Change Your Image
Lord-Palmerstone
Reviews
Hijack (2023)
A good thriller, but too many technical errors
Overall, an excellent and typically Brit made (like their Police series) thriller.
However, there are just fat too many technical or life errors/mistakes which Apple should have spent a little more time on to get right.
A) An ATC officer on 'Dubai Delivery' is just that and after giving him his flight plan clearance would pass him to 'DXB Ground' who in turn would pass to 'DXB Tower', then 'DXB Radar' and 'UAE Airways' before passing to Bahrain ATC or Iraqi ATC.
B) There is certainly no inane chatter about birthdays or Lobster dinners.
C) An ATC officer would have no knowledge of a lowly Indian security screener nor especially knew where she lived. He also would not put his nose into security issues and would not be allowed to do so.
D) Being an Emirati, he would have had the encounter of his life bumping into two Brits, one a Scot who said they were cleaners .. yeah, sure, cleaners in Dubai - sure the city is full of British cleaners using vacuums.
E) The announcement to GND ATC by an aircraft of a Hijack emergency is done purely electronically by a Radio signal called a squawk and on code 7500 instigated by the Flight Crew - as long as that sqauwk stays on it's still valid.
F) During climb and cruise phases due to the extremely busy skies outbound over the Guld with aircraft from not only DXB but also Sharjah and Abu Dhabi in UAE, and Doha and Bahrain elsewhere in the Gulf so there would be constant radio chatter and that flight may have had to taken detours or slowing of the climb at various intervals. Also there is a last handover from UAE Airways to Bahrain or Iraqi Airways controllers, and a change of frequency. It does not happen constantly on the same frequency.
I could go on, but I think that's enough - a good thriller but just too many script errors/mistakes.
The Blacklist: The Troll Farmer (No. 38): Pt. 3 (2023)
This is what we have been missing!
After two or three, maybe four seasons of mainly dross, with Agent Keen moaning, sobbing and whinging consistently that she wanted to know the truth, boring us all to tears. Also being the expert FBI Profiler that she was, couldn't identify even the slightest danger for her and her daughter from a 'new' neighbour who just so happened to be a 'Russki agent', this episode reminds us, and proves beyond all doubt, that we didn't need her (Agent Keene/Megan Boone) at all and is exactly what we have been missing for so long. Here we have excellent script writing, some visual trickery, Red at his best with all his usual subterfuge, and at the end showing his cold calculating methods and brutal ways. An excellent episode.
The Blacklist: Dr. Roberta Sand, Ph.D. (No. 153) (2021)
Did anyone recognise the VEEP
I will start with the main point and that is a leftie activist politician thereby messing up business and therefore capitalism and shot dead on the podium whilst standing adjacent to her apparently outspoken boss.
Did anyone see the similarity with a certain absolutely useless, also with a history of meddling in the past, VEEP - The photo was uncannily similar.
As for the episode, the storyline, as usual, full of twists and turns and now we have the very real possibility that Dembe has betrayed Red. Impossible as it may seem, as he has been for 8 full seasons implacably resolute and faithful -- I somehow cannot believe this.
The Blacklist: Katarina Rostova (No. 3): Conclusion (2020)
'Red shot twice - Who is Twice? - Why he's the Teller'
Referring to my stolen script line above -- anyone got any ideas?
I was however actually referring to Red having fired two shots and I had been really hoping and praying that the second bullet had zinged over Katerina Rostova's shoulder and killed Liz -- as she has become insufferable to us - but also maybe even to Red!
How we can keep watching this whinging selfish millennial woman! She really is the pits, has no backbone, nor conviction!
Answer to the above ---- Lt Frank Drebin in conversation after a Bank robbery in one episode of Police Squad from 1988 - ring any bells? Was the forerunner and basis of the Naked Gun films.
The Blacklist: Robert Vesco (No. 9) (2019)
Good old fashioned yarn
This was a good old-fashioned yarn in the traditional TV style of the 70's and 80's .... and lo and behold there was one of favourite actors from one of my favourite shows of that era. Stacey Keach as Micky Spillane's Mike Hammer.
