Reviews

SPOILERS

These final few episodes go out as you would expect them to if you’ve been paying attention to how I’ve been writing these. I’ll just laundry list some key points, make an additional comment, and get to the real meat of this article: looking back at the entire series and what happens moments after the crux of the finale.

Here we go:

• Noelle goes through with the coronation ceremony.
• DTI is outed.
• It’s a fake assassination attempt by L/R because Mister already knew what to do.
• DTI is stopped.
• Lots of old characters from previous episodes make reappearances. A nice touch to bring things full circle.
• Everything’s okay.

Alright let’s talk about the series now.

Overall: The fact I would give you some key points without much comment should be a clue on what I think of L/R. I praise some points, because the show gives some things a nice touch, but mostly I’m unimpressed. In fact it is not even worth raging about. It has a story it wanted to tell, it has a tone it wanted to sell, and characters that’d rather be laidback, but know how to entertainingly raise Hell. The foundations are right, so what went wrong? read more

SPOILERS

We’re getting somewhere here. Going to a place where all series have gone before, the continued build up to series finale fraught with intensity and uncertainty.

The show nails it from start to finish with this episode. Without much muss or fuss, we know something is up when Rowe is assigned to guard Noelle and Jack is nowhere to be found. Seeing the dynamic of a solo operation with one of L/R is welcome, especially at this juncture. Rowe does the best he can, yet he is bested by a mysterious Jude McManus, a new DTI hire who for some reason kinda sounds like Jack (30 years down the line thanks to smoking) and also looks like him. There’s a nice scene where Rowe gets routed by his means to protect Noelle, and the show delivers a nice guessing game on the whereabouts of Jack. Sure he seems to be Jude, but two similar-looking individuals enliven things up a bit. read more

Now here’s an entry to the Profiling section of your brain: White men in white collared shirts wearing suspenders and speaking in Irish brogue. I suggest placing it a bit higher over “Bearded Brown Men in robes.”

Of course the people most critical of the English-accented Ishtar would sound like Irishmen. Of course.

This episode pleasantly proves me wrong when it comes to expectations. I was bored last week, yet here I am rather intrigued once again. There’re no L/R antics to be had in this episode, since the two parts of it go off on their own to figure out the Angel situation, never mind the shocking revelation about Mister. Jack goes off in that direction, seeking to corroborate Claire and Dez’s claims of the night vis-à-vis any new revelations. Nothing much to be said there, since this episode is not going to be the Hofner Half-Hour. read more

It seems popular foreign television doesn’t make its way to Ishtar much these days, for Des seems to have only heard OF Get Smart, but has never watched it. Cute cultural gags which are funny in and of itself without one knowing the existence of Get Smart, goes a long way.

So this week is where Noelle gets to hang out with Jack and Rowe again after the events of Episode 7. To the show’s credit, it does not waste any time with having to set up the situation where Noelle escapes her bodyguard’s watch. Right off the opening, Claire has already replaced Noelle, who is supposed to be at Ishtar’s first baseball game. So what wacky adventures do those three have now that the princess-in-waiting’s on the prowl? read more

They’re still having that staring contest since the week before last. Man alive…

In a moment of serendipity, it seems that two week gap between this article and the last coincides with the time passed in the show. L/R’s been doing their thing, and Noelle’s been doing her own thing. The thing is, they haven’t doing a thing involving each other since Angel Island. The former has been keeping a guarded distance from her due to the Angel matter, which is unfortunate for the latter who wants to see both of them. You can tell Noelle’s trying her best given the circumstances, but it is also prevalent how she feels like a caged bird given her new status. Interesting, given her more than affable acceptance in the last episode. Maybe she didn’t anticipate it’d be this difficult? read more

Man, Jack and Rowe must be having a most intense staring contest with one another in that shot.

Jumping into the thick of things, it is up to L/R to continue their mission to find and detain the elusive Angel, who was not Jack’s old flame after all. After some detective work, given the use of old Ivory Island songs, they decide to well… go to Ivory Island. This means we not only see Noelle again, but also get a ground-level view of her island. I guess Ivory Island is supposed to be a takeoff on the hinterlands of the UK, given Ishtar’s propensity to appropriate Anglo-Saxon culture? It makes me wish I knew where Ishtar was on a map since it has already ran the gamut of various geographic locales from mountain ranges, deserts, and now temperate island zones. This all seems very ill-defined and as a result is off-putting, at least to me anyway. Ishtar is such an isolated microcosm. read more