Vampire Diaries: The Descent

“You’re my existential crisis.”

This is what I said in my last review: “I like Rose, and I like her vampires-with-benefits relationship with Damon. But to kill off a character whose departure I’d thought was already a foregone conclusion doesn’t seem like the riskiest writerly choice. Will her death send Damon on a mission of werewolf vengeance? That could be neat.” Now that I’ve seen how deeply Rose’s death affected Damon, I feel like a heartless bitch.

Although this was Rose’s death, it wasn’t her episode. It was Damon’s. He connected with Rose, as a friend and as a lover—and we can’t forget that Damon doesn’t have friends, or doesn’t think he does. He doesn’t connect, and can’t even be honest unless it is with a stranger he is about to kill. He deals with grief and pain and any unwelcome emotion (which, unless snark is an emotion, is pretty much all of them) with quips and violence. In this, he is deeply human, but he continues to deny his humanity and to channel his pain into inhuman activities. Like, for instance, slaughter.

Damon wants so desperately to be what he already is: loved and cared-for. He doesn’t realize that he is either of those things, though—Damon doesn’t see his own kindness to Rose, as in the dream world that he created for her. And, above all, he feels deeply guilty: guilty for Rose’s death and guilty for not being able to win (or “good enough” to win) Elena’s love.

Damon described Elena as a do-gooder (“It’s in her nature. She just can’t resist.”), but that applies to him, too. However, he’s also an evil-doer. Back in 1.13, Elena said “I really think that Damon believes that everything he’s done, he’s done for love. It’s twisted. And sad.” But it’s sort of true: Damon may not realize it, but even his evilest acts are done because of love, if not for it.

Ian Somerhalder has been consistently great in this show, but rarely has Damon had the opportunity to have an honest and simple emotion as he did with his psychoanalyst-cum-victim. He did such a wonderful job. I cried. And then I cried some more. Oh, Damon!

Meanwhile, Caroline, Tyler, and Matt are headed for a complex vampire-werewolf-jock love triangle that will only get more complex as Tyler finds out more about wolfiness and vampires, and if Matt ever, ever cottons to the high rate of supernaturals in his town.

Oh, and—Sark! Did you all know he was coming back? I didn’t know this, and I yelped when he appeared on screen. Sark! I hope he sticks around for a while. I hope we get to see him interact with Isobel, whom Stefan seems to be close to locating. Just imagine how complex and fascinating a Sark, Jenna, Alaric, Isobel conversation would be. Add a little vengeful Damon to the mix, and it’ll be combustible. Sark!

Bites:

• Damon: “If you’re going to be maudlin, I’m going to kill you myself, just to put me out of your misery.”

• Rose: “I haven’t had a cold in five centuries.” Jealous.

• Elena: “I expected silk sheets.”

• Damon: “You know, you are ruining our perfect day with your strange philosophical babblings.”

• Damon: “Well, I’m compelling this dream. Maybe I’ll cheat.”

• Damon: “I’m lost…Not that kind of lost.”

And Pieces:

• Two of Damon’s most emotional, vulnerable moments this season are known only to him and to us: his confession to Elena, which he then erased from her memory, and his kindness to Rose in this episode.

• The death toll was awfully high in this episode: at least two campers, the couple at the event of the week, Rose, and the girl at the end. That’s a lot.

• Damon is reading Gone with the Wind. He is sort of a Scarlett.

• When Damon was hugging Elena, he resembled Stefan enough for me to buy that they were brothers.

Four out of four camper limbs. (And that’s with the deduction for too much Tyler.)

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Chuck: Chuck versus the Gobbler

“I love a good suicide mission.”

I’ve written elsewhere about how little I like the proleptic cold open in which we see the inexplicable—Dark Sarah beating up Casey!—and then rewind to find out how on God’s green and verdant earth such a thing could have happened. It’s a device designed to ratchet up the tension, which often means that the plot, in chronological order, wouldn’t be too scintillating without some narrative trickery. And, indeed, this week’s entry felt blah, and I didn’t laugh once.

I know that Chuck isn’t about deftly plotted spy games—it’s not a John Le Carré novel, and I don’t expect it to be. So I won’t address the questions of how Sarah managed to pull off enough wacky Euro-heists to make her way to Volkoff in just a couple of days, or how in the two days the show gave her, she managed to fly from LA to Moscow and back approximately three bazillion times without looking remotely dehydrated or sniffly.

But I will mention the illogic of Volkoff having a network of information called Hydra that exists in only one place, a fake eyeball hidden inside an imprisoned cannibal. This network is vital to his organization, but he has been without it since the Gobbler was imprisoned, and does not seem to have told his “right hand” Mama B about it until just now.

I will also mention the illogic of Sarah needing Chuck, Morgan, and Casey to help her with the Great Gobbler Escape. We know from past episodes that there are, in fact, many other CIA agents out there—why not use some of them? The miniscule staging of most of this episode has me worried: it was something I started noticing in the middle of Season Three of Heroes, in which it seemed like the heroes were the only people in the world, often without even extras in the background to add depth. I started to feel like it showed some desperation on the part of the writers, that they were unwilling to develop plots logically for fear that logic would take our attention away from the awesome centrality of our characters to the continued existence of the universe.

But most of all, I will mention the emotional illogic. Sarah has a history of running from commitment—we know that. But Chuck doesn’t mind that, at a vital moment in their relationship, she chose to accept a mission that her predecessor (Mama B) has been working on for about 20 years. Such an emotionally nuanced and long-simmering problem is simply not on the table. Instead, this episode hands us a new emotional tension on a platter: will Sarah go dark? That’s not a real risk, though, which is why the proleptic opening didn’t create actual tension. It just asserted it.

The structure of many Chuck episodes can be explained in terms of Chuck’s kung fu flashes: whenever he’s about to fight, he has to re-access his kung-fu knowledge bank. He doesn’t really carry that information around and accessible (the way I have my address memorized); he has to look it up every time (the way I can’t ever remember my mother’s address). On a larger scale, each episode of this season has to re-access the emotional drama by creating a new “problem” for the characters to overcome. Because most of these problems are solvable in 45 minutes (although this one might take another episode), they don’t feel real or lasting or important. They feel fluffy, like perpetual deferment.

There was some good in this episode, though: I thought the Grönka thing was rather funny, although it might have gone on too long. I absolutely love Timothy Dalton vamping his way through his evil, evil, evil role, and even thought the arbitrary accent switching added some nice color.

Most of all, though, I’m touched by Casey’s sacrifice. He’s not the type to tell someone he loves them. He’s the type to build shelves of love, and I hope his daughter understands that. I also really, really hope that Casey is okay. Many people have been alluding to 4.13 (the next episode) as something hugely important, but I’ve worked pretty hard to remain unspoiled. If he dies I’ll be horribly sad.

I haven’t lost all of my faith in Chuck. But it’s not the highlight of my week. It’s not even the highlight of my Monday.

Bytes:

• Chuck: “The CIA developed a tonal language for us that only we can understand….Right now, [Sarah] is saying she loves me. Or, she’s planning on buying a Buick. I can’t tell. It’s a very confusing language.”

• Mama B: “There’s one square meter of land in this entire compound that isn’t under surveillance.”

• Morgan: “Wow, Sarah, you look evocative.”


And Pieces:

• Volkoff painting a puppy. Aww.

• I think Sarah has lost weight. She’s lovely either way, of course, but I liked her better with a few more curves.

• The Armenian serial killer joke might not have been funny to the rest of America, but in the context of Burbank’s large Armenian population, it’s actually quite appropriate.

Thank you all for your patience with this review. I got the flu this week, and whenever I sat down to start writing I wound up falling asleep and having terrible fever dreams. Away, elephant, away with you!

One out of four Grönkas.
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Misfits: Episode Four (War, What is it Good For?)

Ollie: “Has anyone got one of these weird powers?”

Ollie didn't last long. No sooner had we learned of his ability to teleport (and marvelled at his cool sandals), and he was dead. I half expected Curtis to turn back time and save him. But not this time. Dead is dead. Which is a pity because I liked Ollie. It's just a shame he was never anything more than an organ donor. At least Nikki's got her new heart. Unfortunately, she's also inherited Ollie's terrible superpower: the ability to teleport just a few feet. I guess you take the rough with the smooth.

The “man stuck in game” plot felt a little bland, but it was by no means throwaway. If Tim hadn't shot Ollie, then Nikki would've died. Which is presumably why Superhoodie didn't intervene. Ollie's death happened exactly on schedule. Why Superhoodie would favour Nikki's life over Ollie's, I'm not altogether sure. Will Nikki surviving have future implications? Does she still have a part to play in the bigger picture? It's not as though she had a meaningful role in Alisha's rescue. She just teleported in and was instantly captured. She didn't help their cause one jot.

And why wouldn't Superhoodie let Alisha phone for an ambulance? Why was his death so important? His objective was to save Alisha; not to go on some suicide mission. Unless he had no way of returning to his own time. Is that why he asked Alisha to burn his body? Has he always known this is how it would end?

The Las Vegas photo showed Superhoodie and Alisha together. So in the future, Alisha is alive. She was never shot. So what caused gun-toting Tim to appear in the present? Has Curtis' time travelling knocked events off kilter? Has the butterfly effect somehow screwed everything up? And how did Superhoodie travel back through time in the first place? His abilities are clearly more advanced than Curtis'. Yet, time travel isn't his superpower. Invisibility is. Did someone send him back? Or does he develop the ability to time travel at a later date?

