Black Mirror (2011) s03e01 – Nosedive

If Nosedive is any indication, “Black Mirror” having guest writers isn’t going to help things. Rashida Jones and Michael Schur wrote the teleplay (they’d previously written “Parks and Recreation” together) from a story by “Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker. The episode also kicks off the show’s Netflix run; it had been on Channel 4, but Netflix took it over, hiring movie director Joe Wright to do a profoundly mediocre job.

Bryce Dallas Howard plays the lead, a woman obsessed with her social media score. Too low of a score, and you lose your job, your apartment, your freedom, and your ability to participate in the ratings game. It’s a similar setup to that “Orville” episode, which came out a year later; guess Seth MacFarlane watched “Black Mirror” and figured he could do better.

He’s not wrong, but let’s talk about Nosedive. Howard’s an incredibly likable lead, but it’s a mediocre script and performance. She’s an unlikable narcissist, desperate for approval from strangers, which drives a wedge in her relationship with brother James Norton. Now, “Mirror” is a very British show, except Nosedive’s pretending it’s not. Norton and co-star Alice Eve are British, while Howard and other co-star Cherry Jones are not. Norton and Eve do American accents, and the cars drive on the right side, so… is “Mirror” trying to appeal more globally? Jones and Schur are American sitcom writers, after all.

It’s a long, tedious episode about Howard getting her comeuppance and learning not everything is about what other people think about you. Michaela Coel’s cameo isn’t even good, but she’s got some personality, which the episode otherwise reviles in not delivering. “Mirror”’s rarely good at explaining the context well enough, but Nosedive takes that avoidance to a whole other level.

Jones is good. It’s not worth watching the rest of it, but she’s good.

“Mirror”’s best when it’s got great lead performances. Nosedive gives Howard a spotlight but then doesn’t give her anything to do in it. Except work her way through various sitcom beats.

Nosedive is so lackluster I was even hoping for one of those lousy “Mirror” end credits epilogues just to have something to discuss. I mean, I suppose there’s something to say about the episode’s take on social media, but there’s also not. Jones and Schur don’t even try to have flaccid observations; they just have excruciatingly dull gags.

If the Netflix episodes keep up the unnecessary length, I hope they at least build in nap time.

Shadows on the Grave (2016) #1

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Despite having read this comic before, I did not heed Mag the Hag and was surprised when the last story in the anthology really is a straight Greek tragedy. The comic opens with Mag the Hag introducing herself—she’s Shadows’s Crypt-Keeper—and then going on at length about the contents of the issue, including the story of Denaeus.

What stands out about Denaeus’s story is how differently creator Richard Corben plots a chapter versus a stand-alone. The other three stories are all done-in-ones horror stories; Denaeus is an epic; it’s Corben with more time to play. He has a great time with it, including a lot of humor, which would be out of place in the other stories.

The first story is about a traveling puppet show and the incredible life-like puppets. Two little boys get curious about the puppeteer’s secret, especially after hearing strange noises from the wagon.

It’s a somewhat obvious story with beautiful art from Corben. Whether it’s the reaction shots on the little boys, the way the action unfolds, or the haunting inhumanity, Corben does it all. It’s a great start to the comic.

The second story is about a couple emergency landing on an island. It reads rather quickly but features some more incredible art.

Corben’s style changes are a little different in the third story. He’s got his rounded, deep style, and then he’s got his inky style. The third story is inky. Well, some of it. He’s got a little bit of the rounded but mostly inky.

This farmer beats his wife one time too many, so she poisons him. Only he doesn’t die. Or maybe he does die. Either way, he’s still walking and talking. The story tracks the events from a distance as neighbors wonder what’s happening. It’s got one hell of a money shot, which Corben drags out magnificently. In the first and second stories, he’s not coy; in the third story, cards are close to the chest.

Then the Greek tragedy for fourth and the issue. The aforementioned humor comes both in dialogue and sight gags. But it’s still straight Ancient Greece stuff—Denaeus is a strong man and potential Royal Guard officer; he’s a great angle of entry for telling the story.

Plus, there are some potentially interesting plotting decisions; while the first three stories are all about Corben’s control, the Ancient Greece one is where he’s got room to let loose. Presumably. Hopefully.

