Summer 2016 TV shows

Jul. 18, 2017 Summer 2016 TV shows:

Wayward Pines: I watched this show when it first came out in summer 2015:

A Secret Service agent goes to Wayward Pines, Idaho, in search of two federal agents who have gone missing in the bucolic town. He soon learns that he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

The pilot was interesting.  You will want to watch it to get your answers.  Here's my review:

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2015/06/wayward-pines-pilot-review.html

Then I watched the 2nd season.

It's still unsure if there is a season 3.

https://www.opptrends.com/wayward-pines-season-3-release-date-latest-news/

However is my review of season 2 premiere:  It was quite a turn. 

Pros:

1. The characters: 

They have a new lead character Dr. Theo Yedlin (Jason Patric) and a bunch of new characters too.

They also have the new leader Jason Higgins (Tom Stevens) who runs the town now.  He's good looking in the handsome way.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3335453/?ref_=tt_cl_t5

2. There are psychological effects on the characters when they are living in this small town.

3. There is good ethnic diversity of the cast.

4. There is lots of conflict, drama, and tension with the survival of this town.  The characters can kill each other or what's outside is going to kill them.

5. There are flashbacks of how this town was created.

Cons: 

None.

My opinion: You guys should all watch the pilot.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2618986/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Jul. 23, 2017 Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders: Criminal Minds came out in 2005.

Does anyone remember in Feb. 2011 when there was a back- door pilot as a Criminal Minds ep and it introduced the TV show Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior?

On the streets of San Francisco a team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Analysis Unit use profiling to catch some of the most horrific serial killers and unidentifiable subjects.

It had big names like Forest Whitaker and Janeane Garofalo.  I saw the pilot and a couple of episodes.  It was good and all, but I didn't watch it more than 3 episodes.  It got cancelled after 1 season.

It seems to have a high chance of success with:

1. A spin-off from a successful show.
2. A mid-season premiere.
3. Big name actors.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703874/?ref_=nv_sr_3

In Mar. 2016, they did it again with a back-door pilot.

An international unit of the FBI charged with coming to the aid of, and solving crimes involving, American citizens in foreign countries. A spin-off from Criminal Minds.

Here's my review of the pilot:

Pros:

1. It has big names like Gary Sinise (CSI: NY) and Alana De La Garza (from Do No Harm and Forever TV shows).

Tyler James Williams (Chris from Everybody Hates Chris.)

2. The first ep was set in Thailand and beautiful shots of water and mountains.

3. Interesting story of young women who are volunteering at a farm in Thailand and are kidnapped.

4. Thai proverb: "What's done in the dark, soon comes to light."

Clara: Life is too long to be alone.

I'm going to put that in my inspirational quotes.

5. Spoiler alert: It turns out the killer was hunting animals to sacrifice for his family.  He starts to kill humans to give to his family.

Clara: Your family doesn't need your sacrifices.  They want you to stop killing.

Cons: None.  I then went on imdb.com and there are so many comments of people criticizing how bad the show is.

My opinion: I watched the pilot and then I never watched it again.  It got 2 seasons.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4364202/

http://deadline.com/2017/05/criminal-minds-beyond-borders-canceled-cbs-a2-seasons-1202093513/

Oct. 19, 2017 Containment: This show came out in Apr. 2016.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4421578/

Pros: 

1. Chris Wood- he played the bad guy Kai on The Vampire Diaries.  I watched Containment for him.  If he wasn't in Containment, I would still watch it, but I wouldn't like it as much.

2. It was a strong beginning.  It was Day 13 and there are soldiers coming out.  There is chaos and mob running around.

3. It was a good story idea of who was infected and how to prevent the infection from spreading.

4. Good dialogue:

Jake: You two have a thing we all want.
Jana: I know.
Jake: Then do a better job of showing it.

5. Good drama, conflict and tension.  A Syrian kid had the virus so it could be bio terrorism.  It's dangerous.  There is the hospital drama with the doctors trying to solve it.

There is the police drama with the police trying to keep the city calm and safe.

There isn't a lot of cops in the quarantine and hard to remain order.

6. I really like the Jake and Katie romance.

7. The characters are all likeable.

Cons: None.

My opinion: I would recommend you all watch the pilot and then you can decide if you want to watch more.

The Family: This show came out in Mar. 2016.

