Category Archives: The Mentalist

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Worst Episodes of the Year (20-11)

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Shades of Caruso apologises in advance for the following posts. They’re filled with complaints and bitching and all sorts of unpleasant negativity, but they’re something that needed to be written even if just to exorcise some very complicated feelings that arose during this past year of watching a lot of TV. Just as watching good TV allows you to appreciate the craft and intelligence of numerous talented people, watching bad TV… well, it allows you to do exactly the same thing. The difference is that you get to see this effort compromised by factors as big as the interference of executives who want to be “creative” but don’t understand anything about the process, or as small as one bad decision made and then followed through to unavoidable disaster (e.g. Evil Sandy in the third season of The O.C.).

Some of the shows here are shows I love, but went momentarily bad, either with ambition that ran away from them, or by adding some awful element that derails the narrative or tone. Some of the shows are probably just not my bag anyway, but were not distinct enough to convince me of their charms (e.g. Friday Night Lights is not a show I would normally watch, but it is exceptional on every level, and is therefore one of my all-time favourites). Some of them are just bone-headed and half-arsed and need a kicking. Unless specified, I’m not bitching at anyone in particular: it’s a collaborative process, and sometimes these things go awry without anyone realising. It’s just the way it is.

Except for my number one pick. That fucking bullshit needs to be called out. (Warning: There will be impotent rage.)

That’s for tomorrow. Today, bad episodes 20-11. In the interest of seeming 33% less bitter and mean-spirited than I could, I’m not listing 30 episodes, though I easily could have. Lucky for The Vampire Diaries, I guess. Normal rules about complete seasons and one candidate per season apply. If you see a show you love on this list, bear in mind I might only be complaining about one episode, not the whole thing. Even my favourite show ever — Lost — had a couple of clunkers this year, and there was even one episode of critical darling Mad Men that nearly made the fail grade. It’s nothing personal (though neither ended up on the list after I got rid of the 30-21 candidates). But if you wanna flame me, I understand. Go ahead. If you make good enough points, I’ll be gentle. And now, un-joy.

20. Dollhouse - The Hollow Men

Many of the episodes listed here are included for crimes against plotting, against pace, against acting. Some represent the moment a show made a transition from mostly-good episodes to mostly-bad, while others were the final proof that a show was broken from conception and would never be any good. This episode – the penultimate one in Joss Whedon’s cancelled SF series – is here for being awesome and terrible at the same time. Yes, it contained as many great ideas as previous episodes, some terrific performances, thrilling plot twists and shocking character deaths. It was also shakily shot and edited, sketchily written, and laden with bad effects and incongruities. A final shot of Echo running from an explosion that does zero damage to the building it happens in — followed by a shot of our heroes aimlessly wandering off into the “sunset” — might stand as the worst moment in all of Mutant Enemy history. Let me be VERY CLEAR: I’m not saying that this is the fault of anyone who worked on the show, and it would be cruel to suggest otherwise. In fact, everyone who worked on it has my eternal gratitude for going the extra mile to take the few episodes and dollars they had left and finish the story that Whedon started. Nevertheless, The Hollow Men stands as a monument to the show’s failure to catch on, either because of lacklustre promotion by Fox or by the unwillingness of the public to give a chance to a show as cerebral as this one. Gratitude is due to all concerned, but the frustration of seeing a potentially incredible story get short-changed remains.

19. Big Love – Blood Atonement

While watching the fourth season of Big Love (several months after its initial airing), the many complaints of fans and former fans rang through my ears, most of them revolving around the Jumping of the Shark. For six episodes I scoffed. From where I was sitting the show was its normal funny and unpredictable self. In fact, it was arguably even more macabre and eccentric than previous years. Other than complaints about the central arc with Bill attempting to become a senator in order to reveal his polygamy to the world, it was still superb, underrated TV. And then this episode leapt out from hiding, like some inept monster in the closet, stumbling towards us with coathangers around its feet and a bandanna over its eyes. With only three episodes left in the series, the showrunners and writing team appeared to be up against the wall in terms of not having time to pay things off in time for the finale, and thus began packing absurd amounts of plot into the show, overburdening it with event, rushing things to silly conclusions, and fatally misjudging the tone. The last three episodes of the season featured numerous terrible choices — the bizarre mad scientist plot featuring Zeljko Ivanek was particularly irritating, as he had been an interesting antagonist before turning into an insane eugenicist — but the booby prize goes to Blood Atonement for ushering in the miserable trilogy, and for including a lumpen hostage rescue plot of such boneheadedness that it boggles the mind. Let’s hope season five gets this gem of a show back on track.

18. FlashForward - Believe

It’s a great premise — everyone on the planet blacks out and sees four minutes of their future — but a great idea is doomed if you go in the wrong direction. The novel FlashForward wisely focused on the scientists who were investigating the worldwide phenomenon, while the show follows a bunch of FBI agents and their friends and family. The show might seem more dramatic, but it’s also liable to fall into tedious action cliche — which it does — and all other sub-plots are likely to seem trivial in comparison to the conspiracies, gunfights, explosions, and shots of Joseph Fiennes emoting with all the force of a billion Olivier-strength Thespian-Bombs. The show’s low-point is probably the least fighty, oddly enough. Believe features two sub-plots about recovering alcoholics (as if one wasn’t boring enough), one of which is solely about Agent Benford asking people if they texted some bad news to his wife. Not exactly riveting, but made accidentally amusing when the two people he asks (his be-whiskered sponsor Aaron and velvet-voiced boss Stanford Wedeck) react as if he accused them of molesting his daughter (chairs thrown, growls of “Get. Out. Of. My. Office!”, etc.). However the main focus of the show is the deathly tedium that is Bryce Varley’s search for his Japanese future-lover. It’s feather-light, leads to hours of pointless soul-searching in later episodes, and relies on horrible cliches about Japanese corporate culture. Imagine a Kate-centric episode of Lost mixed with the worst cultural drama of the Sun/Jin episodes, but without the sensitivity. It’s enough to make you pine for Hiro’s appearances in the first season of Heroes.

17. Fringe - Brown Betty

Glee was everywhere this year, like a virulent strain of some terribly overrated plague. It infected everything, including Fringe. As Fox brought its breakout hit back from slumber with a patience-sapping back-nine, it figured it would be a great idea to celebrate with a Glee-themed week of programming, including a musical episode of the mostly humourless and dry sci-fi show. Not that you could really tell. Though we got a minor moment of song from Lance “Intensity” Reddick, and a nicely underplayed rendition of “For Once In My Life” by Anna Torv — both of whom have lovely voices, especially Ms. Torv — it still seems like a stretch to call it a musical. Shockingly, Broadway star Michael Cerveris — The Watcher known as September — is featured in the episode but doesn’t sing a note. Imagine if Hinton Battle had not sung or danced in Buffy‘s Once More With Feeling: it’s a horrible, horrible waste of an opportunity. There have been arguments that it’s unfair to criticise it for being a musical when it obviously has no real interest in being one, but the episode has plenty of other damaging flaws: the clangingly obvious metaphors in Walter’s drug-induced hallucination; the look of discomfort on most of the cast’s faces as they struggled with the dopey film noir theme and the dreadful jokes (even John Noble looks lost); the complete lack of new or pertinent information, meaning this episode can be happily excised from the show’s run. The worst crime, however, is that it disrupts one of the most impressive late-season runs in recent TV history. At this point Fringe had finally become essential viewing: Brown Betty was a miserable, ill-judged mood-reset button that came at the worst moment. The season rallied and ended on a memorable high, but nevertheless this car-crash still irks.

16. The Mentalist – His Red Right Hand

SoC was quite happy to stick with this average-but-entertaining procedural last year simply because Simon Baker was so lovable as trickster Patrick Jane that even the most humdrum of episodes was lifted by his mischievous smile and funny mind-games. This year the show’s level of quality dipped ever-so-slightly, enough to make us question our decision. Our attentions wandered while airtime was wasted on the Rigsby-Van Pelt flirtation (which turned into a romance much quicker than expected, so kudos for that, at least), and Jane’s playfulness seemed a little less interesting, maybe a little more sour. Only the introduction of Bosco — Lisbon’s former partner and antagonist for our mentalist hero — brightened the show, mostly because it was nice to see that the horrors of The Unusuals didn’t put dependable Terry Kinney off being on TV. His Red Right Hand promised to bring the show out of its rut, as it heralded the return of Jane’s arch-enemy Red John in a sweeps-tastic display of drama. Sadly the episode rested on the innocence of new character Rebecca, whose ultimate evil was signposted by a bunch of distracting swivel-eyed tics introduced early on. The suspense and twist was wrecked by this out-of-place performance, and suddenly the episode was in trouble. Then Bosco died, and Minelli (Gregory Itzin) quit, meaning the two best supporting characters left within minutes of each other. If a Red John episode could be so poor, what’s was the point in sticking with it? With that, SoC dropped the show, albeit with a heavy heart.

15. Persons Unknown – The Truth

Cracks began to form in Persons Unknown‘s veneer at a shockingly early stage, but the intriguing central premise and atmospheric direction of the season opener lulled the viewer into a false sense of security. The sixth episode was where the wheels flew off. The introduction of Erika the week before was bad enough, but this episode showed everyone’s least favourite crazed lesbian gangbanger poisoning duplicitous Joe with anti-freeze. We know this because the episode ends with a shot of her pouring the contents of an enormous can into a sink — a can that has the words “ANTI-FREEZE” written on the side (presumably in much larger letters than the brand name, Acme). As if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, the season’s most superfluous B-plot (with obnoxiously hairy journalist Mark Renbe and his underwritten fuck-buddy Kat Damatto in search of something something in Rome) went into madness overdrive. It should be written in stone that no one can disguise themselves as clergy without the tone of the story immediately becoming comedic. Watching them dress as priest and nun to find some ultimately pointless MacGuffin was the mortal blow. The show limped on for several episodes after this, but the game was up: it became obvious that those early promising episodes were a fluke, and Persons Unknown was actually a brain-dead failure, as well as a source of much derisory fun — the hysterical deaths in the penultimate episode, the personality flip-flops, and poor, inexplicably blind Robert Picardo wearing David Bowie’s cast-off wig from Labyrinth.

14. Human Target - Victoria

When a show pulls a plot from the headlines, it’s usually something fairly recent. In Victoria Human Target went back to the 90s, and retold the story of Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles as a sub-direct-to-DVD actioner, complete with hissable villains and stiff-upper-lipped British princesses turned into real humans by the love of a good Yank. Our hero Christopher Chance is called in to protect Victoria, Princess of Wales, after the men responsible for protecting the Crown attempt to assassinate her and the New York EMT guy she falls for on a blood drive. Wait, wait! It gets better! Chance is forced to call in a favour from a former IRA enforcer, one who once put a bounty on Victoria’s head. For the benefit of US readers, imagine a British show featuring an English cop helping the First Lady elope with a British ambulance driver and getting assistance from a member of al Qaida. After much “Top of the morning!” humour, Chance reunites the Princess with the Queen, and the EMT guy punches feckless bastard Prince Walter in the chops for being such a girly worm or something. It could only have been more insulting to the British people if Chance had decided to protect her by staging her death in a car accident. So yeah, it was a very bad hour of TV, but it’s on here because the usual humour and pace of the series are absent, replaced by cliche and bone-headed predictability. The unbelievable insults to our Royal Family? Hilarious! It’s worth watching just for that. Whoever signed off on this wrongheadedness should stay away from the UK forever, but if I ever meet this person in the US, the drinks are on me.

13. The Office – New Leads

Perhaps it was residual annoyance at the shoddy use of the faux-documentary format in ABC’s monstrous Modern Family that tipped me over the edge, but suddenly the shenanigans at Dunder Mifflin didn’t seem so funny anymore. Much of this was an unavoidable (and — at times — forgivable) problem with the amount of time the show has been on the air. Jim and Pam are obviously growing up and away from the rest of the gang, and Michael has had the first stirrings of depression trigger some fight or flight reflex. Nevertheless, while they grow, the rest of the office have nowhere to go but sideways. This episode represented the lowpoint of the show to date, the moment a Fonz lookalike leapt over a pile of toner in the warehouse in my head. For no reason except plot convenience, the episode starts with the sales staff of the Scranton office siddenly transformed into a bunch of thoughtless jerks that boss everyone else around, instantly rendering them unlikeable. When new owners Sabre hand down some Mitch-&-Murray-esque sales leads, Michael rebels, rendering him unlikeable too. Then the non-sales staff join in, bitching about their colleagues and turning the room into a vortex of hatred. If anything was going to save this episode it would be the blooming love of Erin and Andy, but if you cannot stand them (::points thumb at self::), their cutesy flirting and eventual kiss in front of a crappy green screen effect is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The camel in this metaphor being my previous love of the show.

12. Happy Town – Questions and Antlers

For a start, that title is unforgivable, even though a reindeer features in the episode in bookending scenes. Worse than even that is that for once, there is an actual point to an episode of Happy Town (after five episodes featuring almost no progression in any of its dreary plots), but the denouement is so overbaked as to be merely unintentionally funny instead of tragic. Sheriff Tommy Conroy is forced to finally apprehend his murderous best friend Big Dave, but as Abraham Benrubi appears to have been cast as an unhinged and unsympathetic simpleton, the face-off between him and the inept lawmaker turns into an interminable screaming contest. A bad end to a bad episode, but the reason for its inclusion in this list is not a single moment, but a flaw that runs through every scene like the word “terrible” through a stick of Brighton rock. Indulgent dialogue taints every scene, desperately trying to add a layer of quirk to what was already dreadfully self-conscious. None of the characters speaks like a human being, or even as individuals. All you can hear is the same pretentious voice coming out of everyone, with references to Chinese proverbs, crepes (in the longest and most obnoxious scene of the year), and Bon Jovi songs littering their speech with all the distracting insistence of a sugar-loaded child pointing at the crayon graffiti on your new wallpaper and screaming, “Look at me! I done made the clever words!” Simply unbearable.

