HIGHLA-L Digest - 10 Jun 2004 to 13 Jun 2004 (#2004-106)

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      There are 6 messages totalling 366 lines in this issue.
      
      Topics of the day:
      
        1. Third time's the charm. (3)
        2. Season Four dvds:  The Innocent (2)
        3. Touching Evil (was-- The Innocent)
      
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      Date:    Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:38:17 +0100
      From:    "a.j.mosby" <a.j.mosby@btinternet.com>
      Subject: Third time's the charm.
      
      At the risk of facing the Wrath of Nina (which is much less than the Wrath
      of Khan, but probably a few notches above the Wrath of Kali) I'm just
      posting the following.
      
      #3 of Verbatim is going to the printers this week.
      
      Contents include interviews with:  David Abramowitz, Roger Daltrey, Anthony
      Michael Hall, Brad Wright, Robert Cooper, Chris Buchanan, David Fury, Tim
      Minear and others.  The new temporary (redesigned) website address is:
      http://www.btinternet.com/~a.j.mosby/VerbatimMag/index.html
      
      Feel free to e-mail me off the List for further information (I won't post a
      non-reply about Verbatim again on this List for the moment unless/until
      numbers get low or several people ask the same question and it's the easiest
      way to reach them.)
      
      Thanks to everyone who ordered #2. I only have about 15 copies left of the
      initial print-run, so that's just about covered doing this third edition.
      Just to let you know that I contacted David Abramowitz this week and he's
      still hoping for a Fall start on the mini-series. I'll let everyone on the
      List know the moment anything is officially confirmed.
      
      John
      
      ------------------------------
      
      Date:    Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:22:09 -0400
      From:    kageorge <kageorge@erols.com>
      Subject: Season Four dvds:  The Innocent
      
      COMMENTARY: Bill Panzer says they knew that the part of Mikey looked easy,
      but would be tough to play, to portray all the layers, and to show that he
      knows who and what he is takes an actor of real skill. Once they had cast
      Pruitt Taylor Vince in the part, it removed a huge concern because without
      his performance it never would have worked.
      
      David A. says that, again, they wanted an episode without a run-of-the-mill
      Immortal. They wanted to say that Immortals come in all sizes and shapes.
      They had had Kenny and they wanted to do one where the Immortal wasn't the
      smartest around. They also wanted Richie to grow up a little more, to assume
      some of the responsibilities of immortality.
      
      Stan says his character was always the one being taken care of and Richie
      hadn't previously had a chance to be the caretaker. The actor who played
      Mikey was fantastic and a wonderful person to work with. It was an
      opportunity for Stan to play off Pruitt in the moment. He says neither the
      character of Richie nor Stan, himself, had much of exposure to people with
      serious mental problems, and it made Stan sad to watch it.
      
      Bill says this was "sort of" the beginning of the maturity of Richie,
      because the mature part was choosing and being willing to take
      responsibility for Mikey, but he showed he was still young because he didn't
      fully understand that doing so was not right either for Mikey or for the
      world. He hadn't thought it through to envision the inevitable end result.
      
      David says Immortals are human and that a good, kind Immortal would react to
      someone who is immoral and helpless the same way a good human being would.
      Initially MacLeod wasn't sure Mikey wasn't a con. In his long life he had
      seen a lot of cons, and he'd also recently been suckered by Kenny, who
      played helpless, then beheaded people. Part of Duncan's belief system is
      that everyone does what they have to do to survive, and MacLeod wasn't sure
      that this wasn't Mikey doing just that.
      
      Stan says it was sad to see the character struggling with normal
      moment-to-moment life, and when they got to the scene at the railway yard
      and the tunnel, Pruitt was so real and had such a wonderful face that Stan
      had no problem getting into the emotion of the scene.
      
      David says that Mikey knew he had done something bad, and that he had to
      pay. There are, for everyone, obligations to pay for what you've done, no
      matter who you are. At the end, they thought they gave him dignity, by
      allowing him the choice in his own death.
      
      Stan says that even from the first meetings about the episode, this one was
      different. It was the first show of the season that he was in, so he had
      been off for awhile. He came in with a fresh attitude and it was a very
      different experience that he enjoyed, and it made him stretch as an actor.
      
