Summer TV Rewind: Orange is the New Black 1.01: "I Wasn't Ready"

“Try to look at your experience here as a mandala, Chapman. Work hard to make something as meaningful and beautiful as you can. And when you’re done, pack it in and know it was all temporary.”
-Yoga Jones

This summer, as season 2 has just been released, we’re going to be taking a look at the first season of Netflix’s hit original drama “Orange is the New Black.” I’ve been pretty heavily involved in corrections policy (although primarily on the juvenile side)for the past two years, so I find the show an interesting watch from both a drama perspective and a look at the state of our correctional system. What is especially unique about “Orange is the New Black” is the large cast of diverse female characters. Each inmate the show follows at the Litchfield, Connecticut federal correctional facility is a fully-formed character with her own backstory and motivations. We go on a journey with Piper Chapman, who at first seems like a typical Brooklyn hipster, as she begins her fifteen-month sentence. At first, it feels like Piper doesn’t belong at Litchfield and many of the other inmates do, but as the season progresses, many of the inmates become more sympathetic than Piper herself. Piper is really not the innocent person she first appears to be (even to herself), and she has to come to terms with that.

The opening of the pilot episode is a prison shower scene designed to shock, but thankfully this episode is the first and only time that the show really goes to this place. It’s as if the creative team was saying, “Now that we’ve shown you some naked women so we can be taken seriously, can we get down to the real business of the show?” The idea that a drama needs to include nudity to be taken seriously is a whole other can of worms, really. I think it comes from the HBO-ificiation of drama. But again, that’s a subject for another time. For the record, I dislike violence in media even more than nudity/sex, and obviously the nudity in “Orange is the New Black” didn’t keep me from devouring each episode and enjoying the show enough to want to write about it here. I just think it’s an interesting trend. Anyway, the shower scene takes place on Piper’s first morning in prison, and we see just how little she’s fitting in at this point. Girl’s got shower shoes made out of pads, and she’s freaked out by everyone who tries to talk to her.

Throughout the episode, we get some flashbacks to give us the basics of how Piper ended up in prison. This story will become more layered as the season progresses, but it’s interesting to see Piper’s perspective on her personal responsibility for her situation in the early days. Right after college, Piper was a free spirit who had a relationship with a woman who just happened to run an international drug smuggling ring. That woman’s name was Alex Voss, and she’s played by Laura Prepon, best known for “That 70’s Show.” Alex is going overseas for a while, and she convinces Piper to join her, promising that Piper won’t have to participate in any actual criminal activity. Soon enough, though, Piper is agreeing to pick up some cash from an airport in Belgium. There’s a bit of tension when the money bag doesn’t show up right away, but soon enough, Piper is picking up the bag and blowing right through customs.

About ten years after Piper and Alex’s adventures, Alex has been arrested, and in the course of the prosecution of the case against her, she gives the feds Piper’s name as a fellow member of the drug ring. The now stereotypical WASP hipster has her world completely turned upside down. First she has to let her boyfriend, Larry (Jason Biggs) know what’s going on, which means revealing her super-sketchy past. Even more fun is Piper and Larry having to tell Larry’s family. Larry’s dad is a lawyer, and they hope he can help get Piper out of this (obviously he’s not completely successful). What’s funny is that Larry’s grandmother doesn’t have nearly as much of a problem with it as they thought she would. Larry goes into full “stand by your woman” mode, and during a day at the beach, he proposes to Piper. She accepts, of course, because she’s totally committed to this image she has created for herself of the good girl who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The present-day parts of the episode focus mainly on the absurdity of federal prison bureaucracy and Piper’s ill-fated attempts to adjust to prison life. Piper does a self-surrender, and right from the outset, there are bureaucratic snags. First there’s the fact that she’s surrendering on a weekend. That means that support staff needed to find and process all her information are minimal. Then Larry has to walk Piper’s phone out to the car (she’s not technically allowed to have it in the facility) and almost misses seeing her off. Finally, her commissary check has to be mailed off to an office in the Midwest for processing. That last one is why she eventually ends up with the MacGyvered shower shoes. Her commissary money hadn’t gone through yet. She also has to cry to one of the really skeevy counselors to get use of his phone to call Larry.

Piper has read extensively about how to get through prison, but there are some things she is most definitely not prepared for. First, there’s the segregation. Caucasians, African Americans, and Latinas generally stick to their own kind. Keeping with this, the first fellow inmates that Piper really converses with are all white. There’s Morello, the blue collar chick who likes to wear pin up makeup and hair while she talks about her upcoming wedding. There’s Nikki, a tough, readhead lesbian. There’s Yoga Jones, who runs the facility yoga class. And there’s Red (Kate Mulgrew), a Russian immigrant who runs the kitchen. Piper has a very unfortunate run-in with Red. Red does culinary favors for her favorite fellow inmates, and on this particular morning, she gives people at the table where Piper is sitting yogurts. Red feels sorry for Piper, Piper being a newbie and all, so she gives Piper a yogurt, too. Piper thanks Red for the yogurt because the food is disgusting. She obviously didn’t realize Red cooked the food. Nikki and Yoga Jones warn Piper that insulting Red’s food was a seriously dumb move. Piper realizes just how bad it’s going to be when her next meal is an English muffin…with a used tampon inside.

