So! After I vaguely went to bat for Alice Part One, Alice Part Two aired last night, and now I feel like when a friend is visiting a city and you sort of vouch for an old college friend who lives there now as a friend introduction and they end up in a screaming food fight in a diner; totally embarrassed and sad I didn’t see it coming.

On the other hand, I called the ending in an email twelve hours before it aired, practically down to the dialogue, so clearly I saw SOMETHING coming.

Too bad it was this thing. Tor.com has the brunt of my despair, but I’m not done.

“Spoilerland.”
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SyFy aired Alice last night, and after Tin Man, you had better believe I was ready for the worst.

The worst never came! Instead, Passable came, and Passable was so much better than what I had prepared for that by the end I was like, “That was GREAT!” (It is not. It is Passable.) I reviewed it over at Tor.com.

Here, I want to break some things down, to make sure there is no confusion. The plot here is not good. The plot is stupid. The plot involves stealing people and sucking their emotions out, and weird tattoos and a big conspiracy and a magic ring and it’s just a mess. But, just like with Beyond Sherwood Forest, it’s like the producers sat down and were like, “Here are some likable characters. They’ll just run around in the woods while all the rest of it is going on. Also, we’ll reference Alice in Wonderland a lot. It should be fine!”

And so they did! (Except that dead guy. The dead guy is not likable. That dude was a jerk.)

“I’m glad that skeleton is dead, and other things that might be spoilers!”
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I’m using my Katrina Ghent face for this. She was sorely missed in this total stinkbomb of a finale. As usual, the official version is up at Tor.com.

A spoiler-free list of things I wish had been different:

- THE CHARACTERIZATION. The actual, official characterizations were perfectly good. However, every time the show needed a plot twist, someone would get amnesia or aphasia or a concussion and act like an idiot. That’s frustrating.

- THE PACE. Let’s not just drop things for weeks at a time, yeah? Also, maybe have a through-line with more suspense than “Will the King learn to hate David this week? Again?”

- THE WASTE. Let me get this straight; you have your lead character speak directly with Death – nay, have weirdly romantic tension with her – and you never follow up on that? Oh, Kings. Was Saffron Burrows REALLY so hard to schedule?

A spoiler-free list of things I loved:

- MOST OF THE CAST. Chris Egan and Girl Who Played Michelle can sit down. The rest of you get a round of applause. That was some top-notch acting, guys, don’t think I didn’t notice! Also, I hope that Susanna Thompson and Ian McShane get to work together again. I loved every time they had a scene together.

- THE MUSIC. Oh man, the music. NBC, I WANT A SOUNDTRACK. I am not kidding around. (The composter of Hannibal scored the pilot. I’m just saying, it’s nice stuff.)

- THE PRODUCTION DESIGN. Sometimes you may have been dumber than a sack of hair, but show, you looked good.

I have no hopes that this show will open the doors to better-quality television, or that this show will get picked up, or even that the next random-religious-allegory series will fare better than this one. This show tanked, flat-out. However, I appreciate NBC airing the full season for those of us who wanted to see it.

Now just hand over the soundtrack album and we can forget this whole thing.

So, Kings this week woke up, rolled over, and was like, “Shit, I’m late to finale!” and shoved three episodes’ worth of plot into this week’s episode.

Good news: this week’s episode was really exciting and featured some good acting! Bad news: we had to wait TEN EPISODES for this.

I wrote it up at Tor.com, and extra thoughts are under the cut as per usual.

David made facial expressions. I KNOW, RIGHT?
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Oh, KINGS. How can you look so pretty and manage so little?

I review this week’s Kings episode, “Javelin,” over at Tor.com. Before we jump cut, I just want to point out that Javelin is a reference to a Bible verse I used as a pullquote weeks ago, when I thought that plotline was really revving up. Oh, was I a fool!

Anyway, this week Kings takes to the courtroom. Below the cut, some stuff I didn’t mention in my review, none of which is about the Gilboan justice system. (David-based crimes are considered especially heinous. The elite prosecutors who fabricate these crimes are called Jack and Silas.)

CHUNG CHUNG.
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