“Celibacy, ladies. Dig it!”
-Emma
“Sexy,” not surprisingly, given the title and “Glee’s” tendency to make its episode titles directly reflect the episode’s theme, was about sex. Surprisingly, given the subject matter, this was not really a “very special episode.” The issues presented were handled in a much more complex way than that. And it didn’t hurt that a lot of the episode was actually really funny. Surprisingly, considering it’s billed as a comedy, I don’t really laugh at “Glee” all that much. This episode was the exception to that rule. Some of the humor was a little juvenile and embarrassment squick-y, but I laughed anyway. Finally, there was actual movement forward on several of the plots that have been sort-of building this season (I say sort-of because the season arc hasn’t been all that coherent). The show had been kind of stuck in neutral for a little while, so I most definitely appreciated that some things finally happened.
Emma has decided to be advisor to the Celibacy Club. The only two members of the club at the moment are Rachel (who wants to focus on show business) and Quinn (for obvious reason), but Emma is really gung ho about it. Emma has this amazing, frantic monologue (expertly delivered by Jayma Mays) defending celibacy, and it’s painfully obvious that she and Carl haven’t consummated their marriage yet, and she’s feeling self conscious about it. Later that day, Emma and Will talk about the Celibacy Club in the faculty lunch room. The conversation barely gets started when none other than Holly Holliday shows up. She’s subbing for the health teacher, so of course she has opinions on sex ed in general and celibacy in particular. She thinks celibacy is unrealistic, and she’s concerned about how clueless the glee kids are when it comes to sex. As Holly goes on, Will pays increasing amounts of attention to her, and he pretty much ignores Emma.
Meanwhile, Santana, who I guess is a little bored with Sam, propositions Brittany. Apparently it been a while since there was any making out, or anything else, between them. Brittany says that although she’d like to spend some time that way with Santana, she can’t. Because she’s pregnant. Word of this gets around school like wild fire, and poor Artie thinks his life is over. At rehearsal, Will asks Artie what’s wrong, and then Brittany chimes in to explain that she’s pregnant because she saw a stork building a nest outside her bedroom window. This is the final straw for Will. He pays a visit to Holly at her Jazzercize class (complete with 80’s workout attire!) to ask for her help. Holly says she thinks she knows a way to sneak some sex ed covertly into the next glee rehearsal.
I didn’t really think Holly’s attempt went all that well. Backed up by some of the New Directions ladies, she performs “Do You Want to Touch Me?” I thought it was kind of the most inappropriate glee rehearsal ever. I enjoyed Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance of “F- You” during her first guest appearance more. That could be because her singing ability was more of a surprise the first time around. Emma is very upset when she hears about Holly’s lesson, and even though her fear of sex is taken to extremes in the episode, she absolutely has a point. I’m not at all a supporter of abstinence-only education, but there’s a middle ground between that and having students and teachers do a Burlesque-style dance in the middle of the choir room. Will sort of understands Emma’s point, and he offers to let Emma and the Celibacy Club do a sort of counter-performance in support of abstinence.
Sue, always on the lookout for ways to cause glee club related trouble in general, seeks out Kurt and Blaine at their favorite coffee shop hangout. She warns the boys that “New Directions” has decided to go in a “sexy” direction for their Regionals performance. Blaine is concerned because he recognizes that Warblers performances are usually pretty tame in that respect. He thinks the Warblers need to get “sexified” to have a chance at winning the competition. He gets a bunch of girls from Dalton Academy’s companion all girls’ school to test out a dress rehearsal of their new, supposedly sexier performance. The Warblers do a performance of Neon Trees’ “Animal,” and I thought it was the tamest “sexy” performance ever. I like the song, and I thought it was cool that Kurt finally got co-lead on a song (Blaine usually takes every solo for the Warblers), but poor Chris Colfer was AutoTuned to within an inch of his life. And his “sexy” face looked kind of constipated. Which turned out to be a plot point, so that was okay.
Holly actually turns out to be quite a voice of reason on multiple fronts in the middle of the episode. First, Lauren told Puck she wanted to make a sex tape because she wants to be famous like Kim Kardashian. Holly catches the two of them in the library researching how to make porn, and she manages to successfully convince them to abandon the plan by reminding them that what they want to do could be considered child porn. Then, Brittany is unhappy with her “relationship” with Santana because they only fool around once in a while and never talk about feelings, like she can talk to Artie. The girls decide to chat with Holly about it, and Holly offers to help them perform a song that will air all their feelings. They end up performing Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” and it’s one of the better performances I’ve heard on “Glee,” I think. Santana makes it clear that she has feelings for Brittany. She makes this even more clear in a later declaration to Brittany by the lockers, but Brittany shoots her down. She doesn’t want to hurt Artie by breaking up with him, but if she’s ever single again, she says she’d choose Santana. I don’t think this is a healthy approach to the situation (misleading Artie is not cool), but I’ll go with it to see where it leads Santana.
Will calls in Holly to practice a tango performance to a Prince song with him. I usually adore Matthew Morrison’s vocals, but he should really never sing falsetto. It was painful! Will and Holly kiss at the end of the number, but then Holly runs off. She says she doesn’t want to break Will’s heart. He’s much more of a long-term relationship person than she is. And that’s not the end of the relationship drama in this episode by a long shot. Emma and the Celibacy Club perform “Afternoon Delight” at the next glee rehearsal, which had me howling with laughter. Poor naïve Emma! She thought the song was about eating dessert with lunch. Carl takes the opportunity to ask Holly if she can meet with the two of them in her role as substitute sex ed teacher. At the appointment, were the writers kind of hang a lantern on the fact that using Holly as a couples therapist is strange by having Holly repeatedly remind Emma she’s not a doctor, Emma reveals that she’s still confused about her feelings for Will. Apparently that’s why she hasn’t been able to have sex with Carl.
In one of the more serious plots of this episode, Blaine asks Kurt bout why Kurt looked so odd during the performance of “Animal,” and Kurt reveals how little he knows about sex and how little he wants to know about sex (he covers his ears and starts to sing any time somebody asks him about it. Blaine doesn’t think this is healthy or even really safe, so he has a rather boundary-pushing conversation with Burt about it. He basically says that Burt needs to bite the bullet and have the talk with his son. Burt isn’t thrilled by Blaine’s presumptuousness, but he ends up following his advice, because, of course, in the world of “Glee,” Burt Hummel is the best dad ever. Even the talk is perfect. He gets a bunch of pamphlets for Kurt, and he reminds Kurt not to treat sex casually and that he is worth something.
The episode ends with some interesting couples forming. First of all, we see Finn get out of his bed, followed quickly by Quinn. They’ve been seeing each other and apparently having sex. I think I may have screamed at the television at this point. It still irritates me that Finn is written to be so dumb as to get back together with Quinn after the horrible, horrible thing she did. And I don’t think she even really likes Finn all that much. She just thinks he’s her stepping stone back to the top of the social ladder at McKinley. In the McKinley auditorium, Holly finds Will and lets him know that she’s got a substitute teaching job at another school. She also doesn’t want to say goodbye. Will convinces her to give a relationship a try, and they kiss. I don’t love this pairing, but it didn’t irritate me all that much. I don’t think Will is quite ready to get back together with Emma yet, and if he can learn something about himself from a (temporary) relationship with Holly, so much the better.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
No Ordinary Family 1.17: "No Ordinary Love"
"Your dad stole a girl from me? See I know something's crazy now."
-George
Yes, I’m back to blogging “No Ordinary Family” thanks to many shows going on March hiatus. Overall, I found “No Ordinary Love” to be a rather middling episode, which really isn’t saying much considering “No Ordinary Family” is a rather middling show overall. Maybe it’s that I’ve never been a fan of misunderstanding plots, and this episode was built almost entirely around that trope. I did appreciate that we got an expansion of the mythology. We finally figured out “who watches the watcher,” as it were, meeting the mysterious woman who seems to be Dr. King’s boss. The whole thing suffered somewhat without Joshua, though. He brought a sympathetic element to the whole situation. We could see how Dr. King’s experiments had deeply affected him. In this episode, we get a new convert who is happy and willing to use his new found powers for evil. That can be compelling too, but Joshua provided a needed balance. Here’s hoping he’s back sooner rather than later.
As I’ve already alluded to, the episode opens with Dr. King finding a new recruit. There’s a very dangerous prisoner who is also very sick. The prisoner is going to allow Dr. King to experiment on him, because Dr. King has told him that he can cure him. Dr. King conveniently doesn’t mention that the “cure” will also give him a random superpower and force him to use that superpower to do Dr. King’s bidding. Dr. King agrees to administer the “cure,” but he wants someone new to help with the process. It’s painfully obvious that the “someone new” is Stephanie, sine Dr. King wants to find out more about her powers and also has a really creepy crush on her. Stephanie agrees to it when asked, even though she knows what Dr. King and the experiments are capable of, because she thinks getting on the inside might be the only way to put a stop to it.
In lighter news, the Powells are having a game night. They’ve invited Katie because they know she’s not taking the break-up with Joshua well, and she drives them all a bit nuts. The Powells are saved by the bell, or more specifically, George calling Jim’s cell phone with a tip about a crime in progress. A silent alarm has gone off at a local drug store, and Jim decides to try to stop it. The thief, Jonah, tries to run Jim over when he sees him, but Jim, naturally, being super strong, causes the car to crash instead. George thinks the case will be really easy to prosecute thanks to CCTV footage, but Jim is confused. Why would a seemingly normal family guy rob a drug store and steal, of all things, cough syrup? The only reasonable explanation for stealing certain cold medicines is to make meth. I am not at all fan of whoever discovered this connection, since Sudafed is pretty much the only thing that helps when I have a cold, and now it’s much more difficult to get when I’m sick, but I digress. Anyway, Jonah doesn’t seem like a methhead, so Jim’s convinced there’s another explanation.
A mysterious woman shows up at the police station and tries to convince George to drop the charges against Jonah, but George is not having it. Later that evening, Jim is extremely surprised when George breezily announces he’s dropping the case after all, especially considering how George had been bragging earlier about how it was a slam dunk case. George doesn’t want to talk about the case, though. He wants to talk about the woman he’s going to be going out with. It’s the woman from the police station, and her name is Sophie. George thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I’m wondering whatever happened to Amanda (Amy Acker). I liked her. George arrives at Sophie’s apartment, and not surprisingly, the first thing she has him do is go steal some cough syrup. She uses a superpower to do it, too.
Meanwhile, in teen land (which, if you forgot, I’m not a fan of), Daphne is still using her Jedi mind trick powers. She plants a suggestion in one of her teachers’ heads to get Christ out of detention. This isn’t the first time Chris has seen Daphne go Jedi, and he’s getting suspicious. He tells Daphne that he’s noticed all of her family members seem to have special abilities, and he’s wondering if she does too. Daphne, in a panic, deals with the situation in the only way she knows how. She Jedi mind tricks Chris and suggests he forget the whole thing and go get dinner instead. The kernel of the thought is still in Chris’ mind though, just waiting to be brought up again. And boy is it brought up. Over. And over. And over. Time and time again, Chris starts to voice his theory, and Daphne Jedi mind tricks him. Constantly redirecting Chris becomes quite exhausting for Daphne. Near the end of the episode, she finally just tells the truth. And it turns out not to be a problem at all. Chris is extremely flattered that she told him her deepest secret. And that’s enough about teen land.
Back to the main plot of this episode, Jim interviews the store clerk from the most recent drug store robbery, and the sketch he produces looks suspiciously like George. Jim confronts George about this, but George insists Jim is being ridiculous. Jim and Stephanie have to meet George’s new woman, Sophie, of course, so they all go on a double date. George is an eager puppy around Sophie, and Jim doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like how much of a hold she has on George, and he confronts George about it. George doesn’t take kindly to the criticism and storms out. Sophie follows him and promises George she’ll make things right. She returns to the restaurant, ostensibly to apologize to Jim and Stephanie, but she ends up working her magic on Jim. This can’t possibly end well.
