A random new Criminal Intent and The Riches will wait until later, I only had time for Heroes and Everybody Hates Chris tonight, which are both after the jump.
Heroes: Hiro and Ando find a Deus Ex Machina ad in the yellow pages for a swordsmith, where Hiro's father is waiting for him. Mr. Nakamura is among the older generation of heroes who do not agree with Linderman, and he trains Hiro to be able to fight Sylar. We get no insight into his powers specifically, but the impression we get is that in a day, Hiro has learned to be a total badass with a samurai sword, so maybe Mr. Nakamura's power is to teach people things with a single training montage.
Peter learns to handle Ted's powers in time (though Claire was ready to pop him in the head if she had to), and they decide to split the group up, with Peter, Claire, and Ted headed to the country to keep everyone with explosive powers out of the city until the threat is past. That didn't work out too well, though, since Sylar was hot on their tail the whole time. He sicks the feds on them, and waits until Ted is in custody to break in, crack open his skull and steal his powers. Bennett and Parkman, meanwhile, are off to kill the tracking device. Bennett knew it was a person, but didn't know it was cute little Molly. Mohinder busts in with a gun just in time, and he and Bennett engage in the world's longest Mexican standoff (they literally appear to be standing with guns pointed at each other and Molly for about 45 minutes).
Thanks to Linderman, Nathan's election is fixed (as expected), and so is his wife (as expected). Micah rigs the vote count (apparently all the city's voting machines are networked across precincts, which is a terrible idea) to be a landslide in Nathan's favor, which seems pretty dumb. 52-48 gets Nathan in Congress just the same, and given that the exit polls put Nathan 5 points behind, it wouldn't seem as fishy. But whatever. Nathan's wife gets a lengthy handshake from Linderman that heals her paralysis, but she has to stay in the wheelchair in public, I think because if she stood up now, people would think it was all a fraud to get sympathy from the voters.
Jessica and D.L. raid Linderman's office to get Micah back. Linderman tells them where Micah is, but says D.L. will never see him again, then empties a bag full of cash as payment to Jessica for D.L.'s murder. He gives a long dramatic speech about how Jessica just wants stability, which the money would provide. I figured Jessica would say yes, take the money, and kill Linderman. But instead she hands control of the body over to Nikki, who refuses the money and Linderman pulls out a gun and shoots her -- except D.L. jumps in the way. He then hops up, sticks his hand inside Linderman's head and rematerializes it, apparently yanking out some of Linderman's brain in the process. Linderman looks pretty dead, though we're not entirely clear how his power to heal people applies, if at all, to himself. And D.L. looks well on his way to death, but I guess you never know for sure.
The episode leaves off with Sylar testing out his fancy new nuclear powers while looking at the skyline and saying "boom." Basically a second consecutive episode of exposition, which I hope is all leading to a kickass season finale.
Everybody Hates Chris: Drew is graduating from elementary school. Did they do that in 1985? I had never heard of such a thing until the mid 90's, and it still seems really silly to me. Finishing high school and finishing college are major milestones in life, finishing elementary school means you'll go to a different school with mostly the same people.
Chris is determined to finally have his revenge on Caruso, which gets an impressive buildup but the cats and summer detention payoff was a letdown, as was the obvious twist that Chris would have to go to summer school as well. There's a third plot with Julius trying to fix Mr. Omar's sink with some really awful joke product names (Drainado, Custodian in a Conga). How it didn't get cut completely, I have no idea.
Considering how disappointed I've been with the entire second season, it was a fitting season finale. The only laughs were provided by Greg in his Magnum and Banacek costumes. They tried really hard to be funny and/or touching, but pretty much missed the mark entirely.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Monday Night TV
Monday, May 7, 2007
Monday Night TV
Won't get to check out The Riches until later, but Everybody Hates Chris and Heroes after the jump. I'm still lukewarm on EHC, and this Heroes episode was, I think, mostly setup for stuff happening later. Not as exciting as a typical episode. Still not bad, though.
