Monsters of Television

“Oh, feelings. I see why you came to me.”

Alexei, you might be my favorite.

Two weeks ago, we watched “vs The Balcony” and its structure completely crumble around one of the most important plot arcs in the series. Up there with the Chucknsarah relationship and Chuck balancing a normal life with being the Intersect (regretfully, the latter of which has been hastily abandoned), the correlation between Chuck/Sarah and Orion/Frost has been the ultimate reflection for the future of the core relationship and the ghost that haunts it, even if the arc has defied Chuck’s general stance on being completely obvious about all plotlines. Of course, I flew into reactionary rage about it, whining about the show’s inconsistency and how one of the most important turnarounds the show has accomplished in four seasons was sullied by a “vs the Honeymooners”-esque level of camp.

However, the last two episodes have made up for it.

Granted, I’m a little disappointed we’ve come so far in this arc in the last two episodes but I’m also not at all surprised. Chuck typically likes to come up with a good idea and then burn through it like filler episodes are the sweet, sweet relief to the overexcitement that comes with story. From a different series, I might have expected something a little more drawn out so that the confrontation that happens in “vs The Push Mix” might actually occur closer to the end of the season. That felt like the natural progression for something like this, especially we’re only a little more than halfway through the remaining episodes.

But, to be fair, it appears Chuck has something else in mind for the culmination of the season.

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“No capes. No tights.“

Well, that was better than last week.

I’m still having problems getting a bead on Young Justice despite talking about being patient last week. Certainly “Drop-Zone” is a great deal easier to watch than “Welcome to Happy Harbor” (M’gaan is, thankfully, only in her awful civvies at the end of the episode), and it does a better job of using characters, plot, and theme to create a more fully realized unit of story.

I still quibbles, but I suspect that they have more to do with what I expect from the show than what the show actually will involve, given target demographics and, well, the age of the characters involved. Yes, I’m not crazy about the ‘shipping that is shaping up. Read more »

Do I see a tear? God, I hope so, you sensitive beast.

The Vampire Diaries is back! The Vampire Diaries is back! Hey, did you hear, TVD is back!!  Okay, now that I have that out of my system, I can move on.

Hate to say it, though, not sure I loved this episode. I liked it. I mean, it featured the return of a character I really like and the departure of a character I really did not. There were two impulsive kisses, a sweet hug between Elena and Damon, and actual, sincere Damon tears! You’d think that would all add up to a truly excellent episode. So, let’s try to figure out why I’m not using as many exclamation marks for this particular episode as I would for the series as a whole.

I should also probably issue a small apology to poor, tortured Rose. I’ve been pretty mean to her, and I suppose I liked her character a teensy bit more this week. Sort of. Since she was dying from a werewolf bite, Rose was suddenly all philosophical and telling people to want to live and that kind of stuff. Not sure the character earned all the heartfelt conversation, but since Rose was basically used (and disposed) by the showrunners as a tool more than a character, I can appreciate her for the purpose she served with regard to Damon. Because Damon’s story is the only reason to celebrate this episode.  More about that after the jump.

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“…every dollar from the period fairy.”

Obviously I like Community, and a lackluster episode is often more enjoyable than other comedies on television. “Celebrity Pharmacology” falls into this category. It’s good, but it’s not terribly inspired. And as Cory Barker tweeted to me last night (and then wrote about in his own review), the episode is pretty broad.

Last week, I needled Perfect Couples for being broad (okay, I  skewered it), but this shouldn’t imply that I don’t like broadness, or think it’s incapable of being funny or entertaining. Broad comedy is great if it’s well-executed, and while Community does kind of stick the landing in the episode. It’s just that the episode a bit creaky in its broadness: anti-drug message gone awry, mistaken text messaging, friendships challenged by money. When I said Perfect Couples would be good as a Disney show, I didn’t realize that Community would do an episode right out of Hannah Montana. Read more »

“Hello Megan!”

Um. Yeah. No. That wasn’t good.

Red Tornado is totally photo-blocking Young Justice's big damn heroes moment.

I’ll grade on a curve since the episode does have the difficult task of still establishing the foundation of the team’s dynamics and introducing a new character (and we still have one more team member to introduce (when does Artemis join up, and can it be sooner rather than later?) only makes me a little nervous about the show) in an episode that doesn’t allow much room to breathe, and what breathing room there is isn’t very well done.

What it boils down to is that the show itself hasn’t figure out the dynamics of its core cast yet. And this is different from the characters not having their dynamics figured out yet. One is poor planning and murky writing while the other is drama.

But is only the third episode, so there’s still time to figure all that out. Read more »

“I agree with brown Jamie Lee Curtis.”

Community begins to pay off some of its larger storylines in “Asian Population Studies,” particularly Chang’s quest to join the study group (to destroy it) as well as Shirley’s pregnancy as a result of her night of radioactive taco beef zombifiaction fling with Chang. Likewise back from the undead is Rich, who Annie spent the winter break with doing do-good, and is now seeing as a potential boyfriend for herself.

