I'm crashing like an old man before I can watch The Riches, but Everybody Hates Chris and Heroes are after the jump, and as far as I'm concerned, this might've been the best Heroes episode yet.
Everybody Hates Chris: Rochelle is being driven nuts by her mother being around all the time, so she decides to find a man to set her up with. A girl from the neighborhood has a crush on Drew, but Drew doesn't like her. Chris learns his first dirty jokes, and eventually hears George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words." 
There were two really fun parts of the episode. Trying to remember the setup to the dirty joke that Chris tells the punchline to, and this exchange between Drew and Chris: "You know when a girl likes you, and you don't like her back?" "No, I don't." But I'm still not loving this show anymore. It's not bad, and I'll probably end up riding out the entire run of the series, but something made it work in the first season, and now the magic is gone.
Heroes: I think this was the kind of episode geeks (like me) absolutely love, but I'm not sure how the general public will feel about it. It didn't start out on a good note though. Have I mentioned that I hate the voiceover guy? Not only are his intros corny, but "Previously on Heroes" should not include footage from the episode that's about to start. They started to show Hiro at Homeland Security slicing some guys up before I was able to skip ahead. I really hate spoilers of all kinds, and all I want is the networks to not show spoilers during the show or immediately before it. Is that too much to ask?
But then... wow! So much cool future info, and all of it's going to turn out to be fake, because Hiro's going to kill Sylar, but here we go.
The New York explosion happened, and millions died, including Ando, Micah, and possibly D.L.. The world learns about Sylar, the super evil scary guy who blew up the city, and rallies behind Nathan Petrelli in what I gather is a regime of oppressive anti-superpowers legislation, and this popularity allows Nathan to ascend to the presidency.
Superpowered folks are now outlaws just by existing in public (they mention something called "the Linderman Act"), so many of them go into hiding with Bennett's help. He's working with Hana at Primatech Paper (whose URL they are shoving down our throats - if they'd been more subtle I'd check it out, but showing it over and over again irritates me) to provide cover for superpowered refugees, but he only gets to do it because he and Parkman, who is now a high ranking Homeland Security guy cracking down on the powered, share the secret that they are both hiding their children.
Parkman's (and his partner, the Hatian's) main goal is to catch the future Hiro, who is so desperate to change the past (and save Ando) that he's gotten into more than a few fights, and has made himself public enemy #1. He's not sure why going back to have Peter save the cheerleader didn't work, but he's decided that past Hiro can do it.
Speaking of Peter, he has that scar that future Hiro mentioned the first time we saw him, and he is a badass. He's living in Vegas and dating Niki, who has apparently lost her Jessica alter ego. They've both decided not to get involved with the superheroics anymore, but Hiro's plan to go back in time piques his interest. Why? Because despite what everyone believes, it wasn't Sylar who blew up New York, it was Peter, just like in his dream. 
Everyone is also unaware that their president is not who he seems. Sometime around the time of the bomb, Sylar feasted on the brains of Nathan, so he could fly, and Candace, so he could look like Nathan, and become president. He also took out Claire, who'd been hiding out as a waitress at the Burnt Toast diner (her disguise is dark hair... very clever), so he's nigh invulnerable. Sylar's plan is to exterminate people with superpowers. As Nathan, he justifies it to Mohinder with Linderman's line of thinking, that the thousands and thousands of deaths would unite the world in mourning. But after we learn the truth, you can't help but think Sylar just wants to eliminate the competition. Nathan and Mohinder also indicate that they knew the explosion was going to happen and that they let it, but I'm not clear if it was Nathan Nathan or Sylar Nathan.
Anyway, the superhero extermination plan doesn't quite sit well with Mohinder, and he switches sides, helping Hiro and Hiro and Ando and Peter as they try to get Hiro and Ando back to the present to hopefully fix things. But Parkman manages to get a shot off on future Hiro, who dies handing a picture to Ando. I sure as hell can't tell what it is, but it has to be important.
Parkman also alerts President NathanSylar to what's going on, which leads to the completely awesome showdown between Peter and Sylar when they have even more powers. But all we see are orange and blue flashy lights as Hiro and Ando teleport back to the present (we think) to fix things, armed only with the above picture, and another one of Hiro killing Sylar.
As I said, as a geek, I completely loved this. It had a lot of Bishop feel to it. But it's awfully complicated for the casual viewer, especially since if Hiro is successful, none of this will ever happen. More importantly, wasn't there a whole episode dedicated to Hiro learning through the events with Charlie that he can't change the past? Well the future Hiro sure seems to be able to do just that, and our Hiro now has to do it too, if he wants to prevent the events of this episode from happening. Hopefully, they'll at least explain that discrepancy. Even with that nitpick, this was way too much fun, so who cares. Great episode.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday Night TV
Blogs & Feeds
Reading this blog for a few minutes should make it obvious that I spend too much time watching TV and movies, but I also spend too much time on the internet. And sometimes those two hobbies combine in wonderful ways. In addition to the general interest blogs and sites I've put on the blogroll to the right, some of my favorite writers, actors, and comedians have been kind enough to keep blogs, and you can find a few I enjoy after the jump. And I'm sure there are hundreds more, so if your favorite entertainer or behind-the-scenes person keeps an interesting blog, let me know in the comments!
First, a little primer on the whole feed thing. The basic idea is that rather than having to go to every website you read one at a time to find new articles, you just look in one place (called an aggregator), and when new content is added to your favorite websites, it all appears there. Check out bloglines.com for a free, easy-to-use, web-based aggregator if you're interested. If not, then just ignore the feed links, since they won't realy do anything.
Silent Bob Speaks (site, feed): Kevin Smith does his usual Kevin Smith thing, but on the web.
Jane Espenson (site, feed): A cool blog if you fancy yourself a writer, or even if you don't. I'm just going to quote straight from her site to explain it all, "I'm a former writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have written episodes for shows including: Angel, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Ellen, The O.C., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dinosaurs, Andy Barker PI and others. I am currently under a development deal with NBC/Universal television while working as Co-Executive Producer on Battlestar Galactica. My blog is intended to help new writers tackle the job of writing those all-important spec scripts -- from picking the right show to spec, to developing an idea, to getting that dialogue exactly right, to giving the script that professional look. And then there's lunch."
Publick Nuisance (site, feed): Jackson Publick, the former The Tick writer who created The Venture Bros., directs every episode, and writes half of them, blogs with production news and occasional cool tidbits like links to special Christmas audio.
