This is a follow-up to the post Disgruntled Frank Ashmore fan watches V’s “Liberation Day” from summer 2022. Like its predecessor it is subject to much profanity and lewdness. Of course I am still angry about the steady decline V took once it went to a weekly series. And they should never have killed off Martin, but then having seen the rest of the show maybe it was for the best. Anyway I apologise for none of the following.
So the third season of Emily in Paris dropped last month (don’t look at me like that) and I found myself once more blowing through six episodes in one sitting. Except in my head it’s an alternative show called “Emily in Gilead” where Emily somehow convinces Commander Lawrence to let her start up an Insta account which everyone automatically loves for no good reason. In my alternative the final episode of season three ends something like this:
Why am I such a sucker for this crap? Why do I keep going back to this godawful well?
Anyway. This brings me back to my stance on V the Series. Which has not changed. It still blows. But I said I would return just for Philip. And here I am.
So what’s been happening in the meantime between Frank Ashmore appearances? Look, there’s no way I’m going to review each Ashmoreless episode so here’s a summary of the main points.
Elizabeth the wonder-moth
Last time we saw Elizabeth she was pulsating inside a chrysalis at the end of Liberation Day. Don’t think we didn’t notice that when she emerges she is transformed into The Amazing Twinkle-tits who has the power to summon her own ethereal backing vocalists whenever something magical happens (which is just about every time the writers have written themselves into a corner and need an out). Plus there’s the prematurely aging of a character because you don’t know how to write for a child and want to put her in some weird love triangle with her own mother. Which is awkward. And a bit icky when you remember she’s technically only two years old.
I’ve got nothing against Jennifer Cooke who does well with what she’s given. She’s actually really sweet, winning and quietly strong. But this development is just dumb.
Kyle Bates
Look, first time I watched this show I totally resented Kyle, who was clearly being dangled at my demographic like a catnip toy. Being the contrarian that I am I really wanted to hate this character, but I have to admit I quite like Kyle. Maybe because of his proximity to father Nathan Bates played by Lane Smith who was a welcome addition to the cast. Or the fact I think Jeff Yagher is quite good, adding a lot of dimension to what otherwise would have been an extremely irritating character. Yes he’s a complete hot head with totally run-of-the-mill daddy issues but he is also brave and kind. And ripped.
Dammit. I’m getting soft in my old age.
Robin Maxwell’s magical vagina
In The Series Diana is constantly trying to replicate her medical experiment with Robin Maxwell. Cloning, matchmaking, Bake Off recipes, whatever. Diana pursues this mission with a single-mindedness that would make Stefano DiMera blush. It’s old. And stupid. And this show assumes way too much intent for this experiment in the first place.
In the original miniseries that experiment was only ever Diana’s perverse curiosity of “let’s see what happens when we mash these alien genitals together, what will I get?” Now we’re supposed to believe Robin’s DNA is somehow so special she’s the only one who can produce viable offspring with a Visitor. Or more to the point, offspring like Elizabeth. See above comment about writing oneself into a corner.
Just like in Days of Our Lives with the plot to kidnap Marlena you can guarantee if V had continued that Diana would still be trying to get Robin pregnant even though she went through the menopause years ago.
John Langley
One of Diana’s schemes to impregnate Robin involves mole and secret lizard John Langley. John is supposedly extremely successful with women because …
WTF? … because Diana says so? Sorry what does anyone see in this guy? He’s so meh. He’s blandly handsome, blandly funny and a bland stand-in for that foxy cad Brian. (Yeah okay so Brian was not in the least bit witty or scintillating but dang he was easy on the eye.)
And what on earth does Diana see in him? Doesn’t she usually go for thugs and glowing disembodied megalomaniacs? Even when John shows his true colours with Robin it’s utterly underwhelming. Is he trying to rape her in the middle of the raid or, did he actually …., or … huh? Really? Honestly, I was so disappointed with the stupidity of The Betrayal I was seriously considering following it up with I Spit on Your Grave as a palate cleanser afterwards.
They made Ham Tyler some kind of sissy
Yeah. You heard me right. What the fuck is all this sissy dressing up as Santa crap?
In some extremely misplaced effort to give Ham a backstory they cut his balls off with some crybaby story about a wife and child left behind in Vietnam. Boohoo. This is brought up in The Conversion in some ridiculous “Charles converts Ham” scenario. Would never happen.
As if a nasty prelude to this backstory, it is referenced in the Christmas episode beforehand in Reflections in Terror. Would Chuck Norris cry if a little girl called him a sandwich? Fuck no! He’d punch her in the face. Little shit.
The best things about Ham’s character are that he is a) tough and b) mysterious.
Giving Ham a backstory was not a good idea.
No.
NO!
Then. He leaves the show and every scene involving the Resistance becomes a flaccid old load of cock.
The rise and fall of Science Frontiers
I’ve already said the addition of Lane Smith’s character Nathan Bates was a good thing for the show. I also very much enjoyed Aki Aleong as Bate’s malign henchman Mr Chang.
Is Nathan a villain? Or a the man who saved LA from total destruction. I think Bates is a deeply conflicted character, kind of like Oscar Schindler. Well just a bit. He’s trying to save his people. And profit off of it at the same time. I actually really enjoyed the intrigues around Science Frontiers and the Open City. The cat and mouse games Bates and Julie were playing provided much of the dramatic tension in the early part of the series. But then they decided to trash this plotline midstream which made no sense. Bates was an antagonist for so many different characters: alien and human. His departure had a major impact on the show.
Was Smith one of the growing list of actors who were asking to leave the show? (See Michael Durrell, Michael Wright, Michael Ironside and Faye Grant who presumably couldn’t get out of her contract because her name wasn’t Michael.) If he wasn’t and was instead written out, that was a big mistake.
