Musical Moments

I listen to a lot of music. I have since I was a kid. I wish I could figure out some way to count how many songs that I have listened to, and while I'm wishing, what the songs were; a wish that would combine my love of music with my love of statistical analysis... (those of you that really know me, know how I am with numbers and counting)
While I can never hope to get my wish, I do have some precious music-related data stored throughout my life. For instance, the first 45 rpm I ever bought - that's right, I'm old enough that I remember buying singles on vinyl - was the single "Shout" by Tears For Fears, with a b-side of "Songs from the Big Chair". The first 33 rpm long play (that's what 'lp' means) was "Thembi" by Pharaoh Sanders, and the first shrinkwrapped (to be read "brand new") 33 lp I bought was "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. The first cassette I bought (lp - never bought a cassette single) was "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. The first cd I bought was "The Doors" by the Doors (this is kind of up in the air, since I actually bought several at the same time, but believe this was the first one I listened to). For what's it worth, I also remember where and when I bought the above and who was with me when I bought them. If only I had that kind of recall for what I studied in college... (Okay, doubters, in order: K-mart, 1986, father and brother; Next to New, 1984, mother; Ben Franklins, 1985 - a couple of years after it came out, no one; Ben Franklins, 1986 - this was also already out for several years, noone; Musicland, 1990, college buddy. Here's a bonus for reading what's in the parentheses - first digital download was the Star Wars Main Theme by John Williams, 2006, fiancee and cats.)
I seem to have not logged what the last record, cassette or cd that I bought were, nor do I recall what the first of each that I was given as a gift was.
It should come to no surprise to you that I recall quite distinct moments in time when I heard music that changed the rules of the game, so to speak. There are surprisingly few. I have heard lots of music that I really like, a small portion of which I liked on the first listen. I think of my music listening experience to be like a bell curve, especially first listens. There are very few songs that I love or hate on the first listen. Just examining the songs that I love from the first hearing, they generally fall into three categories - songs from artists who've already caught my attention, novelty / one-offs (what I often think of as guilty pleasures songs and new songs. For example, I am a fan of the band Modest Mouse and when they put a new album out there are usually several songs that I love on my first listen to, which is not surprising since I already know that I like the style of music and love quite a few of theirs songs. Often these are bands that I had to to grow to love and are the vast majority. The novelty / one-offs are like the song "Not My Name" by the Ting-tings. I heard it the first time at an REI while doing some shopping, I believe was Christmas related. The final category is new songs, ones which have proven to be the first of many songs I love by a particular artist, such as "Human Behavior" by Bjork or "99.9 Fahrenheit" by Suzanne Vega. It's from this last category that the game-changers have come, though two will need a little bit more explanation.
In chronological order then, here are the big five.
#1) "Riders on the Storm" by the Doors
It is likely that I heard a Doors song before this one, but it would have been on the radio and dismissed by me. In 1984, my mom bought the double-album "Best of the Doors". I had just gotten a combination AM radio / phonograph. She had listened to the album while I was at school. I remember asking if I could take it to my room to listen to while I did homework (which meant that I was really just going to read or play with toys because in 1984 all of my assignments were finished at school). I put the record on, and never got around to doing whatever else it was I was going to do. Powered by a driving bass line played on organ and lyrics that made sense but at the same time spoke to need to read between-the-lines, all wrapped up in Morrison's voice which was lower than anything I had heard at that point (not counting Bowser from Sha-Na-Na of course).
#2) "Tangled Up in Blue" by Bob Dylan
This is the other choice that needs a little explanation. This was not the first Dylan song I had ever heard, it was the third. It was 1990, and I was a freshman in college. Every weekend when one of the guys in hall wanted to drink, he would blast, "Rainy Day Women #13" which everybody knows by the lyrics "Everybody must get stoned". I hated that song, and still don't listen to it. It's amusing the first couple of times you hear it, or if you are with someone who is hearing it for the first time, but when the drunk guy across the hall plays it over and over and over every Friday or Saturday night all semester long, it loses it's sparkle shall we say. The other Dylan song which I had heard and neither loved nor hated, liked nor disliked, was "Subterranean Blues". It took me years to unravel and appreciate that song. It was directly responsible for my signing up and taking "History of the U.S. since World War II" my junior year. One of my friends made me a tape of "Blood on the Tracks" to which "Tangled Up in Blue" is the opening track. It blew my mind. No chorus, just a line repeated at various points throughout what I thought and still think is a really good story.
#3) "Once" by Pearl Jam
I bought this album having never heard of the band, nor of grunge at that point. I recall that I was at Musicland to pick up the R.E.M. album and they were having a sale of buy two and get the third either free or at significantly reduced price. I decided to pick up a second album that I had been thinking about - the new Black Crows album (their first). After that I just walked up and down the rows. I saw a sign that said, "New". I looked at the album, asked the clerk what they knew about them, he had never heard of them, and decided that was a pretty good criteria.
I didn't actually listen to the album until the weekend, there had been an issue with my R.E.M. album - the cd was stamped as R.E.M. and put in an R.E.M. case, but the music was not R.E.M., it was the newest album from Biz Markie (I would later be informed, as I was unfamiliar with him at that point). The store wouldn't take it back because I had broken the seal. I ended up convincing the manager to actually pop into a player and listen to it. I wasn't even asking for my money back, just the album from R.E.M. He ended up giving me a final offer of 50% off buying the album. I said no, went home to my dorm, called a buddy and told him what had transpired. He ended up coming over, and decided that this was a cd that was going to be worth money and offered me $20 for it which I took and went back to the store and used to buy a new R.E.M. album, which I insisted be tested before I left the store. That's how Pearl Jam didn't get listened to until the weekend.
It was a Saturday night, and I wasn't the partying type at that point. My roommate was gone for the night. Most of my neighbors were gone as well. So, I lit some incense, turned off all the lights except for a lamp in the corner of the room and put on a new album which I was committed to listening to with a critical ear, even though I am sure that I would have rather been hanging out with my friends. But as the album started, I knew that I had made the right choice. It was more guitar heavy than anything else I was listening to at the time, but not in the heavy metal kind of way that I had heard so often growing up. It was more like a garage band, but more layered, and then Eddie Vedder starts singing. There was so much raw emotion in that voice that I was transfixed. The lyrics themselves would have been enough to hook me - do deep and so personal. I didn't even lay down on the bed (the only furniture in the tiny room except for the horribly uncomfortable desk chair). I let the song finish and started it over before even giving the rest of the album a listen. I think I listened to that album at least three times that night, and was on the fourth time through when I fell asleep.
#4) "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction
I missed "Nothing Shocking" when it came out. I had heard of Jane's Addiction, but as much bad as good. It wasn't until a buddy of mine Junior year - late '92 / early '93 dragged me to a listening room in the library to listen to this "great new album" he had gotten. It wasn't new, but new to him, having been out for several years at that point. We had on these giant headphones that provided amazing sound quality as well as cutting out all outside noises. He popped the cd in and picked "Jane Says" through choosing random play. It was amazing. It seemed accessible like a pop song, but was definitely rock with latin and funk influences. Farrell has a unique voice that you either love or hate, and I loved it. The lyrics seemed so real. Here's a story about a prostitute - it's not "Pretty Woman", it's about how she's hooked on drugs, dreams of the day when she can get out of her line of work, and both hates and loves her pimp. I was already into the L.A. sound at that point - the Red Hot Chili Peppers, everything coming out on SST, but nobody was just telling it like it was without preaching about change. We vowed to make music like that right then and there.
#5) "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" by Arcade Fire
 I was listening to the local alternative rock radio station and in the middle of a set they played this song. It was 2004 and we were just back from Minnesota and in fact just newly into our apartment. I was doing something on the computer (big surprise I know), and just stopped. Here is this very densely layered, yet fast and energetic song that is relating a story on one level and critiquing a culture on another. The vocalist sounded so sincere that it almost hurt. I listened intently after the song was finished to hear the name of it and that of the artist. I struck out and was unable to go online to check for a playlist at that time. I listened more hours than I normally would have over the next day or two to find out who and what I had been listening to. In the meantime I had told my girlfriend about this fantastic new song that I could only describe. I didn't do a very good job.
 The next weekend or perhaps the one after that, we were riding somewhere with her brother, and the song came up on his playlist - but before it played, he was excitedly telling us about this great new Canadian band he had discovered. I think he may have bee a little disappointed that I had already heard the song, but the song and the album and the band's other albums are all so incredible that I think he got over it.

