Chuck (S02E04): “Chuck Versus the Cougars”

Grade: B+

This week’s Chuck is all about flashing back on Sarah’s past, when she was still a nerdy girl named Jenny, and forward to her current life, which is interrupted when her past catches up with it. It’s an hour filled up by a soundtrack that makes the 90’s kid in me both want to get up and dance (To Chumbawamba’s “Tubmthumper”) and cringe (to The Backstreet Boys), but also an hour for nerds across America to believe they too can share cheeseburgers with impossibly gorgeous women with pasts more normal than they’d like anyone to know.

In “Chuck Versus the Cougars” we get the season’s biggest twist yet: Nicole Richie can act. While it’s not a performance worthy of any awards, she plays the part of the stuck-up, popular cheerleader well, maybe only because it’s not much of a stretch personality wise. Heather (Richie) and her nerd husband (Ben Savage) run across their former high school classmate, Jenny, and secrets Sarah does not want coming to the surface start tunelling back into the light. Chuck’s loving the information overload, but Sarah’s visibly frustrated and kicking the crap out of a punching bag to try and channel her anger (lest anyone made of flesh and blood get hurt instead). Sarah’s past turns out to be shockingly average (Nerdy girl gets picked on, dad gets arrested to protect him from shady characters he was doing business with, and she gets pulled into the CIA), but it makes her seem more real and, for Chuck, not so cosmically distant from a nerd like him.

Heather has married a man much like Chuck–a guy who’s a little geeky, considers math a fun hobby, and likes ties–and Chuck and her hubby get a chance to have a little nerd pow-wow at Sarah’s high school reunion. But to him, Chuck “Mad Dog” Bartowski is the epitome of cool, while Chuck on the other hand sees himself as just as much a nerd and just as incredibly lucky to have a woman like Sarah at his side. Except the problem is neither Sarah or Heather are truly with these guys. Heather turns out to be the one blackmailing her husband into turning over his top-secret fighter jet plans (though if he ever finds this out, the episode doesn’t show it) and only got with him with dollar-signs in her eyes, and Sarah has genuine feelings for Chuck, but last week already made clear the line that must be drawn between them.

The Office (S05E03): “Baby Shower”

Grade: B

Due to a crazy series of unexpected events this past week, my reviews are way behind. In order to catch up I’m going to be writing a lot less. So here are just some of my mostly unorganized thoughts on this week’s episode of The Office, which I enjoyed less than last week. But while I wasn’t laughing as much, I think this episode did a good job of adding some depth to some of the series’ characters.

Jan resurfacing in this episode is a reminder of just how bad she and Michael are together; a fact made more painfully obvious by the addition of Holly and the oozing amounts of chemistry they share. While the entire office realizes in a very matter of fact way that Jan’s baby is not Michael’s to begin with, it takes the potential daddy to be the longest to come to terms with these facts (well, right after Dwight, who plays in his own little world as usual). Michael gets to act a little immature here by feigning hatred toward Holly, but it’s only because his fear of Jan is back.

Friday Night Lights (S03E03): “How the Other Half Lives”

Grade: A-

If Friday Night Lights doesn’t get renewed for another season, it won’t have been for quality reasons. This season came crashing out of the gates with a revamped and rejuvenated show and continues to maintain its steady course in “How the Other Half Lives”. The Panther’s may have lost their fictional game, but the episode is a win with the exception of a few very minor weak spots.

In football, tough calls have to be made on the fly, but the people of Dillon are all finding those hard choices playing out off the field in this episode. Coach Taylor is being made to choose between a boy he knows and one he doesn’t; a boy with crazy-mad drive and spirit and a boy with years of silver spoon-fed talent. Smash has to face his future and decide whether to go for his dreams by playing football at TMU or supporting his family by taking a promotion at the Alamo Freeze. And then Tim is finding his loyalty split between his brother and Lyla, and realizing having to choose between blood and love isn’t easy.

