Millenium, Season 1: 17-22

[lookingland]

Welcome to Millennium Monday! Lost another week (I'm so bad!) so I am still catching up. As always, I refer you all to the Fourth Horseman Press Millennial Abyss for more details, etc. These comments will wrap up the first season and then next week I can start in on the second season, which I actually finished this weekend (I've been savoring the show, knowing it's finite!).

The episodes ~

"Walkabout"

This was a great episode. I love this kind of brain bender: Frank's in a vulnerable situation and we get to empathize with him a lot here ~ and also the craziness of the drug trial and what happens there is just creepy and disturbing (to say nothing of the "world gone mad" climax. It's a heavy-handed attack on America's reliance on the drug companies, but call me converted and let's sing Alleluia.

"Lamentation"

The series takes an interesting turn here, killing off Bletcher. I love the contrast of the light and dark (the snowy mountains and the shadowy killer in Frank's basement. I also think Lucy Butler is a great (horrific) character. I thought there were aspects of the show that seemed a little too enigmatic (in the way they tried to hide Lucy). I also kinda still don't get the whole postcard thing, but I wonder whether we've seen the end of it. I seriously doubt the little yellow house is going to make it beyond this season now that it's been tainted!

"Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions""

This episode really perked me up after the whole depressing Bletcher thing. Especially because it brings the series back to the supernatural in a huge way. Great casting with Rodney Eastman as a perfect Sammael and Richard Cox as Alistair Pepper (satan incarnate). I'm really hoping we see Sammael (or others like him) in future episodes. This is one of those episodes that feels like it had the right balance between the police work and the larger mysteries.

"Broken World"

Where's Peter Schaefer when you need him? Writer Winrich Kolbe faxes in a weird plot about a stall-stalker who's perving off with victims and kills horses. The sex talk in this one was pretty gross (gutsy though in 1997), but overall this was mostly a mess with a semi-silly conclusion in which the horses get their vengeance. I like horses. I like Frank Black. I liked watching this, but it was rather hacked together.

"Maranatha"

Another great episode! And again, lovely combo of spirits and gritty cops duking it out. This time it's a boogey-man plot with the Russian mob, Chernobyl and a Kaiser-Sose like character named Yaponchik. This was was nicely creepy, inexplicable, and full of great action sequences. Definitely one of my favorites so far.

"Paper Dove"

There's a decent serial killer story in here: the woodsman, harried by his bizarre mooother! is wrecking havoc, alongside a great subplot about a man in prison accused of murdering his wife. Some lovely character development, nice gore, good mix of pathos all around, but it doesn't feel like much of a season-ender. Only in the last moments o the show when Catherine disappears from the airport do we get the season cliffhanger. She ain't dead (not yet anyway), but I sense that this business, coupled with the stress they are under about the Bletcher murder is going to mark the end of the happy family.

Final impressions for 17-22: Season one has some great episodes dispersed throughout and seems to get stronger as it goes along. But there's still a lot of questions about the Millennium group that are just sorta hanging and it's not entirely clear (still) what it is they are organized to do. I wish Frank's position was clearer, but I'm engaged by the characters and I definitely want to see where it's going ~ it's going somewhere, just taking a roundabout way to get there. Now that Catherine has been abducted, I have a feeling all the of stakes are going up: way up!

More next week!

: D

Comments

[utter-scoundrel.livejournal.com]

So you finished the second season on the weekend? Prepare for some whiplash as you start season three...

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

whoooo! the whiplash wasn't as bad as i thought it might be ~ i couldn't help it and had to watch the season three opener immediately following the season two cliffhanger.

i'm kinda surprise they put frank's hair back to being brown again after whiting him out at the end of the second season. that was only thing that really jarred me. well, that and the fact that after five months Jordan's baby teeth hadn't grown back. hahahahahahahaha ~

: D

[utter-scoundrel.livejournal.com]

I suppose its not too much of a spoiler to say he lets his hair gradually go back to gray over the course of the season...