Terminator: To the Lighthouse

When this episode started, I thought the A-plot with Sarah, John, and Charlie was going to be more of the same, tired trend of fairly understated material. Part way through the episode, when Sarah was watching John sleep and remembering “fun times” in the jungle, I actually started channeling Dark Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and thought, “Bored now.” Fortunately, things picked up considerably when we learned the truth about Sarah’s tumor and all hell broke loose in Connor land. Not really a good turn of event for the characters (especially poor Charlie), but a great turn around for the episode as a whole.

Goodbye, Andy Hallett

Andy Hallett, who played Lorne on Angel for four years of its five year run, died last night of heart failure. He was only thirty-three years old.

Dollhouse: Echoes

Topher: "You haven't seen my drawer of inappropriate starches."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Naked Time," "Band Candy," character development 101.

Supernatural: It's a Terrible Life

Zachariah: "You get to change things. Save people, maybe even the world. All the while you drive a classic car and fornicate with women. This isn't a curse. It's a gift."

Zachariah left out the most important thing: that Dean does all this with his brother, whom he loves more than anyone else on earth.

Smallville: Hex

Lois: "One year closer to the sweet release of death."
Chloe: "How wonderfully morbid."

Watchtower, huh? Chloe is the big Justice League space station?

Lost: He's Our You

Sawyer: "How are you doing?"
Sayid: "A twelve-year-old Ben Linus brought me a chicken salad sandwich. How do you think I'm doing?"

Son of a gun. They just did the classic time travel question: if you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it? For Sayid, the answer was, well, yes.

Heroes: Cold Snap

Ando: "You be cold daddy. I'll be warm mommy."

Much, much better. I enjoyed this episode more than I've enjoyed a Heroes episode in a long time.

Terminator: Today is the Day, Part 2

I wasn’t real jazzed by this two-parter. Despite some intriguing moments, it was much more low key than I would have expected or wanted at this point in the season. I found the second part particularly underwhelming. It seems strange to say that for an episode that featured a liquid metal terminator, a break room riot, several key confrontations, and the likely death of a major character at the hands of another. And yet, in the end, I was left feeling rather ho hum about the whole thing.

Chuck: Chuck versus the Predator

The General: “We are in the midst of a secret war with Fulcrum, and I believe that the outcome of this fight will rest squarely on your shoulders.”
Casey: “Argh.”

Chuck is still plotting his escape (and how), but it’s looking more and more like the General won’t let him out of the spy game. His attempts to track down Orion were successful enough for Orion to “come out of the cold,” with rather troubling results.

And on the BuyMore front, it’s war.

Dollhouse: Man on the Street

Man on the street: "Everyone's got their fantasies, right? A guy wants to know what it's like, you know, to be with another man. Just once, nothing queeny, two guys checking it out, and then the other one forgets. That could be sweet for some guys."

Echo and Paul had a "cute meet" and beat each other up. How very Buffy and Angel.

Supernatural: On the Head of a Pin

Castiel: "I know our fate rests with you."
Dean: "Well, then you guys are screwed."

Three, count them, three major revelations. So to speak.

Smallville: Turbulence

Chloe: "Jimmy and I made it out of the dark forest and from now on, it's going to be one long happily ever after."

Battlestar Galactica: Daybreak, Part 2

Adama: "What do you hear, Starbuck?"
Starbuck: "Nothing but the rain."

This finale was a masterpiece. From darkness, to light, to oblivion. I wish I felt better about it.

Fringe: The Equation

Stretch... knuckle-crack... exhalation. Fringe has been on hiatus for a while (it returns April 7th), so now seemed a good enough time as any to wrap up a few of those episodes I didn’t get a chance to review at the beginning of the season. But don’t worry if you’re catching up on back episodes—I’m keepin’ it spoiler-clean for those that follow.

Lost: Namaste

Jack: "What do you think?"
Kate: "I think we should listen to Sawyer."
Hurley: "I vote for not camping."

This episode felt like part two of "LaFleur." It was a "getting us from there to here" type of episode. Nothing wrong with that. It was still fun to watch.

