“Home,” the seventh episode of Boardwalk Empire’s first season, deals with the emotional scars carried around by its characters. In case that is at all unclear to the viewers, each of the three characters the episode focuses on have physical scars to go with their emotional ones, and the visibility of their wounds directly corolate with the depth of their personal issues. As narrative tricks go, it’s not exactly a subtle one, but that doesn’t make it any less effective.
Sunny gave us a mystery this week and along the way the gang attempts to piece together their fragmented memories of a rather outrageous Halloween party. The set up is good and while there are some missteps along the way the episode is an overall success and the best episode of the season so far.
This hilarious chapter ends Kenny and Stevie’s adventure in Mexico. It’s nice to see that the growth that Kenny went through last season has stuck with him. He’s finally done running and is returning to America and baseball. Pat Anderson is the unlikely hero
In this episode of Supernatural, it’s shown that the truth can definitely hurt. The brothers are after the cause of a recent spring of suicides. They quickly realize that townspeople who ask for the truth are receiving it unfiltered, which results in them murdering and/or killing themselves.
Is it just me, or have Community writers really upped the over-the-top movie references in their show this season? Sure, season one had the action film-inspired “Modern Warfare” and the Goodfellas-like chicken fingers episode. But that was over the course of an entire season. But now we’re only six episodes into season two and we’ve already had the big Apollo 13 parody and now our zombie-movie Halloween episode.
As you probably know if you pay attention to news about television at all, this is Steve Carell’s final season on the show. Seven years is a long time to stay on one project, and his decision is totally understandable. What you also probably know is that NBC intends to keep the show going after he’s gone. This is another decision I understand for financial reasons (and NBC really not having many better alternatives), but I find it much less agreeable. Maybe I’m just an idealist, but I’ve always believed shows should end when it’s right creatively rather than waiting until nobody’s watching anymore and letting them die slow, painful deaths. The departure of your main character seems like a great opportunity to wrap things up nicely, especially when many people would agree that you’ve been surpassed by pretty much every other show in your programming block quality-wise. The Office had its best ratings ever last season though, so what do I know?
For better or worse (worse, in many people’s minds), Weeds changed dramatically after season three, when it left behind the cynical suburbs of Agrestic and its myriad versions of “Little Boxes” for the even darker California/Mexico border town of Ren Mar. It changed again with season six, as Shane’s murder of Pilar causes the Botwin clan to pack up and head for the Canadian border. A lack of birth certificate for Nancy’s infant son Stevie prevents them from crossing, so they go for plan B; getting some fake IDs, taking on new identities, and going on the run to stay ahead of Stevie’s Mexican drug lord father and the FBI.