A community is rattled when a politician's son, who was presumed murdered years ago, returns home.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4428038/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

Pros:

1. The story idea is very strong and interesting.

2. There is a good mystery of who kidnapped Adam and why.  Also how to find the kidnapper.

The whole mystery of is that really Adam?  In the pilot they said they did a DNA test and it confirms it.

Danny the brother doesn't think he is.

Then they show Adam watching an old video of himself on his birthday. 

3. There is good drama, conflict and tension in the writing.  The family having to adjust to Adam.  There is tension between the family and the neighbor Hank who they thought was the murderer. 

4. There is good acting in the whole cast.  Liam James who plays the grown Adam is the stand out.

5. Good dialogue.

John has a book called "Learning to live with Loss."

John: Confront your grief and fear of it, and it will take away it's power.

The cop Nina talks to Hank: 

Nina: Just because someone does something bad, doesn't make them a bad person.

The big brother Danny asks Adam:

Danny: Why didn't you run?  How come you didn't run the 1st chance you got?

Adam: I did.  I ran the 1st chance I got.

Danny: When was that?

Adam: Yesterday.

Danny: I'm sorry. 

6. The part where Adam is reunited with his mom was very well- acted and written scene.

7. Hank was in jail for Adam's murder.  He is released from prison and got $30,000 a yr for each year incarcerated.  He got $300,000.

John: I'm sorry what happened to you.

Hank: You happened to me.

8. This is a very unique situation of a kid coming back after being presumed dead.

9. There is a little comedy in it.  Nina finds a cabin and busts in:

Teen boy and girl are smoking pot and saying: I thought it was legal now!

Cons: None.

My opinion: This is a really good show.  You should check out the pilot.  It's dark and intense. 

My week:

Oct. 23, 2017 Coffee place: Today I got a call for an interview at the coffee place.  However, the boss said he needed someone to start work at 6am.  I went on Google Map and there isn't a bus that comes at 5:30am.

I would have to walk 15 min. to a bus stop to catch the bus to downtown.  I told him I can work at like 8am.  I told him he can have my resume on file for other shifts.

"Fund helps non-verbal child 'unlock' what he's thinking": Today I found this article by Liane Faulder in the Edmonton Journal.  I can't find it on the internet.  It's about the Children's Ability Fund to give iPads to kids with disabilities.  The iPad helps them to communicate.

I have never heard of this charity before:

https://www.childrensabilityfund.ca/

Jason Aldean donates song funds:

NEW YORK — Jason Aldean's moving rendition of "I Won't Back Down" on "Saturday Night Live" will soon be raising money to help victims of the Las Vegas shooting.

The song was made available on Friday on various sites. Aldean's representative says all proceeds will be donated to the Direct Impact Fund dedicated to victims of the tragedy.

Aldean was performing at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Oct. 2 when a gunman fired on the crowd a hotel room, killing 58 people. Hundreds more were injured.

The country star made his first public performance on "SNL" five days later and sang the Tom Petty song. It was in part a tribute to the late rocker, who died that week, but also a show of resiliency in the face of tragedy.

http://www.timescolonist.com/jason-aldean-releases-i-won-t-back-down-for-charity-1.23070492

Aug. 12, 2017 Rapper gives puppy to girl: I found this in the Edmonton Journal today:

ATLANTA, Georgia --

Atlanta rapper Big Boi has given a puppy to a little girl who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot while playing in a bounce house near the city earlier this year.

WSB-TV reports Big Boi, who's one-half of the rap duo OutKast, presented Abriya Ellison on Thursday with the pup bred from his kennel business.

Video shows Abriya cradling the dog, which she named King.

Big Boi, whose real name is Antwan Patton, tells the station that the dog is "something therapeutic" for Abriya. He says the girl is "definitely inspiring" and her story touched his heart. Patton also has agreed to pay off Abriya's medical bills and renovate her bathroom to make it handicap accessible.

Abriya was 5 when she was shot outside Atlanta in April.

http://abc7ny.com/pets-animals/outkasts-big-boi-gives-puppy-to-girl-paralyzed-in-shooting/2297403/

Aug. 15, 2017 George Clooney aids refugee crisis: I found this in the Edmonton Journal:

George and Amal Clooney have committed to help 3,000 Syrian refugee children go to school in Lebanon, Reuters reported on Monday.

The new parents to twins Ella and Alexander aim to come to the aid of 200,000 children who are not receiving an education after fleeing the war in neighboring Syria.

