Monsters of Television

“There it is again. That poker face.”

Again with the on-the-nose episode titles. Subtly, people!

This week’s episode is the tipping point episode. It’s that episode of Lost where everyone’s getting ready to run around the Island for the next 5 hours, wondering where something is or to save someone. The big plot threads are starting to wrap together, answering my questions about how Alicia fits into Peter’s narrative, and Peter’s narrative potentially overwhelming the series.

And, you know, we find out that Kalinda is smarter than FEDERAL BOMB EXPERTS. Read more »

“You look like hell.”

“Small price to pay when you feel like heaven.”

Thank Gossip Girl! In a season full of stagnation and relationships that no one seems to care about, “Dr. Estrangeloved” was a return to the glory days of season 1. We saw some of our favorite characters reappear in their true forms, reminding us of why we fell in love with them, and the show, in the first place.

No return to form was more satisfying than that of smirky, bow-tie enthusiast Chuck Bass. After his break up with Blair, he has once again embraced his inner mother Chucker. Read more »

“Those two gab like little school girls when they’re out in the field. It’s murder on the ears.”

The face of doom.

What are you guys crying about?

I don’t typically delve into the dens of inequity that are the message boards and comment streams but I keep hearing about this episode being controversial, a game-changer, even ruinous of the series. Surely, these reactionists aren’t responding to the ending of this episode. They are, aren’t they? Wow. Really? Because Chuck has slept or necked with two other girls that aren’t Sarah during the course of the show, one of whom was the stated love of his life. Where were you when Bryce came back? When Cole was tempting Sarah? Careful, sweethearts. You whine like this enough and you’ll sound like — well, Chuck.

For those unaware, the ending of “Chuck vs The Mask” seemed to provide fodder for those heavily-invested in the Chuck/Sarah relationship to riot in the virtual streets at how the show is being taken irreparably off-course. TV-bloggers have spoken to the subject all day, educating me on the fanbase and the word “shippers” (a section of fandom I had not previously known). And, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what fueled their fire.

Perhaps we should start from the beginning.

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Jeff: “Did you take her to Poundtown?”
Lester: “Can I get an address on that?”

Writers of Chuck, I am pleased. This is exactly where I’d hoped the season would start heading and Chuck is starting to feel less like a lead-in to a bigger show and more like something that can stand alone. It’s keeping its comic lilt while delving into deeper, more complicated terrain and we’re finally starting to see our protagonist develop. We’re starting to see the life he was thrown into take a toll and force him to grow up, for better or worse. And there’s no better way to see this progression than by juxtaposing it with the past.

Awww. He’s bashful.

The episode starts three years ago when Sarah first walks into the Buy More, Morgan alerting a half-listening to Chuck to her presence, and Chuck scratching out the tune that gets stuck in my head: “Vicki Vale — Vick-vah-Vicki Vale — Vickity-Vickity-Vicki Vale, Vick-vah-Vicki Vale” and the phone drops. Morgan, in present day, reminds Chuck of that moment in order to compare it to when Hannah walks into the picture. Oooooh. See, last week I thought Hannah was going to be there for Chuck’s drama but she’s (at least starting out) going to be around for Morgan’s. Hannah. Anna. How did I not see that? He’s enamored by her and tries to complete the analogy Chuck:Sarah :: Morgan:Hannah. Hannah walks in with the same liberal take on dress code if not the same attitude as Morgan’s former flame. But Morgan’s not ready to actually speak to her so he scurries away as Chuck lays down some warnings for a sister: everyone else but him is a wild animal looking to hump. On cue, Jeff and Lester show up. Chuck leads her away from the Jeffster Danger Zone.

Important thing to take from this funny scene comes when Hannah brings up Chuck going to Paris. Chuck tells her to keep it on the low-low but doesn’t get a lot of time to solidify the lie before Casey comes over for “yogurt time.” Despite having to make excuses to leave the store and go to the yogurt shop for two years (three if you count Sarah’s brief stint with wieners), he still doesn’t come up with a good response for Hannah to understand why going to yogurt right away makes any sense.

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Casey: “You know, you give me five minutes running this popsicle stand and we’d be ready.”
Morgan: “Ready for what?”
Chuck: “The Russians.”

This episode is refreshing, invigorating even. I’m not terribly fond of how this season started (maybe except for completely destroying Chuck and Sarah’s relationship so they can rebuild it) but “Chuck vs First Class” starts the build to what we (and by we, I really mean me — but I think you’ll agree) want to see from this show’s progression. It’s all starting to come together.

“Kneel before Zod!”

For Morgan, however, it’s all starting to come apart. Everyone in Buymoria is unhappy with his rise to power, fallout from disbanding the fight club ring from last week. Lester has resorted to the silent treatment while everyone else attempts to pull pranks on him. Nothing works, however, because Morgan is the one that taught them all how to prank and goof off. The only one able to pull one over on his The Silent One and Morgan knows it’s all downhill from there.

