Thursday, May 17, 2007

Thursday Night TV


Season finales aplenty tonight. I've been putting some thought into what I really want to do here, and I think I'm going to abandon the nightly commentary on everything. It feels like a chore, and I can't imagine all that many people are enjoying reading them anyway. But past the jump, some random thoughts on Smallville, The Office, and Scrubs.

The Office: Freeze frame fun:

www.creedthoughts.gov.www/creedthoughts

Creed Thoughts!

Hey-o, everyone out there in Syberworld. It's old Creed Bratton coming at you again here from my perch as a Quality Assurance Manager at Dunder-Mifflin paper. Just a few observations on the world around me.

What do you guys think is the best kind of car? To me, you can't beat motorcycles. They're small and dangerous.
Lines of the night:
  • "Pam's kind of a bitch."/"I hope you get the job in New York."
  • Yeah, I didn't get both your messages."

Scrubs: I'm kind of disappointed that they're going back to the Elliot and J.D. well. Despite a plot-heavy episode, they still worked in some good lines:
  • "I'm not risking my health on trash food. Unless it's a corn dog."
  • "Is that what you're going to say when she looks at you with those big blue eyes and says 'lmtkpkplts'?"
Smallville: I suspect some fakery, but if they killed off Lana there's no reason to watch the show anymore, except for a cool Clark/Bizarro fight.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Wednesday Night TV


Season finales are exciting, but the summer cable shows don't really get going til about the 10th of June, so it'll be a slow couple weeks in between. But tonight, Bones' season finale along with the last Lost before the big season ending episode next week. My commentary on both after the jump.

Lost: When counting down his top 5 moments in life, I was kinda hoping #1 would be killing Ethan. Would've given a nice incredibly dark edge to Charlie. And I can definitely see him finding that moment extremely satisfying in a slightly crazy way.

Charlie's impending death finally comes to the big payoff. It's amazing how quickly Charlie's good moods can be ruined by a concerned glance from Desmond. But this time Desmond sees Charlie's death leading directly to Claire leaving the island (suspiciously absent are any references to anyone else leaving, or whether Claire's leaving with rescuers or if somehow the Others get hold of her and take her away). Charlie decides that he's willing to sacrifice himself, and accepts the assignment to dive into the looking glass station underwater, where he'll flip a switch and drown. Instead of finding an abandoned hatch with a switch, he finds a manned (or womanned) station, with two young ladies running up to him with guns.


Rose, to Bernard: "If you're going to be hiding in the bushes, let's get you into something dark." Does it make me a perv and/or racist that I found that hilarious? Anyway the plan is for Bernard, Sayid, and a few others to hide out and when the Others come, to shoot at the tents to set the dynamite off. While Charlie takes out the jamming station, everyone else heads to the radio tower so they can try to call Naomi's ship as soon as communications are un-jammed. Nothing actually gets resolved (including the question of why Jack is being such a dick), leaving the potential for a super exciting final episode.


Bones: More weddings should feature ZZ Top music. And pie instead of cake (a campaign I've been running for years, long before Turk on Scrubs made that joke). Also, it'd be fun at least once to go to a wedding that ended up like a TV one, in which inevitably something goes horribly wrong, and often no one ends up married.

Such was the case on tonight's Bones (I love a good misleading screencap), which had an ok mystery, a couple of father cameos (Ryan O'Neal getting himself caught on purpose, and Billy Gibbons giving away his daughter, who was wearing some kind of ridiculous looking hood instead of a veil). Pretty fun episode, and they set up plenty of fun little questions for next year. I'm hoping, though, that they play it cool and don't have a big season premiere full of resolutions. But either way, this is how procedurals should work. The case of the week gets wrapped up every week, but the characters are strong and capable of change and growth and they work in plot threads that run over multiple episodes. Also, Sea Chimps!

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Tuesday Night TV


The Shield and some catching up from Monday will come a little later. But first, the series finale of Gilmore Girls and what, sadly, is the second to last Veronica Mars ever after the jump. But first, a really awesome new Bruce Campbell Old Spice ad.



Gilmore Girls: Early in the season finale, it becomes apparent, due to Rory's awesome new job, that the graduation reenactment as planned won't go off, and the town is pissed. So Rory and Lorelai try to calm them with an impromptu version in the diner, using a menu as a prop. Babbette's reaction, "it's not how I imagined it," nicely captured most Gilmore Girls fans' reactions to the final season without creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.


But for a series finale, this wasn't a fine episode. This isn't a show based on plot twists or anything, so just ending with a bunch of nice moments between characters seemed appropriate.

Veronica Mars: Veronica and Piz are all luvy-duvy, which kinda makes me want to puke. Similarly, Logan and Parker are doing the happy couple thing. Sweet was fine on Gilmore Girls, but that's not the Veronica Mars I love.

Piz lands a big interview with a Hearst student named Apollo Bukenya who wrote a book about his experiences as a boy soldier, obviously based on Ishmael Beah. They mention early on that he'd be appearing on Oprah, and I instantly thought he was a fraud. But they took us on the whole "long lost father" detour, long enough to convince me I was wrong, then blindside me with the fact that I was right, then blindside me again. There's the Veronica Mars I was looking for..

Elsewhere:
  • Veronica's taking her PI exam, I guess so that she has some protection if she gets sued while working a case. She gets a 95, and is ready to gloat about beating the old man's score, but Keith got himself a 97 back in the day.
  • Keith is dealing with a series of home burglaries in the 09er neighborhoods. Pressure's on from the rich folks to get it resolved before the elections. Signs point to the Fitzpatricks, a particular security company, and possibly Vinnie Van Lowe's collusion. Vinnie also has a hilarious campaign ad.
  • Mac and Max are seriously into each other, but his commitment to his cheating business at the expense of his classes has Mac worried.
  • Logan and Dick are planning a surf vacation to South America. The first snag comes in the form of Parker not wanting to be apart from him all summer, but Logan ends up inviting her (a decision he immediately regrets). Snag #2 comes when Big Dick shows back up and wants to spend the summer with Dick before he heads off to jail.
  • Inspired by the Apollo story, Wallace signs up to spend his summer in Africa.
  • Piz passes on a summer internship with Pitchfork media so he can be with Veronica, who then ends up getting her FBI internship in Virginia. Ouch.
After the episode, we get very close to an old fashioned "If you'd like to learn more about [this week's topic], visit your local library!", but instead of the library, it's the Invisible Children website. Next week: a two hour season (and apparently series) finale.

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Monday, May 14, 2007

Monday Night TV

A random new Criminal Intent and The Riches will wait until later, I only had time for Heroes and Everybody Hates Chris tonight, which are both after the jump.

Heroes: Hiro and Ando find a Deus Ex Machina ad in the yellow pages for a swordsmith, where Hiro's father is waiting for him. Mr. Nakamura is among the older generation of heroes who do not agree with Linderman, and he trains Hiro to be able to fight Sylar. We get no insight into his powers specifically, but the impression we get is that in a day, Hiro has learned to be a total badass with a samurai sword, so maybe Mr. Nakamura's power is to teach people things with a single training montage.

