Sure, this Shakespearean production has been rocky, but imagine how much worse it would
be if they were performing the Scottish Play. They are staging Julius Caesar
instead, so Brent the director cannot fault the writer. However, the lead is
objectively bad and many cast and crew members just rub him the wrong way. The
theater’s sinister history inspires him to make sudden personnel changes in director-screenwriter
Max Tzannes’ Et Tu, which just released on VOD.
Marcus
has no talent, but his father is bankrolling the production, so he is playing
Brutus. It is a shame, because his understudy Terrence can actually act. Margaret,
the understudy for Portia would also be a trade-up, especially since she and
Terrence have some off-stage chemistry percolating.
It sure
would be nice to get rid of Marcus, especially since he rough-houses with the
prop daggers. To make his irresponsible behavior worse, someone has been sharpening
those stage weapons. The mysterious janitor seems to understand Brent’s dilemma,
He also encourages the director’s worst impulses.
Et
Tu is a scrappy
little macabre tale that is often quite clever. It is probably safe to label it
horror, considering there is more than enough killing, as well as mild
supernatural overtones. Yet, instead of scaring viewers, it invites us to take
voyeuristic glee in the deadly mayhem, which admittedly gets entertainingly
bloody.
Dr. Ben Song is a self-professed pacifist, but this season, he has fought
the good fight, against the Communists, in the Cold War. In the season opener,
Song leaped into an Air Force Airman, on a clandestine mission somewhere in
Soviet territory. This time, he is about to leap into a CIA officer, posted to
the den of spies that was early 1960s Egypt, which was supposed to be a “non-aligned”
nation, but it has been a comfortable home for the East German Stasi agent
known as “Nomad.” If Song can facilitate her defection, it will definitely
change history for the better in this week’s episode of Quantum Leap,
which premieres tomorrow night on NBC.
Song’s
latest host is sort of an early Jack Ryan. He has a background as a desk
analyst, not a field operative, but somehow, he figured out Nomad was interested
in a meeting. The local station chief Shepherd Barnes (a very CIA-sounding name),
does not have much confidence in him, which was warranted in the original
time-line. However, with Addison Augustine back as his holographic guide, Song makes
his host much more resourceful this time around. Indeed, he quickly discovers
Nomad is a native Egyptologist, who used her travel to archaeological sites
throughout the Middle East as a cover.
Having
grown disillusioned with the Stasi, she wishes to defect. Unfortunately, once
he identifies the mole in the embassy, Barnes is reluctant spend the local
capital necessary to save her, so it will be up to Song.
How
did Song get all the way to Egypt this time? Maybe it had something to do with
Hannah Carson, his kind of-sort of new girlfriend, with whom he is possibly “entangled.”
She too is in Cairo for a scientific conference. Even though it has been
several years from her perspective, they immediately pick up where they left
off.
The
developing relationship between Song is Carson has turned out to be
surprisingly well-written. It is romantic, but it is driven by the
circumstances of time-travel, sort of like Somewhere in Time, but
without the sentimentality. On the other hand, the Song-Augustine melodrama is
getting a little tiresome.
