“What, you mean Wales is separate? It’s like the British equivalent of New Jersey!”
-Rex
While there were definitely some problematic elements in the first episode of the new series of “Torchwood,” which has moved to Starz and taken a more US-centric focus, I was so happy to see the show again that things which should have irritated me just didn’t. As an attorney, I tend not to watch shows that involve anything legal, because the inaccuracies make me irrationally angry. And boy was this episode chock full of inaccuracies. I managed to just let it go, though, because the episode was good fun. A macabre premise, for sure, but there was a lightness to the presentation. It felt thoroughly like typical Russell T. Davies work, for all its good points and bad. I realized just how starved I was for Davies’ particular brand of television since I had finished watching all of his episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood. Davies’ work can be cheesy, but it’s cheesy in a rather entertaining way. It was incredibly good to see him put his unique spin on the Whoverse again, even if this plot is only really tenuously connected to the Whoverse. Hey, there was a mention of UNIT, at least!
The episode opened with a rather grim sequence. Oswald, a convicted child molester and murderer, is on death row in Kentucky and about to be executed. Oswald is played by Bill Pullman, who was a favorite actor of mine back in the late 90’s. He’s completely different here from any other role in which I’ve seen him. I thought that was a good thing, because it’s always nice to see an actor get the chance to stretch a bit. Anyway, the lethal injection drugs enter his system, but things don’t go as planned. Instead of dying, Oswald starts convulsing. Now when I was in law school, I had to read and evaluate 65 journal petitions all about the constitutionality of lethal injection, so I think I’m right when I say that this could probably never happen in real life. One of the three drugs used in lethal injection is a paralytic, so he would have been perfectly still while his body was going through whatever it was going through. Which could have been even more horrifying, come to think of it.
We next meet some more new American characters, two CIA agents named Esther and Rex. Esther is at CIA headquarters, and Rex is in his car, and they’re talking over the phone. Someone just sent everyone in the CIA an e-mail that says “Torchwood,” so of course they’re all curious about what the heck Torchwood is. As Esther is searching for information, all references to Torchwood suddenly disappear. Seconds after that, Rex gets into a car crash, and a spiky looking metal pole goes into his chest. Later, Esther is at the hospital waiting for news about his condition. She meets Doctor Juarez, who tells Esther that not only is Rex going to survive, but so are the rest of the patients at the hospital. Everyone’s calling it a miracle.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, in middle-of-nowhere seaside Wales to be exact (or “the back of beyond” as Rhys puts it…I liked that), Gwen wakes up from a bad dream about her Torchwood days. Later that day, she’s feeding her young daughter, Anwen, and telling her stories of her Torchwood adventures. Anwen is an interesting name choice (in a good way). I’m sure it’s a legitimate Welsh name, because Gwen and Rhys (and Russel T. Davies) are very Welsh, but it sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings. I really liked this scene of Gwen with her daughter, because Gwen was telling her Torchwood stories to Anwen as if the stories were fairy tales, and I thought that was really sweet. Rhys didn’t think it was so sweet because he doesn’t want Anwen to get mixed u in the Torchwood life in any way, but who ever listens to Rhys, anyway! The Williams-Cooper family is in hiding, because apparently people want to kill Gwen following the events of “Children of Earth,” so they have a bit of a scare when a helicopter flies past their house and there is a knock on the door. Luckily, the knock is just from a couple tourists wanting to know the best way back to town from the beach.
Back in Kentucky, Oswald is still in prison, and he has a rather ridiculous conversation with one of the Governor’s staffers. Because Oswald was killed and came back to life, he wants out of jail now. Oswald threatens to sue the governor personally if it doesn’t happen, which is just about the dumbest thing I’ve heard on television. But like I said, Davies tends to just write what he wants without evidence of research (and boy howdy was there a blatant “I didn’t research” message with this episode), but it was water off a duck’s back. Somehow, I managed to get past it and enjoy the episode because that’s just the sort of charm Davies works when he’s on his game. Later, Oswald is indeed let out of prison, and he is met by a jeering crowd. The newscaster said that a “force majeure ruling is responsible.” Which also took a prize as one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard on television. I’ve heard of force majeure (“act of God”) in the contract law context, but never in the criminal law context.
