"Bodkin": 10 minutes of gritty urban crime, then paranormal pagans, with some gay teases and a nude Irish bloke

 

Link to the nude Irish bloke

 Netflix has been pushing and pushing the tv series Bodkin at me.  I have no idea what it's about, except that "bodkin" comes from the old expletive  "odds bodkin,"   But I'm running low on content to review, so let's go in.  It's 4:00 am, so I'm watching on my laptop, with the sound muted.  This will be important later.

Scene 1: Establishing shot of a city I don't recognize. Narrator Gilbert Power says: "When I started this podcast, I didn't expect to solve anything.  I didn't expect it to change my life."  Let me guess: by meeting the Girl of Your Dreams?  "But most of all, I didn't expect Dove." Yep.

Scene 2: Dove, the Girl of His Dreams, a rather hard, scruffy looking sort, enters a sleazy apartment, calling for Krtek.  Sounds Polish -- maybe this is Warsaw? The place is a mess.  "How long have you been holed up here?"  Uh-oh, he's hanging in the bathroom.  Suicide!  A cheery way to begin.  

Before the Girl can react, there's a knock on the door: a priest in a devil's mask.  She directs him to Dave's Halloween party upstairs. Dave is not a Polish name.. The devil priest calls her "mate," so we must be in Britain.  Not London, though.

Scene 3: Establishing shot of a pedestrian bridge, a welcome relief after the near-impenetrable darkness of Scene 2.  Dove tells the Boss that she's been investigating this story for 18 months, and she's not stopping now. He points out that her key informant just hung himself, so she's in danger and needs to stop. 

"Nope, I'm obsessed!"

"This scandal could get us all shut down!  I'm putting you on another story. In Ireland."

"Ireland!  No fucking way would I ever go back to that horrible place after all of the horrible things happened to me there!"

"Tough,  you're going.  It's the best place to hide, because no ever goes to Ireland.  You'll be working with your Love Interest, a podcaster named Gilbert Power."

"No way!  I hate podcasters. Sadistic necrophiliacs!"

Scene 4: At the Dublin airport, someone is screaming at Gilbert (Will Forte), calling him a sadistic necrophiliac who gets off on murder.  I guess a lot of people hate podcasters.

"I'm more into hearing people's stories.  The mystery of the human heart." Dove interrupts, astonished that anyone would fall for that load of b.s.

Gilbert introduces himself and the girl who is screaming at him, his research assistant Emily.  She tries to be friendly, but Dove rudely ignores her. So the employee of a podcaster thinks that podcasters are monsters! 

Scene 5: Back to the near-impenetrable darkness as the three and their driver head through a scary forest in County Cork.  They're going to have lunch, and then investigate the site where the scary, disturbing Samhain festival was held. 

Wait -- what about the gritty crime story Dove was investigating back home?  Was it all irrelevant, just a very long excuse to get her to Ireland?  So the real story is about neopagans with crazy, murderous rituals, like Midsommar?  That's annoying -- I spent ten minutes searching for a character named Krtek  (it means "short") and a pedestrian bridge in Warsaw.

Their driver, Sean (Chris Walley, top photo and left),  tries to be friendly, but Dove rudely ignores him.  Geez, this lady is a total jerk.  Maybe she'll be redeemed by her Love Interest

The mystery: 25 years ago, three unrelated people disappeared during a local Samhain festival.  They closed it down, but now it's up again, so no doubt more people will be eaten by a Samhain monster.

Scene 6: They take photos at the site of the festival, praising its beauty, but I think it's dark and depressing.  Check your color pallette, editors!  Driver Sean points out a billboard praising a local amoral monster, who went to Silicon Valley, made shitload of money, and then returned to destroy the town by building a server farm. I imagine that he'll be the Big Bad of the series.

"Wait -- I don't want high tech," Gilbert exclaims. "I want to see small, isolated, quaint, traditions from 300 years ago still in use, and not a single cell phone."

Dove buys sunglasses for a dismal, overcast day.  A little girl praises them, and she says "Fuck off!"  Gilbert, baby, the Girl of Your Dreams is a sociopath.

Scene 7: In the quaint town of Bodkin, they interview two geezers, who make fun of Gilbert for doing podcasts -- but know what happened to the missing lads 25 years ago: Geezer #1: "A rogue wave got 'em."  Geezer #2: "They were disturbing the fairy stones, so they were eviscerated.  You don't disrespect the fairies!" So we're going to have some paranormal.  That's more interesting than that stupid organized-crime story back home.

Scene 8: In their bed-and-breakfast, the manager makes fun of them for doing a podcast, and criticizes Americans for being stupid and obese. In another room, a spirit-animal wolf stares at Dove, then leaps out the window. She assumes that it was a dog, but the landlady, hearing about it, gets all flustered and distracted. Besides, there haven't been any wolves in Ireland since the 18th century.

Scene 9: Next stop: Ailibhe's Hollow, a circle of stones where the villagers held their Samhain Festival until that night 25 years ago. The smiling, chubby Darragh arrives to explain that the festival was really used for a "sneaky ride." Figure it out yourself. Meanwhile, Dove calls headquarters to complain about Gilbert being an idiot.  She's anxious to get home and work on real stories.