Soulbot (site, feed): The blog of Doc Hammer, the other half of the Venture Bros. writing team.
Patton Oswalt (site, feed): Stand up comedian (Comedians of Comedy), King of Queens co-star, lead voice in the upcoming Ratatouille, and all-around funny guy.
Brian Posehn (site, feed): Former Mr. Show player, Just Shoot Me regular, also a Comedian of Comedy, and one of the gay neighbors from The Sarah Silverman Program.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sunday Night TV
The Sopranos and Entourage will have to wait, cause it's animation night for me. A double dose of King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad after the jump.
King of the Hill: Bill looks for meaning in his life, and decides to get more involved in the church, but he ends up involved with Rev. Stroup. They have to sneak around for a while, but when they go public with their relationship (and their displays of affection), everyone becomes so uncomfortable around them that they try to break them up. Rather than take their disapproval, she quits and moves in with Bill. But without the sneaking around and taboo, Bill loses interest. But how to break up with a minister who left a church for you? And Bill obviously has little experience dumping women. But after trying a crazy Boomhauer/Dale idea, he follows Hank's advice and is honest with her, and everything wraps up nicely. Best moments:
In the second episode, Bobby's school has started an alternative P.E. program where a local community college designs video games and the students play test the games for "virtual P.E." credit. It's a pretty ridiculous setup, but nicely introduces two stories. Hank puts Bobby back in P.E. and forces him to take the Presidential fitness test, and the game designers find Hank amusing and design a whole game, the Grand Theft Auto-like "Pro-PAIN!", based on him. Hank starts playing the game, though, and becomes quickly addicted, ignoring Bobby's training. As usual with these things, Peggy steps in and forces Hank to do the right thing. And of course Bobby didn't pass, but did manage a single pull-up, so it was a moral victory.
The Simpsons: The Isotots, Bart's little league team, is one out away from some sort of championship when an easy fly ball heads Bart's way. Since him catching it would be boring, he flubs it, they lose the game, and the entire town (even a Bill Buckner-like character) hates him. Bart goes crazy from all the hate, so they re-enact the final out to return his sanity.
Homer gets a job selling mattresses for some reason. The Lovejoys are looking for one to spice up their love life, but the only one that works is the Simpsons' mattress. At least the writers were smart enough to throw in a comment acknowledging how silly this story was.
Neither story made much sense, but this was a really funny episode:
Family Guy: Lois gets hired as the new church organist, and decides it's a good reason to get the family going to church again. But Stewie drinks the communion wine and throws up, so everyone thinks he's posessed, forcing the Griffins to flee to Texas to avoid a forced Exorcism. 
From here on out, the episode mostly plays a lot like To Love and Die in Dixie, one of the best episodes of the series. This episode had some great gags, some of the best of the season, but a few head scratchers. What on earth was up with Stewie's fantasy about meeting Jesus? Or Sneakers O'Toole? And I could've sworn I've seen the bit about the cow having an orgasm from branding somewhere before.
American Dad: Stan learns that Francine had a lot of lovers before they got married, and the plan is for them to get a temporary divorce so Stan can even the score without breaking his wedding vows. But when he meets a woman who shares his passion for guns, Stan gets married to her instead. So Francine learns her lesson about why Stan got so jealous and they get back together, but as usual for American Dad, they crap on the typical heartwarming sitcom moment by having Stan sleep with the new wife anyway.
Steve gets hooked on an energy drink and starts begging like a homeless guy, and Roger dresses like a Persian guy and keeps picking up trashy women at bars and treating them like crap.
The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd tells the story of the early days of the CIA through the eyes of a young man who enters the intelligence game and rises to a position of power at the agency's inception. But interesting subject matter, an all-star cast, and Robert De Niro behind the camera can't quite rescue it from mediocrity.
There are some good moments as far as the agency goes. My favorite, from Robert De Niro's character as they created the CIA, "I see this as America's eyes and ears. I don't want it to become its heart and soul." But all the efforts to bring in those nice little scenes about the CIA seem tacked on, never really fitting with the narrative.
Matt Damon gives a good performance in a difficult role. By his nature, Edward Wilson is serious, closely guarded, secretive, which doesn't give an actor much to work with. That's not completely unfamiliar territory for Damon, who previously played it close to the vest in Rounders, but The Good Shepherd definitely takes it to another level. The supporting players, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin De Niro, William Hurt, Joe Pesci, and others, all perform admirably as well.
But what really drags the movie down is its length. Three hours is a long time to hold your interest in a Lord of the Rings type epic, but to spend almost as much time for a film with considerably less action and considerably more moments of moody silence is asking a lot for an audience. Trimming it down to a little over two hours, and eliminating some of the tangential elements could've resulted in a pretty good movie, but instead we're left with some nice moments and nice performances, but as a whole, nothing of note.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Friday Night TV
It's sweeps, but that's not good for Friday Night TV. Why? The networks schedule some of their worst programming for Fridays, and since they're sure to be up against first run network episodes, cable channels don't schedule many first-run stuff for sweeps. But we did get a new Law & Order and Acceptable TV.
Law & Order: A Russian in the business of importing girls for prostitution turns up dead from military-grade ricin poisoning. The victim's brother and partner takes a deal on the prostitution and leads the cops to Nicholas Brezin, an ex-KGB agent whose daughter was apparently recruited by the victim and later killed. But Brezin manages to escape to the Russian consulate just in time to avoid arrest.
Jack works out a deal with the Russians to trade the victim's brother, who the Russians want for kidnapping Russian girls, for Brezin. That seems extremely shady. Rubirosa thinks their case is weak so she starts digging and finds Brezin's daughter alive and kicking. The case rests almost entirely on whether he believed his daughter was alive, because he claims he would never kill the only man who might lead him to his daughter.
Rubirosa decides to dig even more, and discovers phone records implicating Brezin in selling his daughter into prostitution. He explains that he was backed into a corner and given a choice between his two daughters, and since his other daughter was only 14, the only choice was clear. But he'll do anything to keep his family from learning about this, so he agrees to a 10 year manslaughter sentence. 
But the big shocker is that Jack got all misty about fathers and daughters in the end, and meets his daughter (completely unmentioned, I think, in his 12 years on the show until this season) for dinner, and in classic Law & Order fashion, we get to learn exactly nothing about them. But Jack sure looks happy to see her.
