#the doctor opening this scene calling her co-pilot and telling her not to jump out of the tardis

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

having funnn im having fun

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Have you been asked yet to rank Trust eps? Cos I'm asking! But your the criteria for ranking I leave to you to decide.

Ahahahaha I’ll have you know I put way too much thought into this. :-D

Ok so first of all, there is no such thing as a bad episode of Trust. The whole thing is really tightly written, every character and plot thread has a purpose, and even the episodes that I haven’t watched over and over again are important to the overall story. And a lot of the impact of the show comes from things that are cumulative over multiple episodes.

That being said, I do have favorites. Since the definitive ranking of Primo’s outfits has already been taken care of, here is my ranking from least to most favorite based on some nebulous criteria of artistic/narrative effectiveness and emotional impact, my judgement of which is obviously highly subjective and also correct.

Under the cut because this got ummm unbelievably, ridiculously long.

10. The House of Getty (episode 1)

Sorry Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, the pilot is my least favorite episode. Still think it was the wrong choice to open with a flashy (and, I can tell, expensive) sequence showcasing the death of a character we literally never see again. And, look, I’m an impatient viewer. If I don’t get someone to root for/emotionally identify with/otherwise catch my interest early on in a narrative, I’ll tune out. And Old Paul is not only unlikeable--far from a mortal sin in dramatic storytelling--he’s boring. I don’t care about any of his rich people problems, and I’m not the kind of viewer who can be kept engaged just by hating someone and watching them be terrible.

Some of the secondary characters in the Getty household do have interesting plotlines, but we don’t get to learn very much about them in the first episode. And I do think things get interesting once Little Paul shows up (although I maintain that the whole episode is more interesting if we understand what the stakes are for Paul getting the money), but if I had started watching this show with no context I wouldn’t have made it past Old Paul’s pre-coital erotica listening routine.

If this had been anything other than the first episode I might not have ranked it last, but extra penalty points for leading with your least interesting characters.

9. Lone Star (episode 2)

This episode is, I think, saddled by the fact that it has to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of exposition and setup. It mostly works because Chace is an entertaining narrator, and once we get to Italy with Gail I think things zip along at a pretty good pace. Opens with an attempted rape to show how Bad the Bad Guys are, which is...not my favorite trope.

Once again, I think a lot of the information in this episode would have worked better if episode 3 had been episode 1. (We’d already know who Berto was when Chace meets him; we’d already know about the box of guns in the apartment; we’d know when certain characters are lying.) This whole show runs on the suspense of the audience being the only party who knows what’s going on with all the characters at once; I think trading mystery for suspense here was the wrong move. I also can’t help thinking there was pressure to front-load the well-known American actors in the beginning of the show at the expense of the strongest narrative choices.

Imo the best thing about this episode is the sort of...multiple competing images of Paul that emerge. His mom sees him as an innocent victim who couldn’t possibly have planned any of this. Chace sees him as a spoiled rich kid trying to swindle his granddad. Neither one of them has the complete truth.

Next we get into some episodes that are certainly not bad, but their greatness is more on the level of some bangin’ individual scenes than a whole package.

8. John, Chapter 11 (episode 6)

Again, this isn’t a bad episode. The main reason I put it near the end of the list is that the first time through I got sort of impatient during the first half. We, the audience, by virtue of our extra-textual knowledge, know that Paul can’t be dead, and we spend about half the episode before we know what really happened to him, which felt a bit too long to me.

This episode does have some fantastic individual scenes including: Leo talking Primo down in the farmhouse, Leo and Paul’s conversation about Angelo’s death, Gail being an absolute badass, and the meeting between Salvatore and Old Paul. A lot of these scenes are essential on a thematic level, but I don’t think the episode as a whole is the most streamlined.

