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Torchwood S4: Miracle Day — “The New World”

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The fourth season of Russell T. Davies’ magnificent Dr. Who spin-off Torchwood kicks off with a new world for the characters on the show, and for the show itself, as it transitions from the UK to the US.

Evolution is part of Torchwood‘s DNA: the show has changed channels with every season. It started on BBC3, moved to BBC2, then BBC1, and has now touched down on Starz. It stays alive, much like its immortal, omni-sexual hero Captain Jack Harkness, and, in the premise of this new season, like everyone else in the world. For this is the concept of Miracle Day: no-one dies.

Russell T. Davies has always been one of the greatest chroniclers of the human heart on television, from his earliest days working with that other titan of British TV, Paul Abbott (Shameless, State Of Play). But as Davies’ career developed, he became something else as well: the true master of the big idea.

It first showed most overtly with his TV miniseries Second Coming, where future ninth Doctor Who Christoper Eccleston played an ordinary man living in an ordinary part of Manchester who truly believes he is the messiah, the second coming, come to save humanity. This show clearly marked the new phase in Davies’ progression: marrying the big idea to street-level emotional reality. It’s since become clear that Davies’ signature across the wide variety of his work is this: huge, paradigm-altering concepts with complex emotional ramifications, handled with humanity, grace, humor and heart.

His massively successful relaunch of Dr. Who took this combination to another level, and his creation of sister show Torchwood continued the evolution.

From its earliest incarnation as a monster of the week show for adults, like Dr. Who but with more sex, violence and horror (the more visceral content was why it started on the more experimental channel BBC3), Torchwood has quickly and steadily evolved into something greater.

Amidst the thrills, the scares and the laughs, the show always dealt head-on with melancholy and loss, and with the horror of its events from the human perspective. Seasons One and Two were great, a huge amount of fun laced with heart-wrenching drama, as Davies blended the episodic approach with more lightly serialized story arcs. Always, he allowed the darkness to build and the implications of his narratives to really hit home for the characters and the viewers.

Season Three, which for the first time had a title, Children Of Earth, was magnificent, monumentally so. Ironically, having fewer episodes and a tighter framework allowed Davies to realize his jaw-dropping big idea in a much bigger and far more emotionally devastating way. It marked a new era and template for the show: the broad-format, one-story miniseries.

Torchwood: Miracle Day continues that new direction and hits the ground running, in true Davies style. The big idea, that on this day, the miracle day, no-one dies, is deployed almost immediately, in two creepily effective ways: in the opening moments of the show, a convicted child murder (an astonishing Bill Pullman) receives a lethal injection, while a CIA agent (a perfectly grandstanding Mekhi Pfifer), gets a lethal impalement. Neither of them die, and very quickly, the world realizes that no-one else is dying either. Something has happened to humanity, and at the very moment it occurs, the word “Torchwood” appears on CIA servers; just as quickly, all traces of it disappear.

In the hands of some showrunners, that might be the entire first episode. For Davies, who has a brutally fast-moving, story-burning approach similar to that of Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec on The Vampire Diaries, it’s just the first five minutes.

From there, the episode races in powerful, muscular fashion through the rapidly evolving chaos that ensues. It introduces Alexa Havins in a sweetly soulful performance as CIA agent Esther Drummond. It reintroduces John Barrowman’s charismatic but tortured Captain Jack from the darkness. And it finds generous amounts of time to catch up with the show’s other lead, the incredible, legendary Gwen Cooper (played brilliantly by the never-better Eve Myles), fangirl and fanboy favorite, and one of sci-fi’s greatest female characters — in fact, allow me to apologize for even mentioning gender there — one of sci-fi’s greatest characters, period. Her relationship with husband Rhys (the always awesome Kai Owen) encapsulates everything that is great about this show, and Davies: a myriad of small, intimate, truthful human moments laced with blistering humor amidst the vast sci-fi darkness that threatens to engulf us all.

The move to Starz was a mouth-watering prospect: Davies’ huge vision coupled with a much larger budget than the show had ever had before. And the results are in: Torchwood made with extra dollars works wonderfully. The enhanced production values are in full effect, and the direction is breathtakingly exciting. All the way through to the thrilling helicopter chase at the end, the show is popping and humming and exploding off the screen.

