Continuum: So Do Our Minutes Hasten
May 13, 2014 9:07 PM - Season 3, Episode 8 - Subscribe
Carlos gets some. Travis is missing because he's traveled to Toronto to meet with Siobhan. Other things happen, but I've already forgotten what they were.
Airdates: 2014-05-11 (Canada), 2014-05-23 (US)
Airdates: 2014-05-11 (Canada), 2014-05-23 (US)
Well, it's gratifying to see Kiera stop being a dupe for her corporate fascist future, but last week's conversion episode was forced, rushed, and unconvincing. Now she's a different person. Carlos continues his change, too.
Oh, well, and also Piron!Alec remains a very different character with basically no explanation for the change. (Because his two week future self came back and interfered? This is reason to suddenly become an unprincipled CEO prick?)
And Betty's big smile and invitation of everyone out for a drink was basically a huge I'm going to be dead within ten minutes cloud hovering over her head. I hate it when shows pull that crap. We've all been watching television for decades now, we know the tropes, we know that a suddenly happy day with all tension relaxed for a previously in-jeopardy secondary character means the writers think they're making the coming death more dramatic. Instead, they're just telegraphing it and damaging the narrative with their unnecessary and obvious contrivance.
I don't know about this show. I love that they're tackling these issues in a way that makes it difficult for the audience. The terrorists are right, except, you know, they're murderers. The creepy totalitarian corporate police state are like cartoon villains except, you know, our protagonist is one of them and fights for their side. I like time travel stories and their complexity.
But it really seems like the writers may have started out with something like a plan (which, really, is obviously that Kiera would slowly become aware that the future she's fighting for is a dystopia) but have then subsequently flailed as they've attempted to realize it. I thought the season started out with promise, although I know other people felt the opposite. But lately the show's just felt incoherent and especially the character inconsistencies are annoying.
And this little arc that Betty went through? Totally rushed and unearned. Carlos loved her, Kiera liked her, then they hated her when they found out she was a mole, but only a handful of episodes later, she's beloved and dead.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:33 PM on May 13, 2014
Oh, well, and also Piron!Alec remains a very different character with basically no explanation for the change. (Because his two week future self came back and interfered? This is reason to suddenly become an unprincipled CEO prick?)
And Betty's big smile and invitation of everyone out for a drink was basically a huge I'm going to be dead within ten minutes cloud hovering over her head. I hate it when shows pull that crap. We've all been watching television for decades now, we know the tropes, we know that a suddenly happy day with all tension relaxed for a previously in-jeopardy secondary character means the writers think they're making the coming death more dramatic. Instead, they're just telegraphing it and damaging the narrative with their unnecessary and obvious contrivance.
I don't know about this show. I love that they're tackling these issues in a way that makes it difficult for the audience. The terrorists are right, except, you know, they're murderers. The creepy totalitarian corporate police state are like cartoon villains except, you know, our protagonist is one of them and fights for their side. I like time travel stories and their complexity.
But it really seems like the writers may have started out with something like a plan (which, really, is obviously that Kiera would slowly become aware that the future she's fighting for is a dystopia) but have then subsequently flailed as they've attempted to realize it. I thought the season started out with promise, although I know other people felt the opposite. But lately the show's just felt incoherent and especially the character inconsistencies are annoying.
And this little arc that Betty went through? Totally rushed and unearned. Carlos loved her, Kiera liked her, then they hated her when they found out she was a mole, but only a handful of episodes later, she's beloved and dead.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:33 PM on May 13, 2014
I have say, I'm enjoying the flashbacks to Kiera's future a lot more than I am the "real" story. It certainly seems to paint a "Future Kiera" who came to understand the corporate government was totally bullshit. I especially liked the behind-the-backs high-fives from her team members after she rescued the children instead of the board members.