In other news, Curtis and Alisha are now history -- which means Curtis is free to see Nikki. In a perfect world, that would leave Alisha free to see Superhoodie. Only Superhoodie's dead. All Alisha has is her grief; and because of her promise, she has to endure it alone. I found Superhoodie's reluctance to let Alisha go quite moving. He knew his life was almost over. Little did Alisha know that the next time she'd see him it would be to watch him die.

Which leaves Alisha still trying to work out the enigma that is Simon. Despite being ontologically identical to Superhoodie, he has a long way to go before becoming the man she fell in love with. It's heartbreaking the way she smiles at him. You can see she wants to make that connection. But Simon can't respond. They've not been together yet. He doesn't know her. And Alisha can't tell him all they've been through. The times they've shared. What they mean to each other.

True to form, Nathan provided the light relief amidst the doom and gloom. His escape attempt was woefully comical. Watching him trying to somersault out of his bonds had me in stitches. In the end, he did the selfless thing. He sacrificed himself so that Alisha could escape. I'm not sure how you come back from dismemberment. Shame we didn't get to find out. But, all in all, it was a terrible rescue attempt. Nothing went right. Even Nikki teleporting in from nowhere didn't help. Without Superhoodie's sacrifice they'd all be dead. Which pretty much sums them up. A bit crap.

With Superhoodie gone, I dread to think what will become of the ASBO five. Will they make it to the end of the season unscathed?

Bits and Pieces:

-- At least now we know why Nikki had a scar in Curtis' flash forward. She's had a heart transplant.

-- Now Alisha has the keys to the base she presumably has access to all of Superhoodie's future newscasts. I wonder what she'll find there.

-- I loved Nathan's slowness at the significance of washing Shaun's car. He was embarrassingly sluggish on the uptake. It wasn't until he was actually sat in the car that the penny finally dropped.

-- I liked Nathan making fun of the fact that none of them (except, I guess, Simon) can control their powers. Which makes them all essentially useless.

-- Kelly would have looked lovely in that dress; if not for the gash across her face and the blood.

-- Nikki appears to be able to teleport to whoever she's thinking about. She also appears to be able to travel further than Ollie.

Quotes:

Nathan: “Better him than me.”
Simon: “You're immortal.”
Nathan: “Better him than one of you.”

Kelly: “Let me go, you dick.”

Tim: “Put it on!”
Kelly: “You can shove that up your arse.”

Nathan: “A bunch of young offenders develop superpowers and not one of us thinks of using them to commit crime? Shame on us!”

Simon: “I thought we'd use our powers to help people.”
Nathan: “Nah!”

Nathan: “See, that's why I don't play computer games. Because they never bloody end!”

Kelly: “Brilliant fucking rescue”.
Nathan: ”No chance of a rewind then?”

Alisha: “I won't let you die.”
Simon: “You have to, or I'll never be this person.”

Alisha: “I don't love him. I love you.”
Simon: “You falling in love with him, that makes him become me.”

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Being Human: Lia

Annie: “You saved me.”
Mitchell: “You saved me, too.”

A solid season opener. Apart from the gang moving to Barry Island (what’s occurin’?), it was pretty much business as usual. Annie’s still in purgatory, Mitchell's still a brooding hunk of... whatever, and George and Nina are still in love. Tonight they even ended up doing it doggie-style during their time of the month. Nasty! But Being Human does seem to have rediscovered its mojo. After the comparative darkness of season two, tonight's episode felt like a return to form. After the relative success of Being Human US, I'd forgotten how good this show can be.

Whilst reviewing the first episode of season two I did ponder what might happen should George and Nina meet in their wolf states. Would they rip each other apart? Or would George recognise Nina, as he did in the season one finale? Well, now we know. They’d screw each other’s brains out. Fairly obvious, I suppose. The George and Nina scenes were a welcome respite from the relative gloom of Mitchell's storyline. Nina trying to free George from jail whilst coping with the pangs of transformation was sublimely amusing -- as was the physical comedy of the bedroom scene. Nice outfit, Nina. (Which is an polite way of saying “phwoar!”)

To get Annie out of purgatory, all Mitchell had to do was face up to his past. Enter Lia, played by lovely ex-Eastender, Lacey Turner. I guessed early on that she'd turn out to be one of Mitchell's victims. I just wasn’t expecting something as recent as the train incident. (H12 was her seat number, right?) Mitchell coming face to face with his mangled victims was like something out of An American Werewolf in London (except less amusing.) The purgatory scenes nicely documented Mitchell's incremental fall into debauchery and murder. It's amazing what you can achieve on such small budget. Purgatory looked like the inside of a dole office.

But who is Lia really? She told Annie that something terrible had happened to her. Was that a reference to the train incident? Or is there something else going on? She seemed so cold towards Annie. Now Mitchell's owned up to his past horrors and apologised, what's keeping her in purgatory? Why hasn't she moved on? And who gave her the purgatory gig in the first place? She said something to Annie about them playing the long game. But who are they? It's almost as if some malign influence has taken over purgatory. Why would anyone think Annie was deserving of Hell? What did she ever do that was so terrible? She's an absolute pussy cat. It makes no sense.

In the beginning, Mitchell was a victim. But something happened along the way. He became hard. He stopped caring. Worse still, he started to revel in the lack of constraints and effortless slaughter his new lifestyle afforded. He began to kill with impunity. He stopped being the victim and became the victimiser. It's difficult to comprehend fully the culpability of someone in Mitchell's situation. Sure, he's done terrible things. But he has a condition. I accept that he has a human conscience. But in the same way mental illness mitigates (at least to some degree) a multitude of crimes, shouldn't Mitchell similarly be shown at least some leniency?

In the end, Annie's freedom came at a price. The time of Mitchell's death has been set. He's become a pawn in someone else's game. The question is: what's the game and who are the players? Mitchell is destined to be killed by a werewolf. So far there are four obvious candidates: Mad Dog MacNair, George (please, not him), Nina (or her) and Thomas. Will dead mean dead? Or will it mean Herrick dead. Or maybe Annie dead?

And, do my eyes deceive me, or are Mitchell and Annie about to dip their respective toes into coupledom? I definitely detected a sultry glance (or two) from Annie -- and those hugs seemed to go on just a little too long. Which kind of works. Except, of course, Mitchell's bound to screw up. He has too many skeletons in his closet to just settle down. And after the shitstorm Annie's been through between seasons, I'm not looking forwards to the what must surely be the disappointment of Mitchell's inevitable betrayal.

George's tears at Annie and Mitchell's return totally set me off. That was such a well filmed/acted/written scene. I filled up instantly on seeing Annie's tea pot spout. (Not a euphemism). Kudos, too, to seasoned blubber Russell Tovey, for pulling off the reunion with such subtlety. His face on seeing Mitchell stood in the doorway was just so moving; as was Annie taking George's face in her hands and wiping away his tears. I loved their enthusiasm at showing Annie around the new house. Nina's gift of a new tea pot. Them dancing in front of the Hawaiian beach painting. What a shame their happiness won't last.

Other Thoughts:

Paul Kaye was an unexpected casting surprise. Unfortunately, he hammed it up something rotten. He looked like a cross between Spike (from Buffy) and Keith Flint from the Prodigy. I must confess, I wasn't overly fond of the cage scenes. They seemed a little too over the top. Why didn't Jameson just stab MacNair while he was transforming? Why does nobody ever do the obvious thing? Still, at least Vincent's dead. I'm guessing Jameson won't be making a hirsute return any time soon, either. There wasn't a great deal left of him.

Robson Green I actually did like. I wasn't expecting to. I was never a fan of Soldier Soldier, and his singing career with Jerome Flynn was atrocious. So I was none too jazzed to hear he’d been cast. But there was none of the usual cheeky Geordie chappie about MacNair. I didn't find the fight scenes particularly convincing. Even clever editing couldn't rescue those. But I do like Mad Dog. I also like the father/son werewolf pairing. It looks as though George and Nina are going to have some furry play-pals soon. Let's just hope Mad Dog doesn't sing.

Bits and Pieces:

-- No signs of Herrick yet. But it’s still early days.

-- What was Rhys doing out dogging? He’s obviously taking advantage of Gwen being in America. Isn't he supposed to be there, too?

-- George seemed almost reluctant to save Annie. Was he simply afraid of losing Mitchell as well?

-- Michael Socha looks so much like Lauren Socha (Misfits) it's uncanny. His accent is less pronounced, but you can still hear it.

-- Another gratuitous arse shot of Tovey. And a topless shot of Nina. Were those tits real or fake? Answers on a postcard please.

-- How comes Thomas had a chicken on a string? Did he know Tully as well?

-- Spit spot? It's Mary Poppins!

Quotes:

George: “Feel the burn. Who’s your daddy? Say what you see.”

Vincent: "Stake and chips, anyone?'

George: “It’s our friend Annie. She’s in Midsomer Murders.”

George: "What are you doing? Why have you got a chicken on a string?"

Annie: "Where are we? This isn't Bristol."
Mitchell: "No, that's the other thing, we sort of moved to Wales."
Annie: "Oh, I wanna go back."
Mitchell: "To Bristol?"
Annie: "No, to purgatory."

George: “We can’t wait to start our Hawaiian dream.”

