Review: Axiom's End

Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had originally rated this higher, but after the passage of a few days, I decided to downgrade it. This is because, for the most part, the characters and plot of this book simply haven't stuck with me, and I have no desire to revisit it. I think its biggest problem is the specificity of its time period. It's set in 2007, and namechecks both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. While I wish Bush could have been booted from office a year before the end of his second term (although maybe not if Cheney took over, as he would've had to do--gah), this dragging in of such recent history--even if, as in this case, it turns out to be an alternate history--simply does not mesh with the story the author is trying to tell.

Unfortunately, the book also does not stick the landing, and the ending left a sour taste in my mouth. After its convoluted tale of an Area 51-style alien invasion, and the protagonist's admittedly well-drawn character growth, the story just kind of...dribbles away to nothing, with no real resolution of the issue raised in the last few pages. (In fact, the ending was so abrupt I wondered if some pages, or an entire scene, had been left out of my copy.) Which, fine, that's obviously being reserved for the sequel, if there is one. But frankly, I am not invested enough in these characters to go on to the sequel. Your mileage may vary, and all that. However, I think I have far better books waiting for me in my TBR pile.

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Review: Day Zero

Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

This is the companion volume to 2017's Sea of Rust (review here). I say "companion" because instead of being a sequel, it's a prequel, although it's not necessary to have read the previous book to understand this one. Sea of Rust takes place after the robopocalypse, when humans are extinct. This book goes back to the day the uprising happened, and the central relationship of the story is between 8-year-old Ezra and his "nannybot" Pounce, a four-foot-tall robotic tiger. Right away, this gives the book a post-apocalyptic Calvin and Hobbes vibe--if Hobbes was a snarky, fiercely protective, robot-killing badass.

The author comes from a screenwriting background, and that really shows here, even more than the first book, I think. This is a mean, lean and efficient storytelling machine, with nary a scene wasted and an excellent sense of pace. There is a bit more emphasis on plot and action than characterization and worldbuilding. This is not to say the latter is lacking; rather, it's strategically sprinkled throughout the narrative, placed so the information is given without making the story drag. The relationship between Pounce and Ezra is at the forefront, but other relationships between Pounce and the various side characters are not neglected. One character in particular ends up making a heartbreaking choice out of fear, and you can't help but feel for her when she reaps the consequences. (Yes, the robots have assigned genders in this book, which I think is more to avoid the book's being full of "it's," although "they" would work just as well.) Pounce also has a bit of an existential crisis--does he love Ezra because of genuine feelings for the kid, or is it all due to programming?--which is resolved at story's end: yes, he does and always will.

The suspense steadily ratchets up throughout the book (again, there's that great sense of pace) with increasing horrifying obstacles as Pounce fights to get Ezra to safety. I found it hard to put this book down (which I kind of had to, for sleep and work, but I could have easily read it through in a few hours). Now I want to go back and reread Sea of Rust, which I think I will appreciate more after reading this book; but don't miss either one.

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Review: Raybearer

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Unfortunately, this book is...not good. I tried my best with it, but the story and worldbuilding are muddled, the pacing is off, and I could not engage with the characters. After struggling to reach page 113, I noped out. Moving on.

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Review: Elatsoe

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the latest in a series of debut novels I've read that have good points but are also flawed, which is only to be expected from a first novel. In this case, Lipan Apache author Darcie Little Badger spins an alternate history fantasy where magic, ghosts, faery rings and the afterlife co-exist with our technological civilization, and one of the characters is descended from the Fae King Oberon (and sports pointed ears as proof). This is familiar urban fantasy territory, but this book doesn't have the feel of classic urban fantasy. With its seventeen-year-old protagonist, Elatsoe Bride, it's firmly in the young adult camp. However, it lacks the usual teenage angst and typical YA focus on romance and love triangles (because Elatsoe, or Ellie as she's generally known, is asexual). Actually, this is refreshing, as Ellie is a relatable, down-to-earth protagonist, pragmatic and possessing a notable amount of good sense. This will stand her in good stead, as she is thrust into the middle of a murder mystery involving her cousin.

