Pop Culture Junk

Family Guy Star Wars

2007-09-24T02:21:00.001-05:00

This blog remains pretty well abandoned, but some TV Squad commenter wanted screengrabs of the people who pop up in the cantina scene of the Family Guy Star Wars special, and I'm happy to oblige. Bender (Futurama), Coach McGuirk (Home Movies), FG's Evil Monkey, and Roger (American Dad) below:

Edit: And one of the binocular shot for another TV Squad commenter. It has a bald head and round Simpsons eyes, but I don't think it's Homer:

Thursday Night TV

2007-05-17T22:17:00.000-05:00

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.

Wednesday Night TV

2007-05-16T22:47:00.000-05:00

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!

Tuesday Night TV

2007-05-15T19:18:00.000-05:00

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.

Monday Night TV

2007-05-14T22:12:00.000-05:00

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.

100 Bullets

2007-05-14T01:58:00.000-05:00

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).

Sunday Night TV

2007-05-13T22:26:00.000-05:00

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.

Saturday Night Live, Molly Shannon/Linkin Park

2007-05-12T22:38:00.000-05:00

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.

Thursday Night TV, Plus Leftovers

2007-05-10T20:09:00.000-05:00

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!

Wednesday Night TV

2007-05-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

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.

Some Catching Up

2007-05-09T16:00:00.000-05:00

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.

Tuesday Night TV

2007-05-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

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.

Flags of Our Fathers

2007-05-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

"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.

Monday Night TV

2007-05-07T20:13:00.000-05:00

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.

Sunday Night TV

2007-05-06T18:30:00.000-05:00

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.

Massive Catch-up

2007-05-05T23:53:00.000-05:00

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.

Friday Night TV

2007-05-04T22:50:00.000-05:00

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:

Spider-man 3

2007-05-04T06:59:00.000-05:00

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.

Thursday Night TV

2007-05-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

Didn't catch Smallville, cause I was watching NBC comedies. And I'm idiotically off to a midnight Spider-man 3 screening after this, so I'll be half dead all day at work tomorrow. And the movie probably won't be as good as Earl, Scrubs and The Office, which we'll get into after the jump.

My Name is Earl: I didn't pick up a smell-o-vision thing, so all the numbers on the screen were quite distracting. Earl picks up with his three part plan to become an adult. After getting his G.E.D. last week, it's off to work loading and unloading trucks at an appliance store. He gets the hang of it quick enough that he's wondering how he could spend his life doing something so easy, so he sets his mind to becoming a salesman. He makes it, but in the process the dock workers hate him for trying to be like one of the "junior college intellectuals" out front, and the guys out front hate him for being a docker.

I feel dense for not noticing that all the famous guest stars (Chelcie Ross, Charles S. Dutton, Sean Astin) were all in Rudy, but that worked out great, cause when Dutton came along to give the "Six-foot-something, a hundred and something" speech, it was both uplifting and hilarious.

The other plot was Joy finding out she really might be going to prison after all, so she gets everything ready for her to be gone, but instead of prepping for prison, she was preparing to flee to Mexico. I'm guessing that's where she'll be for Jaime Pressly's maternity leave. They really spent most of the effort on the smell-o-vision and the Rudy parody (which was excellent), so the random jokes didn't get as much attention. The only one that really stuck out was Randy saying "Someone said Wednesday is hump day. I don't see any ladies around, so I'll watch your back and you watch mine." But the parody was well done enough, making the joking reference but in a loving way, that this was a really great episode.

The Office: Beware the full disagiliation! Which sounds like it has something to do with the guy who flashed Phyllis, but it's something else entirely. Dwight's determined to catch the pervert, and comes up with a photo lineup of penises, including his own. He also tries to require the women to dress extremely conservatively and not wear makeup. Oh, and the number on the flyer is 800-984-3672, and the message is kinda funny (though it was tough for me to get through).

Michael's reaction is one of the more assholish things he's ever done, actually, laughing at the idea that he'd flash her instead of Pam or Karen. But at least he recognized that he crossed a line, and decides to make up for it by having women's appreciations day. Which quickly turns into an awkward field trip the mall.

Apparently his relationship with Jan is also completely messed up sexually, and she pays him to do crazy stuff. Pam and Karen, who'd been bonding a lot lately, disagree on what he should do. But he decides to break up with her, then changes his mind, then accidentally does it anyway. Best parts:

"Phallus?" "Phyllis, sorry. I've got penises on the brain."
"He would not have wanted me to see Jim's... wow I am saying a lot of things"
"Sleeves down to the wrists, button up collars, muted colors... nobody dresses like this."
"I am the expert, I will conduct it, I know the crap out of women."
"I wouldn't want to be in an office relationship anyway."

Scrubs: Elliot says yes, and Keri Russell is still around, looking great, which is nice. J.D.'s happy for her, but everyone is expecting him to take it hard and he doesn't understand why.

Everyone's fantasizing about what it would be like to be married to Elliot. Dr. Cox kills her, Janitor's was his usual insanity, in Turk's he cheats on Elliot with his Latina maid (Carla, I'm not usually a fan, but she was looking fantastic in this fantasy), Kelso's is just like his current marriage, Carla's fantasy involves making out with Elliot, which is awesome.

Turns out Keri Russell's the last single girl from her college sorority, so J.D.'s trying to take advantage of her potential newfound desperation. He keeps breaking the macking rules though, so she shoots him down. When she finally asks why he's working so hard to get her in bed, he realizes it's because he really is upset about Elliot getting engaged. And his fantasy about married life with Elliot was just being happy. I guess we were about due for that to come back. Best parts:

"You ordered some Dorian?" "What?" "Oh, that's my last name."
J.D.'s trip to a weird mermaid Narnia with goat-Turk.
Whoa, you can't go to boobtown. That, my friend, is a gated community.

TV Scheduling

2007-05-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

Traditional TV listings are great at telling you what's on now. But they give you a list of all 100+ channels filled with reruns or shows you'd never watch. So where do you go if you want to schedule your DVR? Or just find out when your favorite shows have new episodes? I've found two useful sources for just that: CAT and TVRage. Neither looks so hot until you've registered and selected the shows you want to track, but once you do, both will give you a customized listing of your favorite shows' new episodes and nothing else. Past the jump, find out what each does best.

First, we'll look at CAT (or TV CAT or pogdesign... I'm not entirely sure what to call it). It looks pretty ugly when you first go there, but that's just because all the display options are on by default. The advantages of this site are a simple setup process and a very clean interface. Once you register (from the link in the top right corner), you can follow the link in the top center (the "0/145" link next to "Select Shows") to pick the shows you want to track from a list. This way, the calendar isn't cluttered with shows you're not going to watch. When you're done picking those, click the "Save Filter" button at the bottom, and it'll take you back to the calendar. Finally, check out the settings button in the top right to decide how much info you want displayed on the page. Personally, I like to have as little clutter as possible. You'll get a whole month's calendar, but since that won't fit here, check out the bottom left corner of April for me:

You may notice a couple other key features at this point. There's a whole lot of color coding going on. The current date is highlighted in orange (I took the snapshot on the 30th), regular episodes are in white, season/series premieres are also orange, and green is for episodes you've already seen. You'll notice the "<" and ">" symbols next to each episode. Clicking on those indicates that you've seen the episode and will toggle the listing of that show between green and white. So I can just scan the calendar for past episodes in white to figure out what I need to catch up on (like the Sopranos and Entourage).

Pretty cool, eh? There are a couple drawbacks for me. First, the selection of shows is slightly limited, and they're sometimes slow to add new ones. Most of your favorites will be on the list, but new shows, especially ones on cable that don't get much hype, don't always appear on the site. And I've found a few mistakes in their listings (like it listing an episode of Drive on 4/30 when it had already been canceled). Nothing too big, but just to warn you that if there's a show you can't miss, you might want to double check to be sure you're not missing anything.

Now TV Rage personalized listings are more of a hassle to set up, the interface isn't as cool, it's not as helpful for looking into the future, and it doesn't keep track of what you've watched, but it does have a killer feature: customized RSS feeds. I discussed RSS feeds not long ago, so check out that post for a brief overview of what they are.

To get all set up for TV Rage, you register (the button should be in the top right), select your favorite shows (the "My Shows" link in the lower left menu), and get a link for your own RSS feed (the "RSS Feeds" link in the left menu). Copy that link and add it to your RSS reader and you're good to go. The selecting of shows can be time consuming if you want to track a lot of them. You have to search for them one at a time, there's no list to select from like CAT. I ended up with a little over 50, so it took quite a while. But in the end it was worth it, because every morning I'm now greeted with a nice list of what's on later that night:

There are some other nice features of TV Rage, but I've only just started playing around with the site recently. The front page is customizable (see the image at the top of this post) and there's a "My Schedule" section where you can look ahead to see what new episodes are coming up (though not in as nice a format as CAT). Aside from scheduling, the site looks like it's aiming to be sort of like tv.com with episode-by-episode information on various shows, and areas to interact with other users. But for now, I'm just in it for the RSS feed.

Wednesday Night TV

2007-05-02T22:35:00.000-05:00

Managed to catch Lost and Jericho tonight, while Bones goes into the ever growing queue of stuff to catch later in the week. Plus I'll be watching Spider-Man 3 Thursday night. Luckily, I have no life. Lost and Jericho after the jump.

Lost: Not a great episode, but not a bad one either. We had to get the revelation about Locke's father being the original Sawyer out of the way at some point, even though everyone on the internet seems to have figured that one out long ago, and we got some interesting scenes along the way. I don't have as much to say about an episode as I normally do, but here are the things that stuck out:

When Ben was trying to talk Locke into killing his father, he was seriously channeling the Emperor from Return of the Jedi. I swear, he almost said "strike him down with all your hatred, and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete."
The scene between Locke and Rousseau was excellent. One picking up dynamite and the other trapping a screaming guy behind a door was just a regular day on the island for these two
Jack and Juliet having that whole "we should tell her"/"not yet" argument was really intriguing. Is it that they know something we don't? Or that they know that there's no way off the island, and they're just being cryptic about it?
Old Sawyer's idea that this was hell was nicely placed in conjunction with Naomi's news that the plane and bodies had been found.

And so we're left wondering what Jack and Juliet were talking about, how they'll react to Sawyer bringing Locke's tape and warning of the invasion, whether Juliet will get word of Naomi to the Others, and what will happen when the Other "invasion" happens. Lots of new questions, but only one answer we already knew. Still a cool episode though.

Jericho: The confrontation between Jericho and New Bern is finally here. Constantino issues a warning, demanding 7 farms and half the salt mine in exchange for not blowing Jericho up. Gray sends Stanley and a few other men, obviously doomed because neither Jake nor Hawkins went with them, to try to take out their mortars. It goes as expected, with Stanley only surviving thanks to the character shield.

Hawkins and Jake then take their shot at it, enlist the help of Emily's father Jonah, and manage to take out the mortars. They'd agreed to split the food, fuel, and weapons 50/50, but Jonah obviously screws them. Fortunately, Hawkins has had a huge secret armory the whole time. And Gray finally admits that he's not a wartime consiglieri, enlisting Johnston's help in handling the crisis. We leave off with every able bodied person in Jericho over 16 armed and waiting for the New Bernians.

If they had ditched the whole Dale storyline, which always seems to suck, I would like the show a lot more. But this wasn't a bad episode at all. I'm still hoping Heather comes back, but she wasn't mentioned at all.

Catching Up

2007-05-01T16:47:00.000-05:00

Not only did I not catch HBO's Sunday lineup and crash early Monday, but I didn't get a chance to watch anything Tuesday night at all. I blame the government. So I'm going to be playing catch up all week. The Riches, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, and The Shield after the jump.

The Riches: Returning from the funeral, Hugh is flipping out over his missing money, and Wayne's been missing for two days, making him the prime suspect. To avoid suspicion, he says he was gone recruiting a rich investor. So the Malloys go looking for a mark. And they find one in an ex-baseball player/ex-con. Hookers, fast cars, statutory rape, and a sex addict. Cael thinks this guy is the greatest guy ever. Dahlia goes undercover at a sex addict support group with him ("Well the co-pilot was there too"). It takes... oh, about a half a second to hook the guy in ("Good thing I'm ambidextrous!") by playing to his addiction. Very sensitive.

They convince him that Wayne is Dahlia's ex, and that he's about to close a huge business deal that'll make him "richer than God," and he falls for it in a second. The one problem being that they need extra people to pull off the con, so they have to recruit some amateurs who make the whole situation extra stressful, but they pull the con off without a hitch. They managed to steal $500,000, but they're giving it all to PanCo.

In the end, when Wayne says next time they should keep the money and run, he and Dahlia come to the scary realization that they can't run, that they've settled in as the Riches and this is their home now. Best Wayne moment: "You know when you keep something in a hedge? Well, imagine a fund... hedge... uh...."

Gilmore Girls: The season finale isn't far away, and it sounds like it'll be aired before anyone knows the fate of the show, which sucks. It's always best for a show to know it's going to be canceled ahead of time so they can wrap things up nicely. Anyway, on to the show. They totally fooled me with a dream intro, showing Rory in a Chilton uniform made me think I was watching a rerun. Rory's freaking out about her future, having passed on a great job to hold out for a New York Times internship, and the Times later turning her down. I love that Rory had a birthday party at the Mark Twain house, since I didn't grow up too far from Hartford, and as a kid, that was the only museum type place that I thought was cool.

Lane's kids have some sort of lullaby thing playing a little baby version of "Boys Don't Cry," which is very cool in a Lane sort of way. Zack got a gig with some band touring over the summer, and they've agreed to take him and Lane and the kids. But Lane realizes she can't go, with two babies. But even though Zack wants to bail entirely, she insists that he go.

Lorelai takes Rory to a karaoke bar to cheer her up, and after a pretty awesome Culture Club cover by Kirk, Lorelai takes the mic to sing for Rory's gradutation, doing a pretty darn good rendition of "I Will Always Love You." So naturally, Luke walks in mid-song, and it takes on a whole new meaning. They're really laying it on thick lately. Perhaps my favorite moment of Luke and Lorelai's relationship happened in this episode, involving Luke's hat. Lorelai was all excited because she had given him a blue hat, which he hadn't worn since they broke up, but suddenly he was wearing it again. She thought this was a really big sign and was all excited, but in the end, we learn that Luke had dropped his other hat in the dishwasher.

We end on a cliffhanger as Logan gets a job in San Francisco, and asks for Lorelai's permission to propose to Rory. She looks horrified and the credits kick in before she gives an answer. I didn't care for the cliffhanger, but it was a pretty good episode. It's definitely past its prime, but the show's been a lot better lately than it has been the previous year and a half or so.

Veronica Mars: Finally, it's back! A local restaurant owned by Arabs is vandalized, and the owner comes to Mars Investigations to hire Keith, but since he's busy getting his sheriff on, Veronica takes the case. She not only catches the vandal, but she helps the father learn about his daughter's Jewish boyfriend and learn to accept it and get a disturbingly anti-American immigrant deported.