Annie: "Humanity isn't an species, it's a state of mind. It can't be defeated. It moves mountains, it saves souls. We were blessed as much as we were cursed."

Annie: "In this little enclave of the lost, I witnessed the very best of being human. We were safe here. While outside, the monsters prowled."

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Being Human: There Goes the Neighborhood (2)

Josh: "What's the point of any of this? Of playing house, of drinking beers, of joining Costco, if you're just going to kill all of our friends?"

Much of this one was a rehash of BH/UK. I want new stuff, but it's probably too soon. At least the house isn't pink. I rather like the house. And I love Sam Witwer and Mark Pellegrino. I rather like Sam Huntington. Not sure about Meghan Rath.

This week we got gory flashbacks to each of our three as humans becoming supernatural: the Civil War for Aidan, an attack of some sort for Josh, a fall down the stairs for Sally. And all three tried unsuccessfully to connect to a human being, too: Aidan with the idiotic Kara, Josh with his sister Emily, Sally with her fiance Danny. The results included death, as well as exploding plumbing. At least Emily and her honey are still intact.

Aidan rescued Josh from killing his sister. Josh rescued Aidan from killing Kara, except Rebecca got her, anyway. Biting Rebecca is turning out to be a huge mistake, since she's ready to go eat her entire family, including the babies. (How very Angel. They taste just like chicken.) Bishop is using her to push Aidan into coming back into the vampire fold at Sapp & Sons. How often does this happen? Are there a lot of Karas and Rebeccas out there for Aidan, or was Rebecca an isolated incident? Bishop just exudes menace with a sexual flavor. Is he in love with Aidan? Does he hate him? Want to control him? All of the above? Whatever it is, it works.

I gotta say I like the softer side of Aidan. Since vampires appear to have nothing but disdain for the fuzzy ones, Aidan's affection for Josh says a lot about him. Aidan also said nice things about Sally while she was listening on the stairs ("nice echo") and kept taking her side when Josh was freaking. Actually, I like how Aidan likes Sally more than I like Sally, because she's still not doing it for me. While Aidan and Josh feel different than Mitchell and George, I keep feeling like Sally is an inferior knock-off of Annie. It's probably worsened by them giving her much the same outfit. When is she going to start making tea?

Bits and pieces:

-- Kara just got killed because she asked Aidan out for a drink. A drink. Joke.

-- Sally's relationship with her fiance seemed pretty darned perfect. Boring.

-- Should have mentioned this last week, but the creators/executive producers of this series are Jeremy Carver and Anna Fricke. Jeremy Carver wrote some of the best Supernatural scripts ever.

-- Should also have mentioned last week that Aidan has a tatt over his left breast with the name "Colette." Or does Sam Witwer?

-- Josh had a fiance named Julia. Bet we'll meet her at some point.

-- Sally: "Danny's pretty open. He voted for Hillary."

I've committed to reviewing the pilot, and since it was in two parts, I did two reviews. I'm definitely going to keep watching, but unless next week's blows me away, I'm not planning to keep reviewing. At least for now. Anyone for feedback?

Three out of four votes for Hillary,

Billie

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Star Trek: The Deadly Years

Kirk: "Tell me. Am I getting old?"

This episode was innovative when it first aired, and fortunately, it has aged well. (Pun very much intended.) The extreme make-up effects still work, and the cast did a fine job turning into grumpy old men.

Growing old is hard enough when you do it in the natural course of time. Becoming senile in the space of a few days is genuine horror. Kirk's aging manifested itself in memory loss, which made him look foolish and garrulous; it was a real loss of dignity and a much bigger hit to his ego than physical degeneration. Spock barely aged at all, which of course made plot sense since Vulcans have a much longer life span. I just wish we'd seen him wrapped up in a huge, ratty old sweater. I especially liked McCoy's crabby old doctor; I think DeForest Kelley did the best acting job with the physical mannerisms and body language, although the best moment in the episode had to be Kirk falling asleep in the captain's chair.

For once, Kirk's love life held my interest. I thought it was rather fun that his old flame Dr. Wallace had soundly rejected him when he was young but came on to him partway through his accelerated aging process because she preferred older men. Kirk may have had memory problems, but he was still sharp enough to realize she was patronizing him.

It was very Spock-like to carry out a competency hearing when he desperately didn't want to do so. It would have been more logical (but less dramatic, of course) for McCoy to examine Kirk and simply declare that he wasn't competent to command. If Commodore Stocker and his obsession with Starbase 10 weren't there to enhance the conflict, Sulu or Uhura would have done just fine. They certainly wouldn't have taken them into the Neutral Zone. Whatever possessed a Star Fleet officer -- any Star Fleet officer -- to take a starship into the Neutral Zone? Yes, Stocker was a paper-pusher, but you'd think that even the lowliest greenhorn ensign would know better than that.

And of course, the big question is why everyone who went down to the planet wasn't immediately quarantined; there wasn't a single word discussing the possibility that the rest of the crew might catch it, too. Oops.

Ben says...

I had mostly forgotten this episode, maybe it's my age... wait a second, those damn kids are on my lawn again!

Okay, I got that out of my system. Two things stand out for me here: just how stupid/annoying/useless we thought old people were a few decades ago and just how stupid/annoying/useless anyone promoted to Star Fleet Commodore is. Seriously, does a Commodore ever appear through the course of the whole series that isn't insane, incompetent or both?

The whole old coot thing requires some thought. I would say that it's another Star Trek trip into stereotypes except that I noticed that Shatner is still playing the same character on the "&#!* My Father Says" as he is in this episode. If you watch the episode, you see that all the actors basically play old (even slightly old) as infirm, irrational, and generally impossible to deal with. I think this may reflect the cultural moment in which Star Trek was created, this isn't a leftover of past prejudice but a reflection of the youth culture of the period where you shouldn't trust anyone over 30. The old folks need to just get out of the way.

Now the Commodore thing, on the other hand, I just don't get. Seriously, how about some kind of performance/competency/annoyingness review or something?

Back to Billie for bits and pieces:

-- Star date 3478.2. An experimental colony on a class M planet, Gamma Hydra 4. That Gamma Hydra thing sounded familiar to me, and for good reason; it's the setting of the Kobayashi Maru no-win test scenario in the second Star Trek movie.

-- Kirk is 34 years old. The star dates on the tombstone in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" suggested he was 36 then, making him 38 now. I would have found that a bit more believable. Then again, maybe he forgot how old he really was.

-- Apparently, the Romulans have broken code two. :)

-- Poor Lt. Galway wore blue, but she was obviously a red shirt.

-- There was an object on the table in Sick Bay that I didn't remember from before. It looked like a very long turkey baster set upright and stuffed with crumpled tin foil. Jury-rigged futuristic doo-dad that someone probably looked at later and said, "What were we thinking?"



-- Dr. Wallace's pink and gold floor-length culottes were definitely something special, in a shuddery "isn't that hideous" sort of way.

-- This must have been the transition episode, because Chekov was seen both with a wig and without one. I vote for without.

Quotes:

Kirk: "Total senility."
Spock: "Yes, Captain. In a very short time."
Kirk: "What a way to die."

Kirk: "What are you offering me, Jan? Love, or a going away present?"
Best line in the episode.

Spock: "Doctor, the ship's temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I've adjusted the environment in my quarters to one hundred twenty five degrees, which is at least tolerable. However, I..."
McCoy: "Well, I see I'm not going to be making any house calls on you."

McCoy: "I'm not a magician, Spock. Just an old country doctor."
Spock: "Yes. As I always suspected."

McCoy: "She's dead."
A great opportunity for a "She's dead, Jim," but sadly, no.

The idiotic Commodore Stocker: "We have no alternative but to surrender."
Chekov: (disdainfully) "Sir, the Romulans do not take captives."

A strong episode, although it's not one I enjoyed watching over and over. Three out of four pink and gold culottes (or should that be gray toupees?),

Billie

All of our Star Trek reviews are archived here.
More about Ben here.

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Misfits: Episode Three (Like a Lilo Losing Air)

Superhoodie: “It's going to be all right. I should know. I'm from the future.”

Tonight's was an event filled episode. Nathan turned gay and fell in love with Simon. Curtis got stabbed with a knife made from ink. Simon almost choked to death. Kelly fell in love with Vince the tattoo artist. Alisha fell in love with Superhoodie. It was hard to keep track at times. Alisha and Curtis' relationship also looks to be on the rocks. Presumably, this will free Curtis up to start seeing Nikki. Which means Curtis' flash forward could come true sooner than we thought.

Tonight, Alisha deliberately put herself in danger to lure Superhoodie out of the shadows. A risky manoeuvre. Luckily, it worked. Who would have thought that Superhoodie would turn out to be Simon? I did not see that coming. Out of all the Misfits, why Simon? He's the least cool member of the gang. Which, of course, makes him the perfect choice. It also explains why he wears a mask. Simon catching sight of his future self would cause all manner of complications. Yet, our Simon and Superhoodie, are as different as can be. Simon's awkward, withdrawn and socially inept. Superhoodie's full of confidence. A man of action. Self assured. Agile. I dare say he's even quite sexy. (If you're into that sort of thing).

