While feeling excited that Veronica Mars is in good shape for next year, I caught up on The Riches, and then started in on Tuesday Night TV. When watching Gilmore Girls, I started getting the feeling that the commercial breaks were long, so I went back and checked the times. One was over 5 minutes, another was 4:40. Whatever happened to two minutes and two seconds, Chuck Woolery? My Tuesday night rundown after the jump...
The Riches: Wayne wants to be a partner at PanCo (with keys to the executive washroom... "I want to wipe my ass with a swan!"), and Hugh won't decide til the Malloys (or Riches) have him over for dinner. So the family's in a panic to throw a buffer dinner party.
Dahlia runs into Chunky K, her cell mate from prison who killed her husband, and even though she knows she should run away, she brings the friend home to show off the house. Wayne's obviously upset, but you can tell immediately how close they were. Chunky K's not having Dahlia's luck though, renting a fold-out couch that she has to fight two pit bulls (Britney and K-Fed) for, so Dahlia invites her to stay with them. Doug is freaking out though when she doesn't seem to leave and the dinner party's coming up soon. But Dahlia thinks its their duty to spread their good fortune around, and hires Chunky K to be their maid.
At the party, Chunky K's having trouble holding it together. She has a business idea breeding rabbits for meat, and Hugh laughs in her face. Sam doesn't help matters by coming downstairs in drag. Later, holding a knife to carve the pork (a nice choice for fake Jews), she seems to have flashes of killing her husband. Chunky K throws a fit, embarassing everyone, except apparently Hugh who ends up with his face buried in K's rather Chunky cleavage snorting what I assume is cocaine.
Thanks to K, Hugh agrees to make Doug a partner, but when presented with the papers by a noticeably high Hugh, Doug has second thoughts. Dahlia says it's because they're turning into buffers. Chunky K takes off with a big wad of cash, most of it given to her by Dahlia but some stolen. And in a strange development, we learn that Nina (the Riches' neighbor) has been in denial for years about her husband's homosexuality.
Gilmore Girls: Lorelai did give Logan her blessing, though they kinda glossed over it, as Gilmore Girls often does. Logan ends up proposing at a graduation party thrown by the grandparents, and Rory says she needs time to think. This is a show about girls, but can you imagine the hell Logan's going through while she weighs her options. She thinks about it for a while but decides she likes being at a point in her life where her options are open. Logan takes it hard and ends their relationship entirely.
Rory's graduating, and the entire town apparently wants to come, but tickets are in short supply, so somehow town outrage snowballs into planning an entire graduation reenactment in the Stars Hollow town square, but I guess that's not until next week.
Luke decides to reciprocate the sentiment from Lorelai's karaoke serenade and gets her a gift, but overhears Lorelai try to downplay the significance of it, and is completely crushed. They have an insane conversation when Rory was thinking about Logan's proposal that was one of those about-one-thing-but-really-about-another conversations that only happens on TV.
Veronica Mars: Desmond Fellows, played by Paul Rudd, is the guitarist from a band called My Pretty Pony, whose lead singer died ten years ago. He plans to play a benefit concert for Piz's radio station by playing along to old tapes of background vocals, but the tapes disappear, so Veronica's on the case. 
Desmond's a hilariously (more on that later) drunk has-been, who Piz almost gets back into songwriting, but a news report comes on showing his old band, and he goes right back to Behind the Music downward spiral. So will they find the tapes, allowing him to continue to suckle at the teat of past glory, or somehow fix the guy and have him do a concert of original material and turn his life around?
Well it turns out to be both. They find the tapes, arrive at the show, but call Desmond from outside and tell him they won't get there in time, so he'll have to fill. He plays his new stuff and everyone loves it, for an atypically happy ending for Veronica Mars.
Still, Paul Rudd is possibly the best guest star the show's ever had. And they gave him a lot of great lines:
There was also a bunch of relationship crap. Mac broke up with Bronson, probably to be with Max. Veronica continues to push Piz away and then be inexplicably forward. Logan gets all jealous of Piz. And Deputy Leo is back, and again a deputy.
The one development that wasn't relationship-y but was really awesome, is that Keith's opponent in the Sheriff elections is going to be Vinnie Van Lowe. I'm excited about that one.
The Shield: Vic's on the warpath after learning that Guardo didn't kill Lem. He visits Antwon (Anthony Anderson, one of the many awesome recurring guest stars on the show) and threatens him with everything under the sun, but Antwon is mostly proud at how Vic thinks he's a supervillain.
