Review of *The OA* (mild spoilers)

Like Stranger Things, I wanted The OA to be more sci-fi and less metaphysics/new age-y nonsense. I worry when things like angels and hidden dimensions are given a veneer of (pseudo)science that, even in fiction, science is diminished. That said, there was a lot that kept me in. I thought many of the performances were superb, particularly the actors who played the title character's parents. I thought the cinematography was great. The voyeurism of the handheld shots was very effective. There was a drone shot in the last episode that caught the reflection of the clouds in a pond that was breathtaking. Finally, I had a surprisingly emotional response to the dance scene at the end. I found the premise of the movements hokey at best, but it was quite effective when all the misfits performed it as modern, interpretive dance. Overall, I would recommend the series but with caveats.

TV Review: *Battlestar Galactica* (2004-9)

After years of hearing from folks in all corners of my life that I would love it, I finally got to make my way through the re-imagined sci-fi series, Battlestar Galactica (BGv2). They were right. It's an incredible piece of art. Like the original series (BGv1), BGv2 is the story of a group of humans who, having survived an attack on their home planet by cyborgs that they had created, search for a suitable planet on which to settle permanently. BGv2 could never be accused of being derivative, though. There are several important changes from BGv1: gone is the hokey humor, many of the primary characters are recast as women, and the Cylons (i.e. the offending cyborgs) are now androids who are virtually indistinguishable from humans. As is the amazing gift of science fiction, BGv2 is able to indirectly address many, many sociologically-relevant issues that are both timely and universal. Here is a partial list of those themes: racism, terrorism, religion, social class, gender, technology, violence, militarism, and torture. As a scholar of religion, I was particularly intrigued with the subplot that addressed the differences between the humans' polytheism and the Cylons' monotheism. This is one of those TV shows that I would love to teach an experimental summer course on.

As if that weren't enough, Bear McCreary, the show's composer, is amazing! He also does the music for another new favorite show of mine, The Walking Dead. Here is his re-imagining of Hendrix' version of Dylan's "All Along the Watch Tower":



Awesome!

Zombies, Families, and the Patriarch

I wrote a review recently of World War Z in which I noted an odd paternalistic theme. I'm currently catching up with The Walking Dead on Netflix and am noticing a similar theme. Both protagonists are very reminiscent of Odysseus, being "unwillingly" drawn away from home and family in order to "protect" home and family, an ironic and hypocritical trope that has spanned the ages. Both have this odd homosociality about them, where they go out in the woods, cities, fields, and other wildernesses to do masculinity in very close proximity with other men. It's only Andrea, in The Walking Dead, who really challenges these boundaries at all, and she is regularly confronted about her deviance--typically by other woman and not the men.

I'm wondering why these patriarchal themes are popular now. Is this the persistence of feelings that have never really gone away or is this a reactionary resurfacing amid increasing acceptance of non-"traditional" family structures. I'd tend toward the latter theory. I'm hesitant, however, to read the reaction as angry; it seems more angsty.