This guy had a secretary to die for in Velda, and in every weekly episode he was drowning in a cast of lovely sexy ladies. Any model or aspiring actress from that era turned up on 'Mike Hammer', a bit like 'The Love Boat'.
Anyway in this Blacklister, good old Mike Hammer had used his Private Detective skills to locate Spanish gold missing for centuries, and also did a number (again) on Red.
Good stuff if perhaps a little light versus most other Blacklist episodes.
The Blacklist: The Pharmacist (No. 124) (2019)
Big Pharma and corruption in the elite institutions of Govt?
As I write this in 2023, all I can say as a reaction to this episode is WOW.
All those scriptwriters were all looking into their crystal balls just 6 months before all the lies, cover-ups, cancelation of the truth (or at least the right to be able to question these so-called 'experts'), and all of this was meted out under the guise of 'health advice' (that one MUST comply with) for the next 3 years.
Health advice that broke all the previous protocol and training gained through best practice over decades, but as we now know, big pharma, big tech, and many, many corrupt individuals all knew better!
The Blacklist: Dr. Hans Koehler (No. 33) (2019)
Blacklisters'supposed Anti Globalist agenda
Well as I write this rather daring comment in 2023, the bad guy the so called BLACKLISTER doesn't seem such a bad misguided guy at all. To wish blow up an EU building in Brussels (NOT The Hague --- ignorant scriptwriters who are on strike as I write this - perhaps they can read up a few world facts whilst at home sat on their bottoms) and better still blow up a meeting at Davos - this especially earns top marks, so both are not such bad ideas after all. Actually, ideas like this should be commended after what we know now about these rogues and corrupt inept individuals, more than 4 years later.
The Blacklist: Pattie Sue Edwards (No. 68) (2018)
Politicization of TV shows
Whilst I agree with many comments here - yes the scriptwriters should get off their 'leftie' soapboxes - but as they say in the UK, they are part of the 'luvvies' sector, so one cannot expect them to be any different. 'Birds of a feather' and all that ................
However even if Red's script was written by and for the 'lefties' he would, as a society rebel and criminal, moreover, an anti-gov't anarchist, have similar views and say something precisely like this.
I too would like to audit my country's finances and analyse why they waste so much public tax money and give contracts to friends, without mentioning their continuous lies and utter ineptitude ....
Traces: Episode #2.1 (2022)
Building up for the Court case
Build up to the court case.
A little tedious, but building the tensions.
Emma divulges to Daniel that she has missed her period,
One note of plot/character misguidance - in an earlier episode of series 1 maybe the 2nd, Daniel and Emma were joking about how she would recognise him, and he said something 'well I will never grow a full beard', lo and behold in series 2, Martin Compston has his 'full Vigil' look going!
The Mentalist: Orange Blossom Ice Cream (2014)
Not very realistic
Firstly I wish to say that the Jayne/Lisbon relationship is full of whines, whinges and moans from both parties. They are like schoolchildren or perhaps to give a little credit teenage adults. What on earth would a worldly man-eating specimen of a sexy woman played superbly by Morena Baccarin want with a wimp like Jayne?
Other comments include as already mentioned here by others, that this was not Beirut, the accent was off and the clothes too. I also did love the innocence of Lisbon (and/or the scriptwriters), when she said to Erica 'I didn't know you spoke Lebanese'. Actually whilst the Lebanese do have their own nuances, accent and a distinct dialect, it is still basically Arabic they are speaking. And ...... whilst I always knew, or thought that Ms Morena Baccarin was Brazilian, it does appear that she has some Italian, and even 'lo and behold', some Lebanese in her blood.
Lucifer: Boo Normal (2018)
What an extremely poor follow on from the fantastic episode 24
Yes I have read all the reasons described here by others, but right from the 1st scenes of Ms Lopez skipping rather disrespectfully up the garden path to a murder scene, cheerfully saluting all present like they were at a night club together just the night before, and then when kneeling down besides the murder victim, reaching for her camera with bare hands and then the 1st snapshot shows she has magically donned blue forensic use gloves, I realised this episode was going to be a 'lemon' ...... why a lemon? Because it left a rather bitter taste in my mouth.
Then followed some awful acting from the child musical prodigy, his father and as for the actress playing Rae Rae ... my goodness - hopeless!
What a truly awful episode!