Vendrell is trying to push the blame back on Guardo, saying that Hernan is lying, but he pushes a little too hard. And for the first time Vic and Gardocki are thinking Shane might have done it. They count 73 grenades that they picked up before Lem's death, and will check that count against the number in the bomb squad locker. But they find 73 in the locker, and are terribly relieved. But Vic gets a hold of the lab report and Kavanaugh's confession, and when he reads it, he gets a look on his face like he's been kicked in the nuts. Gardocki later informs Vendrell that they need to meet at the site of Lem's murder to walk through the lab report and check it. But Gardocki isn't coming.
Vendrell shows up and its just him and Vic, and Vic knows everything. Considering the matters at hand, the words they exchange are surprisingly calm. But Vic makes one thing crystal clear: if he ever sees Shane again, he will kill him.
Guardo's girlfriend who the strike team kidnapped comes in asking Dutch about Guardo, Salseda, and her time in "protective custody." So Dutch and Colette are now suspecting Vic in Guardo's disappearance. They get Vic into the interrogation room without telling him who's in there, but he covers his ass pretty well. Dutch and Claudette are still suspicious, but as usual they have no real evidence.
The strike team catches a case where a city counselor's daughter is murdered. Turns out she was trading sex for drugs, which would be ugly for the counselor (and the barn, since he controls the purse strings). They find the guy who did it, and Vic convinces the guy to come up with a less racy story to confess to in exchange for a shorter sentence. And for his efforts, the counselor's going to try to pull some strings to keep Vic on the job.
Despite not just flipping out like he often does, Michael Chiklis' performance was really strong. It's hard to believe what we saw could be considered understated, but given the chair throwing, vein popping Mackey we've seen lately, it was relatively understated.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Tuesday Night TV
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Catching Up
Not only did I not catch HBO's Sunday lineup and crash early Monday, but I didn't get a chance to watch anything Tuesday night at all. I blame the government. So I'm going to be playing catch up all week. The Riches, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, and The Shield after the jump.
The Riches: Returning from the funeral, Hugh is flipping out over his missing money, and Wayne's been missing for two days, making him the prime suspect. To avoid suspicion, he says he was gone recruiting a rich investor. So the Malloys go looking for a mark. And they find one in an ex-baseball player/ex-con. Hookers, fast cars, statutory rape, and a sex addict. Cael thinks this guy is the greatest guy ever. Dahlia goes undercover at a sex addict support group with him ("Well the co-pilot was there too"). It takes... oh, about a half a second to hook the guy in ("Good thing I'm ambidextrous!") by playing to his addiction. Very sensitive.
They convince him that Wayne is Dahlia's ex, and that he's about to close a huge business deal that'll make him "richer than God," and he falls for it in a second. The one problem being that they need extra people to pull off the con, so they have to recruit some amateurs who make the whole situation extra stressful, but they pull the con off without a hitch. They managed to steal $500,000, but they're giving it all to PanCo.
In the end, when Wayne says next time they should keep the money and run, he and Dahlia come to the scary realization that they can't run, that they've settled in as the Riches and this is their home now. Best Wayne moment: "You know when you keep something in a hedge? Well, imagine a fund... hedge... uh...."
Gilmore Girls: The season finale isn't far away, and it sounds like it'll be aired before anyone knows the fate of the show, which sucks. It's always best for a show to know it's going to be canceled ahead of time so they can wrap things up nicely. Anyway, on to the show. They totally fooled me with a dream intro, showing Rory in a Chilton uniform made me think I was watching a rerun. Rory's freaking out about her future, having passed on a great job to hold out for a New York Times internship, and the Times later turning her down. I love that Rory had a birthday party at the Mark Twain house, since I didn't grow up too far from Hartford, and as a kid, that was the only museum type place that I thought was cool.
Lane's kids have some sort of lullaby thing playing a little baby version of "Boys Don't Cry," which is very cool in a Lane sort of way. Zack got a gig with some band touring over the summer, and they've agreed to take him and Lane and the kids. But Lane realizes she can't go, with two babies. But even though Zack wants to bail entirely, she insists that he go.
Lorelai takes Rory to a karaoke bar to cheer her up, and after a pretty awesome Culture Club cover by Kirk, Lorelai takes the mic to sing for Rory's gradutation, doing a pretty darn good rendition of "I Will Always Love You." So naturally, Luke walks in mid-song, and it takes on a whole new meaning. They're really laying it on thick lately. Perhaps my favorite moment of Luke and Lorelai's relationship happened in this episode, involving Luke's hat. Lorelai was all excited because she had given him a blue hat, which he hadn't worn since they broke up, but suddenly he was wearing it again. She thought this was a really big sign and was all excited, but in the end, we learn that Luke had dropped his other hat in the dishwasher.
