Two weeks into quarantine

Well, plus 3 days now. Took me a bit of time to get on my laptop without anyone looking over my shoulder constantly. 

Quarantine started for me with not physically being able to leave the house for a few days. I never expected those planned “few days” to turn into two weeks, but then on day 2 it was announced that all universities were going to close the next day, which was quite a shock to me. I didn’t expext for things to change that quickly and I don’t know how long things will stay this way. Here’s a bit about how those two weeks have been, who knows how many will follow:

- I’ve been outside for 2 hours max. in these two weeks. Felt oddly reassuring to see that my town hasn’t changed at all. First time out was on day 8 or 9.

- Stayed awake for 39 hours at the beginning of it all. Not fun. And not by choice. I was in too much pain to relax. Got myself dosed up on ibuprofen and slept for 12 hours straight.

- I had exactly one online class. I hated it. Felt really weird and I kept losing focus. Also: group discussions don’t work when you’re thrown in a seperate chatroom thing and your random group members are all afraid of turning on their mic so nothing ends up happening.

- Apart from that online class I haven’t done shit for uni. Can’t focus at home with my brother working in his bedroom a.k.a. constantly calling people and my mother watching TV downstairs when she isn’t at work.

- I’m now in week 1 of 3 of what was supposed to be my official exam period with midterms and shit. I’ve got 3 exams that are going on as normal, because I had to do those at home anyway and there’s one that’s going to be changed a bit so you can do it at home. We’re only going to get 2 hours for that though, normal time for the exam, which absolutely sucks. For the others I have 2 weeks.

- I actually started writing a story. Me. Writing. Never thought I’d get to that point. Progress is really slow, I’m only 2.5k words in and there are lots of details I’m still unsure about and I have no idea wtf is supposed to happen in it yet, but hey I’m writing. It’s about a girl discovering she has superpowers. It’s terrible. She finds out when she tries to kill herself about 500 words in. Yikes why is my brain like this. Oh right because I’m an idiot and my childhood wish of being able to fly has come back to haunt me and I’m telling myself to never try to commit suicide. Writing this is a bit of a weird way of doing it though.

- I also tried digital drawing on this Autodesk SketchBook app. I sort of finished my drawing and it kind of looks how I wanted it to, but I am never going to try that again. Three days of endless fucking pain and getting cramps in my fingers.

- My random obsession with the Chernobyl disaster is back. I’ve spent a lot of time on YouTube watching “stalkers” illegally entering the exclusion zone and staying there for a few days. Fascinating stuff. Would never dare to go there myself.

- I went back to one of those game sites for children that I used to spend hours on as a kid. Because fuck it. (Logical combo of course: Chernobyl and dress-up games; that shit happened on the same day.)

- Looks like I haven’t lost my ability to recognise a Depeche Mode song in 0.4s in the SongPop app.

I’m also pretty good at recognising Neubauten, though they’re kinda hard to find in the game.

- Witnessed Blixa Bargeld making broccoli soup. Possibly the best hour in the whole of these two weeks. He danced!!! 

- Got a phone call from my university's study abroad coordinator. Was told that none of the universities I wanted to go to (Glasgow, Brighton and Manchester) were possible for me. Which is a rare thing, that none of your choices work out; of course that shit happens to me, I seem to be a magnet for bad luck! I somehow managed to keep it together while on the phone, but I was ready to scream or cry. Not sure which. Both have not happened yet but still possible. Now I'm looking into the other options she gave me. Will probably end up going to Leeds. If it's even possible to go anywhere by that time with this whole corona bullshit situation. Well, at least I haven't been rejected...

- Ready to kill my mother and brother because they will never understand how goddamn terrified I am of phone calls. They always think I'm stupid and exaggerating, while they haven't felt my heart pounding in my chest whenever my phone rings. I'm always scared of not knowing what to say. When it's an unknown number it's even worse, having absolutely no idea of what to expect.

- Finally watching series 7 of Endeavour on a Belgian TV channel. 

And, last but not least:

- The VHS Tapes Adventure

I found a big shopping bag full of VHS tapes and dragged out the old VCR. Six of the tapes contained footage of tiny ass kid me and my brother, who’s two years older than me.

