Lost: The Package

Keamy: "I'm sorry. Some people just aren't meant to be together."

I wasn't sure what to think about this one. It was like they threw all of the continuing Sun/Jin plotlines at us in pieces instead of as a whole. And -- disappointment -- I thought Sun and Jin would finally be reunited, but nooooo. And how come the cliffhanger? It's the final season! We shouldn't be getting cliffhangers in the final season, she said indignantly.

Chuck: Chuck versus the American Hero

“Love is a battlefield.”

Here’s a couple of things you might need to know, or maybe just forgot: Chuck originally got at 13-episode order, and it wasn’t extended to 19 until all 13 of those episodes were in some stage of production. So tonight’s episode was originally the lead up to the Season Three finale, and next week’s was the original Season Three finale. The remaining six episodes (numbers 14-19) will be more like Season Three and a Half. There’s more info, with some minor spoilers, here.


This was really an episode in two parts: the first, the wacky buddy comedy; the second, the more serious layout of the threads that will be tied up and snipped away next week. The first half—Casey, Awesome, Morgan, and Chuck teaming up to get the girl, for a variety of self-interested motives—was almost hilarious, but seemed to be trying a bit to hard. Not least among the jokes was the way that very little effort was made to explain, for instance, Casey’s presence in Chuck’s apartment, or Morgan’s sudden desire to go to Rome, or how Ellie just got a sabbatical from her brand-new fellowship. Who needs reasons, when you’ve got a bromantic comedy to play with?

The humor of our boys playing heroes was undeniable, but the gravitas of the situations came crashing in at the moment when Shaw told Awesome about the gun. The Ring is hardcore—we saw them kill a harmless functionary, so we know they’re serious. Our second clue? The presence of Mark Sheppard. I know someone, somewhere, in our comments section mentioned this as a requirement for all genre shows (Mark Greig, was it you?). Chuck’s playing with the big boys now: Cylons and River Tam and the Winchester boys, to be specific.

After that, a lot of stuff happened, most of which is designed to lead up to next week’s episode. Shaw offers to sacrifice himself to be an American Hero (well, really to avenge his wife’s death: another instance of love trumping patriotism, which every character on this show seems to go through). Jeffster unwittingly saves the day. Chuck rides a soda machine into an underworld lair. Shaw finds out that Sarah killed his wife during her own Red Test, which we saw glimpses of last week. Chuck saves Shaw, who then tricks Sarah into coming with him to the desert, where only bad things can happen. Somewhere in there, Chuck and Sarah make plans to leave it all behind at Union Station, in a moment of poetic resonance with the train-station misadventure in Prague at the beginning of the season. And Chuck did a pretty decent job of acting like a real spy, even if he was forced to resort to some Jeffster-outsourcing. Being a good leader is all about delegation, though.

It’s hard to rate, or even assess, most of this stuff, because there’s no closure until next week. A few of the plots feel recycled: not just the Bubble of Handsomeness joke, or the underpass scene, or the "we can't show you a preview for next week" teaser, but the air-strike (remember Barstow, last year?), needing to save a team member in peril, Chuck and Sarah reaching a climatic moment but then being torn apart.

As this mini-season winds to a close, we’ve got a few questions: Will Casey be a spy again? Will Chuck and Sarah make it? Was Sarah set up by the Ring for her Red Test, or was Shaw's wife really a bad spy? Will Shaw die, or just be written out? Will Ellie and Awesome ever make it out of Burbank? Will Chuck quit his job at the BuyMore now that he’s a real spy? What does he want of the spy life, anyway?

Bytes:

• Chuck: “Burbank. Bob Hope Airport, to be exact.” This is even funnier if you’ve been to the Burbank airport, which is fabulously tiny and outdated. Some of the baggage claims are outside.

• Morgan: “I don’t think you’ll be able to buy her back, if that makes any sense.”

• Morgan: “Is that what they teach you in the Marine Corps? Roll over and die?”

• Jeff: “Guy knows how to fill out a pair of slacks, if you know what I mean.”

• Morgan: “That guy can fill out a pair of slacks. He’s a real stallion.”

• Morgan: “Take a look at yourself. It’s a freakish bubble of handsome-ness.” They stole this joke from the Jon Hamm episodes of 30 Rock, but it’s still funny.

• Casey: “Kid’s just not wired that way. Not like us.” They’ve been making quite a bit of Sarah’s killer instincts lately. Is it just to counterpoint Chuck’s own naiveté?



And Pieces:

• I am not a fan of the return of the mini-dress, even on super-pretty women.

• Shaw and Awesome crashing through the window. They both wiped their lips, like they’d accidentally kissed. Slash fiction-writers, go wild!

• The soda-machine elevator. Very Get Smart, with more wind resistance.

• Mark Sheppard is so cool.

• That underpass reminded me of: The FlashForward premiere, a scene from The Italian Job (Marky Mark version), and something else. Can anyone help me?

• Casey told Sarah about Chuck’s Red test. Sweet Casey, you can be my spy any day.

• Chuck is willing to leave behind the spy life for Sarah. Quite a lot has changed since the season premiere, although I’m still not sure how.

• Shaw told Chuck to take care of Sarah. This lends a lot of credence to Dimitri’s theories about Sarah-as-trophy.

I don’t know how many Pat Benatars to give this episode, and I’m going to wait until next week to see what happens.

All of my Chuck reviews are archived here.
(Season Three, Episode Twelve)

Supernatural: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

Bobby: "She was the love of my life. How many times do I gotta kill her?"

Poor Bobby. That was freaking heartbreaking.

FlashForward: Blowback

“Irrational, erratic, and frequently stupid.”