Terminator: Today is the Day, Part 1

I often find it difficult to rate the first part of a two-part episode. Typically, the first part is stuffed with set-up material for the next part of the story, leaving the real “page-turning” action for the next episode. As a result, Part One can sometimes feel somewhat dull. Or at the very least, it can feel so incomplete that it is hard to judge on its own merits. I thought this episode did an able job of following up on last week’s events, and started some interesting new threads with Jessie, but it wasn’t nearly as compelling as ‘Ourselves Alone.’

Kings: Premiere

Kings is a new, high-budget show on NBC about a superpower (Gilboa) led by a king (Silas) who is assisted by a young farm boy (David). It’s full of biblical allusions, and is something of an allegory for modern America…well, no. It’s set in a place that’s basically the same as modern America, but this alterna-verse isn’t really saying anything groundbreaking about, y’know, the state of our nation.

And what better way to deconstruct a weird allegory than to offer a play-by-play? In the spirit of “if it’s new, I’ll review it,” I offer you two solid hours of my thoughts on this compelling show. With commercial breaks.

8:00 Okay, we’ve got a farm boy named David and a…

8:01 My goodness, a king! And it’s a king who likes God (and is liked back).

8:02 The king appears to be a good father: “You won’t be warm enough” is classic Parent Talk.

8:03 This America-imitation country is called Gilboa, and its new capital is Shiloh. Gilboa sounds Portuguese (if there’s a biblical analogue, I’m not catching it), which is interesting—it hints at a possible re-writing of the history of conquest in the New World. In other words: Take that, Spain and England!

8:05 My attention is drifting. Time to Google. According to Wikipedia, Gilboa is the mountain range where Saul battled the Philistines. In other words: I’m sorry, Spain and England. You may have your colonialism back.

8:06 Wow, in this imaginary land, touching people you’ve never met on this face is evidently a-okay. God bless real America.

8:08 Gath is Canada. It’s pronounced “gaaath,” like it’s being uttered by Robert Forester (Peter and Nathan’s dad on Heroes). It’s also an allusion to the home of Goliath, whom David slew. Here, a Goliath is a tank. And I think our farm boy might be up to something.

8:13 Is this show actually about how duct tape can save the world? Because I’m a fan of that premise.

8:16 David is rescuing the king’s son Jack. And David defeated the Goliath.

8:25 Wow, look at all those spoons.

8:26 I should email Billie and tell her how much I like the new banner on the home page.

8:27 Jack the Prince is not-so-much a prince. More of a spoiled brat. The LA Times review compared him to Chuck Bass, and I really can’t top that.

8:30 King Silas is quite the tyrant. He disregards his daughter’s petition and feels like he owes nothing to no one, as John Wayne surely said once. Will David help him learn something about himself?

8:37 Interesting…we got some back-story on this Nation of Allegory. There was a unification war less than a generation ago, and army service is not compulsory. If this series lasts a season, I’ll wonder if we’ll get a flashback episode.

8:38 David looks like he’s a fan of the king, but we know from the opening that he puts work and duty (repairing that guy’s car) ahead of admiration and star-gazing. Since that guy is the Reverend, this could be useful for David, who of course wouldn’t think of it as pragmatically “useful”—the good guys are never that plotting.

8:42 Leonard Cohen was right. David does know the secret chord that pleased the Lord. Well, the Lord’s daughter.

8:52 Commercials? I shall defeat you, Mammon of capitalism, by catching up on my Bible reading. The David and Saul story, which is pretty long by Bible standards, looks like it will indeed make for good TV. Jealousy, lust, dancing…and something going on between Jonathan (who is Prince Jack, right?) and David. The story starts at I Samuel 17, but beware of spoilers!

8:54 Ian McShane does chew the scenery, doesn’t he? Every thing he says is a declamation, even in the family kitchen. This drove me crazy about Deadwood, too.

8:59 David now has the most important position in the military. Homeboy hero made good! His role is mostly that of a figurehead, of course—he’s just supposed to read what’s on the teleprompter.

9:00 Or maybe he’s supposed to go off-script and answer in a way that, unintentionally on his part, makes the royal family look good. Sneaky. Don’t those royals know that corrupting the innocents always just gives them the ammunition they need to eventually topple those in power and usher in a glorious paradise of donuts and puppies?