11. Doctor Who – The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

The arrival of Steven Moffat on Doctor Who was a relief after Russell T. Davies’ run on the show began to offer up more rough episodes per season than highlights, not to mention the back-patting Cringemas special with its Return-of-the-King-esque finale. Nevertheless, even though Moffat’s first season had some very strong episodes, its ratio of good to bad was about 50:50, and it was Moffat himself who wrote most of the best ones. The other half of the equation had aquatic space vampires, Churchill and Daleks, and this dispiriting two-parter from SoC arch-nemesis Chris Chibnall.  Never able to let escapist sci-fi just be escapist sci-fi, he uses the return of new, humanised Silurians to beat us about the head and body with the same faux-profound Statements of Great Importance about humanity’s flaws that make the worst of Who and Torchwood (e.g. Countrycide) such a joyless bore. The Silurians and the humans — sworn enemies for decades now —  almost reach a detente (three minutes after new hostilities begin), but our suspicions get the better of us and the peace talks fail oh foolish hubristic humans and their hubristic foolishness! So yeah, pretty much the same plot as in their other appearances. On top of that, we see Amy sulking like a bored teenager during the peace talks (she’s useless throughout), much lifeless and overlong speechifying by the Doctor, Rory being absorbed by the mysterious crack in the universe just as he was proving to be a more entertaining companion than his fiancee, and a hilarious 15-minute sequence with the Doctor breathlessly helping the humans prepare traps and surveillance prior to a fight with Silurian soldiers that never happens. Still, at least that running around padded the episode out to the right length. That’s something, I guess.

More mean-spirited carping from me tomorrow, fingers crossed.

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Best New Characters Of The Year

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A quick explanation of what’s going on here. This is, as the title says, a list of what I feel are the best new characters introduced in the same time period as the first two lists, though I suspect number 9 is ineligible due to Leverage starting just outside the capture period. Well, tough, because I’ve written all that and I’m not changing it now. These are the characters that have entertained me the most, have served their show best, and have been created and manifested with the most care. The number one slot will come as no surprise to regular readers, and I must say I’m pleased to be publishing this post just a few hours before his triumphant (I hope) return to our TVs.

10. Nina – Reaper

ninareaperIt’s tempting to think of Reaper‘s resident hott demon as little more than a riff on Buffy‘s Anya, being a love interest who just happens to be a servant of a dark force, but while Anya was given a rich inner life — not to mention a tragic end: never forget! — Nina is perfectly designed to fit into the jollier — and simpler — milieu offered by CW’s comedy. For a show that has been so bad at creating compelling female characters (remember Josie?), it was especially pleasing to see Nina fit in so well, but then the second season was much looser than the first, allowing for much broader comic characters and sillier plots. Sadly for the fans, the show’s annoying cancellation by the misguided CW means we’ll never get to see how Nina’s relationship with Ben plays out. We’ll also miss out on Jenny Wade’s crackerjack comic timing. Someone snap her up, quick. The Dollhouse team could surely put her to some good use, especially with its new links to Reaper.

Best Moment: Spending an entire episode flirting with Sam’s douchey half-brother Morgan, just to lure him into a trap set by the Path of Steve. Then she eviscerates him. She’s, like, the perfect woman or something.

9. Eliot Spencer – Leverage

eliotspencerLeverage expends a lot of energy mimicking the air of casual smartassery Soderbergh mastered with the Ocean’s Numeral films, and then splicing it with the snarkiness of vintage A-Team. It’s not a knock, as Leverage does it well enough on a low budget, and entertains much more than most higher-profile network shows. Nevertheless, both Soderbergh’s con-movies and The A-Team are not known for their multi-dimensional characters, and ciphers will not work in a long-running series anymore. Plus, as with the increasingly tiresome Ocean’s films, without a heart at the center of it Leverage would pall quickly. Thankfully, the team’s bruiser — a long-haired, white B.A. Baracus played with dopey charm by Angel‘s Christian Kane — works as the show’s conscience as well as the guy who hits people in the head. Just as with the show’s hybrid nature, it’s a winning combination.

Best Moment: In the pilot, Spencer — who has, to this point, been portrayed as little more than a cool-as-a-cucumber hardass — begins to enquire into Nathan Ford’s past, and his obvious depression. His interest, and vow to look after his new boss, was the unexpected emotional hook that kept me watching.

8. Veronica Palmer – Better Off Ted

veronicaBOTBetter Off Ted pulls off a tonal miracle by lampooning sickening corporate thoughtlessness while still being a goofy, benign sitcom about office politics. Hiding its thorns under lovely petals of silliness (metaphoraclypse – sorry), the show gets away with some edgy material by playing up the wacky musical stings, and relying a lot on the charm of its lead, Jay Harrington. Nevertheless, the show wouldn’t work without its MVP, Portia de Rossi, who comes closer than the rest of the cast to playing a caricature. The hard-nosed, humourless, no-nonsense female boss is an overused archetype, but de Rossi plays Veronica Palmer to perfection, lacing her almost robotic personality with shades of doubt. Often as confused by the goings-on at the sinister/lovable corporate monolith Veridian Dynamics as everyone else, she maintains enough of an edge to keep her minions in check. What could have been a one-note cliche character is, in de Rossi capable hands, the number one reason for watching the show.

Best Moment: Nonchalantly squirting water into Phil’s mouth to stop him screaming following a cryogenic experiment gone wrong.

7. Patrick Jane – The Mentalist

patrickjaneShows featuring anti-social know-it-alls flourished this year, taking their cue from the continued success of House, but the trick is hard to pull off a second time. Lie To Me‘s Dr. Cal Lightman, played by a hyper-aggressive Tim Roth, almost made it onto this list for his late run of excellent moments in the final few episodes of the season, but that character needed to be tinkered with as the show progressed. Patrick Jane, however, arrived fully formed. Surrounded by affable dopes who seem to dislike him half the time and then secretly delight in his antics when he’s not looking, Jane — as played by the extremely charming and dapper Simon Baker — is the mirror image of Lightman. While Roth’s character is a seething mass of hostility with a soft centre, Jane is a showman and charmer who hides a dark core, tortured by the murder of his family and desperate to catch their killer, Red John. The rest of the show is formulaic, but Baker’s brilliant work as a man trying to distract himself from misery with mischief and silliness is enough to keep us watching.

Best Moment: The season finale sees Jane closer to catching his nemesis than ever before, and his genial mask slips throughout. Brazenly promising to kill Red John as soon as he catches him, his colleagues are forced to question the wisdom of keeping a vengeful maverick on their team.

6. Dr. Claire Saunders – Dollhouse

clairesaundersIt’s difficult to talk about Dr. Claire Saunders being a great character, as she is fictional even within the context of the fictional world she lives in. Formerly an Active, Whiskey is maimed by the insane SuperActive Alpha, rendering her useless as a puppet, and then made to take on the personality of a composite character, trapped within the building by fear, and judging the actions of her colleagues without realising she is one of their puppets too. The beautifully timed late season reveal of her origin made her even more tragic than she already was, and her final appearance in Epitaph One, haunting the Dollhouse like the ghost of someone who never existed, was heartbreaking. For those of us who have been adamant that Amy Acker is an immensely underrated actress, this first season was a powerful and undeniable vindication of our beliefs. Let’s hope Whedon finds a way to bring her back for the second season.

Best Moment: Every time she silently reacts to some amoral inanity from the loathsome Topher Frink with withering disdain, an angel gets its wings. (Edit: As pointed out in comments, it’s actually Topher Brink, not Frink. I guess my brain is slowly trying to erase itself so I never have to think about his annoying ass ever again.)

5. Constance Carmell – Party Down

constancecarmellJane Lynch is like Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin, Goldie Hawn, and Joyce Grenfell rolled into one unstoppable comic behemoth-lady. Everything is better with her in it, and Party Down was lucky enough to have her for eight episodes before she disappeared to make Glee. Sad for the fans of the brilliant adult sitcom, but she left us with many joyous memories. Constance is a washed-up actress who doesn’t even realise she is washed up, hanging onto past glories and oblivious to the fact that these fleeting brushes with fame are the highlights of her career (such as playing a hooker in Baretta). While the show leads — Ken Marino, Adam Scott, and Lizzy Caplan — get the big emotional beats, Lynch takes Constance’s sad circumstance and explores all comedic and tragic aspects of it, sometimes all at the same time, without needing big plot developments to showcase her complexity. With just the slightest of plot-threads at her disposal, she makes Constance breathe, all while blowing every other performer on the show away. Considering the incredible cast (both regular and guest), that’s some achievement. I’m sure Glee is very good, but for taking Lynch away from Party Down, I shall hate it forever.

Best Moment: Almost too many to count, but the clueless liberal outrage that erupts while catering the California College Conservatives Union Caucus is priceless. Teaming her up with Ryan Hansen is a masterstroke.

4. King Silas Benjamin – Kings

silasTo be perfectly honest, there are only two words needed to describe why King Silas Benjamin makes it into the top five of this list: Ian Mc-Fucking-Shane. His presence is enough to make Kings essential viewing for all fans of Deadwood who mourn the loss of Al Swearengen. He could have been playing a postal worker, with each episode showing him completing his route, and it would have been appointment television, but instead we’re lucky enough to see him as the monarch of the fictional country of Gilboa, a man tortured by the deals he has made to get where he is, and scared of the consequences of his actions. As his brother-in-law, Crossgen CEO William Cross, conspires against him and the attention of the nation turns to his potential successor, his faith in God and his love for his family are torn apart and rebuilt time and again. Watching Benjamin do terrible things to maintain his hold on power while being assailed by his enemies was one of the purest joys of the year. Sadly, that’s all she wrote. Yet another stupid decision from NBC.

Best Moment: During a power-cut orchestrated in a fit of spite by Cross, Benjamin is haunted by the Sabbath Queen, a manifestation of what seems to be the Devil, come to collect on a deal he made to keep his daughter alive many years before. The king’s sanity is tested to breaking point by the visions, and the intensity of the show jumped up about fifteen notches.

3. Mia – In Treatment

miaWhen compiling these lists — both this one and the subsequent Gupta list, it’s tempting to praise the nice characters and diss the out-and-out assholes. Nevertheless, the screenwriters of In Treatment managed to write a particularly frustrating character who does nothing but complain and belittle those who help her, lying to her loved ones and pushing them away, all the while oblivious to the negative consequences of her actions, and still manage to make her compelling, sympathetic and strangely lovable. At least, they did a lot of the work, but it’s Hope Davis’ masterful performance that really brings this contrary and annoying woman to life, making you care deeply for her even when she is doing and saying the most exasperating and needlessly confrontational things. Desperately unhappy with the way her life has turned out and eager to blame everyone for it except for the one person responsible for shaping her personality, Mia rails against therapist Paul for seven weeks, before finally reaching a point where she looks at herself from outside long enough to see that she can change, given time. There is no award prestigious enough for Davis. Her work as this character is utterly exemplary.

Best Moment: Her final epiphany during her final session is a breathtaking moment of catharsis and revelation, perfectly performed and deeply moving.

2. Dr. Raymond Langston – CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

raymondlangstonAs with Ian Mc-Fucking-Shane,  bringing Laurence Fishburne into your show is guaranteed to make me watch it. When it’s a show I already love, I’m even happier. When the man I reflexively refer to as Morpheus is given a role as entertaining, as well-developed, and as rich with potential as Dr. Raymond Langston, I’m beside myself. Early reports about Gil Grissom’s replacement hinted he would be half scientist, half serial killer, and the suspicion that the long-serving CSIs such as Catherine Willows would not be promoted due to the introduction of someone new gave cause for concern, but Langston never turned into Mr. Hyde, and Catherine became head CSI, proving that the showrunners really give a damn about the internal logic of their show. Such thoughtful fan service is rare these days, and much appreciated. This meant Langston starts at the bottom and works his way up: an odd state of affairs when that character is played by someone of Fishburne’s fame and talent. Thankfully, this move paid off beautifully. Langston’s enthusiasm, naiveté, and kindheatedness are a breath of fresh air after the turmoil of the last few seasons, though the final episode, with Langston forced to kill a man in self-defence, shows he’s not out of the woods yet.

Best Moment: Langston’s first day on the job goes horribly wrong (botched fingerprint dusting, getting muck all over his suit, etc.), but eventually equilibrium is reached. He even wins over audience-surrogate Hodges. Sadly, the shrunken ratings for the best procedural in town did not reflect this meta plot point.

1. Dr. Walter Bishop – Fringe

There was no competition. Even with the character of Dr. Raymond Langston showing so much care and attention from the writers’ room, nothing could compare to the joy I feel whenever John Noble ambles onto screen, chattering excitedly about some food stuff or other. I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about Dr. Walter Bishop, and I don’t want to go over the same ground again, other than to stress how important John Noble’s (and Kurtzman and Orci’s, and Abrams’) work has been to me. Fringe is a bit of fluff that could well go far. The best episodes of the first season were genuinely exciting and well-constructed hours of TV that easily ranked among the best of the year. The potential is there for some really thrilling developments and some bold storytelling. It was also, on occasion, horribly boring and stupid, poorly written, formulaic, and crazy, though sadly not the right kind of crazy. At times I half watched it while doing other things, which is something I would never think to do with Lost. However, even in the show’s darkest moments, I never, even for a second, considered not watching any further. From the moment in the pilot episode when Walter pointed out he had pissed himself (“Just a squirt.”), I was hooked for good.

I can’t think of any other character on TV, past or present, who manages to be pathetic, inspiring, commanding, comedic, tragic and lovable all at the same time. He’s a narrative miracle, able to alter the mood of every scene he is in without ever betraying what the character is at his core because he encompasses every possibility. Part of that is strong writing (even the worst writer must relish putting words into Walter’s mouth, giving them a chance to shine), but most of it is the inspired casting of Noble, which opens up innumerable opportunities for pathos, drama or humour. The only other character on TV that makes me this happy is Ben Linus, who was also a happy accident of casting that gave writers so much to play with. Emerson and Noble are proof that casting interesting and daring actors is more than half of the job of making dramatic gold. Let us hope they inspire other showrunners to take a chance on the weird.

Best Moment: Oh God, where to begin? “I just got an erection. Oh, fear not, it’s nothing to do with your state of undress. I think I simply need to urinate.” “Unless you have an IQ higher than mine, I am not interested in what you think.” “To understand what happened at the diner, we use Mr. Papaya. This is upsetting because he is the friendliest of fruits.” “The only thing better than a cow is a human! Unless you need milk. Then you really need a cow.” Then there’s the random moments, such as shuffling around a room long enough to generate a static shock to his son’s head, or his various explosions of temper at the generally useless Olivia or Peter. Basically, pick even a weak episode, and wait for Walter to show up. Invariably, something fun will happen. When he’s not having some awful and distressing breakdown.

