A few thoughts on Night Stalker

The 2005 television series Night Stalker is a curious little beastie, with ten filmed episodes, only six of which aired originally.  It was a revisit of the classic Kolchak: The Night Stalker, from 1974 and starring Darren McGavin (the dad from A Christmas Story).

The reboot starred Stuart Townsend as Carl Kolchak and Gabrielle Union (impossibly beautiful) as Perri Reed, both reporters for a Los Angeles newspaper (impossibly quaint, watching in 2018).  Kolchak is fixated on unusual/supernatural cases, trying to explain his wife's murder.  Reed is a skeptic but gets drawn in and has to admit that there's some pretty strange stuff going on out there.  It's like X-Files-lite, but due to the early cancellation, the cast never really had a chance to develop much chemistry.

I liked it - weird and supernatural are my jam, of course - and it's certainly not a huge time commitment.  The most challenging part of Night Stalker is just finding it - currently on DVD from Netflix, dunno where else.

The Walking Dead S8E15 "Worth" 4/8/18

At long last, really and truly, the LAST nearly-real time recap of The Walking Dead.  Mr. Mouse returned our cable box to Comcast and - amazingly - got no push-back when he said he wanted to drop cable and keep internet only.  We got a new modem and our bill will be cut in half.  (My only concern now is that the speed goes down too, so we'll just have to see how it goes.)  I did manage to watch S8E14 last night and take notes so here's a sparse recap; it was a lot of talking anyway.  Sorry, friends, but you're on your own for next Sunday's season finale.

OMG we start with a VERY earnest Carl voice-over: Rick reads the letter his son wrote him and Chandler Riggs gets VO duty.  Also, Michonne steals Carl's letter to Negan because Rick doesn't look to be delivering it anytime soon.

In other locations: Over at the Sanctuary, where (almost) everyone thinks Negan is gone, Gregory sucks up to Simon who is presuming to take over the place.  One person who now knows Negan is back is Dwight, because Negan surreptitiously seeks him out to elicit a confirmation of loyalty. At Oceanside, Aaron is still lurking in the woods, slowly starving/dehydrating to death, trying to avoid walkers and convince the Oceanside women to join the fight.  (They aren't interested.)  At Eugene's bullet-making outpost, Eugene is lackadaisical about meeting bullet quotas but he's adamant about the cooks serving up garlic-sardine mac-n-cheese, which he says sustained him all through his college years.  Also, Gabriel, still sick, is intentionally making bad bullets.  When faced with reprisals, Gabriel: "I don't want to help you but I still fear death" and he's sad to think that he hasn't changed into a better person than when he locked his parishioners out of his church to certain zombie death.

When Negan makes his presence known to the Sanctuary at large, Simon tries to justify his disobedience with respect to the exterminate vs. infect attack on Hilltop.  And we learn that Simon is also responsible for having killed all the Oceanside men and boys (which is something I think we should have been told sooner?).  Negan says he forgives him and announces a new plan, with maps: they're going to set up small stations all around Hilltop and pick off its denizens with snipers whenever someone shows their face.  They'll win the war by attrition rather than all-out assault.

Dwight is now playing a very dangerous triple agent game: he tells Simon he supports him against Negan; he tells Negan he is loyal to him; and he copies the attack map in order to get it to Rick and Maggie so they can defend themselves.  At this point, both Simon and Negan appear to believe Dwight's respective stories but I have a feeling Negan is just playing with him.

Meanwhile, Daryl and Rosita kidnap Eugene from his outpost.  He fears they will kill him but instead they promise to stick him in a dark hole and keep using him for his clever brain.  They are seething with disgust and anger towards him.  They're pretty bad at this kidnapping thing though: during a walker encounter that keeps Daryl's attention, Eugene manages to escape by self-induced vomiting all over Rosita (remember the garlic and sardine mac-n-cheese? SO GROSS).  When she recoils in disgust, he manages to get away.  I don't know how - I thought Daryl was a super-tracker and there's no way Eugene moves quickly.  Whatever.

By the way, we still don't know who Negan's hitchhiker was, do we?