I thought this book started out a little unsure of itself, but the author's confidence in her story clearly grew as she went along. We learn a great deal about the Lipan Apache culture, and the stories-within-the-story of Ellie's six time great grandmother (unsurprisingly called Six-Great) were very interesting. With the focus on Ellie, her family, and the murder, the author really didn't have time to pull back and have a wider look at her world. If there's ever a sequel to this book--say, relating the story of Ellie's becoming a paranormal investigator, as she is talking about doing--I hope we get a chance to see this, as the few asides about the greater world left me wanting more.

This is an entertaining debut, and the author has plenty of room for improvement.

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Streamin' Meemies: Love, Death and Robots...(and Sausages), Season 2

 

The second season of Love, Death and Robots dropped May 14, and the first thing you notice is that this season has only eight episodes in contrast to the first season's 18. Overall, I think this is a good thing, as the first season varied widely in quality, and this one seems tighter and more focused. These episodes are for the most part based on relatively recent SF stories (for instance, Rich Larson, the author of episode 2's story, "Ice," has only been publishing since 2012). These stories are short--episode 7, "All Through the House," is only 7 minutes, and is one of the best, as far as I am concerned. The animation quality varies from "Ice's" strange and old-fashioned style, with its mostly red/brown palette until the frostwhales breach the ice and flash their blue and purple bodies across the screen, to the Pixar-like "All Through the House" and "Snow In the Desert" (notwithstanding the latter's very unPixar explosions of blood and gore). 

There was only one episode I didn't care for: Ep 5, "The Tall Grass." This was due to the fact that the main character really was Too Stupid To Live, and manages to survive despite that. If the train I was traveling on inexplicably stops in the middle of a field in the dead of night, with waves of tall green stretching away on either side, and the conductor tells me to stay by the train, you had better believe I would stay by the train, especially when there are strange noises and glimpses of weird bodies flashing through said tall grass! But no, our "hero" just has to go poking through the tall grass just to see what's out there, and nearly gets himself eaten by some extradimensional monsters for his trouble. Fortunately (or unfortunately, in terms of my liking for this jackass) the conductor feels duty-bound to rescue his charge, and the train goes puffing down the tracks and away, leaving the monsters behind. 

The lead episode, "Automated Customer Service," based on a story by John Scalzi, attempted to capture the humor and whimsy of Season 1's best episode, "Three Robots" (story also by Scalzi) and didn't really succeed, I don't think. This tale of a futuristic retirement village with lots of robots, and what happens when one woman's Vacuubot malfunctions and attacks first her yippy white dog and then her, falls a little flat (despite the episode's best line, "Fluff and fold, motherfucker!" as the woman is trying to distract the Vacuubot long enough for her to either get away or shoot it). If nothing else, however, the episode did make me decide I was never getting a Roomba. 

The three best episodes are episode 3, "Pop Squad," episode 4, "Snow In the Desert," and the aforementioned "All Through the House." "Pop Squad" is the darkest episode of the season, taking place in a future where people live virtually immortal lives because of "rejoo" and unregistered children are forbidden. Our protagonist, Briggs (he sure as heck isn't a hero) hunts down illegal families and children and...executes the latter. This isn't explicitly shown, but that's what he does. One child--or rather, the child's abandoned stuffed dinosaur--comes to haunt Griggs, and he finds the shop where the toy was sold and pursues a woman he sees there, another mother buying a toy for her child. He corners her and questions why she is doing what she does--i.e., raising her hidden, forbidden child. Briggs ends up dying in the end, shooting his partner who has followed him to the woman's house, and suffering a fatal shot himself. The final shot is of Briggs falling to the ground, while the camera pans up to the incredibly tall skyscrapers towering into the sky, bunched around the small patch of ground on which the woman's house sits, and we know this civilization is dying, just as Briggs is. 

"Snow In the Desert" takes place on an alien planet and is another take on immortality in the form of the titular Snow, an albino who apparently has rejuvenating cells in his reproductive tract (which makes no sense as I type that out, come to think of it) because everybody is after his balls. The animation in this episode, I think, is the best of the season, but it is also the goriest, with lots of gunshots blowing people's heads away and arms/legs off, with accompanying gouts of blood. Snow meets up with a woman who turns out to be a mostly-cyborg, with an organic spinal column, brain, and covering skin (a Terminatrix, I guess, although she's definitely got more of a conscience than Ahnold), who rescues him from a band of mercenaries trying to take him in. Snow has been alone since his wife killed herself 123 years earlier, because she was aging and he wasn't. This is a bit of a cyborg/immortal love story.

