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:
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:
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.
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.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Sunday Night TV
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Sunday Night TV
A full slate of Sunday night TV, with Fox's animation block and HBO's Sopranos and Entourage after the jump.
King of the Hill: Dale checked out a new book on explosives from the library under the name Rusty Shackleford. But the real Rusty Shackleford showed up to confront Dale for all the damage he's doing to his name. Apparently Dale thought he'd died in third grade, but he just moved away. The guy's decided he's not leaving until he straightened things out with Dale. And Peggy's still working for Chris Elliott's real estate company. Chane Wasonasong teases Peggy with the idea that they'll move, but it's actually to talk over her commitment to be a Cozy Kitchen representative, which appears to fall somewhere between Tupperware sales and a pyramid scheme, and the only way out is to find a sucker to take over for you. 
At this point, it seemed like Rusty would be the obvious solution, since sending the Cozy Kitchen folks after him would send him running, solving both problems at once. But instead, Peggy and Dale go for a fake murder/suicide pact, figuring that if Cozy Kitchen and Rusty think they're dead, they're in the clear. That doesn't work out, but all Peggy has to do is agree to fake her Cozy Kitchen boss's death to get her out of her commitment, and Dale just has to sign some forms to clear up Rusty's identity theft issues.
A pretty cool episode if only for the appearance of an actual Rusty Shackleford, and a good Dale episode is usually pretty hilarious. Best lines:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Catching Up on TV
With sweeps upon us, I'll be spending more time catching up on new episodes I couldn't catch when they first aired. The Sopranos, Entourage, and Everybody Hates Chris after the jump.
The Sopranos: The feds are digging in a spot where Tony and Paulie buried a guy 25 years ago, so they have to take an unscheduled vacation just in case. Trapped in a car together driving down to Miami, Tony gets more and more irritated with Paulie, to the point where they go fishing together, and memories of Pussy come to mind. The scene on the boat was incredibly tense, and Tony seriously considers it, but passes. Paulie's pretty sure he came within inches of getting whacked, so when the scare with the feds blows over, he sends Tony a gift. But in the end, Paulie goes right back to being annoying, and Tony has an almost sitcom-like look of frustration.
Junior's in a mental ward. It seems like his new meds have him a little more lucid, but not too much. He's dealing contraband caffeine and sugar, and running an underground poker game, which causes one of the other patients to hero worship him. His aggressive tendencies though cause the staff to change his meds, and his attempts to not take them fail. With the new meds, he starts following the rules, which is unsatisfying to his protoge, who gives Junior a pretty nasty beating.
Really tense, two good storylines, plus they throw in a couple of Phil Leotardo scenes. He's apparently through taking shit from anyone, and it looks like New York could get pretty bloody. There were some really funny scenes. Junior dictates a hilarious letter to Dick Cheney figuring he might help him out, since they both are "all too familiar with accidental gun play," and Paulie spends about 2 minutes piling up pastries at a breakfast buffet. Great episode.
Entourage: Amanda wants an answer on the Edith Wharton script, and she's pissed that Ari planting the Medellin idea back in their heads is obviously what's holding them up. E and Vince want to give the boring one a last read before deciding, and they inflict the reading assignment on Turtle and Drama too. Shockingly, this did not go well, but they all decide it sucked. And when Vince confesses that finding her attractive made it hard to say no, Amanda heads over to "get the sexual tension out of the way." Which makes her pretty awesome. And Vince pretty lucky. 
I made the first image a little something for the ladies, so I couldn't help but throw that one in to. Anyway, last week's concern for Lloyd is a symptom of a greater problem of actual human emotions for Ari, which makes his job rather difficult. But a visit with a shrink somehow puts him back on track in a storyline that existed I think only to show him hilariously unable to fire a guy with two eyepatches, then later even more amusingly able to fire him and enjoy it.
Everybody Hates Chris: Gambling, eh? A topic that hits close to home, since I used to gamble professionally. Naturally, they get a lot of the facts about gambling all wrong (sports bookies don't care if you win or lose, they work the odds in such a way that they make money no matter who wins). Vincent Pastore has a great cameo as one of the bookies, and shares a hilarious scene with Rochelle. The B-story is about a checkers showdown between Drew and Tanya, which a much less amusing cameo by Jim Lampley. Even with that, and a really predictable ending, it was a fun episode.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Still More Catching Up
I think I'm finally all caught up, and it's only 45 minutes into the stuff I want to watch tonight. Hooray! Thursday's Smallville, the last two Jerichos, and last Sunday's Entourage and The Sopranos after the jump.
The Sopranos: There's a power struggle in the Lupertazzi family, A.J. and Blanca appear to be having big issues, Johnny Sacks dies of cancer, cameos all over the place (Daniel Baldwin, Jonathan LaPaglia, Geraldo, Tim Daly, Sydney Pollack, Christopher McDonald), but what really stood out was the premiere of Christopher's movie.
"Fuck Ben Kingsley!" They're in final editing, happy with their casting, but still going over last minute changes. "The lawyer called, though, we might have to change the title. The Eldridge Cleaver estate, they want an injunction." The whole movie was hilarious, with the mob boss character obviously drawn from Tony. But in addition to being funny, it drove the whole episode. The character's interaction with an associate's fiancee brings up memories of Adrianna for Carmela, and the less than flattering version of himself on screen leaves Tony feeling deeply hurt, pushing the rift between Tony and Chris even further.
