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TV Reviews

8.5
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Fringe – Forced Perspective

“Forced Perspective” was one of Fringe‘s trademark quasi-standalone stories. They are typically set after episodes that delved heavily into the main storyline and are designed to deal with a specific fallout of the previous story arc, in this case Olivia’s predicted death and the events — driven by Nina Sharp — that might make it happen.

The final scene of “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” saw our favorite Observer warning Olivia of her impending death. He had apparently looked at all possible futures and there was none in which she survived. Caught between more pressing matters, she didn’t bring that up until the opening scene of this episode. We understood that Observers (not known as such in this timeline) had been spotted by the Fringe Division which has been on the look out for them for three years. Although relevant to the conclusion of the episode, our bald men in dark suits didn’t feature in the the story beyond other similar indirect references.

7.2
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Justified – Cut Ties

Let’s face it. After last week’s spine shattering premiere of Justified’s third season, we all had unfairly high expectations for this week’s episode “Cut Ties”. And although it didn’t quite pack the punch we expected, the show did take a step back and remind us that Justified is still a serialized procedural, albeit an unconventional one.

This episode’s case-of-the-week brought things back down to earth for the US Marshal Service when one of their own, Bill Nichols, was gunned down by one of the witnesses he was protecting, a former mob enforcer named Terry Powe. But where the story lacked in suspense (Art already knew Powe shot Nichols the moment he received that phone call from Raylan), it made up in character development. Art Mullen (played by the awesome Nick Searcy) is one of those characters we tend to take for granted. Ever since the first episode of the series, Searcy has delivered many unacknowledged zingers that have been lost in the sea of awesomeness that is this show. It was refreshing to see the focus taken off Raylan for once. Art’s interrogation of Powe was particularly badass!

6.5
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Alcatraz – Kit Nelson

After the rather disappointing extended premiere (from a reviewer point of view), Fox’s Alcatraz did nothing with “Kit Nelson” to reassure those who have mixed feelings on the latest J.J. Abrams venture into genre shows.

The episode kept the same pattern used the previous week, building the story around an Alcatraz inmate who has reappeared and can’t help but resume activities that got him incarcerated in the first place. The title character, Kit Nelson, was sent to prison for killing 11-year-olds, and that is of course the first thing he sets out to do when he reappears in our time. This follows “Ernest Cobb,” the second episode last week, featuring a snipper whose favorite pastime consisted of shooting people at (sort of) random. The two episodes, unlike the pilot, brought nothing new to the overarching storyline, but attempted clumsily to do some character development.

9.5
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Fringe – Enemy of My Enemy

Almost everything Fringe did wrong in the previous episode, “Back to Where You’ve Never Been,” was corrected in “Enemy of My Enemy.” The second half of what was obviously designed as a two-part story within a larger storyline was an episode that showcased every single quality that has made Fringe the best sci-fi series on TV today.

“Enemy of My Enemy” built on what was clumsily introduced in the previous episode, telling the story of the encounter of Fringe Division with David Robert Jones (on both sides) and its fallout. The episode also touched on the theme of forgiveness from an angle that was not only surprising but was also so compelling in its execution that Walter had no choice but to comply, and the audience no other choice than to quietly admire the writers’ skills.

7.4
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Spartacus: Vengeance – Fugitivus

The STARZ Network has a unique list of shows to its credit. With Kelsey Grammer winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series (Drama) for his role on Boss, the network has established itself to be a reliable source of awesome television, except for the occasional hit-and-miss (*cough* Camelot). But the show that really put the network on the map and made it a noticeable force to be reckoned with has to be everyone’s favorite blood-and-gore fest, the Spartacus series. The newest installment of the series, Spartacus: Vengeance officially returned this week, and it placed the viewers smack dab in the middle of the action, so much so that you can almost taste the blood as it sprayed across the television screen!

With the fall of House Batiatus, Spartacus and his band of gladiators have been on the rampage, attacking unsuspecting bands of Roman soldiers and pilfering food & supplies from wherever they can. The slave rebellion is starting to gain momentum, and Gaius Claudius Glaber, now a Praetor, as well as Spartacus’ original nemesis, is dispatched to Capua to resolve the situation. The rebels have taken shelter underground and have divided themselves into two factions, one under Spartacus and the other under Crixus, who leads his own band of Gauls. While Spartacus is still focused on keeping the rebellion alive and bringing down the Roman empire, Crixus continued his desperate search for Naevia after she was whisked away and sold to an unknown buyer before the massacre at House Batiatus. With this background in mind, this episode gave us a comfortable opportunity to judge Liam McIntyre as Spartacus. Make no mistake, Andy Whitfield was absolutely perfect in his role as the legendary gladiator. But if the show was to go on, the producers needed an extraordinarily broad set of shoulders to take over the reins from him. I thought McIntyre was fairly impressive as Spartacus, although he does lack the charisma and depth that Whitfield brought to the role. Fans of the show will need time to get used to a new Spartacus, and it’s up to him to make the role his own. But nowhere during the 55 minutes of the episode did I feel disappointed by his performance.