Meanwhile, Casey fills Chuck in on the ramifications of Shaw being in charge of Chuck Squad: he is obligated to do a review of the operation. Chuck, already reeling from Casey telling him Shaw is more special than him, immediately wonders who they could be talking about when discussing the operation based around him. Chuck: somehow whiny and selfless when it comes to family members but completely vane involving anything else.

Shaw is indeed starting his review talking about Chuck with his most ardent supporter, Sarah. She insists that Chuck is a real spy though Shaw, upon reading the reports, feels that Bartowski’s performance is sometimes Bond, sometimes Jerry Lewis (basically the premise of the show). Is Chuck a liability?

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Devon: “Is that your spy training?”
Chuck: “Duck Hunt. Nintendo.”

Angie Harmon can tip me over the side of the building anytime. Unless she really intends to drop me. That would be a real mixed blessing.

My initial reaction to this episode was relatively harsh compared to the other reviews I’m reading. And maybe they have a point. I tend to be a little harder on Chuck but only out of love. The cast, the situations, the chemistry could make this show a flaming diaster but the combinations are all right and the show works, even deigning to attain emotional peaks some shows can only hope for. Just look at how dedicated the fanbase is and imagine if it was on a network people actually watched. However, it needs to continue and even aim higher. Seth Meyers might have been joking about the pressure on Chuck, but, since NBC is run by crazed carnie junkies who will slash and hack at their schedule with reckless and self-destructive abandon, the show can’t wander. I want to see Chuck persevere.

So let’s give this thing another shot.

Captain Awesome is strapped to an office chair on the top of a tall building. Angie Harmon is there (going by the name Sydney) in a little black number tipping him precariously off the edge trying to get him to say — I don’t know. Maybe admit that he’s a spy? But Devon is not a spy, even if hot girls tell him otherwise.

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Wilson: “She no longer thinks we’re gay. Now she thinks we’re mendacious dirtbags.”
House: “Mendacious dirtbag does come much more naturally to me.”

“I’m really glad that worked on zero evidence. Otherwise, how stupid would I have looked? Pret-ty stupid.”

Drug deal in a wet, dilapidated parking garage at night. Four guys standing around the back end of an SUV with bricks of something-er-other neatly packaged in the back. I know there’s an air of privacy that needs to be maintained for these kinds of things but, one day, I’d like to see someone do a drug deal in a nice park during the day. Maybe that’s how they came up with Weeds. Anyway, roles of the four men are soon revealed: Seller, Buyer, Henchman with a Gun (for the buyer), and The Patient (technically at this point he’s Henchman without a Gun but let’s just cut the sheepdip and name him what he is to this episode). Some tough negotiating leads to Henchman with a Gun to pull his piece, demanding respect for his boss. The Patient tries to wrestle the gun away from him, and Henchman ends up shooting himself in the foot but The Patient crumples to the ground, takes a lick to the skull from the asphalt. He has no other external injuries.

The Patient and the Seller go to the clinic instead of the ER to stitch up Patient’s head wound and House picks up on clues (no trauma, gun powder on his sleeve) that he has loud-noise-induced vertigo. How he proves it: when Patient tries to walk away, House slaps his cane against the bed and the Patient goes down like a Tennessee Scare Goat. And thus we have a new case.

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“The sun is up! God can see us now!”

With all the dirty pool going on in late-night recently, 30 Rock is in a prime position to put all this into perspective for us. As an outpost of reflexive network satire, and probably on “Team Conan,” the show is going to have a field day with all that’s been going down. But let’s get through the episodes they already have in the can, shall we?

“No. Seriously. We’re good.”

Winter hiatus is over (because this show is nothing if not meta) and Liz finds Jack in the lobby, spins him around and asks him about his holiday. The beauty of Jack is not that he’s necessarily more elite than everyone, just that he finds snobbier ways to do the awful things everyone else in the cast does without pretense. For instance, Jack spent his New Year’s Eve hwarfing in the bushes. One of the writers for TGS might have that same scenario after a bender of cough medicine and Gentleman’s Jack (like you do) but Mr Donaghy engages in communal purge only after sniffing the horrible scent of recently uncorked BCE wine. Somehow classier. Liz, meanwhile, drunkenly outed her gay cousin and Jenna met with James Franco’s agent to “hammer out” the details of a contractual romance with Mr Franco. All of these are accompanied by 30 Rock‘s trademark flashbacks (like Family Guy but, you know, relevant) until Tracey announces he thinks he might have conceived the daughter he’s wanted for the past couple of weeks. The other three stop Tracey before he gets to describe it, the swish-pan coded as an actual quick camera movement instead of transition to a flashback. See? Meta. And, within the scope of the teaser, we have all our stories in a nice, neat package.

Well, almost all of them. Jack realizes after the credits that he must have drunk-dialed Nancy (his married childhood crush that he reconnected with before the hiatus). After some detective work by Cerie on YouFace, Jack realizes that, in order to save face (and there is little that more important to Jack than face), he must delete the message he probably left her while she was on vacation. Kenneth gets to play sidekick.

Read more »