Crazy Lost episode, Friday Night Lights season finale, South Park parodies 300... for a non-sweeps month, this is about as good as it gets. Click below to reveal spoilers for all three:
Lost: Many had theorized that women on the island couldn't have babies, but it's even worse than suspected - other than Claire, every woman who's gotten pregnant has died before giving birth. Juliet explains that the only reason Claire survived was that Ethan had been sneaking her a vaccine, and the only reason Ethan kidnapped her was because the castaways found out he didn't belong, so he could no longer give her the vaccine in secret.
This of course means that they killed Ethan for no good reason. And now Claire's having withdrawals and only Juliet finding a secret stash of medicine can help her. Jack trusts her immediately, of course, but Sawyer and Sayid want answers. She says "If I told you everything that I know, you'd kill me," which is awesome. But she throws Sawyer and Sayid's checkered pasts back in their faces, saying that she won't reveal her past for the same reason they don't reveal theirs. And her vaccine saves Claire almost immediately.
The pregnancy thing has been speculated, of course, because of their fascination with children, their recruitment of Juliet, a fertility specialist, and the fact that a psychic mysteriously told a newly pregnant Claire that she had to get on flight 815. But in the end, Juliet is shown discussing her whole plan with Ben - how to get Kate to accept her with the handcuff plan, that they had activated an implant in Claire to make her sick, and that they'd see each other in a week.
So who knows how much of what we learned about their experimentation on Claire was true? We're sure that women who get pregnant on the island can't carry their babies to term, but Juliet speculated long before the plane crash that the problem was at conception, so a woman who got pregnant elsewhere and came to the island should be fine. What does this mean for Sun? If Jin finds out all this, will he find out that she was impregnated by her boyfriend before the crash? Or did the island heal Jin and he is the father, which would put her at risk for the mystery ailment. Lots of possibilities.
The other thing going on were discussions about the island's cancer preventing abilities and Jacob, the often mentioned but as-yet-unseen leader of the Others. No one on the island had ever gotten cancer, but right before the crash, Juliet discovers that Ben has a tumor on his spine. He had just asked the mysterious Jacob to cure Juliet's sister's cancer, which was successful. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with anything. Or it's possible that, like Locke said, that Ben had "lost touch with the island," and it's cancer prevention doesn't work if you do. And the frequent mentioning of Jacob I'm sure has people continuing to speculate about his identity, with a lot of people suspecting Locke's father, but my money's on Billy Dee Williams.
A really fun episode for mythology buffs, I think, but not much going on for character/drama/humor. I'm cool with either or both, so I enjoyed it a lot.
South Park: 300 parody! Lots of slow motion, "THIS IS LES BOS!", the overly dramatic British accent voiceover, the ridiculously low-pitched voice of the Persian leader... lots of really nice touches. I can't tell if it was a sort of loving parody of the movie or an honest dig at the overly stylized visuals and cartoonish portrayal of the Persions in 300. 
We also got some random gross/funny "scissoring," an essay/esse pun that cracked me up, and a group of Mexican day laborers doing a pretty good job of teaching fractions. Kinda pointless across the board, but funny.
Friday Night Lights: Oh, the commercials. You show Tami telling Eric that she's pregnant, and you show the players in the baseball caps that all sports teams wear after winning championships... that just plain sucks. I guess we got right to the pregnancy thing within the first few minutes, so that's not so bad. Tami takes half the episode to spill the beans, and Eric takes it extremely well.
The players get good tickets, and Riggins offers his to Tyra, so she asked Landry to go to the game with him, and I can definitely see why he thinks it's a date... but boy she was just almost raped. Not really the time to be putting the moves on him. And Riggins ends up giving his good seats to his neighbor and her kid, so he gives Tyra four crappy seats instead. Which means Landry's riding up with Tyra, her mom, and her stripper sister. If this were like Nip/Tuck, getting stuck in a car with two young sisters and their still-hot mother would've played out a whole different way, but it's basically a nightmare for Landry. And they pick up Lyla too, but also Matt's grandmother. Even Nip/Tuck couldn't spin that last part into something fun.
