October 7, 2008 · 12:22 am

Heroes – “I Am Become Death”

“I Am Become Death”

October 6th, 2008

When “Five Years Gone” debuted last Spring, I was amongst those who were a bit lukewarm on the episode. Sure, it was interesting to see this potential future for our Heroes, but at that point the “here and now” drama of the series was actually quite compelling. Every time since that point, though, the future has been getting more and more attractive: with the future comes a promise of getting away from the doldrums of the present, of the slowly changing landscape actually getting around to changing before we all grow old or, worst of all for NBC, impatient to the point of tuning out.

What “I Am Become Death” does is follow in this same tradition, as Heroes plagiarizes itself in an effort to keep people interested. I would love to report that it doesn’t work at all, but the episode throws enough “Isn’t the future wacky and crazy?!” at the viewer to give them some (likely irrational) hope that the series is heading in some exciting directions. The entire thing plays out as, in combination, Future Peter ushering Present Peter into this new world, and Matt Parkman witnessing the thing while in a hallucinatory state in Africa, and while there are some interesting broad divisions being drawn as related to the key theme it feels like a lot for the future to live up to.

And Heroes isn’t good at living up to its promise.

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October 6, 2008 · 10:01 pm

Chuck – “Chuck Versus The Seduction”

“Chuck Versus The Seduction”

October 6th, 2008

As mentioned last week for the show’s second season premiere, Chuck is just “on” right now. If there is anything that gave the show some problems in the first season, it was managing to handle all of the different elements of the series: the numerous settings (Buy More, Home, Missions), the various supporting characters, and worse of all the weekly storylines and the recurring plots, both romantic and unromantic.

With “Chuck Versus the Seduction” it becomes clear that the premiere was no fluke: flawlessly introducing a case that dredges up Chuck and Sarah’s relationship as well as the continued growth of Chuck as an actual agent as opposed to just an asset. Even though the show goes so far as to throw around the L-word as it relates to our central relationship, it still feels like a show that is letting things move organically. When a show can trot out John Larroquette and Melinda Clarke in the same episode and still not feel like it’s trying to hard, you have a show that is playing with the right themes at the right time.

In other words, the show is more or less seducing the audience in the same nature as the four-prong attack: as long as it doesn’t become a bastard, the show is on a very strong trajectory.

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October 6, 2008 · 2:51 am

Entourage – “Tree Trippers”

“Tree Trippers”

October 5th, 2008

No show knows how to waste time like Entourage.

“Tree Trippers” is straight out of the Entourage playbook: our group faces an important decision, which leads them on a quest of sorts that really just stretches out one sentence into an entire episode for the sake of being filled with antics, tongue-in-cheek celebrity cameos, and likely some sort of drug-based hallucinations.

Now, admittedly, I like my Entourage episodes to have a bit more plot, and this episode kind of struggled in that regard, but the season remains charming: whereas last year felt like nothing but episodes like this one strung along in a row, this feels like a worthwhile detour in order to recollect on the current situation.

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October 6, 2008 · 1:13 am

Mad Men – “The Inheritance”

“The Inheritance”

October 5th, 2008

Pete Campbell has inherited a lot of things from his parents, but one of them might well be his fundamental lack of humanity. As he greets his mother before a short meeting, they embrace by touching each other’s faces: not with any sort of kissing motion, but this awkward greeting that’s not a hug but rather just a proximity that seems to indicate that they are happy to see one another. But it is this coldness, that his mother seems to share, which makes Pete so incapable of handling the financial crisis she is in, and the own family drama that plagues his home life.

Betty Draper inherited from her mother her looks but also her fragile nature. She has many of her mother tendencies, and even has a housekeeper who appears to have raised her much as Carla is raising Sally and Bobby for most of the episode. It is these qualities, then, which make her so unable to deal with the reality of her father’s ailing health, and why her family didn’t even tell her about his failing in order to help continue her shield from the cold reality around her.