Soon enough, Jim and George both show up at Sophie’s apartment bearing flowers. They have a confrontation, and Jim throws George clear across the room. Sophie is impressed by Jim’s super strength and figures out she has a new, better errand boy. She gets Jim to steal some MRE bags from a nearby military facility. Jim gets home as the story of the theft is playing on the evening news, and he tries to play it cool with Stephanie so she won’t realize he’s responsible. Before he and Stephanie have much time to talk, Jim receives a phone call from Sophie. He tries to pretend it’s George and tells Stephanie he has to go out for a little while. As he leaves, Daphne reads Jim’s mind and hears him think about going to see Sophie. Daphne alerts her mom, who follows Jim all the way to Sophie’s and sees him go into her apartment and be very close to her.
Stephanie doesn’t stop and think about what’s going on. She just sees her husband cheating, and she throws him out of the house. Sadly, thanks to Sophie’s special power, Jim doesn’t really care. In fact, he thinks it’s for the best. He goes over to George’s house and asks to crash there for a while. Strangely, George doesn’t even remember Sophie. I guess only one person can be under her spell at a time. George goes over to the Powell house and finds a rather upset J.J., who brings him up to speed on what’s been happening. George is very surprised that Jim has managed to steal “his” woman. Together, George and J.J. speculate that Sophie must have super pheromones. A reluctant George takes J.J. along with him on a trip to investigate Sophie’s apartment, and they find materials needed to make a bomb.
We see Sophie waiting by the side of the road as a limo pulls up. A mysterious woman (played by Lucy Lawless) rolls down the window and has a very vague conversation with Sophie. Sophie is getting a package ready to deliver to Dr. King, and she assures the mysterious woman that she has found just the right person to deliver it. Soon enough, we see Jim heading for Global Tech with a threatening-looking backpack which is obviously filled with a bomb. Meanwhile, Stephanie is doing something equally as creepy. She’s injecting the prisoner Dr. King found with the serum. Dr. King is acting creepy, too, telling Stephanie he heard about some family problems. The prisoner has a bad reaction to the serum, and Stephanie leaves the room to get some air. At that moment, she gets a phone call from George. He explains what has happened to Jim and tells Stephanie that Jim is at Global Tech.
Stephanie thinks she can confront Jim and get him out of Sophie’s spell. She thinks reminding him of true love will make him realize how shallow Sophie’s power is. Jim starts to place the bomb anyway, but Stephanie tries her best to remind Jim of what they had. Finally, she decides to kiss him. It does the trick, breaking Jim out of the spell, but Jim’s reaction is the most tame, lame turnaround ever. They hug, and he’s basically like “sorry, I’m glad that’s over with.” Meanwhile, the bomb is still about to go off. Jim picks it up and tosses it into the air right before it explodes. It explodes safely in the sky, harming no one.
The rest of the episode is pretty much devoted to adding twists to the big conspiracy. Sophie talks to the mysterious woman in the limo again, and the mysterious woman says she’s very disappointed in Sophie. Sophie walks to her own car, gets in, and the car blows up. The prisoner, who Stephanie later finds out was actually a murderer on death row, has a meeting with Dr. King. Dr. King wants to find out what power the serum gave the prisoner. Turns out he’s got claws that come out of his fingers. The prisoner agrees to do some work for Dr. King in exchange for keeping his powers and his health. After he leaves Global Tech, the prisoner encounters the mysterious woman and her limo. She wants to recruit him too, and he agrees.
-George
Yes, I’m back to blogging “No Ordinary Family” thanks to many shows going on March hiatus. Overall, I found “No Ordinary Love” to be a rather middling episode, which really isn’t saying much considering “No Ordinary Family” is a rather middling show overall. Maybe it’s that I’ve never been a fan of misunderstanding plots, and this episode was built almost entirely around that trope. I did appreciate that we got an expansion of the mythology. We finally figured out “who watches the watcher,” as it were, meeting the mysterious woman who seems to be Dr. King’s boss. The whole thing suffered somewhat without Joshua, though. He brought a sympathetic element to the whole situation. We could see how Dr. King’s experiments had deeply affected him. In this episode, we get a new convert who is happy and willing to use his new found powers for evil. That can be compelling too, but Joshua provided a needed balance. Here’s hoping he’s back sooner rather than later.
As I’ve already alluded to, the episode opens with Dr. King finding a new recruit. There’s a very dangerous prisoner who is also very sick. The prisoner is going to allow Dr. King to experiment on him, because Dr. King has told him that he can cure him. Dr. King conveniently doesn’t mention that the “cure” will also give him a random superpower and force him to use that superpower to do Dr. King’s bidding. Dr. King agrees to administer the “cure,” but he wants someone new to help with the process. It’s painfully obvious that the “someone new” is Stephanie, sine Dr. King wants to find out more about her powers and also has a really creepy crush on her. Stephanie agrees to it when asked, even though she knows what Dr. King and the experiments are capable of, because she thinks getting on the inside might be the only way to put a stop to it.
In lighter news, the Powells are having a game night. They’ve invited Katie because they know she’s not taking the break-up with Joshua well, and she drives them all a bit nuts. The Powells are saved by the bell, or more specifically, George calling Jim’s cell phone with a tip about a crime in progress. A silent alarm has gone off at a local drug store, and Jim decides to try to stop it. The thief, Jonah, tries to run Jim over when he sees him, but Jim, naturally, being super strong, causes the car to crash instead. George thinks the case will be really easy to prosecute thanks to CCTV footage, but Jim is confused. Why would a seemingly normal family guy rob a drug store and steal, of all things, cough syrup? The only reasonable explanation for stealing certain cold medicines is to make meth. I am not at all fan of whoever discovered this connection, since Sudafed is pretty much the only thing that helps when I have a cold, and now it’s much more difficult to get when I’m sick, but I digress. Anyway, Jonah doesn’t seem like a methhead, so Jim’s convinced there’s another explanation.
A mysterious woman shows up at the police station and tries to convince George to drop the charges against Jonah, but George is not having it. Later that evening, Jim is extremely surprised when George breezily announces he’s dropping the case after all, especially considering how George had been bragging earlier about how it was a slam dunk case. George doesn’t want to talk about the case, though. He wants to talk about the woman he’s going to be going out with. It’s the woman from the police station, and her name is Sophie. George thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I’m wondering whatever happened to Amanda (Amy Acker). I liked her. George arrives at Sophie’s apartment, and not surprisingly, the first thing she has him do is go steal some cough syrup. She uses a superpower to do it, too.
Meanwhile, in teen land (which, if you forgot, I’m not a fan of), Daphne is still using her Jedi mind trick powers. She plants a suggestion in one of her teachers’ heads to get Christ out of detention. This isn’t the first time Chris has seen Daphne go Jedi, and he’s getting suspicious. He tells Daphne that he’s noticed all of her family members seem to have special abilities, and he’s wondering if she does too. Daphne, in a panic, deals with the situation in the only way she knows how. She Jedi mind tricks Chris and suggests he forget the whole thing and go get dinner instead. The kernel of the thought is still in Chris’ mind though, just waiting to be brought up again. And boy is it brought up. Over. And over. And over. Time and time again, Chris starts to voice his theory, and Daphne Jedi mind tricks him. Constantly redirecting Chris becomes quite exhausting for Daphne. Near the end of the episode, she finally just tells the truth. And it turns out not to be a problem at all. Chris is extremely flattered that she told him her deepest secret. And that’s enough about teen land.
Back to the main plot of this episode, Jim interviews the store clerk from the most recent drug store robbery, and the sketch he produces looks suspiciously like George. Jim confronts George about this, but George insists Jim is being ridiculous. Jim and Stephanie have to meet George’s new woman, Sophie, of course, so they all go on a double date. George is an eager puppy around Sophie, and Jim doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like how much of a hold she has on George, and he confronts George about it. George doesn’t take kindly to the criticism and storms out. Sophie follows him and promises George she’ll make things right. She returns to the restaurant, ostensibly to apologize to Jim and Stephanie, but she ends up working her magic on Jim. This can’t possibly end well.
Soon enough, Jim and George both show up at Sophie’s apartment bearing flowers. They have a confrontation, and Jim throws George clear across the room. Sophie is impressed by Jim’s super strength and figures out she has a new, better errand boy. She gets Jim to steal some MRE bags from a nearby military facility. Jim gets home as the story of the theft is playing on the evening news, and he tries to play it cool with Stephanie so she won’t realize he’s responsible. Before he and Stephanie have much time to talk, Jim receives a phone call from Sophie. He tries to pretend it’s George and tells Stephanie he has to go out for a little while. As he leaves, Daphne reads Jim’s mind and hears him think about going to see Sophie. Daphne alerts her mom, who follows Jim all the way to Sophie’s and sees him go into her apartment and be very close to her.
Stephanie doesn’t stop and think about what’s going on. She just sees her husband cheating, and she throws him out of the house. Sadly, thanks to Sophie’s special power, Jim doesn’t really care. In fact, he thinks it’s for the best. He goes over to George’s house and asks to crash there for a while. Strangely, George doesn’t even remember Sophie. I guess only one person can be under her spell at a time. George goes over to the Powell house and finds a rather upset J.J., who brings him up to speed on what’s been happening. George is very surprised that Jim has managed to steal “his” woman. Together, George and J.J. speculate that Sophie must have super pheromones. A reluctant George takes J.J. along with him on a trip to investigate Sophie’s apartment, and they find materials needed to make a bomb.
We see Sophie waiting by the side of the road as a limo pulls up. A mysterious woman (played by Lucy Lawless) rolls down the window and has a very vague conversation with Sophie. Sophie is getting a package ready to deliver to Dr. King, and she assures the mysterious woman that she has found just the right person to deliver it. Soon enough, we see Jim heading for Global Tech with a threatening-looking backpack which is obviously filled with a bomb. Meanwhile, Stephanie is doing something equally as creepy. She’s injecting the prisoner Dr. King found with the serum. Dr. King is acting creepy, too, telling Stephanie he heard about some family problems. The prisoner has a bad reaction to the serum, and Stephanie leaves the room to get some air. At that moment, she gets a phone call from George. He explains what has happened to Jim and tells Stephanie that Jim is at Global Tech.
Stephanie thinks she can confront Jim and get him out of Sophie’s spell. She thinks reminding him of true love will make him realize how shallow Sophie’s power is. Jim starts to place the bomb anyway, but Stephanie tries her best to remind Jim of what they had. Finally, she decides to kiss him. It does the trick, breaking Jim out of the spell, but Jim’s reaction is the most tame, lame turnaround ever. They hug, and he’s basically like “sorry, I’m glad that’s over with.” Meanwhile, the bomb is still about to go off. Jim picks it up and tosses it into the air right before it explodes. It explodes safely in the sky, harming no one.
The rest of the episode is pretty much devoted to adding twists to the big conspiracy. Sophie talks to the mysterious woman in the limo again, and the mysterious woman says she’s very disappointed in Sophie. Sophie walks to her own car, gets in, and the car blows up. The prisoner, who Stephanie later finds out was actually a murderer on death row, has a meeting with Dr. King. Dr. King wants to find out what power the serum gave the prisoner. Turns out he’s got claws that come out of his fingers. The prisoner agrees to do some work for Dr. King in exchange for keeping his powers and his health. After he leaves Global Tech, the prisoner encounters the mysterious woman and her limo. She wants to recruit him too, and he agrees.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
HIMYM 6.18: "A Change of Heart"
“Your heart’s talking to you, Barney. Do you have the guts to listen to it?”
-Lily
“A Change of Heart” left me feeling rather cold, which is not something HIMYM usually does. There were some great (albeit juvenile) laughs, but I just wasn’t feeling the A story in this one. Probably because it was about Barney having feelings for someone other than Robin. Shipping preferences aside, though, I don’t think the HIMYM powers that be have done that much better a job developing Nora than they did with Don, and comparing to Don is setting an awfully low bar. There have been one or two scenes where Nora’s been kind of endearing (which is where I can say she’s slightly better developed than Don), but like Don, it’s still mostly been tell instead of show. I did appreciate that Barney is acting like a human being again (which he really didn’t for much of last season), and I can live with this if it teaches Barney and Robin the lessons they need to learn to eventually be together in a healthier way than the first go round, but I don’t have to enjoy it while it’s happening.
