Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 8 “USA vs. Theodore J. Kaczynski” (B+)
I guess this is a season finale though we all know that there won’t be a second season and that this is really more of a miniseries. I actually found myself wishing that there was more time spent on the trial since it was pretty fascinating, yet I guess the idea is that we’ve seen all of the evidence presented in its original form, as in when it happened over the course of the last seven episodes. What’s most intriguing about this show aside from its subject matter is the way in which its characters play such a minor role on some occasions, with Fitz figuring in somewhat to this episode but otherwise all of the legal and investigative figures we’ve come to know over the course of the season just showing up for mostly non-speaking roles. Fitz didn’t get all the credit for bringing him down, and no one needed that, since David had to make the difficult statement that what happened was right, even though both he and his mother do still care for Ted. And then there’s Ted, who was very involved in his own legal defense and was hellbent on not claiming insanity, something his lawyers were set on doing despite his objections. It was interesting how this episode really painted Ted in a sympathetic light, the lone person confident in what he was saying yet deemed crazy by all around him. At the very least, this was an extremely involving show featuring a powerhouse performance by Paul Bettany, who I very much hope wins some awards next year. I now feel like I want to learn more about this case, particularly by visiting the exhibit at the Newseum that previously was of no interest to me. The forensic linguistics part really is very cool, and this was a solid show.
Season grade: B+
Season MVP: Paul Bettany as Ted
Showing posts with label Manhunt Unabomber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manhunt Unabomber. Show all posts
Friday, September 15, 2017
Friday, September 8, 2017
What I’m Watching: Manhunt: Unabomber
Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 7 “Lincoln” (B+)
Twitter might not have existed yet, but the movement of so many federal agents was enough to attract attention and allow CBS, and other outlets, to get the full story of what was going on and then agree to hold off on publishing the story for twenty-four hours only. One hundred agents on the way but no warrant was a serious problem, and Fitz was bold to suggest that the dual presence of the “eat your cake and have it too” was enough for a warrant. What I like most about this show is the way that it latches on to the central pieces of the investigation that helped crack the case of who the Unabomber was, and the reason for the judge signing the warrant still fits into that category. Remembering sentry duty and the way in which they were able to distinguish that Japanese soldiers were trying to use American code words was extremely interesting, and entirely applicable. Ted’s capture wasn’t some big event, accomplished simply with the assistance of someone who knew him and two agents there posing as surveyors. Ted’s response was calm, repeatedly asking if he was under arrest and to see the warrant, which he quickly scanned for the names of those who were most instrumental to his apprehension. Fitz was so excited to call his ex-wife and tell her, and then he had to watch the news and not even get any credit, explaining the scene we saw early on in the show where Fitz nearly went ballistic when he saw Genelli, who took all the credit for his hard work. David was devastated to learn that the FBI arrested Ted because of him, and I guess we’ll learn in the final episode how the trial goes.
Twitter might not have existed yet, but the movement of so many federal agents was enough to attract attention and allow CBS, and other outlets, to get the full story of what was going on and then agree to hold off on publishing the story for twenty-four hours only. One hundred agents on the way but no warrant was a serious problem, and Fitz was bold to suggest that the dual presence of the “eat your cake and have it too” was enough for a warrant. What I like most about this show is the way that it latches on to the central pieces of the investigation that helped crack the case of who the Unabomber was, and the reason for the judge signing the warrant still fits into that category. Remembering sentry duty and the way in which they were able to distinguish that Japanese soldiers were trying to use American code words was extremely interesting, and entirely applicable. Ted’s capture wasn’t some big event, accomplished simply with the assistance of someone who knew him and two agents there posing as surveyors. Ted’s response was calm, repeatedly asking if he was under arrest and to see the warrant, which he quickly scanned for the names of those who were most instrumental to his apprehension. Fitz was so excited to call his ex-wife and tell her, and then he had to watch the news and not even get any credit, explaining the scene we saw early on in the show where Fitz nearly went ballistic when he saw Genelli, who took all the credit for his hard work. David was devastated to learn that the FBI arrested Ted because of him, and I guess we’ll learn in the final episode how the trial goes.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
What I’m Watching: Manhunt: Unabomber
Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 6 “Ted” (B+)
Take out the first part of the show’s title in this episode, since this was all about the creation of the Unabomber, a deep dive into Ted’s past and to what turned him into the recluse that he has become. Only he’s not quite as removed from society as we might have thought, still interacting with other intellectuals and trying to inspire the continuation of knowledge in those with pure hearts and minds. The way that this show manages to tell its story really is impressive, since Ted’s childhood appeared idyllic at first as he spent time playing in the woods and experiencing adventures with his one friend, who all of a sudden got interested in a girl and then was cruel enough to throw rocks at him when he dared to be near them in a formerly shared spot. Getting to college two years early had him full of promise, as he looked up to his new professor Henry Murray, played by Brian d’Arcy James, who I know best from his role in the over-the-top musical series “Smash” and the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight.” He was very good here as an intellectual who nurtured a promising young mind and fed it, only to completely betray Ted by subjecting him to a horrific brainwashing study during which he read an awful letter purported to have been written by his mother and undercut everything he thought made him an individual. It makes sense that Ted would turn out this way, angry at the world for not turning out the way he expected - and not close to it either - and I’m interested in seeing what happened between then and the present time on the show, though I think the glimpses of him building the house with his brother were about all we’ll get before we return to the manhunt.