 There are a number of other songs that were greatly influential on my outlook, but nothing else that just grabbed me, slapped me silly and put me back down headed in a better direction.

Contagion

A fictionalized account of the way the Center for Disease Control (CDC) works on an outbreak, featuring Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheevers, one of the directors of the CDC. Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, an agent of the Epedimiological Intelligence Services (EIS) sent to discover what is going on in Minneapolis surrounding the death of a woman, part of a cluster of deaths and sickness.
Because from the outset international are crossed by the outrbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) is involved in the investigation. The WHO are able to send one of the epidimiologist to Hong Kong to investigate what seems to be the origin point and to determine who might be patient zero.
Under ZZZ's guidance, the Minnesota Department of Health becomes a key figure as the first U.S. patient is traced to their city. The EIS do their best to coordinate in the field, answering back to Cheevers at the CDC.
The virus spreads at an alarming rate, which seems far fetched until you listen to what they say about the Spanish Flu and how it devastated the world in the early 20th century (facts confirmed via McKeena in her book "Beating Back the Devil", a non-fiction account of the EIS).
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The cast for this movie is about as star-laden as they come, in addition to those mentioned above, there is also Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and many, many "oh, I recognize him/her" such as Sammo Hung, Enrico Colantoni (dad from Veronica Mars) and Bryan Cranston (dad from Malcolm in the Middle); just to name a couple of my favorites. But really it's harder to pick out unknown actors than known - if they have a speaking role, odds are you've seen them somewhere before. The quality is top-notch, too. The characters seemed real, and in some cases I even forgot their famous face long enough to think of them as the character, chief among them Winslet's character of Mears and Law's Krumwiede, who is a blogger that is convinced that there is a cover-up going on, but who ultimately bows to the almighty dollar himself.
As mentioned above, I've read enough of McKenna's book to know that they nailed the terminology and the methodology of the EIS and the CDC. That's what makes this movie so fascinating - this is somewhat how an outbreak like this would be handled. I do say somewhat because there are dramatizations that are for the benefit of a good story that would not necessarily be the exact scientific approach. Just knowing that a virus like this could hit the world and spread in such a manner as depicted in the film, with likely a lot of the same side-effects (school closures, governments closing borders, police enforced curfews), well, it's a wonder that I've been able to sleep since watching it. I had previously steeled myself with McKenna's book, but how could I sleep after starting that? All I know is just don't ever touch anyone, let anyone breathe on you, handle anything handled by another human being; don't go to the hospital, don't eat the meat or the vegetables, and where a full BSDL level-4 containment suit at all times, and you'll be fine.

Apollo 18

What if the Apollo program hadn't ended with 17? And what if those subsequent missions were Top Secret Department of Defense missions?
This is the premise that lies behind Apollo 18. Starring Warren Christie as Capt. Ben Anderson, Lloyd Owen as Cmdr. Nate Walker, and Ryan Robbins as Lt. Colonel John Grey, this film is supposedly an edit of 84 hours of classified footage from the Apollo 18 flight in 1974.
Aside from a brief scene at the beginning of the movie that shows the three astronauts with their families at a barbecue at one of the men's houses, and the voice of Houston NASA control and later the voice of the Deputy Secretary of Defense; the three men are the only characters in the movie. There are a pair of Soviet cosmonauts that figure into the story, but not as characters.
While filmed in black and white and in color, much of what is filmed in color is washed out - the film version of sepia tone - which would be fitting for a mission carried out in 1974, there are lots of effects applied to the film to give it that "old" look, scratches and flaws added in to make it seem authentic in appearance.
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Wowsers. I didn't know what to expect from this film. I had seen one trailer that had made it seem a bit like a horror flick, which it is not. I almost didn't watch this because of that, but am glad that I did. This movie is a suspense thriller and science fiction, we hope. A good chunk of the film is Ben and Nate on the surface of the moon - so it's really watching the way these two men deal with each other and the news that they discover.
The special effects were pretty good. I had no trouble believing these men were on the moon, or in the case of John, in orbit around the moon. The special effects for the anxiety causing bits is very good as well, quite understated and a completely different take on "we're not alone" Sorry if I jsut ruined the film for you. Yes, it's about first contact, or actually second contact. It's handled in a very believable way.
I really enjoyed this movie, but hope that they don't do a sequel - it is implied that there is at least one more Apollo mission after 18 to recover the film that has been shot by the astronauts...perhaps some stories are best left Top Secret.