We end on a cliffhanger as Logan gets a job in San Francisco, and asks for Lorelai's permission to propose to Rory. She looks horrified and the credits kick in before she gives an answer. I didn't care for the cliffhanger, but it was a pretty good episode. It's definitely past its prime, but the show's been a lot better lately than it has been the previous year and a half or so.
Veronica Mars: Finally, it's back! A local restaurant owned by Arabs is vandalized, and the owner comes to Mars Investigations to hire Keith, but since he's busy getting his sheriff on, Veronica takes the case. She not only catches the vandal, but she helps the father learn about his daughter's Jewish boyfriend and learn to accept it and get a disturbingly anti-American immigrant deported.
A 19 year old got loaded at a bar owned by Rescue Me's Chief Jerry (Jack McGee), walked outside, and got hit by a car. He had a bad fake I.D., but Chief Jerry doesn't even really care, so Keith is trying to crack down on ID checking. But his deputies mysteriously turn up nothing. Keith visits Chief Jerry's bar again, and finds Wallace and Piz there, checks their IDs, and immediately recognizes Veronica's handiwork (she hooked them up in exchange for them testing drinks for roofies at the frat party a while back). So he gets them to go to a bar with really awful fake IDs (John Bon Jovi and Biggie Smalls) to check on the Deputies, and cans the ones who don't catch it.
A bunch of relationship-y stuff happens later on. Logan's throwing a party for Parker, and Veronica has to act like a grownup and pretend to be over everything and go and be happy. Logan seems really happy though which makes her feel worse and feel even more guilty for feeling bad. Mac's still with Bronson, but it sounds like things are not all that great. She ends up on a couch at the party with Max, the test-selling hooker-loving geek we've seen a few times this year, and they seem to hit it off. Finally, Piz grows some cajones and makes a move on Veronica, which shouldn't have worked but did. It felt forced and stupid.
A fairly interesting case and the usual dose of wit and Lebowski references made it an ok episode, but I'm hoping for a little more for the rest of what hopefully isn't the last season.
The Shield: Gardocki shaved! Just one of several shocking moments this week.
Colette puts strike team on the machete massacre earlier in the season. Hyatt takes the lead and other new guy Julien is helping out. He's got a lot to learn about the strike team, and Vic isn't a great teacher but Hyatt is an excellent mediator, knowing both Vic and Julien's point of view. Dutch can't keep his mouth shut about Hernan, and spills the beans to Hyatt. They head out to Hernan, who tells them not only that the machete murders weren't Salvadoran, but that Guardo didn't kill Lem.
Vendrell gets the crap kicked out of him, and now that Heist is canceled, Mara is back. He got jumped because of Tilly, and Mara finds out and pitches a fit. With the guilt he's carrying, he doesn't care much about the beating or Mara, but Tilly calls his cell and Mara answers, so she kicks him out. He goes on a bender snorting ground up Oxycontin (can you do that? I'm drug-ignorant), and wanders back home, confessing to Mara that he killed Lem, in what would've been an awesome surprise had they not put "I killed Lem!" as the first three words of the commercials that ran during The Riches (thanks, FX!)
Dutch is still on the rape, and a concerned father shows up. Or is he a concerned father? The second he showed up, I thought he might be the guy, and Billings gets the same idea shortly after. They come up with a B.S. excuse to talk to him in interrogation, and one of the victims IDs his voice. He claims to have done it to generate publicity about runaways in the hopes of getting his own daughter's case re-opened. Or something. He was creepy. And he molested his own daughter, just to make it that much weirder. And thanks to the press coverage, he finds out that his daughter's dead.
Carl Weathers makes a return appearance, offering Vic a little off-the-books work that may be a preview of his life after retirement. Since Arrested Development, I have a hard time taking Carl Weathers seriously. I keep expecting him to say "Baby we got a stew going." It wasn't a very important storyline, except I think to make Vic appreciate his job a little more, and to provide a little dark comedy with Weathers' partner's incredibly gross treatment of drug dealers.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Monday Night TV
NBC tried an underhanded trick to ruin what could be a nice night of television by having Heroes run a minute long so my DVR won't record the 10:00 Riches and then I'll watch that Wedding Crashers reality show. Fat chance. All they accomplish is that I wait another hour to start watching everything, shortening the gap between Heroes and the 11:00 Riches, skipping more commercials in the process. Sure, I don't have a Nielsen box, so they don't lose anything from it, but I feel like it's a moral victory. Spoilers for those two shows plus Drive after the jump.
Drive: The movie doesn't turn out nearly as informative as I'd hoped, but for improving the most from checkpoint one to checkpoint two, Alex and Corrina get a head start, letting them skip the next checkpoint. But there's a price to pay for their lead: when they arrive at their destination, they find that they have to rob a bank to get their next clue or whatever. 