I can’t wait to see what’s next in Shadows.

Infinity 8: Volume One: Love and Mummies (2016-17)

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Infinity 8 is very high concept. It’s a series of eight stories, originally published in European volumes, published in the United States as eight, three-part limited series. It’s a combination of hard and soft sci-fi: a passenger ship has encountered a space graveyard and needs to investigate. They send a single agent. Agents are intergalactic super-cops, but good guys.

That agent will investigate, relaying findings back to the ship, whose captain can reset time in eight eight-hour-loops (so it should be Infinity 888). The next time out, the agent or crew will have that extra experience.

All that high concept comes through in roughly three pages. Writers Lewis Trondheim and Zep don’t spend much time on the concept. It’s a very interesting way to do a first chapter: intentionally delay establishing the ground situation. But then again, maybe the possible timelines only matter once you have comparable ones.

The agent this issue is named Yoko Keren. She’s just a passenger on the ship, enlisted to help out because she’s never off-duty exactly; she’s been trying to find a suitable mate from the 880,000 (88, get it?) other passengers. She scans all of them, checking their medical records.

She also breaks up bar fights as necessary. Otherwise, we don’t really get to know the character. She has one intense experience after another; Love and Mummies is mostly an action comic. Sci-fi action, lots of imaginative design, lots of humor, but it’s all action. Point A to B to C to D and back to A via C but not B. Once it’s done being an action story, it becomes a romantic comedy, which retroactively contextualizes the whole thing as a romantic comedy and makes it even more successful. Trondheim and Zep are dealing with alien species, an undefined future, and the mysterious space graveyard, and they weave a lovely, amusing romantic comedy through it. It’s like they finish weaving the story, and then you see what it’s been.

It’s an utterly charming approach, which is particularly effective since the story itself gets gross.

First, Yoko’s got to deal with an annoyingly horny second officer, who doesn’t just proposition her (without even knowing she’s on a mate hunt); he also pesters her via comlink while she’s out exploring. Then she’s got to navigate around the space graveyard, where most things are covered in maggots.

Unfortunately, the Infinity 8 is carrying many Kornaliens, a species who loves to eat dead things. The longer dead, the better. They crave it uncontrollably and riot until they can get off the ship and find corpses to munch on.

Initially, the Kornalien subplot is separate from Yoko’s exploration plot. She discovers artifacts from a wide range of sources, including the now destroyed planet Earth, but when she happens into a Buddha’s temple, her story collides with the Kornalien subplot. There she meets Sagoss, who’s just eaten a monk who died for love, and now Sagoss has those same emotions towards Yoko.

Unfortunately, his fellow Kornaliens have just decided the best way to get corpses to eat is to make them out of the Infinity 8’s passengers. They start attacking the ship, turning Yoko’s exploration mission into a combat one, against incredible odds.

Making things more difficult are the Kornaliens who maybe aren’t attacking the passenger ship, but have still eaten something to give them unhelpful emotions.

Plus, Sagoss is an electrician and Yoko needs an action sidekick.

There’s lots of suspense—including an exquisite chase sequence—there’s a lot of humor, there’s a lot of great art. Dominique Bertail does the art (with Olivier Vatine doing the design for the whole series). Bertail’s got a lovely sense of pacing in space; Yoko’s either on jet thrusters or a cosmic sled and the art conveys her velocity alongside the enormity of the space graveyard. It’s wonderfully well-paced.

The end’s a little too cute, a little too rushed, but it’s not actually Yoko’s story, after all; she’s just one chapter of Infinity 8.

Kill or Be Killed (2016) #4

The most unrealistic thing about Kill or Be Killed is Dylan isn’t a white supremacist. Like, historically speaking. Also, his classes in graduate school. Much of this issue’s about him trying to find his next target, starting with a subway fantasy about taking out a couple punks, but then it turns out he’s just watching too much Death Wish 3 or whatever.

Okay, Dylan watching Death Wish movies is also somewhat unrealistic.

But after the subway shootout fantasy, he opines you can’t just kill Black drug dealers in parks because it’d be racist; besides, they’re just a cog in the wheel. To find bigger fish, he’s got to do research, which means reading newspapers and police blotters. Dylan’s a copaganda-invested vigilante. It leads him to a strip club where he’s sure the girls are human trafficked from Russia, so he’s going to kill their handler.

