Tag Archives: Flynn

Librarians, among others

This is a site where we write articles when we have meaningful things to say, or share.  When we want to bring shows to people’s attention, have podcasts we are releasing, but this is not a site dedicated to making sure an article is posted hourly or daily.

With that in mind, I found it hard to not flood the site with articles today, which felt ironic given we do not guarantee to write even 1 article every day.

While Sundays are not famous for being the best night on Television, it looks like tonight is going to be a very good night for a lot of viewers.

The second season of The Librarians, on TNT, is starting.  While John and I have not yet recorded a podcast about the first season, we do have one about the movies that led up to the show, and this is another example of a show doing a nice job of taking a character from the movies, and world where viewers had come to understand the logic and how that world operated, and from those things a fun and entertaining show was created.

 If you have not already listened to the podcast we did about the movies, now may be a great time to do so.  Noah Wyle’s character is in all three movies, and recurs in season 1, and he and the Library itself serve as the binding threads if you will between the movies and the series.  The podcast discusses  The Librarian: Quest for the Spear television movie including a little about the other two television movies The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines and The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice.

Madam_Secretary_CBSAlso on Sunday night’s is Madam Secretary, a show I do not write about often, but do watch by appointment every Sunday Night.  There are several reasons for this, one of which is they way they blend stories that are “ripped from the headlines” with things that have not happened, and yet once they toss out the possibility, you realize how they could, and there is something enjoyable about seeing a working government (and yes, this show strives to show a WORKING government) strive to tackle the problem.   This CBS show avoids talk of specific political parties, instead it has scenes where two people who really ought to be working together but come from different divisions of government make statements along the lines of, “this isn’t your time to shine,” or you aren’t on  “my time” and later discover why our government functions so much better whenever everyone in those positions is working towards the single minded goal of the best America possible.  (An idealistic view, no doubt, and yet one that perhaps we need to see if we are not to become to cynical to both survive, and find a way through, gridlock.)

Quantico - ParrishFinally a show I have not yet taken an opportunity to write about, in part because I am still forming an opinion on it.  Quantico on ABC.   If you watched the ABC show The Nine several years ago, Quantico has a similar format to the episodes — flashing back to FBI training 9 months ago in Quantico, while currently trying to solve the question of who is responsible for a present day terrorist  attack, using 1 clue — a tip that the person responsible for the attack was a member of that class of trainees at Quantico.  Their trainer Liam O’Connor, played by Josh Hopkins, is working the case in New York, and is convinced it is Alex Parrish (played compellingly by Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra), in part because she was found, unconscious, within the blast radius (ie where someone who had just set of the device might have been.)  

Quantico - BOothWhy am I wavering in how I feel about the show?  It is pretty solid entertainment, but most weeks it feels like we get the back story, or a reason to mistrust, yet another member of the trainee class.  A bit expected to be honest.  We are getting a lot of 9 months ago drama, which I am enjoying, but little in the way of compelling information today, few people being introduced as truly believable or viable terrorists, for me.  I keep watching thinking I missing something, that they are giving me a set of characters I like, especially Ryan Booth (Jake McLaughlin) the one FBI agent that Alex Parrish is sure from the moment she knows she has been framed that she can trust.   Part of me does not want one of Alex’s fellow trainees to have been the terrorist, and another part of me is begging the writers to have been playing fair with us as viewers.

In addition, I am particularly enjoying Yasmine Al Massri‘s portrayal of twins who are taking turns as 1 recruit, trying to prove that 2 people could go undercover as 1 person and share the responsibilities and role of an FBI agent.  She has had some particularly good scenes with Aunjanue Ellis as the head of FBI training, Miranda Shaw.

Sunday has suddenly become an evening where my DVR and I are very busy… and very happy.

kay

Major Crimes

Fans of The Closer, which starred Kyra Sedgwick, were disappointed when the show was cancelled after seven season on TNT.  Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes came Major Crimes.  Remarkably similar to The Closer Major Crimes has a strikingly similar cast, with a new leader, and a new guiding principle.  It is no longer enough to close the case — now they want a confession, a conclusion that is so iron clad the D.A. can walk in and cut a deal, not only saving the citizens a costly trial, and meaning the state knows the guilty party will indeed go to jail, instead of pulling some legal wizardry at trial, and getting away with a trial we have just spent an hour being convinced they committed.

 After 109 episodes in which cases were closed, week after week, the Major Crimes division has spent 66 episodes making sure the criminals will go away.  One of the most interesting aspects of Major Crimes has been the use of Rusty (Graham Patrick Martin) to take a character who we gradually saw more and more of near the end of The Closer, Captain Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell), and take her from a very brusque by-the-book officer on the side of Internal Affairs, to a more sympathetic, maternal team leader.

Rusty, a street kid whose testimony was needed in a trial, started as a rough around the edges boy who had no interest in the members of Major Crimes getting into his life and pressing him to testify.  Now, he is a part of Captain Raydor’s life, his adopted son, they have shown one another a definition of family that reminds the audience we can choose who we call family, and that being there for people, no matter what is perhaps the most important thing — mattering infinitely more than the value of physical gifts given at holidays, or shared DNA.

One of the great subplots of this season, that has extended to a series of online videos, has been Rusty’s realization that when he was living on the streets no one was looking for him.  But now, he has Sharon… and the team as well, but predominantly Sharon, and that means, above all else, he has someone who would file a Missing Person’s Report should he go missing.  It sounds so simple, and yet, to someone who has had no one to rely on, or trust, for so long, it means so much.

Upon seeing a Missing Person who was found dead, and realizing no one filed a report on her, Rusty sets out to identify the girl… the person who, under other circumstances, could have been him.

Rusty Beck’s series of Identity videos can be seen on Facebook, YouTube, or the TNT Website.

Major Crimes airs Monday Nights on TNT.

The Librarian

With The Librarians about to start on TNT on December 7th, John Mayo and Kay Kellam have a spoiler filled discussion about The Librarian: Quest for the Spear television movie including a little about the other two television movies The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines and The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice.

Upcoming air dates:
2014-12-07 @ 11am: The Librarian: Quest for the Spear
2014-12-07 @ 1pm: The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines
2014-12-07 @ 3pm: The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice
2014-12-07 @ 7pm: The Librarians season premiere: And the Crown of King Arthur; And the Sword in the Stone

Links:
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear television movie @ IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412915/
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines television movie @ IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455596/
The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice television movie @ IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1146438/
The Librarians television show @ IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3663490/
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear television movie @ Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Librarian-Quest-Spear-Noah-Wyle/dp/B0009NSCRQ/
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines television movie @ Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Librarian-Return-King-Solomons-Mines/dp/B000IJ7A24/
The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice @ Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Librarian-Curse-Judas-Chalice/dp/B001MVYUQG/
Discount Comic Book Service: http://www.DCBService.com
Comics Podcast Network: http://www.comicspodcast.com
League of Comic Book Podcasts: http://www.comicbooknoise.com/league/

Email us at TheGuys@ComicBookPage.com

Join the discussion on our forum at: http://forum.comicbookpage.com

This podcast episode originated on the Comic Book Page website: http://www.ComicBookPage.com