Christ on a cheese platter, this was awful. I actually laughed out loud at some of the awfulness—loud enough to wake up the cat (sorry, boo). We had FlashBacks. ShoutingMatches. MovingBoxes. TrustIssues. And all under a new ShowRunner with a penchant for awkward indie music that seems to have been tacked-on at the last minute, without regard for the editing.

The Aaron/Tracy Plot:

Poor Aaron. Poor Brian F. O’Byrne. The writers don’t seem to trust this actor to actually portray the major human emotions of grief and love: instead, they’re forced to rely on physical expressions of those emotions: a fight with a jail guard, a drinking binge. That’s too bad, as I get this sense that O’Bryne might be a decent actor if the writers just let him, y’know, emote. He is, though, a fairly stupid guy. Even I saw Mike as a Jericho plant, but Aaron fell for it right away. Too bad that he raised his daughter to be equally dull: how did she not hear two men, a dolly, and a giant moving box sneak their way into the house?

It was the suspenseful shot of the boiling pot of water that did me in. I usually watch episodes once, then again to take notes for the review. But the shot of the boiling water…I stopped watching, grabbed the laptop, and started typing as the craziness continued on-screen.

I’m fairly ambivalent about Tracy. She and her dad fight, then she makes him dinner. They fight, then they love each other. I can’t understand how all of their fights feel so momentous if their relationship is so very strong. I can’t understand why the writers are comfortable relying on this weird vision of alcoholism to portray the angst of the relationship. This, my dear readers, is a problem of characterization, direction, and narrative coherence.


The Demitri/Gabrielle Union Plot:

There is no way—absolutely no way—that the Freedom of Information Act applies to classified documents pertaining to an on-going investigation, right? I’m usually fairly forgiving of leaps of logic, but this one really irked me. Especially as Gabrielle Union’s (does her character have a name?) goals were extremely unclear. Why does she think she’ll be better at this than a trained investigator? Is this just a ploy to get Gabrielle Union more involved in the plot?

On the other hand, maybe it is just Gabrielle playing every card she has to try to save her fiancé. She goes litigious; Aaron goes Charles Bronson. We all have ways of coping.

The Mark/Lloyd Plot:

All of the plotlines were interlaced, despite appearing to take place over several days (Aaron and Tracy) and several hours (Mark/Lloyd). The goal of that interlacing is to increase our interest by breaking up the stories at suspenseful moments (like suspenseful pots of water). In other words, the goal of that interlacing is to hide the fact that this episode sucked.

Interesting tidbit: the drive from Mark’s office to his house would take an hour in completely ideal traffic conditions (3am-on-Christmas-morning ideal). So Lloyd, bright boy that he is, would have realized that he was headed to Simi Valley well before walking into Mark’s home. All of which, by the way, makes his question of “What are we doing here?” absurd. He would have asked in the car. That the writers didn't realize this somehow cemented my conviction that this was an episode written by well-trained gerbils. They know what they're supposed to be doing (creating suspense, putting complex characters in difficult situations) but they're distracted by the pellets and wheel in their cages.

Even more out-there is the idea that Lloyd, who is either a Canadian or British national, would go along with Mark’s demands on his time. Yes, I know that they were supposed to go from enemies to grudging friends--but that's a need on the part of the plot, not the characters. Lloyd has, until now, seemed smarter than this: getting involved with Mark does nothing for him. A bigger question: does Lloyd remember what the equation was?

D. Gibbons—or Frost, whatever—is a thief. Lloyd and Simon both know him. Our scientists are getting involved in the investigation. Maybe they could just be the investigation? With Demitri and Janis as sidekicks?

The Janis/Baby Plot:

Janis wants this baby—the FlashForward baby. I sort of get that: she felt pregnant, she wants that feeling, and she associates the joy of pregnancy with one particular fetus. It makes a strange sort of sense, because it’s just nonsensical enough to feel human. Demitri and Janis are so great together, but the beauty of their scene was almost ruined by Janis’s horrible line about fighting for the future.

So, What Now?

I have an amazing ability to suspend disbelief. I firmly believe in the existence of Narnia, vampires, and a Mafia-CIA conspiracy to kill Kennedy. But, with the half-hearted exception of Janis, every single storyline in this episode felt completely absurd—a bunch of mini-cliffhangers designed to keep us watching. This wasn't art, or even decent storytelling. It was bait. It was a cheat. It was simply bad. I can’t think of anything else to say.

I told you, months ago, to keep watching FlashForward. Luckily, very few of you listened to me. For those few that did, I am so sorry. I was wrong.

Flashes:

• How does a boiling pot of water catch on fire?

• Lloyd had the good grace to look embarrassed about having used lipstick to write an equation on a mirror like a cliché mad scientist. I buy this actor as smart, which is probably why I like him so much.

• I don’t think that Joseph Fiennes really knew what ‘adamant’ meant.

• The ‘Mirror Test’ doesn’t sound like physics to me. It sounds like Lacan for pets.

• James Erskin’s house was the set used for Shirley Manson’s house in one of the last episodes of Terminator: TSCC. Weird.

• A guy who works for the electric company going “off the grid” is funny.

• My review of next week’s episode (because I’m going to finish the season, even if it kills me) will be late. I have an exciting trip to Somalia planned—it’s a crow-attrition thing—and won’t be back until April 5th or 6th.



Zero out of four empty evidence lockers.

All of my FlashForward reviews are archived here.
(Season One, Episode 13 if we count last week as two episodes, which I think we should.)

Lost: Ab Aeterno

Hurley: "Your wife sent me."

Is anyone else getting a "my favorite sci-fi show is turning religious" Battlestar vibe?

Chuck: Chuck versus the Final Exam

“No, Chuck. Just you.”