I had never seen these tapes before, so it was a bit overwhelming. I had no idea we had footage that actually included sound! All the stuff I had seen before was made with a crappy camera with no sound.

I saw myself when I was less than a day old. I saw myself walk at 10 months. I heard myself slowly learning how to talk. I saw myself in one of those typical “child tries something new to drink and is totally amazed by it” moments, drinking coca cola and immediately demanding more. I saw my now dead grandmother, holding me, playing with me, and I heard her voice again. I cried.

God, it was so overwhelming; and it was weird to actually use a VCR again, last time I did that was over 10 years ago. I had one fuck-up though followed by a bit of a panic attack. I think the VHS went in at a slightly wrong angle, there was lots of noise and then it came out with some tape sticking out of it. God I was terrified, I had never experienced that before and we don’t have backups of any of that childhood footage. I ran to my mum and cried like a baby. She fixed it and was not really worried.

Also, I was left slightly pissed off. I witnessed all of my brother’s birthday parties, starting with his first, but the only birthday party I saw that was for me was when I turned four. Also, there’s a lot more footage of my brother in general. And I know it’s completely stupid, and I get that it was different with my brother because he was the first child, but it still makes me feel bad. 

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I know there probably won’t be anyone reading this, or getting this far, and I know all of this is not relevant to you even in the slightest, but it feels good to write stuff and share it somewhere at least in the knowledge that someone out there might read this and possibly care? We're in a weird situation right now and I don't really have anyone to talk to. I only speak to other students (I don't really dare to call them friends - we just sort of talk when we see each other but not really outside of that) when I see them in person, so I have not been in contact with them at all these past weeks. This is the only place where I can share stuff now, also because this is the only social media account none of my family are aware of. And it’s really good to have something away from them so that I don’t have to feel embarrassed.

My upbringing was starkly black and white, everything strictly categorised as sin and acceptable, allowed and not. The massive ‘sin: not allowed’ category swallowed everything in legalism and immutable consequences. I fell in love with noir partly because it has no such hangups.

I savoured noir’s evocative language and sexual undercurrent. I learned to believe exposing repressive authority and dirty deeds was valiant even if ultimately futile, and justice could be delivered even when corrupt systems stymied it. The hardboiled detective attracted me from every angle, and I dreamed of both being and fucking the daring mystery-solving, smoking, drinking, dame-bedding wiseass. The detective archetype is dangerously appealing; stalwart antiheroes holding to their personal code while all around them people sold their souls for a bottle of scotch, a land deed, a tempting woman or a hard man. Terribly tragic, and as such, terribly romantic.

Like a suspect in a smoky dive bar, what constitutes ‘loyalty’ in noir is hard to pin down, but while most supporting characters treat loyalty as a purchasable, expendable, flexible commodity, [anti]heroes Spade and Archer, Gittes and Dewitt, Mars and Hammer, et al. hold fiercely to their personal definitions thereof. These ideals often keep them from working with a partner, as they can’t find others who share their notions longer than a book’s opening chapters, a film’s first act. Sometimes, in a twisted blessing, their partner gets murdered before committing betrayal. (‘Committing betrayal.’ What a cruel grammatical construction.)

Fairly unique among their set, Charleses Nick and Nora manage loyalty and happiness to and with each other, but not only does their teasing openly relay insecurities in everyone outside their connubial circle, their origin story is shot through with loyalty conundrums. The crux of The Thin Man revolves around characters leveraging Nick’s allegiance to an old friend to make Nick and Nora investigate a suspicious death/disappearance, similar to the relationship between Marlowe and Terry Lennox in The Long Goodbye.

Marlowe: You didn’t have much choice, huh? So you used me. Lennox: Hell, that’s what friends are for.

Many noir tales examine murder, corruption, lost love, incest, power, grasping for companionship in sex and booze and partners. Few are so nakedly about friendship, loyalty, and the unique betrayal they set you up for as The Long Goodbye. As the game Lennox and Marlowe play in their first scene tells us, all Marlowe’s relationships are games of liar’s poker he’ll lose. The only question is: sooner, or later?