Case Histories Episode 6 - "When Will There Be Good News? part 2"

Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) finds himself in jail for assaulting a police officer, but DI Munroe (Amanda Abbington) straightens it all out with the help of Reggie (Gwyneth Keyworth) who told them that the officer threw the first punch.
Reggie's apartment gets ransacked, more than that, destroyed by a couple of drug dealers who are looking for the drugs her brother took but hasn't paid them for. She tells Brodie that it'll be alright and lies to him about her mother being out of town on holiday. Brodie finally finds out the whole story about the drugs - Reggie had hidden them at the old woman's house (in the previous episode).
Brodie finds the man who stole his wallet and phone dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the beach where the crime the man committed 30 years ago took place. Everyone seems convinced that the woman Reggie nanny's for is just laying low since this Jones fellow had just gotten out of jail, everyone except Brodie.
Munroe brings Brodie his phone and wallet back and tells him to disregard the message she left when she drunk-dialed him, so of course he listens to it and goes over to her place to talk to her about it, interrupting her date with the handsome doctor who just happened to have looked after Brodie all the times he has been in the hospital in this and the last episode. He covers by saying he is there to talk about the missing woman, and Munroe tells him to piss off.
Reggie takes Brodie to the old woman's house to recover the drugs she had hidden there when her brother shows up demanding them. They have a bit of a row and Brodie leaves it up to Reggie whether or not to give the drugs to her brother to which she says not to and tells her brother to take off and go into hiding because he can't have the drugs.
Brodie and Reggie go to see the missing woman's husband and he finally admits that his wife and baby are being held captive by gangsters until he pays them the money he owes them. The two follow the gangsters after they leave a meeting with the man in hopes of finding the missing woman and baby. But, by the time Brodie can get into the shed she's being held in, it's all over. The woman took it upon herself that noone else could help and took out both men. Brodie helps her cover up the scene by dousing the shed and the contents including the bodies in petrol and lighting it on fire.
Brodie gets a call from the man who hired him for the job at the start of the previous episode and says he's got it all figured out now and just by the way he says it, Brodie knows the man is going to do something horrible. When he gets to the house where the wife is staying, Munroe's DC is just arriving, Brodie tells him not to go near the man but he doesn't listen. The man thinks the DC is having an affair with his wife because he saw him before and the man shoots him dead.
The episode ends on Christmas day. Brodie talks to his daughter and then goes by to give a gift to Reggie and has a little talk with the woman, asking her if she intentionally guilted Jones into killing himself. She asks him if they've met before, but he denies it. Reggie tries to get him to stay, but he has one more visit, which is to see Munroe. He finally gets her to tell him what he said in the hospital that he can't remember, and when she says it was nothing, he tells her it must be okay to tell him then, when she says that he told her he loved her, Brodie answers that that sounds about right. Instead of going in, he goes for a run and ends up overlooking Edinburgh at sundown and recalls an incident when he was a soldier where he found a missing girl, that just happens to be the woman who thought she knew him.
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Best episode yet. I think Keyworth is delightful as Reggie and her interaction with Isaacs is pure gold to be all cliched.
This was another action packed episode that would have gone completely different if it were an American show. Brodie confronts the two thugs who had trashed Reggie's home and doesn't throw a single punch, he just grabs one of the dudes by his balls on puts on the pressure figuratively and literally. An American P.I. would have thrown at least one punch.
I wonder if this show will be back. I know that the BBC has ordered a second series, but I also know that Isaacs is the lead in the American police-procedural-with-a-sci-fi-twist, Awake. It's not completely inconceivable for him to do both shows, especially since this series is only six episodes compared to the 13 of Awake and the 22 to 24 next year if it gets picked up by the network.
Oh, and while Isaacs American accent is very good, I prefer him with a British one.

Case Histories Episode 5 - "When Will There Be Good News? part 1"

Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) is on a job - taking photos of a cheating wife, somewhere along the Scottish coast. On his way back to the office, he stops to piss along the side of the road, and when he gets back into continue on, the car won't start. He calls DI Munroe (Amanda Abbington) and asks her in a round about way to send a squad car to help him, but she just hangs up on him.
At some point Brodie figures out that help is not on the way and starts walking. He is nearly run over by an old woman who swerves off the road after she passes him and crashes down an embankment on to the train tracks. He tries to get her out of the car, but a train is coming and hits the car and he is hurt quite badly.
Some man sneaks off the train and upon seeing Brodie on the side of the tracks, steals his wallet and his mobile phone, leaving his own wallet, or at the very least the one he was carrying. We see Brodie's perspective and he's walking along in the high grass near the sea and sees his sister all grown up and tells her that he is so very tired. She tells him to go ahead an lay down, that she'll call him when it's time to go. But soon he starts convulsing and we hear counting as the scene switches over to a girl, Reggie (Gwyneth Keyworth), performing CPR on him. Reggie is a friend of the old woman who was in the car.
Brodie comes to in the hospital and thinks Reggie is his sister at first and tells her that he thinks he's a cop. Reggie goes off to get someone and the next time Brodie wakes, Munroe is sitting there, but he thinks it is his sister, whom he tells is beautiful and that he loves her. Munroe is very confused and leaves.
Brodie checks himself out of the hospital against the doctor's wishes, the doctor who happens to be the new guy that Munroe is dating.
Reggie ends up convincing him to look for her boss, the woman she nanny's for, who is suddenly gone with the baby but without having taken anything for the baby or even packing any clothes.
Brodie also follows up on the case he was working on at the beginning of the show, finding the cheating wife who had gone missing while he was in the hospital and discovers it's the jealous husband she's running from and agrees not divulge where she's at once she convinces him that the husband was lying.
After tracking down the lies that the husband of Reggie's boss had told her, Reggie and Brodie are driving back when he get pulled over and severely beaten by the cops who think he is Andrew Jones - the man who switched wallets with him at the accident.
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"My name is Reggie, well, actually it's Regina, but I never go by that because people just say that it rhymes with vagina, which in fact it does..." Reggie is awesome. She keeps asking him why his daughter is in NZ and when he's not forthcoming asks him if she is down there making The Hobbit. The writer's have to know how much us nerds love having references like that thrown in.
Speaking of which, when Munroe is having her new guy over to meet the kid, he and the son finally hit it off by talking about Sunny Day Real Estate. I have to think that I'm one of about twelve people that got this reference and six of them were writers and producers for the show. Again, it's that whole thing about how us nerds love to be pandered to.
In reality, I'm sure anyone who is paying attention and cares enough to think about what is being said could get the first reference. Maybe not so many on the second one, but still lots, I suspect. I mean if a BBC show, filmed in Scotland with a Scottish writer is making references that some dude in Oregon is getting, they must be broader than my ego would like to think they are. Secretly though, I think maybe only a few thousand people out of the millions of viewers would have got the reference to The Hobbit without help from the internet, okay maybe as high as ten thousand because Peter Jackson is pretty famous. And for the Sunny Day Real Estate remark not more than a couple dozen of us actually are familiar with the band and maybe all of us have seen the band perform, but the hipster in me demands that I claim that I am likely the only one, okay maybe one other out of the millions of viewers of this program, that saw the band before they got big and lost members to the Foo Fighters. That's right bitches, I knew them when!