7. Consequences (episode 10)

I debated for a while where to put this episode because the overall feeling of 57 Chekov’s guns going off in the space of one episode is SO satisfying, and the resolutions of some of the individual plotlines are delicious. Ultimately I would have liked more space for Paul and Gail and less Old Paul being grumpy about his substitute child museum’s mediocrity (although the scene with the bad reviews is hilarious). Once again I feel like the show creators felt they had to pull the focus back to Old Paul to wrap things up and I just. don’t care.

That being said. The resolution of Primo’s storyline? SO SATISFYING. And tbh I don’t dislike the scenes that exist with Paul and Gail; even the happy scenes have this poignant tone to them. I think they were trying to deal with the fact that his irl story is just...incredibly fucking tragic, and you can see a bit of the strain showing.

6. Kodachrome (episode 7)

I know episode 7 is not one of your personal favorites, but it’s the one where I think jumping between multiple plotlines/sets of characters is used to the most satisfying dramatic effect. It has this sense of dramatic irony that feels like some Shakespearean family tragedy. The whole episode, we are hoping that Paul Jr. will finally do the thing we want him to do, which is stand up to his father. And he does it--but at the absolute worst, most selfish and destructive moment possible.

Paul Jr. may be the literal worst, but I do have compassion for him in the flashbacks, mostly because it seems painfully apparent that no matter what he does, he will never be able to please his father. But he doesn’t seem to realize this, and he keeps trying, even as it’s destroying him and his relationship with his family. Credit to Michael Esper for his performance for making me feel a smidgen of compassion for this bastard.

I think the other thing this episode shows is how both of Paul’s parents keep putting him, a child, into roles and circumstances that he shouldn’t really be in. He’s wandering around through what seem like very much adult environments with his dad and Talitha in Morocco. In the Trust version of events he’s there when Talitha ODs and is the one trying to revive her while his dad is having a breakdown in the corner. Gail seems like the more responsible parent but there’s something about her bringing Paul as her “date” on a night out, and the understanding that this is a thing that happens regularly...to me the disturbing part is not so much bringing a young kid to a party with adults but the unspoken expectation that Little Paul will fill the void of companionship that his father has left empty. (Gettys expecting Little Paul to step in to cover for the failings of his father is a repeated theme, and it even plays into the ear thing. His family has failed to pay the ransom, so this is now a problem he has to solve himself.) Combine this all with Leonardo going, um, excuse me but what the actual fuck is wrong with your family? and I think it makes a very effective episode. And the last couple minutes had me yelling NOOOOOOOO GODDAMMIT because you can see what’s going to happen and you’re just watching it unfolding like a car wreck. Also has one of my hands-down favorite scenes, of Paul and Primo in the car waiting for the ransom.

5. White Car in a Snowstorm (episode 9)

The ~ D R A M A !!! ~ This episode is an opera. I mean this whole show is dramatique but episode 9 really leans into the vivid imagery--that snowy highway in the mountains above the sea, the all-white ransom exchange, Paul clinging to the pole at the shuttered Getty gas station, some Very Serious Mobsters throwing the ransom money around like idiots in a moment where you’re encouraged to be happy along with them.

This is also one of my favorite episodes for Primo and for Primo and Paul’s weird sometimes-alliance. Primo walking away from Salvatore to go tell Paul “they always pay in the end”? Primo and Paul teaming up to argue with Salvatore about why Paul shouldn’t die? Primo being all threateny to the doctor treating Paul because somewhere deep down he is worried (that’s my take and you’ll never convince me otherwise)? Primo dressing up to fake-scab on a postal strike in order to find a misplaced severed ear? All gold.

Fun fact: the letter Gail writes to President Nixon did happen in real life, but as far as I can tell the phone call did not. The real details of who convinced Old Paul to finally pay (some) of the ransom are considerably less cinematic. They’re the same amount of sexist though!

Ok now we are getting to the top tier...