The Clooney Foundation for Justice has teamed up with Google and HP Inc. to help UNICEF and the Lebanese Ministry of Education open seven "second shift" schools, which includes special afternoon classes exclusively for the relocated Syrian children. Lebanon currently has over 1 million Syrian refugees, with around half of them children.

https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2017/08/01/george-amal-clooney-donate-to-syrian-children/23059653/

Bruno Mars donates $1 m to flint: I found this in the Edmonton Journal:

Bruno Mars revealed during his Saturday concert in Auburn Hills, Michigan that he had donated $1 million to aid victims of the water crisis in nearby Flint.

Mars and Live Nation, the promoter of the singer's 24K Magic World Tour, announced that revenues from the Detroit-area show had been redirected to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.

"I'm very thankful to the Michigan audience for joining me in supporting this cause," Mars said in a statement. "Ongoing challenges remain years later for Flint residents, and it's important that we don't forget our brothers and sisters affected by this disaster. As people, especially as Americans, we need to stand together to make sure something like this never happens in any community ever again."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bruno-mars-donates-1-million-to-flint-water-crisis-aid-w497453


Oct. 25, 2017 David Schwimmer good behavior:

Nell Minow, a member of a richly accomplished family, recounts to me her interviewing actor-producer David Schwimmer, best associated with NBC's iconic "Friends," at the Phoenix Hotel in Washington, D.C. in 2011. Minow is a prominent corporate governance expert who for years has also authored "Movie Mom,"  a terrific look at movie, culture and values for parents. Wondering about whether you should take your kid to a certain flick? Check out "Movie Mom."

She was set to interview him about a movie he'd directed, "Trust," the tale of a young girl preyed upon by an online abuser (a real-life story that involved someone Schwimmer knew). They were scheduled to chat in the first-floor restaurant but that proved crowded and noisy. They tried to start but it wasn't working. It prompted Schwimmer to hesitantly broach the notion of going up to his room.

Heck, Minow was twice his age, so she didn't feel the slightest anxiety. But Schwimmer quickly added that if she wanted, he could make sure there was a third person in the room. Perhaps somewhere in the mix, she thinks, the very subject matter of his film prompted anxiety about what she, or others, might think if they went alone, which they did.

"I haven’t thought of that since it happened but the Weinstein stories made me not just remember it but remember it in an entirely different context as an indicator of the prevalence of predatory behavior and as an indicator of Schwimmer’s integrity and sensitivity," Minow said. "This wasn’t just about his being a good guy who would not have tried anything. He understood what it is like to have to be constantly on the alert and he wanted to make sure I understood I was safe." So they did do the interview in his room.

Work on my resumes: Yesterday I did a job interview for a restaurant.  I then notice that the resume needed be changed.  I looked at my other restaurant templates resumes and they had to be edited.

There were server and hostesses resumes that didn't have Pro Serve on it.

Oct. 26, 2017:

Mon. Oct. 23, 2017 Call centre job interview:

Pros:

1. It was easy to get to.  2 buses that come by frequently.

2. The hours were good.  Mon.- Fri.  1pm-9pm.

3. The pay was good.

4. I can do the job where I call people to set up appointments.  If the sales person makes a sale there, then I would get a $25 bonus for making the appointment.

Cons:

1. The shift ends at 9pm.

My opinion: I would definitely work there.  I showed my interest in the job.  I told the interviewer that I can start 2 days from now.  I told him of my previous call centre experience.  I called him to ask if I got hired (he said I can call the next day) and he said I didn't get hired.

Interviewer: You can do the job, but you need more practice.

I was disappointed.  I have to write about it so I can get over it and move on.  Also I hope the people who get hired will quit soon after and then I can get hired.

Tues. Oct. 24, 2017 Server job interview: The place hasn't opened yet.  Interestingly enough, I was passing my resume to another restaurant by there, and the woman there says a restaurant will be opening across from them soon.

Pros:

1. It was in downtown.

2. The food is for a sports bar.

Cons:

1. It was evenings and weekends.

My opinion: I'm probably not going to get hired and I won't work there because it's evenings and weekends.

Oct. 30, 2017 The highlight of the week: I did 3 job interviews in 3 days.

If I had to say something fun I did:

I watched the Blindspot season 3 premiere.  That was exciting.

"In producing Legion, ideas run free"/ Riverdale

Jan. 17, 2017 "In producing Legion, ideas run free": Today I found this article by Ian Bailey in the Globe and Mail:

Michael Wylie is in production designers’ heaven. As he leads reporters on a tour of sets he designed and had built for the new TV series Legion, he says he has been given a freer-than-usual hand to let his imagination run wild.