Scared by Marvin Eriksen’s heart attack, the gang all goes to a cardiologist to get checked out. Well, everybody but Barney. Everyone is fine, so the conversation at MacLaren’s soon turns to other things. Robin says she might want another dog, which makes Ted unhappy. Ted thinks that if Robin got a dog, he’d be the one who had to take care of it. I’m not so sure that would be true. Up until the second season episode “Stuff,” Robin took care of a whole pack of dogs all on her own. Marshall thinks Robin doesn’t really want a dog. He thinks she’s trying to fill emptiness inside her because she doesn’t have a man. I hate to tell Marshall, but like I already said, Robin’s been known as a dog person for quite some time. Marshall thinks Robin feels left out because everybody in the group is “with” somebody but her. Barney vehemently denies he’s “with” Nora. He claims he’s just going on a second date with her because she’s hot and he wants to have sex with her.
Barney’s date with Nora doesn’t exactly go as he expected. He’s coming down with a cold, and being Barney, Mr. “I stop being sick and be awesome instead,” he really turns on the misery. Nora isn’t really taken aback by Barney coughing and sneezing all over the place, though. Instead, we see a montage of her taking care of him while he’s sick. When he has finally recovered and is telling the rest of the gang about this, he continues to play it off like he’s still just interested in Nora for the sex, going to far as to sing that God-awful “bangity bang” song from last season. Lily realizes that Barney now wants to go to the cardiologist like the rest of the group has, but he’s too scared. Lily says she’ll go with him if he promises to never lie to Nora.
The cardiologist thinks Barney might have a slight arrhythmia, so she wants him to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours. When Barney comes back the next day, she doesn’t see anything especially alarming on the monitor’s read-out, but she does notice a few “irregularities.” Most of the rest of the episode is Barney and Lily telling stories to explain the irregularities. During their date the night before, Nora had been going on and on about how she wants to get married some day. Trying not to scare Barney off, she stresses that it doesn’t have to be with him or right now. It’s just something she wants in the long run. Barney, looking very sincere, told Nora that’s what he wants too. When Lily heard about this, she slapped Barney for lying. That was the first irregularity, and it cracked me up. Later on their date Nora started going on and on about how she wants kids and an old stone house. Barney, again, seemed to sincerely agree and threw in that he wants a pool too. When Lily heard about this, she punched Barney for lying. That was the second irregularity.
Meanwhile, in a kind of stupid yet embarrassingly funny B story, Robin has taken her own desire to get a dog and Marshall’s advice that what she’s really missing is a man and sort of combined them. The result is a guy named “Scooby” who is pretty much a dog in human clothing. Robin found Scooby in the park, of course, and he spends most of the episode exhibiting dog behaviors like chasing his “tail” (a tag on the back of his pants) and fetching things. This inspires a long line of dog puns from the rest of the gang over drinks at MacLaren’s, much like the similar round of Canadian puns they all rattled off when Robin told them about Simon in “Sandcastles in the Sand.” It was juvenile, for sure, but I’ve got to say it completely cracked me up. Scooby reveals that someone gave him some “sandwich making material” while he was in the park, and Ted, Lily, and Marshall decide that while they’re too old to smoke it, they’re definitely not too old to bake it into some brownies. While they themselves are all baked, Scooby leaves Ted’s apartment, and nobody can find him. After a long search, they eventually find him reliving himself on a fire hydrant.
While on his date with Nora, Barney brought her to MacLaren’s to meet the gang. He ends up blackmailing his friends to say only nice things about him. It’s mildly amusing how Barney has such dirt on all of them. Just saying the word “calzone” to Marshall makes him acquiesce. Barney continues to act the perfect gentleman while Nora is around, and the rest of the group back him up. He even agrees to meet Nora and her parents for brunch that weekend, and never meeting the parents is one of his “just one” rules (as in he’ll always say “I have just one rule”). After their date, Nora invites Barney up to her apartment. Barney chooses to come clean about not wanting to get married. Nora slaps him and heads upstairs in a huff. Switching back to the present time, Lily and the cardiologist slap him too.
Soon after slapping Barney, Lily comes to a realization. She tells Barney that she doesn’t think he was lying when he said he wanted to get married at the beginning of the date. She thinks he was lying when he told Nora he didn’t really want to get married at the end of the date. She has the cardiologist look over the heart monitor data again, and she confirms that when Barney first saw Nora at the beginning of their date, his heart literally skipped a beat. We then see Barney show up at the restaurant where Nora and her parents are having brunch. He strides in confidently, is kind, and makes a good impression. It’s quickly apparent that this is all in Barney’s head, though. We again see him standing outside the door to the restaurant, but in reality, he walks away.
-Lily
“A Change of Heart” left me feeling rather cold, which is not something HIMYM usually does. There were some great (albeit juvenile) laughs, but I just wasn’t feeling the A story in this one. Probably because it was about Barney having feelings for someone other than Robin. Shipping preferences aside, though, I don’t think the HIMYM powers that be have done that much better a job developing Nora than they did with Don, and comparing to Don is setting an awfully low bar. There have been one or two scenes where Nora’s been kind of endearing (which is where I can say she’s slightly better developed than Don), but like Don, it’s still mostly been tell instead of show. I did appreciate that Barney is acting like a human being again (which he really didn’t for much of last season), and I can live with this if it teaches Barney and Robin the lessons they need to learn to eventually be together in a healthier way than the first go round, but I don’t have to enjoy it while it’s happening.
Scared by Marvin Eriksen’s heart attack, the gang all goes to a cardiologist to get checked out. Well, everybody but Barney. Everyone is fine, so the conversation at MacLaren’s soon turns to other things. Robin says she might want another dog, which makes Ted unhappy. Ted thinks that if Robin got a dog, he’d be the one who had to take care of it. I’m not so sure that would be true. Up until the second season episode “Stuff,” Robin took care of a whole pack of dogs all on her own. Marshall thinks Robin doesn’t really want a dog. He thinks she’s trying to fill emptiness inside her because she doesn’t have a man. I hate to tell Marshall, but like I already said, Robin’s been known as a dog person for quite some time. Marshall thinks Robin feels left out because everybody in the group is “with” somebody but her. Barney vehemently denies he’s “with” Nora. He claims he’s just going on a second date with her because she’s hot and he wants to have sex with her.
Barney’s date with Nora doesn’t exactly go as he expected. He’s coming down with a cold, and being Barney, Mr. “I stop being sick and be awesome instead,” he really turns on the misery. Nora isn’t really taken aback by Barney coughing and sneezing all over the place, though. Instead, we see a montage of her taking care of him while he’s sick. When he has finally recovered and is telling the rest of the gang about this, he continues to play it off like he’s still just interested in Nora for the sex, going to far as to sing that God-awful “bangity bang” song from last season. Lily realizes that Barney now wants to go to the cardiologist like the rest of the group has, but he’s too scared. Lily says she’ll go with him if he promises to never lie to Nora.
The cardiologist thinks Barney might have a slight arrhythmia, so she wants him to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours. When Barney comes back the next day, she doesn’t see anything especially alarming on the monitor’s read-out, but she does notice a few “irregularities.” Most of the rest of the episode is Barney and Lily telling stories to explain the irregularities. During their date the night before, Nora had been going on and on about how she wants to get married some day. Trying not to scare Barney off, she stresses that it doesn’t have to be with him or right now. It’s just something she wants in the long run. Barney, looking very sincere, told Nora that’s what he wants too. When Lily heard about this, she slapped Barney for lying. That was the first irregularity, and it cracked me up. Later on their date Nora started going on and on about how she wants kids and an old stone house. Barney, again, seemed to sincerely agree and threw in that he wants a pool too. When Lily heard about this, she punched Barney for lying. That was the second irregularity.
Meanwhile, in a kind of stupid yet embarrassingly funny B story, Robin has taken her own desire to get a dog and Marshall’s advice that what she’s really missing is a man and sort of combined them. The result is a guy named “Scooby” who is pretty much a dog in human clothing. Robin found Scooby in the park, of course, and he spends most of the episode exhibiting dog behaviors like chasing his “tail” (a tag on the back of his pants) and fetching things. This inspires a long line of dog puns from the rest of the gang over drinks at MacLaren’s, much like the similar round of Canadian puns they all rattled off when Robin told them about Simon in “Sandcastles in the Sand.” It was juvenile, for sure, but I’ve got to say it completely cracked me up. Scooby reveals that someone gave him some “sandwich making material” while he was in the park, and Ted, Lily, and Marshall decide that while they’re too old to smoke it, they’re definitely not too old to bake it into some brownies. While they themselves are all baked, Scooby leaves Ted’s apartment, and nobody can find him. After a long search, they eventually find him reliving himself on a fire hydrant.
While on his date with Nora, Barney brought her to MacLaren’s to meet the gang. He ends up blackmailing his friends to say only nice things about him. It’s mildly amusing how Barney has such dirt on all of them. Just saying the word “calzone” to Marshall makes him acquiesce. Barney continues to act the perfect gentleman while Nora is around, and the rest of the group back him up. He even agrees to meet Nora and her parents for brunch that weekend, and never meeting the parents is one of his “just one” rules (as in he’ll always say “I have just one rule”). After their date, Nora invites Barney up to her apartment. Barney chooses to come clean about not wanting to get married. Nora slaps him and heads upstairs in a huff. Switching back to the present time, Lily and the cardiologist slap him too.
Soon after slapping Barney, Lily comes to a realization. She tells Barney that she doesn’t think he was lying when he said he wanted to get married at the beginning of the date. She thinks he was lying when he told Nora he didn’t really want to get married at the end of the date. She has the cardiologist look over the heart monitor data again, and she confirms that when Barney first saw Nora at the beginning of their date, his heart literally skipped a beat. We then see Barney show up at the restaurant where Nora and her parents are having brunch. He strides in confidently, is kind, and makes a good impression. It’s quickly apparent that this is all in Barney’s head, though. We again see him standing outside the door to the restaurant, but in reality, he walks away.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Fringe 3.15: "Subject 13"
“But how did you know I’d come here?”
“Because it was the only drawing that looked happy.”
-Olivia and Peter
I’m breaking with my personal tradition and making this episode’s Quote a double. It only seems appropriate that an exchange between Olivia and Peter would open this blog post, because this episode was about the two of them and how their lives have intertwined, all the way back to when they were children. This episode of “Fringe” was told entirely in mid-80’s flashback, without even the framing device used in “Peter” of current day Walter telling Olivia the story of what happened back then. I was excited when I heard about the concept of this episode, specifically the image of Peter and Olivia as small children sitting in a field of white tulips. It excited me because it reminded me so powerfully of my favorite television show of all time, Pushing Daisies. I just couldn’t get the image of young Ned and Chuck in a field of brilliant yellow sunflowers under a brilliant blue sky out of my head. Because this is “Fringe,” what we got here in this episode was much grittier, but I still found it intriguing because of all the new questions it raised.
A flashback episode of “Fringe” wouldn’t be complete without the 80’s version of the opening title sequence that we got the last time “Fringe” visited this time period. After the retro titles, we see that we’re picking up not long after the last flashback episode left off. Peter is not adjusting well to our universe at all. His “mother,” Elizabeth, finds a note on his bed simply stating that he “wants to go home.” Panicked, she runs out to Reiden Lake, and there she finds her new “son” standing on ice in the middle of the lake, trying to break the surface so he can sink down into the freezing water. He thinks that this is the way back to the Other Side. Peter succeeds in breaking through the ice, and the heavy object to which he’s tied himself propels him towards the bottom of the lake. Elizabeth jumps in and saves him just in time.
Walter is not at the lake while all this is going on. He’s in Jacksonville, overseeing the daycare center that is a front for his Cortexaphan experiments. One of the students, is, of course, Olivia. The kids are all standing around in a circle while Walter leads them in meditation, presumably in an effort to see if they’ll jump to the Other Side. A little boy, who turns out to be Nick (pyro girl’s boyfriend), worries about taking his teddy bear to the other side, and Olivia tells him to just put the bear on his feet. It turns out Walter is hoping he can return Peter to the Other Side in much the same way as Nick’s teddy bear. Walter’s assistant interrupts to inform him that Elizabeth is so distressed over something that she’s flown all the way to Jacksonville, so Walter ends the session early.