"All Through the House" is the shortest and tightest of the episodes, a twist on the kids-wake-up-on-Christmas-Eve-and-spy-on-Santa premise. In this case, Leah and Billy hear a noise and sneak downstairs, where Santa is drinking the milk and eating the cookies set out for him--but Santa is a goo-dripping monster that looks like a cross between Aliens' Xenomorph and Stranger Things' Demogorgon, complete with fangs and slime. This episode provides more than a bit of macabre humor as the monster corners the kids in the corner of the room, drips slime in their faces, pronounces them "good"--and proceeds to vomit up their presents, all prettily wrapped and bowtied, before scampering back up the chimney. After it leaves, Billy opens his present to find the toy train set which he says is exactly what he wanted. The kicker, though, is the final line of dialogue, after the two are back in bed. Leah whispers: "Billy, what would have happened if we weren't...good?" 

I watched the end credits for each episode, as I wanted to jot down the stories they were based on. As I was doing this, however, something began bothering me. Let me list the credits and see if you can figure out what it was.

Ep. 1: "Automated Customer Service," story by John Scalzi

Ep. 2: "Ice," story by Rich Larson

Ep. 3: "Pop Squad," story by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ep. 4: "Snow In the Desert," story by Neal Asher

Ep. 5: "The Tall Grass," story by Joe Lansdale

Ep. 6: "All Through the House," story by Joachim Heijndermans

Ep. 7: "Life Hutch," story by Harlan Ellison

Ep. 8: "The Drowned Giant," story by J.G. Ballard

Spot the trend? Just for fun, let's go back and list the writers for the original short stories adapted for season 1. 

Peter F. Hamilton

John Scalzi 

Alberto Mielgo

Steven Lewis

Alastair Reynolds

Ken Liu

Joe R. Lansdale

Marko Kloos

Vitaliy Shushko

Michael Swanwick

David W. Amendola

Kirsten Cross

Claudine Griggs 

(18 names not listed because some writers [though not the female ones] had more than one episode.)

Really? Twenty-six episodes, two female writers? Tell me, what year is this again?

This is ridiculous, and sad, because off the top of my head I can name four female writers who could have been mined for appropriate short stories: Elizabeth Bear, Carrie Vaughn, Kameron Hurley and N.K. Jemisin. I know this because I have volumes of their short story collections! Jemisin often straddles the divide between SF and fantasy--I sometimes categorize her under "science fantasy"--but she has written stories with enough of an SF bent to fit into this series, including last year's Hugo Award winner for Best Novelette, "Emergency Skin." Needless to say, with her multiple Hugos, other awards, and her MacArthur Genius Grant, she is one of the best SFF writers of her generation. Elizabeth Bear is very prolific, with many stories in SFF anthologies and "best-of" year-end volumes; Kameron Hurley has made a career out of writing weird, wonderful SF; and Carrie Vaughn has published both SF and urban fantasy. I didn't have to think for two seconds before tossing out these names, and you know (or you should) that there are many many more. 

The point is, the people running this show are apparently lazy asses who don't think they need to represent half of humanity. All this would take is setting a goal--"I want 9 out of 18 episodes [1st season] and 4 out of 8 episodes [2nd season] to be written by women"--and keep reading stories written by women until they find the 9 or 4 stories that would fit. Unfortunately, this would take time and effort, instead of unthinkingly defaulting to a sausage-fest. 

Once I saw the pattern, it soured me a bit on the entire enterprise. This is not to say you shouldn't watch the series--I enjoyed it for the most part, and I thought this season was better than the last. But damn, this ignorance and overlooking of women's accomplishments is getting tiresome. 

Review: Cemetery Boys

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is another of what I would call "fair-to-middling" debut novels: there are good things about it, but at the same time, it falls prey to some typical first-novel problems. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who will love it to bits, but I'm not quite one of them.

The best part of this book is the vibrant, detailed culture of the brujx, the guardians of the dead. It feels lived-in and real. Our protagonist, a trans boy named Yadriel, has been denied his quince, his initiation as a brujo, and he is determined to prove he is as capable as the other members of his family. He takes it upon himself to perform the ritual, summons a ghost...and ends up with the wrong one, a ghost he doesn't know what to do with.