Alisha and Simon being together, up until this week, would have been unthinkable. They're just too different. Alisha's the beautiful, fun loving, party girl. Simon the introverted, social outcast. Yet there was a definite shift in Alisha's worldview tonight. Simon calling her beautiful shook her to her core. Would it have had the same effect had she not just met his heroic future self? I'm guessing not. She did, after all, balk when Simon tried to ask her out just two episodes ago. But Alisha's perception of Simon is now radically different. He's essentially a changed man. Or will be.

I love seeing Alisha like this. Her confidence is gone. She has no idea what she's doing. Yet, her passion for Simon has undoubtedly been kindled. How can it not? It's a foregone conclusion she'll fall in love with him. She already has. Them having sex must surely spell the end of her relationship with Curtis. Curtis said all the wrong things, tonight. Blaming Alisha for their inability to have sex was definitely not cool. By contrast, Superhoodie was able to reassure Alisha that nothing was her fault. None of them asked for their powers. They were all victims.

Simon can also touch Alisha. How, I have no idea. Him saying that things are different in the future, really didn't tell us anything. But they certainly took advantage of the situation. That was some steamy sex they had. Steamier than Nathan and Kelly's attempts at copulation, anyway. God, that was awkward. Props to Lauren Socha for playing an absolute blinder. She looked as sick as a chip. Another knock back for Nathan.

And not just from Kelly. His attempted seduction and rejection by Simon was a second kick in the teeth. The love letter. The dancing to "Careless Whisper". The non-stop sniffing of Simon's hair. That long, angsty conversation he had with Kelly, in which he confessed undying love for Simon. Magnificently acted by Robert Sheehan. I laughed out loud when he threw himself in front of Simon in an attempt to protect him. Maybe he's not the Renee to Simon's Tom after all. That was quite courageous. For Nathan, anyway.

At least now we know what the clocks are for. Superhoodie's tracking events in time. His mission: to stop Alisha from dying. Presumably he's attempting to rewrite the time-line leading up to Alisha's death. Without Superhoodie, the Misfits would already be seriously depleted; if not extinct. Clearly he needs them. But, for what? What's on the horizon that's going to require the intervention of the ASBO Five?

Bits and Pieces:

-- We learned this week that Nikki has a heart problem. A fairly serious one, by the looks of things.

-- The whole peanut resolve was mental. What were the chances of that one peanut going into Vince's mouth?

-- I'm not sure adrenaline needs to be administered directly into the heart for a peanut allergy. Isn't that just when the heart stops?

-- Simon's about to lose his virginity. I wonder who to? I'm guessing it won't be Nathan.

-- No wonder Simon was so good in bed. He's been having sex with Alisha for some time. Hence him managing to press all the right buttons.

-- If Superhoodie's VT is accurate, those with superpowers will go public at some point in the future. How far in the future, I wonder?

Quotes:

Nathan: "I'm not saying you're ugly... you've looked in a mirror.”

Nikki: “You tell your little friend he owes me a new mattress. He wiped his arse on my pyjamas.”
Curtis: “Yeah, that's the kind of thing he does. He's not right in the head.”

Nathan: "You don't know how much I've always wanted to do that. Feel my heart. It's racing. It's okay, it's okay. I'll be gentle."

Nathan: "It's okay, we don't have to go all the way. We can just cuddle."

Nathan: "I was staring into those big beautiful eyes. He's like a handsome shark."

Nathan: “I've never felt like this about anyone. He completes me."
Kelly: "Er, That's from Jerry Maguire."
Nathan: "I know, I watched it four times last night. It's like he's Tom and I'm Renee. Someone else is the ugly speccy kid.”

Kelly: “Are you trying to tell me you're gay, or something?”
Nathan: ”Gay, straight, retarded. Why do we have to put labels on everything?”
Kelly: “Cos, we do. All right! Or-else no one's going to know what the fuck's going on.”

Alisha: "Look, if I've ever been a bitch to you, I'm sorry."
Simon: "I've never thought you were a bitch."

Alisha: “Maybe I deserve all this. But I need you to make me feel like I don't.”

Kelly: “I'm not being funny, yeah, but is this doing anything for you?”
Nathan: “Well, I'm a guy. We're really not that fussy.”

Kelly: "Do you ever get embarrassed of anything?"
Nathan: "Not really, no."

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Buffy Season Eight: Last Gleaming, Part V

[This is the final issue of season eight.]

Faith: "You're the only slayer. You always were."

Synopsis:

San Francisco. Buffy is waitressing at the "Pick Me Up," a coffee/book place. A customer trips her, but she manages to maintain the tray of hot stuff upright and serve the customers anyway -- with her foot. The customer is a former slayer who hates Buffy.

Kennedy's place. Buffy and Kennedy are talking as Kennedy packs. Kennedy is furious and crying. She says Buffy literally f%$#ed everything up. Buffy says Willow needs Kennedy now more than ever since Willow no longer has powers, but Kennedy says no, that Willow dumped her.

Golden Gate Park, sunset. Buffy and Willow sit on the grass and talk. The slayers that had their powers before still have them, but no new slayers will be called. Willow, who has no magic any more, broke up with Kennedy because she believes Kennedy really liked being with a superhero. Willow says that there is someone else. Someone she'll never see again.

Buffy is dreaming. She's reliving the moments after Giles' death and the destruction of the Seed. Angel is saying, "Buffy, what happened? Did we... did we win?" (A little flashback to the end of season two. Angel doesn't remember what he did.) Dawn pokes Buffy and wakes her up. Buffy is on the couch of the apartment she shares with Xander and Dawn.

Xander goes off to his carpentry job, and Buffy and Dawn talk. There are still plenty of vampires and vamp wannabes in the world. Without her army, Buffy is no longer a leader; Dawn says she's just back to being bossy.

A military place. The General is talking on a cell phone to his significant other, whoever that might be. He's been pensioned out, the slayers have dispersed, he thinks everything has worked out for the best. Elevator door opens and rogue slayer Simone Doffler steps out and shoots the General in the head.

Cemetery in the rain. Coffin lowered into the earth. Lawyer's office, where Buffy and Faith learn that Giles left everything to Faith Lehane. All Giles left Buffy was an old book with the word "Vampyr" on the cover. (And we're back to the pilot again.)

Giles' flat. Faith tells Buffy she is the only slayer and always was. That Giles must have thought Faith needed help, and Buffy didn't. Faith says she is the only one who can stand looking at Angel, who is sitting alone in a room of Giles' flat in the dark, still covered with blood and with a blank look on his face. Faith is willing to take care of Angel because she's all about forgiveness.

Later, back at Xander and Dawn's apartment in San Francisco. Spike is outside on the fire escape knocking on the window. Buffy can't invite him in, it's not her house, but she reaches out the open window, caresses his hair, and calls him Blondie Bear. She comes out onto the fire escape, and they talk.

Spike is keeping his ear to the ground. He says someone is coming for her. He doesn't know who yet. They talk about the recent mess and he says Buffy did what she always did -- she saved the world. It's just that people noticed this time.

Spike takes off on his bug dirigible (it was parked on the roof). Buffy goes to bed on the couch alone. She hears Dawn and Xander loudly making it in the bedroom and longs for her own place. Except that it's not -- it's Dawn on the other side of the door faking it, while Xander is in the shower.

Buffy goes out patrolling and is attacked by three angry former slayers. They're angry because she betrayed them. She cut off the line of slayers, who don't call themselves slayers any more, destroyed the Wiccan community, tainted the earth, let all of her friends down. The three ex-slayers (should I know who they are? Comics are hard) attack Buffy. She takes all three of them down.

She leaves them and in the last few panels, she goes on patrolling, fighting, taking out vampires, because that's what she does.

Review:

This was the first issue that felt like Buffy in a long time. It was rather good, in a reset-y sort of way. The story wasn't outlandish, the characters felt like Buffy characters, and I laughed out loud more than once. Buffy, Willow, Xander and Dawn retained their closeness, to some extent. Buffy and Faith are friends again. And hey, Willow finally dumped Kennedy.

Joss Whedon's somewhat apologetic letter at the end did clear stuff up. He admits he got too into creating something epic and went too far afield from the characters we love, and that he hopes to do better and get back to the basics with season nine. It also seems that he was trying to reconcile the end of season seven with the Fray comics. That probably makes sense for a story that will stay in the comic book universe, but since I don't care at all about Fray, it doesn't mean anything to me.

As I wrapped up the final nine reviews these past few weeks, I've thought a lot about why season eight hasn't worked for me. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my absolute favorite show, ever, and I desperately wanted more of it. This comic series, spearheaded by the series creator that I so deeply admire, should have -- okay, maybe not blown me away, but it should have at least kept me interested, made feel that I was indeed getting more of what I loved so much. It could have been the ultimate in creativity for Joss Whedon and his band of writers, with no limits to his imagination, no actors to sign, no network to satisfy. Instead, it has been a long-strung-out personal disappointment. Did I expect too much? Are other Buffy fans out there satisfied with what we got? Are you?

There were several things that were obviously set-up for season nine. Angel's condition, of course. Spike said someone was coming for Buffy. (Simone?) The death of the General, the angry ex-slayers. I'm surprised but pleased that they even left us with the possibility that Buffy will get involved with Spike again.

So I hope season nine goes well, truly I do. But it will do it without me. I'm not going to buy it, and I'm not going to read it. And as God is my witness, I will never review a comic again.

Bits and pieces:

-- Faith finally has a last name: Lehane. Ooh, I got it! After Dennis Lehane, the best-selling author from Massachusetts, right?

