Synopsis: The Quests go to Thailand so Benton can develop drugs that facilitate long-distance space travel. They’re pursued by Zin, whose new plan involves a Race Bannon lookalike. Dr. Quest’s awesome project, some interesting animals and the presence of an honest-to-god adventuress brilliantly distract from one of my least favorite classic plots.
Sometimes even the smartest and most capable of us gets stumped. A project hits a snag. Circumstances change. A member of your social circle has been replaced with an evil doppelganger. You know, those everyday nuisances.
Tip 43: A fresh pair of eyes can be a big help.
Meet Jade. She travels alone, scares leopards out of trees, and wears simply smashing pith-helmet-and-utility-snood headgear. She’s also macked on Race Bannon enough to accept no substitutes.
Next time: I still like vampires-even ones not named Vlad, Jerry or Jack.
Next time on TQfM!: We draw close to the end of the bunches-of-Bannons trouble.
Why Finally? Because this is the reason I’ve had trouble coming up with Friday posts lately. You’d think an ’80s kid like me would’ve seen enough After-School Specials to avoid these traps, but no: I am addicted to Criminal Minds.
The Premise: In no particular order: murder, kidnapping and murder, murder, murder, rape, rape + murder, child murder, murder, profiling. (More specifically: a team of FBI profilers, led by expert Jason Gideon and later by David Rossi, travel the US to catch the perpetrators of all that violence aforementioned.)
Did you see how the word “murder” began to not even look like a real word up there? That’s sort of what it’s like to watch this show sometimes.
Given my fondness for mystery and cop series and this show’s decade on the air, it’s odd that I hadn’t given Criminal Minds a try before this year. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that when I tell people what I’m watching, they make this…throat-noise, as if I’d announced some personal tragedy. I don’t blame them, either, at least for the first two seasons: the problem with Mandy Patinkin as Jason Gideon is that he’s way too good in the role. You feel every iota of Gideon’s pain, frustration, and building mental collapse—so much so that I began to think people who make it through seasons 1 and 2 should get achievement certificates.
That’s pretty much his happy face…one reason I took to calling Gideon “America’s Most Haunted.”
Edged in black, of course.
Criminal Minds can be super depressing. It’ll make you afraid to own a home, have a routine, play a sport, or make contact with other humans in any way. Most episodes aren’t even really mysteries in the usual sense of the term: the first suspect is often the right one, and the mystery is how to get one step ahead and maybe save one of the (many, many…and sometimes even many-er than that) victims.
But something happened around the middle of season 3: the characters started to work better as a team, and the show began to let us see more of them personally. Instead of relying solely on a few minutes with hacker Penelope Garcia to lighten the mood from SadCon 1, Criminal Minds started to level out a bit. Perhaps the people responsible for the show realized that creeping dread wasn’t what an audience should feel when approaching their TVs; I don’t know, but I am grateful.
The Verdict: It’s kind of the same verdict as my old Beauty and the Beast review: I like it—to the point I am ignoring my blogly duties—but don’t necessarily enjoy liking it. Fainthearted viewers might want to skip the Gideon years; fainthearted viewers might also look through some of the other reviews I’ve written to get an idea about what “too murdery” could possibly mean in the context of the things I watch.
Might go well with: You’ll probably want something significantly lighter as a palate cleanser—I’ve been alternating this with Kolchak: The Night Stalker because I have a weird idea of “light.” And honestly, food is going to be hit or miss with this one.
Synopsis: The Quests go to Thailand so Benton can develop drugs that facilitate long-distance space travel. They’re pursued by Zin, whose new plan involves a Race Bannon lookalike. Dr. Quest’s awesome project, some interesting animals and the presence of an honest-to-god adventuress brilliantly distract from one of my least favorite classic plots.
Tip 42: Globetrotting spy-entists with lookalike enemies posing as bodyguards: they’re just like us!
…In the sense that they take animal photos at every opportunity, anyway.
This show does a lot of things that make me stare like that too, lizard.—This nightmare scenario being a case in point.Cute and horrifying at the same time.
Imagine what they could do with iPhones. For that matter, why hasn’t Benton just gone ahead and invented them?
Why Found-Again? Many things can make me unsure about continuing with a TV show:
The characters are mishandled (most every character on Heroes, and I am still a little bitter about it);
A character I like leaves;
A character I dislike arrives (Burn Notice had at least two of these);
The villain gets too awful (see both shows mentioned above);
And then there’s The Flash, which is teetering on the edge thanks to a combination of “Barry keeps acting like an idiot” and “Central City breeds speedsters like ‘Salem’s Lot breeds vampires.”
I tried to stick to older examples above, but my current-season TV viewing took a big hit this year (damn you, The Flash!). I now have time to pick up some of my abandoned Netflix shows, like Death in Paradise, but should I bother?
The Premise:Death in Paradise brings a British detective, the uptight DI Richard Poole, to the tiny island nation of Sainte-Marie when the island’s own head detective is murdered. To his horror, what Richard thought was a one-shot assignment may be a permanent posting in a tropical land with no big cities, cloudy days or proper cups of tea.