On what looks a lot like a smaller version of Super Bowl media day, a reporter confronts Coach Taylor with the TMU job news, and he doesn't have much choice but to admit it. The players and staff hear about it, and it's seriously affected the mood going into the game. The only one who seems to take it all ok is Buddy Garrity of all people. He has a nice moment with Matt, who is not taking it well, where he understands Matt's frustration but also says "if you're ever lucky enough to have a family like I do, I promise you, you will understand." A great little scene... but forget that, it's game time!
As usual, things start off ugly. 26-0 at the half is really rough. The announcer guy, who a rare element of the show I've never really cared for, places the blame squarely on the news of Coach Taylor's departure. But you can't do a football story without an inspiring halftime speech. It's no "win one for the Gipper," but it was still really well done. The inevitable comeback montage is pretty exciting, but Smash dislocates his shoulder scoring a touchdown. Naturally, he'll play through the pain, and we find the team down 5 points with six seconds to go.
They go with the hook & lateral, and it works perfectly, with Smash just barely crossing the line as time expires, and the Panthers win state. I felt like this show would have a very real chance at ending with a loss, so I'm left with a sour taste in my mouth over the commercials. But it's not the show's fault, so I can't be too unhappy. I just now hate network promotional departments even more.
The win and the baby causes the Eric to re-think his career and he offers to back out at TMU and stay a high school coach, but of coruse Tami won't be the reason he skips out on his dream. So it sounds like if we come back next year (and the word is cautiously optimistic), Coach is off in Austin, but Tami and Julie stay behind, and everyone has to figure out what's next. If this is the series finale, I can handle it, and if it's not, it gives the writers a lot to work with for next year, and a lot of new challenges as well. Here's hoping we get another season (or two or three), because this is one of the best show's out there.
Showing posts with label Friday Night Lights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday Night Lights. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Wednesday Night TV
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Friday Night TV/Catching up
Trying out a new spoiler hiding method. Let me know in the comments if you like it or not. Still no idea about how to hide them for RSS subscribers, but I hope that's not a problem. Behind the jump are possible spoilers if you haven't watched this week's Law & Order and Friday Night Lights, plus some clips from Acceptable TV. 
Turns out the jeweler knocked her up and confesses with 25 minutes to go. After about a million Law & Order episodes, there are three ways this goes: the confession is thrown out, some crazy affirmative defense, or the confession was fake. But look the hell out, there is a fourth possibility that I had not considered. He makes it look like a fake confession, fingers a rap mogul, but it turns out the jeweler did it anyway. It's still a shadow of its former self, but this was the best episode in a while.
Coach Taylor's line about "have you ever thought about coaching?" last week was apparently a firm offer to be an assistant coach, cause now he and Street are teaming up on Saracen to get him ready for the state finals. "You better not rest on your laurels." "You don't have any laurels." Good stuff. But can he really be a high school coach? He talked at some point about getting his GED, but I'm not sure he ever got it. And when they had that alumni day episode, the ex-player asked about a coaching job but I was pretty sure Coach told him there was nothing available. I figure with a government job there'd be educational requirements and a long complicated hiring process. But it's fun to have him around anyway.
Landry does his best for Tyra after the events of last week. He tries not to betray her confidence but in the end he goes to Tami. She and Tyra go to the police and file a report, and Landry's reward for his good deeds is being called "a smelly geek" and generally being hated. You feel awful for the guy, but you also know that's the only way Tyra would've reacted. I really liked how they handled this in the first half of the episode. But then I felt like she admitted her mistakes way too quickly and Landry turned into a dick. I think they wanted it to be his "standing up for himself" moment, but she's like a few days removed from an attempted rape and is in the middle of apologizing to him when he starts giving her crap for her choices in men. It just seems poorly timed.
Things have gone pretty well for Lyla right up to the pilot, and now she's due for life to crap on her. Her boyfriend gets paralyzed, her father's a philanderer and everyone knows it, and now she catches Street making out with the tattoo girl about five minutes after finding out that her parents are divorcing. I guess she cheated on Street in the first place, so maybe this is all karmic retribution?
Still to watch: Jericho.
I was very angry to discover that NBC is running Friday Night Lights promos with big spoilers for the season finale, so if you're spoilers paranoid like me, I'd suggest changing the channel or skipping ahead if you see a FNL commercial start.