Next up, worst new characters of the year, and then miscellaneous stuff about best pilots and worst direction and all that jazz.

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Worst Episodes of the Year

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As with the list of best episodes, we’re operating on a strict timeline, meaning some shows that would normally appear here, won’t. Luckily, as the summer sees less non-reality shows aired, I’m exposed to less dross. Of the shows I’ve seen over the past couple of months, only one would potentially qualify for this list, i.e. ABC’s dripping wet space soap Defying Gravity. I cannot believe showrunner James Parriott not only aimed to make a show that he has described as “Grey’s Anatomy in space”, but managed to find a lead actor even less appealing than Patrick “Oily Void” Dempsey (Ron “Acting Lessons” Livingston, if you were curious). Anyway, that will have to wait until next year, as the show is still on, inexplicably. Now, I shall let my anger flow from me like sewage from a pipe. Apologies for the inevitable mean-spiritedness…

10. Battlestar Galactica – Daybreak

daybreakAs was said in the previous post, ending a long-running series is a fraught proposition, almost guaranteed to disappoint some fan somewhere. The trick is to make sure that at least the core questions or dilemmas of the show are addressed and resolved, and to pay off longrunning character arcs in a way that show consideration for continuity and human behaviour. No mean feat. It’s unfair to criticise showrunners for not getting a finale 100% right, but if Shawn Ryan could get it 99.999% right with The Shield, we now know it can be done to a very high degree of viewer satisfaction. Daybreak tried to resolve all of the unanswered questions posed by four seasons ofBattlestar Galactica, but in the laziest manner possible. Attributing all kinds of mysterious happenings to a unknown force that is never named or explained or given any kind of motivation rendered the whole tale pointless. As wishy-washy as the nebulous thought processes of the worst kind of woolly-headed fantasist, Daybreak resolved barely anything, with characters making illogical and suicidal choices for no reason other than that it was the last episode, and it needed to end before the final credits. The puddle-deep enquiry into AI ethics was the killing blow (Hug A Robot Today, So They Don’t Nuke Us Tomorrow!). So why is it not higher in this list? Because the first hour was fantastic, Boomer’s redemption was beautiful, and it featured some of the best performances of the year (Callis, Olmos, McDonnell: take a bow). Shame it didn’t follow through properly. Or at all. (For more whining about how disappointing this episode was, here is my original post following the broadcast of the finale.)

9. Dollhouse – Stage Fright

stagefrightIt’s tempting to be forgiving of the first half of Dollhouse‘s first season. Thousands of words have been written about how Joss Whedon’s incredible new show had its wings clipped by the evil suits at Fox, who either couldn’t understand the high concept or thought no audience could, and thus tried to force the show into a poorly fitting mission-of-the-week format. Until, that is, they suddenly stopped being evil suits and let Whedon go crazy with ideas and talking and audience-alienating character arcs like Ballard’s descent into self-loathing and unpleasant hate-fucking or Adele’s surprising ethical lapses with Victor. Let’s not forget, as shaky as the first half of the season was, it also laid the groundwork for the miraculous TV that was to come. And yet, even taking that into account, Stage Fright was a desperate failure, more Bionical Woman meets Josie and the Pussycats than Alias meets Buffy,  with Echo imprinted with the personality of a pompous backing singer for a superstar, and Sierra mugging for the camera as an adoring fan. The final dramatic scenes were like out-takes from Wayne’s World. It’s not so bad, though. The team responsible for this episode (David Solomon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon) also gave us the phenomenal Epitaph One. For this mis-step, they’re super-totally forgiven, and then some.

8. Dexter – Turning Biminese

turningbimineseAs I’ve complained before, the popular and critical adoration of Dexter has baffled me for years. What strikes me as overdirected, poorly acted, clangingly obvious and desperately patronising drives millions of viewers into paroxysms of joy. Fair enough. Shades of Caruso keeps giving it chances, especially when Shield producer Charles Eglee steps in, and that patience was rewarded with the most pacey and entertaining season yet. However, it’s still overdirected, poorly acted, clangingly obvious and desperately patronising. While most episodes this year were just average (and one, Sí Se Puede, was actually very entertaining, even to this Dexter hater), some were just dire. Turning Biminese was the worst of the bunch, featuring yet more obvious metaphors, tedious sub-plots for the dreary cops in what can only be described as the world’s most inept police department, and a cringe-inducing, desperately unfunny rant from forensic photographer and obnoxious foul-mouth Matsuka, in a scene that sounded as if it had been written by an enraged adolescent Ain’t It Cool talkbacker who had just been told that the star of his favourite TV show was gay. The episode’s worst crime? After realising that Dexter is a vigilante with a murderous MO, season three Big Bad Miguel Prado (played with scenery-devouring enthusiasm by Jimmy Smits) actually says “Dexter, you and I, we’re the same!”. Instant, irrevocable FAIL.

7. Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day 2

It’s not a Worst Episode of the Year list without an appearance from the Torchwood team, ineptly going where no one should ever have gone before. Or after, for that matter. But what is this? Not the worst hour of the year? How could this be? For a start, having Russell T. Davies give his full attention to the show instantly raised the quality level, after two years of neglect from the hapless Chris Chibnall. A greater focus and a willingness to do the unthinkable to the core team of characters gave it a boost of credibility and power that even a hater such as myself cannot deny. After two years of staggering awfulness, the first episode of the mini-series Children Of Earth was a huge and pleasant surprise. Dialogue fizzed, action zoomed along with actual momentum, and drama happened without becoming instantly ridiculous. It was enough to make me tuck into a large slice of Humble Pie.

And then, almost as soon as it had promised so much, the show fell flat on its face and stayed there. While fans and critics lined up to praise the show for its bold plot twists and dark subject matter, it became apparent that the most startling dramatic moments — the horrible fate of the children taken by the 456, the various depressing deaths, the commentary about the venality of politicians — were jotted down as essential touchstones early on in the scripting process, with little idea of how to create the connective tissue necessary to make these moments work, let alone create characters who act like recognisable human beings (the ridiculous — and easily avoidable — fate of John Frobisher sticks in the craw most of all).  The moral conundrum at the heart of the show fails too. The threat facing humanity is never fully explained, so every terrible choice is undermined by the suspicion that there might have been a way to avoid doing such terrible things, but those possible solutions are being rushed past in the hope that the viewer won’t notice. Plot holes and longeurs abound, and the usual failings of this most ridiculous show rear up once more (poorly executed action, terrible performances, po-faced melodrama). Day 2 makes the list for quickly ruining the promise of the opener. Easily the most over-rated TV event of the year.

6. Fringe – The Cure

thecureBy the time season one of Fringe reached episode six, the show was wobbling between two states: pointless, boring misfire, or insane, ambitious curio. We’d been given an overlong and dull pilot, several minutes of unexciting chase sequences, and oh God so much witless exposition from Peter Bishop. We had also been given mad ray-guns, Warren-Ellisian techno-telepathy, burrowing missiles, various fun Easter Eggs and, best of all, The Observer. Just as the show had begun to show promise, the tinkering of the showrunners threw a frustrating spanner in the works by revamping lead character Olivia Dunham. As she had done nothing particularly interesting for the five previous weeks, it was a necessary move, but there are ways to do it right. Thrust into an adventure featuring super-evil brain scientists and their sexy lab assistants, Olivia cast off her passive demeanour and transformed into an ill-judged avenger, stepping on toes, cracking skulls, and “flirting” with her nemesis. Anna Torv relaxed into her role by the end of the season, but here she was way out of her depth, mugging and shouting and overplaying most dramatic moments. If the episode had been better it wouldn’t have mattered, but even Walter seemed out of sorts. The fingerprints of concerned and interfering Fox executives were all over the place. It would be weeks before Fringe recaptured that exciting post-Observer momentum.

5. Ugly Betty – Ugly Berry

uglyberryOnce a vibrant and lovable diversion with hidden brains and a commendable commitment to showing racial and sexual diversity, Ugly Betty is now a shadow of its former crazy self. After some of the best writers and directors on the show were sacked midway through the second season, the quality dropped noticeably, and Shades of Caruso’s interest dropped even further. Early struggles to keep up with the lacklustre third season faltered with the stunt casting of Lindsay Lohan as Betty’s nemesis Kimmie Keegan, but it was the appalling Ugly Berry that killed our interest altogether. Jokes fell flat, potentially long-running arcs were cut short (Lohan’s departure has been blamed on her dreadful behaviour, but who knows — or cares — what the real reason was), and new arcs came and fizzled with distressing regularity. That crazy energy had turned to depressing inertia. Even though it features three of the most entertaining actors on TV (America Ferrera, Michael Urie, and the amazing Becky Newton), enough was enough. So sad to see a once great show go the way of last season’s fashions.

4. Eleventh Hour – Agro

agroITV’s failed Doctor-Who-killer, Eleventh Hour, was improbably picked up by Jerry Bruckheimer, possibly while the writers’ strike kept his brain-trust out of commission for months. Good for the UK, I guess, especially with Brit actor Rufus Sewell taking over from previous star Patrick Stewart and heading up this expensive show. Avoiding the crazy superscience of Fox’s Fringe, Eleventh Hour seemed to want to explore actual moral questions about modern advances, soberly showing exaggerations of real world dangers and asking whether the men and women of science were capable of reining in their worst impulses in order to help mankind. Well, if you can call portraying most of the scientists on the show as demented, power-crazed idiots “sober”. The show was arguably more ridiculous than Fringe by pretending to be more responsible with its plots, while throwing logic, reason, and recognisable scientific theory out of the window on a week to week basis. To make things worse, at least Fringe was fun. Eleventh Hour was the dreariest show on TV, a seemingly never-ending chain of cliches, moodily-lit close-ups of slightly worried faces, and undramatic soap operatics staged with all the half-arsed energy of a commercial for boil-in-the-bag rice. Of those eighteen tedious hours, the most exasperating might have been Agro, during which Dr. Jacob Hood matches a DNA sequence to that of a dangerous fungus by looking at twelve base pairs on a blackboard. Obviously they were the most distinctive twelve pairs out of the possible 12,495,682 that could have been on the board (and that’s if it was merely yeast). That kind of stupidity kills shows dead, you know.

3. The Mentalist – Russet Potatoes

russetpotatoesWhen describing The Mentalist, Shades of Caruso has found itself using words like “pleasant”, “diverting”, “watchable”. Even in the grip of an absinthe hallucination, it would be an impossibility to make a claim that The Mentalist is great TV. Nevertheless, it did approach an unexpected intensity in its very entertaining season closer Red John’s Footsteps, and its genial tone was often a nice contrast to the humourlessness of a lot of TV procedurals. Sadly, when it went wrong, it went memorably wrong. Russet Potatoes introduced hypnotism into the mix, pitting Patrick Jane against mesmerists of such great power that they can create murderous minions at the drop of a hat. One of the CBI team — the gloriously named Rigsby — is turned into little more than a dopey puppet, macking on his colleagues and trying to kill our be-vested hero. Hypnotism could never achieve the results seen here, which wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of the series hadn’t shown such an admirable commitment to portraying the acts of flim-flam artists and fake spiritualists in a realistic light. The show’s IQ level dropped precipitously early in the episode as every character seemed to be hypnotising someone else, and that level kept plummeting, culminating in a rooftop showdown that looked like something out of a Wayans Brothers movie. One of their really bad ones. One without Anna Faris in it.

2. Knight Rider – A Knight in Shining Armor

Glen A. Larson is a TV legend. He made almost all of my favourite TV shows back when I was a discerning pre-teen. The original Battlestar Galactica, BJ and the Bear, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Galactica 1980, Magnum P.I. (co-created with fellow TV legend Donald P. Bellisario, creator of numerous shows with titles that are just assortments of letters), Manimal, Automan… What an exciting time it was. Riding high above them all in a leather jacket and white man’s afro was David Hasselhoff, playing the heroic archetype Michael Knight (the inspiration for Joseph Campell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces, though the show was cancelled before Michael got to progress any further than his second face). Knight Rider. One man, one car, an infinite number of exciting challenges that can be resolved with little more than a bit of talking-car sass and a Turbo-Boost. It was a show so complex, so daring, so groundbreaking, that even the shows that ripped it off (such as Streethawk, featuring a very fast motorbike that, sadly, didn’t talk) were incredible just by borrowing a little of its brilliance.

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Perhaps the new Knight Rider can’t be blamed for not living up to that original, but when it actually manages to be worse than last year’s pathetic reboot of Bionical Woman, the show is pretty much the same as an asteroid made of fossilised alien-shit caught in the gravity well of the nearest sun. Actually, that doesn’t even cover the extent to which this was bad. It was like a cross between a Sci Fi original movie and a Girls Gone Wild video. In many episodes, Michael “Le” Traceur (who becomes Michael Knight early on in the season) is required to find information from a pool-side bikini party, during which he uses KITT’s space-age satellite hacking technology to zoom in on some poor lady’s bosoms. Rowr rowr! Often, he is also required to meet an old friend who is now a terrorist of some kind because of Reason X. Once or twice he is sexually harassed by his female colleagues. The majority of his enemies, when they’re not former friends who have gone insane, are either young, blonde females in leather catsuits, or young, brunette females in leather catsuits. His colleagues are either angry bureaucrats or lust-addled twenty-somethings who make nerdy references. In one episode Billy — played by Paul “Billy from Battlestar Galactica” Campbell — dresses up as Captain Jack Harkness and goes on about how much he loves Torchwood. The convergent awfulness of the moment was like having a bucket of boxer’s spit emptied over my head.

knightrider2Most of the time KITT does little other than sit there like a big piece of talking product placement, with Val Kilmer mistakenly portraying the formerly lovable car as a relative of HAL, instead of a fussy, pedantic middle-class nerd, which is what the wonderful William Daniels did in the original series. The rest of the time, it’s a plot-resolution device, with what amounts to a Star Trek replicator in the glove compartment which is used to solve every problem that comes their way. Handy. Later in the series the show turns into Transformers for five minutes, with one main character becoming super-evil before being eaten by a giant robot, which is then defeated with a Turbo-Boost. Even the most undemanding teenager would have been affronted by the cynicism of the enterprise. So why pick this episode? Because it managed to be even stupider than any of the other episodes, as well as for setting up a template so ill-conceived that the show had to jettison most of the characters in a mid-season revamp of hilarious ruthlessness. For its gratuitous semi-nudity, illogical science, and shoddy production values, it is a prime example of how unforgivably ill-conceived the whole thing was. It will not be missed.