Winston and Sean decide it'd be faster to just follow them. We learn in the process that Winston was in jail for armed robbery. Which is convenient, since they're tailing someone who needs help in committing armed robbery. Even more convenient, Sean seems to be some kind of hacker. Not the real kind, where it takes actual effort and preparation to break into a computer, but the movie kind where you can sit down and type for a few minutes and gain access. The bank heist is surprisingly easy, until a cop shows up, shoots Sean, and Sean shoots the cop, Dear Sister-style.
Wendy gets a call from Cindy Williams saying her kid might be in trouble. Does this mean Laverne (or Shirley? I never watched that show) doesn't work for the race, and that Wendy just ditched the baby with a friend or something? I dunno, but Wendy decides she wants to quit the race and save her baby. But Ivy wants that money, and amusingly doesn't know how to drive, so she pulls her gun and is forcing Wendy to continue.
Rob checks in with his commanding officer and discovers what Ellie had been hiding from him. Turns out his unit shipped out two weeks ago, so she'd been hiding it for quite a while, huh? Anyway, he's got a court-martial waiting for him if he ever goes back, so Rob is pissed enough to throw the race phone out the window. No idea where this leaves them, but subsequent events lead me to believe that people don't drop out of the race very easily.
Which brings us to Leigh and Susan, Ivy's old partners. They kept coming to Rome, GA, after getting their tires shot out and abandoned by one of their partners, but when they finally make it there, they're told that it's too late. Susan says God has been speaking to her, and that they have to continue. Conveniently, someone just threw their race phone out the window, so now they're back in. Less convenient is the fact that someone runs them off the road shortly after. With her last breath after the wreck, Susan says that God told her that Leigh was going to win. On a mission from God, eh?
It's 106 miles to Appomattox, Leigh's got a full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes... and actually she has none of those things. But she is hitching to Appomattox. Our bank robbers are trying to save Sean, who's now passed out, and Alex has some kind of plan involving a motel. Actually a bit of an improvement over last week, but I was hoping for more. It's still interesting, but Drive hasn't made the leap into can't-miss territory yet. But speaking of can't-miss....
Heroes: Oh, how I've missed it. Hiro has his sword but is trapped in post-disaster New York, Linderman makes an offer Nathan might not be able to refuse, Primatech has Parkman in custody, Claire is on the run, and what everyone's really excited about: the Sylar-Peter face-off. So naturally we pick up with an obviously fake version of Claire trying to mess with Bennett's head and an evil speech from Eric Roberts. But Candice is still really hot, so I don't mind the tease.
Nathan and Linderman are still discussing their proposal. Linderman shows off his own power, which is to heal things. At least plants, but it'd be a boring power if it was just that. But Linderman gives his "here's why I'm evil" speech, and I'm guessing almost every comic book fan watching found the whole thing disturbingly familiar, except that his office has fancy Japanese artifacts instead of Egyptian. Hopefully, it's just an homage and doesn't turn the series into a complete ripoff. I don't think we heard Nathan's response, but he's certainly considering it.
We finally pick up with the big fight. Peter quickly recovers from the telekinetic buzzsaw to the forehead, uses some telekinesis of his own, and turns invisible, but Sylar sends shards of glass in all directions, and one goes through the back of Peter's skull, killing him. Mohinder knocks Sylar out and takes Peter's body and the list to Mrs. Petrelli... but did anyone think he wouldn't be coming right back to life?
It sounds like Mrs. Petrelli has some powers of her own, and had a bad experience in Linderman's old group of crime busters or whatever, so she wants to keep Claire away from that world until she can make an informed choices. But they leave us hanging as to what Mrs. Petrelli's powers are. When Peter's body shows up, he comes back to life pretty quickly, and Claire gets to meet her father. They share a familial moment, but they hint with some ominous music that he wants Claire to run to Paris not to protect her from the hero mess, but because he's going to go along with Linderman.
Sylar shows up at Isaac's studio, and of course Isaac knows he's coming. So we finally see Isaac's death that Hiro saw so early on. But Isaac ships off a bunch of his artwork before he dies, and implies that that will show everyone how to kill Sylar.
Bennett thinks loud enough to give Parkman instructions on how to break out, and Parkman finds out something scary on the way out, stopping to pick up nuclear Ted. The plan is for Ted to generate an EMP to get them out. Which apparently only Bennett knew he could do. But it works. And they discuss their future plans at the Burnt Toast Cafe, naturally. We get the amusing revelation that Bennett's a middle manager and knew nothing about his organization. Their plan is first to go to New York to destroy the system that tracks powered people, then go after Linderman (who, in the least interesting subplot, has just kidnapped Micah).