How far is too far? At what point does patriotism become murder? Can a good man do bad things, if he does them for the right reason? Just when Casey is at his lowest point, reduced to exorcising his grumpy demons by threatening Jeffster, Chuck reaches the potential acme of his nascent spy career, and is forced to make a difficult choice.

Casey has sacrificed everything: first for his country, then for his past love and the daughter who doesn’t know him. He’s doing the best he can to defend the BuyMore from the threat of Nerf-wielding slackers—he hates it, but he does it. He’s a man of duty, which is how he defines being a man of honor. And he learned a few touching lessons from Big Mike, too.

Chuck, on the other hand, may be in the spy game for the wrong reason. He’s paid lip service to the concept of patriotism, but he hasn’t really convinced me that he actually cares. It seems like the allure of being a spy is also the allure of the perks: specifically, the possibility of finally getting together with Sarah, and not lying (well, less lying) to his family and friends. Chuck’s motives are murky even to him, I think—but when faced with his own personal Rubicon, he took the high road instead. (That metaphor works quite well, doesn’t it?)

The suspense of this episode wasn’t whether our heroes would discover the McGuffin. It wasn’t whether Chuck would get the girl. It was whether Chuck would kill: the teaser left that ambiguous, and we got the flashback, the lead-up to the moment of truth, and then the full reveal towards the end. I’ve had issues with this structure before in other shows, as it seems like a false creation of suspense: because the story has no definite narrative tension, the creators are forced to manufacture it by dangling a “how do we get to that place?” bait and making us wait to be reeled in.

For all of my narratological acumen, I did forget the most important rule of fiction: Chekov’s Shotgun Law, which dictates that if there’s a shotgun over the mantle in the first act, it must go off by the third. Casey was our sleeper agent this week, and the gun Chuck gave him struck me, at the time, as such a downright kind gift that his surprise entry into the boxcar chase (another topos that is just tired and overused) was a surprise.

It shouldn’t have been. For all the guff I give this show for its occasionally scary politics, Casey believes he’s doing the right thing, and he’s willing to sacrifice an awful lot to uphold his ideals, which is more than I do—that’s for sure. He killed the mole because it needed to be done, even though he gets nothing, and might lose what little he has, for that action. Chuck’s not willing to make that kind of sacrifice, because doing so would cause him to sacrifice something else: his inherently good nature. (Casey was the real star of this episode for me.)

And we’re left holding the bag. Chuck is a spy, but he’s a spy under false pretenses. Casey isn’t a spy, officially, but he still has a spy heart of gold. Sarah, meanwhile, is convinced that she has finally lost Chuck, even though his own shiny heart is just as pure as ever—well, maybe a bit tarnished by this new lie, but still gold underneath. Interesting, isn’t it: she’s forced to choose between Shaw, who would have no problem killing the mole, and Chuck, whom she might be rejecting because she thinks he did kill the mole.

I’ve watched some great TV this week: Dexter Season One, the Richard-centric episode of Lost, even the Dominic Monaghan sections of last week’s FlashForward, all of which had me riveted to the couch. (Literally—it was so painful. Note to self: I am not made of denim.) I also read a book that had a lot of promise but didn’t quite deliver: James Ellroy’s Blood on the Moon. Reading Blood on the Moon, I realized what my problem with Chuck has been for this season, because it’s the same problem that I had with Ellroy’s novel: both of them are telling interesting stories, but they’re struggling with not showing the seams of how everything fits together. If I’m reading a book for the first time, and aware of how a metaphor is failing or how a characterization seems hackneyed, then I lose the pleasure of losing myself, even if the story itself has the potential to be compelling. I’ve had the same problem with Chuck. Because there have been questions about consistency of character, I’ve been distracted by the good stuff as I get more preoccupied with the technique of it all: the score, the editing, the characterization, the structure.

Ellroy’s early novels feel…well, immature. His later books works out the kinks, and he’s more willing to let a metaphor hit you once and then retreat—no need to play “Badger in the Bag” with the reader. (If you don’t get that reference, check out the Mabinogi.) Chuck, on the other hand, is struggling not with immaturity but with growing pains. How to make this show grow up without losing its childlike innocence? How to keep our interest in these developing characters, without losing what we love? As this chapter of Chuck winds to a close, and if we do get a fourth season, I’m going to try to stay involved in the story and stop worrying about technique. Sometimes—ideally—a show just forces me to do that, as Dexter and this week’s Lost did. Sometimes I have to try to regain my viewing innocence, and start enjoying instead of evaluating. I’m working on it.

Bytes:

• Casey: “Together, you constitute a clear and present danger.”

• Chuck: “Without a license to kill, you are a menace to society.”

• Casey: “At the moment, I don’t have a better plan.”

• Big Mike: “I need to know that you can be strong like the reed, and not break like the Kit-Kat.”

• Chuck: “I can’t really picture what Shaw does for fun.” Well, Chuck, start with a cage…

• Chuck: “I am a naked spy.”

• Casey: “It was a thoughtful felony.”

• Casey: “You’re not a killer, Chuck.”
Chuck: “Thanks.”

And Pieces:

• The exploding laptop. Both times.

• Union Station is pretty. I’ve never been there.

• Why doesn’t the Intersect allow Chuck to flash on Russian language translations?

• Chuck is—don’t hate me—not a very good spy. He kept radio-ing in to Shaw for help, and doesn’t really seem to be the motivated self-starter that I imagine the CIA is looking for. And the distractions on the stake out: well, they told us where his real passion is, I guess.

• The Subway product placement was really intense. I didn’t mind too much: the lucrative Subway-sponsorship is one of the main reasons that Chuck got this third season, and I appreciate that a sandwich shop is doing what it can to support the arts in these difficult times.