1. Heroes – The Entire Third Season

heroesfail

I tried. I really really tried so hard to pare this down to a single episode. Before watching the second half of the season, with the “Heroes” on the run from Nathan — who has gone from thinking everyone should have powers to thinking no one should have powers because of some mental conversion moment that has skipped out of my memory — I was certain the woeful Knight Rider episode was bound to top this list. After three very depressing days watching the last eleven episodes of Heroes season three back to back, it was obvious that not only was this show a more catastrophic failure than the now-cancelled swimsuit-and-car showcase, there was no way one episode could ever be singled out. The things that make Heroes the stupidest, most broken and ill-conceived show on network TV are now systemic. It’s like the opposite of a synecdoche. The whole must speak for the part.

The perfect example of a rudderless ship, Heroes has ceased to make any sense from scene to scene, let alone week to week. Early attempts to explore some kind of moral complexity — by having some of the “Heroes” flirt with doing bad things and the one true villain do good things — never disappeared, but instead became the raison d’être of the entire show. With no fresh ideas coming out of the writers’ room, each season sees the same things happening: the world is revealed to be facing a cataclysm, Sylar will try to become the President of the United States (who needs what amounts to omnipotence when you can waste years trying to pass legislation to regulate hazardous emissions from small businesses?), and all of the characters change alignments at the drop of a hat.

deadlytracy By now, we’ve seen all of the main characters in both hero and villain format, either with a time travel or premonition cop-out or with an insta-retcon plot-knot dropped into an episode with no warning or reason. Heroes have had evil scars (Peter), evil long coats (Hiro), or evil black hair (Claire). Villains have worn Spectacles of Virtue (Sylar) or Sensible Bobs of Benevolence (Daphne). This is what passes for character growth in the Heroes universe. In one episode I’m sure Noah Bennett started out evil, became good, turned evil again, and then by the end was double-crossing Nathan, triple-crossing Danko, and quadruple-crossing himself. Do the actors realise what a joke their characters have become? Why did we spend the first half of the season watching Sylar become good just for him to become evil again one episode later? How can we be expected to find any of this meaningful? And do we really need to have entire episodes taken up with Claire tearfully betraying or leaving her father, just for them to be reunited a week later? And why, part of the way through Chapter Four, did Tracy Strauss kill an innocent person, thus wrecking her chance to escape from Danko? Just to have a cool visual? This isn’t any kind of human (or even metahuman) behaviour I know. Frankly, the whole farrago is insulting.

Ah, but the writers’ room has been cleansed! Goodbye Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander! Hello Bryan Fuller! Surely this is good news. Well, yes, the single Fuller-written episode of the season, Cold Snap, featured the most natural dialogue Heroes has had for a while, had a pleasing structure, and a coherence lacking anywhere else in the seemingly endless twenty-five episode run. It was poetic, and kinda moving, if you look past some shaky performances. Swoozie Kurtz was in it too, for bonus YAY points. However, it not only showed up the surrounding episodes for the epic disasters they were, it failed on its own terms too. Parkman’s weird obsession with Daphne, based on a premonition that obviously was never going to come true (like most of them, as plotlines are abandoned willy-nilly), made a mockery of his previous infatuation with his suspicious wife. Fair enough. A lot of screentime was used up explaining how they had fallen out really badly, meaning he left his child just to go hang out with Suresh, because there ain’t no party like a Mohinder party (it involves a lot of intense teeth-gritting and nonsensical voiceovers about destiny and heroism and how up can be down if you squint really hard).

poordaphne

So, fair enough, Matt saves a gravely ill Daphne, and uses his Amazing Powers of the Brain to bamboozle the mortally wounded speedster into thinking he can fly her to the moon. So romantic. Compared to her previous death scene — which lasted three seconds and almost turned Matt temporarily evil for an episode before he thought better of it — it was a nice finale for possibly the only entertaining character introduced since season one. What happens as soon as Fuller hands over scripting duties to the rest of the team? Matt turns temporarily evil for an episode, thinks better of it upon confronting Danko, is reunited with his wife and son, and decides to stay with them. For ten minutes. Then he decides (with no prompting) that he has to fight the good fight against Danko. For Daphne? For justice? Because he can’t stand the sight of a full diaper? Who knows? The showrunners can’t have him written out, though. Who was he upset about earlier? Fucked if I know. Some woman. Denise? Can’t have been important. Quickly! Onto the next scene! Hiro is walking into a wall or something while Ando pouts about not being taken seriously. Everyone loves Hiro!

Fuller left not long after, and though I’m sure there were numerous logical reasons for his departure, part of me likes to think he realised how impossible it will be to sort out this Briar-Patch continuity. It can’t have helped that his good work trying to nail down even just one character (Matt) was undone almost immediately, and for no apparent benefit, nor that getting rid of Loeb and Alexander means much when you have Joe Pokaski and Aron Eli Coliete around. Maybe it was the jawdropping awfulness of the season finale, with Nathan killed and Sylar tricked into turning into him and having his memories replaced, just so that Angela doesn’t lose the son she never even seemed to like that much even though that means she’s hanging around with the man who actually killed the loved one he is now impersonating. Of all the rank stupidity and poor storytelling I have seen this year, nothing approaches the staggering wrongness of that moment. If I were Fuller and Tim Kring came to me with that idea, I’d walk out of the door and never look back. Who knows? Maybe Fuller came up with that idea? Maybe he was responsible for all of Matt’s behaviour and dialogue, even the really really stupid stuff that contradicts everything that happened in Cold Snap. Unless someone is willing to spill the beans, we’ll just have to hope it’s not the man who once made me think this show could be something truly special by writing something as wonderful as Company Man.

season3This post could go on forever. This piss-poor excuse for a show, which is — never forget — NBC’s most watched dramatic series, has become a joke. Every episode features nine or ten moments of laughable error, poor storytelling, inconsistent continuity, unbelievable behaviour, or ungrammatical dialogue. The crux of the matter, the killing blow to the credibility of this haphazard, chaotic mess is that it is now, after three years, less coherent than either the Marvel or DC comic universes. Yes, the DC universe, which has been rebooted numerous times and features 52 divergent universes with a multitude of characters, is more coherent and digestible and — most importantly of all — far more entertaining. If Lost‘s continuity could be seen as a series of lines linked together to make a starkly beautiful web of meaningful interconnections, Heroes would look more like a box of toothpicks dropped onto the ground in the middle of a sandstorm. As the talking fox from Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist says, “Chaos reigns”. This is not something to be proud of. NBC, a network that cancelled Journeyman just as it was beginning to attract plaudits, and shunted its most promising new show — Kings — into a summer season with a two month gap wrecking all storytelling momentum, has kept this on the air. The network recently gave up the ghost and stuck Leno on every night instead of commissioning new shows. That was the actual surrender. Keeping this on the air was the white flag that preceded it. Something tells me it won’t get another reprieve after this year, from NBC or from the viewers. There’s only so much patience in the world.

Dishonourable Mentions:

The Unusuals – Boorland Day: Great character actors are not enough to save a misconceived project, and this formless bag of quirky tics disguised as character traits, bolted onto the most formulaic of cop plots, was as misconceived and unimaginative as anything shown on network TV this year. As the pilot was directed by Stephen Hopkins, the show could only improve. This second episode showed it couldn’t improve enough. Sometimes, a flawed premise is just a flawed premise.

House – Last Resort: Other than his brief appearance in Big Love, Željko Ivanek has had a really bad year. Looking lost as a gun-toting villain in Heroes was one thing, but he also played a gun-toting villain in House, harassing our hero and a bunch of annoying patients for an hour, which is no way to use someone who just won an Emmy. If there’s a plot I would happily remove from modern TV, it would be the hostage situation…

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – No Way Out: …because with Last Resort and this feeble effort from the usually dependable CSI team, it’s gone beyond played-out. The hostage situation here seems to have been used as a clumsy way to force two new characters (the excellent Dr. Raymond Langston and the practically invisible Riley Adams) into the limelight, but we find out nothing new about them other than that they cope well under pressure. Well, duh.

Parks and Recreation – Canvassing: Humour is a subjective thing, obviously, but sometimes a show comes along that seems to actually completely lack jokes. It’s not like Family Guy, where there are lots of jokes but they’re all really stupid and poorly timed. Parks and Recreation just doesn’t seem to be a comedy, except that Amy Poehler is in it. This was a particularly annoying episode, with some unlikeable people doing boring things. It can only improve.

The Office – Employee Transfer: Perhaps I’m mad at Parks and Recreation for distracting the showrunners of The Office. A generally underwhelming fifth season still had a few big laughs and upsetting drama, but one episode was a perplexing laugh-free half-hour, misjudging the balance between comedy and tragedy in a way that was shocking coming from a show that gave us last year’s brilliant Dinner Party. Plus, Amy Ryan left the show. Fuck that shit.

It feels better getting that all off my chest. Tomorrow, or the day after that, my ten favourite new characters of the year. There is no one from Heroes in that list.

The Return of TV, The Departure Of A Blog Feature

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For a while now I have plugged away at writing enormous posts, filled with screengrabs, about the various weeks of TV, a task I once enjoyed and slowly came to dread, simply because even if I had some fun with it the process was horribly time-consuming, which made posting even more irregular than it already was. My reading time was overtaken by attempts at writing comments with every spare moment I got, which eventually became a source of much frustration as my ever-shitty TyTn II phone kept crashing and deleting my work. The last time that happened ended up removing the majority of a Week in TV post, and though I didn’t realise it at the time, it was the final straw. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; THE TYTN II IS THE WORST PHONE IN THE WORLD! Do not even think of buying that buggy-assed fucking shit.

So, with the TV season restarting after a Christmas holiday, I might as well admit defeat, even though I have several semi-finished posts filled with pictures littered around the place. Should I even bother finishing the rambling diatribes when I can’t even muster the enthusiasm to do anything with them now that a silly amount of time has passed, and I have now found other projects to concentrate on? I don’t think so.

So, for now, here is a bit of what I was going to write, just for the sake of keeping track of my responses to the last few weeks of TV, which contained some dreck but mostly some of the best TV of the year, such as a wonderfully consistent season of Friday Night Lights, the grim but entertaining introduction of Dr. Raymond Langstrom (aka Morpheus) on CSI, and certainly the best series finale since the last episode of Angel, as The Shield finished with a staggering, emotionally draining closer that even my favourite show, Lost, cannot possibly top. And then there was this stuff…

Stupidest Science:

Suresh, the crusty unscientist and narrator of Heroes, is already the stupidest and most annoying character on TV, so having him experiment on, and kill, innocent people in order to make his serum work is par for the course of this moronic show. Even so, stating that they need a catalyst to make the proteins bond with the enzymes, as they did many weeks back, is possibly the worst kind of sciencey-sounding gibberish I’ve heard in years.


Proteins and enzymes don’t bond. If they did, we’d never be able to digest meat (or nuts). Considering this is a show that features superheroes and scientists, it’s a blow to its credibility that no one who works on it seems to know anything about superheroes or science. It’s no wonder Suresh’s research creates this.


Plus, for extra stupid points, this poor bastard mutates way faster than Suresh does. If a reason for this was given, I don’t know what it is. Suresh can’t even fuck up properly. What amuses me most, is that this non-science bullshit carries across the writing staff of Heroes. Here is a panel from Joe Pokaski’s dire Ultimate Fantastic Four, set moments after Jeph Loeb ruined the entire universe with his Ultimatum, a comic almost as bad as his Onslaught Reborn mini.


And the way Heroes uses death to lazily generate drama?



Don’t get too upset there, Ben. Oh, and because Jeph Loeb continues to be a plague on the world…

Crappiest Plug:

Obviously written before Jeph Loeb got shitcanned by Tim Kring, this episode of Heroes (It’s Coming) featured Hiro getting upset about the current state of affairs in the Marvel universe, proving that he truly is a fanboy in his current brain-damaged state. While the shock over the death of Steve Rogers is justified, getting all twisted up about Red Hulk is a waste of time.


Once Loeb is off the title and Greg Pak or Fred Van Lente get back on it, that’s gonna get retconned as quickly as Supergirl got rewritten once Loeb left DC. And hey, when Bryan Fuller arrives at the end of this season of Heroes, he can retcon all of his nonsense here as well! It all works out in the end.

Most Annoying Turn of Events:

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s gratifying to see an atheist heading up a TV show, which is one of the reasons we’ve stuck with The Mentalist so far. Sadly, however, just as with the other big TV atheist, House, instead of letting that stand, the showrunners have to flirt with showing these characters in doubt about their stance. Fair enough if the character is dealing with some terrible event. As they say, there are no atheists on a deathbed. However, having characters doubt their beliefs just because some “supernatural” event has happened is just horseshit. It troubles me to think that atheists are just considered religious believers in waiting, and a bleeding statue or family tragedy is all we need to be pushed over the edge, just as it’s horseshit to assume a religious person would automatically eschew their beliefs if presented with examples of terrible mortal cruelty.


House has flirted with this in the past, much to my disgust, this episode of The Mentalist (called Seeing Red, showed our jovial but tortured hero Patrick Jane meeting a psychic, played by Leslie Hope, aka super-unlucky Teri Bauer from season 1 of 24. For much of the episode he calls her out on her techniques, treating her as a terrible fraud. Much James Randi-esque fun is had as he toys with her, but all of that good will is undone in the final scene as the psychic tells Jane that she knows about his family’s murder at the hands of the evil Red John, and reassures him that they didn’t suffer. As she leaves, Jane bursts into tears.