The film’s opening involves the great Philip Marlowe cajoling his hungry cat to eat first a concoction of cottage cheese and raw egg, then generic cat food. The two mewl, mumble and scratch in their understanding standoff. The film ends with Marlowe coolly justifying shooting his once-friend because Lennox indirectly killed the cat. Everything between is a meditation on loyalty.

As best exemplified in Nick and Nora Charles, noir understands relationships featuring fidelity and comfortable insults are the ones which really matter, so the snarky–sweet caring–codependent way Marlowe and hungry cat banter intentionally evokes true friendship. Altman called that opener important and Marlowe’s relation to his cat commentary on friendship: no matter how hectic his life, Marlowe is concerned the cat eats, whether the cops scare him, if he’s lost in LA’s mean streets.

Like most of his genre, Marlowe is destined to traverse the criminal underworld, continually learning the hard way he’s more loyal to friends, clients, even his constantly stoned neighbours, than they to him. He can’t bring himself to act on his cynicism until he’s burnt, and is a lost soul not because he’s dumb or drugged – he turns down even his neighbours’ hash brownie – but because he can’t find anywhere to put his trust.

Though they harass him and he blusters against their threats and handcuffs, Marlowe’s relationship with the cops is his most stable. He despises their work, they hate and stymie him, but at least he knows where he stands. Everywhere else is shifting sand and empty promises, golden and glittering by daylight, cold and dangerous at night. Under it all play morphing renditions of “The Long Goodbye,” refrains evolving and fading as quickly as relationships, adding atmosphere as Los Angeles underworld characters succour the detective and each other until betrayal becomes convenient.

As he searches for answers in mysteries and others, Marlow smokes to dull the pain – take a shot every time he strikes his match on a new surface, you’ll be drunk before the halfway point. Elliot Gould’s physicality superbly conveys Marlowe’s hurt and insecurity, shambling gait literalising existentially unsure footing.

Altman’s shots and Zsigmond’s cinematography also expose Marlowe’s mental state. The beautiful police station tracking shot puts us in Marlowe’s gumshoes, showing his strain as he attempts to sort through the mountain of information, theories, and grief he’s been buried under. The long dolly across the grounds of the clinic has a similar effect, moving first methodically, then more frenetically as Marlowe’s frustration builds. Exposition of addresses and phone numbers unroll with slow camera movements over long takes, revelling in the acting’s stillness, taking a less usual route than montages to make the viewer feel Marlowe’s tedium and loneliness.

The odyssey is wrapped in perfectly exposed beach scenes, daytime sands yellow-tinged and California to their core, nighttime painted deep blacks and grainy red with Eileen’s dress the only spot of yellow. Doubled imagery and symbols of duplicity abound, the most striking of which involve the beach. First we see Marlowe in the glare off Wades’s window, projected between quarrelling lovers as they snipe at each other. Later, in the same window, Eileen is shown two-faced as she and Marlowe talk while her husband charges suicidally into the inky sea.

The whole film is a gorgeous depiction of our ugliest impulses, and Altman is the perfect director for it. Through various lenses and genres, Altman’s work examines intimacy and pain which can be leveraged by only those closest to us. Noir’s peripheral characters are who many of Altman’s other films center: desperate, impotent men; disloyal lovers; marriages on the verge; frustrated humans performing drastic acts. The Long Goodbye digs into side stories many noirs don’t unless impacting the protagonist directly: Farewell, My Lovely is more concerned with Marlowe’s relationship to the women in his path than the women themselves; American Gigolo hardly contains a conversation Julian Kaye isn’t in; Evelyn’s relationships in Chinatown mostly evolve when Jake is around to observe, and he’s around almost every frame. Some of The Long Goodbye’s more virulent events or breakdowns happen while Marlowe is out of the picture, or listening to nothing but crashing waves.

Altman is interested in examining these stories for their own sake, and shows it by examining side characters with the reflections motif, too. Zsigmond uses Eileen’s windshield brilliantly to reflect her facade as Marlowe chases her through the streets. The stoned hippy neighbours are introduced surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, one dancing with herself in the mirrored glass. The gate-guard-slash-impression-artist is reflected in Harry’s shiny car sidepanels, a symbol of security who pretends to be many other people, then shows himself more trustworthy than people pretending to be someone they’re not.

