Thank you, Kim Manners

Kim Manners passed away on January 25th, 2009.

In addition to his most recent work on Supernatural, Mr. Manners directed and produced numerous X-Files episodes—really, some of the best of the series. He also worked on dozens of other series, from 21 Jump Street to Charlie’s Angels to Baywatch.

Thank you, Mr. Manners, for so much wonderful TV. May you rest in peace.

Lost: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

Cesar: "You know him?"
Locke: "Yeah. He's the man who killed me."

The major theme of this show is science versus faith. Faith appears to be winning. I mean, really. Killing yourself on the word of a strange, ageless guy is a pretty big step to take on faith. And Locke would have gone through with it if Ben hadn't stopped by and murdered him.

Heroes: Cold Wars

Noah: "You know me. I've always been comfortable with morally gray."

They're trying. I know they are. But it's not working for me. I like Noah and Matt. I should have been emotionally engaged in Noah's suffering and Matt's grief. And I just... wasn't.

Chuck: Chuck versus the Best Friend

“Much as I respect your code of honor, there’s nothing I can do about it. Orders before honor this time.”

I usually don’t love the BuyMore interludes on Chuck, but I really enjoyed this episode. Maybe my previous distaste was due more to the odd ways the B-story and A-story would fit together? Either way, this was a great episode, and not just because Anna’s hair got progressively more odd.

Dollhouse: Target

Connell: "Is this the best date ever, or what?"

Now, this was more like it.

Terminator: Desert Cantos

This episode was not terribly interesting. In general, I appreciate the slower pacing of the series, especially when it gives us time to explore the psychological impacts on our characters, but this one was a little too slow for my tastes. Certainly, it makes sense that the Connor crew would continue to look into the mystery warehouse and its destruction, but this was a very long and awkward hour just to get to the major revelation at the end.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

Roslin: "Omigod, that's Ellen Tigh."
Hot Dog: "How many dead chicks are out there?"

This episode was like a soap opera in space. Amusing, and rather sad. Sort of annoying, too. I was disappointed to see Ellen revert to type and spend the entire episode making an ass of herself. Not that Tigh was much better. The Final Five are most emphatically not godlike. Or maybe the message was that gods can be petty and jealous, too.

Lost: 316

Frank: "Wait a second. We're not going to Guam, are we?"

Well, color me shocked. And delighted. I thought we'd have to wait until the end of the season to see the Oceanic Six return to the Island. Actually, I thought they might make us wait until next season. They could have made seventy hours last a year and a half. I wouldn't put it past them.

Heroes: Building 26

Sylar: "You've really got to stop trying to be my friend, or I'm going to have to kill you."

There was good stuff. There was "why are they even bothering" stuff. And there was stuff kind of in the middle, where they were setting future stuff up.

Chuck: Chuck versus the Suburbs

“I’m sure someone, somewhere, is having a worse Valentine’s Day.”

In Dante’s Inferno, Virgil describes life in one of the less painful circles of Hell: “Without hope, we live in desire.” Turns out this is true of cover-couples in the suburbs, as well—Chuck once again got his hopes dashed as Sarah put their job before their passion.

Dollhouse: Ghost

“There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

My expectations for this episode were rather absurdly ambivalent. On the one hand, I’ve been ecstatic since I first heard that Joss was coming back to TV (and the wait felt like it was killing me). On the other, I knew that pilots in general aren’t my thing; that Whedonverse pilots (or even first episodes of any season) are never the best of the bunch; and that Joss re-did this pilot after some talks with Fox. So then I found myself hoping that the pilot would be accessible enough for non-genre fans, so at least we could get as much Dollhouse as possible.

Battlestar Galactica: No Exit

Ellen: "What are you doing?"
Boomer: "Forgiving you."

There was so much information in this episode that I kept saying to the screen, "Slow down! What was that again?" And in fact, this is the revised version of my original review because I missed so much the first two times I watched this episode. The third time was the charm. It was just too frakking complicated.