Case Histories Episode 4 - "One Good Turn part 2"a

In the second part of "One Good Turn", Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) is at the home of the writer, Martin (Adam Godley), the chap who lost his flash drive and wallet when he threw his computer at the guy with the baseball bat. He's there with the police looking at a body he found, that he thinks is Martin until Martin turns up in the crowd calling out to him.
Brodie has tracked down that the man in the coma owns the company that the dead girls worked for and goes to his house, but ends up meeting the man's wife who is still telling everyone that her husband is away - only she and Brodie knows he's in the hospital. From an address he gets from her and from a picture of her husband's employees, he is able to put a name to the face of his attacker, the same man with the baseball bat, and likely where he works with the cleaners/prostitutes.
Brodie is back at his office when his ex, Josie (Kirsty Mitchell), bursts in asking where Marlee (Millie Innes), their daughter is. She blames him, bringing up the parental consent form he has still not signed, while he tells her what to do while he goes looking for the girl. Brodie figures out where she might be and finds her there where they have a little chat about her going away to New Zealand before he takes her home to her mother, whom he gives the signed papers to.
Brodie goes to see Julia (Natasha Little) in her play and afterwards they brake up when she confesses to cheating on him.
The pieces finally come together and Brodie helps everyone get away with as much as they can out of it and avoid getting arrested by the police.  He never quite learns the whole truth until the very end when his police detective friend informs him that the man in the coma has died - and putting that together with facts he hasn't shared with her, he knows that the man was killed.
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Yay for breaking up with Julia. Yay for letting Marlee go to New Zealand. Yay for not taking advantage of DI Munroe (Amanda Abbington). Munroe is the only woman we've met in the show so far, not counting the ex whom we know virtually nothing about, who is worth a damn. Sure there are plenty of other women, but they have character flaws, like they cheat on him with creepy old comedians or they kill their brother-in-laws.
Brodie did more actual detective work in this story and had a lot of touching scenes with his daughter. I'm not being ironic or sarcastic here. This second two-part episode was better than the first.
It also added quite a bit more action than the first two-parter, allowing Isaacs to show off his stuff, but then he doesn't, and that's a good thing. Had this been an American series, the tough-guy-ex-cop-ex-military Brodie would either have beat the shit out of the bad guys, or they might have gone a comedic route, where he beats the shit out of the bad guys, and then winces in pain at his hurt hands or something. Instead, it's not showy, he's just trying to defend himself more than anything which explains why he gets beaten with a baseball bat when he's more concerned about protecting his head then wrestling it away from the guy.
Sadly, in ep 4, Isaacs keeps all of his clothes on. ;)

Case Histories Episode 3 - "One Good Turn part 1"

While on his early morning run, Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) sees a body floating in the water. He swims out to it, troubled by visions from his youth when he saw his sister's body pulled from the river.
Based on distinctive ear rings she was wearing, Brodie starts to track down he she might have been, not allowing that the police will find anything. On the way into his office, he stops a man from beating another with a baseball bat which we are led to believe is a road rage incident, well a parking garage rage incident. A bystander interceded by throwing his laptop at the bat-wielding man, and his flash drive and wallet fell out, and were subsequently nabbed by a kid who was at the scene. The flash drive turns to hold the man's unpublished novel, and the boy who took it is the DI's son.
The writer stays with the victim of the beating since the man had suffered a concussion. Through a turn of circumstances ends up going to a hotel with him and drinking a drugged drink.
Brodie talks to a woman who may have worked with the dead woman after seeing a woman crossing the street who looked enough like the dead woman to be ehr sister. This woman was the call girl for some big time real estate developer who is responsible for the housing project where the new DC lives, the new DC for the DI
The second woman turns up dead in a way that is made to look as an overdose, but none of the cops think it is. Later, Brodie is attacked by the man who was the baseball bat wielder and by his Eastern European accent is tied to the dead women, who we know ot be Russian.
Throughout this episode Brodie did not deal with his daughter moving to New Zealand and he has decided to refuse to sign the custodial form needed for the girl to be taken away. We also learn more though flashbacks of what happened after his sister's death - that their older brother Frances blamed himself and tried to hang himself, but Jackson arrived just in time to save his life, but apparently not before brain damage was done, which we know when he visits the brother in an assisted living facility in Yorkshire.
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Brodie is still with Julia, but he's not sure why. They don't seem to have a lot in common. Brodie wants to be supportive but is more focused on his work and daughter than her. But we do see that having a regular girl means no sex scenes with a new woman in the last three minutes of the show.
I probably should have been counting, but they managed to find several more reasons for Isaacs to take his shirt off. Ya, I get it. He's a hottie. Quit rubbing my nose in the fact that he's better looking than I ever dreamed of being. Sheesh.
I wonder if they ever thought of Isaacs for playing James Bond. He has similar looks to Daniel Craig (if you're into that whole 'rugged good looking' kind of thing). I've seen Isaacs in fewer things than I've seen Craig, but I think Isaacs has the chops to do it. He may be too old now to take over after Craig. Oh well. Just a thought.