Summer TV Rewind: "The Americans" 1.01: "Pilot"

“Why is everyone so punctual in this business?”
-Phillip

One of the series we’ll be looking back on this summer is FX’s 1980’s period piece spy thriller, “The Americans.” Season 2 just wrapped up, but we’ll be looking at season 1 here. “The Americans” is a densely plotted thriller with well-drawn characters. None of the characters are really all that likeable, but they are interesting, for sure. The show tells the story of the later years of the Cold War through the “other side.” It follows Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings, two Soviet spies who are part of the elite “Directorate S.” Directorate S agents are trained to perfectly blend in with American culture and pose as everyday families. Unluckily for Phillip and Elizabeth, FBI counterintelligence agent Stan Beeman moves in across the street, and their lives become more complicated from there.

The early scenes in this episode are much more 1980’s atmospheric than the second half of the episode and the series overall. This episode makes more prominent use of period music to set the scene. Right from the beginning, we get a sense of how Phillip and Elizabeth do what they do. The episode opening setpiece also sets some things in motion that will carry through this first season. Phillip and Elizabeth are supposed to bring in a Russian defector named Timochev. The mission goes bad, Phillip and Elizabeth’s colleague ends up with a fatal knife wound, and Timochev ends up in the trunk of Phillip and Elizabeth’s 1977 Oldsmobile. Because of the time it takes to drop their colleague off at the hospital, Phillip and Elizabeth miss the cargo ship on which Timochev is supposed to travel back to Moscow.

Throughout the episode, we get flashbacks to the 1960’s, when Phillip and Elizabeth were still in training and the early days of their Directorate S assignment. While young and still in training, Elizabeth was raped by her instructor, who was none other than Timochev. We also see the moment when Phillip and Elizabeth first met. They were instructed not to tell each other about their past lives. They were only supposed to learn about the backstories that were created for them. We get to see Phillip and Elizabeth’s early days in the United States as well, and it’s interesting to see how fish out of water they were. They are astounded by air conditioning, for instance. Where they come from, the weather was never as hot and swampy as it is in a DC summer.

Because they missed the cargo ship, Phillip and Elizabeth have to figure out what to do with Timochev. They try to get word out to higher-up KGB folks, but the botched operation has drawn the attention of the FBI, who have surrounded the Soviet embassy. Phillip and Elizabeth are going to have to hold on to Timochev for a little while until things cool down. He stays tied up in the trunk of the car, tucked away in the Jennings family garage. Which makes this a good time to mention that Phillip and Elizabeth have two children, Paige and Henry. It’s interesting that Phillip and Elizabeth would conduct their spy business so close to their kids. I know their family life is built on a lie, but they do seem to genuinely care about their kids.

What’s interesting about Phillip and Elizabeth right from the start is that she is much more into the job than he is. Elizabeth is loyal to the Motherland, whatever it takes. Phillip has started seriously considering defecting so that their family could have a chance at a more normal life. Phillip gets even more interested in this prospect when Timochev tells him that the U.S. would likely pay him millions to defect, since Directorate S agents are very valuable. Elizabeth won’t hear any of it, though. She would never betray her country, and she never, ever wants their kids to know what their parents do. We see from the flashbacks in this episode that Elizabeth had a rough road to get to where she is now, and she still has to do quite unpleasant things for the Motherland, so Part of me thinks that her loyalty is more about not going through all that unpleasantness for nothing.

While we don’t spend as much time with him as we do with the Jenningses in this episode, we also get to know FBI Agent Stan Beeman. Stan and his family just moved to DC for Stan’s new counterintelligence assignment. Prior to this assignment, Stan spent three years working undercover trying to bring down a white supremacist group. We get the sense from early on that the experience was very trying on his family (a wife and teenage son), because he wasn’t able to be around much. Stan’s team is looking into the disappearance of Timochev, but they keep turning up nothing. In a scene that is supposed to show his ability to read people, Stan says that if he had taken Timochev, he would hide him in his house for a while until things cooled down. Stan is, of course, completely right about what happened, but he doesn’t know that.

Stan and the Jenningses kind of dance around each other throughout this episode. They first meet when Phillip and Elizabeth take a plate of brownies across the street to welcome their new neighbor. They are very nervous when they find out that Stan is an FBI agent. They wonder if the U.S. government is on to them, or if the whole thing is a coincidence. There’s also a tense scene where Stan asks Phillip to borrow jumper cables, and Phillip has to reach past Timochev (still in the trunk of the car) to grab them while Stan is in the garage. Stan notices that the Oldmobile, other than the license plate, matches the description of the car involved in Timochev’s disappearance, so he sneaks back later to investigate. By that time, Timochev has been dispatched and disposed of (more on that in a minute), so he comes up empty. Interestingly, Phillip was waiting in the shadows, ready to shoot Stan if he discovered too much in his snooping.