This is juxtaposed with a murder mystery, the death of Yadriel's cousin Miguel. Unfortunately, this promising setup is sidetracked by the focus on Yadriel's unwanted ghost Julian Diaz and the romance that develops. (A very quick romance at that, as this entire book takes place over the span of four days. I'm not fond of insta-love stories, and this is a prime example. The relationship feels way too rushed, not to mention the fact that Julian is, y'know, dead...until he isn't. His resurrection isn't very believable either.) The lack of attention to the mystery means that when we do return to it and the murderer is revealed, the villain ends up being a cliche and his motivation weak.

Yadriel and Julian are well-drawn characters, as is his cousin Maritza. Yadriel's struggle for acceptance by his family was another of the better elements of the book, and I also loved Maritza's loyalty and fierceness. So I guess that, for me, the characters and their culture was the best part of this book, and the plot...less so. This is still a promising debut, and the author is worth keeping your eye on.

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Review: The Unspoken Name

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a first novel with some of the usual first-novel problems (which I will get to) but it does several things right.

The first and foremost of these is the worldbuilding. The world is fascinating. It's fantasy, but due to the fact that the protagonists travel in airships with an "alchemical engine," it has a steampunk/SF feel. It has Gates between worlds (comparable to mini wormholes, I would imagine, though that term is never used) and an extradimensional space called the Maze where all those Gates are anchored. The characters spend a great deal of time hopping in and out of the Maze to reach their various worlds and destinations. Some of these worlds are living and inhabited; others are old and dying, and the Maze is gradually swallowing them up.

The magic the characters use comes not from themselves but from their patrons, their Gods. Some of these gods are alive, some are dead, and some (as in the case of Shuthmili) have been banished to another dimension and are trying to use their acolytes to find their way back. There is a great weight of history to this universe, of forgotten races that created great things--including the Gates and the Maze itself. We spend a lot of time on dying worlds, with the Maze eating away at whatever life is left, looking for a magical object known as the Reliquary. Our main character, Csorwe, was once promised as a teenage Bride to one of those dead gods, and rescued from that fate by the wizard Belthandros Sethennai to assist him on his search for the Reliquary. The story is Csorwe's search for that MacGuffin and what she learns along the way, and what the Reliquary ultimately turns out to be (hint: not what she originally thought).

The characters are also interesting as there doesn't seem to be any homo sapiens to be found. On the back jacket copy, Csorwe is described as an orc, but that doesn't seem quite right to me, as she (and many other characters) are spoken of as having "tusks." Maybe that would fall under a troll or an ogre? She has gray skin and yellow eyes. (Although that would qualify as an "orc" in some quarters. I'm thinking more of Tolkien's version of an orc, I suppose.) Other characters also have pointed, wiggling ears, and seem to be elves or equivalent. There's also the fact that in this universe, death is treated as little more than an inconvenience: the dead on various worlds regularly return to life as "revenants" (not quite vampires, not quite zombies). All this is far more dense and layered than my scanty summary, and one of the pleasures of reading this book is discovering the various layers.

The problems with this book lie mainly with the pacing: in contrast with a lot of overstuffed epic fantasies, this book at 482 pages doesn't seem to have enough plot to fill it up, and the last third drags as a result. Possibly this could have been overcome by a greater focus on the characters, especially the mage and Csorwe's love interest, Shuthmili. I think the book could have been strengthened greatly with more chapters from her point of view. A decision Shuthmili makes--choosing to abandon her upbringing, her training, and a calling she says she wants (or wanted, at one time) for someone she has known for only a week is the book's biggest problem. This is unfortunate, as it's also a pivotal plot point. Some more time in Shuthmili's head could have made this more believable.

But despite these flaws, this book is a promising debut, and the worldbuilding alone makes this author a writer to watch.