He has unleashed his imagination into a pretty big playground.

Sets for the series, based on the X-Men-related character, were built in a 160,000-square-foot former supermarket warehouse in this city southeast of Vancouver. It feels as large as a pair of downtown Vancouver city blocks. Throughout the tour, there’s the strident ringing of bells to indicate that cameras are rolling elsewhere in the vast space where shadows are broken here and there by lights for filming.

“A lot of times in TV shows, things have to be in continuity. From episode to episode, things have to be in continuity. There’s more flexibility to Legion,” says Wylie, who has designed sets for such series as Masters of Sex and the recent similarly Marvel comics-inspired Agent Carter.

The freedom is notable on Legion because the series is based on the realm of the X-Men – the righteous, heroic mutants featured in six films since Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000. There’s been a largely consistent look to the characters and settings since then.

But that all appears to have been enthusiastically chucked out the window with Legion, which will run eight episodes in its first season on on cable channel FX in Canada and the U.S. The series was created by Noah Hawley, the American novelist and screenwriter who has been acclaimed for his lively TV adaptation of Fargo, based on the 1996 Coen brothers’ movie about nefarious doings in Minnesota.

“I think the nature of this story and this story world is that it’s not as beholden to a certain aesthetic as some superhero stars are, in that sense,” says a chipper Dan Stevens, who played ill-fated Matthew Crawley in the British series Downton Abbey.

In Legion, Stevens is playing David Haller – a.k.a. Legion. In the comics, Legion was a mutant with dissociative personality disorder whose personas each had access to individual superpowers such as telepathy, telekinesis and pyrokinesis. He was also the son of X-Men leader Professor X – a.k.a. Charles Xavier.

But there was no talk of any such links during the media tour held in the fall as work was under way on the seventh of Legion’s eight episodes. “I don’t know who Professor X is,” actress Jean Smart, who co-stars in Legion as a mutant therapist, said politely during an interview.

And Stevens himself said Legion won’t exactly be like X-Men films. “It doesn’t feel like a superhero show. None of us yet have capes or horns or anything quite like that,” Stevens told reporters during a break from filming.

The series does not take place in any fixed time. Cars from the sixties exist with modern-day cars. Clothing is a mishmash of present-day and past fashions. As one cast member notes, it’s a kind of “sixties, mod-Britannia realm.” It’s the future as imagined from the perspective of the 1960s and 1970s. Another cast member says the proceedings have the visual tone Stanley Kubrick created for his feature films A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“We’re just trying to confound everybody,” says a bemused Wylie.

In a conference call with reporters, Hawley said he had read X-Men comics, but was not interested in a straightforward adaptation of that material. “There was no rulebook or anything I was handed when I came on.”

He also said he was steering clear of the angle around specific powers being linked to varied personalities created by Legion’s multiple personality disorder. Rather, he said, he was intrigued with the premise of someone who has to reassess their assumptions about themselves.

“What we get into with David is this idea that he has lived for 30 years and this identity he believes in is actually fake. Maybe he doesn’t have mental illness. Maybe he has these abilities. If that’s so, he has to go back and rewrite the story of himself. That, to me, was a fascinating existential journey that I wanted to take.”

Hawley said he approached the material in the same way he approached Fargo, where the mandate was to adapt the film about homicides linked to a nefarious kidnapping plot in Minnesota for TV without using its specific story.

“[It] was a very odd thing to think about, which is: How do you take the essence of a story and translate it into a completely new story,” he recalled. “But it liberated me in a lot of ways to create something where I wasn’t imitating. I wasn’t taking pieces that [filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen] had created and sort of mimicking them.”

With Legion, he says he, similarly, wasn’t interested in adapting specific issues of X-Men comics, though he was inspired by the material. “As I looked at it, the character led me to the story, which led me to the style and so, in many ways, if you’re going to watch the show looking for story lines that you recognize, that wasn’t my intention. My hope is to create something unexpected.”

He says Marvel has been supportive. “I am not sure they knew what to make of this as I came to them with this out-there idea for a show. It doesn’t really fit into all of the other shows they’re doing and I think that’s exciting for them in that they get to just give me the rope for me to run or hang myself or whatever I am going to do with it.”

Cast members and production staff promise drama, complicated relationships, action and mutants. Beyond that, details are limited, and some that were fairly obvious during the sound stage visit cannot be revealed without spoiling the show.