-- Spike's sphere ship is a dirigible. We still don't know where he got it, although I'm sure it was explained somewhere.

-- Isn't Giles' flat in England? How did they get Angel to England? How could a broke waitress pay for a plane ticket to England when all Giles left her was a book?

-- My favorite volume was the early Faith and Giles one, "No Future for You." My favorite standalone was "The Chain." Interesting how early both of these were.

-- I did love the cover art for some of the issues, particularly the ones by Jo Chen.

Quotes:

Buffy: "Come on, I'm rooting for Kennedy here! That deserves special consideration. And possibly a plaque."
Willow: "You... you're never not you, are you?"

Dawn: "Nightmare?"
Buffy: "What else?"
Dawn: "Is this the one where Angel and Spike get it awwn?"

Dawn: "Everybody knows I was the Scrappy-Doo of that gang."

Buffy: "At least Harmony's show got canceled."
Dawn: "She's doing Dancing with the Stars."
Buffy: "Balls."

Spike: "If you'd invite me in, I wouldn't have to crawl about, would I?"
Buffy: "Not my house, Blondie Bear."
Spike: "I've begged you not to call me that. Reminds me of that moron who -- among other things -- has completely ruined Dancing with the Stars this season."

Buffy: "You getting this, breathless? I'm Buffy, the vampire slayer, and you're a bunch of whiny thugs."

Two out of four broken scythes for "Last Gleaming." And that's it for me. Over and out,

Billie

All of my Buffy reviews are archived here.
(Season eight comics, issue 40)

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Fringe: The Firefly

Roscoe: “Are you sure you don’t know what I’m supposed to do for you?”
Walter: “No idea.”

What a delightful episode. I had been a bit worried that Fringe would start to lose its shine now that Bolivia is back in her Bearth. (See what I did there?) But this episode managed to neatly balance on the fine line between mystery of the week and high-powered mythology.

Our mystery…well, at first I didn’t realize it was a mystery. I was just goin’ along with the Observer’s actions and enjoying the first good episode of TV in a long while. But this episode, with delightful subtlety and Christopher Lloyd, managed to resolve a tension I had forgotten about: the Observer’s meddling influence in our universe and its repercussions for our heroes and humanity at large. And it all hinged, like some kind of science fiction Agatha Christie novel, on the tried-and-true mystery technique of putting a vital clue (the inhaler) in plain sight and letting us forget about it.

The Observer set himself two tasks: to test Walter (to see if he would give up his son), and to manipulate events so that Walter would be willing to give up his son—to manipulate events, in other words, so that Walter would pass the test. Over the course of the episode, Walter began to realize the persistent, deeply personal consequences of his actions: not the bombastic insanity of Earth-2’s and Walternate’s anger, but one father’s grief. As Walter gradually pieced together that, in bringing Peter back, he had induced a firefly-effect chain reaction that lead to the death of Roscoe Joyce’s son, he began to understand that he cannot control all events, because sometimes the universe must maintain its own control.

Walter’s willingness to accept the universe’s order is a long time coming. He has fought so diligently against ceding control that the Observer had to manipulate a chain of events to create both a catastrophe (the car accident) and a new frame of mind for Walter. Fascinatingly, he still had to intercede to make the catastrophe truly feel catastrophic: Walter only knew that the line about the keys and the girl was important because the Observer had mentioned it. Otherwise, he would not have realized that it was a watershed moment; because he did, he was spurred into adapting his own philosophy to take course-correction into account.

Of course, course correction and the butterfly (or firefly) effect work both ways. Peter’s return may have led to the death of Roscoe’s son, but Walter had no way of knowing that would happen. It could have been that, if Walter hadn’t brought Peter back, the Cold War would have ended in scorched earth. (Or something.) There are consequences to everything, and we can never know what they are. Whether or not we have free will, we don’t have the foreknowledge to see our will in the universal context, to know which consequences are supposed to happen and which aren’t. The Observers, however, can see those consequences, because they have a bird’s eye view of time. They can see it all at once, zooming in on specific moments at will. (The difference between our heroes’ perspective and the Observers’ is like the difference between us watching the episodes, and the point of view we have when they’re done, or when the series is complete.)

In other news: how cool was Christopher Lloyd? And how great is John Noble? It’s so easy for me to forget that he’s acting, but when I remind myself that he is not, in fact, Walter, I’m astonished by the incredible rapport he develops with each individual actor that he works with, from Kelly Astrid Jasika Nichols to this week’s guest star. Bravo to the writers, too, for showing us paternal grief that differs from Walter’s: Roscoe said that when his son died, nothing seemed to matter. For Walter, when Peter died, nothing seemed to matter except Peter.

Hmm. Wild:

• Bed-head Peter: “You’re just talking to an astral projection of me.”
Walter: “You’re just saying that to see if I’m high.”

• Peter: “The book wasn’t meant for her. It was meant for the Olivia Dunham that I’ve spent that last couple of years of my life with. Because I wanted you to read it. You’re the person I wanted to share it with.” Did anyone else tear up?

• The Observer caught bullets. Awesome!

• Dr. Jacoby from Washington State is Walter’s friend. Best shout-out ever.

• The Observer walked into the lab right as Walter was about to drink the Milk of Wisdom. Hmmm…

• I suspect the magic air gun and the Milk of Wisdom might have consequences down the line.

• What do you make of the Observer’s line that it must be difficult to be a father? Is he just referring to Walter and Roscoe, or someone else?

Four out of un-four-seen consequences.


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Buffy Season Eight: Last Gleaming, Part IV

Xander: "Giles, I'm all for rash acts of nobility-- but you can't get between those two."

Synopsis:

Willow is chanting a spell to protect the Seed, which I want to call the Big Red Egg because that's what it looks like. Buffy and Angel are fighting, and Spike vamps out and attacks Angel. Angel grabs Spike and takes up into the air; it's still daylight, and Spike begins to burn. Buffy arrives and knocks them apart. Spike is either sucked into the sphere ship, or Buffy deliberately tossed him there, or both.

More Buffy and Angel fighting, with military planes as casualties. Buffy feels that what happened to Angel isn't Angelus or Twilight. Then what is he?

Xander is watching the battle from afar as the sun goes down. He thinks this is the end. Giles is of the opinion that demons already attached to this world don't want it to end and they're on the Scoobie/Slayer side. Suddenly monsters are fighting each other.

Willow is getting off on the Seed, or the magic, or whatever; she's glowing, floating in the air, chanting away.

Faith, Scythe in hand, is ready to lead the slayers into battle, but Giles stops her and takes the Scythe for Buffy. An ugly blue dragon-like demon starts casting a spell on the slayers and they start looking awful. Faith whacks the blue dragon-like thing.

Meanwhile, Amy and Warren are in a much nicer, less battle-y place, drinking wine in an outside cafe and arguing about leaving. Amy decides she'll wait and see how things turn out.

More battle, more battle, more battle. Willow chants, Andrew is punched out, Buffy smacks down Angel. Angel puts his fist through the Master's head. (I guess that's it for our reincarnated Master. Did they really need him in the first place? I guess it made for a cool issue cover, though.) Buffy says "Go Angel! Also, take that!" and hits him again.

Xander is watching them from a doorway. Giles comes up with the Scythe; he says the Seed weakens Buffy but it will fuel the Scythe. Okay, that doesn't make sense. Xander says, so toss her the Scythe, but Giles says Buffy will hesitate, that she won't use it to kill Angel. Xander cautions against getting in between Buffy and Angel.

Giles dashes in with the Scythe, and Angel grabs Giles and snaps his neck. The panel actually looks like the top of the stairs archway shot where Angel did the same thing to Jenny. Angel then tells Buffy that when they're all gone, she'll understand.


Buffy whacks Angel, and picks up the Scythe. She swings it, we think she's going to take out Angel, but no -- she takes out the Seed. Boom. Big bits of red eggshell everywhere.

Willow, still in mid-air, clutches her head, screams, and plummets to the ground. The slayers all look shocked. Amy and Warren also react; Amy moans and clutches her head, while Warren dissolves into a puddle of blood and bones. Demons and monsters everywhere start floating up into rifts in the sky and disappear. The chanting Wiccans in a living room somewhere are all clutching their heads like Willow; they've lost connection with Sunnydale.

Willow, crazed and obviously injured, screams for Aluwyn, who isn't answering. Kennedy finds her and holds her as Willow cries, "We lost!" Very end of season six, but with Kennedy instead of Xander, and no yellow crayon.

Spike, in his sphere ship with his bugs, sees a huge monster still around and takes off after it.

Back underground, Buffy lies on the ground sobbing uncontrollably. Xander stands over her helplessly. Angel stands off to the side, looking shocked and probably not evil any more. Giles is dead on the ground. The Scythe is broken in half.

Review:

This was like one big mish mosh of way too many confused battle scenes. Which is a minor complaint compared to Angel killing Giles in exactly the same way that he killed Jenny back in season two. Did they have to do that? Really?

I had to think for awhile about why it bothered me so much. And I've got it. It's because, despite the delightful Buffyspeak and the familiar universe, the comics don't seem like real Buffy to me. I've never bought in. If Giles had died during the run of the series, I would have cried a huge puddle of tears, no matter how it happened. But all his death did to me here was make me mad. I've never felt so dissociated from the series; it's like the comics have taken me to an alternate Buffyverse. I never wanted an alternate Buffyverse. I want *my* Buffyverse. Too bad.