At their Jacksonville apartment, Walter and Elizabeth argue over what to do about Peter, given his recent outburst. Walter still genuinely wants to return Peter to the Other Side by using the children, and Elizabeth pleads for him to hurry up. She’s extremely upset that she can’t keep Peter safe. The Bishops aren’t the only ones having a rough evening. We see a brief scene of Olivia at home, being yelled at menacingly by her stepfather. Olivia is afraid, and she starts to run from him. This only enrages her stepfather further, and in her terror, Olivia briefly crosses over to the Other Side. She doesn’t realize what has happened, but as viewers, we know exactly what it means when she’s suddenly standing in a field and a Zeppelin is lazily floating over her head.
At school the next day, Olivia is very withdrawn thanks to the abuse and accompanying black eye. Walter talks to her to try to figure out what is wrong. She claims the black eye is just from falling, but Walter knows she’s not telling the truth. More interesting to Walter, however, is the fact that Olivia has drawn a picture of a Zeppelin in her sketch book. He realizes that in her heightened emotional state, Olivia was able to cross over. Thus begins a series of experiments on Olivia. Walter induces a variety of emotional states more pleasant or at least tolerable than abuse, hoping one will work equally as well. He lets her play with toys, he gives her an impossible puzzle to solve, and so on. The whole sequence is extremely clever from a visual standpoint. It’s told as a series of spliced together Betamax clips of experiment footage that Walter intends to send to William Bell for his opinion.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Peter are still having a tough time. Peter refuses to listen to Elizabeth or acknowledge her as his mother. He vehemently insists he’s not crazy and desperately wants to go “home.” Elizabeth decides to take Peter along with her to run some errands and get some fresh air. For good behavior, he’s rewarded with a trip to the toy store. There’s some fascinating work done here by the two actors where Peter will go up to a toy, show interest in it, but as soon as he realizes Elizabeth is watching him, stop what he’s doing. The draw of a toy plane is too much for him, though, and he keeps playing with it, making it zoom around, despite Elizabeth’s attention. She buys him the plane, and he takes it with him on a trip to Walter’s “day care.” At the day care, he sees Olivia in one of the testing rooms, just sitting there, and he’s transfixed by her. Walter notices, calling Olivia “beguiling,” and Elizabeth takes Peter away.
Walter has come to the conclusion that no emotion other than genuine fear will be sufficient to trigger Olivia to jump to the Other Side. He sets up quite the creepy scenario. Olivia is happily playing when, all of a sudden, the lights go out. The lights are out for just long enough for Olivia to start panicking, and when the lights come back on, things are even worse. She sees Nick lying on the ground, looking bloodied. All of a sudden, everything goes up in flames. At the apartment, Elizabeth hears sirens scream as fire trucks speed down the street in the direction of the day care. She calls the day care and gets a busy signal. Because dragging your “son” to the possible scene of a major emergency is what every good mother does, Elizabeth gets Peter in the car and heads to the day care to investigate. There’s been a fire and Olivia is missing. Peter looks through Olivia’s sketchbook while Elizabeth looks through Walter’s notes. In the sketchbook, peter sees a drawing of an angry man and a drawing of a field of white tulips. Elizabeth sees notes about how Walter thinks only the combination of fear and love Olivia feels about her stepfather will trigger her jumps. At that moment, Walter’s assistant says she can’t find Peter.
We flash to the Other Side and find that, not surprisingly, the Alt-Bishops are in just as much disarray as their doppelgangers. Walternate’s been drinking heavily, and he’s been watching news reports about Peter’s kidnapping. The whole situation has done quite a number on the Alt-Bishop marriage. Alt-Elizabeth begs Walternate not to go down to Florida for work this coming week and just stay at home with her. She wants Walter to try to start to heal and work on their marriage. When she wakes up the next morning, though, he’s not in bed. We see him arrive in Florida, where he runs “Bishop Dynamic,” the Other Side doppelganger to Massive Dynamic, I presume. His office has a nice view of the Kennedy Space Center shuttle launch pads, which I think is pretty much the coolest thing ever (have I ever mentioned that I’m a big time space nerd?).
Back in our universe, Peter finds Olivia in a field of white tulips which Elizabeth had pointed out to him on their car ride earlier in the day. The moment they have is a bit “Pushing Daisies,” although, as I said before, since this is “Fringe,” it wasn’t quite as charming. There was a lot more angst. How there could be more angst than Ned and Chuck having their first kiss at their respective parents’ funerals I’m not quite sure, but somehow the “Fringe” folks managed it. Olivia admits to Peter that her stepfather is responsible for her black eye, and Peter adamantly tells Olivia that he thinks she should tell Walter about it. They hold hands briefly as they take a break from the craziness and just try to be kids for a little while.
Back at the day care, police are questioning everyone about Peter and Olivia’s disappearance. The two kids choose that moment to reappear together. A fussing Elizabeth leads Peter away. Olivia asks Walter’s assistant to see “Dr. Walter,” presumably so she can come clean about her stepfather. The assistant isn’t so sure, but Olivia makes a run for it and bursts into Walter’s office. She begs Walter for help and hands a very confused Walter her sketchbook. The door opens and our Walter walks in behind Olivia. Olivia is extremely confused. It turns out she had briefly crossed over and was speaking to Walternate. This will have huge implications, because Walternate now has Olivia’s sketchbook, which contains a drawing of her and Peter. He now knows his son is in an alternate universe, and this is probably when he began to prepare for war against us.
Our Walter seems sympathetic to Olivia’s plight, and he threatens Olivia’s stepfather when he comes to pick her up, saying that he will contact child protective services if Olivia is ever hurt again. He also mentions he knows some people who are pretty high up in government, and they will make sure that any CPS incidents cause him trouble for a good long time. Olivia’s stepfather doesn’t seem very receptive to Walter’s threat. Back at the Bishop apartment, Peter finally starts to believe Elizabeth when she insists she’s his mom and he was just confused from being sick for so long. Privately, Elizabeth is devastated by what she has done to her doppelganger. She opens a cabinet, pulls out a bottle of liquor and a glass, and starts drinking. It’s very symmetrical to Walternate drinking on the Other Side.
“Because it was the only drawing that looked happy.”
-Olivia and Peter
I’m breaking with my personal tradition and making this episode’s Quote a double. It only seems appropriate that an exchange between Olivia and Peter would open this blog post, because this episode was about the two of them and how their lives have intertwined, all the way back to when they were children. This episode of “Fringe” was told entirely in mid-80’s flashback, without even the framing device used in “Peter” of current day Walter telling Olivia the story of what happened back then. I was excited when I heard about the concept of this episode, specifically the image of Peter and Olivia as small children sitting in a field of white tulips. It excited me because it reminded me so powerfully of my favorite television show of all time, Pushing Daisies. I just couldn’t get the image of young Ned and Chuck in a field of brilliant yellow sunflowers under a brilliant blue sky out of my head. Because this is “Fringe,” what we got here in this episode was much grittier, but I still found it intriguing because of all the new questions it raised.
A flashback episode of “Fringe” wouldn’t be complete without the 80’s version of the opening title sequence that we got the last time “Fringe” visited this time period. After the retro titles, we see that we’re picking up not long after the last flashback episode left off. Peter is not adjusting well to our universe at all. His “mother,” Elizabeth, finds a note on his bed simply stating that he “wants to go home.” Panicked, she runs out to Reiden Lake, and there she finds her new “son” standing on ice in the middle of the lake, trying to break the surface so he can sink down into the freezing water. He thinks that this is the way back to the Other Side. Peter succeeds in breaking through the ice, and the heavy object to which he’s tied himself propels him towards the bottom of the lake. Elizabeth jumps in and saves him just in time.
Walter is not at the lake while all this is going on. He’s in Jacksonville, overseeing the daycare center that is a front for his Cortexaphan experiments. One of the students, is, of course, Olivia. The kids are all standing around in a circle while Walter leads them in meditation, presumably in an effort to see if they’ll jump to the Other Side. A little boy, who turns out to be Nick (pyro girl’s boyfriend), worries about taking his teddy bear to the other side, and Olivia tells him to just put the bear on his feet. It turns out Walter is hoping he can return Peter to the Other Side in much the same way as Nick’s teddy bear. Walter’s assistant interrupts to inform him that Elizabeth is so distressed over something that she’s flown all the way to Jacksonville, so Walter ends the session early.
At their Jacksonville apartment, Walter and Elizabeth argue over what to do about Peter, given his recent outburst. Walter still genuinely wants to return Peter to the Other Side by using the children, and Elizabeth pleads for him to hurry up. She’s extremely upset that she can’t keep Peter safe. The Bishops aren’t the only ones having a rough evening. We see a brief scene of Olivia at home, being yelled at menacingly by her stepfather. Olivia is afraid, and she starts to run from him. This only enrages her stepfather further, and in her terror, Olivia briefly crosses over to the Other Side. She doesn’t realize what has happened, but as viewers, we know exactly what it means when she’s suddenly standing in a field and a Zeppelin is lazily floating over her head.
At school the next day, Olivia is very withdrawn thanks to the abuse and accompanying black eye. Walter talks to her to try to figure out what is wrong. She claims the black eye is just from falling, but Walter knows she’s not telling the truth. More interesting to Walter, however, is the fact that Olivia has drawn a picture of a Zeppelin in her sketch book. He realizes that in her heightened emotional state, Olivia was able to cross over. Thus begins a series of experiments on Olivia. Walter induces a variety of emotional states more pleasant or at least tolerable than abuse, hoping one will work equally as well. He lets her play with toys, he gives her an impossible puzzle to solve, and so on. The whole sequence is extremely clever from a visual standpoint. It’s told as a series of spliced together Betamax clips of experiment footage that Walter intends to send to William Bell for his opinion.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Peter are still having a tough time. Peter refuses to listen to Elizabeth or acknowledge her as his mother. He vehemently insists he’s not crazy and desperately wants to go “home.” Elizabeth decides to take Peter along with her to run some errands and get some fresh air. For good behavior, he’s rewarded with a trip to the toy store. There’s some fascinating work done here by the two actors where Peter will go up to a toy, show interest in it, but as soon as he realizes Elizabeth is watching him, stop what he’s doing. The draw of a toy plane is too much for him, though, and he keeps playing with it, making it zoom around, despite Elizabeth’s attention. She buys him the plane, and he takes it with him on a trip to Walter’s “day care.” At the day care, he sees Olivia in one of the testing rooms, just sitting there, and he’s transfixed by her. Walter notices, calling Olivia “beguiling,” and Elizabeth takes Peter away.
Walter has come to the conclusion that no emotion other than genuine fear will be sufficient to trigger Olivia to jump to the Other Side. He sets up quite the creepy scenario. Olivia is happily playing when, all of a sudden, the lights go out. The lights are out for just long enough for Olivia to start panicking, and when the lights come back on, things are even worse. She sees Nick lying on the ground, looking bloodied. All of a sudden, everything goes up in flames. At the apartment, Elizabeth hears sirens scream as fire trucks speed down the street in the direction of the day care. She calls the day care and gets a busy signal. Because dragging your “son” to the possible scene of a major emergency is what every good mother does, Elizabeth gets Peter in the car and heads to the day care to investigate. There’s been a fire and Olivia is missing. Peter looks through Olivia’s sketchbook while Elizabeth looks through Walter’s notes. In the sketchbook, peter sees a drawing of an angry man and a drawing of a field of white tulips. Elizabeth sees notes about how Walter thinks only the combination of fear and love Olivia feels about her stepfather will trigger her jumps. At that moment, Walter’s assistant says she can’t find Peter.
