What I’m Watching: Brave New World

Brave New World: Season 1, Episode 4 “Swallow” (B)

This episode, like the one before it, felt very expository, and I’d prefer there to be more action and substantial development. There are enough people in New London who have some concept, however vague, of what life before, or currently in the savage lands, was like, and so the way that John is acting should make sense to a degree. Instead, he’s roaming around outwardly expressing a resistance to the way of life he’s being told is normal while everyone acts surprised that he’s not conforming when he couldn’t possibly understand what a world that devalues his connection to a parent is. Bernard seems simultaneously obtuse and curious, insistent that he has a relationship with John that makes him uniquely qualified to help him but also clueless about why his perception would be the exact inverse of how he reacted to being a tourist in the savage lands. Lenina is expressing more understandable difficulty reacclimating, which has to do in part with the trauma that she endured. It’s interesting to see that this dystopia has thus far cast as its most dangerous villains the people closest to humanity today, not the ones who want to control thought and free action. I think this show will become more enthralling and compelling when it moves to a focus on how those in power, like Mustafa and Henry, exert their influence over others to try to brainwash them and quell them with those drugs everyone so freely pops at the first sign of a stressful or disquieting thought.

Take Three: Boss

Boss: Season 1, Episode 3 “Swallow” (B+)

This show continues to get darker and more intense with each episode, as Tom begins to notice more symptoms of his condition and start slipping up in front of other people. Wetting the bed in the middle of the night and then zoning out and muttering while meeting with Cullen are unsettling developments, and his lengthy lecture about horses while the two women are making out with each other in front of him seems to indicate that he really can’t concentrate on much of anything. His apologies to Doctor Harris felt sincere, but all it took was a friendly offer from Meredith to get her effectively deported from Chicago with the threat of losing custody of her son hanging over her. Sometimes, he is on, of course, like when he literally feeds questions directly to a reporter to as he asks them to Cullen. Telling him that what he has, Tom gave him was harsh, but that’s nothing new for Tom. Cullen’s not doing too well, told by his advisors that it’s better for him to be perceived as gay than to admit the truth, that he was going over the acceptable campaign contribution limits. Sam is getting into truly dangerous territory in his investigation of the construction site, and I just hope that he doesn’t get himself killed. Ben and Kitty need to stop having sex at every possible juncture, and Kitty was right to take issue with the fact that Ben propositioned her with his kids several feet away. Kitty’s meeting with her former mentor was melancholy, memorable particularly for his point that his exit from politic has absolutely nothing to do with his constituency. It’s about time Tom came clean with someone, and he didn’t waste any time just coming out and saying it. Emma, unsurprisingly, lambasted him for never coming to see her just because he missed her. The episode ended on a fitting, haunted note as Tom saw himself captured on camera, just like everyone else in Chicago.