A 19 year old got loaded at a bar owned by Rescue Me's Chief Jerry (Jack McGee), walked outside, and got hit by a car. He had a bad fake I.D., but Chief Jerry doesn't even really care, so Keith is trying to crack down on ID checking. But his deputies mysteriously turn up nothing. Keith visits Chief Jerry's bar again, and finds Wallace and Piz there, checks their IDs, and immediately recognizes Veronica's handiwork (she hooked them up in exchange for them testing drinks for roofies at the frat party a while back). So he gets them to go to a bar with really awful fake IDs (John Bon Jovi and Biggie Smalls) to check on the Deputies, and cans the ones who don't catch it.

A bunch of relationship-y stuff happens later on. Logan's throwing a party for Parker, and Veronica has to act like a grownup and pretend to be over everything and go and be happy. Logan seems really happy though which makes her feel worse and feel even more guilty for feeling bad. Mac's still with Bronson, but it sounds like things are not all that great. She ends up on a couch at the party with Max, the test-selling hooker-loving geek we've seen a few times this year, and they seem to hit it off. Finally, Piz grows some cajones and makes a move on Veronica, which shouldn't have worked but did. It felt forced and stupid.

A fairly interesting case and the usual dose of wit and Lebowski references made it an ok episode, but I'm hoping for a little more for the rest of what hopefully isn't the last season.

The Shield: Gardocki shaved! Just one of several shocking moments this week.

Colette puts strike team on the machete massacre earlier in the season. Hyatt takes the lead and other new guy Julien is helping out. He's got a lot to learn about the strike team, and Vic isn't a great teacher but Hyatt is an excellent mediator, knowing both Vic and Julien's point of view. Dutch can't keep his mouth shut about Hernan, and spills the beans to Hyatt. They head out to Hernan, who tells them not only that the machete murders weren't Salvadoran, but that Guardo didn't kill Lem.

Vendrell gets the crap kicked out of him, and now that Heist is canceled, Mara is back. He got jumped because of Tilly, and Mara finds out and pitches a fit. With the guilt he's carrying, he doesn't care much about the beating or Mara, but Tilly calls his cell and Mara answers, so she kicks him out. He goes on a bender snorting ground up Oxycontin (can you do that? I'm drug-ignorant), and wanders back home, confessing to Mara that he killed Lem, in what would've been an awesome surprise had they not put "I killed Lem!" as the first three words of the commercials that ran during The Riches (thanks, FX!)

Dutch is still on the rape, and a concerned father shows up. Or is he a concerned father? The second he showed up, I thought he might be the guy, and Billings gets the same idea shortly after. They come up with a B.S. excuse to talk to him in interrogation, and one of the victims IDs his voice. He claims to have done it to generate publicity about runaways in the hopes of getting his own daughter's case re-opened. Or something. He was creepy. And he molested his own daughter, just to make it that much weirder. And thanks to the press coverage, he finds out that his daughter's dead.

Carl Weathers makes a return appearance, offering Vic a little off-the-books work that may be a preview of his life after retirement. Since Arrested Development, I have a hard time taking Carl Weathers seriously. I keep expecting him to say "Baby we got a stew going." It wasn't a very important storyline, except I think to make Vic appreciate his job a little more, and to provide a little dark comedy with Weathers' partner's incredibly gross treatment of drug dealers.

Monday Night TV

2007-04-30T19:47:00.000-05:00

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.

Blogs & Feeds

2007-04-30T10:24:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-29T20:06:00.000-05:00

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:

"You too can have champagne for breakfast, and caviar for your dog!"
"I know you're excited, but I'm going to need at least a hymnal's width between us."
"I'm sure it was someone else. Mr. Dauterive has a very common shape."
"Oh Hank, please call me Karen." "Uh, I'm not gonna do that."
Did Bill use the word "ricoculous"?

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.

Pancake roulette!
Bobby trying to do pull-ups, and Joseph giving him a little push.
"Hank, there is a brown spot."
Dale drinking through osmosis.
"Dad, do you think I should shave off my body hair to be more aerodynamic?"

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:

Springfield Little League Park. Warning: Your child is not as good as you think he is.
"Flanders, these boys have earned the right to behave like arrogant oafs."
"My wife's looking for a bathing suit that doesn't make her look horsey, so I'm gonna be here a while."
"It's horrible but you can't keep your eyes away. It's like watching a monkey swallow a hand grenade."
"If Homer'd used protection, we'd all be pooping roses on easy street!"
"He died, Bart. Dad buried him in the backyard. But... not in that order."
Bart's favorite song is "Love Stinks" by J. Geils Band?
Lenny's book, The Murderer Did It.
"And now the sunset, brought to you by God, the invisible giant who you turn to when you're about to die."

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.

"That's like asking me to choose between Sarah Jessica Parker and Kirsten Dunst in a "hot body/weird face" contest. It can't be done."
Gladiator Mice!
I just wrote on the wall. Take that, society!
"None for me, thanks, it's going to go straight to my vagina."
"But is having this minor skill worth being so unattractive? That's for the fan to decide."
"She's been scraped more times than a fisherman's knuckle."
"It's Enrico Polazzo!"... one of my favorite Naked Gun moments.

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.

"All I can see is you taking more poundings than Omaha beach before the ground assault began."
"It's Thursday night, which means it's time to tease some pedophiles on the internet!"
Battlestar Galactica on Ice!
"Lori Petty is the man who played Tank Girl."
Stan giving out fake spoilers to M. Night Shyamalan movies.
"Can I borrow a quarter? Cause I want to call my mother and tell her I just met the girl I want to nail in the bathroom."

The Good Shepherd

2007-04-29T18:20:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-27T21:26:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-27T11:27:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-26T19:59:00.000-05:00

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:

"In Armando's class there are six women for every man. Nice."
A nice callback to Mallrats with Randy's sailboat picture.
"You better hope that To Catch a Predator guy doesn't come in here and see you with all these kids."
"And Summer, always remember, just because you have a stripper name doesn't mean you have to grow up to be a stripper."

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:

"The image of a beloved cartoon duck performing unspeakable acts upon a certain cartoon mouse that a lot of people like. I've never been a fan."
"Every week I'm supposed to take four hours and do a quality spot check of the paper mill. And of course the year I blow it off, this happens."
"Lord, beer me strength."

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:

"My techniques guarantee male orgasm."
"The most important thing is that she makes Jack very happy. She's like a white Geisha."
"Carrying plastic bags, sitting on benches, brushing my own teeth. This is unsuitable!"
"I was at a costume party earlier this evening. And the hostess's dog attacked me, so I had to stab it."
"And all the time I've been on this earth, I have only one regret: I should've worked more."
"They've got pretzels downstairs!"
"If I die will you take care of my birds?" "I got a lot on my plate right now, Ken."

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:

"It's my screensaver!"
Turk's Booty Breakdown
The Janitor's cleanliness ghost

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

2007-04-26T17:13:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-25T22:33:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-25T15:07:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-24T20:29:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-23T20:03:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-23T07:28:00.000-05:00

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 Night TV

2007-04-22T21:41:00.000-05:00

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:

"Print media is where it's at. Do you know it's where most people used to get their news?"
"Just consider it my way of saying I'm sorry." "Sorry for what?" "Oh, you'll know."
"I've never seen you play this well. Except in that dream I had where you won the Masters in a playoff with a robot."
"This is Dee, she coined the term 'cozy' for uncomfortably small places."
"Chris says his ideas may sound crazy like Howard Hughes towards the end, but they're actually crazy like Howard Hughes in the middle."
"Those clubs don't care whether they're striking a Titleist or Dr. Ted Nelson's skull, and neither should you."
"Oh Peggy, I would've thought you were ready, except you told me you were ready. Don't worry Peggy, you'll know when you're ready because I will have just told you."
"Bobby, check the Guinness Book of World Records and see who holds the one for being fired the most times." "I'm pretty sure it's George Jetson."
"Team Peggy merges forces with Team Sizemore. We'll call it 'Team Sizemore.'"

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:

"He's the most destructive player in this game. He once beat me to death with my own life bar."
"Hey Lisa, self-conscious about your shins? In my day, girls were worried about their boobs."
The Bend It Like Beckham scene with Apu cheering on the father.
Homer painting his referee shirt white

Still More Catching Up

2007-04-22T20:15:00.000-05:00

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.

Saturday Night TV

2007-04-22T01:22:00.000-05:00

Scarlett Johansson and Bjork is an unusual combination. Early on, Scarlett looked really stuck on the cue cards, so I was worried that would be distracting the whole time, but it was only the first couple sketches. She did an ok job, the writing didn't do much for her though. In the monologue her top was barely holding her in, which was kinda nice... but is her singing voice really that low? She sounds like Princess Vespa in Spaceballs. A couple pretty good sketches, mostly weaker than usual. More thoughts after the jump.

Really lame opening, even with the Chuck Schumer cameo. Is there any reason they always open with the George Bush bit?

Roy Rules! ruled. Why is the digital short always so much funnier than everything else?

Kristin Wiig reprises her role with the reporter who gets distracted by her attraction to an interviewee. But what on earth was with the cat mauling at the end of the sketch? It really wasn't funny, and was extremely poorly executed, with the stick the cat was hung by going well into frame.

I've never been a Bjork fan, but you have to respect someone who's not afraid to go out and sound completely different. She mixes up her sound all the time, but never sounds like anyone else.

Weekend Update was pretty good. Some nice jokes, and the people other than the anchor were actually kinda funny for a change. Too often lately they've completely derailed the whole segment for me, but Will Forte's song wasn't bad at all.

Lots of Catching Up

2007-04-22T00:20:00.000-05:00

Almost caught up, I'll probably manage to just catch up in time to fall behind again Sunday night. Past the jump are my thoughts on last week's Gilmore Girls, House, The Shield, the last two weeks of Penn & Teller: Bullshit, and some Acceptable TV clips from the past two episodes.

Gilmore Girls: Logan is crashing with Rory and Paris since he's all no longer living off his father. Rory interviews with the Providence Journal, and she's feeling all grown up businesswoman-y, but as soon as the interview high fades, she starts stressing over getting the job. Then when she ends up getting it, she's stressing over whether to take it or not. After a Logan/Lorelai heart to heart, and then a Logan/Rory heart to heart, she decides to pass to go after her dream internship at the New York Times.

Logan and Rory come home to Stars Hollow for the Spring Fling. Maybe I'm crazy, but a hay bale maze actually sounds fun. I raced my brother through a real live maze (made of wood rather than hay bales) once in Ft. Worth, Texas, and a good time was had by all. Except that I lost. But while people seem to enjoy the Stars Hollow maze, it's mostly there for a cheesy metaphor for Luke and Lorelai to get lost but then find each other.

Any episode with Kirk wearing a giant minotaur head and stilts has to be pretty good (if only he could've done both at the same time) and I'm glad that we're finally making progress towards the inevitable reunion of Luke and Lorelai.

House: Hey, Carla Gallo from Undeclared, and that guy from Grandma's Boy and Art School Confidential. And I love a good Casablanca reference.

So a little girl has JRA, they think, meaning her immune system is attacking her joints and eyes and other stuff. Then she has a stroke. This means her blood is too thick, which actually caused the JRA symptoms, but they don't know why. An inspection of their house reveals some bloody clothing, so they suspect abuse, perform an exam, and find a series of cuts in her genital area. This is turning disturbing like an SVU episode. Then they figure out that she's somehow hit puberty.

The sick girl's brother has a crush on Cameron, and she seems to be using his affections to mess with Chase, which is kinda bitchy. But the crush turns out to from the same early onset puberty. And in the end, it all turns out to be cause of their father's "male enhancement" cream. If that could seriously cause something like this, how is it even legal?

House's clinic hours were pretty useless this week, despite that guy's cameo, but there was a pretty funny side story about Wilson and Cuddy, and I love that House watches wrestling. It's sorta like his soap operas, except homo erotic. With the exception of House messing with Wilson, the episode was pretty lame, I thought. Probably the least interesting of the season.

The Shield: Dutch and Billings catch a robbery/murder with some guys boosting ephedrine from a pharmacy. Billings says they make a good team, that his strengths are Dutch's weaknesses, and accuses Dutch of both arrogance and insecurity (and he does manage to show both pretty frequently). Dutch manages to ditch the pharmacy case onto the strike team (or just Gardocki, who doesn't have a personal day available to go help kill Guardo) because he wants back on Lem's murder. He floats the name of a guy named Hernan, who sounds all super scary, but it turns out that Hernan is an undercover Fed. But for now, Dutch is stuck babysitting the case. The same people hit a second pharmacy, and I think the pharmacy manager was the secretary from Andy Barker, P.I..

Officer Tina, who's been under Dutch's tutelage for a while, practically has an orgasm when she sees Gardocki knock a suspect around. And then later when the bust a related drug ring, she roughs a guy up herself, and then almost jumps Gardocki. She still seems to stick with the detective lessons from Dutch, but when he brings her over to check out his case library, she seems to be on to the fact that he just wants in her pants.

Guardo calls in about the kidnapping, and Vic threatens to rape and kill the girl over the phone while Guardo listening. I'm not sure it's just a threat, either. They arrange an exchange, but Guardo still thinks it's a ransom, so he's worried about protecting the money, while Vic is just planning to blow in and kill the guy. When Vendrell brings the kidnapped girlfriend back home, she says she's pregnant. So now by killing Lem he's also going to orphan an unborn child. He really can't handle the guilt, and when they abduct Guardo, Vendrell looks like he's just barely going to talk Vic out of killing the guy, but then Vic turns around and shoots him.

And the episode wraps up with news that Claudette has found a new strike team guy. Not a new addition, but Vic's replacement for when he retires in a month. Another good episode. A bigger role than usual for Billings and Gardocki, which is nice, but whatever happened to that murder scene they found in the season premiere? It seemed like that was going to be the season's big investigation, but then completely disappeared. Also, Danny and Julien seem to be relgated to background characters this year. But it's all ok, because the Lem/Guardo/Kavanaugh stuff has been very entertaining.

Acceptable TV: I was an entire week behind, so I checked out last week's stuff on the website as well as this week's content. Both were fairly weak, but Operation Kitten Calendar 3 last week and The Highfiver this week were both good.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit: Oh boy, the circumcision episode a while back was the grossest thing I've ever seen, but this was a close second. The theme two weeks ago was the detoxification movement, so they showed us someone actually getting a colonic, with the little clumps of crap coming out. Nasty. The look on the guy's face was priceless, though. You could tell he immediately regretted the decision to go in there. But the episode ran with the idea that we've seen quite a few times in the series: don't take medical advice from anyone but a doctor. Especially if they're telling you to buy $43 cans of maple syrup or charging you to stick stuff up your ass.