9:05 David’s brother is potentially in trouble, but Gath is offering a peace treaty. I imagine any mid-season replacement has both a thirteen-episode plan and a five-year-or-so plan. Where’s this show headed? Are we supposed to hope for the end of monarchy, that evil beast so inimical to quality of life and reserved for such backwards places as Norway? Is this going to be a show about revolution?...

(9:10 Well, it’s certainly going to be a show about David and Silas’s daughter.)

9:11 …Revolution, or the actual horrors of war, seem a bit too messy for this show. It’s so glossy, and focused so specifically on the royals, that a revolution would feel distant—assuming, of course, that this tone and premise stay constant.

9:12 Is Jack gay? His dad certainly seems offended by his homosociality, if not his homosexuality. The role of young princes and kings with too many male friends who have too much fun is pretty interesting. Edward II died a brutal death. Richard II was deposed and killed. Yes, my mind wanders.

9:17 The proclamations are written in pseudo-Shakespearean archaisms on a PDA. Why?

9:18 CrossGen, which stands for the entire military-industrial complex, has a stake in war with Gath, and that evil CrossGen guy has just bribed King Silas into continuing the war for the sake of a war economy.

In an essay on the mode of allegory, Erich Auerbach notes that true allegories are always a bit unsatisfying: the story that stands for something else is filled with irrelevancies—his example is of the knight Yvain who, while on a journey, turns left. Left has no relevance for the reader. It doesn’t refer to any absolute direction the reader could relate to, like north. It’s just in there to make the point that Yvain isn’t on the right path.

This CrossGen thing feels the same way—a bloated allegory of the modern American dependence on the manufacturers of war. But it’s not an allegory that tells us anything new: the symbolism is just describing what we already know, and not very well.

9:27: “We are king, and we do what seems right in mine eye.” Just because it sounds old, doesn’t mean it’s poetic. It just means it’s derivative and not innovative.

9:29 The Reverend is getting hot under the collar. I wonder if this is a Christian society. The obvious answer is yes, but no one’s mentioned anything particularly Christian, and there haven’t been any crosses. It would be kinda cool to see them invent a new religion to go along with their imaginary country of Gilboa.

9:34 David is surrendering. That’s pretty gutsy, and a damn interesting twist. I thought he was going to bring King Silas the foreskins of the Philistines.

9:36 Shakespeare, great guy that he is, has bequeathed us a horrible legacy: generation upon generation of overwrought actor has convinced us that the height of art—grand art that describes the human condition in epic strokes—is composed of shouting, declarations, and heroic last stands. This can sometimes be true, but isn’t there something at least a little heroic in the casual, non-self-aggrandizing gesture? Great art doesn’t have to be stiff.

9:52 Shiloh is a bit more than a capital city, isn’t it? It’s really the metropole, as though the rest of Gilboa is just the provinces. Is Gilboa really a superpower? Or is it a much smaller country than the US?

9:55 Help! I’m being attacked by butterflies!

Battlestar Galactica: Daybreak, Part 1

Anders: "Find the perfect world. The end of Kara Thrace. End of line."

I swear, I honestly didn't think the end was getting to me. But when Roslin, barely able to walk, crossed that red line, I started to cry. All of the characters I care about are planning to take a disintegrating ship on a suicide mission. If Ron Moore stays true to form, there could be a Shakespearean bloodbath.

Dollhouse: True Believer

Senator Boxbaum: "Your active will be perfectly safe."
DeWitt: "In a fanatical religious cult?"

Again, a tired, overused plot: undercover with a religious cult. And again with the twist.

Supernatural: Death Takes a Holiday

Dean: "You and me, we're like the poster boys of the unnatural order. All we do is ditch death."

We had a cool story about reapers, Dean and Sam got to be invisible, there was brotherly conflict as well as a return to the "angel-demon dance-off." Add in the tragic death of a continuing character, and what more could a Supernatural fan ask for?

Watchmen: Who Watches the Watchmen?

Dan Dreiberg: "But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream?"
The Comedian: "It came true. You're looking at it."

Watchmen isn't what you'd call a "child friendly" superhero movie. Malin Akerman (who plays Silk Spectre II) said in an interview that the film belongs in a genre of its own. There's probably some truth to that. If superheroes did exist (and apologies to those of you who think they do), then this is probably what they'd be like: horrendously flawed, disturbed individuals, desperately trying to save the world, but not always doing the right thing.

