Wow, wow, wow. That was one stylish and elegant episode of spy capers, right up until we hit the cryogenically preserved Fuhrer. That's my third cryogenic Hitler this week. It must be catching. The stamps, and the wonderful banter between Robert Vaughn and Janine Gray more than make up for it, though. Janine Gray was very lovely indeed as the extremely devious Angelique, agent of the thoroughly evil organisation we know as THRUSH.
The notion of Napoleon being deliciously involved with an equally suave female THRUSH operative is almost irresistible. They bounce off each other so brilliantly, that you wish it could be done again and again, but it was a one-off occurrence. Oh, Angelique, you are so wonderful, but so devilishly dangerous. So dangerous... And armed with poison spiders?
The other reason why this hour is great is that it all begins with stamps. Yes, a grand mystery that ends in stamps, runs through the story of two university students, some messing around between Napoleon and Angelique, and then culminates in an extended sequence of the obligatory mad scientist trying to revive Hitler at the expense of Solo's life, before tagging out with a lovely tease between the star-crossed Napoleon and Angelique again. It started so promisingly, too. What a mess! However, at least the German dictator went in a suitably very trivial manner.
Despite the mild derailment of the cryogenics sequence, this is an admirable episode, which really tunes in to both the strengths of Napoleon as a lead character and Ilya's pointed remarks and assistance, as well as the style which permeates through the best episodes of UNCLE. The willingness of the show to go literally anywhere in the stories it contains is amazing. They show no restraint, while remaining true to their core bible, and that's something that always draws me into a show. Just go crazy, writers. Why not?
O.
Side note: By not talking about the Nazis and Hitler factually, and suppressing people who try, we are actually deifying and elevating those awful people and their actions. They deserve to be treated and condemned as real people, not mystified by non-discussion. Those were horrible real times, not sequences of mythical events.
Wednesday, 13 December 2017
Monday, 11 December 2017
Nine Hundred And Eighty Seven
We are nine hundred and eighty seven posts into the Quirky Muffin, and still going. Yes, this is the weblog that can't be stopped, not by dodgy three-part stories on 'Hunter', not by accumulated stress due to assignments, or the extreme fatigue brought on by mid-Winter, or even sheer literary incompetence. The weblog survives, somehow. For the record, the 'Hunter' three-parter that I wrote about yesterday, turned out to be a bit of a dud after that brilliant first episode. It's a very predictable outcome when beginning three-parters, alas.
Out there, not many miles away, the United Kingdom is struggling under centimetres of snow. However, here in the scenic Gwendraeth Valley, it looks completely normal. It's a green and characteristically damp sight, and completely normal for December. You might even begin to think that all the snow reports and closures are made up, figments from the media's powers of distortion. Is the snow real? Is it?
Oh, of course the snow is real. Probably. There are independent reports coming in from associates around the country. There really is snow. Let's not have any paranoia.
The world is rotating still, and Christmas is coming. It is relentlessly sneaking closer on the calendar, and absorbing all that would normally take place. It's creepy, massive, and utterly unimportant while being crucial. A mid-Winter holiday makes perfect sense, but having it be forcibly linked to a religious festival is problematic, here in the present day of 2017. Oh well, it's a few days off, and an opportunity to catch up with studies and preparation.
Christmas! Bah humbug! Let's all put up the pumpkins all over again and go counter-conventional! Aren't we supposed to be a country full of eccentrics, after all?
O.
Out there, not many miles away, the United Kingdom is struggling under centimetres of snow. However, here in the scenic Gwendraeth Valley, it looks completely normal. It's a green and characteristically damp sight, and completely normal for December. You might even begin to think that all the snow reports and closures are made up, figments from the media's powers of distortion. Is the snow real? Is it?
Oh, of course the snow is real. Probably. There are independent reports coming in from associates around the country. There really is snow. Let's not have any paranoia.
