Monsters of Television

“I really hope that wasn’t me.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise is really running out of ideas.

Finally, someone let Casey out of his cage. The man has been trapped in the van for the better part of this season and it was time he had an episode that wasn’t a somewhat cheesy affair (like when it centered around his former sensei). Instead, we get some pretty heavy backstory, some Robert Patrick, and a dash of treason to whet our appetite for all things Casey. But, funnily enough, even when a story is Casey-centric, it all still reflects back on Chuck and Sarah.

I usually don’t do spoiler warnings since you, dear reader, are in fact reading a review of an episode post-first-run airing. But with so many things that happen for Casey’s character that are too good to just read about and not watch, I encourage you to peep the episode first before reading on so I don’t spoil any of the good stuff.

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“Welcome to the endangered species list, you bastard.”

Hold me. Like the river Jordan. And I will then say to thee. You are my friend.

Noel couldn’t make it to the live-tweet of Dinoshark (some lame excuse about reading) but I sure did. This flick had it all: bad accents, high body count, inexplicable blood splatters, taking obscene chances with a single grenade. This is a great appetizer for Sharktopus.

Below are my comments throughout the movie. You can see everyone’s live-tweet by doing a search on Twitter using the hashtag #dinoshark. It might be worth your while; we were pretty hilarious. Once I get a hold of the movie again, I’ll put in the timestamps and screengrabs so you can follow along at home.

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“I’m being secretly undermined by Captain Jerksauce.”

One of these men is not like the others. One of these men just doesn’t belong.

Poor, poor Life Unexpected. Touted as the new family dramedy of the season and then so quickly dethroned by Parenthood. Granted, Parenthood has plenty of time to ruin itself since it’s only two episodes deep. But something tells me Lauren Graham and Peter Krause are going to be just fine.

Meanwhile, Life Unexpected is on the CW bubble despite some good traction in its Monday premieres and Wednesday encores. I suspect, however, its niche will not be in the family way that other show is running with. It’s going to find its own schtick.

Not to say this show hasn’t found a formula. The last few episodes have been formatted in one of two ways: (a) Baze gets upset about something and ends up nearly ruining some radio-show event Cate and Ryan host or (b) Baze tries to fix a situation but ends up lazily seeing it through only for it to end in disaster. This episode has both!

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MEGADESK!

Save our show.

Let’s make a sandwich, shall we?

Something good, something good. Oh, so this felt like a great dedication to actual work environment. It’s been so long since we’ve seen The Office actually tackle common issues of the American workplace rather than get wrapped up in its own idiosyncrasies. I know the theme of the season has been how much the economy has devastated business but what makes The Office enjoyable (and, probably, the reason for its being) is that, like Office Space or any other workplace comedy, it hits on the commonalities of working in an office. Everyone has been in that situation where either they are new or a higher-up is in town and you don’t want to be the first one to leave, no matter how much work you have left. For them do it while dressed up for St Patrick’s Day, which is, let’s face it, a lesser holiday, makes it feel all the more ridiculous. There was a strong showing by the bit part characters in this episode, especially Meredith (one of those characters that rarely gets enough screen time). Michael showed up by eventually standing up to Jo and dismissing his employees. Completely believable and true to Michael’s character. Which makes the entire first act strange.

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“I think that bailiff from Night Court is spot on.”

Hmm. Something smells of herring.

The one thing I learned from this episode: despite my film degree, I have not seen a whole lot of Hitchcock. You would think after spending four years of taking film classes of every kind that I would be sick of Hitchcock, up to my ears in the bald man. But no. Even today, my familiarity with his oeuvre is limited to Psycho, most of Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest and brief clips I’ve seen in passing. Now, base an episode on the Odessa Steps sequence or mimes playing tennis and I’m a freaking expert. But my education on Hitchcock was somewhat lacking.

Like House, season finales on Psych are usually formula-breaking, stylized events. Season 4’s ending brings back the Yin-Yang Killer from last season’s finale, a psychopath obsessed with Shawn that leaves clues around town for him to pick up on like a game only he can play. But, since Yang (the name by which she goes) is locked up in a high-security mental institution, this new string of murders can’t be her. In a twist that should really be no surprise to anyone familiar with the Yin-Yang symbol, Yang admits to having a partner that’s still at large. He goes by Yin.

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“Into the fire.”

Mozzie, tugging at the heart strings. Don’t cry, buddy.

It’s all come down to this. Neal, after working for the feds all season, and doing a good job (sometimes so good I wonder how Burke even caught him in the first place), is ready to possibly throw it all away for the dream of a girl he fetishizes and the proverbial “one last job.” Aided by the decidedly hotter Alex and the always faithful Mozzie, the team prepares a plan to steal the music box from the Italian consulate during a conveniently-planned gala. Peter knows Neal is up to something and crashes their planning party. Peter tries to talk Neal out of doing anything illegal but the smarmy look Neal always wears tells Burke that it’s going to happen anyway. Peter’s parting words: “Do the right thing, Neal.”

Central to this series is what Neal thinks is the right thing. He is a principled man, a cultured man, a man both polite and courteous, not even prone to jackassery. By all outward appearances, a gentleman. But then again, he’ll also rob people blind for motives that aren’t entirely clear. Does he only defraud those he feels can afford it? Does he rob just because he likes the nice things? Or does he buck society for some other deep-seated reason? In a binary world, he appears to ride the fence of good and evil, leaning toward one side or the other whenever it suits his purposes. For Neal, though, the world is not binary. It’s all gray. The right thing here is to save Kate. That is his responsibility. And, despite the woman right there that obviously still holds a torch for him, he has an obligation to see this through and chase the dream. The only way to do that is to skirt the law.

