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:
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:
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:
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!
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Thursday Night TV, Plus Leftovers
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Massive Catch-up
Having already seen Spider-man 3, I don't have a movie to catch this weekend, which leaves a little extra time to catch up on TV. A whole mess of shows after the jump.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Olivia has a brother pops up again, but she's lost faith in him and is now helping the Feds find him. Soon though she bails to follow leads about her father, learns a lot more, and begins to wonder if her mother was really raped. It turns out, though, that the Jersey cop who was after him in the previous episode had framed Simon, and was out to kill him after her sister, Simon's alleged first victim, killed herself. Olivia shows up just in time, and talks the cop into confessing everything, and Simon gets off entirely. 
Bones: I don't have too much to say about this episode, except that if, in a case involving someone falling out of an airplane, you find that the body's been chopped up by a heavy not-too-sharp object moving really fast, and that he was struck many times almost simultaneously, how does it take you half the episode to come up with the "hit by the propeller" theory?
Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Of course one of the Law & Orders was going to rip this particular story from the headlines... diaper-wearing crazed astronauts is just too juicy to ignore. Weird though that this episode aired the same week as the Bones about an astronaut... also weird that they both used the same fake NASA-like group (the National Space Agency). I found Tate Donovan's wife entirely creepy, the way she referred to him as "the Commander." But otherwise it was a pretty forgettable episode.
Entourage: The "one time thing" concept doesn't seem to go well with Amanda and Vince, since they both are really into each other. Ari has a formerly loserish college friend (Artie Lange) visiting who has an inexplicably hot fiancee (Leslie Bibb). Turns out that he made millions on the internet, which makes Ari really jealous.
Pauly Shore wants Drama for a new Punk'd ripoff show, but Drama knows about it ahead of time, planning to act surprised. When a UFC guy argues with him over a parking space, he assumes that it's the prank and practically gets in a fight. But the prank turns out to be something else, and the UFC guy's after him. Drama goes to a fight to kiss up to the guy, but ends up in the octagon on his knees begging for forgiveness when Pauly Shore pops out and reveals that it was all a big prank. Kinda funny, but predictable.
The Sopranos: Tony is seriously strapped for cash. Gambling problems, funding Carmela's spec house, losing Vito (his best earner), and his debt to Hesh leave him in bad financial shape. Carmela closes on the spec house, but she figures it's her money, so Tony won't see any of it, leading to a whole lot of tension.
With Vito gone, his kid's doing the goth thing (Phil says he looks like "a Puerto Rican whore") and acting out. His mother wants a fresh start somewhere else, and money to move there from Tony. Given the money issues, Tony's desperate to straighten the kid out somehow. But it doesn't work, cause for some reason the kid ends up taking a Count Dooku in the shower after gym class. Tony advises her to send him to a (much cheaper) camp for troubled kids.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: I was two episodes behind, so two weeks ago they covered immigration. They talked about some interesting stuff. Apparently, just as many illegal aliens enter the country legally and stay after their visas expire as sneak across the border. They rather amusingly hired a group of illegal immigrants to build a fence like the one proposed for the Mexican border, and then had them go under, through, and over it. It took eight hours to build, and 5 minutes to get past.
This week's episode was on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA's statistics count 51 million disabled people in the US, which is one in six. It includes people who have trouble with money or using the phone. That seems kind of messed up, though the braille on the drive-up ATMs is quite funny. Penn & Teller as Libertarians obviously also don't like the idea of the government telling people what to do with their own private property, and generally legislating niceness.
House: A kid about to donate bone marrow to his brother develops an infection, so the race is on to find and cure the infection before his brother's leukemia kills him. The plan is to keep him cold to make the infection worse so they can figure out what it is faster. But that turns out to backfire, forcing the infection into the son's heart. Foreman's still dealing with losing a patient last week. House thinks he has Steve Blass disease, and is actually trying to be patient with him, which is pretty un-House-like.
House is still keeping Hector, Wilson's ex-wife's dog, and it's causing him lots of problems. It gets into his vicodin stash, chews up his cane (forcing him to get a sweet new one with a flame decal). But when he eventually gives the dog back, he seems sad to let it go.
They finally track down what was causing the son's infection, and this is where the episode took a crazy left turn that I didn't get. Foreman straps the now-healing son to the table and without anesthetic (because he wasn't well enough), starts extracting bone marrow even though it sounded excruciating. It works, both kids are going to get well, but Foreman doesn't like that he's "becoming" House, and gives his two weeks notice.
Smallville: And old fashioned mystery at the Planet. Lana gets shot, and gets medivac-ed to Smallville for some reason. But what was she doing all dolled up at night, out with Lionel instead of Lex? Jimmy's fascination with old movies and a blow to the head send us into an extended black & white film noir fantasy/dream sequence. There were some nice touches, using the back projection and sped up film during the car chases, the old timey wipes to transition between scenes, cigarette smoke pouring into every frame (I'm surprised they can even do that). 
