Tag Archives: Episode 10

December 7, 2009 · 10:07 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “The Window”

“The Window”

December 7th, 2009

There are moments where it feels as if Robin Scherbatsky exists entirely to be ignorant to the various long-standing mythologies that exist in How I Met Your Mother’s universe. Inevitably, when something new to us is introduced, Robin is the one asking “what’s that?” And such we enter “The Window,” as we discover (through Robin) that Ted Mosby has been on a nine-year journey to bag a college pal and yet has been foiled every time.

The way the show is able to use Robin to justify its exposition, almost always told through a casual conversation at McLaren’s or in Ted and Robin’s apartment, is part of why these stories are able to move so smoothly. In just moments, the stage has been set for what is yet another potential love story waiting to happen, fate and destiny fighting against reality. And by nicely balancing some more emotional beats for Josh Radner’s Ted with some broader comedy as the rest of the gang tries to keep the window from closing, the episode manages to entertain while also providing the sort of heartwarming conclusion (albeit with a twist) that HIMYM is so great at.

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Tagged as 15-year old Marshall, Architecture, CBS, Cobie Smulder, Episode 10, Erotic Dog Photography, Grizzly Bear, HIMYM, Informer, Jamie Kaler, Jason Segel, JoAnna Garcia, Maggie, Maggie Wilkes, Make Adjustments Go Get It Energized, Marshall, Mike Chaps, Montage, Overalls, Rat Tail, Robin Scherbatsky, Se7en, Season 5, Snow, Ted Mosby, The Window, Time Travel, Two Weeks, Vanilla Thunder, What's in the Box

December 1, 2009 · 3:20 am

House – “Wilson”

“Wilson”

November 30th, 2009

You might be wondering why I stopped reviewing House after the season premiere. And, well, the answer is quite simple: I stopped watching House after the season premiere.

It wasn’t an intentional decision: a few episodes piled up on the DVR, which proceeded to crash and lose all of its files, and then more episodes piled up alongside some frustrated critics who were growing tired of the show’s ignorance of the rather great premiere, “Broken.” And so my desire to catch up with House was limited, and until tonight I was kind of convinced that I may never return to the show again.

However, on the advice of those same critics, I returned to “Wilson” and discovered what role House will play in my television criticism future. It is a show where the only episodes that truly engage me, truly suck me in, are those which feel uniquely possible within the show’s universe. Alan Sepinwall quite rightly observes in his review of the episode that the focus on Wilson in the episode would never work if not for the inherent juxtaposition of his methods to House’s methods.

It’s an episode that puts someone else in the driver’s seat, and rather than feeling like an overly complicated, soap operatic version of the show’s basic premise (which, based on what I’ve read of the season so far and parts of last season, is effectively what the show has boiled down to) the episode felt like a rumination on character, themes, and the inherent humanity or lack thereof at the show’s core.

The result was a very compelling hour of television, one which is uniquely housed (I made a funny!) within this particular series but will do little to change its overall downward trajectory.

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Tagged as Apartment, Cuddy, Dr. House, Entertainment, Episode 10, FOX, Joshua Malina, leukaemia, Review, Robert Sean Leonard, Season 6, Television, Tucker, TV, Wilson

November 22, 2009 · 11:02 pm

The Amazing Race Season 15 – “Episode 10 (Czech Republic)”

“We’re Not Working with Anybody, Ever, Anymore!”

November 22nd, 2009

When we get this close to the end of The Amazing Race, the show’s interest in its characters begins to shift. At certain points, the show allows the racers to appear as comrades, laughing together and competing against the race itself more against each other. However, by the time you get to the final four teams, the show wants every chance to pit the teams against one another in a fight to get to the end, trying to breed the sort of competitive fire that you want to see at this stage in the game.

And while most of the google hits from last week’s post seemed to indicate that the biggest piece of news from the leg was crotch censorship, the real story was the way the producers turned Dan and Flight Time’s altercation into a sign that, from this point forward, things are personal. In reality, the clip was only really edited this way (Big Easy clarified, as they did at the start of this leg, that they had no personal vendetta), but what it does signal is that all bets are officially off.

And this week, as the teams head to the Czech Republic, we realize that this season these teams are perfectly built in order to enter into this competitive stage. There is no team in this race that is what one would call a “feel good” team, and the result is that we’re effectively watching to see how well these teams are able to embrace this competitive spirit. And while this might not fit into a narrative of personal achievement or self-realization, it does fit into what makes these final legs of the race suspenseful: all of these teams are both ultimately capable of being competitive (athletic and strong-minded), but they also tend to create an enormous amount of drama in the process.

As someone who likes this competitive side of the race, I’m pleased by this, but I can see how someone looking for more of a fan favourite finish to the race may be disappointed.