Peter learns to handle Ted's powers in time (though Claire was ready to pop him in the head if she had to), and they decide to split the group up, with Peter, Claire, and Ted headed to the country to keep everyone with explosive powers out of the city until the threat is past. That didn't work out too well, though, since Sylar was hot on their tail the whole time. He sicks the feds on them, and waits until Ted is in custody to break in, crack open his skull and steal his powers. Bennett and Parkman, meanwhile, are off to kill the tracking device. Bennett knew it was a person, but didn't know it was cute little Molly. Mohinder busts in with a gun just in time, and he and Bennett engage in the world's longest Mexican standoff (they literally appear to be standing with guns pointed at each other and Molly for about 45 minutes).

Thanks to Linderman, Nathan's election is fixed (as expected), and so is his wife (as expected). Micah rigs the vote count (apparently all the city's voting machines are networked across precincts, which is a terrible idea) to be a landslide in Nathan's favor, which seems pretty dumb. 52-48 gets Nathan in Congress just the same, and given that the exit polls put Nathan 5 points behind, it wouldn't seem as fishy. But whatever. Nathan's wife gets a lengthy handshake from Linderman that heals her paralysis, but she has to stay in the wheelchair in public, I think because if she stood up now, people would think it was all a fraud to get sympathy from the voters.

Jessica and D.L. raid Linderman's office to get Micah back. Linderman tells them where Micah is, but says D.L. will never see him again, then empties a bag full of cash as payment to Jessica for D.L.'s murder. He gives a long dramatic speech about how Jessica just wants stability, which the money would provide. I figured Jessica would say yes, take the money, and kill Linderman. But instead she hands control of the body over to Nikki, who refuses the money and Linderman pulls out a gun and shoots her -- except D.L. jumps in the way. He then hops up, sticks his hand inside Linderman's head and rematerializes it, apparently yanking out some of Linderman's brain in the process. Linderman looks pretty dead, though we're not entirely clear how his power to heal people applies, if at all, to himself. And D.L. looks well on his way to death, but I guess you never know for sure.

The episode leaves off with Sylar testing out his fancy new nuclear powers while looking at the skyline and saying "boom." Basically a second consecutive episode of exposition, which I hope is all leading to a kickass season finale.

Everybody Hates Chris: Drew is graduating from elementary school. Did they do that in 1985? I had never heard of such a thing until the mid 90's, and it still seems really silly to me. Finishing high school and finishing college are major milestones in life, finishing elementary school means you'll go to a different school with mostly the same people.

Chris is determined to finally have his revenge on Caruso, which gets an impressive buildup but the cats and summer detention payoff was a letdown, as was the obvious twist that Chris would have to go to summer school as well. There's a third plot with Julius trying to fix Mr. Omar's sink with some really awful joke product names (Drainado, Custodian in a Conga). How it didn't get cut completely, I have no idea.

Considering how disappointed I've been with the entire second season, it was a fitting season finale. The only laughs were provided by Greg in his Magnum and Banacek costumes. They tried really hard to be funny and/or touching, but pretty much missed the mark entirely.

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100 Bullets


An older man in a black suit, a total stranger, approaches you on the street. He calls you by name and hands you a briefcase. Inside, you find irrefutable evidence that one person is responsible for everything wrong with your life, along with a gun and 100 rounds of ammunition. The man, who identifies himself only as "Agent Graves," tells you that the rounds are completely untraceable, and that the police won't investigate any crime in which those bullets are used. That's the premise of 100 Bullets, a Vertigo Comics series from Brian Azzarello with art by Eduardo Risso.

At first merely a series of revenge tales, it develops into a head-spinningly confusing tale of conspiracy theories that makes the whole thing feel like The X-Files but with guns instead of aliens. 100 Bullets is plotted for 100 issues, and they're up to number 83. Only now is the picture starting to become clear as far as what is actually going on.

While you might find yourself lost (I know I did, on many occasions), the art is always top notch, the standalone stories are consistently compelling, and the cover artwork (pictured, top and left) is among the best in the business. Dave Johnson does most of them, and they're usually top notch.

As with many Vertigo titles, 100 Bullets features adult language, some occasional nudity, and a huge body count. So remember kids: don't buy this book without your parents' permission (or be prepared to hide it from them).

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

Sunday Night TV


May sweeps is starting to wrap up, which means fewer TV posts on the horizon. This also means more comic books and movies. Sadly, I'm screencapless for a couple days due to computer problems, but it should be worked out by mid-week. Until then, another full slate of Sunday Night shows, with Fox's animation block and HBO's lineup. King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, The Sopranos, and Entourage after the jump.

King of the Hill: The long dormant Nancy/John Redcorn relationship comes back this week when Nancy's assigned to interview him. She's drawn to him because of their history, because she's losing her hair due to the stress of having to be without him, and because Dale's misunderstanding of equinoxes and tricked out cars have him thinking he's traveled back in time by one day.

An ok episode, but really they've been through this plot before. Dale's crazy but deep down he's sweet, and Nancy'd rather put up with his insanity than deal with the guilt of cheating on him.

The Simpsons: Homer getting everyone lost in an electrified corn maze (no relation to Gilmore Girls' hay bale maze) inexplicably leads Santa's Little Helper to becoming a police dog. But a cop's life changes a man... or dog... and he can't live with the Simpsons anymore. But in the end all it takes is a toxic cloud caused by a replacement pet snake and a frisbee to bring Santa's Little Helper back, and everyone's all back to normal.


Not a great episode by any stretch. Other than the police animal training montage, there were only a few good parts:

  • Bart's fantasy of Santa's Little Helper as a robocop dog with a laser cannon.
  • "We can't just send him away. He's a dog, not Grampa!"
  • "I miss shamrock shakes, but they ain't coming back til March."


Family Guy: An encounter with toxic waste in the country drive Lois to get all political, taking on Adam West for mayor of Quahog. She trails in the polls until Brian tells her that undecided voters are too stupid to hear complicated rhetoric, and are best wooed with the stupidly obvious, and her controversial anti-terrorism stance propels her to victory. But after a few small victories, she starts taking advantage of the perks, and becomes as corrupt as Mayor West.

Not a terrible story, and quite a few good jokes tonight:
  • Price is Right jokes are always winners.
  • I don't think much of the target audience got the joke at all, but the Amadeus part was hilarious.
  • "Mrs. Griffin, what about our traffic problem?" "9/11!"
  • "We have evidence that... Hitler is partnered with the Legion of Doom... to assassinate Jesus."
  • "Hey, other dog, #$@! you!"
  • "Anybody else hear anything?" "My wife did."
American Dad: Stan wants to teach Steve and his friends to be real men, so he has them run their own cattle ranch. They don't want to eat the meat from the cows though, so only Stan is driven mad by the meat that turns out to be full of mad cow.


Roger has a crush on the clerk at the liquor store, so he gets Hayley to pretend to be his girlfriend to make her jealous, but Roger ends up falling for Hayley in the process. But his declaration that she's the "prettiest girl in the house" suddenly starts a competition between Hayley and Francine. In the end, it was all a setup by Roger to submit a video for mother-daughter-catfight.com.

