12 Monkeys (TV)

The Syfy time-traveling show 12 Monkeys wrapped up its four-season run earlier this year, so I decided now was a good time to check it out.

When it begins, 12 Monkeys is about a time traveler trying to stop a massive plague that kills the vast majority of humanity in the mid 21st century, and the 20th century actions that led to it. After about a season and a half, the scope expands to cover larger sections of history and the destruction of all time. It's all a bit over-the-top in terms of dramatics, but I thought it worked well for the most part, keeping the viewer interested as the stakes went higher.

The TV show is loosely based on the 12 Monkeys movie from 1995, but most of that relationship is in the initial setup and character names. Once the series gets going, and particularly after the first season, it bears little resemblance to what was in the movie. Not surprising, since they had a lot more hours to fill.

Time travel is always a difficult beast to pull off, but 12 Monkeys did a fine job of it. The ability to travel was limited by technical issues and potential for paradox, so the viewer could believe the difficulties that the characters were having couldn't simply be solved by going back a little further in time. And the limited information available after the plague made it more believable that it wasn't possible to easily eliminate the source of the problem. Later on, some of those limitations were removed, but by then the problems were greater and the enemy more capable. On the whole, I think 12 Monkeys pulls off the time-travel theme about as well as can be expected.

I enjoyed most of the characters in the show as well, although the leads were far from the best in my opinion. Both James Cole - handsome rogue from the future - and Cassandra Reilly - implausibly beautiful and brilliant doctor - felt too "TV perfect" for me to really have much empathy for them. Sure, they were in some crummy situations, but of course they always found a way out. But several of the supporting cast were great, in part because the characters actually had some believable flaws. By far the best character as far as I'm concerned, both in terms of acting and writing, was Jennifer Goines played by Emily Hampshire. She played the driven-insane-by-warped-time character perfectly, and the writers gave her some of the most hilarious and memorable moments in the series.

One of the most difficult things to do with any multi-season series is a really satisfying ending. On this score, I give 12 Monkeys high marks. The way that they wrapped up the plot was excellent, covering pretty much every major question that had been raised along the way. I'm sure there were a few minor things that didn't fit, but there wasn't anything that bothered me enough to matter. The ending for the characters was a bit too good to be true, but I really wasn't expecting anything else by that point.

All told, I'd recommend 12 Monkeys to science fiction fans. I'm not sure it'll draw in too many who aren't interested in the time travel premise, but it's a solid offering for those who are.

Why I'm Not Following the (American) Football Season

It's September, the time when a whole lot of people pay a lot of attention to what's happening on the gridiron. I've done that myself for many years, but I've decided this year it's time to finally put my time and money where my principles are.

I've got two major problems with the game of American football: the injuries it causes on the field, and the way the organizations treats their players off the field.

Head trauma caused by playing football is not news...it's been reported widely for years. (A quick search will turn up plenty of articles, but here's one for easy reference.) There was even a movie. It's a difficult condition to diagnose. Different people have widely varying reactions to blows to the head. What one person shrugs off might cause serious issues for another. Worse, the effects are often delayed, showing up days, weeks, or even years later. But what is known is this...repeated hits to the head are bad for anyone, and in at least some cases are known to cause serious problems.

At the professional level, the injury potential can be excused to some extent because the players are adults able to make their own decisions. Years ago, the players weren't informed and couldn't make that decision, but these days there's no excuse for any adult playing football to plead ignorance. Adults that want to take a risk for love of the game or for a big paycheck should be allowed to make that choice.

However, the vast majority of football players aren't professionals. They're high school kids and college students, mostly still minors. We restrict young people from doing potentially dangerous things all the time, and playing a game with a high likelihood of causing life-long health issues should be no exception. But we don't discourage it - we actually do the opposite in most communities, treating football games as social events and the players as heroes. I don't want to be part of the problem by participating in the sub-professional football ecosystem, even in a small way as a spectator.

My second concern comes in at the college and professional level. The organizations that run the game (NCAA and NFL) don't treat their players very well, even if you leave aside the injury concerns.