4. That’s All Folks! (episode 4)

This is definitely the episode that took me from “ok this is fun” to “oh holy shit I’m invested now.” It’s the episode where we get introduced to most of the Calabrian characters and their world. It’s also the episode where we start to realize that Primo is not just a fun antagonist but is really a parallel protagonist to Little Paul, with his own set of relationships and motivations that we start to see from his POV. (I’d argue that, with the exception of his very first scene, we’ve mostly seen Primo through other characters’ gaze up until episode 4, and this is the point where we start watching him as like, the character whose pursuit of a goal we’re following over the course of the scene.)

This episode ranks high for capturing so much of the weird mix of tones that makes Trust work. It can be very funny. (I never fail to fuckin lose it when Fifty is on the phone with Gail the first time and when he’s talking to the thoroughly unimpressed newspaper switchboard operator.) It has this weird unexpected intimacy between characters you wouldn’t think would connect with each other. (Primo and Paul, Paul and Angelo; in retrospect the arc of the relationship between Primo and Leo gets started in that scene in Salvatore’s kitchen.) And it has one of the show’s absolute best record-scratch tone shifts when Primo gets the ransom offer. I remember saying “oh FUCK” out loud the first time I watched the end of that episode, when Primo comes back to the house, visibly drunk and clearly furious. We’ve seen him be violent plenty before now in the show, but always in a controlled, calculated way. This is the first time we see his potential for out-of-control rage-fueled violence and he’s terrifying!

3. La Dolce Vita (episode 3)

I stand by my claim that this episode (with a few minor continuity adjustments) should have been the pilot. Can you imagine a title card that’s like “Rome 1973” and then away we go with Paul snorting coke and taking racy photos and jumping on cops and fucking his girlfriend in what is definitely not proper museum etiquette, and then the smash cut to Primo intimidating and robbing and murdering people? And that’s the opening of the whole show? And you’re like how are these characters connected and then they meet each other and it’s the fucking sunflower field scene??

Anyway aside from the fact that I think knowing the information in this episode would have made episodes 1 and 2 more interesting...it’s just a great fucking episode. It’s kinetic and propulsive and funny and tense and violent and features Primo’s sniper skills and his ass in those cornflower blue trousers. I rest my case.

2. Silenzio (episode 5)

I’ll be honest, I went back and forth on the top two a bunch. Silenzio is definitely my personal favorite episode, and I’d argue that it’s the best written, in terms of what it accomplishes narratively, which is to keep you emotionally invested in both Paul and Angelo trying to escape with their lives, and Primo and Leonardo hunting them down. That’s so fucking hard!! And yes some of it is great acting but it starts from the foundation of the writing. It’s just such a perfect little self-contained horror movie, and it has this profound sense of fatalism to it, because you know from the beginning (if only by virtue of only being halfway through the series) that Paul is not going to escape, and you sort of know that there is only one way this will end for Angelo. And yet they escape by the skin of their teeth so! many! times!

It’s also the episode where you see how much power the ‘Ndrangheta has over people’s lives in this community: Salvatore is like God, calling his servants to him with the church bells. Combine that with the visuals of two characters running for their lives mostly on foot through this unforgiving landscape, and you really get the sense of this environment as a harsh place where most people have a very constrained set of choices, and the claustrophobia of that. You get the sense in this episode that everyone is trapped in these expectations of violence and duty and honor. Angelo did what anyone with compassion would do, and saved Paul from what seemed like certain death, and he’s doomed for it. At the same time Primo is doing exactly what anyone would expect him to do in response to a subordinate who disobeyed him. In some ways the end of the episode feels inevitable, unsurprising, and yet they do SUCH a good job of winding up the tension until the literal last seconds of the episode, and then releasing it with a big dramatic bang. It’s so good!!

1. In the Name of the Father (episode 8)

Ok I’ll be honest the ONLY reason In the Name of the Father edged out Silenzio for the top spot is that it is really clear they pulled out all the stops in terms of making this episode feel extra heightened in a show where everything is already heightened. Like, the cinematography is different? They still use handheld a lot but I swear there are more still shots and more extreme, editorial camera angles like that shot of Francesco looking upward in church where the camera is looking down from above him. I can’t tell if they actually tweaked the color grading or if the bright white and blood red just stand out against the Calabrian color palette which is mostly earth tones, browns and greens and blues.

