Farewell, Gladiators! #Scandal #ScandalFinale #seriesfinale #ABC #Shondaland

Farewell, Gladiators! #Scandal #ScandalFinale #seriesfinale #ABC #Shondaland

All pictures courtesy of ABC and Shondaland Productions 

It's rare that I get to write one of these. I think the last time I wrote one was for the short-lived, but twisty-good (in my opinion) series Revenge, another ABC show about backstabbery, betrayal, lying, cheating and rich people problems. In the TV-landscape it is quite rare to encounter. A TV show is very akin to a new restaurant or business, in that over 90% of them fail their first or second year out, and often close up shop without warning. For years, fans have lamented about their favorite new shows suddenly being canceled or put on long, indeterminate hiatuses often without proper conclusions. I think the most flagrant example and probably the one that started the cancellation trend of unsatisfying ends was that of Alf, the 1980's sitcom about a bizarre-looking alien that comes to live with a family in suburban America. It is now not only known in pop culture as one of the strangest shows with a cuddle-ugly alien thing to possibly ever exist, but is infamous for its final episode's final shot showing Alf gazing into the sky while a spaceship, presumably from his home planet, is beaming light down on him. Does he ever get back home like E.T.? What happens to the family who cared for him for four seasons? And what about the government agencies that have chased after him? Fans will never know because the show ended on a huge cliffhanger in hopes of the network keeping them on another season, only to be axed a week or two after the finale aired. All of that long opening paragraph and out-of-the-blue Alf reference simply to say this: It's a big deal when a beloved, long-running scripted series gets a series finale.

President Mellie Hardly Factored Into This Episode If You Ask Me

B
ut did we deserve this finale? Eh! Let's first recap for any of those people who just like reading my words or like to experience things over again. With Olivia having told her clan that the only way to get out of their current predicament—on the cusp of being taken down and Mellie's presidency being de-legitimized due to charges of treason—was to go over the cliff and actually... tell the truth (gasp!). The truth about everything, but mainly about B6-13. Our finale, aptly titled “Over The Cliff” opened with them readying to testify about their involvement in and/or knowledge of this organization. Everyone from sitting president Mellie, to Fitz, to Olivia, to Huck and down the line were going to testify. They'd do this all to prevent Cyrus from taking over the white house. But first, in order to even get the clout and grand hearing that they wanted, the guy that was looking into Mellie's supposed treasonous attempt to bring down Air Force 2 had to do something drastic. See, he was threatened by Jake and saw no way to prosecute B6-13 without also incriminating himself and bringing everything down. He was a true white hat who only ever wanted to be in a position of power to push strongly for gun control. He asked one thing of Olivia: that she make Mellie act on gun control as one of her first agendas after they got their hearing. The promise made, he then shot himself, which triggered a shift of power back to David Rosen.

David, the long-suffering white-hat lawyer who saw himself stripped of his position a few seasons ago, only to come back and claim the seat as the USADA, was now taking over the investigation into B6-13, which held a higher priority than the treason against Mellie, from which he had to recuse himself. Cyrus' plan to take the oval has gone awry. So while David briefs Olivia's brood on what to expect during their testimony, telling them to give as much of the truth as possible, Cyrus goes to Jake and tells him that they need to get rid of David. Frankly, he wants a hit out on almost all of them at this point. Jake doesn't actively agree, but does go to find Rosen and tries to intimidate him out of continuing the investigation and bringing charges. He reminds him that he shot Cyrus' husband in the back on the street right in front of Rosen, and even raises his gun to him. But David, in his own glorious impersonation of the old Olivia Pope, gives Jake a serious talking to about being good and decent, and actually believing in something for himself and no longer being the puppet of everyone around him. It saves him and Jake disappears.

Jake goes back to Cyrus and tells him that he didn't do as “ordered” because he didn't want to, and that Cyrus can't say a single word to him about it because he isn't strong enough to do the killing himself. At this point, I got a little confused because I could have sworn that we did see Cyrus kill at least one person before through some means. I digress. Cyrus takes the criticism to heart and calls Rosen in in the middle of the night, while Rosen was cuddled up with Abby, so that he can sign a confession and make a deal that will absolve him of any future charges.

David (L) is the stupidest, most trusting lamb on the show. Why meet Cyrus at night? 

It's a trap that tries (and fails) to be rather Shakespearean in nature when he offers Rosen a drink of poisoned wine. Rosen falls to the floor as he is choking but is still alive. It takes too long for Cyrus, and he grabs a pillow and suffocates the man, but only after showing us the many faces of horror that we are to believe have changed him. He can't believe he's killed someone for the first time. After all of those orders to kill, all that bad-wolf bloviating he's done through the years, agony is writ upon his face as he must kill the most honest, upstanding, white hat probably on the entire show.

Meanwhile, as the group awaits a final decision about each of their testimonies to come in, and they all know that they will go to jail based on what they've said, Quinn and the group go to prison to visit Charlie, and perform a solo-visitation-room wedding officiated by Huck. It could be their last chance at tying the knot and Quinn wants to commit even if she'll never see Charlie again. Redhead Abby struggles not to cry and break down now that David is dead because they need to see this over-the-cliff thing all the way through to the fiery crash at the bottom, and if she starts mourning now, she'll never stop. Olivia goes to her father and asks him to stand in the sun with the rest of the group and also testify, to which he says that he is retired. They argue back and forth about the kind of woman he always wanted her to be and her fulfilling that destiny only for him to still say no and say that he is escaping the country. Olivia then hops over to Fitz and challenges him either to fight with her about their past bad decisions or make love to her on their potential last night of freedom. He chooses the latter, but Shonda then fails to give us one last great love scene.

And then they get the call. The call comes in that the decision has been delayed because of a new witness with new testimony. Yes, it is Papa Pope, Eli or Rowan as was his kill name, come to testify before the slew of white men looking at the facts concerning B6-13. In one last great speech for Joe Morton, he pulls out an epic white male privilege speech that sees him gloat about how he, a black man, quietly ran the country for 30 years, deciding presidencies, what laws would and wouldn't get enforced, who lived and who died, and basically every decision and every freedom that most US citizens take for granted, especially the white male ones. He was the true ruler, and he was the architect of such an organization that became bigger than the US Federal government itself. He was command, and you can't take command... But you can give it away. He appeals to their racist/racial bias bones and tells them that while he is command, the author and finisher of the American fate, they don't have to give the US public him. He doesn't have to be the face of this organization which surely must be dismantled and prosecuted. Instead of giving the public a black face in charge of everything, he (and they) sacrifices Jake, the current command. Jake is arrested and thrown in jail (I guess we were supposed to assume that the trial already went down) and everything is then pinned to him and his secret organization. The treason charges against Mellie quietly go away and Olivia tells her that she, too, is going to go away and let Mellie rule how she wants to, instead of being in her ear the whole time. Mellie respects that.

From An Earlier Season. Also This Finale Episode Felt Like Morton's Time To Shine Most

Olivia then goes to Jake in jail and talks to him one last time before he is set to be shipped off to Federal Super-max prison in Indiana (it might have actually been Illinois, but I watched the Cavs-Pacers game right after and my fury at its outcome may have soaked my memory). She asks who he might've been had she left him on that island a few seasons back, left him to stand in the sun and not dragged him back to DC. Like how many licks it takes, the world may never know.

Finally, Olivia calls Cyrus into the oval before officially packing it in and hands Cyrus his resignation papers. He starts talking about how he was never charged with anything and how he is clear and free. But then he shifts and asks Olivia if she can still enjoy a drink. Not a reference to David per se, he insists that after having finally crossed that mad line by killing David, he can no longer get the insanity and brutality of what all they've done over the years out of his blood system no matter what he tries. He can't even enjoy a good drink without thinking of the blood shed. Maybe it is time for him to finally go. He signs the papers and does just that.