What makes Eric’s decision work so well is the way that the writer’s have decided to portray JD and the McCoys. Mr. and Mrs McCoy are the villains of the season, with their fake smiles and deep pockets, but their son may not be an apple from their tree even if they’ve slapped a coat of glossy, red paint on him. When Matt and Julie find JD’s “shrine” in his home at the big Panther party (hosted at the McCoy’s home rather than the Taylors, after the planning proves too stressful for principal Taylor), JD finds them and makes a little joke at his own expense about showing them his gold plated diaper. The coach probably says it best when accosted by Buddy, Mr. McCoy and others: He knows who Matt is, both as a person and as a player, but he knows very little about the very young JD, and though it doesn’t mean the kid isn’t good or that he doesn’t have all kinds of potential, he’s going to stick with his guy, Matt. This whole setup could make room for JD as an upcoming character, possibly to replace seniors like Matt, who could become a very likable addition to the cast. He just doesn’t seem like another VooDoo, meant only to serve as an antagonist, and outside of his headache inducing parents could be a really good character with a lot of baggage to bring to the pile.

Fringe(S01E05): “Power Hungry”

Grade: B

The thing that sets Fringe apart from most mystery-of-the-week series is its stricter adherence to ongoing plots and a continued attention to building up a unique mythology for the show, centered mostly around the fictional mega-corporation, Massive Dynamic. However, this could be a weakness as well, if Fringe veered too far from its cases and sunk in too deep with conspiracy theories and gasp-worthy twists. This episode attempts to ease any fears of this scenario by presenting a Massive Dynamic free hour, but ends up falling into the old predictability trap I thought it had strayed from. That said, the case is interesting and the characters are still growing more likable every week, so all-in-all it’s another solid episode for any fans of the show, but probably not good enough to woo many new ones.

My biggest gripe at the moment, and one I felt had been assuaged by last week’s episode, is the too-formulaic setup of the standalone cases. The show is all about something called The Pattern–a string of mysterious and unexplainable phenomena happening all over the world–but there’s another very obvious pattern developing as well. This pattern goes as follows: An incident occurs, which Walter reveals could be based on old ideas he had studied, but that have been taken and perfected in the years since, and he then has a theory that Olivia pursues relentlessly until she reveals what she knows to her boss, who then reveals to her he’s known more than he let on all along and shares new, key information that advances the scenario into its final legs. Most episodes have contained some or all of these parts, and while it doesn’t make the value of the mysteries any less, it does take some of the fun out when you can see a blueprint of what’s to come without even trying.

The case this week is one that might have the Heroe’s writer’s jealous they lost all their creativity long ago, with a man whose brain has been altered so that he can cause electromagnetic disturbances. The whole kerfuffle gets started after this guy accidentally causes an elevator to plummet 20 some stories, killing everyone inside except himself. But he’s not a bad guy, just a guy with some semi-stalkerish tendencies who’s having a bad day and just happens to have powers he doesn’t understand and isn’t able to control. When he gets emotional, he doesn’t write angry poetry, but makes sparks fly and pacemakers die–which is how his own mother ends up dead. It’s nice to see the people Olivia and co. are chasing aren’t always plain bad guy, like the prostitute killer and this guy, but victims of ambitious, shadowy figures. One of those steps onto the scene tonight, performing inhumane tests to advance whatever agenda he has, and is clearly the one to direct any anger toward.

Pushing Daisies (S02E03): “Bad Habits”

Grade: A

More than any other show on TV, I can count on Pushing Daisies to give me a reason to smile every week. That’s because Daisies has yet to truly let me down, even in its roughest weeks, and “Bad Habits” sticks to the very good habit of crafting an hour long escape that leaves my cheeks feeling the slightest bit tingly and my heart a little warmer.

Olive and Ned are both dealing with abandonment issues this week: Olive feeling abandoned emotionally by Ned, and Ned still not over being dropped to the curb by his father. Their separate but related issues collide when one of Olive’s sisters falls from a bell tower and she brings Emmerson, Ned and Chuck in to help solve the case. So these dilemmas are nothing new, but their finally coming face with them and with each other. Olive’s run away to keep her guard up and her secrets inside it, but she gets the chance to spill it all to Ned in the nunnery and can instantly feel a heavy burden pulled off her like a plastic bag from the head.