We flash to the Other Side and find that, not surprisingly, the Alt-Bishops are in just as much disarray as their doppelgangers. Walternate’s been drinking heavily, and he’s been watching news reports about Peter’s kidnapping. The whole situation has done quite a number on the Alt-Bishop marriage. Alt-Elizabeth begs Walternate not to go down to Florida for work this coming week and just stay at home with her. She wants Walter to try to start to heal and work on their marriage. When she wakes up the next morning, though, he’s not in bed. We see him arrive in Florida, where he runs “Bishop Dynamic,” the Other Side doppelganger to Massive Dynamic, I presume. His office has a nice view of the Kennedy Space Center shuttle launch pads, which I think is pretty much the coolest thing ever (have I ever mentioned that I’m a big time space nerd?).
Back in our universe, Peter finds Olivia in a field of white tulips which Elizabeth had pointed out to him on their car ride earlier in the day. The moment they have is a bit “Pushing Daisies,” although, as I said before, since this is “Fringe,” it wasn’t quite as charming. There was a lot more angst. How there could be more angst than Ned and Chuck having their first kiss at their respective parents’ funerals I’m not quite sure, but somehow the “Fringe” folks managed it. Olivia admits to Peter that her stepfather is responsible for her black eye, and Peter adamantly tells Olivia that he thinks she should tell Walter about it. They hold hands briefly as they take a break from the craziness and just try to be kids for a little while.
Back at the day care, police are questioning everyone about Peter and Olivia’s disappearance. The two kids choose that moment to reappear together. A fussing Elizabeth leads Peter away. Olivia asks Walter’s assistant to see “Dr. Walter,” presumably so she can come clean about her stepfather. The assistant isn’t so sure, but Olivia makes a run for it and bursts into Walter’s office. She begs Walter for help and hands a very confused Walter her sketchbook. The door opens and our Walter walks in behind Olivia. Olivia is extremely confused. It turns out she had briefly crossed over and was speaking to Walternate. This will have huge implications, because Walternate now has Olivia’s sketchbook, which contains a drawing of her and Peter. He now knows his son is in an alternate universe, and this is probably when he began to prepare for war against us.
Our Walter seems sympathetic to Olivia’s plight, and he threatens Olivia’s stepfather when he comes to pick her up, saying that he will contact child protective services if Olivia is ever hurt again. He also mentions he knows some people who are pretty high up in government, and they will make sure that any CPS incidents cause him trouble for a good long time. Olivia’s stepfather doesn’t seem very receptive to Walter’s threat. Back at the Bishop apartment, Peter finally starts to believe Elizabeth when she insists she’s his mom and he was just confused from being sick for so long. Privately, Elizabeth is devastated by what she has done to her doppelganger. She opens a cabinet, pulls out a bottle of liquor and a glass, and starts drinking. It’s very symmetrical to Walternate drinking on the Other Side.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The Big Bang Theory 4.17: "The Toast Derivation"
“They were having fun wrong.”
-Sheldon
“The Toast Derivation” was a moderately funny episode of “The Big Bang Theory.” I think it was a little too disjointed to be considered among the series’ best, however. Not only did the episode devote time to every regular character in the series, but several guest characters as well (and one cameo from LeVar Burton). It was just too much to fit into a little over twenty minutes of television. I think that without some of the little side detours that seem to have been blatantly included for the sole purpose of fulfilling certain actors’ contracts, this could have been a really interesting, thoughtful exploration of Sheldon’s place among his group of friends. That subject was dealt with a bit in this episode, but in a very simplistic way. I guess maybe I always want “The Big Bang Theory” to be more than it really ever has been.
The episode opens with Sheldon in his apartment trying to order pizza for the usual Thursday night happenings with the guys. He’s getting frustrated because the person he’s talking to doesn’t understand the Italian phrases with which he peppers his order. He thinks the employee is Chinese. Which I guess is supposed to be ironic and funny, but it was really just kind of stupid. Leonard tells Sheldon that ordering pizza is pointless, because everyone’s meeting at Raj’s for dinner. Mostly because Priya is there and Leonard wants to spend more time with her. Sheldon is upset, which isn’t surprising. He gets very irritated whenever his routine is broken. First he says their Thursday night pizza is “tradition,” then he starts to worry that Raj and Priya are going to serve strange food. Like haggis.
Leonard finally manages to drag Sheldon along with him to Raj’s, but Sheldon is most definitely not happy about it. He’s unhappy he has to find a new “spot.” He’s unhappy that dinner is fajitas, which means he has to put the ingredients together. When Priya breaks out a pitcher of margarita’s, that’s Sheldon’s last straw. He think’s it’s become too much like a party, I guess, and Dr. Sheldon Cooper doesn’t do parties. Except he does every Halloween and New Year’s Eve, or did the writer of this episode not remember that? Anyway, upset by the party atmosphere, Sheldon starts to head home but instead finds himself…at the Cheesecake Factory bar. He orders a “Water. Neat. With a little umbrella.” and unloads his “troubles” on Penny. While they’re talking, Sheldon receives a phone call from Amy, who just joins in the conversation. Amy speculates that Leonard is the center of their social group, not Sheldon.
Sheldon is not going to stand for not being the center of the universe let alone not being the center of a social group. The next day, as Leonard leaves for yet another evening with Howard, Raj, and Priya, Sheldon is putting out snacks in the apartment. Leonard is confused about this, considering the night’s festivities are once again happening elsewhere, but Sheldon explains he has a new group of friends coming over. He’s recruited Stewart from the comic book store, Kripke (Sheldon’s annoying lisping nemesis from the University), Penny’s menu-selling ex-boyfriend Zach…and LeVar Burton. Well, Sheldon’s invited LeVar Burton via Twitter, but Leonard doesn’t think he’ll actually show up. Sheldon finally comes to the same realization after the rest of his new “friends” have been at the apartment for a while, so he has everyone make introductions, which are quite awkward. Stewart still hates his life, Kripke is still Kripke, and Zach doesn’t remember what he does for a living.
Meanwhile, Bernadette and Amy show up at Penny’s door, determined to take Penny out for a girls’ night of dancing. Penny is a little reluctant, still insisting that she’s fine with Leonard dating Priya and doesn’t need any sort of distraction, but she eventually agrees to join them. We don’t actually see any of this girls’ night. The episode confines itself only to the getting ready. As Penny’s getting ready, Bernadette and Amy press her on her feelings about Leonard and dating. Penny continues to insist that she’s fine and doesn’t need to lose herself in casual hookups, but then the girls find that Penny still has the preserved snowflake Leonard brought back for her from the North Pole. Then Penny finally decides she needs the distraction of a night out. I thought this plot was really unnecessary. There’s all sorts of interesting character work being done with Sheldon in this episode, but with Penny, it’s a sort of throwaway rehash of what her plots have been for just about every episode this season- Amy and Bernadette reminding her that she misses Leonard. Why can’t the female characters on this show exist outside the men they date. I think that Amy (*gasp*) comes the closest to this ideal, but not completely.
Sheldon’s new group of friends is kind of a disaster from Sheldon’s perspective, at least. Zach’s telling a story about hooking up with a chick in a hot tub, and Stewart and Kripke are much more interested in hearing about that than anything Sheldon has to say. Sheldon proposes a vintage video game night, but the guys aren’t having it. Kripke’s going to go get his karaoke machine out of his car, Zach’s getting beer, and Stewart’s getting a shower (he lives in the comic book store, and use of the shower was Sheldon’s bribe to get him to come to this gathering). Sheldon is not happy for two reasons, I guess. First is that this is turning into something that looks an awful lot like a party, and we know that this week, at least, Sheldon doesn’t like parties. Second (and most importantly), none of the other guys are paying attention to Sheldon.
Our usual boys and Priya are over at Raj’s fully enjoying their Sheldon-free evening. Then they go to make a toast, and Leonard mentions that this is the first time in a very long time that they’ve been able to toast without Sheldon giving a lecture on the history and meaning of the toast. It’s obvious the boys kind of miss his annoying presence. Just as they make this realization, Sheldon shows up at the door. He’s left his new “friends” because they were “having fun wrong.” Priya offers Sheldon some chili, which he promptly insults for containing beans. I’m sorry, but I still don’t get why these people are friends with such a miserable creature. Despite disapproving of the food being called “chili,” he eats it up anyway. Ah well, the episode’s tag was quite funny, at least. We get a LeVar Burton cameo! He shows up at Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment, sees a half naked Stewart singing karaoke with Zach and Kripke, and hightails it out of there, vowing to never respond to a Twitter invitation again.
-Sheldon
“The Toast Derivation” was a moderately funny episode of “The Big Bang Theory.” I think it was a little too disjointed to be considered among the series’ best, however. Not only did the episode devote time to every regular character in the series, but several guest characters as well (and one cameo from LeVar Burton). It was just too much to fit into a little over twenty minutes of television. I think that without some of the little side detours that seem to have been blatantly included for the sole purpose of fulfilling certain actors’ contracts, this could have been a really interesting, thoughtful exploration of Sheldon’s place among his group of friends. That subject was dealt with a bit in this episode, but in a very simplistic way. I guess maybe I always want “The Big Bang Theory” to be more than it really ever has been.
The episode opens with Sheldon in his apartment trying to order pizza for the usual Thursday night happenings with the guys. He’s getting frustrated because the person he’s talking to doesn’t understand the Italian phrases with which he peppers his order. He thinks the employee is Chinese. Which I guess is supposed to be ironic and funny, but it was really just kind of stupid. Leonard tells Sheldon that ordering pizza is pointless, because everyone’s meeting at Raj’s for dinner. Mostly because Priya is there and Leonard wants to spend more time with her. Sheldon is upset, which isn’t surprising. He gets very irritated whenever his routine is broken. First he says their Thursday night pizza is “tradition,” then he starts to worry that Raj and Priya are going to serve strange food. Like haggis.
Leonard finally manages to drag Sheldon along with him to Raj’s, but Sheldon is most definitely not happy about it. He’s unhappy he has to find a new “spot.” He’s unhappy that dinner is fajitas, which means he has to put the ingredients together. When Priya breaks out a pitcher of margarita’s, that’s Sheldon’s last straw. He think’s it’s become too much like a party, I guess, and Dr. Sheldon Cooper doesn’t do parties. Except he does every Halloween and New Year’s Eve, or did the writer of this episode not remember that? Anyway, upset by the party atmosphere, Sheldon starts to head home but instead finds himself…at the Cheesecake Factory bar. He orders a “Water. Neat. With a little umbrella.” and unloads his “troubles” on Penny. While they’re talking, Sheldon receives a phone call from Amy, who just joins in the conversation. Amy speculates that Leonard is the center of their social group, not Sheldon.
Sheldon is not going to stand for not being the center of the universe let alone not being the center of a social group. The next day, as Leonard leaves for yet another evening with Howard, Raj, and Priya, Sheldon is putting out snacks in the apartment. Leonard is confused about this, considering the night’s festivities are once again happening elsewhere, but Sheldon explains he has a new group of friends coming over. He’s recruited Stewart from the comic book store, Kripke (Sheldon’s annoying lisping nemesis from the University), Penny’s menu-selling ex-boyfriend Zach…and LeVar Burton. Well, Sheldon’s invited LeVar Burton via Twitter, but Leonard doesn’t think he’ll actually show up. Sheldon finally comes to the same realization after the rest of his new “friends” have been at the apartment for a while, so he has everyone make introductions, which are quite awkward. Stewart still hates his life, Kripke is still Kripke, and Zach doesn’t remember what he does for a living.
Meanwhile, Bernadette and Amy show up at Penny’s door, determined to take Penny out for a girls’ night of dancing. Penny is a little reluctant, still insisting that she’s fine with Leonard dating Priya and doesn’t need any sort of distraction, but she eventually agrees to join them. We don’t actually see any of this girls’ night. The episode confines itself only to the getting ready. As Penny’s getting ready, Bernadette and Amy press her on her feelings about Leonard and dating. Penny continues to insist that she’s fine and doesn’t need to lose herself in casual hookups, but then the girls find that Penny still has the preserved snowflake Leonard brought back for her from the North Pole. Then Penny finally decides she needs the distraction of a night out. I thought this plot was really unnecessary. There’s all sorts of interesting character work being done with Sheldon in this episode, but with Penny, it’s a sort of throwaway rehash of what her plots have been for just about every episode this season- Amy and Bernadette reminding her that she misses Leonard. Why can’t the female characters on this show exist outside the men they date. I think that Amy (*gasp*) comes the closest to this ideal, but not completely.