We end with Charlie getting out of prison, Huck standing around with no real meaningful ending, Abby finally breaking down into tears because not only are they all not going to jail after their testimony was all redacted in order to charge Jake but Rosen is still super-dead, Mellie signing gun control as one of her first new measures and Olivia meeting Fitz on the sidewalk and doing the old romantic “Hi” thing that every writer has written at least once if they've ever done anything about romance (their, “You had me at hello,” moment). But the final shot is the most curious because it features two little black girls walking through the hall of presidential portraits and seeing Fitz's portrait which is of him behind a window (almost as weird as Obama bushes, but that one had some seriously hilarious symbolism). But then they turn a corner, walk a little farther only to stop and see a portrait of Olivia Pope in a dress that looks very similar to one that Shonda herself has worn before. Some fans have wondered about this ending and Shonda refuses to give the answer, but I think it's quite clear judging from Papa Pope's speech about power and her serving at the pleasure of white people, not to mention her having put two presidents into office and her own love affair with the oval, that this is a shot from far into the future, and she was, at one point, president.

You're A Villain

OK, so now that we're caught up with the recap, I have to say that I absolutely hated this ending. It wasn't satisfying in the least and fell into the trap-trend that I saw possibly developing years ago. First, to talk about the potential trend, I have to mention the wave of reboots. If you look back through some of my posts, I completely called the trend of reboots slowly drifting back into TV now that movies were inundated with them. For certain, if you aren't a cinema/entertainment history buff, you should know that TV often follows the trends set by film, lagging behind by about eight years give or take. Had we seen a few reboots of old shows in the 90s? Sure. But not like what we have seen in the last 15 years with everything from Roseanne to 90210 to Dynasty and Dallas returning to our airwaves in some form or fashion. We are getting reboots and remakes at an alarming rate in a medium that must feed on new ideas in order to thrive. We're also realizing that the actors and actresses we absolutely loved on past series have found hard times after such big success earlier in their careers, leading many of them to be open to come back and retread familiar characters even after saying adieu to them so long ago. And no, hard times doesn't necessarily mean monetary-wise but can be just getting good roles again. So with this, I predicted about two years ago (unfortunately, I don't think it made it on to this blog, so if this is the first time you're reading it, remember where you heard it from) that some popular series of today would start writing series finales that leave a wide berth of story lines and characters to play with for possible reboot or “sequel series” considerations. This series finale completely smacks of that potential future nostalgia-pandering on both ABC and Shonda's behalf.

For starters, for the last two years I have maintained that Olivia was, in fact, the actual villain of the show. Thankfully, she said as much on the penultimate episode. I called that she was a villain after seeing the abortion episode. But note that it was not the act of having the abortion that made her a villain, rather the actions leading up to and beyond it and the way she went about everything in her life at that time that made her the villain. This also marked the show's long-gestating but finally completed transformation into something almost wholly different from what it started as. No, the show did not start as a political spy thriller, which it became in later seasons, but more as a romance/law show. It's crazy to think that while the political theater was always there, Olivia did more lawyering than politics: she helped people escape bad situations, defended the innocent, advocated for proper law and due process, and could try a case in the court of public opinion which would lead to their never being a trial. She and her group found evidence on people that no one else bothered to find, they helped stop terrorist plots and made good on promises to clients who they saw as good and decent people in a bad situation. The White House's role was more as a tool by which Pope could wield clout and get things done for her clients, rather than something she desired so that she could shape the world.

Remember This? Back When We Were All Shipping Olitz and Thinking Side-Chickdom Might Not Be That Bad?

But as the show grew more political in story-line (not in tone. In tone, it was always addressing the social justice issues of today and kicking butt doing it), it shifted away from romance and went full steam with plots focused solely on the white house, even dropping the weekly cases of innocent people in need of help—I think they only had two of those this entire season, if I'm counting correctly and that's even after Quinn took over at OPA.

I said all of that to say that the shift in tone is what allowed the writers to be so lax in writing the finale and have it be perfectly setup for a reboot. See, now they can reboot the show either as the political drama it ended as or as the romance it started as, using the “hi” moment as a jumping-off point for future storytelling involving Liv and Fitz. But I also mentioned the change in the show to highlight the change in Olivia's character from good guy to bad guy, and suggest that the show should have concluded the way I have been suggesting for the last two years: either Olivia Pope dies or she falls on her sword for everyone and is imprisoned for life. We usually demand villains be punished in some way to make a satisfying ending for we viewers. Either that or everything goes back to happy-go-lucky times to give the viewers a happy ending. But I'd contend that Scandal askew-ed both in favor of an ambiguous ending that, again, allows for future stories to go anywhere.

On a show that was not shy about killing off its guest, main and recurring characters, none of the main players died in the finale after doing the most dirt through the seven-season run. Huck, Jake and Eli (as well as the gay secret service dude who killed the president's son) were all known killers throughout the duration of the show over its 11-year span of time, yet they all lived at the end. We also had Charlie and Quinn live happily ever after. Cyrus, the mastermind and right-hand to two presidents, who often communicated with his B6-13 cohorts openly and honestly about whom to kill, got to walk away without a single scratch to tarnish his legacy. The only important person who died was David Rosen, a good guy but someone whose death was, strangely, not felt as much as it probably should have been. Essentially, everybody who did crime and who did the most dirt got away, lived to see another day and lived through the BS. “We all did a bunch of bad stuff and nothing happened.”

The show started as a lovesick woman trying to atone for her past sins (rigging the election) by doing as much good for people that she could while using her White House influence to the people's advantage. But the worst thing is that the series and its finale never fully make this atonement. Yes, B6-13, the long-tentacled Hydra that controlled the government, is gone, but what of the rest of the crimes committed outside of their purview?

Even more troubling than the fact that everyone lived was that we still didn't get that great of an end to the romance. Some can argue that Liv's speech about making love to Fitz answered that question, but did it? Because to me that seemed like an everyday speech they'd make to each other. It wasn't memorable and wasn't a declaration of some higher level of feeling, it was just in the moment. It was far from Fitz's “Slave to you” speech in season 3(?), far from the stand in the sun speech, far from him begging to go to Vermont with her. And as far as it being a “You had me at Hello,” moment, even that Jerry Maguire speech was preceded by Jerry's/Tom Cruise's brilliant commitment plea to her. He had finally decided after all the back and forth that he was in. Here, I feel like they could probably break up the next week.

We Shoulda Known This Was A Different Show When She Went From White Coat to Dominatrix Carmen San Diego

If I'm thinking about it, the same goes for the entire OPA family. Olivia's relationship with the others didn't feel restored to what it once was or even to what it was midway through the season. She still very much seemed lost and without a home at the end of the season, similar to how she found Quinn at the beginning of the series. It would have been great if that was the poetic note to be gotten from the show, but their switch in roles wasn't stressed enough for me throughout the series because Quinn never became white-hat good and strong. Just a few weeks ago she was going to kill Liv. And though we know where Quinn and Charlie are destined, what of everyone else? Will Mellie have her Olivia Pope-esque affair with her own younger black confidante in the one guy (you know, what's his name) or is that done? What about Abby? Where does she go from here after David's death? And why did Huck have that none-ending ending where all he did was basically stand in the background while everyone else got to emote about love, loss, doing the right thing or entering into a new chapter in their lives?

Ultimately, a good series finale is supposed to try to tie up loose ends about the fans' favorite characters. Yes, we know that the characters will probably continue on in their lives in the fictional worlds created by the show's creators, writers and producers, but finales are supposed to feel like the ending chapter in a very long but enjoyable book. But with the amount of loose ends left untied, this felt more like a run-of-the-mill season finale rather than a series finale. And it seemed quite clear from the ending that Shonda is open to revisiting it probably within the next 8-12 years, if only because of how I originally thought the series could end after viewing that electrifying first season way back in 2012: Olivia Pope becomes president. Fitz would be the first man, OPA would still be around and so would Mellie. And Cyrus, after maybe growing used to killing, would decide to resurrect B6-13 out of seeing a need for the organization in the country. And frankly, if this current trend of rebooting TV continues, and Kerry Washington is exposed to the world of so-so roles for actresses (though, the industry is changing and I think she won't have problems finding work, especially now that she's partnering to produce a TV adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere), she might be glad to come back and do a 13-episode-a-year season for a few seasons. Most certainly everyone else will want to, maybe with the exception of Cyrus. Outside of him, these are the best roles that any of these actors and actresses have ever played.