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November 18, 2009 · 11:51 pm

Glee – “Ballad”

“Ballad”

November 18th, 2009

If you were to go back to the pilot, you would believe that Rachel Berry was the heart and soul of Glee. At that point, she was the person who most believed in Glee club, who saw it as the only place where she wasn’t the subject of ridicule and where she could express herself in the way she most desired.

But since that point, Rachel has become almost heartless. She turned her back on Glee club to join Sandy Ryerson’s musical, and she’s generally judgmental and frustrating before she’s caring or supportive. And yet, because Rachel is the strongest soloist (only Mercedes) on Glee, she’s remained at the centre of storylines and the club itself even while she seems convinced it’s actually holding her back from something better. It’s created a scenario where Rachel isn’t actually likeable, which is somewhat problematic if she’s supposed to be our heroine.

“Ballad” is a continuation of this theme, as a Glee Club exercise has everyone singing emotional ballads that bring out their deepest insecurities (in pretty uniformly effective ways) while Rachel is stuck in a “Hot for Teacher” scenario that never successfully bridges the comic and the dramatic (tears aside). I’m all for the show integrating more comedy than last week’s more emotional episode, and parts of this week’s entry nicely balance the two even with a lot of musical numbers involved, but Rachel’s storyline is effectively emotion-free, something that’s going to grow more and more problematic as we move forward.

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November 13, 2009 · 12:44 am

The Office – “Murder”

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“Murder”

November 12th, 2009

The best thing about The Office is that its silliest episodes can sometimes be its most effective. An episode like “Cafe Disco” last season was the perfect way to break through the tension of the Michael Scott Paper Company period, devolving into a dance party that helped to bring everyone back together albeit through a less than serious structure. While the show can go off the rails if things become too silly, there is something very honest about situations where the silliness is the result of a human response to a crisis, or to a period of tension. Michael Scott is not the only person in the world who doesn’t like tense situations, although he may be the only one who decides to turn his office into a dance party or, as we see in “Murder,” the scene of a vicious murder.

What makes the episode work is that it continues a couple of ongoing character trends (Jim slowly turning into Michael, Andy’s interest in Erin) in an episode that otherwise devolves into the office’s crazier characters overacting their way through a murder mystery in a box while the rest of the characters contemplate some major financial restructuring. It’s a good introduction to what seems like the next major arc for the series, and I think it’s an effective piece of television comedy in the process.

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Tagged as Andy Bernard, Bankruptcy, Dunder Mifflin, Dwight, Ed Helms, Ellie Kemper, Entertainment, Episode 10, Erin, Georgia, Insolvency, Jim, Michael Scott, Murder, Murder Mystery, Pam, Rainn Wilson, Season 6, Steve Carell, Television, TV

November 11, 2009 · 7:55 pm

Sons of Anarchy – “Balm”

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“Balm”

November 10th, 2009

I don’t need to tell you that “Balm” was an exceptional hour plus of television: for about two weeks, critics have been waxing poetic about how this could be the show’s defining moment, and how this is the episode that raises Sons of Anarchy from the upper echelon of television drama to the upper upper echelon of television drama. The result is that Sepinwall, Fienberg, Ryan, Poniewozik and every other critic under the sun have already made their position extremely clear, to the point where I don’t really have much to add in terms of singing its praises.

However, that’s never particularly stopped me before, so I still want to talk about how great this episode is, or, more accurately, why this episode manages to be great despite some significant challenges. This is an episode which builds its tension around an action that before last week was almost entirely foreign to its audience (at least those with no deeper knowledge of MCs than what the show offers) and that creates an emotional climax you can see coming by the time the episode gets going, and yet manages to pull it off so brilliantly that it’s as if we as viewers have always known what “going Nomad” refers to and that we could never have expected the kind of emotion the episode’s final moments bring.

It’s an episode that turns the viewer into an active participant in the lives of each and every single character, to the point where we are sitting at the dinner table with the characters in that final scene and responding as they are to the news being delivered.

And that’s some damn fine television.

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Tagged as Balm, Chibbs, Clay, Entertainment, Episode 10, FX, Gemma, Going Nomad, Jax, John Teller, Katey Sagal, Nomad, Prospect, Rape, Review, Ron Pearlman, SAMCRO, Season 2, Television, Tig, Titus Welliver, TV

October 19, 2009 · 3:16 pm

Mad Men – “The Color Blue”

“The Color Blue”

October 18th, 2009

“The faintest ink is better than the best memory.”

Mad Men is many things, but I think the attribute most apparent in “The Color Blue” is its meticulous attention to thematics. One of the things that has been missing in some of the recent episodes, as great as they are, is that sense that everything is adding up, that Sterling Cooper campaigns and character interactions will all add up to something, or more accurately multiple things that have ramifications to both past, present and future in the show’s universe.