There are several other interesting tidbits in this episode, some of which have big implications for the rest of the series thus far. In one scene, Phillip pays a visit to a woman named Martha who works at the FBI. He says his name is Clark, and he mentions being part of an oversight committee. It almost seems like he’s the FBI version of Internal Affairs. Martha tells him all about the Timochev case. Phillip was basically talking to her to find out what the FBI knew about the incident. Also, there’s a scene where a really skeezy guy hits on Paige at the mall, and Phillip sees it go down. Near the end of the episode, Phillip pays the skeezy guy a visit and sticks a barbecue fork through his hand.

At the end of the episode, there’s a big confrontation between Phillip and Elizabeth and Timochev. Phillip had taken Henry to a very patriotic school assembly, and when he gets home, he gets Timochev out of the trunk and tells Elizabeth that he was going to make a deal. Elizabeth decides to take the matter into her own hands, and she starts beating up Timochev. Timochev says he’s sorry for hurting her. Phillip wants to know what this means, and Elizabeth admits that Timochev raped her back in the day. Phillip kills Timochev, and he and Elizabeth go burn the body. For some reason, murder makes them horny, and they have sex in the car. One thing “The Americans” will definitely never be is boring.

Summer DVR Dump: Atlantis 1.01: “The Earth Bull”

“I cannot explain it. And yet, it’s as if, for the first time in my life I am absolutely certain of what I must do.”
- Jason

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’ve picked up a new show. What you may not know is that “Atlantis” is helmed by the same team who did “Merlin”. If you even look at the blog, you know I was fan of the show. So I figured I would give “Atlantis” a try. From the start it was not what I was expecting. I thought it was be much more in the vein of Merlin where everything was set in the past. Nope. We find Jason on a boat about to climb into a sub in the present to go look for the wreckage of his father’s sub. Heads down and sees the wreckage with “the oracle” written on it. No sooner as he spotted this but a bright white light appears and drags him, sub and all, into it. Jason wakes up naked on a beach in a strange city. He finds some clothes and goes wandering through the open market. Unfortunately, he provokes a two-headed lizard and after causing some inadvertent mayhem in the square, gets chased by some guards and wounded. A man rescues him before he plummets to his death and hides him when the guards come looking. This kind soul is Pythagoras (yes the same one who did stuff with triangles). And his companion is none other than Hercules (although he’s a bit hefty). Jason is all confused and thinks he’s hallucinating and doesn’t know where to begin. Pythagoras suggest they go to the Temple of Poseidon to see the Oracle because Jason is wearing a necklace with her symbol (the one his dad gave to him before disappearing).

Jason heads to see the Oracle where he sort of runs into Hercules. They don’t really acknowledge that either is there. Jason’s chat with the Oracle is brief but informative. He’s actually from Atlantis and he was pulled by to it by unseen forces. His father, sadly, is head and the Oracle says she can’t see the answers to all of his questions, including information about his mother. She tells him that the next morning, the first rays of sunlight will show him the path he must follow to save Atlantis. Vague, much? He also learns from Pythagoras that the next day, seven human tributes (read: sacrifices) will be selected and sent down to the Minotaur to keep the city safe. Jason is pretty appalled by this whole concept. I guess he never read The Hunger Games. But at least he has a place to crash for the night before all hell breaks loose.

In the middle of the night, Hercules tries to sneak out of the city so he doesn’t have to participate in the drawing of lots to face the Minotaur. Jason and Pythagoras go after him and he says that the Oracle told him he’d be going in to face the beast. They are nearly caught by the guards (and their hunting lionesses) but they scale a wall and Jason does some nifty aerobatics that he isn’t sure where he got the skills. I have a guess that maybe the Oracle or some other mythical creature his is mother (his mythology is not one I’m very familiar with). The next morning, everyone gathers before King Minos (aka Alexander Siddig. Love it when he shows up). Hercules and Jason pull white stones (meaning they are safe) but Pythagoras is saddled with a black one, marking him as a tribute. Well crap.

The guys have a farewell supper before morning comes. Minos’ daughter, Ariadne is not happy about sending more people to their deaths and it upsets her mother enough to slap her. I can already tell she and Jason are going to have some serious feels. Jason wakes the next morning and see the sun’s rays falling on the black stone. I guessed that was what would happen. As he is preparing to go into the labyrinth, Ariadne slips in and asks why he’s there when she saw him draw a white stone. He explains that he owes his friend a debt and he’s confident he can slay the Minotaur. She gives him some magic twine which he can attach to the start of the labyrinth so he won’t get lost. As he and the other tributes are being led to the caves, Pythagoras and Hercules realize Jason’s gone and Py thinks it’s a good idea to bring him weapons. Their plan doesn’t go off as they hoped and the guards let two of the tributes go and put Pythagoras and Hercules in their place. Good move, boys.