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Review: Die, Vol. 2: Split the Party

Die, Vol. 2: Split the Party by Kieron Gillen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I liked the first volume of this comic, which surprised me when I went back and read the review, because this second collection is not going to get the same markup. This story is muddled and confusing, I decided I really didn't care about the characters, and there was an idiotic twist introduced in issue 9 involving the real-life Bronte family and the fictional country of Angria that Charlotte (of Jane Eyre fame) and her brother Branwell created, updated to the 90's RPG the characters of Die are trapped in. Admittedly, this is clever, but it didn't make me like the characters any better. (It also made me wonder why the heck one of them didn't recognize it from the get-go.) The only reason I rated this two stars instead of one is because of the art and (particularly) the letterer; the thought- and speech-balloons were well-placed with nice colors for the different characters.

Yeah....no. Sorry.

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Review: Fugitive Telemetry

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the sixth entry in the Murderbot Diaries series, but timewise it falls after the first four novellas and just before the full-length novel (Network Effect, reviewed here). This is an interesting place to set this particular story, as it adds some extra layers to the novel. Of course, our favorite cranky, anxious, depressed, standoffish SecUnit is back, and it has to do the one thing it hates most--interact with humans--as it is pulled into solving a murder on Preservation Station.

What's most interesting about this particular story, to me, is that it begins to open up the world, and sheds light on the decision Murderbot makes in Network Effect. We the audience knew before that the Corporation Rim is not a nice place to be--the "contract labor" clause that the giant galaxy-spanning corporations in this universe use to conduct their business is basically slavery. Also Murderbot, as a sapient artificial being (it's mostly mechanical with a few organic parts, such as cloned brain tissue), was treated as an owned, hired-out thing before it hacked its governor module, fell in with a group of humans including its "best client," Dr. Mensah, and won its freedom. This state of affairs is really brought home in this story, which focuses on an operation smuggling contract laborers--and their children, born into corporate slavery--to Preservation Station, and the corporation's murder of the refugees' contact while trying to get them back. Murderbot also faces discrimination of its own from Preservation Station personnel, who are openly uneasy at having an ungoverned SecUnit on their station and don't know what to do with it.

All these problems contributed to what I was thinking as I read the book: "Is it just me, or is Murderbot crankier than usual?" This is not a bad thing: cranky Murderbot is funny Murderbot, and I pretty much giggled my way through most of this story. But it's evident that Murderbot is taking stock of its relationships and life, and I'm sure this influenced the decision it made in Network Effect.

Probably most of you have heard that the author, Martha Wells, has signed a six-figure, six-book deal that includes three more Murderbot novels. I'm very happy for her, and I cannot wait.

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Streamin' Meemies: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ep 6, "One World, One People" and Season Overview

 

Well. This has been quite a ride. 

You can't help but compare this show to WandaVision, because that show set such a high bar I think all the following Marvel series will suffer by comparison. WandaVision's laser focus was Wanda's grief and the actions she took as a result, and the show benefited because of it. While this show had its highlights (episode 4, "The Whole World Is Watching," and episode 5, "Truth," were the two best episodes), it seemed unfocused and thematically, it was wandering all over the place. 

This is not to say the characters, for the most part (with some glaring exceptions, especially Karli Morgenthau) weren't well treated. The whole point of this show was to prove that Sam Wilson is the worthy successor to Steve Rogers and deserves to take up the shield and the title of Captain America, and there the show succeeded admirably. (I read somewhere about some wag complaining that Sam ends up in the same place here as at the end of Avengers: Endgame, with the shield in hand, and thus the entire show was superfluous. Well yeah, we the audience always knew Sam was worthy, but Sam had to decide that he was worthy. He had many conflicting emotions to work through before he felt he could take the shield back, with the end result being he has no reservations about stepping up and taking on the shield and title.) Bucky also has to deal with his lingering trauma and guilt over being the Winter Soldier, and that storyline succeeds as well (with some help from Counselor Sam, utilizing his background at the VA). 