What’s interesting about this week’s episode is how they manage to juggle multiple different storylines, weaving characters like Lane and Kinsey back into our storyline while nonetheless providing some substantial character work for both Don and Betty. I like when the show really focuses on a single character, but there is something that much more impressive about a small Kinsey story turning into a theme that has meaning beyond the walls of Sterling Cooper. After a season where some felt things were moving too slowly, things are moving at an enormously fast pace, and the show is actually opening up its world rather than narrowing it in response.

The result is a really intriguing hour of television, changing the game by taking hidden feelings and putting them on paper.

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Tagged as Affair, AMC, Betty Draper, Dick Whitman, Don Draper, Entertainment, Episode 10, Phone, Review, Season 3, Secrets, Telegram, Television, The Color Blue, TV

September 14, 2009 · 12:34 am

Season Finale: Hung – “A Dick and a Dream or Fight the Honey”

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“A Dick and a Dream or Fight the Honey”

September 13th, 2009

While we can argue back and forth on whether Hung’s ensemble were used to the degree that Nurse Jackie’s, or whether Thomas Jane could possibly stand up to Edie Falco in a direct comparison, I don’t think there’s any question that Hung had a far clearer sense of its own identity in its freshman season.

From beginning the end, the show was an investigation of these economic times we live in, portraying a potentially farcical concept (high school teacher turns prostitute) in a starkly realistic context. When we learn in the finale that 70% of the teachers at Ray’s school are getting laid off, only so that they can then re-apply and be denied the benefits they currently have, it feels like another drop in the bucket, and that’s the point: it’s not going to stop anytime soon, and whatever you can do to stay afloat is understandable if not particularly ethical.

As such, we find a finale where every single character is forced to make adjustments to who they believe they are in an effort to maintain this screwed up status quo, this realistic scenario wherein a poet becomes a pimp. Tying together quite marvelously nearly every single character, the finale depicts those moments where your attempts to alter your identity run head first into a brick wall, and how each character works to climb over top of it into a new stage in their life.

For some it’s almost too easy, and for others it’s going to prove a comic, dramatic, and engaging challenge.

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Weeds – “Perro Insano”

WeedsTitle2

“Perro Insano”

August 10th, 2009

Ah, the false finale.

In many ways, “Perro Insano” operates as a finale would, giving every character a climactic moment or climactic decision and leaving them hanging as we move on in a new direction. In the events of this episode, there are moments of resolution, moments wherein you are seeing an entire season’s of storylines reach a particular apex. The problem, of course, is that this is a false conclusion: while Celia may appear to have reached that deluxe apartment in the sky, and Nancy has finally convinced the man she loves to marry her, one can’t help but believe that things can only go downhill from here. And, unfortunately for Nancy and Co., there’s still two episodes for that destruction to take place.

It’s an awkward point for Weeds, really, because we as an audience are conditioned to the point of numbness to these types of events, and for every bit of false resolution we’re given we can’t help but resist, pushing back as if in defiance of Jenji Kohan and her writing staff. It creates an odd bit of tension that I think the show wants to thrive in, but here there’s been too little definition in the supporting storylines, and too much sensationalism in the major ones, for it to feel like an example of the audience being manipulated rather than the storylines being contrived. It’s a difference between consistency and repetition, in a way, and I think the show is falling at least slightly too much on the latter point.

But not so much so as to discount the show’s overall quality too greatly.

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Tagged as Alanis Morissette, Andy Botwin, Dr. Teeth, Entertainment, Episode 10, Esteban, Guillermo, Justin Kirk, Lucha Libre, Marijuana, Nancy Botwin, Perro Insano, Season 5, Shane, Silas, Stevie Ray, Television, TV, Wedding

July 15, 2009 · 12:33 am

Better Off Ted – “Trust and Consequence”

BetterOffTedTitle

“Trust and Consequence”

July 13th, 2009

The truth of the matter is that Better Off Ted’s summer ratings have been less than impressive, and that the consequence is that the show likely isn’t making much of an impression heading into its second season in the fall. However, right now, I don’t care. The real truth of the matter is that the show remains absolutely fantastic, with a laugh ratio that most comedies can only dream of.

“Trust and Consequence” was another example of the show’s ability to take one idea and run with it. This wasn’t an episode that was about a particular series of plotlines, but rather one event that creates logical consequences that are all quite humorous, with jokes piling onto jokes in a way that makes the conclusion where everything comes to a speedy end feel both clever and like leaving a great story while its quality is still high.

I don’t have too much to say, but some thoughts after the jump.

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