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.

Or did it? The episode ends with Chuck and Sarah sharing a quiet moment that feels very much like a moment between a loving couple and the line that was drawn already seems to be smearing. One of the supposed reasons Chuck gave for distancing himself was that he would never know her real name, but now he does, even if he doesn’t care near as much about who she was as he does about who she is. He likes the idea that she was as normal or maybe more normal than him as a kid, but when he passes on her offer to probe deeper into her previous life it shows that knowing her real name means very little when he is very obviously in love with Sarah, not Jenny.

The Buy More story was once again mostly a miss for me. I thought the part about haggling with customers to move more units was amusing, and Lester explaining it by announcing” this is a teaching hospital!” seemed like some sort of jab at Grey’s Anatomy. However, the idea to throw a big frat-type party at the store was just too insanely stupid for me to follow. I get that these employees aren’t the brightest, and their quirks make them fun to watch, but raising money to make up or the products they essentially gave away by hosting a party in an electronics store just makes no sense. Of course, the party turns out to be the total disaster it promised to be, but the crew pulls together, cleans the place up, and manages to impress Big Mike when he returns from his time away.

The only real good I found coming from this story was the humanizing of Lester, by allowing him to screw up horrendously only to have all the people he treats so badly have his back and help him save face. It gives him an idea that maybe there are decent people and that he should treat others with some kindness, but it’s probably safe to say those heart-warming realizations won’t stick with him too long. He also resigns from his position, leaving it up for grabs again. I wonder who will take it this time?

There were two YouTube worthy clips in this hour: The first being Casey as the high school reunion DJ and the other being the extended fight between Sarah and Heather, first in a locker room, then in said locker room’s shower (where they get very wet and bloody), and finally with Sarah’s foot in Heather’s face and Heather’s face in a shattered trophy case. It was like a clip tailor made for The Man Show or something.

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.

Pam and Jim are having an “off” day and not feeling as in-synch as usual, which proves that long distance relationships can be hard. He doesn’t understand her stories about people he doesn’t know (Remember, all their stories before centered around people at the office) and she’s doing laundry and can’t hear Jim very well. At the end when they both call each other at the exact same moment and leave voice mails reminiscing on the exact same funny story, we get to see the chemistry is definitely still there and it truly was just a singular bad day for them, which is realistically going to happen to any happy couple now and then.

A lot of this episode felt more serious than usual, conjuring up some genuine sympathy on my part for Michael and how Jan has treated him. He’s planning a big baby shower for her and then she shows up not pregnant, but with a stroller. He tries to forge on and pretend everything is OK, even treating Holly like crap for Jan’s sake, but after going on about how good he is with kids and then holding “his” baby, he feels nothing and realizes at the same time he no longer feels anything for Jan, who is singing semi-sexual songs at her baby shower. When Jan and the, not his, baby leave, he finds Holly and gives her a hug that might seem awkward, but is incredibly sweet when you take into account who he is and what he’s wordlessly admitting in that moment.

The highlights of the episode for me were Andy’s “wtf” reaction to Angela’s baby photo (believing Phyliss’ baby photo is Angela’s and then reacting poorly to the real photo of her as a toddler) and Michael’s ignorant moment of the half-hour when he goes on about golden showers in a wholly innocent way that for anyone other than Michael sounds totally pervy. Also, I liked how everyone in the office is worrying about issues such as who the real baby daddy is while Dwight is simply preoccupied with the safety and durability of a thousand dollar stroller (which he steals and puts through a variety of tests, like launching it from a high ledge and tying it to the back of his car). It’s all almost as funny as Dwight’s opening moments, pretending to be a pregnant woman whose water is breaking and then going into labor and announcing “I’m crowning!”

Oh and apparently Dwight circumcised himself when he was but a young lad, but is that really all that surprising?

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.

Smash had a great arc going this season, but this episode tarnishes his send-off in a way. He gets offered a regional manager position at the chain of Dairy Queen-ish restaurants and spends the entire episode making up his mind whether to take it and make money for his family or to follow his dreams. The problem is that he already had a similar dilemma and worked through it with the help of Coach Taylor, who bent over backwards for him. Sure, his mother sets him straight at the end by telling him he’s not going to throw away what they all worked so hard for and to let her support her children, but it just doesn’t seem like he would have realistically been anywhere near as torn over this decision. For Brian maybe it would have been difficult, but with his returned mojo as Smash, it should have been an easy one. Hopefully next week will really wrap up his story in a satisfying manner, and this episode will prove to only be a minor misstep for his character.