      OUTTAKES: Gillian comments that the sword fight where MacLeod fights while
      swinging from a rope was a challenge, and we see the takes where Adrian is,
      in essence, directing the movement and timing to make sure Callum Keith
      Rennie, who played the bad guy (also known for his roles in "Memento," "Hard
      Core Logo," and his stint as Ray K. on "Due South," among other numerous
      credits), didn't get bonked by the apparatus. In two angles shown of a
      second cut, Adrian is struggling to hang on to the same apparatus until they
      push it forward and the two actors swing at each other.
      
      An outtake is shown of Stan struggling with his lines in a scene in the loft
      where he hangs up the phone, goes to Duncan and tells him that he's found a
      school for Mikey. Not sure why they showed that one.
      
      THE EPISODE: The episode opens with an unknown man looking up as he "feels"
      another Immortal. It turns out to be Mikey, a smiling round-faced man, who
      clutches a toy train. It quickly becomes apparent that Mikey has the IQ and
      outlook of a young child, and that the first man (Alan) and his mortal wife
      Ellen are caring for him. Mikey has an obsession with trains and has
      memorized lots of facts about their history. He is physically big and
      strong, but has little real understanding of the "rules" of Immortality and
      when a challenger comes along, he gets distressed when Alan tells him to
      hide with Ellen while he takes care of the problem. Ellen screams when Alan
      is killed, and Mikey puts his hand over her mouth and squeezes her to keep
      her quiet, unintentionally smothering her to death. Terrified by both what
      he had done and by the Quickening, he grabs his toy train and runs away.
      
      Richie is riding along in the country on his motorcycle, feels Mikey and
      ends up befriending him (as the Immortal who killed Alan is watching from a
      distance) and taking him to MacLeod, who is in the midst of buying a rundown
      house. When Richie says, by way of explanation, "When you find someone who's
      helpless, you've gotta protect 'em, right?" we get a flashback to MacLeod in
      the Dakota Territory in 1868. He encounters a man brutally whipping an
      Indian slave, and intervenes, proving fairly handy with a whip, himself.
      
      In the present, Duncan tries to question Mikey about his history but doesn't
      learn much other than that asking the questions distresses Mikey, and we get
      a series of scenes that demonstrate how quickly and easily Mikey can get
      himself into serious trouble. They finally head back to the dojo, where,
      when Mikey sees two fencers sparring, he gets hysterical and tries to stop
      them.
      
      Richie is in a quandry. He wants to take care of Mikey, and believes that
      maybe they had run into one another for a reason, but Duncan insists they
      have to find someplace where he's not going to get into trouble. "Are you
      ready to dedicate your life to him? Twenty-four hours a day, every day,
      forever?" Duncan asks. Richie decides to talk to some social workers,
      leaving Mikey with Duncan, who again tries to get some information from him
      about what happened.
      
      "Mikey's fault! Always Mikey's fault," he cries, clearly in distress, and
      both of them feel another Immortal approach. Duncan tells Mikey to stay put
      in the loft, and then finds Tyler King, the Immortal who killed Alan,
      downstairs. King is after Mikey ("Have you talked to him? He's lunch meat,
      barely a blip on the EEG.")
      
      "He thinks. He feels," Duncan responds. "He's got as much right to life as
      even you do." (Mikey sneaks in the side door.)
      
      "What life? He's going to get whacked soon enough. Why not by me?"
      
      "Because I say so."
      
      As they fight, Mikey tries to intervene, almost getting Duncan killed in the
      process, then running away. Duncan manages to knock King out and chases
      after him. Mikey wanders the streets of the city, lost and confused while
      Duncan searches for him. Mikey ends up in the middle of a busy intersection
      and gets hit by a police car. Mikey fights the cops, who wrestle him down
      and arrest him just as MacLeod drives up.
      
      We return to the flashback, where Duncan takes the young Indian, Chaske,
      into a town for medical treatment. The townsfolk are perturbed at seeing an
      Indian there, a crowd gathers, the doctor refuses him treatment, but Duncan
      refuses to take no for an answer.
      