  • "My therapist says I'm a bad kisser."
  • "Tubs, your parents didn't seem to care much either way. Kinda surprised they had a kid."
  • "Mmm... good cut of face meat."
  • "Men don't do what they like. They get jobs and wives to keep them from what they like."
The Sopranos: Chris and Tony get in a wreck, and Tony uses it as an excuse to off him. It's been a long time coming, with all the grief he's been causing him. The movie, the drugs, the wet blanket 12 step program attitude... it's been frustrating and has put Tony in jeopardy. The funny thing is, Tony doesn't feel a bit of remorse or sadness, only relief. To get away from all the mourners dragging him down, he heads to Vegas, meets a friend of Chris's (the gorgeous Sarah Shahi). They share some sex, some pot, then in a peyote-induce haze, wander the casino floor (I think the Venetian, but I'm not sure). Tony lays some bets and starts hitting. He realizes the curse of Christopher has been lifted.

A.J.'s a different story. He had been feeling great after the acid to the toes guy, but the second one leaves a sour taste in his mouth. My only guess is that he felt the first guy deserved it, the second guy's only crime was being Somalian.

The only other thing going on is Tony's asbestos disposal operation. The dumping goes to Leotardo's turf, and he wants 25%. Tony's not going to pay that, so he's holding out. The guy's removing the asbestos are caught in the middle and end up dumping it in a pond. I'm sure that'll come up later.

I'm sure the people hoping for a bloodbath were a little excited with this episode, with at least one major character getting offed, but I really think the show's going to end more subtly.

Entourage: Turtle meets the girl of his dreams ("Me with tits."), Drama's show gets ripped to shreds by the critics but is a hit with the people, and Vince is pushing all-in on Medellin. Vince and E are putting up everything they have (including the house) to buy the script, since the big wig they were trying to get to bankroll it was threatening to buy it just to keep it from them after he felt slighted.

Yet another episode that didn't seem entirely funny. Drama's scenes at the "massage" parlor were kinda funny, and Ari occasionally gets a good line in, but mostly it played like a light drama.

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Saturday, May 12, 2007

Saturday Night Live, Molly Shannon/Linkin Park

I think we can all agree what the Superstar movie proved that we could always use a little more of that Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch. Or, wait... I didn't see it, and neither did anyone else. So naturally they open the show with it. Yikes. But that's what you get when you bring back, to me, one of the least missed cast members of the last, oh, decade and a half. But Molly Shannon's got a movie (Year of the Dog) to plug, and I guess they want to help out friends of the show.

What worked: The return of Kristen Wiig's hair twisting desperate to be liked character, fringe candidate debate, MacGruber! (which rather cleverly evolved into a David Hasselhoff joke).

What didn't: Superstar Idol, Sally O'Malley at the Bing, Linkin Park (I've never cared for them at all), Weekend Update (it wasn't bad, for the most part, but the Molly Shannon "bad stand-up" segment derailed it and went on way too long), whatever Amy Poehler is calling that character that used to be Andy Richter's little sister on Conan, Tales from the Greatest Generation, Charli Coffee.

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Thursday, May 10, 2007

Thursday Night TV, Plus Leftovers


A full night of Thursday television (NBC comedies plus Smallville for me), plus catching up on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Jericho's season finale, all after the jump...

My Name is Earl: Being on the lam in Mexico didn't work out as well for Joy as they made it seem on the Dukes of Hazzard, so she's in jail and needs character witnesses. After a very unsuccessful attempt to find some, Ruby (Marlee Matlin reprising her role as Joy's lawyer) suggests Earl.


Part three of Earl's plan to grow up is to get a real place to live, so he moves out of the hotel, but feels unsatisfied. He decides that the problem is that he's ready for a relationship, and after meeting Ruby, he's pretty sure he knows who it'll be with. Everything goes great, until she starts reading the list and discovers that Randy and Earl once robbed her.

Earl's turn as a character witness was going perfectly until the prosecutor played a series of 911 calls Earl had made when he was married, cataloging the horrible things Joy'd done. When he saw the jury making up their minds, he decided to confess, figuring that she has kids and a husband, while he doesn't have three strikes. Earl gets sentenced to 2 years in the state pen, where he'll share a cell with Ralph (Giovanni Ribisi).

Really funny episode and a great story. Between this and last week's great episode, Earl's really ended the season on a high note. Best parts:

  • "When I go looking for an ice machine, I should put on pants. Oh, and there's no ice machine."
  • "I didn't really need to ask cause his hair is like a mood ring."
  • "When I point to you, tickle Uncle Randy until he screams a '1' tone."
  • Last time she was here she drank too much cherry wine and had a threesome with my parents."
  • "You don't think Jesus would want a piece of this?"
  • "He's been sneezing them out for the last hour. They melt in your mouth, but not in your nose."
  • "Damnit, how am I supposed to keep my legs smooth? And cut bitches?"

The Office: Beach day! Do offices really have beach days? Michael is interviewing for a job at corporate, and has to show up with a recommendation for who'll replace him. So beach day turns into a series of ridiculous competitions to win the position of future manager. It naturally doesn't prove anything, but a walk over hot coals finally inspires Pam to stand up for herself, wondering why no one showed at her art show, telling Jim how she feels. Funniest parts:
  • "About 40 times a year Michael gets really sick but has no symptoms. Dwight is always gravely concerned."
  • The despair on Toby's face when he finds that he'll be missing Pam in a two piece (which they teased us with but never showed... bastards).
  • "Yes! Funtivities! I knew it wasn't just a trip to the beach!"
  • "One day... 14 strangers, who work together... but only one survivor."
  • "There is nothing better than a beautiful day at the beach filled with sun, surf, and diligent note taking."
  • "Sabotage -- the ancient Dutch art of screwing up your own team."
  • Dwight's edited version of The Aristocrats (the easily offended shouldn't follow that link)
Scrubs: Elliot wants to have her wedding in two months, despite the fact that Keith doesn't want to rush things that much. Dr. Cox doesn't want to go, and while she tries to convince him, he points out that Keith and J.D. were basically the only single straight men at the hospital who were the least bit desirable, so she might just be settling.


J.D., Turk, and Kelso are at a conference. Kelso's looking forward to hookers and booze, so he leaves the actual work for Vanilla Bear and Chocolate Bear. J.D.'s mostly along to forget about Elliot, and nothing seems to help until Kim (Elizabeth Banks) shows up as a lecturer at a conference. Last we saw her, she was lying to J.D. about miscarrying their baby, and her giant belly makes it difficult to keep that particular lie going. J.D. freaks out and can't really decide what to do.

At this point, there was an amber alert in my area, so I have absolutely no idea what happened for what seemed like the two most important minutes of plot, but J.D. apparently ran away, and Kim followed him back to ask what happened just as Elliot asks him if she's making a mistake by marrying Keith. They're really bringing the season's plotlines to a climax nicely, but (at least the parts I saw) weren't all that funny. The best parts:
  • Old M.C., bust a move, indeed!
  • "And you, Nurse Ipanema..."
  • Air-groping?
  • Janitor, chief of medicine.
Smallville: Helo from Battlestar Galactica guest stars in a terrible, terrible role. A guy who's been brainwashed but tries to fight it off when he meets a close friend? Olivier couldn't save that role from being ridiculous. All you can really do is act like you're having a seizure and speak in sentence fragments.

