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.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Massive Catch-up
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Lots of Catching Up
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.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Catching Up on TV
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:
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.
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.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Sunday Night TV/Catching Up
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.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Friday Night TV/Catch-up
Two shows with no real plots, so no spoiler warnings here:
- Acceptable TV: A really interesting take on a sketch comedy show. Each sketch is presented as a short "pilot episode." Viewers go to acceptable.tv to vote for their two favorites. The sketches with the most votes get picked up for another episode, while the rest get canceled and replaced by new pilots. They will also feature user submitted videos on the site, and every week the most popular user creation airs on VH1 during the show. It's an awesome concept for a sketch show, since watching SNL often leaves me wondering why so many of the best sketches never show up again, while that Horatio Sanz in drag sketch, the Nunni's, and Deep House Dish have been harder to get rid of than most STDs.
But the good concept is wasted if the mini-pilots aren't any good. You can watch all this week's content on the website if you missed the show. 5 mini-shows this week, plus a user submission: Joke Chasers, Who Farted (a great game show parody, but I'm not sure another episode would be any good), Homeless James Bond, The Teensies (easily the weakest), Anna Manesia (user submitted one, but having Steve Agee of The Sarah Silverman Program in your video is kinda cheating for an "amateur"), and Mr. Sprinkles (and animated "Cat in the Hat" spoof).
I think my votes go to Homeless James Bond and Mr. Sprinkles (or I would if the registration was working, which it currently isn't, at least for me... the voting doesn't last long, so I hope they figure out the issue soon). The Bond sketch had the best jokes of the night, and James Bond movies provide a lot of material to parody, so I think it could last. And Mr. Sprinkles was actually a nice bit of satire. A co-worker mentioned that he was going to sit his kids (aged 6 and 9) down and show them the story about the young boy in Georgia who was recently found dead. He wanted to make sure his kids knew to believe him when he told them to be careful around strangers. And all parents seem to be like this, instilling complete paranoia about people. I'd like my hypothetical (as far as I know) kid to be careful and all, but I'd also want him to know that people in general are good. But I don't think anyone reads this to hear my thoughts on the ills of society, so I'll just say it was funny and move on.
In general I was pretty pleased with the show. All the sketches are kept short, so if they're not funny they're at least over quickly. Assuming the Acceptable TV viewers have similar tastes to me, it could be pretty great. If you don't want to watch the mini-pilots online, Acceptable TV looks like it's repeating a lot over the weekend on VH1. - Penn & Teller: Bullshit: I somehow missed that this had started back up, but hooray! I don't actually subscribe to Showtime, but I can usually find some time to park on a friend's couch to watch their most interesting stuff. Anyway, Bullshit is one of my favorites. They kind of worked their way past the good issues early on, and tend to overstate their cases on the stuff they come up with now, but even if when I think they are bullshitting as much as their targets, the show is still entertaining.
This week's topic: obesity. A perfect example of overstating cases. I agree that crash dieting is terrible for you, that the BMI is stupid, that the weight loss industry is full of misleading information and has a vested interest in their products not working, that the overweight are unfairly discriminated against, and that we're genetically programmed to eat as much food as we can so the industrialized world with abundant food should naturally start to get fat.
However, they make it sound like being really fat isn't that bad for you. I'm neither a doctor nor a nutritionist nor do I even follow my own advice, but it certainly seems like people who try to get some exercise and who eat somewhat sensibly are a heck of a lot healthier than lazy gluttons. I know two guys with diabetes and it has been extremely difficult for them. Had they taken better care of themselves, they wouldn't be dealing with these problems. So the message that being fat is ok seemed... overstated. But hey, the Fat Olympics were hilarious, especially the blue shirted guy knocking into every hurdle before finally just going around the last one. An average episode, but for a show that's typically good, I'm happy with that.
Still to watch: Nothing. I tried to watch Raines but fell asleep. And I wasn't all that tired, so I think I'm done recording it.