      Richie blames the police for mistreating Mikey, but Duncan says they were
      just defending themselves from Mikey's attack, responding to Richie's
      protest with, "I'm not on anybody's side. This isn't about whether I like
      Mikey or whether he's gentle or whether he has a good soul. It's about the
      reality of his life." When Richie insists that they have to find a way to
      give Mikey a life, Duncan tells him, "Richie, we're Immortals. We're not
      gods.... We can't give him a life he doesn't have, no matter how much we
      might want to."
      
      Mikey is in jail, but deeply traumatized, not responding to anyone, and we
      again see a flashback of Duncan's attempt to help the young Indian. The
      doctor treats Chaske as Duncan keeps an eye on the hostile crowd outside. As
      tension out front starts to build, the Indian sneaks out the back, but ends
      up running into his former "master", who grabs him. Chaske wrestles his gun
      from him, it goes off and the man dies. The gunshot draws the crowd, Chaske
      runs and one of the angry crowd members shoots him in the back, killing him.
      
      Richie gives Mikey a new toy train and a trainman's hat, and that finally
      brings him out of his shell. Back at the loft, Richie has made some calls
      and found a school on holy ground that will take Mikey. Mikey doesn't want
      to go, though, and it takes Duncan telling him that they will visit a real
      train switching yard on the way to get him to go. Mikey is utterly entranced
      by the real trains in the train yard, but Tyler King makes a reappearance,
      and Duncan fights him inside a train repair building while Richie takes
      Mikey back to the car.
      
      For reasons never explained, the police have suddenly decided that Mikey is
      wanted for murdering his previous "keepers", Alan and Ellen, and try to
      arrest Mikey. Richie desperately tries to keep Mikey calm, but Mikey freaks
      out and fights them, pushing one of them through a car window and knocking
      the other one out, then running away with Richie on his heels.
      
      While all that is going on, Duncan is fighting Tyler King and appearing to
      enjoy the battle, even grinning triumphantly as he fights while swinging
      from a rope in a decidedly Erol Flynn-ish move. By the time a quite violent
      Quickening is over (wreaking havoc on the trains), Richie and Mikey are into
      the countryside, running along the train tracks.
      
      Duncan heads back to his car, to find the two policemen, one dead and one
      unconscious. He finds Richie's jacket and moves along the tracks, eventually
      'feeling' Richie and locating them. Richie wants to get Mikey to the
      religious school, but Duncan says he can't go, that one of the cops is dead
      and now they'll never stop looking for him.
      
      This time Duncan is insistent to know what happened to the people who had
      been taking care of Mikey and he confesses that Alan was killed by the "bad
      man", but that he "made Ellen quiet", and he falls to his knees in tears.
      
      "You can't hide him," Duncan tells Richie. "And he can't be in a cell
      forever. He's Immortal, what're we supposed to do with him?"
      
      Richie finally realizes that there are no good answers, and only one that
      won't end up with Mikey being institutionalized, which would inevitably put
      all Immortals at risk. Duncan says he'll do what is necessary, but Richie
      ultimately stops him, taking responsibility for the awful task. He leads
      Mikey into the train tunnel. They stop, Richie takes out his sword, and
      Mikey starts to run, then stops.
      
      "I didn't mean to hurt anybody, Richie," he says.
      
      "I know." And the whistle of a train coming is heard.
      
      Mikey goes to his knees, putting his head on the track, and tells Richie not
      to worry, that's he's okay and not even scared. "Mikey go see King of
      Trains," he says with a happy smile.
      
      Richie is horrified, and moves to the wall of the tunnel as the train goes
      by, then takes Mikey's Quickening which is thankfully brief.
      
      The tag has Richie visiting Duncan at the wreck of a house he has bought to
      remodel. "So this is the place?" Richie observes. "It looked better in the
      picture."
      
      "Yeah, I guess it did."
      
      Richie offers to help, and Duncan asks him if he's okay. He says he is, and
      when Duncan asks him if he wants to talk about it, Richie answers, "What's
      there to say?"
      
      They start to work, and both turn as they hear the whistle of a train go by.
      The episode ends with a montage of Mikey in ecstasy at the train yard while
      the "King of Kings" portion of the "Hallelujah Chorus" plays.
      
      MY COMMENTS: I think the producers pretty much captured what was good about
      this episode in their comments, and that was Pruitt Taylor Vince's
      performance in a role that managed to be poignant without being maudlin and
      in the final scene, Stan K. had some very nice acting moments, as well.
      