Friday, March 30, 2007
TV Catch-up
Last bit of catching up from this week's TV. Highlight for spoilers:
- Friday Night Lights: This show is just awesome. Seriously awesome. So my... I want to call my reaction "giddiness", but as Cliff Clavin pointed out so many years ago, "men don't get giddy." But I was thrilled with this episode, and the result is a pretty rambling commentary on it. Sorry in advance.
Landry's plan to pick up Tyra with his math skillz is hilarious. I was a nerd in high school (I say "was" as if I'm not a nerd now, which is obviously not the case), but the math never really paid any dividends in that department. "Mr. T., and the T. stands for... Tyrasalgebratutor." I also liked his premature "yes" to the "If you're not doing anything on Friday..." question. Would've been funny if it was "If you're not doing anything on Friday, would you mow my lawn while I go out with some other guy?"
When that random guy in the restaurant said he remembered those days or whatever, I thought he was going to swoop in, tutor her, and they would hit it off, and Landry would show up just in time to see his plan pay off for someone else. Then they showed someone running up behind her and I thought it was Landry to be all "wait, I'm here!" I did not see that coming at all. I thought the whole thing was written and acted just about perfectly. Tyra seems really tough, and it's appropriate that she'd be able to fight the guy off. But she's still human, and that's obviously pretty traumatic. And you could tell Landry didn't really know what to do, but he still probably ended up doing exactly what she needed.
The Matt getting paid storyline is sort of predictable. Every college or high school football movie/tv show has to cover race relations, steroids, and under the table payoffs, and since they covered the other two, I guess we were due. It was nice to couple it with the "this is getting too commercial" thing. That's not quite as ubiquitous as the other three things, but still pretty common. I liked that Buddy actually took the "Garrity Bowl" suggestion somewhat seriously.
In what was a very tiny side story this week, Waverly, the unmedicated bipolar girl, being armed was slightly troubling to me, but not as troubling as it was to smash, who I think thinks she's just going to flip out into a murder/suicide thing.
In Lyla/Street news, the big blow-up was a long time coming. Too much tension there to not explode at some point. And we finally get rid of the lawsuit cloud that's been hanging over him and Coach Taylor. "You ever thought about coaching?" was the perfect note to end on.
Warning: actual football content follows. They're not down 8-0 right off the bat if that kid just falls on the ball on that onside kick. You try to return it, and that's how you end up fumbling. Also, it seems silly that Dillon would bite on that fake extra point, the footing being so bad, I think you only kick out of desperation (and we see their opponents try a field goal later and flub it). A nice realistic depiction of a muddy game in general though, and another "chill scene" with the winning run, which featured some really good cinematography, I think. Great, great episode. - Jericho: That uptight detective from Psych is the sheriff of the windmill town. And he drives a hard bargain on the windmills. But with the long emotional goodbyes for these ten guys... and the fact that Heather didn't come back, either the actress didn't want to show up (or they couldn't afford to pay her), or that's extremely fishy. And wouldn't the supposedly food-strapped windmill town have to feed all these guys they're forcing to come build the things? Not much of this makes any sense.
Shoshannah Stern is back! I really liked her on Weeds and part of what made me give Jericho a shot was her presence. But the punk store owning kid and is bratty rich friend are back too, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad. Dale's pissed at farmers not honoring contractual obligations to the store. Nothing says compelling drama like a guy inheriting a store and not getting the 3% the other guy is obligated to give. I almost fell asleep writing that sentence. He showed up at the dude's house with a gun, which seems kinda dumb. He might get the food now, but that guy, whoever the hell he is, isn't going to just shrug his shoulders and forget it ever happened. But hey his bad boy routine is at least going to get him some action with the aforementioned bratty rich girl. You can tell how invested I am with the show by the fact that I don't know a lot of the characters' names. But the show isn't without it's moments, like...
Aasif Mandvi is back too! I'm seriously loving him on The Daily Show, and it's awesome that he's also a serious, PTSD, drunken doctor here. I find a lot of the character drama in the show to be pretty lame, and April's pregnancy was one of my least favorite storylines, but the scene where Jake convinces Kenchy to go back into surgery was actually pretty moving.