As a season finale of a show that will go on an “extended hiatus” for maybe a full three presidential terms, it's fine. But as a series finale like what it purports to be, it, without conflation or exaggeration, is literally in my top five shows that had the worst series finale ever. I should mention that I, unlike most people (apparently) think that Seinfeld still holds the place as the greatest series finale ever when you consider the entirety of the show and the rich silliness of the characters. Them going to prison for not helping a citizen being robbed was the most ironic (and thus, fitting) end to a group of people who lived their lives by trying to slip, cheat and obfuscate the system, and unintentionally doing some of the most infuriating things ever. They were regular people but also terrible regular people which is what made it so great for them to be imprisoned for being the regular people they were. They rarely ever tried to be good people, they just didn't want to be bad. I still contend that it was genius, and that it was able to bring back all of our favorite characters in the series in one of the least contrived or overly done (so many wedding finales) that we, to date, have ever seen. The end to Scandal should be considered a partial scandal in itself, because it definitely needed some fixing.

Either She Was President Or They Credit Her As A Founding Mother Of The New B6-13-less Republic

What do you think? Did you watch the Scandal finale? Did you like it? If you did, why? What were your favorite parts? Where do you think the characters will go? What do you think of the meaning behind the last shot? And would you be down to see Scandal get rebooted a few years down the line? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming summer. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “Well, well, lovers of liberty. You've hung in there for six years and seven twisty, good, OMG seasons. Now, maybe it's time for you—”

'Wait, did we not kill Sally Langston either? And after she got away with killing her husband?'

“We should call somebody about this.”

'Command?'

“That'll work. Wait, what's his number?”

'Don't worry. It's been handled.'

P.S. Wow! Everybody got to live. This is literally the reverse of Hamlet. I have to hand it to Shonda, she said she'd only have the show run for seven seasons, and she kept her word, even though it didn't quite satisfy all the cravings. Even though I didn't like the last two and a half seasons, I stuck it out (I usually do once I commit to a show. Can't wait to finally break up with Grey's and Once Upon a Time some day), and you tried your best to deliver. And sometimes your best is all that someone can ask for. Well done!

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It's About Justice, But For Who? #ForThePeople #3weekroundup #recap #review #ABC #newseries

It's About Justice, But For Who? #ForThePeople #3weekroundup #recap #review #ABC #newseries

All pictures courtesy of ABC

Is it late? Yes, it's late. Very late. Like, super late. Like, the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland kinda late. But I've been very busy cooking up good stuff for you all, desperately trying to get people to read and review my upcoming novel The Man On The Roof (#TMOTR) and getting a thousand other things ready. I'm also trying to get The Knowledge of Fear ready for release by the end of this month (yikes!), and get work on the second season of Extraordinary done and ready for summer release, not to mention start this new mystery novel entitled The Ones That Stare, due out this December. I'm very busy and booked to capacity, as bald-headed Tamar Braxton might say. But I'm still reading and viewing some of the latest in entertainment for you all. (I know I haven't put up a single book review in the life of this blog, but it's comin' eventually. I think). With all the excitement going on, I am set to miss more shows this year than ever before, not to mention I have decided to skip this year for The Writer (eek!). I might have mentioned this before, but yes, I am skipping a year of my summer serial The Writer in order to try (keyword) to catch up on some other projects that have been languishing in editing or development and desperately need my attention. How the hell I will finish all the work that I need to do this year, I really don't know. Every year it seems like I'm slowing down far more than I should be and I'm still not that old yet. But enough about my deteriorating health, we're all here for For The People. So, will Shondaland's new show bring it, or do its legal antics already seem like old-hat? Let's find out together. (Oh boy, that was a terrible opening paragraph. Sigh! This is gonna be rough).

ABC's new show For The People comes straight from super-producer Shonda Rhimes. Using her Shondaland production banner, she has recently built an incubator of talent, often cultivating new show creators from the inside, while also reaching beyond her own imaginative bounds to grab intriguing intellectual properties. While the most recent Shonda-produced show didn't fare so well (see: Still Star-Crossed), the creator behind this one is hoping to piggyback off of the initial concepts, tropes and starry-eyed qualities that made Shonda's original hit Grey's Anatomy a phenomenon when it first premiered some 14 (13?) years ago. For The People follows a group of young, wide-eyed lawyers headed by Britt Robertson, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Susannah Flood as they take on some of their first cases in New York's famed Southern District Federal court, also known as The Mother Court. This is supposed to be a show not like most other legal shows. Both sides work for the government and are split up at the very beginning of the first episode.

The two sides we see are the public defenders and the US prosecutors who, essentially, bring the cases against criminals for the people. You get it? The show's name has a double or even triple meaning because technically both sides are working for the people, the common man, the little guy and oh my god, I'm explaining the meaning behind the name as if I'm talking to a bunch of idiots or children. Sorry. When you're away from reviewing for a while things get super sticky when you come back.

Sandra Bell played by Britt Robertson

Anyway, we have on our public defenders' side: Sandra Bell played by Britt Robertson in her first major TV role, Allison Adams played by Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Jay Simmons played by Wesam Keesh. Sandra, while not a loner, is a super-driven defender with a Meredith Grey-complex: she expects to one day be either the best or the second best but doesn't let her ego overshadow her drive to do what's right. On her first day, after being sworn in with all the other lawyers (both defenders and prosecutors), she immediately jumps at the chance to be the “on-duty” defender, or the person who is automatically sent a case by the court clerk because the case needs to go in front of a judge that day, and hasn't been vetted and assigned by the defenders' boss. The public defenders' boss, played by Hope Davis, tells her that “on-duty” is usually for more experienced lawyers who have gotten a handle on this high court. But she is brash and bullheaded, so Sandra takes the duty anyway. Her first case: defend a young man (college-aged) accused of terrorism (trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty). Her opposition: Leonard Knox.

The other side or the US prosecutors are led by (meaning led by star quality, in my opinion) Kate Littlejohn. Played by Susannah Flood, Littlejohn is the essential Cristina Yang of The Mother Court. While Sandra shows up first to the swear-in, hours before they are supposed to be there, Kate shows up a close second. She is the rule of law hawk, the stickler for details, the everything-must-be-done-by-the-book woman who tolerates no fool, not even her boss or fellow all-male colleagues. Let me mention here that it is a very intriguing power and sexes (genders) dynamic that this show has setup. I will discuss it more in the critique section, but just know that battle lines are clearly drawn almost exclusively by gender and the gender politics are quite easy and rather blatant to pick up.

The Prosecutors (Lto R): Littlejohn, Seth, Knox

Anyway, the prosecutors team is rounded out with golden-boy and God's gift to... himself Leonard Knox, played by Rege-Jean Page; the oafish everyman Seth Oliver played by Ben Rappaport; and their boss played by Ben Shenkman. We all know that every lawyer is arrogant because they have to be in order to think that they can win their cases, but Knox's arrogance has been taken to another level, and for good reason. Reasons we'll get to in the next episode. But in the first episode, upon getting assigned their first cases, Knox asks Seth what case he got, only to find out that their boss handed Seth the terrorism case. While he pats Seth on the back, he wholly plots to snatch the case from him because the case he's been given isn't high-profile enough. His next stop is his boss's office where he lobbies for the case and wins, already dumping on poor Seth who recently worked in a rinky-dink law firm.

So, it is Knox versus Sandra in trying to convict this young brown-skinned Muslim man (kid, really) of terrorism. Meanwhile, as Sandra ignores her boss's advice to not let the case go to trial because she will inevitably lose, Sandra's friend and current roommate Allison takes a case about a man's embezzlement that has affected his family. That case just happens to be the one that was handed off to Seth after Knox pulled the robbery. Seth just happens to be Allison's on-again off-again boyfriend. They made a deal to not let their relationship get in the way of their work, but didn't know they'd be pitted against each other on the first day because I guess they've never seen any TV involving any kind of competitive environment and romance, like, ever! Seth's boss has given him what he thinks should be a complete gimme (Knox knew this) but somehow the young attorney manages to mess it up by leveling with his girlfriend during an at-home argument. Allison doesn't want to use the in-private information he freely gives her, but she does and ruins his case, allowing for the wife of the embezzler to slide, resulting in Seth losing his first case. Now, he's on probation.