9.4
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Justified – The Gunfighter

Grab a can of Kentucky fried whoopass, gents. Justified is back! After the mind numbingly awesome season last year, Justified made its much awaited return to FX last night. And “The Gunfighter” didn’t waste any time in getting down to business. For those of you with a fuzzy memory, season 2 left us with Raylan Givens (apparently unable to sweet talk his way out of a bullet) being shot after a dramatic confrontation with the Bennetts. To keep things short, Mags Bennett is dead and so is Doyle. As for Dickie, he’s cooling off his heels in prison, but we’ll get to him later. Is everybody up to speed? Perfect. Now onto the good stuff!

It’s been three weeks since Raylan’s shooting and our hero is still in the process of getting his bearings back. But Harlan County and its neighbors are a restless bunch, and Raylan has an uncanny knack of being in the thick of things. The death of Mags Bennett was the final step in the downfall of the Bennett clan, and while most of her assets have been seized by the authorities, a sizable chunk is still missing along with an even more sizable amount of marijuana. One guess as to who might have taken it. It was probably Raylan’s first order of business to bring Boyd in for questioning. Justified is known for its crisp and witty dialogue, and any conversation between Raylan and Boyd is bound to be a mouth watering scene. The fact that the two ended up beating the crap out of each other was an added bonus!

8.0
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Fringe – Back to Where You’ve Never Been

Fringe returned from its two-month hiatus with an episode that did a lot of things right, but unfortunately not for everyone. From the very beginning of this fourth season, the minds behind the show have done everything in their power — and have largely succeeded — in designing storylines friendly to newcomers to the series while keeping longtime viewers interested. Like every episode set on The Other Side, “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” was captivating, but it was also an episode more likely to dazzle a newcomer than a series seasoned viewer, which is a pity because at this point in the season, the show needs to keep all its audience.

5.5
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Supernatural – Time After Time After Time

After its thoroughly underwhelming return to our screens last week, Supernatural had a fair bit of work to do with “Time After Time After Time,” perhaps even more so than usual with the long-awaited return of its time-slot competitor Fringe. I usually spend the first paragraph of the things that I write trying to lightly unsheathe the machete I’m about to put into the stomach of whatever given show it is I’m talking about if it’s had a bad week, but this episode doesn’t even deserve it. Before I go any further, I’ll clarify that “Time After Time After Time” was actually a very small improvement over last week’s outing (if you ignore everything about it), but as the standalone spectacle it was trying to be, it failed almost uniformly. 

The premise was fairly simple, the brothers catch wind of a hunt as is par for the course – this particular case being thrown to them by Sheriff Mills in a nice use of a semi-recurring character – and in the process Dean gets transported to 1944 whilst trying to save what appeared to be an employment and housing challenged gentleman from death. Having not known what it was that they were hunting at the time, both Sam and Dean – now in separate eras – continue the hunt, with the aim of bringing Dean back and also killing what it is they’re after. Believe it or not, despite what you’d imagine would be the semi-serious nature of the plot, the episode played itself largely as a comedy; its first major downfall. 

5.5
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Supernatural – Adventures in Babysitting

This week marked the return of the majority of prime-time television to our screens, meaning of course that Friday was all about Supernatural. The mid-season finale was something of a strange one, combining a series of good individual moments together to make what ended up as a mediocre pile of frustration. Bobby had caught a bullet the week before and we got to see a fairly emotional aftermath to that, but the way things ended up was just stupid. Now that the month long cliffhanger is over, we have ourselves “Adventures in Babysitting.”

I am not entirely sure where to begin with this episode. It certainly had elements that made it scrape just above unwatchable, but following up a month-long break with this was a terrible idea. The episode began with the standard introduction to the weekly hunt and then moved on with a scene reminiscent of – I cannot believe I am about to say this – The Twilight Saga: New Moon, in which the brothers mope around whilst time slowly ticks by. Admittedly, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles can hold the screen slightly better than Kristen “no emotion whatsoever” Stewart can, but it was awkward to the point of laughable. Although intuition would tell you the answer, we still didn’t have absolute confirmation that Bobby was dead until five minutes into the episode, because that’s how long it actually took one of the brothers to speak.

8.0
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Terra Nova – Occupation / Resistance

A lot happened during the two-parter finale of Terra Nova, some of it
was funny, some of it was touching and some of it was sad, and although
there were some breadcrumbs setting the stage for a subsequent season,
the whole of it pretty much felt like a conclusion.


In the first half of the finale (“Occupation”), the forces behind Lucas
Taylor make their move, sending him back to Terra Nova at the head of
an army for hire. The private army takes over the settlement, pushing
Taylor into military resistance and quickly creating an atmosphere as
to make his previous absolute military leadership seem like a
Jeffersonian democracy. If we forget the scene shared by Maddy and her
soldier, everything leading up to the arrival of the army was pretty
decent, but then there was the anti-climactic moment after the
explosion. Even if you have little tolerance for battle scenes, here
the build-up was such that when the story moved from the explosion at
the Terminus to the infirmary, you had to feel a bit robbed of some
promised outcome.

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