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At the same time, his affair with Kira has accelerated, leading to their content-less soap opera babbling about her boyfriend (and his roommate) taking place while they’re both naked. The roommate’s getting suspicious because Dylan keeps going out every night from 2 to 4 am. This is why The Punisher lives alone.

Overall, it’s an okay issue (relatively speaking). Writer Ed Brubaker tries really, really hard to rationalize Dylan through his narration. It’s not entirely successful, and it seems vaguely half-assed, but at least Brubaker’s trying to be thorough. But it reads like his notes on a project, not a finished project. Kill or Be Killed needs an editor, not Eric Stephenson’s “editorial supervision.”

Artist Sean Phillips gets in some great New York City street scenes, but he’s also got his scale problems. Lots of Dylan’s head looking oversized for his body—in panels where the other people have standard-sized heads—but this issue also has Phillips drawing other characters awkwardly small. Seriously, the whole thing could be explained if it were Dylan’s fantasy he’s playing out with his action figures.

There’s a biggish reveal at the end, along with a wrench in his relationship with Kira; neither are particularly engaging, but at least they’re dramatic blips in a series so awkwardly otherwise without them.

Kill or Be Killed (2016) #3

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What is the deal with the heads? Seriously, this issue starts with talking heads between Dylan and Kira—which has numerous issues—and it really looks like artist Sean Phillips cut out a head and pasted it on a body. But without adjusting the scale.

It’s comically weird, though it does improve in the rest of the issue.

The scene takes place after Dylan’s first night out Punishering; best friend Kira, who’s dating his roommate and having an affair with him, wants to talk. He’s afraid he’ll confess to her because he’s madly in love with her, and he wants to tell her everything anyway.

Now, Kira and Dylan will go and have their talk later on. He will say nothing; she will talk at him about their problems on a very macro scale without any specifics. It’s actually an improvement over the first scene, which sounds like writer Ed Brubaker got the dialogue from a soap opera trailer.

This issue has two big reminders of why this comic didn’t click with me before. Didn’t click with me, meaning it pissed me off to the point I stopped reading it.

First, Dylan’s obnoxious white college bro philosophy thoughts. Maybe half the issue is just Dylan’s narration, thinking about what he’s done—killed a guy because the demon in his head told him to do it—while going about his day as a graduate student in New York City. There’s a Times Square scene, there are some library scenes, and Kira and Dylan will have their big scene at Coney Island—Phillips is going all out on the travelogue. No wonder he doesn’t have the energy for heads.

But Dylan’s just full of shit. His narration is just stream of consciousness bullshit from an asshole. And it’s unclear if Brubaker knows it. Every time it seems self-aware, there’s something like the second anti-click reminder—the ladies mooning over Dylan without him realizing. Now, suppose Dylan had become a killer vigilante and started seeing the ladies seeing him differently. In that case, he’d be… becoming (see: Manhunter), but he doesn’t notice them agog at his new manliness.

Also, when Dylan and Kira hang out and have no substance or chemistry beyond Dylan’s narration telling us they have chemistry, it’s another sign of trouble for Brubaker’s handle on the situation.

I remain committed to the read-through, even if it just keeps disappointing.

However, it’s not a bad comic overall, just self-indulgent and annoying. It rallies a bit towards the end. It does read way too quick, though.

Kill or Be Killed (2016) #2

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I’m not reading the back matter on Kill or Be Killed for lengthy reasons, but if there’s some explanation why artist Sean Phillips is drawing the twenty-somethings with odd bodies—their heads are too big for their bodies and slightly too round—I may regret not knowing.

May.

This issue opens with another of the illustrated micro-prose, which writer Ed Brubaker established last issue. On one side of the page is black letters on white, lots of white space because the narration’s relatively terse, even when there’s a lot of it, and images on the right from Phillips. The two things move in unison, what protagonist Dylan thinks about while experiencing or witnessing the visuals.

