Some Catching Up

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

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


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

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

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

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

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Massive Catch-up

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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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.

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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.

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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.

On the Tivo: FNL, Jericho, Knights of Prosperity.

Fortunately (sort of), there are mostly reruns tonight, so I'll probably get caught up.

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Tuesday Night TV

Highlight for spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Did I miss a scene? They had a long walk for gas to Naugataugatuck or whatever New England-y sounding town they had to get to, and I was thinking "wow, those shoes look like a bad choice to walk in," then they cut straight to Friday night dinner. A stressful Friday night dinner, but one that featured the best line the show's had in a long time: "Golf is really more like Richard III, you know? They're all hunched over." Lorelai and Emily had some nice scenes, but I'm not sure I buy mopey Richard. Even post-heart attack, he seems too proud to sloth around like that. Logan's story was kinda funny though. "Hey buddy, you're completely broke, ruined. In old movies you would have no clothes and be pictured wearing a barrel with shoulder straps. Oh, and happy birthday!"

• Veronica Mars: Three different plots going at once:
  • Coach mystery: Oh hey someone, I think on Televisionary, mentioned the peanut allergy as a possibility. It's probably a bad idea to mention Caged Heat in front of an ex-cop and his hot prisoner daughter. Great to see Vinnie Van Lowe back, even if his appearance is mostly pointless. The jealous husband thing had to be a red herring, just cause there were no clues to that at all in the previous episode... but doesn't Doctor/Patient confidentiality still apply after death? And I was sorta right (edit: I thought I mentioned it here last week but I guess I didn't) that the assistant coach having more dialogue than an extra normally should turned out to be sorta significant.
  
  
  • Dean mystery: Holy crap, Lamb died? I'm not sure how the whole Richard Greico thing ties in. And who bugged the professor's phone if Veronica and Keith didn't? Vinne Van Lowe? I'm confused about a lot of things, but it's blissful confusion. I love this plot... but I hope it wraps up soon. It seems a lot more complicated, at least to me, than the past extended mysteries. I think one episode dedicated to the Dean's murder to wrap things up should do it.
  
  
  • Non-mystery stuff: The scavenger hunt seems like a really bad idea. Mostly cause I can see kids drowning trying to get to that buoy. But I was glad to see them not win, I don't know why.

• Law & Order: SVU: I hate it when they get hot guest stars, cause inevitably something awful happens, and I feel kinda creepy for finding them hot. This week, Ashley Williams (sfw), who is stupidly cute and usually seems kinda fun/goofy. But fun/goofy doesn't really apply since here she lost her baby, got accused of killing the baby, then hung herself. Creepily, still cute. So then it turns into a custody battle after the biological abusive father shows up to challenge the drug mule compulsive gambler ex-husband. The second half was pretty dull. But have they written Munch and Finn off this show? I don't remember the last time I saw either.

On the Tivo: L&O: CI, that History Channel Star Trek thing.

Caught a commercial for regular L&O, and they're "ripping from the headlines" the OJ If I Did It book. Remember when it was unpredictable, gritty, and original?

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TV Catchup

Quick catchup on some Tuesday stuff, with more to come... highlight for spoilers:

• Law & Order: SVU: I'm normally not bothered by the wrongness of the crimes, but that candlestick was huge... nasty. Between the lame Jersey accent and the newfound portliness, I didn't recognize Cary Elwes until the episode was almost over. It was a decent episode, but damn I hate when the commercials ruin stuff like that. The suspect dying was a huge twist, and happened like... 40+ minutes in. But the commercial was "I'm ruling the death a homicide/You know as well as I do Elliot would never murder anyone." Would it kill them to advertise the drug angle, the mob angle, the nasty crime angle, or anything other than the one that would ruin the surprise?

• House: I never get tired of House being an asshole to his patients. And Cuddy. I feel like I've seen the whole Darkman can't feel pain thing on medical shows many times before, but I can't think of an example.
  
  All the doctors standing around watching House operate (and the girl leaning forward looking into her open stomach) was a cool scene. And the camera phone was a nice touch And if Chase is offended by being microwave pizza, I'd happily step up..

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Last Night's TV

Tuesday has been the most crowded TV night forever... fortunately (sort of), Dirt sucks, so unlike most of the year, there's nothing on F/X for me to want to catch. Highlight to reveal spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Weird episode. Party predictable... you could see a mile away that Luke would show up and Christopher wouldn't, Emily would obviously be her normal bitchy self then break down and show real emotion in the end, and Suki would make food. Still, the Logan end of things, I don't care for really. And the whole dissolution of the Lorelai/Christopher marriage seems to be happening way too fast.

• Veronica Mars: Started off with a half naked Veronica getting out of bed. Pure ratings stunt, and I love it. Yowza! A little progress in the Dean murder (seems like the TA's out, since he's secretly investigating, and they seem to have tossed the Dean's son in as a suspect) and not too much relationship drama (my least favorite part). The mystery of the week was fairly interesting. Sweet episode title (There's Got To Be A Morning After Pill). What I really appreciated was that the preacher father was a good man. I'm not a Christian, and I have as much distaste as anyone for nutjob fundamentalists, but most Christians are good people. And too often, Hollywood makes them all into Jerry Falwell. And as usual this season, the vast majority of supporting characters were nowhere to be seen. Wallace, Mac, Piz, Lamb, and Parker were all absent.

• Law & Order: SVU: Seems like they're only doing a lot of episodes lately that focus on only one of the detectives, and this is no exception. Stabler gets knocked out in a fight early on (was that Goldberg? I'm not a wrestling fan), so Olivia runs the whole show. In one of the more standard L&O franchise plots, a giant corporation is screwing over poor people, but their lawyers are so good, there may be no legal way to make the corporation pay for it.
  

Still parked on the Tivo: House, L&O: CI.

Lost comes back tonight, so hop on your favorite forum full of crazies and make wild speculation, analyze minute details in single frames, and don't get too upset when nothing ends up happening.

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