Jay Simmons played by Wesam Keesh

Finally, Ms. Littlejohn outwits both Jay Simmons and his client. Jay, a brown-skinned law romantic wants to see nothing but the good side of people and give them compassion and an ear to bend because all criminals are simply people who society has chosen not to listen to. While I will somewhat agree with that, he takes it too far by going into his first case without reading the brief on his client and instead relying on the word of the man. In an embarrassing turn, he stands up to plead for the court to go light on his client because the man was just trying to take care of his brother while stealing money, only to immediately find out from Littlejohn that his client is a conman and pathological liar who didn't even tell Jay his real name and doesn't even have a brother. Jay's naivete and gullibility continue when he goes to the jailhouse to talk to his client about the government bureau he concocted in order to rob people of their cash. Jay is convinced that the man truly believes he works for this fictitious bureau and that he is insane, only for Littlejohn to hit him with the jailhouse video of the man talking up the effectiveness of his con while on his one call. Littlejohn then tells him that he could be a good lawyer if he tried, he's just not trying.

Back to Sandra and Knox who both give it their most valiant effort. Sandra learns that her “terrorist” client was not alone in the attempted bombing and that he was, in fact, set up by undercover FBI agents who posed as college kids, coached up what little radicalism he had for 18 months, picked a soft target for him to bomb and even built him a fake bomb to carry in a backpack. While all of this evidence is admissible and heard by the jury, she loses the case based on jury bias (he's a brown-skinned Muslim with a bomb. Doesn't matter if he was completely setup, he fell for the trap), and her own outburst at one of the ferry captains that day—a well-strategized ploy from Knox to draw out the jury's bias.

Left to Right: Boss played by Shenkman; Knox

While Knox gets the old pat on the back from his boss and freshly poured concrete for his golden-boy status, Sandra gets a parental talking-to from her boss who tells her that she should get something from every case, and today she got beat, but she'll learn from that. Everything wraps with a tinge of both hope and cliff-hangery-ness when we see Seth breakup and move out of Allison's apartment, and Sandra cement her living status as permanent roommate with Allison. While Allison has hope that she and Seth are just going through another off-again phase, she and Sandra take a walk across one of the many bridges in New York (maybe the Manhattan bridge? I don't live there, so...) so they can turn back and see where they work all lit-up at night. Oh, and they also discover that the two bosses—lead prosecutor and lead public defender—are pseudo-seeing each other or at least hang out often and go to ball games together.

Episode two sees Jay have to step up to defend a white supremacist who was accused of shooting and wounding a congresswoman during a protest clash. A skinhead, a myriad of offensive tattoos adorn the man's body, including on his neck and face. He believes in the RaHoWa, which, if you aren't familiar with it, stands for the Racial Holy War: the belief that one day all “minority” races will rise up, band together and come to attack whites... and the whites will win and eventually dominate the planet as one race. Side note: I found out about this theory while doing research for my as-yet to be released future sci-fi novel Mulatto. It's an insane belief.

At first Jay wants to cover the man in makeup and present him to the jury as a regular citizen who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he changes his mind upon hearing about the RaHoWa. Instead, he seeks to prove that the US hasn't brought in any good witnesses that can effectively ID the racist as the shooter, and shows three pictures of other tatted-up skinheads that attended that protest. He wins the case, but feels terrible about himself. He goes back to his parents dry cleaners only to have a good pep talk from his father who, even though he dislikes that he got this racist man off, tells him that what's most important is that he was able to utilize the law and actually have a trial because in many places in the world that is not guaranteed.

Meanwhile, because of Seth losing his first case and earning himself probation, he is paired with Littlejohn as her helping hand for her case. It comes from their boss's boss that they need to make an arrest that has an effect on the opioid epidemic. The prosecutor's office has been looking at a gaggle of doctors for over a year now, trying to pin over-prescribing charges to someone in order for the president to save face in this drug war. Littlejohn wants to comb through all the info they have gathered on the doctors to see if anything sticks out about their medical practices, and she wants Seth to sit quietly in a corner with his hands folded, so he doesn't touch anything. His idea: don't look at their medical practices but at their houses because they could've slipped up there. He wants to get warrants to randomly search 25 houses with no cause or evidence of any wrongdoing because I guess he doesn't know how the law actually works. The judge shoots them down, only for Littlejohn to use a twist of his idea and look into the doctor's personal finances instead of their business books. She finds that all but one of the doctors has a housekeeper. This man has three children, a dog and a working wife, not to mention a giant house and more money than he knows what to do with in New York. But no housekeeper in a culture where it's natural to have one.

Littlejohn and Seth get their hands dirty and go to see about the housekeeper, suspecting that he not only has one but that she is illegal which is why he doesn't have her on the books. Lo and behold, he does have one. Not only does he have a housekeeper but she is actually his unpaid (yes, you read that right) slave who has worked for him for 17 years so she can get back her passport, which he took, to go back home. She doesn't even want to be in this country. Even more shocking, he's been using her name to setup shell corporations to funnel international drug money for a cartel that ranges in the hundreds of millions. They not only bust him for human trafficking (slavery), but for the drug stuff, too, and are able to guarantee that his never-paid housekeeper gets no less than five million dollars of the seized money.

Allison 

While Knox mopes around the office, thinking that he has suddenly fallen out of favor because he was given a simple gun possession case, and Allison battles to out-wait Seth, so she doesn't have to be the first to apologize, Sandra takes a non-duty case when she sees a black woman come five minutes late to file some court papers concerning her living arrangement. Here, we meet court clerk Tina Krissman, the no-nonsense clerk who shows little to no emotion about doing her job, and, similar to Littlejohn, is a stickler about following the rules to a T. Sandra sees this as an outrage and decides to take the woman's case when she learns that the reason the woman was late to file was because she has poor living conditions. The stairs in her tenement are crumbling and there is no elevator, so she had to carefully and cautiously carry her special needs son down the stairs and frantically drive him across the city to his therapy before coming to court. She takes it to trial and gives a story about how terrible it is for people (children especially) to have to live in terrible conditions where they are always threatened with the idea of having to move—something which she herself experienced, which is why she refuses to unpack her things in Allison's apartment. She wins the case.

So while we learned that Knox is a rich-boy son of a US Senator and calls his mommy to the office to parade her around his boss in order to try getting him better cases, we also learn that Seth was completely done when he moved out because he no longer wants to be second fiddle to Allison who made all the decisions during their time together.

Episode three sees Allison take on a trial in which a young black man has stolen something. It is a routine trial but the judge orders that she will ultimately make her judgment with the aid of Evaluate, a new computer program that uses a complex and complicated algorithm to make a sentencing suggestion. After doing some research, she believes the software could be bias against black and brown-skinned people and needs a mathematician to testify on this point before the trial. As it so happens, her brother is a mathematician (and possible college professor) who lives a borough away from her. But they don't get along as well as she'd like. She is the oddball out in the family because she is the only one who didn't go for a math and/or science discipline like her mother, father and brother. He thinks she is the chosen one in their family because their parents gave her that apartment to live in rent-free. Even worse, he knows of the Evaluate technology and thinks it's brilliant, but he does tell her that bias is human and that she needs to look at it with humanity. That leads her to come up with the percentages of tough sentences, which shows that the software recommends tougher sentences than both the national average and the current judge. She would rather trust the judge's own human-error-filled sentences than the machine's. She gets the young man a light sentence.

Knox, the slimey worm he is, tries to poach a case from the very woman he is sleeping with when she, a lawyer for the northern court or some other big court in New York, lets slip after their coitus that she is pursuing the stalled boat of a billionaire embezzler—think Bernie Madoff—trying to flee the country. Unfortunately, a storm is coming, which makes getting to the boat nearly impossible, so the harbor master is willing to let the boat drift to whichever island the wind blows it. Knox uses Seth's meteorology expertise (he was a weather nerd in his youth) to predict where the boat will have to dock in the storm. It docks in New Jersey, but Knox knows this ahead of time and sends a group of Manhattan cops to a restaurant that literally sits right near the dock where the boat has to pull in, and he gets his billionaire.