Except, also not, because Brubaker starts the comic where he ends the comic, and Dylan’s not thinking about the same things at the beginning as at the end because it’s all past tense narration. It’s an entirely acceptable, basically successful technical device—the text alongside the images.

I also don’t like it.

Maybe they’ll win me over, but it seems like a cop-out. The minimally successful approach; basically, it’s just taking the prose specials of the eighties and, instead of type-setting them, having your letterer do them. The comic doesn’t credit the letterer (it’s apparently Phillips), so maybe he’s just using Blambot fonts anyway, and it’s still just type-setting.

Anyway.

I’m not sold on it, though they use the same device later in the issue with better effect; maybe because the white space does something with the visuals later, instead of just pushing them to one side.

This issue has Dylan making his first kill—to appease the demon who’ll kill him if he doesn’t kill an evil person. The demon doesn’t appear. Actually, there’s not much follow-up on the first issue's outstanding things—best friend turned roommate’s girlfriend turned illicit lover Kira wants to chat with Dylan about their status. He puts it off because he’s figured out where to get a gun and, thanks to the gun kicking off a madeleine moment, who to kill.

When Dylan does finally get back to Kira, carrying her to bed, it’s where the figures are so obviously distorted. So Phillips has got to be doing it intentionally. Right?

Especially since the rest of the issue, the other people Dylan encounters—his dealer (who’s a hoot), his mom (who’s always in another room), flashback friends, flashback Dad (the comic rushes through Dad having killed himself and the inevitable repercussions on Dylan)—they all look normal. It’s Dylan and Kira who look like strangely molded action figures.

Dylan’s first victim’s crime is particularly terrible, making him a worthy target, but it’s also a narrative gimme. Brubaker takes two big shortcuts—the gun acquisition and the victim selection—so hopefully, those contrivances will somehow pay off.

After the oversized first issue, this one seems a little too quick, especially since we don’t meet anyone else. We hear about them in Dylan’s narration, but only Kira really gets to exist in scenes, and even then, they’re really quick.

But it’s okay. Full disclosure—this read-through isn’t my first attempt with the series, and I’m trying hard not to get derailed. I’m trying to keep an open mind here.

Hence not reading the back matter.

Kill or Be Killed (2016) #1

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Kill or Be Killed kicks off with approximately thirty-three pages of story. I feel like it’s got to be thirty-two, but the quick count was thirty-three. And writer Ed Brubaker packs those thirty-three pages.

The comic starts with a bunch of gory action killing as our hero, Dylan, shotguns a bunch of bad guys. Well, presumably bad guys. He only kills bad guys, he assures us in narration; Sean Phillips’s art captures the gloom and gore. It’s a lot to start an issue with, but Brubaker and Phillips get through it as the narrator—who’s talking directly to the reader—decides to fill us in on his backstory.

Dylan’s a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student in New York City, living off inheritance and student loans, older than his peers because one of his suicide attempts got him kicked out of school. He’s got no girlfriend—though we get to meet an ex in a flashback in the flashback—and his roommate has stolen his best friend (dating her). As Dylan’s domestic life gets more complicated, with his best friend, Kira, starting an affair with him behind the roommate’s back, he soon finds himself once again suicidal.

Luckily, he’s got one of those apartment buildings like Selina Kyle in Batman Returns and he survives the attempt… only a demon shows up demanding Dylan kill bad guys to make up for the demon not getting his soul in the suicide. A murder a month to keep the demon away.

The issue ends before Dylan’s done the deed, but we know he’s clearly heading in that direction from the opening.

There’s a lot of narration. A lot of it. Some of it’s tedious, some of it ages poorly (the comic’s from summer 2016 and Brubaker’s not great at future-telling), but it rarely gets to be too much. There’s always gorgeous Phillips art to offset any narration-related lag. The New York City stuff is phenomenal, the character figures—their figures look artificially small—not, but it’s only in medium or long-shots. Close-ups, talking heads, Phillips’s on it.

The comic’s intense, unpleasant, and exceedingly well-produced.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e10 – Bedtime Story

There are a lot of stories you can only tell in sci-fi. For instance, only with time travel can you have young mom Kacey Rohl wake up after two thousand years of cryo-sleep and be paired off with her unknowing son, Tom Stevens, now grown up.

Yuck.