There are just. So many layers to this episode. The imagery! The literal sacrificial lamb at the beginning, Francesco being guided by Leonardo through an act of violence against an animal, something that I’m sure they don’t even see as violence but just part of farm life, part of survival and in this case part of a celebration, but something that fathers teach their sons how to do as part of becoming a man in this world. Paul as the metaphorical sacrificial lamb later, drawing parallels to Jesus (the lamb of God), Isaac (a father sacrificing his son), any number of martyred saints, pick your Catholic imagery. The blood of the lamb on the tree stump and Paul’s blood on the stone. The communion wafer (the body and blood of Christ) and Francesco at the end with Paul’s blood and a literal piece of his body held in his hands the same way.

And then there is like, the suspense of watching everyone marking time through the steps of this community ritual that’s supposed to be a joyful, communal celebration, while we know that there is a secret ticking away under the surface. The slow unfolding of the lie told to one person spreading to everyone in the village, and then the knowledge that Salvatore knows spreading to all the people who’ll be in trouble for that. The relationship arcs between the main Calabrian characters...not resolving, but sliding into place for the final act. Primo finally being done with Salvatore. Primo and Leo’s alliance being cemented and Leo physically stepping between Primo and Salvatore, to protect Primo. (No one ever protects Primo!! Still not over it!!!!) The confirmation celebration as a mirror of the Getty party in episode 1, the parallels drawn between the 3 Pauls and Salvatore-Primo-Francesco and how Primo reacts to being passed over as heir vs. how Paul Jr. reacts. Little Paul having two whole minutes of screen time and managing to break your heart with them. Regina! Just...Regina’s whole everything. The music going all-instrumental for an episode and having this haunting, dreamlike but still tense quality to it. And the fact that we never cut away from Calabria to another plotline gives the whole episode this hypnotic, all-encompassing quality. It’s just. SO GOOD!!!!

[itstimetowatch]

Pilot (Fringe)

Okay, who’s this guy all hunched over? Oh, he’s Steve Newell from True Blood. He’s also injecting himself with something that is definitely not insulin. So this is a case we’re jumping right into? Excellent!

Oh my God! The co-pilot’s fucking jaw!

Wow! I was not ready for that!

So he loves her and she didn’t say it back? Is this one of those relationships? if so it’s an interesting dynamic reversal with the guy being the committed one and the woman non-commital.

Regardless of the answer to any of those questions. Her name is Agent Olivia Dunham, FBI, and she’s getting called in with regards to the plane full of dead people (one hopes they didn’t live through that, anyway).

So, she seems to care about him but still doesn’t say it. Emotionally closed-off?

I like the driving at the location name-thing. That’s pretty original.

Charlie is from Band of Brothers.

Another Steve Newell? Well, since it’s a show about weirdo sci-fi, let’s guess that rather than a twin brother, maybe he’s a clone, Orphan Black-style.

Daniels is Special Agent in Charge Broyles and he is every bit as authoritative as I remember him from The Wire.

So there’s some hostility there.

Wait? This is a Kurtzman/Orci show? As in the writers of the oh-so-amazing Transformers movies and Star Trek Into Darkness and the shit-awful Amazing Spider-Man movies? As in Bob Orci the ridiculous 9/11 truther nutbag? And I’m watching this with my own two (2) eyes? Individuals whose opinions I trust told me this was a thing that I need to have watched already, and it’s written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci?

One chance, show! You get one whole episode and if I don’t like what I see, then I’m out!

Um, “honey”? Do not try to make me hate Lt. Daniels, show! I won’t work.

“I have a gun! I will shoot!” I’m pretty sure that running from law enforcement is not punishable by summary execution, there, John.

So Olivia was thrown a country mile by the explosion, but the guy never even budged? Okay… now I’m thinking he may be a cyborg, instead

Oh, and now we introduce Denethor… or rather Dr Walter Bishop.