In the caves, the group starts forward but when they come to a fork, Jason goes one way and the Minotaur finds the rest of the group. They scatter and things get hectic. One of the tributes is killed and Pythagoras is injured. Jason runs off towards the sound of shrill screams. Jason finds Helen (of Troy is my guess) and ultimately slays the Minotaur. The beast becomes just a man again and says that he betrayed Jason’s father. The man also warns that King Minos can’t learn who Jason really is or else things would get very bad. In her temple, the Oracle sees Jason’s deed and while she is pleased to know he is the answer to Atlantis’ prayers, he is also now in danger. I’d say he couldn’t get into too much with Hercules and Pythagoras at his side but they’re not quite up to snuff yet. It seems the Queen is not blind to her daughter’s sudden affections for the newly minted hero. It will be interesting to see what happens romantically for the savior of Atlantis. Overall, I thought it was an interesting pilot episode with enough mystery and magic to keep coming back. While it’s no “Merlin”, it’s still a decent effort by the creative team and from what I’ve heard, it picks up the pace and kicks up the intensity after a few episodes.

Game of Thrones 4.07: "Mockingbird"

“I suppose I’ll have to kill the Mountain myself. Won’t that make a great song?”
-Tyrion

As per usual for “Game of Thrones” this season, in “Mockingbird,” the bulk of the action (other than visiting in briefly on many of the other ongoing plots) happened in King’s Landing. The most shocking moment of the episode, however, took place at the Eyrie. This, I suppose, shouldn’t have been surprising considering the episode’s title references Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, who is currently at the Eyrie with Lysa, Robin, and Sansa. The theme that tied this whole episode together was the ties between siblings. Tyrion and Jaime, Lysa and Cat, and even Arya and Sansa all were showcased in the stories of this episode. I know I’m kind of grasping at straws here for something to tie the episode together, but much like the previous episode, the individual stories were all compelling enough that I didn’t mind the disjointed style terribly much.

This episode takes place in the aftermath of Tyrion demanding a trial by combat after having been accused of Joffrey’s death. Early in the episode, Tyrion and Jaime talk strategy. Tyrion had been hoping Jaime would be his champion, but Jaime admits that his left-handed swordplay still isn’t good enough. Tyrion figures Cersei will choose a posh knight who isn’t a great fighter, and he also figures Bronn will fight for him again. Unfortunately for Tyrion, he’ll be wrong on both points. We learn right away that Cersei’s champion is none other than Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane. The Mountain is not going to be defeated easily. At all.

Meanwhile, Arya and the Hound have some more bonding time. They encounter a dying man by the side of the road. Arya and the Hound wonder why he hasn’t killed himself, since his wound is fatal, and the man says he’s staying alive out of habit, basically. The Hound mercy kills the man, but he and Arya are soon ambushed by one of the rapers who was traveling with Arya to the Wall back in season 2. The Hound makes a comment wondering why the raper wasn’t on Arya’s list, and Arya says she doesn’t know his name. The raper says his name is Biter, and Arya quickly dispatches him with Needle. Later, Arya wants to cauterize one of the Hound’s wounds, but he has an extreme fear of fire thanks to how the Mountain tortured him when they were kids. He tells Arya the whole story, which is kind of touching, I guess.

In the North, Jon is facing more trouble from Ser Alliser. I think Ser Alliser resents that so many of the Night’s Watch brothers volunteered to help Jon. Based on what Jon discovered during the raid on Craster’s Keep, he recommends that the Night’s Watch seal the tunnel that runs under the Wall. Ser Alliser doesn’t like this idea, probably because Jon suggested it. The argument he gives against it is that sealing the Wall would keep the Night’s Watch from being able to fulfill their sworn duty to protect the citizens of Westeros from what lurks north of the Wall. Ser Alliser asks for the opinion of the First Builder, since the Builders would be the one to actually do the sealing. Sensing that disagreement with Ser Alliser would be a bad idea, the First Builder nixes the tunnel sealing idea.

In King’s Landing, Bronn pays a visit to Tyrion so that Tyrion can ask him to be his champion. Bronn declines because he’s getting married. Cersei made the match, of course, to a woman who is second in line to inherit a decent sized holding. Cersei and Bronn figure it shouldn’t take too much effort to arrange an unfortunate accident for the older sister, and Bronn and his new wife will be set. Tyrion and Bronn haggle a bit (because Bronn always promised to fight for Tyrion if Tyrion could double the price someone else offered), but Tyrion can’t meet Bronn’s price this time. Bronn seems genuinely sad to be leaving Tyrion in the lurch. Luckily for Tyrion, he finds an alternative in Prince Oberyn. Turns out the Prince is a strict believer in justice, and he genuinely believes Tyrion didn’t kill Joffrey. He’s also always in favor of increasing Lannister family mayhem, since the Lannisters hurt his family back in the day.