In Riggin’s world, Lyla wants him to prove her friends and family wrong about him and his brother wants him to help give him his second chance, which happens to come in the form of copper wire. Twice in the episode Tim lets Lyla down, and both times his family is to blame. First he convinces her to come hang out with him, his brother, and his fiancee and her mom and Tyra, but when Lyla laughs out loud at the wedding vows ripped straight from Finding Nemo, Tim doesn’t rescue her as he promised. She’s left alone with the women when Tim leaves to help his brother and it’s war between upper crust, slightly higher-than-though Lyla and the trailer yard (though Tyra plays moderator to an extent). Even though Lyla had no bad intentions, her upbringing puts her in such a different world than Tyra’s family that their differences seem so fundamental that getting along is a near futile undertaking. For the record and in Lyla’s defense, I might have burst out laughing at those vows, too.

The next time Tim chooses family over frakking is when he’s a no show to the Panther party, leaving Lyla waiting all evening for him. Instead he’s out at an abandoned factory stealing copper wire and dodging attack dogs and police cars. It’s hard to condone what either Riggins brother is doing, but the idea of family always coming first and the fact that Tim is willing to help his bro’ out is a little bit stupid, but also kind of honorable and loyal. Except that he’s also letting someone else down at the same time–someone who has been vouching for the “real” Tim that no one else sees all season, and giving them all the more reason to tell Lyla “I told you so…” She begs Tim not to make a fool of her, and he’s either going to have to balance his priorities better or choose a side. For the sake of his future, Lyla is the safe bet, free of drug deals and shady robberies, but it’s also doubtful he’ll be shaking off the bonds to his brother with the theme of family being as strong as it is in FNL. Truthfully, neither of his choices are the most interesting stories of the season, and I’d be happy if he just blew Lyla and his brother off and found some other hijincks to get into instead.

Tim and Lyla’s storyline as well as the ordeal with Eric and the McCoys highlights the underlying clashing of different classes going on this season and point back to the title of this episode. You’ve got Lyla and Tim trying in different ways to go outside their comfort zone by Tim dressing himself up and Lyla dressing down, but both are having a time of it. It shows that maybe it’s not such a good idea to become someone else to try and swim with another group of fishes. You can put a nice blazer on Tim or a Tweetie Bird T-Shirt on Lyla, but at the end of the day they are who they are, and their whole relationship is seemingly hinging on this idea that one or both of them just change. But perhaps they’re starting to realize they can be who they are–screw the haters!–and figure out who they are together rather than who they should be. Coach Taylor is feeling the class issue in his own way when his moderate wealth is overshadowed by the big and rich McCoy family. Not only are they breathing down his neck to get JD more playing time, but they’re getting to his wife and somehow getting her to hand over his party (the one he has at his house each year) to them. The party itself is a grand spectacle, but Eric can’t enjoy a moment of it. It’s like a large scale cigar or bottle of fine whiskey–a bribe leaving him feeling indebted to the McCoys, which is the last place he wants to be in. Too bad Tami can’t quite see how fake their gestures are or how one-sided their goals are and every action leading to that ultimate ideal: Jd being QB1 of the Panthers.

At the end, Coach Taylor says he misses the Coach’s wife and Tami says she wants to meet the Principal’s, husband, but it’s unclear where the middle ground is for them to meet at. This will surely continue to be an issue this season, and should be interesting–especially knowing that they can endure any number of hardships and still remain a strong couple when it’s all over. It’s still the best and most real feeling marriage on TV now and, in my opinion, ever.