Some interesting developments came out of the episode, though. Martha is going to be a U.S. Senator, Lois is determined to ruin Lex, and Lois is closer than ever to betraying Lex and driving him to supervillainy (or at least I hope so).

Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Fun cameos this week. Peter Bogdanovich plays a Hugh Hefner-type character for the second time, Kristy Swanson plays a fake Anna Nicole Smith, and in one of the best casting jobs ever, David Cross as the Howard K. Stern guy. It was pretty dull, though I really enjoyed all of David Cross's scenes.

Jericho: They finally put the tank to good use, which is good. Johnston dies, which is very bad. Johnston, Jake, Heather, and Hawkins are really the only characters I care about, and they just killed one off after kinda killing one off earlier. It was great to see Heather back, but she's listed as a special guest star.


The season ends on a rather annoying cliffhanger, with the military on the way, some kinda crazy 35-ish star flag, a train and a bunch of troops heading Jericho's way, but no word on the season's most gripping plot: Dale's acquisition of assets in an effort to become a 16 year old post-apocalyptic real estate tycoon!

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Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Wednesday Night TV


ABC is seriously pushing the Traveler series, huh? Seems like they ran the promo during every commercial break on Lost, which, along with Bones, I'll cover after the jump...

Lost: So Ben's a big fat liar and he wasn't born on the island at all. Kinda funny that he was born outside Portland (but "Not In Portland" either). His mother died giving birth, and his father joined the Dharma Initiative when Ben was a young boy. Ben's dad, like everyone else on Lost's dad, was a huge jerk, and blamed Ben (out loud) for killing his mother. One day he sees his mother in the woods, just like Jack had seen his father when he first arrived. He goes wandering into the woods looking for her and sees Richard Alpert, one of the "hostiles," and looking the exact same age he looks today. Ben wants to join run off with them, but it seems to take about 20 years for their plan to pay off, as Ben gasses his father while the rest of the hostiles gas the rest of the Dharma Initiative. So it seems that killing your father is a rite of passage for joining their little clique.


Locke shows back up with the others carrying the corpse of dear old dad, and demands to see Jacob. There's some resistance, but after Locke beats the snot out of Mikhail, Ben agrees. He takes Locke to a ratty looking cabin and starts talking to an empty chair. Locke starts thinking Ben has lost his mind, but just as he's about to leave he hears "help me" in a decidedly non-Ben voice. Locke shines his flashlight on Ben and all hell breaks loose. Jacob is a Luddite so he invisibly starts throwing stuff around and breaking things, and shoves Ben against the wall. He becomes visible for just a second (above, though I'm sure Lost Easter Eggs will have a much clearer shot, if they don't already) before Locke leaves. Locke thinks it was all a trick, but Ben just wants to know what Jacob said to Locke, so he leads Locke to the mass grave of the gassed Dharma folks and shoots Locke and leaves him for dead.

Back on the beach, Sawyer plays Juliet's tape for Sayid and Kate. They decide to fill everyone in on the tape and Naomi. Just as they play the tape for everyone, Jack and Juliet show up. It seems that Juliet told Jack everything as soon as she returned from the hatch with Sun (so that was probably the subject of the "should we tell her?" conversation last week). Jack's developed an enormous ego, apparently, and figures there isn't any point to telling anyone until he's decided what to do about it. Since, you know, none of those other people could have helpful advice. He says "we have some catching up to do," and that storyline is ignored for the rest of the episode.

Some crazy questions... how is Alpert not aging? Ben still ages, so it's not just the island. Do the other others not age, and if so how long have they been there? Are they the Black Rock pirates? That'd be cool. Who's Jacob and why is he (mostly) invisible? And what's up with Jack's personality change?

Bones: A glow in the dark skeleton seems like a radioactive thing at first, but it turns out to be a sushi thing. The victim looks like a sort of Rachel Ray (but she looks like Saffron from the band Republica with the red streaks in her hair). They dance around a bunch of theories before arriving at the fact that the victim was sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend.


Mostly a typical episode, except they were much heavier with the sexual tension between Booth and Brennan, some quality mac and cheese banter, and Hodgins and Angela finally getting engaged thanks to a heartfelt non-proposal.

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Some Catching Up


Catching up on House (which was especially funny) and SVU (which was typically not very funny) before Lost and everything tonight.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A woman turns up dead, and SVU's trying to track down his spy fiancee (Nip/Tuck's Dylan Walsh). Only he turns out not to be a spy, he's just a married guy living a double life. His lies make him the immediate suspect, but soon evidence points to his wife finding out about the affair and getting pissed. Benson and Stabler show up just in time to find the husband shot and the rest of the family dead.


One of those forensic tools they use about angles of guns (which I've always been skeptical about... if you shoot someone while holding a gun at a funny angle, couldn't you get one of these guys to say "based on the angle of the bullet, the shooter was eleven feet tall and left-handed") shows that Dylan Walsh's wound was self-inflicted. Turns out the guy was telling so many lies and couldn't control them anymore, so he wanted to just put the "reset button" of life by killing everyone he loved. Crazy. This pushes Stabler over the edge, and he gets a confession out of the guy by jamming the interrogation room shut with a chair and threatening to break the guy's neck, making this roughly the 10th time he should've been fired.

House: Foreman's still quitting, but nobody's telling Chase and Cameron why. Cameron figures he'll tell her when he's ready, but Chase is playing detective. House is unsurprisingly unconcerned, but Foreman's weirded out at the fact that he seems happier since he decided to quit.

House gets a couple in his clinic rounds who are vegans, wondering why his crap floats. He picks up three amphetamines from the pharmacy, then tells them the guy's been eating meat, and hits on the woman (Piper Perabo). Then he pounds the speed into a powder and spikes a cup of coffee. Amusingly, he anticipates Wilson's paranoia and offers him the non-drugged coffee, and Wilson drinks the drugged one. All to figure out why he was yawning. Turns out he was on antidepressants. House for some reason takes this as a challenge to his own state of depression, and volunteers to take antidepressants to prove his non-depression.

Wilson doesn't give them the antidepressants, because he's been dosing House's coffee with them for weeks. The happiness Foreman had been noticing was all Wilson's doing. But aside from helping him save the case of the week, which wasn't that interesting, it becomes a nice topic of conversation on the date he lands with Piper Perabo in the end.

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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Tuesday Night TV


While feeling excited that Veronica Mars is in good shape for next year, I caught up on The Riches, and then started in on Tuesday Night TV. When watching Gilmore Girls, I started getting the feeling that the commercial breaks were long, so I went back and checked the times. One was over 5 minutes, another was 4:40. Whatever happened to two minutes and two seconds, Chuck Woolery? My Tuesday night rundown after the jump...