The guard also displays The Long Goodbye’s wicked sense of humour, along with the horny lookout whose ogling of stoned half-naked neighbour women allows Marlowe to sneak away. There’s the slapstick of Harry swinging haplessly on the gate trying clamber over as he imagines a detective should. Marlowe plants a sloppy handprint on the interrogation cell two-way mirror, then paints his face with fingerprint ink, cops impotent to stop his clowning. The guard dog fetching her owner’s stick from the waves has a twisted hilarity to it.

Which brings us, as the film continually does, back to loyalty. Relationships with animals are throughout: besides his cat, Marlowe nervously banters with the guard dog and talks as cheerfully as a damned man can to strays lying in the road. Ultimately animals’ loyalty – even only to the hand that feeds and then betrays them, pictured perfectly with mounted ducks – is still stronger than that of everyone else in his life, and loyalty is important to him.

If only I’d recognised earlier how much my identifying with pulp heroes was due to my own sense of loyalty, deservedness of recipients be damned. “Their cynicism exactly stems from their compassion, [their] hardness is a scar tissue of a heart they can’t stop the world from breaking over and over.” I weirdly admired Marlowe hoping against hope, believing those he loves once, then again. You know what they say about fools.

Marlowe: Nobody cares but me. Lennox: Well that’s you, Marlowe. You’ll never learn, you’re a born loser.

The Long Goodbye is Chandler’s most personal work. “You writers have your own special way of describing, don’t you?” is the movie acknowledging this sure as Chandler’s book commented on his deep insecurities, ideals, and philosophies. (The film references the book many times, including the face-bandaged man as a nod to Book Terry’s extensive plastic surgery.) Roger Ebert said in his original review, “The private eye as a fiction device was essentially a way to open doors; the best novels of Chandler and the others are simply hooks for a cynical morality.” Like Inherent Vice, the criminal underworld is alluring backdrop and murder the smaller mystery behind the real question of whether the detective can uphold his personal code in a world where ‘a man is only as good as his word’ simply means most men are no good. The real question, the crux and heart of the matter, is Will they keep clinging to that code? Why do we keep falling for those who throw us over?

The thing about franchised noir detectives is, as characters or story properties, they can’t fundamentally change. They solve mysteries, their settings are updated from 50s to 70s to aughts to 2019, they jadedly swear they’ll never trust again, they may seem to learn their lesson. But in the end the stories reset. Sure as sunset and the next story, they get let down, used, double-crossed, stung, only to begin again when the next sultry shadow darkens their door. Once again they give their loyalties to a friend in need, a dame with legs up to there. Once again the dames and mates evaporate; or worse, explicitly sell our fallible hero upriver, relying on said hero’s tragically loyal personal code to prevent retaliation.

We’ve all had those dames and mates. We’ve all sworn to never love again, only to willingly set ourselves up for more heartbreak. People who mean what they say only so long as they feel like it. Family who love you so long as you’re meekly in line. Dames who say “I love you” in the night and “I’m leaving you” in the morning. Business partners who call you family until it’s more expedient not to be. Friends who say forever but mean for as long as you’re fun, and you’re no fun when you’re stumbling through a haze of pain or grief. Homme fatales who sell you out when a better offer comes in. Lovers who are loyal while you do exactly what they want.

In the first of two crucial scenes which start placidly before exploding into brutal violence, thug Marty gives a speech to/about his girlfriend Joanne. “Delicate and sweet . . . I love you. I do. . . . The single most important person in my life.” Ah, love, the highest form of loyalty.

Then he hits her across the face with a glass bottle.

Do we feel sorry for her? is the same question Tarantino asks in Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood when Brad Pitt’s Cliff smashes sadistic Sadie’s face with a can of dog food. The blow to Joanne’s face is lighter and unprovoked, but though her crimes are lighter, her madonna-like framing is window dressing. She blithely enjoys fruits of Marty’s torture, murder, and extortion, knowing her flippery is bought with blood money. (Her blow’s aftereffects are visually replicated by Jake’s bandages in Chinatown – directed by Polanski, who is depicted in Once Upon A Time, making these films a Möbius strip of themes, imagery, period, and settings.)