In the Hawkins storyline, I think he would've been best off confessing that he used to nail Sarah, and that's why she left, and that's why his wife isn't around. Pretty much covers everything, and I think the cop would just let it go. Or at least I would. But it worked out anyway I guess. I had sorta forgotten about the guy Sarah killed, so the twist that they found the body of the guy she killed was a nice surprise to me.
A pretty good episode, thanks largely to Aasif Mandvi. A character that can barely handle the stress of this whole situation is a great addition to the mix.
Still to watch: nothing. Although by the time I finished this, Friday night TV was already starting.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
TV Catch-up
A little catch up this afternoon before starting in on Thursday night shows. Highlight for spoilers:
- Bones: I have nothing against the actor who played Sully, nor was the character really that bad, but I'm absolutely thrilled to see him leave. Booth's relationships haven't thrown the show's tone/pacing/whatever off, but every scene with Brennan and Sully seems to grind the show to a halt. At least to me.
This week they find the body, or rather skin and organs because someone removed the bones, of a mail order bride from China. The lack of bones makes things a little difficult, but eventually, thanks to guest star Michael Paul Chan (Lt. Tao from The Closer), we come to the conclusion that the bones were removed for some kind of Chinese wedding/burial ceremony, but we eventually loop around to find it was the weird lady who runs the bride import company. Not a great mystery, but not that bad.
Despite the especially gory case of the week, we still had plenty of funny moments: "No bones, no Bones," switchamacallit, and the balloon head. I tend to prefer a little more Zack and Hodgins, but it was still an ok episode. The presence of a lot of Sully was made up for by the fact that we won't be seeing him again (for a while at least... I hope). - Friday Night Lights: Somehow I completely missed the fact that Julie would be completely pissed at the idea of leaving Dillon for TMU. Her scene with her dad near the end was really nice. The Taylor family is easily one of the best on TV. A lesser family drama would've had him turn the job down right there and have a group hug, a shock-value show would have him accept for the drama of the moment, while Friday Night Lights is patient with the storyline and to squeeze real drama out of it.
I love that Street got unceremoniously cut from the quad rugby team. Quite the ego on that dude though. He may be the best athlete on the floor, but he's been playing the game for what, six weeks? I have no idea how long, really, but he broke his neck in the first game and the football season isn't over yet.
The scene where the tattoo girl (whose name slips my mind) offers Street a ride was hilarious. "I can give you gas money, or... something." Wink, wink. So that finally goes where it was obviously heading, with a make-out session at Stonehenge II (I was hoping it would be a stonehenge that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf, but it was a roughly full scale replica).
And the scene where Street coaches Saracen is the scene I've been waiting for all year. Great step forward for Street, whose future, I think, is in coaching. Great moment for Saracen, too, who has yet to gain the swagger needed to lead a football team, but Street figures out right away how to inspire some confidence. ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons
likes to count the "chill scenes" in sports movies. I don't remember many in sports TV shows, which are typically pretty awful, but this was a rare one. And a great one. I actually came to this show from the movie, which I liked a lot, and was much much heavier on the football content. I still love the show, but do miss the football sometimes, and this was by far the best scene they've ever had on that front.
Thank goodness Riggins finally tried to get into his neighbor's pants, cause the kid storyline, which I didn't really mind, got old fast, and like tattoo girl, we all know where this was heading.
Tammi makes Tyra her personal project as a guidance counselor, but Tyra's mom is not playing along, and continues to freak out over the Buddy thing, and just have issues in general. But they sorta make up at the end, though I'm sure the crazy isn't anywhere near over yet. Speaking of crazy, Lyla's having trouble with her father and Street, and ends the episode with a nice little rampage at the car lot.
Yet another great episode. I'm probably more desperate for Veronica Mars to hang on for another season, but FNL is a close second.
Left to watch: All caught up.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
TV Catch-up
The cable's out, so I might miss all the Thursday night stuff. Hopefully between network websites and other people's Tivos, I can catch up eventually. But that did free up time to catch up on Wednesday stuff. Highlight for spoilers:
- Jericho: That trading post town at the fairgrounds had the feel of those Fallout video games. The guys checking guns at the gate, especially. So apparently salt is worth a ton, so the snooty rich teenager is again rich. They've also teamed up with a neighboring town to trade salt for parts to make windmills. And the new girl living with Hawkins is just trying to find the "package", which I assume is a bomb he was supposed to set off. Dull episode.