The Riches: Wayne wants to be a partner at PanCo (with keys to the executive washroom... "I want to wipe my ass with a swan!"), and Hugh won't decide til the Malloys (or Riches) have him over for dinner. So the family's in a panic to throw a buffer dinner party.


Dahlia runs into Chunky K, her cell mate from prison who killed her husband, and even though she knows she should run away, she brings the friend home to show off the house. Wayne's obviously upset, but you can tell immediately how close they were. Chunky K's not having Dahlia's luck though, renting a fold-out couch that she has to fight two pit bulls (Britney and K-Fed) for, so Dahlia invites her to stay with them. Doug is freaking out though when she doesn't seem to leave and the dinner party's coming up soon. But Dahlia thinks its their duty to spread their good fortune around, and hires Chunky K to be their maid.

At the party, Chunky K's having trouble holding it together. She has a business idea breeding rabbits for meat, and Hugh laughs in her face. Sam doesn't help matters by coming downstairs in drag. Later, holding a knife to carve the pork (a nice choice for fake Jews), she seems to have flashes of killing her husband. Chunky K throws a fit, embarassing everyone, except apparently Hugh who ends up with his face buried in K's rather Chunky cleavage snorting what I assume is cocaine.

Thanks to K, Hugh agrees to make Doug a partner, but when presented with the papers by a noticeably high Hugh, Doug has second thoughts. Dahlia says it's because they're turning into buffers. Chunky K takes off with a big wad of cash, most of it given to her by Dahlia but some stolen. And in a strange development, we learn that Nina (the Riches' neighbor) has been in denial for years about her husband's homosexuality.

Gilmore Girls: Lorelai did give Logan her blessing, though they kinda glossed over it, as Gilmore Girls often does. Logan ends up proposing at a graduation party thrown by the grandparents, and Rory says she needs time to think. This is a show about girls, but can you imagine the hell Logan's going through while she weighs her options. She thinks about it for a while but decides she likes being at a point in her life where her options are open. Logan takes it hard and ends their relationship entirely.

Rory's graduating, and the entire town apparently wants to come, but tickets are in short supply, so somehow town outrage snowballs into planning an entire graduation reenactment in the Stars Hollow town square, but I guess that's not until next week.


Luke decides to reciprocate the sentiment from Lorelai's karaoke serenade and gets her a gift, but overhears Lorelai try to downplay the significance of it, and is completely crushed. They have an insane conversation when Rory was thinking about Logan's proposal that was one of those about-one-thing-but-really-about-another conversations that only happens on TV.

Veronica Mars: Desmond Fellows, played by Paul Rudd, is the guitarist from a band called My Pretty Pony, whose lead singer died ten years ago. He plans to play a benefit concert for Piz's radio station by playing along to old tapes of background vocals, but the tapes disappear, so Veronica's on the case.


Desmond's a hilariously (more on that later) drunk has-been, who Piz almost gets back into songwriting, but a news report comes on showing his old band, and he goes right back to Behind the Music downward spiral. So will they find the tapes, allowing him to continue to suckle at the teat of past glory, or somehow fix the guy and have him do a concert of original material and turn his life around?

Well it turns out to be both. They find the tapes, arrive at the show, but call Desmond from outside and tell him they won't get there in time, so he'll have to fill. He plays his new stuff and everyone loves it, for an atypically happy ending for Veronica Mars.

Still, Paul Rudd is possibly the best guest star the show's ever had. And they gave him a lot of great lines:

  • He calls Piz "Fez," "Plax," "Pez," "Puz," and "La Paz."
  • "Anyone ever tell you you look like a fiesty, young Barbara Eden?"
  • "How old are you, Monica?"
  • Veronica: "What are you taking pills for?" Desmond: "Eh, you know. Life."
  • Piz: "Brought to you by Wrigley's Extra gum." Desmond: "Wait, their leftover gum?"
  • "Oh yeah, all the old hit. You bet."
  • The entire Beatles conversation with Keith, especially "I used to know a rent boy from Oslo who called himself that."
There was also a bunch of relationship crap. Mac broke up with Bronson, probably to be with Max. Veronica continues to push Piz away and then be inexplicably forward. Logan gets all jealous of Piz. And Deputy Leo is back, and again a deputy.

The one development that wasn't relationship-y but was really awesome, is that Keith's opponent in the Sheriff elections is going to be Vinnie Van Lowe. I'm excited about that one.

The Shield: Vic's on the warpath after learning that Guardo didn't kill Lem. He visits Antwon (Anthony Anderson, one of the many awesome recurring guest stars on the show) and threatens him with everything under the sun, but Antwon is mostly proud at how Vic thinks he's a supervillain.

Vendrell is trying to push the blame back on Guardo, saying that Hernan is lying, but he pushes a little too hard. And for the first time Vic and Gardocki are thinking Shane might have done it. They count 73 grenades that they picked up before Lem's death, and will check that count against the number in the bomb squad locker. But they find 73 in the locker, and are terribly relieved. But Vic gets a hold of the lab report and Kavanaugh's confession, and when he reads it, he gets a look on his face like he's been kicked in the nuts. Gardocki later informs Vendrell that they need to meet at the site of Lem's murder to walk through the lab report and check it. But Gardocki isn't coming.

Vendrell shows up and its just him and Vic, and Vic knows everything. Considering the matters at hand, the words they exchange are surprisingly calm. But Vic makes one thing crystal clear: if he ever sees Shane again, he will kill him.

Guardo's girlfriend who the strike team kidnapped comes in asking Dutch about Guardo, Salseda, and her time in "protective custody." So Dutch and Colette are now suspecting Vic in Guardo's disappearance. They get Vic into the interrogation room without telling him who's in there, but he covers his ass pretty well. Dutch and Claudette are still suspicious, but as usual they have no real evidence.

The strike team catches a case where a city counselor's daughter is murdered. Turns out she was trading sex for drugs, which would be ugly for the counselor (and the barn, since he controls the purse strings). They find the guy who did it, and Vic convinces the guy to come up with a less racy story to confess to in exchange for a shorter sentence. And for his efforts, the counselor's going to try to pull some strings to keep Vic on the job.

Despite not just flipping out like he often does, Michael Chiklis' performance was really strong. It's hard to believe what we saw could be considered understated, but given the chair throwing, vein popping Mackey we've seen lately, it was relatively understated.

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Flags of Our Fathers


"Every jackass thinks he knows what war is, especially those who haven't been in one."

I can't say I was all that interested in Flags of Our Fathers, but I keep hearing that Letters from Iwo Jima is great, and I figured since they're "companion pieces" I might as well watch them in order. And since the latter comes out on DVD in a couple weeks, it seemed like a good time to check this one out.

They way Flags was promoted, it seemed like a fairly run-of-the-mill war movie. And it certainly has its share of brutal battle sequences. But it's really about survivor's guilt, and the contrast between the public face of heroism and the reality of war. The main characters were in the famous photograph raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and are given a hero's welcome. They are used for a promotional campaign for war bonds and treated like celebrities, but the men who died get no fanfare at all.