Across the Narrow Sea in Meereen, Daario sneaks into Dany’s bedchamber. Dany is really pissed off about this, but she hears Daario out anyway. He complains that he knows two things well: war and women, and right now Dany just has him patrolling the streets of Meereen. His talents are going to waste. Dany understands what he’s saying, and at first it sounds like she has an enemy for him to slay. Then she tells him to take off his clothes. Daario’s hot and all, but the situation still seemed kind of skeevy. Dany didn’t seem to really want to have sex with him (she seems ashamed afterwards), but she does anyway. I guess I don’t really understand enough about her motivation to be able to judge. And should I even judge in the first place? Mostly it just bothers me that Dany, a powerful Queen and Mother of Dragons, would feel pressured to have sex with Daario if she didn’t really want to. Anyway, after Daario leaves, Dany and Jorah talk about Yunkai. Dany says she’s sending Jorah to kill all the Yunkai Masters. Jorah convinces her this is a bad idea, and Dany says that now she is going to give the Masters a choice to change their ways or die.

At Dragonstone, Melisandre is taking a bath when she is interrupted by Selyse (Stannis’ wife). Melisandre makes nice with Selyse by telling Selyse a bit about all the potions and poisons in the room. Selyse is nervous about taking her daughter Shireen with them when they head North, but Melisandre convinces Selyse that Shireen is needed. Because that isn’t ominous or anything! Meanwhile, Brienne starts telling the cook at the inn where she and Podrick are staying about her mission to find Sansa. Podrick thinks this is a bad idea. He thinks broadcasting the mission will make them targets. The cook happens to be Hot Pie, thankfully, and he says that while he doesn’t know about Sansa, he knows Arya because they escaped King’s Landing together.

We finish up this episode at the Eyrie. It’s snowing, and Sansa has been building a snow replica Winterfell. Sansa and Robin have what starts out as a sweet conversation, but things turn sour when Robin ruins Sansa’s Winterfell replica. The fight escalates, and Sansa slaps Robin before Littlefinger intervenes. In the aftermath, Littlefinger kisses Sansa, which was just gross. Unfortunately for everyone, Lysa sees this, and she doesn’t appreciate people kissing her new husband. She confronts Sansa by the Moon Door and almost pushes Sansa through it before Littlefinger again intervenes. After telling Lysa that the only person he ever loved was Cat, Littlefinger pushes Lysa through the Moon Door. This won’t end well, for sure.

Summer DVR Dump: Warehouse 13 5.01: “Endless Terror”

“You’re wasting your time, Voldemort. I’m just as much a part of this Warehouse as you are and it won’t let you kill me.”
- Claudia

Well folks, it is the beginning of the end. In case you didn’t know, “Warehouse 13” was given a brief 6-episode final season to wrap its run. And so I am going to be covering the final season for you. When last we left our heroic band of Warehouse agents, Paracelsus (Tony Head) had taken control of the Warehouse and Claudia is facing off against him. Oh, and Myka is in recovery after her surgery for her ovarian cancer. Claudia and Paracelsus face off and at first they can’t really hurt each other. Then Claudia has to go and taunt him about it and he realizes that since she is part of the Warehouse, he can control her. Oops! He makes her show him some of her memories about the Warehouse in recent years and then sets her to finding various artifacts for some nefarious plot he’s got going.

Outside, Steve and Artie are trying to get past the giant shield but they aren’t having much luck. Steve drives a car covered in neutralization goo but it just dents the hood of the car. Then they try to short it out and Steve just gets tossed like 50 feet. Thankfully Myka and Pete show up with some useful information. Oh and she didn’t actually have cancer (yay). She apparently reads all the addendums the Regents put out for the manual and they created a failsafe for the shield so that it allows them to get into the Warehouse without Paracelsus knowing the shield is going wonky. Once they get inside, Pete and Steve go into distraction mode so that Artie and Myka can go disconnect Paracelsus from the Warehouse. Artie also instructs Pete and Steve to get the arrow that killed Achilles. Diversion away! Of course, he sends controlled Claudia to try and kill her friends. It gets progressively funnier as she keeps warning the guys what the artifacts do. Luckily, she is kind of a bad shot. Elsewhere, Artie and Myka end up reigniting the fires in the weird symbol room which severs the link between Paracelsus and the Warehouse. He gets huffy for all of two seconds before he gets back to building what ends up being a time machine. That Claudia helped build. The gang gets to the machine just in time for Pete to fire the arrow (and miss) and Paracelsus to jump back in time.

