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 Matt Dillon Was More Of A Figure Of Speech

Come Back To Us

by DICK CHENEY

Wayward Pines
creator Chad Hodge

When he breathes out, Matt Dillon's face resembles a puffy blowfish. Matt should have been on Lost. As Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, Dillon is fantastic at the only thing ever required of him on Fox's Wayward Pines, which is to bristle at unexpected developments in his life. When you think about it, Matt Dillon, 51, could have been much better than Matthew Fox or Henry Ian Cusick in their respective roles. By the way, I still wonder what happened to Matthew Fox. Did he die from remorse after his creative involvement with Damon Lindelof?

Her hair looks like Play-Doh.

Matt's wife Theresa Burke is played by Shannyn Sossamon. She seems an unlikely choice for a long suffering wife, but director M. Night Shyamalan finds something in her androgyny. Wayward Pines is, I am not sorry to say, better acted, better cast and better performed than anything J.J. Abrama has been involved with. Matt is drawn to the town of Wayward Pines searching for his missing partner Kate (Carla Gugino). One day he wakes up into an idyllic and charming town. Naturally, the only thing he can think of to do is leave.

Carla became a little too close to Matt Dillon on the job. It is a bit too soon for another adulterous hero, but Dillon is also perfect at conveying the properties of mistakes. He is no more responsible for their occurence than God is responsible for the tragedy of The Mindy Project's cancellation. Unlike other actors, his errors all come across as feckless, guiltless.

The Rock is very sorry for how he acted last night. She's very lucky her husband was a helicopter pilot.

Things manifest differently for a woman. Dressed up in the style of decades earlier, Gugino looks like a strumpet even when she is Taylor Swifting about how conflicted she is about having sex/intercourse with another man's wife. Gugino, 43, is finally beginning to look like a woman in middle age, but her girlish appeal is still intact. Wayward Pines wins you over with its perfect casting and pace more than any actual substance.

It's nice to see a Scientologist can still get work.

In a bar in this mysterious, final town Matt Dillon meets Juliette Lewis. It feels like Lewis has been around for so long; the shocking news is that she is only 41. Her chief talent consists in making manufactured surprise look completely genuine. The fun comes when we simply watch her react to Matt's loopy questions. She gives him her address if he needs somewhere to stay, and it is at that address where he finds the body of a  missing cisgender federal agent.

Terence has trouble juggling multiple roles because of his utter devotion to the Stanislavsky Method.

Looking for answers — as well as his wallet and firearm — Dillon heads over to the sheriff's office. There Terence Howard is quietly fulfilling his contract with Fox, the same way Nucky's brother on Boardwalk Empire has magically been cast on every single HBO show since. Matt eventually has a breakdown and winds up in the hospital, where his real troubles begin. He cannot drive out of the town of Wayward Pines, since there is a massive electric fence circling the habitat.

Say what you want about M. Night's questionable taste in material/Scientologist actors, but he is fantastically talented at atmosphere and tension. Wayward Pines is incredibly fun for this reason. Here Chad Hodge (The Playboy Club) has an actual mystery that will deliver according to the novels it is based upon, rather than the strategery of Carlton Cuse taking notes for Lost's direction from message boards.

He has the best back of the head in television today. I want that hair as a wig.

Mr. Cuse recently bestowed upon us the rather dull third season finale of Bates Motel. The prequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho succeeds entirely on the charisma of its star, the brilliant Vera Farmiga. In contrast, Cuse's newest show The Returned, also airing on A&E, is about as exciting as Lost-Jin flashback episode. You will not be surprised that The Returned concerns a massive cast of people all returning to a locale after they are believed to be dead.

In what is a major step forward for Carlton, there is barely anyone from Lost on the show, not even Nestor Carbonell. (Michelle Forbes was too good to exclude on this basis.) In what is not a major step forward for Carlton, The Returned concerns a group of white people from very different backgrounds and circumstances struggling with a mystery that has left them in an isolated place. Apparations and figments of their imagination recur, and they cannot make sense of the specifics of their lives. Lost should have died a long time ago.

Michelle Forbes should be in every show.

There is actually something deeply wrong about these many reincarnations of Twin Peaks. For all its perfection in mood and atmosphere, Twin Peaks was actually tongue-in-cheek, which many of these projects seem to ignore entirely. There is not really even one joke in Wayward Pines or The Returned — like Lost, they are utterly sincere interpretations of the same basic theme: understanding human beings at the level of a community rather than at the level of a person is a waste of time.

Treading over this ground might seem a little dull, but as long as Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly remain on the outskirts of employment and general good will, I suppose I can accomodate this trend.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is most known for his disgust with the ending of Lost and being the former vice president of the United States.

This should have been what was in the hatch.

"Just Saying" - Jamie xx (mp3)

"Stranger in a Room" - Jamie xx ft. Oliver Sim (mp3)

In Which A Bear Is Merely A Trifle To This One

What He Really Thinks Of Women

by DICK CHENEY

Thrones. "We're very complicated, you know. Pleasing us takes practice." Finally the truth, what GRRM really thinks about women. They can't be pleased or sated. They spend all their time in the nude, writing letters to their mother. They can't defeat a simple bear with a wooden stake. A dwarf defeated an army with some moonshine, but the largest female soldier I've ever seen can't defeat the bear from The Hotel New Hampshire and the David Mamet movie where Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins fall in love after the black guy from Lost stabs himself in the leg in the most racist scene in modern cinema?

