"I thought they droned the guy! - Yeah well, apparently it didn't take."
Hello everyone!
As you may have noticed, we seem to be short on two blog posts on this page since last Tuesday, and I promise you it has nothing to do with the Game of Thrones season finale.
I mean, it might. I'm not sure!
The thing is, my computer of ten years decided on Wednesday morning to say farewell, and I needed to sort out my situation before I could get back to posting, which means that I unfortunately had to skip on a few blog posts.
Never fear, however. I'm back!
And since I've been so used to watching HBO over the last month and a half, I'm now trying to figure out what to keep on watching haha.
Thankfully, CBS is hitting it out of the park with its lineup this year, so I decided I'm going to talk about the premiere of their summer show, Blood & Treasure.
Our story begins, by necessity, in an Egyptian tomb - because where else are you going to kick off a journey into the past, right? A favourite from Timeless playing Ana Castillo has apparently discovered the last resting place of none other than Anthony and Cleopatra.
In a quick refresh: Cleopatra is the lady who seduced the Romans, had a child with Caesar and ended up committing suicide once Octavian defeated Mark Antony, her then-lover. Apparently, however, nobody really knows there the two were buried.
That is, until now.
Dr Castillo just found them!
And she's also found trouble.
Who else but Oded Fehr walks into the tomb, all glorious with silvery hair and commanding presence?
There's some irony in the fact that, back in the Mummy days, HE was the one protecting the tombs in the desert, but now there are OTHERS protecting them from HIM. And with good reason, because after he grabs Antony's sarcophagus (Cleopatra's is somehow missing) he blows the entire pyramid up (or most of it, the things don't like being exploded) while taking Dr Castillo captive.
Meanwhile, in a more modern setting, our protagonist Danny who practices international law is trying to get a painting back to its original owners when John Larroquette walks in to save the dilemma and tells Danny about Castillo.
Danny used to be an FBI agent before things went south during one of his investigations, so he may be a bit rusty and calls for help from an unlikely ally, namely Lexi.
Our other protagonist is a modern day Lara Croft extraordinaire, thieving her way through life when Danny picks her up from the back of a police car, and the two of them then hightail it to Rome so they can find an auction where the pieces from the tomb will be sold - and they can potentially get a link to who kidnapped Dr Castillo.
Of course things aren't going SO smoothly, because Lexi and Danny have a past - and it's explained in segments during the two episode premiere:
while Danny was still in the FBI he apprehended Lexi and then went on to get her to convince her father, an antiquities dealer, to help them try and catch Farouk (Fehr), a notorious terrorist. Things were all going according to plan until someone tipped Farouk the FBI were on to him and he deviated from his course during the action meant to take him out, and Danny had to make the tough call of letting him go as the US didn't have jurisdiction in this new territory.
This ended up backfiring because Farouk came for revenge even though Danny promised that he would keep Lexi and her father safe, but an explosion put a lie to that and killed Lexi's father - also killing any chance of there being a Lexi and Danny, at least at the time.
Anyway, in the present day, Lexi is showing Danny that goody two-shoes don't exactly make it far in her world, breaking into an ex-boyfriend's place to get him a suit so they can go meet with a branch of the Italian mafia.
The Don of said mafia is actually holding the auction and they need to get in there, so Lexi, who knows everyone everywhere, explains she'll help the Don smooth things over with his daughter, who now has a son of her own - and hey presto, they're in!
Although Danny is feeling decidedly like a boy toy (and is called as such) and is itching to call the Interpol, which he does, tipping off an old contact of his (apparently also an old flame, Gwen), causing the Interpol to come in guns blazing. While Lexi's busy yelling at Danny he manages to tell her he used the phone of the dealer they were tagging - Shaw - and since Lexi managed to get an app on said phone to track him, they go to pick him up.
They also end up tying him and putting him in the trunk of a stolen car, and patch up most of their differences after Lexi lets Shaw go as bait and explains that it was easier to hate Danny for her father's death than herself.
Coincidentally, she also tells Danny to keep her father's prayer beads, which he found in the shop later, and carried with him ever since.
Time to keep on moving, however, and they head to a secure location that's like a Swiss bank only it has larger spaces you can rent to keep bigger things in, and this is where they also learn a startling thing: Farouk is still alive!
Spoiler alert, he was supposed to be dead by Egyptian missile, but apparently, the guy's got more lives than a cat.
Lexi leaves Danny in the dust with Shaw AND Dr Castillo as they hide in a sarcophagus to escape both a lack of oxygen and a fire set in the container room (apparently, if the oxygen is cut off in the room, but you close the lid of the box, that forms an air pocket that helps you wait the system out) while she heads after Farouk, not that she's successful.
She and Danny are both picked up by Interpol and being transported (by Gwen, natch) to be taken into custody, but they end up escaping using the one parachute that's on board, landing in the Vatican gardens.
Thankfully, Danny has a friend, and he manages to stall the Carabinieri and Agent Gwen while Danny and Lexi head out through a secret passageway.
They now need to get to Shaw since he's still their only link to Farouk, and so they head over to Monte Carlo (I believe it was that at least) where they find him in a casino trying his luck after fleeing.
They're all in for some bad luck, however, because Farouk has ordered their execution by Scorpio, a woman who uses poison (naturally) and the lot of them all get poisoned by the casino chips, only Lexi and Danny have enough strength left to go after her and kick her ass for the antidote.
Back with Dr Castillo, they realize that Farouk only really moved the sarcophagus which means that it's his endgame, but that they might have more luck if they followed something else rather than him: he's probably going for Cleopatra, and Cleopatra was apparently taken by the Nazis. So even though there's now three factions going after her (Lexi and Danny, Farouk, and the secret society that guarded Anthony and Cleopatra's tomb but were too late to stop the Nazis, and of whom Commander Fabi of the Carabinieri is a member), it looks like it's time to pack up and go on the move!
Highly entertaining, fast paced, and with a strong main cast in Matt Barr and Sofia Pernas, who relocated to CBS from Valor and The Brave, this show promises to be another win for CBS.
Because who can really resist Oded Fehr being all diabolical?
Tune in again tonight when we continue the hunt for Farouk - and Cleopatra!
xx
*images and video not mine
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