This season has demonstrated in more than one way its insistence on these characters to move forward, out of the past and into the future. The problem is that they’re scared of both their pasts, with all its dark corners, and their futures, clouded by uncertainties that point back to the past. Olive’s admissions to Ned and his subsequent apology to her, for not being the slightest bit sensitive to her feelings in his whirlwind romance with Chuck, allows her to finally move out of the past and toward that future.

Heroes (S03E05): “Angels and Monsters”

Grade: C

A few weeks ago, I made the resolution to lower my expectations for Heroes, hoping it would help me to better enjoy the show from a standpoint of pure fun with no analytical strings attached. Four weeks and five long hours later, though, and I’m forcing myself to sit through an entire hour’s worth of eye rolling, stifled yawns, and the repeated reminder that this show, for me, will probably never return to being the Heroes I used to enjoy so much. “Angels and Monsters” offers a few noteworthy moments, but those continue to be lost in the rubble of a rapidly crumbling foundation, barely held up by the many broken characters and an annoying habit of using plot twists as a replacement for good storytelling.

The theme of the season is villains, and Heroes really wants to let everyone know it, and essentially everyone gets to act a little bit evil in “Angels and Monsters”, even when it makes little to no sense. Peter tries to slice open his mom’s head, Sylar style, and gives a fine example of overacting when he shouts in her face “Tell me all your secrets!, Claire decides to enact taser justice on the escaped criminals of Level 5, Suresh is killing drug dealers and cocooning people, including Maya, on the walls of his apartment, and even Hiro has an unexpected evil itch to scratch. I appreciate the concept of an overarching theme that ties stories together under a cozy umbrella, but this just feels suffocating.

The biggest offender might be the whole Mohinder story, where a boring character has been taken and made evil with the hope that would, in turn, make him more interesting. Not so much. His character has taken a 180 degree turn, killing people, making animal love to women, and performing strange experiments with people held captive in larva looking pods, but it’s all just a little too weird and hard to swallow. My suggestion would have been to write the character out, but making him a hybrid of The Lizard, The Beast, and The Fly was probably not the right way to make this character more likable amongst fans.

Chuck (S02E03): “Chuck Versus the Break-Up”

Grade: B+

As if Chuck believed it was unable to woo me any further, episode three opened with a song by The National and closed with one of my favorite tracks from Bon Iver’s brilliant album. Right, so an episode of TV isn’t made by its song selection, but it gets serious cool points nonetheless. As far as the actual episode, “Chuck Versus the Break Up” is probably my least favorite of the season, but it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable time spent with TVs most huggable character.

I didn’t get around to writing about last week’s “Chuck Versus the Seduction”, but Chuck’s moves are considerably less smooth this week, thanks to the reappearance of Sarah’s ex-partner and continuous thorn in Chuck’s side, Bryce Larkin. His return puts the stops on Chuck and Sarah’s romance and makes them both begin to question the costs their feelings might have. Sarah is making choices based around Chuck and possibly compromising her ability as a spy while Chuck is pouring drinks in the laps of the rich and dangerous and dropping whole bottles of $1000 wine.

Chuck is not your average spy, with smooth moves and crazy gadgets, and he doesn’t introduce himself last name first (Bartowski. Chuck Bartowski), but he still proves he has the potential to be a spy of his own defining; one that’s a whole lot more amusing to watch. While he isn’t a real spy, he’s also not your typical bumbling one, with skills hidden beneath a layer of ineptness and social awkwardness. Instead, he’s a very normal guy that uses some quick thinking and parts of his own personality to get himself out of tricky situations. In the premiere it was the Call of Duty gag, where he convinced a group of seasoned killers that an elaborate online game strategy was actually a real one.Then last week he managed to seduce a deadly killer, at least partly, using a sprinkling of advice from a seasoned playboy spy and a lot of his own brand of sweet talk. However, in the newest case he’s assigned to pose as a waiter while Bryce and Sarah pretend to be a married couple, and watching them dance and lock lips and generally feel each other up proves to be just a little too much for him to handle.

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True Blood (S01E06): “Cold Ground”

Grade: A

The sixth episode of True Blood brings us the saddest scene of a cute girl eating pie to ever air on TV and swims in all sorts of emotionally murky waters in a similarly daring and unrestrained fashion. This show about vampires is always walking hand-in-hand with death, but the fallout from Gran’s murder is the blackest moment yet, and like Sookie may leave you feeling uncomfortably numb.