Acceptable TV: Mr. Sprinkles and Kitten Calendar are unstoppable juggernauts, huh? Only one new sketch did anything for me though:
DVD Wishlist: Karen Sisco
Karen Sisco is a tough, smart, and sexy U.S. Marshal who has the unfortunate habit of falling for the same bad guys her job requires her to catch. She first appeared in an Elmore Leonard's novel Out of Sight, and then in the 1998 movie adaptation of the novel (played by Jennifer Lopez opposite George Clooney), and both were excellent. In 2003, ABC brought Karen into her own show, and I had mixed emotions going in. It's hard enough to adapt a good book into a good movie, could lighting strike twice when they spin the character off into her own series? Fortunately, as you probably guessed since I'm holding out hope for an improbable DVD release four years later, I thought it worked out perfectly. Random thoughts about the show (and a clip) after the jump.
Bob Brush (The Wonder Years, Early Edition) wrote the pilot, and Scott Frank, who wrote the movie version's script, served as a creative consultant. The series was a mixture of action and mystery, with plenty of character-based drama as well. And like any good Elmore Leonard adaptation (of which there are surprisingly few), it always managed to make the criminal element a constant source of oddball characters and plenty of laughs.
The cast was excellent. Carla Gugino, who can currently be seen on Entourage but at the time was only known for the Spy Kids movies and a season of Spin City, was cast in the lead, and in addition to being beautiful, made the character her own, and for my money played it a little better than Jennifer Lopez. Robert Forster doesn't have much range as an actor, but Karen's tough private-eye father was right up his alley. And Bill Duke (Predator) is always so mean you can't help but love him, and his role as Karen's boss was no exception. And for good measure they brought in some great guest actors.
ABC I thought did a decent job trying to promote it, but could've scheduled it better. In the fall of 2003, Alias was still a modest hit, and would've been a perfect lead-in for a show with a similar strong-but-sexy lead. Instead, it aired on Wednesdays after The Bachelor, which seemed like an odd choice. But whether it was scheduling or just America's often frustrating tendency to ignore shows I like, the audience just wasn't there, and ABC pulled it from the schedule after 7 episodes. The remaining three were shipped off to USA and aired the following spring. And that's pretty much the last we heard of the show. Although it had it's share of dedicated fans, it won't be coming to DVD anytime soon, which is a shame.
And for kicks, here's the only decent clip I could find of the show, featuring Grey's Anatomy's Kate Walsh.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Thursday Night TV
Thursday night has plenty of good TV, and with sweeps upon us, the schedule for the month is loaded with new episodes. Earl, Scrubs, The Office, 30 Rock, and Smallville after the jump.
My Name is Earl: Earl puts himself on his list since he never let himself grow up, so he starts by trying to get his G.E.D. It proves a little too difficult, so he goes back to his old high school for help, but his old teachers are all burnt out cause since Earl they've had an endless parade of kids who are no good. To make it up, he takes over as a substitute covering in-school suspension.
He tries to show them his life as an example of what happens when you goof off in school, but kids today got no respect. So Earl convinces the teachers to fight fire with fire, and they pull a series of pranks on their students. Everything works out great until a car rigged with an innocent prank ends up exploding. But after freaking out, it turns out that was exactly what the kids needed to fall in line. The teachers get back to teaching, and Earl gets his G.E.D. A funny episode, especially the exploding car, but accidental car bombs as the solution to your problems seems like a very odd message to send. Some especially funny parts:
The Office: Crisis mode, as Dunder Mifflin accidentally sends out a bunch of paper with an obscene watermark. Creed is the Quality Assurance guy, and in an effort to avoid blame pulls some evil genius moves. He gets someone fired for his incompetence, then takes up a collection for her and pockets it. I love that guy.
Jim and Andy go to a high school to apologize for the paper, and discover that Andy's girlfriend is a high school student. But that was a one-note story, because aside from that, there was no point and not much humor.
Michael decides to hold a press conference to apologize, presumably without consulting with upper management, to get ahead of the scandal that probably would not have been a scandal of note. And he brings a client to the press conference who won't accept his apology, so it turns out to be an even bigger disaster than I'd have thought. So he records some kind of crazy apology video that sounds like a manifesto and/or threat, and I guess intends to put it on YouTube? Will they continue this story at all, or just leave it? Weird episode, but it had some really good parts:
30 Rock: Season finale already? What a pisser. But what a great episode. Completely insane, but great.
Tracy's still in hiding under the assumed name Gordon Tremeshko (I think?), and only Kenneth knows that he's in Needmore, Pennsylvania, with Kenneth's cousin (played by Sean Hayes in the first role I didn't hate him in) taking care of him. Then going all Misery on him. Kenneth not only rescues him, but throws himself down the stairs to an ambulance will rush them through traffic to get to the show on time.
Jack's love of his job and crazy mother remind him that he doesn't love Phoebe. And gives him a heart attack. And Lemon's love of hers puts the kibosh on the Floydster. Which sucks for him because Tina Fey was looking especially hot tonight. Glasses, business suit, and a hint of cleavage really works for her. And speaking of hot, Cerie makes her first appearance in a while.
Just some of the many, many good parts:
Scrubs: Turk and Dr. Cox fight over who'll treat hypochondriac Lloyd the deliveryman, making up fake diagnoses for his arm pain to make him each other's responsibility. Just as Perry thinks he's won, Turk ups the ante by actually operating. Take that? I have no idea how Perry didn't see that it was all a prank. Turk's prone to doing some stupid stuff, but he's still a good doctor.
I never thought Keri Russell was all that attractive on Felicity but with straighter hair she's gorgeous. She plays Elliot's old friend who J.D. naturally has a thing for. J.D., despite always being a huge jerk to Elliot, is upset that she makes time for Keri Russell but not for him. So he turns into an even bigger jerk and sabotages the Elliot/Keri Russell friendship. We're supposed to like him and all, but sometimes he's a complete dick. It did, however, lead to a pretty amusing appletini scene. But after he gives a hollow apology for his dickishness, Elliot forgives him. And in the closer, Keith proposes to Elliot. Is she going to be Mrs. Dudemeister?
