Sun 15 Mar 2020
A TV Episode Review: COUNTERPART “The Crossing” (2017).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Science Fiction & Fantasy[8] Comments
COUNTERPART. “The Crossing.” Starz, 60 minutes. 10 December 2017 (season 1, episode 1). J. K. Simmons (in a dual role), and a large ensemble cast, both primary and recurring. Created by and screenplay: Justin Marks. Director: Morten Tyldum,
Shown on the premium channel Starz for two 10-episode seasons, the premise is both simple and complicated. The short description is that a parallel world to our has been secretly tapped into, and while much is the same in the two Earths, the paths for each have been rapidly diverging. The long version takes up the entirety of this, the entire pilot episode, without much of a direction of where the story is going to go from there.
I’ve listed only J. K. Simmons as the star of the series, as the roles of everyone else revolve only around him. On our side he’s a downbeaten schlub for the company he works for, without no hope for promotion and not much idea what the company he works for actually does (which is tom monitor the point at which the two wolds meet). On the other side he’s the aggressive agent who’s been sent to our side to pave the way for – what exactly, the details will come later.
As an actor, J. K. Simmos is a revelation. Just by body language alone, you know immediately which Howard Silk he is. It is an utter delight just to see him in action. I’m not a big fan of parallel worlds story lines such as this (I stopped watching Fringe when the emphasis changed from relationships between the characters on our side to uninteresting events happening on the other), but at the moment I’m OK with watching the next in this series, just to see where it’s going from here.
March 15th, 2020 at 1:26 pm
I agree, Simmons was great. We lost interest somewhere in series two, but maybe it was just us.
March 15th, 2020 at 2:59 pm
Jeff, I think I’m going to follow your example and keep on watching until I no longer find myself no longer enjoying it.
March 15th, 2020 at 4:59 pm
“Large ensemble cats” sounds intriguing.
March 15th, 2020 at 5:21 pm
Made of Lego pieces, I guess. But I’ll fix it. Thanks! Spell checkers can’t catch everything!
March 15th, 2020 at 8:25 pm
This series made my best of the 2010 decade post here https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=65490
Nice to see the past posts and comments did survive.
It was cancelled after the second season.
March 15th, 2020 at 8:49 pm
Ha! So you did, Michael. I’d forgotten. At that point in time,I never thought I’d ever see anything on Starz, so it was once read in your post, then immediately gone.
All of the posts and comments made it through the transition, but for some reason we haven’t figure out why, not all of the images did. They were all there at first, then many of them suddenly disappeared.
Compounding the problem, WordPress had instituted a new editor, which doesn’t make a hill of beans of sense to me, but over this past weekend, I’ve worked out a, well, work around that seems to be working.
All the missing images are there; it will just take a while for me to go back and fix a problem I’ve found with them.
Also, please notice the addition, finally, of images now starting to be included in tall of the post-transition posts.
Including this one!
March 16th, 2020 at 8:43 am
Steve, You’re spelling “duel”as to fight a duel, not “dual” as in a dual role.
March 16th, 2020 at 9:23 am
Absolutely right, Randy. I am chagrined. Thanks!