Oh, and almost forgot! Matt and Julie are incredibly adorable together and have this chemistry together that just works. Them as friends (or more) is so much better then tham hating or avoiding each other, and they both had me smiling pretty much every scene they were in together. I didn’t touch much on Matt and his continued struggle with the pressures being put on him from the crowd eyeing JD McCoy to take over his title, but when he plays one of the best games of his career only to lose it in the last second because of a loose grip on a ball, Julie is there to comfort him and talk about anything (except football). It’s a sweet end to a tough few episodes for Matt, and it’s probably only going to get worse for him both on and off the field, so it’s good that he has that support from Julie back. And they should definitely include more Landry and Matt scenes, because Landry is awesome and thus far very udnerused int he season. Maybe the writer’s are afraid of what happened last season when they expanded his role on the show?

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.

By far the best scene of the night came from Walter (no surprise) when, while Olivia and Peter are talking, he dances around in wool socks on carpet and then shimmy-shakes his way over and shocks his son. Priceless. Also, when he’s in the lab investigating the possibility of inputting a person’s audio-fingerprint in pigeons, who can then theoretically track down whomever that fingerprint belongs to, there’s a moment where he powers up his machines and electricity shoots out, and Walter stands in the background seeming more like Dr. Frankenstein than ever before. I’ve made the comparison already, but this almost seemed intentional.

The last intriguing aspect of the episode is the increased frequency in which Olivia is seeing her dead lover, John Scott. He appears to her three times in the hour, first in the mysterious power outage at her office, next by a vending machine, and finally at the end to lead her to his secret stash of personal files, including an engagement ring meant for Olivia’s finger. I had the explanation for his apperances figured out before it was given–that Olivia’s soak in that tank back in the pilot got his concious tangled up in hers–but it’s still a very cool concept. I had severe Alias flashbacks when John appeared to Olivia in the elevator of her office and told her that the truth will come out, and couldn’t help, but think of the unfilfillec potential of the “Truth takes time…” storyline between Sydney and her mother. Thankfully, the truth didn’t take much time and was at least mostly resolved by the hour’s end. I’m glad Agent Scott wasn’t just a simple bad guy and that his character is more interesting dead than he was alive. Fringe is proving it has a thing for characters with blurry motives and unclear alliances, but that really shouldn’t come as any surprise knowing the team behind it.

I do wish Anna Torv hadn’t wasted such a good opportunity to stretch her acting chops, though, and her reaction to finding the ring was almost non-existent. Her perpetual straight face must just be the character she’s trying to portray, but if that’s the case I wonder if I will ever fully warm to Oliva. I don’t know whether to blame Torv for her ability (having seen her in nothing else, I can’t make comparisons) or the character design. Maybe it’s a tad of both.

P.S. Fringe doesn’t dissapoint in the chase scene department either. It’s had one every episode so far, but this time it has two. One traditonal and one that you probably won’t see happen ever again, when Olivia and Peter chase a flock of pigeons across town, complete with dramatic chase scene music. It’s almost amusing how dramatic it is watching an SUV frantically following a group of birds.

P.P.S I also enjoyed the play on the title, with the literal power being eaten and spat out by our poor, unfortunate victim and then the power hungry scientist with devilish ambitions. A small, but nice touch.

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.

She’s not the only one struggling with the past, though, or even the one having the toughest time with it. That honor goes to Chuck and her sad stump of a family tree, unfinished since her days of grade school and the silly project that made her realize then and still now that she knew very little about her family. Donning a blond hooker wig, as Ned calls it, she meets a well-known genealogist to try and dig up her family history, but Ned makes that scowly face he makes when he’s unhappy, because he is unhappy for whatever reason about her search. Perhaps because even after last weeks steps forward, he still wants partly to be all that she needs–to be her entire world–when clearly that can’t and shouldn’t be the case.

Later, in the thick of the nunnery investigation, sitting side-by-side and under the watchful eyes of the Virgin Mary, Chuck reveals how she feels stuck in between, like a ghost lingering somewhere between heaven and hell. It almost seems to Ned that she wants him to touch her again and die, which breaks his heart a little, but what she’s really wanting is clarity on her past and a clear path into her future. She doesn’t have to die, she just needs answers to kick her out of that terrible in between place of uncertainty. And Ned is handed the key to that by Olive Snook in the form of the bombshell that Lily is not her Aunt, but her mother.