Now, the worst case scenario here is that Jane is so distraught over this tragedy in his past that he’s willing to suspend his scepticism long enough to allow the possibility that this information is real, which is a betrayal of everything he has stood for so far and scuppers the show entirely. That his devout colleague Grace Van Pelt sees him crying could suggest that that is what is intended, her look of sympathy also one of triumph. However, I’m going on the minor information I have about this lightly sketched character. For all I know, she understands that Jane is actually just grieving, having been reminded of the tragedy by the psychic, which is the scenario I would prefer to imagine. Jane has been portrayed as a man angry at the abuse of skills such as his, and I’d like to think the show is willing to portray him as a tortured man but not one turning his back on his beliefs (and his knowledge of fraudulent psychic nonsense) just for some solace. It’s lazy writing to have him debating this so early in the day, and smacks of focus group meddling. I hope Bruno Heller knows this and won’t take the show down that road, and so in the interest of giving him a chance I’m just going to assume Jane is merely grieving and not taking her words at face value. Nevertheless, I’ll be keeping an eye out for any further bullshit flare-ups.

Best Road Trip:

FNL has faced cancellation since early in its first season, and especially now, with the show on a roll, the prospect of losing it is a miserable one. Last season, ending on an episode that provided zero closure and only accidental cliffhangers, looked for a while to be the last episode ever until the DirecTV deal came through. That third season might also be the last (we’ll have to wait and see what happens when FNL returns to NBC), but at least we’re getting a little closure before then at the start of the season we saw Smash achieve his dream, and with this episode the same thing happened to Jason Street.


Using actual New York location shooting with a bit more grace than the clumsy attention-seeking of Ugly Betty, Street and Riggins bumble around the city in search of clothes and employment like a couple of yokels, except lovable, funny, and relatable. In the process, we see Street’s confidence finally hit a speedbump, as he is rebuffed by the sports agent who had inadvertently given Street false hope, and yet more signs of Riggins’ newfound maturity, as his advice and support saves the day.


As is usual with me, the end of the episode caused floods of tears, as Street gets his Happily-Ever-After with Erin, and Riggins watches from their cab. It was only then that it struck me: no more banter between these two friends. As grateful as I am that we got to see Street’s arc finish (and finish with a happy ending to boot), it’s a shame we get to lose that.


The chemistry between Scott Porter and Taylor Kitsch has been one of the most appealing things about FNL since the pilot. It shall be missed.

Most Pleasing Guest Star:

My childhood adoration of Steve Martin has taken numerous knocks since he became the go-to guy for weak wacky dad roles or unnecessary and ill-thought-out remakes of superior works, but luckily his appearance on 30 Rock as the crazed white-collar criminal Gavin Polone was a shot in the arm for my admiration.


Though he strayed into Wild-and-Crazy-Guyisms in the final stretch, for the most part he was reserved and quirky, much like in his film-stealing uncredited turn in Baby Mama. I’d hold out hope that this is a sign of a forthcoming renaissance, but I shouldn’t hold my breath.

Worst Fashion Sense:

I could have spent a long time dealing with the psychic fallout from this horrendous jacket (cagoule?) worn by Greg in CSI…


…but we’re actually both traumatised by the clothes foisted upon the female leads of The Mentalist. Amanda Righetti has been given some really badly fitting t-shirts, especially in the most recent episodes.


She’s got a rocking bod, so it takes some skill to make her look bad. Still, in early episodes she did okay. Robin Tunney, on the other hand, has been lumbered with awful low-slung pants and nasty, tucked-in shirts. This picture…


…doesn’t even begin to display the horror. If you watch the show (and you should, as it has gone from strength to strength, despite the quibbles voiced above), check out her dreadful ensembles. I’m shallow enough to want some CSI-style flash in their outfits. Tim Kang and Owain Yeoman also suffer with their bland suits, with only Jane looking swish with his vests. Maybe that’s the point. Still, though.

Most Distracting Furniture:

It was the confrontation absolutely nobody was waiting for. After two years of not thinking about it at all, Nathan Petrelli finally comes face to face with the father he thought was dead. It was one of the great TV moments, up there with the end of M.A.S.H., or that bit in Only Fools and Horses with the chandelier. And through it all I was transfixed by Pops Petrelli’s table.


It’s just a sheet of circular glass resting on three metal beams. Simple. Yet I spent the whole scene either staring at it or worrying about the damn thing. Is the glass resting on the pointy corners of the beams? Isn’t that dangerous? If you nudge the table will those corners scratch the glass? Or are the corners flattened? In which case that wouldn’t happen, but the purity of the design would be disrupted. This fascination with furniture is proof that there is obviously something wrong with me, if I’m going to be distracted from all of the dramatic tension and devastating emotion on display by something so innocuous.

Most Blistering Performance:

Recently I pointed out how amazing Walton Goggins had been in The Shield, and his streak of acting brilliance continues all the way to the outrageously exciting finale, but in the penultimate episode, Possible Kill Screen, his genius was utterly eclipsed by one of the most astonishing acting moments I have ever seen.

Shield spoilers! Do not read if you have not yet watched this amazing show!

Michael Chiklis has been consistently great from episode one, even though I had a tough time buying this little man as a hardass despite all of the posturing and violence. In the penultimate episode, believing he has no choice but to sign a deal with ICE behind Ronnie Gardocki’s back in order to save his wife from an arrest that didn’t actually happen, Vic is asked to confess his wrongdoings in order to complete the deal, allowing him to start his new deal as a federal agent. After signing the document he pauses for a startlingly long time, something even the best TV shows don’t have time for, and in that time, he seems to age ten years. The weight of everything he has done is so overwhelming that the strain of it made him look like a different person. How he did this I don’t know. I don’t have a picture of that, so take a look at this, and imagine the complete polar opposite of it.


The moment was electrifying, even more so when he finally unburdens himself of the list of crimes to an increasingly horrified Laurie Holden, who slowly realises that her support of Mackey has doomed her career. Vic’s deadened laugh as he recounts some of the more despicable acts of the past three years is chilling, but even worse is his arrogance at the end, knowing that he has saved his own ass, with his only remorse saved for Ronnie.

Chiklis deserves honours and awards for his work here, but he wasn’t the only actor to shine even brighter than usual. Midway through the confession Claudette and Dutch arrive to catch Vic, only to find he is now immune to prosecution. CCH Pounder’s performance in that moment, snapping with the strain of seeing the man she detests getting away with not only the crimes she thought he was responsible for but also much much more, was another award-worthy moment, and not the first either.

This is the depressing fact about The Shield, that outside its fanbase, it’s largely ignored in favour of more prestigious work. The recent disgraceful Golden Globes, which snubbed Lost and The Wire, also coughed up nothing for The Shield, and while there’s an argument that ballots were cast a while back, the show has been around for long enough that it deserved a sentimental nod just for old time’s sake. Though, of course, a gratuitous nomination just for making it to the finale would be almost as galling as no nominations at all, it still stings that Chiklis, Goggins and Pounder end up with nothing. At least they have the gratitude of a legion of fans who have been lucky enough to see these fine actors at the height of their powers.

Most Pointless Torture:

While waiting for the TV season to kick off again, we started watching the sixth season of 24, which we had yet to watch even though it aired a couple of years ago. During that there has been less of the torture, though saying that we’re not even halfway through, so who knows how that changes. Nevertheless, nothing they can do in that show will top the endless crazy zapping of Sylar (who, at that point, was momentarily good) by Elle.


Seriously, she goes nuts.


Really nuts. It’s to do with him killing her dad, Evil Ned Ryerson.


Stephen Tobolowsky was a dick in this show, and she never seemed to like him, so why his murder brings about this response is, as with many things on Heroes, illogical.


Even Mel Gibson doesn’t get tortured for this long in his movies, and he has a Christ complex.


Well done, Elle, you blew some skin off his face. You can probably knock it off now.


No? Still going? Okay. Do you need to recharge or something? Drink some Powerade?


That wifebeater he’s wearing is awfully resilient. After all, in this opening shot, she destroys his jacket in a homage to Watchmen.


Occasionally, for variety, he gets blown backwards.


So yes, she is very angry.


So angry I bet she never gets over it and forgives him! That would be crazy.


Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Most “Holy Shit!”-Inducing Improvement:

We really never saw this this coming.

Yes, Fringe had been, before the pre-holiday episode, a sporadically entertaining sci-fi show packed with silly implausibilities, boring secondary characters, poorly cast leads, and even more loose plot threads than Lost had at this point in its first season. Other than John Noble’s brilliant performance as Dr. Walter Bishop, we found it mildly diverting but frustratingly underwhelming, especially when compared to the electrifying mind games of Lost.


And then Safe happened. Suddenly every character was written better, every plot thread echoed the others, and most of those annoying questions posed earlier in the season came together brilliantly. It also featured the best cold open so far, as shady FBI traitor Agent Loeb (surely a comment on the hapless writer/producer) used the phasing doohickey from a few weeks ago to steal a lockbox containing a mysterious machine.


The sequence had pace, intrigue, grisly death and cool sci-fi trappings, and even better, we didn’t have to wait to find out what the machine was, and who it belonged to. By the end of the episode we knew it was part of a teleporter that had been designed by Walter many years previously, something that even he didn’t know.


Not only did it sate our curiosity about the elements introduced this week, we got to see Mr. Jones in action, killing his lawyer (played by an underused James Frain), and then being snatched from his captivity in Germany by mad science to reappear in America, at Little Hill (another question from previous weeks thus resolved). The teleportation effect, disrupting the ground and shaking the prison, was especially well conceived.


While the craziness raged, Walter’s memory hiccups continued, as Olivia began to mistake John Scott’s memories for her own. That the show had finally figured out how to make two plots intertwine in this way inspired hope that the writers were becoming more confident now that the format and characters have been set down. It’s not the best writing on TV, but it was the best writing on Fringe so far, and I take heart, hoping that this represents the moment the show kicks into gear.

So, for now, that ends that. I’m sure that I’ll still talk about TV in the future, in some format, and not just because some of our favourite shows are returning. Yes, Battlestar Galactica, Big Love, and Flight of the Conchords are back, and coming very very soon, my favourite show, Lost, returns following a triumphant season. In the words of my good friend and dastardly despot Brian Michael Bendoom…

This Week In TV Year II (Week 7)

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As I have already said, I’ve been taking my time on this one for several reasons, but one of the most important ones is that The Shield was so great last week it overwhelmed my brain in much the same way that Lost does when it’s on. Except for one notable exception, this week was pretty poor, and my enthusiasm for some shows is waning. It doesn’t help that I started writing this while the wonderful In The Name of the Father was on Sky Movies, distracting me even more (and holy shit, Mark Sheppard plays one of the Guildford Four!), and tried to finish it while The Incredibles was on. That’s my favourite film of the decade we’re talking about. How could I not get distracted?

Non-Shield Highlight of the Week:

As this week’s Friday Night Lights ended, and the final slow-motion shot of “Smash” Williams faded to black, Canyon said, “My God, it really is back on form.” I couldn’t agree more. Though we enjoyed the second season more than many, this third season has been exceptional even by this show’s high standards. The latest episode was just about perfect, and was filled with examples of how the showrunners have upped their game this year.

Part of it is the shorter season. This time there won’t be any Carlotta missteps, or new characters not given a full arc (I’m still upset at how Santiago was treated). Sticking with the core characters and seeking to build upon old tensions rather than introduce new ones, the show has done the miraculous and made a season that feels like the first season while telling stories that are new enough to feel fresh but have expanded from previous concerns. The best example of that is Matt Saracen’s relationship with his grandmother. Though his position as QB1 is now endangered, and has generated a great deal of turmoil for himself, Coach, and the Dillon fanbase (who are jerks, let’s be honest), we still have the old, unresolved arc featuring his grandmother’s illness informing his every choice.


That story should have become boring a long time ago, but while season two featured that awful Carlotta plot, this season sees Matt reaching out to his mother in an act of desperation, and from there we find out more about him, his family, his capacity for forgiveness, etc. Carlotta told us nothing other than how teenage boys get horny and make mistakes. This new plot has been a revelation in more ways than one. Most importantly, it’s given Zack Gilford a chance to show what he’s capable of, which seems only fair after season two gave Taylor Kitsch numerous opportunities to shine. His scenes with his mother, played by the ever-excellent Kim Dickens, were a joy to behold. I’m glad the showrunners got around to giving Gilford a shot at the prize.

Another consequence of the shorter season is the chance to finish arcs conclusively. Next week we’ll find out what Jason Street has been up to, but for the first four episodes we saw Smash get a second chance to get into college. Last week I admitted I was getting a bit sick of the constant doubts Smash had, but luckily this frustration was assuaged by this week’s conclusion. By the time Smash gets his phonecall of acceptance, he’s really earned it, having faced down every obstacle going. If he didn’t make it, it might have been “realistic”, but it would also have been wrong.


The whole point of Coach’s philosophy, and Smash’s confidence, is that hard work and dedication bring you what you want, and this was the perfect dramatisation of that. My misgivings faded as Coach delivered yet more stirring speeches about living up to his promise, and the last five minutes of the show were viewed from behind a veil of happy tears. It was exactly the ending we had hoped for, and justified everything Smash has gone through. If only all TV could be like this.

What the Hell Just Happened? Disaster of the Week:

As this season has progressed, you’ll note that my fondness for Fringe has increased from my initial position of slightly optimistic reticence, with much of that interest based around Dr. Walter Bishop and The Observer, that bald Easter Egg I love so much. In the first season of Alias, created by J.J. Abrams and often written by Fringe creators Kurtzman and Orci, I remember the pilot episode being one of the strongest hours of TV I’ve seen, and that first season containing pretty much no clunkers, so confident was the showrunning team. Though the Fringe pilot was nowhere near as good as the first hour of Alias, it was still compelling, and the premise grew to be more interesting than I had first thought by the time The Observer showed up. So how the hell did last week’s episode turn out to be so feeble, even though it opened with such nasty events as brain-cooking and blood tears?


Much of it comes down to a truly crappy script, which was little more than a list of cliches of forehead-slapping overuse, with serious misjudgements throughout. I’m not sure which was worse: the scientist who, when rumbled, shoots himself in the head; Olivia’s rogue investigation and sudden random and hilarious aggressiveness; the race against time kidnap plot (also used this week in CSI), and much more. Perhaps the worst crime was sticking Lance “Intensity” Reddick with some dialogue of look-away-it’s-so-awful clunkiness.