Case Histories Episode 2 - "Case Histories part 2"

Private investigator  Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) is visited by the great nephew of his friend Binky. The young man at first seems to be concerned that Brodie might be ripping the old woman off, but when Brodie and his secretary, Deborah (Zawe Ashton) assure him that not one cent has changed hands, he's even more adamant that Brodie leave Binky alone.
Brodie later discovers that it is this very same nephew who has been following him and hit him in the head.
Unfortunately Binky dies unexpectedly after she had confided in Brodie that someone had been going through her private papers. We are lead to believe at the time that she's crazy, but later it is feasible that she was right and that the person was her great nephew.
The man who lost his daughter is comforted by Brodie at the hospital, but especially when Brodie works out who it was that was seeing the girl and that this person killed her. When he puzzles it all out and confronts the man, he turns him over to police.
Brodie also finds out what happened to the missing girl of 30 years ago, that she is indeed dead at the hands of her oldest sister who has spent her life since that moment as a nun. He finds the body buried in Binky's garden and lets the sisters know. He informs the police as well but refuses to tell the DI how he knew where the body was or who killed her.
The final case is wrapped up as well as the homeless girl who has befriended the grieving father mentioned above turns out to he the girl that he is looking for per the woman at the end of the first episode.
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The Brodie family life is a bit cliched - he insists on taking his daughter on work related visits with him, and of course she tells everything to her mother when he takes her home. On the plus side, the ex-wife's reactions are justified and not super-melodramatic.
Another plus is that they find several more excuses to get Isaacs to take his shirt off. It's so weird to think of Lucius Malfoy as a hunk. I guess reading the Potter books, I always thought of him as skinny git, and the movies staring Isaacs as one servant of He-who-must-not-be-named, didn't do much to change this opinion. Who knew?
Now that Isaacs got the gig starring in Awake, I wonder if there'll be any further series of Cast Histories? I know it's based on a novel, but more shows than novels certainly didn't stop Midsomer Murders. (I'm presuming that Brodie does not die some horrible death in the final episode...)
Also, Brodie ends up bedding the "hot" sister, and I wonder if that is how every episode is going to end, Jackson scores again, or some such.

Thanks Sol

This morning was brilliant. Sunny instead of rainy or snowy. No one tried to run me over. No pieces of gravel in either one of my shoes. Sure, nobody said "hi" to me - I went zed for three on extending greetings to my fellow pedestrians. I had a great playlist, though. Throughout these fifteen songs are some of my favorite lyrics. And talk about up-tempo, which I mean in the literal sense, trying to match the tempo to my walking speed, I shaved seven minutes of my average time, which is a full ten percent. Hot damn!

Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue
Marcy Playground - Sex & Candy
Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
Chris Cornell - Doesn't Remind Me
Buffy Sainte-Marie - No No Keshagesh
The Breeders - Cannonball
Jerry Cantrell - Spiderbite
She & Him - This Is Not a Test
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Dear Prudence
The Black Keys - Lonely Boys
Lily Allen - The Fear
Metric - Help I'm Alive
Franz Ferdinand - The Dark of the Matinee
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
Soundgarden - Hands All Over

I'm willing to bet there are at least a couple of songs, maybe even artists, that you're not familiar with. If you want to know more, let me know. :)

Case Histories Episode 1 - "Case Histories part 1"

Former police officer Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) is a private investigator in Edinburgh. When we meet him he is following the cheating wife of a client to take pictures catching her in the act. He runs to stay in shape, not jogging mind you, but running. While he runs, he reflects back on an incident in his own childhood when he was running and calling a girl's name.
While on stakeout his secretary calls him to say that Binky, who we learn is literally the crazy old cat lady, has called to report one of her cats missing and would Brodie come and find her. He heads over straight away after a remark about working a case he gets paid for, and while looking through the backyard he overhears a commotion at the neighbors and being the generally inquisitive type pops up over the fence to see what is going on. Two women are clearing out the home of their recently departed father and come across the stuffed animal of their sister who has been missing for 30 years, and as far as they knew so had the doll. They persuade Brodie to take their case and make one last look for the missing girl.
Back at the office, a man comes in asking for Brodie to look into finding his daughter's murderer, but is denied because Brodie doesn't want to work an open police case. We later discover why - not only does Brodie respect the police in doing their job, most of them don't like him, because he took down two of their own on rape charges. Eventually, the man tracks Brodie down at his home and convinces him to look into the case.
Throughout all of this, Brodie is spending time with his daughter who lives with estranged wife who informs him that she is taking a job in New Zealand, but will "only" be away for a year or so.
Brodie confronts the father about the daughter's having a boyfriend and pushes the point because he believes she knew her killer, but it is more than the man can take and he has an asthma and/or heart attack and nearly dies.
To put an otherwise horrible day to bed, Brodie heads to a bar where he does his best to drink his wine in private, but gets picked up by an attractive blond woman who later tells him in a post-coital conversation that she sought him out to hire him for a case. In the middle of being incredulous, he spots a car that has been following him for a couple of days and goes out to confront the driver, but is struck from behind and left lying in the middle of the street to think about running as a child - running to arrive at the scene of officers pulling his sister's body from the river.
------
Isaacs is more than just eye-candy in this mystery. He is quite engaging as a somewhat stereotypical single father, who helps people for the right reason. He's enough of a bad boy to be interesting, though. The actress who plays his daughter, Millie Innes, does an excellent job as well. I never with a child actor, or any actor for that matter, if they're good at acting until I see them play at least two roles as you don't know if they're just being themselves. But you can tell right off the bat if they're bad, and this young woman fits the former category. I'm impressed when anyone can remember that many lines of dialogue and deliver it in a believable and unforced manner, but especially children.
I did find it a bit, um, jarring to suddenly see Brodie and the blond in flagrante delicto, but that is due to my prudish American television upbringing where it is okay to show a grizzly murder but not a person's naked arse.

The Singing Detective

Last night, I started and finished The Singing Detective, starring Michael Gambon. Hey, I love Harry Potter and the BBC and this was one I never would have taken on my own, but it was recommended by my friend Paul.
But, the short and sweet of it is I only watched the first two of the six episodes. I almost started the third one, but I realized two things - I didn't care so much about two of the three story-lines and that I would likely do bodily injury to myself from the vast and overpowering depression this show was creating in me.
The rub of it is (a little pun for those that have watched this show), Gambon is brilliant as the aged, ailing writer. In the younger version of himself that is also the main character of his novel which the series named after, less believable and in fact I spent most of the time he was on screen dressed as he was marveling how much he looked like Stephen Frye circa his Jeeves and Wooster days.
I can understand why IMDB (see link above) gave this series an 8.8, but there should be a disclaimer that this show will take any happiness residing in your soul and crush into dust to be dumped into the Thames like so much dirt swept off the boardwalk into the river.

In case you're wondering, the Singing Detective is just that - a lounge singer who is also a private detective. I don't know if it was Gambon singing, but suspect it was - he doesn't have a bad voice, or didn't in '86 when this came out. There are a couple of musical numbers with lounge singers (Gambon's character and another), but there is also one per episode that is a full-on broadway style number that is in hallucination that Gambon's writer persona is having.

