Tag Archives: Season Two

November 13, 2008 · 12:12 am

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles – “Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today”

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“Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today”

November 10th, 2008

At the end of “Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today,” Sarah Connor says that nothing ever changes: that it is the same thing that drives her every day, and that all of her decisions will continue to revolve around that concern. While I don’t doubt this mother’s dedication to her son’s safety, I feel like this statement paints a picture of this show as something repetitive, something that boils down to an action-packed joy ride of destruction at its best and an elaborate holding pattern at its most languid.

And there have been moments when Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles has felt like both of those things, especially in the early parts of its first season. However, like the first season finale before it, this week’s episode (the eighth of the show’s twenty-two episode season) is an example of the ways in which the show has resisted becoming a pure action series, and how those potentially slow-moving sections have given the show a chance to build characters who believe in things, who have complex emotions, and who can fire off some guns while remaining grounded in some kind of reality.

As this week’s episode weaves in and out of everyone’s stories, there was never once where I questioned whether that character had something to contribute to this story (even if the device seemed unnecessary, gimmicky), and each of them reached an apex of sorts in this episode as it relates to their characters. For a season that has spent considerable time tracing the origins of Skynet through the introduction of Shirley Manson’s Terminator model, it is telling that the most action-packed episode so far is all about people (as sucky as they might be, Riley) – it’s also the best episode of the season so far.

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November 10, 2008 · 11:56 pm

Chuck – “Chuck vs. The Ex”

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“Chuck vs. The Ex”

November 10th, 2008

If I was going to make one complaint about Chuck’s 99% sublime second season, it would be that we haven’t spent enough time on Chuck himself – sure, he had his crisis in the premiere, but the show has dealt mainly with his relationship with Sarah as opposed to really letting Zachary Levi cut loose in this role. While he is perhaps the most unsung hero of the show, Levi continually gives Chuck a certain humanity that makes this show work, quite simply – without him, I’m not sure it would be the show it has been so far this season.

As far as episodes go overall, this one was a bit slower and more open-ended than our last few, the multi-episode arc element meaning that we get only part of a broader story (plus, this week’s Buy More storyline was one of the weaker ones in a good season for the store). But the return of Jill, Chuck’s ex-girlfriend from Stamford who broke his heart by running off to Bryce Larking so soon after their breakup, is the kind of thing that lets Levi demonstrate that he is the heart of this show, an element that can often be forgotten when we’re running at the kind of breakneck speed this season has been maintaining.

And that’s what turns what could have felt like a slow, exposition-driven introduction to a new character into something so successful: sure, it’s a bit slower plot wise than anything we’ve seen lately, but the episode was so chock full of double entendres, stylish one-liners and hilarious iPhone photos that any loss of momentum is entirely negated. This is a show that can stop, detour, or hit any multitude of speed bumps, and something will be there to pick up the slack, what little of it there is.

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November 10, 2008 · 10:18 pm

Gossip Girl – “Bonfire of the Vanity”

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“Bonfire of the Vanity”

November 10th, 2009

Gossip Girl is not one for subtlety, nor one for taking their time to get into storylines. Last week, Serena was just discovering that Aaron could be a potential mate of sorts: this week, he’s leading her on romantic trips around the city and making her his muse. Just at the beginning of the season, Jenny Humphrey was a naive young girl looking for her big break, and now she’s an angst-ridden, eyeshadow wearing and hoodie sporting punk.

It feels like these two characters, in particular, are jumping around from story point to story point: Serena has gone from post-Dan sadness to new Dan closeness to post-Dan sadness to anti-Blair bitchiness to suddenly friendly towards Blair to now hunting after Aaron. Jenny, meanwhile, went from unhappy intern to unhappy student to home-schooled young assistant to unappreciated designer to unappreciative rebel to guerilla runaway fashionista to homeless, dressless child (And in between she made out with Nate – Ew.)

And we’re not too far into this the show’s second season, and there’s a long way to go: right now, what Gossip Girl is doing right is those storylines that feel natural, and don’t count those two girls amongst them. In fact, only really Chuck and Blair have maintained something approximating consistency, and the result is the episode’s only positive development. And while I’m glad the show is finding its footing in the ratings, there are points where the guilty pleasure needs to show a bit more pleasure.

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October 29, 2008 · 9:41 pm

Pushing Daisies – “Dim Sum Lose Some”

“Dim Sum Lose Some”

October 29th, 2008

If there is a new mantra on Pushing Daisies, it seems quite simple: leave no character behind.

Excluding the Aunts, who have been absent for quite some time now likely in an effort to save money and focus the show on other issues, we’re seeing a lot more interaction between our four main characters. Ever since Olive’s last stand at the monastery, especially, the four have been intertwined into the mysteries in a way that the first season only really accomplished once, in “Bitches.” Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that Simone, one of the four wives of the polygamist dog breeder returns in this episode to a similar dynamic, and a similarly strong episode.

Although the episode deals a bit with Ned’s past, and Emerson gets almost all of the great one-liners, it really is a group effort: when the episode evolves into an almost “Chuck”-like espionage scenario at the Dim Sum restaurant, the entire cast comes together in a comic scenario that just clicks. I wouldn’t contend that this is amongst the show’s best episodes, but it’s a definite sign that the creative resurgence that began the season is still going strong.

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October 28, 2008 · 5:32 pm

Chuck – “Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer”

“Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer”

October 27th, 2008

With some shows, enjoyment is just enough.

Chuck is in a unique position this season, already given a full season order even while its ratings are struggling. That NBC was willing to shell out a back nine for a show based on quality alone does, indeed, say something about its rather dire pilot situation, but more importantly it says something about the show’s quality: in the early part of this season, Chuck is perhaps the most “on” series of all.

