Looking for more of Aaron McCusker, I decided to do a test review of Fortitude, the British series about weird paranormal events on an icy island in the Norwegian Artic. Critics said that it was influenced by Twin Peaks and Lost. Sounds interesting. I reviewed Episode 1.1.
Scene 1: An elderly, sick, senile man wanders the icy waste. Suddenly he sees a man being mauled by a polar bear, pulls out his gun, and shoots -- the man. The sheriff, or whatever they have in Norway, rushes up and tells him to mind his own business. We are not told the location, but according to the fan wiki, it's Svalbard.
Scene 2: Three months later. Two kids find a frozen blob on the beach, grab part of it, and walk home -- nice shot of the town of Fortitude from the hill above. The boy goes home, opens the door -- and collapses! Whatever virus he got from the blob, it worked fast.
Scene 3: Police station, rather large for a town with 711 people. Cops Frank (Nicholas Pennock, left) and Dan (Richard Dormer, above) announce that they have found "them." I assumed that they meant the kids, which would make structural sense, but after watching this scene several times, it looks like they have found camping equipment that some tourists lost. Why not say that instead of misleading everyone?
Next, we get a close-up of a coffee cup -- apparently it will be very important later.
Cop Dan gets a letter addressed to Henry from the Governor's Office. His medical adjudication has come in, so now the Governor has no choice. We are not told what all of this means, or its connection to the Extremely Significant Coffee Cup.
Scene 4: I'll skip the five minutes of parents comforting the dying boy. Next: the airport, where Professor Stottart (Christopher Eggleston, left) is introduing himself to government biologist Vince Rattrey (Luke Treadaway, below). Or the other way around -- using subtitles, I can't tell which is the new arrival. They drive through the icy slopes, discussing industrial perfluoroalkyl compounds, which break down the brain/body barrier and cause polar bears to eat each other.Ok, Biologist Vince is the newcomer. The Professor drops him off at his new house, offers to have his wife make dinner later, and leaves.
Scene 5: Meanwhile, we see the other kid who found the blob -- watching tv. How long until she's dying, too? Her Dad comes in with a package that he says gets good reviews -- or does he mean the tv show -- sucks on the top of her head, asks about her boyfriend -- dying -- and finds the thing she retrieved from the blob -- now it looks like a striated stone.
More dying little boy stuff, and then Dad (Johnny Harris, left) and his friend Jason -- Aaron McCusker, finally! investigate the blob. It's a woolly mammoth, thawed out of the permafrost due to global warming, now decaying, buzzing with flies, and crawling with 13,000 year old viruses. They discuss how much money they can make with this find.
Scene 6: Cop Dan and a lady are discussing his differences with Henry, whoever that is: "He's old, he's lonely, he's dying, and he can't die here. It's the law." Really? How do they enforce it? "You just died, so you're under arrest."
A medical person comes in to announce that the dying boy has polio, which has an incubation period of a bazillion months, so the whole town has to be quarantined. Wait -- it's not related to the blob? That would make structural sense.
Cut to Cop Frank and a girl in a parked car, doing something that looks like a bizarre parody of kissing. They break; Cop Frank tells her that she is the most incredibly gorgeous woman in the universe. Aha! They're aliens trying to fit into human society, but not sure how to kiss.
More cops and alien kissing after the break
Scene 7: Biologist Vince goes to his new lab and encounters his Love Interest dissecting a deformed reindeer.Very disgusting scene. He's written a paper on reindeer anomalies, so she's -- arrogant and dismissive? He asks if this is a specimen. "No, it's dinnner." Wait -- I hope she's being sarcastic.
Meanwhile, Jason-- the friend of the Dad of the girlfriend of the dying boy, remember? -- shows the Professor the striated rock -- actually a mammoth tooth. "This is an amazing discovery!" he gushes. "Priceless!
But when he discovers that Jason wants to be paid, the Professor gets bitchy: "The law on finding specimens of this nature is perfectly clear." Jason clobbers him with the tooth and runs away.
Meanwhile, the lady who was swallowing Cop Frank's tongue is interrogated by Cop Dan: "Has anyone talked about the incident or given you reason to believe that they know about the incident?"No. "Do you feel safe in Fortitude?" Yes. "Are you seeing anybody?" Say what? That's inapprop, dude! Looks like we got a competition between Cop Frank and Cop Dan for the fair Lady. She storms out.
Scene 8: Hildy, the Governor of the province, is in the hospital, yelling at her husband Eric, played by Bjorn Hylnur Haraldsson, about standing in a bear trap -- "you could have lost your leg!" Well, it wasn't on purpose. They discuss an ice drill arriving from Oslo. Then Hildy tries to kiss Eric, but in her species you swallow your partner's whole head, and she's surprised that she can't get her mouth all the way around in human form. It takes two or three tries before she gives up. Seriously, even if you've never kissed anyone in real life, you could watch a video to see how it's done.Scene 9: Hildy is giving a speech to an empty room about a hotel they have built into the ice, so lovers of the wilderness can sleep in an icy room.
Then two cops land a helicopter. get angry with two tourists for looking for polar bears without the proper equipment. One of the tourists yells "Fuck this!", whereupon the cop disables his snowmobile. Then he pulls out a small handgun, whereupon the cop disarms him, gives him a rifle, and tells them to walk down to town.
Cut to Biologist Vince getting naked to go into the sauna -- no dick. A burly guy leaves just as he enters. Whew, Biologist Vince is relieved.
Beefcake: Only Biologist Vince and the burly guy, just before the vagina.
Heterosexism: I think everybody is divided into boy-girl dyads. But for God's sake, when you cast Martians, give them some instructions on how humans kiss!
Male Gaze: Shooting scenes as if 100% of viewers are straight men. That naked lady is really intrusive. I wouldn't mind if we saw some dick, too, but sleazoid director Sam Miller obviously doesn't care about his viewers as long as he gets his titilation.
Gay Subtexts: Dad and his friend Jake might have one, but they both have wives and kids at home, so it will have to be subtle.Paranormal: I didn't see anything
Dying: Lots
The Goal of Viewer Confusion: Too many conversations that give the viewer no clue about what is happening: "You should talk to him about it!" "Did you bring it?" "Did you tell anyone what happened that night?" And a lot of long closeups of things to make them look important, but they're not.
It reminds me of that darn wheelbarrow poem that my college profs gushed over: "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens." Do you have any idea what it means? Hint: it's a toy wheelbarrow abandoned in the rain because the child is....
See also: Aaron McCusker: serial killer, busker, astronaut, and hairdresser.
Gemstones Season 1 Memes: Kelvin bottoms, Gideon falls in love, and Keefe checks for semen loads. When you need to f*k the Sadness.
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