Thanks to some timey-wimey artifacts, the gang remains intact as the world and the Warehouse changes around them. When the new Warehouse 13 appears, we see that Paracelsus has been caretaker for the last five centuries and he’s focused on the pursuits of science and combining artifacts at the expense of everything else. Pete and Claudia head off the hub to try and find where he went back to and fix it and we see a cameo by the always lovely Mark Shepard. Last we saw of him, he died breaking into Warehouse 12. Now he’s using freaky mind control artifacts to create Borg-like super soldiers. Great. Artie, Myka and Steve manage to find the time travel device and are on their way to gather the other artifacts when they happen upon experimentation with artifacts. It is really upsetting to Artie because it reminds him of stories his parents told about World War II and concentration camps. Myka tries to get him to think positive. They’re going to get the Warehouse back from Paracelsus and set things right.

Claudia and Pete get too the hub and we learn that it’s being powered in part by Abigail (who I will admit I completely forgot about since season 4 ended). It’s not that important though because they manage to get the date that Paracelsus went back to. The gang reconvenes and gets the portal open so Pete and Myka can go back in time and stop Paracelsus. Artie goes to distract the guards and Steve is charged with keeping the portal open. Of course, Claudia has to off and eventually rescue Artie. But first, he gets caught and we get yet more cameos from Hugo (Hi there Odo) and Vanessa (Artie’s doctor girlfriend). They are clearly scared of their boss and it turns out they are married and have children that Paracelsus is keeping to make them do what he wants. Claudia eventually pops in and knocks them out but she gets captured, too.

Back at Warehouse 9, Pete and Myka encounter Lisa Da Vinci, Leonardo’s granddaughter played by Rebecca Mader. She’s not nearly as annoying as Zelena, let me tell you. After using some nifty artifacts, she learns that Paracelsus went back and killed all the guards on the day he was bronzed and he also goes after the Regents with the intent of murdering them. Our heroes hightail it over to an actual olive garden where the Regents are trying to decide on a new Caretaker. Paracelsus shows up and nearly kills them with the tusk of an elephant that was strangled by a boa constrictor. Lisa is quick enough to call a giant purple bird that retrieves artifacts and saves the Regents. But now it’s a race back to the Warehouse to stop Paracelsus from linking up with the Warehouse again. They get back and Pete ends up taking him down with a scalpel. Myka overhears him saying that Paracelsus lied about Myka dying. I guess now she knows the lengths to which he’d go to save her life.

In the alternate future, Artie and Claudia almost unleash Alice from the mirror but luckily, Pete and Myka do their job and things start to revert back to the way there were. Claudia is still peeved at Artie for not telling her that her sister Claire was still alive until the end of season 4. Apparently Claudia and Joshua thought she died in the car accident that killed their parents. Luckily, with Paracelsus bronzed again, Mrs. Frederick (whom we barely saw this episode) is linked back with the Warehouse. However, it’s not all rainbows and puppies because Claudia says she has this feeling that something’s coming and it’s both good and bad. Ominous, much? Pete and Myka have a moment about him possibly using artifacts to save her life and then we find Artie putting away the artifacts that they used to keep themselves grounded in the alternate universe. There should be twelve but there’s only eleven. Before we cut to black, we see that Mark Shepard’s character has the remaining artifact and he’s crossed over from the other time line. I’m guessing he has something to do with Claudia’s confused feeling.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the cameos by so of our favorite guest starts. The writers obviously know this is the final run of episodes and they are trying to tie things up while giving the fans a good time. I can’t wait to see what happens in the remaining five episodes and how mark fits in. Because who doesn’t love Mark being his snarky quasi-evil self?

Summer TV Rewind: Leverage 1.01: “The Nigerian Job”

“People like that, corporations like that have all the money and all the power. Right now you’re suffering under an enormous weight. We provide leverage.”
- Nate Ford

So this summer, we’ll be taking a look back at the very first season of one of my favorite shows, “Leverage”. It was a quirky, intelligent little show that sadly came to close (albeit a fairly satisfying one) in 2012. And I’m not going to lie, blogging this show is going to be hard because I just get so wrapped up again with the characters and the cons. But I’ll do my best to overcome my nostalgia and fangirling.

We begin in a bar where soon-to-be criminal mastermind Nathan Ford is sitting having a drink when he’s approached by Victor Dubenich (played by the ever entertaining Saul Rubinek….whom I’ll be discussing as I cover the final farewell to Warehouse 13). Dubenich claims that Pierson Aviation stole his airplane designs and if he doesn’t get them back before the end of the month shareholder’s meeting, he’s screwed. Now, Nate is a former insurance investigator so you’d wonder why he’d even consider helping Dubenich get the designs back. But then Victor plays the trump card; Nate’s former employer not only insures the rival company but was responsible for letting Nate’s son die. So Nate gets a two-for-one out of it; $600,000 and a big “screw you” to his former bosses. The only catch is he has to handle a group of thieves who have reputations of only working alone. First up his Alec Hardison, hacker extraordinaire. He hacked Mick Jagger’s credit cards when he was in high school. We’ve also got Eliot Spencer, retrieval specialist (we hear him somehow take out an entire room of armed men to get a baseball card back) and lastly Parker, a seriously crazy thief who blew up a house as a little girl to get a stuffed bunny back.