The episode is played straighter than most Community episodes, but doesnt quite reach the heights of “Mixology Certification” in terms of the show’s sense of grounded reality (or what passes for it on this show). On the other hand, it does address the idea of what happens when you have put a particularly sitcom-y character like Chang and try and introduce him into a group of self-aware genre nuts. I just don’t know if there’s much new in that story since the show already kind of did it last season. Read more »

“I hear you, cherished partner.“

So I recapped the preview of Perfect Couples that aired back in December and found a great deal to dislike in the episode. I was going to skip viewing the pilot, but Matt begged me to check it out just for his own amusement. Adding to this review happening is that the folks who got screener copies of this episode and the second episode said that these episodes were somewhat better than the preview episode.

They’re not wrong, but Perfect Couples remains an obnoxious show that I have no desire to ever revisit again. (Sorry, Matt.) Read more »

“Microbursts of contempt.”

Man, did the court case just get in the way in this episode or what?

Normally I like the case of the week in The Good Wife as it allows for a breather in between whatever arc developments — law firm politics, Alicia/Will, Peter’s campaign — occur in the episode. But, here in “Two Courts”, the courtroom/procedural plot (the jury whisperer and Will’s feud with the judge) is decidedly underdeveloped, which is to the detriment of the episode as a whole.

Luckily, the on-going stories are strong enough to carry the episode, so that it is still decidedly entertaining, but not up the show’s regular standards. Read more »

“Remember tonight … for it is the beginning of always.”

Spoiler: the show does NOT end in hail of bullets after double-crossing a South American drug lord. However: Lux does kill Dumbledore.

A film degree at my alma mater requires a minor and, instead of doing the responsible thing and getting a Computer Science minor to tag onto my established expertise, I went in a more interesting route and took every Italian class my school had to offer. My interest in Italian stems from my hero worship of the man credited with codifying the language: Dante Alighieri. I’ve read just about his entire catalog, including some in the original Italian, and have been reading his work since I was fifteen.

The quote Eric Daniels writes on the board doesn’t ring a bell.

If you know where it comes from, I’m willing to learn but I couldn’t find “ricorda” (the command form of “to remember”) and “notte” or “sera” (“night” or “evening”) anywhere near each other in La Commedia, Vita Nova, or Rime. I even looked in the complete poetry of Guido Cavalcanti, Dante’s best friend.

Where I did find a reference (besides the numerous quote sites on the internet citing Dante as the source of the quote but not from where it was derived) is to One Tree Hill. Lucas apparently has a conversation with Brooke about a note in which Lucas included the passage, claiming it was from Dante, an author they read “last semester.” Using One Tree Hill as a kick-off point for the end of the series is fitting, even if the elder series lives on while this one makes its exit.

Life Unexpected was supposed to be the Everwood/Gilmore Girls series that everyone was missing, a show that could fill the void of family drama the WB used to program for so well. And its first season (particularly the end) showed some promise. But second season went off the rails a little bit and started to, frankly, look more like One Tree Hill. Pretty people who can’t seem to ever pull it together because of the soap opera melodrama happening all around them. It’s probably good that LUX wasn’t allowed to limp into another season. Between LUX Shovel and Creepy Eric Daniels, the show was well on its way to a weather machine plotline delayed because Baze’s megalomaniacal father watched his own heart transplant spill across the floor of a hospital. That clip never gets old.

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“Let him man-serve you.”

Ms. Walker. You’re trying to seduce me.

Why do the big moments in Chuck and Sarah’s life have to be nestled in their cheesiest episodes?

It wasn’t always like this. Harken back to Seasons 1 and 2 and you’ll find plenty of important moments that are properly escalated, better structured, and surrounded by story that doesn’t crumble around the emotional core. In fact, the only heartbreaking moment in the timeline of these two crazy kids nestled into a campy hour prior to Season 3 that I can remember off the top of my head comes during “vs The Truth,” where a former East European gymnast armed with truth-serum/poison provides all the characters with their very own writer’s crutches.

But it seems like the really well-plotted episodes of this series are increasingly scattered and episodes that should have a lot of emotional pay-off because of the events surrounding the beating heart of this show (no matter how many times I almost wish the focus would shift to Morgan and Casey) stumble in structure and execution. Yeah, “vs The Honeymooners.” I’m looking at you.

While not suffering from the same paralysis of subtlety that 0314 celebrated, “vs The Balcony” definitely has an unfinished quality to it. The A-plot (termed as the “sub-mission” for the episode) is never supported by any other elements of the episode, even when it’s necessary that it is in order for the A-plot to function. But, more importantly, the end of the episode lacks an emotional beat because of the campiness surrounding the rest of the story.

Let’s start off with something good about the episode, though.

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