Take out the first part of the show’s title in this episode, since this was all about the creation of the Unabomber, a deep dive into Ted’s past and to what turned him into the recluse that he has become. Only he’s not quite as removed from society as we might have thought, still interacting with other intellectuals and trying to inspire the continuation of knowledge in those with pure hearts and minds. The way that this show manages to tell its story really is impressive, since Ted’s childhood appeared idyllic at first as he spent time playing in the woods and experiencing adventures with his one friend, who all of a sudden got interested in a girl and then was cruel enough to throw rocks at him when he dared to be near them in a formerly shared spot. Getting to college two years early had him full of promise, as he looked up to his new professor Henry Murray, played by Brian d’Arcy James, who I know best from his role in the over-the-top musical series “Smash” and the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight.” He was very good here as an intellectual who nurtured a promising young mind and fed it, only to completely betray Ted by subjecting him to a horrific brainwashing study during which he read an awful letter purported to have been written by his mother and undercut everything he thought made him an individual. It makes sense that Ted would turn out this way, angry at the world for not turning out the way he expected - and not close to it either - and I’m interested in seeing what happened between then and the present time on the show, though I think the glimpses of him building the house with his brother were about all we’ll get before we return to the manhunt.
Friday, August 25, 2017
What I’m Watching: Manhunt Unabomber
Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 5 “Abri” (B+)
Once again, we didn’t see Ted at all, and this entire episode took place in the same time period. Yet this was easily the most gripping hour yet, showing how easy it was for the Unabomber to be identified when the right person saw exactly what they needed to see. I don’t think that Mark Duplass, a great quiet straight man in some more serious comedies like “Togetherness” and “Your Sister’s Sister,” would have been my first choice to play the brother of the Unabomber, but in the context of this episode it makes some sense, since it’s a pretty straightforward portrayal of a man who is concerned about his brother’s wellbeing even if he is a mass murderer. Fitz was more than ready to abandon his kids at the movies when he got the call about a letter that was too close to what the Unabomber wrote to be anything but the man himself, and Ellie isn’t anywhere close to ready to forgive him. He pushed Natalie away when they collected all the evidence and she misread the moment, and then he threw Tabby under the bus by refusing to stick up for her since her alleged misdeeds directly benefited him. Now, an isolated Fitz is finally being listened to and everyone knows that Ted is the Unabomber, but there are still three episodes left in this season, so I’m really curious to see how the capture plays out and to learn more about what transformed Ted from who he was into the Unabomber.