Since most of the episode was spent in fantasy land, very little was devoted to the actual goings on. Towards the end, they worked in Canadian-filmed TV staple Richard Kahan, a plug for Sprint, let Clark save the day, and reveal the plot behind the attempted murder, which was entirely uninteresting. But the fantasy sequence was fun enough that the episode wasn't a waste of time.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Tuesday Night TV
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.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Tuesday Night TV/Catching Up
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: This very special Criminal Intent is brought to us with limited commercial interruptions. I'm not sure what's special about it. Other than a scene being set in a Moe's burrito place, which might've earned them enough money that they didn't have to air as many commercials to turn a profit.
We don't really know a thing about Wheeler, which isn't that surprising for a Law & Order show, but I'm surprised they gave her sort of a feature part this early on. I've had some questions about her character (mostly, thanks to her non-feminine hairstyle and the lesbian mechanic that hit on her early in the season, about her sexuality), but none of them revolved around her father. But it turns out Pop Wheeler was a lawyer who helped people get liquor licenses in exchange for piles of money.
The actual case involved the murder of a judge's son. The investigation, as usual, went in all different direction, but whenever they show punk rich kids I'm immediately suspicious of them. The father of the kid who did it was overacting pretty badly there at the end. A lethal combination of the "look away to process information before dramatically turning your head to face someone in anger" and the long, almost Shatneresque, pause. - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Law & Order did an episode on February 10th about a preacher and a gay hooker, played by Anson Mount. L&O: CI followed suit on February 21st, with Tom Arnold as the gay preacher. SVU's way behind the times, with Tim Daly as the religious leader.
But they're at least slightly clever and don't make the religious leader exactly like Ted Haggard. They tried to be tricky about it, with all sorts of circumstantial evidence pointing toward Daly's character, but SVU has gone with the same DNA test twist way too many times. They get a partial match to the main suspect, and run with that until - surprise! - it's a close relative of the suspect. The oldest son was the obvious choice, since he thought their little haunted house AIDS joke was so hilarious, but I wasn't 100% sure until the mom from Picket Fences said he'd changed his tune from preaching against homosexuality to promoting tolerance.
I was expecting the son to be the murderer, but when he confessed to having the gay relationship but not the murderer, they were running out of characters to pin it on. Tim Daly's oldest daughter knew her brother was gay, but they made it clear that the killer had overpowered the victim, and she looked to be about 4'10", so that left the smug church assistant guy.
NBC promoted this with "One thing's for certain, you'll have no idea who did it," which worked, because it made me really try to figure out who did it, but it wasn't that much of a challenge. Otherwise, it was nice to see Finn and Munch get a little screen time after being absent for most of the year. - The Riches: Eddie Izzard finally dons the priest getup that we kept seeing in the promos. It's part of a scam to get fake documents for the rest of the family in order to get the kids enrolled in school. That doesn't go over well, and I have to assume the kids will have a ton of trouble both academically and socially. During the debate, we get a little insight that Wayne is a "half-breed" and through 7th grade lived as a "buffer," the traveller term for a normal person. Which opened up the possibility at least that there's an explanation for his weird accent (which seemed much more American last week, but goes right back to whatever it was in the first episode).
Wayne's first day at work starts with a hilarious speech. It resembled his interview last week, and was hilarious. "Peter Piper picked a peck of Panco peppers." Everyone buying into the "we are rocks" bit was a bit of a stretch, but Eddie Izzard is so damn charismatic that I can see people buying his bullshit. From that point on, the story at Panco was the plot to the Newsradio pilot, in which Dave Nelson gets hired as the new news director, has to fire Ed, the old news director. Still, if you're going to rip someone off, you might as well rip off one of my favorite shows ever.
I'm really starting to like Ginny next door. Her speech about the fancy private school being a waste and then admitting their hypocrisy was great. And I really liked Dahlia's outrage when the private school wouldn't let them in, but with how thick she laid it on with her after the bird con thing, I'm surprised she fell for it in the end..
Tammy, Cael's special lady friend, is still calling him (and Di Di finds out about it). Dale, the traveler leader guy, beats Tammy into leading him to the Malloys. And Cael naturally falls for it completely. We leave off with Dale clandestinely observing the meeting between Cael and Tammy, so I figure that's going to be the basis for next week.
Not as good as last week's episode, but still pretty solid. I feel like they can get a ton of mileage out of this premise, and the cast seems able to take the material as far as it will go, the only question is whether the writing will hold up. But I'm along for the ride either way.