The south is a place where manners and smiles are plastered on with duct tape and Elmer’s glue, which is to say they’re very obviously fake. While some people will tell you like it is to your face, Southerners prefer to gossip and slander behind your back, or, in Sookie’s case, in their thoughts. Usually so composed, Sookie is finding it hard to deal with her Gran’s death and even harder to block out all the thoughts firing at her from every supposedly supportive member of the community. They’re baking casseroles and feigning sympathy, but she can hear their thoughts, about how they wished it was her dead and not her Gran or, worse, that she had something to do with the death. It’s enough to make her snap when the very nosy Maxine takes out a pie from the Frigidaire that Sookie’s Gran had baked shortly before passing. It’s not the pie, of course, that sends her over the edge, but the idea settling in that it’s the last pie ever to be baked by the woman she describes as her grandmother, her parent and her best friend.

She’s pushed even further at the funeral when she again can’t ward off the nasty thoughts of all the people, and she ends what could have been a very touching speech by telling each and every one in attendance that they can F*** off. It’s not only the people who have been saying one thing and thinking another, but our heroine has been trying to maintain a smile all this time as well. Sure, she’s had outbursts of emotion, but for the most Part Sookie has retained a certain level of optimism and cheer. Right after she finds Gran dead, she doesn’t show any emotion. The next day, she admits to feeling numb–not knowing what to feel. She tries to put on a show for the town and to hide her grief. As she finally unwraps the last fourth of Gran’s pecan pie, she lets herself grieve a little bit more with every bite, until the tin is empty and she’s filling it back up with tears. It’s good to see her really let go of all the grief stuck inside and hopefully try and figure out how to live in a world where she and her brother are the only two Stackhouses (with exception to the creepy Uncle introduced this hour, who has some unexplained bad blood with the family).

Grey’s Anatomy (S05E03): “Here Comes the Flood”

Grade: B-

Grey’s managed to pick itself back up a little after last week’s near-unbearable premiere by making the cast more likable and the stories more sincere, but still suffered from the “ER Syndrome” of adding unnecessarily dramatic events into the hospital setting. Last week it was an icicle, this week it’s a flood, and it’s hard not to think that these freak accidents could become a pattern.

Last week was about reshaping the Hospital to get up its ranking, while this week starts with the Chief addressing all his staff and talking of cutting out malignancies, which should start with the people that work their and trickle down. He says he wants no more personal relationships interfering with work, whether it’s between employees or between doctors and their patients, and he doesn’t want people, aka Christina, being allowed to specialize in only one area. And just like last week was a clear double-sided message, this one very clearly bleeds behind the scenes as well. They need to get ratings for Grey’s up, so they’re cutting out the bad stuff and trying to change things up. Shonda isn’t keen on subtlety it would seem, but the message is still a sign of better episodes in the future. Hopefully. Unfortunately, while baby steps were made this time around, certain watery disasters held this hour back from being really good.

Grey’s first season had very few episodes that had any kind of extraordinary events in them, and the individual patients and the characters had enough going on that you didn’t need anything added on top of them. Somewhere along the way, though, Shonda decided there needed to be a disaster every week, perhaps starting after the Ferry incident and spiraling out of control afterward. It’s annoying and takes the show into further depths of the unreal, and the fact is that the show could thrive just as well without them. In this episode, there’s a busted pipe somewhere in the hospital that begins by causing minor leaks until it eventually floods a good portion of the hospital. Water’s rushing into elevators, dropping into patient’s abdomens and causing general over-the-top chaos.

Friday Night Lights (S03E02): “Tami Knows Best”

Grade: A

It almost seems as if season two of Friday Night Lights was the product of network pressures and of a show trying too hard to bring up the ratings and prove its worth in order to be renewed by going out of its comfort zone and, thus, straying from what it did best. This feeling comes two episodes into the third season, where the show many of us fell hard for is back in its prime and not letting outside anxieties rule the show’s direction. The crazy drama of last year did not feel like the next step forward for FNL, but last weeks premier and tonight’s “Tami Knows Best” feel like the next stage in evolution for this show. Perhaps the writers and producers examined their own mantra, because this episode is full of heart, though my eyes were definitely not always clear.