In the NCAA, huge sums of money go to schools and coaches while the players aren't paid. At the top schools, it's possible you could argue that scholarships and benefits make up for that (although I don't think that's nearly enough), but certainly at lower division schools that's not the case. Don't believe me? Ask Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He played basketball rather than football, but the same arguments apply to both. Basketball and football account for the vast majority of the money in college sports. The "amateurism" doctrine in college sports needs to change, and until it does I don't want to spend any more of my time or money in support.

In the NFL, the majority of players don't have guaranteed contracts. If they get injured or just slow down a bit, they can be cut and the team owes them nothing. The average NFL career is less than 4 years, and most players won't make big money in that time. Enough to live on, certainly, but if they get a costly injury...very likely...that money won't last.

There's also been a lot of news in the last few years about NFL players protesting against treatment of people of color at the hands of the police. Some people have said they stopped watching football because those players were disrespectful of the United States. I don't agree with that at all, and fully support the right of the protesters. In fact, one of my reasons for not watching football is the opposite...I think the NFL owners have suppressed those protests. The obvious example is the way that Colin Kaepernick has been unable to find a team, but the NFL has tried to make rules limiting the ability to protest and individual owners have spoken out against it.

For all these reasons, I've decided it's time to make a clean break with football. It's impossible to completely avoid it...it's everywhere on the news and across the Internet...but I won't be spending time watching TV coverage, or spending any money on merchandise or attending games. One person won't make a difference, I know, but it feels like the right thing to do. If enough people eventually make the same decision, change may come.

GR Mini Maker Faire

The Grand Rapids Public Museum hosted the Grand Rapids Mini Maker Faire this weekend. Despite the "mini" description there was plenty to see, with a good-sized list of exhibitors spread out through the museum.

Exhibitors fell into roughly three categories at the faire: community organizations, crafters selling their goods, and food. I was familiar with a lot of the community exhibitors: our local public library system, various and sundry crafting organizations, the Grand Rapids Children's Museum, the Grand Rapids Police department, and so on. The commercial booths were a widely varied bunch - everything from 3D-printed toys to handbags to paintings to dolls. Good variety on the food, too, from a beer booth to bundt cakes to hot sauce to popsicles.

Most of the exhibitors had one kind of hands-on activity or another at their booth. Lots of families present, with kids of all ages trying out everything from build-your-own-floating-robot to woodcarving. Robotics and 3D-printers seemed to be the most common themes - several booths that had one or both. But there were plenty of more traditional exhibitors as well.

There were also a few vehicle displays, including a one-man submersible that looked incredibly cramped but awfully cool nonetheless. The Grand Valley State Solar Garden group was showing one of their vehicles, and one guy had an electric motorcycle. Pretty amazing some of the things that people put together in their hobby time.

The one negative to this year's event was the long line to get in, if you had to buy a ticket. I think they may have had some technical issues that resulted in a long wait for those of us who didn't buy tickets ahead of time. A fairly minor issue, though, and once I got inside it wasn't overly crowded at all. As a museum member I saved about eight bucks on the entry fee, which I immediately spent on beer...wait time forgiven.

If there's a Maker Faire near you, it's well worth taking a few hours to go check it out. Whether you're a crafter yourself or not, it's always interesting to see the huge variety of things that people are doing and making.

Orphan Black

The main thing I learned from watching Orphan Black is that Tatiana Maslany must be a serious workaholic. She deserves that Emmy and the other awards she's garnered from playing half the roles on the show.

Orphan Black is a contemporary science fiction thriller series based on the idea that a shadowy cabal is messing around with the human body. Clones, DNA manipulation, body modifications. Over the five seasons, the characters go from blissfully ignorant to deeply involved, one layer of evil masterminds after another.

This kind of sci-fi thriller isn't a new formula, of course, but it's a solid premise if executed well. Which Orphan Black is, especially in the first 3 seasons. There's plenty of intrigue and mystery with interesting characters. Anyone who's read some sci-fi in this genre won't be too surprised by the larger plot points - there were several "big reveal" points that I saw coming a mile away - but it's still a fun ride getting there. I wasn't as impressed with the last 2 seasons in terms of plot, largely because it's just hard to sustain the suspension of disbelief as the stakes keep going higher. Eventually you become kind of numb to the ever-escalating danger and crazy mad science.