There were other problems, though. One scene at a horseriding club was lit so badly you could see shadows on the floor even though it was supposed to be filmed during late-afternoon, and other scenes were blocked terribly, with characters pulling guns on each other in a room so small the camera almost gets in the way. I understand that the show has to make the most of its budget, and the shooting schedule is tight, especially as development on the show would have been affected by the writers’ strike, but it still seemed amateurish. These egregious errors are above and beyond the main problems; that it was sluggish, boring, silly, littered with tonal errors (having a main villain played, by Canyon’s least favourite actor Chris Eigemann, with outrageous mustache-twirling evilness), and criminally over-writing Walter so that he is almost annoying. Almost. I’m sorry, but even though he went a bit far, having him get upset over microwaving a papaya to death because it’s the friendliest of fruits made me laugh too much to get angry at him.


Fringe is away for three weeks, what with sport and elections and whathaveyou. It’s a good job the fourth episode was so freakydeaky, because otherwise I would be walking away after this. It wasn’t as bad as Knight Rider (surely impossible), but maybe it was approaching Flash Gordon levels of awfulness. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and the only thing that makes me feel better about that judgement is that I refuse to believe the show is going to sink. Surely this is an anomaly. I’m just hoping the number of bad episodes don’t end up outweighing the good.

Slowly Improving Show of the Week:

As I had hoped, this week’s Mentalist was definitely organised around a central location, a sort of bland office complex that featured last week without being named as the CBI HQ.


Other notable features of the episode included more screen time for Gregory Itzin (working as the pencil-pushing jerk I had hoped he would be), more panicky reactions from Patrick Jane upon being confronted with a gun, and some humour. It’s babysteps, but the hour went much quicker than some of the other shows we watched this week. Spotting some of Derren Brown’s techniques helped (the fumbling disarming of a gun-toting Eastern European was particularly welcome), and I hope we see more of his team using elaborate lies to fool the criminals into giving themselves up. That said, I still don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone who’s not a huge fan of procedurals, though. It’s still not quite there yet, but it’s a little victory that, five episodes in, it’s managed to create an episode that is arguably more entertaining (if less well constructed) than this week’s episodes of House (not as bad as I had feared, but a little dull) and CSI (would have been better if the serial killer introduced this week didn’t get arrested at the end).

Heartbreak of the Week:

Oh Friday Night Lights, how you torture us. Tyra and Landry’s ill-fated love was never meant to be, only beginning because of the murder/rape plot that annoyed the fanbase so much. This week, Tyra definitively moved on, leaving a heartbroken Landry behind with nothing but his slowly weeping guitar for solace.


Yes, the murder plot might have been handled well but was not welcome on the show. Yes, it was a contrived way to get Tyra and Landry together when in real life there is no way she would ever want to be with him. But who cares about that when we get to see acting of the calibre displayed by Adrianne Palicki and Jesse Plemons? Fuck it, they could have been abducted by aliens for all I care. Seeing Landry’s heartache and Tyra’s sadness over the consequences of her decision was one of the acting highlights of the season so far.

Your Sex Is On Fire of the Week:


And so were the words to transpire, whatever that means. Yes, this week House finally had bisexual Thirteen have some gay sex, because in TV land, as Canyon pointed out during the hectic sex scene (which was as hot as a fever), bisexual means lesbian, but a lesbian that the male viewers have a chance with. I really doubt that having lesbian smooching and the attendant rattling bones hinted at in trailers means twenty million more viewers tune in, but even if the opening felt unusually exploitative for the show, it kinda matched Thirteen’s desperate effort to live her life to the full before she dies. Sort of. Well, it was edited really frantically. Luckily, it’s not forever, but it’s just tonight, oh we’re still the greatest. The greatest! The greatest! And YEEEAAAAHH Yo’ sex is on fiyah!

Yeah, you know Kings of Leon are the shit.

Actor We Love of the Week:

Lee Pace is always great on Pushing Daisies, but we want to give him a shout out this week, just cuz.


Actually, it’s more that we just saw him in The Fall (directed, of course, by… TARSEM!), and he is unnaturally great in it. Let’s hope that the imminent cancellation of this lovely show frees him up for more great work. For instance, the West End loves American actors lately, Mr. Pace. Some are very close to pie shops. Plus, you can stay at our house while you are here. We have a very small bed that only slightly smells like cat vom. You’ll love it.

Improbably Attractive Biologist of the Week:

Evil David Esterbrook, evil CEO of evil pharmaceutical company Intrepus, is more than happy to hang around while a woman is injected with a compound that will turn the strontium capsules in her head into a weapon, but he won’t be doing any of the injecting himself. Instead, he has an improbably attractive biologist to help him out.


As you can seen, the improbably attractive biologist is wearing a HazMat suit, and if you think she took off the helmet and shook her long black hair out like the stereotypical sexy librarian who lets her hair down to the amazement of all the horny chaps nearby, you would be right.

Sudden Romantic of the Week:

Though Landry and Tyra get the award for most heartbreaking relationship failure of the week, Dwight Schrute’s agony over the imminent marriage of Angela and Andy came a close second.


That he kept undercutting that pain with such horrible treatment of Phyllis was perfect, but even better was his pathetic but noble attempt to make it up to her at the end.


Of course, there were other romantic developments in this episode, but this was the one that seemed to get forgotten in the rush to squeal with delight over the other stuff.

Worst Performance of the Week:

I’m beginning to think that the Fringe showrunners made a huge mistake in casting Anna Torv to head their new show. Though all of my affection for the show rests with either John Noble or Lance “Intensity” Reddick, I’m willing to open my arms to allow others in. No one has stepped up yet. Kirk Acevedo’s tics irk me, Blair Brown is as shaky as she was during Altered States, and even though I thought he was okay opposite Patrick Stewart in Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre, I’m otherwise baffled by the appeal of Joshua Jackson, especially in a role as poorly written as this one.


Torv, on the other hand, has shown little spark of life in Fringe, which we attributed to the lifeless role of Olivia, who has been asked to swallow her grief over her lover’s death and possible betrayal (and, you know, the fact that his consciousness is living inside her brain or something). This week, however, Olivia has been re-written as an angry young lady, all guns drawn and snarly, telling tales of her evil step-dad and going after nasty pharma-jerks who abduct women to make their brains a big radioactive weapon, or somesuch. (Check out this week’s appearance of The Observer, who seems to find Olivia’s inept flirting more interesting than someone’s head exploding in the opening scene. He truly is inhuman!)


While I would definitely say Olivia needed a revamp, and pronto, and while I would accept a mid-flow personality change as a quick fix to what must have been an obvious problem with the template for the show, did the showrunners realise that Anna Torv can’t really pull it off? With the whole episode revolving around her dangerous past and sudden no-nonsense attitude, her acting quirks were on full display, and warning bells sounded throughout.


While I’m not able to discuss her acting technique using technical terms, and though a lot of what was wrong with that episode is down to the shockingly poor script, it was still a dispiriting display of faux-rage and stroppy, confrontational bluster, none of which convinced. Though Torv’s voice is possibly the most soothing thing currently on TV, hearing her spit sarcastic and furious lines at her co-stars just made us laugh in incredulity. Her goofy reaction to the scientist’s suicide was amusing too; this picture does not do justice to the WTFness of it.


In other venues, I’m sure Ms. Torv is just fine, and she must have done something right to get the job, but so far this role seems like a bad fit. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare her to Jennifer Garner, whose work on Alias was so consistently impressive (shut it, haters), but she had some warmth or lightness that Torv desperately needs. Of course, perhaps she is not meant to portray that, in which case the character needs to be rethought, as she can’t do tough guy, so it’s going to be a problem if Olivia 2.0 is meant to go all Horatio Caine week after week. Nevertheless, Torv is on probation until there is another change, because right now, Angry Olivia is still good for a few laughs, which harms the show’s atmosphere, but holds our attention more.

Magnificent Insanity of the Week:

It’s official: America’s Next Top Model has lost its mind. Words cannot describe the lunacy on display. I’ll let this photo montage do the explaining for me.















There really is nothing else to add.

Troubling Development of the Week:

We’ve been thinking it for a while now, and this week might have set our opinion in stone: Ugly Betty is now officially boring. While we’re a week behind on Pushing Daisies out of regrettable error, we’re not up to speed with Betty mostly because we just don’t care about the majority of the storylines currently running. While Claire Meade’s incarceration was amusing, this week’s prison sub-plot just made me wish I was rewatching Arrested Development, an urge more pronounced after Jeffrey Tambor turned up on CSI the following week.


The biggest problem the show has this season is that there is very little it can do that it hasn’t done before. The O.C. had a similar problem in its middle two seasons, after the crazed first burned through major arcs in the space of a couple of episodes. Eventually the show had nowhere to go, and the penultimate season ended up filled with clanging plot failures like Sandy’s descent into evil, Marissa’s infinitely boring friendship with the world’s most depressed surfer, and Ryan’s war with the adorably named Volchok. Ugly Betty is in similar trouble. Other than the attempted murder of Christine, which was done and dusted in two and a bit episodes, we’ve wasted hours (or thereabouts) on Hilda’s affair and Daniel’s son, both of which are the most tedious sub-plots of the year so far.


A large proportion of each episode is now given over to stories that don’t go anywhere, merely offering cloying moments of grief from minor characters who are unhappy over events that don’t really matter. Don’t believe me? Watch how often Daniel mentions his son over the rest of the season. Also, Hilda made her true love go back to his wife to try to make it work out? Yeah, I’m sure that the guy who was crazy about you and didn’t want to be with his wife any more is real happy about that decision. It was all so dull that even her son looks like he wishes he was on Heroes or something.


Of course, while The O.C. had a similar quality dip, it found its feet again for a mostly entertaining fourth season, but that was by ditching the dark plots and going all out with the weird (alternate realities?), which might have annoyed the purists (if there is such a thing as an O.C. purist) but kept us happy. How can Ugly Betty go that route? It’s already cartoony, and until now has worked by maintaining that slightly hysterical soapy semi-dramatic tone. Turning it into an out-and-out comedy might make it more fun in the short term, but it might finish the whole thing off as well. It’s worth a try, though. Even the happy-making return of Gio became a meta-comment on how much the show has begun to annoy us.


My suggestion is the same as I’ve been saying for a while now. Give Marc and Amanda more to do. Make Claire Meade a catty matriarch again. Give Wilhelmina something else to do other than plot to takeover Meade Publications every week. Betty’s fine for now, but her family is dragging the show down (plus, Justin is realistically snotty as a teenager, but he’s also zero fun). Give Daniel a victory or two, or bring back his tacky lad’s mag (dozens of story possibilities flew out the window with that decision). Most importantly, make it funny again. Jokes are flopping lifelessly to the ground with depressing regularity, and it’s making the show a chore to watch. I’m not sure how much longer we’re going to stick with this, and I bet we’re not the only ones.

Shurely Shome Mishtake Moment of the Week:

Olivia Dunham spends much of last week’s Fringe being grumpy about her birthday, which is later explained away as a consequence of her abusive stepfather beating up her mother so much that Olivia ends up shooting him. He nearly dies but somehow survives (is Mad Science responsible??!?!?!?), before disappearing. His only contact with Olivia is sending her a birthday card every year since. That the whole speech was only lacking a reference to the screaming of the lambs was not the worst thing about it, nor was the cliche of Olivia transferring her anger of her stepfather over to her investigation of Evil David Esterbrook. It was the fact that she shot someone when she was nine and grew up to become an FBI agent.


Oh sure, she did it in self-defence, but surely there has to be some rule that someone who once tried to kill someone else, no matter what the circumstances, should not rise through the ranks of the FBI to become an agent. It just strikes me as being highly unlikely. No doubt someone somewhere knows that it’s actually mandatory or something, but until then, I call bullshit.

Gratifying Performance of the Week:

We’re a week behind on Pushing Daisies, and rumours of its imminent cancellation are sapping our enthusiasm, but that doesn’t mean we’re not getting any pleasure out of it. The episode from two weeks ago, with Ned, Chuck and Emerson visiting Olive’s convent featured many amusing moments, but most pleasingly it gave Anna Friel a chance to show off her acting skillz. Wracked with doubt about her place in the world, and whether or not she should have received a second chance at life, she is saved from a potentially terminal depression by the news that Aunt Lily is actually her mother. Her tear-soaked reaction was almost enough to set me off.


I’ve been waiting for years for Friel to live up to the promise of her Brookside performances, and regrettably she’s not had any roles good enough to give her a chance to show off what she can do, but Chuck is perfect for her. I especially like that even though she is becoming more unhappy as the show progresses, she is still cheery enough to hide it convincingly. Plus, the way she keeps waving at Olive is adorable.



Here’s hoping we get to see a full season of endearing character moments like this.

Distracting Embonpoint of the Week:

It is my sincere wish to be as progressive about gender politics, the insidious male gaze, and the negative impact of the objectification of women as possible, but Catherine Willows’ breastal area seemed way way larger than usual this week, causing me to lose focus on the plot.


This, in turn, made me feel like a lecherous wanker for getting so distracted. Was I being irrational? Am I no better than some Daily Star-reading creep whose favourite word is PHWOAR? Surely I’m better than this, I thought as I rewound subsequent scenes several times because I had become so anxious about my distraction and the psychological consequences of my sudden fascination with the boobs. It was upsetting me so much I had to blurt out my suspicions about a size increase to Canyon, who, thankfully, had been thinking the same thing. Not that I’m saying, “It’s okay for me to be staring at boobs because my wife was as well,” but it did make me think I was onto something with my suspicions. And I’m not judging Marg Helgenberger if she has indeed had cosmetic surgery. That’s her choice, and more power to her for doing it. Good on her. Not “Good on her for having bigger boobs. Or not, if she’s not done anything and I’ve made a mistake.” Just, you know, good on her for doing what she wants to do. If it is what happened. I’m not saying it definitely is. I’m not the kind of guy who gets obsessed with these things. It’s just idle curiosity. So, what happened? Cosmetic surgery (not that there’s anything wrong with that)? Or just that top she is wearing? It could just be shadows. Not that I’m insinuating she has small boobs normally. I’ve never really thought about it one way or the other, to be honest. They just caught my eye this week, which is unusual. It’s almost aberrant, you could say. Me noticing her boobs, that is, not the boobs themselves. I’m sure they’re as great now as they have always been. Though of course I don’t go around saying, you know, “Hey, boobs are great! Yowsa boobs!” And I certainly don’t think women are expected to have cosmetic surgery done. It’s totally their choice and it’s none of my business. Of course, I also think that wanting to enhance boobs is totally acceptable, and I would never suggest otherwise. And it’s not just for women either, or wymyn, should I say. Men can have them too, if that’s what they want, certainly if they are intending to change gender, which, again, is supercool with me, and I would never think to make any disparaging comments about that either. Which is getting me away from my question about Catherine. Now that I think about it, I’m fairly sure it’s an optical illusion or something to do with the lighting, and I’m reading too much into things, which is more than likely. It’s the culture we live in, you know, obsessed with body image and looks and what-have-you, reducing people to their parts instead of dealing with them as a whole. It’s so terrible. I never ever do that. Except this one time. And earlier on when I was going on about all of the hott gay sex in House. But that was just me pointing out the show using sex as a ratings winner, in an exploitative manner, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, because of course I don’t want to seem like I watch TV just to ogle anyone, because I totally don’t. So, we’re settled with this, right? It’s just a very nice top she is wearing, and I should be ashamed of myself for being so interested in it. Good. Glad we’re clear on that. [/torrential flopsweat]

Distracting Groin of the Week:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Holy shit! Don Draper is 150% more man than most! (Believe me, that bulge next to the AMC sign is not the pleats.)