I really like Clint Eastwood as a director. He's not Martin Scorsese, but he gets good performances out of actors and doesn't let anything get in the way of the story. A few parts were derivative of Saving Private Ryan, but I guess if you're going to borrow from someone for a war movie, that's a good choice, and occasionally he makes his points forcefully when subtlety might do better (a shot of blood-red sauce poured on an ice cream mold of soldiers lingered a tad too long, for example).

Another odd thing about the promotion for this movie was that I don't think I ever knew who was in it. Not that it has an all-star cast, but Ryan Phillipe certainly has some fans. I'm not one of them, but this is easily the best I've ever seen him. Adam Beach, who played a similar role in Windtalkers, which I hated, was actually good here.

The only major problem I had was that the structure of the movie was a little too complex. The timeline bounced between the battle, the PR effort after the fact, and the recent past with a man assembling the stories. I don't see what the more recent timeline brought to the table that couldn't have been accomplished as a sort of epilogue, which would've simplified the rest of the story.

Otherwise, it was a pretty enjoyable film, and I'm looking forward to Letters from Iwo Jima.

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Monday, May 7, 2007

Monday Night TV


Won't get to check out The Riches until later, but Everybody Hates Chris and Heroes after the jump. I'm still lukewarm on EHC, and this Heroes episode was, I think, mostly setup for stuff happening later. Not as exciting as a typical episode. Still not bad, though.


Everybody Hates Chris: Chris needs help in algebra so his mother tutors him, Risky has to get a real job, and Drew breaks Julius' chair. A pretty typical episode of late, with a few laughs, standard sitcom happy resolutions, but without whatever it was the first season had that really endeared me to the show.

Heroes: Hiro and Ando return to the present, armed with a comic book, a vision of a possible future, and false information about how to prevent the catastrophe. They go to see Isaac to fill in the blanks in the comic, but he's already dead, and Sylar's still there. And they only manage to just teleport out. Sylar paints the future, seeing Ted's explosive powers and New York blowing up, and thinks he's going to destroy the city. He's all about killing for his own benefit, but blowing people up and not getting anything from it doesn't do much for him, so he goes to two people for help.

First, Mohinder. He's not in a helping mood, so he goes to Thompson to learn more about the Primatech organization and use what they know to stop Sylar. Thompson introduces him to Molly Walker, the girl whose name they've been dropping the past few episodes, and she's sickly cute and precocious. She has the power to locate anyone on earth, which will help them stop Sylar, but she has the same disease that killed Mohinder's sister, and it's preventing her from using her ability. Mohinder beleives that he has an antibody in his body that will save her, and gives her a transfusion of his own blood, and it appears he'll save her.

Second, Sylar visits his mother. He's trying to reconnect with his old life as a simple watch maker (another Watchmen connection I didn't notice before), but his mother's crazy ambition for him gives us a clue as to why he is the way he is. He also beans her with a snow globe in a totally weird scene.

Hiro and Ando have followed him to his mom's place and are outside debating when to kill the guy. The comic doesn't have Hiro stabbing Sylar until later, but Ando shows him the comic page Future Hiro gave him which was of Ando's death at the hands of Sylar. Hiro busts in just as Sylar's mom freaks out and gets stabbed with a pair of scissors in a struggle, but I think he un-froze time while in his stabbing motion, and Sylar was able to stop him. Again, they teleport out. Sylar is left with his mother's dead body, and Hiro is left with a broken sword.

Claire is going to follow grandma's advice and going to France, but Peter convinces her she has to stay to save the world. She lets Peter know about Ted, so now Peter is wondering if it's not him that blows up. Of course, this is the worst idea ever, since pursuing the guy will put Peter close enough to Ted to get his explosive powers. Nathan calls Linderman when he finds out, but Claire spots Nathan meeting with Thompson, and now doesn't trust Nathan anymore. Peter and Claire have a plan, at least. Claire has a gun now, since she's the only one who'd be able to stop Peter. We get a creepy scene at the end were Ma Petrelli eases Nathan doubts about the plan... it seems it's not just Linderman's plan, but that all the older heroes are in on it.


Candice still has Micah (and is keeping up the Niki illusion), and Jessica and D.L. are after him. They break into Linderman's office and find a painting of Micah during the explosion, and that he's been tracking their entire lives. Micah uses his fancy Jake 2.0/Mitchell Hundred powers to escape, but finds that every door in the place leads him right back into the same room. Candice is much more powerful than we thought.

Ted, Bennett, and Parkman are still after the tracking system, which they call "Walker" named, of course, after Molly. So are they lying to Mohinder, that her abilities will be used to stop Sylar? Is she the one that'll let them track down those with abilities after the nuke goes off? Lots of interesting possibilities. They arrive in New York with Claire and Peter waiting for them, and Peter instantly absorbs Ted's powers. We get a cliffhanger as his hands start to go nuclear, but I suspect that with Ted, Claire, Parkman and Bennett around, they can figure a way out of it.

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Sunday, May 6, 2007

Sunday Night TV


A full slate of Sunday night TV, with Fox's animation block and HBO's Sopranos and Entourage after the jump.

King of the Hill: Dale checked out a new book on explosives from the library under the name Rusty Shackleford. But the real Rusty Shackleford showed up to confront Dale for all the damage he's doing to his name. Apparently Dale thought he'd died in third grade, but he just moved away. The guy's decided he's not leaving until he straightened things out with Dale. And Peggy's still working for Chris Elliott's real estate company. Chane Wasonasong teases Peggy with the idea that they'll move, but it's actually to talk over her commitment to be a Cozy Kitchen representative, which appears to fall somewhere between Tupperware sales and a pyramid scheme, and the only way out is to find a sucker to take over for you.


At this point, it seemed like Rusty would be the obvious solution, since sending the Cozy Kitchen folks after him would send him running, solving both problems at once. But instead, Peggy and Dale go for a fake murder/suicide pact, figuring that if Cozy Kitchen and Rusty think they're dead, they're in the clear. That doesn't work out, but all Peggy has to do is agree to fake her Cozy Kitchen boss's death to get her out of her commitment, and Dale just has to sign some forms to clear up Rusty's identity theft issues.

A pretty cool episode if only for the appearance of an actual Rusty Shackleford, and a good Dale episode is usually pretty hilarious. Best lines:

  • "You probably don't realize how threatening you're coming off, even with the smile."
  • "This is just like the time I had to sell all those candy bars for school. Is there any way you can eat your way out of this?"
  • "It appears Bill needs his tires aligned."
  • "We still have a chance. Act like a ghost."
The Simpsons: Homer takes Nappien, an Ambien-type drug, and starts doing "kooky" things at night (setting up videotapes as dominoes, vandalizing a wax museum). Rather than quitting, he decides to lock himself in his room so he can't get into any trouble. But Bart realizes he get Homer to do his bidding in his sleep, but after some hijinks they end up crashing into the fire station, injuring the entire fire department. So Homer, Moe, Apu, and Skinner volunteer to fill in (despite the fact that I'm sure Apu ran the volunteer fire department already).