The second episode was about demonic possession and exorcism and stuff. This touched on an issue that's always bugged me. What kind of an idiot would worship Satan? Believing in the Christian devil means you also believe in the all powerful and benevolent god of Christianity who offers eternal life in paradise in exchange for faith and being sorry when you screw up, so they decide to go with the one who offers eternal torture. Sure. The guy with his pendulum that answers questions about demons was hilarious. I feel awful for those people that buy into this stuff though. I felt worse when we learned that one exorcist is a public school teacher, and that another tells kids that their imaginary friends are demons.

And now I'm left with only Entourage, The Sopranos, two Jerichos, and Smallville to watch.

Thursday Night TV

2007-04-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

I'm still way behind on TV after an extended weekend. Still to watch: The past two Jerichos, The Sopranos, Entourage, House, Gilmore Girls, The Shield, tonight's Smallville, and I'm still not clear on whether this week's Bones was new. But I did catch My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, and Scrubs tonight. Spoilers past the jump.

My Name is Earl: Cool to see a call back to Burt Reynolds' episode, but even better... Norm MacDonald! I've been a fan for a long time. And once when I saw him at a casino, he said "how's it going?" to me. Also cool to see Charles Robinson, fresh off his appearance on The Riches. I never saw him in a casino, though.

So Norm plays "Little Chubby," son of the now deceased "Big Chubby." He was a huge jerk, so in an apparent cross promotion with kickedinthenuts.com, dons a jumpsuit and an orange wig and... well... kicks him in the nuts. But everyone laughing at him sends him on a spiritual quest, and he comes back a better person.

But it turns out the severe testicular injury meant he wasn't producing testosterone, and since he never saw a doctor for it, it was his mangled nads that made him nice. But thanks to a touching rendition of "Freebird," he sacrifices his balls to be a nice person again.

Best parts:

Catalina
"It's like having sex with a fat chick, except I can't get her pregnant."
"Male intimacy: it's not just for gays anymore."
"Never trust a man who wants to put his finger in your butt."
"No wonder we make a fortune with this place, I bet everyone here has working testicles."
"What would I sacrifice to be loved? Not my balls."

30 Rock: Liz sees herself in New York for the rest of her life, but Floyd wants to go back to Cleveland. So they go to Cleveland and it's like a paradise. It even gets it's own musical montage with a song that actually sounds like it's sung by Sudeikis and Fey. Floyd ends up taking the job, so it sounds like he's taking off. I was seriously impressed with how likable Jason Sudeikis has been in this show, and for the first time that I can remember, I'm sad to see a sitcom character's love interest go.

A secret society of famous black people lead by Bill Cosby is apparently out to get Tracy, so he disappears. And is still on the lam when the episode ends. Jack's wedding is still on, even though his fiancee Phoebe is seeming like even more of a crazy bitch lately.

"By the hammer of Thor!" and "blergh" seem to be Liz's new catchphrases.
"It's... made of gold."
"It's going to be at least $30 million with all the claymation sex scenes."
"I'm gonna have so much money, my grandkids are gonna play lacrosse. Lacrosse, Liz."
"Who told Tracy about Anagrams? I'm gonna call Dr. Spaceman."

Scrubs: Another episode where the narration gets passed off to someone else, but this time it's to Ted, the Todd, and Jordan. Ted's trying to get Kelso to resolve a pay dispute with the nurses. The Todd is trying to keep Turk from jeopardizing his career by clashing with the head of plastic surgery. And Jordan messes with Elliot and Keith's relationship, but when she succeeds she actually feels guilty. In typical Scrubs fashion, everything gets resolved in the end with a heartwarming narration thing. Nothing was especially wrong with the episode, but it just wasn't all that funny.

Best parts:

"Internal uh-oh five."
Elliot's stripper pole.
"What's with this guy and bees?"
Ted's murderous rage at Kelso

Wednesday Night TV

2007-04-18T23:11:00.000-05:00

I'm still way behind, but Lost and South Park have to be seen ASAP or else something will get spoiled for me the day after. And almost to prove my point, here's me writing stuff that would spoil both after the jump:

Lost: One of the things that struck me about Desmond's situation running around trying to save Charlie is that it reminded me of those old cartoons where a dog is left to watch a baby, and the baby wanders off distracted by something shiny into dangerous situations, but through sheer luck escapes from every peril completely unharmed, while the dog suffers endless torture trying to save the baby. So Desmond is like the dog, and Charlie the baby. I mentioned TV Funhouse a while back, a long since canceled Comedy Central show featuring crazy animated shorts among other things, and whenever I think of those cartoons, I think of the TV Funhouse spoof of them:

So I found it hilarious that Desmond leads around Charlie, the baby, Jin, the immigrant, and Hurley, who not only could pass for a guy on mushrooms, but actually mentioned them early on in the episode.

But that has nothing at all to do with anything... this was a pretty cool episode. Brian K. Vaughan, comic book god, gets his first co-writing credit this episode, so I had high expectations. Which usually means I'll be disappointed. While it wasn't the best Lost episode ever, it was still cool.

Desmond has a vision of Charlie's death, but also a parachute landing with a picture of Penny on board. But he's torn as to whether Penny arriving is worth letting Charlie die, and the episode draws the parallel to God asking Abraham to kill Isaac. It of course doesn't go exactly according to plan, Charlie lives, and the woman in the parachute is, I think, someone we've never seen before. But she does recognize Desmond before appearing to die. We also learn that Desmond had another fiancee, Ruth, who he left to become a monk (hence the whole "brother" thing), but that didn't work out either. The head monk though had a picture of the lady who told Desmond all about his flashes of the future on his desk (it's not too apparent in my crappy screencap, which I'm not sure is uploading right anyway, since blogger seems to be having issues, but the photoshopping of the two actors together was pretty lousy):

The episode was very centered on the Baby/Immigrant/Guy on Mushrooms story and the flashback, so everything else didn't get much attention. Though the whole Sawyer/Kate/Jack/Juliet love... trapezoid... is getting messy.

South Park: I'm not a huge fan of zombie movies, but I've seen enough to say that I'm pretty sure they hit just about every zombie movie cliche and managed to make it all pretty hilarious. The points about the homeless, the ridiculous overreactions by Randy, and Cartman's efforts to jump the homeless served to elevate a decent parody into one of the better episodes in recent memory.

More Catching Up

2007-04-18T14:55:00.000-05:00

Still catching up, with this week's Riches after the jump:

The Riches: Ken is moving in, because it's tradition for the future son-in-law to live with the family leading up to the wedding. It's also tradition for him to apprentice with the father-in-law. So borderline retarded Ken is working at the law office, which obviously can't last. After amusingly stapling himself, Ken ends up bringing Di Di her lunch. When he gets to her school, there's a police search underway, and a bag of pot gets passed around like a hot potato from Cael's friends to Ken to Di Di to the cops, and she's busted, which means trouble. Wayne tries to talk her out of jail, but it's actually Dahlia who rescues Di Di.

Sweet Dee is back, as the plaintiff in an unwinnable case. Apparently she lost her arm to an alligator after Panetta built housing in the middle of a gator habitat. But Wayne (with an assist from Aubrey) finds out she has a shoplifting problem, and Wayne uses that to save the company a lot of money.

Back with the travellers, Dale is even more pissed, if that's possible, upon learning that his father thinks he's a sociopath and that he was going to make Wayne the leader of their group. At the end of the episode he takes his father out into the middle of nowhere and leaves him for dead.

Wayne and Panetta do some bonding in the sauna. I don't think you're supposed to drink in those places. Despite telling everyone that she's dead, Wayne's mother actually left his family when he was very young. And Hugh is actually not that rich. He's "mortgaged up to my eyeballs." Dahlia also did some bonding with Hugh, and she's now his personal assistant. She's acting considerably crazier than normal, a combination of stress and the addiction, I think, but Panetta seems to love the crazy stuff.

Wayne had a few really funny moments, Ken added some laughs with his stupidity, and Di Di had some of her best scenes yet dealing with Ken. She's obviously embarrassed and repulsed, but she feels bad for him too. Another quality episode. I'm really enjoying this show. It's not great, but it's consistently good, with a nice mix of family drama and comedy.

Catching Up

2007-04-17T20:22:00.000-05:00

A loooong weekend away from home. I caught a couple shows... Painkiller Jane was as bad as I'd heard it was. And SNL with Shia LaBeouf was pretty dull, except for the digital short (Dear Sister, featuring Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek"), and Sofa King. Also, I'm twice the age and half the X-chromosomes of Avril Lavigne's target demographic, so that didn't do much for me. The big thing I missed out on was the three hours over two nights premiere of Drive.

Spoilers for that after the jump:

Drive: A cross-country race run by a mysterious organization that took extreme measures to coax people into the race, I knew about. Clues about each stop on the way, sinister penalties for finishing last, I did not know. Three hours in, we've got plenty of mystery, and relatively exciting car chases and things. The effects aren't movie-quality, but they're passable. It doesn't seem as well-written as Tim Minnear's earlier efforts, but I think this is meant for a broader audience. Still, it's well above the Fast and the Furious-type dialogue that is normally associated with car stories.

So far we've met seven people (above), as far as we know, that work for the race officials, and we're familiar with several teams:

Nathan Fillion and Kristin Lehman play Alex and Corrina. Corrina was kidnapped 27 years ago for the race, and her parents died just shy of the finish line trying to win her back. Former semi-pro auto racer Alex is in it to win back his wife (Angel's Amy Acker) who was kidnapped by the powers that be. A cop (Law & Order's Richard Brooks) and Alex's sister (Katie Finneran from The Inside and Wonderfalls) are back in Nebraska looking into the disappearance of his wife and subsequent disappearance of him.

They have a leg up on the competition, since Corrina seems to know more about the race than anyone else, and has a USB drive with apparently info on the other racers. But the leg up isn't much help, since Alex apparently was the wheelman on a number of bank robberies and on the hook for some murders, and it looked like he was getting arrested, but it was just an excuse to get him out of his crappy truck and into his old racing car.

Wendy Patrakas (Melanie Lynskey) just had a baby, who the race people took. It sounds like her husband is crazy, jeolous, a workaholic, and abusive. She kinda sucks at the whole racing thing, but she's obviously motivated. She ended up coming in last in the first leg, which earned her a gun and the assignment to "eliminate" Ivy (Taryn Manning). We don't know much about Ivy at this point, except that she was in New Orleans during Katrina, and apparently has no money. Wendy gets around her elimination task on a technicality by getting Ivy to join up with her.

Winston Salazar (Kevin Alejandro) just got out of jail. We have no idea what he did (or didn't do). His rich father abandoned his family when Winston was seven. After getting invited to the race, he goes to pick up some pocket money by stealing from his dad. But instead he finds his half brother, Sean, who didn't even know Winston existed. They team up, but Winston is on parole, so a bounty hunter is after him. He gets picked up, but Sean calls in his father's yes man and gets him out.

Elle and Rob Laird (Mircea Monroe and Riley Smith) are our only husband and wife team. He's in the Army, she wants him out. So she grabs his cell phone and deletes the message letting him know that his unit's being redeployed to Iraq. Which I guess makes him AWOL. They've probably gotten the least development so far, with a lot of the scenes featuring them focusing on showing off Elle's body, which I am all for.

John Trimble ("That Guy" Dylan Baker) is an Astrophysicist who's dying. The only thing keeping him alive are his meds, and he doesn't have enough to last the whole race, apparently. He's driving along with his daughter Violet (Emma Stone), who... is a teenager, but otherwise isn't remarkable in any way. But she and her father have a nice relationship, and it looks like Sean Salazar is hot for her, so I'm sure that'll show up later.

We leave off at a cliffhanger, where everyone (including us, we hope) is about to learn a lot about the race. I, for one, am excited.

Weekend Offline

2007-04-13T11:45:00.000-05:00

I'm offline and virtually TV-less for the weekend. How will I survive this nightmarish scenario? I'm not sure. But when I come back, I'll have to catch up on this stuff:

Painkiller Jane premieres tonight at 10pm on SciFi. The reviews are generally crappy, but I want to give it a shot. Kritanna Loken is easy on the eyes, and if the dialogue/story aren't too clunky a good looking woman kicking some heads in can be pretty entertaining.

A new Saturday Night Live with Shia Leboeuf hosting.

Drive kicks off with a two hour premiere Sunday on Fox, followed by (I think) an hourlong episode Monday in Prison Break's timeslot.

The Sopranos and Entourage have new episodes on Sunday as well.

A ton of movies come out this weekend too, though almost none of them look very good. I'm sorta interested in Pathfinder for mindless action fun, but that's about it. But still, an entire weekend of TV, plus I haven't watched the most recent Jericho yet, so I'll have plenty to catch up on when I get back.

On top of that, the The Venture Bros. Season Two DVDs come out on Wednesday. If you're not familliar with the show, it's partly a spoof of the boy adventurer genre (Johnny Quest, The Hardy Boys books), partly a comic book hero/villain spoof along the lines of The Tick, but mostly just plain awesome. Check out The season one if that sounds at all cool, though be warned that it's kind of slow starting. It starts off ok, but it's not until about the seventh episode of the first season that it really hits its stride. Click past the jump for my favorite Season 2 clip.

Thursday Night TV

2007-04-12T19:17:00.000-05:00

It feels like about a year since the last new My Name is Earl. I liked Andy Barker, P.I., but I knew it was going to be cancelled, so I did my best not to get too attached. Since Earl will be sticking around, I'm happy to have it back. Spoilers for tonight's Earl, The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs past the jump.

My Name is Earl: Flipping on the television at 4am reminds Earl that he and Randy used to harass a local news reporter. To make it up to her, Earl agrees to appear in a heartwarming story, but Randy gets left out of the action. Earl makes him the center of the story, but the reporter ends up editing Randy to look retarded. It's not that big of a stretch, but she did it on purpose. In the end, it just makes Randy feel like he's finally noticed by karma, so now he and Earl are partners in completing the list.

Best parts:

I love it every time Tim Stack pops up. Anybody remember Night Stand with Dick Dietrich? That show was hilarious.
"Family asks that donations in the name of Mr. West be made to the family."
"Also reported killed in the explosion were two drifters, a homeless man, and a bum."
"And just like Van Halen, we were going to keep playing until everybody got sick of us."
"When he's had a few drinks, he uses his junk as the spout, but never in front of the kids."

The Office: Michael takes the warehouse crew's scarier safety seminar as a threat to his masculinity or something. Andy, who is now Drew, is being shunned by Dwight. Everyone else has turned into compulsive gamblers. Apparently, Michael's plan to prove that he's tough is to jump off the roof, which almost wins Kevin $100,000. No love triangle stuff this week, just good old fashioned funny.

Best parts:

Jim's translation of Dwight's thoughts was pretty good.
Michael calling that lady "Pudge."
Dwight leaning his head into the bailer ("Bailer? I don't even know her!")
After Daryl's cool scary safety presentation, Toby's upstairs tips were great. "You always want to keep a sweater or cardigan of some sort in case it gets drafty."
I love a good Van de Graaff Generator joke.
"When you land, try and land like an eight year old. These bouncy castles are not designed for adults."
"If John Mellencamp ever wins an Oscar, I am a very rich dude."