Still to watch: House, which I kinda forgot was new until just now, and I'm headed to bed.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
TV Catch-up
So much to get through, this is only scratching the surface:
- Law & Order: CI: We don't open on a musical montage for the first time in a while. Lee Tergesen, Chet on the TV version of Weird Science/Toby on Oz, guest stars, as does Chris Bauer, Faith's husband on Third Watch/Lee Nickel from Tilt... two great TV That Guys. The plot took a major left turn, going from standard "reporter working on a story somebody wants to keep covered up" to "other reporter on a whole different story somebody way scarier wants covered up, complete with a creepy Man in Black from an unknown agency." All very Cloak & Dagger. And the new Captain (who I'm still not sold on, maybe he should wear an eyepatch for a while) gets some rare actual action. A decent episode, especially for a non-Goren one.
- Law & Order: SVU: We pick back up on the whole "Olivia has a brother" thing. I can't say the Olivia family issues are really my favorite storylines... it's a little too heavy for me. Weirdly, Olivia's brother is played by Private Dancer from the current Scrubs story arc. NBC must like this guy.
I tend to prefer the more traditional L&O storylines about following just one case. But it was interesting to see Olivia really screw up, what with being on the phone so she misses directions and ends up letting a couple of rapists escape. But I guess given all the episodes this season where Benson and Stabler have worked alone, this one gave them plenty of partner bonding time, with Stabler doing a lot of covering for Olivia. Still practically no Munch or Finn. They used to get part of every case. Like Elliott and Olivia would go interview the victim's friends, while Munch and Finn would root through trash or whatever. Now they're hardly part of the show anymore.
Fortunately (sort of), there are mostly reruns tonight, so I'll probably get caught up.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
TV Catchup
Little bit of catchup:
- Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier: A History Channel special, that for some reason I was told was about the history of Star Trek. But it was 90% about the Christie's auction of Star Trek memorabilia. So that kinda sucked. Also, they did show a fair number of clips from the various TV shows. So for some reason they chose to do this thing in widescreen, letterboxed for the original filmed bits, but doubly letterboxed (horizontally and vertically) for the TV clips. So that was dumb. By the end it was so auction-centric I stopped paying attention and was surfing the web mostly.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent (highlight for spoilers): Regular Law & Order just did a Ted Haggard episode a week and a half ago., so this seems weird. Instead of Anson Mount, CI gives us Tom Arnold in the role of the preacher who secretly hires a gay prostitute... which is a bit of a step down, acting-wise. But in this one they introduce a Richard Dawkins-type character (athiest, opponent of Intelligent Design), who ends up being the killer. We also get a ton of Goren's personal life here, between the continuing story of his mother's chemo, to his brother making a rare appearance. Decent episode, the mystery was pretty solid, but I felt like the Goren family drama was a little distracting. I'm not huge on this storyline, really.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
TV Catchup
Lots of catchup. Highlights for spoilers:
- Bones: I like seeing Booth's shrink back. Their scenes together are always nice. I do not like seeing Agent Multitalented back. But it kinda seemed like Meredith Monroe was completely underused.
Meredith Monroe kinda looked like Cameron Richardson here. I never watched The Creek, but MM's nice looking and not a bad actress at all, so it seems like a waste to just have her on for three seconds.
- Friday Night Lights: Damn, this show is good. Everyone's pushing all-in this week. Smash and the rest of the black players put their futures on the line for their walkout, Saracen puts a lot of money up to try to get Julie back, and Street's ready to dump his education for quad rugby and a G.E.D. Plus the whole season's out there hanging in the balance - the JV squad shows up to try to fill in for the walked out guys, and if they have to play, the upcoming playoff game will be a joke.
A couple really great scenes. Coach asks Tami for her advise as far as firing Mac, as guidance counselor, as his wife, and as his friend. Riggins swallows his pride and tells Smash that the team needs his leadership, and Smash throwing Mac's white players/leadership comments back in his face. And Mac handing in his resignation... he seems to look racist sympathetic all at once, which is hard to pull off.
The whole situation plays out in shades of gray. If you know a guy is a good man and he's truly sorry for his mistake, do you punish him for a big mistake? Is it worth sticking to your guns over one guy if it might mean your education? Plus the game ended in victory, but in the worst possible way. Mac gets a shot at semi-redemption when he chases off the cops who want to blame Smash for the whole incident. So they win and move on, but it's not like everything is wrapped up in a neat little package.
Oh, and Landry hitting on Tyra was kinda hilarious, as was his "look them in the eyes, not in the rack" comment.