But the biggest case comes when Littlejohn and Sandra go against each other in a national security case ala Eric Snowden. A young NSA agent and former military soldier procures some information that exposes that the US government was apparently using medical records to track down and deport illegals. While that might sound good to the Blood and Soil type, they had to secretly dig through millions of medical records, mostly of citizens. To the prosecution, the soldier is a traitor. To the public defenders, she is a hero doing her civic duty to protect the rights of citizens.

Each woman matches the other's wits as they battle over this young woman's life. Sandra goes to the press with the woman's story. Littlejohn prepares to make a deal of 78 months in prison. The woman believes she has started a movement and doesn't want a deal at all, but she is too young and naive to realize what she is doing. Sandra counters in court by saying that she wants all of the documents exposed, otherwise the US should dismiss the case. Littlejohn knows that by exposing all the documents or “evidence” they are opening up millions of classified documents that could be harmful to national security. Yet, she is willing to do it to win but asks that all the classified information be redacted and blacked out, which she estimates will take at least 18 months. The judge realizes they are both going to go for each other's throats and tells them to hash out a deal in his chambers. After Littlejohn tells a story about how she never got to go on a field trip to DC to see the capitol building—a lifelong dream—because some idiot thought the rules of the class didn't apply to him, they hammer out a deal that sees the young woman in jail for no more than a year and a lengthy probation. In the end, we see the respective groups (minus Jay) hanging with each other and the two leading ladies of each group feeling more comfortable around the people they will ultimately call family.

What's my grade? I give it a C+. Grey's Anatomy this ain't. I know this is a cliché, and we writers are supposed to hate them, but it is as they say that lightning almost never strikes twice in the same place. It will be hard for Shonda to ever replicate the success of Grey's, especially because of the steadily changing landscape of TV (although, you'd be hard-pressed to see the change with all of these crappy reboots). Again, Grey's Anatomy (along with Desperate Housewives) was a show that essentially changed the entire fabric of TV-viewing for a generation. It came with its own language, its own way of doing things and its own style that made us care about the characters and truly showed heart in TV making. It was, arguably, far more emotional than ER, and felt like it came from a younger mind with a different voice and way of looking at life. None of that is really here in For The People. Grey's had an angle. While it was definitely a good medical drama, it was far more of a contemporary romance. Sure, some people tuned in for the medical stuff, but most watched for the relationship drama that went on from week to week. It was about the adult-coming-of-age story of finding your true love, your clan and how that effects our work lives. Frankly, this is the criticism of Grey's in recent years: it focuses far too much on the medical and less on the romance, and while the medical has gotten more cutting edge and wowing, there is hardly one single couple that you can look at on the show right now and say, “Yes, I want that. I'm shipping them.” And don't tell me you're shipping that Avery/black Grey half-sister (I can't even remember her name most times) because they are very boring and their romance is as tasteless as tap water.

For The People, essentially, comes from the same place. While recent Shonda launches like How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal both still tried to employ the old Grey's formula (HTGAWM's love story was more familial with Annalise and Wes being like mother/son), For The People drives hard at the legal aspect which, after 50 or 60-some years of legal dramas, has to do something amazing to grab audiences. While this may reflect well the life habits of Millennials—more are work and cause-driven rather than relationship and sex-driven—it does little for the audience and doesn't allow us to connect with the characters nearly as much as we might want to. The one romance we have is immediately disassembled on the first episode, and there don't seem to be any other tenuous connections between anyone else, save for the sad attempt of Seth to try bonding with Littlejohn on some human level. Could they sleep together at some point? Sure. But do I care? At this point, not really. That means that the show has but one aspect to it and that is the legal aspect.

That one aspect? Eh! It ain't that great. While I appreciate the differences in using a higher court and in having everyone be a government employee, there isn't much to separate this from any other legal show. The one great thing it currently has going for it is that there aren't many legal dramas on right now. This show feels devoid of... feels. Do you feel a sense of family? No, not really. Sure, that last shot on episode three went a long way in trying to install some sentimentality, but it was held for so long and so little about the characters own families or struggle to fit in in life is still known that it almost felt synthetic, like they were trying to manufacture a connection to these people. This isn't a quirky, work-intensive bunch that all need acceptance and are super vulnerable, it's just a group of young, attractive people who work at an important place.

Then there is the subtle politics of today: gender politics. The fact that almost every main character on the public defender's side is a woman and almost every main character on the US prosecutor's side is a man is not lost on me. In fact, it also doesn't bother me, which is actually rather... saddening because I feel like it should bother me a little. No, not because they are playing gender wars on the show, but because the show is failing to exploit its fundamental design. A great deal of these cases are, I'm assuming, going to be ripped from the headlines and focus on hot-button issues of today that are highly political and easily dividing. Yet, here, I have yet to feel a tear in my heart about which side I should root for or come down on. For instance, the terrorist case should've had me more invested and questioning which side was right and which one was wrong. I should've agonized (as much as you can about a show) over the fact that the prosecutors easily won that case, even though it was clear that the young man had been set up by the FBI. But... I didn't. In fact, I really didn't care which side won. Granted, I sorta wanted Sandra to win but only because I like Britt Robertson so much, which has nothing to do with the narrative of the show. Would it have been nice to see the arrogant Knox get put in his place on the first case out? Yeah, and it might have given his character more dimension, but even that idea can only induce a shrug from me.

The show's premise is that the law is a two-sided coin. The exploit is (or at least should have been) that the public defenders are the compassionate ones, thusly why they are almost all female, while the prosecutors are the ruthless, cold, calculating ones, thusly why they are almost all male. And even though they do somewhat make that distinction, they never drive it home in a meaningful way. Instead, they fail to setup a good versus evil, and they fail to setup a good you choose who to support debate. I want to root for the public defenders and see Knox get crushed every time, but I am often left asking why should I cheer for anybody? 

To me, this show feels similar to FOX's The Resident. Where that show had people that I didn't feel I could properly root for, this show feels like it doesn't have people I could properly remember. Everyone feels like a walking, talking ideal, more of a symbol for something rather than an actual person. Yet, they don't even feel like very strong symbols and I can't particularly pinpoint why that is. Maybe that is because it doesn't dwell in the extremes that often make these shows watchable. It's cutthroat, but doesn't feel cutthroat enough. It tries to be real like a Law and Order, but is far from that level of grittiness. It doesn't employ the over-the-top wackiness of Boston Legal and isn't the hard-driving tough-issues-dealing kind of drama that The Practice was. It's really sorta ho-hum, and I can see why it was a mid-season replacement for the month of March. It couldn't even get a prime January spot.

Should you be watching? This is a tough one because while I think that the show could be ten times better, or that it could make a really great summer show, I'm not sure it's worth a watch right now. Considering what it replaced was Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, which I rather adored because it showed middle-America in a nice light while also mixing the good-naturedness of a My Name is Earl with a pseudo-religious magic, I don't think this warrants a full season in its current time slot. Again, as a writer and creator myself, I really hate talking bad about someone else's creation, but this doesn't ring the bell. It's a shame, too, because I think that it has a pretty good cast. I like Jasmin and really like Britt, and think that Hope steadies the show. For The People airs on ABC Tuesdays at 10pm EST.

What do you think? Have you heard about For The People? If not, do you think you'd tune in for an episode or two now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Did you like it? Was I too hard on it? And do you think Seth will get back together with Allison eventually, or will he hook up with Littlejohn? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “...that it be for the people, by the people.”

'Right. But remember that we also need to do something for big corporations, too.'

“What? But they're not the people.”

'OK, I see your point. But check this out, what if they were?'

“Ohhhhh!”

P.S. It's still rather baffling to me that corporations can legally be treated as people. I try not to make political statements on this blog but it would seem that if we are supposedly so economically sound now that we almost have full employment, then our next focus should be on one of two things: healthcare, and a critical and sound look and restructuring of the criminal system from new ways to police and all the way up through to new ways of picking judges and how trials are decided. Currently, our legal system is a mess and will only get worse. That is something that politicians should do for the people. I'll try to think of a better sign-off next time.

