Monsters of Television

“It’s Robin Sparkles 3, ya’ll!”

I was just as excited to hear these words as Ted and company were.

Callbacks are something that How I Met Your Mother does extremely well. The show features some of the best recurring jokes and characters such as “Challenge Accepted”, Robin Sparkles and Slap Bet, the latter two making reappearances in this episode. It’s not just the humor that makes HIMYM the best comedy on TV right now, it’s the emotional resonances, the lessons learned. The Full House moments if you will. Coincidental because Bob Saget is the voice of Future Ted.

“Glitter” isn’t just an episode about Robin Sparkles and porn and space travel, it’s an episode about friendship and growing apart. And math.

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“In lock-up, they won’t let you tweet.”

This is the best episode of The Good Wife so far this season.

Part of this is because it had pretty much everything I’ve come to love in the show. But the other part was that the episode  didn’t have any of the stuff I hate. (Read: There were no Blake and Kalinda shenanigans in this episode. None. Zero. Zilch. So glorious.) But yes, “Bad Girls” had everything in it that marks an episode of The Good Wife: political maneuvering,  law firm maneuvering, a solid case, reasonable Kalinda investigating, good family beats.

There’s a delicate balance to crafting a show with so many things going on at once, and what often happens is that some things fall to the wayside (did Jackie break her hip?) while others gain prominence. Overall, I feel that The Good Wife does a good job of giving all things equal weight though, after sleeping on the episode, I do see the critiques the episode might perhaps try and overreach here.

I still think the episode is considerably stronger than the past few episodes have been, so don’t let my acknowledgment of the critique seem like I’m discounting how much I enjoyed the episode.

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“I mean — he was moving, right?”

What is happening here?!

Troubled kid, meet actual trouble.

For most of tonight’s episode, I felt pretty much the same as I do every week of watching this show. “Ew. Don’t do tha– ew. Lux, you’re a jackass. Tash, please don’t let her — ew. Adults don’t leave them in a room alone togeth– ew.” And, despite because extra crispy gross tonight, Eric “Minnesota” Daniels wasn’t the weirdest part of the evening. No, that easily goes to what Lux did with a car, what Tash did with a shovel, and what the new guy Sam put together all by himself.

Seriously, this is an episode that makes me almost sad that the show is almost certainly doomed. I really want to see where this is going, especially now that they’ve dug deep down into the WB archives for characters this season. Especially since they decided to bring in some of the stuff they plastered over earlier this season (quick! Get Tash away from Valerie! Wait — you called her mom? And don’t mention it again) and weave it into the new stuff they have going on here.

I’ll warn you now, I have no real important thoughts on this episode. I offer no real insight. All I can tell you is what I saw, how I saw it, and hope you watch the episode just to enjoy the spectacle with me. It’s a glorifying hour of witness.

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“Whoa, whoa. That sounds like candor.”

If it weren’t for the Dragon*Con photos, I’m not sure I would believe that Summer Glau knows how to smile. Combo Breaker!

Why can’t we start off our seasons with episodes like this? Instead we have to wade through so much garbage before we start to get the story going, right about at the threshold when people stop caring about the show.

It wasn’t perfect but just about everything hit: the spy story, Chuck’s situation, the best Greta yet, even the Chuck and Sarah story had good reveal. There was a point when I even said, “Oh snap.” Out loud. Yeah, I brought that back that’s how good it was.

Okay, I’ll be honest. “Oh snap” never really left my vocabulary. But you can see how impressive that is for Chuck this season. I can’t even think of a moment beyond the past two episodes where an “oh snap” would be appropriate. Maybe they know something we don’t. Maybe they have reason not to worry about ratings and make a bunch of horrible episodes to scare away the riff-raff. And then at the quarter-season mark, they bring out the goods for the True Believers. Excelsior!

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“Boutineer is French for ‘Booty is near.’“

If there’s one thing that How I Met Your Mother does well it’s delay pleasure. Sadly, sometimes the show sometimes can’t sustain the build up and the climax just kind of peters out.  It happens to the best of shows, so I’m willing forgive it every now and then. At least this time the show actually had some game compared to earlier episodes this season.