A lot going on, I'm actually slightly confused about what's going on in the New York family, but the funny parts were just so damn funny, I couldn't help but love it. Hopefully the New York picture will clear up soon. Or someone will clue me in.
Entourage: Vinnie and E are dodging Amanda's calls, and having issues over a couple's weekend. E and Sloan want to go by themselves, but E tries to come up with a plan to make it happen without offending Vinnie at all, which of course blows up in his face, and leaves him on a trip with Sloan barely talking to him while the rest of the crew heads to Cabo.
Ari is hoping to land a gay client, so he brings Lloyd along in a hilariously anti-gay attempt to prove that he's gay-friendly. But the potential client takes a little too much liking to Lloyd, and the feeling isn't mutual. In order to sign the guy, Lloyd may have to... take one for the team. But look out, Ari's actually feeling guilty about the whole thing, and refuses to let Lloyd sleep with a guy just to sign a client.
There's a whole subplot with Turtle and Drama trying to pick up Freaks and Geeks's Busy Phillips and the lovely Brianne Davis at a dog park, which was kinda funny. A big improvement over the previous episode, which I didn't enjoy all that much.
Smallville: Lex listens to terrestrial radio in his fancy car, I don't think so! They couldn't work in an XM/Sirius plug? Chloe runs Lex's car off the road, knocks him on the head and takes a flash drive. She wakes up the next morning with no memory of the whole thing though. Clark spots a button of Chloe's at the scene though, so now they're all suspicious of what her Tyler Durden personality is up to. They find the flash drive though, and it has files on Chloe's mom, who has the ability to control other meteor freaks. 
Lynda Carter is Chloe's mom, and at 56 she still looks great. Lex has her locked up, having found a drug to wake her out or her catatonic state, and hoping to use her powers to his advantage, but she just wants out. So she's using the power to try to kill Lex and help Chloe find her. They escape, but the drug only had a limited effect, and she slips back into her catatonia.
Lex makes some scary threats to Chloe to keep her quiet. Lana, injured in the fight, learns that she had unknowingly been taking hormones to make it seem like she was pregnant, but never was. The sonograms must've been faked and all that stuff. And we wrap up with Clark declaring that the war between him and Lex is about to begin. Cue the dramatic music. I haven't been really in to this show in a long time, and this is just another reminder why. There was nothing bad about the episode, but there wasn't anything good either.
Jericho: Two episodes to catch up on, starting with "A.K.A." from two weeks ago.
Jake is on to Hawkins, with a drawer full of fake government IDs, and confronts him about it. Hawkins is ready with some crappy stories, but Jake isn't buying it. He comes along with a second story, and we get a lengthy flashback, but who knows if it's real or not. Hawkins says he was CIA and hooked up a domestic terrorist cell with fake IDs and killed an FBI informant to win them over, and that flashback we'd previously seen fits in with it well. The CIAs plan to infiltrate the terrorists caused them to move up their timetable, and he was given his orders to take the bomb to Columbus, OH, but instead gathered up his family and took them to Jericho. He shows Jake the bomb, and after freaking out a little, Jake agrees to keep his secrets safe.
Elsewhere, Emily is trying to start up a school for the kids of the town, but they have more pressing matters to deal with and ditch, except for April Hawkins, and they do some bonding, and Mimi is having issues with Bonnie in Stanley's absence.
Then this week's episode, "Causus Belli," picks up on the windmill building story. It looks like all of Jericho's men are back except Eric, who was torn up over April's death, but Stanley and Jake are suspicious as to why he didn't come back.
Jake takes Hawkins to New Bern to figure out what happened to his brother. They're fed a bunch of stories that they don't buy, and have to sneak around town and interrogate people to get real answers. Eric and the long-absent Heather apparently sabotaged New Bern's factory that morning, but they're left to wonder why, so Jake and Hawkins make their way to the factory and find a detailed map of Jericho and its resources, already divvied up between the powerful people in New Bern. And the factory in New Burn has been turned into a munitions factory. They're prepping for an attack. 
Jake idiotically decides to try to stop them single handedly and gets himself captured, and throw into a cell next to Eric. And holy crap, Heather is dead. That sucks, I like Sprague Grayden. The episode ends with New Burn's mayor parading Eric and Jake in front of the town in handcuffs, explaining that Jericho never planned to honor their food commitment. It looks like preparation for an execution before they launch their attack, and the only one who can stop them is Hawkins. Luckily, he's a badass.
Stanley comes home to find the dude that's been nailing Bonnie at his farm, which is quite the kick in the balls. But conveniently, that guy's a total idiot, so it's probably not going to last.
Skylar and Dale start moving salt from the mine, but apparently she can't because she's a minor. She tries to get her parents declared dead so she can become an emancipated minor miner (I amuse the hell out of myself), but the mayor shoots that idea down. This might force her to sign a deal with one of the New Burn guys.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Sunday Night TV
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:
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.
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.