“Not exactly,” she says, understatement of the decade. Baghdad is definitely not local.

And that’s the second time in 20 minutes that someone has called Olivia “honey” and I have to tell you I’m not liking the way this feels already.

Oh, that is so a bluff! She doesn’t know anything about him.

Okay, I just realized that I was mistaken. Peter and Walter are not a team. They barely know one another or at least Peter barely knows anything about Walter.

“Sweetheart” isn’t much better.

“I thought you’d be fatter.” LOL!

I’m glad they didn’t stick with that beard. I mean, it obviously wasn’t in any of the promotional material, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have to endure it for the duration of the pilot. Glad I don’t.

Massive Dynamic? That sounds ominous.

Agent Farnsworth, there, was on Underground this season. I think she may have also been on Scandal as well, but I can’t swear to that.

Yeah, I’m with Peter on this. Walter with a scalpel is worrisome... not because he’s a dangerous mental patient or whatever, but simply because he has some rather obviously shaky hands.

So on the one hand, she’s barking orders at her boss… or at least the agent in charge of this task force. On the other hand, being polite and asking for things doesn’t seem to be the way to accomplish things with Agent Broyles, so I can’t really fault her for doing what she needs to do to get the job done.

So Peter and Olivia are going to bone at some point, yeah? Maybe not soon, since I can’t imagine them going to these extraordinary lengths to save John and them not being successful, but that’s going to end at some point and then Peter and Olivia are going to be A Thing, right?

“Get him a cow.” I knew there was a cow.

“Only thing better than a cow is a human… unless you want milk and then you really need a cow.” I don’t know if Walter is going to be worth it alone to continue this show, but he is pretty damned entertaining.

Just walking the cow through the building, past all the students.

Dream sharing? I’m guessing this is where the (somewhat) iconic image of Olivia floating in a sensory deprivation tank is from.

Why on Earth does Broyles go along with this? I mean, I get why Olivia wants to do it, she’s in love with the guy, but (I mean, I’m guessing here) Broyles isn’t. There’s no rational justification for this. Peter, the voice of reason, just spent a couple of minutes going over all the reasons this objectively shouldn’t work, all of which ought to sound pretty convincing to a DHS agent.

“Somewhat.” Oh, okay, Broyles doesn’t know.

John Noble is such an amazing actor.

Ah, the J.J. Abrams lens flares! Can’t tell you how much I haven’t missed those. Although, they do seem to serve a little more purpose here, in this scene, than they do everywhere else.

So, not a clone or a cyborg? That’s disappointing.

Holy Crap! Nina Sharp has a robot arm? What was I saying about a cyborg? This just got a whole lot cooler!

The Pattern? Arc words, I suspect.

Oh, Peter’s gonna break him. I was beginning to wonder how he was going to fit into this group dynamic but now I’ve got it. He’s smart like Walter but not emotionally and psychologically traumatized like him. He reads people well but he’s not an agent. He can work outside the law if the situation warrants it. Okay, cool.

Though I’m not sure how he’s going to be allowed to stay after that. Patriot Act, I suppose.

The doctor treating John was Henrik Johannsen on Orphan Black. I didn’t place him the first time around, but I figured you out, my dude.

WHAT?! John is… wait, what was… he was threatening the guy who caused the incident. What does that mean?

Well, I guess it means that he’s going to murder him.

What? What is all of this about? Does John have something to do with The Pattern? I assume he must.

Oh you know he’s dead. All that trouble to save his life only to end up rolling his truck five times.

That’s not going to help Miss Emotionally Closed Off now, is it?

So Bell has taught others how to interrogate a corpse as well, huh? So Bell is going to be an antagonist, then?

Okay, so this is not bad. Definitely much better than I thought it would be once I saw those names in the opening credits. I think I’m going to sample the other shows (Pushing Daisies and Person of Interest) and then I’ll make up my mind how I want to proceed.