Monsters of Television

“You are not the guy.”

This is going to be kind of quick since I don’t have much to say, I don’t know the episode warrants a lot of commentary, and I’m sure a good chunk of it has been expressed elsewhere.

I will say that I was very jealous of Nick last week. After “Open House” (an episode I’m more and more convinced may be the I’ve enjoyed most so far since the premiere) and seeing the preview for “Bullet Points”, I thought, “Man. Nick gets the exciting episodes.” And then I realized that I would get an exciting episode as I would get to write about whatever the hell happened to Jesse and Mike on their little road trip.

I’m still jealous of Nick, but he didn’t get that great dinner scene to talk about, so I’ll say we’re even-ish. Read more »

“Jerry would never let you get that far.”

What a bunch of crap led up to this episode. White Collar needs to stop doing favors for their actor friends.

Letting Tiffani Thiessen’s husband be the villain-of-the-week a couple episodes ago pushed the show off the very thin tightrope they walk every week above Campy and made it come off as a monster-hybrid short of a Syfy original. And Eliza Dushku last week, bless her heart, those pouty lips, and her perky — well, everything, but, when miscast, she has the delivery of day player given her first speaking role (I honestly cringed when she quoted The Book of the Dead). Unfortunate timing for her to be in scenes where they reintroduce the closest thing to a big bad White Collar has had since Fowler.

Yeah, the lead up to the summer finale wasn’t stellar. But they have to give us something and the White Collar Writer’s Room kept demanding via Twitter for East Coast not to ruin the episode for the West Coast. So I assumed that something good had to happen, that the art treasure storyline was going to finally come to a head.

I need to stop listening to Twitter. Read more »

“Maybe lying doesn’t come as easily to me as it does to you.”

Well, enough of these supporting character shenanigans. Skyler, Marie — get back in the cage with Walt, Jr.

There just isn’t enough room for the family characters when the spotlight shines on Jesse and Walt. And now that Mike and Hank jockey for a part of the glow, too, this sausage fest just doesn’t have room for developing these supporting roles. In most shows I would be a little disappointed to see the female characters take a back seat but I don’t think it’s gender-specific. There’s a reason why Bob Odenkirk is the most famous person in this cast that isn’t Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul.

As an actor, you’re not going to get a better story than them. You’re not going to play the part better than them. You’re going to take a back seat. These characters standing in the wings: their slight is not gender-specific. Their leads are just larger than life.

And now some (really long) bullet points: Read more »

“Marie, you want to go home?“

I like vegetables. Especially in the current state of climate affairs, I’ve been eating more salads and raw veggies (I love me some carrots, guys) to avoid heavier, hotter meals that just make me want to lapse into a food coma. This isn’t to say that I want vegetables all the time, as I do like a nice piece of chicken or fish along aside it, but I like to have some vegetables.

And the same is true of narratives. Episodes like “Open House” are narrative vegetables. They’re good for the story and for you, and help set up plot points and keep other things moving along (much like veggies provide you with fiber, if you get my point). So while my initial reaction to “Open House” was, “Wow. That was kind of boring.”, Breaking Bad has established this narrative pace that I shouldn’t at all have been surprised or bored by it.

With further reflection (and dodging conversations and reviews about it on Twitter, which was fairly easy (perhaps due to the lack of OMGWTFBBQ type of moments in the episode)), the episode is a solid one. It’s by no means the most exciting one, but it does important work, just like vegetables tend to do. Read more »

“It’s for defense. Defense.”

Most shows have what we in the television-snark game call a “breather” episode after a showing like Breaking Bad had last week. What Jesse ending up actually doing (I didn’t believe it until I saw the body), what Gus did in response, what showed us a normally unflappable Mike can, well, be flapped — I think we might all need an extra week to process.

But Breaking Bad is different. They don’t have typical “breather” episodes per se. This is a show dedicated to not getting too out of hand with its fantastical premise. With how far Walt and Jesse have come in the past three seasons and change, the show could easily spin out of control. So, instead, after action-heavy episodes, we get a week to see the characters try to swallow their PTSD (let’s face it: action on this this is horrifyingly traumatic) and struggle back to a stasis. Folks on this show are constantly trying to unsee what they’ve seen/done and we get to watch them suffer the consequences of their world.

So, you see, the show doesn’t really give the audience a “breather” episode like other series. It just makes a viewer suffer differently this week than s/he did last week. And I dig that about you, Breaking Bad.