• They did the jump-cut, sped-up camera work thing for the fight scene, just like last week. Repetition makes it less effective.

Two and a half out of four Nerfs.

All of my Chuck reviews are archived here.
(Season Three, Episode Eleven)

(Thanks to chucktv.net for the awesome screencap.)

FlashForward: Revelation Zero (Part II)

“For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”

Remember Dominic Monaghan’s Dr. Evil chair-spin in A561984? Remember him staring at a laptop and muttering ‘Annabel’? Well, the writers have figured out what’s going on with his heretofore ambiguous, cheesy, and completely confusing character. He’s a black and white kinda guy: most people, he doesn’t care for. Why should he? He’s a genius. But there are a few that do matter: his sister, his father, maybe even Lloyd.

We finally got some answers about Simon this week, and they’re compelling. His father died a few days before the flashes, killed by distant Uncle Teddy. On the day of the funeral, Uncle Teddy got Simon to go to from Toronto to Detroit, where Simon had the unique and unexpected (for him) experience of being awake during the flashes. Jess, you’ve won the Big Invisible Prize, for guessing that Suspect Zero was Simon back in Episode Three.

Uncle Teddy/Flosso/Ricky Jay has something on Simon: it seems like he got him wrapped up in something when Simon was just a kiddo, and refuses to let go. Of course, he’s really just a middleman for D. Gibbons, so his death doesn’t mean a lot for the plot, but it does speak to Simon’s moral values, and it ups the ante on everyone finding D. Gibbons at some point.

Simon killed his father’s killer, and he killed the man who orchestrated his sister’s kidnapping. He also killed the man who took his little finger in Part I. He’s hardcore, but I don’t think he’s amoral. He just has a very select group of people who matter to him. And he’s a fan of his pinky.

Lloyd’s one of those people. Simon is haunted by what he’s done—especially his first kill. He’s “confessed” this sin to two people: the stranger on the train (and that’s what strangers on trains are for, after all), and Lloyd. For both of them, he framed it in terms of what he saw, but with Lloyd it means something more, because Lloyd just might be the person he’s closest to, aside from family.

Simon’s family seems split down the middle. On the one side, there’s Uncle Teddy and the dead father who was probably up to something. On the other, there’s the nice religious mom who made an entire ham for dinner, the tall brothers, and the little sister Annabel. Simon has inherited the ruthlessness of his father’s side, but the devotion to family comes from his mom. Part I showed us the messy duality of Mark and Lloyd—Simon’s duality is all internal. How far will he take his revenge?

Simon “never lets anybody push him around.” He gets that from his mom, too. That could be good news, if he chooses to fight for the right side. But right now he’s something of a free agent—a trickster, a coyote. He said “we have to protect ourselves from the effects of another blackout.” Does he care about saving future people? (That is, is he defining “ourselves” as all of humanity?) Or is he talking about the “ourselves” of those people that are close to him? Or was it all just a ruse, because Janis was there?


Flashes:

• Does Mark have his job back? That was quick.

• Lloyd’s all about the evidence. He didn’t trust his source (Mark) about the possibility of another blackout, so he didn’t do anything about it.

• Janis was walking like she’d hurt her back. Did the masked intruders in Lloyd’s house do it?

• Is Simon’s mom Irish? That doesn’t really explain the Manchester. And his adviser, Scottish? Are there no Canadians in Canada? Is that why the Toronto airport looked like it was still running off generators?

• Janis was awesome in this episode. I loved that she just kept popping up, especially with the Shakespeare quote.

• So, my crazy Doc Josie theory? Simon’s adviser was reenacting, in miniature, Henry V’s victory at Agincourt. This battle was decided not just by awesome speechifying, but also by the use of the Welsh archers that Simon mentioned—the French were unprepared for the force of the Welsh longbow. In political terms, this meant that England used the technological force of one of its earliest colonies (Wales) to conquer the “bad guys.” Now, think back to the reason Familia Campos went to Canada: so Simon’s education wouldn’t suffer (weird, but whatever). Simon’s educational victories, in other words, are based on the resources of one of England’s later colonies, Canada. The question is: who are the French? Who might Simon defeat? And who will be lucky enough to qualify as one of his “brothers”? Fun fact: while Simon was watching a baseball game (the Detroit Tigers), the Detroit NFL team is the Lions. The first official coat of arms for an English king (Henry II) was a lion—and Henry V’s arms had two lions. Tantalizing, isn’t it?
Mark could be the French--and this is where the Buick comes in. Buick is owned by GM, which also owns Chevrolet: the American car company named after the French cross used by the crusaders. So Mark, obviously, must be the French, and he must battle the Welsh longbows to save his kingdom from being overrun by a matrilineal excuse for a pretender. Of course, he's also Shakespeare, which makes the whole thing very meta.


Quotes:

• Janis: “Dude, you live in a hotel.”

• Simon: “Country is such a loose term. It’s Canada.”

• Simon: “Police types. All about power and intimidation. I could have done this with my trousers on, you know.” Exactly what I was thinking. Only I was thinking “pants” instead of “trousers.”

Four out of four cans of sardines for Samantha.

All of my FlashForward reviews are archived here.

FlashForward: Revelation Zero (Part I)

“How did you find us?”
“You called me.”

Lots of answers. Lots of questions. A little bit of ret-conning. A few missteps. And the best use of a take-out menu I’ve ever seen. FlashForward’s return lived up to my expectations by doing something I didn’t expect: focusing on the two most interesting (and thus far, sidelined) characters: Lloyd Simcoe and Simon Campos. Simon Campos, you’ll be interested to learn, is played by some actor named Dominic Monaghan. Seems like he might be one to watch.