…That sound really dirty, didn’t it? Read more »

Danger! This woman believes she always knows "what is right." Proceed with caution.

There are two ways to evaluate this episode, the follow up episode to the brutal depiction of Charlotte King’s rape.

First, you can consider the representation of a social issue–rape and its impact upon a survivor and everyone around her.

Second, you can consider the program as a fictional narrative from the perspective of plot, character, theme, etc.

For me to evaluate this episode, I have to do both because I’m rather torn about this episode.

On the first scale, that of the social issue, the episode is problematic, even disturbing.

On the second scale, that of the fictional series, I will focus on character.  In this, the episode excels.

Quite the conundrum for the review, but here I go…

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“Why don’t you take that stupid hat and go back to On Golden Pond?

“Oh, don’t worry: he won’t wake up. I made time between running from zombies and scraping by to survive to bump uglies with your best friend while your son slept in the next bed and he never made a peep. Carl, not Shane. Shane’s a screamer. Did I mention that I made you a cuckold? I did. But we can laugh about it now. Ha ha ha. Ha?”

The complaint from several people (including myself) is that last week’s episode of The Walking Dead felt too much like the horror movies the pilot promised so much against. Dialogue was atrocious, themes were too obvious, it borrowed so heavily from its genre-mates (even parodies like Shaun of the Dead) that it felt unoriginal, and the slow-build-tension, character-focused, trope-examining, AMC-promise-of-story was violated by what was, essentially, a conventional horror plot.

Perhaps I felt that way because I brought expectations to this episode. After talking it over during the Monsters of Television podcast, they might have needed a hook after that first episode in order to grab as many people as possible. Sure, the story for the first episode set a tone but we’re dealing with television afterall and it’s not called “broadcast” for nothin’. Stupid farmers.

In any event, the third episode is kind of a marriage of the two in that we have some interesting character deepening events with some heavy-handed themes, even ones that are vocalized pretty blatantly (more so than even the “us against them” speech Rick gave Mearle on the rooftop). There’s some good stuff here, some cheesy stuff, and one big huge “WHY. WOULD YOU DO THAT?” For those of you that watched the episode, I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going.

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She's undead, naked with Damon, and still a crappy character. No fixin' that.

I feel like the writers for The Vampire Diaries have been reading my mind—so many small complaints that I have had in the past weeks were resolved or at least addressed in this week’s episode. Thanks, TVD!

This was another episode where we have more talking than action, but at least we got some good dish and a number of answers. Even better, Elena took matters into her own hands, so this week it was Stefan having to react instead of lead. I appreciate a feisty Elena, and Katherine seems to bring out the best in her. Let’s have these two gals go on a road trip next!

Still not in love with Rose, somewhat ambivalent about the direction Damon seems to be heading, and absolutely uninterested in Elijah (except for that cool trick with the coins!). But putting the spotlight on Elena was fitting, and the series has now erected some impressive obstacles for our newly empowered heroine to overcome. Obstacles = drama, and that’s a good thing.

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“We need to give the truth the drama of a lie.”

We've got cynicism, right here in Chi-Town. And that starts with C which rhymes with...

Sometimes reviewing  a consistently solid shows is a challenge. It’s hard to say much new about them. This, of course, applies to procedurals in general, but it becomes especially difficult when a show like The Good Wife. You end up trying to find something to hang your review on, and that can be tricky.

Luckily, The Good Wife often provides a peg to drape itself over pretty consistently. Sure, it was easier last season when the episode titles told me what to look for (“Doubt”, “Fleas”, “Boom”), but I like not being told what the peg is, even if the episode makes it pretty obvious, and boy oh boy is “Poisoned Pill” a super-cynical episode of The Good Wife. Read more »

“It loves the little squshy mushies!“

I do not have a great deal to say about “Tashy 497” because there isn’t a lot to say about it. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad episode, because it’s not. It’s just kind of there, in the episode list, kicking back, taking it easy.

I think my my trouble is that the episode is just so beige that it’s kind of hard to form a really solid opinion about the episode, which is a little frustrating after the great run the show has on recently. But “Tashy 497” still has some entertaining aspects to it, which prevents the episode from being a complete waste. Read more »