He could appear in the porn version of this show. As Dong Draper.

Inaccurate Depiction of Bloggers of the Week:

CSI wandered into dangerously luddite CSI: Miami territory last week, with our heroes hingeing their investigation on the comments section of an art blog. While a serial killer left macabre posed corpses around Las Vegas, an immoral blogger (seen below, with more hair than is usual for bloggers) made vodcasts about the project, leading the killer to post comments about how awesome he was.


I say the blogger was immoral because, in a bit of judgemental stereotyping, the blogger was more concerned with the statement than the crime, though he got the message after being pulled in to lay a trap for the killer. If this was CSI: Miami the blogger would have been the killer, and he would have broadcast the murders on The YourTube, the sick bastard. He would also have been a pedophile. And a terrorist. CSI: Classic was not as bad as that, but it still chafed.

Still, the thought that the police were going to trace the IP addresses of the commenters in order to find the killer must have made the hearts of many bloggers soar in much the same way that the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back did, with fantasies of finding abusive jerkoffs and making them apologise for being douchey. Ah, how lovely the internet would be if everyone had some goddamn manners.

Shock of the Week:

Hard to believe, but last week’s Heroes did not totally suck. I’m not saying it qualifies as good, but it was intentionally amusing at times (as well as unintentionally), and contained some surprises that actually worked until you thought about them for a moment, instead of seeming like contrived nonsense right off the bat. I have no idea what last night’s episode was like (I intended to get this finished before it aired, but I’m still feeling super-rough), but this episode managed to be flawed but fun. Things to like: Hiro’s tantrum after getting hit over the head with a shovel for the second time…


…Daphne trying to ignore the power of Parkman’s turtle totem…


…Pops Petrelli’s power being a new variant on Peter and Sylar’s power absorption, and best of all, Peter going down like a punk in the final scene.


Things not to like: Daphne wondering how Parkman could know so much about her which is stupid as, even though it’s not the reason for his knowledge, she has just read a folder on him pointing out he is telepathic; Adam also going out like a punk, with much crying and whining and dessicating…


…Peter not reading his dad’s mind before getting powersucked; the utter lameness of Pops Petrelli’s Association of Evil Individuals…


…Hiro’s power suddenly freezing Daphne, even though it has been established that he can’t, which also means that last week’s fake-out murder of Ando was just as stupid as expected…


…all of the deeply boring Puppet Man plot, especially finding out that Meredith went after him even though she knew he could control her body…


…and everything involving Tracy, Nathan and Suresh, who are an Unholy Trinity of boring stupidity.


Still, that’s a lot more in column one than in recent weeks. I strongly doubt the show is ever going to be what we hoped it would be, and some viewers are never going to warm to it, such as a disgusted Canyon, who barely made it through this installment, but it might get to the point where it makes sense once in a while, something the second season seemed to render impossible.

Guest Stars of the Week:

Just recently I made a comment about how CSI often blows the mystery of the week by casting guest stars who are obviously going to be the killer, but this week convention was shirked, meaning Alex Kingston really was a grief counsellor, and Jeffrey Tambor really was just a snotty artist. The killer turned out to be just some guy doing a weak Kevin-Spacey-in-Seven impression.


Tambor is one of those rare Scientologists its okay to like, such as Beck, Chick Corea, and mid-to-late 90s Travolta. It’s always a treat to see him on TV, and he was lots of fun here. Kingston did an equally good job as the counsellor who ends up facing off against Gil following a misunderstanding, but even so I was worried that the show was suddenly employing two guest stars.


It’s a bit of overkill that suggests the showrunners were eager to distract the viewer from the new character, who would otherwise be the biggest deal in the episode. Speaking of which…

Unorthodox Introduction of the Week:

…new character Riley Adams, played by Lauren Lee Smith, arrived at CSI HQ with an aggressive attitude and a malfunctioning sense of humour. As Lee Smith appeared in the credits, replacing Gary Dourdan, we discussed how difficult it would be for her to fit in with the fanbase’s expectations, who treat in-show change with a range of emotions running the gamut from thwarted yet undeserved entitlement to seething indignant rage.


Perhaps the CSI showrunners realised that, and didn’t bother creating a likeable character, knowing it would all be for naught. Better to just alienate the audience on purpose and win them over in the long term (I wonder if naming her after a famously unpopular character who joined a show late in its run was part of the plan). Also, I noted that Riley is the first permanent team member added since Holly Griggs (not counting Greg, who was promoted. Griggs, of course, was murdered in the pilot due to Warrick’s negligence. So far Riley is the total opposite of Griggs, which makes the whole thing nicely symbolic. Or cyclical. There’s a point being made here, but sadly the grogginess is making it hard to find.

Model of the Week:

We’ve decided on our favourite for this cycle. I had been convinced that Lauren Brie was going to win for sure, despite being partially covered in an almost inedible rind, but it was not to be. As is now the way with ANTM, we got to see her being a big bitch two weeks ago, and not long after she was SENT! HOME! Unfortuately the same happened to the awesome Joslyn, leaving us kinda bereft. Now, we’re not sure she can pull it off, but we’re totally rooting for Analeigh, who has been adorable and is getting better every week.


Her CoverGirl ad this week was possibly the best in the show’s history, and her in-house diplomacy has been a refreshing change from the usual catty shenanigans (Marjorie and Samantha have been moved to our Shut-The-Fuck-Up Corner). Of course, Elina will probably win now that Tyra has made it her mission to break her spirit and mold her into something else as if she were V and Elina were Evie, but we’re hoping Analeigh (and therefore justice) will win out.

Grisly Moment of the Week:

Was it Pops Petrelli yanking a tube out of his throat after absorbing Adam’s power?


Or Fringe Mysteriously Experimented-Upon-Person Emily Kramer after her head exploded due to some particularly Mad Science involving Strontium or something?


Or the eerie image, from CSI, of a child suspended in a tank filled with carbon monoxide?


That wasn’t gross, but it was deeply unnerving, especially as it brought back uncomfortable memories of Vincent D’Onofrio’s elaborate murders in The Cell, which was, of course, directed by… TARSEM!

Silly Bet of the Week:

Not only does he have a name guaranteed to make Brits laugh for all the wrong reasons, Wayne Rigsby (played by Owain Yeoman) bets Mentalist Patrick Jane that he can’t seduce the widow at the funeral they are staking out. For crying out loud, not only is he The Mentalist, but he’s played by Simon Baker.


Yum! He’s such a mischievous hottie. No woman could resist his Amazing Powers of the Brain and his sexxy waistcoat. Bet lost. (Actually, Rigsby kinda wins, but only because the widow is a murderous psycho and Jane has to put her away using psychology and subterfuge. Bad luck, Mentalist.)

Hitchcock Reference of the Week:

Having an obvious but non-showy Vertigo reference in Pushing Daisies was very welcome.


You see, later that week we watched Eagle Eye, and the hamfisted way D.J. Caruso visualised his rip-off of the big finish of The Man Who Knew Too Much, with a CG overlay of a sheet of music with a big note sticking up where the bomb is going to go off, was just horrid. Just showing the tower, identical to the one in Vertigo, is the way to go.

Intensity of the Week:

Even from a distance…


…Lance Reddick brings it.

I’m really startled by how much this week has disappointed me, stripping me of all of my enthusiasm for this project. It’s not just me, either. Brian Michael Bendoom was harder to track down for comment, but after leaving numerous messages for him, he got back to me to say…


…and to be honest, I think he’s being generous. Be better this week, TV!

These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 3

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I swear, these post titles are beginning to look like quadratic equations.

Tear-Jerking Moment of the Week(s):

Goddamn Coach Taylor! Considering his default personality is “very pissed off”, his farewell to Jason Street in the second season of Friday Night Lights made me blub like a baby, and in this season opener his vow to help Smash Williams get the scholarship he has always wanted made me shed multiple tears.


Oh man, it’s so good to have this back.

Runner-Up:

The return of CSI was a muted affair, dealing with the aftermath of Warrick’s shooting by the dastardly Undersheriff McKeen. Opening on Warrick’s death in Gil Grissom’s arms, a large part of the show showed the CSI team dealing with his death, with Gil, Catherine and Nick taking it hardest.


While I had problems with the crime-solving aspect of the episode (how great it would have been to have kept Undersheriff McKeen around, knowing he was the bastard who killed Warrick), the rest of the episode was terrific, and when the usually stoic Gil breaks down during the eulogy to his friend, I lost it.


I guess this is where we start to see Gil get ready to leave the team, prior to the heavily-anticipated arrival of Morpheus. I don’t think he’ll be crying at any funerals.

Mentalist of the Week(s):

CBS has an honest to God hit on its hands with The Mentalist, which surprises me. While a lot of serialised or complex shows appear to have hit the buffers, procedurals seem to be doing well. The Patinkin-less Criminal Minds is doing great, the CSI opener had the highest ratings of the season so far, and Crime-Fighting Derren Brown is surprising everybody. We thought the second episode was passable at best, but it didn’t help that we saw it right after watching the special features for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which included multiple unused clips from the made-up in-film procedural Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime, and lots of extra previews for Sarah Marshall’s next show with Jason Bateman (including Divine Justice and Jesus H. Cop). As a result, The Mentalist looked like another spoof, so closely did it hew to a procedural formula.


Still, that formula is subverted a bit. The main character, Patrick Jane, is still disliked by his whole team, and does not do well in action situations: he gets bailed out twice this week, and his plan goes wrong in the final act, leaving him at the mercy of two murderers.


Luckily, even though he’s impetuous he’s still smarter than everyone else, and solves cases while the rest of the team chase their tails (which is a format convention similar to House’s weekly misdiagnosis of a patient and his or her subsequent respiratory arrest/cardiac arrest/anaphylactic shock). Nevertheless, so far we’ve seen three people get shot because of his intervention, and we’re only two episodes in. No wonder no one likes him.


We’ll probably stick with the show for a while longer, while it finds its feet, but it occurred to me that I’m already impatient for Jane to use his Amazing Powers of the Brain throughout, getting restless when the show falls back on the usual procedural nonsense (evidence logging, interrogations, mobile phone calls, rap sheets, etc.). It reminded me of being a kid and watching dreck like Knight Rider (original flavour) or Airwolf. I couldn’t give a shit about the talky bits. I just wanted to see KITT leap over a hedge or Streethawk use his beam weapon or BA Baracus throw a stick of dynamite at someone. Same here. All I want is The Mentalist hypnotising people and winning rock, paper, scissors competitions. That’s the fun stuff. And when is Derren Brown getting a guest spot?

Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week(s):

Even the all-black, all-the-time stylings of the Future Heroes can’t top this cringe-inducing ensemble from Don Draper.


His pants/trousers are sort of beige as well. It was a nauseating sight. All he needed to complete it was a pipe and he would have looked like the deluded 50s dad from Ren and Stimpy. The only thing that came close was Maya, again forced to totter around in high-heels and cleavage-tastic dress on account of how hot she is for Suresh, not realising he’s all wrong on a genetic level.


Poor Dania Ramirez. I gather her power was going to be used to kill the Shanti virus in season two, but that plan got cancelled when the writer’s strike killed the season early. From saviour of the world to hott, scantily-clad babe making failed booty calls to a mad scientist. She needs a better agent.

Still, at least the clothes, horrible though they are, look good on her. These pants, worn by Anna Friel on Pushing Daisies, do not flatter her at all.


And this combo not only features much heinous plaid (or tartan or something ugly), but also a daring top.


When I say daring, I mean, “Why is she exposing that much skin around a guy whose touch could instantly kill her?” It’s not the style that bothers me, it’s the risk of doom. I really get conniptions when I see them together. Love the show though I do, it really stresses me out.

“Where The Hell Did That Plotline Come From?” of the Week(s):

At the end of a fluffy Ugly Betty, someone pushes Christina down a flight of stairs.


Harsh. I know I’m no fan of Ashley Jensen’s mugging, but I don’t want her character to actually get mugged. What was great was that the episode had set this up with some stealth, with her former husband and Claire Meade set up as possible suspects. It was especially welcome as the following week brought us the best Ugly Betty episode in some time, overcoming some dreary structural tricks (flashbacks and police interrogations again?) with much humour, silliness, and an almost surprising denouement. I say almost, but the reveal of the attacker would have been more surprising were it not for Rebecca Romijn’s obvious pregnancy.


They obviously needed an excuse to lose Alexis for a while, but at least they used her real-world situation in this way, resolving the attacker plot without pinning it on some hastily introduced patsy. This way the assault has some real consequences.

Uncomfortable Scene of the Week(s):

Seeing Paul Kinsey attempt to weasel out of travelling to civil rights battleground Mississippi with his girlfriend Sheila was hard to watch, as Paul’s hipster liberalism is punctured in front of the Sterling Cooper bellhop, Hollis, he has just made an effort to greet as an equal.


Liberal white guilt, fractious race relations, relationship strife, the civil rights movement: all commented on in just one minute of screentime. ::doffs cap::

Bravery of the Week(s):

As much as I’m utterly uninterested in any of the characters played by Ali Larter on Heroes, kudos to her for allowing the showrunners to use this photo from her youth.