Terminator: The Good Wound

Welcome back, Sarah Connor fans! After a two-month break, the second half of the season picks up pretty much where we left off. Most of the episode was spent dealing with the aftermath from “Earthlings Welcome Here”: Sarah’s gunshot wound, her discovery of a major Skynet operation, and Riley’s attempted suicide.

Dollhouse premiere: Ghost

DeWitt: "I'm talking about a clean slate."
Caroline: "You ever try to clean an actual slate? You always see what was on it before."

Yes, it held my interest. It has potential.

Fringe: The Cure

“You’re probably way ahead of me on this, but I’m noticing some uncomfortable similarities between this and some of the other incidents we’ve been covering lately.”

Yes, Peter. There are similarities: evil doctors, evil corporations, Walter’s obsession with childhood foods.

Fringe: The Ghost Network

“Well, I’ll take what I can get.”

The pilot gave us a plane crash with melty people. This episode gave us a bus crash with frozen people. It’s totally different. The frozen people were attacked with something like sarin gas. But this is a different type of gas. John Scott is a traitor, but a different kind than Robert Hanssen. One of the victims was in a clandestine relationship with her traitorous co-worker, which is not different at all from Olivia’s recent situation.

And Walter continues to be a different kind of crazy.

Lost: This Place is Death

Robert Rousseau: "What is that?"
Jin: "Monster."

Was Jin right? The Island is death. So many of the characters on Lost have met a horrible, flamey, gruesome, and/or painful death. Like Charlotte. Who's next? Will the Oceanic Six return to the Island only to get picked off, one by one?

Fringe: Power Hungry

Electromagnetism is a pretty hot topic in genre shows these days. I’d love to see a renaissance in stories that focus on the mystic allure of gravity. So powerful, so ubiquitous, so unstoppable!

Fringe: The Arrival

“It’s disturbing, but you get accustomed to it.”

Let’s take this one plot-line at a time.

Fringe: In Which We Meet Mr. Jones

In one of his popular essays—it might be “Anthropologist on Mars,” from the book of the same name—neurologist Oliver Sacks describes a test performed by one of his colleagues on a high-functioning autistic man. That man had an obsession with light switches, so his doctor doctored up a device to track his eye movement while watching a romantic, Douglas Sirk-style movie. In the movie’s climax, as the couple finally kissed while swelling music played, the testee’s eyes tracked to the upper right frame, where—unnoticed by probably anyone, ever—a light switch was visible. The true importance of the moment was lost to him; or, to him, the moment was important for another reason.

Sometimes, watching Fringe, I feel like a light-switch-obsessed blogger.

Fringe: Ability

“What was written, will come to pass.”

Our theme of the week is texts. We had a newsstand owner/victim and an uber-useful bookseller—one of my favorite type-characters. We also had the meta-text, if an episode-long allusion to Alias counts as being meta-textual. And if you think I’m overreaching, I refer you to the floor the bomb was on, and the destined female spy whose parents subjected her to childhood tests.

Heroes: Trust and Blood

Claire: "So I get a pass. And everyone I know just disappears."

This episode was typical Heroes, in that there wasn't a cohesive beginning-middle-end of the episode. There was meandering around the crash site, and lots of running around ineffectively in the surrounding woods. As they were all fleeing for their lives, Matt stopped, found some art supplies, and created elaborate cartoon panels. (In that kind of rush, he can't scribble stick figures?) Daphne, with Ando in hand, dashed to the rescue (from Tokyo to Arkansas, over an ocean or two) and promptly got shot.

Great Expectations: The Return of Sci-Fi Friday

I don’t have a reputation for being the world’s most positive person. In fact, my friends have in the past accused me of having my very own “little black rain cloud.” But as the premiere of FOX’s new Friday night combo of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse approaches, I’ve been feeling like Little Mary Sunshine in a sea of Doubting Thomases!