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With Young Justice‘s extended hiatus, I haven’t had any superhero television to review for a while. Admittedly, I stopped writing about Young Justice because it was increasingly uninteresting (How bad was the Doctor Fate episode? And, really, boom tubes already? Sigh.), but I was watching it nonetheless.

I did not think, however, that I would miss Young Justice as much as I did while I was watching the Marvel anime series tonight. Animated at Madhouse, a terrific animation studio by the by, and with stories by Warren Ellis, you’d think that Iron Man  and Wolverine would be a bit livelier, but they’re both fairly uninspired affairs from the start. At least Wolverine a has a bit more of a pulse than Iron Man.  Read more »

“Blow it up on his face.”

Usually the opening quote of these reviews are telling, well-crafted lines that either encapsulate the episode on the whole or it’s just a gem I want to share. This line is neither. Sometimes I’m just 14 and it makes me laugh.

That line comes from the mouth of Peter Burke and will probably be featured in a new incarnation of the “Let’s Enhance” video. He’s talking about some surveillance video he gains through a hacker in his employ, from a bank that must have HD cameras installed at all exits since “blowing it up on his face” didn’t degrade the image quality at all. But I suppose I shouldn’t be nitpicky.

My eyes roll when shows do episodes revolving around technology and hacker culture. The scripts tend to become a list of keywords and misused terminology and it’s so transparent that the writers don’t necessarily understand the solution to their story problem and just type in what the consultant tells them to write. I imagine hospital shows sound the same to an doctors. Unless sarcoidosis actually does come up in every differential ever.

However, I don’t blame White Collar for sounding like every procedural that tackles technology. Sure, they make their computer nerds gorgeous (generally not the case) and their apartments ridiculously well-outfitted (the wall of expenive 25-inch monitors in a hacker’s pad is probably way more rare than you think) but you have to expect that kind of thing with the “blue skies” look. This isn’t The Wire; gritty reality has no place here. No, my issue with the show of late comes more from it falling into tropy pitfalls. The season started off with a bang and it’s been stalling, things like Worried Wife and Syrupy Character Development (I wish I had the time to review the Mozzie-focused episode — what a cheesey/saccharine miscue that was) flooding the choke. And even that wouldn’t bother me so much if Myles McNutt hadn’t said that would be the case when I was filling my glass half-full.

I hate it when that smug, Canadian bastard is right.

What I can say, though, is that this particular episode brought a little more development and a little more drama. I would say it’s moving in the right direction. But, sadly, I know better now.

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“You know what, man? If I get out of this job without upper respiratory issues it’ll be a miracle.”

An interesting episode. The heist was just a catalyst for our heroes to be placed in a WWII mixed race love story narrated by guest star Danny Glover. Some definitely rose to the occasion, taking advantage of the different material and showing some acting chops. Others may want to stick to the character acting. I won’t name names, but they’re still beautiful blondes and I love their usual character.

Leverage is an odd show to review. Unless you’re talking about the heist itself, which in the grand scheme of the show is mostly inconsequential, there isn’t always much to go on. So I’m going to try something new. The following “review” is going to be a list of pros and cons from the episode. Because the team is comprised of professional con men. Damn I’m good.

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“Well? Get back to work.“

I did season one of Breaking Bad a while back, and then did seasons two and three over the course of June and just a bit of July so I would be all caught up in time for premiere.

How did you all wait an entire year for this show to come back? (“Meth” was a common answer. Oddly, no one took up chemistry or dressing entirely in purple.) I mean, I only had to wait two weeks for this episode, and while I kept my now very bad addiction to suspense fed by watching the Women’s World Cup, I still found myself jonesing (seeing Walt and Jesse on every other Web site I visited this month certainly didn’t help maters). I can only imagine what people who have been watching the show for longer than I have have been going through.

But it’s here now, so we can all exhale slowly. If only so we can suck all the air back in and hold our breath again. Read more »

“It’s a dangerous mountain. There could be some polar bears or ill tempered Eskimos.”

Leverage‘s return left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Sometimes the cons are just silly. Or boring. But it’s that oh so lovable ragtag group of liars, cheats and thieves turned do-gooders that keep us coming back. “The Long Way Down Job” was a prime example of why those who are fans of the show love it and why its naysayers are so adamantly against it.

A mountaintop is just not a place for the team to be. It’s a very challenging terrain. A hacker is almost no good because, as evidenced, signals are lost all the time and communication is hard to maintain. Sure Parker climbs buildings, but a mountain is a totally different story. Eliot is just good at everything so he should be fine.

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