- Friday Night Lights: Geez, so much happens on this show. I love it:
- Buddy Garrity as Dupree/Magnum P.I. is pretty hilarious.
- Riggins' new neighbor is kinda cute, but her kid is irritatingly cute. I can't imagine a kid that old in Texas (or Tennessee) not knowing how to throw a spiral, though... but I guess that's shorthand for "lacking a father figure."
- Landry's toast was excellent.
- Waverly's whole "where have you been?" introduction just made me assume she'd been knocked up, but it seems like she's got a mental health issue. Bipolar, probably. And now she's off her meds, and kinda losing it.
- Tyra's mom, on the other hand, has already lost it.
- Lyla doesn't react too well to her parents' fighting, nor to Street's tattoo girl.
- And some nice moments between Tyra and Tami, and Buddy and the Coach there at the end.
- Knights of Prosperity: Ok, the Oswald Montecristo video was quite amusing. "K-E-E-S-I-N-G" and the fantasy sequence about Kelly Ripa and their inexplicably british kids were both pretty good too. I wouldn't rob Kelly Ripa though. Lenny Kravitz was a better choice. I can see the whole ditching Mick Jagger and looking for someone else to rob really improving the show. This may have been the best episode yet.
On the Tivo: TCM stuff. I missed all the Thursday stuff, which I'll have to hunt down.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
TV Catchup
Finishing up Wednesday stuff, highlight for spoilers:
- Friday Night Lights: Alright Julie coming right out and asking for sex all matter-of-factly was quite a shock. Matt's reaction was extremely appropriate, though. All their scenes were cute and everything, but I feel like a pansy for liking them. So enough about that. As usual, the best stuff came from the Taylors, who are really well written and both actors play it perfectly.
Buddy nailed Tyra's mom, felt guilty about it, fired her, and then she showed up outside his church and hit him a bunch. Riggins was all buddy-buddy with his dad, til pops stole a camera from the team, then he went on a bender and got his ass kicked. Not much to the story, but it gets us through the falling out between them, which could've dragged on for way too long, but thankfully didn't. And in what seems to be the theme for last night's TV, a tattoo artist shows up to connect with one of our characters. In this case, Street, who's trying out for quad rugby.
The side stories weren't too great, but the Taylor family carried the episode. I really hope this show lasts, though it's being thrown to the American Idol wolves for the rest of sweeps, which demonstrates the lack of confidence NBC has in it at this point. But if it does get canceled, I just hope they let the production team know ahead of time and let them finish out the season, and wrap things up in a satisfying way.
- Knights of Prosperity: Alright, they sucked me back in. The montage with them playing around in Mick's apartment (with a few nice callbacks to the pilot) was funny, as was the portable toilet gag. And Maz Jobrani had a lot of funny moments this episode. Good stuff.
Tivo: Empty, except for more TCM stuff.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
TV Catchup
Lots of catchup. Highlights for spoilers:
- Bones: I like seeing Booth's shrink back. Their scenes together are always nice. I do not like seeing Agent Multitalented back. But it kinda seemed like Meredith Monroe was completely underused.
Meredith Monroe kinda looked like Cameron Richardson here. I never watched The Creek, but MM's nice looking and not a bad actress at all, so it seems like a waste to just have her on for three seconds.
- Friday Night Lights: Damn, this show is good. Everyone's pushing all-in this week. Smash and the rest of the black players put their futures on the line for their walkout, Saracen puts a lot of money up to try to get Julie back, and Street's ready to dump his education for quad rugby and a G.E.D. Plus the whole season's out there hanging in the balance - the JV squad shows up to try to fill in for the walked out guys, and if they have to play, the upcoming playoff game will be a joke.
A couple really great scenes. Coach asks Tami for her advise as far as firing Mac, as guidance counselor, as his wife, and as his friend. Riggins swallows his pride and tells Smash that the team needs his leadership, and Smash throwing Mac's white players/leadership comments back in his face. And Mac handing in his resignation... he seems to look racist sympathetic all at once, which is hard to pull off.