Even though “Revelation Zero” is technically one two-hour episode, I’m breaking the review into two parts, because we covered a lot of ground, and—Lost-style—the first two-thirds was very Lloyd-centric with a dash of Mark; the rest, Simon-centric. Maybe you see it differently? As Mark-centric for the first part? That’s because you’re not blocking out the boring bits. It’s all about perception and choosing your own fate.

When last we saw Lloyd, he’d been abducted by PseudoParamedics (darn, I’ve used that one before)…When last we saw Lloyd, he’d been abducted by ErsatzEMTs in front of his son. This episode picked up right where the other one left off, with Lloyd chained to a pipe in a burned-out husk of a FastFood Tofurkey joint. Ricky Jay (evil villain) threatens torture, and quickly brings in an Isaac for Lloyd’s Abraham. But Lloyd, whatever his DeadbeatDad faults before the blackout, isn’t willing to sacrifice more lives to save Dominic Monaghan’s little finger, and he plays it as cool as he can while under some extraordinary pressure. It’s just the threats against his son that break him.

The focus on Lloyd also gave us some important glimpses into Simon’s character. He’s been a fairly cheesy evil genius so far, and a lot of the dangled niblets have pointed us in the direction of ConfusionLand. But Lloyd clued us into an important fact about Simon: Lloyd couldn’t imagine Simon killing someone. This felt a bit like ret-conning, as Lloyd and Simon didn’t seem that close or that trusting when we saw them duking it out over five-card stud in “Playing Cards with Coyote.” But I’m okay with the shift: in this episode, I felt like Lloyd and Simon knew each other, and knew each other well. They didn’t need to talk extensively, because they had their own shorthand and their own way of working together. Their scenes in the TofurkyTortureChamber felt honest, and made me like Simon’s character instead of just the actor who plays him. He’s not as much of a condescending jerk with his friends.

Sadly, Mark still isn’t very impressive to me. It’s too bad that his flash is so important to the plot, as his death would not be a great tragedy to anyone but his daughter. (I think I’m becoming an Olivia/Lloyd shipper.) His therapist gave him some sort of drug to help him recall the rest of his flash, and what he recalled helped him save Lloyd and Simon. It also set up a few more “Oh! I remember that from the board!” moments for future episodes. More on that in a sec.

Mark’s short conversation with Olivia wasn’t quite as great as the Lloyd/Simon (or Demitri/Janis) exchanges, but it did set up some character changes for Olivia: she feels like she’s been cold and distant at work, and grumpy at home—she also feels like that’s not really who she is, and that she wants to get back to her true self. We saw a bit of that when she was nice to Nicole, and to Lloyd’s son.

Mark saved the day with his Buick (for a Doc Jensen-level analysis of the significance of the Buick, see Part II). More importantly, he saved it with the take-out menu that Lloyd tried to use as an SOS, with little success. I’m completely enamored by the significance of that take-out menu. To review: Lloyd tries to stick it out the window of the basement, but it blows away. Ricky Jay finds it, and brings it back to him. He sticks it in his pocket. Mark recalls the menu from his recalled memories of the board, and hunts down the location of the basement where Lloyd is held captive. When Lloyd is rescued, he gives the menu to Mark to stick on his board.

Lloyd says, “How did you find us?” And Mark says, “You called me.” Mark is talking about the cell phone call from his flash, but his words mean something else to us: the menu from the flash called out to Mark for aid. The future called out to the past. It’s gorgeously poetic, no matter how many self-consistency issues it brings up. I’ll leave the physics stuff to our highly-paid science consultant, WhyMe.

The Lloyd/Mark exchange is particularly interesting in light of the twinning that’s going on with their characters. A luv-connection with Olivia. Kids of similar age. The thing with the laptop: Olivia hugging Mark as she watched herself hugging Lloyd on-screen. The awful preacher character talked to Nicole about how free will and fate are intertwined, and the characters of Mark (who feels fated to drink) and Lloyd (who is certain of the possibilities of free will, using the scientific evidence of Al Gogh to prove his thesis) are just as intertwined. They’re not FlipSides of the same coin—it’s messier than that. And I like that it’s messier than that.

Flashes:

• I’m not going to talk about the preacher, because I don’t really care. Everything he said was extremely trite. Some of it was so trite as to be unintelligible.

• I am going to talk briefly about Nicole’s mother, mostly because I think Lindsay Crouse is awesome. She played Maggie Walsh in Buffy Season Four, and an equally screwed-up psychologist in David Mamet’s House of Games. Plus, those were great fluffy angel wings. Where does a person get something like that?

• The Significant Object in the credits was the burning Bible. Interesting: the Bible also tells us how the world will end—what the future will be like, in other words. But flashes are more personal, and therefore freak people out more.

• Gotta say it again: John Cho? So very cool. I wish he’d successfully hit the CIA agent.

• Did Bryce call a patient “Mr. Minkowski”? Maybe Fisher Stevens’s consciousness flashed to FlashForward.

• The new possibilities of the board—and the phone call…What do you think? It feels to me like the producers realized they had a convenient loophole, since what we’ve seen of Mark’s flash was so short, and they made use of it as best they could. You can only pull that rabbit out of the hat once, though.

• There were cuts between Olivia singing to Lloyd’s son, and Mark confessing to Aaron. The cuts seem to be a tacit acknowledgement of the extremely boring quality of Mark’s issues, but they also show how Olivia and Mark can be pulled apart: it’s not just his drinking, it might be her attachment to the boy, too.

• There were quite a few moments when the writers seemed to be acknowledging fan questions. It was nice the first few times.

• The music for this episode was darn good.