In different ways, Joanne and Sadie establish The Long Goodbye and Once Upon a Time‘s cruel worlds, where psychopaths and rich ruthless men get their way. Both center men with drinking and smoking habits, a dubious past, and a personal moral code. Marlowe and Cliff fight against the establishment, for themselves and their friends. Though they don’t believe in innocence, they want to believe people exist whose souls at least aren’t as dark as the rest of ours. Within their morality is loyalty; Cliff to Rick Dalton, Marlowe to Terry or at least the idea of him: “Terry Lenox was my friend you motherfucker . . . you don’t deserve to be alive you fuckin’ pig.” Rick and Terry don’t return the loyalty, yet Cliff and Marlowe can’t help themselves. It’s their code.

The Long Goodbye ending Ebert calls “off the wall” I see as wish fulfilment, same as Once’s. In the film Terry gets justice delivered by Marlowe, Bracket’s screenplay ‘fixing’ the book’s injustice. Altman revels in this playground where disloyalty equals death and real world consequences are momentarily suspended for a warped fairy tale ending.

The final shot is reminiscent of Holly Martins waiting on a tree-lined boulevard in The Third Man, another film featuring a man unendingly loyal to a death-faking friend who didn’t deserve such fidelity. The Long Goodbye’s last shot brings yellow in again, reminding us of Eileen’s dress, the faded sun on the beach, letters and pledges of friendship aged and brittled by time. Only here, Marlowe’s the one walking away, getting as happy an ending as one can hope for in noir.

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Lennox blindsided Marlowe, then called him a fool for expecting others to do what he would in keeping his word. Pulp detectives are thrown under the bus or off a cliff with the shrugged excuse along the lines of “I knew you were tough enough to survive” or “sorry, you were just collateral damage.” Given enough time, “I threw you under the bus to save myself” becomes “It was the best option for both of us” becomes “you survived and are better for learning this lesson, you should be thanking me!” This essay draws parallels to Marlowe and Veronica Mars’ getting run over because of their clinging to loyalty, “an anchor that binds.”

But every detective also has their breaking point, the point at which they say the rules have been violated enough to justify them taking matters into their own hands. 

Marlowe: I have two friends in the world. One is a cat. The other is a murderer.

Is loyalty its own reward? Chandler’s book seems to argue it is, but Marlowe shooting his once-friend in the film argues something else. Grown and free of the romanticised prism Younger Me viewed Marlowe through, do I believe Chandler’s ending or Brackett’s?

The teenager who first read Chandler’s book would choose idealism: be true to your code, give your loyalty, those who turn on you will get what they deserve while you can keep the moral high ground. Even with grim answers in front of me, maybe I’d make like Marlowe, clinging stubbornly to loyalty disavowed by its recipient, or keeping myself preoccupied searching for answers and other mysteries.

While I want to hold to those ideals still, what are movies for if not to show us what we really want, wish-fulfilling our basest instincts? Watching now, I can’t help but savour that moment Marlowe tosses his cigarette, reaches into his waistband, and coolly shoots the man who treated his loyalty as commodity.

For #Noirvember, I wrote about the concept of loyalty in noir in general, and "The Long Goodbye" in particular. My upbringing was starkly black and white, everything strictly categorised as sin and acceptable, allowed and not.

Hey I saw you do prompts with Niles and C.C. Could you maybe write something with Niles becoming famous suddenly and C.C needing to save him from all the media. Before they got together even? I would love to see something like that.