30 Rock: Rip Torn is back as Giess, Jack's boss. After the disastrous fireworks special last week, Giess takes the microwave division away from Jack, and hints that the way to get it back is to get married. This sends Jack into a spiral of depression.

Liz, on the other hand, is jazzed that her relationship with the unfortunately named Floyd is going well, playing Uno by candlelight and crapping all over the same movies. But the bliss is short lived, because Jack latches on to "the Floydster" as a cure for the blues, seriously cramping Liz's style. Eventually she convinces Jack to find someone for himself, and he ends up hooking up with Phoebe, who has "avian bone disorder," leaving her bones hollow and brittle. Which I guess is kinda funny when gentle taps cause her to say "ouch," but I think that'll get old quickly. Sounds like she's sticking around though, as Jack looks to get back the microwave division by proposing to Phoebe in the last scene.

Tracy is still pitching his idea for a movie based on Thomas Jefferson's life, with him playing all the parts, Norbit-style, except it's not a comedy. Rip Torn, however, would like him to make a sequel to Fat Bitch, the movie where Tracy plays a dog. To sell them on it, he's going to use the TGS set and staff to make a trailer. And stays in character all day. After the trailer turns out crappy, he's decided to finance it himself, so it looks like this will be a lengthy story arc.

Best parts:

Fun with the pause button: the movies playing when Liz and Floyd came out of the theater were: The President's Wife, Moonquest: Quest for the Moon, Speaking of Emily, and The Boy Made of Corn.
"It's like my old man said, 'If you try, you win.' And he was a hell of a garbage man."
"I took the money from the sale of those pieces, and a bought a sailboat, and I named it after my ex-wife, and I sank it."
How cute was Liz in her pajamas?

Scrubs: After Laverne's funeral, everyone slips right back into routine, except for Carla, who can't understand how everyone can act like nothing's changed.

Elliot doesn't seem interested in anything with Keith except sex, and he's had enough of it. In the first of a few scenes this episode where one character bluntly tells another character exactly what their problem is, Carla, in a rather bitchy manner, tells her that she's letting Keith slip away because she's afraid of getting hurt like she did with J.D.

Dr. Cox is on a quest to take 20 minutes for himself, but keeps getting interrupted by people who need his help. In scene #2 of easy problem solving, Kelso tells Perry that being the "go to guy" is time for himself, because that brings him joy.

J.D. and Turk have to treat a deaf child, and only the Janitor knows how to sign. They figure out he can have his hearing restored with a cochlear implant. After a recent Law & Order: CI covered the same thing, I knew the father wouldn't go for it. In problem solver #3, the Janitor tells J.D. and Turk that being deaf might be the thing the father and son have most in common, so they're better able to understand what's going on.

And apparently everyone solving each other's problems was the spirit of Laverne living on, which gives Carla warm fuzzies. A little too sweet for me. Still some funny scenes though:

J.D.'s fantasy of his funeral.
Dr. Cox's imaginary sound-proof bubble.
After Keith shot down the KFed/Britney roleplaying, was Elliot suggesting Claus von Bulow and Alan Dershowitz roles?
"Well that sucks caboodle."
"I'll give you a hint, it starts with an 'M' and ends with an 'R'." "Marg
Helgenberger!"

Wednesday Night TV

2007-04-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

Crazy Lost episode, Friday Night Lights season finale, South Park parodies 300... for a non-sweeps month, this is about as good as it gets. Click below to reveal spoilers for all three:

Lost: Many had theorized that women on the island couldn't have babies, but it's even worse than suspected - other than Claire, every woman who's gotten pregnant has died before giving birth. Juliet explains that the only reason Claire survived was that Ethan had been sneaking her a vaccine, and the only reason Ethan kidnapped her was because the castaways found out he didn't belong, so he could no longer give her the vaccine in secret.

This of course means that they killed Ethan for no good reason. And now Claire's having withdrawals and only Juliet finding a secret stash of medicine can help her. Jack trusts her immediately, of course, but Sawyer and Sayid want answers. She says "If I told you everything that I know, you'd kill me," which is awesome. But she throws Sawyer and Sayid's checkered pasts back in their faces, saying that she won't reveal her past for the same reason they don't reveal theirs. And her vaccine saves Claire almost immediately.

The pregnancy thing has been speculated, of course, because of their fascination with children, their recruitment of Juliet, a fertility specialist, and the fact that a psychic mysteriously told a newly pregnant Claire that she had to get on flight 815. But in the end, Juliet is shown discussing her whole plan with Ben - how to get Kate to accept her with the handcuff plan, that they had activated an implant in Claire to make her sick, and that they'd see each other in a week.

So who knows how much of what we learned about their experimentation on Claire was true? We're sure that women who get pregnant on the island can't carry their babies to term, but Juliet speculated long before the plane crash that the problem was at conception, so a woman who got pregnant elsewhere and came to the island should be fine. What does this mean for Sun? If Jin finds out all this, will he find out that she was impregnated by her boyfriend before the crash? Or did the island heal Jin and he is the father, which would put her at risk for the mystery ailment. Lots of possibilities.

The other thing going on were discussions about the island's cancer preventing abilities and Jacob, the often mentioned but as-yet-unseen leader of the Others. No one on the island had ever gotten cancer, but right before the crash, Juliet discovers that Ben has a tumor on his spine. He had just asked the mysterious Jacob to cure Juliet's sister's cancer, which was successful. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with anything. Or it's possible that, like Locke said, that Ben had "lost touch with the island," and it's cancer prevention doesn't work if you do. And the frequent mentioning of Jacob I'm sure has people continuing to speculate about his identity, with a lot of people suspecting Locke's father, but my money's on Billy Dee Williams.

A really fun episode for mythology buffs, I think, but not much going on for character/drama/humor. I'm cool with either or both, so I enjoyed it a lot.

South Park: 300 parody! Lots of slow motion, "THIS IS LES BOS!", the overly dramatic British accent voiceover, the ridiculously low-pitched voice of the Persian leader... lots of really nice touches. I can't tell if it was a sort of loving parody of the movie or an honest dig at the overly stylized visuals and cartoonish portrayal of the Persions in 300.

We also got some random gross/funny "scissoring," an essay/esse pun that cracked me up, and a group of Mexican day laborers doing a pretty good job of teaching fractions. Kinda pointless across the board, but funny.

Friday Night Lights: Oh, the commercials. You show Tami telling Eric that she's pregnant, and you show the players in the baseball caps that all sports teams wear after winning championships... that just plain sucks. I guess we got right to the pregnancy thing within the first few minutes, so that's not so bad. Tami takes half the episode to spill the beans, and Eric takes it extremely well.

The players get good tickets, and Riggins offers his to Tyra, so she asked Landry to go to the game with him, and I can definitely see why he thinks it's a date... but boy she was just almost raped. Not really the time to be putting the moves on him. And Riggins ends up giving his good seats to his neighbor and her kid, so he gives Tyra four crappy seats instead. Which means Landry's riding up with Tyra, her mom, and her stripper sister. If this were like Nip/Tuck, getting stuck in a car with two young sisters and their still-hot mother would've played out a whole different way, but it's basically a nightmare for Landry. And they pick up Lyla too, but also Matt's grandmother. Even Nip/Tuck couldn't spin that last part into something fun.

On what looks a lot like a smaller version of Super Bowl media day, a reporter confronts Coach Taylor with the TMU job news, and he doesn't have much choice but to admit it. The players and staff hear about it, and it's seriously affected the mood going into the game. The only one who seems to take it all ok is Buddy Garrity of all people. He has a nice moment with Matt, who is not taking it well, where he understands Matt's frustration but also says "if you're ever lucky enough to have a family like I do, I promise you, you will understand." A great little scene... but forget that, it's game time!

As usual, things start off ugly. 26-0 at the half is really rough. The announcer guy, who a rare element of the show I've never really cared for, places the blame squarely on the news of Coach Taylor's departure. But you can't do a football story without an inspiring halftime speech. It's no "win one for the Gipper," but it was still really well done. The inevitable comeback montage is pretty exciting, but Smash dislocates his shoulder scoring a touchdown. Naturally, he'll play through the pain, and we find the team down 5 points with six seconds to go.

They go with the hook & lateral, and it works perfectly, with Smash just barely crossing the line as time expires, and the Panthers win state. I felt like this show would have a very real chance at ending with a loss, so I'm left with a sour taste in my mouth over the commercials. But it's not the show's fault, so I can't be too unhappy. I just now hate network promotional departments even more.

The win and the baby causes the Eric to re-think his career and he offers to back out at TMU and stay a high school coach, but of coruse Tami won't be the reason he skips out on his dream. So it sounds like if we come back next year (and the word is cautiously optimistic), Coach is off in Austin, but Tami and Julie stay behind, and everyone has to figure out what's next. If this is the series finale, I can handle it, and if it's not, it gives the writers a lot to work with for next year, and a lot of new challenges as well. Here's hoping we get another season (or two or three), because this is one of the best show's out there.

Pride of Baghdad

2007-04-11T08:01:00.000-05:00

Pride of Baghdad is now the book I will give people when they're skeptical about comic books. That's pretty high praise, but I can't imagine a book more deserving of it.

It'll take some convincing to get nonbelievers to pick it up, of course. It's a comic book, and that's a big enough hurdle as it is. But even if you sell people on that, they might get to the first page and dismiss this as Disney-style trash, because, yes, it features talking animals. But this is not for kids, and it's not to be missed.

Brian K. Vaughan is easily my favorite comic book writer working today. He writes Y: the Last Man, Ex Machina, created Marvel's The Runaways, and also works for the folks at TV's Lost. Somehow despite all those commitments, he found time to write an original graphic novel. Inspired by the real life story of a group of lions who escaped after they were abandoned by zookeepers during Iraq War bombing, Vaughan crafts a deeply political story without being at all one-sided. Rather than a simple "the war is good" or "the war is bad," he presents four points of view, each given pretty equal time, and none declared right or wrong. But it sure makes you think.

I'm not the least bit familiar with Niko Henrichon's work before Pride of Baghdad, but his art here is fantastic. The lions appear remarkably human. Some of the credit for this goes to Vaughan, for his characterization, but Henrichon manages to convey the lions' emotions through facial expressions without the it looking at all silly. They still look like lions, but they also look scared, or happy, or whatever. That's pretty impressive. But even beyond that, every page is just plain beautiful.

The book is intelligent and accessible, funny and heartbreaking. I just read it yesterday, but I want to read it again.

Tuesday Night TV

2007-04-10T20:28:00.000-05:00

April's a television lull... Gilmore Girls, the Law & Orders, and Veronica Mars are all off, so it's just House and The Shield tonight. Spoilers for last night's episodes past the jump:

House: Two cases running in parallel this week: Old lady gone wild is about to get down to business with a hooker when she passes out, and House and Cuddy try to stop a quickly spreading illness on a plane.

On the flight, people are puking all over the place. I've seen Airplane! about a thousand times, so my immediate thought is that it's the fish, and they'd better find someone who knows how to fly a plane. And look out, House agrees with me! Sadly, the pilots had the chicken or something, so House and Cuddy don't get to play Striker and Elaine (yes, I'm going to keep making Airplane! jokes). But the fish theory goes out the window pretty quickly, and they're leaning towards meningococcus, which is bad news.

Back at the hospital (it's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now), with House gone it's up to Wilson to treat our crazy old lady (who may or may not speak jive). The hooker brought her in, and since they've been telling everyone they're friends, our prostitute keeps getting guilted into hanging around. We get our usual dose of only partially intelligible medical jargon, and eventually just as about they're about to cut into the old lady's brain, they discover that her neighbor's house was being fumigated, and there was a vent pumping poison into her home.

On the plane (a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it just looks like a big Tylenol), House figures out that everyone conversion sydrome, a totally fun non-disease, except for the original patient, who's really sick. House's theory is that he's a drug mule with a burst condom full of heroin inside him. Since they flew out of Singapore, that would make this guy pretty stupid, as they have especially harsh drug laws there, with possession of more than a half ounce of heroin leading to mandatory capital punishment. Also, I think House is secretly upset that all that good smack is being wasted on this guy's instestines. But just as he's about to cut in to search for the drug-filled condom, House picks up on another symptom and determines that he has the bends.

And we wrap things up with House asking the hot stewardess if she's "handicap accessible," Wilson asking out the prostitute who he doesn't know is a prostitute, and Cameron dumping Chase because he likes her too much.

Cool episode. I liked the two cases running side by side, House was amusing as ever, and we're (hopefully) getting to the end of the Chase/Cameron relationship drama while possibly starting up a much cooler one between Wilson and a "lady of the night."

The Shield: All sorts of stuff going on in the opening few minutes. The evidence Kavanaugh plants gets them a warrant for Vic's arrest, and Vic finds out that Guardo's hiding in Mexico. Claudette's been captain for about ten minutes, but according to Acevedo she's getting screwed by neighboring districts. Plus, a Mexican jail is releasing tons of prisoners who are likely headed to Farmington.

Dutch and Kavanaugh, still waiting for Vic, interrogate Vendrell. He helps plant the idea in Dutch's head that Vic's being framed. Dutch namedrops Occam's Razor and Chatton's Anti-Razor (I'm on fire with the informative wikipedia links tonight) to the lovely Officer Tina, and begins to investigate conspiracy theories. But of course Kavanaugh gets wind of it and tries to get Dutch off the case. Dutch and Claudette, though, are starting to piece together what Kavanaugh's up to. They bring Emolia into interrogation without Kavanaugh present, and break her in a hurry, forcing Kavanaugh to confess. He tried playing Vic's game, but he obviously isn't very good at it.

After Vic spends the whole episode hiding from cops and on a wild goose chase to do a favor that'll get him Guardo, he decides to just abduct his girlfriend and get Guardo to come to LA to pay a ransom. Vic's hard core quest for revenge has Vendrell feeling even guiltier, since he knows they're chasing down an innocent (in this case) guy, and pursuing him so strongly that they're putting themselves at risk.

Random other happenings: Danny passed the Sergeant's exam, but will have to sit on a waiting list for an open position if she doesn't come back from maternity leave right away... and does Kenny Johnson get paid every time he appears as Lem in the previouslies? Cause I suspect that he'll be in them all season long.

Now that I'm pretty sure the Kavanaugh storyline's done, I think we'll get a little more focus the nasty murder that popped up last week and was only mentioned in passing tonight. But for now, Vic's only concern is finding Guardo. "Every second he gets to breathe and Lem doesn't is unacceptable." Not as good an episode as last week, but still pretty intense.

DVD Wishlist: TV Funhouse

2007-04-10T09:20:00.000-05:00

Robert Smigel is a crazy, filthy-minded, genius. He first made his mark as a writer on Saturday Night Live in 1985, and remained there until becoming the first head writer on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. While on Conan, he performed in a few comedy bits frequently, as the voice behind Syncro-Voxed celebrities, but most notably as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. He later returned to SNL, creating short cartoons under the title TV Funhouse. The success of those shorts lead Comedy Central to greenlight an original half hour series for Smigel, also called TV Funhouse, which would combine live action pieces, animated shorts, and Triumph-style animal puppets. The series was insane, vulgar, and absolutely hilarious.