Everybody Hates Chris: Chris needs help in algebra so his mother tutors him, Risky has to get a real job, and Drew breaks Julius' chair. A pretty typical episode of late, with a few laughs, standard sitcom happy resolutions, but without whatever it was the first season had that really endeared me to the show.
Heroes: Hiro and Ando return to the present, armed with a comic book, a vision of a possible future, and false information about how to prevent the catastrophe. They go to see Isaac to fill in the blanks in the comic, but he's already dead, and Sylar's still there. And they only manage to just teleport out. Sylar paints the future, seeing Ted's explosive powers and New York blowing up, and thinks he's going to destroy the city. He's all about killing for his own benefit, but blowing people up and not getting anything from it doesn't do much for him, so he goes to two people for help.
First, Mohinder. He's not in a helping mood, so he goes to Thompson to learn more about the Primatech organization and use what they know to stop Sylar. Thompson introduces him to Molly Walker, the girl whose name they've been dropping the past few episodes, and she's sickly cute and precocious. She has the power to locate anyone on earth, which will help them stop Sylar, but she has the same disease that killed Mohinder's sister, and it's preventing her from using her ability. Mohinder beleives that he has an antibody in his body that will save her, and gives her a transfusion of his own blood, and it appears he'll save her.
Second, Sylar visits his mother. He's trying to reconnect with his old life as a simple watch maker (another Watchmen connection I didn't notice before), but his mother's crazy ambition for him gives us a clue as to why he is the way he is. He also beans her with a snow globe in a totally weird scene.
Hiro and Ando have followed him to his mom's place and are outside debating when to kill the guy. The comic doesn't have Hiro stabbing Sylar until later, but Ando shows him the comic page Future Hiro gave him which was of Ando's death at the hands of Sylar. Hiro busts in just as Sylar's mom freaks out and gets stabbed with a pair of scissors in a struggle, but I think he un-froze time while in his stabbing motion, and Sylar was able to stop him. Again, they teleport out. Sylar is left with his mother's dead body, and Hiro is left with a broken sword.
Claire is going to follow grandma's advice and going to France, but Peter convinces her she has to stay to save the world. She lets Peter know about Ted, so now Peter is wondering if it's not him that blows up. Of course, this is the worst idea ever, since pursuing the guy will put Peter close enough to Ted to get his explosive powers. Nathan calls Linderman when he finds out, but Claire spots Nathan meeting with Thompson, and now doesn't trust Nathan anymore. Peter and Claire have a plan, at least. Claire has a gun now, since she's the only one who'd be able to stop Peter. We get a creepy scene at the end were Ma Petrelli eases Nathan doubts about the plan... it seems it's not just Linderman's plan, but that all the older heroes are in on it. 
Candice still has Micah (and is keeping up the Niki illusion), and Jessica and D.L. are after him. They break into Linderman's office and find a painting of Micah during the explosion, and that he's been tracking their entire lives. Micah uses his fancy Jake 2.0/Mitchell Hundred powers to escape, but finds that every door in the place leads him right back into the same room. Candice is much more powerful than we thought.
Ted, Bennett, and Parkman are still after the tracking system, which they call "Walker" named, of course, after Molly. So are they lying to Mohinder, that her abilities will be used to stop Sylar? Is she the one that'll let them track down those with abilities after the nuke goes off? Lots of interesting possibilities. They arrive in New York with Claire and Peter waiting for them, and Peter instantly absorbs Ted's powers. We get a cliffhanger as his hands start to go nuclear, but I suspect that with Ted, Claire, Parkman and Bennett around, they can figure a way out of it.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday Night TV
I'm crashing like an old man before I can watch The Riches, but Everybody Hates Chris and Heroes are after the jump, and as far as I'm concerned, this might've been the best Heroes episode yet.
Everybody Hates Chris: Rochelle is being driven nuts by her mother being around all the time, so she decides to find a man to set her up with. A girl from the neighborhood has a crush on Drew, but Drew doesn't like her. Chris learns his first dirty jokes, and eventually hears George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words." 