Best parts:
Smallville: The rich have it good. Even Lex's abductors are beautiful women. She blows up a series of tunnels leaving Lex trapped and Lionel in the hospital. Naturally, the tunnels are filled with kryptonite, cause the episode would be over pretty quickly otherwise. As usual, Lex makes it look like he's finally 100% evil, but then turns around at the last second to partially redeem himself. I hope before this show ends, which I hope is soon because I can't stop watching but I really don't like it much anymore, they finally just let Lex become evil. Elsewhere, Lana's getting used to being a Luthor, acting all deceitful and devious. My recording got all messed up in the last 10 minutes, so I might've missed some stuff, but it sounded like the same old conclusion stuff, where they play spooky music and make it sound like big important stuff is going on but nothing really happens.
Catching Up on TV
With sweeps upon us, I'll be spending more time catching up on new episodes I couldn't catch when they first aired. The Sopranos, Entourage, and Everybody Hates Chris after the jump.
The Sopranos: The feds are digging in a spot where Tony and Paulie buried a guy 25 years ago, so they have to take an unscheduled vacation just in case. Trapped in a car together driving down to Miami, Tony gets more and more irritated with Paulie, to the point where they go fishing together, and memories of Pussy come to mind. The scene on the boat was incredibly tense, and Tony seriously considers it, but passes. Paulie's pretty sure he came within inches of getting whacked, so when the scare with the feds blows over, he sends Tony a gift. But in the end, Paulie goes right back to being annoying, and Tony has an almost sitcom-like look of frustration.
Junior's in a mental ward. It seems like his new meds have him a little more lucid, but not too much. He's dealing contraband caffeine and sugar, and running an underground poker game, which causes one of the other patients to hero worship him. His aggressive tendencies though cause the staff to change his meds, and his attempts to not take them fail. With the new meds, he starts following the rules, which is unsatisfying to his protoge, who gives Junior a pretty nasty beating.
Really tense, two good storylines, plus they throw in a couple of Phil Leotardo scenes. He's apparently through taking shit from anyone, and it looks like New York could get pretty bloody. There were some really funny scenes. Junior dictates a hilarious letter to Dick Cheney figuring he might help him out, since they both are "all too familiar with accidental gun play," and Paulie spends about 2 minutes piling up pastries at a breakfast buffet. Great episode.
Entourage: Amanda wants an answer on the Edith Wharton script, and she's pissed that Ari planting the Medellin idea back in their heads is obviously what's holding them up. E and Vince want to give the boring one a last read before deciding, and they inflict the reading assignment on Turtle and Drama too. Shockingly, this did not go well, but they all decide it sucked. And when Vince confesses that finding her attractive made it hard to say no, Amanda heads over to "get the sexual tension out of the way." Which makes her pretty awesome. And Vince pretty lucky. 
I made the first image a little something for the ladies, so I couldn't help but throw that one in to. Anyway, last week's concern for Lloyd is a symptom of a greater problem of actual human emotions for Ari, which makes his job rather difficult. But a visit with a shrink somehow puts him back on track in a storyline that existed I think only to show him hilariously unable to fire a guy with two eyepatches, then later even more amusingly able to fire him and enjoy it.
Everybody Hates Chris: Gambling, eh? A topic that hits close to home, since I used to gamble professionally. Naturally, they get a lot of the facts about gambling all wrong (sports bookies don't care if you win or lose, they work the odds in such a way that they make money no matter who wins). Vincent Pastore has a great cameo as one of the bookies, and shares a hilarious scene with Rochelle. The B-story is about a checkers showdown between Drew and Tanya, which a much less amusing cameo by Jim Lampley. Even with that, and a really predictable ending, it was a fun episode.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Wednesday Night TV
During Lost tonight, KFC ran the ad TV Squad mentioned a while back with the high pitched sound that only young people can here. I guess I just barely still count as young for these purposes, and boy was that sound ever annoying. What exactly was the point of that? Nothing makes me crave chicken like irritating noises. But that's got nothing to do with anything, just random griping. Lost and Jericho after the jump.
Lost: Three stories going on this week. First, Sun finds out about Juliet's fertility specialty. After a confrontation where Juliet reveals the truth, they head to the staff hatch, where there's a hidden room with an ultrasound machine. After explaining that men on the island had unnaturally high sperm counts, Juliet determines that the baby is eight weeks old, so the baby is Jin's, but this also means that Sun and her baby will die without some kind of medical miracle. In an entirely expected final scene, Juliet goes off and leaves a message for Ben, indicating what she learned about Sun, and that she would next try to find out if Kate is pregnant (since Sawyer would be pretty potent on the island as well). 
In Sun's flashback, we learn that being Mr. Paik's enforcer was not in fact the deal Jin made to marry her. It was only when Sun borrowed money to pay off a blackmailer that his debt was escalated to where he had to get his hands dirty. The blackmailer in question was Jin's mother, who he thought was dead, but it turns out she was a prostitute. In an effort to save him from that shame, she not only forces him into a life of crime, but when he finds the money Sun is using for the payoff, she manages to make him feel like an inadequate provider for that extra kick in the balls. So in previous flashbacks, when we felt like the tension between them was merely Sun's unhappiness with what Jin had become, we know now that it was also Sun's guilt at her own responsibility for the situation.
Back on last week's camping trip, the guys find that the parachutist has a stick in her chest and that she's dying. When looking for something to use to treat her, Hurley sets off a flare gun. Shortly after, Mikhail comes running to them. This is interesting not only because he managed to survive his encounter with the security fence, but also because it seemed like he was running towards the flare. Was he expecting that woman? If so, why? Mikhail strikes a bargain to save the girl in exchange for his release, and Desmond agrees over Charlie's objections. Mikhail tries running off with the phone, but Jin manages to catch him, but Desmond still honors the agreement to let him go. The parachutist asks where she is, and Hurley explains their situation, and she replies that they can't be from flight 815, since that wreckage was found with no survivors.
We're left with fun questions everywhere. Are we back to the purgatory theory that was so popular in season one? Or is it some kind of Others conspiracy to create fake wreckage and bodies so no one comes searching for them? How close are we to the week deadline for Ben coming back? What about Mikhail and the flares? Whoever thinks Lost has lost it just doesn't know how to sit back and enjoy a cool story.