At least I can say that I zipped through this issue very quickly. Maybe I'm just anxious for it to be over. And it is over, to some extent. There was some actual resolution. Buffy used the Scythe to destroy the Seed. Demons and monsters went *phtt.* Willow lost her power, and so did Amy, big yay there. Warren dissolved into a puddle of blood, which may have been my favorite panel in many, many issues. Whoever decided to bring Warren back doesn't deserve dessert for a year. If that's Joss Whedon, and I'm pretty sure it is, so be it.

Now what? I'm looking over at the bookcase where number 40 sits in its paper bag, as yet unread, and I wonder -- is there any possible way that Joss Whedon can end season eight in a way that will make this nearly four year journey worth my time? I don't think so, Dave. (That's something Dan and I say a lot. It's sort of from 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Quotes:

Buffy: (referring to Angel) "I liked it better when you were kissing."
Spike: (quietly) "I'm fairly certain I never mentioned..."

Willow: "Master? Pfft. You're the master of nothing. You're the extra light fluffy coating around the more substantial center of ordinary nothing."

On to The End,

Billie

All of my Buffy reviews are archived here.
(Season eight comics, issue 39)

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Misfits: Episode Two (I Think I'm Going to Die, Before I See My Time)

Nathan: “I see dead people.”

This episode started off slowly. Nathan's back-story, whilst not entirely surprising, offered an intriguing glimpse into his personal life. Greeting your Father with a punch in the face is pretty dysfunctional. Getting one back is downright abusive. But where this episode really caught fire (pun intended) was at the club. Curtis' altered power gifted us a fascinating peek into the future. How far into the future is anyone’s guess. But if that last minute reveal was anything to go by, it could be sooner than we think.

Jamie's drugs had the unexpected side-effect of reversing the Misfits' abilities. Alisha repelled people, instead of attracting them. Nathan became mortal, and had to be saved from exploding shrapnel by Superhoodie. Simon, instead of being invisible, suddenly became the focus of everyone's attention. How sweet that he refused to use his new found popularity for his own carnal gratification (despite enthusiastic proddings from Nathan). How like Simon to hate the adulation and lock himself in the toilet.

Kelly's powers were also reversed. Instead of being able to hear everyone else's thoughts, she couldn't stop telling everyone her own. She acknowledged that Nathan could probably do better than her. She even admitted to sleeping with just four people (“you're practically a virgin”). She also confessed to being in love with Nathan, and of being afraid of getting hurt. By caring, sharing Nathan? Surely not.

Curtis' flash of the future showed him wearing a superhero's costume. He actually looked pretty cool. But who was the girl in his vision and why did she have a scar running down her chest? More importantly, why did Superhoodie lead them to her home? Can he see the future, too? It's hard to shake the feeling that the Misfits are being manipulated. Yes, Superhoodie's protecting them. But to what end? Is he friend or foe? He seems to know everything about them. Always watching. Always one step ahead. But not invincible. That shrapnel from the car explosion definitely hurt him.

Nathan's attempts at caring for his newly found brother were as comical as they were well meaning. I loved watching him ironing Jamie a toasted sandwich. What must his clothes smell like? (Assuming her ever irons them). Nathan warmed to the idea of a brother right away (a typical only child response. I'd love one too). Someone to mould in his own image. Someone to look after, to go on the pull with, to teach his dance moves to (if he had any). What a shame Jamie died -- incinerated by an exploding Lily.

Jamie's purpose after death was to bring Nathan and his Dad together. It's early days -- but the signs are encouraging. Nothing says “I'm sorry” like paying for a man's breakfast. Those were some ugly exchanges at the Police Station. Years of neglect have obviously left Nathan with some deep scars. I felt a little sorry for his dad, too. Sure he's made mistakes. But he seemed genuinely sorry at the end. Maybe Nathan was a little sorry, too.

It's refreshing to know that things in the afterlife aren't so different to things over here. People still have sex. Apparently. Great closing line from Jamie (“I'm fucking her”). Maybe, Jamie and Nathan aren't so different after all.

Bits and Pieces:

-- Awesome opening scene of Nathan stripping off in front of the group and rubbing suntan lotion into his white, skinny body. I loved everyone's look of revulsion. Apart from Kelly. She seemed to be enjoying it.

-- Why, oh why, would Nathan think that shitting in someone's bed would send the right message? Loved his face whilst curling one off, though. Very serene.

-- I'm glad Nathan made the connection between Superhoodie and the BMX bandit from season one. I was wondering about that. Not that it helps us much in determining his identity.

-- Where does Nathan get his self confidence? Virtually everyone thinks he's a dick. Being immortal just makes him worse. Him talking to those car jackers as if they were prostitutes was hilarious.

-- Nathan's immortality means he can talk to dead people. There are infinite story possibilities there.

-- Loved Simon's dancing. It was made only slightly more ludicrous by everyone in the club mimicking him. It reminded me of the Doctor dancing in "The Big Bang". Truly terrible.

-- Dexter Fletcher is perfect casting as Nathan's father. They have similar mouths.

-- Poor Alisha can't seem to catch a break. Even with her superpower altered she was untouchable. What a pain.

Quotes:

Nathan: “Who says you can't have an ASBO and an all over tan?”

Nathan: "We're like the Mitchell brothers: only we're not bald, ugly and shit."

Simon: “Nathan? It's me”
Nathan: “Barry? Hey man. Help me out.”

Nathan: “There was a storm. Bunch of us got superpowers. I'm immortal. Big reveal.”

Nathan: “We need to send a message. Let him know he can't fuck with us.”
Curtis: “And How does taking a shit in his bed do that exactly?"
Nathan: “Well They did it in The Godfather."
Simon: “They put a horse head in the bed."
Nathan: "Well, have you got a horse's head?"

Nathan: "There's an extra twenty in it if you tie me and and hit my balls with a cactus."

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Buffy Season Eight: Last Gleaming, Part III

Buffy: "It's not enough to side with our original big bad -- now we're working for him."

Synopsis:

Angel is fighting the Phoenix-like Higher Being Twilight whatever. It complains that Angel abandoned It, and that its mother, Buffy, abandoned It, too. It wants Angel to bring It the Seed, its soul. (Aha, says Billie.) The demons and monsters pouring in are a bit premature; they're anticipating the removal of the Seed.

Meanwhile under the Sunnydale crater, monsters are everywhere and there is much fighting by everyone with everything. Monsters bonk Dawn, who is injured, not dead.

Inset shot of Angel's face, looking pale, with blank spots for eyes.

The Master proposes that he and Buffy ally to protect the Seed. Buffy decides to stake him and Spike is ready to help. Willow stops her and says they must indeed ally with the Master to protect the Seed. Buffy asks Willow what happened when she passed out. Willow lies. The Master attacks Buffy and succeeds in hurting her, because the Seed has made her weaker. Spike attacks but is tossed aside. Willow again insists that everyone work together to protect the Seed.

Back to Angel, who has been unconscious or worse, I think, probably because of the panels of him looking blank. The Phoenix-like Higher Being tells him to fly and he flies.

Back to the sphere ship, where the General (remember the General?) smushes one of the Bugs. The General is injured, shuns Amy's help, and says he's off to find a medic.

Buffy goes off in a corner and talks to Giles. Buffy acknowledges that all this was her fault for empowering the slayers. Giles says he can help, but not here, and Spike can't go out because it's daylight. Buffy needs to get away from the Seed to get her powers back.

Xander brings Dawn to a military medic station and of course, the General is there. and knows who they are. The General has intel that the Seed must be destroyed. He's right. How about that.

Willow chants a protection spell for the Seed, with the Master looking on. Buffy and Spike, further away, fight monsters. One of the monsters bursts apart and it's Angel in disguise. Except that he punches Buffy out. Spike says "Angelus" as Angel punches him out, too. Buffy says, "No." Angel says, "Twilight."

Review:

I'm confused. What is Twilight? It's a place created by Buffy/Angel boinking, it's a Phoenix-like Higher Being spawned by Buffy and Angel, it's Angel's alter ego, it's the Big Bad, it's a book by Stephenie Meyer. I wish they'd make up their minds and stick to it.

I guess it was inevitable that Angel would become evil again. Except what he did earlier in the series was evil, too. Wouldn't it have made more sense if he'd been Angelus all along? Except that Angelus would never have wanted to go to Twilight heaven with Buffy. Hey, couldn't they go back and rewrite season eight and get it to make sense?

This issue had a ton of confusing cartoon battle scenes, which does nothing for me. And did they have to tease us with the cover? They show Xander carrying Dawn's body, and she's not dead. I guess since she didn't wink out of existence in season five when everyone wished she would, Dawn will never get written out. It doesn't seem quite fair.

Bits and pieces:

-- The Seed restored the Master when Twilight "chose Angelus". Angelus, not Angel, huh.

-- The General thought Xander was soldier-like. "Halloween" lives on.

-- The last few have mentioned "The queen is dead" here and there. Like back in the Faith volume, except Gigi was referring to Buffy.

-- Buffy losing her powers as she gets close to the Seed is a lot like that terrible Highlander TV movie that I'm trying to put out of my head forever.

Quotes:

Master: (referring to Angel) "I sort of thought he'd show."
Spike: "Oh, he'll be around later to take credit for everything, don't you fret."

Xander: "I get it. Little too much time around his preciousssssss..."