There were two really fun parts of the episode. Trying to remember the setup to the dirty joke that Chris tells the punchline to, and this exchange between Drew and Chris: "You know when a girl likes you, and you don't like her back?" "No, I don't." But I'm still not loving this show anymore. It's not bad, and I'll probably end up riding out the entire run of the series, but something made it work in the first season, and now the magic is gone.
Heroes: I think this was the kind of episode geeks (like me) absolutely love, but I'm not sure how the general public will feel about it. It didn't start out on a good note though. Have I mentioned that I hate the voiceover guy? Not only are his intros corny, but "Previously on Heroes" should not include footage from the episode that's about to start. They started to show Hiro at Homeland Security slicing some guys up before I was able to skip ahead. I really hate spoilers of all kinds, and all I want is the networks to not show spoilers during the show or immediately before it. Is that too much to ask?
But then... wow! So much cool future info, and all of it's going to turn out to be fake, because Hiro's going to kill Sylar, but here we go.
The New York explosion happened, and millions died, including Ando, Micah, and possibly D.L.. The world learns about Sylar, the super evil scary guy who blew up the city, and rallies behind Nathan Petrelli in what I gather is a regime of oppressive anti-superpowers legislation, and this popularity allows Nathan to ascend to the presidency.
Superpowered folks are now outlaws just by existing in public (they mention something called "the Linderman Act"), so many of them go into hiding with Bennett's help. He's working with Hana at Primatech Paper (whose URL they are shoving down our throats - if they'd been more subtle I'd check it out, but showing it over and over again irritates me) to provide cover for superpowered refugees, but he only gets to do it because he and Parkman, who is now a high ranking Homeland Security guy cracking down on the powered, share the secret that they are both hiding their children.
Parkman's (and his partner, the Hatian's) main goal is to catch the future Hiro, who is so desperate to change the past (and save Ando) that he's gotten into more than a few fights, and has made himself public enemy #1. He's not sure why going back to have Peter save the cheerleader didn't work, but he's decided that past Hiro can do it.
Speaking of Peter, he has that scar that future Hiro mentioned the first time we saw him, and he is a badass. He's living in Vegas and dating Niki, who has apparently lost her Jessica alter ego. They've both decided not to get involved with the superheroics anymore, but Hiro's plan to go back in time piques his interest. Why? Because despite what everyone believes, it wasn't Sylar who blew up New York, it was Peter, just like in his dream. 
Everyone is also unaware that their president is not who he seems. Sometime around the time of the bomb, Sylar feasted on the brains of Nathan, so he could fly, and Candace, so he could look like Nathan, and become president. He also took out Claire, who'd been hiding out as a waitress at the Burnt Toast diner (her disguise is dark hair... very clever), so he's nigh invulnerable. Sylar's plan is to exterminate people with superpowers. As Nathan, he justifies it to Mohinder with Linderman's line of thinking, that the thousands and thousands of deaths would unite the world in mourning. But after we learn the truth, you can't help but think Sylar just wants to eliminate the competition. Nathan and Mohinder also indicate that they knew the explosion was going to happen and that they let it, but I'm not clear if it was Nathan Nathan or Sylar Nathan.
Anyway, the superhero extermination plan doesn't quite sit well with Mohinder, and he switches sides, helping Hiro and Hiro and Ando and Peter as they try to get Hiro and Ando back to the present to hopefully fix things. But Parkman manages to get a shot off on future Hiro, who dies handing a picture to Ando. I sure as hell can't tell what it is, but it has to be important.
Parkman also alerts President NathanSylar to what's going on, which leads to the completely awesome showdown between Peter and Sylar when they have even more powers. But all we see are orange and blue flashy lights as Hiro and Ando teleport back to the present (we think) to fix things, armed only with the above picture, and another one of Hiro killing Sylar.
