Reviews

The worst episode, certainly, by a long shot. Does not bode well for the last 3.5 hours. I would rather have watched every single Deanna Troi-themed "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode in a row than that rubbish. And very poor acting -- does that even matter at this point? Is this what we can expect from the conclusion of the series? Answers that say nothing? Ridiculous emanations like -- I am going to put the wheel in here, add light and some water, and go home! What? Was he serious? Not only does such dialogue insult our intelligence, it devalues all we have seen previously. The only thing of quality in this episode was the music. To wit, see Alex Ross in this week's New Yorker: newyorker.com/online/blogs/alexross/2010/05/the-music-of-lost.html Appalling.

The crew try to solve a decades old murder of a coed undergraduate who was having an affair with her art history professor. The case hinges on recognizing a particular picture by John Everett Millais, leading light of the English nineteenth century avant-garde artistic group, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In the late lamented series "Inspector Morse," one episode (season 8, episode 1, "The Way Through the Wodds") similarly revolved around a picture by Millais, who has unwittingly, and very much posthumously, become a favorite for TV mystery writers on either side of the Atlantic. Lucidly directed by Agnieszka Holland, and featuring particularly committed performances by Kathryn Morris and Danny Pino, the episode aims for an enlightened sense of aesthetics, and even weaves in a discussion of ideas of post-modernism to the plot. That being said, a scene with the detectives reading various Shakespeare plays with stupefying levels of general ignorance, is gratuitous and largely unnecessary in advancing the plot -- it is simply there to further set them off from the educated professor. If Chief Inspector Morse, or Detective Jane Tennison, assumedly know their Shakespeare, there is no real reason why five detectives in Philadelphia, home to excellent theaters and a thriving arts scene, should be portrayed as so thick.

Another fine episode by Altman, with good p.o.v. shots throughout, especially from the perspective of the young Frenchman, Gilbert, who tries to join the troops. The forest scenes are well handled, with spinning camera-work framing the chaos of both situations and mental states. In the end, when the orphan boy kills the German soldier who had shown him kindness, and who had spoken to him of his family, his sense of confusion is finely handled, and the fade gives a brilliant encapsulation of the face of war ravaged France. Interesting is a running thread of fine art used as symbolism throughout--from the print of Raphael's "Sistine Madonna" on the wall of Gilbert's house (ironic on multiple levels, of course, because not only is the picture in Dresden, and escaped the bombardment by the Allies, but it also features in Ingres's "Vow of Louis XIV" in Montauban Cathedral, a symbol of French lineage and divine authority). In the end, framed by the cross above the bed, and the Raphael on the wall, it is clear that Gilbert will choose pacifism over combat.

Superior work by Altman in this episode, which he did not pen. An extraordinary amount of tension is developed along the way. From the initial scenes of the patrol skirting along a graveyard, where a group of nuns are interring a sister in a scene that could be from centuries before. A gust of wind and the papers of the French collaborator are dispersed, and then he is caught by a land mine. They take him to the convent and radio HQ for a surgeon. In an wonderful vignette, that anticipates the drollness of M*A*S*H*, the surgeon is seen in his tent, casually lancing blisters, while a superior officer tries to convey to him the need to save this Frenchman for the allied effort. Death lingers throughout this episode, from the initial funeral, to the expiration of the surgeon from a heart attack on the way to the convent, to the loss of Pvt. Temple despite a blood transfusion. A smug German surgeon is captured and brought in to operate on the Frenchman, with the help of one of the convent disciples who used to be a nurse. And the genius scene is in the chapel, the patient on the table, every candle in the convent brought in to provide light, while Temple (the name now takes on a meaning) lies dying below, and Altman slowly, in a measured build-up of force, cuts from face to face of each protagonist, in a show of meaningful pace frankly unimaginable in today's television landscape. It ends with another burial. Religiosity pervades Altman's work on this series. And it is most directly referenced in this episode.