Yearly Archives: 2016

Featured, Travelers

The team is in deep trouble on Travelers

Things don’t look good for our travellers. Not at all. While one image from Monday’s episode, “Room 101,” shows MacLaren on a rooftop with a helicopter overhead, the other is far darker and scary: his team is caged, strapped to chairs and hooked up to IVs of some sort. Is it fallout from the face-off our team had with Hall? Is Hall getting revenge for his arrest?

Here’s the official episode synopsis from Showcase:

MacLaren is on his own as he fights to unravel the mystery of his team’s sudden disappearance.

Here are a few more plot points heading into Monday night.

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That opening scene…
We were blown away with Brad Wright’s way of introducing the travellers in Episode 1, but he outdoes himself tonight, as three new folks arrive in 2016 in a unique way. Their arrival also caused us to pause and ponder the instance surrounding their deaths in the first place … and that travelling is still imperfect.

…is nothing compared to the second before the main credits
With just four minutes elapsed, the reason MacLaren is solo and how his team became separated from him is established.

Trevor still has his sense of humour
The quartet may not know what’s going on, but that doesn’t stop Trevor from cracking wise about catheters.

Forbes is catching on
You can only miss so many court dates before your partner starts asking questions, and that’s the case with MacLaren. I wondered how he’d be able to juggle his FBI gig with the missions and the short answer is, he can’t.

This time is full of very bad people
Hall may or may not be involved in what happens to Carly, Marcy, Trevor or Philip, but “Room 101” does reveal a shady someone or group is interested in the travellers. And they know a lot. Who, exactly, are they? We’re not sure, but through them we’re given some key insight into what the world the travellers left looked like.

Travelers airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showcase.

Images courtesy of Corus.

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Shoot the Messenger

Link: Elyse Levesque talks Shoot the Messenger + a preview of “Strange Bedfellows”

From Heather M. of The Televixen:

Link: Elyse Levesque talks Shoot the Messenger + a preview of “Strange Bedfellows”
“I think [she] wants to get to the bottom of things. I do think there’s something that when you’re sober, you’re jonesing for a fix, some sort of excitement, looking for something else to curb the desire to drink or do drugs. I think the adrenaline she gets from putting herself in dangerous situations is [her fix].” Continue reading.

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Frontier

Link: Allan Hawco on his new fur trade TV series ‘Frontier’

From Alexandra Pope of Canadian Geographic:

Link: Allan Hawco on his new fur trade TV series ‘Frontier’
“The time period is so rich in terms of potential for high-stakes conflict, with all these different companies jockeying for position in the fur trade. It’s really North America’s coming-of-age. The show takes a lot of dramatic licence, but the writers worked very hard to make sure all of it was plausible.” Continue reading.

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Featured, Heartland

Wolves and pot-bellied pigs on Heartland

Mitch has, like, the worst timing in the world, doesn’t he? Last week he snapped at Lou down by the river and she backed off from telling her how she felt about him. And leading off Sunday’s episode, he showed off a horse he got her … just as Peter rolled up in a cab. Awkward.

“Riding Shotgun” was both literal and figurative in the script written by Pamela Pinch and directed by Chris Potter, as Petunia the sick pig (and Adam) sat next to Georgie in Bob’s truck on the way to the clinic and a shotgun was handy at Mitch’s side when wolves threatened to make a sinewy snack out of Jack.

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For Mitch, being unable to pull the trigger when a toothsome predator was mere inches from Jack’s throat was a call back to his time in Afghanistan, where he lost his cousin, Zach (the dog tags Mitch was holding last Sunday). But Zach didn’t die over there, he committed suicide back in Canada. It was a sobering revelation that not only brought real life back to Heartland but added another layer to Mitch the character. The wise-cracking, good-looking ranch hand has stuff going on below that tough exterior.

It was nice Mitch apologized to Lou for snapping at her, but his admission he didn’t gift Venus to her means he thinks their relationship is over, and Lou hopes it’s just begun.

(Speaking of tough guys, it was great to see Peter not only agree to help out at Heartland more if Lou ends up spending more time away with Maggie’s expansion and telling Georgie the key to a successful relationship is talking. He smartly took his own advice.)

Heartland airs Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Blood and Water, Featured

Omni’s Blood and Water is back with new episodes … and brighter days?

Wait, what’s this we spot? Is that really Det. Jo Bradley (Steph Song) smiling in the above photo? She certainly didn’t have a lot to be jovial about by the end of Blood and Water‘s first block of eight episodes. After all, two dead Xie sons and a cancer scare isn’t the stuff of good times. So, why is Jo grinning when Blood and Water returns to Omni on Sunday?

“Jo is a lot freer in these episodes,” Song says during a break in filming. “We find Jo one year cancer-free, so she’s feeling good about life and has faced down that demon and is perhaps more liberated. She’s coming back to work and has a new partner and is maybe a little attracted to him. We get to see a different side to Jo Bradley.”

She’s still a razor-sharp detective, something Jo draws on during an all-new murder case involving the Xie’s. Gone is Peter Outerbridge’s Det. Al Gorski, replaced by Det. Evan Ong (Bryon Mann); he and Jo are drawn into Ron Zie’s (Oscar Hsu) world when a murdered woman tied to the late Charlie Xie turns the spotlight back on the beleaguered family, who are fighting to keep control of their business as interested buyers circle.

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Along for the adventure is returning cast Elfina Luk, Fiona Fu and Loretta Yu; Aidan Devine checks in not only as Jo’s boss but the third part of a love triangle. Awkward.

Once again presented in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, Blood and Water, executive producer Diane Boehme says the second block of episodes explores ghosts and what haunts you; regret and wrong decisions are experienced by the characters. For Ron Xie, it’s the family secret he tried to keep hidden that, ultimately, blew up in his face. Daughter Anna (Luk) has left town and, perhaps, found love. As for Jo? Boehme teases that she begins to receive mysterious letters written in Chinese. As they’re translated, Jo realizes they’re from her biological family, who want to connect with her. Jo, rightly so, is conflicted.

“All that stuff comes out for her,” Boehme says. “The regret of what she might have been.”

Blood and Water airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET on Omni.

Images courtesy of Rogers Media.

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