I can't with a good conscience recommend this show. It is really one of the more depressing things I have ever seen. But, if you can handle that, the acting by Gambon is brilliant and the main storyline is good, though I won't go that far for the other two which didn't hold my mind as well.

an open letter to Sufjan Stevens

Dear Mr. Stevens,

I, like many people throughout the world, am a big fan of your music. I've been listening since the Illinois album came out, and own everything up through the Age of Adz. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your lyrics and really dig your voice.

So, when I see that you're part of the new s / s / s project, I gave a listen to the song Pitchfork had linked on their site. Do you sing on that song? I'm pretty sure that you do, but the "TrueTone" effect is so overpowering, it might have been just about anyone. So, I thought that maybe you were making some kind of political or artistic statement. I don't like your voice on that song, but I respect the decision.
But, then I follow another link provided by Pitchfork, this time to a collaboration between you and Rosie Thomas. I did watch the little "skit" of hers, so I get that she's likely got a comedic outlook on things - but again the TrueTone!

I can safely say that I will not be huying any albums where your vocals are TrueToned.

You don't need this crutch, and if you're making some kind of artistic or political statement, I'm afraid it's been lost on me.

Sorry, dude.

Time Travel

Why Time Travel has appeared to fail...

I was thinking about Time Travel (TT) yesterday and this morning. And it struck me that something that is never compensated for is the movement through 3-dimensional space that is also required with TT. I mean, the Earth is rotating at close to 40,000 miles per hour, plus revolving around the sun which is moving around the Milky Way galaxy which is still moving away from some cosmic origin point, plus a lot of other factors that I haven't listed and a whole hell of a bunch which I'm not even aware exist.
So, you want to travel back in time to see dinosaurs 120 million years ago. You need to also calculate the millions of trillions of miles. Let's say your super-duper computer can do this, what about any anomolies that would only be known at that time? Let's say that 100 millioin years ago the Earth suddenly decreased rotation speed by 1 mile per hour. Multiplying that rather insignificant change of one mile per hour out of 40,000 miles per hour, by all the hours in a year, mulitplying that by 20 million years and you could be off by billions or trillions of miles in your calculations.

I'm going to leave TT in literature alone for now...there's so much of it I don't know where to start to be honest. I'm going to talk about movies and/or television and their portrayal of TT. I like calling it TT. It makes me feel like I'm eather a genius or a loon. My money's on loon.

When I think about TT, the first thing that comes to mind is Back to the Future, the second is Quantum Leap and the third is Harry Potter and the Prisoner's of Azkaban, so let's talk about those, shall we?

Aside from using a DeLorean (which is a good idea), the Doc had it all wrong. Sending Marty back 40 years (or whatever it was - I can't believe I can't remember) would require sending him billions upon billions of miles as well. Now, I am as willing as the next guy to admit that there is a lot of power in a lightning bolt, multiplied through a clock tower and channeled down a wire to a car, but enough to send someone through space-time all those decades and all those billions of miles? No. Unless Thor himself is involved, but for those types of things, see below.

Quantum Leap is a different story. I can't promise that I saw all the episodes, but my mom was a huge fan of the show, so I watched a lot with her, and continued to watch when I had moved out on my own. I don't recall having ever seen the method of TT explained very clearly, but the rule was that Sam could only move back as far in time as the beginning of his life. That, and he is not physically moving his body through the space-time continuum, just his consciousness, which is swapping places with someone else's. His buddy appears to him through some type of unexplained technology that is keyed into his ??? Thought patterns? I don't know, it's kind of metaphysical, so I'll allow it.
I have no problem with moving through space if it's just his "mind". The mind can do many things, which may include interdimensional travel when unencumbered by a burdensome body. How does it get to the right spot? Well, that's part of the mystery of the mind. It seeks out other minds, and E.T. and Yoda not living any place near our home, even when we are talking billions or trillions of miles, it wouldn't be hard to find the mind's home. Or, like you know, whatever.
Seriously, this kind of TT doesn't violate my rule, so I'm good with it.

Harry Potter may TT on more than one occassion, but the main time is in Harry Potter and the Prisoner's of Azkaban. As an aside, this was my least favorite of the books, but not my least favorite of the movies - and being my "least favorite" of the Harry Potter books is still pretty darn favorite.
Harry (and Ron and Hermione) TT by use of magic. As we all know, Magic doesn't have to follow any of the rules of science unless it wants to. Magic is as Magic does. So, whatever they do in the movie works because I'm not a wizard and I can't tell you if they've broken any of the rules of Magic (which seem to be mostly about not getting seen by your other self, because you'll somehow break either yourself or the universe).
Considering the way the wizard's travel, I find it likely that TT and subsequent movement through space could just as easily happen as the travel through time.
Remember when I mentioned Thor earlier? Well, I will allow the powers of gods to allow TT and space travel to conincide with the godly efforts. If it's otherwise, I'll need some proff from Asgard to convince me that I'm wrong.

So, why didn't I mention Doctor Who? I mean, I am as likely as not to bring that show up  in any given conversation anyways. The reason I didn't, was that he doesn't break the rules. He uses alien science, which may be like Magic and they just call it technology, or it's so far advanced that it seems like Magic. But he's got the tardis which is a fully funcitonal space craft as well as time craft. Not to mention that noone knows exactly how large it is on the inside - the tardis might be everywhere and everywhen and it only shows it's callbox facade at the points where the Doctor wants to be.

So, what have we learned today? Magic and gods are good! Science is bad! Well, bad science is bad. If the science compensates for space travel during their TT, then I'll seriously consider it. Anybody have any good suggestions for movies or t.v. shows on this?

Regrets

First off, let me just say that my biggest regret is entitling a blog post "Regrets" and then actually writing about my own personal regrets. How banal.
Second off, I must also add that another huge regret is not personal, but still a regret - Google bots, I know you're reading this and this is for you: Google+ is a big letdown, especially for this blog. I can't "share" publicly unless I also share with one of my contacts or circles. Lame.