During Simon's "let's plan a rebellion against Negan" meeting, Dwight betrays Simon to the big man.  Negan loyalists shoot all the conspirators (except Dwight and, for some reason, Gregory) but Negan wants to battle it out with Simon in a bare fist battle.  It's Thunderdome time!  Despite Simon starting things off with a sucker punch, Negan beats him down and finally throttles the life out of his former right-hand man.  During the fight, while everyone appears to be distracted, Dwight hands Gregory the annotated map, hands him some keys and sends him off to Hilltop to warn Rick and Maggie. 

After choking Simon (and the nascent rebellion) to death, Negan promotes Dwight to be his #2 guy.  But it was all a ploy because when Negan walks Dwight back to Dwight's quarters, the hitchhiker / Lauren / the girl on Dwight's attack team whom we all thought Dwight killed when he shot the rest of the team is there and she has brought everyone up to speed on Dwight's duplicity.  By the way, smirks Negan, that "plan" I came up with is a fake and you've delivered that bad intel to Rick just as I wanted you to.  And now Negan has "plans" for Dwight - which are undoubtedly even worse than stealing his wife and ironing his face.

Eugene makes it back to his outpost and orders everyone to up bullet production.  Even Gabriel is conscripted to work.

Outside the Sanctuary, dead Simon has become one of the fence-zombies.  He's very bite-y.

Michonne has come within walkie-talkie range of the Sanctuary.  She calls Negan and reads him the letter Carl wrote to him:  "The way out is working together.  It's forgiveness."  But Negan has had enough: "[I'm going to be] killing every last one of you.  That is [the way out].  Rick started this."  And then he crushes his walkie underfoot, ostensibly to keep her from contacting him again but jeez, for someone who is so concerned about resources, couldn't he have just changed the channel?

And next Sunday is the season finale:  will anyone important die?  I guess Morgan is getting out of dodge and moving over to Fear the Walking Dead.  Good luck to him.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead S8E14 "Still Gotta Mean Something" 4/1/18

Quick flashback as we see Jadis playing dead to escape the Saviors' massacre of her Scavenger clan.  Later, on her own, she regroups in the cargo container she lives in - which is outfitted to look like an Ikea catalog.  We don't have to see the Rick and Michonne interlude again but we jump right ahead to where she's captured Negan.  She's taken him back to the dump and tied him to a wheeled dolly.  With Lucille slung over her shoulder, and Negan protesting, "What the shit?!?" she drags him out into the center of the dump.

At Hilltop, Ezekiel tries to get Carol to come with him to search for Henry.  When she refuses, he calls her a coward.  He doesn't know that children are her soft spot.  Later, however, when she sees Morgan acting twitchy and making to head out into the woods, she says she'll go with him.  Meanwhile, Tara has figured out that she is not infected, that Dwight shot her with a clean arrow.  Daryl's all still, nope, he sucks.  Tara tells him that he should do what he's got to do, but she's no longer on board with killing Dwight since he's now saved her life twice, despite the fact that he killed her girlfriend.  Also, Rick finds Michonne crying over the letter Carl wrote to her.  He still hasn't read the one his son wrote him and is too busy bottling up his grief to do so.  He says that he's going out to search for food.  But she insists that he sit down and read it right now: "[Writing that for you] was one of the last things [Carl] ever did."  But Rick still heads out of the compound.  On his way out, one of the reformed Saviors asks him to please maybe not kill all the Saviors he finds out there - they may have made a poor decision in the heat of the moment and maybe he could bring them back to be a part of this community.  Rick's all, yeah, I could do that.  Also, Maggie, Rosita and Daryl discuss the low ammunition situation.  Rosita's like FUCK the Saviors have Eugene and he can make them more bullets.  She and Daryl head out to do some recon.

Back at the dump, Jadis is setting up a bonfire for some reason.  Negan is actually talking some sense for once and he says that he didn't order the slaughter of her people.  "This was my mistake.  I'll own this ... I am sorry for this ... I am sorry that you lost all you had."  He actually sounds sincere.  Jadis isn't ready to buy what he's selling right now though.

Carol and Morgan think they're on Henry's trail.  Morgan starts seeing things again and freaks out.  Carol sticks with him but then they come to a crossroads.  She wants to go one way, away from the herd of walkers up ahead, but Morgan - raving that he never dies/everyone else dies - wants to go straight on, through the herd.  Despite wanting to keep an eye on Morgan, Carol has to go her own way.  They split up.