So while I haven’t been dissecting each individual episode like I have been with Mad Men, know that I’ve been spending the past few weeks enjoying the wonderful world of Chuck Bartowski. With “Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer,” it’s a much smaller world than we’re even used to: it takes place almost exclusively in the Buy More (Outside of one particularly stimulating excursion), it features no fancy new identities, and has nothing cluse to what you might call stuntcasting.

However, it has everything else: it has tension between Chuck’s two lives, it has some great integration of the Buy More crew, it has the emphasis on Sarah being placed into attractive costumes and shown in slow motion, and ends with moments of meaningful (and awesome) moments of character achievement. I don’t know what kind of frequency Chuck is operating on this year, but “Tom Sawyer” is as good a choice as any.

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October 28, 2008 · 1:45 am

Season Finale: Mad Men – “Meditations in an Emergency”

“Meditations in an Emergency”

October 26th, 2008

“We don’t know what’s really going on; you know that.”

While there have been a lot of meta-critical statements made by characters in the universe of Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men, there is perhaps none more simple than this observation Don makes about the nature of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The entire series hinges on secrets, on facts hidden to everyone but a select few who are concealing something that is potential volatile. For the most part, these secrets are more dangerous to those who hold them than those who are in the dark: for others, not having secrets when you know that others do can leave you desperate for something, anything to identify with them.

The genius of “Meditations in an Emergency” is the emergency itself, the Cuban Missile Crisis which suddenly made the Cold War very real. Kinsey notes how everyone is looking at people in a different way, suddenly terrified that they’re a spy and that they’re helping to organize some sort of attack. For our characters, however, this culture of fear and concern is less a motivator to run for the hills in search of safety and more an opportunity to face what is truly inside of them. If there is a single unifying factor in our main characters, it is that none of them show any signs of running away in the face of this struggle: instead, they all run closer than ever before to that which has paralyzed them, that which has confused them, or that which has been causing them to question themselves.

What we get in this fantastic season finale, then, is a series of actions: letters written, confessions given, power plays made, acts committed, and feelings confronted. The end result is, without question, the ultimate test of these characters: it is a question not of whether we value their actions, but rather their choice in making them which defines who they are, and why they matter to us as a viewer, to Weiner as a writer, and to this series as a timepiece of a period of social and personal change.

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October 26, 2008 · 9:00 pm

Mad Men – “The Mountain King”

“The Mountain King”

October 19th, 2008

A week after watching the penultimate episode of Mad Men’s second season, I still have more to say than I expected. There is something simultaneously disarming and welcoming about the episode. As Don Draper slides further into a life away from his job and the family that we’ve come to know, we see a side of him that in reality we like more: a man who is comfortable, open, and who finds passion in things that are not so much digressions as true directions in life. As Peggy Olsen begins to finally start advancing at Sterling Cooper based on her talent, we see that perhaps her fellow employees are starting to dig into their inner prejudice as she moves ahead of their own status.

And yet everything else we see in the episode is so comparatively vile, the unravelings of everything good in this universe in favour of what is, in fact, totally awful. Whether it’s Pete’s family life falling apart, or Betty searching desperately for some place in her life, or Joan, who I don’t even want to talk about right now in fear of becoming too frustrated with human nature, it’s hard to feel too hopeful when everything is distintegrating rapidly. I won’t have time tonight to discuss everyone, but let’s focus on at least a few key elements.

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October 13, 2008 · 12:11 am

Mad Men – “The Jet Set”

“The Jet Set”

October 12th, 2008

When most people arrive at their travel destination without their suitcase, they’re angry; when Don Draper arrives without his luggage, it provides a freedom that allows him to break free into (long) uncharted territory.

“The Jet Set” follows Don on a journey of sorts, as he flees the rigidity and direness of Cold War aerospace technology and the schmoozing of pie in the sky engineers searching to create the superhuman astronaut, instead jumping in a car with a young woman named Joy who, more than his meetings, offers hope for her her eponymous emotion. As he encounters those filthy rich and adventurous individuals known as the Jet Set, he also encounters a life that is so unlike his own it nearly scares him back to safety, but then surprisingly scares him back to something difference altogether.

There’s a lot of people who are reverting back to older perspectives here, some in desperate search of former glory or others who are simply collateral damage in the wake of the office’s bigotry. For the most part, it’s a stark reminder that the lives of our characters are the polar opposite of the show’s airborne guests: while they fly from exotic location to exotic location, our characters are stuck in place, struggling to expand their horizons at anything close to jet speed.

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October 8, 2008 · 9:45 pm

Pushing Daisies – “Circus Circus”

“Circus Circus”

October 8th, 2008

In the prologue to the second episode of Pushing Daisies’ second season, Ned learns a lesson that may be all too self-prophetic for Bryan Fuller’s charming show: that “new beginnings only lead to painful ends.” Considering last week’s alarmingly low ratings numbers, joining Chuck and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles on the lists of shows bouncing back creatively if not in terms of viewership after the writers’ strike cut their seasons short, Pushing Daisies might well be headed for an end that will certainly be painful considering how much I love this show.

But as the episode progresses, what is demonstrates is that new beginnings aren’t nearly as hard as Ned’s initial lesson made it out to be: that striking out on your own, or suddenly being on your own, or hoping for a new period in your life to begin, can be both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time without having to fall into either category. While it may seem like a show shouldn’t be able to create a common thread for a pie maker who can bring back the dead, an alive again childhood sweetheart, a picture-book making detective, two eccentric Aunts, and an employee who’s at a nunnery, all while also managing to construct an entertaining circus-based murder mystery, Pushing Daisies has proven its mettle.

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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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