The show becomes increasingly terrible to look at
One of the common complaints about the weekly show is the constant recycling of stock footage. I mean how many times does Mike Donovan get caught while out riding that white horse? Not to mention the alien technology which includes such stunning advances as paper?! There’s even a scene I think I remember where I see Lydia using a pneumatic system to send a paper message somewhere like she’s just walked onto the set of Are You Being Served?
In addition to the poor special effects are the increasingly dilapidated and low budget sets. Sure we get it. LA is on fire now. In fact isn’t that burning pile of tyres stock footage of a burning pile of tyres we saw in the last episode?
And don’t think fans didn’t notice after Club Creole goes up in smoke that they recycle the Resistance headquarters at Spohn Ranch from Final Battle (no it’s not Spohn Ranch, but you want it to be don’t you?!).
And as for the mothership, well..,
What is this? The Flintstones?
What the hell is with the decor on the mothership? I know lizards love lying around on rocks but isn’t that generally in the Mediterranean sunshine? I imagine the production designers were told “Use your imagination! Go wild!” when they were told to come up with the alien set design. Only to be told subsequently that the budget was a buck ninety-nine and all they had was polystyrene and PVA glue, and maybe some leftover paint from someone’s kid’s school production.
Look I’m from New Zealand so I’m rather partial to a bubbling mud pool and a pile of rocks, and especially some giant eels as thick as your arm here and there. But even I’m watching this suspiciously and thinking they brought the sulphur in to disguise the smell of the script or something. Maybe they were going for primeval. Maybe they thought it was “counterintuitive” or something.
The plants are nice. I do like the plants.
White mouse with a pinch of saffron
There are numerous scenes with Visitors smacking their lips over mice, rats, spiders, and even goldfish. But there is no way any of the food the aliens are eating can be in any way appealing to them. How can you taste anything if you’re swallowing it whole? And if you could taste any of that stuff what would it taste like? Keratin? Wouldn’t mice taste like how they smell?
Think about it.
YUM.
And at some point Diana chastises Lydia for eating too many sweets (fat-shamer!) But. It looks like Lydia is binging on what looks like cockroaches: which everyone knows (or will soon the way we’re going) have a nutty savoury taste anyway.
Finally, someone to beat Donovan in the low cut shirt competition.
Speaking of yummy. As if as some form of consolation for the whole John Langley debacle Duncan Regehr is added to the cast in the middle of the season. Finally! Someone who is actually attractive, right ladies and boys?
But.
I just can’t take Charles seriously because of that stupid fucking archaic smile. I just cannot not see it. Those of you who know your Classical History will know what I’m talking about: that witless smile that appeared on statuary in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BC. This smile appeared on all statues no matter what (just like it appears on Duncan Regehr’s face no matter what). The most egregiously inappropriate example of this is a fallen warrior who appears on the western pedestal of the the Temple of Aphaia in Aegina with an arrow sticking out of his breadbasket.
It’s just too ridiculous.
Well that seems to have raised the tone of this blog very briefly. I do apologise. It won’t happen again.
Everyone on the mothership seems to think they’re in the British Royal Family.
Diana? Charles? Philip? Elizabeth? Seriously? Although they missed a trick with naming Lydia. Poor Lydia always second best should have been named Margaret. Nobody seethes quite like Lydia which is in keeping with Princess Margaret, but she was famously a bit of a goer. And there is this:
And what is with everybody’s accents? Diana’s accent was always hovering somewhere over the Atlantic (though admittedly it’s somewhere just off the coast of Jersey). But then everyone else is suddenly enunciating like they’ve just traipsed up the train and found the last table which allows four people to sit together but also happens to be in the quiet carriage.They’ve done this so they can project loudly about their time at RADA*. Why?
Duncan Regehr might be able to claim he is Canadian and has a British mother, but what the hell is Judson Scott’s excuse?
And who does the officiant at Charles and Diana’s wedding think he is? Peter Cook? (Although honestly the introduction of lines from the notoriously offensive Derek and Clive Get the Horn would make very little difference at this stage.)
*Admittedly this is more likely to happen in a small hip new restaurant on Charlotte Street, but it is a common, miserable, and true thing that happens to Londoners fairly frequently.
What the fuck show is this anyway?
By now tonally this show is all over the place. In particular the world that the characters on the mothership inhabit is not the same as the world of the people in the Resistance. It should be possible to have these be quite different and still make sense. There is a massive power differential between groups sure. But still the tone is so wildly different the aliens are on Dallas while the humans are on some cut rate A Team meets Casablanca. This gives the series a Frankenstein’s Monster feel where different scenes and even different actors appear to be in entirely different shows.
I think Science Frontiers was the lynchpin that tied these disparate groups together. It, and the character of Nathan Bates himself, provided the backdrop where both aliens and humans interacted and made it feel like a cohesive show. But once untethered from each other the Visitors are careening about in a violent meteor storm with little hope of returning to Earth. Now it’s two completely different shows spliced together to provide a hybrid even less convincing than Elizabeth Maxwell.
So it’s into all this that Frank Ashmore gamely wades back onto the set. Why did he come back? The obvious answer might be that he was a family man with bills to pay but he did turn down a role in Falcon Crest to play Philip so it wasn’t like he didn’t have options. Perhaps, like us fans it was some ill-founded commitment to the original concept, or even that it was just too bloody awkward to say no after the fans kicked up such a stink about Martin’s death.
Ashmore returns as his own twin brother in The Champion. I do like that you hear him before you see him, (though his name has appeared in the credits already so duh).
Yes.
Yes. Please stop. Please.
But it’s Frank Ashmore and I can’t not watch it.
Why oh why do I keep returning to this godawful well?
When Martin Died 