We conclude with Hiro and Ando in the future. Hiro decides that the way to prevent the disaster it is to figure out their mistakes from the future before traveling back to fix them. When poking around for clues in Isaac's apartment, he finds his own future self, perfect English and all, who seems unhappy to see our more familiar Hiro, and that's where we leave off.
I'm a little concerned about the lack of originality from the villain (I'm being vague because comic book fans will know what I'm talking about, while those not in the know might find the comic and its inevitable movie adaptation at some point in the future to be less fun if they're thinking the bad guy is just like Linderman the whole time... but if you're curious, and don't mind spoilers, click on this link for the bio of the Linderman-like character), but the show is still slickly done and exciting, so I'll try not to think too much about it.
The Riches: Dale calls Dahlia in (fake) tears to report on his father's death. Dahlia was close to Earl, so she wants to go to the funeral, which means scrounging up some cash to pay back at least most of the money they stole so that Dale won't immediately kill them.
The Malloys aren't exactly greeted warmly when they return home by anyone except Dale's mother. Lots of menacing glares and even a little spitting at their feet. After the funeral, two big things going on: traveler funerals are frequently accompanied by traveler weddings so Di Di's in trouble, and Dahlia confronts Dale about Earl's death.
It doesn't take much to figure out that Earl's guilty, so Dahlia tries to convince everyone else, but Dale's mother is in denial, so all Dahlia can do is get really pissed, shoot holes in Dale's roof, and leave.
Between selling out the location of the Malloys to Dale, and the fact that Dahlia's out of state on parole, Ginny has the family by the balls, but Di Di can't quite say "I do" ("No, I can't. What the hell is wrong with you people?" is the closest she can get). Still, Ginny won't sell them out if Di Di fulfills Ken's dream to "consummate." There is no "I" in team, but their might be an "ewwww," cause Di Di sounds willing to bite that bullet. But when Ken comes in to enjoy his non-wedding night, Di Di explains the situation, and Ken shows that while his sister might be a huge bitch, he's still a pretty nice guy, and refuses to go along with the blackmail. Whew.
But you have to feel for Ken, who could've had his dream come true, but has his heart broken instead, and even though his entire family being a bunch of evil bastards, he's still a good guy. And his reward for his good deeds is a savage beating from Dale, who now knows that Ken knows where the Malloys live.
A lot more intense than usual, but not as funny either, which is an ok trade off. Lots of great scenes for people other than Wayne, which is a nice change from him normally stealing the show. As with every episode, I think, since the pilot, it wasn't perfect, but still pretty good.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
More Catching Up
Still catching up, with this week's Riches after the jump:
The Riches: Ken is moving in, because it's tradition for the future son-in-law to live with the family leading up to the wedding. It's also tradition for him to apprentice with the father-in-law. So borderline retarded Ken is working at the law office, which obviously can't last. After amusingly stapling himself, Ken ends up bringing Di Di her lunch. When he gets to her school, there's a police search underway, and a bag of pot gets passed around like a hot potato from Cael's friends to Ken to Di Di to the cops, and she's busted, which means trouble. Wayne tries to talk her out of jail, but it's actually Dahlia who rescues Di Di.
Sweet Dee is back, as the plaintiff in an unwinnable case. Apparently she lost her arm to an alligator after Panetta built housing in the middle of a gator habitat. But Wayne (with an assist from Aubrey) finds out she has a shoplifting problem, and Wayne uses that to save the company a lot of money.
Back with the travellers, Dale is even more pissed, if that's possible, upon learning that his father thinks he's a sociopath and that he was going to make Wayne the leader of their group. At the end of the episode he takes his father out into the middle of nowhere and leaves him for dead.
Wayne and Panetta do some bonding in the sauna. I don't think you're supposed to drink in those places. Despite telling everyone that she's dead, Wayne's mother actually left his family when he was very young. And Hugh is actually not that rich. He's "mortgaged up to my eyeballs." Dahlia also did some bonding with Hugh, and she's now his personal assistant. She's acting considerably crazier than normal, a combination of stress and the addiction, I think, but Panetta seems to love the crazy stuff.
Wayne had a few really funny moments, Ken added some laughs with his stupidity, and Di Di had some of her best scenes yet dealing with Ken. She's obviously embarrassed and repulsed, but she feels bad for him too. Another quality episode. I'm really enjoying this show. It's not great, but it's consistently good, with a nice mix of family drama and comedy.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Monday Night TV
Well, I'd intended to write a little review of Thank God You're Here, but it was just too painful to actually watch the whole thing. The sketch was way too long and just not that good. Plus, David Alan Grier looks really old. TV Squad, fresh off a redesign that I don't think I care for, posted a bunch of videos from the show a while back, and they were similarly not that good. Speaking of redesigns, The Daily Show has a new set, which will take some getting used to. But let's get down to business.