Jericho: Russell and his friends from New Bern, fresh off their agreement with Dale and Skylar, stage some kind of sit-in at the salt mine, and Mayor Gray threatens to break it up. When Dale refuses to give up any ground, it turns into a shootout, with one New Bernian dead. Russell doesn't seem as aggressive as the rest of New Bern, and warns Gray and Johnston that news of the shooting could start a war between the towns, so Johnston heads out with Russell to save his sons. He meets with Constantino, who explains all about his hatred for Jericho and that he has the Green boys in custody for sabotaging the factory. He demands to see them, but Constantino tells him to take off, so Johnston just kind of wanders around until he finds a truck.
Constantino is interrogating Jake and Eric. They seem to just be asking Jake questions about Hawkins, but beating the hell out of Eric and asking about Jericho's defenses. One of Jake's cellmates turns out to be Maggie the fake marine, who thinks if she gives up Hawkins' name and whereabouts, they'll take her along, and she can pass information to Hawkins once he kicks their asses. It sounds like a really stupid plan, but it apparently works perfectly, and she meets up with Hawkins and Ted.
The plan is for Maggie to get re-captured, steal some keys like some kind of ninja, then Hawkins sets off some explosions in town and free everyone in the ensuing chaos. But it's a good week for improbable plans, since Hawkins has no trouble getting his hands on explosives and she easily takes some keys from a guard. Ted's supposed to factor into the plan somehow with a rifle, but he's never shot a guy before and bails. So Hawkins has to take on the guards by himself, but luckily they're pretty incompetent. He gets off four shots before anyone reacts. Hawkins and Maggie each catch a flesh wound, but everyone manages to escape, thanks to Johnston conveniently showing up in a truck right as the shootout ends.
The episode ends with Hawkins, Eric, Jake, and Johnston walking back to Jericho after the truck gives out, carrying Maggie, who may bleed out from her leg wound. They actually share a nice family moment at the end, which was one of two high points in an otherwise stupid episode. The other was Jake giving us a sliver of hope that Heather is still alive, saying "We can't even be sure Heather's dead with the lies they're spreading." But at this point, I may not see her come back. I feel like the quality has fallen off enough that I might give up on Jericho if it gets renewed.
The Science of Sleep
Michel Gondry makes a hell of a music video, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was great. Human Nature, not so much, but even though The Science of Sleep didn't necessarily look like my cup of tea, I thought I'd give it a shot.
Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien) stars as Stephane, a man with a has a vivid imagination and the line between his dreams and reality is blurred more than a little. This provides plenty of opportunity for Gondry to exercise his skill with trippy visuals, with lots of cool stop-motion animation. Plot-wise, it's the usual story... boy meets girl, boy learns how to suspend clouds made of cotton in the air by playing the piano, boy gives girl a one second time machine, girl goes with him on imaginary ski vacation. This would be where they lost me.
It's well-acted, visually interesting, but it was a little too weird and didn't really have a plot in the traditional sense. I'm sure someone a little more comfortable with art house film would scoff at me, but my initial impression from the trailers that I wouldn't care for it was right on.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Tuesday Night TV
Sweet, my sources (in the form of a commercial on the CW) inform me that Veronica Mars returns from hiatus next week. Gilmore Girls, House, and The Shield after the jump.
Gilmore Girls: Lorelai goes back into Luke's and it's awkward. Her jeep is pronounced doorknobs (as in "dead as a..."), so she has to bike to work and look for a new car. But this turns out to be a good excuse to try to reconnect with Luke since he knows cars and she doesn't. And she drives her kinda nuts with her car shopping technique, but in a way that finally gets them past their polite awkwardness. And they really do share some nice moments.
Jackson crashes with her cause he's never had the chicken pox and his kids have it. Sookie seems convinced that he will drive her nuts. And he ends up somehow killing Lorelai's doll house. In addition to that sucking, Sookie still hasn't forgiven Jackson for his deceitful non-vasectomy. But this little tragedy finally gets them talking about it, and they seem to be on their way to getting past it.
Paris gets into all her law/med school choices and freaks out twice. Once in celebration, and then in a very negative "what am I going to do?" manner. And she dumps Doyle as part of her second freak out, wanting to make sure she doesn't make her grad school choice based on him. This starts a whole career vs. relationship thing that at least starts the audience questioning whether Rory and Logan will work out. But like every other storyline this episode, it ends up bringing them closer together as Doyle decides he will be the one to sacrifice and will follow Paris anywhere. And in the last scene, Rory gets her rejection letter from the New York Times internship she was hoping for.
A few funny parts, a little bit of Kirk, which is always my favorite, and the story was kinda nice. One of the better episodes of the season.
House: A three-card monte shill suffers from Aboulia, the inability to exercise will. A crack pipe sends them down the drugs/toxicity road, but that's a dead end. Foreman's new theory is lymphomatoid granulomatosis. So they give her radiation targeted at her immune system, but it turns out she has an infection, and they just destroyed her ability to fight it off. Foreman took the lead on this particular case, and takes the whole basically killing this woman thing pretty hard. I can't say I find any characters besides House, Cuddy, and Wilson all that interesting, so a Foreman-centric episode is kinda dull to me.
Mel from Frasier plays Wilson's ex-wife (#2), who, along with the budding Wilson/Cuddy relationship/friendship, gets a whole thing started where House may want to sabotage them or feel guilty about ruining Wilson's previous relationships with his... unique personality traits. Despite involving my three favorite characters, I am not enjoying this arc and I'd kinda like to see it end, especially since it takes away from House's time ridiculing patients and coworkers.
The Shield: Vic's replacement, Kevin Hyatt, arrives. Claudette tells Vic she wants to expand the strike team and will try to keep him on, but that was just a lie to get Vic to behave for his last few weeks. Vendrell's still feeling guilty over Lem and lashes out at the new guy, which jeopardizes Vic's imaginary chances at sticking around. But with Vic on his best behavior, Hyatt's actually impressed with the way he works.
Dutch and Billings catch a rape case. Billings' inappropriateness just keeps getting funnier ("I love the smell of underage sexual assault in the morning... I didn't mean that the way it came out."), which is difficult considering how nasty the rape case is. She was drugged and raped, but sometime before had "Go Home" carved into her stomach. Two more victims leave them with a serial rapist on their hands, and he's getting more violent with each victim.
The pile of bodies from the season premiere finally comes back up. A contact of Acevedo's says it's from a new Salvadoran gang and he gets the case reassigned to to the barn, since Hyatt comes from INS and might be best equipped to handle the case. The slow moving nature of this story probably means it'll last the whole season, and possibly into next.