The show was centered around the idea of a fake children's show. Each episode had a theme (Caveman Day, Hawaiian Day), and Doug, the host, would arrive an an appropriate costume, excited to have a fun show with his friends, the AniPals. But the AniPals, a group of Triumph-like animal puppets, had very adult interests (gambling, cock fights, sex) which always resulted in them ditching Doug's show for something more fun. Each episode bounced around between Doug parodying children's show activities, introducing cartoons, pieces mocking educational films, and the AniPals' adventures.

Despite being given a prime timeslot after South Park, the show lasted only eight episodes. Cable ratings are hard to come by, so I'm not sure if it was poor ratings or the show's more controversial elements (a sketch called "Porn for Kids" got them into some trouble, though it was not nearly as offensive as the title makes it sound) that lead to the cancellation, but I'd like to see it on DVD, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Though Saturday Night Live has released a DVD of their TV Funhouse shorts, to my knowledge there are no plans of any kind for the Comedy Central series.

Click below for a whole bunch of TV Funhouse clips:

Wonderman 1:

Wonderman 2:

Sted-man!:

A new Scooby-Doo cartoon:

Mnemonics:

Monday Night TV

2007-04-10T03:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I'd intended to write a little review of Thank God You're Here, but it was just too painful to actually watch the whole thing. The sketch was way too long and just not that good. Plus, David Alan Grier looks really old. TV Squad, fresh off a redesign that I don't think I care for, posted a bunch of videos from the show a while back, and they were similarly not that good. Speaking of redesigns, The Daily Show has a new set, which will take some getting used to. But let's get down to business.

Spoilers for The Riches below:

The Riches: The best scenes this week, as always, were with Wayne at work. He and Aubrey are really developing a chemistry.

"We've been working together a while now."
"Four days."
"I think you should call me Wayne. No, Doug. Doug's better."

For the first time, Wayne's really over his head with a case, though, to the point where he has to fake narcolepsy to find a way out. But to get around complicated legal issues like Eminent Domain ("it's how you steal people's property... because you want to."), he figures out that he can be a guest lecturer at a local college, getting law students to give him answers. Pretty slick.

Dahlia is bored. Very, very bored. But then she discovers that the late Mrs. Rich was a dental hygienist. Dahlia is hired by Mac from Night Court. She has a pretty funny scene where she fakes her way through a cleaning, but then of course stumbles onto lots of drugs. I felt like it could've been a better scene, like when Lost's Charlie found the Virgin Mary statues full of heroin, but they kinda blew right past it. I guess it couldn't last though, a hygienist who can't clean teeth and who steals drugs would get fired or arrested pretty quickly, and it turns out Dr. Mac had just lost his wife, and ends up killing himself. But this just makes her realize she misses Wayne, and it looks like she'll be working with Wayne at Panetta's offices.

Ginny has of course been spying on the family, and apparently sneaking into the fridge and giving her baby fetal alcohol syndrome. And it looks like she's struck a deal to not sell them out, but it requires Ken, Di Di's sorta fiancee, to move in with the Malloys.

Good episode again. A few laughs, Dahlia finally did something for herself rather than just be motherly, and with Ken moving in, I'm excited to see where things are going.

Sunday Night TV

2007-04-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

So let's see here, when we last left off on before the long hiatuses (hiati?) of these two HBO series, Ari was fired, Vince was shopping for new agents, and Drama had a new TV series, while Christopher was going to had a kid and relapsing, Tony was pissed that Christopher "stole" Julianna Margulies from him, A.J. was hooking up with a single mom, Carmela's spec house was back on, Phil was in a coma, and someone in Tony's crew was going to be the target of a hit. Click below for this week's Entourage and Sopranos:

Entourage: Vince has hired a new agent, and she's super hot. Carla Gugino is a lovely, lovely woman. Anyway, she's pushing Vince to take a Sam Mendes adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel. I don't think there's anyone alive who sees that happening. Vince seems to be on board, though, but I wonder if it's just because he wants to get in his new agent's pants.

It's Vince's birthday. E., Turtle, and Drama are throwing and paying for the party, and the budget gets tight. The always enterprising Turtle decides on corporate sponsorship from Victoria's Secret, so it looks like a good time was had by all.

Ari talks his way into an invite, and plants the seed in Vince's brain that he can get the part in Medellin after all, but only with Ari running the show. Seemed like it didn't work at first, but in the end, Vince delays signing on to the Mendes film because the seeds of doubt have been planted. A pretty dull episode, but I think it's mostly setup for the looming war between the agents.

The Sopranos: The gun Tony dropped running from the feds at Johnny Sack's place so long ago comes back to bite him in the ass, and he gets arrested a bullshit charge, which is quickly dropped. He heads up to the lake with Janice and Bobby, and - fresh out of jail on a firearms charge - gets an AR-10 for his birthday.

A.J. grew a beard that makes him look like a time portal opened up and a Backstreet Boys reject stepped through. He's still with Blanca though. With the 'rents out of town, A.J. throws a party.

A little political commentary thrown in. Bobby tells the story of his grandfather sneaking into the country illegally, then turns around and says they should wall off Mexico. And the latest scam is to sneak prescription drugs across the border from Canada.

I loved the Monopoly scene... Tony's cheating was hilarious, and Bobby had the best line of the episode ("You know, the Parker Brothers took time to think this all out. I think we should respect that."). And like any family Monopoly game, it ends in a fight. But this being the Soprano family, it got ugly. And Bobby whips Tony's ass.

So Tony sends Bobby up to Canada to kill a guy to close a deal. Bobby's not the enforcer type, and screws it up, dropping the gun (prints and all, I think) and letting the victim grab a fist full of shirt which he also leaves behind. Hopefully it wasn't a "Bada Bing!" logo shirt.

Lots of spooky foreshadowing... I get the feeling Tony's going to have to kill Carmela (who was looking especially busty this episode) or at least that he will accidentally, the story about the baby floating face down in the pool will come in to play too (either Tony or A.J., I think), and of course Bobby's screwed. If it wasn't obvious from how badly he seemed to botch the hit, it was made clear by the happy family moment he had at the end.

I liked this episode a lot. We get enough callbacks to the first half of the "season" and enough new deveopments to keep the overall plot moving, while the episode itself was just a quiet little vacation with family, mafia style.

Hollywoodland

2007-04-08T15:02:00.000-05:00

This really could've been a great movie with a fascinating subject. Superman, the Man of Steel, dead from a gunshot to the head. An actor, the hero of children everywhere, apparently kills himself. A once strong and handsome struggling actor becomes an aging, out of shape, typecast has-been. But because his death was mysterious, Hollywoodland ditches what could've been a fascinating biography and makes it mostly a sub-par detective story.

Adrien Brody plays a private detective hired by George Reeves' mother to prove that her son didn't commit suicide. All the normal detective stuff happens, but I found myself far more interested in Reeves' life than his death. Brody's character spends a lot of time looking into Reeves, but also has issues with his son, and a second case involving a strange client who is convinced his wife is cheating on him. Neither served more than to make a fairly insignificant point about Brody's character and we could have done without both.

Most of the attention for this film was put on Ben Affleck and his performance. He does an able job, but those that heaped praise (and a Golden Globe nomination) on him missed an important element of his performance. He was mostly playing himself. He does have personal similarities to George Reeves (reported troubles with alcohol, and he certainly seemed uncomfortable in that Daredevil costume), but I mean more in a general sense. Affleck has been pretty good in some roles in the past, and they're all pretty similar. He does that sort of charismatic, funny, but kind of a jerk role perfectly. Not to say that he's a charismatic funny jerk, but his voice and his face and his mannerisms lend themselves to him playing those parts naturally. Any time he tries to do something different (Gigli, Daredevil), it tends not to work out too well.

I guess that's a roundabout way of saying I think he doesn't have any range as an actor, and that he should stick to what he's good at. But here, he was doing some of his best work. The movie's split between the investigation Reeves' death and flashbacks to Reeves' life, and virtually every good scene is in t he past. Probably the best scene in the film is some footage of Affleck right near the end. Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins also deliver good performances in the flashback sequences.

I don't know why the same seedy underbelly of 40's and 50's Hollywood is always so interesting, but I really did like the setting. Is it just combining 50's nostalgia with classic movies and television and giving it a film noir veneer? Or is it more of a dramatized version of the tabloids, how people love to see the rich and famous fall? In any case, all the elements you're used to seeing are there: the gold diggers, the paparazzi, the wannabe actors looking for a break, and of course the evil studio boss.

The one highlight for me in the Adrien Brody section of the movie was the bit part of his girlfriend/assistant, played by Caroline Dhavernas from Wonderfalls. I really loved that show, and it's always nice to see her. I don't like the blonde hair but she's still adorable, and was pretty good despite a fairly bland part.

I'd recommend Hollywoodland to a fan of Superman or to a Ben Affleck fan (if there are any), but that's about it. I liked quite a few parts, but the film as a whole was disappointing.

Catching Up on TV

2007-04-08T11:59:00.000-05:00

My Jericho reviews are always really long, because I actually go back and read them to remember what's going on. Unlike a show like Lost where I pay super close attention, I don't even remember all the characters' names on Jericho, and I'm never 100% engrossed in the show, so writing something closer to a recap helps me keep up with the story. So that means more spoilers than usual are included past the jump, plus some quick thoughts on Penn & Teller: Bullshit:

Jericho: Hawkins continues to be a part of what I gather is a large number of guys who pretend to be women on computers. He tells the big evil scary guys to meet him at a warehouse, and about a dozen guys with rifles show up. And then he leads them away with another fake text message. So as far as I can tell they had that whole sequence just to show us the bad guy's face. He heads back home to share a moment with his daughter, who is apparently a chip off the old block, not feeling a bit of remorse after killing a woman.

Skylar and Dale continue to play a sort of post-apocalyptic Bonnie and Clyde. It continues to be boring. But at least we get a scene that shows they're prepared for retribution, since they've hired some muscle to guard their supplies. But of course in this situation, I have no idea why they expect the hired goons not to turn on them and take all their stuff. But since they're faceless thugs at this point, I think we're not supposed to care.

Some kids discover the hidden tank, so everyone finds out that the marines aren't coming back with supplies. The panic over resources leads them to decide to kick out the refugees. And they bring two cops to throw about 50 people out. Apparently they figured the refugees would be quietly and happily escorted into the radioactive wild.

Mayor Gray goes kinda nuts and gasses the refugees. This pisses some people off, naturally. Roger tries to reason with him, then tries the "I'm holding a gun" brand of reasoning, and we're supposed to get the impression, I think, that he doesn't plan on using it, but of course a struggle ensues and the gun goes off. Roger takes the hard line, he's not going to let Gray get treatment for his wound until he gives his word that the refugees can stay. I liked him better with the stupid fake beard. Deputy Bill pulls out a rifle and tries to take out Roger to save the mayor, but let's just say he's no Mark Wahlberg.

The craziest of refugees takes Jake's mom hostage, and they share a nice hostage/captor moment, giving her extra sympathy for all the refugees, and rallies the townspeople to share their rations with the people about to be kicked out. So Roger gives himself up, and the dramatic hostage situation ends not at all dramatically. And the "we don't have enough food to support the town and the refugees" problem now becomes "we don't have enough food to support the town with it's newly adopted extra citizens." Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but it sure gives everyone warm fuzzies. Except Roger, who gets kicked out. If he shows back up, the fake beard will return!

The last scene shows everyone gathered around the radio they took from the fake marines, and a news broadcast pointing out that the people who were going to blow up New York were carrying "near perfect fake FBI badges," and the sheriff immediately thinks of Hawkins. So that might be interesting.

I liked the episode ok, but I feel like the show always comes close to being edgy, but backs off at the last minute to be family friendly. And some of the side stories are kind of dull. Plus, I miss Sprague Grayden.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit: This week, a very interesting episode about breasts. Why can guys walk around the beach with no shirt, but in many places women get arrested for the same thing? Why are so many people offended by the perfectly natural act of a mother feeding her child? I'm as big a fan of the female form as anyone, but I've often wondered if men's fascination with breasts is directly related to the fact that they're kept hidden. The forbidden fruit, in this case, are melons. But since this is a Showtime show, there's nothing forbidden about them, so there were plenty off them.

Another really interesting topic they touched on was breast cancer. Apparently all the pink ribbons and walk events put the majority of the money they raise towards awareness, and not that much towards actually finding either a cure or an underlying cause. Early detection seems to be the best thing for any kind of cancer, so awareness is good, but that does seem kind of bullshitty. Just isolating the factors that put women at risk would make an enormous difference. A doctor saying "you should have regular mammograms" carries a lot less weight than "you have gene X, so you will probably get breast cancer. You need to have regular mammograms." But that's just one man's opinion, and on the topic of breast cancer, I don't think a man's opinion counts for much.

Grindhouse

2007-04-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

When my brother asks me about a movie I've seen, he asks two questions. Is it good? And can I take my wife to see it? She's a little sensitive to the violence, profanity, and nudity, and doesn't really want to see a movie with too much of any of that. My answers to those questions for Grindhouse would be a definite "yes" and and even more definite "no." Grindhouse is awesome, but your kids should not see it, and if you've ever thought about not seeing a movie because it seemed too violent or bloody or anything, you should skip it too. But I'm not one of those people, so I loved it. And since the movie's split in two, I might as well discuss them seperately. But in the spirit of Quentin Tarantino movies, I'll put them out of order.

Most every movie geek worships at the altar of Tarantino, but I'm not one of them. I felt like Reservoir Dogs was his best film, and each one since has been progressively worse. They're not bad (I really loved Reservoir Dogs, so he's got a long way to fall), but they've been increasingly self-indulgent. Kill Bill could've been one really good movie, but instead it was two pointlessly long ones, because Tarantino had to prove how cool he was by cramming in as many references as he possibly could. He's a big enough name that he can get final cut on his own movies, and apparently removing scenes that don't work or derail the flow of the action is too much for an auteur such as himself.

Death Proof suffers from a similar problem, but it's an improvement in my book over Kill Bill. It's still too long and could have huge chunks of it removed easily which would improve the movie dramatically. But there's still a lot to like. The action scenes were great, the soundtrack (as always) was top notch, and Tarantino's dialogue is never boring, which is important. Had a lesser writer made an action movie which spends the vast majority of the film showing groups of girls just chatting with each other, I would've gotten so bored I'd have left the theater. But with QT at the helm, there was enough clever back-and-forth to keep me from wondering "what is the point of this?" all that much.

Despite my complaints, I did enjoy the Death Proof section. It's just that to me, it suffers in comparison to Planet Terror.

On the other hand, I am a Robert Rodriguez fanboy. I skipped the Spy Kids series, but otherwise I think each one of his films has been better than the last. El Mariachi was impressive for how cheap it was, Desperado was kinda cool but silly, Once Upon a Time in Mexico was awesomely silly, and Sin City was just brilliant.

