Asakiyume mita

I finished watching the series Containment on Netflix the other day. Yes: although I hate zombie stories, I have a morbid fascination with contagion stories. The premise of this story is that a flu virus has been genetically modified to cause hemorrhagic symptoms, resulting in an impressive 100 percent fatality rate, killing its victims just two days after exposure. That’s a trifecta for an infectious disease: easily transmitted, exceptionally deadly, and fast acting. In real life there isn’t any disease that’s all three—or rather, there are some (like meningitis), but we have treatments that can cut down on the deadliness, not to mention vaccines. Anyway, this virus gets loose and our story begins.

The setting is Atlanta, but it’s Atlanta the way Boston is Boston in Fringe, which is to say, in name and sky shots only. I know that Atlanta, like Boston, has a large population of people who’ve moved there from elsewhere, but in this series no one—not one character—attempts anything like a southern accent. Not one character grew up there? Not the pregnant eighteen-year-old? Not the 11-year-old son of the schoolteacher, who’s brought her class on a field trip to the hospital? Nope. No one.

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I’m a carping, critical viewer, but I enjoyed the show enough to binge-watch the last four episodes, so if you share my morbid interest in epidemics, check it out and tell me what you think of it.

PS: regarding Into the Inferno, I did see it, and I'll post about it later.

**The series also includes one gay character, who’s favorably portrayed but whose partner is conveniently off screen, and one character in a wheelchair, who isn’t defined by her physical limitation but is definitely shown as vulnerable and in need of support because of it.

We got Apple TV, so suddenly we have access to way more shows. I’ve written up reviews of the ones we’ve watched recently—but I’ve divided them into two entries, as it gets long. Here’s part one.

Fringe (2008–2013)

A US show. We saw all but the final two-thirds of the final (fifth) season, when the show seriously went off the rails.

I really loved this series, which starts out as sort of an updating of the X-Files concept and then goes off in its own direction. Every episode does have some sticky, body-horror-type aspect, which is not my thing, but those were very eye-closable and ear-pluggable, and meanwhile, the characters and stories were fabulous. I loved King Learianly emotional mad-scientist Walter, played by John Noble of Denethor fame. This guy has apparently gotten typecast as someone who is either going to have son issues (Fringe, LOTR) or father issues (Sleepy Hollow). The other characters (capable, reserved FBI agent Olivia Dunham, Walter’s genius-but-ne’er-do-well son Peter Bishop, sweet FBI agent Astrid Farnsworth; inscrutible boss of the Fringe division Philip Broyles) start out as familiar types but grow in depth within just a few episodes. In addition to having exciting episodic adventures, the show deals sensitively with family, loss, grief, trust, selfishness, wrongdoing, guilt, and redemption, along with identity and what makes us who we are. An alternate universe and, later, an alternate timeline give the writers a chance to explore who characters might be if things had gone differently. And with the exception of a couple of cartoonish bad guys, everyone has a chance to be forgiven and to make better choices.

Dark Matter (2015)

A Canadian show. A bunch of characters wake from stasis on an interstellar freighter with no memory of who they are. Someone among them erased all their memories—but it went wrong, and whoever did it lost their own memories, too. Instant mistrust. And they’re not happy about what they find, when they are able to discover who they were.

The premise was fun, and I liked the android character. However there is an Asian character whose storyline is so screamingly orientalist that pretty much every time he hit the screen, I had to scream. I'm talking painfully, cringeingly orientalist. Additionally, because the ship basically runs itself, the characters have nothing much to do all day except … hang out. So of course all the Asian character does all day is practice martial arts. Yeeeeaaaaah. Apparently a second season will air in 2017.

Outcasts (2011)

A British show that was cancelled after one season.

Refugees from a very near-future earth have settled the planet of Carpathia, which is earthlike except that it appears to have no megafauna or even medium-sized fauna, and is prone to violent sandstorm-like storms.

We watched this after Dark Matter, and it was a relief to have characters who weren’t simply cartoons or adolescent in their motivation and action (with the exception of the Evil American—who made a fun change of pace from the Evil Brit that you get in American shows, but who was pretty transparent in his deviousness). However, the pace was **really** slow. Also, I wanted the weird alien stuff that I knew would come to come quicker, be more present, and to be … slightly different from what it was. (Could we please do away with the trope of aliens just wanting to understand that thing we hooomans call luuurve?) Still, it was an okay way to chill out of an evening. Warning, though: it ends without resolving any of the plot developments, though some things are made clear.