It had been a very productive morning at the theatre, C.C. thought to herself as the limo took her back to the Sheffield mansion. The set was finally up and running, the dancers weren’t half as terrible as they had been the week before (who said yelling never got anyone anywhere?), and not one person who worked backstage had tried to argue over their contracts or working hours for once. Everything was on course for the next Sheffield-Babcock production to take place, she’d managed to score a clean cup of coffee before she’d left the mansion that morning (no interference from a certain annoyance), and the weather was good and the traffic light.Everything seemed to be coming up C.C., that was for sure.That statement had never been more true than when the limo turned a corner, and from the window she suddenly spotted a huge crowd of reporters chasing somebody down the street. Well, that wasn’t so unusual in New York. Even she had been chased, once or twice. Ignoring the little British voice in her head which told her the people chasing her had been carrying pitchforks and flaming torches, she craned her neck a little to see if she could catch a glimpse of the unfortunate individual who was the subject of all that attention.She almost laughed out loud to herself when she saw the butler, surrounded by reporters threatening to encircle him. Oh, this was priceless! She wished she had her camera with her so that she could ask the driver to slow down and she could get a couple of shots. But she didn’t, and the limo had just hit its first line of traffic for the morning. Niles seemed to be running down the avenue the limo was taking anyway, no doubt scurrying for the safety of the mansion, so she could at least watch for a while longer until she got bored.It was funny, seeing him in such a position. And it was all down to one magazine interview that was supposed to cover Maxwell. When the reporter got to the mansion, he’d apparently talked to the butler as much as the producer, and had even written a small feature which he’d shown to his editor. That small feature had turned into a large feature, and then into a joined television interview with him and Maxwell, and had only escalated from there.Niles had quickly grown uncomfortable with all of it, though. The poor man would never last in show business.C.C. frowned to herself. Seeing him batting away the more intrusive cameras and reporters’ Dictaphones wasn’t proving nearly as much fun as she thought it would be, and she actually began wondering how long the butler had been running from them. He looked almost exhausted and more than a little upset; he’d either gone out to get something and dropped it on the way to try and make a run for it, or he’d tried to leave the mansion, got a little way away, been recognised and had tried to turn back. Maybe she should do something. She was heading to the mansion anyway, and if intervening meant that she could hold this over him for a while, then she was going to play that angle up for all it was worth.As soon as the limo was able to move a few feet ahead of where Niles was running to, C.C. called for the driver to stop, and she threw open the door just as the butler stopped running to yell at the reporters to leave him be.“Get in!” she shouted.Confusion crossed his face for a split second as he took in the sight of her, sliding across to make room for him on the seat and gesturing wildly for him to hurry up. Obviously having no other choice, he practically threw himself into the limo and slammed the door behind him. C.C. then ordered the driver to step on it, and the vehicle snaked its way back into the road, away from the crowd now gathered helplessly on the side of the street. Niles took a minute to catch his breath back, “You…saved me…why?”C.C. shrugged, and folded her arms, “You looked like you needed it.”The butler let out one final deep breath, actually managing to speak in full sentences without stopping, “I had everything under control. Another block or two, and they would have paid attention to me telling them to leave me alone.”“Another block or two, and you would have collapsed,” the producer retorted, rolling her eyes. Couldn’t the man just thank her for once? She wasn’t asking for much, and she rarely asked him to be grateful for anything that she did. “And if everything was under control, then why did you heave your old carcass in here like your life depended on it?”Silence as the butler thought, his mouth twitching with a sentence he hadn’t quite formed in either his brain or on his lips. She smirked in return.“I believe the correct thing to say right now would be “Thank you, Miss Babcock”.”Niles sighed, clearly defeated, “You’re right. I would have been done for by those vultures out there if you hadn’t come along. I suppose I should thank you.”Something in the producer softened at the way he said those words, and her smirk faded, until it was just a slight smile. Somehow, neither watching him run all the way that she had, or holding it over him for whatever reason she wanted seemed that amusing anymore. She’d probably still try, but she doubted she’d feel good about it, so it wouldn’t last.She reached out, and gave him a reassuring pat on the arm.“Any time, Butler Boy.”

Mutant X [TV] (2001-2004)

S01E13 “Blood Ties”

[spoilers]

Sci-fi/action

Tom McCamus plays a main role in season 1

Jesse and Brennan have been to a nightclub and Jesse wants to go home, and Brennan wants to walk a girl he met to her car. Guess she was the designated driver then? It seems Jesse wasn’t drinking either because he heads to the (oddly deserted) parking lot. Maybe this is some sort of Canadian/American cultural thing, but going clubbing without drinking isn’t much of a thing where I live. Even more bizarrely, a man starts following him, a man who turns out to be his Dad. Is it just me or is it a bit abnormal for your estranged father to track you down at night in a parking lot next to a club? What? Happens all the time? Oh okay.