Sheldon’s new group of friends is kind of a disaster from Sheldon’s perspective, at least. Zach’s telling a story about hooking up with a chick in a hot tub, and Stewart and Kripke are much more interested in hearing about that than anything Sheldon has to say. Sheldon proposes a vintage video game night, but the guys aren’t having it. Kripke’s going to go get his karaoke machine out of his car, Zach’s getting beer, and Stewart’s getting a shower (he lives in the comic book store, and use of the shower was Sheldon’s bribe to get him to come to this gathering). Sheldon is not happy for two reasons, I guess. First is that this is turning into something that looks an awful lot like a party, and we know that this week, at least, Sheldon doesn’t like parties. Second (and most importantly), none of the other guys are paying attention to Sheldon.
Our usual boys and Priya are over at Raj’s fully enjoying their Sheldon-free evening. Then they go to make a toast, and Leonard mentions that this is the first time in a very long time that they’ve been able to toast without Sheldon giving a lecture on the history and meaning of the toast. It’s obvious the boys kind of miss his annoying presence. Just as they make this realization, Sheldon shows up at the door. He’s left his new “friends” because they were “having fun wrong.” Priya offers Sheldon some chili, which he promptly insults for containing beans. I’m sorry, but I still don’t get why these people are friends with such a miserable creature. Despite disapproving of the food being called “chili,” he eats it up anyway. Ah well, the episode’s tag was quite funny, at least. We get a LeVar Burton cameo! He shows up at Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment, sees a half naked Stewart singing karaoke with Zach and Kripke, and hightails it out of there, vowing to never respond to a Twitter invitation again.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
No Ordinary Family 1.16: "No Ordinary Proposal"
Sarah's back with another "No Ordinary Family" recap. Enjoy!
***
“How can I love you, when I don’t even know you? You’ve lied to me since the day I met you.”
- Katie
This week begins with Jim chasing a suspect on foot for once through a crowd. George admonishes Jim that he should have stayed on the rooftops, but it’s kind of a moot point once the guy runs into a dead end alley. Jim corners the guy who pulls a gun. The suspect gets off about four or five shots and Jim deflects them all, including one that ricochets through a window and seriously injures a boy nearby. Jim’s really shook up with guilt over the whole thing and I can see why. I’d be pretty upset if I caused some innocent kid to get shot.
Meanwhile, Katie wakes up to find Joshua awake first (I have decided that since we are unlikely to learn his real name any time soon, the quotes are just annoying now and shall no longer be used). He’s got a surprise for her, an engagement ring. She’s excited and it’s a really sweet proposal (though not so different from what he’s been telling Katie all along). At the office later, Katie is a little worried that she doesn’t deserve the ring or the engagement and there’s a Batman reference (and a possible allusion that Robin is gay). But Stephanie is going to throw her an awesome engagement party. And hopefully their trials with the antidote to the serum will work on their test rat so that it will work for Joshua.
Daphne stops by Chris’s place because he wasn’t at school and finds him and his dad home. His dad, now wheelchair-bound, is kind of a whiny/angry jerk who is bossing Chris around. But Chris agrees to spend a little time with Daphne at the engagement party to get out of the house and his newfound responsibility as breadwinner. The party seems to be going well until Stephanie sees Jim is rather unhappy. She quickly learns it’s about the kid who got hit by the stray bullet and she tries to make Jim see that it wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could do. He tells her they should use the serum that she brought home from the lab because it could cure the kid. Steph pretty much vetoes that before it even leaves Jim’s mouth, saying she won’t play God. Too bad someone else doesn’t have the problem. After the party, they discover the serum is missing, and before the act break, we see someone inject themselves. The party also takes a slight unhappy turn when Dr. King shows up and insists on giving a speech in honor of Katie and Joshua. I get the feeling that there is more history between King and Joshua. As King leaves he whispers in Joshua’s ear about his father being proud. I’m not sure if that means King or not.
So Steph and Jim are going through the list of party attendees to try and solve the mystery of the missing serum. They go through the obvious choices first; Dr. King and Joshua. But Dr. King has his own supply and wouldn’t need it, and after a chat with Joshua, Steph determines he didn’t take it either since he’s trying to get rid of his powers. Jim thinks he’s figured out who took it while he and George are at the Lair. They zero in on Chris. I mean it is easy to blame the kid with a criminal record. As Jim is ranting about “gateway crimes” an alert goes up on the police scanner about an ATM robbery. But there’s no evidence of a bomb or other explosive at the scene when they arrive. So it had to be a super crime. The only witness saw someone ride off on a blue motorcycle, like the one Chris drives. Jim confronts Chris but decides he’s not responsible when George calls to tell him there was a second robbery.
In other teen news, J.J’s asked by Mr. Litchfield to join the academic decathlon team, but J.J. has no interest. He knows he wouldn’t be challenged in any way. As he leaves class, he runs into Natalie who is still putting up the “I like you but I have to focus on schoolwork” routine. She’s applying for a $10,000 scholarship and needs to focus so she can get it. I’m getting tired of this plotline, honestly. Mr. Lichfield eventually chooses a much more devious tactic to get what he wants, and he tells J.J. that if he joins the decathlon team, Natalie’s chances will go way up in the scholarship pool. I find this rather disgusting and evil. You don’t blackmail a 15-year-old. You just don’t.
Over at Global Tech, Joshua drops by to surprise King. It works. They have one of their usual banters but with some interesting information. We learn that Joshua was given the serum at age six and that it supposedly saved his life. And turned him into a killer. So in a way, I guess Dr. King was like a father, even if Joshua refuses to see it that way. Unfortunately, in espousing that he is going to be powers-free soon, Joshua has to admit (even though he doesn’t actually say it, King does), Steph is helping him. Later, Joshua is again at the lab to get the antidote Steph created. He’s a little worried that Katie’s only known him with his powers, and he doesn’t want her to look at him any differently. She promises that she will love him no matter what. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the antidote is working. He gets all wobbly and beakers start smashing, like his powers went on overdrive. One he settles down, Steph tells him to try and use his powers. He can still use them and bitterly says he didn’t know he thought they could make him something he’d never been.
We briefly see Jim try to apologize to Daphne for getting all in Chris’s face, but she hurriedly leaves the house to go see Chris. He tells her it’s cool and that he didn’t take the serum. But Daphne’s trusty picto-vision rewind shows her Chris giving his dad the serum and his dad walking again. Which obviously means it wore off because when we see Chris’s dad, he’s sitting at a table. Or he’s just faking it. Daphne runs home and tells Jim he was right. Which leads pretty much directly to Chris tossing a wad of bills in front of his dad and demanding to know where it came from. They get into a rather big fight about what his dad is doing and the fact that he’s drinking again. Chris’s dad seems like a really violent guy, and I kind of hope we don’t see him for much longer. He’s got no qualms about pushing his kid around and being physical. Maybe it’s that I just don’t like people hitting their kids.
Meanwhile, Jim stops by Chris’s house looking for his dad. He tries to get Chris to help them stop his dad, but Chris is obviously scared of what his dad can do. So Jim goes after the guy alone and gets thrown through a cement wall for his trouble. Guess Chris’s dad’s super strength is a little more crazy than Jim thought. He’s complaining about it to Steph and George when comes up with an idea of how Jim might be able to beat Chris’s dad. He’s got to be quicker. Chris tries to confront his dad again but gets thrown out a window for his trouble. Poor kid. Someone needs to take his dad down hard. So George is teaching Jim to box, sort of. George explains that it is all about making the other guy miss. Making him miss uses up his energy (and in Chris’s dad’s case, the serum). Just after Jim manages to knock George down he gets a call from Daphne that Chris is in the hospital. After a little persuasion, Chris tells them his dad went to Global Tech to get more serum.
At the lab the next day, Stephanie learns some disturbing thing about Joshua courtesy of Dr. King, namely that he can erase memories. Which clicks in her head because of Daphne’s memory loss. At this point, I’m kind of intrigued to see what happens. Will she confront him? Will she tell Katie? I mean, obviously it’s not a good thing to just erase unhappy conversations from the mind of the woman you claim to love. I’m really trying to root for Joshua here to overcome what he was. Just as Stephanie is going to tell Katie about Joshua, Chris’s dad walks in with his arm clamped around Katie’s neck. And he’ll kill her if Stephanie doesn’t give him more of the serum. Am I wrong in kind of hoping Joshua randomly shows up to save the day? Well I would be wrong because Steph tries to stop him and gets knocked down for her trouble. But Jim takes care of him in the parking garage. One super villain down, one to go. Jim busts in on Joshua and nearly pummels him for what he did to Daphne. But Katie arrives and gets her own digs in. She returns the engagement ring. She can’t trust Joshua and she wants him out of her life forever. I can understand where she’s coming from, but it makes me sad to know he couldn’t overcome all the things that had happened to him.
So we wrap up pretty much all the storylines of the episode about 5 or 6 minutes. The kid that got hit by the bullet is going to be okay and because of being hit by the bullet, the doctors found a small tumor that they were able to remove before it got too bad. Daphne is spending time with Chris and hears him thinking that he loves her. J.J. finds out that Natalie got the scholarship and so he’s basically forced to join the decathlon team so she won’t lose it. And it turns out the test problem Mr. Litchfield gave him to solve was courtesy of Dr. King. Jerk! Katie and Steph are sharing a good cry at the lab over Katie dumping Joshua. And Joshua is on a bus leaving town. He’s staring at the engagement ring in its little box and he tries t use his powers to close it when he discovers he no longer has them. Guess Steph’s antidote worked after all.
- Katie
This week begins with Jim chasing a suspect on foot for once through a crowd. George admonishes Jim that he should have stayed on the rooftops, but it’s kind of a moot point once the guy runs into a dead end alley. Jim corners the guy who pulls a gun. The suspect gets off about four or five shots and Jim deflects them all, including one that ricochets through a window and seriously injures a boy nearby. Jim’s really shook up with guilt over the whole thing and I can see why. I’d be pretty upset if I caused some innocent kid to get shot.
Meanwhile, Katie wakes up to find Joshua awake first (I have decided that since we are unlikely to learn his real name any time soon, the quotes are just annoying now and shall no longer be used). He’s got a surprise for her, an engagement ring. She’s excited and it’s a really sweet proposal (though not so different from what he’s been telling Katie all along). At the office later, Katie is a little worried that she doesn’t deserve the ring or the engagement and there’s a Batman reference (and a possible allusion that Robin is gay). But Stephanie is going to throw her an awesome engagement party. And hopefully their trials with the antidote to the serum will work on their test rat so that it will work for Joshua.
Daphne stops by Chris’s place because he wasn’t at school and finds him and his dad home. His dad, now wheelchair-bound, is kind of a whiny/angry jerk who is bossing Chris around. But Chris agrees to spend a little time with Daphne at the engagement party to get out of the house and his newfound responsibility as breadwinner. The party seems to be going well until Stephanie sees Jim is rather unhappy. She quickly learns it’s about the kid who got hit by the stray bullet and she tries to make Jim see that it wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could do. He tells her they should use the serum that she brought home from the lab because it could cure the kid. Steph pretty much vetoes that before it even leaves Jim’s mouth, saying she won’t play God. Too bad someone else doesn’t have the problem. After the party, they discover the serum is missing, and before the act break, we see someone inject themselves. The party also takes a slight unhappy turn when Dr. King shows up and insists on giving a speech in honor of Katie and Joshua. I get the feeling that there is more history between King and Joshua. As King leaves he whispers in Joshua’s ear about his father being proud. I’m not sure if that means King or not.