The X-Men films, which made Australian actor Hugh Jackman – a.k.a. Wolverine – a star are old news on the big screen. And there have been X-Men cartoons. But live-action TV is a new frontier for the franchise. Various X-Men-related TV series were on the drawing board, but Hawley won the race to get one to the sound stage.

Smart, nominated for an Emmy for her work on Fargo, says she knew nothing about comic-book superheroes, but signed on quickly when asked to join Legion. “Noah asked and I said yes. It didn’t matter what it was about. I kind of came into it blind,” said Smart, well known for her work in the sitcom Designing Women, and for playing a troubled U.S. first lady in 24.

Hawley has laid out a creative mandate for his team, says Wylie. It is this: “This story is being told from an unreliable narrator so we can do whatever we want, so that’s a really fun part of doing the show,” says the production designer.

“What that means to us, is ‘Everything goes.’”

So Wylie’s sets include the slickly furnished interior of a giant ice cube that’s the brain of one mutant – though Hawley apparently prefers to refer to “people with abilities.” Elsewhere, there’s David Haller’s apartment, which seems both modern and vintage – as confused as the character.

And there are the corridors and vast day room for the Clockworks Mental Hospital – a 23,000-square-foot set. This was the most complicated set to develop, he says. “Trying to make a hospital feel fun is a perfect challenge.”

Asked about shooting in the city, Hawley wryly said, “I heard all television shows are shot in Vancouver. That’s why we went up there. But, no – Vancouver offers an amazing array of looks and feels and, obviously, a great crew base and everything. We were thrilled to be up there.”

Hawley’s Fargo TV series has been shot in Calgary and other parts of Alberta.

Wylie was inspired by the brutalist architecture of the 1950s to mid-1970s, which often features bulk and exposed concrete and is typically seen in government and institutional buildings. “We shot all the exteriors at UBC where they have a lot of that sixties and seventies brutalist architecture and kind of embraced it,” explained Wylie.

But while there will be streaks of the traditional X-Men films in the DNA of Legion, Wylie notes that some props from the feature films have been brought to this sound stage from storage in Montreal – where the last two X films were shot – and the United States.

He did not say how they would be used, but, as with everything else, he has a free hand.

“You don’t have to follow any rules. If you come up with something, you can do something because you think it’s cool, or that it’s pretty or it manipulates somebody,” he said, then added with a smile, “We’re in the manipulation business here.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/why-the-production-designer-for-the-new-tv-series-legion-has-a-dream-job/article33635015/

My opinion: I have never seen the show before, but I would like to check out the pilot.


Jan. 11, 2017 "Riverdale is a subversive, dark take on Archie Comics universe": Today I found this article by John Doyle in the Globe and Mail:

It’s hovering around 9 a.m. on Sunday. I’m in a room with a couple of hundred people who write about television. A man on the stage is jawing on about the importance of keeping critically acclaimed but low-rated series on the air. It makes sense, he says, because the acclaim eventually draws in viewers who might watch others shows.

The man is Mark Pedowitz, president of the small, feisty CW network. The CW has such long-running series as Supernatural and in recent years delivered the strange but wonderful Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin.

Yes, I’m at the midseason press tour for TV critics. It goes 14 days, every day, almost 24/7 and I’m here for a few days of it.

Pedowitz started by saying, “I’m not competing this morning, thank God, with any presidential-elect tweet. So things are good there.” This brings a laugh. Getting attention for any new TV production is difficult enough in an era of 450 scripted series airing across all platforms in the TV universe.

But there’s another side to the remark – one of the reasons for coming here is figuring out how U.S. TV will respond to the species of populism illustrated in Donald Trump’s victory. Is TV on board or acting as part of the resistance?

Television takes time to create and produce, but at any time it certainly acts as a reflection, sometimes twisted, of what the public is feeling.

Riverdale, a CW show that arrives on Jan. 26 (in Canada on Netflix), has been in development for a couple of years, first at Fox and now landing on the feisty CW. How it illustrates what’s happening in the United States is open to interpretation. Certainly, though, it is the first talked-about and advance-acclaimed new drama of 2017.

It falls into the category of “Is nothing sacred?” See, it is based on the characters in the Archie Comics, but bizarrely, shockingly so. Pedowitz called it “The O.C. meets Twin Peaks.” And that isn’t the half of it. It’s not a high-school show. It’s startlingly adult, subversive and near-Gothic. It’s sexy, funny and very creepy. It is, frankly, an amazingly ambitious, daring drama.