As I said, as a geek, I completely loved this. It had a lot of Bishop feel to it. But it's awfully complicated for the casual viewer, especially since if Hiro is successful, none of this will ever happen. More importantly, wasn't there a whole episode dedicated to Hiro learning through the events with Charlie that he can't change the past? Well the future Hiro sure seems to be able to do just that, and our Hiro now has to do it too, if he wants to prevent the events of this episode from happening. Hopefully, they'll at least explain that discrepancy. Even with that nitpick, this was way too much fun, so who cares. Great episode.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Catching Up on TV
With sweeps upon us, I'll be spending more time catching up on new episodes I couldn't catch when they first aired. The Sopranos, Entourage, and Everybody Hates Chris after the jump.
The Sopranos: The feds are digging in a spot where Tony and Paulie buried a guy 25 years ago, so they have to take an unscheduled vacation just in case. Trapped in a car together driving down to Miami, Tony gets more and more irritated with Paulie, to the point where they go fishing together, and memories of Pussy come to mind. The scene on the boat was incredibly tense, and Tony seriously considers it, but passes. Paulie's pretty sure he came within inches of getting whacked, so when the scare with the feds blows over, he sends Tony a gift. But in the end, Paulie goes right back to being annoying, and Tony has an almost sitcom-like look of frustration.
Junior's in a mental ward. It seems like his new meds have him a little more lucid, but not too much. He's dealing contraband caffeine and sugar, and running an underground poker game, which causes one of the other patients to hero worship him. His aggressive tendencies though cause the staff to change his meds, and his attempts to not take them fail. With the new meds, he starts following the rules, which is unsatisfying to his protoge, who gives Junior a pretty nasty beating.
Really tense, two good storylines, plus they throw in a couple of Phil Leotardo scenes. He's apparently through taking shit from anyone, and it looks like New York could get pretty bloody. There were some really funny scenes. Junior dictates a hilarious letter to Dick Cheney figuring he might help him out, since they both are "all too familiar with accidental gun play," and Paulie spends about 2 minutes piling up pastries at a breakfast buffet. Great episode.
Entourage: Amanda wants an answer on the Edith Wharton script, and she's pissed that Ari planting the Medellin idea back in their heads is obviously what's holding them up. E and Vince want to give the boring one a last read before deciding, and they inflict the reading assignment on Turtle and Drama too. Shockingly, this did not go well, but they all decide it sucked. And when Vince confesses that finding her attractive made it hard to say no, Amanda heads over to "get the sexual tension out of the way." Which makes her pretty awesome. And Vince pretty lucky. 
I made the first image a little something for the ladies, so I couldn't help but throw that one in to. Anyway, last week's concern for Lloyd is a symptom of a greater problem of actual human emotions for Ari, which makes his job rather difficult. But a visit with a shrink somehow puts him back on track in a storyline that existed I think only to show him hilariously unable to fire a guy with two eyepatches, then later even more amusingly able to fire him and enjoy it.
Everybody Hates Chris: Gambling, eh? A topic that hits close to home, since I used to gamble professionally. Naturally, they get a lot of the facts about gambling all wrong (sports bookies don't care if you win or lose, they work the odds in such a way that they make money no matter who wins). Vincent Pastore has a great cameo as one of the bookies, and shares a hilarious scene with Rochelle. The B-story is about a checkers showdown between Drew and Tanya, which a much less amusing cameo by Jim Lampley. Even with that, and a really predictable ending, it was a fun episode.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Monday Night TV
As a TV and internet addict, I'm a big fan of electricity. Except when I don't have any. I got home around 9:30, ready to tonight's offerings, only to discover that the power was out. And it stayed out until this morning. A few years ago this would've meant I missed my favorite shows, but things are pretty awesome these days. Highlight for spoilers:
- Prison Break: It looks like I recorded the first 10 minutes or so before the power died, but Fox is kind enough to put the episode online here.