The world is rotating still, and Christmas is coming. It is relentlessly sneaking closer on the calendar, and absorbing all that would normally take place. It's creepy, massive, and utterly unimportant while being crucial. A mid-Winter holiday makes perfect sense, but having it be forcibly linked to a religious festival is problematic, here in the present day of 2017. Oh well, it's a few days off, and an opportunity to catch up with studies and preparation.
Christmas! Bah humbug! Let's all put up the pumpkins all over again and go counter-conventional! Aren't we supposed to be a country full of eccentrics, after all?
O.
Saturday, 9 December 2017
Television: 'Hunter: City Of Passion (Part One)' (1987) (Episode 4x06)
Well that was creepy, and right there on the cusp of shows I would not actually choose to watch. Also, this is the beginning of a three-parter. A THREE-parter? Who on Earth makes three-parters? It's lunacy! Mutter mutter.
'Hunter' was a 1980s detective show which frequently wobbled between goofy and adult, and serious and daft plot elements and storylines. In the early years, it was mainly a vehicle for its titular star Fred Dryer to get in some car chases and shoot a villain dead in self-defence every week, and for Stepfanie Kramer to over-dress ridiculously every week as his partner McCall, and sometimes go undercover as a tarty prostitute. That all partly changed when Roy 'Maverick' Huggins took over the show, and made it his last television project before retirement. He added consistency but sadly removed the goofier peaks and troughs. If it weren't for the actors, it might not have worked, but they were great enough to pull it off, and that is what is really going on here. Huggins also instituted his old practice of adapting stories and novels, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
'City Of Passion' seems to be a triple-layered narrative at the moment, where even the dynamic duo's boss is getting in on the action, staging a campaign to remove an incompetent or corrupt senior officer from the force. It is packed full of things, which probably originates from the source novel it is at least partly pulled from. There is political intrigue inside the force, a serial rapist who has possibly turned homicidal, a threat to Dee Dee that calls back to her previous rape trauma, and even a supposed subplot involving demon worshippers and a possible death cult. Demon worshippers? It's madness! It's bizarre, crazy lunacy! That flashback/story was the most awkward part of it all.
This hour was really well done. However, and this may have been due to it being December here, and the mood being generally in the deep doldrums, this episode was packed with foreboding and it seems as if it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Of course, if it goes badly, this may be the only time we mention 'Hunter' here on the QM. There may never be a second Fred Dryer reference. This could be it. No uttered confusion as to why 'Stepfanie' has a 'pf'. No wondering at the sheer ineptitude of their first few lieutenants, or Hunter's relentless early destruction of his cars. No ponderings on Sporty James. Nada.
What will happen with the rest of this three-parter? There are going to be some serious events, we'll probably have some mostly boring personal stories from the guest cops, and McCall will almost certainly be in extreme danger at some point. The main question is this: How will these three stories combine by the end? Will they all combine? Will just two converge, or will there be three different resolutions to come? We'll have to wait to see.
O.
Subsequent Note: Sadly, parts two and three weren't anywhere near as good, the three plots didn't converge in any meaningful manner, and the end result was quite underwhelming. No posts for those, then!
'Hunter' was a 1980s detective show which frequently wobbled between goofy and adult, and serious and daft plot elements and storylines. In the early years, it was mainly a vehicle for its titular star Fred Dryer to get in some car chases and shoot a villain dead in self-defence every week, and for Stepfanie Kramer to over-dress ridiculously every week as his partner McCall, and sometimes go undercover as a tarty prostitute. That all partly changed when Roy 'Maverick' Huggins took over the show, and made it his last television project before retirement. He added consistency but sadly removed the goofier peaks and troughs. If it weren't for the actors, it might not have worked, but they were great enough to pull it off, and that is what is really going on here. Huggins also instituted his old practice of adapting stories and novels, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
'City Of Passion' seems to be a triple-layered narrative at the moment, where even the dynamic duo's boss is getting in on the action, staging a campaign to remove an incompetent or corrupt senior officer from the force. It is packed full of things, which probably originates from the source novel it is at least partly pulled from. There is political intrigue inside the force, a serial rapist who has possibly turned homicidal, a threat to Dee Dee that calls back to her previous rape trauma, and even a supposed subplot involving demon worshippers and a possible death cult. Demon worshippers? It's madness! It's bizarre, crazy lunacy! That flashback/story was the most awkward part of it all.