It’s unclear why you’d want to tell this story (something “Wayward Pines” only decided to do last episode as a final shocker since no one cares if Nimrat Kaur leaves Jason Patric for Josh Helman), but it’s also unclear why you’d do it just to be cruel to Rohl. Patric will ditch the Hippocratic oath this episode because it’s the finale, and things need resolving. However, he also ditches it to include taunting Rohl with the information he knows about her unintentional Oedipus subplot. Later on, Amitai Marmorstein will give Rohl a similarly knowing look.e

It craps out Rohl having a character arc, even with such a bunk storyline. It’s too bad because she was one of the season’s stronger performances overall. Unfortunately, the show didn’t know what to do with Stevens, and Patric went way too quickly from season protagonist to sturdy town doctor supporting cast, so Rohl was its last hope. Well, I guess maybe Kaur, but they took her arc away to give her to charisma and acting vacuum Helman.

Towards the end of the episode, Djimon Hounsou gets a moment where it’s obvious he should’ve been the protagonist, but of course, they wouldn’t. “Wayward Pines,” outside the casting this season, never made actual good decisions. And when it’s vaguely exploitative, it’s okay. But, when they embrace the exploitative, they can’t figure it out.

The episode’s stakes are simple—there aren’t enough pods, some of our favorite cast members might not be going because Stevens made a list, and he’s closing out the grudges. Plus the gay and Asian kids. They don’t get saved either.

Anyone not in a pod is going to get murdered by the creatures. Or, if Patric can come up with a way to fend them off, they’re going to starve to death. Or be killed by the left-behind shitty white guys. Stevens at least didn’t take the shitty white men (at least not the ones out of their teens).

It’s familiar, sympathetic cast members in danger, and mildly effective. Certainly more effective than the creatures’ preparing their assault, which is just queen Rochelle Okoye yelling at them while they amass in the same locations again and again. “Wayward Pines” clearly didn’t have the budget for a big action sequence, so someone decided to tread water for the entire final episode.

Not a great choice.

Script credit to Mark Friedman. It’s not good. Outside Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s part. She again is the butt of the joke, but her performance is, as usual, superb enough the writing doesn’t matter.

“Wayward Pines: Season One” started more embarrassing than it ended; season two started less embarrassing than it ends. Director Ti West has some lousy composition, which may be a nod to executive producer M. Night Shyamalan, but it’s also just indicative of the exhaustion. The show never explored its better plot threads, never actually developed its characters; it just sustained on usually minimal competency and a few good performances.

Jason Patric ought to be a TV lead. Djimon Hounsou is a great TV series sturdy wingman. It’d be interesting to see if Tom Stevens can do anything but Mirror Universe Wesley Crusher. Kacey Rohl’s got some range and skills. Hope Davis is a good creep (it’s too bad she didn’t find out Rohl was Stevens’s mom; that scene would’ve been something). It’s too bad they weren’t working together in a better project.

Instead, they were trapped in “Wayward Pines.”

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e09 – Walcott Prep

Wayward Pines, the town, is in dire straits. The creatures outside the wall have destroyed their food supply, and they’re out of MREs. They’ll only survive another thirty days (or, more precisely, two episodes). So teen dictator Tom Stevens decides everyone’s going back in cryo-sleep for fifty-seven years or whatever. Only Djimon Hounsou then discovers no one kept the cryo-pods charged since season one ended and the teenage Nazis took over. As a result, they can only take half the populace.

Jason Patric’s still hoping he can come up with some kind of medical solution and won’t help Stevens evaluate the breeding stock. Patric says they should do a lottery; Stevens says it’s got to be based on white bloodline or whatever. Like most scenes for Stevens, there’s potentially a good character thread, but then they immediately drop it. In this case, it’s in favor of a personal quandary—Stevens doesn’t want defects, love of his life Kacey Rohl can’t have babies and is, therefore, defective. Joss Whedon ghostwrote “Wayward Pines?”

Patric is also actively plotting against Stevens this episode, though we don’t get to see any of his plans other than when he checks in with Josh Helman to ensure Helman won’t support Stevens in a coup. It’s a pointless scene, only there for Helman to taunt Patric about how Nimrat Kaur’s preggers with Helman’s baby. Kaur’s around for useless scene with Stevens—encouraging more, different character development–because it turns out this episode’s all about a huge secret.

