The game is over, but the real war has just begun. Who won the commercial battle in the 2011 Super Bowl? It was a pretty strong year with the usual competitors providing strong showings. Coke, Pepsi, Doritos, Bud Light, and several car companies were some of the standouts. We are going to run down some of the highlights from this year’s commercial wars.
Fringe returns to the season one classic “case-of-the-week” episodes. Generally, they would be considered crap amongst the mythology focused episodes. However, “Concentrate and Ask Again” did give us a very character centric episode, developing the relationship between Peter and Olivia. You really hold out hope for the two, but damn, neither of them can catch a break from each other.
The mystery this week involves a scientist who has his bones stolen from him and the Fringe team has a bone to pick with the thief (whatity-shmackity-do!). The team picks up a contexifan kid who has the ability to read minds and have him follow the clues. However, every time this kid uses his abilities he gets sick. This doesn’t really provide any tension because they make it obvious they won’t kill him. Meanwhile in plot thread B, Olivia wonders whether Peter loves her of fauxlivia. Normally I would say: Hilarity ensures, but it just gets depressing even though that’s exactly what they wanted to happen. As we’ve come to expect, Walter is the comic relief, in fact he was a bit manic in the episode with his obsession with chicken.
Lois knows Kung Fu, Clark can fly, and Chloe returns. Smallville returns after one of the longest hiatuses ever, only to return with one of the blandest, boring Matrix “homages” in recent history. I love Smallville, I’m glad its back but this was a serious disappointment. This episode took the things that people that don’t watch the show, criticise it for and put all of them into an episode. Chloe deserved a much better homecoming.
The episode picks up shortly after the attack at the funeral for Hawkman. Clark and the rest of the League (even though we only see Oliver and Black Cannary) are told by Chloe that they are trapped in the Matrix VRA cyber space and the only way to escape is to take a leap of faith into a portal and the only way to reach it is to take a leap off of the daily planet rooftop. Chloe stated that she can’t control where the portal shows up, but I can guarantee you the moronic writer of the episode could.
Last night’s Spartacus had some frustrating moments but it ultimately ended up as a pretty satisfying episode with the best action we’ve seen in the prequel thus far. As the title suggests, it involves someone’s father, with that someone being Quintus Batiatus; his father Titus arrives back from wherever he was, in the middle of Quintus having some fun with his lady friends, and is disgusted both by their display and the apparent sorry state of affairs at the ludus. Batiatus never really wanted to run a gladiator factory for a living, but he was forced into the family business, and Titus isn’t happy with some of his decisions.
And I thought the last episode was awesome. A Going Concern is one of the best Archer episodes yet and that is saying something. In a way, this episode should have been the season premier, as Archer discovers the microchip that was planted in brain at the end of last season. After this revelation, Malory reveals that she has lost all of her money in a Ponzi scheme and planes to sell the company to O.D.I.N so their director can marry Malory and Archer has to stop the deal to keep his Mother (and his job).
With Jim barely showing up anymore (it seems like he must not be available to film much because of other commitments) and audiences pretty used to Dwight and Pam at this point, it seems like the writers of the show have really been giving just about everybody else on the show more chances to stand out and get a few minutes of screen time. That continued with last night’s cold open, which featured Ryan and Kelly announcing their divorce to the rest of the office without even bothering to have told them about their quickie marriage a week earlier. With so much of the show’s emotional focus on the various troubled relationships its biggest male characters go through, it’s fun to have a couple around that’s just completely ridiculous to deflate things a bit. And I love how nobody raised their hands to show support for either one of them.
Good news everyone! According to actress Katey Sagal, Futurama may have just been renewed for another season. While on the red carpet at the DGA Awards, Sagal, the voice of Leela on the show, is quoted as confirming the return of the popular sci-fi animated comedy. ‘I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that yet,’ she adds in an interview with Vulture.
