Monsters of Television

World's dumbest plans--Werewolves prove once and for all that they are less evolved than vampires.

I’m a bit torn about this week’s episode. Some of my complaints about last week—Are all werewolves naturally sadistic? What the heck does Jules want with Tyler? Does Tyler have any compassion at all for his so-called “friends”?—remained issues for much of the episode. Not that there wasn’t goodness—Damon and Ric bantered like buddies, Jeremy and Bonnie got hot and heavy, Stefan and Elena were crazy cute—but I remain a bit less than satisfied.

This show is repeatedly praised for its fast pacing.  Things happen on The Vampire Diaries.  People die, many people get shot, stabbed, tortured, and lots of couples fall in love.  But without character development, all of that feels empty.  The first half of this season did an admirable job putting Tyler on the path to redemption.  He became sympathetic in his fear and pain, and his friendship with Awesome Vampire Caroline brought out the best in Tyler.  But in the past weeks, Tyler’s story has been pushed to the sidelines.  Even though the wolves have been the primary actors–doing all kinds of stupid things with the goal of getting Tyler and getting revenge–Tyler has not been given a chance to process all these actions.  He has followed other people without much comment and without a true crisis of self-preservation versus a duty to others.  There is much more than could have done with Tyler in the last three episodes.  Sadly, this potential was not fulfilled.  A rare instance of The Vampire Diaries failing to deliver the one-two punch of adrenaline and emotion.

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“Make sure they spell my name right.”

One of the great things about Fringe is that even in a show dealing with parallel universes and other hard sci-fi plots, it’s still a believable show. Hear me out. At its core, Fringe is about taking science too far. Sure, sometimes people on the show use science for bank robberies or bringing back lost loved ones, but a lot of times it’s about people trying to do right and having it go horribly wrong. That’s the essence of Walters character and “Immortality’ gives us a look at another man who has taken his research to an extreme point for the “greater good.”

Or is it?

Dr. Silva is attempting to bring the skelter beetle back from extinction because they contain an enzyme he was working worth to produce a cure for the avian flu. Since the beetle died out with sheep (love the little details that distinguish the “over there” universe from our own) he’s engineering the beetles to live in other hosts: humans. Can you see why Fringe Division would have a problem with this?

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Just as I was beginning to like you...

I should begin with an apology for the extreme lateness of this post. I was out of town, unable to watch on my usual schedule. And as all fans of The Vampire Diaries know, the CW takes its own sweet time getting new episodes loaded into their video player. Ah, well.  Today I’ll offer thoughts on “Daddy Issues,” and tomorrow I’ll catch up by describing “Crying Wolf.”

In addition to my trip last week, I have experienced another change in my life—my partner has caught up with The Vampire Diaries at long last. We have spent the last two months watching season 1, and in the last week during my absence, he blew through season 2. This means I now have a buddy when watching this pretty great show. But that also means I can’t pause to take notes as I had been doing.

I bring this up because my reviews have gotten longer and longer as I’ve tried to be more and more thorough. This may change as I focus more on the big picture rather than individual scenes.  If I have any regular readers, though, I’m happy to oblige your preferences, so let me know what you think of these monstrously long recaps.  Too much?  Just right? Better to focus on particular scenes of interest rather than detail every scene?  Happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.

It was virtually impossible for me to dislike this episode as it featured the return of Jonathan Gilbert. Uncle John pretty much rules me—not just because I loved Anders on Alias as Sark but also because his character on TVD is wonderfully ambiguous. Just as Damon continually intrigues with his battle between good and evil, Uncle John may also provide a similar satisfaction. I believe he does love Elena, but when someone commits as fully to duty as does Johnathan Gilbert, that commitment may become a mania. Bad for Gilbert, but great for viewers.

The episode also begins and ends with a naked, bathing Damon. Sure, this may seem like pandering, but I am not going to complain. Even better, Awesome Vampire Caroline got a lot of story this week—she became the centerpoint of this week’s central plot and I appreciate how capably Candice Accola portrayed Awesome Vampire Caroline’s torture, anger, and devastation.

Notwithstanding these highlights, the pacing this week seemed to move almost too quickly.  As I’ll describe more fully below, sometimes the characters need a moment to breathe in order to, you know, change and grow.  I’m becoming a big fan of the Tyler-Awesome Vampire Caroline friendship, but I think the show dropped the ball a bit this week.  These two characters made big decisions this week, but we saw little of their process in making those decisions.  In particular, Tyler seemed pretty clueless during the entire episode, and I don’t understand why.  Well, I do understand, but I wish the show would have showed his fear and confusion more clearly. If Tyler is going to become a better person, then show me how and why that is happening, including a more thorough depiction of the motivation behind the setbacks we see this week.

This episode also put Damon in a bit of holding pattern.  Though he makes a number of ironic comments this week that remind viewers of his bid admission last week that he missed being human, he doesn’t actually do much.  Here’s hoping we see bad boy Damon get a bit more to do in the coming weeks.

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“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 »

“Alright Alice, where’s the rabbit hole outta here?”

About time this show came back. We were left with quite the cliffhanger when last we saw our fledgling heroes, mysteriously rendered unconscious at the funeral of Hawkman after his epic battle with Slade. In it’s return (albeit a week later than originally stated) Smallville gave us an episode about trust. And about TRON and The Matrix. Got your attention?

Turns out the VRA was waiting at Carter’s tomb, ready to ambush the heroes. They held them prisoner hooked up to some central computer that was projecting a virtual world. Essentially they had locked them in the Grid. But no worries, Chloe returns! — and this time she’s the one coming to the rescue.

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“It makes me angry! Wanna see me channel that anger?!”

Flash would be so proud of Wally for getting beaten by Black Canary. Kid Flash: WIN

Six words: Superboy angry! Superboy smash! Noel yawn!

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration as I did like the episode overall, but you get my point. As was mentioned earlier, Superboy is pretty much defined by his anger issues, which has made him kind of uninteresting. Not saying that he doesn’t have a right to those issues, but the show hasn’t done anything to make those issues be more than a character shorthand and not a part of Superboy’s (hopefully) larger personality.

But this episode does make steps to remedy this flatness as it allows Superboy the opportunity to begin working through his anger (and for Batman to tell Superman to, well, Superman up). Read more »

“I attack them with my Additional Notes.”

When How I Met Your Mother did an episode that was heavy on sports references and terminology (complete with a Yankee with a faux hawk), I wasn’t thrilled because it closed me out of the episode’s story and many of its jokes (I recently saw a rerun and still felt a closed out from it). “Advance Dungeon & Dragons” may very well be the episode of exclusion for some, and while I loved the episode (I think it rivals “Modern Warfare”, frankly), I also think it could be an example of that Web adage: Your mileage may vary. Read more »

“Carob chips, anyone?”

I’ve been waiting for a Cary-centric episode all season, and “Silly Season” is as close I’ll ever probably get to one. I mean, I get why we couldn’t have a purely Cary-centric episode on the show (aside from the fact that the show it’s called The Good Cary), but I’ll take what I can get.

Overall “Silly Season” is a strong episode (aside from Blake, who just seems to bring out the pissy in everyone he meets (except Bond)), and one that rewards viewers familiar with the show’s big moments (Bishop’s relations with Lockhart-Gardner, Peter finding the condoms in the bed side drawer) while still managing to tell a pretty self-contained story and continue the season’s larger stories. Indeed, it’s a very find example of what the show does best. Read more »