{"id":19594,"date":"2022-12-10T22:05:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T06:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=19594"},"modified":"2022-12-10T22:05:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T06:05:28","slug":"tv-_counterpart_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2022\/12\/10\/tv-_counterpart_\/","title":{"rendered":"TV: _Counterpart_"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I apparently haven\u2019t posted here about the TV show <cite>Counterpart<\/cite>.<\/p>\r\n<p>I watched the first episode just under a year ago. (I no longer remember how I heard about it.) I liked the first ep quite a bit, so I rewatched it with Kam, and she liked it too, and we ended up watching both 10-episode seasons.<\/p>\r\n<p>It\u2019s a fascinating, well-done science fiction series\r\n with (sort of) a modern-real-world setting, and kind of a Cold-War-spy-movie vibe even though it\u2019s not set in the Cold War.<\/p>\r\n<p>(I should note that in particular, there are assassin characters, and several violent deaths, and a <em>lot<\/em> of other deaths that are part of the backstory. And quite a lot of deception and betrayal. I should probably give more content warnings than that; if there\u2019s particular stuff in that sort of milieu that you find distressing and you want to know whether it\u2019s in this show, feel free to ask me about it.)<\/p>\r\n<p>The show stars J.K. Simmons (who played J. Jonah Jameson in some of the Spider-Man movies) as Howard Silk, an American working for the United Nations \r\nin Berlin; his job involves speaking coded messages to another worker, in a mysterious office setting, but he doesn\u2019t know what the messages mean or much of anything else about what his job really involves.<\/p>\r\n<p>And if you like sfnal shows with excellent acting and writing and a spy-ish vibe, and very gradual revelation of backstory, then I recommend not finding out anything\r\n more than that about the show before watching the first \r\nepisode; the way that they reveal things in that \r\nfirst ep is really effective and well done.<\/p>\r\n<p>And I had no idea\r\n, before this show, how good an actor \r\nSimmons is. He plays two roles on this show, and he does an excellent job with both of them; very impressive.<\/p>\r\n<p>I also like the other actors, especially Olivia Williams as Howard\u2019s wife Emily. (Who\u2019s in a coma at the beginning of the series.)<\/p>\r\n<p>Sadly, the show was canceled\r\n after two seasons, and it\u2019s arguable\r\n whether it has a satisfying conclusion. But even though I strongly prefer shows to have satisfying conclusions, I liked this one so much that I wasn\u2019t particularly bothered or upset by the ambiguity of the ending.<\/p>\r\n<p>Anyway, good stuff. It\u2019s on my top-20 favorite shows list.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speculative-fiction","category-television"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19595,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594\/revisions\/19595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}