This hour was really well done. However, and this may have been due to it being December here, and the mood being generally in the deep doldrums, this episode was packed with foreboding and it seems as if it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Of course, if it goes badly, this may be the only time we mention 'Hunter' here on the QM. There may never be a second Fred Dryer reference. This could be it. No uttered confusion as to why 'Stepfanie' has a 'pf'. No wondering at the sheer ineptitude of their first few lieutenants, or Hunter's relentless early destruction of his cars. No ponderings on Sporty James. Nada.
What will happen with the rest of this three-parter? There are going to be some serious events, we'll probably have some mostly boring personal stories from the guest cops, and McCall will almost certainly be in extreme danger at some point. The main question is this: How will these three stories combine by the end? Will they all combine? Will just two converge, or will there be three different resolutions to come? We'll have to wait to see.
O.
Subsequent Note: Sadly, parts two and three weren't anywhere near as good, the three plots didn't converge in any meaningful manner, and the end result was quite underwhelming. No posts for those, then!
Thursday, 7 December 2017
Hound Dog
As I sit here, idly watching the Dice Tower people play a board game, and wondering just what life has come to, it seems like it has been a very silly day. Any day which involves watching people play board games in another country has to be silly, yes? No? Oh good grief, I'm talking to contrary imaginary people! This is the bottom of the blog writing barrel, right there under writing about television shows and pretending to be Elvis Presley...
They're playing 'Pandemic Legacy: Season Two', and it's a very strange thing. It's difficult to get behind the idea of a game, a very expensive physical game, that can only be played through once, even if it is over a set sequence of mini-games, gets permanently changed and partly destroyed in the process, and is then useless thereafter. That's just plain odd. People seem to like it, though. Obviously, this is a rich person phenomenon. I imagine that it would be like playing a very immersive computer game, but with a real thing that you can't turn back to the beginning just by clicking your fingers? (They're having problems... Nyahahahahaha!)
(No, don't look at the blue suede shoes.)
It's a week full of cancellations, here in the wacky world of mathematics tuition, and it's only getting worse as we approach the bizarre event that is known as Christmas. Yes, we're going fully festive and Christmas cards are being thrown around with grim abandon. Whether people want them or not. Yes, take the Christmas card and enjoy it, person of interest! Grraaaaaa! At least all the packages and cards have gone out now, which is nice. There is no Christmas related postal pressure to come. Now, there is only Christmas itself, and then New Year's Day. The year two thousand and eighteen is coming, and with it even more oddities in the geopolitical world.
(It's going to be a blue... Christmas...)
Oh, they lost their game, badly. And with implications. Oh dear. You don't get these problems with 'Scrabble', 'Carcassonne', 'Hare & Tortoise' or 'Thebes'. Or with thousands of other games. It looks so stressful! And the rant about weather forecasting has still not happened! Next time? Or the time after that? Before or after the thousandth post?
O.
They're playing 'Pandemic Legacy: Season Two', and it's a very strange thing. It's difficult to get behind the idea of a game, a very expensive physical game, that can only be played through once, even if it is over a set sequence of mini-games, gets permanently changed and partly destroyed in the process, and is then useless thereafter. That's just plain odd. People seem to like it, though. Obviously, this is a rich person phenomenon. I imagine that it would be like playing a very immersive computer game, but with a real thing that you can't turn back to the beginning just by clicking your fingers? (They're having problems... Nyahahahahaha!)
(No, don't look at the blue suede shoes.)