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“Be not afraid.”

Yeah, I’m not going to feel sorry for you people.

Am I the only one that misses Laura Prepon with red hair? Every time I see her blonde it upsets me.

After a series of House episodes with a bit of gravity (including the very good “Wilson” and “5 to 9”), we get a mostly light-hearted episode. The threads of the season (Cuddy and House, Lucas and House, House’s recovery, etc) are left alone for a week so that we can, instead, focus on more antics between men of a certain age, namely the secrets they keep from each other even over the long course of their friendship and, more recently, constant proximity to one another.

The overall theme to this particular episode is the concept that “no man is an island.” House (natch) feels that anyone can be an island, that even while living among thousands of people, one can maintain solitude. As you might guess, Wilson feels the opposite. Ms Prepon plays a blogger who sees recording her life as a commitment to honesty, even to the detriment of her relationship and her decision-making abilities (“Dear strangers/readers, what kind of heart valve should I get?”). We would call her an “oversharer.” Her presence updates the “no man is an island” concept by bringing it into digital world where anyone can offer as much of themselves as they want. “Privacy is a modern invention,” Talb insists, supporting his statement with the fact that people used to live in small, far-flung towns where no one could keep secrets. The internet has made the world small again, the difference being people can choose which tiny village to create or inhabit. Our blogger friend, of course, is eventually stricken with some serious effects of a disease, which of course leads her to PPTH. The most disappointing thing: not even one Eric Foreskin joke.

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Morgan: “Don’t freak out.”

The Ring fights dirty. Any gentleman knows that the appropriate weapon here is one of those giant forks. A gun is so uncouth.

Yes.

What I just watched was an episode tailor-made for fans. It’s like the writers sat in a room for three days and read every tweet of the rational fans (sorry, shippers) and dumped it all into a well-crafted episode. Don’t believe me? Big reveals? Check. Jeffster? Check. A whole lot of not-as-whiny Morgan? Check check.

In season 2, it was at about the four episodes before the end of the season (around “Chuck vs The Dream Job”) when the series started to open up a little more (Chuck finds his father, FULCRUM attempts to make intersect agents, lots of Chuck and Sarah going off-book) and that’s about what we’re getting now since the original order for Chuck eps was at 13 going in. Happily, we have more Chuck to look forward to (NBC ordered more) but their plans haven’t changed and we get what I consider one of the best episodes of this show we’ve seen yet. Top 5 material. Let’s get into it.

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“Do not invite me to shut it.”

Lassie is officially on the train to Crazy Town.

Dear Writer’s Room at The Office: did you see this past week’s episode of Psych? Pretty funny, right? I know. I had a lot of trouble choosing which quote to use as my lede. It was between this (from Juliet), “Dear God, what am I doing? This is half a man” (from the coroner), and “Fishing is one of my top 5 skills, right behind profiling and ski ball” (from Lassiter). Well-crafted dialogue, situations that were germane to the plot, and, in an episode that was pretty much filler (since it didn’t tackle any of the continuing threads like Shawn’s slump or the question of a relationship with Juliet), it didn’t feel like a cop out.

I mean, how cool was it that Lassiter was going to follow in Shawn’s example? An insane Lassie is gut-busting. The fact that Shawn didn’t really even put clues together until the second half of the show as we followed Lassie following his gut was pretty remarkable. Though weren’t you guys a little disappointed that they didn’t go all the way with that? They could’ve let Lassie finish out the case with the Tao of Shawn. But at the same time, that wouldn’t be true to Lassie’s character. So, and I think you’d have to agree, we have to applaud their restraint.

Speaking of which, Office writers, I think we should commend them on their dedication to character. That’s certainly something you can appreciate. Lassiter doing things like pulling his badge and shooting wildly into the water for the sharks to appear (information we gleaned anecdotally from Juliet) is priceless. Shawn wanting to egg Lassie on is also a great use of character since all Shawn’s ever wanted to do is pull the stick out of Lassie’s you know where. You know where, Office guys! Ha ha! Classic.

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“God said the doomed lose the right to be redeemed.”

Jacob looks way different.

Oh yes, we’re going to talk about Mercy.

TVByTheNumbers calls this show (along with Trauma) a ratings sinkhole. Even with NBC’s desperate need to fill the holes in its schedule, for all intents and purposes, it can’t in good conscience keep a show no one is watching. I watch a lot of TV and I count on one hand the times I’ve caught even a piece of an episode. In fact, the only two full episodes I’ve watched are the two most recent (though I’ve seen several episodes 30 minutes in). But I think I have a pretty decent snapshot of the show.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I had this series pegged for early cancellation from the beginning. Everything from the preview trailers showing Veronica shouting “I’m a nurse that knows more than all of your residents combined” to the cartoonish Dr Dan Harris (seriously, he belongs somewhere on Scrubs) made me believe no one would care. But the small glimmer of hope I held was that they would focus on Veronica’s PTSD. Every indication from advertising showed her struggle with the effects of war and her ravaged psyche and emotions. But I hadn’t seen anything that supported that hope outside of a few irrational moves (dropping a cinderblock on a Harris’s windshield) and her being overly emotional.

What I was expecting was the kind of hallucinations and erratic behavior demonstrated by Gregory House. I wanted a pain we could see and a woman wrestling with herself demonstrated creatively. Perhaps that was my error, taking the standards of one show and demanding it exist in another, despite different disorders and symptoms entirely. “I Have a Date” would show me something else.

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