Anyone who thought that the wholesome quality of the narrative of Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead might simply make for a new 90210 for this decade was wrong. There’s a scene in the first episode in which Betty (Lili Reinhart) asks Archie (K.J. Apa) if he has feelings for her.

Archie hesitates and the viewer knows why. It’s because he is having, but can’t explain, a passionate fling with Miss Grundy (Sarah Habel). In Riverdale, Miss Grundy is not the white-haired schoolteacher of the comics. She’s a siren of a music teacher quite ready to indulge in an intense sexual affair with a student.

As for the classic love triangle of Archie, Betty and Veronica (Camila Mendes), it certainly exists, but this Veronica is more like the sultry brunette vixen from an imagined pornographic twist on the Archie Comics. Watch the first hour and you’re ready to believe that the dynamic between the trio is highly erotic and a threesome is on the cards.

Especially after Veronica and Betty indulge in a passionate kiss in their cheerleader uniforms. I swear I’m not making this up.

Once the shock wears off, the bones of Riverdale become clear. It’s a tangled murder-mystery set in a small town where evil lurks. What happens is that Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch, who is wonderful as the school’s main mean girl and dangerous she-devil) and twin brother Jason are boating out on the lake. Jason drowns. Accident?

Obviously not, in this world where everybody is hiding something. Most characters barely pretend to be wholesome. Me, I’m no expert on the Archie Comics universe, but I know enough to recognize that this is the Archie universe on acid.

There is a remarkably textured, blurry twist on the retro-vibe. The reference to Twin Peaks – which, interestingly also returns, rebooted, this year – is supported not just by the tone but by the casting of Madchen Amick, who was the abused waitress Shelly Johnson on Twin Peaks, as Betty’s mom. This mom is, mind you, closer to the crazed mother of Carrie, Margaret White, in Stephen King’s story, than to Betty’s mom in the comics.

And then there’s the nod to Beverly Hills 90210, with the casting of Luke Perry as Archie’s dad. This show is a very heady concoction. As one critic put it to the Riverdale cast and creators here, it’s like Happy Days was rebooted and Fonzie was actually a dangerous gang member.

Asked if he’s anticipating a backlash against this perverse twist on the old, familiar comics, CEO and publisher of Archie Comics, Jon Goldwater, was amused. “Backlash is good,” he said. “I don’t think there’s going to be anything but a great backlash.”

Admittedly, the Archie Comics line was relaunched a few years ago with more mature themes and there was the novelty of a comic featuring Archie fighting zombies in Riverdale.

But for most Americans, Archie Comics and its iconic characters are apple-pie wholesome.

The tale of how Riverdale came into being is a tangled one and offers an insight into the sheer weirdness of the TV business here.

When the series was in development, executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says there were mind-boggling suggestions from one unnamed executive. “He said, ‘I want you to think about time travel, Archie travelling through time,’ ” Aguirre-Sacasa told us. Then came another suggestion: “Portals are huge,” this exec said. “A portal to another dimension [for Archie]” And then came the wildest idea: “What if Louis C.K. is Archie?” Aguirre-Sacasa described the situation as, “Like something out of an episode of Entourage.”

The show’s creative team then settled on what they truly wanted, a surreal, noir-ish Archie Comics. “It became a loss-of-innocence show,” Aguirre-Sacasa explained.

This Riverdale revels in irony, perversity and ambiguity. It has the look of a drama set in the recent past – that period to which Donald Trump refers when he brays about making America great again – but it is emphatically set in the present. A present in which Veronica can be designated as looking like Betty Draper in a certain season of Mad Men. And a present in which the perceived serenity of the recent past is recast as a fraud, and then is remounted as a world utterly lacking in traditional morality.

Coming immediately after a topsy-turvy year, Riverdale feels like a gesture of disenchantment. In that itself, it’s popular culture with a Trump-ian twist – a complete loss of innocence, as its producer asserts.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/john-doyle-cws-riverdale-is-a-subversive-startling-take-on-archie-comics-universe/article33547832/

My opinion: When I first heard about this show, I was kind of "eh" with it.  As in I wasn't really that excited about it.  It was about teens and I have really stopped watching shows about them.  I have leaned to written action- dramas like Blindspot, Quantico, and Arrow.

I don't know if I could take the show seriously because I read these comics books in elementary school.  However, there was a murder mystery.  I decided I'll record all the episodes and watch it in a week.