When he does tell her, she begins to cry tears of joy. Ned is surprised over her choice to take the news in a good way, since he was right alongside me in thinking she would resent such a secret being held from her, and maybe she will later on, but for now she’s just overjoyed to be able to fill in those missing branches of the unfinished family tree. Ned hands it to her to rewrite, but is simultaneously realizing he has to go back into his past as well. The Father at the convent told him that he is going to continue to become more like the father that abandoned him unless he goes back and faces him and clears the air, which is hard for our very non-confrontational Ned to stomach. Much like myself, Ned is the kind of guy to choose almost any option over confrontation. While it can be a good quality at times and avoid many unnecessary conflicts, it can also lead to avoidance of absolutely necessary things–like reconciling with a person that hurt you more than you’d even like to admit. Ned can’t live in the bubble anymore, as it’s been burst, and has to move outside his comfort zone in order to expand it and move on and be happy. Olive’s bandaging up her past, Chuck is filling in hers and now Ned, too, has to face his. Also, Emmerson has one that’s following him around and will surely be more than just hinted at as the season continues.

The case this week isn’t as fanciful as the last, taking place entirely in Olive’s convent, but I think has more heart. Olive gets to play the heroine for the hour, starting with the wonderful opening explaining her penchant for digging. She dug a hole in her yard to get to Arabia to get an Arabian horse, but find a dinosaur skeleton instead. She’s digging for horses, digging for truffles, but mostly, she’s digging for love. It’s an odd story that could only fit in the world of Pushing Daisies, but it sets up Miss Snook’s tenacity in this episode and her reason for never giving up until she has what she wants. That could be why Ned poses such an unknown for her, being someone that no amount of digging will ever lead her to, and she doesn’t know what to do or how to move on because of it. So the supposed suicide of her one friend at the nunnery (guest star Mo Collins) gives her a chance to dig into a problem she can solve and leads her to the meeting with Ned that sort of finally pushes her out of the stagnant pool she’s been wallowing in. Olive may have the biggest pickax for digging, but Ned, Chuck and Emmerson are all finding they have digging of their own to do and they’re finally almost able to handle the tools necessary to drill into their pasts and get rid of the several billion year old dinosaur skeletons lingering there.

I enjoyed the many turns the case took, making it appear that several different people were murders before ultimately revealing the complicated truth behind everything. Some shows, and even some cases on PD, I can figure out early on, but this one kept me guessing until the end. Complete with secret passageways, hidden truffle laboratories, and killer pigs, the case was certainly obscure and random enough for a Daisies caper and ended off for the first time (that I can recall) with no one being guilty of murder. I was personally glad that the devout nuns or the Father full of good advice were not scheming killers, which would have been a little dark for this show, but the episode did a good job of making it hard to trust a single person living in a convent full of devout sister’s of God.

If I had to find a negative it might be the lack of either aunt, but that’s only because I love them so much, and I realize there was no way they could fit into this nun filled hour. Also, I was pretty sure I read Olive was to perform a musical number in the third episode, but either I was misinformed or it got lost on the cutting room floor. Everything else, as usual, was full of that Fuller magic (and Gretchen Berg, the writer, deserves credit, too).

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.

On the flip side, Sylar is being pushed a little too far too quickly into being a reformed serial killer. He’s bought into mommy’s love and is playing super nice. The goal is obvious: To show that heroes we thought to be good can be bad and that villains we thought to be irredeemable are not past saving, but this episode brings it all together a little too densely and without much subtlety. At first, there seemed to be hope for the unlikely pairing of Sylar and HRG, but by the end of this hour there doesn’t seem to be much to like. HRG is being made to seem like the worse of the two for the moment and though he gives his tired old reasons–he’s doing it all for Claire–she isn’t buying it and I’m definitely not either. He’s lying to her now, breaking promises and coming across as a general jerk rather than the complex and multi-faceted character first introduced.

Claire’s vigilante quest for justice was good up until her father and Sylar coincidentally showed up at the house of the escapee she had chosen to visit. She realizes that not all so-called villains are bad when the vortex creating man she visits reveals he never meant to hurt anyone, and all he wants to do is see his family again. She ends up trying to help with his reunion, but is interrupted by daddy’s arrival on the scene. It’s one of the few subdued moments of the episode–where the line between hero and villain truly is nicely blurred–but it doesn’t last long or end in a satisfying way. Thanks to HRG, who says he’ll pardon the man if he’ll suck Sylar into a vortex, the man ends his own life rather than kill again.

