Friday, March 17, 2017
The nudity of truth is at times disquieting
FOREVER – IOAN GRUFFUDD – 2014-2015
That’s a one-year series with twenty-two episodes of
forty-one minutes that comes to a conclusion that cannot be stepped over
without the series becoming repetitive and thus boring if it did. Imagine one
man who has lived for more than two centuries and is we’ll say eternal, in fact,
he will never die but he was born. He had a starting point but he has no end.
So he is living a never-ending life. In such a series you cannot really discuss
the central element without violating the whole suspense.
It discreetly deals with the Second World War and Auschwitz
since Dr. Henry Morgan (is he a relative to Dexter Morgan?) has a son who he
recuperated as a new born baby when he liberated Auschwitz, which by the way is
impossible since it was liberated by the Russians. But well, let’s dream a
little bit. He is called Abraham and his mother, Dr. Henry Morgan’s wife at the
time who discovered and adopted Abraham in the same circumstances and at the same
time as Dr. Henry Morgan did, disappeared from their life when she was
seventy-two or something along that line. Abraham wants to know what happened to
her, since she was not eternal but was mortal. Abraham and Dr. Henry Morgan
will manage to find the truth about this disappearance. It is sad and re-comforting
in a way.
But there is another never-dying chap in the story, a lot
older since he was killed the first time with one of the daggers that killed
Julius Caesar. This chap considers that being killed a second time with the same
weapon is the only way to stop this curse of a never-dying life. So Dr. Henry
Morgan has to find that haunting stalker and to neutralize him. Add to this the
fact that Dr. Henry Morgan was killed on a slave ship owned by his own father
when he tried to liberate the slaves and imagine the fact that the ship got
wrecked somewhere along the coast of New England or North East USA and it is
brought back to the surface one day and they could not find the several hundred
skeletons that should have been the slaves. The mystery and plot definitely
thickens.
And what’s more since Dr. Henry Morgan is working in the
local morgue in New York, he is in contact with Detective Jo Martinez, who has
lost her husband in unclear circumstances. It does not matter how anyway since
the only thing we have to know is that she is a widow and her husband was the
attorney general in New York or something close to that.
You thus have several lines that are crisscrossing one
another and that interweaving makes the story funny, at times slightly
hilarious because every single time Dr. Morgan is killed he is resuscitated in
the East River in the nude and is arrested several times for exposing and
exhibiting himself in full nudity in some public place. Every episode is a
criminal case. Then Dr. Henry Morgan is running after his stalker, named Adam,
which is a frankly naïve name, to neutralize him, since Dr. Henry Morgan is no
killer. Then Dr. Henry Morgan and Abraham have to find what happened to their
wife and mother. We have to learn a little bit about the distant past and the not
so distant past. And we have to deal with Detective Jo Martinez who is not
completely blind to the bizarre situation of Dr. Henry Morgan.
That makes the series palatable and even at times very
successful. Enjoy that new Morgan in your series universe, and remember we
always need to have a little Morgan in some closet or cabinet in case of some emergency.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:53 AM 