Planet Terror is a gory, bloody, violent, hilarious movie. Rose McGowan having a peg leg made out of a machine gun does a remarkably good job of describing the movie. Full of violence, sex, and ridiculousness, but in the best possible way.

The cast mostly combines sexy young women and cool older guys who I haven't seen in a while, which by itself makes for a pretty cool cast. But throw in Lost's Naveen Andrews, ditching his fake Iraqi accent for what I assume is his natural British accent, and it's just plain great.

One thing that stuck out to me was the much publicized "aging" process that both films were put through. Planet Terror is full of specks and lines and junk all over the screen and legitimately looks like it's a reel of film being shown for the thousandth time, while Death Proof has some intentionally clunky cuts but otherwise looks almost pristine. I can only assume this is because Rodriguez shoots everything digitally, making post production effects like this easy and cheap, while Tarantino shoots on film.

A lot has been made of the fake trailers, and they're hilarious. But discussing them at all would probably count as spoilers, so my thoughts about them (and some general spoilers as well) after the jump:

Probably my favorite scene in the whole film was in the Werewolf Women of the SS trailer where Nicolas Cage showed up. I would definitely go see that one and Machete if they were real movies.

Death Proof was pretty misogynistic though... as far as I could tell, Stuntman Mike had no motive other than that he just liked killing women, and it sure seemed like the girls in the second half of Death Proof left their really cute friend in the cheerleader outfit behind to get raped by that guy. Maybe that was a reference to the sexist element of the genre they were parodying, but I thought it was kinda disturbing. I'm all for the aesthetically pleasing display of the female form, but not for that kind of degradation.

Friday Night TV/Catching up

2007-04-07T09:07:00.000-05:00

Trying out a new spoiler hiding method. Let me know in the comments if you like it or not. Still no idea about how to hide them for RSS subscribers, but I hope that's not a problem. Behind the jump are possible spoilers if you haven't watched this week's Law & Order and Friday Night Lights, plus some clips from Acceptable TV.

Law & Order: A rapper is found murdered. She has feuds with other rappers, debts to a jeweler, and was pregnant by married guy. So there are plenty of potential motives.

Turns out the jeweler knocked her up and confesses with 25 minutes to go. After about a million Law & Order episodes, there are three ways this goes: the confession is thrown out, some crazy affirmative defense, or the confession was fake. But look the hell out, there is a fourth possibility that I had not considered. He makes it look like a fake confession, fingers a rap mogul, but it turns out the jeweler did it anyway. It's still a shadow of its former self, but this was the best episode in a while.

Acceptable TV: Returning from last week: Mr. Sprinkles, Kitten Calendar. New shows: Yo! Murder, He Rapped, Pedophile Gladiators, Shady Acres, and web winner l33t Haxxors 2. I'm voting for these two:

Friday Night Lights: TMU gives Coach Taylor a take it or leave it offer, and he accepts? Wow. Julie's a little broken up about it, and spills the beans to Saracen. Tami suggests she and Julie stay in Dillon and Eric splits up or commutes or something, but he shoots it down right off the bat. And the episode wraps up with Tami saying no matter what happens, she's not leaving Dillon. I smell some tension. I guess he hasn't signed a deal yet, but can he back out on his word if the show gets a second season?

Coach Taylor's line about "have you ever thought about coaching?" last week was apparently a firm offer to be an assistant coach, cause now he and Street are teaming up on Saracen to get him ready for the state finals. "You better not rest on your laurels." "You don't have any laurels." Good stuff. But can he really be a high school coach? He talked at some point about getting his GED, but I'm not sure he ever got it. And when they had that alumni day episode, the ex-player asked about a coaching job but I was pretty sure Coach told him there was nothing available. I figure with a government job there'd be educational requirements and a long complicated hiring process. But it's fun to have him around anyway.

Landry does his best for Tyra after the events of last week. He tries not to betray her confidence but in the end he goes to Tami. She and Tyra go to the police and file a report, and Landry's reward for his good deeds is being called "a smelly geek" and generally being hated. You feel awful for the guy, but you also know that's the only way Tyra would've reacted. I really liked how they handled this in the first half of the episode. But then I felt like she admitted her mistakes way too quickly and Landry turned into a dick. I think they wanted it to be his "standing up for himself" moment, but she's like a few days removed from an attempted rape and is in the middle of apologizing to him when he starts giving her crap for her choices in men. It just seems poorly timed.

Things have gone pretty well for Lyla right up to the pilot, and now she's due for life to crap on her. Her boyfriend gets paralyzed, her father's a philanderer and everyone knows it, and now she catches Street making out with the tattoo girl about five minutes after finding out that her parents are divorcing. I guess she cheated on Street in the first place, so maybe this is all karmic retribution?

Still to watch: Jericho.

I was very angry to discover that NBC is running Friday Night Lights promos with big spoilers for the season finale, so if you're spoilers paranoid like me, I'd suggest changing the channel or skipping ahead if you see a FNL commercial start.

Thursday Night TV/Catch Up

2007-04-06T01:53:00.000-05:00

NBC's Thursday night lineup is almost back in full force with three shows back from hiatus with new episodes. My Name is Earl won't be back until next week, but three shows are back. Highlight for spoilers:

The Office: Dwight and his pepper spray... "who's laughing now?" That's a great way after the break to address the Jim/Roy tension without opening the episode with a very unfunny savage beating. Although Dwight beating Roy with nunchucks would have been a very funny savage beating. That little fight sets up the entire episode.

Dwight's heroics have Angela practically melting, so she spends the episode looking for new, hot tales of Dwight kicking ass. Jim feels a debt to Dwight for helping him out, but Dwight doesn't want to take rewards for his heroism.

Roy's fired, which is weird, but has Darryl's angling for a raise, and Michael's trying out Wikipedia tactics for winning negotiations. But his strategies all result in Darryl taking camera phone pictures of embarrassing things.

Ryan and Kelly are still in adjacent cubes, and their constant bickering is hilarious. I hadn't realized Toby would be next door. Toby also spend a lot of time with Michael, and every scene with them was hilarious... their interaction is one of my favorite parts of the show.

Pam tries to apologize about the whole Roy thing, but Jim is a huge dick about it, saying rather dismissively that Pam and Roy would end up back together again. But they share a friendly coffee together which sort of makes Jim's dickish prediction look right on.

Best moments:
- "Everyone here is extremely gruntled."
- "Because. That is the way these things are done... in films."
- "Every year I get a $100 gas card. Can't put a price tag on that."
- The Creed/Michael exchange: "Here's the $40 you gave me." "I didn't give you $40." "In a way, you did."
- "Toby is the worst human being I've ever known."
- "It will be a groundbreaking case when it inevitably goes to trial."
- "You know who's a real Hero? Hiro from Heroes. That's a real hero. Also, Bono."

30 Rock: Will Arnett as a rival executive of Jack's is great casting. And giving him a gay crush on Kenneth is excellent. Both executive types using him as their pawn in a power struggle was better still. And it all lead up to a great payoff with the fireworks show making it look like Rockefeller Center blowing up.

Elsewhere, Jason Sudeikis did seem so normal. I'm not so concerned about the alcoholism, but his name is Floyd? That's no good. But Liz manages in a messed up way to end up with him. I'm not a 'shipper by any stretch of the imagination, but this makes me happy.

And in a third plot that was mostly just to set up some Tracy insanity, Tracy finds out he might be a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, while Toofer's ancestor was a black Confederate soldier who helped hide John Wilkes Booth.

Best moments:
- "A talking like this contest."
- "I never got out of my car, and she never got all the way out of her toll booth."
- Good to see Dr. Spaceman back. Chris Parnell is great at sounding reassuring and knowledgeable while saying ridiculous stuff.
- "Dr. Spaceman, when they check my DNA will it tell me what diseases I might get or help me to remember my ATM PIN code?"
- "Love is like an onion. You peel layer after stinky layer until you're just weeping over the sink..."
- The Maury Povich dream sequence was excellent. Alec Baldwin as Thomas Jefferson giving the audience the double finger?
- "The last time I drank I ended up doing a man on the street commercial for Tarzan on Ice."
- "What's that? MC Lyte just murdered Danny Bonaduce? Thanks, phone!"
- Is it weird that Liz's speech about all the crazy crap she's done made her even more attractive?

Scrubs: Laverne remains in a coma, setting us up for a downer episode. But Carla is now seeing Laverne's pre-death ghost following her around and talking to her (which allows us a great callback to Nicole Sullivan's character as the ghost following Dr. Cox).

We finally get an explanation for Dr. Cox's shaved head a few episodes back, which was apparently aired out of order. "Nobody liked my haircut, so now they can all just suck it," was a great shout out to the fans, who have been complaining about the 'do all year. "Are you on call tonight or will you be busy fighting Superman?" Anyway, he and Jordan finally have their baby, but he wants badly for the birth not to be associated with Laverne's death so he's hot to keep it a secret. But of course that fails, they make some points about the circle of life or whatever, and enjoy some touching moments. An ok episode, but I like the show when it's just more fun.

Best moments:
- Bad news robot. I think they blew the entire effects budget on JD's disintegration.
- Janitor converting to the Norse religion his awesome.
- Delivery Guy and his speed metal again. Lots of little callbacks this episode.
- Turk mentions all the black people around, Snoop Dogg resident and the security guard, but whatever happened to Hooch?
- Shadow Puppet Theater!

Bones: Building an episode around a Poco song is a great way to ensure that I'm not going to love it. Lots of the issues with Brennan and her parents that I really wasn't interested in before are brought back up, and I mostly remain uninterested.

The focus almost entirely on Brennan also means that Hodges and Zack and everyone get pushed into the background, with almost everything they do being scientific babbling to push the plot forward. I like Bones, but as a mystery show with interesting characters, not as a character-driven show with some crime thing going on in the background.

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights (fresh off a Peabody Award), Jericho.

Once again, I didn't watch Andy Barker, P.I., because I'd already seen it. Decent episode though, Traci Lords was very funny.

DVD Wishlist: Andy Richter Controls the Universe

2007-04-05T11:53:00.000-05:00

This TVSquad article and subsequent discussion in the comments lead me to think about some of the shows I miss that have either gotten a weak DVD treatment or none at all. Which brings me to the first edition of my TV on DVD wishlist.

As a fan of Late Night with Conan O'Brien during the early days, I was crushed at the news in 2000 that Conan's lovable sidekick was leaving. When Andy Richter's subsequent sitcom, Andy Richter Controls the Universe premiered in 2002, however, I immediately knew that it was worth it. But after two seasons of extraordinary television, the show was canceled. And almost 4 years after Fox pulled the plug and despite a rabid fan base demanding one, there is still no DVD release scheduled for the show, which is a shame.

The series followed the adventures of five friends in an office working for a giant corporation. Andy writes manuals for military applications, a poor substitute for his dream to be an actual writer. Jessica (Paget Brewster, Huff) is his boss and friend, a capable career woman with a pretty disastrous personal life. Wendy (Irene Molloy, Grosse Pointe) is the hot new secretary who Andy had a crush on. Keith (James Patrick Stuart) is Andy's best friend, who uses his good looks to avoid doing any hard work. And Byron (Jonathan Slavin) was an artist who worked with Andy, who alternated between a sort of angry depression and an innocent child-like optimism.

In many ways, Andy Richter Controls the Universe was a traditional workplace sitcom. Most of the action takes place at the office, and all the regular characters are his coworkers. And the basic feel is nothing out of the ordinary. Some conflict between characters leads to a bunch of laughs, resolves itself within 30 minutes, and we often get a nice lesson in the end.

But there was a lot that made the show different and special. It was stylistically similar to Scrubs, in that it was a single camera show with no laugh track, and Andy narrated the action, frequently relying on his fantasies, flashbacks, and non-sequiturs for gags. It differed from Scrubs in that it never took detours into maudlin territory, nor did it push any romantic subplots. It was at times edgy, sweet, smart, and brilliantly stupid, but always funny.

The six-episode first season aired on Tuesdays in the spring of 2002. There was a good amount of critical buzz, and Fox seemed to really get behind it with the promotions, plugging it frequently during the embarrassing but highly rated Celebrity Boxing special the previous week. Strong ratings ensued for the pilot, which raised hopes high for a successful series. But each of the next two weeks saw the audience shrink. Fox showed enough faith to give the series a 13 episode order for a followup, but at some point between the first and second seasons, really lost confidence in the show.

The second season premiere was pushed back to December, where the schedule is traditionally loaded with reruns. Airing on Sundays and Tuesdays, the network showed eight episodes in six weeks before pulling the plug. That they came in such rapid succession, in an unusual month for television, and around the holidays, meant that many fans missed some or all of the second season. On top of that, Fox left five finished episodes unaired.

Sometime later, the Paramount Comedy Network (whatever that is) and HDNet aired reruns, so the unaired episodes finally saw the light of day, and they've been floating around on the internet ever since. One would think the studio would see the excitement fans had over uncovering the last episodes, but still nothing on the DVD front. Amazon.com has a page set up for if (when?) there ever is a release, but it's been there for quite a while. Until that happens, the best we've got are a few clips floating around on YouTube. Not the moments I'd have picked, but they still provide a window into the crazy world of Andy Richter Controls the Universe.

In the first, from the pilot (I think), Andy introduces us to his imaginary friend, Mr. Pickering. He appeared on occasion throughout the series, and was hilariously offensive every time. Medium and The Ghost Whisperer may have done the talking to dead people thing more successfully, but Andy Richter did it first. Truly a show ahead of its time.

In the second, from the second season episode "Twins," Andy suggests an unusual theory for his boss' boyfriend's mood swings, and is reminded of his theorizing track record:

Wednesday Night TV/Catching Up

2007-04-04T22:55:00.000-05:00

I'll be playing around with a fancier method for hiding potential spoilers over the next couple days, but until I get that figured out, more spoiler highlighting:

Lost: If you've ready my review of Shooter, you probably already think I'm a perv, so no harm done with me saying this: tonight's Lost episode was really hot with all the lesbian overtones. And it's hot every time it rains on Kate anyway. Good times. Not only were Kate and Juliet handcuffed together (cat fight!), Kate did quite a bit of bonding with Cassidy in the flashback.

I've never found Kate's backstory all that interesting, but this week's story provided a nice accompaniment to the aftermath of her attempt to rescue Jack.
Right there at the end, when they were saying goodbye, there was seriously a moment where I thought Kate was going to lean over and kiss her.

Sawyer can't have been that good of a con artist, could he? You'd think two useful skills in the con game would be spotting someone else's con and getting people to like you. Still, as with just about everything involved with Hurley, it was a pretty amusing storyline. And I would happily use some Dharma generic A1 sauce, but not on pork!

It's interesting to have Sawyer taking on a leader role, but with Jack, Sayid, Kate, and Juliet on the way back, they'll have to take their time if he's going to really establish himself as a leader. More importantly though, will they try to relocate the castaways to the Others' village? Protection from the smoke monster, houses with real roofs and beds, a foosball table... what's not to like?