Spoilers for The Riches below:
The Riches: The best scenes this week, as always, were with Wayne at work. He and Aubrey are really developing a chemistry.
"We've been working together a while now."
"Four days."
"I think you should call me Wayne. No, Doug. Doug's better."
For the first time, Wayne's really over his head with a case, though, to the point where he has to fake narcolepsy to find a way out. But to get around complicated legal issues like Eminent Domain ("it's how you steal people's property... because you want to."), he figures out that he can be a guest lecturer at a local college, getting law students to give him answers. Pretty slick.
Dahlia is bored. Very, very bored. But then she discovers that the late Mrs. Rich was a dental hygienist. Dahlia is hired by Mac from Night Court. She has a pretty funny scene where she fakes her way through a cleaning, but then of course stumbles onto lots of drugs. I felt like it could've been a better scene, like when Lost's Charlie found the Virgin Mary statues full of heroin, but they kinda blew right past it. I guess it couldn't last though, a hygienist who can't clean teeth and who steals drugs would get fired or arrested pretty quickly, and it turns out Dr. Mac had just lost his wife, and ends up killing himself. But this just makes her realize she misses Wayne, and it looks like she'll be working with Wayne at Panetta's offices.
Ginny has of course been spying on the family, and apparently sneaking into the fridge and giving her baby fetal alcohol syndrome. And it looks like she's struck a deal to not sell them out, but it requires Ken, Di Di's sorta fiancee, to move in with the Malloys.
Good episode again. A few laughs, Dahlia finally did something for herself rather than just be motherly, and with Ken moving in, I'm excited to see where things are going.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Monday Night TV
I always get wordy with Prison Break because there's always so much going on, even when it's not all that interesting. So sorry for the lengthy writeup. Highlight for spoilers:
- Prison Break: Kellerman testifies to framing Burrows and to being under orders to kill Sara. The whole "nobody will believe me, they erased any record that I ever existed" thing flew out the window, and the judge vaguely references corroborating documents (that as far as I know never previously existed) in the process of dismissing charges against Sara and Burrows and arresting Kellerman. Much later, Kellerman's in prisoner transport, and you know that's not going to go smoothly. The show continues to cop out though, because when two masked guys bust open the transport van and shoot inside, they zoom out and don't show us Kellerman get shot. So now we're pretty sure they just shot the anonymous guard and abducted Kellerman.
Sucre takes off against doctor's orders. Bellick and T-Bag are stuck in the same prison, and Maricruz's location is stuck in there with them. And then that's it for all those characters in this episode.
Michael uses himself as a bargaining chip to some marina mobster guy, on a boat full of rather attractive women in bikinis. Arriving at Mahone's designated location, Michael hides the money just as Kim shows up, and Mahone plans to frame Schofield and Burrows for the murder he's about to commit, then take the money and the boat and live happily ever after with that crazy lady from Rescue Me. But plans like that never work out, and Kim shows up with some muscle, giving our heroes enough time to escape. Schofield's slick plan with the mobster was to hide a bunch of drugs on the boat and call in a tip to screw over Mahone.
Sara makes it down to Panama and lets them know about Kellerman and the charges. They enjoy an emotional moment of celebration, but their relief is all too brief, because Kim shows up to hold them at gun point. And by the rules of Prison Break, that means their escape is guaranteed. Which is assured when Sarah shoots him in the gut. So now they're fleeing Panamanian cops for that murder, and they left all the money in the river, which has got to suck. Michael and Sara share a brief "I love you" moment before he takes the blame for her. So Michael, Bellick, Mahone, and T-Bag all appear to be stuck in Panamanian jail... is next season going to be Panamanian Prison Break?
But they take Michael and Mahone to a place with "sona" on the door, which the evil old guy mentioned earlier in this episode as important sounding, so we're looking at some crazy conspiracy stuff. The evil old guy is revealed to be some kind of general, and his assistant says "you know he's gonna break out, it's in his blood," and evil old general says "that's exactly what we want him to do." And the season ends with Michael walking through a creepy looking prison hallway and out into a rainy area that sounds like a gladiator arena. Huh? TV Squad had an article marked as spoilery for the third season about it being all weird, which I won't be reading probably ever because I'm spoiler-paranoid, but now the potential weirdness makes sense. I have no idea where they're going with this, and I'll keep watching next year, but I can't say I'm particularly excited to find out. - The Riches: Wow, the "Previously on The Riches..." segment was like 20 minutes long. We pick up Cael and Tammy in the diner with Dale on their tail. Cael turns out to not be the world's biggest moron, and realizes she's setting him up. He's smooth though and avoids Dale, but it looks like the crazy pregnant lady from the pilot (whose name might be Ginny?) is following him.
