Well, I binge watched this show that has now been canceled and I am not sure what to do next. I mean, shall I write a petition and ask Hulu.com to pay for another season or something? After all, if I have to tell the truth, I was watching it because Hugh Laurie was playing the part of a doctor, a different one from the one we used to know, not a new House M.D. style, so… maybe, the fact that I was not focusing on the plot that much, should suggest that it was time for the series to have a break. Or maybe not, I don’t know. What do you think?
In this series Laurie plays Eldon Chance, a forensic neuropsychiatrist from San Francisco, CA who treats his patients in an “alternative” way: he evaluates them from a psychiatric perspective to finally send them to other specialists depending on what he finds out about their lives, their habits and their -of course- mental problems, details that will eventually be passed to the police. Differently than Gregory House, Eldon has a family, although he’s going through divorce, he has a daughter who will get into trouble with the developing of the season, and he has some money issues that will force him to do some stupid things and to get into trouble as well. Father and daughter will eventually find out that they have more in common than what they have been thinking so far.
Although there is no evidence that Chance was done considering Laurie’s previous works, I can’t help but find similarities in these two characters that are, at the same time, so different. The way Chance makes his reasonings, his mental speeches, the way he processes details, and how he evaluates situations considering all the information he can gather from not only his knowledge but his senses as well, resembles House in a striking way, at least to me. Also, in whatever way you want to put it, some actors can play roles that only fit to their appearance. I will always remember the shock I had when I watched the movie with Robin Williams, One Hour Photo (2005) where, instead of a cool character, he was playing a psychopath molester. No. Nope. No way. Uh, uh. There are actors and actresses who are flexible not only in their art but also in the way they look, and then there are others who simply cannot. Chance seems to fit Laurie’s predisposition to represent smart, wait… wise men, maybe tormented as well, and I believe he was the right fit for this role. (But who am I? I know, I know… ) Chance seems to be not only a well trained doctor, but a person with high values and wisdom. The torment seems to begin when his new patient, Jaclyn, comes into his life with her dark secrets and mental health issues. Moreover, it is not a chance -no pun intended- if this Chance is being accompanied by a sort of strange superhero, D., a huge bear-like man who looks a little isolated, asocial and probably a former mental health patient, who is above all, some sort of martial art skilled fellow, clearly bright but misunderstood, a calculator, with a baggage of knowledge about psychological reactions, combat and tools that make him survive in any case of potential scuffle. Eventually D. will become Chance’s reference point (I’d say a-real-friend) to fix his excruciating situation.
Chance
Genre: they want to call it crime “drama”, I would go with psychological thriller
Based on: Chance by Kem Nunn
Starring: Hugh Laurie, Ethan Suplee, Greta Lee, Stefania LaVie Owen, Clarke Peters, Diane Farr
Watched on: HULU
Two Seasons, Twenty Episodes binge watched in: 4 nights
I almost said it all (about the plot) for the first season while trying to depict an image of this character, so please just take note that the second season will focus on Detective Hynes who will blackmail poor Chance and Darius (D.’s real name that will come out eventually) in order to find a serial killer, while they get into even more serious trouble and heavily dangerous situations. In fact, Chance’s life has gotten even more screwed up while he is trying to bring justice to his patients who had to go through abuses and bad management of their conditions under the lead of the authorities. Chance turns into a violent sort of “vigilante” after we found out that violence has maybe always been part of his DNA, because of some mental health issues he may have had as a young man. This features are later mirrored in his daughter who acts in weird violent ways to protect herself, scaring her mother to the point she believes her daughter has inherited some psychological deviation from her father.
