It's been awhile since I've written about TV on this blog. Even though we still live (I think?) in the "Golden Age of Television"(tm), I don't watch a whole lot of TV, at least by our contemporary "Golden Age"(tm) standards. These days it seems like everyone is required to binge watch three seasons of content every day, or at least to brag about doing so whether one has done so or not.
I don't usually enjoy binge watching. I like some time to digest what I watch. I actually preferred olden times of waiting a full week between episodes and tuning in at a specific time when you could share the experience with others at the same time. Weird, I know. If you think about it, it's odd that "binge-worthy" is a compliment. Imagine eating at a nice restaurant and exclaiming, "My compliments to the chef! I ate that dish really fast! It's binge-worthy!"
I also live with a TV enthusiast of very different tastes. If I'm going to watch straightforward science fiction, fantasy, or horror shows, I tend to watch them late at night by myself, which is a time when I often would rather take advantage of the quiet and get some reading in.
I'm exaggerating a bit, of course. I watch plenty of TV. About as much as I want to. And here is the first part of my roundup of some interesting shows I've watched in the last six or seven months, starting with The Expanse, The Haunting of Hill House, and Future Man.
The Expanse, Season 3
I liked season 1 of The Expanse, but I felt like the show didn't really come together until season 2 (see my thoughts here). And in season 3 The Expanse has become one of the best science fiction TV shows I've seen in a long time. It's also about as close to so-called "hard science fiction" as you're going to get on TV. I've read the first two in the series of novels upon which this show is based. Season 3 makes me want to go back and pick up the books.
The plot of this season picks up with the alien protomolecule as well as the conflicts between the three main centers of power in the solar system: Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. It's hard to talk much about the plot of season 3 without spoilers, but I can say that the seeds planted in season 1 finally start coming to fruition and there are some new seeds being planted for future seasons.
It also seems like the cast is really getting into their groove with these characters. My favorite continues to be Avasarala (Shoreh Aghdashloo). My only complaint is that she's not featured in all the episodes, but I can forgive the show because I've also really come to like Bobbie the space marine (Frankie Adams), Alex (Cas Avner), and Amos (Wes Chatham). The Belters are a lot more distinguishable now, and I especially like Camina Drummer (Cara Gee). There's also an interesting subplot back on Earth that involves a Christian pastor played by Elizabeth Mitchell (who also played Juliet on Lost).
As I noted before, one of the philosophically interesting things about The Expanse is to imagine it as a possible future for humanity. Colonizing the solar system is a technically feasible task, one that might be supported via asteroid mining. And at least on Earth, severe poverty is nearly eliminated (but it's complicated). But as much as Gene Roddenberry and I hope otherwise, it's also entirely possible we'll bring a lot of our old hierarchies with us into the future and the expanse of space, not to mention inventing some new ones. As I said my post, "Random Thoughts, Part 3," "I hope for a Star Trek future and fear a Mad Max future, but we’ll probably end up with The Expanse future."
Is there a way to get all the good parts of The Expanse without all the bad? Would it take an outside intervention to truly bring us together -- or to pull us far enough apart to quell old enmities?
The Expanse encourages viewers to ask all these questions, but don't worry: it's also a scientifically-interesting show with plenty of great characters, great cast, political intrigue, cool special effects, neat gadgets, and more. That it has something for almost every kind of science fiction fan is a big part of what makes The Expanse one of the best shows on TV right now. I can't wait to see where season 4 takes us, and in the meantime, I've got a lot of books to catch up on!
The Haunting of Hill House
I'm a fan of Shirley Jackson's classic novel The Haunting of Hill House, but somehow I had no idea Netflix was adapting it to a series until I saw a friend discussing it on social media and heard my students discussing it in my horror and philosophy course last fall. Unlike previous film adaptations, which more-or-less follow the basic plot structure of the book, the Netflix series has almost nothing to do with the book aside from the basic idea of a haunted house, a voiceover lifted directly from Jackson's famous prologue, and a few character names that are recycled. It's not even really a sequel or a reboot.
So, what is it? I admit I was disappointed to hear it has little to do with the book, but in this case I think the writers of the show did something pretty cool. They turned a quirky, but deeply philosophical novel about a group of strangers into an inter-generational family drama. As many people have pointed out, it's like This is Us ... but with ghosts!
The family drama takes a couple episodes to ramp up, but once it does it's hard not to feel something for these characters (although as David Barr Kirtley noted in the episode of The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy dedicated to the show, how are they paying for all this, especially the property taxes on that giant house for decades?).