Quotes:

• Simon: “I know America was founded by Puritans, but is there really not a single beer in this entire place?”

• Simon: “I’d say working for the FBI is going to be much more interesting than academia.”

• Janis: “That’s a big word for such a little man.” Ha! Janis is so cool. I wish she would stop getting injured.

• Ricky Jay: “You may call me Flosso. And I’m the villain.”

• Lloyd: “Clearly you weren’t paying any attention to the FBI agent who killed himself.”

• Mark’s daughter: “You always start with the corners and work in…Start with the corners, Daddy.” I hate precocious advice from adorable children.


Three and a half out of four Tofurkey Soy Cheese Steaks. Cuz I’m deducting points for that preacher.

All of my FlashForward reviews are archived here.
(Season One, Episode Eleven, Part I)

Lost: Recon

Man in Black: "You are the best liar I've ever met."

I am loving these karmic flash sideways so, so much.

Chuck: Chuck versus the Tic-Tac

“It’s Casey.”

But this episode turned out to be pretty awesome, wasn’t it? Oh, wait, you haven’t been participating in the conversation inside my head. It went something like: “Wow, Chuck has been uneven.” “Yeah, right?” “I wonder how they’ll pull off this [finally!] Casey-centric episode.” “Yeah, I’m sort of nervous.” All of my internal dithering aside, though, I loved this week’s edge, although I’m not sure every episode should be this suspenseful or this gloomy. Plus, Robert Patrick? How cool is that?

Last season, Casey risked his own career to save Chuck and Sarah. This season, Chuck and Sarah returned the favor. When Casey got shanghaied into committing treason by a delightfully grumbly Robert Patrick, I thought the plot would end there. Getting an emotional backstory was just happiness gravy. So Casey has loved and lost, but would never actually betray his own country—no surprise there. And he sacrificed everything to do what he thought was important for his country. Twice.

Casey doesn’t have a spy name, like Sarah and “Charles Carmichael.” I guess the idea is that he doesn’t have a “real” life to keep separate from his spy life—his entire identity is being a spy. and his former persona has been gone since 1989. He knows what he has sacrificed, and what he is still sacrificing. He is continuing to sacrifice his relationship with his former fiancée and his daughter because it’s his last link to serving his country, in his eyes, at least.

In Chuck and Sarah news, she said that she worried that he had changed. (Had she changed her mind at some point?) She also told him not to “give up on the things that make [him] great.” Chuck, though, gave up on fear (see below) with ill effects. We got a cliffhanger that hinges of Sarah’s choice this week…what will she decide?

In my obsession with structure news, Chuck answered the question of how to go dark without alienating viewers by going dark, but using Casey as the focal point instead of our cuddly hero. I’m so happy we finally got a Casey story, sad as it was.

But that story had some repercussions. Casey is no longer a spy, although I can’t believe that will last long (right?). And Chuck’s lack of fear—becoming “the Intersect he was always supposed to be”—had some truly lethal consequences. He really seemed to enjoy choking that guy. Is fear the only thing that keeps us moral? Is Chuck’s good-guy nature just a product of being a wimp? Is it his wimpiness that makes him great, like Sarah said? Can’t it just be that he’s a good man?

Bytes:

• Sarah was supposed to meet Shaw in DC? Like, for a date at the Reflecting Pool? Or for CIA stuff?

• The arrow pointing belowground to the secret CIA facility? Adorable.

• Fast-forwarding through 15 levels of security was funny, especially as Sarah’s hair-extension bun got very messy by the bottom level.

• Chuck’s obliviousness as he ratted Casey out was a great contrast to Sarah’s high-alert tension.

• Fitzroy was hilarious. He reminded me of that FBI accountant in one of the later seasons of the X-Files who was basically just a fangirl.

• Every time Awesome and Morgan said “Medicins sans frontieres,” it sounded dubbed. It also sounded like both actors were more comfortable speaking Spanish than French. I know, because that’s about what it sounds like when I try to speak French. Of course, my Spanish sounds Italian. And my Italian? Really just English with a funny accent and lots of hand gestures.

• Those were some hardcore fight scenes, with everything sped up to make it seem more intense. It worked.

…And Pieces:

• Morgan: “The answer is yes. I set the DVR to record the Mork and Mindy marathon.”

• Chuck: “All right, then. Time to save the day.” Splat!

• Casey: “How would you like to be a part of a very important, very secret mission?”
Morgan: “Yeah. Can I get a cool call name, like Condor or Ladyfingers?”

• Chuck: “That someone would have to be desperate, stupid, or just plain willing to do anything to impress him.”

Josie’s Tiny Soapbox:

• Chuck seemed shocked that Casey had been a part of CIA ops in Honduras in the eighties—the era of School of the Americas/CIA-backed death squads throughout Latin America. The thing is, it’s not like we don’t know that the US did terrible things then and there. Is Chuck just now realizing that the US government has done terrible things? Has he not yet realized that he’s working for the same organizations that did those terrible things?

• “They’re moving him to a black site in Thailand outside of US torture jurisdictions.” I don’t think that’s how the Geneva Convention is supposed to work.

Four out of four Cuban cigars.

All of my Chuck reviews are archived here.
(Season Three, Episode Ten)

Lost: Dr. Linus

Arzt: "You know, you really had me fooled with that sweater vest. Linus, you're a real killer."

And the Emmy goes to...

Chuck: Chuck versus the Beard

“You’re a good liar, Chuck, but you’re not that good.”

I know y’all have each and every word of my past reviews memorized, but just in case you’ve forgotten, I said something brilliant in my explication de Chuck at the beginning of the season: “Chuck is right. His emotions screw everything up.” That’s the theme of the season, but what exactly constitutes Chuck’s emotions have lead to the unevenness of the past few episodes, as well as the occasional fan- or Josie-outrage.