I do love David Anders and his Adam Monroe character, who is dripping with an equal amount of sarcasm and sex-appeal as his beloved Mr. Sark was from his days on Alias. Hiro, Ando and Adam seemed to be a fun motley crew while they lasted, where  a scheming bad guy was teamed with the two most squeaky clean of the whole cast, but again the story was cut short in favor of one I’m digging far less. Hiro has made a point every episode, to an almost annoying degree, that he has a destiny and a mission, which is to be the world’s saving light. To be…a hero! So when Heroes decides the episode needs another twist, Hiro’s “nemeshis” Daphne shows up with Knox wanting his help, but to prove himself he must kill Ando. He barely hesitates before apologizing in advance and driving a sword through his best friend’s chest, and presumably his heart.

This is where the show stretches too far for me to reach. So Hiro, the purest of pure characters, also has the potential to become a villain, or so we’re led to believe. But it seems all too evident that this will be a twist presented purely for shock value that will be explained away soon enough, by some combination of Hiro’s powers over time and space, I assume. The rivalry being setup between Hiro and Ando was one thing, but this shoves it into a whole other realm of nonsense. With Heroe’s reputation, I can’t help but to feel that this move wasn’t made based on where the story needed to go, but for the purpose of dropping jaws.

It’s the same principle employed several times over in the last ten minutes: With Hiro, then with Mama Petrelli, who finds Tracy and her two sons dead, but only in a vision meant to fool us all for a few seconds. And finally with the reveal that Mr. Petrelli is alive (though not too well–hooked up like a computer to a tangle of wires and machines) and plotting very bad things. The in-head Linderman is explained away as well in a truly unexciting way: Father Parkman with his mind powers has been making both Nathan and Daphne see him in order to advance Mr. Petrelli’s agenda. So many places they could have gone there, but they chose the simple route of a hero using a power, all written in for the convenience of the story.

This episode did manage to give us the creepiest scene ever on the show and one of the few highlights of the hour when Claire’s birth mother goes out looking for her and somehow ends up in the lair of a creepy clown man with the powers of manipulation. The way he shuts her jaw like she’s a puppet and then we pan out to see  a living room that looks like a demented, one man circus is all pretty chilling. Enough to make this episode worth watching? Hardly.

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.

But even when he gets kicked out of the party for being the worst waiter in the world, Chuck still shows us that he can think on the fly. Unfortunately, he lands himself in the hands of the evil villains once more and Sarah must choose him or pursuing the cipher. She chooses Chuck and gets herself a nasty concussion in the process. Later, when Chuck inadvertently stumbles upon a lead and sets up a trade for the chip, Sarah hesitates to act again when her shot could come dangerously close to harming Chuck. Casey ends up getting the job done, but at this point everyone realizes how dangerous love in the line of duty can be. And the realization doesn’t come easy to Chuck, who realizes he has to let Sarah go if he truly cares about her. He tells her it’s because he doesn’t know her real name or where she’s from, but Chuck is letting her go to save her life. It’s sad, but the right thing for him to do. And what would a show be if our destined lovers lived happily ever after so soon? I’m just hoping they can both find each other in that boring, spyless world they both dream for–where they will have no secrets and at least three sickeningly cute kids running around on a quaint farm somewhere in nowhere, U.S.A.

The hardest part of it all will be what comes now, when they must go back to being a pretend couple. Can they really keep their feelings for each other at bay? After Chuck tells Sarah that they can’t be together, even though she’s his perfect girl in every way, they have to go eat dinner with his sister and Captain Awesome and fake an evening worth of smiles, though Chuck has trouble wearing a convincing one. Just multiply that by all the future missions where they will have to fake more than smiles and think of how stressful it could be on the both of them. Surely it’s only a matter of time before one of them breaks down and drops a line like “I can’t take it anymore! I want you! NOW!” Or…something along those lines.