They start to enjoy the perks of the job with everyone hooking them up with free stuff after they save them, but when Mr. Burns' house catches fire, he gives them a half hearted thanks and tells them to get lost, so Moe comes up with the idea that they could exaggerate the severity of fires and just take stuff. Marge and the kids catch them in the act, though, and guilt Homer into stopping, just in time for Homer to heroically save the day.

Best parts:
  • "The Deadtly Truth About Oxygen"
  • "Growing up means giving up everything that makes you happy."
  • "I have three kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and three money?"
  • "Just come back alive, ok?" "Don't tell me how to do my job!"
  • "Oh bogus gizmo, grant me eternal life!"
Family Guy: The Griffins have ballet night? Chris' school has history books from 1948, so Lois heads to the PTA to complain, but the problem is budget cuts due to the No Child Left Behind laws. In order to raise the school's test scores, they expel the dumbest kid in school: Chris. At this point the episode takes a 10 minute detour with the return of the bad coupon chicken, which was pretty well done.


But we pick the story back up with Carter Pewterschmidt getting Chris into a fancy private school, where being poor isn't going over well. To help him fit in better, Carter gets him inducted into the Skull & Bones society. But when he finds out that the family had to get second jobs (selling buttscratchers, prostitution, and following fat guys around with a tuba) to pay for his tuition, he just wants to go back to James Woods High, so Carter pulls some strings.

Best parts:
  • "The Nutcracker had zero physical comedy."
  • "Israel: the brand new country everyone's gonna love."
  • "Cool, I don't have to go to school. I can just pee in my bed all day."
  • "Well... a certain kind of pirate."
  • "He has to shoot and star in a shot-for-shot remake of Liar, Liar for my amusement."
  • "One time I picked my nose, and I swear I could feel the bottom of my eye."
American Dad: The CIA has to hide their illegal stuff, so Stan gets to take all sorts of fancy gadgets home. But a listening device reveals that the neighbors, who Stan assumes love him, all think he's a jackass. So Stan becomes consumed to faking his way into being liked. When all his efforts fail, he uses a new CIA power to seize all their property to "help with the war on terror." When his family thinks he's gone crazy, he kicks them out too. But eventually he discovers that everyone hates everyone, and all is well.

Roger's out to make a quick buck and convinces Steve to help lie to a neighbor when Roger pretends to fall on the sidewalk. This quickly turns into a scheme where Roger goes around injuring Steve for money and free stuff, but Steve comes up with the idea of selling one of the evacuated houses to an unsuspecting couple. But Steve cons Roger out of his half of the money, leaving Roger stranded in Mexico, with only a fire extinguisher full of tequila to comfort him. Best parts:
  • "Oh it's a disintegrator? I thought it was a penis enlarger. That almost went horribly wrong."
  • "Everyone knows the juiciest fruit is bought on the roadside."
  • "I'm surrounded by people who hate me. It's like our wedding all over again, except I'm you."
  • "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie..."
Entourage: Benicio Del Toro pulls out of Medellin, but the studio chief's only given them til sundown to find a replacement. The only problem is that it's Yom Kippur and the producer, played by Adam Goldberg, and studio head are both Jewish, so they can't do business or use the phone. Ari represents Goldberg's character, so even without Vince as a client, he stands to lose a lot of money if they don't land Vince in time. Amanda and Ari play sacrilegious phone tag trying to work the deal out, but they fail to meet the deadline and the movie gets shut down. Vince blames Amanda for not pursuing it hard enough and confronts her, saying he shouldn't have left Ari. She says the movie was ruined by Adam Goldberg, who interrupted the studio head at his synagogue twice that day to get an answer. Vince apologizes, but Amanda feels like she never had his confidence and drops him as a client.

Elsewhere, Drama buys a horse to save it from the glue factory, but unsurprisingly it doesn't fit well at Vince's house. It'll cost to much to keep it at a stable, and he's picking up fines for having a horse without a permit. He finally gets rid of it by showing up at Edward Burns' house with the horse as a gift. Burns wants to turn it down, but his daughter sees it and flips out, so now he can't give it back without breaking the kid's heart.

The Sopranos: A.J.'s depressed about his fiancee. He goes to visit her at her job and is all weepy and creepy. He spots a happy couple at work, breaks into tears, and quits on the spot. Meadow begins to suspect that he might be suicidal. Tony convinces him to go to a party at the Bing with some of Tony's friends' kids who are at college. They run a bookmaking operation, and A.J. goes along with them for a collection. When they start beating the guy down and pouring acid on his foot, A.J. gets a scary look on his face like when Tony's about to do something evil, which was kinda great, and when he returns home he's alive again. I definitely see him joining the family business if it doesn't blow up in his face first.

Christopher and Paulie, as usual, are at odds with each other. Paulie sends Little Paulie twice to boost power tools from Chris' father-in-law. Chris gets more pissed each time and eventually throws Little Paulie out a window. Paulie in return drives all over Chris' lawn and tears it up. Tony brokers an uneasy peace, again as usual, an uneasy peace between them. But to seal the truce, Chris has a drink. So naturally they cut straight to Chris loaded, and Paulie being an even bigger asshole. He goes to Tim Daly's house for help, and gets a little annoyed with the guy so he pops him in the head.

Kind of an awesome episode, between Christopher's random violence, Paulie driving like a maniac on his lawn, A.J.'s great transformation from depressed to mobster, and a great therapy session. I know lots of people want a bloodbath between New York and Jersey to wrap up the series, but if they just keep giving us episodes like this I'm perfectly happy.

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Saturday, May 5, 2007

Massive Catch-up


Having already seen Spider-man 3, I don't have a movie to catch this weekend, which leaves a little extra time to catch up on TV. A whole mess of shows after the jump.


Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Olivia has a brother pops up again, but she's lost faith in him and is now helping the Feds find him. Soon though she bails to follow leads about her father, learns a lot more, and begins to wonder if her mother was really raped. It turns out, though, that the Jersey cop who was after him in the previous episode had framed Simon, and was out to kill him after her sister, Simon's alleged first victim, killed herself. Olivia shows up just in time, and talks the cop into confessing everything, and Simon gets off entirely.


Bones: I don't have too much to say about this episode, except that if, in a case involving someone falling out of an airplane, you find that the body's been chopped up by a heavy not-too-sharp object moving really fast, and that he was struck many times almost simultaneously, how does it take you half the episode to come up with the "hit by the propeller" theory?


Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Of course one of the Law & Orders was going to rip this particular story from the headlines... diaper-wearing crazed astronauts is just too juicy to ignore. Weird though that this episode aired the same week as the Bones about an astronaut... also weird that they both used the same fake NASA-like group (the National Space Agency). I found Tate Donovan's wife entirely creepy, the way she referred to him as "the Commander." But otherwise it was a pretty forgettable episode.

Entourage: The "one time thing" concept doesn't seem to go well with Amanda and Vince, since they both are really into each other. Ari has a formerly loserish college friend (Artie Lange) visiting who has an inexplicably hot fiancee (Leslie Bibb). Turns out that he made millions on the internet, which makes Ari really jealous.