Is there some tradition about military men killing themselves in dress uniform, or did everyone just really like that part of A Few Good Men? Not that it was poorly acted, but I felt like the scene with Kellerman and his sister after the gun jammed lacked emotional weight because we've seen her for all of a minute prior to this. And then he shows up at Sara's trial, but I have no idea how he is a "very credible witness," though, since Kim and friends supposedly deleted all the evidence that he ever worked for them. I like that Sara's defense lawyer is that guy who, although he's had a long and successful acting career, I will always think of as Davis Lynch from Wings and Diane's fake boyfriend who turned out to be gay on the last episode of Cheers ("Muffin, come back!").
A recurring theme in this show that holding someone at gunpoint almost guarantees their escape. It happened with Bellick holding T-Bag, and Linc holding Mahone. Related to the latter, I'm not sure I like the idea that Schofield and Linc aren't capable of killing a man. I understand the idea of portraying them as moral and all that, but I think that if you're fighting for your life long enough, you ought to become willing to take the lives of those who would take yours. Between the brothers not killing folks when they had the chance, C-Note's suicide a couple episodes back, and Kellerman's suicide, I feel like the show is wussing out a lot lately. Cutting away when something exciting is about to happen, only to cut back later and show that it didn't... you can only do that so many times before it gets irritating. - Everybody Hates Chris: The CW is also friendly and put this episode up on their video site.
I had been souring a bit on the show lately, but I really liked some of the father/son moments. Rochelle's part this week was nice, too. She can be quite the bitch on occasion, but this week was really looking out for Tanya and even Jackee's character. I don't find Monk particularly funny though, and I wish they'd go back to Antonio Fargas as Chris' boss. The two highlights for me were Julius' "cool" scenes and the part where Chris' love interest takes over the narration and instantly asks out the random other guy.
The Riches gets repeated on FX tonight at midnight, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report ran this afternoon (which I watch, but would find impossible to review... I don't know how TV Squad's Annie does it)... so I will end up not missing anything. Hooray for the internets!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
TV Catch-up
Nothing new Tuesday night, so mostly a non-TV night for me. I did catch back up on the rest of Monday though. Highlight for spoilers:
- Everybody Hates Chris: I didn't really care for the main story, about Chris getting a gig as a DJ for a party. It seemed like a flimsy excuse for them to be able to make jokes about the early days of rap. And the jokes weren't that great. Plus, it sounded like they could only afford the rights to the one James Brown song ("The Boss", I think?), because it ran almost non-stop through the episode. This is a situation where a few soundalikes would've worked better. The B story was great, though. Drew gets into magic, and wants to go see a free performance at a toy store. When Julius finds out there may be rabbits pulled out of hats, we get a hilarious flashback to him seeing Night of the Lepus.
The other highlight of this episode is that Adam Finley is back reviewing the show at TV Squad. He seems to like the show a lot, and even though my love for it lately is fading, his reviews are always a nice read.
On the Tivo: nothing.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
TV Catch-up
Quick catch up before Tuesday night shows start, highlight for spoilers:
- Everybody Hates Chris: I never knew chain snatching was an epidemic... or maybe it wasn't, and it's just an invention of the show... but it makes sense, perfectly expensive stuff being that ubiquitous. Some of the cutaway gags were very unfunny here, particularly Julius as Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men and as Batman. This show disappointed me again, and I'm seriously considering dumping it, which is hard to believe given how much I liked the first season.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
TV Catchup
I forgot I recorded that history of Star Trek thing Monday night, but I still haven't watched it. Caught up with EHC, and watched some March premieres online. Highlight for spoilers:
- Everybody Hates Chris: Chris cuts school to see Ghostbusters, his dad stands in line at the DMV, and his mom visits the younger kids at school and is a huge bitch. And at one point, Greg pulled bottled water out of his backpack. I guess technically it might've existed in 1984, but the odds of a kid outside of a country club drinking it seem pretty remote. A few good moments here and there, but another sub par episode.
- The Black Donnellys (pilot online here): I only made it through 3/4 of the episode, not cause it was bad, just cause the player kept cutting out on me. I was interested enough to watch it when it comes on. It has a few funny moments, but I'm curious how it works as a series. The pilot is framed around a guy telling the cops a story... maybe the pilot wraps up in such a way that it launches into a series, but I haven't gotten that far. If not, I don't see how he can keep stretching his story over 13 hours or whatever to fill a season.
