Category Archives: Episode Reviews

The Return of The Jack Bauer Power Hour

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Fox executives said Monday that its drama “24″ is returning next May for a limited run that will stretch into the summer. The adventure series with Kiefer Sutherland starring as Jack Bauer ended its original run in 2010.

While I admit that the last few seasons weren’t very good (they still brought us moments like this), I’m excited to see Jack Bauer on my television again.  12 episodes is perfect because one of the biggest problems with 24 was all the filler that was required to make this show last for 24 hours.  With half that number, we can get to the heart of the matter quickly (at least that’s the hope).

I think I’ll have to end my retirement from recapping 24 episodes.

Fire up the Jack Bauer Kill Count!

Don’t Call Me During…: Fall 2012 – Tuesdays

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9:00 pm: Happy Endings (ABC; 10/23)
I think Happy Endings has taken over Modern Family‘s spot as ABC’s funniest show.  The way I feel about this show now is how I used to feel about How I Met Your Mother in the good days (seasons 1-4)

9:00 pm New Girl (FOX; 10/25)
Zooey Deschanel is still the weakest link in this cast but she improved as the season went on.  Well, she didn’t necessarily improve.  She just meshed better with her castmates.  She’s about to lose this show to Schmidt (Max Greenfield).  I haven’t seen a secondary character hijack a show from it’s star like this since Urkel.

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New Girl: “CeCe Crashes” (S01E05)

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Is New Girl smarter than I think it is? On the surface, the show looks like it blowing it’s “two of our castmembers slowly start to fall in love” wad early like it’s suffering from premature infatuation. We’ve spent most of the episodes in this young season pairing Jess up with Nick in various situations. Now the show, through CeCe, confronts the idea that Nick could like Jess. At first I was getting concerned but then I thought maybe they know what they are doing. Maybe they are addressing this now so it can be dropped for future episodes only to be revisited when enough time (2-3 seasons) have gone by. I guess it remains to be seen.

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New Girl: “Naked” (S01E04)

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We were doing so well. While I found the episode relatively funny, I’m concerned that the writers/show runners haven’t decided who Jess is yet. Is she simply quirky and awkward? Or is she an alien life-force in the form of Zooey Deschanel: trying to figure out how to interact with human begins and ultimately how to love? The last episode “Wedding” favored the former but the other three episodes are making me believe the latter.

“Naked” centers around Nick and his penis. Nick has a date (or least he thinks he does) with his fellow bartender Amanda (Lake Bell). After Schmidt and Jess suggest that he might have a gut (or as Jess called it, “the little pooch where you keep your extra cookies”), Nick builds his confidence by dancing naked in front of mirror to Yellowman’s reggae classic “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng”. Jess, wanting him to turn it down, enters his room without knocking and sees Nick’s penis. Her reaction: nervous laughter. Nick, having been established as slightly emotional fragile, now finds himself unable to have meaningless sex with Amanda and settle for cuddling.

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New Girl: “Wedding” (S01E03)

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Finally!

“Wedding” was the first good (almost great) episode of the series. The first two episodes which were basically double pilots were just okay. They had to set up the series and characters and, when Damon Wayans, Jr. had to be replaced, they needed to add a new castmember and establish chemistry. Now that the characters seem relatively comfortable with one another, the show feels like it’s found a groove.

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New Girl: “Kryptonite” (S01E02)

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We have a Schmidt problem.

In a way, “Kryptonite” was pilot 2.0. Because they had to replace Damon Wayans, Jr., we now had new roommate, Winston (Lamorne Morris), to react to Jess’ weirdness. I liked the way they just tried to slip Winston into the show with no fanfare. He was the original roommate and was an old basketball buddy of Coach’s. Wayans, Jr is a tought act to follow and in his first episode, Morris didn’t even seem like he was trying. He just hung in the background of the story, watching like the rest of us. Hopefully in subsequent episodes, we will see more personality.

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New Girl: “Pilot” (S01E01)

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The episode premieres tonight but it’s been available on iTunes for awhile now so I’m posting this early. It contains spoilers but it’s a sitcom, not serialized drama like Breaking Bad or Mad Men. I think you’ll survive.

I went into The New Girl wondering one thing: what would be the mechanism that they use to explain why someone as attractive as Jess (played by indie hipster queen Zooey Deschanel) is perpetually unlucky in love? I’m not saying that attractive people don’t have a hard time with dating and relationships as I have many friends who fit the bill. But this isn’t reality, this is a sitcom so instead of an in-depth examination into how being beautiful and quirky can work against you in the dating scene, we’re going to get a (hopefully) humorous 22 minutes of cute dorky hijinks. But I was curious if the reason Jess would be single and frustrated is that she’s such a dork that a decent guy would find her off-putting or would the guys she tries to date be evil douchebags who are just taking advantage of our sweet, lovable heroine. If the pilot is any indication, thankfully it’s going to be a little bit of both.

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What I Hated About MTV’s Adaptation of Skins

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MTV Skins Cast and The Original BBC Cast

It saddens me that most people watching MTV’s version of Skins don’t know about the far superior original from BBC. If you even liked the pilot that aired last night even a smidge, I recommend you watch Skins on Netflix Instant Watch (don’t watch it on BBC America because they will edit the language). Even you hated this pilot as much as I did and I want to know what possessed MTV to make this show, watch the original.

So where did they go wrong?