But that's all right, because there are plenty of great characters to follow into those last couple of seasons: several clones, their various friends and family, recurring villains, and new bad guys showing up on a regular basis. It's not always clear which people fall into which category, either, which is great. Keeps things really interesting when you're aren't entirely sure who is on which side. And even among the main characters who are clearly working together, there's plenty of interpersonal tension and drama, largely driven by the fact that just about everyone is flawed in some way.

What makes Orphan Black really unique is how Tatiana Maslany plays all those clone roles. There are four primary recurring characters, and at least five others with lesser roles. Each is a separate character, with their own personalities and appearances (and accents, usually). I thought she did an excellent job of really giving each one a unique feel, so that the viewer really sees them as different people. It's especially impressive when she plays one clone trying to pretend to be a different one, looking uncomfortable and purposely not-quite-perfectly mimicking mannerisms.

I had a great time watching Orphan Black, even when the plot-lines got a bit hard to swallow in the later seasons. Still a great show that I'd recommend to anyone who likes the sci-fi thriller genre.

K Project (anime)

The K Project anime series has a promising premise and themes, but doesn't do a very good job of executing on that promise.

In the world of the K Project, superpowers have begun to manifest in a small portion of the population. Most of that power is concentrated in a few individuals known as Kings, with a larger number of lowered-powered individuals forming clans around the Kings. The effect is limited to a small portion of Japan (for reasons made clear as the series goes on). The first season of the series focused on a murder mystery that leads to a conflict between Kings, while the second season expands to a larger conflict between more Kings. There's also movie in between that fills in some gaps between the two seasons.

The problem with the K Project, in my opinion, is that it constantly undercuts its own story and themes. The logic behind the Kings alone is inconsistent and confusing. There's mention of seven Kings, but the story never tells us who they all are. Each King is associated with a color and theme (red for chaos, blue for order, etc) but some don't seem to have a theme (like the Gray King) and one has no color. Supposedly the death of a King leads to a new King being chosen, but sometimes that doesn't happen for no apparent reason (such as the Gold King). Each King has a giant "sword of Damocles" that sometimes hangs in the sky above, which are never explained except that we know it's bad if they fall. There are several flashbacks that fill in some of the history leading to the Kings, but they leave so much out that it feels like we're only given a few random glimpses.

It's not just the Kings, either. The visuals are beautiful and largely take the subject matter seriously, but occasionally veer off into ridiculous fan service territory with panty shots and bouncing cleavage.  Serious themes like abuse of power and order vs anarchy are raised in the story, but they're used only as excuses to get clans battling rather than explored as complex issues.

There are some manga serializations and novels that are set in the same world. It's possible that the missing bits that I've mentioned above can be found there. If that's the case, I think they really should have somehow tied that into the anime - a simple mention of the manga stories in a post-credits scene would have sufficed.

The K Project isn't a bad series, but it could be much better in so many ways. There are better things out there to watch.

The Americans (FX)

I'd considered starting The Americans a few different times over the last few years, but there was always something else available to watch. Figured I might as well just wait until the show finished its run, which happened earlier this year.

The Americans is a Cold War era spy thriller, set in the 1980s. A pair of Soviet agents comes to America under assumed identities in the 1960s and sets about living normal lives. By the 1980s when the first season starts, Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings have two kids and are basically indistinguishable from your average suburban couple. Using their travel agency jobs as cover, they perform various espionage missions right under the noses of American counterintelligence.

In addition to the deep-cover family, other characters in the espionage game fill out the cast. An FBI agent lives next door, there are various sources and informants, and several of the Soviet embassy staff become important figures. I enjoyed seeing focus on characters from both sides of the undercover conflict. As you'd expect, there's a high turnover rate...not a safe profession, the spy game.

