Agatha All Along: Gay teen and witch trapped in a bad-tv show world. With bonus nekkid guys.

 

Agatha All Along appeared without warning on my Disney Plus page, showing two elderly women and a teenager on a dark wilderness road.  The teenager is Joe Locke, who played a gay character in Heartstopper, and came out in real life twice, at age 12 and 15, so no doubt he plays a gay character here.  I'm not even going to bother with preliminary research.

Scene 1: An elderly woman, maybe Agatha, driving to a crime scene: she's a small town cop suspended for punching a suspect,  but called back for a case only she can work on -- a woman has been found dead in the woods.  Why is it always a woman, never a man?  

Crushed by a heavy object, no id except for one of those old library check-out cards. 

Scene 2: Wait -- her name is Agnes, not Agatha, so who is "all along"?  

She goes to the library, where there's a long line to check out books. Have you been to a library lately?   She cuts -- "Only suckers wait their turn" -- to ask the sarcastic librarian Miss Jones about the check-out card found on the victim.

Miss Jones: "Ooh, is she dead?"

Agnes: "Why do you assume it was a woman?"  Because it's always a woman, nitwit.

Miss Jones: "It's more tit-ilating." Boob joke, har har.

They don't use old-fashioned check-out cards anymore.  The book -- Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning & Debate, was marked stolen three years ago.  But there are lots of other copies in Natural Sciences.  Not in English?

Agnes hits the stacks, and there were indeed a dozen copies -- all burnt up. "There was a fire," a mysterious man whispers.  Odd that Miss Jones didn't know that.

Scene 3: At the station, the Chief is played by David Lengel, who looks like Ross from Friends with a porn stash.  

The body shows traces of "a particular microbial sediment found only in Eastern Europe."  That makes no sense.  The woman was killed across the ocean and transported to their quiet New England town. 

Scene 4: In other news, Agnes has to work with the snarky Federal Agent Vidal, whom she hates.  To be fair, Agnes hates everyone.  They may be ex-lovers: Agnes thinks that she requested the assignment just so they could get back together.

Ex-Lover notes that there are no drag marks on the soil, nothing disturbed: the body just got zapped there, as if by magic! 

Agnes scoffs. "In stories about small-town murders, it's always about the hidden secrets of the townsfolk, so let's investigate those."

Scene 5: Norm the pawn shop guy,  played by Asif Ali,  is examining a cameo locket that Agnes brought in: New England, late 17th century, with a lock of hair inside.  He offers $200. 

She just wanted an expert opinion so she could sell it on ebay, har har.  Agnes is rather a jerk, isn't she?

Scene 6: Late at night, Agnes is fiddling around at the station.  She discovers that the first letters of the book's title spell DARKH.   So?

Later, in her huge "TV middle class" house, Agnes goes into a child's bedroom with a teddy bear on the bed and drawings on the table, and music awards: "Nicholas Scratch, First Place." Dead kid?  But Nick and Scratch are both names for the Devil.

Scene 7: Knock on the door: It's the Ex-Girlfriend, with pizza!  Isn't it, like, the middle of the night?

Agnes has a lead: car crash in the town of Eastview an hour before the body was found. Ex-Girlfriend wants to know if she's ever been to Eastview.  "Sure, I'm a world traveler."  Wait...it dawns on Agnes that she's never actually left town.  How is that possible?  

Next Ex-Girlfriend asks "Do you remember why you hate me?"  "No."  It's like it was written into the script, with no back story.  Something is wrong here.

They're interrupted by a clattering -- an intruder in her bedroom, going through her stuff!  She chases him out onto the roof, down a gutter, and down the deserted streets, until Debra Jo Rupp, Grandma Kitty on That 90s Show, accidentally hits him.

Scene 8: The perp is a teenager, played by Joe Locke.  He's sarcastic and insulting, leading Agnes to kick him -- that's what got you suspended, Girl.  Finally he admits that he broke in to look for the Road. 

Agnes thinks he means the road to the murder site, so he's a suspect!  "What you were doing last night between 1 and 3 am?"  "Asleep in bed." "Loser!"  Wait -- being asleep in the middle of the night makes you a loser? 

She pulls out pictures of the murdered woman to confront him with, but suddenly they turn into pictures of flowers on someone's front lawn!   He starts chanting in Latin....and now her Ex-Girlfriend has vanished!  There never was a murder, so of course she would not have been called in.

Scene 9: Agnes visits the coroner's office  -- no body.  Until one appears, with a check-out card instead of a toe-tag, and the last person who checked the book out was Wanda Maximoff!  Agnes is shocked!

Who the heck is Wanda Maximoff?  Answers and nekkid men after the break

A Discovery of Witches: Some lesbians, a gay tease, a very important book, and Matthew Goode's goods

 

On to the next of the new paranormal tv series on Netflix, A Discovery of Witches.  

But it's nowhere near Halloween.

Prologue: "It begins with absence and desire.  It begins with blood and fear,  It begins with..." Coffee and bagels?  No, "a discovery of witches."

Scene 1: Nice establishing shots of Oxford.  Matthew (Matthew Goode) complains that this was once a world of wonder, but it belongs to the humans now. Demons, vampires, and witches have all gone into the closet.