Of course in addition to our spy exploits, we have the misadventures of the Buy More crew, with 75% less Chuck involvement. While it had nice moments, such as Morgan crawling on the ground like he’s playing COD: Buy More Versus the Bullies or Anna beating the crap out of a man four times her size with a tripod, this story didn’t work for me overall. Basically, Lester’s new rules call for a stricter Buy More and the first order of business is to kick out the team of guys that’s been sitting in the demo room playing Madden for hours and trashing it with cups, empty hamburger wrappers and half-eaten burritos. The problem Is that even a extremely good ability to suspend disbelief fails to make this story remotely believable. If a bunch of surly, gap-toothed jocks planted themselves in a store everyday to play on a TV they don’t own and to litter in a place that’s not theirs, management would kick them out or call the cops.

So I get the setup of Morgan and Lester, the “dweebs” against the “jocks”, but the amount of time it gets dragged on is ridiculous. Morgan even goes as far as giving up two weeks pay to buy the guys PSPs to avoid meeting face first with a fist bigger than his head, and even when he finally grows the testicles to confront them, the resolution ends in a cage match between the gang leader and Anna. Granted, it’s an awesome scene that gives Casey enough reason to make a note of her being good material for an agent, but it was an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion to a story I just couldn’t make myself get into. Perhaps my years in retail make me cringe at this story just as people in the medical field can’t help but hold an intense hatred for shows like ER and Grey’s Anatomy.

Thankfully, the Chuck side of the evening was enough to make The Break Up a solid and enjoyable hour, and the end twist finally answers some questions I’ve been wondering since the premiere. Bryce leaves Chuck a pair of his cool, cool spy glasses that unbeknownst to Chuck are a clever disguise for the Intersec update, which gets downloaded right into his brain. Again. And thus the seemingly endless quest for the Cipher and Chuck’s freedom gets put on indefinate hold, and a whole lot of new doors suddenly open for the show to step through.

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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).

This all leads to the end, where Anna Paquin gives America a glimpse of her naked body while Sookie gives Bill a lot more than just a peek. She lets him taste her, quite literally, by allowing him to feast on her neck. And girl must have a pretty high threshold for pain or kinky enough to turn that pain into pleasure because day-um, if that doesn’t look like it hurt something terrible.

Sookie’s not the only one toting around a big pile of emotional baggage though, and her BFF Tara gets a chance to be both the strong, supportive friend as well as deal with inner demons of her own. Or I should say, the inner demons of her mother, because that’s exactly what she’s trying to exorcise. At the funeral, Tara’s mom shows up surprisingly sober and gives a speech that’s touching to everyone except her daughter, whom it just pisses off. She talks about how she didn’t know Ms. Stackhouse well, but knew when Tara was over at her house that she was taken care of. Tara claims Gran was more of a mother to her than her real one, but mommy dearest still wants to try and be that mother figure for her. The only problem standing in the way is that she’s possessed by a demon. Tara laughs, we laugh, and everyone except mama laughs, who is dead serious about it. Well to deal with this, Tara goes to be with Sookie again–to help her with her pain so as to bury hers–but she finds Sam instead, and they find themselves in bed together.

But all this fakeness going around has gotten to Sam and he demands of Tara that if they hook up again it has to be real. It can’t be something to forget about or deny happened, but something substantial and, well, real. She agrees, but in the post-coital sweaty kissing stage, her lost baggage is delivered and she has the sudden urge to leave and see her mother. Sam seems so dejected in this moment it’s almost easy to forget he was rolling around in a dead girl’s sheets a few weeks ago like a world class pervert. Meanwhile, Tara cuddles with drunken mama on the couch, all thoughts of bottles to the head forgotten for the moment. Tara has played the wise-cracking, tough as nails best friend of the series thus far, but she finally cracked, no doubt brought upon by the loss of her friend’s mother figure. She reveals to Sam before they have the not so real sex again that she’s always being sarcastic to hide her true feelings. She says afterward it’s a joke, but it seems the “jk” is only a rushed addendum so as not to seem vulnerable or weak. No matter how horrible alcohol (or demons) have made her mother, she realizes that with the passing of Gran anyone can be taken from this life at any time.