      There was one plot hole that bothered me, and that was the sudden decision
      by the police, after they had let Mikey go, to re-arrest him for murder.
      Yes, there are some easy explanations, but if they had set his release up a
      little better with an extra 15 seconds of dialogue, the problem would have
      gone away. I also didn't care for the over-the-top sappiness of the
      "Hallelujah Chorus" playing during the last montage showing Mikey enjoying
      the trains.
      
      However, for the shallow among us, we had some nice eye candy to enjoy, with
      Callum Keith Rennie looking pleasingly debauched (doesn't he always?), as
      well as Duncan without a shirt in the last scene. Having them together in
      that very stylish fight was a double bonus.
      
      One interesting note is that the Chronicles tell us that Duncan returned the
      body of Chaske, the young Sioux warrior, to his tribe. Chaske's brother was
      Makina, and the implication is that the friendship that developed between
      Duncan and Makina was what led him to live with the Lakota Sioux. Makina was
      killed, and Duncan ended up caring for and living with Makina's family,
      Little Deer and her son, Kahani.
      
      MacGeorge
      
      All episode commentaries available at:
      
      http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/indexframeset.htm
      
      ------------------------------
      
      Date:    Sun, 13 Jun 2004 17:01:56 EDT
      From:    Dotiran@aol.com
      Subject: Re: Season Four dvds:  The Innocent
      
      In a message dated 6/13/2004 2:22:51 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
      kageorge@erols.com writes:
      Once they had cast
      Pruitt Taylor Vince in the part, it removed a huge concern because without
      his performance it never would have worked.
      OT:  He is such a superb actor. For those of you who are watching the new USA
      version of Touched by Evil, Pruitt Taylor Vince has a role in a continuous
      story arc and it, like the rest of the cast and show is simply amazing.
      
      ------------------------------
      
      Date:    Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:57:52 -0700
      From:    Pat Lawson <plawson@webleyweb.com>
      Subject: Re: Third time's the charm.
      
      John wrote:
      
      >Just to let you know that I contacted David Abramowitz this week and he's
      >still hoping for a Fall start on the mini-series. I'll let everyone on the
      >List know the moment anything is officially confirmed.
      
      Thanks, John.
      
      Pat L.
      
      ------------------------------
      
      Date:    Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:12:17 -1000
      From:    MacWestie <mac.westie@verizon.net>
      Subject: Re: Third time's the charm.
      
      John flogs his wares (which may well require a same/sex warning)--
      > At the risk of facing the Wrath of Nina
      
      More weary contempt than anything else, really.
      
      
      > Just to let you know that I contacted David Abramowitz this week and he's
      > still hoping for a Fall start on the mini-series. I'll let everyone on the
      > List know the moment anything is officially confirmed.
      
      Tell him to kiss Chris Lambert on his withered cheek for me.
      
      Nina (well, if you can't believe John & the official HL website, who CAN you
      believe?)
      mac.westie@verizon.net
      
      ------------------------------
      
      Date:    Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:44:45 -1000
      From:    MacWestie <mac.westie@verizon.net>
      Subject: Touching Evil (was-- The Innocent)
      
      > OT:  He is such a superb actor. For those of you who are watching the new
      USA
      > version of Touched by Evil, Pruitt Taylor Vince has a role in a continuous
      > story arc and it, like the rest of the cast and show is simply amazing.
      
      The American version of the show is called Touching Evil.  The 12th & final
      episode of the 1st season airs on USA Network this week--Monday night.  It
      will run 75 minutes rather than the usual hour.  I haven't heard if we'll
      get a season 2; to me, the show felt less engaging than it should have been,
      w/ the male lead's performance a bit lacking, & the plots were uneven.  I
      assume USA Network will replay all the eps over the summer.  Check here for
      info--
      http://www.usanetwork.com/series/touchingevil/
      
      Nina (looking forward to Monk, as well as Nip/Tuck over on F/X after The
      Shield wraps this week)
      mac.westie@verizon.net
      
      ------------------------------
      
      End of HIGHLA-L Digest - 10 Jun 2004 to 13 Jun 2004 (#2004-106)
      ***************************************************************
      
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