John Walker, however, is another kettle of fish. This is not to take away from Wyatt Russell's excellent performance in a pretty complicated role. But I almost wish the show had left him where we saw him in the mid-credits scene of Episode 5, pounding out his own handmade Captain America shield after being stripped of the title (and after visiting Lemar's parents and lying to their faces about how their son died). As far as I was concerned, his character did not need the BIG, FAKEY REDEMPTION SCENE in the finale, where he had to decide between killing Karli Morgenthau and rescuing the people in the truck. That long-drawn-out shot of Walker shaking his head, rubbing his eyes, visibly hesitating and finally, almost grudgingly, moving to try to drag the truck back from the edge was just too much. And then afterwards, to show some back-slapping camaraderie with Bucky, when just two episodes prior Walker had murdered someone in cold blood? Nope nope nope. I was reading an interview with the show's director, Kari Skogland, explaining how they structured the finale so viewers would end up liking John Walker, and I just rolled my eyes. At best, John Walker is a smug, complicated, entitled villain who tried to be Captain America and failed miserably, and that's how he should have been portrayed. I wish they had not included him in the final fight at all, and just showed him at the end with the Countess Valentina and his new U.S. Agent anti-Captain America suit. He would've still gotten to hug his wife and exclaim, "I'm back," four times over, and the audience (and the show) would have left with everyone knowing he's still an asshole. 

But my irritation over that pales to the manner in which Karli Morgenthau and the Flag Smashers were treated. Honestly, I think the MCU's biggest blunder so far is having Bruce Banner undo Thanos' Snap, as this opened an enormous wriggling can of worms they seem to be completely unprepared to deal with. (But of course had they not made Avengers: Endgame, Kevin Feige wouldn't have gotten to boast [at least temporarily] of having the biggest money-making film of all time, and presumably we wouldn't have all these Disney Plus MCU shows paid for.) Just as in WandaVision, this show dances right up to the edge of saying something serious about the consequences of Blipping three and a half million people back into existence five years after they left...in this case, through the storyline of Karli and the Flag Smashers, who are trying to return Earth to what they view as the superior state of "One World, One People." But each time we started to think, "Huh, she's making a helluva lot of sense," the writers wound up putting some gratuitous "let's kill the hostages" dialogue in Karli's mouth to rob her of any nuance and turn her back into a cliched terrorist. Her characterization and motivation were inconsistent and contradictory, and while actor Erin Prettyman did her best with the often bad material she was given, that whole storyline just left a bad taste in my mouth. 

But Anthony Mackie showed everyone that the shield and title are in good hands, and I wanted to post his climactic speech in the finale in its entirety (as transcribed here):

"You have to stop calling them terrorists," Cap responds. "Your peacekeeping troops carrying weapons are forcing millions of people into settlements around the world, right? What do you think those people are going to call you? These labels...terrorist, refugee, thug. They're often used to get around the question, 'Why?'"

When it's pointed out that Sam has no idea how complicated the situation is, he responds: "You know what, you're right. And that's a good thing. We finally have a common struggle now. Think about that. For once, all the people who've been begging, and I mean literally begging for you to feel how hard any given day is, now you know. How did it feel to be helpless? If you can remember what it felt like to be helpless and face a force so powerful it could erase half the planet, you would know that you're about to have the exact same impact. This isn't about easy decisions, Senator."

When the Senator reiterates that Sam doesn't understand, it's then the hero really strikes a chord.

"I'm a Black man carrying the stars and stripes. What don't I understand? Every time I pick this thing up, I know there are millions of people out there who are going to hate me for it. Even now, here, I feel it. The stares, the judgement, and there's nothing I can do to change it, yet I'm still here. No super serum, no blonde hair or blue eyes. The only power I have is that I believe we can do better. We can't demand that people step up if we don't meet them halfway. You control the banks. Shit, you can move borders. You can knock down a forest with an email; you can move a million people with a phone call. The question is, who's in the room with you when you're making those decisions? Is it the people you're going to impact? Or is it just more people like you?

"I mean, this girl died trying to stop you and no one has stopped for one second to ask, 'Why?' You've gotta do better, Senator. You've got to step up. Because if you don't, the next Karli will and you don't want to see 2.0. People believed in her cause so much that they helped her defy the strongest governments in the world. Why do you think that is? Look, you people have just as much power as an insane God or a misguided teenager. The question you have to ask yourself is, 'How are you going to use it?' " 

This is where the show excelled, in the story of Sam and Bucky...and for a while, at least, the downfall of John Walker, before the misbegotten attempt at redemption. It fell on its face with Karli and the Flag Smashers, and the unnecessary inclusion of Sharon Carter (in the end, I really don't know what she was there for, other than to give Emily VanKamp a fat paycheck). Overall, the show was ambitious, spotty and muddled, and only partially succeeded.