The stoner guitar guy from last week is conveniently in Di Di's English class. If you couldn't tell that he's a rebel last week from his guitar playing, because he wears a jacket over his school uniform. And Cael's ability to steal stuff looks like it'll make him instantly popular at rich buffer school.
Nina the neighbor remains awesome, mentioning to Wayne in passing that her husband hasn't had sex with her in five years before fondling the extremely phallic handle of her mug. And explains how she doesn't have a drug problem because they're prescription pills, and how her neighbors like animal porn, eat broccoli, and run off with 17 year olds. Then lights up a joint. I think she's still billed as a guest star, but I really hope she's always on, cause she's hilarious.
Wayne's picked up on Dahlia's drug problem, though, and that's leading to more than a little tension. Sounds like she started using because she hated Wayne for getting her sent to prison.
This show really shines when Wayne has to make shit up. "I mean, we are completely against anyone blowing up. Even a little bit." "When I'm nervous, I refer to myself in the third person."
So the Riches are Jewish? I have no idea why Dahlia tilted her cross necklace crooked and called it an "x" rather than just saying it was a "t," but the bumbling "x marks the Jew" speech was amusingly awkward. And Doug had an ex-wife who's hot for alimony? Complications galore.
They tackle the ex-wife issue this week, running an alpaca-based con against the ex's crooked lawyer. It works out pretty smoothly, but of course, Wayne still manages to get impulsive and wanders into the ex-wife's house. It sounds like Doug was a huge asshole, holding out on his wife long enough for her to lose her house and their kids to end up in a homeless shelter. It's a really good scene though where Wayne acts as the lawyer and pretends to have Doug on the phone, but he's really talking to Dahlia as they're able to make up.
Hey speaking of huge assholes, Panetta's at the same party as the Malloys, wanders into the bathroom, sees Dahlia sneaking some pills, and gropes her. That was a totally weird scene.
Still to watch: Nothing.
The Shield kicks off tomorrow, plus FX ran a cool looking promo for Rescue Me this summer.
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.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Monday Night TV
Another rerun-heavy week, with basically nothing on tomorrow, but some shows of note tonight. Highlight for spoilers:
- Prison Break We pick up the action at el aeropuerto, where Sucre and Bellick chase T-Bag and his recently recovered bag o' cash. When T-Bag gets away, Bellick uses the fact that he's apparently kidnapped Maricruz to compel Sucre to keep helping him. Bellick sounds especially stupid this week, threatening a Mexican guy in Mexico by pretending to be INS, and using the line "your sweet little plum is going to dry up like a raisin." T-Bag uses his escape to apparently nail and then murder a prostitute.
Linc and Schofield are about to board their freighter, with Michael inviting Sara long. She notices a tail though, and rather than tell Michael, who'd miss his ship out, Sara takes one for the team and says she's already on board. It also seems like she's had time while on the run from the law to get her hair done and do a nice job applying her makeup, as she's suddenly looking especially hot.
C-Note gets offered a walk plus witness protection for his whole family in exchange for testifying against Mahone, and obviously takes it. I think this might actually be the end of his story, since he's probably the most deserving of a happy ending.
Mahone, meanwhile, is having an A Beautiful Mind moment, looking all crazy (which I'm sure is playing right into the hands of the guys working with C-Note to bury him). Schofield's plan is apparently to get to a yacht, which Mahone's crazy pattern recognition, plus a little research, is able to pick up on. He posts a message on that finch webpage about T-Bag being in Panama (where he's showing a preference for a certain type in prostitutes), and Michael falls for the bait, which is likely going to be the focus of next week's episode.
Conspiracy-wise, Agent Kim meets with the mysterious bald old guy we keep seeing in a boat, since it was apparently a blind spot from satellites, but it looked just like the boat where they killed Fredo in The Godfather Part II. So I was expecting old bald guy to kiss him and say "You broke my heart, Kim!" then pop him twice in the head. But instead, it was vague conspiracy talk. Yawn.
Another decent episode, not as good as last week, but still pretty entertaining. I still keep wondering how the show can possibly last through a third season, since it seems to be going to great lengths to stretch things out already. But who knows. - The Riches: I'm still not clear as to whether Eddie Izzard's character is actually supposed to be born into the traveler lifestyle, or some kind of outsider who married his way in... or if he's even supposed to be American. But the voiceover in the previously is a lot more American-accented, so he probably is. They're both good actors, but why they got two Brits to play Americans in the South is beyond me. But if you can get past the accents, there's a lot to like.