In fact, speaking as a true connoisseur of helicopter scenes in TV shows and movies (I loved Airwolf a little too much as a kid), I can say with authority: that chase scene kicks major ass. It also, thanks to Davies’ frankly brilliant writing, simultaneously serves to throw Phifer’s agent into the Torchwood mix, and is also the scene that brings Jack and Gwen back together for the first time. Davies always does a great job blasting out scenes that work on multiple levels, and this is no exception.

This first episode does an awesome job of setting up the arc of the show, reintroducing the major characters and deftly reaffirming the Torchwood concept for first-time audiences (with some nice callbacks for existing fans, including numerous ‘456’ references, and Harkness using ‘Owen Harper’ as his fake FBI identity). It also has some great Wales jokes (“the British equivalent of New Jersey”).

The stage is fully set for the remaining nine episodes, and there is so much to look forward to: watching Phifer’s awesomely irascible agent Rex Matheson get on board with the Torchwood team, seeing how Pullman’s arc plays into the larger narrative. There is also the glorious prospect of great future episodes from fantastic TV sci-fi writers, including Jane Espenson and Doris Egan.

Above all, thanks to Starz, we get to see Davies really turn up the volume on his terrifying and thrilling vision.

The pedal is well and truly to the metal, sending us headlong into the darkness.

I can’t wait for more.

Let Me In

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When it was first announced that CLOVERFIELD director and J.J. Abrams compadre Matt Reeves would be writing and directing a US remake of the hugely well received Swedish vampire flick LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, initial responses were mixed to negative. The original had been so critically acclaimed, and was extremely popular. The consensus seemed to be, it’s unnecessary and doomed to be worse than the original.

The consensus was wrong.

Remakes of foreign language films are generally not seen to be necessary, in the eyes of purists. And the history of cinema is littered with weak remakes of powerful originals. But history doesn’t make the rules. The fact that it’s happened before doesn’t make it a necessary truth. It’s gone the other way too. With VANILLA SKY, Cameron Crowe’s startlingly original, multi-layered and visionary remake of the Spanish mystery-thriller ABRE LOS OJOS (Open Your Eyes), it was demonstrated that setting a story in a different culture can add all kinds of extra dimensions and layers, to create a richer, deeper, more complex experience. And if that doesn’t sway you to believe that remaking foreign movies can yield powerful, awesome results, I have two words for you:

THE DEPARTED.

It can, clearly, be done. Much in the manner of Shakespeare plays, we can look at movies and their screenplays as texts, open to reinterpretations that illuminate the time and place in which they are remade. It’s like anything: if it’s done well, it’s done well. Talent often makes arguments redundant. With a high level of creativity and vision, extraordinary things can occur (see also, BAZ LUHRMAN’S WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO & JULIET, and OCEAN’S ELEVEN).

When LET ME IN was released, it was clear that Matt Reeves brought several critical advantages to the party: a spare, minimalist yet heartbreakingly emotional writing style; absolute mastery of genre; and a true joy and love for great cinema. You really feel that last one in every single frame of this movie. Reeves loves great movies, and here he has lovingly constructed something truly unique and powerful. Every frame reveals his right-on intuition for gorgeous shot composition in complete service to the story. It’s such a gorgeously detailed film, but in such a streamlined way that it flows seamlessly.

It’s a key point to make: as rich and layered as this film is on some levels, it’s beautifully stark and simple on others — there is nothing superfluous in LET ME IN. Not a single second, element of a frame, moment of sound design, or word in the script.

It’s an emotionally and visually taut, tense experience. Reeves demonstrates throughout one of the key signs of a true master — he knows how to use stillness. This is at heart a quiet, meditative film, in the manner of the original story. But in Reeves’ hands, that stillness is not inert. It’s a lethal stillness that comes with the sure knowledge that when it’s time to strike, the movie’s gonna strike hard. Every frame of LET ME IN is poised, ready to attack. Part of the terror of the movie is never knowing when it’s going to happen. It’s like a black belt sixth dan martial arts master, making only the necessary moves to create devastating effects. It’s like Jason Bourne in that scene where he doesn’t move for five minutes then explodes into furious violence.