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This Has Not Been Marvel’s Year #Inhumans #3weekroundup #recap #review #ABC

This Has Not Been Marvel’s Year #Inhumans #3weekroundup #recap #review #ABC

All pictures courtesy of ABC and Marvel

Let me start this review by saying that I haven’t seen Logan still to this day, so don’t lump that movie in with the title of this article. This is mainly focused on Marvel Studios properties as produced or co-produced by Disney. Having already covered my disdain for this summer’s Spider-man: Homecoming and contented disappointment in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (it was OK, but could’ve been better), I now turn to TV. As noted earlier, I didn’t see The Defenders and didn’t particularly care to. I don’t have Netflix and only occasionally catch some of their shows on Youtube. That leaves me with the network shows. And while I have yet to see The Gifted (again, that would count more as FOX studios for me rather than Marvel), I have seen the first few episodes of Inhumans. So, has Marvel transformed what could’ve been a theatrical blockbuster into a serialized mega-hit, or is this show begging for Marvel to do the humane thing and put it out of its misery? Let’s find out together.

Before I begin, I should warn readers going forward that I actually enjoyed ABC’s Agent Carter that followed Peggy. You should be able to find a review of it somewhere on this blog. Was it great? Heck no. I thought it had a rather rocky start but that it got its footing about halfway through the first season and delivered a pretty good second season that linked well into the films. I should also say that I’ve been a day-one fan of Agents of SHIELD even when Marvel fans hated on it and even before Captain America: Winter Soldier switched the game up, which I still hope will happen again with this next Thor or with the Black Panther film. Yes, I’ve liked what I’ve seen of Daredevil as well, so you know where my baseline for fandom is. With all of that said, this Inhumans show is worse than that first cake that your boyfriend tried to make you on that one birthday you had where he was trying to go above and beyond to impress you knowing damn well he can’t cook for nothin’. Yer garbage, Inhumans! Gah-bage!

Left to Right: Gorgon, Karnak, Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Maximus the human

Inhumans follows the boring exploits of the titular race of people. Inhumans, as explained in Agents of SHIELD, are humans who have undergone a transformation after having been exposed to Terrigen crystal mist. Think mutants but with an alien twist. And to think that I was actually worried about this show when I started plotting my Extraordinary episodic serial novel (out now). Anyway, like mutants (which we all know Marvel can’t have because they sold all of them to FOX), Inhumans are hated beings that are hunted down, captured and often jailed or killed. The world is not really ready for them but they are in it regardless. Only in the show Inhumans do we learn that these types of people have existed for years, eons. Currently, to avoid all of the harshness on earth, the Inhumans live in an old-school monarchy kingdom on the moon, beneath an invisible dome. They live in a city that is divided into a strange caste system that almost seems to exist for no reason save but to create needless drama. In the comics I thought that they lived on a floating, invisible island above New York, but I haven’t actually read the comics.

The city, as said, is ruled by an archaic form of monarchy in which there is a royal family and no kind of parliament. There is a king and queen. The king is Black Bolt, played by Anson Mount. Throughout the first episode (which is smashed together with the second episode to make them movie-length. More on that later) we see Black Bolt using his hands to speak. At first, without knowing much about the character, one might think he was deaf or dumb (couldn’t speak). We later find out that he is actually imbued with such great power that simply by speaking he can launch cars, destroy people and even wipe away entire cities with the booming sound of his voice. This, I suppose, is why they call him Black Bolt, though, I would’ve expected his powers to be more thunderous than just sound, but I digress. Let me also say here that from what I’ve heard on the show so far, no one has a legit name AND a superhero name. For instance, Black Bolt isn’t his work name like Spider-man or Iron Man. It’s his actual name, or at least what everyone calls him. Just keep that in mind as we walk through the characters.

Next, we have his wife and queen Medusa played by Serinda Swan. Medusa, as one could guess, is Marvel’s play on the mythical she-devil of the same name that was said to be able to turn a man to stone simply by him looking straight on at her face or, in some twists of the story, directly into her eyes. While she doesn’t have that power here, she does have another intersecting aspect of the Greek myth’s powers: sentient hair. The mythical Medusa was said to have a thicket of snakes for her hair, where as Inhumans’ Medusa has long red hair that she can control and use as snakes. We see this in her introductory scene with Black Bolt. As they are making love, he reaches for his communicator only for her hair to restrain him and keep him bed-pinned. Similar to the Bible’s Samson, in her hair lies all of her strength. Here’s a funny factoid: the actress Serinda Swan who plays Medusa was also in the Percy Jackson film series where she played the role of Aphrodite, but only after auditioning for the role of Medusa.

Keeping this going, we next have Maximus played by Game of Thrones alum Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton). He is the younger brother of Black Bolt and thus a member of the royal family. But the most interesting thing about him is that he is human. Apparently, as we learn in the melded-together first and second episode, when he was introduced to the terrigen crystals as is every person in the moon kingdom, while it gave his brother immense power, it changed his Inhuman genetics to make him perfectly human. Yes, he is bitter about it. Yes, he is our heel.

Then we have Crystal. Crystal rounds out the royal family as she technically qualifies by proxy. She is the sister of Medusa. While Black Bolt and Maximus were born into the royal family, Medusa and Crystal, as we learn in episode three were born into what can only be assumed as a noble family that tried to revolt against the royal family and the system under which the kingdom operates. We’ll talk about the system in a bit, but let me round out the cast.

Crystal has a massive dog named Lockjaw and even he is inhuman—er, I mean in-dog-an? Anyway, this huge bear-dog of a thing (he’s a really big dog. Think four Donald Trumps all smashed together except a lot cuter) has the ability to teleport to anywhere in the galaxy I’m guessing as he easily goes between earth and the moon. All he needs are the instructions. The one problem is that his teleporting skills are not an exact science. Either that or the instructions given to him aren’t specific enough for him to properly understand. But in the end, he’s a good boy. He’s a very good boy.

We round out the main cast with Gorgon played by Eme Ikwaukor. Our black guy of the group, he is half man, half minotaur or centaur. The point is that he has hooves and is part of the royal guard and is the distant cousin of the royals. Then we have Karnak played by Ken Leung, our Asian guy. He seems to be council to the king and queen. His power, as I understand it, is that he can either rewind time or rehearse a scenario completely in his head and course-correct to get the best outcome before he ever makes a move. Or something in-between that. If you’ve ever seen the Nicolas Cage film NEXT where he can see the future, think of him in that sense. And finally we have Auron who seems to be the personal... guard or maybe just a minion/henchwoman of Maximus. She can fight but I can’t remember what her Inhuman power was. It’s inconsequential for the first three episodes.

So, we start out by witnessing an Inhuman on earth being tracked down by a group of what looks like black-ops military men. We first assume that this is one of the many government bodies tracking down Inhumans. The Inhuman girl is young and she runs into an older man who is also inhuman and looks like a green alien. He tells her that there is a place for her and that she isn’t a freak like she thinks and tries to save her. But before they can escape the black ops team shoots her and shoots the Inhuman guy too. Next, we jump up to the moon city and see that some private tech company has rovers up there to map out the surface so that they can build things like a hotel and whatnot up there. As they are mapping it out, the rover-drone hits against the invisible force field that hides the city from prying eyes. Before the drone pilot can explore this phenomenon further, a hoof stomps the drone.

We then jump to the King and Queen in counsel with Karnak who is talking about the drone. Gorgon defends his decision to kill-stomp the drone and Maximus is all gung-ho on this idea that they need to go and invade the earth before the earth invades them. Black Bolt keeps his calm as always and allows for Medusa to speak for him when she says that they must do nothing for now. Revealing themselves will only cause harm.

Anyway, they must all go to what I called a Misting Ceremony which every person in the city must go through at some point in time. This is where, as teenagers, people are exposed to the terrigen mist and their powers are revealed. From what I can see, usually teen siblings do it together, meaning that there’s no set age where everyone does it. Apparently the entire royal court must be there to witness every one of these ceremonies because they have to run and get Crystal as she stands out in the city looking at boys and playing with Lockjaw.