Spy shenanigans take up about half the plot, and I found most of it to be well written. Sure, you have to suspend your disbelief about the premise of the super-deep-cover setup, and the main characters miraculously survive all kinds of danger on a weekly basis. But that's par for the course on almost any television series. A lot of the spy action is centered around development of personal relationships with individual sources, but there's also plenty of sneaking around and even a few gun battles and car chases.

The time period in the 1980s makes it easier to accept all the disguises and sneaking, although I suppose modern spy thrillers manage the same even in today's cameras-everywhere society. Each season has some kind of big theme for the spying, from stealth aircraft to improved food crops, drawn from the big stories of the time. It was fun to see how the writers worked with the time period, from those significant plot points down to minor references like classic video games.

The other half of the plot comes from all the emotional angst that you'd expect in this kind of situation. Who is sleeping with whom, what lies are being told, the stress of hiding activities from your family and friends, and so on. I found it all interesting at first, though eventually it starts to wear thin. I thought the writers did a pretty good job of showing how the stress of the spy lifestyle wears people down over time, but in so doing there's a ton of repetition.

After about three seasons, I was more than ready for the Jennings family to finally move on from spies to whatever was next, good or bad. I'd kind of hoped that would happen in the fourth or fifth season, but instead it just dragged on in more or less the same vein. Some significant changes did finally happen throughout the final sixth season, which was the best since the first in my opinion. The last episode leaves a lot of loose ends, but there was enough resolved to make it a good series finale.

I'm glad to have watched The Americans, though I think they let it go on too long. If they'd wrapped it up around 4 seasons, that would have been about perfect.

Macross Delta

Two and a half years ago, I watched a bunch of Macross shows (Plus, Seven, Zero, Frontier). Macross Delta came out shortly thereafter, which was the whole reason I'd watched the earlier ones, but I didn't have any way to (legally) see it and eventually I kind of forgot about it. Well, a friend finally got the series recently and I was able to watch it.

The first thing you noticed in Macross Delta is the two significant differences from other Macross series. Number one: Someone writing this series really likes the magical girl genre. There's a group of young women named Walküre that performs songs to combat enemies (this is standard Macross), who change outfits during songs and dance around the battlefield with some kind of rocket-dresses (this is definitely new). Think of the "magic" part as being singing and combat dancing, and this is pure magical girl style anime. Number two: The enemy sings too, and uses it as a mind control device. In prior series, the "magic" singing has always been the province of the good guys, using it to disrupt the enemy. Occasionally an enemy might convert a singer to their side (as in Frontier) but mostly it belongs firmly on the side of the hero(ine)s. This time, the enemies are on the offensive with their songs and our heroines are largely on the defensive.

The major differences end there, and the similarities to other Macross series are legion. Young "play by my own rules" pilot gets co-opted into military organization, check. Pair of ace pilots on each side meeting in battle after battle, check. Love triangle with singer girl and military girl after hotshot pilot, check. Giant transforming battleship with aircraft carrier arms, check. Three female bridge crew and a gruff old captain, check. Refugees in space fleeing from enemy assault, check. And so on and so forth.

I enjoyed the development of the enemies from Windermere, which are revealed very early on after just a few episodes. It seemed to me that the writers put quite a bit more effort into humanizing this enemy than in most of the earlier series. We see the events that shaped the Windermere leadership's aggression as the series progresses, and time is spent to develop characters for several of the Windermere fighters. It reminded me a lot of the way that the original SDF Macross series handled the Zentradi.

Other character development was all right, but nothing special. I'd have liked to see more interaction between Windermere fighters and the Delta squad, which didn't really happen until very late in the series. Mikumo's fate was telegraphed so much that it seemed anticlimactic at the end. And the reveal of the identity of "Lady M" was wasted, in my opinion, coming as it did as an offhand comment in one of the final episodes. Surely they could have milked that for a scene or two!

I kept watching Macross Delta in the hope that there would be some kind of interesting twist that set it apart from what one would expect in a Macross series. But that never really materialized. Those two major differences that I pointed out at the beginning are great, but they're also just about the end of the deviations from standard Macross. By the time the final episode rolls around, it's not hard to predict how true love will save the day from some terrible fate. Which is fine and all, but so predictable that it feels a bit disappointing.