Round Two: Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories: Season 1, Episode 2 “The Heat” (B)

The difficulty of getting into an anthology series is that one episode might be riveting and of particular interest while the next has nothing to do with it and feels altogether very different. I liked the time travel present in the first and the way in which its protagonist used what he knew of the future to set events in order to match them. In this hour, one character’s inability to move on and communicate with the living after her death was an unexplained event, one that had to be resolved and managed to do so in a way that I found less compelling. This reminded me a lot of the film “Wander Darkly” with Sienna Miller and Diego Luna that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, an intriguing effort that boasted some of the same issues this episode had. Tuka and Sterling talking out loud to themselves as they pieced together was a bit hokey at times, and the notion that Tuka could only be heard when they were both running was fairly predictable. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant narrative, namely with Sterling being hit with a baseball bat just as she was about to run her big race. I thought I recognized a few of the cast members, and I think the only one I knew before was Shane Paul McGhie, a strong part of a lackluster film I also saw at Sundance this year, “The Last Shift.” I’m ready to give this show another chance with episode three, but if it doesn’t hold my attention, I’ll settle for remembering the excitement of the first hour as I stop watching this show.