Monsters of Television

“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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“Anna’s a lizard? That sucks. She’s so hot.”

It’s been a long time since the sky turned red (well, only 4 days in story time), but V came out swinging. Questions were answered, things were shown, lines were drawn and other nouns were verbed. Earth continues to be a planet populated mostly by idiots as the V’s plans continue and most of us keep drinking the red Kool-Aid. I prefer Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade myself.

We got to see the V baby! And she’s so cute! Ryan only got a short time with her before being banished from the mothership. Anna plans on fueling his hatred of her to lead him to the Fifth Column (of which he’s already a main member) and destroying them from the inside. Hobbs already has reservations about his rejoining the group. Understandable seeing the extreme anger issues Ryan seems to have developed. He beat the piss out of that tracker. By the way, was anyone else thinking about this during the chase scene? It’s all I was seeing.

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“No. I never thought our friends were criminals until we made friends with criminals.”

Ok. This must be discussed before diving into the meat of the episode. I feel cheated, No Ordinary Family. Daphne’s amnesia, a super exciting possible plot development, was just an outlet for introducing potential new viewers to the concept and to the character’s powers. It’s resolved in the first 2 minutes of the episode by touching her family members and relearning everything. All of the emotional weight from the brilliant ending to “No Ordinary Sidekick” was just wasted. Cheap, No Ordinary Family. Cheap.

Now that that’s off my chest let’s talk this week. “No Ordinary Friends” introduced us to the Cotton Family. The patriarch, Dave, was saved by Jim and so a friendship between the two families was born. Jim and Steph loved the possibility of having people they could talk and relate to. Apparently they forgot about George and Katie.

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“You are freaking out the invalid.”

Can you speak up so the bear can hear you?

Right out of the gate in 2011, ABC Family laid the calendar year’s premieres of Greek and Pretty Little Liars and, while some of our academic critic cohorts watch and review Greek, Matt and I are of different stock and shifted our attention to the lyin’ ladies of Rosewood instead. Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Aria continued her illicit relationship with a teacher, Emily conceded to be in lesbians with Maya, and Hanna got hit by a car after recognizing who she thought was “A.” Oh, and there was the tragedy of a side character dubbing her birthday party “Camp Mona,” complete with labeled SWAG and signage, but only kept reminding me of Who’s the Boss?

This week the show decompressed a little, going over the facts and processing the new information. Matt and I did the same upon the finishing the episode.

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“I’m not ready for this.”

When last we last this show, Ted was sorting everyone’s life out but his own and then went to watch It’s A Wonderful Life while the episode failed to really follow through with any reflections on Ted’s own inability to get his life in order. Needless to say, the show really only follows through with the Marshall and Lily baby plot.

But that’s not really what matters, is it? The episode is very unimpresisve, with very little of the inspired humor that could come from the premises (lasertag tournament, SANDY RIVERS!) but that button. Man, that button grabbed what’s left of my cold, bitter, cynical heart.

That is, if I still had one. Read more »

“Come find me, bitches.

Sometimes they are also Pretty Dirty Little Liars

You can’t be blamed if you haven’t watched this show. I wouldn’t even know about it if I wasn’t such a Gilmore Girls junkie and ABC Family wasn’t such a publicity whore during their commercial breaks. Seriously, the phrases “secret life” and “make it or break it” will be forever burned into my consciousness despite the fact I’ve only seen short clips of both that put together wouldn’t even amount to an episode. And then, even if you had seen a preview or two for it, you might’ve been like me and assumed some sort of “ghost in the machine” scenario, like some poor American reboot of Serial Experiements: Lain. The show wasn’t really made for me and I chose not to respond to it.

But Matt kept insisting I check it out. Since I’d already given Veronica Mars a whirl (which I liked a lot) and I gave my mother Lost Season 1 for Christmas, I decided to hit the Matt Owens Trifecta. He sold it to me as a departure from normal ABC Family fare, something more closely resembling the WB shows of the early 2000s (when Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, and One Tree Hill were at their schmaltziest). The production value is improved over shows like Secret Life of the American Teenager and Make It Or Break It and the writing was a lot tighter, he defended. So, since Hulu had the entire season up to this point available to watch, I decided I could try it out. I mean, I watched Life Unexpected; it’s not like I have a masculine reputation to upkeep. I have a Fashionista badge on Miso, for crissakes.

The show surprised me, however. I was taken by the opening sequence, a desaturated series of shots showing a body being prepared for a viewing and scored by an almost saccharine song about keeping secrets (although Aria shushing at the end almost made me turn the show off). And not only did I see the things Matt noted but I also found it interesting in other areas. I’m not saying you have to watch it but it’s something to keep your eye on. If you want to keep up without sitting through the first ten episodes (new episodes start Monday, January 3rd), let me take you through the highlights.

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“So if we’re going to figure out what’s going on now, we have to figure out what happened back then.”

I’ve already seen the episodes that follow this one, up through, as of this writing, “Faith.” While I was watching, I was tweeting little bits about my enjoyment (and I really love this run of episodes as you’ll see), and regular commenter on this First Watch, Charlotte Howell, noted that this run of episodes is where she no longer needed convincing about staying with the show. I was pretty sold after “The Phantom Traveler,” but “Home,” “Asylum,” and “Scarecrow” have me fully committed to Supernatural. In that spirit, each one gets its own write-up, starting with “Home.”

Which starts off this: Damn. Just damn. Read more »

“Every legend has a source, a place where it all began.”

“Sometimes bad things just happen.”

This post was inspired by the episodes “Bloody Mary,” “Skin,” “Hook Man,” and “Bugs” found on disc 2 of the first season DVD set.

So instead of doing a blow-by-blow of each episode on the second disc of Supernatural season 1, I’m going to do a sum-up post since my notes on each episode tended to be roughly the same due to the trends present in each of the episodes. I’ll try not to make a huge habit of doing this kind of a post since I think there’s some value in addressing each episode individually, or, at the most, paired, but I make no promises. (It’s also Christmas, so I figure one long entry may be a nice break from dealing with whatever you happen to be dealing with today, be it family or boredom or both!)

In any event, at this point in the season, I think I can address one of its big central premises: myths happening in every day life and most of us simply aren’t aware of it. More importantly though is that these myths aren’t occurring in big cities. Despite the claims of Toledo and St. Louis, we’re clearly in the suburbs of those cities, so how is it that the urban myth is now a suburban one? Read more »