It’s Tami vs. football again this week,  which boils down to pretty much everyone except her family. Buddy and the rest of the Booster club go on the offense to get their jumbo tron, but give Tami a chance to admit she made a big mistake by reallocating the funds. She won’t budge and chooses instead to stick it to them all in one of the episode’s best moments. However, as awesome as her tirade against the religion of football was and how education should come first, there’s still the question of whether it’s right of her to take money that was raised for a specific thing only to have it taken away and used in a different way. Personally, I’m taking Tami’s side, but I do appreciate the shades of gray they’ve plopped into this story. Unfortunately, the people of Dillon aren’t seeing her decision in such a positive way. Last episode, everyone was squawking about needing new text books and more teachers, but this week they’ve gotten that and are instead causing a ruckus over not getting their over sized football TV. Tami’s feeling pretty lost right about now, and even her husband can’t give much comfort as he tries to stick to middle ground to avoid the whole stink causing a strain on their relationship (perhaps sparked by a nasty article in the paper that turned what Tami said into a story about her new job causing marital strife). What’s most interesting is that the mayor and other influential members of the community seem to put so much more passion into football than the needs of the community and its youth, and whether Tami’s decision was right or wrong, you can’t fault her for what she’s done. She’s coming from a pure place, whereas the rest of the angered people play off as totally selfish. Guess the town really is a bit of a devil town, as the song suggests, where football is clearly the religion of choice. And god certainly comes before education, I suppose, only it’s a pigskin being bowed down to.

Ugly Betty (S03E03): “Crimes of Fashion”

Grade: B

With news that Rebecca Romijn would be leaving the show early on this season circulating the web for some time, this episode was bound to happen. It has that feel that most shows do when real life drama seeps into the fictional world, seeming just a little forced and raising all sorts of “what ifs” as to where the characters would have gone had the writer’s pen not been guided by outside influences. Tonight’s story certainly felt propelled along by the need to find Alexis an exit door, but that said it was still enjoyable even if the weakest episode in the still fledgling season.

“Crimes of Fashion” is all about the aftermath of Christina’s classic soap opera moment last week–pushed down the stairs by an unseen hand. Betty gets wrapped up in the middle of it all, trying to prove Daniel’s innocence after she unintentionally lets the police know that Daniel had asked her to lie about his whereabouts on the night of the incident. It’s of course very clear by this early revelation that Daniel is not guilty, but it’s all about finding the evidence to prove this. The episode flashes back and forth between the present and the slowly connecting pieces of the puzzle from the night of the MODE party, presented in drunken sepia tone.

What was a nice touch in Betty’s sleuthing was the humanizing of almost all of our characters. Usually, one or maybe two might have a tender moment in an episode, but tonight they all let their guard down for Betty, albeit only briefly. Amanda shares her financial woes and we learn just how she affords (or doesn’t afford) her fancy lifestyle, Marc reveals he likes to slap around Wilhelmina’s Mannequin, which looks a lot like one of those Real Dolls, and Claire admits she can’t drink one cocktail without drinking fifty. These little moments of insight into the real thoughts of the characters versus the personas they’re always putting on are always enjoyable, and these were no exception.

The Office (S05E02): “Business Ethics”

Grade: A+

This week The Office returned to its half hour format, which is a good thing considering I don’t think I could have handled thirty more minutes of laughing as much as I did during “Business Ethics”, an episode automatically ranking as one of the best Office episodes to date.

There isn’t a weak scene to be found during “Business Ethics”, landing one knock after another to the funny bone. Considering there weren’t many quiet spots, there were a whole lot of highlights. Michael and Holly’s rendition of Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical”, changed to Let’s Get Ethical, leads right into Ryan’s candid talk about what got him demoted, which involved hooking up with a girl whom he describes as looking like a chick off the sixth season of Survivor (a TV reference Dwight totally gets), which then jumps to Dwight’s veiled jab toward Andy when he answers a hypothetical question regarding stealing bread to feed your family with the absurd and oh so very Dwight answer of “False, it’s a trick question. The bread is poison and it’s not you’re real family: You’ve been cuckolded by a stronger, smarter male.” The whole episode is relentless with its comic pacing, and provides a perfect example of how to take the ensemble of a fairly long running show and use all their quirks, histories, and relationships with each other to craft a nearly flawless twenty plus minutes of comic gold.