It was pretty good.   There is a good mystery with surprises and turns in it. 

"CBC's Pure is not so simple"/ "Alberta actor makes name as a bad guy"

Jan. 16, 2017 "CBC's Pure is not so simple": Today I found this article by Melissa Hank in the Edmonton Journal:


When it comes to successful television shows, sometimes you just have to go for the WTF effect.

Breaking Bad: A high-school chemistry teacher learns he has cancer, and decides to make meth to pay for his treatments. WTF?

Game of Thrones: Families fight for control of mythical lands, with dragons and beheadings and incest galore. WTF?

And The Walking Dead: two words — zombie apocalypse. WTF?

All those shows are unmistakably distinct, and all widely successful. The new CBC series Pure is banking on that formula of uniqueness. Set in southern Ontario, it follows a pastor who tries to bring down the Mennonite mob by working for them while feeding the cops intel on their drug-trafficking operations.

“The show revels in its specificity, in terms of community and where it’s set. If one looks beyond our shores to see which shows have been successful — internationally, at least on the cable front — every one of them has that in common,” says director Ken Girotti.

“Pure is a show that doesn’t try to water itself down to appeal to a broad audience. It just is what it is.”

Creator and writer Michael Amo, who also co-created homegrown drama The Listener, didn’t have to look far to find his concept.

“The inspiration was my grandparents. They were Mennonites from Russia who came to Canada, and I was always interested in that aspect of my family,” he says. “Then I came across stories about the Mennonite mob, I thought it was a fabulous way into that community.”

Though Amo had done plenty of research on Mennonites in Canada, and employed consultants to help with the language and performances on the show, he acknowledges that there’s a risk of Pure offending its subjects.  

“I want to emphasize that the people who are involved with (drug trafficking) are a very small minority in the Mennonite population,” he says. “Our main characters are trying to get rid of this problem as opposed to embracing it, so I hope there’s no backlash.”

With just six episodes in its first season, Pure already has had enough challenges — including making Nova Scotia stand in for southern Ontario, and portraying two high-contrast worlds for viewers.

“The Mennonite world is very spare and sparse and austere, and if you put that up against what the Mennonites call the Ausländer world, the outside world where we live, the Ausländer world is full of eye candy and confusing and messy and dirty and thick with information. So I used that kind of palette to inform how we shot the show” says Girotti, who also directs History’s action-packed period drama Vikings.

“Part of the story also takes place in Texas and Mexico, and those were challenging things to achieve, but I think we did pretty well.”

The solid cast helped — Girotti had worked with many of the stars on previous projects. Ryan Robbins plays pastor Noah Funk, with Alex Paxton-Beesley as his wife Anna, and A.J. Buckley, Peter Outerbridge and Rosie Perez round out the cast.

And, says Amo, there’s a sense of universality in Pure that he thinks will resonate with viewers. Shows dealing in spiritual and ethical matters have recently manifested onto TV screens.

On Fox, Lucifer focuses on the Devil, who leaves hell to run a nightclub in Los Angeles and help police catch criminals. NBC has The Good Place, about a woman of questionable morality who’s accidentally placed in a blissful afterlife. Comedy airs Impastor, about a fugitive who steals the identity of a deceased gay Lutheran pastor.

Plus there’s Preacher on AMC, following a spiritual leader who enlists the a vampire to help him find God, and Jane Lynch’s one season wonder Angel from Hell, which centred on an unconventional angel who connects with the human she’s charged with.

“I think there’s always an appetite for shows that approach our spiritual struggles in an honest and entertaining way,” says Amo.

“You might not see as many of them as other types of shows, but I think it’s part of the human condition to have these spiritual questions and longings. I think if they’re done in the right way, I think there’s always an audience for them.”

http://www.canada.com/entertainment/pure+banks+unique+premise+mennonite/12702674/story.html

My opinion: I watched all 6 episodes in a period of a few days.  I thought it was average.  It got cancelled after 1 season.  I don't know if I would even watch the show if it got a second season.  I was ambivalent about it.  I don't know until the 2nd season comes, and how I feel if I should record it and watch it in a week. It was like with the TV show Gotham.  I watched the 1st season.  When season 2 came, I missed the premiere.  Then I started watching a bit of an ep and I didn't really want to watch it. Pure (TV series) Pure (TV series) Pure is produced by Two East Productions and Cineflix Media[4] and is directed by Ken Girotti.[5]

"Alberta actor making name as a bad guy": Today I found this article by Eric Volmers in the Edmonton Journal:


Chad Rook goes through the same routine every time he receives a new script for the television series Timeless.