Pauly Shore wants Drama for a new Punk'd ripoff show, but Drama knows about it ahead of time, planning to act surprised. When a UFC guy argues with him over a parking space, he assumes that it's the prank and practically gets in a fight. But the prank turns out to be something else, and the UFC guy's after him. Drama goes to a fight to kiss up to the guy, but ends up in the octagon on his knees begging for forgiveness when Pauly Shore pops out and reveals that it was all a big prank. Kinda funny, but predictable.

The Sopranos: Tony is seriously strapped for cash. Gambling problems, funding Carmela's spec house, losing Vito (his best earner), and his debt to Hesh leave him in bad financial shape. Carmela closes on the spec house, but she figures it's her money, so Tony won't see any of it, leading to a whole lot of tension.


With Vito gone, his kid's doing the goth thing (Phil says he looks like "a Puerto Rican whore") and acting out. His mother wants a fresh start somewhere else, and money to move there from Tony. Given the money issues, Tony's desperate to straighten the kid out somehow. But it doesn't work, cause for some reason the kid ends up taking a Count Dooku in the shower after gym class. Tony advises her to send him to a (much cheaper) camp for troubled kids.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: I was two episodes behind, so two weeks ago they covered immigration. They talked about some interesting stuff. Apparently, just as many illegal aliens enter the country legally and stay after their visas expire as sneak across the border. They rather amusingly hired a group of illegal immigrants to build a fence like the one proposed for the Mexican border, and then had them go under, through, and over it. It took eight hours to build, and 5 minutes to get past.

This week's episode was on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA's statistics count 51 million disabled people in the US, which is one in six. It includes people who have trouble with money or using the phone. That seems kind of messed up, though the braille on the drive-up ATMs is quite funny. Penn & Teller as Libertarians obviously also don't like the idea of the government telling people what to do with their own private property, and generally legislating niceness.

House: A kid about to donate bone marrow to his brother develops an infection, so the race is on to find and cure the infection before his brother's leukemia kills him. The plan is to keep him cold to make the infection worse so they can figure out what it is faster. But that turns out to backfire, forcing the infection into the son's heart. Foreman's still dealing with losing a patient last week. House thinks he has Steve Blass disease, and is actually trying to be patient with him, which is pretty un-House-like.


House is still keeping Hector, Wilson's ex-wife's dog, and it's causing him lots of problems. It gets into his vicodin stash, chews up his cane (forcing him to get a sweet new one with a flame decal). But when he eventually gives the dog back, he seems sad to let it go.

They finally track down what was causing the son's infection, and this is where the episode took a crazy left turn that I didn't get. Foreman straps the now-healing son to the table and without anesthetic (because he wasn't well enough), starts extracting bone marrow even though it sounded excruciating. It works, both kids are going to get well, but Foreman doesn't like that he's "becoming" House, and gives his two weeks notice.

Smallville: And old fashioned mystery at the Planet. Lana gets shot, and gets medivac-ed to Smallville for some reason. But what was she doing all dolled up at night, out with Lionel instead of Lex? Jimmy's fascination with old movies and a blow to the head send us into an extended black & white film noir fantasy/dream sequence. There were some nice touches, using the back projection and sped up film during the car chases, the old timey wipes to transition between scenes, cigarette smoke pouring into every frame (I'm surprised they can even do that).


Since most of the episode was spent in fantasy land, very little was devoted to the actual goings on. Towards the end, they worked in Canadian-filmed TV staple Richard Kahan, a plug for Sprint, let Clark save the day, and reveal the plot behind the attempted murder, which was entirely uninteresting. But the fantasy sequence was fun enough that the episode wasn't a waste of time.

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Friday, May 4, 2007

Friday Night TV


Not much tonight, but I'll be catching up with stuff over the weekend (among others, Bones, SVU, Criminal Intent, House, The Sopranos, Entourage), but tonight just Law & Order and Acceptable TV.

Law & Order: This week, our case is ripped from the story about those kidnapped boys in Missouri a few months back. A young boy is kidnapped and killed, and the evidence leads them to a kidnapper who's held an older boy captive for five years. It turns out though that the kidnapper wasn't the murderer, it was the older boy, leading to a traditional L&O court case. It was nice to see Olivet back, but otherwise the episode was a little too generic.

Acceptable TV: Mr. Sprinkles and Who's Gonna Train Me returned (with a Steve Agee cameo in the latter), and Sin Trek, I'm Not Racist, and Price of Dollars (which was funny, but I don't see how the concept lends itself to a second episode) premiered. I'll be voting for these two:


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Spider-man 3


I have an easier time with a movie that's just no good than I do with a movie that could be great, does a lot of things well, but shoots itself in the foot with its own stupidity. Before I continue, I should say that I was lukewarm on the first two installments in the Spider-man series, so fans of those should ignore me and go see this, because a lot of my frustration extends from the first two.

Several things bothered me. First, I've never liked Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. Most of the time, he has a goofy grin on his face that I find irritating, but when he plays a scene where he has to cry, rather than looking emotional he has an "ouch, stop it" look like someone's got a tight grip on his nads. Second, I've been reading WWTDD (which is sometimes work-unsafe) for about a year, and now I can't stop staring at Kirsten Dunst's teeth. Third, and most importantly, this one went for a lot of easy jokes. There's an extended sequence in the middle where I thought the tone of the entire movie was derailed for cheap laughs. It seemed to work, as most of the theater was laughing the whole way through, but I felt like it was one of the dumbest sequences I've seen in a big budget movie.

And the flaws don't end there... some more specific, slightly spoilerish gripes, and a few positive things after the jump:

The Sandman makes for cool special effects, but the Flint Marko character was an extrageneric villain with a heart. The movie clocked in at 140 minutes which is a bit too long, and since they had three major villains, they really could've cut the Sandman entirely. The Stan Lee cameo was dreadful, and Sam Raimi threw in a cameo of his kids in one of the climactic moments which was distracting (I'm sure they're great kids, but they're not actors). Harry's butler gets a lot more screen time and his dialogue is cringeworthy and his performance not much better. There's an action sequence involving a damsel in distress and a giant disaster waiting to happen, but after Spider-man shows up and saves the girl, he never does anything to stop the disaster and they just ignore it. Plus, during that sequence, there's a shot of Gwen Stacy running towards the camera as the floor starts to collapse, and the effects are terrible. It's only one shot for about a second and a half, but you'd think that for $250 million, they could make it look a little better. Also, Kirsten Dunst apparently did her own singing, but they pre-recorded it and had her poorly lip sync to herself early on, which was weird.

As for the good, the action sequences, as usual, were mostly well done, and they have a lot of fun with the web slinging. The venom suit looked just how I'd imagine it, the sandman scenes were pretty cool, Bryce Dallas Howard and Topher Grace were both nice additions to the cast, and Bruce Campbell got a bigger part than the past two movies and did an excellent job with it.

As I said, fans of the first two should just go see this (not that they needed me to tell them to). I suspect they won't like it as much, but if you liked Tobey Maguire as Peter, it's not a bad movie at all, and if you also dig the more ridiculous comedy elements they go for in the middle, you might even love it. But for me, it was a few fun action scenes surrounded by stuff that I generally found boring.

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