TV Reviews

Game of Thrones – Winter Is Coming

I’m not sure how objective about Game of Thrones I can really be,
having read and loved the four currently-released books in the series
that the show is based on. I can only promise that I will try to look at
from the perspective of both a fan and someone who hasn’t read a word,
and tell you what I think. Based on last night’s premiere, we learned a
few things. The show will look amazing, it won’t hold back on the
story’s darker content, and so far they’ve put together a pretty
outstanding cast to portray the large number of significant characters. I
had a few issues with the first episode, but they’re the sorts of
qualms that could easily be smoothed over with time.

Smallville – Kent

After
ten years of Smallville, this show still has the uncanny ability to
switch from one week to the next from a perfect episode to the most
trying, which is starting to try my patience You must admit ten years is
a long time and being faithful to Superman has its limits. A few
minutes into episodes I usually notice a recurrent Smallville theme that
is likely to annoy me for most of the hour. In the case of Kent,
my mind actually came up with two: “excessive hero-worship” and
“dragged-out impostor situation”, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. I
should have remembered that this final season of Smallville has been
until now one of my favorites, so except for one or maybe two tiny
instances, this episode was hero-worship free and they wasted no time in
dealing with the impostor.

Fringe – Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Since
the beginning of this season of Fringe Olivia has become (in both
universes) even more central to the story than she was before. Despite
the revelations surrounding Peter, she has remained the emotional
epicenter and has been consistently used to move the story forward in
both universes – though arguably a bit more over-here. This is why
following William Bell’s “soul transference” I felt episodes over-here
had to be either strong stand-alone cases or cases drawing heavily on
some aspects of the doomsday arc, in order to play down the absence of
Olivia by relying on William Bell and Peter. The writers seem to have
taken the stand-alone route. Stowaway, the previous episode set
over-here succeeded with a tragic and beautiful story, this week’s
episode of Fringe though good wasn’t quite as impressive.

30 Rock – I Heart Connecticut

This has been a very inconsistent season for 30 Rock; there have been plenty of great episodes, like the reality parody “Queen of Jordan”, but also many mediocre ones as well.  30 Rock is still one of the best comedies out there, even when it has a subpar show like this week.  As always, there are lots of isolated funny moments, and witty lines, but the episode doesn’t have much to offer outside of the occasional random comedy spike.

The Office – Training Day

Last night’s episode of The Office had something fans have been
anticipating for a long time – the arrival of Will Ferrell on the show,
which is somehow the first time he has acted with Steve Carell since Anchorman,
a landmark film in both their careers. Ferrell arrives as Deangelo
Vickers, Michael’s replacement as manager of Dunder Mifflin in Scranton,
and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the character. Not because I
don’t like Ferrell, I think he’s still one of the most consistently
funny leading men working right now. He just usually has a type, and I
really like the way Vickers doesn’t quite play to that type.

Nikita – Into the Dark

Before I get into the episode itself, I thought I’d spend a moment chastising the production team of Nikita for their laughable attempt at creating their own little piece of London. Whilst Nikita is a child of The CW and thus, relative to many other shows falls short in the budget department, it has up until now managed to maintain some level of reality in terms of portraying various locations worldwide. Pretty much any and every detail of London, more specifically Camden, seems to have alluded them in “Into the Dark” as they go from an ambiguous sidewalk that could really be anywhere to what is obviously a small Canadian town. Maybe being English I have a certain sense of bias towards wanting a portrayal of London being done correctly, but I really would think that anyone could see past a solitary underground sign on the side of a street. 

 Ignoring the production flaws the episode itself wasn’t actually half bad. “Into the Dark” sees the return of Owen, former guardian of one of Percy’s black boxes and contributor to some of the better hand-to-hand combat scenes that I’ve ever seen on television, as he brings news to Nikita that he has discovered a rough location of yet another black box. When arriving in Nikita’s loft to bring her the news, Owen walks in on her and Division agent turned Nikita collaborator Michael in bed. Whilst I am all for seeing Maggie Q in a thong, the minute long scene of her standing in her underwear between the two warriors was some of the most shameless viewer grabbing Tv of recent times. Ultimately, after Nikita puts some clothes on, the scene is set and she and Owen head to London to finish the hunt for the black box, whilst Michael heads to the office to see what he can discover on his end. 

Community – Competitive Wine Tasting

Sitcoms
really aren’t known for their in-depth plots or having much more than a
singular story to follow while what passes for comedy in 2011 is draped
across the TV screen. It’s because of this exact reason that I have
already watched this week’s Community twice. When it comes to writing
about a 20 minute show it isn’t usually difficult to remember the beats
that made you laugh or who was doing what at any given moment that made
the show worth watching, but my memory was put to this test with this. “Competitive
Wine Tasting” was even a departure for Community itself in the plethora
of stories told, but after seeing the end result, I can’t help but hope
that the writers have enough faith in themselves to try something like
it again in their third season.

Bob’s Burgers – Spaghetti Western and Meatballs

After several episodes and a few breaks in-between Bob’s Burgers has finally found its tone, style and pacing; while keeping the family lessons and not losing sight of what sets it apart from the other prime-time animations. This episode opens with Louise and Bob staying up late watching TV together. Louise dubs them the burn unit as they change the channel taking turns making fun of aka “burning” a show. The jokes aren’t very good, but you can see that it’s a special father daughter time that they share. Until Bob stumbles upon a Spaghetti Western called Banjo, which is basically Clint Eastwood with a… banjo. Gene comes in looking for a larger plunger as he’s preparing for the extreme number two he has on deck. He’s intrigued by Banjo and all its cheesy western action. Louise is instantly discouraged by the fact that the burn unit is done for the night and that she now must share her father’s attention with Gene.

Fringe – Bloodline

Fringe always seems to step its game up whenever they do an
episode outside of the standard formula – basically, whenever the opening
credits look different. There have been a couple episodes set in the 80s that
explore the origins of this whole crazy war between universes that have been
pretty amazing, and also a number of episodes this season set entirely on the
other side that have been very good at well. It’s like the change in setting
invigorates the writers and cast, and let them do new things. Last night’s
episode was another one set in the other universe, and while it seemed to
function mainly to move the plot along, it was still a very effective and
interesting hour of TV.

30 Rock – Plan B

Alas, all of the intriguing subplots raised on last week’s reality spoof “Queen of Jordan”  will have to go unanswered because this week 30 Rock jumped back to their usual format with “Plan B”.  While the episode is consistently funny, and brings back some great characters from previous seasons, it never quite hits any highs, or delivers many laugh out loud moments.