This is where Reeves’ sensibilities really come to the fore. Comics, horror and genre are all part of this movie’s DNA. There’s a subtle comic book influence deeply infused within the visual look of the movie, and a real affinity for horror. Reeves clearly had a larger budget than the original, but never before has money been spent so subtly or targeted so perfectly. When Chloe Moretz (who gives a remarkable performance to join her brilliant turn as Hit Girl in KICK-ASS) first shows us exactly what her vampire character is capable of, it’s utterly horrifying, thanks to expertly judicious use of special effects, framing and sound design.

In fact, I’d like to single out the sound effects. They’re fucking disgusting, but that’s how they need to be. Reeves does a remarkable job of balancing the lonely emotions with the savagery of the truth of what Moretz’s character is, and what she and those who bond with her have to endure. It’s true that these are truths contained within the original source material (the novel, then the first movie). However, Reeves’ script translates these elements and re-presents them in a new light. It’s a beautiful example of powerful, stripped-back writing.

Reeves’ version punches up the original movie, without ever trampling on it. It’s as reverent and respectable as it needs to be, without fear of pushing forward when necessary. It’s like a cover version of a song that takes over from the original. Like Jimi Hendrix did with All Along The Watchtower. In most people’s minds, that’s a Hendrix song, it’s his. Of course, Bob Dylan wrote it, which I guess in my example makes Reeves Hendrix and Tomas Alfredson Bob Dylan.

LET ME IN is a genre film of superior quality, with fantastic genes, that has become so much more than its potential. It’s beautiful, terrifying, haunting, poetic and thrilling, by turns, all at once, and in the way it lingers, and stays with you.

Blood Streams: The Vampire Diaries

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Last week’s episode, Klaus, only confirmed what we already knew: watching The Vampire Diaries is an exhilarating, exhausting, extraordinary experience that leaves you drained in the best possible way.

Thanks to showrunners Kevin Williamson (Scream 1-4, Dawson’s Creek, I Know What You Did Last Summer) & Julie Plec (Kyle XY, Scream 2&3, Cursed), and their excellent writers’ room, this show consists of non-stop live-wire storytelling, barreling along and aggressively evolving and phasing on the fly with maximum speed and acceleration. The pace of storytelling is relentless: it’s like a killer act out every 60 seconds. It’s brutal but addictive; which is also how the writers handle the show’s main theme: love. Because for all its velocity of narrative, The Vampire Diaries has a beating heart when it comes to romantic love.

The lushly unabashed romanticism of the show is brutally intercut with swift chest-punching heart-grabbing (literally and metaphorically, because the show is that good). To quote another iconic Warner Bros TV show (SouthLAnd, of course): love’s a bitch. Love will lift you up and enrich your life and take you to beautiful emotional and physical places, but you’d better believe it will kick your ass along the way. That’s just the truth about love (and also about writing, as it happens), and in The Vampire Diaries that huge, resonating truth just happens to be filtered through the awesome genre lens of vampires, werewolves, witches and beautiful people in a contemporary setting. This is a hardcore genre show that is so much fun it’s accessible to everyone.

Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec have taken L.J. Smith’s rich source material, and created a monster, with all the enormous fun and kicking aside of responsibilities that comes with it. There’s a “hell, yeah!” quality to every episode, act, scene and beat in this show. It goes all the way from the season arc through-line, down to the granular level of shots and edits. There’s such a huge, wild enthusiasm for high-octane, wild-eyed with exhilaration storytelling. They build storylines over months to an unstoppable momentum, and then slam you with insanely thrilling reversals that take your goddamn breath away.

The writers take those awesome WTF moments and pile them one on the other, detonating story-bombs with abandon, because they can, thanks to the bench strength of the writing room talent on this show.

From the beginning, the showrunners declared their intention to have an absolute blast. The opening words of the pilot script teaser described the boyfriend driving the car as having that “cute-I’m-probably-gonna-die-soon look,” and his girlfriend as having that “I’ll-probably-live-longer-than-my-boyfriend look.” From there, it’s only gotten to be even more fun, with Damon’s chest-punching and Elijah’s multiple heart-grabbings (again, you know, on more than one level), and the many, many British accents on display (as a Brit, I gotta love that — of course the accent denotes worldly experience, intellectual brilliance and general bad-ass awesomeness. Of course. It just does.).

Throughout, Williamson & Plec and their outstanding team of writers demonstrate an intense sense of glee with their slice and dicing of typical monster tropes, and their manipulation and reconstruction of genre. They’ve taken the twin concepts of genre and love, and spliced them, allowing each to transform the other.