- The Winner (first four episodes online here): I watched two episodes. The pilot was weak, only Rob Corddry's performance made it bearable, but the second episode was actually pretty good. I like the random Wings references. I'll probably end up watching the first season, just cause there's a shortage of comedies on tv.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Monday Night TV
No Prison Break this week, and yes, I'm like the only guy in the world that doesn't watch 24. I gave up shortly into season 3. People seem to love it these days though, so I might take some time this summer when network shows are reruns to grab some DVDs and catch up. Highlight to reveal spoilers:
- Everybody Hates Chris: Orlando Jones guest stars as a sub who challenges Chris. He was ok, the plot was ok, and the jokes were ok. I did like the callback to the Gritzky jersey, the Officer and a Gentleman parody was ok, and the "B-" t-shirt was sorta funny. The narration jokes didn't really work, though. The show hasn't wowed me in a while, and really needs to generate some laughs to keep me coming back.
- Heroes: Mohinder's been calling heroes at random, and one calls him back (Glenn from the Gilmore Girls, and also those Office-style Burger King commercials a few years back), with some kinda melty powers, but Sylar beats him to the guy. Cool effects on the melty thing. I'm not sure I like Sylar's philosophical musings, though. But that's the standard way to make a comic book villain evil and creepy, so it's at least appropriate.
Claire wants to meet her father, her mom just wants to extort him. I love the "$50k! And you get half!' part, sounding all generous when she's really screwing Claire out of $25k. I'm surprised we weren't beaten over the head with Motorola logos when she took Claire's pic with her phone, though. And wow, Ma Petrelli is a cold bitch.
Weiss' (Parkman, but he'll forever be Weiss to me) career as a bodyguard doesn't last long, turning quickly to diamond thieving. But he leaves the case with his prints on it, and I'm sure the cops will have noticed that it wasn't there when they showed up. Maybe just an editing thing and we're supposed to think he did clean up after himself, but it still bugged me. Also, apparently his psychic powers are directional, given that he heard JessNikka coming in the elevator. These two parts set things up nicely. With JessNikka headed after Nathan, Claire possibly chasing her dad, and Weiss potentially after JessNikka, that could finally get everyone all together in New York. Which is good, cause Nikki's family hasn't been a very interesting story so far, but getting them involved in the action could help.
Hope calling Hiro "Sulu" makes the whole George Takei guest star thing confusing. So does Hiro's father look like the guy who played Sulu, or is it like Last Action Hero, where Stallone played the Terminator? And was that Dauber from Coach as Hope's boyfriend/gaming commission dude?
Hiro and Ando have kind of stalled out to me. They were by far the best storyline early on, but now they're sort of treading water. The best storyline now, Peter and the invisible Dr. Who, didn't appear (get it? I'm hilarious). I'm still loving the show, though. They manage to keep action going in at least one storyline every episode, so even when it's heavy on character development, they can cut to some excitement.
- Studio 60: It was nice to know that I was supposed to notice the singer's chest in the beginning. What a terrible song, though, and that actress is not comfortable at all standing in front of an audience and pretending to sing. Cool to see Stephen Tobolowski... but he was underused. Hopefully he gets brought back in some capacity.
I'm not sure how I feel about Matt's drug problem starting up as a storyline. Danny's already a recovering addict, do we need more of that? And was the Tyler Durden moment at the end supposed to be surprising? Other people not remembering the guy at first stuck out, then when the singer mentioned the dreamy thing, it became pretty obvious.
The flashes of Sorkin brilliance continue to frustrate me. The B-story about the metric conversion sketch? That's what this show should be like all the time. It was funny, it was both about making a sketch comedy show and about the characters, and it didn't take itself too seriously. Plus, it was heavy on Matt, Danny, Nate Corddry, and Timothy Busfield, with a little Mark McKinney thrown in.
NBC's plugging the 5th anniversary of Last Call with Carson Daly. Really?
