Monsters of Television

Big damn hero shot. And it looks oh so good.

I’ve been struggling with Sym-Bionic Titan since the second half of its season started (are we saying season 2? I have no idea any more). “The Ballard of Scary Mary” and “The Demon Within” were rough episodes (to say the least) while “I Am Octus” was a great meditation what it means to be human. And while I didn’t review it, “Disenfranchised” just kind of okay. I’ve not been totally blown away by these episodes like I was for much of the first run of episodes.

These two episodes, “Escape from Galaluna” and “Under the Three Moons”, probably encapsulate the good and the not-so-good (but not horrible) that the show offers up, seemingly on an alternating basis. But there other challenges the show faces as it moves into the last few episodes of its run apart from its quality from episode to episode. Read more »

“Can you ask me that question again?“

What do you do with a problem like Kalinda?

I’ve never been crazy about Kalinda. She of the Awesome Boots and Tight Mini-Skirts has never really done it for me. Instead Kalinda has been unnecessarily mysterious and opaquely sketched as a character, suddenly having knowledge or skills that makes her useful in each episode. And while she may be smarter than federal bomb experts, her talents (for me) have always left outside the norms of the show (as I point out in the link), making her a crutch for the show to rely on to get out of tight narrative spots with a sultry wink and a smile.

And now, after digging itself into a very deep, dark, and unnecessary hole all season with the Blake absurdness, the show needed a way to pay off all that time spent on a story that essentially went nowhere and failed to reveal anything particularly earth-shattering about Kalinda. So in an episode hyped up to reveal some serious character meat (and what better way to do that than a grand jury investigation?), The Good Wife instead turns Kalinda into another wedge in the larger story of Alicia and Peter’s marriage. Read more »

“God. I hate Chicago. Such a mean place.“

And I thought that the show was cynical before this episode. Sheesh.

“Great Firewall” (it took me until today to get that) is an example of The Good Wife firing on cylinders. Well, almost. The case of the week was a bit vague, even though it ultimately served a more interesting purpose (along with the case from “Net Worth”, as it turns out!), but I’ll get to that. All in all though, “Great Firewall” showcases just how well the show is able to pull together its narrative threads into a coherent whole (the Blake and Kalinda debacle being the glaring exception, and I can only assume that story is on ice at this point) and crafting a complicated and rich world. Read more »

“Oh, sure, send the robot.“

Oh, Modernism. Is there no one you can't suck in?

I’m a week late on this due to computer issues, but that seems only fitting somehow. And with no new episode this week, I don’t feel too bad reviewing this later than I normally would.

“I Am Octus” is one of the show’s stronger episodes, and probably one of my favorites the show has done so far. But then I love existential episodes wherein machines attempt to figure out what it means to be a machine in a world of humans, and whether they have emotions or projecting those emotions because they perceive they should to be accepted. Read more »

“Why do you hate Jesus?“

Can you say breather episode?

I don’t mean that in a bad way per se, just that, well, I was pretty bored with “Silver Bullet.” I even kind of clocked out during the last ten minutes of the episode to do something else, with the episode just playing in the background (seriously, my notes stop after McVeigh suggests running off with Diane).

There were things to like in the episode, but these were things that I’ve liked in previous episodes (Eli talk to people outside the normal narrative, McVeigh and Diane’s very adult-ly written relationship, Grace being Grace) without much in the way of shiny newness. As a result, none of this feels all that interesting or engaging. Just a minute to take a breath before Will and Diane try and stop Bond, in what I hope will be the most exciting board meeting ever shot for TV. Read more »

“Sure, let’s talk. Let’s all talk.”

I enjoyed “Net Worth” a great deal, but perhaps that was because everything didn’t quite work perhaps as well as it should have. Some things worked smashingly well (Owen and Alicia, but that’s a given at this point), some things were enjoyable but too on the nose (the legal aspect of the case that was a little too much like The Social Network but had moments of real delight), and then there’s Kalinda and Blake. And you can imagine how I felt about that.

But I think that the shagginess of some parts of the episode it what makes me like “Net Worth” more than I perhaps should. It’s nice seeing the The Good Wife not be as tight and controlled as it normally is, to be a bit different in spots and give us something other than its weekly greatness.

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“I just kept driving forward, hoping for the best.”

Oh masculinity. Always in crisis.

“Desperation Day” is solid, provides more than a few chuckles (and CBS also gave a last minute Valentine’s Day gift idea), and begins to wrap up the inital impact of Mr. Ericksen’s death. Which in turn helps Ted resolve an issue with Zoey that probably should’ve been drawn out over multiple episodes.

Oh, and Barney hits on women some more while Lily does what we’ve all done at one point or another and pretend that a body pillow is a significant other. You know, the usual stuff. Read more »

“As per us, he bored the pants right on her.”

Unlike the numbers from a few episodes ago that slowly built to a payoff that comes from nowhere, the narrative structuring of playing phone tag allows the episode to do a lot of things, give everyone a bit of screen time, and tell the story in a compelling way. HIMYM is always at its best when it unfurls a narrative in non-linear-ish fashion, and I appreciate it when it succeeds at it (and it is a show about storytelling, after all, so it should be able to tell stories well).

As such, “Oh Honey” is the first episode since “Natural History” (that was way back in November, folks) that I really enjoyed. Even if the ending was a foregone conclusion (and it was), I still got swept up in the episode’s romantic scope and banter. Read more »

“Sometimes I come out here with my astronomy class and have starbecues.“

I am a bad fan of this show.  Not only did I know know when season 2 was starting, but I was also unaware that it had changed days. Shameful, I know.

So Titan comes back from hiatus with a good episode, one that expands its show’s universe a bit, something I’ve been waiting for the show to do. Earlier episodes had made gestures to this, with varying degrees of success, but with the range of characters we get to see in the episode, plus a nice flashback for the school’s history, I feel like “The Ballad of Scary Mary” is a good step in helping create a more fully realized world.

Now if only Kimmy weren’t drawn in such a problematic way, I’d be pretty happy. Read more »