Which makes her inner turmoil more interesting...On one hand, the only way she will be able to get back to her timeline and her daughter is to make sure events happen that ensures the rise of the corporate government. On the other hand, she knows from experience how wrong and destructive that government is. We're obviously heading to a decision point for her, where she's going to have to choose which future she returns to.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:52 AM on May 14, 2014
Which makes her inner turmoil more interesting...On one hand, the only way she will be able to get back to her timeline and her daughter is to make sure events happen that ensures the rise of the corporate government. On the other hand, she knows from experience how wrong and destructive that government is. We're obviously heading to a decision point for her, where she's going to have to choose which future she returns to.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:52 AM on May 14, 2014
Travis is missing because he's traveled to Toronto to meet with Siobhan.
When I saw him show up the next night on Orphan Black, it really made my week.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:07 AM on May 14, 2014
When I saw him show up the next night on Orphan Black, it really made my week.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:07 AM on May 14, 2014
"I especially liked the behind-the-backs high-fives from her team members after she rescued the children instead of the board members."
Yeah, except that this doesn't make sense to me in what we've seen of her in the show. Up until recently, she's never said anything to Carlos or Alec or anyone that had the tiniest doubt about the rightness of the future corps. She's wanted to get back to her family, yes, but she's also seen Liber8 as being completely in the wrong (not just in methods, but in every way) and the corporations as right. She's done nothing but defend the corporations in our time.
What it seems to me is that the writers are cheating in a very sleazy way. They're rewriting Kiera's future history in the flashbacks, giving us examples of a viewpoint we never have seen her exhibit in the show, in the present or future, before recently ... just to make her conversion now more convincing. Except that they've given us these examples from her past (our future) while also failing to show her questioning the corporations and, instead, defending them, here in her present right up until only the last few episodes. They've spent more effort recreating her past than they have in showing her character evolution in her present.
So not only do these (her) flashbacks ring false to me (because we've never seen anything like them before recently), they don't help make her conversion more believable because they've neglected to show how her present perspective has evolved. Basically, they're just rewriting the character.
Which makes little sense if, as I speculated previously, they'd always planned on her having this conversion experience. And I think I see what they thought they were doing, overall: they understood her character as being unable to have that conversion just as long as Kiera was hanging on to getting home to her family. Once she let that possibility go (because the future has been altered irrevocably anyway), then they thought the psychological door would open for her to see what she's always known, deep down, to be true: the corps are corrupt and her future was a dystopia. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I think that's a good plan. But they've sucked at the execution and they've managed to transform what was a pretty convincing and organic narrative and character evolution into something that feels abrupt, unnatural, and contrived.
This really bugs me because there's been so many things in this show that seem to me to clearly be an attempt to rise above just a lazy by-the-numbers science fiction television show. They have some deep ideas here, and they were ambitious enough to create a situation and characters that would make the audience uncomfortable. That's not by-the-numbers genre television. It's ambitious and thoughtful. But I think that maybe they've not been up to the task they set themselves.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:26 PM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yeah, except that this doesn't make sense to me in what we've seen of her in the show. Up until recently, she's never said anything to Carlos or Alec or anyone that had the tiniest doubt about the rightness of the future corps. She's wanted to get back to her family, yes, but she's also seen Liber8 as being completely in the wrong (not just in methods, but in every way) and the corporations as right. She's done nothing but defend the corporations in our time.
What it seems to me is that the writers are cheating in a very sleazy way. They're rewriting Kiera's future history in the flashbacks, giving us examples of a viewpoint we never have seen her exhibit in the show, in the present or future, before recently ... just to make her conversion now more convincing. Except that they've given us these examples from her past (our future) while also failing to show her questioning the corporations and, instead, defending them, here in her present right up until only the last few episodes. They've spent more effort recreating her past than they have in showing her character evolution in her present.
So not only do these (her) flashbacks ring false to me (because we've never seen anything like them before recently), they don't help make her conversion more believable because they've neglected to show how her present perspective has evolved. Basically, they're just rewriting the character.