When Season Three started, the conflict was between spy-life and love-life. Chuck chose spying (3.01), and the show told us that he chose it to save mankind (3.02). Chuck started to get into the spy life, but we saw (via Awesome), how hard the constant dishonesty could be (3.04). Meanwhile, as Awesome represents Chuck’s innocent side, Shaw represents the hardened spy (3.05) that Chuck is turning into (3.06). Then he meets a pretty girl on a plane (3.06) and tries to balance spying with dating (3.07), as does Sarah (3.07-08). Chuck’s rebound relationship showed us how cold he can be (3.08), but had the unintentional effect of making his angst over losing Sarah seem diminished—the Hannah thing also made his earlier choice of spy-life over love-life seem…um…completely ruined. (I think that ruination might have been at the heart of the fandom backlash against Hannah.) And the big choices between spy-life and love-life that permeated the first few episodes of the season gradually became big choices between honesty and dishonesty: a conflict that centered around Hannah (who got the short end of the stick), Awesome (who will not stop kvetching about how hard it is to lie), Morgan (who misses his friend), and Ellie (who suspects something).

I said last week that my distaste for some of the recent developments centered on the way they were developed: Chuck couldn’t go full-on Evil, because the show would lose its charm, so we were left with characters telling Chuck how evilish he was getting, even if we couldn’t see it. Similarly, a lot of the honesty-drama has centered on everyone else’s reactions to Chuck’s lying, and the negative effects it has on them. Paired with the displacement of the conflict, from love to lying, the meaty emotional arcs have felt hackneyed, as though the writers are swapping out Angus beef with buffalo meat, and sometimes swapping it back. (That is not my best simile ever.)

[You can skip this paragraph: Josh Schwartz’s first show, The O.C., made us of a similar drama-creating series of events, and Gossip Girl continues to do so: one character does something, feels bad about it, and everyone around them begins to spin like tops to fix the lack of happiness. On The O.C., I found this touching, as that show was basically about people trying to do right by each other. On Gossip Girl, it’s feeling hackneyed, especially as Serena’s love life is not that interesting. And on Chuck, the effect isn’t great.]

This week attempted to resolve the honesty-conflict with Chuck’s full confession to Morgan. Along with the summary dismissal of Hannah from Burbank, we can feel the arcs that were set up in the beginning of the season start to draw to a close. That makes sense: this season was originally supposed to be just 13 episodes, so we’re nearing the original end, even though the total final count will be 19. So Chuck set up some shaky pegs, and is now knocking them down.

With iffy results: I’m so happy that Chuck and Morgan and now friends again, and Hannah’s departure means we’re one step closer to the inevitable Chuck/Sarah pairing. The dishonesty snafu, which momentarily led to Chuck being unable to flash, is now resolved: All he needed was a good heart-to-heart. I’m not sure we needed that kick-in-the-face symbolism (yes, Chuck’s good heart is what makes him a good spy), but it made for a fun plot.

Our remaining pegs? Awesome and Ellie, who might be on the lam; Sarah, the love of Chuck’s life, who is doing something with Shaw; Shaw, who is doing something with Sarah; The Ring…am I forgetting anything?

As far as the actual episode goes, it was nifty. Morgan as hero was cute. Chuck and Morgan are funny together. The BuyMore Last Stand was a quaint subplot with disturbing undertones. Shaw and Sarah are a beautiful couple. Casey’s fight with the Ring Spies was rougher than fighting usually is on this show (his shirt came untucked!), and that’s a good thing.

The next few episodes should be good. We’ll get resolution. Of some sort. And when we look back, we’ll forget how uneven this season has been, and remember that it contained a lot of game-changers and was fun to watch.

Bytes:

• Morgan: “This conversation is never an easy one to have with an employee…I’m firing you as my best friend.”
• Bellgirl: “May I say you two are a very beautiful couple.”
• Ring Spy: “There’s no need to be conservative here. Terminate the rest.”
• Big Mike: “These corporate fatcats think they can take whatever they want. They can take dignity, they can take all the hot women, but they will not take our jobs. And they will never take our store!”
• Morgan: “Buddy? Don’t freak out.”
• Casey: “The only thing I hate more than hippie and neo-liberal fascists is the hypocrite fat-cat suits they eventually grow up to become.”

…And Pieces:

• Jeff’s chloroform addiction came back into play. When was that last mentioned? Early Season Two?
• Stop. Stealing. Music. The Muse-theme and the Terminator-theme were back. Is there any rhyme or reason to this?
• Zachary Levi directed this episode. He did a good job.
• The Iwo Jima re-enactment was funny—but the snapshot saved it. I was briefly freaked out by the lack of parallelism.
• The Nerf guns.
• The torture scene reminded me of the Firefly episode “War Stories.” Probably because in both episodes, the energy level is kept high through having the buddies not facing each other, which keeps the camera moving.
• Jess, I’ve been watching for pregnancy clues, and Ellie has been drinking in the past two episodes. I don’t think she’s having a baby.

Yikes!:

• The BuyMore employees were staging a protest against The Man to keep their jobs working for The Man. The irony? Utterly lost on them.
• Using “Fortunate Son” to energize that fight for The Man, especially in the context of that song’s popularity in the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the Iwo Jima re-enactment--that ain't right.


Three out of four Duck Hunts.

All of my Chuck reviews are archived here.
(Season Three, Episode Nine)

Smallville: Conspiracy

Lois: "Zod. How did you end up in my nightmare on psycho street?"