Family is very important in True Blood and the loss of family members is possibly the hardest thing to cope with. This is a town obsessed with their Civil War Ancestors, still somewhat mourning and probing at the lives of long-dead members of family they might never have even known in the flesh. So when close, living family dies, it hits hard. It hits Jason so hard that he smacks Sookie right across the face, and you almost hate him for it until you realize just how torn up he is inside, too. Sure, hitting his sister isn’t anywhere near the right way to handle the situation, but its clearly a way of passing from palm to face the guilt he’s feeling over not being there for Gran: Instead out hooking up with a girl whose number and name he can’t even recall. When he’s questioned yet again over the murder, he hits his breaking point as well. He can’t remember who he was with exactly because it was another one night stand, and the fact that such a meaningless experience caused him to be one of the last people in town to find out about Gran’s death really leaves him in a messed up state (on top of still getting high on V). Later, after Gran’s funeral and being told by Sookie she wants nothing to do with him, he finds another tramp to get it on with. She’s into it while he is clearly trying his hardest not to cry during sex. It’s almost as sad as Sookie and her piece of pie, but not quite.

True Blood didn’t hold back any emotional gut punches in “Cold Ground” and is a truly raw and heartbreaking episode because of it. It’s still proving that it’s unlike any other show in its genre and that when it comes to stories about death, Alan Ball is still King (Well, maybe he shares a throne with Bryan Fuller, now that I think about it…)

R.I.P. Gran.

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.

The only good aspect of the flood was the patient it effected most directly. There’s this guy who believes he brings misfortune wherever he goes, and the leaks in the hospital seem to prove his theory. His idea that he’s under some curse has kept him from living fully–kept him from saying hello to this girl he likes–and Alex sets out to prove that he can get better and can find the courage to say hello. During his operation, the ceiling of the Operating Room gives out and water and debris go all into the man’s open chest. It’s so dramatic it’s silly, but the accident causes the doctors to search harder for anything that might have fallen inside their patient, and they end up finding a tumor at its very earliest stages. Alex tells the man later that normally that kind of tumor is a death sentence, and the flood essentially saved his life. It’s all pretty touching as long as you can forget the fact that the water wasn’t a coincidence or a miracle, but Shonda’s hand concocting a story where everything pieces together a little too snugly.

What really works this week is the return of likable characters. No one’s whining (much), there’s less self-centered behavior running rampant, and in general everyone is once more enjoyable. Sloan, Izzie, Lexie and Alex remain the current best, with the biggest positive changes from last season, but the rest of the gang was fairing much better as well. Except for Derek, who smiles his McDreamy smile, but acts like a grade A douchebag.

His douchery is what sets up the episode’s biggest dilemma: He tells Izzie and Alex they need to move out ’cause he’s moving in, but he tells them this before discussing it with Meredith and just assumes his decision will be the right one. For him to make such an assumption and to tell Meredith’s friends before even talking with her is about as rude as you can get. This causes Izzie and Alex to worry for the majority of the hour about whether they’ll be homeless in a week (which seems pretty crazy if they actually think Meredith would kick them to the curb like that) and Meredith to try and figure out what she should do. In the end, she stands up to Derek and tells him no, they can’t move out, because they’re her family just as much as he is. Fortunately, he agrees without a fuss, but it still doesn’t excuse the way he approached the whole situation to begin with.

The Callie and Hahn relationship is aging fast and not so well. It needs something of more interest than a small squabble over Callie telling Sloane about their relationship, which Hahn views as a private matter as she does essentially all of her affairs. I like both characters, but I’m still not sure I like them together. I can say with some certainty that their characters were not initially conceived as being bi-curious, or whatever they are, and while the potential for this to be interesting is there, I’m just not feeling it. As a result, it’s taking away enjoyment from two of the better people on the show.

The best developed character so far has been Lexie, who went from being an annoying extra last season to one of the biggest players now. Her friendship with George feels more genuine and fun than his and Izzie’s ever was, but I wonder what will happen when they inevitably make them more than just buddies. Getting bed with someone on Grey’s never seems to end well, which is a pretty pessimistic view on love, but whatever. Lexie shows off that she’s not just a  good friend though, helping George study for his second try at the exam, but she’s a smart and independent woman that has yet to be tainted by all the other problems dragging down other characters.

There’s more to be said about this episode, like about Alex learning better bedside manners and slowly thawing out his bad boy act or Izzie and her realization that she has no one anymore to turn to, made evident in her search for a new place to live, but I think I’m done.