Bureau’s Breakroom’s Television Table – Week beginning 2020 March 29

I hope you weren’t looking for superheros, because they are doing their part to Defeat Corona by staying in.  We do get some villains, as Better Call Saul reduces to initials and the FBI investigates some hackers on Blacklist.  Our AI cowboys spend some time working on their appearance on Westworld.  Cosmos gives us a search for intelligence on earth and then goes to the moon with Cassini.  Good Doctor (not a real one, a fictional hero) ends his season.  If you’re stuck home with kids, Zoey is a glitch, and DuckTales returns with two episodes.  Anything else you are doing while sheltering-in-front-of-the-television?

[All synopses (and titles) from Trakt.tv below the cut, except when there really aren’t any.  (If a show’s synopsis is a spoiler to you, do not click More…)]

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist – S01E07 – Zoey’s Extraordinary Glitch – After receiving heartbreaking news, Zoey suffers a mysterious “glitch” in her powers.

Westworld – S03E03 – The Absence of Field – If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, don’t blame the mirror.

Cosmos – S02E07 – The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth – A revelation of the hidden underground network that is a collaboration of four kingdoms of life, and a true first contact story between humans and beings who communicate in a symbolic language and have maintained a representative democracy for many tens of millions of years.

Cosmos – S02E08 – The Sacrifice of Cassini – The mysterious untold story of the scientist who figured out how to go the Moon while fighting for his life in a WWI trench. He wrote a letter to fifty years in the future. It made the Apollo Mission possible. And the saga of the twenty-year long odyssey of a robotic explorer ordered to commit suicide on another world.

Better Call Saul – S05E07 – JMM – Jimmy and Kim build a legal firewall with help from Huell. Kim sets things straight with her clients as Jimmy is compromised by his. Gus calms troubled waters in service of his plot to build an empire. Mike does damage control.

The Good Doctor – S03E20 – I Love You – In the second episode of the two-part finale, our doctors work against time and their own personal safety to save the lives of those around them.

The Blacklist – S07E13 – Newton Purcell – The Task Force investigates a series of attacks on data centers perpetrated by a blacklister with a peculiar condition, as Liz conducts a secret investigation on the side. Glen desperately tries to prove his value to Red after a shipping mishap.

DuckTales – S03E01 – Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks! – Huey races against Violet in a challenge to be named Senior Junior Woodchuck, while Scrooge and the family search for a secret Woodchuck treasure.

DuckTales – S03E02 – Quack Pack! – The family is not quite themselves as they discover the planned family photoshoot might just be a part of a bigger “wish” gone wrong.

8 replies on “Bureau’s Breakroom’s Television Table – Week beginning 2020 March 29”

  1. My wife has made me start watching The Witcher. I’ve seen worse, but it seems overly complicated at this point without a detailed map and some character sheets.

    • I watched it cold, having neither read the books or played the games, so I wasn’t fussed with the changes made to adapt it for the screen, but while Cavill did really well as Geralt the rest of the cast wasn’t great, to say the least. Hopefully that will improve for Season 2, because I quite enjoyed the plot, despite the rather wooden acting.

      FWIW, I also struggled to follow what was going on at first, but it helped a *lot* when I realised that there were two timelines (initially set about 50 years apart), that were slowly converging. Specifically, Geralt in Blaviken and Yennefer’s backstory happens some time before the fall of Cintra, and much of the story basically relates how they end up there during the sack.. Unlike other similar epics, I don’t think a map really matters; I never felt the need to Google for one, although I’m sure they exist – all the various towns and villages are ultimately just differnt waypoints on a hero’s journey – and all roads lead to Cintra.

  2. And we should finally start getting Westworld reviews later this week. Very few of the episodes are ever true standalones, but I think a review of the first three or four should work.

    Is anyone here watching it, or are you waiting to see the entire thing?
    Or just not interested enough? Because the second season, in particular, establishes it for me as one of the great SF shows of all time.

    • I’m watching Westworld as they air. Lots of things to speculate on – the timeline (again!), plus who was in those pearls we saw at the end of last season and where the conciousnesses they contain end up. I’ll probably doing the usual binge re-watch after the last episode to spot all the clues that I inevitably missed as well…

  3. Watched this week’s Westworld, and my guess is that the mind that is in Charlotte is actually Teddy, though they are kinda acting like that person is a child, someone who needs a lot of hand holding. My other going hypothesis is Serac is the big AI that is in the sphere, and doesn’t have a physical body, which is why we only see him in glasses and environments of questionable virtuality.

    • I’m kind of going with the same conclusion for Charlotte, but I’m not sure they are sufficiently up there on the intellectual scale to think as fast on their feet as “Charlotte” is having to do. Then again, I’m also pretty sure that we’re seeing multiple timelines again (Bernard is apparently walking around, yet Delores also his pearl), so that doesn’t preclude the same individual being in another body in the same episode. My current theory is that we’re seeing both Delores and Teddy in Charlotte at different points in time – Delores first (continuing on from leaving Westworld in S2), then Teddy later. I only have guesses on who might be in any of the other pearls though, but I deeply suspect that the MiB will be one.

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