What I liked about this one was the conflicting ways the Kandorians were portrayed. First, they were totally sympathetic -- two displaced sisters far from home, never to regain their powers. One of them was kidnapped by a mad man with an unfortunate resemblance to Pinhead who imprisoned her in big Zip-lock bag. And then we found out it was happening because the woman and her Kandorian buddies were experimenting on human beings. (Bad.) And then we found out it was human cadavers. (Not so bad.) Whom they were accidentally bringing back to life in a Frankensteinian way. (Really bad.)

Lost: Sundown

Ben: "There's still time."
Sayid: "Not for me."

I'm sort of in mourning today. I loved Sayid. He was my favorite character. And now he's...um... Lost. That clever Man in Black; he picked the one thing that Sayid would sell his soul for.

Chuck: Chuck versus the False Name

“Live the lie.”

I’ve attempted to write this review three or four times. I kept writing paragraphs that contradicted each other. (Chuck is a successful liar!) Re-watching the episode didn’t help. (Chuck is only a successful liar to those who don’t know him!) Thinking about past episodes didn’t help. (Chuck is a low-down dirty playa who sleeps with women and then abandons them!) So I’m just going to emote: I’m not buying it.


The Theme of the Week is lying, and—to start with—I’m incredibly unhappy that Chuck is being reduced to the Theme of the Week formula that irks me so much on Fringe. Why? Because we’re being asked to ignore a lot of salient facts in order to buy this vision of our hero. We’re supposed to believe that Chuck is a great liar: Awesome’s freak-out in the kitchen and Hannah’s freak-out at the restaurant both told us so, and they’re our entry points into the bizarre world of spying in Burbank, because they are nice, normal folks.

But the truth is, Chuck’s not a great liar. Hannah figured out something was weird in the past two episodes, but seems to have forgotten it. Ellie (and Morgan, sadly absent) have suspected that something was up for months, but they wrote off all the weirdness once they discovered Chuck’s new girl—even though she hasn’t been around for months, but just a couple weeks.

Chuck’s not even that successful of a liar when he’s on the job. He broke his Rafe-persona a few times in the tooth-pulling scene, and broke it entirely with the two wiseguys in the sniper scene. The only reason the wiseguys bought his lies is that it meshed with their own vision of how love works: the real Rafe wouldn’t care about killing someone from afar or up close, but Goodfellas-style justice calls for killing your lady’s lover in person. (This reminded me of a scene from the first episode of the Sopranos: “Why doesn’t he just whack him?” “It’s against his religion or something.”)

The show wants us to believe that Chuck is going dark, but it’s also trying to balance that incipient darkness with the good humor and peppy nature that we love. They’re not succeeding: Chuck’s moments of puppy-dog confusion amidst his dark-avenger playacting ruin the idea that Chuck is changing and “becoming a spy” as Shaw said. Or, as Chuck said, “I’m not me anymore.” Really? How is he different? (If you know the answer to that question, please leave it in the comments!)

All of this reminds me of the main problem I had with the first half of Buffy’s Season Six: other characters kept telling Buffy (and us) that she was cold, emotionless, and empty. But it was hard to actually see it. We were being told, but not shown. The coldest thing Chuck did was ditch Hannah at the restaurant with her parents—and that wasn’t about lying, it was about how he loved Sarah and wanted to figure out how to get her back from Shaw. And how honesty hurts. And also about moping in a cardigan. (Damn you, Perry Ellis, for trying to make cardigans cool again!)

Sarah’s journey this week was more interesting: Shaw still seems like cold comfort, and she’s connecting with him because she’s so very lonely. That seems like a real, believable problem to me, and I’m glad that Sarah finally got a chance to tell someone her real name. On the other hand, Sarah is worried that Chuck is going too dark, and she has the unenviable task of telling us just how dark he’s getting. A lot.

Shaw’s role is still murky, to me at least. He’s definitely pressuring Sarah, and playing the good friend to either get in her pants or earn her trust—maybe both. Are his motives pure? I’m not sure. He seems to genuinely care, but I think he might care about Ring-vengeance more than Sarah herself. The Shaw-factor is the real suspense point for me this season. What is he doing, and why?


Bytes:

• Sarah: “I need to stop mixing my personal life with my professional life.”

• Chuck as Rafe: “Because I like cupcakes, that’s why. Who doesn’t like a good cupcake?”

• Chuck as Rafe: “This is my co-worker. You may call him John…John doesn’t talk much.”

• Chuck as Rafe: “I want to kill him, not some secondary infection.”

• Casey: “Weird, huh? Walker helping you get laid.”

• Wiseguy Number One: “I hate those will-they-won’t-they things.”

…And Pieces:

• Superman is so…super-looking. But again with the creepy: he was obviously using the “oops, I’m naked!” seduction technique, which is just awkward. On the other hand, I’d love to have him trapped in my underground lair.

• I loved the wiseguys. The casting call for this episode actually asked for two men straight out of Goodfellas, and they nailed it.

• Rafe was over the top. Growling instead of talking? That’s like owning an expensive car because you have a tiny penis.

• Casey is one of five people in the world who can make that half-mile shot. Way to go, Casey!

• Did you catch the TV Guide building next to the Roosevelt Hotel?

One out of four CrockPots. I think. I'm so confused.

All of my Chuck reviews are archived here.
(Season Three, Episode Eight)

NewsFlash: HBO Okays Game of Thrones

SciFi Wire reports that HBO has picked up ten episodes of the television adaptation of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series--they're calling it The Game of Thrones, after the first book. The first season will feature Lena Headey, Sean Bean, and Peter Dinklage, among others.

If you haven't read Martin's books (there are currently four out of a planned seven), now's your chance. If you have read the books, I imagine that you're doing the jig of joy. Dance! Dance! Dance!