In Which The Aliens Will Likely Take The Form Of Evangeline Lilly

Raptor Food

by DICK CHENEY

Colony
creators Carlton Cuse & Ryan J. Condal

For Christmas I received a very unexpected gift. Carlton Cuse sent me the first few episodes of his new show, Colony, along with a magnum of Chablis. I've heard of cozying up to critics; I mean how else to explain the two decades of blowjobs Peter Travers has lavished on every cinematic attempt with a pulse. (There is no Peter Travers.)

But there is me, and there was a note that came with the alcohol and the screeners. It began, "Hey Dick," and it continued in a similar vein.

I know u don't like Josh Holloway, but I figure u might like my new show anyways. Christ, The Force Awakens sucked, didn't it? Thanks for the kind words about Bates Motel. You don't know how much that means to me when I go to sleep next to my pert wife on top of a huge pile of money.

Carlton

P.S. If anyone ruined Lost, it was you and your unrealistic expectations, and possibly Matthew Fox's drinking.

OK, I added the postscript based on information I got from a "source".

The rest is one hundred percent true. I wanted to hate Colony because Carlton was such a dick, you know, in his note. Unfortunately for my self-respect, that is impossible. Colony, airing on USA Network starting January 14th, will be a blowaway smash because Josh Holloway and everyone in it are fantastic.

There is this one scene where Josh pops out of the shower, or as Lynne calls it, the show-pow. His wife (a somewhat fresher looking version of The Walking Dead's Sarah Wayne Callies) is waiting for him. She readies herself to upbraid him for his latent sexism, since I believe he used some gender normative terminology earlier in the episode. Instead she simply removes her shirt and touches his face a lot during the sex they share. I quietly whispered, "Thank you."

Closeness is all these people have. Los Angeles has been taken over by a government force beholden to an alien invasion. The governor of the occupation Alan Snyder (Peter Jacobson) explains that the aliens require certain things from humanity and then circumstances will probably return to normal. One of the things he requires from Josh Holloway is to destroy the human resistance to the invaders.

I have read a fair number of books about what alien invaders might want from us, and I believe I can summarize my findings in a listicle:

our bodies
our children
our reproductive capabilities
our friendship
our technology
our planet
Selena Gomez and Jude Law's daughter to kiss

If Carlton Cuse has thought of something new to add to this list, that will be an exciting moment. (Jude Law's daughter looks like a lesbian Watson.) Southern California is segmented into blocs. Mr. Holloway risks it all to get into a neighboring bloc where his twelve-year son was stranded at the time of the arrival.

This constant reference to The Arrival made me think of The Arrival, an embarrassing if somewhat humorous movie David Twohy made in the 1990s. A pre-HIV Charlie Sheen starred opposite Teri Polo, so we can pretty much assume that happened. In The Arrival, the aliens have the silliest plan ever — they build machines that emit greenhouse gas that will overheat the Earth. This is such an insanely ridiculous way of killing off humanity, especially since (1) humans were already doing this and (2) the aliens had the ability to imitate humans without being detected.

Could this be an explanation for Donald Trump? I found Mr. Trump quite amusing, even when he was going after Megyn Kelly. His recent comments about Muslims have caused me to board the nonstop charisma train that is the Ted Cruz campaign. America has incubated many important Muslim-American men and women that have done our country proud, and it wasn't just because handwriting instructors residing in West Virginia pushed the faith on unsuspecting children. Maybe incubate was the wrong word. Many Muslims are proud, patriotic Americans, though, and Mr. Trump is an asshole.

We need to collectively realize something that most of us in our hearts already knew: if we need to direct hatred towards a particular group of people for why things have gotten the way they are, aliens make a great scapegoat. Colony has the potential to turn into a hair-raising rebellion story.

The X-Files is coming back relatively soon. I was never a fan of The X-Files, especially when it became about building super soldiers and not the sexual tension between the two leads. Gillian Anderson looked like Eve, and David Duchovny was absolutely tiny. The Vince Gilligan episodes were okay but everything else was a bit blah and schlocky.

Colony takes things a lot more seriously. Josh Holloway is known for his humorous one liners, but this show does not give him a lot to work with — it is determined to be dreary and serious, even though things do not seem all that bad compared to how they are now in Los Angeles. Callies is great as Josh's wife, showing off a range and vulnerability not intrinsic to her Walking Dead character. The shaky camera work is a bit annoying, though, as are the constant cuts between faces without ever seeing the placement of actors in the scene. We are willing to believe this is real without getting motion sickness.