The Master: "She and Angelus will see you all dead."
Buffy: "Wow, this guy is really challenged by the major plot points."
Dawn: "He's not the only one."
Count me in on that, Dawn.

Buffy: "He's a monster and he killed me."
Willow: "Grudge validated. Move on."

Buffy: (to Willow) "You talked to your snakey demon hottie girlfriend, didn't you?"
Giles: (to himself) "It seems I've missed a great deal."

The Master: "You remain that same little girl I killed. I can still smell the acne scrub."

Two issues to go. But who's counting?

Billie

All of my Buffy reviews are archived here.
(Season eight comics, issue 38)

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Chuck: Chuck versus the Balcony

“It’s time to come clean.”

A good TV show, just like a good public speech, a good book, a good poem, should create audience desire. We, as the audience, should be guided into knowing what to hope for—do we want the main character to be happy, or sad? Do we want the couple to stay a couple, or break up? Should the bad guy die, or be redeemed? A strong show creates these tensions for us by effectively creating characters we can actively love or hate, arcs that have pep, sub-plots that keep us interested.


(This is the great problem with the Lost finale, for many people: it manufactured the desire for “answers,” but the creators ultimately wanted us to desire character resolution. Oops!)

Does this mean that a good show will do exactly what I want it to? Absolutely not. To paraphrase Joss Whedon, a good show should give me what I need, not what I want. If Buffy had given me what I thought I wanted, it would have lasted 1.5 seasons and ended with a Bangel sex scene. Because it gave me what I needed, instead, it grew from a good show into a fabulous one. And as Joss masterfully shifted audience desire throughout the seasons, what I thought I’d wanted, at first, became something entirely different by the series end.

But Chuck has lost its sense of desire. Our Pinocchio has grown into a real boy with a real job and a real girlfriend. Along the way, he has revealed himself to be still funny, still befuddled, and insanely neurotic about his relationship. So neurotic, in fact, that it’s hard for me to sympathize, because Chuck—despite all his bluster about marriage—doesn’t seem to fully understand the give-and-take, mature, often-boring adult relationship. He still doesn’t seem fully comfortable as a boyfriend yet, let alone a husband.

Could be a character quirk, sure. But I don’t think it’s an intentional one. Chuck still has a fairy-tale vision of lifetime commitment that seems oddly related to a sense of having scored a fabulous girlfriend and very little to do with a life plan—is this a problem with Chuck the character, or with the way the relationship has been written? Would I feel differently if the show allowed us a few more glimpses into their non-spy life? If the show had allowed its format some deviation to develop the characters and their relationship to one another?

Because of outside pressures, Chuck, has been forced to negotiate character development with brand consistency, and the tension is starting to wear show. Chuck has new magical powers, but hasn’t changed much. Sarah continues to wiffle-waffle between commitment and the spy-life. They talk a big game about marriage, which is supposed to be (according to Vladimir Propp) the way all fairy tales end, but neither of them seems to actually be ready for it.

As for desire, Chuck doesn’t seem to want anything more than renewals. This isn’t the damning criticism that it could be: plenty of shows (Law and Order, for instance) desire nothing but the renewal of episodic satisfaction. Those just aren’t the shows that I particularly love to watch.

All of this is by way of introducing my main point: this episode of Chuck gave me everything I thought I wanted, and nothing that I needed. It was funny, peppy, lots of things happened, the clothes were pretty, Morgan was reasonably involved, Chuck finally got to propose, the spy mythos got more complex…

And I’m left feeling cold. So Chuck is just as neurotic about the proposal as he has been about every single other aspect of his relationship with Sarah? There’s a new reason that Chuck and Sarah can’t be happy—only now it’s Sarah’s fault, but not really, because Chuck understands that she’s doing this for him, even though it was horribly ill-timed? So it does all come back to Volkoff, sort of? And Lester is still creepy? (Were we supposed to be rooting for him?) It was pleasant in the short-term, but unsatisfying in the long-term.

I’ve read quite a few reviews online this week, which I don’t usually do. But I was trying to figure out if it’s just me. Is it? My in-depth statistical analysis says no: it’s me and about half of the fandom. The other half really liked this episode, probably because it did have everything we want from a Chuck episode. For me they didn’t add up to a satisfying whole, but for others, it did.

Is that significant? I’m not sure. But right now, I’m starting to think that if I weren’t reviewing this show, I wouldn’t bother watching any more episodes, but would just wait for the series finale.

Bytes:

• Sarah: “Besides, I’ve got such a bad history of proposals.” That is now on my list of first-date must-says, along with “I’m not sure how many cats I have; they breed so quickly,” and “Alliance or Horde?”

• Lester: “It’s like they’re stuck in the old country. With their dated traditions and obsolete dietary restrictions. I keep telling them: ‘I live in the United States of America now. I’m not in Canada anymore.”
Big Mike: “You mean India, right?”
Lester: “What? No. I’m a Saskatchewan, a Hinjew of Saskatchewan. Some believe that we were a cult. Of sorts.”

• Morgan: “Casey is your man servant. Let him man-serve you.”

• Morgan: “Tide to-go sticks. Left jacket pocket.”

And Pieces:

• Lester singing was horribly uncomfortable. I couldn’t root for him to score the hot chick. I just couldn’t.

• Sarah’s blue dress was an interesting choice for a day at the office.

• I did enjoy Morgan’s pronunciation of the Lu-wah valley. It just rolls off the tongue, like a pinot with a stable on the label and a stork on the cork.

• Did anyone else expect Chuck to put the ring in his ear and the earbud in the box?


Where do you stand? How many Danny Kayes out of four?



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Being Human: There Goes the Neighborhood (1)

Josh: "We'll have full moon parties. We'll invite the neighbors over and eat them."

I've been feeling torn by the advent of the new Being Human. I absolutely love the UK original (hereafter referred to as BH/UK). It's unique and wonderful and we're reviewing it. Reboots of good stuff usually suck, and I was totally prepared to hate this new version. But -- surprise -- I don't. It's good.

The producers of BH/US are promising us that they're using BH/UK only as a jumping off point, and they may actually mean it. Yes, part one of the pilot covered some familiar set-up ground, but I wasn't constantly going, hey, deja vu. It feels somewhat the same, but a good bit different.

One of the big changes they made was giving the characters new names. Instead of Mitchell, George and Annie, we now have Aidan, Josh and Sally. I like what the name change implies -- that this is a different series. And I really loved Sam Witwer (Aidan) and Sam Huntington (Josh). They're both strong actors and completely different personality types, but they felt like friends. Yes, I know there are way too many brooding, unhappy vampires on television and in the movies right now, but Witwer was a bright light (in a dark way) on Battlestar Galactica and Smallville; I've been hoping for quite awhile that he would land a good series, and I think he just did. I was less enthralled by Meaghan Rath as Sally, but there wasn't a whole lot of her so I'll reserve judgment.

Although the cliffhanger was werewolf-heavy -- will Josh kill his sister Emily? I don't think so -- a lot of this episode was about Aidan. The flashback showing Bishop and Aidan taking out a wedding party was pretty nasty. Did Aidan kill the child hiding under the table? Even if he didn't, he's got a seriously evil past to live down. And it's not that much in the past, since he killed one of his workmates at the beginning of this episode, and visited a vamp brothel later on. Aidan finds death beautiful, even though he's trying to give it up. Bishop, the truly scary vampire who turned Aidan and with whom he has a two-hundred-year Lestat/Louis relationship, is going to make it even harder for him.

And how cool is it that Bishop is played by Mark Pellegrino, who guest starred on both Lost and Supernatural last year? Did they do that on purpose to pull me in? Because it's working.

Bits and pieces:

-- Josh has been away from his family for two years. He's Jewish.

-- Josh and Aidan work at the Suffolk County Hospital in Boston. New England. Little ha-ha there.

-- Vampires don't eat in this version. That's different, because Mitchell definitely eats.

-- The actor who plays Mitchell on BH/UK is Aidan Turner. I don't suppose they did that deliberately?

-- I particularly liked that Aidan didn't care if their landlord Danny (Sally's fiance) thought he and Josh were a couple, while Josh was having a cow.

-- I loved the comment that everything Sally knows about ghosts came from Whoopi Goldberg.

-- The empty picture frame they put over the fireplace was this episode's Most Obvious Symbolism. They're trying to define themselves and so far, their humanity is only an outer shell.

Quotes:

Sally: "How can you see me?"
Aidan: "Think of us as sort of different countries on the same continent."
Josh: "Omigod, that's beautiful. Really. We're Africa."

Sally: "At least I don't masturbate to Nova."

Bishop: "You don't call, you don't write, you move in with a werewolf..."

I'm not ready to take BH/US on permanently -- not on the strength of one episode -- but I'm looking forward to part two. What did you guys think? I'd love to know.

Billie

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Misfits: Episode One (Stealing Past the Windows of the Blissfully Dead)

Kelly: “Ah, you fucker!”

Tasteful dialogue with which to start a season, eh? This episode pretty much followed on from the season one finale: with Kelly mourning Nathan's death, Nathan indulging in a spot of onanism (whilst lying in his own shit), and Simon with a dead probation worker in the deep freeze. Only, now there's a new hero in town, and he seems to know all about the Misfits. Who is Superhoodie? Does he have superpowers? Questions they'll hopefully address as the season progresses.