The whole situation plays out in shades of gray. If you know a guy is a good man and he's truly sorry for his mistake, do you punish him for a big mistake? Is it worth sticking to your guns over one guy if it might mean your education? Plus the game ended in victory, but in the worst possible way. Mac gets a shot at semi-redemption when he chases off the cops who want to blame Smash for the whole incident. So they win and move on, but it's not like everything is wrapped up in a neat little package.
Oh, and Landry hitting on Tyra was kinda hilarious, as was his "look them in the eyes, not in the rack" comment.
- Knights of Prosperity: Yikes. The whole montage of attempts to get into the club was supposed to be funny, but it was devoid of laughs. Esperanza's ex, drug lord Enrico (played by Bobby Cannavale from Third Watch), had a couple good lines, but that was about it. As much as I like the cast, the show is really struggling to make me laugh. And with the Mick Jagger thing seemingly wrapped up, I think this would've been a good place to end, but I think it's going to keep limping along for the rest of the season. I might be done with it, though, I'm not sure.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: I feel like the intros to this show have really changed of late. It used to be the eerie music would slowly swell as they showed a series of disjunct scenes leading up to a body being discovered, and the scenes would be clues to the eventual solution of the mystery. But last week we had the "Under Pressure" montage cutting between the Aaron Burr/Hamilton reenactment and the sniper, this week we get a guy plugging a CD dissolving into a Tupac/Biggie-style rap murder. Fab Five Freddy played the rapper though, which is kinda cool.
The mid-episode murder felt much more like how the show used to work. The first person shot of murderer, the music coming up, all that. I realize that the whole "talking to the cops gets you killed" thing was crucial to the plot, but I feel like they way overemphasized it. Between the undercover guy, the DJ, the white rap mogul guy, and the guy they confronted in his apartment... I mean, we get it already.
I'm still not entirely sold on Julianne Nicholson though. I liked her on Conviction ok, but I buy her as the cute girl, but the tough cop with the boy's haircut (I'm not 100% sure, but I think they're trying to go with a lesbian angle with her... she had a lesbian mechanic hit on her earlier this year in front of Logan which she ignored, but did she ignore it cause she's straight, cause she wasn't interested, or cause it was in front of Logan?).My least favorite part of the episode was the killer getting shivved at the end, though. Meh.
Friday, February 9, 2007
Last Night's TV
After finishing up with Wednesday stuff, I dozed off early and haven't seen a bit of Thursday TV. I'll catch up this afternoon, but for now (highlight to reveal spoilery stuff):
- Friday Night Lights: So we start off the episode with a trick play for a touchdown, which seems to have been run in the 4th quarter of a playoff game that was already wrapped up. Hopefully, that's not the case, cause that's gererally pretty un-cool. But with Smash throwing a TD pass, the local media start asking questions about quarterbacks and race, which seems to be the excuse Mac was looking for to put his foot in his mouth. This starts a whole lot of unrest with the team and the school, eventually resulting in the black players walking out of practice. You have to feel bad for the coach and his wife, because they both really seemed to do everything right as far as handling it, but the way they'd hinted at racial tension since the pilot, it was a powder keg and Mac comments were the match.
I like that Street finally made it back to school, and that it was very difficult. And while I also dig the quad rugby storyline, I don't think giving up on school that quickly really fits with his character. Sure, he's competitive and wants to play the game, but he's also not a quitter. I also loved the powder puff subplot. Coach Taylor's sudden interest in the game, getting to coach his daughter a little, almost charging onto the field to protest a call... good times. It also gave Landry some excellent comic relief scenes, and some new opportunities to show what a perv Lyla's father is. - Knights of Prosperity: So Gary has like 7 illegitimate children by all different women and he's pretty much never met any of them. They say a sitcom has to have likable characters to succeed, so I guess they're not even trying. But I did like the episode mostly, even though the "unplugging while deleting" thing seemed really stupid, especially after they'd earlier said something about movie hacking being stupidly unrealistic. But computer geekiness aside, there were some solid jokes in here, and Gary's my favorite character so I was glad to see the focus on him. I was debating dropping it, but now I think I'll probably stick with the show until it gets cancelled, which I have to assume will be soon.
Still Parked on the Tivo: Smallville, The Office, My Name is Earl, Scrubs, 30 Rock, The Sarah Silverman Program.
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