The crew’s aim is simple, get the designs and get out so they can get their money. But almost immediately things start going sideways. Nate is set up in the building across the street to monitor things but that means he’s got very little control over the rest of the team. Parker goes flying off the roof and rappels down to get into the building while the boys climb down the elevator shaft. Parker is in charge of monitoring the guards which leads to their next hiccup. Nate says that there are only 4 guys on camera but 8 listed as on duty. They’re doing their rounds early so that they can watch the big basketball game. When they start heading to where Hardison and Eliot are trying to break into the R&D server room, Nate instructs Eliot to take care of them and use Hardison as bait. It works and we get to see what Eliot really does. He’s basically a martial arts badass (and later takes on the term hitter with good reason). They manage to steal the designs and trash the rest of the system but the guards have reset the alarms so the only escape route is down. For a minute it seems like it’s going to be everyone for themselves but Nate manages to exert some control and the trio gets out of the building using the bur scam (paint Parker up to look like a burn victim to distract eh guards in the lobby from realizing they are out of place. The gang gets away and Nate promises they’ll receive their payment later that day after Hardison uploads the designs to Dubenich. With that, they walk away, hoping never to see each other again. Though Parker and Hardison admit it was kind of fun working as a unit for once.

Of course, things go even more sideways. Nate gets an angry call from Dubenich the next morning saying the payments are being frozen because he never got his designs. He tells Nate to go to an old aircraft warehouse his company owns and lo and behold he finds a very pissed off Eliot, Parker and Hardison. It takes Nate all of 30 seconds to realize they’ve been set up and they barely escape the warehouse before it blows. But local cops arrive and fingerprint them at the hospital. If the State Police run their prints and get the info back, they’re all screwed. So we’ve got con number two of the episode. After some rather epic projectile vomiting skills from Parker, she and Hardison lift some phones which they use to orchestrate their escape. It’s really amazing to see how these disparate personalities work together so well. The con goes off without a hitch this time. Well the real State Police call but the gang has already left the hospital and are holed up in Hardison’s sweet pad. Instead of running away to safety, Nate convinces the team to get back at Dubenich for trying to kill them. But they’re going to need help. A world-class grafter named Sophie Deveraux who shares a complicated past with Nate. The scene where the rest of the team first sees Sophie acting is priceless. She’s terrible as Lady Macbeth and it’s just hilarious to see their expressions.

And now with rapid fire pace, we quickly ease into con number three. You didn’t think it was possible to fit so many well-crafted cons into one episode, did you? It’s a hallmark of Leverage. Sure it has a formula but it works. Since Victor knows the rest of the crew, they enlist Sophie to hook him. She approaches him as part of an African consortium of private businesses looking to bring jobs and revitalize the region and they want to use Dubenich’s company (and the short-range airplane designs he stole from Pierson) to do it. She hooks him by saying she’ll got to Pierson instead and he says he’ll take the meeting with her Nigerian group. The gang has two days to get ready. We get a brief interlude in the con where we get a window into some of the characters. Eliot remarks that Nate is looking better than he did at the start of all this and Nate is concerned that it feels good. Eliot also says he’s sorry to hear about Nate’s son who died since Nate’s employer didn’t cover the treatments the boy needed. I always thought it was touching that Eliot, this tough guy, actually could show empathy and care about people. His layers really did peel back over the course of the series.

Unfortunately the Nigerian con hits a little snag. The day of the meeting, Victor arrives early which prompts the team to take a few risks, including Sophie and Parker zip lining down a stairwell to ensure she gets to him before he realizes the consortium doesn’t have an office in the building. Nate provides a distraction by pulling out a nightstick and smashing car windows. It gives Eliot enough time to put up a sign for the consortium and Sophie leads Victor into a meeting with the Nigerians. The meeting seems to go well and he agrees to pay them a “finder’s fee” (read: bribe) of $1 million. Or so we’re led to believe. Nate is convinced the con will conclude exactly the way it’s meant to but Victor finds the bug that Parker planted in his office earlier and he claims that the Nigerians aren’t even real. He’s going to beat the crew at their own game. He calls in the FBI but they show up to arrest him for trying to bribe government officials and Sophie is nowhere to be seen. Victor tries to explain things to the FBI but it just isn’t working. And it turns out that Nate and company predicted the massive drop in stocks and got a hell of a lot of money out of it. Victor going to jail is just a bonus. I think one of my favorite parts of this show is as the episode progresses you get to see pieces of the con and how they actually play out. It’s really quite clever. The team gets their enormous payouts and walks away, saying it was a one and done job but then one by one they each come back, saying how fun it was and that Nate needs the chase of hunting down bad guys. So he gets to pick the people they help. And thus Leverage Incorporated was born.