Overall story-wise, "Welcome to the wonderful world of not knowing what the hell's going on" was a great line, and we didn't learn much about anything going on this week (except that it sounds like Cassidy wasn't lying to Sawyer about having a kid... or if she was, she's really dedicated to the lie). Two new questions: where the hell did the others go, and did they leave Juliet behind to punish her or is she still working with them to infiltrate the crash survivors?

This was not up to the excitement level of the best episodes of this season, but still pretty entertaining. Those who demand big answers every week probably didn't care for it, though, unless they're like me and easily distracted by Evangeline Lilly.

South Park: Hare Club for Men, bunny Popes, Vatican ninjas, hippitus hoppitus, Bill Donohue (who I actually thought was supposed to be Karl Rove at first), a good Pope hat joke, and exploding peeps. For an episode with almost no Cartman, this was quite good. I'm not sure how many people were aware of Donohue and his shenanigans as part of the Catholic League, but let's just say I'm not a fan, so I appreciated that element.

House: A fairly Cuddy-centric episode. With House debating a vacation, she sees a little bit of herself in a woman in her 40s having complications with her pregnancy. So she takes on the House role, ignoring most people's opinions, and successfully employing a crazy strategy.

More Chase/Cameron relationship stuff... I'd really like to see this sort of end badly and blow up. Or at least somehow resolve soon. House doesn't do happy sweet cute love stories... or at least it shouldn't.

I was thinking House's attempts to go on vacation were a mask for something along the lines of the fake cancer thing, especially when he went into the decompression chamber (I think that's what it was anyway), which I thought might've been prep for a fake medical condition or to serve some other purpose. But doing it all to get people off his back so he could park on the couch, pop vicodin, and watch the Travel Channel was just as good.

Best House line: "I know you can't talk so I need you to look petrified if you consent."

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights, Bones, Jericho.

Shooter

2007-04-04T09:22:00.000-05:00

Free movie passes are both great and awful. I have a weird compulsion to see movies within the first day or two of their release. This helps me avoid spoilers, but mostly I'm just impatient about waiting to see a movie I'm excited about. But free passes aren't valid for the first week or so of a release, so when I get one I often don't use it until it's about to expire. Then I'm at the mercy of the least crappy option among movies that accept passes that I haven't seen. This is how I ended up seeing Shooter. Some spoilers follow, but not much more than appear in the trailers.

I really enjoyed some of the sniper sequences in Enemy at the Gates and Jarhead, so I wasn't entirely down on the concept, but the trailers made it look pretty goofy. And I wasn't disappointed. They hit a lot of cliches for these types of movies. Mark Wahlberg's best friend is killed when the government sends them on an off-the-books mission and leaves them for dead. There are some evil guys who use their political and military power to screw over the little guy and get rich in the process. Ned Beatty and Danny Glover do alright in these roles, but I kept expecting Glover to just say "I'm too old for this shit." The FBI plays the role of the non-evil government organization that's only pursuing our hero because he looks guilty. Michael Pena isn't bad as the sidekick/comic relief agent with the ridiculous action movie name (Nick Memphis). Just to make sure everyone knows we're watching a mindless action movie, they throw in excessive slow motion sequences (Marky Mark puts on a pair of sunglasses and walks in slow motion at one point for what seemed like 2 minutes), random explosions, and not much dialogue. And what dialogue Wahlberg's character had, he kind of mumbled, making a lot of it difficult to understand.

While I generally found the movie to be stupid, there were some highlights. Some of the action scenes were really well done. The opening sniper sequence was very cool. But for me the real highlight was Kate Mara. In addition to being the best part, Ms. Mara's appearance also falls under the category of goofy. Though the movie didn't have any nudity, probably 90% of her screen time was in some state of undress or another (the image to the left is typical, click for a larger version). Some of it pretty inexplicable. In one scene, she has to disguise herself, so naturally she dresses like some kind of prostitute. And I think we get the impression that she spent several days without putting a shirt on. While there's no good reason in the plot for any of these things to happen, I didn't mind one bit.

Looking at her imdb page, Kate Mara's actually been in a lot of stuff (24, We Are Marshall, Jack & Bobby), but I only remember her from a brief (but memorable) recurring role in the first season of Nip/Tuck. I thought she was pretty attractive then, but she's blossomed into a full-blown hottie since. I still have fond memories of the Nip/Tuck role with the equally lovely Sophia Bush, though, so I've included a clip (note: despite playing high schoolers, both actresses were in their 20s for this scene, so I'm not that big of a perv). I would suggest not viewing it at your workplace or anywhere else two cheerleaders making out and undressing would be considered inappropriate:

To not come off as completely superficial, I should comment on her acting. Um... her southern accent in Shooter wasn't the worst I've ever heard.

Since I spent half this review drooling over Kate Mara, it should be obvious that I don't have too much to say about the actual content of Shooter. I would recommend it to anyone who is a big a Kate Mara fan, or a big Mark Wahlberg fan (he has a few scenes of little clothing, too... you know, for the ladies), or someone who's distraught that they stopped making sequels to those Tom Berenger Sniper movies and will settle for this. Anyone else should skip it unless they're really bored.

Tuesday Night TV

2007-04-04T01:03:00.000-05:00

Great to have The Shield back. Highlight for spoilers:

Law & Order: Criminal Intent: A doctor who performs cochlear implants turns up dead, and deaf groups angry at the whole concept are the chief suspects. An interesting idea, and I have no idea if it's true, that deaf people would find cochlear implants offensive. But not a very good mystery. I expect better from a Goren & Eames episode.

The victim's redhead wife was quite the looker though. Shockingly, they showed an extreme closeup of a text message sent to Eames, but didn't show any kind of brand or service provider or anything.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A suburban girl drinks herself to death at a party in the city, and all the kids at the party take off to avoid trouble rather than try to help her.

They try to charge the kids who were at the party, but can only get them on trespassing. But the kids kept getting into trouble. The kid who plays Silas on Weeds showed up early on but wasn't one of the ones charged, though he was chummy with them, so you knew he had to be important. And the nice, nerdy girl, played by Sarah Drew (I guess from Everwood, which I never watched, but I remember her as Jaye's clone girl from an episode of Wonderfalls), who tutors him is in for a surprise when she and the cops find out that her mother is doing Silas.

The death of the girl early on becomes completely irrelevant, and the story is all over the place. Silas' character gets in a drunk driving wreck, killing himself and another girl. The nerdy girl is secretly an alcoholic. They use that to get her to turn on her mom. But it all wraps up with the slutty mom confessing for everything and wrapping things up.

I liked that they called back to Stabler getting his daughter off on the DUI charge. That always bugged me, and I'm glad he now sees it as a mistake. The special message at the end seemed a little hokey though. I guess if it clues in some parents then that's great, but as a non-parent, it just looks goofy to me. And of course, I reprint it here, because the purpose of this blog is not to kill time or vent my pop cultural ramblings, but to save the lives of children.

Random aside: the memorial service was pretty funny. "I can't believe I'll never play lacrosse with him again. The team will never take state now." Touching, dude.

The Shield: I missed the hell out of this show... but in the time (I think a full year) since the last episode, I forgot all about where we left off. The previouslies caught me up mostly, I think.

Kavanaugh and Dutch are working Lem's murder together. Kavanaugh feels guilty for providing Vic (so he thinks) with a motive to kill Lem, so he gets pretty desperate, and starts pulling the same stunts Vic pulls, breaking the rules to take down someone he knows is guilty.

Speaking of guilt, Vendrell finds out he killed Lem based on bogus information. As a result, he's getting kinda reckless. Vic's still being pushed towards retirement, and is hard on Shane, figuring if he has to retire, Shane's the one left to do Vic's work.

Random thoughts:
- CCH Pounder is really awesome on this show. She's got an incredibly commanding presence without being hammy at all.
- Good to see the lovely Officer Tina back, and Dutch's hilarious ploy to get in her pants via detective training.
- Dick 'N' Granny
- "I got leftovers older than you." "Yeah, but not as tasty."
- The press calls Lem dirty, which seriously pisses Vic off. I mean, he's normally pretty angry, but this is crazy pissed.
- Danny had her baby. I guess with many of them being sorta pudgy and bald, the baby's resemblance to Vic isn't surprising.
- But wow, cat fight between Danny and Corrine.
- At the end there was one of the nastier crime scenes I've ever seen on tv.

Still to watch: House.

Invisibles 329

2007-04-03T09:35:00.000-05:00

Filmwise has Invisibles #329 up. Strangely, I feel pretty satisfied when I get 6 out of 8 (which I have this week), but if I get 7, I just get frustrated at the one keeping me from perfection. I'm missing #1 and #4 this time.

Last week I missed Night at the Museum, The Haunting, and Lost in Translation. The first two I don't mind, but the third I missed because I'm apparently an idiot.

Monday Night TV

2007-04-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

I always get wordy with Prison Break because there's always so much going on, even when it's not all that interesting. So sorry for the lengthy writeup. Highlight for spoilers:

Prison Break: Kellerman testifies to framing Burrows and to being under orders to kill Sara. The whole "nobody will believe me, they erased any record that I ever existed" thing flew out the window, and the judge vaguely references corroborating documents (that as far as I know never previously existed) in the process of dismissing charges against Sara and Burrows and arresting Kellerman. Much later, Kellerman's in prisoner transport, and you know that's not going to go smoothly. The show continues to cop out though, because when two masked guys bust open the transport van and shoot inside, they zoom out and don't show us Kellerman get shot. So now we're pretty sure they just shot the anonymous guard and abducted Kellerman.

Sucre takes off against doctor's orders. Bellick and T-Bag are stuck in the same prison, and Maricruz's location is stuck in there with them. And then that's it for all those characters in this episode.

Michael uses himself as a bargaining chip to some marina mobster guy, on a boat full of rather attractive women in bikinis. Arriving at Mahone's designated location, Michael hides the money just as Kim shows up, and Mahone plans to frame Schofield and Burrows for the murder he's about to commit, then take the money and the boat and live happily ever after with that crazy lady from Rescue Me. But plans like that never work out, and Kim shows up with some muscle, giving our heroes enough time to escape. Schofield's slick plan with the mobster was to hide a bunch of drugs on the boat and call in a tip to screw over Mahone.

Sara makes it down to Panama and lets them know about Kellerman and the charges. They enjoy an emotional moment of celebration, but their relief is all too brief, because Kim shows up to hold them at gun point. And by the rules of Prison Break, that means their escape is guaranteed. Which is assured when Sarah shoots him in the gut. So now they're fleeing Panamanian cops for that murder, and they left all the money in the river, which has got to suck. Michael and Sara share a brief "I love you" moment before he takes the blame for her. So Michael, Bellick, Mahone, and T-Bag all appear to be stuck in Panamanian jail... is next season going to be Panamanian Prison Break?

But they take Michael and Mahone to a place with "sona" on the door, which the evil old guy mentioned earlier in this episode as important sounding, so we're looking at some crazy conspiracy stuff. The evil old guy is revealed to be some kind of general, and his assistant says "you know he's gonna break out, it's in his blood," and evil old general says "that's exactly what we want him to do." And the season ends with Michael walking through a creepy looking prison hallway and out into a rainy area that sounds like a gladiator arena. Huh? TV Squad had an article marked as spoilery for the third season about it being all weird, which I won't be reading probably ever because I'm spoiler-paranoid, but now the potential weirdness makes sense. I have no idea where they're going with this, and I'll keep watching next year, but I can't say I'm particularly excited to find out.

The Riches: Wow, the "Previously on The Riches..." segment was like 20 minutes long. We pick up Cael and Tammy in the diner with Dale on their tail. Cael turns out to not be the world's biggest moron, and realizes she's setting him up. He's smooth though and avoids Dale, but it looks like the crazy pregnant lady from the pilot (whose name might be Ginny?) is following him.

The stoner guitar guy from last week is conveniently in Di Di's English class. If you couldn't tell that he's a rebel last week from his guitar playing, because he wears a jacket over his school uniform. And Cael's ability to steal stuff looks like it'll make him instantly popular at rich buffer school.

Nina the neighbor remains awesome, mentioning to Wayne in passing that her husband hasn't had sex with her in five years before fondling the extremely phallic handle of her mug. And explains how she doesn't have a drug problem because they're prescription pills, and how her neighbors like animal porn, eat broccoli, and run off with 17 year olds. Then lights up a joint. I think she's still billed as a guest star, but I really hope she's always on, cause she's hilarious.

Wayne's picked up on Dahlia's drug problem, though, and that's leading to more than a little tension. Sounds like she started using because she hated Wayne for getting her sent to prison.

This show really shines when Wayne has to make shit up. "I mean, we are completely against anyone blowing up. Even a little bit." "When I'm nervous, I refer to myself in the third person."

So the Riches are Jewish? I have no idea why Dahlia tilted her cross necklace crooked and called it an "x" rather than just saying it was a "t," but the bumbling "x marks the Jew" speech was amusingly awkward. And Doug had an ex-wife who's hot for alimony? Complications galore.

They tackle the ex-wife issue this week, running an alpaca-based con against the ex's crooked lawyer. It works out pretty smoothly, but of course, Wayne still manages to get impulsive and wanders into the ex-wife's house. It sounds like Doug was a huge asshole, holding out on his wife long enough for her to lose her house and their kids to end up in a homeless shelter. It's a really good scene though where Wayne acts as the lawyer and pretends to have Doug on the phone, but he's really talking to Dahlia as they're able to make up.

Hey speaking of huge assholes, Panetta's at the same party as the Malloys, wanders into the bathroom, sees Dahlia sneaking some pills, and gropes her. That was a totally weird scene.

Still to watch: Nothing.

The Shield kicks off tomorrow, plus FX ran a cool looking promo for Rescue Me this summer.

For Your Consideration

2007-04-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

Christopher Guest, probably still best known to most as Count Rugen, the six fingered man from The Princess Bride, seems to be able to reunite the same cast for an improv comedy every couple of years. And it always seems to focus on people in a very particular world, whose passions tend to come off as a little bit sad. Nothing against any of these pursuits, but to put so much energy into community theatre (Waiting For Guffman) or dog shows (Best in Show) always struck me as somewhat pitiful. Now, with For Your Consideration, we move into genuinely pathetic territory. And the results are mixed.

Home for Purim (fake official website) is a low budget film about a Jewish family celebrating what I gather is a relatively minor holiday. It stars Victor Allen Miller (Harry Shearer), an actor mostly memorable for his role in a hot dog suit for a series of commercials, and Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara), one of those "whatever happened to..." actors with one memorable role in the 80s. Things get out of hand, though, when the film starts to generate Oscar buzz. Actors become desperate to relaunch their careers, the studio wants to rework the story to better capitalize on the early good word, and the press apparently has nothing better to do than to pick up on the hype and magnify it.