At its heart, this is a show all about transformations, both literal and metaphysical: human to vampire, human to werewolf, innocent to aware, comfortable to world-shattered. Everyone on the show at some point has had to deal with the reversal of everything they thought they knew. This is why The Vampire Diaries transcends genre and achieves vertical take-off into the realm of great drama — it grounds everything in character.

When someone’s world gets upended or destroyed, they feel it, and so do we. And as quickly as this show moves, it knows exactly when to hold a moment too, as we saw in this week’s mind-blowing episode Klaus, which not only seemed to pack in more plot than a season of 24, but also finally gave us Jenna’s reaction to finding out about the existence of vampires and werewolves, and to the fact that everyone had been lying to her all this time. Sara Canning played the scene with simple, heart-rending truth, breaking down inside and out. It was beautifully done.

Thanks to the fantastic writing which delivers kick-ass genre awesomeness and brutal character work week after week, the show continues to work its way into our bloodstreams and has shown no sign of slowing its momentum. The show was just renewed for a third season, and like an insane but thrilling rollercoaster, it’s impossible not to come back for more.

SouthLAnd: Graduation Day

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And so, with a building, searing intensity, the final episode of SouthLAnd‘s season three roared to its emotionally explosive conclusion.

Such a bittersweet moment for fans and presumably creators alike. As the opening voiceover reminded us, sometimes you just have to make that leap. Throughout its two year, three season, 23 episode history, SouthLAnd has been fearless and unflinching, never hesitating as it ran over the rooftops of network and cable drama, fast, fitter, harder than the rest.

With Graduation Day, the show delivered astonishingly, beautifully, heartbreakingly, poetically and ball-bustingly on all the narrative arcs it had set up and laid down in the previous 22 episodes. Such relentless emotional follow-through is rare in TV drama. Comparing the events of the episode to the original pilot script, broadcast as Unknown Trouble, it’s an intense and moving experience to see how the show has so powerfully come into its own. It’s followed Ben Sherman from that terrifying first day, full of the unknown trouble of the title, through to his, and the show’s, graduation. Although Sherman has often been a quiet presence, SouthLAnd has always been powered by his story. Both Sherman and the show now stand on the edge of a new era in their existence. SouthLAnd has done a phenomenal job of maintaining its core truths while aggressively evolving within its world. Season three has seen the show expand, despite the budgetary hardships of the move to cable — it feels bigger than ever, and that is a testament to the extraordinary creative team, working harder and smarter than ever to deliver the best cop show of all time, and one of the undisputed, heavyweight greatest TV dramas I’ve ever seen.

What an episode it was. Part graduation, part commencement speech for the future. And lots of running. With a story by Heather Zuhkle, teleplay by John Wells, direction from Christopher Chulack, and eerie, beautiful, raw and hypnotic lighting from Jimmy Muro, Graduation Day was a full court press from start to finish. This season has showcased great and powerful writing and directing from Cheo Coker, Chitra Sampath, Allison Anders, Muro, and many, many others. But you have to bow down to the showrunners, the OGs: when John Wells and Christopher Chulack step up to the plate, they don’t f**k around. The pedal goes to the metal and stays there.

Whether it was bringing a season’s worth of crackling tension to an explosive conclusion as Lydia sparred against Josie about dating her son, or fulfilling the promise of the first season by having Sammy finally become a father (in messed up circumstances to be sure, but it’s him and Tammi, it couldn’t be any other way), Graduation Day handled its storylines and emotional arcs perfectly. It was great to watch Regina King play Lydia’s happy yet complex arc in this episode, creating one of the most enjoyable storylines of the show to date.

Most cathartic and showstopping of all of the narratives was the inevitable, long-awaited showdown between Sherman and Cooper, as Sherman finally, monumentally lost it on his disintegrating training officer. McKenzie and Cudlitz unloaded both barrels on each other for this scene, tearing the scene apart with their bare hands. McKenzie had some work to do. Following on from his bare knuckle rooftop fight with his suspect (one of the most painfully raw, real, intense and prolonged fight scenes we’ve seen on TV), McKenzie had to raise his game to take on the mighty presence of Cudlitz, formidable even when he has to play someone barely holding on. It was a great, classic scene, resonating with all the force of its two-year build-up.