Danny's back on duty and looks out of shape, taking Tina's place because she transferred out to be the "new face" of the cops, with her face up all over posters, or possibly to get away from Dutch's advances. And for the first time this season, Julien has a significant story development, with him being added to the New and Improved Strike Team(tm) starting next week.
The 19ers have a small faction who want out of the gang life, and all it does is make them targets. Vic makes it his mission to take care of these kids, somehow identifying it with a dream Corrine has about Lem. He almost manages to save the leader, but he dies when they get to the hospital. Vic loses it in a wall-punching, chair-throwing meltdown in front of the strike team, the new guy, and Claudette. I wasn't buying into the whole Corrine dream thing, but Vic's meltdown was really well done and left the episode off on a great, if heartbreaking, note.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Monday Night TV
NBC tried an underhanded trick to ruin what could be a nice night of television by having Heroes run a minute long so my DVR won't record the 10:00 Riches and then I'll watch that Wedding Crashers reality show. Fat chance. All they accomplish is that I wait another hour to start watching everything, shortening the gap between Heroes and the 11:00 Riches, skipping more commercials in the process. Sure, I don't have a Nielsen box, so they don't lose anything from it, but I feel like it's a moral victory. Spoilers for those two shows plus Drive after the jump.
Drive: The movie doesn't turn out nearly as informative as I'd hoped, but for improving the most from checkpoint one to checkpoint two, Alex and Corrina get a head start, letting them skip the next checkpoint. But there's a price to pay for their lead: when they arrive at their destination, they find that they have to rob a bank to get their next clue or whatever. 
Winston and Sean decide it'd be faster to just follow them. We learn in the process that Winston was in jail for armed robbery. Which is convenient, since they're tailing someone who needs help in committing armed robbery. Even more convenient, Sean seems to be some kind of hacker. Not the real kind, where it takes actual effort and preparation to break into a computer, but the movie kind where you can sit down and type for a few minutes and gain access. The bank heist is surprisingly easy, until a cop shows up, shoots Sean, and Sean shoots the cop, Dear Sister-style.
Wendy gets a call from Cindy Williams saying her kid might be in trouble. Does this mean Laverne (or Shirley? I never watched that show) doesn't work for the race, and that Wendy just ditched the baby with a friend or something? I dunno, but Wendy decides she wants to quit the race and save her baby. But Ivy wants that money, and amusingly doesn't know how to drive, so she pulls her gun and is forcing Wendy to continue.
Rob checks in with his commanding officer and discovers what Ellie had been hiding from him. Turns out his unit shipped out two weeks ago, so she'd been hiding it for quite a while, huh? Anyway, he's got a court-martial waiting for him if he ever goes back, so Rob is pissed enough to throw the race phone out the window. No idea where this leaves them, but subsequent events lead me to believe that people don't drop out of the race very easily.
Which brings us to Leigh and Susan, Ivy's old partners. They kept coming to Rome, GA, after getting their tires shot out and abandoned by one of their partners, but when they finally make it there, they're told that it's too late. Susan says God has been speaking to her, and that they have to continue. Conveniently, someone just threw their race phone out the window, so now they're back in. Less convenient is the fact that someone runs them off the road shortly after. With her last breath after the wreck, Susan says that God told her that Leigh was going to win. On a mission from God, eh?
It's 106 miles to Appomattox, Leigh's got a full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes... and actually she has none of those things. But she is hitching to Appomattox. Our bank robbers are trying to save Sean, who's now passed out, and Alex has some kind of plan involving a motel. Actually a bit of an improvement over last week, but I was hoping for more. It's still interesting, but Drive hasn't made the leap into can't-miss territory yet. But speaking of can't-miss....
Heroes: Oh, how I've missed it. Hiro has his sword but is trapped in post-disaster New York, Linderman makes an offer Nathan might not be able to refuse, Primatech has Parkman in custody, Claire is on the run, and what everyone's really excited about: the Sylar-Peter face-off. So naturally we pick up with an obviously fake version of Claire trying to mess with Bennett's head and an evil speech from Eric Roberts. But Candice is still really hot, so I don't mind the tease.
Nathan and Linderman are still discussing their proposal. Linderman shows off his own power, which is to heal things. At least plants, but it'd be a boring power if it was just that. But Linderman gives his "here's why I'm evil" speech, and I'm guessing almost every comic book fan watching found the whole thing disturbingly familiar, except that his office has fancy Japanese artifacts instead of Egyptian. Hopefully, it's just an homage and doesn't turn the series into a complete ripoff. I don't think we heard Nathan's response, but he's certainly considering it.
We finally pick up with the big fight. Peter quickly recovers from the telekinetic buzzsaw to the forehead, uses some telekinesis of his own, and turns invisible, but Sylar sends shards of glass in all directions, and one goes through the back of Peter's skull, killing him. Mohinder knocks Sylar out and takes Peter's body and the list to Mrs. Petrelli... but did anyone think he wouldn't be coming right back to life?
It sounds like Mrs. Petrelli has some powers of her own, and had a bad experience in Linderman's old group of crime busters or whatever, so she wants to keep Claire away from that world until she can make an informed choices. But they leave us hanging as to what Mrs. Petrelli's powers are. When Peter's body shows up, he comes back to life pretty quickly, and Claire gets to meet her father. They share a familial moment, but they hint with some ominous music that he wants Claire to run to Paris not to protect her from the hero mess, but because he's going to go along with Linderman.
Sylar shows up at Isaac's studio, and of course Isaac knows he's coming. So we finally see Isaac's death that Hiro saw so early on. But Isaac ships off a bunch of his artwork before he dies, and implies that that will show everyone how to kill Sylar.
Bennett thinks loud enough to give Parkman instructions on how to break out, and Parkman finds out something scary on the way out, stopping to pick up nuclear Ted. The plan is for Ted to generate an EMP to get them out. Which apparently only Bennett knew he could do. But it works. And they discuss their future plans at the Burnt Toast Cafe, naturally. We get the amusing revelation that Bennett's a middle manager and knew nothing about his organization. Their plan is first to go to New York to destroy the system that tracks powered people, then go after Linderman (who, in the least interesting subplot, has just kidnapped Micah).
We conclude with Hiro and Ando in the future. Hiro decides that the way to prevent the disaster it is to figure out their mistakes from the future before traveling back to fix them. When poking around for clues in Isaac's apartment, he finds his own future self, perfect English and all, who seems unhappy to see our more familiar Hiro, and that's where we leave off.