More after the break

Kelton Dumont's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 2: Orson Welles, James Dean, Bam-Bam Rubble, and a naked Pontius

 

Link to the nude photos

This is a collection of cute/cool or hot/humorous photos of actor Kelton Dumont, best known as Pontius in The Righteous Gemstones.  As far as I know, he's over 18 in all but #2.  There are also some photos of his dad James and a few friends. 

1. "Punching or licking.  Your choice."

2. Boating at dusk. I like the cityscape in the background.

3. Kelton playing Orson Welles in a Halloween broadcast of War of the Worlds. Why do you need to be in costume for a radio play?

4. Pontius is interrupted in media res

4. Back to War of the Worlds. Burgers with the rest of the cast.

5. A random photo with no connection to anyone in War of the Worlds, especially not the drama major on the left.

 6. James in Red

More Kelton, and maybe more James, after the break

Miss Peregrine's Home for Heterosexual Children

After he is bullied by some mean kids, 16-year old drugstore employee Jake (Asa Butterfield) received a telephone call from his raging, delusional grandpa, Abe Portman (Terence Stamp).

His deadbeat father, who doesn't have a job, can't get off work, so his boss drives him over. 

It's mid-afternoon when they leave but the middle of the night when they arrive, although in other scenes Abe lives close enough for Jake to bicycle over. 

Have you had enough inconsistencies yet?  Good-- we're just getting started.

They find Grandpa dead, with his eyes gouged out.  But he lives long enough to tell Jake to go to the Home.

Flashback to Grandpa babysitting the 5- and 10-year old Jake, and telling him about his childhood.  He lived in Poland before World War II, where there were "monsters" about, so his parents sent him to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, on an island off the coast of Wales, where he would be safe.

Ok, I get it.  Grandpa was Jewish.  Repeat:  Jewish. It's a perfectly legitimate word.  Why is everyone afraid to say it?

The Peculiar Children all had bizarro powers:
1. Emma was lighter than air.
2. Olive could start fires by touching things.
3. Fiona could make plants grow.
4. Millard was invisible.
5. Hugh (Milo Parker, left) was full of bees.
6. Horace (Hayden Keeler-Stone, below) could project his dreams onto a screen, like a movie (how did he ever discover that one?).

Abe left the home in 1941 to join the army, but he stayed in contact with the Headmistress, Miss Peregrine. 

Back to the present: Jake tells the whole story to his therapist, who suggest that the Peculiar Children were actually mentally ill or physically disabled or something.  Since Miss Peregrine is still alive -- she would be well over 100 -- why not pop over to Wales and check? 

So Jake and his dimwitted loser Dad drop everything and fly to a tiny village in Wales, where Dad pays some local boys to hang out with the mortified teenager.  They take him to the Home, in ruins since it was bombed by the Nazis in 1941.

Why would the Nazis bomb a children's home in a tiny town in Wales?

By the way, Dad (Chris O'Dowd) is writing a book on birds, and the tiny town has some interesting specimens.  We get the idea that the bird book is a pipe dream, something he is writing endlessly but will never finish. 

He's also amazingly neglectful:  "I see that something is troubling you.  If you want to talk about it, call your therapist.  I'm busy."

No wonder Jake later drops out of the family without a moment's hesitation.

Back to the House: somehow Jake takes a step to the right, and the Home is still there, with Miss Peregrine and the children the same age as they were in 1941  After some shenanigans and missteps, they explain: they're in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over.  Every night, just as the bomb falls, Miss Peregrine resets time 24 hours.

And there are similar time loops all over the world, where other Peculiar Children are kept safe from monsters by reliving the same day over and over.

These time loops are presented as marvelous paradises, but can you imagine how horrible it would be to live 70 years with the same 11 people, never growing up, no movies, no tv, nothing to do all day, every day?  They don't even take classes.  They play, eat giant carrots for dinner, watch Hugh's dreams on a movie screen (here's hoping he doesn't have an erotic dream), and then go outside to watch Miss Peregrine reset time as the bombs fall.

And there are monsters, eyeless creepy things who are  trying to regain their humanity by eating the eyes of Peculiar Children.  I think.

It's all completely muddled and nonsensical, a mishmash of Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, H. P. Lovecraft, and nonsense.  Plus two -- count 'em -- two hetero romances.

1. The morose teenage Enoch, who hates Jake on sight, finally gets the gumption (after 70 years) to tell Olive that he is in love with her. They walk off hand in hand.

2. Jake falls for Emma, his grandfather's girlfriend.  After the adventure is over and the eyeless monsters subdued, Grandpa Abe (alive again for some reason) tells him "Go to her."  So the 16-year old drops everything, including school and his parents, and rushes to the ship and kisses her. 

Oh, I forgot.  The Peculiar Children raise the Titanic or something.

I don't know what was more annoying, the incessant heterosexism or the fact that the MOVIE MAKES NO SENSE.

By the way, the top photo is the hunky Bryson Powers, who is listed in the credits as "Surfer Boy."  I don't remember anyone surfing in the movie.