So Steph and Jim are going through the list of party attendees to try and solve the mystery of the missing serum. They go through the obvious choices first; Dr. King and Joshua. But Dr. King has his own supply and wouldn’t need it, and after a chat with Joshua, Steph determines he didn’t take it either since he’s trying to get rid of his powers. Jim thinks he’s figured out who took it while he and George are at the Lair. They zero in on Chris. I mean it is easy to blame the kid with a criminal record. As Jim is ranting about “gateway crimes” an alert goes up on the police scanner about an ATM robbery. But there’s no evidence of a bomb or other explosive at the scene when they arrive. So it had to be a super crime. The only witness saw someone ride off on a blue motorcycle, like the one Chris drives. Jim confronts Chris but decides he’s not responsible when George calls to tell him there was a second robbery.
In other teen news, J.J’s asked by Mr. Litchfield to join the academic decathlon team, but J.J. has no interest. He knows he wouldn’t be challenged in any way. As he leaves class, he runs into Natalie who is still putting up the “I like you but I have to focus on schoolwork” routine. She’s applying for a $10,000 scholarship and needs to focus so she can get it. I’m getting tired of this plotline, honestly. Mr. Lichfield eventually chooses a much more devious tactic to get what he wants, and he tells J.J. that if he joins the decathlon team, Natalie’s chances will go way up in the scholarship pool. I find this rather disgusting and evil. You don’t blackmail a 15-year-old. You just don’t.
Over at Global Tech, Joshua drops by to surprise King. It works. They have one of their usual banters but with some interesting information. We learn that Joshua was given the serum at age six and that it supposedly saved his life. And turned him into a killer. So in a way, I guess Dr. King was like a father, even if Joshua refuses to see it that way. Unfortunately, in espousing that he is going to be powers-free soon, Joshua has to admit (even though he doesn’t actually say it, King does), Steph is helping him. Later, Joshua is again at the lab to get the antidote Steph created. He’s a little worried that Katie’s only known him with his powers, and he doesn’t want her to look at him any differently. She promises that she will love him no matter what. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the antidote is working. He gets all wobbly and beakers start smashing, like his powers went on overdrive. One he settles down, Steph tells him to try and use his powers. He can still use them and bitterly says he didn’t know he thought they could make him something he’d never been.
We briefly see Jim try to apologize to Daphne for getting all in Chris’s face, but she hurriedly leaves the house to go see Chris. He tells her it’s cool and that he didn’t take the serum. But Daphne’s trusty picto-vision rewind shows her Chris giving his dad the serum and his dad walking again. Which obviously means it wore off because when we see Chris’s dad, he’s sitting at a table. Or he’s just faking it. Daphne runs home and tells Jim he was right. Which leads pretty much directly to Chris tossing a wad of bills in front of his dad and demanding to know where it came from. They get into a rather big fight about what his dad is doing and the fact that he’s drinking again. Chris’s dad seems like a really violent guy, and I kind of hope we don’t see him for much longer. He’s got no qualms about pushing his kid around and being physical. Maybe it’s that I just don’t like people hitting their kids.
Meanwhile, Jim stops by Chris’s house looking for his dad. He tries to get Chris to help them stop his dad, but Chris is obviously scared of what his dad can do. So Jim goes after the guy alone and gets thrown through a cement wall for his trouble. Guess Chris’s dad’s super strength is a little more crazy than Jim thought. He’s complaining about it to Steph and George when comes up with an idea of how Jim might be able to beat Chris’s dad. He’s got to be quicker. Chris tries to confront his dad again but gets thrown out a window for his trouble. Poor kid. Someone needs to take his dad down hard. So George is teaching Jim to box, sort of. George explains that it is all about making the other guy miss. Making him miss uses up his energy (and in Chris’s dad’s case, the serum). Just after Jim manages to knock George down he gets a call from Daphne that Chris is in the hospital. After a little persuasion, Chris tells them his dad went to Global Tech to get more serum.
At the lab the next day, Stephanie learns some disturbing thing about Joshua courtesy of Dr. King, namely that he can erase memories. Which clicks in her head because of Daphne’s memory loss. At this point, I’m kind of intrigued to see what happens. Will she confront him? Will she tell Katie? I mean, obviously it’s not a good thing to just erase unhappy conversations from the mind of the woman you claim to love. I’m really trying to root for Joshua here to overcome what he was. Just as Stephanie is going to tell Katie about Joshua, Chris’s dad walks in with his arm clamped around Katie’s neck. And he’ll kill her if Stephanie doesn’t give him more of the serum. Am I wrong in kind of hoping Joshua randomly shows up to save the day? Well I would be wrong because Steph tries to stop him and gets knocked down for her trouble. But Jim takes care of him in the parking garage. One super villain down, one to go. Jim busts in on Joshua and nearly pummels him for what he did to Daphne. But Katie arrives and gets her own digs in. She returns the engagement ring. She can’t trust Joshua and she wants him out of her life forever. I can understand where she’s coming from, but it makes me sad to know he couldn’t overcome all the things that had happened to him.
So we wrap up pretty much all the storylines of the episode about 5 or 6 minutes. The kid that got hit by the bullet is going to be okay and because of being hit by the bullet, the doctors found a small tumor that they were able to remove before it got too bad. Daphne is spending time with Chris and hears him thinking that he loves her. J.J. finds out that Natalie got the scholarship and so he’s basically forced to join the decathlon team so she won’t lose it. And it turns out the test problem Mr. Litchfield gave him to solve was courtesy of Dr. King. Jerk! Katie and Steph are sharing a good cry at the lab over Katie dumping Joshua. And Joshua is on a bus leaving town. He’s staring at the engagement ring in its little box and he tries t use his powers to close it when he discovers he no longer has them. Guess Steph’s antidote worked after all.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Glee 2.14: "Blame it on the Alcohol"
“Ke$ha’s been a cultural icon for weeks, and I really want to do her music justice.”
-Brittany
I’ll admit I went into my viewing of “Blame it on the Alcohol” not expecting to like it very much. The plotline seemed kind of silly and prone to venture into “very special episode” or after-school special territory. And I also kind of loathe Ke$ha’s “music.” Instead, we got only a minimally preachy chock full of dark humor episode of “Glee,” and I do love “Glee” when it embraces the dark humor. I think that’s what makes “Glee” more grown-up than the media sometimes gives it credit for. When I first started watching “Glee,” there were two things that really drew me in. The first was the fun, energetic musical performances ( the AutoTune hadn’t grated on my last nerve yet), and the second was the dark humor. When these things are both in place, I’m a happy “Glee” viewer. This episode didn’t have me in tears like “Sectionals,” but it was good enough for late middle of the season.
The episode opens with Figgins taking a meeting with Will. This time, for once, it isn’t because one of the glee kids are in trouble. Figgins is in general very concerned about underage drinking. Apparently public drunkenness is a very regular occurrence at McKinley High. That definitely wouldn’t have flown at my public high school, that’s for sure. We would have gotten one of our principal’s patented “I’m very disappointed in you” speeches over the PA system that he usually reserved for major scandals like a food fight in the cafeteria or a mildly offensive (because it referenced living in a trailer…the horror) drag show at the pep rally. Figgins thinks that the music of Ke$ha is responsible for this phenomenon. Only hey calls her “Key-dollar sign-ha,” which I found hilariously adorable. Figgins’ solution is an “Alcohol Awareness Week,” and he wants New Directions to perform at an assembly singing something that will warn the kids about the dangers of alcohol.
Meanwhile, Will decides he wants to put the past behind him and try to be friends with Emma. He comes to the staff lounge bearing housewares as a peace offering because he’s heard she and Carl are looking for a house. Emma is concerned about Will and wants to know if he’s dating anyone. Sue interrupts the conversation, though. She has decided that Will is a future alcoholic, and she’s being really obnoxious about it. She mentions how she’s going to be coaching Aural Intensity, and Emma is very surprised. She wants to know how Sue could have possibly gotten a job coaching a glee club. We see a flashback of Sue getting the job. Not surprisingly, it turns out she kept pushing the Aural Intensity coach down a stairwell over and over until he was too injured to keep his job. The repeated pushing was supposed to be funny, I’m sure, but it was just extremely cruel.
In the choir room, Rachel is diligently working on composing an original song. Puck interrupts because he’s heard that Rachel’s parents are out of town on a cruise. He wants Rachel to use the opportunity to throw a party at her house. Rachel declines, showing some good sense for once. Finn arrives in the choir room next, and Rachel wants him to hear her song. But for some bizarre reason, she has to hug him first. The song is horrendous. The tune is okay, but the lyrics are most definitely not. The song is called “My Headband,” and it pretty much just talks about Rachel’s accessory drawer. Finn prompts Rachel to realize that she doesn’t really have the life experience to write the kind of song she wants to write. She decides to take Puck up on his suggestion to throw the party, and she tells him to buy some wine coolers.
The party, which isn’t huge, just the New Directions kids plus Kurt and Blaine, doesn’t get off to a very good start. Rachel tries to set a two wine cooler limit to keep things at least somewhat under control, but the kids all think that’s lame. They think it’s so lame that some of them start to leave. In a desperate move to save her party, Rachel lets Puck break into her dads’ liquor cabinet. Not surprisingly, the party starts to get a little crazy. Finn and Kurt are the only ones who stay sober. Finn is designated driver, and Kurt doesn’t want to get to sloppy in front of Blaine. A very drunk Rachel starts hanging all over Finn, and Finn takes the opportunity to explain the different “types” of drunks to her, such as the happy drunk and the angry drunk. Rachel is the needy drunk. I would find this amusing if Finn didn’t focus only on female drunkenness stereotypes. Rachel is not happy to be called needy, and she decides it’s time for a game of spin the bottle.
When it’s Rachel’s turn to spin, the bottle lands on Blaine, and everybody in their drunkenness thinks that’s pretty darn funny. Rachel and Blaine kiss, and it turns from silliness to something more real. They kiss more than a bit too long, and poor Kurt is in hysterics. It’s something you have to look for carefully, but there’s a shot where you can see him in the background, and the face Chris Colfer made cracked me up. Rachel says she thinks she’s found her new duet partner, and she and Blaine sing a duet of “Don’t You Want Me” as the rest of the kids (minus Kurt) rock out. Lea Michele and Darren Criss really do sound good together- they should do Rachel/Blaine duets more often. Anyway, the next morning, Burt goes up to Kurt’s room to ask him a question and finds Blaine in Kurt’s bed. Even though Blaine is fully clothed, Burt still freaks out a bit. He claims that he’d have the same reaction to Finn bringing a girl home, but Kurt is still really angry. The argument doesn’t end quickly- in a later scene Kurt chides his father for not being able to provide the answers to him that he could provide to a straight son.
On Monday, all the kids are still hung over when they arrive at school, which sounds just a touch ridiculous to me, even though I’ve never been much of a drinker. Artie thinks the best cure for their hangovers is more alcohol- Bloody Marys, specifically. This leads into Artie singing “Blame it on the Alcohol,” the absolutely horrendous “song” performed by Jamie Foxx that was the inspiration for this episode’s title. Artie singing in the hallway turns into all the kids performing the song in a full-on production number in the auditorium. I think they’re trying to show Will their idea for the assembly. Poor, naive Will tells the kids he’s impressed with their acting ability- some of them looked believably drunk (imagine that!). Will says the song won’t work because it glorifies drinking, but the kids say there aren’t any songs about the dangers of alcohol. Being really obnoxious, they say they can’t find such songs because alcohol isn’t dangerous.
At lunch, Will starts complaining to Coach Beiste about the problems he’s been having with the glee kids. Beiste says Will needs to blow off a little steam and escape from his rather miserable life for a little while. She’s going to take him to her personal favorite place to blow off steam- a honky tonk bar called Rosalita’s Roadhouse. Will, in keeping with the theme (and title) of the episode has quite a lot to drink at Rosalitas. He also does a bit of singing, with Beiste as back-up. They perform “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” “Glee” never plays about enforcing the theme of the week, do they? Beiste takes Will home, and they have a silly drunken conversation about how stupid Alcohol Awareness Week is before she leaves. Will then decides to grade tests while still drunk. That seemed like a dumb move to me. Although the kids will be happy. Apparently Will’s an easy grader when drunk. Then Will makes an even dumber move. He drunk dials Emma.