Possibly the funniest scene of the episode, and maybe the most laugh out loud worthy one in seasons, was between Jim and Dwight. The setup for it begins in the ethics meeting, where Holly lets everyone know that wasting time is a form of stealing, just as bad as taking money. Well, Jim sets out to prove Dwight wastes time just like everyone else, so he gets out his stopwatch and goes to town. He times Dwight’s yawns, his sneezes and when things get boring he incites Dwight into talking and then times that as well. Then, the main event: Jim goes to Andy and starts talking about Battlestar Galactica, a well known passion of Dwight’s that is so good anyone not watching is, in his own words, an idiot. Jim calls the aliens on the show Klingons rather than Cylons, says it’s a shot-for-shot remake, and calls the main character Dumbledore Callrizzion, all while Dwight is gnashing his teeth and wanting oh so badly to stand up and set the record straight. But every time he flinches, Jim flashes the stopwatch. You can almost hear the nerdish fanboy rant he would have given if he had the chance, but he restrains himself and manages not to stop working for the rest of the day–even resorting to peeing in an empty soda bottle rather than waste time going to the bathroom. He finally slips up for 19 minutes and change when he meets Angela for some afternoon delight, proving to Jim he’s at least a little bit human.

Pushing Daisies (S02E02): “Circus Circus”

Grade: A

For two weeks in a row now, Pushing Daisies has delivered fantastic hours of TV, and for two weeks even Ned’s magical powers have proved not enough to revive the show’s sinking ratings. But putting aside the numbers for this wonderful, dare I say brilliant, show, “Circus Circus” is an all all around winner, with a stronger mystery than the last and an overarching theme of new beginnings being both scary and exhilarating that ties everything together with a pretty ribbon.

For the characters of Pushing Daisies, the time has come to move out of the comfortable bubbles they’ve created for themselves and make fresh starts. Aunts Lily and Vivian have become shut-ins, but must ease themselves back into the world. Emmerson has done everything to escape the memories of his missing wife and daughter, but must finally begin to embrace them. Olive admits she still loves the Pie Maker, but knows she can’t go back to daily dancing around that fact and pretending his unrequited affections do not faze her. And, most importantly, Chuck and Ned have to step outside the world they’ve created together–one that revolves solely around each other–and build their own lives, not only as a couple but as individuals. Pushing Daisies manages to take the single theme of new beginnings and weave it throughout the episode without it feeling heavy handed in addition to giving yet another excellent whodunit case full of mimes, clowns and exploding cannons (oh my!).

Heroes (S03E04): “I Am Become Death”

Grade: C-

It turns out last week’s Heroes was a fluke; an accidental slip back into the realm of goodness. This week launches us into one of Heroes overused fetishes–alternate future stories–and what a mess it is.

If Heroes hadn’t used the future gone terribly awry device multiple times now, what happens four years later in a vision Parkman has out in the African desert might be interesting. The problem is that in the past these alternate timelines never merge with the real ones because our heroes always save the day/the future so that they can envision another terrible future and save it as well. So you know every second of what you’re seeing is meaningless fluff meant for purposes of shock and awe and to drive the story forward. Tonight, the badass Claire from the premiere returned to kill both Peters and we got to see a domesticated Sylar, living in the Bennet’s home with his son, Matt married to the speedster Daphne, and Nathan as, bum bum bum, Mr. President! These would all be pretty drastic revelations if, you know, they actually came to pass, but they won’t. Claire won’t become heartless, Sylar won’t become daddy dearest, and while the other stories might happen, it’s doubtful. The only likely scenario would be Nathan as president, but they’ve been driving at that since season one.

I will say, the writer’s are good at posing interesting questions. The gap of unknown time between how these characters went from who they were to what they’ve become is filled with possibilities. The problem really rises when you realize this gap will never be filled because this future will never be realized. It’s the  writer’s  fanfiction of their own universe, living comfortably alongside what’s really happening and vaguely shaping peoples actions and reactions to events yet-to-be, so they can make sure they stay permanently in that realm.