Jesse’s dad, Noah (Art Hindle) is on the run from a company called Nexogen. Who just so happen to be chasing him when he’s following his son. A woman recognises Jesse as a New Mutant, so it’s obvious straight away that they have links to Genomex. If it wasn’t obvious enough with the company name being almost the same but the other way around.

Emma and Jesse discuss his dad’s reappearance over hot chocolate. Of course Adam knows the company and says they are concerned with the genetic replication of protoplasm. Which is really a rather old fashioned term for a cell. Jesse explains this as cloning, and Adam agrees with him. But in reality all living things naturally replicate cells using their genes. I believe what he meant was the genetic replication of organisms.

Everyone seems to know about the accident at one of Nexogen’s sites that happened a year ago. Jesse suggests his dad might be investigating. Investigating an accident that happened a year ago? Really, Jesse?

At Genomex, yet another overeager recruit is hoping to step into what must by now be extremely worn out dead men’s shoes. This time it is Calvin Porter (Derwin Jordan) who very helpfully gives a brief summary of his super human powers of hearing. It’s interesting that he describes his powers as difficult to cope with until Genomex created special headphones to help him filter sounds. Present day Genomex isn’t quite as evil as Adam and Mutant X make it out to be. It has improved the life of this New Mutant at least.

But Mason is very rude to him and tells him he shouldn’t speak to him directly. We see him give chances to other people and be quite nice to them. I prefer the theory that he is mentally unstable over that of mere poor writing. Calvin hears that Nicole Carter is demanding to see Mason and passes on the message. Apparently she is giving his assistant hell. We never see that he has a PA, or hear him speak to them, and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere off-screen they could be hiding.

But anyway Nicole is waiting for him. Nicole is played by Chick Reid who is Tom’s McCamus’s wife, she also appears alongside him in Booky’s Crush and also in this year’s production of The Madness of George III. Nicole, (who interesting to note is dressed very similarly to her off-screen husband) says that information about the Martez incident has been leaked. Mason isn’t particularly interested or sympathetic, but agrees to help when she tells him that a computer disc implicating Genomex in the incident has been stolen. We learn Nexogen is Genomex’s competitor. This seems a little odd as it is said that Genomex is really a branch of the government. Perhaps it is simply the government’s preferred contractor? Who the government have to keep pouring money into because of the horrendous problems New Mutants are causing. Mason calls on Porter to get the disc back, offering him a promotion in return. Sadly, the way Mason makes employees jump through hoops for promotions is really rather realistic.

The show does suffer from a terrible case of “tell, don’t show” at times. Shalimar mentions a picture she saw of him and his dad at a martial arts tournament in his room. That scene would have seemed a lot less forced if maybe they had Jesse looking at the picture being sad.

Brennan discovers that Noah is the Security Chief at Nexogen, and the woman who was after him is Nicole Carter, Director of Operations at the same place. Mutant X seems to exist in some kind of bizarre universe where senior management take a hands on approach. Adam is pretty sure Genomex was connected to the incident.

Suddenly Jesse gets a phone call from his Dad. This is a bit odd. He clearly hasn’t seen his father for years and we don’t see them exchange numbers when they meet. These days it could be explained by them both keeping the same cell phone number for years, but at the time of the show cell phones had not been widely used for long. Jesse agrees to slip out alone to meet him. But Porter hears the conversation with his super hearing, which doesn’t seem to have any limits. He wears special headphones which help him to filter out background noise and zoom in on conversations he wants to hear. There must be some sort of psionic aspect to his power that helps him to focus in on certain people or conversation topics. I love the camera angle and the yellow sky in this scene.

Adam has a plan to send Shalimar and Emma to Nexogen. Both girls have curly/crimped hair now. I think hair and makeup departments think they can suddenly change everyone’s style and no-one will notice. Like the season of Lost where all the girls suddenly had bangs. Adam has created yet another evil device that he uses to alter Emma’s thumb print so they can gain access to the building. He doesn’t tell her what he is going to do and it obviously hurts her. He offers no explanation for his device. There are multiple ways of changing one’s fingerprints: burning, surgery, or if TV is to be believed, gluing on fake latex fingerprints. Adam does the same to Shalimar, and it obviously hurts her too. Removing or changing fingerprints is possible, but none of the methods are pleasant.

