TV Reviews

Community – Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts

Community wrapped up one of its longest running side plots this week when Shirley’s baby is finally born in Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts.
The episode centers entirely around the group helping to deliver the
baby when they are unable to leave Anthropology class due to a race riot
started by Dean Pelton. 

The episode begins with another fantastic guest appearance by John
Oliver of The Daily Show as drunkard Professor Ian Duncan, as he and the
class take their own special version of finals. With everyone aside
from Shirley and Annie getting drunk, the class has to quickly sober up
when the Dean drops by with a reporter writing an article about him. The
entire cold open of this week’s episode really did highlight quite how
good the cast of Community is. With nothing particularly funny happening
or being said, the show remains entirely watchable and even
entertaining from the quality of acting alone. Now towards the end of
the second season, the characters and their mannerisms are so well
established that it is easy to be engaged for the full two minutes
before a singular punch-line is even delivered.

Avengers – Ultron 5 & The Ultron Imperative

You’d think Hank Pym would be perfectly happy with his
life.  He has a hot wife, he’s a
super genius, he can turn into a giant, and he control ants with his mind.  But no, the guy has to reach a little
higher, and build an army of robots. 
A smart fellow like him should know that armies of robots just don’t
turn out well, especially when you’re a superhero.  Yet here we go again with the classic Avengers
storyline: Ultron.

Smallville – Booster

The
first few minutes into a show are paramount in our assessment of the
overall experience. It is why people often give their opinions with
lines such as “It started slowly but then picked up some momentum,” or “It
was promising but unfortunately didn’t deliver.” That is because our
mind can never be cheated out of remembering what we felt at the
beginning. A few minutes into this episode of Smallville and I braced
myself for the worst.

Avengers – Hail Hydra

Why do I love Captain America?  This episode of Avengers is why.  Cap may have peak human physical conditioning, and a Vibranium shield, but his real super power is delivering inspirational speeches.  I’d follow that man to the Gates of Hell after watching this episode!

Game of Thrones – The Kingsroad

Last night’s episode of Game of Thrones was a significant improvement
over the first, mostly because they had already done a lot of the hard
work of setting up a vast interconnected network of families and
kingdoms (or at least the ones that matter at this point), and just let
the story threads they had put in place unfurl for about an hour. There
were a few new faces to introduce, most notably Sandor Clegane, a knight
with a scarred face in the king’s service known as The Hound; and
Doreah, one of Daenerys’ servants who teaches her about lovemaking. With
the introductions kept to a minimum the quality of the production was
allowed to shine, and it was just an entrancing episode. The viewing
numbers I gave last week turned out to be inaccurate, but they were
still good enough to earn the series a quick renewal for a second
season, and I’m excited to see these actors portray these characters for
at least another 18 episodes.

Fringe – 6:02 AM EST

With
Olivia back in her body and Fauxlivia fully recovered from delivery,
the main season arc returned in full swing in this episode of Fringe
with a gripping story that took us back and forth between the universes.
The Other Side never disappoints and ours always shines when dealing
with the main storyline. We had here all the ingredients for a riveting
hour and it delivered.
It begins with Secretary Bishop using his grandson’s blood sample,
harvested in “Bloodline”, to activate the Machine on the Other Side.

Nikita – Girl’s Best Friend

For the first time in a long time Nikita
had an episode this week that centered around a Division mission for
good rather than evil. The episode opened with an insight into Alex’s
state of mind, as we see her confess her sins to her lover Nathan, only
to find out that he is working with her nemesis Jaden. After a short
fight scene, the much loved cliché of “and then she woke up” is thrust
upon us as we discover that it was all just a dream. Alex is promptly
called into the office as Division has been gaining intelligence that
suggests that a young Liberian prince is not only distributing
conventional weapons with his considerable means, but also a deadly
toxin. After being presented as fashion models to the prince and
handpicked by him to attend a party at his house, Alex and Jaden are
sent by Percy to destroy the lab where the weapon is being created
before it can get into the open market.

The Office – Michael’s Last Dundies

The Dundies are a memorable part of the rich tapestry of
Michael Scott’s long history with Dunder Mifflin, though this is only the
second time we’ve actually seen the award ceremony, with the first being way
back at the beginning of the second season. It seems odd, considering they’re
even featured in the opening credits. You’d think they’d pull the idea back out
for an easy excuse for a clip show or something. Well they returned in last
night’s episode, as part of the second-to-last hurrah in Steve Carell’s very
long going-away party.

Community – Paradigms of Human Memory

Although
the concept of filler episodes was something that I was aware of, I’d
never really come across one that wasn’t directly referencing that it
was one until this week’s episode of Community. “Paradigms of
Human Memory,” in stark contrast to last week’s “Competitive Wine
Tasting,” sees just about nothing happening whilst the study group
reflects on some previously unseen events from the past year that have
led them to where they are today.

Avengers – The Casket of Ancient Winters

During the lengthy hiatus that Avengers took, I had forgotten how much I love this show.  After airing 19 marvelous episodes, it took a break, but has returned to assemble the final few storylines before the grand season finale.  This first of the new episodes is the Casket of Ancient Winters. One of the tricky parts of writing a superhero team is that the audience has to accept all of the different origin stories, and various kinds of superpowers.  In the Avengers, there is magic, aliens, time-travel, and super-science.  The producers require that the audience suspend their disbelief for such, but this episode directly addresses the fact that the show has magic thunder gods standing right next to techno cyborg men in robot suits.