Michael Cudlitz laid it down in this episode, anchoring the entire show with the craggy, iconic power of his performance. His acting ranged from intensely physical (his truly heartbreaking attempts to climb the ladder), to painfully intense (“I did f**king chase after you!”), to devastatingly quiet and detailed (saying “thank you” to Sherman; checking himself into rehab). Cudlitz stepped up to the plate and batted 1000. McKenzie delivered too: after three seasons of mostly having to repress his impulses, he finally got to explode with full force and authority, literally tearing Cudlitz up from the street and laying into him: “you’re a f**king goddamn useless training officer.” It was great f**king television.

It was a hell of a season for Sammy Bryant. Throughout it, Shawn Hatosy prowled like De Niro, tore it up like Sean Penn, and brought a restless, relentless energy to the role. He had some gruelling, raw scenes, and he gave them everything. Hatosy had a powerful, extraordinary season. This episode captured all of it. From the scenes in the delivery room, to the catharsis of seeing Nate’s killer die (“Nate Moretta, motherf**ker”), to the revelation that his newborn son was called Nathaniel, to his desperate look at the photo of himself and Nate, Hatosy took the outstanding scenes and beats given to him by John Wells and brought them to life with beautiful authenticity. It was heartbreaking. And it made his final scenes all the more bad-ass: as he walked out in uniform with his new partner, the one and only Ben Sherman, Hatosy showed us just how damn awesome season four is going to be as they trade the quirky streets of Hollywood for the tougher world of Alvarado.

In this final scene, we also discovered that Sherman has graduated nicknames, from Boot to Pup. Although Sherman must have felt like he was back at the start in some ways, that wry smile on McKenzie’s face in the final shot said it all: this shit is only going to get better.

As the show heads into its seemingly inevitable season four, one thing needs to be made clear: we need more Michael McGrady, C. Thomas Howell and Arija Bareikis! McGrady brought his customary presence and gravitas, backing it up this week with some heartfelt emotion, anchoring the scene with Sammy at the end with fatherly concern and genuine worry. Howell and Bareikis are great together, with snappy chemistry and a natural rhythm.

It’s important to take a moment here to acknowledge that this was the season Jimmy Muro came into his own, and brought the entire show with him. As director of photography, Muro did extraordinary things with light on this season, taking the show’s raw, kinetic aesthetic, and imbuing it with the otherworldly sheen of an ethereal sci-fi dream. And as director of two episodes (Cheo Coker’s Cop Or Not and Chitra Sampath’s Failure Drill), Muro unleashed his vision, creating haunting, complex visual textures that recalled Blade Runner and Star Trek with their deep ambient quality and mesmerizing lens flare. Muro is the master of that legendary Los Angeles light: dealing with it head-on in the show’s signature bleached-out, oversaturated glare, bringing in new visual grace notes by reflecting magic hour light on the downtown skyscrapers. Muro brought vital extra dimensions to SouthLAnd, creating yet another way in which the show effortlessly, quietly, almost imperceptibly differentiated itself from its peers.

At the time of writing, no announcement has been made by TNT about the show’s future. Renewal seems highly likely with the steady increase in ratings (Graduation Day being the highest rated of the season), and the sheer bench strength of the entire cast and crew. This is a brutally high quality production, and it deserves a long future. Finally, the awards have started coming to the show: Regina King recently and deservedly won the NAACP award for Outstanding Actress In A Drama Series — this must surely only be the beginning of a wave of writing, acting and technical awards for this peerless show.

All that remains is for me to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in bringing this amazing show to our screens. It’s had a huge impact on me, on my writing and my life. It’s been an extraordinary ride so far, and all the elements are in place for SouthLAnd to take it to the next level in season four.

Until then, I’ll leave you with John Cooper’s words of wisdom:

“Look sharp, act sharp, be sharp.”

SouthLAnd: Survival

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Over the freeze frame of the flame of gunfire came the theme of Failure Drill: “To protect and to serve, that’s the LAPD motto… But as most cops’ll tell ya, sometimes you’re lucky if you can just survive.”

And this was an episode all about trying to survive, trying to make it through the day, trying to just stay upright and awake, trying not to lose it, trying not to die, and, often, trying not to laugh so damn hard. The signature SouthLAnd blend.