He races to the end to make sure he isn’t dead.

Such is life when you play a time-travelling villainous henchman. 

“Do I live? Do I still breathe by the end of this episode?” says Rook with a laugh, in a phone interview from Vancouver. “The longevity of the show, we’re pretty confident about that. But being a bad guy and one of the main henchman, it’s always just a throw of the dice every episode.”

The Lethbridge native plays Karl, the muscle behind chief antagonist Garcia Flynn (Goran Višnjić) in NBC’s high-concept sci-fi series. 

As such, he helps his ruthless boss travel through time in an attempt to change the course of American history. Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter and Malcolm Barrett play, respectively, the history professor, soldier and engineer who are out to stop them.

Rook once described his character as “the guy who does all the killing and the shooting.” And, in the first few episodes, he didn’t do much else. But as the show developed, so has Karl.

“The more and more in-depth that Goran’s character got, the more Karl was included and the network started developing that character a lot,” says Rook. “When I first came on as Karl, it was just a smaller henchman role and it’s just gotten bigger and bigger and Karl has become more focused in regards to (plot.)”

When Timeless returns on Monday after a month-long hiatus, the mysterious motives behind Flynn’s campaign will begin to crystallize, which will further deepen Rook’s character. The storyline is set to “come to a climax ” and might change viewers’ opinions on notions of good and bad in the Timeless universe, Rook says.

Not that Rook minds being bad. For an actor who boasts such leading-man good looks, the 34-year-old has played plenty of heavies in his career. He left for Vancouver after graduating from Picture Butte high school, where he performed in school musicals.

Initially, Rook found success as the face of international modelling campaigns. But he soon began landing roles in TV series in Vancouver, including a recurring spot on the CW’s short-lived horror-thriller Cult. He got a major break as a super villain in The Flash, playing Clyde Mardon, a.k.a. The Weather Wizard, for a couple of episodes in 2014. In fact, throughout his career he has played a rogues gallery of arrogant vampires, con men, demons, kidnappers and killers.

“The villains always get to shoot the coolest guns and drive the coolest cars,” he says.
Whether his upcoming role in the mega-budgeted War For the Planet of the Apes is officially a villain is not clear at this point, but Rook does play a human soldier who serves under the film’s primary antagonist, The Colonel (played by Woody Harrelson.) Rook plays Boyle and Gabriel Chavarria plays Preacher, the Colonel’s two right-hand men.

“There’s a big difference between the two characters in regards to Preacher and Boyle,” Rook says. “There’s an antagonist, protagonist side to things, even though we’re both on the same side. ”

At the same time, Rook continues to make his own films. Frustrated at the sort of roles he was, or wasn’t, landing earlier in his career, he founded the independent production company back in 2009. He makes his feature debut as a writer-director-star in The Perfect Pickup, an upcoming romantic comedy about a group of four friends who set out to determine the perfect way to pick up women.

He plans to follow that directing and starring in a holiday movie called Christmisfits and with a post-apocalyptic sci-fi web series called A.R.I.D., in which he will play an convict who realizes most of the world population has been decimated.

As for Timeless, NBC has not announced whether it will renew the series. But Rook is confident and looks forward to more history-related adventures. That is if Karl survives the first season. So far, viewers have watched Flynn and Karl attempt to disrupt major moments in U.S. history, whether it be Watergate, the Hindenburg disaster, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Apollo 11 mission and even The French and Indian War in 1754.

“It’s not only a period piece, it’s every period piece,” Rook says. “Every episode is something different that I don’t usually get to do. I play a lot of villains, but usually it’s always modern day. I was completely excited because I had never done a period piece and now I get to do every single one.

Not only that, when I first started watching the show it hit me that this is different because you are learning things. I didn’t know the full details of Lincoln’s assassination. I didn’t know the full details of Watergate. It’s based on reality. To be on set and see characters that look like Lincoln and Houdini and Bonnie and Clyde. That adds to the cool factor.”

http://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/television/good-at-bad-lethbridge-native-chad-rook-enjoying-timeless-role-as-violent-henchman

My opinion: I like the TV show Timeless.  I watched the pilot and thought it was good, and decided to watch the 2nd episode to determine if I should record every episode.  The 2nd episode was good too and I recorded the whole series.

It's a fun action show and you do learn history.