Whereas Don Draper has spent decades resolving his relationship with his father (although last week indicated he still sees that side of him), the inability to handle what they’ve inherited from a generation past is what holds Pete and Betty back, what keeps them from becoming fully realized members of society. What “The Inheritance” becomes is less a mediation on any pivotal moment in either of their development, but a demonstration over a number of days of their reactions to these ideas being tested, of their innocence or coldness rising in opposition to something that needs to be said or done.

The result is an episode that doesn’t quite hit as hard as the past few episodes on an emotional level, and feels like it doesn’t really add things to our story; that being said, it also feels distinctly like Matthew Weiner and Co. moving pieces around in preparation for something larger.

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October 5, 2008 · 9:36 pm

The Amazing Race Season 13: “Episode Two”

“Do You Like American Candy?”

October 5th, 2008

The second episode of The Amazing Race is always one of the most awkward: there isn’t yet any really compelling stories yet between teams, within teams, or within the race itself. And yet, unlike the first episode, there isn’t the need for a lot of exposition, so the producers have to hope that in the distance between one spot and another in close proximity the racers fall into every possible cliche.

Well, the producers lucked out: while some of it disheartened me to see, as personal favourites took a turn for the race, everything from airline drama to clue misreading turned up for a leg that, even without anything close to a suspenseful ending, told us a lot of things about these teams, defined some new relationships between them, and even gave us a couple of lessons about Karma. In the end, it’s an entertaining second leg that bodes well for the season ahead, if not quite blowing us away with anything particularly mindblowing.

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October 3, 2008 · 2:37 am

Season Premiere: Friday Night Lights – “I Knew You When”

“I Knew You When”

October 1st, 2008

There is something very intoxicating about Friday Night Lights. I knew this before, I guess, but this is the ultimate test. Although a mere check of my ‘About’ page would tell readers of this post that there’s something amiss with my doing this review, I just can’t help it. Even with too many shows by half already on my schedule, and numerous real life commitments, it is not within my level of will power to wait until whenever NBC decides that they’re going to run the third season of Friday Night Lights.

The DirecTV exclusivity deal is designed to save the series, to give it one last chance to prove itself within a more financially viable model, and I hate to be “part of the problem” when it comes to the effectiveness of this model. But, I want to live in a world where that deal doesn’t exist, or doesn’t need to: the show itself was in enough of a creative rut last season that seeing whether Jason Katims can prove himself is more than enough to drive me to dig into the show’s third season premiere.

What I found in “I Knew You When” was vintage FNL, a show that seems to have returned to a less convoluted and ultimately more effective structure. While many of the season’s clear trajectories are left mostly untouched in the premiere (Saracen, in particular, gets short-shifted something fierce), what we see is a very common theme: much as with the show’s chances for a fourth season (or an extension of the existing order), there are those who think that it can’t be done, and those who hold out hope for something better. To put it into football terms, something the show smartly does this season, there’s a lot of people thinking about calling a Hail Mary, and that has created an environment rife with an excitement about the future – and even if the show never gets to see it, watching the characters move towards the end of the tunnel seems like it will be worth it.

[If you are amongst those waiting until the show airs on NBC, first off I admire your willpower. Second, I will be discussing the episode in detail, so feel free to view this all-too tempting opening as your sign that the show is on the right track to start off.]

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October 2, 2008 · 11:48 pm

Fringe – “The Arrival”

“The Arrival”

September 30th, 2008

I was busy finishing off an assignment for Wednesday on Tuesday evening, and as a result delayed the watching of my (ridiculous number) of Tuesday night shows. So while I’ll be covering the rest in a bit of Cultural Catchup likely spread out over the weekend, I believe it is in the best interest of everyone who’s been following Fringe to get their two cents in on the first episode of the series that seems to actually be unquestionably interesting.