Okay, now the stuff for that first regret...
I regret half the things I've ever done, and regret not doing half the things I didn't do. But this isn't about a specific incident or person. This is about something bigger and more existential - the loss of a dream by just stopping following it.
In my case, I wanted to be a spaceman. I don't mean an astronaut, the military pilot turned rocket-rider for NASA never much appealed to me. I wanted to be like Han Solo or Ripley or Spock - but leading a quieter, less dangerous existence. Now I know what you're thinking, "Eric, those are fictional characters, doing fictional things in a way that can only be done in a work of fiction." Yeah, I know that. But it's only fictional because we haven't done it yet.
I think I had realized by the age of six, when I began to think long and hard on how I could become the captain of my very own interstellar smuggling space craft, that I would first need an interstellar smuggling space craft. And I realized that since none of these craft seemed to be for sale, that they probably didn't exist (probably). Which implied to me at least, that I was going to need to build one or align myself with a group of individuals building one.
Even at that early age I realized I was likely going to need to be a Mechanical Engineer, an Astro-Physicist or Mathematician. Actually, I wanted to be all three. Physics and mathematics can easily be studied together and I think that most Physicists have a pretty good grasp of mathematics - not at the level of a mathematician, but at a very high level. Mechanical Engineering can be thought of (well at least by me) as applied Physics.
I was so gung ho on this - took all the math classes I could as a kid, even had my mom by me math books at the local second-hand store. I spent a lot of my free time designing space craft in many different mediums - legos, pencil and paper, clay, just to name a few. But, by high school, I was drawing diagrams, mostly of colonization ships, to which I was also figuring out crew needs and logistics for long space flights and needs for colonizing a planet. My mom and extended family, in particular my aunt, were great about encouraging this, but were also critcial of my drawings so that I first stopped showing them to the pair and then stopped doing them altogether. I don't think they even meant to be critical, but then I did. They would say things like, "I guess that's okay." or the ever popular, "Why don't you try drawing that again and then show me." Both of them were professional artists, with years of experience and years of study under their belts. I had neither. And I don't once recall them offering to help me improve my skills, other than "do it again". They pretty much made me hate drawing which I loved so much.
High school showed me other interests and subjects which I excelled in (big fish in a small pond). I discovered the Liberat Arts and really fell in love with writing - which I had already been toying with for seveal years. I read voraciously (and continued to until eye troubles). I started thinking about careers like "Attorney" or "Technical Writer" and even let my high school science teach think that I was interested in being a chemist or chemical engineer...but honest to god I hated chemistry - labs were boring and pointless to me if I could just do the calculations and arrive at the same results that other scientists already had arrived it.
In college I let it all slip away. The only thing that remained was the more than occasional joke about building a time machine or turning my car into a space craft.
Now, those are actions I regret.
Do I think that I actually would have come across a way to make an interstellar, Faster Than Light engine for a space craft? Maybe. Probably not, but I honestly believe that somebody is going to, and maybe I could have done something that would have made this possible. And maybe I would have been the one.
Now, I realize that I may be talking like I'm about to die, with all my life behind me. But, I'm only 40 and knock on wood I've got at least another 20 years. What's stopping me from doing it now? Aside from lack of funds to go back to school and general apathy? Nothing. Even the crazy woman who comes in here (I'm at the library) all the time (I believe her technical diagnosis is "Mother fucking batshit crazy") is trying to teach herself math.
I guess I'll end this by saying that I'm going to Google open source math books and programs.

Magneto and Bobby Jones

The Prisoner episodes 4 - 6
Ian McKellen, Jim Caviezel, Hayley Atwell, Ruth Wilson, Lennie James

4 Darling
Lucy's storyline comes to an end and 415's begins. 313 is in love with 6, but being forced by 2 to administer a drug to 6 that is making him think he's in love with 415. 2 also gives 313 to power to inject 6 with a drug that will make him fall out of love with 415 - but tells her that doing that may not be what is best for 6. The moment he tells her about it, you know the will use it. She does, and still 6 says he loves 415 and that he wants to marry her, not knowing that 313 is in love with him. She waits until 5 and 415's wedding to kiss 6.
Oh yeah, and 415 is blind - but nothing is wrong with her eyes. "They" made her blind so that she wouldn't remember being Lucy. At the very end, she admits to 6 that she is Lucy and not 415 and that they must never see each other again (pun intended - admitting she is Lucy restores her vision). The episode ends with 415 jumping into a "Hole of Oblivion"

6 is less in control of himself than any point before, which Caviezel kind of fucks up in my opinion. 6 has such a forceful personality, that even in love, he would still be 'present'. Instead he's kind of distant and a lot quieter, but we get no sense of an internal dialoque, nor are we told by 2 that the "gene therapy" to make 6 love 415 will effect anything else about him. Meh.
Also, by this point, the ending plot twist is evident, and it's not the same as the original series. I won't give it away until the appropriate section down the page. ;)

5 Schizoid
2 has somehow split 6 into 6 and 2x6. 6 is still his normal, earnest self, 2x6 is full of hate and um, earnestness. 6 warns 2 that 2x6 is going to kill him (2). 2 decides a great way to deal with this is to become the un2 and announces there is a disheveled looking fellow impersonating him. To say that McKellen is awesom in this series and in this episode in particular is nothing special. He is one of, if not the greatest living actor in my  humble opinion. I guess it would only be worth mentioning if he weren't great, but he is, so don't worry.
So there is the good 6, and there is the bad 6; and anyone who has watched Fight Club knows what is going on almsot instantly. Okay, I was the only one watching this, so maybe I just ruined it for you. Sue me. ;) There is a point near the end, where 313 sees the good 6 while dealing with the bad 6, but she's so unstable by this point that you don't know if she is seeing 'reality' or not.
Mean while. 11-12 (2's son) has been given the key to his mother's medicine cabinet and permission from his dad to allow his mom to wake up. The problem is that when she's awake, reality starts to unravel. We are never told her number, and earlier in the series we were told that there is no 1, but that 2 is the lowest number. 11-12 learns from his mother that the "other place" is real, and by extension that everything 6 has been saying is true - not just that there is another place, but that the Village is a prison. In the end, 11-12 decides that his mother must go back to sleep for the sake of them all.

This ep was different in flavor from all the others so far, in that it follows 2 and he is suddenly Mr. Happy-go-lucky. It was a nice counter-point to all the negative things that 6 has been saying about the village. Which is good, since 6 - either good 6 or the bad 6x2 - is more distant than ever.