Which makes little sense if, as I speculated previously, they'd always planned on her having this conversion experience. And I think I see what they thought they were doing, overall: they understood her character as being unable to have that conversion just as long as Kiera was hanging on to getting home to her family. Once she let that possibility go (because the future has been altered irrevocably anyway), then they thought the psychological door would open for her to see what she's always known, deep down, to be true: the corps are corrupt and her future was a dystopia. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I think that's a good plan. But they've sucked at the execution and they've managed to transform what was a pretty convincing and organic narrative and character evolution into something that feels abrupt, unnatural, and contrived.
This really bugs me because there's been so many things in this show that seem to me to clearly be an attempt to rise above just a lazy by-the-numbers science fiction television show. They have some deep ideas here, and they were ambitious enough to create a situation and characters that would make the audience uncomfortable. That's not by-the-numbers genre television. It's ambitious and thoughtful. But I think that maybe they've not been up to the task they set themselves.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:26 PM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's ambitious and thoughtful. But I think that maybe they've not been up to the task they set themselves.
Heh. I think you've summed this up awfully well, unfortunately. I started to worry about it with Kiera's flipflopping about Kellog last season, which felt like poor characterization. (It also feels like they aren't keeping in mind her built in lie detector nearly well enough - she should have had much better insight into stuff like whether Betty was on the level in earlier episodes.)
It makes her seem dense, rather than trapped with the impossible choice the show is predicated on.
I'm also not fond of her alliance with the Freelancers. Not because it doesn't make sense at this juncture, but because it raises more questions they don't seem to have good answers for. (Like... what are the Freelancers doing, day-to-day? How many of them are there? Why aren't they still actively pursuiing Liber8? Where do they get those wonderful toys? What's the deal with Chen?)
That said, I'm still hoping they get everything back on an even keel. The first couple seasons were tons of fun, and I'd still totally watch a Garza-based spinoff.
posted by mordax at 3:09 PM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
Heh. I think you've summed this up awfully well, unfortunately. I started to worry about it with Kiera's flipflopping about Kellog last season, which felt like poor characterization. (It also feels like they aren't keeping in mind her built in lie detector nearly well enough - she should have had much better insight into stuff like whether Betty was on the level in earlier episodes.)
It makes her seem dense, rather than trapped with the impossible choice the show is predicated on.
I'm also not fond of her alliance with the Freelancers. Not because it doesn't make sense at this juncture, but because it raises more questions they don't seem to have good answers for. (Like... what are the Freelancers doing, day-to-day? How many of them are there? Why aren't they still actively pursuiing Liber8? Where do they get those wonderful toys? What's the deal with Chen?)
That said, I'm still hoping they get everything back on an even keel. The first couple seasons were tons of fun, and I'd still totally watch a Garza-based spinoff.
posted by mordax at 3:09 PM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
They're rewriting Kiera's future history in the flashbacks, giving us examples of a viewpoint we never have seen her exhibit in the show, in the present or future, before recently ... just to make her conversion now more convincing.
I agree with you that this seems sloppy. I'll just throw this in here as a possible idea...Recall, in one of her flashbacks, how her commander overrode her actions via her CRM? She encountered a wounded rebel, her commander gave her orders to terminate the rebel, she hesitated, and the commander basically took control of her via the CRM. I have to think that Kiera's mind is a huge mish-mash of contradicting emotions and experiences, due to the manner in which she is plugged-in to her CRM.
There's also the possibility that the "flashbacks" we're seeing are views of how Kiera's timeline (our future) is being changed by the events in our present. I think that's probably giving the writers too much credit, though.
In any case, I'd sure like to see a few episodes set entirely in that future timeline.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:36 AM on May 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
I agree with you that this seems sloppy. I'll just throw this in here as a possible idea...Recall, in one of her flashbacks, how her commander overrode her actions via her CRM? She encountered a wounded rebel, her commander gave her orders to terminate the rebel, she hesitated, and the commander basically took control of her via the CRM. I have to think that Kiera's mind is a huge mish-mash of contradicting emotions and experiences, due to the manner in which she is plugged-in to her CRM.