Aside from some of the thoughts on how we are all haunted by ghosts of our own making (a theme it does share with the book), probably the most philosophically-interesting part of the show is that it contains a really cool and unique causal loop, which may now be one of my favorite examples of such a thing (see also the brand new Netflix show Russian Doll, which I will discuss in a part two or three of this TV Roundup -- on a side note, someone at Netflix really likes causal loops...). To say more about the causal loop in The Haunting of Hill House would be an unforgivable spoiler, but if you'd rather read about causal loops and other monkey business about time (including my discussions of the Terminator and Planet of the Apes movies), check out a post from a few years ago on time travel and the metaphysics of time.
But, you might ask, isn't The Haunting of Hill House supposed to be a scary horror show? It is! What I love about the scares is that it doesn't overdo them. It's much like the book in this regard, but there are a few 21st century jump scares just to keep the kids watching. Precisely because the show doesn't scare you every time you think it might (and there sure are a lot of creepy scenes), when it does go for the scare, it works. And the constant element of dread works about as well as it does in any on-screen horror. I think a skilled author can get an even deeper dread on the page (Shirley Jackson and Stephen King are masters of this), but maybe that's just me.
The only thing I didn't like about the show was the direction it took in the last couple episodes. Granted, the show is pretty much drifting free from the book, but the way they mangle Shirley Jackson's famous prologue ought to make her roll over in her grave, or better yet, haunt the writers' room.
Future Man
I had been aware of Hulu's Futureman for awhile, but I didn't really know anything about it. Then their ad blitz for season 2 reminded me that the show exists. I was in the mood for something funny, so I thought I'd check it out. And I loved it!
It's maybe not everyone's kind of humor. It can honestly be pretty crass. As The Geek's Guide the the Galaxy panel on this show points out, Seth Rogen is a producer and if you find Seth Rogen's movies funny, you'll probably like Future Man, too. I also really recommend that Geek's Guide episode. It's great!
Aside from Douglas Adams, there's not much that works both as real science fiction and as humor. Humorous science fiction may be rare because a lot of science fiction is deadly (boringly?) serious and a lot of humor loses focus on the science fictional aspects. I didn't care much for The Orville precisely because I felt like the humor and the science fiction elements of the show were pulling in different directions, but maybe I'll give it another chance sometime. In Future Man, the jokes work as part of the science fiction story, as they do on a great science fiction improv podcast called Mission to Zyxx that I also love. (All this said, if you do like The Orville, you'll probably like Future Man, too).
The story of Future Man begins with Josh Futterman (Josh Hutcherson of Hunger Games fame), a quintessential "loser" who lives with his parents and works as a janitor by day and becomes a video gamer by night. After he beats his favorite game, two of the characters from the game become real and tell him they've traveled from the future to seek him now that he's proven his skill in battle.
You might be thinking at this point that this sounds an awful lot like the plot of The Last Starfighter, a fact that Josh himself points out. But that's what's brilliant about Future Man: normally when a character points out a reference, it's lame, but in Future Man, it works. I think it's that the writers are staying ahead of the audience rather than explaining things to us. There's also an episode that makes fun of James Cameron pretty hard, which is hilarious. (I know some fans of The Orville are mad here, but the difference is that these little references work because Josh is a 21st century person and the references actually have something to do with the plot).
You can tell that the writers are real science fiction fans who revel in pointing out the paradoxes of time travel and the many absurdities of the time travel sub-genre, but always in a loving way. This is satire done by people who love what they're satirizing. I find this to be a deep point, actually: if you can't have a laugh at the absurdities of time and life once in awhile, what kind of life would that be? Is a humorless life worth living?
But the show isn't just rehashing old time travel tropes. Especially when you get to season 2, there's some cool new stuff going on, but never at the expense of the jokes. I can honestly say I laughed out loud at least once during every episode for two seasons.
The cast is great. Josh Hutcherson works as the befuddled everyman. Eliza Coupe and Derek Wilson do amazing jobs as the time-traveling warriors Tiger and Wolf, who are befuddled by our world. I especially loved seeing how their characters develop over time, as when the previously gruff and overly intense Wolf picks up a unexpected skill.
The show is a lot funnier and better written than I've probably made it sound. I haven't seen science fiction humor this good in a long time, with the possible exception of the new Dirk Gently show, which I just remembered I never finished watching. I recommend Future Man for fans of Douglas Adams who nonetheless hope Adams didn't entirely exhaust the possibilities for humorous science fiction.
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