Toby Jones stars in a flashback story about how he got baby Tom Stevens for the town. First, he tried buying a pregnant blue blood’s unwanted baby, but then he had to resort to more traditional means (bribing a public hospital).

The secret is the identity of Stevens’s mother. Sadly, not an Emperor Palpatine clone. Instead, it’s someone whose identity is going to knock every character arc for Stevens out from under him. There’s also some retconning involved with Hope Davis and Melissa Leo’s characters in particular, though they’re long gone and out of the guest star budget, so who cares. As PG-13 exploitative as “Wayward Pines” got with this season, I really did not expect them to embrace it to this episode’s degree. Worse, it doesn’t do anything to inform characters’ behaviors in previous episodes. Mom’s secret identity doesn’t explain why Stevens is king little shit.

It all comes to a fateful conclusion, including the not ineffective shot of blood running through the streets of the Wayward Pines model in Jones’s office. They probably should’ve used that visual last season with Jones’s death and not here when they’re trying to make a contrived plotline have more of an oomph.

On the other hand, faced with an inevitably disappointing conclusion—season two switched over to building to the finish just as there was character development—a large-scale cop-out and shrug do kind of make sense. Why bother doing anything else?

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e08 – Pass Judgment

So, with “Wayward Pines” entering the season’s final act—there are only two more episodes after this one–it’s unclear where they’re going, but it’s clear they aren’t going to get there gracefully. This episode’s all about female creature Rochelle Okoye escaping and wreaking havoc around town, including leaping between the buildings on Main Street. There’s also lots of running through the woods, which are right behind the houses, and all of a sudden, it’s obvious what a lousy job the show’s done—in the eighteen episodes so far—at establishing the basic geography.

For example, Emma Tremblay and Michael Garza are back this episode (nothing said about her period or him maybe being gay or ace), and they walk downtown from school. Through a forest. Not an inherently terrible idea and certainly better than anything else town architect Nimrat Kaur “designed,” but also a little weird. All of a sudden, they’re in danger from forest-hunting Okoye, but there’s going to be an alley somewhere taking them to Kaur’s shop.

Kaur and Josh Helman are also back this episode—unfortunately—and now they’re both trying to beat the creatures. Kaur is trying to figure out how Okoye got into the town; Helman’s going to take his guns and form a citizen’s militia, which will lead to a trigger-happy Christian shooting the only Black guy in the episode. “Wayward Pines: Season Two” ’s big problem is none of the adults deserve to survive, and most of the teens also do not deserve to survive, and we don’t meet many kids because they need to be in puberty for the show (and town) to care about them.

But, basically, there’s militia versus military on the residential streets, and it’s bad. It’s not as silly as it could be, but it’s not well done. Jennifer Lynch directs the episode and does comparably better with the talking heads stuff than the action or suspense, but only in comparison. Unfortunately, this season hasn’t had many distinct or good directors (only one of the latter, I think) and is heading into the finale with, at best, tepid direction….

Bad sign.

Also, an ominous sign is a big reveal for Kaur and Helman, which manages to make his performance even worse in hindsight. Besides her busy work finding town blueprints, Kaur’s just around for Helman and Patric to glare at each other over. Even when Tremblay shows up and Kaur gets her to safety, they don’t have any real scenes together. Tremblay’s just an accessory for Kaur, who’s just an accessory for Helman or Patric.

Though Kaur does have a good “girl power” scene with Kacey Rohl, who found that she can’t have babies at the beginning of the episode, and now everyone is assuming boyfriend and teen führer Tom Stevens will have her killed for it. That development turns into an almost interesting plot point until the episode screws it up.

Seamus Kevin Fahey gets the writing credit. The most inventive stuff in the script are the details about Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s weird life. Fallon Hogan manages to be excellent despite being the butt of the show’s jokes.

And maybe if Patric’s complaint no one takes any responsibility in “Wayward Pines” is a meta-comment on the show itself, which is an accurate dig. The whole show is what happens when you compound cop-outs.

Anyway. Two left, and it’s not in very good shape.