In the opening scene, Dahlia makes Wayne promise not to answer Doug's phone, so that left us absolutely sure he would answer that phone at some point.
The action starts up with the family trying to come up with details about the family so they can keep up their cover. The information gathering out of the computer was kinda cool. The amount you could find out about a person from that is pretty disturbing, so be careful with your laptops. I wouldn't want some nefarious type knowing... uh... the disturbing amount of TV I watch?
Wayne trying on Rich's clothes was amusing. I flashed to that Arrested Development episode where Michael kept looking like a kid around Sally Sitwell, and was forced to wear an oversized jacket to have lunch at that club. And his interview was awesome. "Napoleon used to say 'I know he's a brilliant general, but is he lucky?' He used to say it in French." Great line.
We get a little more insight into the kids this episode. Apparently the teenage son, Cael (IMDB spells it Cael, but it sounds like "Cal"), has a girlfriend back in the traveler camp. Phone calls to her will be a problem at some point. And it's kinda cool that the neighbors think that they have a second daughter.
Dahlia's cookie-microwaving attempt to be all WASP housewife-y to score more pills was pretty amusing. Nothing says classy like taking a swig of cough syrup and stashing the bottle back in your fancy handbag. Or pimping out your teenage daughter so you can steal your RV out of an impound lot (and since the actress who plays Di Di is in her 20's, I don't feel creepy for saying she's totally hot... also I finally realized where I recognized her from - a recent episode of Psych).
Things go pretty well for the family this episode, with Wayne getting the job from Mitch Huntzberger (I forgot his name here) and all that, but I get the feeling they're about to get ugly. The phone Wayne wasn't supposed to answer, which as expected he does pick up at the end, leaves things off on a somewhat ominous note.
Some more random thoughts:
Sweet Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia shows up as the bitchy neighbor, which was pretty awesome just cause I like her, and it was made much more awesome by the fact that her arm fell off in the middle of an argument. I did not see that coming. I hope she's a regular.
The opening credits are pretty trippy, huh? I took a look at the official website, and it's similarly weird. But cool.
Are security guards allowed to actually dress that much like real cops?
Nothing endears you to a character quite like having him drag a pregnant chick out of a car, throw her to the ground, and when a guy comes to her aid, hit him with a tire iron. I'm enjoying all of Dale's scenes.
My issue with the pilot was that I sorta expected a mix of drama and comedy (I hate the word "dramedy" though I guess it applies), but it was fairly laugh-free. This episode was excellent though. I'm almost certainly in for the long haul with this show.
On the Tivo: Everybody Hates Chris.
FX has got The Shield promos coming pretty much non-stop, and I'm excited. My one complaint with all FX shows (including The Shield and The Riches) is that they run over every week by a random number of minutes between 1 and 5, and I usually only get the first minute over recorded. This means if I watch something else at 10, I try to record the 11:00 rerun of the FX show. And sometimes the recording starts with the ending of the episode I'm about to start, which sucks. It's not a problem for now, since I don't watch anything Monday at 10, but it's annoying. I had to record the 11:00 rerun tonight just to catch the end of the episode.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
The Riches
FX, to me, has had a great track record for original programming. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, and The Shield are all appointment viewing for me. But after Over There and Dirt, which were both more than a little disappointing, I was a little worried about the direction the network was heading. But The Riches looks somewhat promising.
Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver star as part of a family of gypsy con artists who live in an RV. Minnie Driver's character was just released from prison and has a drug problem, Izzard seems to be tiring of the traveling life and wants something better, and we don't get much of a look at their kids, but they are... around. Without giving too much away, they are unexpectedly given an opportunity to assume the identities of a rich family who are moving into a neighborhood where nobody knows them.
It's hard to make too much out of the pilot, which seems to be nothing but exposition for the series, but it leaves me interested in what will happen next, which is a good sign at the end of a first episode. The obvious class conflict provided by a bunch of WASP-y millionaires living next to a family who lived in a filthy RV only a few days earlier, the constant struggle not to be discovered as frauds, it seems like there's a lot to work with. And, although Minnie Driver has a couple scenes were her southern accent sounds ridiculous, the performances are top notch. I've never cared all that much for Eddie Izzard's stand up (he's funny, I guess, but doesn't blow me away like he does a lot of people), but I've always enjoyed him as an actor. And Gregg Henry, who's been all over the place on TV the past few years, makes an appearance as well.
The Riches premieres Monday, March 12, at 10pm on FX. The pilot is available online here.