Smallville: Infamous

Lois: "How could someone with x-ray vision be so blind?"

Really good episode. I loved it. And I haven't said that about a Smallville episode in a long time. It was like the writers were apologizing for forcing that Clark-Lana craptasm from the past on us. I didn't even mind the inevitable "Clark tells the world so you know they'll take it back in the end" re-set button.

Terminator: Ourselves Alone

This was a very intense episode, filled with dread and foreboding. A sense of doom hung over every quiet moment, slowly and steadily building towards Riley’s death. I could feel it coming the whole time, it was just a question of who would do it.

Heroes: Shades of Gray

Nathan: "I have been helping you out all along. You and everyone else."
Tracy: "And doing a fabulous job of it."

Way predictable. I knew every single plot twist ahead of time. But at least it was fun to watch.

Chuck: Chuck versus the Lethal Weapon

“We’re dead. Bartowski’s got a gun.”

Agent Cole Barker has gone back to the UK, and Agent Chuck Bartowski is stuck in Burbank. Cole’s arrival and action in LA did something to Chuck, who just a few episodes ago was all gung-ho for the spy games. But realizing (however falsely) that Sarah wasn’t into him has made him hate the Intersect—he even referred to it as a nightmare.

Castle: Flowers for Your Grave (Premiere)

Dear Nathan Fillion,

You must know how wonderful you are. You are handsome, kindly, handsome, Canadian in that way that gives your accent a subtle hint of the South, handsome, a great singer, and—O, Captain! My Captain!—look great in tight pants.

Dollhouse: Gray Hour

Echo: "I'm not broken."
Boyd: "No, you're not."

Again, a classic (or depending on your viewpoint, overdone) plot, the bank heist gone wrong. And again, Echo transcended her programming. For me, the best part was how Echo connected with the injured guy, who got himself some instant karma for his kindness toward her when she escaped and took him along with her.

Battlestar Galactica: Islanded in a Stream of Stars

Tigh: "She was a grand old lady."
Adama: "The grandest."

It's time to say goodbye to this series, and it has started with the Galactica herself. It had to happen, but it just feels awful. It feels like the end. Maybe because it is.

Lost: LaFleur

Faraday: "It doesn't matter what we do. Whatever happened, happened."
Sawyer: "Thanks anyway, Plato."

I got a huge charge out of this episode. It was surprising. Fun. Sort of delicious. Complicated. Also confusing. But hey, way fun. Maybe I was just ready for a Sawyer episode after the doom and gloom and religious symbolism of the last episode. Or maybe I just like Sawyer better than Locke. Probably both.

Chuck: Chuck versus the Beefcake

“Come with me if you want to live.”

Or, as Andre 3000 has it: when arrows don’t penetrate, Cupid packs a pistol.

This episode had all the same component parts of the average Chuck episode, but this time the spy stuff, the love stuff, and the BuyMore stuff all gelled nicely into coherent goodness, like a Jell-O mold with a great soundtrack.

Heroes: Exposed

Claire: "You were incredible."
Sandra: "It's nice to know I still have a few tricks up my sleeve."

I've been so discouraged and disappointed with Heroes lately that I was surprised that I didn't hate this one. But I didn't love it. And the ending, with Matt and the dynamite, made me sigh again. So Matt is going to be forced to blow up Washington? I'm really tired now.

Dollhouse: Stage Fright

Echo: "Hey, you wanted to die. This would be a 'careful what you wish for' moment."

Eliza Dushku can sing. Maybe she'll be available for part two of Dr. Horrible, when Joss Whedon gets around to it.

Terminator: Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep

This is the kind of episode that keeps you guessing the first time through, and provides some interesting insights on a second viewing. On initial watch, I spent the whole episode trying to figure out which scenario was reality and which was the dream. Both scenarios had elements that made them seem real, but each also had elements that made them seem like they could be in Sarah’s head. Right up until the very end, I thought we’d learn the whole episode was in her head and that something else entirely was going on.

Battlestar Galactica: Someone to Watch Over Me

Piano Guy: "Just because you don't know your direction doesn't mean you don't have one."

Seems like forever since we had an episode about Starbuck. This was a really good one. And it may very well have given us one of the Big Answers.