Ever since FOX announced that these two shows would be partnered on Friday nights, critics and fans have been downright gloomy about their prospects:

“Friday is where shows go to die.”

“I don’t know why Joss even bothered getting into bed with FOX again. This show is as good as cancelled.”

“Guess we aren’t getting another season of Terminator.”

People can’t even mention the premiere of Dollhouse without cynically grumping that we’ll be lucky to get four episodes. That’s right. The first episode hasn’t even aired and people are already writing the series’ obituary.

Is the economy bringing everyone down? Or have years of genre TV fandom beaten folks to a pulp? Things are not right in the world when *I'm* the voice of positive thinking!

Why can't we look forward to these shows without fretting about their possible end? Why is it so hard to just enjoy the ride while it lasts? However short it is. Maybe Dollhouse will be awesome, but get crappy ratings and we only get a few episodes. Or maybe it won’t be any good at all. If so, let's cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, can't we just hope for the best without preparing for the worst?

Don't get me wrong, I understand why people are gun shy. I’ve been burned by FOX before. Was I bummed that Wonderfalls only aired four episodes before being cancelled? Yes. Do I feel pretty bittersweet about only having 13 episodes of that fun and quirky series to continually enjoy? Yes. But at the same time, I'm so grateful for those 13. Same goes for shows like Firefly and Invasion. Yes, it sucks that these shows didn't get more time to shine---and I do at times feel pretty wistful about what could have been---but I will always be glad I got to spend time in those worlds. At least for a little while. And I like to approach new shows with that same hope for something great, even if it is short-lived.

I, for one, am eagerly anticipating the premiere of FOX’s Sci-Fi Friday. I understand ratings aren't likely to be stellar. But ratings expectations probably won't be as high either. I can’t wait to see what Joss has in store for us with Dollhouse---even if it does get cancelled after four episodes. And I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of Terminator, Season 2. Even if that’s all we ever get, at least we got to enjoy two seasons of some awesome ass-kicking and surprisingly character-focused storytelling. And for that, I'm grateful.

So how about some positive thinking?

Battlestar Galactica: Blood on the Scales

"It stopped."

Incredibly cool conclusion, following last week's incredibly cool part one. This might have been their best two-parter ever, and that's saying a lot.

Smallville: Requiem

Oliver: "Well, if it isn't Metropolis' newest power couple."

Truck go boom. Is Lex dead? Come on. Do they really think we'll believe that Lex is dead? How stupid do the writers think we are?

Supernatural: Sex and Violence

Dean: "The middle of Basic Instinct, and you bang Sharon Stone?"

Dean finally got to investigate a case with strippers. The preview made it look like a romp. And then they went and got deep on us. When you think about it, it's amazing that a show about two brash young men hunting monsters can be so poignant.

Lost: The Little Prince

Sawyer: "Who came in these? Other Others?"
Juliet: "Don't look at me."

And we have French people.

Fringe: The Transformation

Possums have 15 nipples?

Oh, and... John Scott isn’t dead?

Chuck: Chuck versus the Third Dimension

Well, hello, Cleveland. Chuck really didn’t pull any punches with this return episode. We had nightmare almost-sex, real almost-sex, some crazy Led Zeppelin-style guitar riffs, crowd surfing, emotional confessions, elevators, ex-cons, and a rock star played by Dom—

[We interrupt this review to bring you an unscheduled moment of fangirl glee: woo-hoo! It’s Charlie! And he’s hilarious! And adorable! And bringin’ the Manchester in full force!]

Heroes: A Clear and Present Danger

Peter: "Did you ever get the feeling, like, you're meant to do something extraordinary?"
Mohinder: "I used to. Turns out I was mistaken."

So there I was, apprehensive, but ready and willing for Heroes to win me back. And you know, they may have done it. I wasn't blown away, but I wasn't turned off, either. And I watched the episode twice, something I couldn't bring myself to do earlier in the season. Cautiously optimistic, that would be me.

What worked?