Rachel’s making some bad inebriated decisions, too. She’s moved on to the wine from her dads’ liquor cabinet, and while a little tipsy, she calls Blaine and asks him out. Blaine happens to be on a coffee run with Kurt when he receives the call, and he accepts the date. To say Kurt is not happy would be an understatement. Blaine says he thinks he might be bi, and Kurt belittles that, saying that’s what gay kids say in high school so they don’t get beat up. Considering all Kurt has gone through just for being himself, Blaine is really upset that Kurt isn’t supporting him in his quest to really figure out who he is. After the big date, Kurt decides to pay a visit to Rachel to “help her clean up” from the party. In addition to cleaning, Kurt warns her that Blaine is really gay, and if she goes through with this, he’ll be the first in a long line of guys she dates who later become secure with the fact that they are gay. Rachel says she had a good time on the date but that there wasn’t really much in the way of sparks. She’s convinced this will change, though, and she bets Kurt that she can ambush kiss Blaine without either of them being under the influence of beer goggles and the chemistry they felt at the party will still be there.
After his honky tonk night, Will shows up for work at McKinley hung over. He sees Emma and decides to apologize to her for the drunk dial. Emma didn’t receive it, which can’t possibly be good. Sue interjects in this conversation and says she’s close to having Will committed for his behavior. This obviously means that she was the accidental recipient of the drunk dial, but of course Will hasn’t realized that yet. It’s time for the Alcohol Awareness assembly, and the New Directions kids are nervous, especially Brittany. Brittany wants to do Ke$ha proud. Rachel gives out an incredibly gross sounding concoction of everything left form her dad’s liquor cabinet to calm their nerves. The performance starts out just fine, but then Brittany doesn’t feel well. Soon enough, all the kids are spewing gross blue-gray vomit.
To make matters worse, after the assembly, Sue plays Will’s drunk dial for the entire school. We don’t yet know Emma’s reaction yet, but she certainly looked shocked and a little upset. The whole mess lands Will in Figgins’ office, but instead of a lecture (and maybe a termination), Figgins congratulates Will. He’s happy that Will was able to stage such an effective anti-alcohol program. The rest of the McKinley students were so grossed out by what they saw on the stage that they aren’t drinking anymore. When will breaks the news to the kids, he tells them he’s not going to drink anymore, and he hopes they do the same, at least until Regionals. He gets everyone to sign a pledge that they will do their best not to drink, and if they do drink and get in trouble, they’ll call him.
Later at the coffee shop, Rachel puts her ambush kissing of Blaine plan into action. The kiss is nowhere near as satisfying for them as their first, drunken kiss, and Blaine realizes he is absolutely 100% gay. Kurt’s happy he has the possibility of dating Blaine back. Blaine’s happy he finally answered his questions about his sexuality definitively. And, surprisingly enough, Rachel is happy too. She thinks kissing a boy who turned out to be gay is excellent “living” material for her songwriting.
-Brittany
I’ll admit I went into my viewing of “Blame it on the Alcohol” not expecting to like it very much. The plotline seemed kind of silly and prone to venture into “very special episode” or after-school special territory. And I also kind of loathe Ke$ha’s “music.” Instead, we got only a minimally preachy chock full of dark humor episode of “Glee,” and I do love “Glee” when it embraces the dark humor. I think that’s what makes “Glee” more grown-up than the media sometimes gives it credit for. When I first started watching “Glee,” there were two things that really drew me in. The first was the fun, energetic musical performances ( the AutoTune hadn’t grated on my last nerve yet), and the second was the dark humor. When these things are both in place, I’m a happy “Glee” viewer. This episode didn’t have me in tears like “Sectionals,” but it was good enough for late middle of the season.
The episode opens with Figgins taking a meeting with Will. This time, for once, it isn’t because one of the glee kids are in trouble. Figgins is in general very concerned about underage drinking. Apparently public drunkenness is a very regular occurrence at McKinley High. That definitely wouldn’t have flown at my public high school, that’s for sure. We would have gotten one of our principal’s patented “I’m very disappointed in you” speeches over the PA system that he usually reserved for major scandals like a food fight in the cafeteria or a mildly offensive (because it referenced living in a trailer…the horror) drag show at the pep rally. Figgins thinks that the music of Ke$ha is responsible for this phenomenon. Only hey calls her “Key-dollar sign-ha,” which I found hilariously adorable. Figgins’ solution is an “Alcohol Awareness Week,” and he wants New Directions to perform at an assembly singing something that will warn the kids about the dangers of alcohol.
Meanwhile, Will decides he wants to put the past behind him and try to be friends with Emma. He comes to the staff lounge bearing housewares as a peace offering because he’s heard she and Carl are looking for a house. Emma is concerned about Will and wants to know if he’s dating anyone. Sue interrupts the conversation, though. She has decided that Will is a future alcoholic, and she’s being really obnoxious about it. She mentions how she’s going to be coaching Aural Intensity, and Emma is very surprised. She wants to know how Sue could have possibly gotten a job coaching a glee club. We see a flashback of Sue getting the job. Not surprisingly, it turns out she kept pushing the Aural Intensity coach down a stairwell over and over until he was too injured to keep his job. The repeated pushing was supposed to be funny, I’m sure, but it was just extremely cruel.
In the choir room, Rachel is diligently working on composing an original song. Puck interrupts because he’s heard that Rachel’s parents are out of town on a cruise. He wants Rachel to use the opportunity to throw a party at her house. Rachel declines, showing some good sense for once. Finn arrives in the choir room next, and Rachel wants him to hear her song. But for some bizarre reason, she has to hug him first. The song is horrendous. The tune is okay, but the lyrics are most definitely not. The song is called “My Headband,” and it pretty much just talks about Rachel’s accessory drawer. Finn prompts Rachel to realize that she doesn’t really have the life experience to write the kind of song she wants to write. She decides to take Puck up on his suggestion to throw the party, and she tells him to buy some wine coolers.
The party, which isn’t huge, just the New Directions kids plus Kurt and Blaine, doesn’t get off to a very good start. Rachel tries to set a two wine cooler limit to keep things at least somewhat under control, but the kids all think that’s lame. They think it’s so lame that some of them start to leave. In a desperate move to save her party, Rachel lets Puck break into her dads’ liquor cabinet. Not surprisingly, the party starts to get a little crazy. Finn and Kurt are the only ones who stay sober. Finn is designated driver, and Kurt doesn’t want to get to sloppy in front of Blaine. A very drunk Rachel starts hanging all over Finn, and Finn takes the opportunity to explain the different “types” of drunks to her, such as the happy drunk and the angry drunk. Rachel is the needy drunk. I would find this amusing if Finn didn’t focus only on female drunkenness stereotypes. Rachel is not happy to be called needy, and she decides it’s time for a game of spin the bottle.
When it’s Rachel’s turn to spin, the bottle lands on Blaine, and everybody in their drunkenness thinks that’s pretty darn funny. Rachel and Blaine kiss, and it turns from silliness to something more real. They kiss more than a bit too long, and poor Kurt is in hysterics. It’s something you have to look for carefully, but there’s a shot where you can see him in the background, and the face Chris Colfer made cracked me up. Rachel says she thinks she’s found her new duet partner, and she and Blaine sing a duet of “Don’t You Want Me” as the rest of the kids (minus Kurt) rock out. Lea Michele and Darren Criss really do sound good together- they should do Rachel/Blaine duets more often. Anyway, the next morning, Burt goes up to Kurt’s room to ask him a question and finds Blaine in Kurt’s bed. Even though Blaine is fully clothed, Burt still freaks out a bit. He claims that he’d have the same reaction to Finn bringing a girl home, but Kurt is still really angry. The argument doesn’t end quickly- in a later scene Kurt chides his father for not being able to provide the answers to him that he could provide to a straight son.
On Monday, all the kids are still hung over when they arrive at school, which sounds just a touch ridiculous to me, even though I’ve never been much of a drinker. Artie thinks the best cure for their hangovers is more alcohol- Bloody Marys, specifically. This leads into Artie singing “Blame it on the Alcohol,” the absolutely horrendous “song” performed by Jamie Foxx that was the inspiration for this episode’s title. Artie singing in the hallway turns into all the kids performing the song in a full-on production number in the auditorium. I think they’re trying to show Will their idea for the assembly. Poor, naive Will tells the kids he’s impressed with their acting ability- some of them looked believably drunk (imagine that!). Will says the song won’t work because it glorifies drinking, but the kids say there aren’t any songs about the dangers of alcohol. Being really obnoxious, they say they can’t find such songs because alcohol isn’t dangerous.
At lunch, Will starts complaining to Coach Beiste about the problems he’s been having with the glee kids. Beiste says Will needs to blow off a little steam and escape from his rather miserable life for a little while. She’s going to take him to her personal favorite place to blow off steam- a honky tonk bar called Rosalita’s Roadhouse. Will, in keeping with the theme (and title) of the episode has quite a lot to drink at Rosalitas. He also does a bit of singing, with Beiste as back-up. They perform “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” “Glee” never plays about enforcing the theme of the week, do they? Beiste takes Will home, and they have a silly drunken conversation about how stupid Alcohol Awareness Week is before she leaves. Will then decides to grade tests while still drunk. That seemed like a dumb move to me. Although the kids will be happy. Apparently Will’s an easy grader when drunk. Then Will makes an even dumber move. He drunk dials Emma.
Rachel’s making some bad inebriated decisions, too. She’s moved on to the wine from her dads’ liquor cabinet, and while a little tipsy, she calls Blaine and asks him out. Blaine happens to be on a coffee run with Kurt when he receives the call, and he accepts the date. To say Kurt is not happy would be an understatement. Blaine says he thinks he might be bi, and Kurt belittles that, saying that’s what gay kids say in high school so they don’t get beat up. Considering all Kurt has gone through just for being himself, Blaine is really upset that Kurt isn’t supporting him in his quest to really figure out who he is. After the big date, Kurt decides to pay a visit to Rachel to “help her clean up” from the party. In addition to cleaning, Kurt warns her that Blaine is really gay, and if she goes through with this, he’ll be the first in a long line of guys she dates who later become secure with the fact that they are gay. Rachel says she had a good time on the date but that there wasn’t really much in the way of sparks. She’s convinced this will change, though, and she bets Kurt that she can ambush kiss Blaine without either of them being under the influence of beer goggles and the chemistry they felt at the party will still be there.
After his honky tonk night, Will shows up for work at McKinley hung over. He sees Emma and decides to apologize to her for the drunk dial. Emma didn’t receive it, which can’t possibly be good. Sue interjects in this conversation and says she’s close to having Will committed for his behavior. This obviously means that she was the accidental recipient of the drunk dial, but of course Will hasn’t realized that yet. It’s time for the Alcohol Awareness assembly, and the New Directions kids are nervous, especially Brittany. Brittany wants to do Ke$ha proud. Rachel gives out an incredibly gross sounding concoction of everything left form her dad’s liquor cabinet to calm their nerves. The performance starts out just fine, but then Brittany doesn’t feel well. Soon enough, all the kids are spewing gross blue-gray vomit.
To make matters worse, after the assembly, Sue plays Will’s drunk dial for the entire school. We don’t yet know Emma’s reaction yet, but she certainly looked shocked and a little upset. The whole mess lands Will in Figgins’ office, but instead of a lecture (and maybe a termination), Figgins congratulates Will. He’s happy that Will was able to stage such an effective anti-alcohol program. The rest of the McKinley students were so grossed out by what they saw on the stage that they aren’t drinking anymore. When will breaks the news to the kids, he tells them he’s not going to drink anymore, and he hopes they do the same, at least until Regionals. He gets everyone to sign a pledge that they will do their best not to drink, and if they do drink and get in trouble, they’ll call him.
Later at the coffee shop, Rachel puts her ambush kissing of Blaine plan into action. The kiss is nowhere near as satisfying for them as their first, drunken kiss, and Blaine realizes he is absolutely 100% gay. Kurt’s happy he has the possibility of dating Blaine back. Blaine’s happy he finally answered his questions about his sexuality definitively. And, surprisingly enough, Rachel is happy too. She thinks kissing a boy who turned out to be gay is excellent “living” material for her songwriting.
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