Once again, we didn’t see Ted at all, and this entire episode took place in the same time period. Yet this was easily the most gripping hour yet, showing how easy it was for the Unabomber to be identified when the right person saw exactly what they needed to see. I don’t think that Mark Duplass, a great quiet straight man in some more serious comedies like “Togetherness” and “Your Sister’s Sister,” would have been my first choice to play the brother of the Unabomber, but in the context of this episode it makes some sense, since it’s a pretty straightforward portrayal of a man who is concerned about his brother’s wellbeing even if he is a mass murderer. Fitz was more than ready to abandon his kids at the movies when he got the call about a letter that was too close to what the Unabomber wrote to be anything but the man himself, and Ellie isn’t anywhere close to ready to forgive him. He pushed Natalie away when they collected all the evidence and she misread the moment, and then he threw Tabby under the bus by refusing to stick up for her since her alleged misdeeds directly benefited him. Now, an isolated Fitz is finally being listened to and everyone knows that Ted is the Unabomber, but there are still three episodes left in this season, so I’m really curious to see how the capture plays out and to learn more about what transformed Ted from who he was into the Unabomber.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Take Three: Manhunt: Unabomber
Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 4 “Publish or Perish” (B+)
We didn’t get to see Ted at all in this episode, which took place entirely in the same time period, as things intensified with the search and Fitz suggested a very risky gamble. This episode showed, more than anything, how times and technology have evolved in the past twenty years. The idea that you could print something in a newspaper and know that it was only sold at own newsstand in a given city is so foreign to what happens today, and on top of that, announcing that the manifesto would be posted a few days later on the website is a distant relic of the past, since now it’s impossible to find something that isn’t immediately online somewhere, and then reposted everywhere, within moments of it happening. Unfortunately, the grand plan didn’t work out all that well, with Tabby’s foot chase on the subway turning out to be a false lead. I had seen Jane Lynch’s name in the cast list before, and this was one of the more serious roles I’ve ever seen her in as Janet Reno, who didn’t want to hear too much from Don but was willing to trust him, and then concluded that this was a sad development. Ellie doesn’t seem pleased at all with Fitz’s intense involvement in the case, and getting fired doesn’t seem to have affected his work ethic at all, which is a bit of a concern. The end of the episode presented the first sincere lead we’ve seen, with the introduction of Mark Duplass as someone who appears to be a relative of Ted and whose wife thought she recognized some of the language in the manifesto.
We didn’t get to see Ted at all in this episode, which took place entirely in the same time period, as things intensified with the search and Fitz suggested a very risky gamble. This episode showed, more than anything, how times and technology have evolved in the past twenty years. The idea that you could print something in a newspaper and know that it was only sold at own newsstand in a given city is so foreign to what happens today, and on top of that, announcing that the manifesto would be posted a few days later on the website is a distant relic of the past, since now it’s impossible to find something that isn’t immediately online somewhere, and then reposted everywhere, within moments of it happening. Unfortunately, the grand plan didn’t work out all that well, with Tabby’s foot chase on the subway turning out to be a false lead. I had seen Jane Lynch’s name in the cast list before, and this was one of the more serious roles I’ve ever seen her in as Janet Reno, who didn’t want to hear too much from Don but was willing to trust him, and then concluded that this was a sad development. Ellie doesn’t seem pleased at all with Fitz’s intense involvement in the case, and getting fired doesn’t seem to have affected his work ethic at all, which is a bit of a concern. The end of the episode presented the first sincere lead we’ve seen, with the introduction of Mark Duplass as someone who appears to be a relative of Ted and whose wife thought she recognized some of the language in the manifesto.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Round Two: Manhunt: Unabomber
Manhunt: Unabomber: Season 1, Episode 3 “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” (B+)
I’m impressed with the pacing of this show, which allows its characters to make some fantastic discoveries while superiors refuse to even entertain the possibility of their being valid while interweaving further complications that present themselves after Ted has already been caught. Opening with Fitz presenting a whole mountain of evidence on Ted that proves that he’s the Unabomber seemed like an incontrovertible argument, and Ted ripped that to shreds with his assertion that the search warrant wasn’t valid, using the term that serves as the episode’s title. Later, Fitz tried another tactic, telling him he wouldn’t get recognized if he gets off, before Ted turned it on him and said that a lack of a conviction would mean that Fitz’s life’s work would be meaningless. It’s clear that Fitz came a long, long way from having his comments selectively heard and his profile literally thrown away by his superiors. Bringing in a whole panel of intellectuals and determining that he learned his strange spellings from a Chicago Tribune style guide from half a century ago were smart advances, and I’m especially intrigued about the origins of the unexpected phrase “eat your cake and have it too.” The coolest bit of forensic analysis was the science of nachos, which helped get Fitz’s mind racing so that he could figure out all the things that the Unabomber didn’t know about to contribute to his next profile. The whole field of forensic linguistics is pretty fascinating, and while I’m sure plenty of this is dramatized, it’s still awesome.
