Picoreview: Continuum, Series 1

Picoreview: Continuum, Series 1: Really, really enjoyed it. We blew through it in less than a week (it’s only 10 episodes) and would have managed it all in a weekend if I hadn’t had a date last Saturday evening. :)

Major spoilers behind the cut.

Apparently the first time I watched the pilot I said, “She’s a real Jodie Foster type, isn’t she?” I said it the second time, too, though I didn’t notice it so much in subsequent episodes, which makes me wonder if they were trying to play it up in the first episode.

The thing I liked about the pilot the first time was that ten years ago, the guy playing Carlos (“oh yeah!” I said upon seeing him the second time we watched it, “the inconveniently attractive cop partner! I’d forgotten about him!”) would have been the time-travelling lead, and the woman playing Kiera would have been the modern-day cop, if she’d been cast at all. Instead, it’s her show, which delights me.

It’s true that her supporting cast–and by this I mean her supporting cast–is almost entirely male: Carlos, the lieutenant, Alec, Kellog. But there is Betty (“Oh hey it’s her!” we said when the actress came on), who is The Smart One on the cop team. Not as smart as Alec, but it’s made clear that even the bad guy supergenius isn’t as smart as Alec, so, well, okay.

And as for the bad guys, we’ve got Alexa Doig and, er, the blonde woman, whom I persist in thinking of as Callisto (which amused me hugely when I realized I was doing it/where it was coming from). Granted, they’re also in a mostly-male crew, but god damn, they’re vicious. (so are all the dudes, but one doesn’t often see the women being as brutal as the guys.) So while it’s a far cry from equal representation, the women characters are good ones.

Show structure: I’m *really* liking the framing sequences of the 2077 storyline. Some of the episodes have more future stuff than that, some don’t, but I just really like working the stories together that way. I think it’s working very nicely, and I love how it ties one story together with the other.

Kiera’s husband is a dork, and not in a good way. He and her son are very well cast as family members; they look very much alike. I’m waiting with ill grace to find out just how evil her husband is, though.

I was SO HAPPY at the Terminator reference. I’d said it at the beginning of the episode, and then someone in-show did. Bahaha.

I was actually kinda disappointed Alec and Kiera met the way they did, because of old-Alec (inspired casting, btw, with young and old: the kid looks like he could grow up to be the Cigarette Smoking Man!) saying “It’s long past time,” when he met Kiera in the future. I thought that meant they’d never met before, but no. Oh well. Still, I’m really enjoying their interactions.

Also generally really liking the convolution of Alec, Julian, and Kiera. I mean, it’s pretty clear off the bat that Alec is playing both sides against the middle, as it were, but I was delighted as it became increasingly obvious that we had a Cain & Abel kind of story going on too. I’m dying to learn old-Alec’s master plan. o.o

I. Love. Kellog. He may be my favorite character, but then, I always like the morally ambiguous ones. The bit where Kiera found herself flirting with him inadvertantly, and caught herself and was like “Damn!” made me hoot. She lasted longer than I would’ve with the not flirting. :)

Here’s the one thing that really pissed me off:

How damned much time is supposed to have passed between the 9th and 10th episodes? Because the implication is a single night, which is freaking absurd.

Kiera is leaving Kellog’s yacht like she’s only stayed the one night, particularly as she nabs the McGuffin on her way out, and Julian is turning up on, er, Bra’tac’s, doorstep, after being told he’d be clothed and fed and brought to Bra’tac. The implication in both these cases is that it’s the next day, which is flat out impossible: Carlos is entirely healed up from a gunshot wound to the gut, and by three minutes in, he’s forgotten to even move stiffly. Julian’s new tattoo is all healed up. Alec is dealing with the aftermath of water damage to his loft, which we didn’t see happen.

I’m sorry, that’s just pure shit editing/storytelling, and it pisses me off when it happens in anything, but they’ve generally done a nice enough job with Continuum that it *really* gets up my nose.