Jesse goes to meet his Dad, but then the GSA show up. Noah pulls a sneaky trick and hides in his son’s car while speaking to him on the phone. All because of the classic nobody ever locks their car trope. He takes his dad to the safe house and he tells Jesse what he has been doing. The Martez incident comes up again, but we learn nothing new. New Mutants were involved. There’s a secret disc.

Shalimar and Emma are undercover in businesswoman disguises. Emma has gone for the “classic” unbuttoned shirt with tie look, while Shalimar has opted for long coat instead of a top. Adam must have created new records within Nexogen’s system because their photos appear when they scan their thumbprints. So what on earth was he doing with that painful machine? It certainly should not have hurt to take scans of fingerprints. Nicole appears to see the system struggle to find Emma’s thumbprint. Why she would take an interest in a blip in the security system, who knows.

Porter does what is seemingly required of every aspiring GSA second in command, makes a pointless report to Mason.

Noah’s reveals that he knows all about Mutant X and his son’s part in it. But then after Jesse leaves he makes a phone call to Nexogen asking for money for the disc.

Emma pretends to be Nicole and gives orders to some guards. She is clearly unaware that an Operations Director is unlikely to be directly responsible for giving orders to security staff, but luckily they are unaware of this also. And at this point are we really surprised that Emma’s powers are again off track from telempathy?

It is actually surprising that Nexogen was involved in such a public scandal when security measures are high, much higher than at Genomex where it appears possible to just wander in. In a ridiculous show of overkill, the computers they need to access are behind a security locked door with two guards and now a (obviously very visible) laser grid. Haven’t they heard of actual cybersecurity? Passwords, even? Adam easily bypasses this security measure.

The real Nicole is actually ordering security staff around, so perhaps she has been left in charge of security. But even though their Security Chief has gone rogue, one would think he’d have a second in command who could take over.

The Mutant X girls do some generic button pressing computer cracking type activities. Emma slots what looks like a Zip disc into a wall (those were like floppy discs but physically bigger and with bigger capacity). The girls are stopped on their way out. Emma could have quietly used her telempathy on the guards, but they decide to fight them. Brennan shows up to help and brings the Double Helix to take them home.

Noah finally cuts a deal with Nicole, but then Porter busts in with some GS Agents to get the disc from him. Back at Sanctuary, Adam knows all about Noah’s plans for blackmail, but Jesse won’t listen to him.

Noah has been taken back to Genomex and Mason questions him. We finally find out what happened at Martez. Apparently Genomex had Nexogen carry out experiments on their behalf (why? Couldn’t they do enough on their own?) Apparently the subjects’ genes replicated out of control (like cancer?) and their bodies exploded (no, cancer does not work like that).

Jesse calls his dad and asks him about the blackmail. Noah convinces him to leave the disc for him. But he has secretly struck a deal with Mason. Who unbeknownst to him plans to have him killed rather than part with the money.

It so appears that the disc Noah slipped into his son’s pocket was for real a Zip disc. Did he really not notice such a big disc? I was imagining a tiny USB disc but this was 2001. The other members of Mutant X attempt to convince him otherwise, but Jesse goes to meet his father and his accompanying GS Agents. Brennan shows up and they fight off the GS Agents. Then Jesse destroys the disc with his massing out power. Instead of, maybe looking at the disc to see if there is anything useful on there. Nah, it’s better to make a point.

Nicole confronts Mason because she can’t access her own facility. Mason tells her he has convinced the federal government to let him take over Nexogen. Apparently the government gets involved in the affairs of private companies? I don’t know enough about US law to know if that’s ridiculous or not. So Nicole finds herself unemployed. But Mason kindly draws her attention to the vacancies on the Genomex website. Porter has been put in stasis, and we actually see him in a pod. I find the way people in stasis look vacant and sort of wobble around even more freakish than if they were perfectly still. If Mutant X was current, there would definitely be memes like: in stasis, still can’t get a damn night’s sleep.

Shalimar steps out of her room and goes to speak to Jesse. It bothers me that their bedroom doors are like sliding wardrobe doors. And yes there is the zen like Japanese theme to Sanctuary, but traditional paper walls don’t have holes in them and actually offer some privacy.