You Might Think This Blog Was Deja Vu In Print Form
But No! READ IT CLOSELY because the Remote Nuclear Detonator is freshly back from it's One Millionth Victim Service.
Okay, okay, I am being deliberately abstruse. There ought to be a hyphen in there, or even a space, because it should read "Pro team", as in a team of professionals, even if it does look suspiciously close to "PROTEAN", which is the intent. We aim to deceive. Art!
Your Humble Scribe is going to do a deep divulge on Episode Three of "Department S: A Cellar Full Of Silence", so if you want to avoid SPOILERS for a show broadcast 55 years ago, now is the time to skip lightly o'er the intervening text. Art!
Told you so
There you go, a gang of four armed criminals, all shot dead in a cellar, whilst wearing fancy dress, with no motive for either the fancy dress or their murder, since they hadn't carried out an armed robbery. Yet they were cracking a bottle of champagne.
What happens when the police cannot solve a baffling crime such as this? Why, they turn the case over to the stalwarts of Department S, who operate outside regular police or judicial channels. Art!
Jason, Annabelle and Stewart
Here we see the investigative 'Pro team'. Jason is the ideas man, able to interpolate and extrapolate; Annabelle is the computer expert; Stewart is the muscle, with a background in the FBI.
There is a sub-plot here, involving the distinctly dodgy Martin Kyle, a British - ah - 'entrepreneur' and 'project manager'. One is able to judge his base character by the decor of his subterranean bunker. Art!
Kyle, you see, puts together criminal 'Pro teams'. He acts as the middleman between the organiser of an illicit enterprise, and a register of professional crooks of varying talents and abilities. Stewart here is well aware of this business and attempts to pressure Martin, who gives up a little information, just enough to avoid a Stewart Sullivan Smackdown. Art!
Then we jump to a large country house, where the semi-hysterical girl (Libby) being pumped full of sedatives insists she witnessed a gang of four men in fancy dress breaking in and killing the butler. The unconvincing smoothy here is a South Canadian, and I'm sure I've seen him elsewhere. He insists it was all in her febrile imagination, but we know better, hmmmm viewers?
What you're looking at here is this episode's Macguffin, which people have been desperate to lay hold of, to the extent of knocking Jason unconscious and later trying to blow him up. What could it possibly be apart from a replica Teuton Marshall's baton? Art!
It's made of highly-compressed wire, which can (and was used by the Teutons of Second Unpleasantness vintage) be used to record on. This is where and how Martin Kyle foolishly reveals the true intent of the four costumed villains, which was to fake a robbery. The real purpose was to leave secreted behind several sticks of fused gelignite, due to go off in merely N hours from now, under the boardroom floor. This is where the plot goes a bit bonkers. Art!
These chaps, you see, are another variety of Pro team, being the heads of various Mafia enterprises, here on a junket to the UK. That cross-legged chap nearest we the viewers is behind the dastardly plot, because he plans to take over after blowing them all up, BWA HA HA!
Thanks to Department S it all goes horribly wrong, of course - obviously!- and there are bodies everywhere at the end. Art!
Don't worry, Stewart's fine. That door and the other two chaps, not so much
Conrad has to say the plot here was pointlessly convoluted and seemed more suited to creating some notable images than making sense. Cross-leg, if he wanted to take over, could simply have gunned the other board members down, which is what he did to the first Pro team in that cellar. I mean, if he was the sole survivor of an explosion that killed everyone else, the finger of suspicion automatically points to him. Why would Kyle incriminate himself with his wire-bound baton? What was the point of Libby? Why not have the original Pro team just kill the board members? Where did Kyle hide his wire-recorder? Did t
Of course, I might be overthinking this .....
And I will, without doubt, be watching episode 4 "The Pied Piper Of Hambledown"*
"Midinette"
Another of those words that popped into my head, this time whilst glaring at the alarm clock this morning at 08:00. Which is still better than glaring at it at 07:30.
No! We are not talking about the French dub of "The Return Of Captain Invincible", where the eeeevil villain lurking in the background becomes 'Monsieur Midinette', although that's not entirely off-track. Art!
No, instead it means - what's that? No! There is no original "Captain Invincible". NO! TROCI is NOT a musical, it's a comedy with music, there is a difference and that's a hill I will die on.
Can I continue? Thank you! Thank you so much! Art?
Apparently a 'midinette' was a young French seamstress or saleswoman.
Well, now we know more than we did five minutes ago, apart from Conrad pondering how on earth this word ended up in my brain.
Rather Grim News
If you've been following us for any length of time, then you know that we occasionally experience vicarious excitement by following the hikers slash mountaineers Bruno Pisani and Anderz Egart, both of whom have posted vlogs of their experiences in the Italian Dolomites. Art!
They were last heard of by mobile phone, which was almost out of charge, and that was the last anyone heard of them. The Italians have mobilised their Alpine Rescue, Guardia di Finanzia Rescue, Carabinieri and local fire brigade teams to search for them. Art!
They were going from bivacco to bivacco along the mountains, and don't seem to have a Plan B contingency if their comms went toes-up. All the more remiss since there has been heavy snowfall in the Dolomites. Latest news is that a body has been found. As I warned you, rather grim.
Our Journey With Bernie
Before I continue with typing, better do the due diligence and check which of Mister Wrightson's FPG trading cards are available on teh Interwebz. Ah! Yes it is, #60 "Technicolour Yawn". Art!
Conrad is unsure who or what this is, except that it's teeth are worse than Shane MacGowan's, which is saying something. A bit of poetic licence at work, too, because this image is certainly not in Technicolour. Rather ill-mannered, as well, because we well-bred people cover our gaping piehole when yawning. On the plus side we now know how Ol' Bernie manages to create the images we see with his art supplies.
Finally -
This week I've been working the schedule I like, where Monday is a 9-hour day, whilst Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday are 8.5-hour days. The benefit to this is that Friday is a 09:00 - 14:00 day, only 5 hours with 2 x 15 minute breaks, so even shorter than that.
So, I tootled off down to Lesser Sodom after work to see what was what at the Co-Op, did the shopping, had to wait 20 minutes for a bus that ought to have been there in 10 and am now finising off tomorrow's blog. Gainfully employed as the last time I was on this sked I wasted the whole afternoon watching Reddit Youtube clips. Art!
AI Art generator runs amok
That'll teach me. "Comsat Angel 2002 Conrad" was the text. Apparently I am a gay clubbing cosplayer. O well.
* Late-breaking news: half-way through and I can't see how they can pull all the threads together. We'll see.
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