Cut to a blonde woman rowing in the Thames, then running through the university, taking a shower -- gratuitous nudity, at Minute 2, no fair! --  eating breakfast, packing up her stuff, and pausing to gaze despondently at a photograph of her and her boyfriend.  Actually, the lady in the photo seems a year or two older, so maybe it's her lookalike sister or mother.  Looking at her makes Rowing Lady extremely depressed, so she must be dead.

Biking across town, locking up her bike -- whoops, her papers fall out and scatter, but she uses her magic powers to retrieve them. Fortunately, no one sees her.

Scene 2: Rowing Lady, Diane, is a Visiting Research Fellow who took her D.Phil. in the History of Science from Oxford, published two prize-winning books, and got tenure at Yale.  In the History of Science? 

In her powerpoint presentation, she theorizes that the Renaissance alchemists were actually describing real chemical processes.  She's going to research the manuscripts of Elias Ashmole , after whom they named the Ashmolean Library. A lady rushes up and offers her a position at Oxford, and wants to know if her book is ready yet.  She hasn't started the research yet, nitwit. 

Scene 4:  Diane has coffee with an old friend from Oxford, who gazes at her -- ex-girlfriend?  She was trained in classical history, where there are no jobs, so she's just an adjunct.  And there are jobs in the history of science? 

The friend invites her to the coven tonight, but Diane isn't comfortable around magic after what happened to her parents.  Witch burning?

Scene 5: In another building, a guy -- maybe Matthew?  -- is praying with his rosary.  Um -- Oxford is Anglican.

Left: Matthew's butt.  

And his cock.  It's not much, but he's an upper-class straight white man, so he'll be in a position of power regardless.

Cut to Diane in the Ashmolean Library, ordering books from the hunky library guy, played by Ezra Idun.  But the book whispers at her, and some pages have been cut out.   And the Praying Guy hears a heart beat!  In other news, her needy friend drops by to flirt with her some more.

As Diane types her notes, the lights flash and everybody hears the whispering.  Praying Guy gets a call from a woman, who explains that their blood is reacting to something.  They must be vampires.  Catholic vampires who go out in the daytime.  He uses his super-hearing to locate the disturbance

Meanwhile, Diane finds that touching the pages burns her!  She returns the book and rushes out of the building, bumping into a passerby who looks like her dad! Praying Guy is watching her suspiciously.

More after the break

Mayfair Witches: Two of them, with interlocking stories, a swishy straight guy, and a demon dick

 

Netflix has just dropped a lot of paranormal tv shows: A Discovery of Witches, Interview with a Vampire, The Preacher...I'll start with Mayfair Witches, which is based on a trilogy of books by Anne Rice, so there's bound to be some gay characters.

Scene 1: A sagging Gothic mansion. A man in a Depression-Era robin's egg blue suit appears on the front porch to give a staring, catatonic woman her Thorazine shot.  He's new, and can't believe that this is the patient: her file is so big, he thought she was elderly.

He reviews her file, and snoops among the weird books and artifacts in her library, including a photo of her as a 1920s flapper.  So she's immortal. Out on the porch, a man is talking to her, but when the doctor comes out, he is gone, and the maid says there was no man.  Eerie!

The rest of the episode juxtaposes stories of two women who look alike, so the only way to tell them apart is by their timelines: the first is contemporary, and the second looks to be in the 1950s. I don't know which is the catatonic one.

The Story of Woman #1: Rowan

Scene 1: Rowan pilots a boat into San Francisco Bay.  Her girlfriend arrives via Uber.  Nope, it's her mother.  

Scene 2:  A surgeon, Rowan is comforting the young boy she'll be operating on. Wait -- a male surgeon, Dr. Keck, took over the case to impress the sexist Board, but he's not operating right. She argues, but to no avail, and the boy almost dies  "Keck is a menace!" she exclaims. 

Scene 3: More tearjerking: Mom's cancer is back!  Plus we've only seen two male characters, neither cute.

Rowan tells the menace Dr. Keck that David Lemle was observing the surgery.  His company does research with stem cells for cancer patients, so could Dr. Keck arrange an introduction, so she can apply for a job as his research associate, so she can get her mother into the trials?  That sounds unethical, and really far-fetched. But Dr. Keck thinks she's arrogant, with a superiority complex.. As he is tearing into her, she hears whispers, something happens inside his brain, and he falls over dead!  

Scene 4: Rowan thinks she caused Dr. Keck's death.  Maybe her powers are genettc, but she's adopted, and there's no way to determine who her birth parents were.  

But the moment she leaves the room, Mom calls a facility and asks who Rowan's case worker is now: Ciprian Grieves, played by Tongayi Chirisa, left. That's a totally made up name.  She leaves a message: "My daughter is hurting people.  I need to know if something has changed."

Scene 5: In a bar, Rowan asks the bartender, Max (Jordan Cox) to have sex with her, but he has a date tonight.  So she goes after a random guy, and he relents.  

After sex, he wants to stick around, cuddle, and discuss their feelings, but she kicks him out: she's only in it for sex, not a relationship.  That's why she never sees the guy a second time.

Scene 6: Caseworker Ciprian Grieves goes to a house in New Orleans and uses his magic powers to look at the spirit world.  A mysterious spirit, played by Jack Huston, is lurking in the back yard.  He calls Rowan's Mom and tells her that He is nowhere near her daughter.  That's a good thing, right?  

Mom notes that she's dying of cancer, so who will protect Rowan when she's gone?  Ciprian volunteers.

More after the break