At this point in the dump, I get a little confused.  Jadis goes off, leaving Negan alone to inch his way to a flare and a gun she left behind.  She comes back with a zombie fastened to another dolly for some reason (and I never quite figured out what the point of that zombie was).  She and Negan have a bit of a standoff when he threatens to burn some photographs she has with that flare.  They have a moment of connection, when Negan tells her that Lucille was his wife before the apocalypse and he named that bat after her.  Then they struggle and she gets the gun and the flare away from him.  But the flare rolls into a puddle and fizzles out, just as the alarm on Jadis's wristwatch goes off and a HELICOPTER appears and hovers overhead.  As Negan is all, WTF?, Jadis cries out "I'm here! I'm here!" and waves her arms futilely.  The helicopter flies off and Jadis collapses.  Negan's all, I have no idea what is going on here but I promise you, I can settle this - I can make this right.

Rick finds Morgan, half unhinged out in the woods.  They realize that they are both out there to deal with "them," meaning the Saviors.  "Let's finish it," growls Rick.  Then the Saviors sneak up on them and capture them.  When Rick comes to, he and Morgan are tied up in a warehouse while the group of escaped Saviors argue about what to do.  Jared (the skinny long-haired asshole) is all, we're going back to the Sanctuary and delivering Rick to Negan.  Then Rick speaks up, saying that he and Morgan can bring them all back to Hilltop for reintegration there - but the Saviors need to untie them ASAP because a herd of zombies is coming.  The Saviors argue some more, many of them leaning towards going back to the Hilltop, until the herd swarms the warehouse.  The Saviors release Rick and Morgan so everyone can fight walkers; one of the Saviors even saves Rick from an approaching zombie he doesn't see.  And then.

And then Rick starts shooting the Saviors in the back and chopping into their necks with his hatchet.  Morgan follows suit and they kill the men along with the walkers.  Jared scurries away and Morgan gives chase.  They struggle and then Morgan traps Jared against a metal gate, holding him in place until the walkers eat the guy alive.  Morgan rejoins Rick and they survey the carnage, human and zombie alike.  One Savior is just barely alive and manages to gasp out something along the lines of, "You said we could have lived."  Rick, now completely morally bankrupt in his grief over Carl, just DNGAF: "I lied" and shoots the guy in the head.  Damn.  That's cold, this new Rick.  And, frankly, he's the most interesting he's been in seasons of this show.  Morgan is continuing on his journey to crazytown and, when Rick asks him why he saved Rick way back in S1, Morgan replies, "Because my son was there."  So the parallels are laid right out for us: both Morgan and Rick have lost their minds and their humanity because it was their sons who were keeping them together.

Jadis lets Negan go.  Before he leaves, he asks her about the helicopter but she's not offering up any answers.  He tells her that he'll come by again to see her.  She shrugs and goes back to her Ikea hideaway.

In the "I so don't care about this," after dark Carol manages to find Henry and save him from three zombies who have him cornered.  He hugs and they both cry.  He tells her he's sorry; she tells him that it's okay and that she's the one who's sorry because she was wrong, he is in fact able to survive.  They go back to Hilltop and Ezekiel meets them at the gate, pulling Henry into an embrace and giving Carol a meaningful look.  Then Rick and Morgan return to Hilltop.  Morgan tells Henry that he killed the man who killed Henry's brother.  Henry pats Morgan on the arm and says he's sorry.  This confuses half-crazy Morgan and he wanders off.

On his way back to the Sanctuary, Negan pulls over (where'd he get the car? is it Jadis's?) to pick someone up.  We don't get to see who it is.  When they get back to the Sanctuary, Negan instructs the sentries not to say anything about his return.  He's got some surprises to inflict upon those who disobeyed him.

Also, Rosita and Daryl's scouting trip confirms that Eugene is in fact manufacturing bullets for the Saviors.  They discuss how to put him out of business.  Rosita:  "We don't need to take out the machines.  We take out the man."

Finally, still damp from his bath, Rick sits down to read the letter Carl wrote him.

Seriously though: WHY WILL NO ONE KILL NEGAN WHEN THEY HAVE THE CHANCE? Ugh.

Previously on The Walking Dead 

Next time on The Walking Dead