Trophy Wife 1.22: "Mother's Day"

“They dumped the kids and Kate on me, and now my day is ruined.”
-Hillary

The final episode of “Trophy Wife” was a fitting end to the series, for the most part. The Harrison clan is closer than ever, and it seems like Pete may finally get to do something more fulfilling with his life than his evil law firm job. The stars of this episode are really Diane, Jackie, and Kate, who over the course of the past season have become an odd sort of sisterhood. I thought this episode demonstrated that journey well. At first, Diane and Jackie try to use Kate’s enthusiasm for parenthood as a way to get a Mother’s Day vacation for themselves. By the end of the episode, they realized that was a bit of a dick move, and the whole Harrison clan has fun together. It was a sweet way to say goodbye to a show that, in a few years, I think we’ll say ended too soon.

Early in the episode, Pete and Kate are in bed watching television and talking about the fact that Mother’s Day is coming up. Kate’s a little upset that the kids are going to be spending the day with Diane and Jackie, because she thinks she should be considered a mother now, too. Pete and Kate don’t have much time to discuss this, though, because there is a breaking news report about an oil spill. The company responsible for the spill is a client of Pete’s law firm, so he has to go to work. Hillary has seen the news report, too, and she begs Pete not to help the piece of crap company that is responsible for environmental destruction. Pete’s got to do his job, though, so he heads to the office.

While Kate is trying to make a reservation for a Mother’s Day brunch for one (is she wallowing, or what?), Diane, Jackie, and the kids come barging in. The kids are acting like they haven’t purchased or made any Mother’s Day presents, and Jackie and Diane say they want to give Kate the gift of having the kids this Mother’s Day. Kate is overjoyed, because she’s still enthusiastic about the step-parenting thing (and she thinks this means Diane and Jackie truly approve of her). She is on a mission to help the kids get good, creative presents for their moms. For Jackie, the present will be a chicken, and there’s a funny bit where Kate consults Siri to find a chicken, and the phone thinks she’s looking for Tevin instead. They do indeed get a chicken, and it’s a regular presence in the rest of the episode. For Diane, they get all the stuff necessary to recreate a famous Flemish still life painting (including a skull…eww).

Meanwhile, at the office, Pete is named lead counsel for the oil spill case. Mostly because his boss doesn’t want to deal with all the press himself. Pete is going to be the one who has to do interviews and look like a jerk for saying things like “oil is an organic substance.” Pete isn’t thrilled about this, but he doesn’t really feel like he has a choice. There is an ample food spread available for the war room Pete has convened, and he takes complete advantage of it, stress eating like there’s no tomorrow. Focusing on Pete’s work so much was a bit of a departure from the “Trophy Wife” norm, but there were a ton of funny little jokes in this plotline if you pay attention, like a list on a white board of all the things they could maybe blame the oil spill on instead of their client, such as “tiny submarine.”

Diane and Jackie actually pawned the kids off on Kate so that they could have a kid-free relaxing Mother’s Day weekend at a swanky resort. The jig is up when Kate and the kids try to deliver their Mother’s Day presents, and neither Diane nor Jackie are home. Kate drags the gang to Pete’s office to find out if he knows where Jackie and Diane went. It’s Bert who actually gets the information, though. He’s a master manipulator, that one. He tells Sad Steve that he wants Sad Steve to be his father, and he needs to know where Jackie is so he can tell her. Sad Steve, who clearly has some issues, is so touched at Bert’s acceptance of him that he gives up the location. There are a couple other funny bits in this scene, where Hillary acts like she’s been taking care of everyone and Warren wants to be a lawyer when he sees Pete getting make-up put on for an interview.

Anyway, Kate takes the kids to the resort, where she has a big confrontation with Jackie and Diane by the pool (Jackie is enjoying a drink in a beach chair while Diane does laps). The fight escalates, and all three women end up in the pool while the kids delightedly squeal “Mom fight!” The party is over, though, when Kate gets a call that Pete is in the hospital after possibly having suffered a mild heart attack. Everyone rushes to the hospital, and there is a funny bit where Meg is the first person Pete sees when he opens his eyes. The doctor comes to talk to Pete, and it turns out that Pete didn’t have a heart attack at all. He had severe indigestion from all the food he ate at the office. This leads to Pete and Kate later having a conversation about whether Pete should find a different job. Kate was thinking a “not evil” law firm. Pete is thinking about focusing on his legal erotica.

With Pete in the clear, medically, the whole family goes back to the resort for some fun. We get a montage of sorts of everyone enjoying the hotel room. It’s fancy camera work of the sort that makes a statement that this is the finale. Pete and Kate drink champagne, Diane and Hillary play chess, Meg enjoys the mini bar, Warren and Bert start a pillow fight. We get the sense that the Harrison family adventures are really just beginning now that Diane and Jackie have truly accepted Kate into the fold.