I was watching an interview with Robert Sheehan last week and he revealed that, before this episode even aired, fans of the show were guessing correctly how Nathan would escape his interment. Personally, I had no clue. I half suspected the iPod Kelly buried with him would turn out to be an iPhone, and he'd rally the troops and have them come dig him out. In the end, it was our mysterious masked avenger, Superhoodie, who sent messages out to our favourite degenerates, instructing them to meet at his grave.

Superhoodie, unlike the Misfits, is a proper hero -- or at least appears to be. He has a costume of sorts, hides his face behind a mask, has gadgets, is an adept practitioner of free running, and can actually be arsed to save people. Last season he saved Nathan from the Virtue virgins. Tonight, after stabbing Kelly in the eye with a superbly directed paper plane, he returned -- decked out in body armour and night-vision goggles -- and saved Curtis from certain asphyxiation. He must also know about Kelly's telepathy; otherwise, why send them to the cemetery?

Nathan's resurrection was in predictably bad taste. After scaring Kelly half to death by screaming in her face, it was business as usual -- with the sexual innuendo, the shit talk, and the endless digs at Simon (although Tutti Frutti gum is pretty rank). Not exactly the reunion we were expecting. But as usual, Nathan gets all the best lines, which Sheehan delivered with enthusiastic aplomb. No wonder Nathan never pulls. He's a complete sociopath. I can't bring myself to quote some of the stuff he says.

We were also given a pretty disturbing glimpse into Simon's past and how his failed arson attempt landed him in a mental institution with the ever so slightly unhinged Lucy. Looks can be deceiving -- just not in Lucy's case. She looked strange from the off. Her face said it all. As did her obsession with Simon and her immediate jealousy of his new friends. Scratching out the eyes of paintings whilst silently sobbing is another tell-tale sign things aren't going well upstairs.

And thus began the shape-shifting madness. I honestly thought Kelly had offed another probation worker. Let's face it, it's not outside the realms of possibility. They've already got one mouldering in the chest freezer. Thankfully, Curtis' ability to turn back time saved them again. Not that it helped Nathan. Impaled on a pipe. Ouch! And, if it hadn't been for Superhoodie, Curtis would have likewise been toast. How is it that Superhoodie knew exactly where they were and what to do? More to the point, how did he know they were in danger in the first place? Precognition?

I liked that Kelly waited for Nathan to come back to life. It wasn't quite the evening they had planned -- but it was sweet in its own way. It was nice too that, despite Nathan promising to change (like he ever could), Kelly didn't ask him to. Kelly, of all people, knows that the person you are on the outside isn't necessarily the person you are within. Despite Kelly's brash exterior and uncompromising talk, it's obvious that deep down she cares for Nathan. She stuck up for Simon, too, when Curtis was about to take him to the cleaners for hurting Alisha. The writers are fleshing out Kelly's character nicely.

But what does it mean now that Superhoodie knows the Misfits killed Sally? Will he use this information to his advantage? Despite him saving Nathan and Curtis, is he really on their side? Or is he just using them?

Bits and Pieces:

-- I like the new probation worker's attitude. He seems as uninterested in the Misfits as they are in him.

-- Damn, Alisha's sexy!

-- Being immortal suits Nathan's personality perfectly. Not being able to die is going to push his self-confidence up through the roof (assuming it's not there already).

-- For a TV show with a small budget the visual effects were pretty awesome this week. Lucy's shape-shifting looked genuinely creepy.

-- I'm not sure I'd have eaten a Cornetto. Ick!

Quotes:

Nathan: “Can we please stop killing our probation workers?”

Curtis: “He's dead.”
Kelly: “I heard him. I think he was knocking one out.”
Simon: “That does sound like him.”

Nathan: “Oh, hey man! Cornettos!”

Kelly: “So if you're not dead, how comes you smell so bad?”
Nathan: “I appear to have shat myself.”

Nathan: “You want to see the merchandise? Try before you buy.”

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Buffy Season Eight: Last Gleaming, Part II

Spike: "So what do you say, luv... fancy a bit of exposition?"

Synopsis:

In his stateroom on the sphere ship, Spike fills Buffy in on the Seed of Wonder, which is the source of all the magic in the world. It has been in Sunnydale since before humans and before The First. The world was overrun with demons and horrors, a spillover from another dimension. The Seed kept the demons/monsters from seeping back into the old dimension. The Seed is like a key. (I'm getting Dawn flashbacks.) Or maybe it's a cork. (And now I'm getting Lost flashbacks.)

Spike says everything was good, until Buffy and Angel boinked and created Twilight (the place.) Buffy tells Spike that what happened with Angel made her feel completely out of control. Spike doesn't want to hear it but she says that he's the one she told all of her dark stuff to. They kiss -- except no, they don't, it's a tease. Buffy is fantasizing about kissing Spike, while Spike believes the romantic look on her face means she's thinking about Angel.

Spike has an answer to the problem but wants to wait and tell the entire group. He says Buffy should get to bed and she immediately fantasizes about the two of them in bed together. Very season six in Spike's crypt.

Meanwhile in Japan, Satsu is leading slayers in a fight against monsters and demons and Angel shows up to help. Angel zooming around fighting monsters says Buffy was right and he needed this.

Meanwhile in the ship/sphere's control room, Dawn is still trying not to think about the giant bugs. Xander suggests that if they survive, the two of them should move in together. Dawn says she has wanted that forever. The evil General (the former Twilight minion who is pretending to be on the Slayer side but really isn't) is eavesdropping.

Willow passes out and finds herself on that other plane with the snake-woman-person Aluwyn. (This is all confusing exposition.) According to Aluwyn, as long as the Seed is in its place (the Hellmouth), the status is quo. If it is *removed* (to another dimension, I'm guessing?) the gates of Hell open wide and demons and monsters will thrive. This is what Twilight wants. (Twilight the place, not Angel.) But *destroy* the Seed, and there is no avenue for evil to take to the world. No demons, no monsters -- and no magic. The vestiges of that magic would remain in the form of slayers already called, plus vampires -- but those drawing their power from elsewhere, as witches do, would lose it all. Willow tells Aluwyn that Buffy had a vision that someone would betray her and says Aluwyn knows who it is.

Willow wakes up and says, Buffy, we have to protect the Seed. Bad Willow, no biscuit.

The sphere ship arrives above the Sunnydale crater, and it's a real mess -- monsters and demons versus military, planes and bombs. Buffy jumps out of the ship and Spike grabs her around the waist and goes with her. Willow is about to take off, too, and Xander, Giles, Faith and Dawn say they want to go along.

Buffy and Spike fly underground (must have been an opening somewhere). The Master is there, and he whacks Buffy. Spike vamps out. The Master says that "It" said Buffy would come, but she was supposed to come with Angel. Spike distracts him and Buffy smacks him down.

Back to Angel. The world is looking like a battlefield. The higher being shows up in animal form again, calls Angel "Father" and tells him his work isn't done. It turns into a winged lion with a mane of green gas (a phoenix?) and tells Angel he must finish what he started.

Review:

I'm so confused. So much exposition. So much stupid, hard-to-follow exposition. When you get near the end of the series and you get tons of exposition, that means the writers haven't laid their groundwork.

And I hate that Willow is a bad guy again, although it was obviously coming. I don't know what is sadder -- that Willow decides that keeping her magic is more important than saving the world, or that I wasn't surprised she went that way. It's pretty much a rerun of season six, but without the makeover of the damned. Now if Joss Whedon had done what I told him to do and brought back Tara, this wouldn't be happening. (Yes, I read the "Willow" standalone, and I get that Willow said no to bringing Tara back. Disappointing.)

The obvious answer is destroying the Seed. Are we heading for a big giant re-set button? Slayers already called, plus vampires, and that would be pretty much it as far as the supernatural goes?

More lovely Buffy/Spike banter. Tell me again why she belongs with Angel? I do like that Angel was supposed to be with Buffy below Sunnydale, but she went with Spike instead. That felt right. It was the place where Spike gave his un-life to save the world, after all, the place where she told him she loved him, even if she didn't.

And Buffy still fantasizes about him. Knew it. Even though they're obviously just throwing a bone to the Buffy/Spike shippers, I still found Buffy's two mini-fantasies more enjoyable than an entire issue of Buffy and Angel having sex, and I'll stop talking about it now.

Bits and pieces:

-- Spike says he'll explain his spaceship some other time. Like when?

-- If you're interested in more detail about the "Willow" one-shot that talks about Tara, here's a synopsis: http://www.seanpaune.com/2010/01/12/buffy-season-8-willow-one-shot/

Quotes:

Spike: "Point is, bottle corked, world safe, nothing to fear. Unless a couple of super-powered morons who never got a higher education decide to shag a universe into existence."
Buffy: "That wasn't our fault!"
Spike: "Nobody said it was except me right now to your face."

Buffy: "... it was like... elemental. Like we were outside ourselves, in each other... like we were the wind that swept us up."
Spike: "Can you think of a single creature on any plane of existence that wants to hear this less?"

Buffy: "You're my dark place, Spike."

Buffy: "God, my brain's turning into Cinemax over here."

Buffy (in the air) "Spike's totally touching my butt."

On to part three, and only three issues to go. If you got a better grasp than I did on this Seed of Wonder crap, please post a comment and enlighten me!

Billie

All of my Buffy reviews are archived here.
(Season eight comics, issue 37)

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