Now, I say interesting instead of good because the jury is still out on the latter: the show received its full season order after good stability airing behind House, but the actual trajectory of the series was fairly unclear. But “The Arrival” marks, well, the arrival of some very interesting things that deserve our attention, and I believe the attention of most viewers. Co-written by J.J. Abrams and Jeff Pinkner, Alias alum both, the episode introduced the first signs of a serialized narrative that isn’t entirely related to Massive Dynamic, ended on the show’s most successful cliffhanger yet, and made great strides in making both the series’ male and female leads more interesting characters in terms of their relationship with The Pattern.

In other words, it has taken the series from “Curiousity” to “Compelling” in one fell swoop…for me, at least.

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October 1, 2008 · 11:14 pm

Season Premiere: Pushing Daisies – “Bzzzzzzzzz!”

“Bzzzzzzzzz!”

October 1st, 2008

Sometimes a show isn’t profound, or fascinating, or deep. Sometimes, a show’s originality and charm are what elevate it to the level of being one of the most anticipated returns of the fall season, not a cliffhanger or any sort of buzzworthy (I know, I know) story element.

Pushing Daisies is one of these shows. I’ve always found it tough to blog about Pushing Daisies on any sort of extremely critical perspective: it’s a show that people either love or hate, and falling so strongly on the love side of things I can’t help but be more giddy with excitement than brimming with allegorical readings. If Pushing Daisies offers a cranky Emerson Cod, spastic Olive Snook, optimistic Chuck, awkward Ned, wacky Aunts Lily and Vivian, and more of Digby (Television’s best canine co-star) than I could ask for, I’m not going to be complaining anytime soon.

“Bzzzzzzzzz!” (With exactly nine Zs, I checked) is more of the same: not quite the revolution that Chuck’s second season premiere was for that show’s trajectory, it’s an episode that smartly places the focus on the central premise of the series while allowing the opportunity for almost all of its characters to have their various little moments. Settling in from the end of season drama that we were left with, Pushing Daisies remains what it was before: a comfy, cozy and whimsical universe to escape to for an hour each week.

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September 29, 2008 · 10:51 pm

Heroes – “One of Us, One of Them”

“One of Us, One of Them”

September 29th, 2008

Is it wrong that, at the end of the day, I’m so satisfied by an episode of Heroes that doesn’t suck, acting as if it’s as much a triumph as an episode that is extremely good? My standards have certainly fallen for Heroes in the past two seasons, but that doesn’t mean that “One of Us, One of Them” isn’t still a good indicator for the strength of the coming season. There are some elements, including a smart return to the dynamic of the Company’s two-man teams and Hiro and Ando’s comic escapades, which feel like a return to a Heroes that knew what it was doing.

But let’s be frank: the strength of this episode is based on what is missing as opposed to what is really here. It’s an episode that focuses on the most interesting characters (HRG and Sylar), the most well-tested ideas (such as our new Isaac that Parkman met in Africa), and those storylines that could actually improve the show in the future (Claire training to become a hero in her own right). On those fronts, the show is smart: it’s what viewers like, what offers hope for the future, and what doesn’t outright suck.

Really, though, the reason the episode works is that the parts completely dragging the show down (Maya and Mohinder, in particular) are wonderfully absent in this third episode; when the show returns to their characters, something tells me that I won’t be willing to give them a free pass on some of the weaker execution seen in parts of the episode.

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September 29, 2008 · 9:35 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “The Best Burger in New York”

“The Best Burger in New York”

September 29th, 2008

Flashbacks? Check. HIMYM-specific terminology? Check. Self-created Lore? Check. If you’re looking for an episode of How I Met Your Mother that represents the show’s charms in a single half hour, this is perhaps one of the most pure examples. While it sidelines Barney, perhaps the show’s best character, the show remains an ensemble and Marshall (who gets the most focus) was in dire need of a wakeup call in more ways than one.

The search for the best burger in New York sends Marshall back into his past, but the episode follows just a single night in the lives of our five lead characters. With Regis Philbin weaving in and out of the narrative to mild success, and some really charming cyclical storylines, it feels like (more than last week’s premiere) an episode that fits into the show’s canon with ease, if not with pure triumph.

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