We see a brother and sister enter this terrigen chamber and breathe in the crystals’ mist. While the girl becomes a flier with butterfly wings, the boy comes out and looks no different. It is not until Maximus touches him that he feels a power course through him. He sees some kind of imaginative vision of Maximus’ future. The strange thing about this scene is that the boy tells Maximus in front of everyone that Max will be pinned by snakes and whatnot, yet no one reacts to this as maybe being some kind of mental power. You would think that Karnak, who, arguably has a mental power that wouldn’t have been perceptible to the outside onlooker at first, would have said something about this, but it is almost as if no one else hears him. Again, it just stuck out as strange to me.

Moving on, we finally get to this caste system in which they live. There seem to be three levels of hierarchy here: the royals, the middle or noble class and the bottom dwellers. The noble or middle class have powers that are elegant and or extremely useful. Flight is a noble class power, for instance. Well, the lower class seem to have powers that are not that elegant or are hard to define or find a use for. Strength seems to be a lower-class power as it is only good for one thing. Speaking of that one thing, the lower class is made to work in some sort of moon mine. What is in the mine? Why do they have a mine? What the heck are they mining? Why does everyone in the lower class have to work there? These are all good questions, none of which are answered by the show within the first three episodes. But what we know is that while the butterfly-winged girl gets to stay with her parents in the middle class, her brother who hasn’t been seen to have powers by anyone save Maximus, is sent to work in the mines. There is some talk about how Maximus himself should be in the mines as he is a mere mortal but he turns this objection into a cry for revolution. Supposedly, they have this rigid caste system because of how limited their moon resources are. This forces them to put people in their place and ration out what little they have to those who can actually use it. Frankly, I didn’t fully get this part, but I will save that criticism until the end.

Moving on, we now know that Maximus wants to rule over the kingdom so that he can move all of their people back to earth where they left from thousands of years ago. The assumption is that he wants to rule there too.

Shortly after the misting ceremony, the royal court learns of the disappearance of the green Inhuman guy from the beginning. As it turns out, the guy was sent on a secret mission to retrieve the girl and hasn’t been in contact with the person who sent him since. So, Black Bolt and Medusa decide to send Gorgon down there to hopefully find the missing Inhuman and the girl. Crystal gets Lockjaw to take him down to the Hawaiian island on which the girl was lost, but it doesn’t appear to be the exact same island but another one of the smaller islands that is unmarked.

As soon as the head of the royal guard is gone, all hell breaks loose. Here, I again must note that the first two episodes of this were smushed together to make one long two-hour premiere so I can’t fully divide them from each other quite like you might want. So just follow me here until we get to episode three.

So, with the royal guard gone we soon learn that Maximus is a sneaky, conniving little fella. For starters, he, Black Bolt and Medusa have all known each other since they were children with her parents being high-order nobles and all. As it turns out, he and Medusa used to get into some trouble and he formed an undying crush on her. But after Black Bolt received his power and would never talk again, the would-be king was put into a room of solitary and told by his parents that he must both deal with his newfound power/handicap while also ruling as king—his brother Maximus could never rule because he was no longer Inhuman. Well, all of this pressure got to him which made him ask but one question to his parents as they stood in front of him: “Why?” The very ask disintegrated his parents in front of him, making him the instant king at a very young age. It was for this reason that Medusa felt pity for him and snuck away into his cell of a room to start their romance that would continue on into adulthood, leaving Maximus behind.

Well, Maximus brings up a what-if scenario that implies he is plotting to become king but maintain the same queen, and Medusa uses her “snake” hair to pin him to the wall, just as the boy saw in his vision when Maximus touched him. Now only Maximus knows of the boy’s true foresight powers. He goes back to him to ask a few more questions and the boy basically ensures him that his evil plan to take over the kingdom will go well. And so it begins.

We learn that Maximus was the one who hired those black ops guys to go and kill the girl and the Inhuman who was trying to save her. He did this on purpose knowing that Gorgon would have to leave the palace to go off-world, which would leave the royal court open for attack. He has his men, led by Auron, swarm the palace and take out the royal court one by one, but of course they fight back as best they can. He embarrasses Medusa by chopping off all of her hair in a reverse Samson and Delilah, sends his men to kill and be beat down by Karnak who replays every scenario over and over until he can win the fight, and even goes to get Black Bolt to surrender and bow to him as the new king, thinking that the man couldn’t possibly speak or attack him because the guilt of killing both parents and then his brother would weigh on him too great. But the crazy part is that as this takeover is happening, Crystal gets word that Maximus is a traitor and hops into quick action. She orders lockjaw to find all of the royal members and transport them to “the same place as Gorgon.” Remember, however, that Lockjaw isn’t that great at this or those instructions are too vague, so he finds each person and transports them somewhere slightly different. Karnak ends up at the top of a jungle mountain; Medusa ends up in the middle of a huge crater; and Black Bolt, on the brink of parting his lips to say something and destroy his brother, is taken to the middle of a city (Oahu) in the middle of a street full of traffic. Lockjaw, having never seen such busyness and honking and calamity from the traffic gets cutely anxious and teleports back to the moon in a panic, leaving his king to survive on his own.

Before Lockjaw can get to Crystal, Maximus has already found her and is ready to attack. The dog arrives and while she is giving it instructions, Auron comes and zaps the dog unconscious. Not only is the royal court all dispersed across Oahu and its surrounding isles, but they currently have no way of getting back to each other and very little way of communicating to each other. And only at the end of episode two do you realize that this is probably not the show that you were anticipating.

This sentiment is cemented even more on episode three. See at the end of episode two we see Karnak fall off of the cliff while climbing down, resulting in a bad hit to the head. On episode three he realizes that he no longer has his powers like he usually does. They’re probably not gone forever, but he cannot see how a situation will unfold and correct it to his advantage every time. He haphazardly wanders onto a secret jungle plantation of marijuana, which isn’t all that bad in and of itself but when the workers there hold him at gunpoint, he can’t defeat them.

Meanwhile, as Karnak is imprisoned in the jungle drug cartel, Black Bolt tries to fit into his environment to keep clandestine. He goes to a store and gets a suit and tie but walks out without paying as he has no concept of such an idea of cash-money or credit. He lets out a tiny yelp when the police pursue him and sends a squad car tumbling through the air with gusto. Jail for you my friend, although it looks a lot more like prison, but I digress. Anyway, far away there is some scientist guy who knows of the Inhuman stronghold on the moon and seeks to protect Black Bolt, so he contracts an inmate to help break the man out of prison. Yes, this man is also an Inhuman but I’m not sure the guards knew that.

Gorgon is still on the island and has learned of the treachery of Maximus. Armed with a locator beacon and communicator that links back to the moon city, he tells Maximus that he is going to leave his communicator/locator on for the traitor and his minions to come and find him. He wants the fight so he can end it all now. Well, Max only half takes the bait by sending Auron instead of going himself.

Upon her arrival on earth Auron first runs into Medusa who, though she doesn’t have her hair powers anymore, is still a fierce ass kicker. She stabs Auron and leaves her to die. Here, it was unclear for me if Auron actually did die or not but she gets up after a few hours of laying on top of a car hood, and heals herself. I’m not sure that is her power, though. She calls back to Maximus and says that she needs help so he sends this really evil big-bad who is supposedly so vile that they have him locked away in a solitary prison behind a thick wall up in the moon city. His name is Mordis and he looks like he’s wearing a toned-down version of that iron mask Leo DiCaprio wore in that movie where he played a Man in an Iron Mask. Gosh, what was that movie called? Hmm? Don’t know. Mordis, to boot, is not scary nor intimidating and plays more like the most disappointing, comical parts of Ultron in that Avengers 2 movie, or some comedic interpretation of classic villains in a Robot Chicken skit. It’s rather sad, frankly.