In one scene, Josh witnesses a light show that the aliens put on, possibly to purge the toxins that hover above their conquered city. "Have you ever gotten a glimpse of one of them?" Josh whispers to his buddy. "No one has," the man replies, guaranteeing that the aliens will either look exactly like humans for budgetary reasons (why I find Battlestar Galactica boring) or we will wait four seasons to figure out that the aliens are actually human beings from centuries in the future. Hopefully they will be bird-like or dinosaur in nature, as hinted at. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I am willing to watch every single episode of Colony to find out if this is going to be another Lost.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Doing the Right Thing" - Daughter (mp3)

"New Ways" - Daughter (mp3)

In Which We Imagine All The People Left Behind

I'm Going Back In The Hatch

by DICK CHENEY

The Leftovers
creators Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrotta

Imagine a world in which Justin Theroux woke up and the older woman he was romancing was simply no longer there.

Jennifer Aniston went to heaven on a jet plane. In heaven she no longer has to play a stripper or prostitute in every movie, she just portrays a mature woman in her fifties who knows what she wants from life. She has been absorbed, along with 2 percent of the world's population, into an afterlife while the rest of the proleteriats go on with their earthy travails.

We never see it, but we can assume Heaven is fantastic in HBO's The Leftovers. You would think being with only virtuous people would get annoying over time, but that is not the case, because God let some assholes into heaven as well, The Leftovers informs us at length. They serve hors d'oeuvres.

Most assumed that the guys responsible for Lost would never get jobs in the industry again, but when that pitch meeting comes around, Damon Lindelof tells a compelling anecdote about how their original idea for what was in the hatch was Demi Lovato nude and tied up, but Jamie Tarses nixed it.

Given that Carlton Cuse created the masterful Bates Motel, I have forgiven the fact that he looks and sounds like a cowardly lion and I now direct all my venom towards Damon Lindelof. The Leftovers proves he was by far the weakest link in Lost besides Desmond's lackluster gf.

David Carradine is sitting up alertly in his grave

It is hard to imagine who The Leftovers could possibly appeal to. It makes religious people look like zany cretins who smoke cigarettes constantly, it makes kids look like sex and drug crazed infidels, it makes minorities look like ineffectual pawns and victims in a whitewashed future and it has over three dream sequences just in the first episode. No one could possibly enjoy this.

At one point Theroux's daughter (Margaret Qualley) is choking some guy while he jerks off at a party. Afterwards she discovers a dead dog in the trunk of her dad's car, which she buries with her friends. At the conclusion of this disturbing set of moments, Lynne openly wondered to me, "At least stag films have the added aspect of turning you on or making you afraid."

Can you blame her for wanting a hard think after she chokes some bro while he comes for over an hour?

In the book version of The Leftovers, Theroux is very depressed that his wife (Amy Brenneman) has gone off to join the local silent cult Guilty Remnant, even though he was cheating on her with another white woman. Are you guys as tired of ww as I am? Not everyone has a white wife, I mean I do, but do I need to see my own life on television all the time? The answer is yes, but not every single time.

I identified just as well with Stringer Bell until I found out he was really British and pretending to be kewl.

Guys, our sheriff is 5'3" and he left his girlfriend of fifteen years for Jennifer Aniston. Crime may be a problem.

The Leftovers only has one clever trick up its sleeve. In order to make the rest of the cast look like a bunch of Julliard-trained professionals, Lindelof has chosen to employ the casual acting ministrations of Liv Tyler.

Tyler portrays a woman in an unhappy engagement. She is in the car with her fiance when he starts singing. At first she laughs good naturedly, but then he goes on singing and she decides to join the religious order of fanatics who devote themselves to reminding everyone else that they were not chosen by God to serve Jennifer Aniston pain au chocolat. In the cult she meets Theroux's wife, and her real romance begins. She sounds like Arwen throughout and never changes her facial expression, even when she's taking a huge shit.

God is the Marlboro Man confirmed

In order to assuage his feelings of loneliness and abandonment - even though no one in his family was actually even absorbed by the rapture - Theroux starts a relationship with his high school aged daughter's best friend. Fucking American Beauty. The devastating toll of boredom and cliche spawned by Sam Mendes' lack of directing talent continues to destroy lives even decades after its release.

Theroux actually overdelivers in this thankless role, but the fact that he is physically more suited to play a munchkin in the Michael Bay-directed resurrection of The Wizard of Oz hampers his credibility. Every single person in the show is taller than him, requiring more workarounds and odd angles than Tom Cruise looking up at Emily Blunt's chin. I really hope seeing this pilot is why Aniston postponed the wedding.

American Beauty was utter trash, and leaving Kate Winslet was even stupider

We all know that at the end of The Leftovers it is going to turn out that this was heaven all along, or some light at the back of the cave will be the answer to everything. Somewhere in there, Matthew Fox will be arrested for drunk driving. He could play the Devil, or alternately, he could be God. Come to think of it, this show could really use Matthew Fox: his best case scenario is portraying Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend in heaven. She deserves a good-looking guy.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He will not be recapping further episodes of The Leftovers, or even watching it all, until Liv Tyler retires from the acting profession.

"Big Girls Cry" - Sia (mp3)

"Eye of the Needle" - Sia (mp3)