Humiliating Scene of the Week(s):

This is a personal one. Earlier in the week an attempt at defrosting our fridge cost me a rather large amount of money thanks to some less than clever (i.e. unbelievably fucking stupid) and very impatient behaviour. I don’t want to go into it too much, as I’m utterly embarrassed about it and really furious at myself, but let’s just say that this moment…


…with Betty defrosting a fridge using a bowl of hot water and not a knife and meat tenderiser combo would have been rather helpful if I’d watched it two days earlier. At least our new fridge doesn’t smell weird and can’t be dismantled by our cat Sydney, I guess.

Asshole of the Week(s):

We love Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, with his bumbling ineptitude and endless enthusiasm.


In the first two episodes of the third season, however, he crossed a line into pure asshole-dom, scheming against Tami over her decision to divert his Jumbotron money into funding the school, and threatening Riggins prior to dinner.


Sure, he’s onto something in his distrust of Riggins, and most parents would probably agree, but by not trusting Lila’s judgement and ability to understand her boyfriend’s childish impulses, he just makes things worse for everyone.

Soundtrack of the Week(s):

The CSI season opener was, as mentioned before, more contemplative than usual, and part of the reason was the lovely ambient soundtrack by John M. Keane, channelling The Mighty Eno or Cliff Martinez. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer Jason Segal is onto something when he criticises procedural soundtracks as being little more than ominous tones and atmospherics (Mark Snow, I’m looking at you), this week CSI proved him wrong. It was a joy to listen to, and increased the emotional impact considerably.

Accidental Political Satire of the Week(s):

Obviously Friday Night Lights was filmed a little while back, but surprisingly they still managed to comment on the Sarah Palin vice-presidential debacle with a sub-plot about Tyra Collette trying to win an election by appealing to the groins of intellectually stunted morons, with sassiness, broadly caricatured feminine wiles, and mean-spirited insults.


It’s as if the writers have precognition or something.

Best Nerd Reference Scene of the Week(s):

Jim’s torture of Dwight, recasting Battlestar Galactica as Dumbledore Calrissian’s quest to return the Ring to Mordor, made my hair stand on end.


I’m sure many shared our pain.

Facial Expression of the Week(s):

Is it Noah Bennett donning his famous horn-rimmed glasses?


Olive reacting to a dishonesty overdose?


A rare smile from Stanley, who is only happy when food comes into the equation?


The mysterious Dr. Zimmerman (regrettably not played by the world’s best Zimmerman) getting accidentally frozen by Tracy Strauzzzzz?


Tyra Collette moments after her stripper sister gets engaged to Riggins the Elder?


Lily Charles, as a nun, trying to reassure Olive?


Peter Petrelli using Jesse’s “sound manipulation” superpower (which, it turns out, is thankfully more like Banshee from X-Men than Michael Winslow from Police Academy)?


Tami Taylor reacting to the political corruption of Sarah Palin Tyra?

Most Insane Televisual Event of the Week(s) Year Decade:

We’ve almost caught up with America’s Next Top Model (it’s delayed by about a year in the UK), having just started Cycle 11 after a mostly pleasing Cycle 10 (I’ll be getting to that soon, hopefully). Yes yes, this aired a few weeks back, but it’s been a busy period in our lives. God! Anyway, within minutes of this cycle season beginning, we were overjoyed at the shambolic and relentless insanity unfolding on our TV. The futuristic theme for the premiere and auditions was the greatest stroke of genius in the show’s history, and almost killed us from the laughter. I don’t know what I loved most. It was a battle between Alpha and Beta Jay (with Alpha Jay looking utterly mortified by his silver get-up)…


…the laser scanning of the catsuit-clad model-wannabees…


…the Orgasmatron Glaminator 11.0 (what does that even mean?)…


…The Tyrabot (for crying out loud)…


…the three hosts beaming up “fiercely” (which almost gave me a hernia from the laughter)…


…and the entrance of Noted Fashion Photographer Mr. Nigel Barker later in the premiere, this time from a magician’s cabinet.


This pleased me greatly. Almost as much as the delicious schadenfreude of vicious bigot Sharaun getting kicked out in the first week. Usually the out-and-out bitches hang around for a few weeks, or right until the end (cat-human hybrid Dominique and the amazing Jade spring to mind), but this time there are so many nasty women in the house that they could sacrifice one straight away and not bore-ify the show later.

Intensity of the Week(s):

For once, there’s a challenge to Lance “Intensity” Reddick’s Crown of Intensity. In a welcome return to the show, The Haitian, aka Jimmy Jean Louis, has enough dignity left over after getting knocked out by both Ando and Peter (embarrassing) to deliver some awesome intensity.


Still, even that attempt is crushed by the effortless intensity of my man Reddick, here reacting to the news that Olivia has discovered the presence of The Observer.


It strikes me that what we’re seeing here is a case of White Men Can’t Do Intensity. It could be argued that Don Draper’s reaction to the appearance of Jimmy Barrett is a sure-fire winner…


…but I’m not sure that that doesn’t count as psychosis rather than intensity. Removing that candidate leaves us with this.


It’s just pathetic, really.

Holy shit I’ve finished! I feel like I’ve been writing this since February. In summation, not bad stuff, with some great returning shows and the smart move of avoiding new shows and things that are proven to be terrible (Knight Rider). I asked Brian Michael Bendoom what he thought, and…


…I think that’s good? [/old man]

These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 2

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Much as I don’t want to derail this post with talk about a quality movie (i.e. Hairspray), I suppose I can make it more TV related by carping about Sky. Hairspray was as entertaining as expected (and ten million times the movie Dreamgirls was), though it was hard to tell thanks to the botched broadcast on both Sky Movies and Sky Anytime, which filled the film with so many glitches and bloops that it sounded as if it had been remixed by Aphex Twin. It was taken down from Anytime last night, as was Breach (which comes highly recommended solely on the basis of Chris Cooper’s awe-inspiring performance). If Sky’s technology is getting hinky, it’s a bad sign. I’ve already had trouble with their Box Office downloads disappearing, and our Sky+ box has taken to crashing every Sunday morning. Is it our machine, or is there trouble at their end?

That’s neither here nor there, especially as I’m here to make fun of Heroes and say good things about Mad Men.

Most Boring Side-Plot of the Week(s):

Is it Hilda Suarez’s adulterous love affair with Eddie Cibrian?


Or Taub’s mysterious relationship problems with his wife?


Or Daniel Meade’s battle to keep his hideous son in America?


Or Matt Saracen and Julie Taylor possibly getting back together?


At least Daniel’s son turned out not to be his son (a real shock), and Hilda’s relationship meant we got to see Marc and Amanda losing their composure.


The other plots are just mogadon.

Biggest Badass of the Week(s) Century:

Check out The German. Last week on Heroes he totally staked his claim to being the most awesome villain since Kang the Conqueror, who, never forget, once destroyed Washington DC, an act so heinous it actually made Thor cry! First The German used his magnetic powers to draw some blinds. Just moments later, while we were still catching our breath, he cracked a safe, using those same magnetic powers to turn the dial instead of using his hands!


Ho. Lee. SHIT! Fuck you, Polaris! Eat donkey shit, Magneto. What have you ever done besides reversing the poles and other miscellaneous acts of supervillainy?


Even better, a little while later he totally neglected to use his powers to protect himself against a deadly superpowered punch!


Just amazing. I hope current X-Men writers Mike Carey, Chris Yost, Warren Ellis, and Ed Brubaker are taking notes.

Thematic Coherence of the Week(s):

The tenth episode of Mad Men, while maybe not as entertaining as the previous one, was still excellent, mostly because of the beautifully sustained theme of lost or recaptured youth and adolescence. Early on we see Betty’s father recovering from a stroke, seemingly senile and prone to confusion. He mistakes Betty for his first wife, which upsets her enough to drive her into Don’s arms, as she humps him on the floor like teenagers trying to elude their parents.


Her father, now trapped in his own adolescent state, threatens Don and makes a pass at his own daughter, which is surely the most shocking moment of the episode, if not the season, and beautifully played by everyone. This distresses Betty further, and she seeks solace in the arms of her old nanny.


Upon returning home she kicks Don out again, and then hangs out with that creepy-ass kid from the first season. Using his presence as an excuse to regress even further, she chills out with some Bob Kanigher madness…


…and watches cartoons while sipping on soda like a kid.


Of course, her new friend might only be a kid, but he thinks he’s an adult, visually represented by the t-shirt he wears, covered with Don Draper pheromones (which overpower every woman in the room, obviously). His creepy-ass desire for Betty shocks her back to herself, and she snitches on him to his mother, filled with regret at the loss of her fantasy. It could be worse, of course. She could be made to wear a bonnet.


Good stuff. It also made me realise that the theme of the entire season was youth (and young manhood) all along, with the odd dabble in cultural awakenings, which is what the 60s are remembered for. Perhaps there will be more of that in later seasons (I look forward to Don hearing Are You Experienced? for the first time). This year, though, we’ve already seen the introduction of Sterling Cooper’s first youth consultants, Roger trying to recapture his youth by running off with Jane the Scheming Secretary, Freddy peeing his pants, Pete hiding from his adult responsibilities, and Jimmy Barrett being an impulsive brat (though that hides a calculating mind). Though we’re not yet sure what a toll this disconnect will take on any of them, it’s fair to say that it’s not just Don’s infidelity that has made the normally pristine Betty end up looking like this.


All of this childishness throws Don’s behaviour into stark relief. Along with Peggy, he is more responsible and “adult” than almost everyone else on the show; they all think they’re mature but they act like kids. Don is the alpha male (and alpha character) because he observes everyone else in the playpen from a position of behavioral superiority and relentless Draper-esque fury. The irony, of course, is that he never got to have a childhood, and is either angry at those who surround him because he is jealous of them for having that, or because their behaviour is totally alien to him, creating a confusion that fuels his rage. All this time Don is searching for who he really is, but maybe there’s nothing to find.

Mysterious Theme of the Week(s):

While Mad Men brilliantly visualised the infantilisation theme in The Inheritance, Six Month Leave featured a curious motif that I really didn’t get. Many of the main characters started their scenes lying down.


There’s a possibility this had something to do with Marilyn Monroe’s death, referenced at the start to the show…


…which would suggest that the characters are, thematically, being killed by the times they are living in (certainly Joan’s repose is deathly, turning Roger’s office into a tomb).


Also, there was a blood drive subplot, which could be a hint that all of the characters shown lying down are bleeding out, that their souls are grievously wounded.


Or they’re just lazy.


Best of them was Betty’s faceplant.


Oh Betty, if only I could send some Prozac back in time for you!

TV Return of the Week:

So great to see Francis Capra on TV again, after illness made his appearances on Veronica Mars sporadic.


He did a great job on that show, mixing youthful cockiness, insecurity, and machismo. Hopefully he’ll get a chance to do the same on Heroes.



::sigh:: Never mind.

TV Return of the Week(s) That Didn’t Involve Getting Killed Like A Totally Lame Punkass Bitch:

Xander Berkeley, a character actor I’m immensely fond of, appeared in The Mentalist as a folksy cop who helps our team track down the Redhead Killer, as well as becoming a suspect towards the end. Here he is being a big red herring while talking to Amanda Righetti, formerly Hailey Nichol on The O.C.


If this had been CSI, the killer would have been Berkeley, as the guest star is always the killer. CSI might be the superior show, but it does keep making that mistake. Ten points to The Mentalist, but if it really wants to totally win me over, it can come up with some complicated way to make Berkeley a regular. Automatic 10,000-point George Mason bonus.

Runner-Up:

Look! It’s Sara Sidle, come back to Las Vegas to attend Warrick’s funeral!


I see Jorja Fox is rocking the late-80s Ally Sheedy look. Shame it doesn’t suit her, because otherwise my late-80s smitten-adolescent self would heartily approve.

Beautiful Visual of the Week(s):

Ned bringing hundreds of bees back to life with the help of Chuck was the most memorable visual of the last couple of weeks.


I can imagine that the ladies who love Lee Pace (LL Lee P) would also agree.

Clever Visual of the Week(s):

House guest star Breckin Meyer, playing a crappy artist, is exhibiting symptoms of visual agnosia, which means his perception is distorted though he doesn’t realize it, leading to a clever cold open featuring a hideous portrait that he sees as normal. Later in the episode he is visited by two strange doctors…


…but they are actually Taub and Thirteen, their identities obscured by his ailment.


It’s not much to rave about, but in a mostly underwhelming episode, I was taking what I could get.

Ridiculous Visual of the Week(s):

Was it the sight of supervillain Knox activating his super strength by sniffing very hard?


Or unpowered Daphne being revealed to have a flappy-arms dash that does not scream Wally West so much as Dean and Hank Venture’s various “Super Run Away!” moments?


Maybe it was the moment it was revealed she was running at superspeed in high heels.


Could it be the pirouetting Wall Street traders flying off in a scene that would otherwise have been supercool (a New York populated by flying people and speedsters)?


Or the ludicrous Men in Black stylings of Agent Glasses and Agent Sylar?


How about Suresh the Super Hoodie scuttling around his future lab like a verbose Phantom of the Opera?


Or maybe it was domesticated Sylar (sorry, Gabriel) hanging out with some kid named Noah and Mr. Fucking Muggles, who is apparently immortal?


Perhaps it’s the future of fashion, which, to the horror of designers everywhere, appears to be lots of black…


…with black dyed hair a la Al Pacino…


…or,if that’s not an option, the Young Republican look (thanks to Heroes semi-fan Diane Court for that observation).


Surely the strongest contender has to be Matt following his animal totem, a turtle (which seems to at least be intentionally funny, and an obvious way to keep him out of the way for a week or so).


I think by now you get my point.

Psyche-Tearing Visual of the Week(s):

It’s either the removal of a drug-filled bezoar from Breckin Meyer’s stomach…


…Meyer’s grotesque swelling caused by anaphylactic shock…


…or this nightmarish image from Pushing Daisies, as a bee-coated assassin menaces Chuck.


A nice reverse of the final scenes of The Wicker Man, where, as everyone knows, bees will go for THE EYES! NO, NOT THE BEES! MY EYES!!!

And yes, there is still more to come (and I will happily admit I’m milking this to make it look like I’m posting more).