also… Emerson basically just seems like he’s doing a Kevin Spacey impression.