It's a week full of cancellations, here in the wacky world of mathematics tuition, and it's only getting worse as we approach the bizarre event that is known as Christmas. Yes, we're going fully festive and Christmas cards are being thrown around with grim abandon. Whether people want them or not. Yes, take the Christmas card and enjoy it, person of interest! Grraaaaaa! At least all the packages and cards have gone out now, which is nice. There is no Christmas related postal pressure to come. Now, there is only Christmas itself, and then New Year's Day. The year two thousand and eighteen is coming, and with it even more oddities in the geopolitical world.
(It's going to be a blue... Christmas...)
Oh, they lost their game, badly. And with implications. Oh dear. You don't get these problems with 'Scrabble', 'Carcassonne', 'Hare & Tortoise' or 'Thebes'. Or with thousands of other games. It looks so stressful! And the rant about weather forecasting has still not happened! Next time? Or the time after that? Before or after the thousandth post?
O.
Tuesday, 5 December 2017
Television: 'The Man From UNCLE: The Green Opal Affair' (1964) (Aired 1x06, Produced 1x07)
That was an interesting hour. We get another example of Napoleon being hypno-trained into a cover personality, another delicious villain, and Ilya training with a stick and a pointy thing on a rope. On the other hand, the Innocent's story is a bit half-baked, and the whole thing is just a tad prolonged. Ultimately, it's still a fun hour of television, so let's be happy.
In 'The Green Opal Affair', a visiting agent is discovered destroying a record tape while in a tortured mental state, whose words while collapsing point Napoleon towards an eccentric millionaire suspected of being part of THRUSH. However, and this is where we get a turnaround, the dying words are a trap! Napoleon has been selected for subtle brain surgery, so that he will become a double agent when he reaches the high command of UNCLE, along with many other professionals in other areas. Yes, almost the whole episode is a trap! Ha! The Innocent this week is a housewife, who has also been taken in order to later push her husband into a senior position for THRUSH's later benefit. She works pretty well, but not perfectly, as someone who is unhappy with her husband not being ambitious.
We don't have Mr Waverley this time, which is a shame, but we do have Carroll O'Connor as the hilariously villainous mastermind behind the brain alteration scheme, the wheelchair bound Brach, who has a numerologist and that great villain staple that is the shark bay. What better way than to be nobbled by your own sharks after your numerologist gets annoyed and shoves your wheelchair in? Huzzah!
All in all, this is a much better example of brain alteration and villainy than 'The Brain-Killer Affair', which really faltered thanks to the odd tonal shifts, and was bumped in the airing order to be far away from this one as they're thematically similar. 'The Green Opal Affair' isn't perfect, but it's pretty good, and it's great to see Ilya's bizarre exercise routines. He's definitely an usual and kooky Russian, but time will tell as to whether we prefer one man from UNCLE or two. Jerry Goldsmith's scores are continuing to be excellent when its his turn to compose, and we had sharks!
You can't beat sharks in secret agent stories. Go, sharks, go!
O.
In 'The Green Opal Affair', a visiting agent is discovered destroying a record tape while in a tortured mental state, whose words while collapsing point Napoleon towards an eccentric millionaire suspected of being part of THRUSH. However, and this is where we get a turnaround, the dying words are a trap! Napoleon has been selected for subtle brain surgery, so that he will become a double agent when he reaches the high command of UNCLE, along with many other professionals in other areas. Yes, almost the whole episode is a trap! Ha! The Innocent this week is a housewife, who has also been taken in order to later push her husband into a senior position for THRUSH's later benefit. She works pretty well, but not perfectly, as someone who is unhappy with her husband not being ambitious.
We don't have Mr Waverley this time, which is a shame, but we do have Carroll O'Connor as the hilariously villainous mastermind behind the brain alteration scheme, the wheelchair bound Brach, who has a numerologist and that great villain staple that is the shark bay. What better way than to be nobbled by your own sharks after your numerologist gets annoyed and shoves your wheelchair in? Huzzah!