Richard Poole, like Rumpole of the Bailey or Inspector Morse or even S. Holmes himself, is a classic detective type from British mystery, whose brilliance is fun to watch, but whose personality, if he were your coworker, might drive you to madness and murder. Fortunately, the rest of Sainte-Marie’s police are more forgiving: young go-getter Fidel; older, laid-back Dwayne; and Poole’s partner Camille, who tries to help Poole assimilate even as they solve some truly intricate murder cases.
The Verdict: I can’t say why I stopped watching Death in Paradise without dropping a giant spoiler, but I now realize I’ve missed the show while I’ve been away from it— much so that I even bought the first book by the show’s creator and may get the next one. The setting is gorgeous, the characters are fun (even Richard), and darn it, I even miss the CGI lizard.
Might go well with: Plantains; rum; your other favorite British crime shows.
Synopsis: The Quests go to Thailand so Benton can develop drugs that facilitate long-distance space travel. They’re pursued by Zin, whose new plan involves a Race Bannon lookalike. Dr. Quest’s awesome project, some interesting animals and the presence of an honest-to-god adventuress brilliantly distract from one of my least favorite classic plots.
Tip 41: Everything old is new again.
You may associate the travelers-in-trouble genre with Hostel or Turistas, but Team Quest is way ahead of you.
Come for the scenery that makes you hum “One Night In Bangkok”…Stay—well, against your will.
Next time: I’m psyching myself up to keep watching a TV show, and I’m taking you all with me.
Next time on TQfM!: So how hard is it to be Race Bannon, anyway?
Synopsis: The Quests go to Thailand so Benton can develop drugs that facilitate long-distance space travel. They’re pursued by Zin, whose new plan involves a Race Bannon lookalike. Dr. Quest’s awesome project, some interesting animals and the presence of an honest-to-god adventuress brilliantly distract from one of my least favorite classic plots.
Tip 40: Imitation is a sincere but often irritating form of flattery.
Why a man who can create robots is messing around with the old lookalike ploy—training a Race of his very own!—will forever confound me.One of the many problems in this plan is apparent here. I’d give you a hint, but that would be gauche.
Next time: Still up in the air, but probably horror-adjacent.
Synopsis: The Quests go to Thailand so Benton can develop drugs that facilitate long-distance space travel. They’re pursued by Zin, whose new plan involves a Race Bannon lookalike. Dr. Quest’s awesome project, some interesting animals and the presence of an honest-to-god adventuress brilliantly distract from one of my least favorite classic plots.
Kind of politically timely…
Tip 39: The art of confidentiality is important in many situations.
…Such as when you have a multivalent government job.
It can, however, go too far.
If it’s need-to-know information, maybe THE BODYGUARD WHO PROTECTS YOU AND YOUR KIDS needs to know. Just a suggestion.
All of which is to say that it looks like Dr. Zin has spies all over the US government, given what happens on this Thai jaunt.
Next time: A musical interlude practically from the womb.
Next time on TQfM!: Welcome to (yet another) jungle.
Synopsis: The Quests go to Thailand so Benton can develop drugs that facilitate long-distance space travel. They’re pursued by Zin, whose new plan involves a Race Bannon lookalike. Dr. Quest’s awesome project, some interesting animals and the presence of an honest-to-god adventuress brilliantly distract from one of my least favorite classic plots.
Tip 38: Animal spotting!
It’s been several episodes since we saw him hanging out with the Po-Hos in the Amazon, but the official Jonny Quest monkey is now here in Thailand!
And he’s thrilled to be here!Also makes a cute window treatment.
Next time: Even now, I am watching Prince of Darkness. If I don’t regret it too hard, that’ll be Friday.
Next time on TQfM!: The plot thickens, in that there is one.
Synopsis: A strange aircraft near Dr. Quest’s lab is not an X-File—just Dr. Zin’s latest scheme. The craft contains a spidery robot that can stun people, spy on them, and (Zin hopes) steal an invention intended to harmlessly disarm people. In my opinion, that’s the kind of thing you want supervillains to have, but hey, it’s not my story.
Tip 37: Destroying a robot spy? It takes a village.
Mostly it takes Benton Quest’s invention, though.
It’s a giant pen-holder that shoots, right?
Next time: Still a mystery to me.
Next time on TQfM!: It’s (the female) sex, drugs, monkeys & doppelgangers in “Double Danger.”
Sadly, the timeline doesn’t allow me to line up the Fourth of July with a Jonny Quest explosion.
(Episode: “The Robot Spy”)
Synopsis: A strange aircraft lands near Dr. Quest’s lab, but it’s not an X-File—just Dr. Zin’s latest scheme. The craft contains a spidery robot sent to steal an invention intended to harmlessly disarm people. In my opinion, that’s the kind of thing you want supervillains to have, but hey, it’s not my story.
Tip 36: In praise of multitools.
This episode’s titular robot is wonderfully efficient, especially for the time period in which it was made. It moves about on its own, disarms enemies with a bonk to the head, sports a built-in webcam…
First 15 minutes free?
…diagnostic probes…
Spycraft or AI first date—you decide!
…and, best of all, an ability to hide from children and small dogs.
Happy holiday, everyone!
Next time: Say what you will about the Frankenstein monster, at least I knew what I’d be writing about on Fridays…