So Gorgon, who can’t swim, is rescued from the water by these surfers (this happened in episode 2 but I didn’t mention it because it didn’t feel necessary at the time) who now want to help him fight whatever force is supposedly coming for him. Well, he warns that they could die but they’re like, whatever, dude. Auron, Mordis and a crew of other red-shirt nobodies come to fight Gorgon and the surfers. A few get their butts kicked, one chick with cool gardening powers (totally want those) makes trees do her bidding and Gorgon decides to flee with the surfers because they are outmatched. But dude, you were all big and bad not turning your locator beacon off.

Meanwhile, Medusa was able to contact Bolt and listen to his heartbeat to know he was safe and still alive (this was before he got arrested). Now, she is on a Kill Bill-esque journey to find him. She sneaks into some rich person’s home and Goldilocks-es about trying on their clothes, eating their food and all sorts of stuff. When she leaves she hops on different buses and public transportation, sees a story about a guy who is a suspected Inhuman who did some stuff to some police cars, and somehow finds the jail and is there to rescue him when Black Bolt and the other guy break out of the jail and fly off in a helicopter. As luck would have it, that drone pilot from the first episode is trying to investigate what happened to the drone and has somehow been led to the prison also. Medusa kidnaps her and tells her to follow that copter.

Back on the moon, Maximus is trying to make moves to either get Crystal to be his queen instead of Medusa or get her to support him in front of the high council to take over the throne as king. Or both. One thing is for sure: he has lied to the people about Medusa and Black Bolt abandoning them. He’s doing everything he can to sully the royal court’s name. But he needs the high council to assume full power and push for this move down to earth. Crystal won’t do it but he keeps working on her, tepidly seducing her by reminding her how her parents rebelled against the kingdom for this very reason and how combining their powers can only help the people. She’s young but smart and does what she must to keep everything from imploding.

What’s my grade? I give it a D. Look, there are so many things that are wrong with this show that it’s hard for me to pinpoint one thing that doesn’t work. For starters, I hate the fact that for whatever reason ABC, Disney and Marvel all believed that this show was good enough to merit a theatrical release of its first two episodes. When I heard they were doing that, I actually got excited, especially considering that this is a limited series that is, I believe, only supposed to have eight episodes. To me, I thought, “Wow, they can spend a good grip of money on each episode to make it absolutely amazing.” Wrong! If you’re going to release the first two episodes of a show as a movie, then make sure that it sorta plays like a movie. Even ignoring the so-so costume work, the uninspired acting and the TV-focused cinematography, the plot itself played more like a television show with little direction. The first two episodes didn’t even have a proper climax. I know that it is a show, but still, it would be better to focus on writing the show as a film than to have it flounder in both aspects.

Going back to the acting, I just don’t know what went wrong. With the exception of the black guy who plays Gorgon, I’ve seen all of the main characters in other stuff where they were much better. I’ve been a fan of Anson Mount ever since I saw that Jason Statham film Safe, which a lot of people didn’t like but I thoroughly enjoyed. I think he’s good. Yet, here, with the absence of dialogue for him to speak, he is no more interesting than a mannequin. No, this is not a criticism of the character and I’m not asking for them to give him more lines, I’m asking for them to better direct him in expressing the character’s underlying emotion. I remember watching the movie Quiet starring Camilla Belle as a girl who doesn’t speak, thinking, “Wow! She’s amazing.” Granted, I was already crushing pretty hard on Belle at the time but still. She brought a certain charm and characterization to the silence of the character that didn’t require her to speak for you to feel. Here, Mount often wears only one look on his face the entire time: “Son, we need to talk.” Even during the opening love scene, I kept thinking that he needed to sit his teenage son down for a talk about responsibility, and how driving is a privilege and how he better not get one of those loose Bronte girls pregnant. Its so stern all the time that it is bordering on satirical. Show us pain, anguish, love, hate, something other than sternness.

Medusa is pretty good and oozes both sex appeal and intelligence, especially because she is the mouthpiece of the king. She seems most capable, oddly enough, even over Karnak. Speaking of, Ken Leung had a great gig on The Night Shift and I don’t know whose idea it was for him to part from that show but I wish he was still on there (Edit: that show has recently been canceled). While he is doing a decent job here, he could be doing so much better. I’ve seen his better. The Crystal character is OK as a young, teenage princess who must hold her own against the would-be usurper but she is certainly no Sansa Stark. Speaking of, Mr. Ramsay Bolton himself Maximus is also just OK here. It is as if the directors told Iwan to be a toned-down version of Bolton. You know, the one that they can show on broadcast network TV. With the plot similarities between his yearning for power, holding a young queen/princess hostage and forcing her and her people to bend to his will, it might’ve been a better idea to have him playing in a different role so as not to draw any comparisons. Here, he just doesn’t quite seem evil enough.

What’s worse about Maximus, and this speaks to the plot, is that the way this show is written and the brief exploration of the caste system makes it feel an awful lot like he’s technically right. For me, someone who hasn’t read the comics and doesn’t want to bother to do all the research like I have for other comic book characters, the caste system makes little sense when paired with the mines and whatnot, and their refusal to move to earth even after the Inhumans have long been a part of the earthly society. Yes, I know, if you’re only watching the movies you might not have realized this, but on Agents of SHIELD one of their main cast members is an Inhuman and has been since season two. Why the heck are they still up there on the moon and for god’s sake, what the hell are they mining?

Finally, my last big complaint is geared around how the show was packaged and sold as opposed to what it actually is. Again, as someone who wasn’t a fan of the comics, I didn’t get all of the hate for the costumes at the time of the poster coming out. I thought that they looked alright for TV and that their looks sorta fit into a real-world representation or at least into the MCU representation of characters. But now having watched the show, I find a completely different complaint cropping up which only now piggybacks off the costume complaint and that is that these don’t seem to be Inhumans. Think about this, at the end of the two-hour season premiere we have the coolest character in Lockjaw unconscious, we have Black Bolt unable to ever really use his powers for fear of decimating the entirety of the moon city, we have Medusa no longer with her hair powers (is she really even Medusa now?), we have Karnak unable to use his fix-o-dent powers, Gorgon is trapped on a small secluded island, and we have yet to see what Crystal’s powers are. Between Yo-Yo, Quake and her last boyfriend when he was still alive and on the show, we’ve gotten far more Inhumans using superpowers on Agents of SHIELD than we get on this show. Really only the bad guys have the powers. So this basically is a bunch of regular people running from some superpowered ones, which is not a bad twist on the genre but is hardly done well enough to make any statement.

In the end, the costume complaints are fairly unwarranted too because not only do they abandon their powers but they also abandon their costumes. Sure, Gorgon and Karnak are still in their get-ups but I’m sure that the latter is going to change into something more human-like within the coming episode. He’ll be wearing a breezy Hawaiian tee in no time (Note: He did change into a bohemian chic style).

Should you be watching? No, not unless you’re a die-hard comic book fan and/or you have eight to ten hours of your life to kill. Look, I wanted this to be good because I wanted another series that could crossover and complement Agents of SHIELD, and that could tie into the movies in a big way. Hell, we’re going off world for the next Thor and the next season of SHIELD, it only makes since to see Inhumans as a stepping stone for both of those things or to maybe see them show up in Black Panther or reference those events somehow. Give us another Winter Soldier twist for all of the properties. But no. This is simply not worthy of any of that. It needs to be completely retooled, maybe recast and definitely written and directed by others. Give it a bigger budget or just release a film version like originally planned, because this is going nowhere fast.

What do you think? Have you heard of Marvel’s Inhumans? If you haven’t, do you think you’ll watch now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? Where do you think it could improve or is it doing a great job at interpreting these characters. And do you know what the hell they’re mining for on the moon? And how cool is Lockjaw? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “We’ve got to stop these disgusting mutants and—”

‘Uh, no-no! They’re Inhumans. Inhumans, sir.’

“What? They’re not mutants?”

‘No. We couldn’t get the copyright license back.’

P.S. This seems to be the season of the copy because, for some reason, it looks like every new show has a doppelganger that is either another new show on another network or is a returning show. I sure do hope that FOX’s The Gifted isn’t just a mutants on the run show like Inhumans pretty much is. I’ll try to come up with a better, more original sign-off next time, but no promises.

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