Written by Chitra Elizabeth Sampath, Failure Drill was her first script for the show, although you would never know it: the episode was classic season three SouthLAnd, one of the best-written this season. It was an assured and playful script that did what SouthLAnd does best, being full of smart turns, sharp dialogue, jaw-droppingly “no that just didn’t happen” humor, swift and surprising reversals, and a clear line of sight right to the emotional heart of the show. She advanced major storylines, threw in great, thrilling and truthful character moments, and wove it all together in a fast-moving, never-stopping express train.

The show opened with Lydia being trained in the titular failure drill. This referred to a police shooting technique: shoot the attacker twice in the chest to see if they’re wearing a vest. If they don’t go down, shoot once more to the head. This is exactly what SouthLAnd does emotionally, and it proved to be a great metaphor for the episode that followed.

Sampath showed us Lydia at her absolute best, and Regina King took full advantage of the huge range that Lydia got to explore. Whether it was her masterful handling of the husband who murdered his wife, her empathy with their son, her deep struggle with whether to let herself relax and open up to the possibility of dating Morales, or her all-out action hero scenes at the end, King threw herself body and soul into all of it.

Shawn Hatosy had some great scenes too, showing us how he’s at the very top of his game, crackling with energy, rage and authority. Hatosy’s best scene was his priceless reaction to the staggering next level of Tammi’s insanity, which literally came out of nowhere in a fantastically perfect interchange, one of Sampath’s finest in the episode. A heavily pregnant Tammi showed up unexpectedly, interrupting Sammy’s questioning of a suspect. “How the hell did you find me?” Sammy asked her. “I put a Find My Friends app on your phone,” she replied. Hatosy’s reaction shot was f**king brilliant — Sammy could barely process this: “I’m a gang detective,” he manfully forced out in utter disbelief, “I can’t have a f**king Find My Friends app on my phone.” Tammi struck back with, “are we having this baby together, or not?” Her mission to completely f*ck with Sammy’s head continues successfully.

The main event in this episode, though, was John Cooper’s steady, seemingly unstoppable descent into hell, via his painkiller addiction. Sampath handled this with great subtlety and style, choreographing Ben and John’s scenes with finesse. Their “off the record” conversation was heartbreaking, but artfully messed up, in true SouthLAnd style. Ben McKenzie and Michael Cudlitz both gave the scene, and the episode, all the intensity they had, and it was great. Their arc also showed Sampath’s real strength: delivering character development and raw emotion on the fly and deep beneath the surface of fast-moving, brutal dialogue. All of which is frequently broken up by absolute jewels of brilliant comedy, like Sherman demonstrating the child car seats, or Adams discovering who Morales was related to — surely one of the most awesome surprises ever thrown at us by the show.

There’s no doubt that with this episode, Sampath executed her own failure drill on all the other cop shows out there, dropping them in three.

But as wonderfully written as this episode was, it’s now time to hail the relatively unsung hero of SouthLAnd, the master of light and motion, the man who turns the lens into an emotional perspective and makes everything look harshly beautiful, making LA look simultaneously just like it is, and like we’ve never seen it before: the one and only Jimmy Muro. Failure Drill was the best looking SouthLAnd episode of all three seasons. Muro, usually the director of photography on the show, directed this one, proving himself (not that it needed proving) to be the grand master of the show’s aesthetic.

He lit and shot the shit out of the show this week. Using hypnotic lens flare, brutal oversaturation, and great visual textures (from the golden light of the Hollywood day to the deep blue of dusk in downtown LA), Muro elevated the show to new visual heights, relentlessly pursuing a futuristic aesthetic that enhanced the emotional bullet-like precision of the show. As Lydia prowled the levels of the factory towards the end of the show, searching for the shooter who had massacred many of the workers, Muro lit the scenes like the end of Blade Runner, bringing a haunting art deco depth and future-retro timelessness to the atmosphere. He followed this up by lighting the final scene with Ben and Cooper like it was shot in an alien city many years from now, all shining blue-white flare and futuristic light. It was mesmerizing, compelling and remarkable.

Failure Drill was the perfect set up for the season finale, Graduation Day. As the fans await news of renewal (and maybe a blu-ray box set), we have the prospect of an awesome finale to look forward to. This is the show that keeps surviving, because it’s just so damn good.