TV Reviews

30 Rock – It’s Never Too Late For Now

I
love it when a work of fiction is well-structured; meaning that all of
the little bits of the plot fit together like a jigsaw puzzle or, even
better, a complex Rube Goldberg contraption, and that is exactly how 30 Rock turned out this week.

It
started out at a good pace with Liz declaring that she’s putting
herself on the fast track to becoming a crazy old cat lady by not only
carrying around a cat, but also wearing a fanny pack and joining the
book club at her senior center.  The instant that Liz held up a copy of Murder on the Orient Express,
I should have suspected that it would somehow tie-in with the episode’s
overall story, but I still didn’t figure out where they were going with
it until much later.

Community – Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking

I’m starting to regret choosing to review Community. The
problem is simple; each episode is good. 
If you look back on the scores I have given previous episodes, they have
all been quite solid. Sure, Community has some off episodes as all shows do,
but despite this Community is one of the most consistently funny shows on
television currently. If Community keeps being this excellent, and I review it
well, then it is going to seem that the high scores don’t mean anything. But
trust me on this; Community absolutely deserves to be highly rated. It is a
superb show. This week’s episode is no exception.

Community works best when its characters’ story arcs are
separate, and yet are bound together with one central plot line. This episode
follows this structure, with each character pivoting on Pierce’s story. Pierce,
having been admitted to the hospital after collapsing on a bench, summons the
group.  Upset at his friends’ lack
of empathy, Pierce pretends to be dying. He gives each of the members (except
for Abed, but we’ll get to that later) a bequeathment.  These gifts both seem to be a blessing
and a curse for the receiver, and they shape the multiple story arcs.

The Cape – The Lich

Remember that old Wes Craven movie, The Serpent and The Rainbow?  That was cool; I really liked that.  You know who else liked that movie?  Whoever wrote this week’s episode of The Cape.  They liked it so much that they decided to “Borrow” numerous aspects of that film to make this episode.

Supernatural – Unforgiven

This week’s episode of Supernatural definitely seems to be one of the
darker ones, but in a different way than normal. Usually it’s the
monsters that are doing horrible acts and the show is dark because of
their nature and violence. However, in this episode the behavior of
humans is hard to watch. As mentioned in the episode, things are a bit
Momento as Sam gets a mysterious text luring him back to a town that he
and Samuel were hunting in a year prior, but since this is Sam with a
soul things are completely new for him. Through numerous flashbacks and
the brothers picking up clues, the mystery slowly starts to unravel.
This episode being so mysterious is another unique property of it.
Usually we as the audience know more than the brothers, but this time
we’re as clueless as they are.

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena – Beneath the Mask

Gods of the Arena has been entertaining, though in some ways
it has felt like it has just been setting the table for something bigger this
whole time. Things might be coming to a head after what happened last night,
though. A character died sooner than I expected, and as much as Titus wants to
avoid confrontation with those above his station, I don’t know how much longer
he can hold his son’s ambition in check.

The Office – PDA

There’s something both brutal and hilarious about Darryl turning to
the camera with a single tear in his eye, suffering at the hands of his
coworkers, who mistook a sympathetic greeting card for his grandmother’s
death for a birthday card and filled it with cheerful messages while
Andy delightedly pretend-punches him. But that was just the opening, the
real episode is about Valentine’s Day, on one of the only occasions
that a sitcom has made the use of that particular holiday seem like a
good idea.

30 Rock – Double Edged Sword

This week Jack and Liz both head out of town on separate
adventures, where they each learn that dating someone who is too much like
yourself is a “Double-edged sword”. 
I’ve observed on several occasions that 30 Rock needs to get away from the backstage hyjinx of TGS,
every once and a while, and take the characters out of their usual setting,
however this week’s episode was not the right way to do so.

Community – Early 21st Century Romanticism

Following a strong episode last week, Community follows the trend with a similarly good episode tonight. This
week’s episode didn’t directly parody an obvious genre and felt more like a
standard half hour sitcom. Despite this, the content was strong and the writing
was refreshingly witty. This episode is just more evidence that Community generally knows when to use
sitcom standards and when to subvert them for laughs. This week the team split
up and followed individual story lines. Jeff wants some space from the group and
ends up watching a football (or soccer for my American friends) match with
Professor Duncan and Chang. Troy and Abed fall in love with the same woman and
decide to let her choose who she wants to be with. Pierce continues his
struggle with pain medication and Britta spends some time schooling Annie on
being accepting to ‘friends of Ellen’ (a delightfully funny term Annie uses to
describe lesbians). Oh, and Shirley does literally nothing this entire episode.

As is the case for episodes where the characters have their
own story threads to deal with, the group dynamic is purely used as an excuse
for back-and-forth dialogue. However, even though each of the stories is
separate, certain themes connect up all of the stories. For instance, the
constant mentions of potential sexual relationships between same-sex friends in
Britta and Annie’s story reflect back on Troy and Abed’s story. Troy and Abed
are truly the cutest couple in Community, if not on tv right now. Their (and I
apologize for partaking in this overused pun) bromance is pivotal to the show’s
success, and they have superb on-screen chemistry. Throughout the history of
the show, there have been subtle hints that their relationship could be seen as
more than just friendship, but the writers stepped it up a notch this week,
allowing us to see a moment when Troy and Abed may choose each other over an
extremely attractive librarian hottie.

Fringe – Concentrate and Ask Again

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.

Smallville – Collateral

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.