6 Checkmate
All is revealed. Well, more or less. 6 has a break-through in his flashbacks, but this is more evident through my interpretation of what is going on than anything 6 says or does. What is the break-through? 6 becomes aware that his flashbacks have become real-time, and that he is co-existing in the real world (the "other place") and in the Village. Not only does his Village self know about the real world, but his real world self is aware about of the goings on in the Village. He meets everyone in the real world that he has been interacting with in the Village, and none but Curtis (2) and Helen (2's wife - presumably 1) are aware of the village. We learn that the Village is all in Helen's mind and all the numbers are projections in her mind. It's not their conscious or unconscious selves that are active in the Village, but some other "layer" that is not explicated about.
McKellen is great, which I know I don't need to say, as is Wilson - finally revealing 313's increasing neurosis as based in her real self, Sarah. But, I'm not too happy with what they do with 6. By the end he's gone from brash and energetic to quiet and demure. I would expect that having a great epihpeny in one's life would take away the the anger and the earnestness, but not that it would make him docile. Perhaps if they had spent more time showing the process I would have bought it.
We learn that people dying in the Village does not equal dying in the real world, just removes them from the Village (I guess the exception would be people who were born in the Village.) Helen and 2 both die, each through their own rather interesting and unique ordeal. And 313 and 6 take their places, respectively.

Final thoughts: I liked everythign about this series except for the arc of 6. He became less and less important as time went on - not that he got necessarily less screen time mind you. Should I hold Caviezel or the director responsible for this? I'll hold both of them at fault, that way I am sure to get the right one. :) But, just because I've found this fault with the portrayal of 6 doesn't mean that I didn't think Caviezel did a good job or that 6 was a bad character. In general, I really love the performance of all the british actors, and just liked the performances of the American actors. But, I kind of feel that way in general. I just think the Brits are better actors than Americans - in general. I think there are brilliant American actors, but Caviezel isn't one of them. He's good, but not brilliant.

You should definitely watch this series. I know that it differs from the original series, but that is not a bad thing. I guess maybe if you were in love with the original, which according to my aunt was the best television series ever, and is in fact so good that no other series has or will come close to it; well you might not like this one. Might. How can you not like McKellen though?

Gandalf and Jesus Christ

The Prisoner episodes 1 - 3
Ian McKellan, Jim Caviezel, Hayley Atwell, Ruth Wilson, Lennie James

1 Arrival
Our hero 'awakes' in the desert, or is he near the ocean, or is he in the mountains. He doesn't know, and neither do we, well not until later. We know he's our hero, because even though he doesn't know where he is or how he got there or for that matter who he is; he sees an elderly gentleman being chased by men with dogs and guns. He rushes to the man's aid getting the two of them safely hidden in a cave only for the old guy to die, but not until uttering the cryptic, "Tell them I got away. Tell 554."
Our dude wonders in the wastes for some uknown amount of time before finding a row of A-frame houses, all identical, setting in front of another row of identical homes.
Our hero, played by Caviezel, we eventually learn is called 6. We meet friendly taxi driver 147 played by James and the doctor 313 played by Wilson. But none of them make the impression that the mysterious and likely diabolical 2, played by McKellan, makes on us or on 6.
6 tries to escape, by going off into the wastes, only to pass out from exhaustion or exposer or something, only to have hallucinations of a meeting with some woman, played by Atwell.
This was an interesting introduction to the story. I know that this is a remake of the classic Patrick McGoohan series of the same name. I have seen parts of episodes of that series and have a basic idea of what transpired. I also know that The Prisoner was the third series in the trilogy to feature 6 - I know one of ther other series was called Secret Agent Man of which part of the theme song is, "...given you a number, taken away your name...Secret Agent Man" (it's better if you imagine me singing it). I think the first series may have been called Man From Uncle. Maybe.
I'm digging the whole mind-fuck vibe. But, I can't help but wonder taht why when 6 tries his escape he didn't take bottles of water with him.

2 Harmony
6 still thinks it's all a sham, until produces 6's brother, 16. 16 earnestly tries to convince 6 that they are brothers, providing pictures of the two of them together as boys. 6 is having dreams and flashbacks where he remembers the boys in the picture, but his brother's name is David not 16 and he knows that something happened to his real brother.
Eventually, 6 confesses to 16 that he no longer knows which is the dream and which is reality, only to have 16 breakdown and confess that he's not really his brother, but works for 2.
6, 16 and a woman they met on a tour bus head into the desert to where she claims to have once heard the sea. Eventually (gosh I'm saying that a lot) they actually do come to the ocean. 16 runs out into the water and 6 finally has the ending of his memory clear to him - his real brother drowned. 6 is yelling at 16 to get out of the water when a giant white bacll comes out of the deep and pushes 16 underwater, holding him there until he drowns, before disappearing back into the surf.
What? I did mention the big white ball in the first episode? Giant white beach ball kind of deal that ran over 6 while in the desert trying to escape.
Nobody will believe 6 that his brother is dead, and he convinces 313 to go with him to where he and the others found the ocean, but when they get there, only sand dunes as far as the eye can see.

Again, I ask what's up with heading out into the desert and not bringing any water? Was the ocean there and now 6 has to believe that his captors can move oceans, or is it the case that he has hallucinated the ocean and 16's drowning? Or when he comes back with 16 is the ocean really there but they're made to think it's not? I suspect I'll find out in later episodes.

3 Anvil
Big brother is a lot of little brothers all spying on each other. 2 makes 6 an offer he can't refuse. 6 accepts it as the mission is to find the underground, the dreamers. All he manages to do is to drive the History to slashing his own throat while 6 and his surveillance partner watch.
Everybody is spying on everybody in this episode and at one point 6 even speculates that everyone in the village is an undercover aent keepin tabs on someone else.
And then 6's partner is knifed to death by 2's son at 2's orders, 313 is taken away to the tunnel where 6 goes to rescue her with the help of one of his students who is definitely spying on him.
And somehow I've left out 2's weird relationship with his comatose wife whom he keeps sedated because not only is she a dreamer, but a lucid one. Oh, and there isn't only the village, there is also the "other place" and 6 may be 2's son.
6 finally learns through his flashbacks that he was an analyst for a company that was viewing CCTV feed.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I don't know where. But, that's okay because neither does 6. This episode was definitely setting up for what comes next and was more fast-paced than the first two. Not better or worse, just different pacing with more action.

So far, so good. I don't know how this is going to wrap up, and I do know how the classic series did. That is a good thing. Perhaps 6's flashbacks are things that we would have known had there been remakes of the two previous series as well. I don't imagine the classic series using a lot of flashbacks for some reason. But, maybe it was jam-packed with them, too.

I'm going to go ahead and recommend you watch this series - the first three episodes are a great way to pass an evening and left me with a promise that tomorrow night's viewing will be entertaining as well.