There's also the possibility that the "flashbacks" we're seeing are views of how Kiera's timeline (our future) is being changed by the events in our present. I think that's probably giving the writers too much credit, though.
In any case, I'd sure like to see a few episodes set entirely in that future timeline.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:36 AM on May 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
In all seriousness, I watched the first few episodes, and wanted to like it, but had a hard time staying interested. Is it worth giving it another try? I generally like sci-fi on TV, but can't think of any sci-fi shows in the past few years that weren't middling. On a scale of Defiance to Firefly, where does it fall?
posted by [insert clever name here] at 4:09 PM on May 16, 2014
I agree with you that this seems sloppy. I'll just throw this in here as a possible idea...Recall, in one of her flashbacks, how her commander overrode her actions via her CRM? She encountered a wounded rebel, her commander gave her orders to terminate the rebel, she hesitated, and the commander basically took control of her via the CRM.
I've considered that possibility. I think you're probably overly optimistic at this point, but I'd really love it to go that way.
In any case, I'd sure like to see a few episodes set entirely in that future timeline.
I get the impression they limited that due to budget constraints, but I'd so love to see that.
In all seriousness, I watched the first few episodes, and wanted to like it, but had a hard time staying interested. Is it worth giving it another try?
The first couple seasons are genuinely good, IMO: strong female protagonist, interesting moral conundrum, teen genius I don't hate, neat SFX, and excellent bad guys. (Liber8's moves felt very clever, early in.) Lately, it's feeling... well, you've seen our concerns here. Kinda feels like it's off the rails.
That said, I'm certainly going to stick with it until it's over.
posted by mordax at 5:32 PM on May 16, 2014
I've considered that possibility. I think you're probably overly optimistic at this point, but I'd really love it to go that way.
In any case, I'd sure like to see a few episodes set entirely in that future timeline.
I get the impression they limited that due to budget constraints, but I'd so love to see that.
In all seriousness, I watched the first few episodes, and wanted to like it, but had a hard time staying interested. Is it worth giving it another try?
The first couple seasons are genuinely good, IMO: strong female protagonist, interesting moral conundrum, teen genius I don't hate, neat SFX, and excellent bad guys. (Liber8's moves felt very clever, early in.) Lately, it's feeling... well, you've seen our concerns here. Kinda feels like it's off the rails.
That said, I'm certainly going to stick with it until it's over.
posted by mordax at 5:32 PM on May 16, 2014
There's also the possibility that the "flashbacks" we're seeing are views of how Kiera's timeline (our future) is being changed by the events in our present. I think that's probably giving the writers too much credit, though.
That's exactly what I've been thinking.
I don't know man. Time travel shows/movies are really, really hard to do right, so I'm willing to cut the unevenness on Continuum a lot of slack since it's using time travel to deal with some very present and pressing issues.
Also I secretly suspect I know who's been providing a lot of their insanely good wardrobe, for you otaku out there.
IF, thanks for making this thread!
posted by digitalprimate at 9:02 AM on May 23, 2014
That's exactly what I've been thinking.
I don't know man. Time travel shows/movies are really, really hard to do right, so I'm willing to cut the unevenness on Continuum a lot of slack since it's using time travel to deal with some very present and pressing issues.
Also I secretly suspect I know who's been providing a lot of their insanely good wardrobe, for you otaku out there.
IF, thanks for making this thread!
posted by digitalprimate at 9:02 AM on May 23, 2014
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Kiera seems to maybe be developing a clue, which was what I was personally waiting for... this entire time? Nice to see her starting to get along with Carlos again, too. I sincerely hope he's stopped talking to the dead body of his timeline's version of her.
Shame about Betty, though.
posted by mordax at 9:15 PM on May 13, 2014