All in all, this is a much better example of brain alteration and villainy than 'The Brain-Killer Affair', which really faltered thanks to the odd tonal shifts, and was bumped in the airing order to be far away from this one as they're thematically similar. 'The Green Opal Affair' isn't perfect, but it's pretty good, and it's great to see Ilya's bizarre exercise routines. He's definitely an usual and kooky Russian, but time will tell as to whether we prefer one man from UNCLE or two. Jerry Goldsmith's scores are continuing to be excellent when its his turn to compose, and we had sharks!
You can't beat sharks in secret agent stories. Go, sharks, go!
O.
Sunday, 3 December 2017
A Reason To Delve Deep
Right, what to write about? Is it time to dig into the little used words bag? Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. It's almost certainly too soon to mention 'persiflage' again, so hold on for a moment while the Phrontistery gets one of its semi-regular visits. Hmm...
Once again, it's astonishing how many more words there are than we use. It's astounding, shocking and even bewildering! Just a quick glance through 'K' and 'P' yields the following list!
kakorrhaphiophobia: fear of failure
kenophobia: fear of empty spaces
keraunoscopia: divination using thunder
proceleusmatic: inciting; encouraging; exhorting
proxemics: study of man's need for personal space
Of these, the most interesting in the moment seems to be 'proxemics', which shares a root with 'proximity' and deeply connects to that deep desire that we all have to be alone for some of the time. What is the etymological root, though? The psychological root is easy: we just need to avoid cognitive dissonance part of the time, and be able to what we want instead of what is forced upon us by the social situation. It's mad that some people never get to just follow their whims, the poor people. Oh, the etymological root is from Latin, from 'proximus'. Alas, there was nothing super interesting about it. No Greek gods or animals anywhere.
'Keraunoscopia' is quite a nice word too, though. The many words for the different kinds of divination are fascinating. Divination was such a prominent part of life in the old days, before it was reduced to just being the pseudo science of meteorology. Ooooh, there hasn't been a rant about meteorology yet, has there? That's something to come back too! Yes, people used to divine the future from thunder, which must have meant that such diviners had quite a few days off in the year. What an excuse that would be for not correctly predicting the future. "Sorry, dear, I couldn't read anything as there hasn't been a storm for six months. Try me again in November..."
O.
Once again, it's astonishing how many more words there are than we use. It's astounding, shocking and even bewildering! Just a quick glance through 'K' and 'P' yields the following list!
kakorrhaphiophobia: fear of failure
kenophobia: fear of empty spaces
keraunoscopia: divination using thunder
proceleusmatic: inciting; encouraging; exhorting
proxemics: study of man's need for personal space
Of these, the most interesting in the moment seems to be 'proxemics', which shares a root with 'proximity' and deeply connects to that deep desire that we all have to be alone for some of the time. What is the etymological root, though? The psychological root is easy: we just need to avoid cognitive dissonance part of the time, and be able to what we want instead of what is forced upon us by the social situation. It's mad that some people never get to just follow their whims, the poor people. Oh, the etymological root is from Latin, from 'proximus'. Alas, there was nothing super interesting about it. No Greek gods or animals anywhere.
'Keraunoscopia' is quite a nice word too, though. The many words for the different kinds of divination are fascinating. Divination was such a prominent part of life in the old days, before it was reduced to just being the pseudo science of meteorology. Ooooh, there hasn't been a rant about meteorology yet, has there? That's something to come back too! Yes, people used to divine the future from thunder, which must have meant that such diviners had quite a few days off in the year. What an excuse that would be for not correctly predicting the future. "Sorry, dear, I couldn't read anything as there hasn't been a storm for six months. Try me again in November..."
O.
Friday, 1 December 2017
Television: 'Bugs: Season 1' (1995)
'Bugs' is an anachronism now, an example of 1990s style adventurous science fiction televisual nonsense, but it's still good if you look at it from the right angle, squint, and can connect to some naive part of your mind. Since that's a significant strength here at the QM, 'Bugs' is considered to be fun, as a matter of course. Also, the theme music is awesome. Truly awesome.