I'm a little concerned about the lack of originality from the villain (I'm being vague because comic book fans will know what I'm talking about, while those not in the know might find the comic and its inevitable movie adaptation at some point in the future to be less fun if they're thinking the bad guy is just like Linderman the whole time... but if you're curious, and don't mind spoilers, click on this link for the bio of the Linderman-like character), but the show is still slickly done and exciting, so I'll try not to think too much about it.
The Riches: Dale calls Dahlia in (fake) tears to report on his father's death. Dahlia was close to Earl, so she wants to go to the funeral, which means scrounging up some cash to pay back at least most of the money they stole so that Dale won't immediately kill them.
The Malloys aren't exactly greeted warmly when they return home by anyone except Dale's mother. Lots of menacing glares and even a little spitting at their feet. After the funeral, two big things going on: traveler funerals are frequently accompanied by traveler weddings so Di Di's in trouble, and Dahlia confronts Dale about Earl's death.
It doesn't take much to figure out that Earl's guilty, so Dahlia tries to convince everyone else, but Dale's mother is in denial, so all Dahlia can do is get really pissed, shoot holes in Dale's roof, and leave.
Between selling out the location of the Malloys to Dale, and the fact that Dahlia's out of state on parole, Ginny has the family by the balls, but Di Di can't quite say "I do" ("No, I can't. What the hell is wrong with you people?" is the closest she can get). Still, Ginny won't sell them out if Di Di fulfills Ken's dream to "consummate." There is no "I" in team, but their might be an "ewwww," cause Di Di sounds willing to bite that bullet. But when Ken comes in to enjoy his non-wedding night, Di Di explains the situation, and Ken shows that while his sister might be a huge bitch, he's still a pretty nice guy, and refuses to go along with the blackmail. Whew.
But you have to feel for Ken, who could've had his dream come true, but has his heart broken instead, and even though his entire family being a bunch of evil bastards, he's still a good guy. And his reward for his good deeds is a savage beating from Dale, who now knows that Ken knows where the Malloys live.
A lot more intense than usual, but not as funny either, which is an ok trade off. Lots of great scenes for people other than Wayne, which is a nice change from him normally stealing the show. As with every episode, I think, since the pilot, it wasn't perfect, but still pretty good.
Hot Fuzz
I learned two things when sitting down to write this post. 1. It is probably not a good idea to try find images while at work by doing a Google image search for "Hot Fuzz." 2. After catching up with the news, in the context of last week's events in Blacksburg, most of the Hot Fuzz promotional images seem kind of inappropriate. It seems like Hot Fuzz had a really unfortunate release date. Like Boondock Saints, a fun but violent movie that went completely unnoticed in theaters since it was released just after the Columbine incident, Hot Fuzz will probably suffer greatly as a movie filled with guns released just four days after the worst gun murders in American history.
I wouldn't recommend this movie by any means to anyone still feeling emotional about the whole Virginia Tech thing, and it's also on occasion extremely bloody (but fortunately it's very fake looking and obviously for laughs) but with that out of the way, Hot Fuzz is a whole lot of fun. Director/writer Edgar Wright, writer/star Simon Pegg, and star/goofball Nick Frost reunite from previous efforts Shaun of the Dead and TV series Spaced (which aired at some point on BBC America, but I've never seen it, though I hear good things). I'm not a fan of zombie movies in general, so many of the parody aspects were lost on me, but I still liked Shaun of the Dead quite a bit.
When I heard they would be taking on an action film next, I was pretty excited, and I was not at all disappointed with the result. The movie lovingly ridicules the action movie genre, with far less snark than most parody movies, making dozens of references to classic and not-so-classic action movies (and probably dozens more I didn't pick up on), finding plenty of room for crude humor (but in a way that breaks neither character nor the narrative) and cool actors (Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy (Shaun of the Dead, Pirates of the Caribbean), Martin Freeman (the original The Office, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), and almost impossible to notice cameos from Peter Jackson and Cate Blanchett). It's just a ton of fun from start to finish, and when it comes out on DVD, enough time will have passed that anyone who might like a somewhat crude, dark, action/comedy should check it out.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Sunday Night TV
Back to watching normal TV after a week of catching up. I'll have to catch Entourage and The Sopranos later cause I'm watching baseball. But King of the Hill and The Simpsons are after the jump.
King of the Hill: The Souphanousinphones want Connie to have a cool job to put on her resume for private high school, so rather than follow her parents' suggestion to work on a squid boat, she decides to be Peggy's protoge at the Arlen Bystander, but Peggy's usual "dictated puff piece" isn't enough for Connie, so she convinces Peggy to do some real investigation into her assignment, a local realtor named Chris Sizemore (voiced by Chris Elliot). When she finds no actual dirt, she writes a disrespectful story anyway. But it turns out that Sizemore was a big advertiser with the paper. Sizemore likes the cut of her jib, or whatever the cliche is, and after getting her fired from the paper, hires her at his real estate agency. And inexplicably, Connie decides to follow her. 
When she starts working for Sizemore, though, she (and Connie) are stuck with the grunt work. Peggy tries to show some initiative but ends up getting fired again. When Connie appears to be headed back to the squid boat, but Peggy decides to give it one last shot. She does a good enough job almost selling a house without a license that Sizemore hires her back.
Dale gets Hank a set of titanium golf clubs. But when Hank gets curious as to how he could afford them, he finds out one of the clubs was used as a murder weapon, and that Dale got them at a police auction. Hank has mixed feelings about them, but all it takes to get past it is asking the guy if he used them for murder, and him saying "no." There's a hilarious scene in the end where Hank finds a ski mask in the clubs, but he happily assumes that the previous owner liked to ski.
King of the Hill at its best is funny and touching, but this one fell short on the latter. But it was still very, very funny. So that's just fine with me. The best parts:
The Simpsons: Marge is embarrassed that she doesn't have email, so she gets to poking around the internet, and ends up finding a World of Warcraft type game. And everyone from around Springfield has their own character in the game, but they're all afraid of an evil shadowknight. Who turns out to be Bart (I was thinking it'd be Milhouse). And Marge is actually kinda proud of him, but having his mom around is really bugging Bart. And then Bart accidentally kills Marge.