The Edge was not a satire, or maybe it was, I haven't read the court transcript from either David Mamet's first divorce or his future one. Men who say women are simple are as devastatingly stupid as men who say women are complicated. It's not a man's place to say anything reductive about a woman, unless that women is permitting Simon Cowell in her bed. Then there's just one word for her.

theon greyjoy's nightmare is king joffrey's most carnal dream I can speak for men, however. Our first view of the opposite sex is usually determinative. It was Halloween, and I saw a girl I liked dressed as a hobo. She had red hair, and her parents moved her to North Carolina before school started again the next year. I never did tell her how I felt about her, but I did mail her a picture of Theon Greyjoy's penis.

brb one sec gotta gchat with someone in House Martell, you don't know this person
This week's episode began with verifiable proof that Robb Stark had one of those. In an elaborate postcoital scene in which his wife faked over three orgasms, the boy king kept going on and on about how his wife should put some clothes on lest he "attack" her. I guess he was trying to be playful? Since he never actually copulated with her again, he sounded like Renly Baratheon fawning over a woman so he would not actually have to go through with the more difficult work of maintaining his arousal.

let's just snuggle here forever and talk antibiotics; penetration is for lannisters

It almost made me empathize a little with Robb's wife that his pale, wrinkled mother disapproves of her, but we all know what's coming so it is best to focus on the Stormborn when looking to approve of a very tan woman from across the narrow sea.

P.S. If this sea is so narrow why don't they go visit the naked woman's mom right now? Hannukah is coming.

these gold bars are filled with eyeshadow
Daenarys' idle threats to a slave culture that precedes her entire civilization remains entertaining. Still, it's not a role that offers her a lot of chances to do anything other than free slaves. Spartacus is a similarly boring character. If I was the slaver with this eye-shadow, I would have just knelt. Someone will have to explain to me the economy of Astapoor and the yellow city. Real clever George, the yellow city.

Mama Stormborn's skin was looking a bit mottled, but I guess she's been crossing CGI for days at least.

You were no Dwight Schrute

As this episode was written by GRRM himself (thanks for taking time from your strenuous schedule of caviar and writing long passages about the Greyjoys that no one could give two fucks about), it had more than its fair share of YKNJS. Ygritte was not so fantastic in this episode; possibly Jon Snow's grimacing "you'll die when you fight a bunch of guys wearing black" took her down to his level. I miss Craster. The only thing less believable than their ongoing honeymoon beyond the wall is the idea any lord would apologize to a woman he compensates for sex.

jesus, doesn't anyone sit down and have dinner anymore
In the books we can actually believe Tyrion might care about this Shae, but in the cold light of King's Landing (soon to be renamed Hot Pie's Landing) we can see quite clearly that this is the last conversation he wants to have with this woman. Reassuring someone that you love them constantly is never fun, since slowly but surely you stop believing your own words. I think Shae's expectations are also a little out of whack; he offers her a house and clothes and she's like, "But what about an inground pool?" Just move on little guy, if she won't even do something with her hair now, it's only going to get worse.

that is one splendid fucking jerkin there bronn five stars

As ever, Bronn is the finest man alive. Why GRRM is putting out a ball-achingly embarrassing collection of Tyrion's "finest" "quotes" while Bronn's solid advice is diminished in contrast, I don't know.

GET IT? ORSON WELLES DID IT ONCE SO WE HAVE TO DO IT IN EVERY MOVIE AND TELEVISION SHOW FROM NOW ON GUYS

What you have to respect about Tywin Lannister is that he has never even tried to please a woman since his wife died in childbirth. His tact with his grandson further revealed the depths of his political skill. The cliche of him having to tower over Joffrey on his Iron Throne was a little heavy- handed, but the Lannisters are so far and away the best characters and actors on the show that you sympathize so much more with them than you do in the books.

Bran was literally there yesterday

Jaime's transformation from incest participant into the lion with a heart of gold I guess was a slow process. His sudden authority over his own life is all the more shocking. It's fun to watch someone change, even if they did not hate the person they were before. Changing yourself is loving yourself, because you care enough about it to do better or be better.

Is it wrong that it bothered me than Bran and Jaime were on the exact same set? I guess he did take the little lord's legs. I hope you're eaten by the biggest dragon in Westeros Bran.

Genry, you will be very happy now. Hot Pie, you will not.

GRRM wants you to think we are watching men and women save each other, as they must. But really, his underlying belief is that no one can be saved, which is something of a nihilistic attitude. Many times he has told us that his wife will not allow Arya to die. This knowledge ruined his creation, just as all fan service inevitably corrupts the original inspiration. If no one can be saved, then neither can Arya. Treating her differently than Hot Pie is misguided at best, sexist at worst.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He deleted at least five inappropriate jokes about Catelyn Stark from the preceding. You can find an archive of his reviews of Game of Thrones here.

"Grind or Die" - Eve (mp3)

"Mama in the Kitchen"  - Eve ft. Snoop Dogg (mp3)