  1. The main actors were bland. Now the original Skins cast wasn’t a murderer’s row of acting talent (despite having a young Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame) but they were much better than this.  The only actress who didn’t sound like they just get the script an hour before filming was Sofia Black D’elia (the lesbian Tea) but I have a problem with her character.
  2. James Milo Newman as Tony. Tony is an asshole but in the BBC version, Nicholas Hoult gave him just enough charisma that you could see why his friends put up with his shit.  At the end of the MTV one, I wouldn’t have been surprised if his friends conspired to let him drown in the truck.
  3. The script. I don’t think anyone has ever successfully taken a British script for a TV show, just changed a few words around to make it more American and made a great episode (Examples: The Office, Couplings, Men Behaving Badly).  Skins continues this trend.  The words don’t sound right coming out of the characters’ mouths.  Certain words/phrase common in England (spilff, skins, “I reckon”) somehow made it to the U.S. version and just sound awkward.
  4. No Maxxie. One of the best characters in the BBC version is a male gay dancer is Maxxie played by Mitch Hewer. In the MTV version, he’s been replaced by the aforementioned Tea.  Even though she was the best actor of the bunch, this really bugged me.  I wonder if the fact that (BBC spoiler alert) Maxxie and Tony hooked up on one episode with Tony giving Maxxie a BJ (End Spoiler) had anything to do with the change.
  5. All the adults are caricatures. This has a tendency to happen in teen shows but I feel like the casting agent barely tried when picking the parents and teachers.

I’m probably going to keep watching out of morbid curiosity but if you missed the pilot and were considering watching, don’t.

Lost: No Regrets

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By Chip Zdarsky

While the ending and final season wasn’t perfect and left a lot of unanswered questions, I have no regrets about spending the last six years watching and mildly obsessing over Lost.

I’m going to miss…

  • …writing my little Lost notes
  • …talking to Erwin via AIM during commercial breaks
  • …commercial breaks with Cindy the few times we got to watch it together
  • …sending Cindy one word reviews for the West Coast airing during the final season
  • …coming into work the next morning and reading What Alan’s Watching, Tuned In and The Watcher to get my favorite television columnists opinions*
  • …waiting for people to over to my cubicle the next morning to talk about it to get their opinions and theorize with them
  • …getting into work a little bit early so I can start working on my blog post for the day**

I may be disappointed by how it ended but I can’t help but be a little sad that it’s gone.

There are other great dramas that are still on the air (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Fringe, Sons of Anarchy, Friday Night Lights) but with Lost and 24 (which also ended this week), I doubt I’ll ever be as emotionally invested in a television show like this again.

I guess I can get married and have kids now.

I can still reminisce over my favorite moments of the first (superior) five seasons.

* I stopped Doc Jensen after Season Three.  Lost recaps shouldn’t be eight pages.
** I wrote 84 Lost-related posts and I only started blogging the show at the start of Season Three

Lost Season Six: The End

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What I Liked:

  • Character-wise and action-wise, I loved the finale.  While there were things about the finale (and season six as a whole) I had issues with, when Jack’s eye closed at the end, I wasn’t disappointed and I didn’t say, “What the fuck? What about (insert unanswered question)?” I was just happy.  Although I may have been happy that I don’t have to do this (as if I ever did).
  • The season went a long way in redeeming Jack as a character and giving Matthew Fox a lot of great moments.  You could almost say the same for Kate and Evangeline Lilly except…well…I still wouldn’t have been mad if she died.  I can’t deny that her scenes were among the best this episode (Delivering Aaron while remembering the island, saving Jack for once, her LA X reunion with Jack).  But the MVP for this episode…
  • …was Jorge Garcia.  From the look on his face when he saw Charlie in LA X to his reaction to Jack making him the protector of the island, no one on this show has grown more as an actor than Garcia.  He’s a long way from just saying “Dude“
  • The reunion/realizations in LA X were handled well especially Jin/Sun/ and Sawyer/Juliet.  Considering Sawyer/Juliet reunion, once we got a general idea what was going on in LA X, was the one everyone was waiting for, I was surprised it didn’t let me down.
  • I enjoyed all of the island action (except for some of the Glowing Well stuff) especially the final confrontation between Jack and notLocke
  • Lapidus and Alpert live! No matter how improbable Lapidus’ survival was (he took a bigger blow -TWSS – than Sawyer), it was great to see “Chesty” floating in the water and ultimately getting people off the island
  • The return of Rose, Bernard and Vincent. I figured it was them who freed Desmond from the well and I’m glad they lived out their lives the way they wanted, not getting involved.
  • The last image of the series was fitting and I’m glad Vincent showed up so Jack didn’t die alone.

What I Didn’t Like:

  • I’m not in love with the LA X = purgatory concept.  While it was great to have  goodbyes to some of the characters and, more importantly, some of the relationships we grew to love over the years, I was still a little disappointed.  I tried to avoid *wanting* something to be the way I had imagined but I wanted the sideways world to tie in directly into the Island world.  Now knowing “what happened, happened,” I wish we had spent more of season six on the island.
  • While I was still more entertained than not, now that it’s over, it’s safe to say that season six was kind of a mess.  So many abandoned threads/plot holes, I could strain pasta with them.  Cuse and Lindelof may have known what the ending was going to be but they definitely didn’t know how to get there.
  • When Jacob described the island as a cork to Richard in “Ab Aeterno,” I thought that was a metaphor.  I didn’t know there was an actual cork.  Seriously?
  • Really? No Michael and Walt in LA X?  Christian’s “there is no ‘when’” explanation gave the producers a total out to deal with older, taller Walt.  I better find an interview saying that Harold Perrineau and Malcolm David Kelley didn’t want to or were unavailable to appear in the finale.
  • Jack’s plan to help notLocke use Desmond to destroy the island: The dumbest Jack idea EVER
  • Ben’s lack of a plan.  So was he really siding with notLocke for control of the island or was he just playing along.  Considering his penultimate turn, it was kind of annoying he was just following whomever wherever.
  • Really? Hurley chose sinking with the island over climbing down a ladder?  They could have found a better motivation to keep Hurley around.
  • Shannon was Sayid’s true love?  Really?

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