Catherine O'Hara gives a great performance as Hack, doing a great job portraying her downward spiral. I always enjoy Parker Posey's work, and I thought she looked fantastic in it (particularly in a couple scenes where she's wearing glasses... she's working the sexy librarian look). John Michael Higgins (link provided because nobody seems to know this guy by name) is relegated to a bit part here, but it's one of the funniest in the movie ("I am one-eighth mighty Chocktaw"). And Fred Willard is always hilarious in these movies.

However, I felt like there were about 45 minutes of good material in the main story, but so many plot elements and characters that were just filler. Jennifer Coolidge's ditzy producer who's only job is to write checks, the two writers, Ricky Gervais' studio executive character, whatever Ed Begley Jr. was supposed to be (makeup artist, maybe?)... they all just seemed to fill in time. Each had a funny moment or two, but not a big enough laugh that they managed to actually feel worthwhile.

It's not a bad movie, it just suffers compared to previous outings Best in Show and even A Mighty Wind, so I know they can do better.

Sunday Night TV/Catching Up

2007-04-02T00:21:00.000-05:00

No more Battlestar Galactica for a long, long, long, long time. And another week until the HBO shows get going, so it's slim pickings tonight. Highlight for spoilers:

King of the Hill: Cotton leaves his beloved Cadillac to Hank's previously unmentioned cousin and ZZ Top bass player Dusty Hill. "It's been like a member of the family." "Except that Cotton loved it." This upsets Hank because he wanted the car, and also because Dusty and ZZ Top always played pranks on him (and also played a version of "Radar Love" at Hank's wedding with a 20 minute bass solo).

But the whole thing turned out to be part of a reality show, which of course only served to get Hank even more upset. Will Arnett as the producer was pretty solid. "VH1 Classic is swarming with bands who'll eat anything I tell them to." Plus the climatic moment featuring Dusty's beard caught in a seat belt? Excellent. Not a classic King of the Hill episode by any means, but it was pretty funny.

American Dad: Stan has to set up his boss, Avery, with a friend of Francine, and desperately wants to avoid hearing Francine say "I told you so" in the process. Avery's a little rusty at the whole dating thing, so when he brings the woman home with him, he ends up killing her. Good times. Meanwhile, Roger is embarrassed by not having a nose and puts on a fake one, which results in him being mistaken for Kevin Bacon. And also kills someone. Plus, they made a joke about shoving a baby into a wood chipper and two kids dying in a bungee jumping accident. Pretty morbid episode, huh? But also funny.

The fact that it was called "Stan's Xtreme Bungee Xperience" really sold the bungee joke for me. I really loved the midget airbag assassin, especially after the lengthy seat adjustment sequence. And the Footloose sequence was quite good. I bet that a lot of people hated this episode, but I have a somewhat twisted sense of humor, and really liked it. And as someone who hates to admit his mistakes, I really sympathize with Stan and his "I told you so" fears.

Penn and Teller: Bullshit!: This week's topic is Wal-Mart hatred. They bring up some very interesting points. I know some Wal-Mart haters, some of whom also shop there. A lot of the criticisms revolve around worker mistreatment, and who knows if the Bullshit numbers are believable, but certainly I agree with the idea that they're in business to make money and shouldn't be treated differently just because they've been very good at what they do. And that offering stuff at low prices does help the poor by stretching a dollar further. Particularly effective was the interview with the Chicago mother whose $8.50 an hour from Wal-Mart supports her family and keeps her off welfare, while a city councilman from a richer part of the city wanted to force Wal-Mart to pay its workers twice the minimum wage if they wanted to come to town. But even though they raise some good points, I'm not sure about any argument that comes off as pro-sweatshop. Also not the funniest episode they've done, but still pretty interesting.

Still to watch: I want to check out the rest of The Tudors premiere episode at some point, even though after some reflection I'm not as interested in it as I was after first checking out the pilot. But that's it for now, I think.

Friday Night TV

2007-03-30T21:21:00.000-05:00

Highlight for spoilers:

Law & Order: Law & Order loves the religion-themed shows, huh? A serial arsonist is targeting churches, but this most recent one was a copycat arson to hide a murder. The motive? A guy was teaching kids in a parochial school about evolution. And they work in a little teacher/student sex for good measure.

I figured the guy from Touching Evil can't just be one of those people who talks for a minute and is never seen again. So no surprise when he turns out to be the killer. Cool to see Danielle Melnick, she's one of my two favorite recurring lawyers (along with Dworkin), because she's a big fan of the crazy defense strategies, and doesn't disappoint here. Justifiable homicide because he thought his daughter's life was being put into danger. Because learning crazy ideas like evolution will surely incur the wrath of God. A creative idea that a judge somehow bought into.

And in the end it turns out he was pissed cause a guy was sleeping his daughter. Only it was the wrong guy. She just said the name of the evolution guy cause her dad hated him anyway. While he rots in jail, you have to figure she's going to be riddled with guilt for the rest of her life.

Random aside: I've always thought the Law & Order theme song sounds like the intro to "Where It's At" by Beck.

Acceptable TV: Same as last week, check out the official site to watch anything you missed, and to vote for your favorites. Homeless James Bond and Mr. Sprinkles, the two I voted for last week, both came back. Neither was as good as the first episode, though Bond was still pretty good while Sprinkles was genuinely disappointing. The only funny aspect was the Captain Crunch character.

Medical Hospital was the only of the new ones I liked. The female cast members were looking pretty hot in this one, and I liked the House parody aspect. Super weak ending though. And the user entry this week relied on subtitles in "l33tsp33k", the annoying character substituion language used by kids who think they're hackers, but the Vh1 logo was obscuring a lot of it. The website's overloaded right now, but I'll check it out sometime later. I'm definitely voting for more Bond, but I'm torn between a third Mr. Sprinkles and a second Medical Hospital.

Still to watch: nothing.

TV Catch-up

2007-03-30T16:55:00.000-05:00

Last bit of catching up from this week's TV. Highlight for spoilers:

Friday Night Lights: This show is just awesome. Seriously awesome. So my... I want to call my reaction "giddiness", but as Cliff Clavin pointed out so many years ago, "men don't get giddy." But I was thrilled with this episode, and the result is a pretty rambling commentary on it. Sorry in advance.

Landry's plan to pick up Tyra with his math skillz is hilarious. I was a nerd in high school (I say "was" as if I'm not a nerd now, which is obviously not the case), but the math never really paid any dividends in that department. "Mr. T., and the T. stands for... Tyrasalgebratutor." I also liked his premature "yes" to the "If you're not doing anything on Friday..." question. Would've been funny if it was "If you're not doing anything on Friday, would you mow my lawn while I go out with some other guy?"

When that random guy in the restaurant said he remembered those days or whatever, I thought he was going to swoop in, tutor her, and they would hit it off, and Landry would show up just in time to see his plan pay off for someone else. Then they showed someone running up behind her and I thought it was Landry to be all "wait, I'm here!" I did not see that coming at all. I thought the whole thing was written and acted just about perfectly. Tyra seems really tough, and it's appropriate that she'd be able to fight the guy off. But she's still human, and that's obviously pretty traumatic. And you could tell Landry didn't really know what to do, but he still probably ended up doing exactly what she needed.

The Matt getting paid storyline is sort of predictable. Every college or high school football movie/tv show has to cover race relations, steroids, and under the table payoffs, and since they covered the other two, I guess we were due. It was nice to couple it with the "this is getting too commercial" thing. That's not quite as ubiquitous as the other three things, but still pretty common. I liked that Buddy actually took the "Garrity Bowl" suggestion somewhat seriously.

In what was a very tiny side story this week, Waverly, the unmedicated bipolar girl, being armed was slightly troubling to me, but not as troubling as it was to smash, who I think thinks she's just going to flip out into a murder/suicide thing.

In Lyla/Street news, the big blow-up was a long time coming. Too much tension there to not explode at some point. And we finally get rid of the lawsuit cloud that's been hanging over him and Coach Taylor. "You ever thought about coaching?" was the perfect note to end on.

Warning: actual football content follows. They're not down 8-0 right off the bat if that kid just falls on the ball on that onside kick. You try to return it, and that's how you end up fumbling. Also, it seems silly that Dillon would bite on that fake extra point, the footing being so bad, I think you only kick out of desperation (and we see their opponents try a field goal later and flub it). A nice realistic depiction of a muddy game in general though, and another "chill scene" with the winning run, which featured some really good cinematography, I think. Great, great episode.

Jericho: That uptight detective from Psych is the sheriff of the windmill town. And he drives a hard bargain on the windmills. But with the long emotional goodbyes for these ten guys... and the fact that Heather didn't come back, either the actress didn't want to show up (or they couldn't afford to pay her), or that's extremely fishy. And wouldn't the supposedly food-strapped windmill town have to feed all these guys they're forcing to come build the things? Not much of this makes any sense.

Shoshannah Stern is back! I really liked her on Weeds and part of what made me give Jericho a shot was her presence. But the punk store owning kid and is bratty rich friend are back too, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad. Dale's pissed at farmers not honoring contractual obligations to the store. Nothing says compelling drama like a guy inheriting a store and not getting the 3% the other guy is obligated to give. I almost fell asleep writing that sentence. He showed up at the dude's house with a gun, which seems kinda dumb. He might get the food now, but that guy, whoever the hell he is, isn't going to just shrug his shoulders and forget it ever happened. But hey his bad boy routine is at least going to get him some action with the aforementioned bratty rich girl. You can tell how invested I am with the show by the fact that I don't know a lot of the characters' names. But the show isn't without it's moments, like...

Aasif Mandvi is back too! I'm seriously loving him on The Daily Show, and it's awesome that he's also a serious, PTSD, drunken doctor here. I find a lot of the character drama in the show to be pretty lame, and April's pregnancy was one of my least favorite storylines, but the scene where Jake convinces Kenchy to go back into surgery was actually pretty moving.

In the Hawkins storyline, I think he would've been best off confessing that he used to nail Sarah, and that's why she left, and that's why his wife isn't around. Pretty much covers everything, and I think the cop would just let it go. Or at least I would. But it worked out anyway I guess. I had sorta forgotten about the guy Sarah killed, so the twist that they found the body of the guy she killed was a nice surprise to me.

A pretty good episode, thanks largely to Aasif Mandvi. A character that can barely handle the stress of this whole situation is a great addition to the mix.

Still to watch: nothing. Although by the time I finished this, Friday night TV was already starting.

TV Catch Up

2007-03-29T16:18:00.000-05:00

With nothing but repeats Thursday night (except an Andy Barker, P.I. that I'd already seen online), I had hoped to catch up on even more stuff, but I ended up mostly catching up on sleep. Highlight for spoilers:

House: Tricky with the opener, since we usually see the case of the week person in the sequence before the credits, but it turns out to be a dream House was having about having his leg blown off in Iraq or something. But it turns out we did see the case of the week person, because House was dreaming about the guy before he even got the case, giving us two mysteries: what's wrong with the guy, and why is House having psychic dreams about him?

Hugh Laurie has such a convincing American accent that it was only from his IMDB page that I learned he was not from the US of A. But sitting in the tub with those somewhat grandmotherly glasses on, he looked as British as a tea-drinking soccer hooligan with bad teeth.

House became obsessed with the idea that the guy was a model or in a movie (possibly porn) or on TV. I kept thinking "Of course the guy's been on TV, he's Riley from Buffy!" But no fourth wall jokes for this show, it turned out he dated Cuddy once several years ago.

House also has some of his own medical issues this week, in the form of difficulty urinating. While I can't imagine how bad any of it must be, I have a hard time imagining that not being able to pee more than a few drips is that much worse than a self-administered catheter. That scene was brutal. Plus, it reminded me of the even more brutal Deadwood kidney stone removal scene. Yikes.

And they're playing up the Chase/Cameron relationship even more. While I'm not sure about the storyline, there's something really hot about the normally reserved Cameron being all "I know I'm sexy and you can't resist me."

Bones: Hooray, more of Wyatt, Booth's therapist. This week, he does a little couples counselling for Booth and Brennan, deciding that it wasn't her feelings for him that kept her from taking off with Sully. Hopefully it was the fact that he was a crappy character and seriously reduced my enjoyment of the show. Anyway, this immediately solved the tension between the two, which seems odd, but I'll buy it. The cool part was that Angela thought he was full of it. Convinced that they're nuts for each other, she confronts Mr. Fancy Pants shrink with her own theory, and they share an awesome scene at the end. If they hadn't spent most of the season hooking up Angela and Hodgins, I'd hope they'd hook her up with ol' Gordon, cause that would be tons of fun.

As for the case, a grave robber breaks a water main, and bodies from all over the cemetery float up, so Bones & Co. are called in to identify and re-bury them, but shockingly they discover a murder victim buried amongst the old corpses. Some stuff happens, and the priest quickly admits his guilt. Easy confessions on TV are always lies to cover for someone, so as soon as the priest said he did it, you knew it was someone else. But I was stumped as to who, so I was pleasantly surprised with the resolution. The administrator lady, "practically raised" by the old priest, is a great unexpected fit, and there were enough characters floating around with possible motives (the possibly abused kid and the grave robber kid) that it was still a mystery. But there's no way her confession holds up in court, right? A priest asking questions with no cops around, any decent lawyer gets that tossed. I like how shows without lawyer characters ignore stuff like this.

I'm kinda surprised that they'd make a lead character in a fairly popular TV show both an atheist and a jerk about it. Seems like that might alienate the 90% of the world that believe in some sort of god.

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights, Jericho.

The original Law & Order comes back for the first new episode since sweeps, and Acceptable TV returns for its second episode on VH1 at 10. Too late to vote, but you can still check out last week's sketches on the Acceptable TV website.

The Patriot

2007-03-29T08:22:00.000-05:00

When I first checked out Turner Classic's 31 Days of Oscar lineup, I was surprised to see The Patriot listed. I'd never seen it because it looked pretty generic, but the fact that it'd been nominated for three oscars made me think I might've missed something.

But what I should've noticed was that the nominations were for sound, cinematography, and score, which were all quite good here. The plot? The only thing unexpected about it was how eerily close it was to what I was expecting. I assumed we'd get the old warrior who's seen too much blood in his day and wants to settle down with his family, but doesn't quite fit in as a farmer. I figured the British would make the tragic mistake of making the conflict personal for him, which forces him into the fight. I guessed that we'd get a series of scenes as they assemble their rag tag group of warriors ready to take on a better trained, better equipped opponent, and only their plucky spirit and unconventional tactics lead them to victory. It felt like a dozen different epic/action movies thrown into a blender and set during the revolution.

That's not to say it doesn't have some good qualities. There were some well-choreographed fight scenes, Chris Cooper and Rene Auberjonois are pretty much good in everything they do, and it was certainly a nice looking movie. Plus, it's always funny when actors have to look serious when they're wearing those goofy triangular hats (pictured).

My initial reaction to the trailers a few years back was that it didn't look especially good or bad, and I felt no motivation to see or avoid it. And after seeing it, I remain apathetic towards it.