Lisa decides to play soccer, and when the ref doesn't show up, Homer volunteers to be a referee. But he's biased and starts favoring Lisa, then she starts taking advantage of his favoritism. A completely stupid and hard to understand Ronaldo cameo shows Homer the error of his ways, and Homer throws her out of the game.
With the Simpson women upset at them, Homer and Bart bond at Moe's and get some good advice. Bart brings Marge's character back to life, sacrificing his awesome Shadowknight power, and Homer shows Lisa a documentary on soccer flopping and riots. Honestly, a pretty stupid episode. A few laughs, though:
Still More Catching Up
I think I'm finally all caught up, and it's only 45 minutes into the stuff I want to watch tonight. Hooray! Thursday's Smallville, the last two Jerichos, and last Sunday's Entourage and The Sopranos after the jump.
The Sopranos: There's a power struggle in the Lupertazzi family, A.J. and Blanca appear to be having big issues, Johnny Sacks dies of cancer, cameos all over the place (Daniel Baldwin, Jonathan LaPaglia, Geraldo, Tim Daly, Sydney Pollack, Christopher McDonald), but what really stood out was the premiere of Christopher's movie.
"Fuck Ben Kingsley!" They're in final editing, happy with their casting, but still going over last minute changes. "The lawyer called, though, we might have to change the title. The Eldridge Cleaver estate, they want an injunction." The whole movie was hilarious, with the mob boss character obviously drawn from Tony. But in addition to being funny, it drove the whole episode. The character's interaction with an associate's fiancee brings up memories of Adrianna for Carmela, and the less than flattering version of himself on screen leaves Tony feeling deeply hurt, pushing the rift between Tony and Chris even further.
A lot going on, I'm actually slightly confused about what's going on in the New York family, but the funny parts were just so damn funny, I couldn't help but love it. Hopefully the New York picture will clear up soon. Or someone will clue me in.
Entourage: Vinnie and E are dodging Amanda's calls, and having issues over a couple's weekend. E and Sloan want to go by themselves, but E tries to come up with a plan to make it happen without offending Vinnie at all, which of course blows up in his face, and leaves him on a trip with Sloan barely talking to him while the rest of the crew heads to Cabo.
Ari is hoping to land a gay client, so he brings Lloyd along in a hilariously anti-gay attempt to prove that he's gay-friendly. But the potential client takes a little too much liking to Lloyd, and the feeling isn't mutual. In order to sign the guy, Lloyd may have to... take one for the team. But look out, Ari's actually feeling guilty about the whole thing, and refuses to let Lloyd sleep with a guy just to sign a client.
There's a whole subplot with Turtle and Drama trying to pick up Freaks and Geeks's Busy Phillips and the lovely Brianne Davis at a dog park, which was kinda funny. A big improvement over the previous episode, which I didn't enjoy all that much.
Smallville: Lex listens to terrestrial radio in his fancy car, I don't think so! They couldn't work in an XM/Sirius plug? Chloe runs Lex's car off the road, knocks him on the head and takes a flash drive. She wakes up the next morning with no memory of the whole thing though. Clark spots a button of Chloe's at the scene though, so now they're all suspicious of what her Tyler Durden personality is up to. They find the flash drive though, and it has files on Chloe's mom, who has the ability to control other meteor freaks. 
Lynda Carter is Chloe's mom, and at 56 she still looks great. Lex has her locked up, having found a drug to wake her out or her catatonic state, and hoping to use her powers to his advantage, but she just wants out. So she's using the power to try to kill Lex and help Chloe find her. They escape, but the drug only had a limited effect, and she slips back into her catatonia.
Lex makes some scary threats to Chloe to keep her quiet. Lana, injured in the fight, learns that she had unknowingly been taking hormones to make it seem like she was pregnant, but never was. The sonograms must've been faked and all that stuff. And we wrap up with Clark declaring that the war between him and Lex is about to begin. Cue the dramatic music. I haven't been really in to this show in a long time, and this is just another reminder why. There was nothing bad about the episode, but there wasn't anything good either.
Jericho: Two episodes to catch up on, starting with "A.K.A." from two weeks ago.
Jake is on to Hawkins, with a drawer full of fake government IDs, and confronts him about it. Hawkins is ready with some crappy stories, but Jake isn't buying it. He comes along with a second story, and we get a lengthy flashback, but who knows if it's real or not. Hawkins says he was CIA and hooked up a domestic terrorist cell with fake IDs and killed an FBI informant to win them over, and that flashback we'd previously seen fits in with it well. The CIAs plan to infiltrate the terrorists caused them to move up their timetable, and he was given his orders to take the bomb to Columbus, OH, but instead gathered up his family and took them to Jericho. He shows Jake the bomb, and after freaking out a little, Jake agrees to keep his secrets safe.
Elsewhere, Emily is trying to start up a school for the kids of the town, but they have more pressing matters to deal with and ditch, except for April Hawkins, and they do some bonding, and Mimi is having issues with Bonnie in Stanley's absence.
Then this week's episode, "Causus Belli," picks up on the windmill building story. It looks like all of Jericho's men are back except Eric, who was torn up over April's death, but Stanley and Jake are suspicious as to why he didn't come back.
Jake takes Hawkins to New Bern to figure out what happened to his brother. They're fed a bunch of stories that they don't buy, and have to sneak around town and interrogate people to get real answers. Eric and the long-absent Heather apparently sabotaged New Bern's factory that morning, but they're left to wonder why, so Jake and Hawkins make their way to the factory and find a detailed map of Jericho and its resources, already divvied up between the powerful people in New Bern. And the factory in New Burn has been turned into a munitions factory. They're prepping for an attack. 
Jake idiotically decides to try to stop them single handedly and gets himself captured, and throw into a cell next to Eric. And holy crap, Heather is dead. That sucks, I like Sprague Grayden. The episode ends with New Burn's mayor parading Eric and Jake in front of the town in handcuffs, explaining that Jericho never planned to honor their food commitment. It looks like preparation for an execution before they launch their attack, and the only one who can stop them is Hawkins. Luckily, he's a badass.
Stanley comes home to find the dude that's been nailing Bonnie at his farm, which is quite the kick in the balls. But conveniently, that guy's a total idiot, so it's probably not going to last.
Skylar and Dale start moving salt from the mine, but apparently she can't because she's a minor. She tries to get her parents declared dead so she can become an emancipated minor miner (I amuse the hell out of myself), but the mayor shoots that idea down. This might force her to sign a deal with one of the New Burn guys.