I’m impressed with the pacing of this show, which allows its characters to make some fantastic discoveries while superiors refuse to even entertain the possibility of their being valid while interweaving further complications that present themselves after Ted has already been caught. Opening with Fitz presenting a whole mountain of evidence on Ted that proves that he’s the Unabomber seemed like an incontrovertible argument, and Ted ripped that to shreds with his assertion that the search warrant wasn’t valid, using the term that serves as the episode’s title. Later, Fitz tried another tactic, telling him he wouldn’t get recognized if he gets off, before Ted turned it on him and said that a lack of a conviction would mean that Fitz’s life’s work would be meaningless. It’s clear that Fitz came a long, long way from having his comments selectively heard and his profile literally thrown away by his superiors. Bringing in a whole panel of intellectuals and determining that he learned his strange spellings from a Chicago Tribune style guide from half a century ago were smart advances, and I’m especially intrigued about the origins of the unexpected phrase “eat your cake and have it too.” The coolest bit of forensic analysis was the science of nachos, which helped get Fitz’s mind racing so that he could figure out all the things that the Unabomber didn’t know about to contribute to his next profile. The whole field of forensic linguistics is pretty fascinating, and while I’m sure plenty of this is dramatized, it’s still awesome.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Pilot Review: Manhunt: Unabomber
Manhunt: Unabomber (Discovery)
Premiered August 1 at 9pm
History is a frequent source of inspiration for film and television, and for good reason: it’s often extremely interesting. As someone who wasn’t even alive for most of the Unabomber’s crimes, I feel like I know very little. As a result, I find this show fascinating, since I want to watch and see how it all turns out. Now, what makes it especially intriguing is that it’s framed in a way that tells you how it’s going to end, that is, who the Unabomber is and that he eventually gets caught. The meat of it, and the hook of this show, is just how it was that FBI profiler Jim Fitzgerald, better known as Fitz, figured out who the Unabomber really was and tracked him down. There are parts of it that are clunky, namely the insistence of everyone except for Fitz on the Unabomber is an uneducated airline mechanic whose manifesto wasn’t even worth reading. I always think it’s funny when foreign actors play notable American figures, and the casting of two Brits, Sam Worthington and Paul Bettany, felt odd to me at first. Yet Worthington, who has taken the lead in the likes of “Avatar,” is a good fit for the focused, somewhat antisocial Fitz, who at one point seemed to suggest that the Unabomber’s manifesto made some sense to him, and Bettany, who I remember best from “A Beautiful Mind” and saw recently in a new kind of role in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” is truly terrific as the very unnerving Ted Kaczynski, and I look forward to seeing more of him. I didn’t expect to get into this show, but I’m eagerly anticipating episode three now.
How will it work as a series? The framing of this show is clever and involving, letting the Unabomber speak about how he sees the world as Fitz puts the pieces together to figure out his origins and everything that makes him who he is. Eight episodes seems like a good amount of time for this all to play out.
How long will it last? The reviews seem to be pretty good, and the ratings on Discovery are decent too. I think this is meant to be a miniseries, as so many multiseason shows begin these days, and I think that if it were to continue, season two would have to tackle another anthology focus.
Pilot grade: B+
Premiered August 1 at 9pm
History is a frequent source of inspiration for film and television, and for good reason: it’s often extremely interesting. As someone who wasn’t even alive for most of the Unabomber’s crimes, I feel like I know very little. As a result, I find this show fascinating, since I want to watch and see how it all turns out. Now, what makes it especially intriguing is that it’s framed in a way that tells you how it’s going to end, that is, who the Unabomber is and that he eventually gets caught. The meat of it, and the hook of this show, is just how it was that FBI profiler Jim Fitzgerald, better known as Fitz, figured out who the Unabomber really was and tracked him down. There are parts of it that are clunky, namely the insistence of everyone except for Fitz on the Unabomber is an uneducated airline mechanic whose manifesto wasn’t even worth reading. I always think it’s funny when foreign actors play notable American figures, and the casting of two Brits, Sam Worthington and Paul Bettany, felt odd to me at first. Yet Worthington, who has taken the lead in the likes of “Avatar,” is a good fit for the focused, somewhat antisocial Fitz, who at one point seemed to suggest that the Unabomber’s manifesto made some sense to him, and Bettany, who I remember best from “A Beautiful Mind” and saw recently in a new kind of role in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” is truly terrific as the very unnerving Ted Kaczynski, and I look forward to seeing more of him. I didn’t expect to get into this show, but I’m eagerly anticipating episode three now.
How will it work as a series? The framing of this show is clever and involving, letting the Unabomber speak about how he sees the world as Fitz puts the pieces together to figure out his origins and everything that makes him who he is. Eight episodes seems like a good amount of time for this all to play out.
How long will it last? The reviews seem to be pretty good, and the ratings on Discovery are decent too. I think this is meant to be a miniseries, as so many multiseason shows begin these days, and I think that if it were to continue, season two would have to tackle another anthology focus.
Pilot grade: B+
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