BlackMagic

This was mind-boggling to me. How many countless movies employ these types of characters? Regardless of genre there are always going to be movies featuring ancillary characters you only see a few times. In the case of Minority Report those characters served to propel the story. His scene with Dr. Hineman sets up his goal and the possibility that maybe he didn't commit the crime that was previsioned which adds stakes because proving this would completely break the system he serves and devotes his life to. He meets the hacker to see Agatha's previsions. He meets Peter Stormare to get his eyes replaced, which in and of itself isn't particularly propulsive in the scene and a little tonally off, but it does drive the police encounter afterward as well as gives us the flashback to what happened to his son.

As others have pointed out in other threads I feel like this show really needs two dedicated hosts. Guests are always going to be more polite in their discourse given the inherent status of coming onto someone else's show. What ends up missing is calling the host out, which is something Devin did a lot to Amy (and vice-versa). Without those checks and balances the show develops an unevenness that I felt a lot in this episode. One of the more notable examples of this happened later in the episode (around 1:07:30) where Amy trivializes the guest's point by saying in a mocking baby voice "oh but we're supposed to care that his kid died...". This kinda thing irks me because-- A.) You can single out any plot element in any movie with that voice to make it sound ridiculous B.) You can flip this around to Top Gun and say "oh but we're supposed to care that his dad died..." The guest tries to call her out on pivoting but I feel like it doesn't have the same weight as Devin or another dedicated host doing it. Minority Report is far from perfect and Amy does make a lot of good points about some of its shortcomings, specifically about some of the odd tonal shifts that happen and the way his wife is portrayed. What I don't understand is her dislike of dead children in Minority Report but her pass on the dead father in Top Gun. Dead family members work because they're elemental, everybody can relate to them especially parents. Just because something is done a lot doesn't mean its any less effective. I could understand if they just shoe-horned that part in with exposition but Anderton losing his child is the driving force for all his actions in the movie. It causes him to join the PreCrime police force. It causes him to dope which later gets him in trouble. It causes him to kill Leo Crow in the future which in turn causes the prevision that sets the story in motion and is ultimately the thing that changes his character. It's not just some part of his character's backstory that's tacked on in a cheap attempt to add depth to him. If there are going to be versus episodes they should probably stay within the same genre. Pitting romantic military action against neo-noir science fiction doesn't make a lot of sense. Especially since they have completely different tones. If it needs to be a Cruise-off it should have been something like Top Gun vs Born on the 4th of July or Minority Report vs War of the Worlds.