I can’t tell, and actually I can’t even guess, how the series will or would end as it was interrupted after season two, and there is no word on the street about a new season coming anytime soon. For what is worth, it was great to see Hugh Laurie back in the game again and most of all, appreciating his usual way of portraying badass men. Knowledge is power people, never forget this! The more you know the better, oblivion keeps you numb but social, knowing more makes you a little isolated maybe… but again, who am I to judge, so make your choice. Take your chance to grow, if I can say so. Oh and please, give Laurie another chance to play another cool role, I mean do it for yesterday! But first go binge watch the series…
I will totally skip on the fact that 
Let’s start the new year with the Alternative Review of a series that I honestly loved, not only for its adaptation from a book I read, but because it took me back to my first year of graduate school (the first time I attended, not the second) when I took a class in Canadian Literature and I studied Margaret Atwood‘s artwork. Who would have thought I would meet her in person something like ten years later at a book festival held close to where I used to live? Well, it happened, and here I am now, talking about the TV-series they made out of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale: simply genius. Another book I loved from Atwood was The Edible Woman, so once you’re done watching the show and reading the book (because really, you have to!) I would recommend catching up with all of her works. So actual, so accurate, so powerful. Do it, you fools!
Many have talked about the novel as one of the most feminist of the eighties, why yes, people, Atwood wrote it in 1984 and her feminist views are kind of obvious back then, if you study her works, but what was outstanding about her ways of showing ideals (and it still is remarkable also now, after watching the show) is the fact that it does not feed your brain with concepts and beliefs, instead she raises questions, she wants her readers to reach their own conclusions by simply reporting a truth, although through fictional events, that are still too real, so far.
The show begins with Offred (who is not Offred yet) and her husband, trying to escape from the police to save their child. Other details of her past are showed only through Offred’s memories and flashbacks, because from the moment they capture her, we only see her new life at Gilead. After a civil war, the United States have created a totalitarian government based on “Christian” rules. For some odd reasons, women are not fertile anymore, and they need to resort to a sort of surrogate mothers in order to have babies. What will happen though, is that these surrogate mothers are handmaids, they get impregnated by the most powerful men of the Gilead republic and they leave their children with the family that abused of them. They get assigned to their owners and they must undergo a treatment, a ritual, more easily said a f* rape, in order to give the family a child. Society is divided into classes (again?), handmaids are dressed in red (oh, by the way, read also The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne when you get a chance!), marthas – housekeepers and cooks- wear green, and wives wear blue. Of course we could not miss the prostitutes for those elite men in need of … well, they’re men, so at Jezebel’s there are women who work in secret brothels to satisfy them. Not to be contentious (or am I) but what I saw through all the episodes does not deviate much from what I see everyday. Of course the story is exaggerated (I mean, it is first a novel and then a television adaptation of it, so it has to be a little fictional, don’t you think?) but, as I said before, it gives you hints to reason, to process your thoughts, and I would appreciate to know what this TV shows creates in your …guts. About the colors and the perfect contrast the filmmakers decided to create, well, I’ll touch this topic later, waiting for season two, and after I’ll get more experience on the field… eh-hem.
June (name that in the novel is never mentioned but left for granted) played by the Emmy and Golden Globe winner 
I’m back. Well, I just spent a whole bunch of time binge watching shows, and actually, I also invested many hours catching up on movies I could find on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime Video, any platform really… long story short, I had to be ready for the 
We are back to black. How? Black is one of my favorite colors. It is considered to be the absence of light, or better, the absorption of light that can no longer be reflected. To me, black is at the same time power, mystery, authority, fear, elegance, formality, death, evil, aggression, sophistication… rebellion. You need black to have depth and variation of hue in any other color. You all other painters over there, do you agree? You do, don’t you? Black is often given a negative connotation. As many said last night, when Natalie Portman and other goddesses of mine started sharing the hashtag 
I won’t talk about the nominees, the winners, the host Seth Meyers who had a tremendous monologue, the series and the movies because these are basically details that turned out to be futile in such a night of revelation, of empowerment and awakening and, hopefully, this will last until it becomes normality. Not a movement, not a revolution. Normality. As for the reviews of movies and series that were competing for this year Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s award we’ll have to wait until Thursday, as the day of Thor is the designated weekday for the Binge Watching Queen’s Alternative Reviews. 