This really is a goofy show, partly derived from the mind of Brian 'The Avengers' Clemens, and one which is roughly contemporaneous with another dippy show known as 'Crime Traveller'. Apparently, it was a good time for inventivity. Ah, happy days... The central conceit is that intelligence operative Beckett is framed and drummed out of his agency, and inadvertently teams up with a gadget expert called Roz and a daredevil lunatic known only as Ed in order to clear his name. Then, after the dust has settled, they set up a high-technology security consultancy (Gizmos) and get into a sequence of capers, mainly dealing with strains of eccentric crimes and dippy scientists not dreamt of for decades. Sadly, the actors didn't then and still don't exist to enable full vintage kookiness but they had a good go!
Season one is distinct from the following three years of the show, as the Gizmos trios are operating independently, instead of under the auspices of a governmental agency. As a result, the dangers are daftly diverse and partly follow as a consequence of how incompetent our three protagonists frequently are at the outset of each story! Good grief, people, you call yourselves experts?! And what about your morals? Huh? Over the course of ten episodes, we get experimental (and toxic) seaweed food, electromagnetic pulse weapons, remote control airplane heists, stealth cars, bank frauds involving submarines, explosive new alloys, and performance enhancing drugs. It's a full set of then novelties, and the show is often remarkably prescient. And goofy, with extremely erratic writing and performances. Also, there are loads of really old computers, hurrah!
It's fun when it's good, and very odd when it's bad. Jesse Birdsall is stern, Jaye Griffiths is lovely and sparky, and Craig McLachlan is charismatic. The standout episodes from these ten are the deliciously dippy finale 'Pulse', and the genuinely scary 'All Under Control'. In fact, as soon as the opening to 'Pulse' was reviewed this week, I remembered just how much the villain stuck in my mind for years. What a nasty bloke. Boo. Hiss.
Ultimately, season one of 'Bugs' is dumb adventure with gadgets. What's not to like? Oh, you don't like the terrible humour sequences at the end? Sigh. I don't know you.
O.
This really is a goofy show, partly derived from the mind of Brian 'The Avengers' Clemens, and one which is roughly contemporaneous with another dippy show known as 'Crime Traveller'. Apparently, it was a good time for inventivity. Ah, happy days... The central conceit is that intelligence operative Beckett is framed and drummed out of his agency, and inadvertently teams up with a gadget expert called Roz and a daredevil lunatic known only as Ed in order to clear his name. Then, after the dust has settled, they set up a high-technology security consultancy (Gizmos) and get into a sequence of capers, mainly dealing with strains of eccentric crimes and dippy scientists not dreamt of for decades. Sadly, the actors didn't then and still don't exist to enable full vintage kookiness but they had a good go!
Season one is distinct from the following three years of the show, as the Gizmos trios are operating independently, instead of under the auspices of a governmental agency. As a result, the dangers are daftly diverse and partly follow as a consequence of how incompetent our three protagonists frequently are at the outset of each story! Good grief, people, you call yourselves experts?! And what about your morals? Huh? Over the course of ten episodes, we get experimental (and toxic) seaweed food, electromagnetic pulse weapons, remote control airplane heists, stealth cars, bank frauds involving submarines, explosive new alloys, and performance enhancing drugs. It's a full set of then novelties, and the show is often remarkably prescient. And goofy, with extremely erratic writing and performances. Also, there are loads of really old computers, hurrah!
It's fun when it's good, and very odd when it's bad. Jesse Birdsall is stern, Jaye Griffiths is lovely and sparky, and Craig McLachlan is charismatic. The standout episodes from these ten are the deliciously dippy finale 'Pulse', and the genuinely scary 'All Under Control'. In fact, as soon as the opening to 'Pulse' was reviewed this week, I remembered just how much the villain stuck in my mind for years. What a nasty bloke. Boo. Hiss.
Ultimately, season one of 'Bugs' is dumb adventure with gadgets. What's not to like? Oh, you don't like the terrible humour sequences at the end? Sigh. I don't know you.
O.
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