- Knights of Prosperity: Yikes. The whole montage of attempts to get into the club was supposed to be funny, but it was devoid of laughs. Esperanza's ex, drug lord Enrico (played by Bobby Cannavale from Third Watch), had a couple good lines, but that was about it. As much as I like the cast, the show is really struggling to make me laugh. And with the Mick Jagger thing seemingly wrapped up, I think this would've been a good place to end, but I think it's going to keep limping along for the rest of the season. I might be done with it, though, I'm not sure.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: I feel like the intros to this show have really changed of late. It used to be the eerie music would slowly swell as they showed a series of disjunct scenes leading up to a body being discovered, and the scenes would be clues to the eventual solution of the mystery. But last week we had the "Under Pressure" montage cutting between the Aaron Burr/Hamilton reenactment and the sniper, this week we get a guy plugging a CD dissolving into a Tupac/Biggie-style rap murder. Fab Five Freddy played the rapper though, which is kinda cool.
The mid-episode murder felt much more like how the show used to work. The first person shot of murderer, the music coming up, all that. I realize that the whole "talking to the cops gets you killed" thing was crucial to the plot, but I feel like they way overemphasized it. Between the undercover guy, the DJ, the white rap mogul guy, and the guy they confronted in his apartment... I mean, we get it already.
I'm still not entirely sold on Julianne Nicholson though. I liked her on Conviction ok, but I buy her as the cute girl, but the tough cop with the boy's haircut (I'm not 100% sure, but I think they're trying to go with a lesbian angle with her... she had a lesbian mechanic hit on her earlier this year in front of Logan which she ignored, but did she ignore it cause she's straight, cause she wasn't interested, or cause it was in front of Logan?).My least favorite part of the episode was the killer getting shivved at the end, though. Meh.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Last Night's TV
A little catchup, plus last night's viewing. As always, spoilers. Highlight to reveal:
- Law & Order: CI: Well, cutting straight from the L&O "...these are their stories..." intro to Under Pressure (most overused soundtrack song ever? Or is it Baba O'Reily?) and some guys in 18th century garb about to duel made me think the Tivo somehow switched channels mid-recording. But then the cut to a sniper, so at least I know it wasn't a period drama with weird music choices. Xander Berkely is a pretty good actor, huh? He should be in more stuff.
- House: So was the wheelchair bound woman just messing with House, or is she a lesbian? Either way, I hope she hangs around. Despite only a few lines, she was pretty likable. And a few episodes ago, House had quite a bit of sexual tension with a little person, now with a woman in a wheelchair. I could definitely see him having a thing for... atypical women. I liked the case of the week. It's cool to see a solution end up being much more simple that everyone expected it to be. Also, this episode reminded me that I use the word "gyp," and never remember that it's derived from an ethnic stereotype. So I should stop that.
- Bones: I liked the scenes with Booth and the shrink. Replacement partner guy, though? Not so much. And it looks like he'll be back for more. As soon as French Stewart popped up in the credits, I was worried. Partly because he's not the kind of actor you want to see in a drama. Ever. But mostly because anytime someone that famous shows up, you know they're going to play an important role. And when they show up for half a second early on and aren't heard from for 30 minutes, you know they're probably going to be the key to the case. Most likely the murderer. But on the plus side, he wasn't nearly as bad as I thought he'd be. At least he didn't do the eyes half closed 3rd Rock from the Sun thing. Oh, and Hodgins' line about getting caught in a pornado? Excellent.
- Lost: Sweet reveal at the beginning with the Miami skyline. Overall a pretty great episode. I can't say I cared all that much about Juliet, but now I'm warming to her. A few really cool parts. I liked that Ben wakes up mid-surgery. And when Tom explains how it happened, I pictured Jack like Bones from Star Trek: "Dammit, Tom, I'm a spinal surgeon not an anesthesiologist!" The octopus hatch thing was new, and it seems to be where they condition people with music and crazy film montages. Eventually, that'll make sense, I'm sure, and it'll be as clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. I thought the "tell me the story I told you" thing was incredibly lame. I get that they needed some way that she could easily lie without the others knowing, but the 2 minute speech for emotional impact was forced. And she told the story while she was still on dry land, which was just a little stupid, since Juliet could've shot Kate in the face as soon as she got off the radio. And I've always loved the spontaneous car accident... Meet Joe Black is still my favorite, but this one was up there (even if it was just like the one Nip/Tuck did this season), especially cause of the sinister possibilities
We did get some fun guest stars. Zeljko Ivanek, Deadwood's Robin Wiegert, a visit from William "Ethan" Mapother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Rob McElhenny, and Nestor Carbonell. I hadn't seen Nestor Carbonell for a while... I first remember seeing him in Muscle, one of the original WB shows that was sort of a daytime soap opera spoof, like Soap. He later popped up in one of those bad NBC sitcoms that was sandwiched between good shows, (maybe Suddenly Susan?), then as Batmanuel on the live action Tick. But then nothing memorable for a few years, and now he's in Lost and Smokin' Aces one right after the other. He was surprisingly good in both, especially since I had previously only thought of him as a comedic actor with a gimmick accent.
Still parked on the Tivo: Friday Night Lights, Knights of Prosperity (which I'm getting close to dumping).