In a Washington, DC hospital, Rex watches news reports about Miracle Day, and it really upsets him. He asks Doctor Juarez what she knows about it, but it doesn’t seem like she knows much. She does mention that she’s called doctors at a bunch of different hospitals, and all have reported no deaths. Rex, showing some smarts, wants to know what will happen to him when the miracle wears off, considering it was the miracle that kept him alive. Doctor Juarez doesn’t know, but she’s optimistic. She sees the miracle as something that just gave her more time to tend to Rex’s injuries. Rex doesn’t seem especially happy with that answer, and he’s seriously restless in the hospital. He’s kind of an annoying character in that sense.
Esther is feeling guilty about having been talking to Rex on the phone when he got in his accident, so she’s taken to investigating Torchwood. Somebody high up in the CIA has declared Torchwood so classified that only his office can have access to the files, but Esther decides to go looking in the CIA archives. She finds what she’s looking for under the “456 designation,” which is a nice little shout-out to “Children of Earth.” In the file, she sees photos of Captain Jack (Harkness, not Sparrow) and Gwen, and she looks up from the file to see the real Jack standing in front of her, partially obscured in the dark archive. This seriously freaks Esther out, so she runs for the entrance to the archive. She sees that the security guard has been shot, and Jack, who has been following her, shoots the assailant. That doesn’t get them out of trouble, though, because the assailant has a bomb strapped to his chest. Jack and Esther jump out a window and land in a fountain as the building explodes. This was one of a few really great action sequences in the episode. As the fire trucks arrive, Jack and Esther sit on a nearby bench and talk about Torchwood, then Jack breaks out the Retcon to make Esther forget everything she just learned. I liked that it was very reminiscent of Gwen’s introduction to the Torchwood world back in series 1.
While things are already tense, Gwen gets a phone call from her former police partner, Andy, back in Cardiff. Andy’s speaking in code, but Gwen understands the message. Her dad is in the hospital, and she needs to get to Cardiff in spite of the danger. At the hospital, Andy gives her the scoop on her dad’s condition and tells her about Miracle Day, which is pretty much the reason her dad is still alive after two heart attacks. Gwen is upset when she hears about Miracle Day because it’s the sort of thing she used to be able to help solve as part of Torchwood, and now that life is gone. After paying a visit to Gwen’s dad, she and Andy start doing some internet searches about Miracle Day, speculating what the consequences of overpopulation could be. I liked that Davies really seemed to put a lot of thought into the consequences of their show’s premise. Rhys gets extremely upset when he sees Gwen kind of getting into the research, because he is worried that she’s going to get mixed up in dangerous things again. He asks Gwen to think about how great it would be if Anwen could live forever, and that convinces Gwen to agree to go home without continuing the investigation with Andy.
Back in the United States, Rex is still belligerently questioning doctor Juarez about Miracle Day. She can’t give him any answers, but she tells him something cryptic that Rex eventually figures out means he should check the hospital’s security cameras. On the video, he sees Doctor Juarez attending an especially gruesome autopsy. It’s the autopsy of the bomber from the CIA archive. He’s burnt to a crisp, which doesn’t make sense. He should be, as they said on “Grey’s Anatomy” way back when, “pink mist.” Jack’s in the room too, impersonating an FBI agent. He uses some psychic paper and says his name is FBI Agent Owen Harper. I appreciated the shout-out to old school “Torchwood,” back in the days when it was more supernatural CSI: Cardiff. Jack wants to know if the bomber, who is still alive despite being crispy, will survive decapitation, and we see it proven that indeed he does. It’s pretty gross.
Esther wakes up really confused and sees she’s got a massive burn or bruise (it was hard to tell) on her side. Jack, across town in his own run-down apartment, sees that he has one too. Esther gets to work late, but a colleague, played by the actor who played Calvin on “Greek,” hands her the last copy of the Torchwood file. He had to pull some serious strings to get it. Esther discusses what she learns about Torchwood with Rex over the phone, and Rex obnoxiously decides he’s heading to the UK to find Gwen immediately, hole in his chest and all. He flashes his CIA badge all over the place to get what he wants. Considering CIA agents are supposed to be able to go undercover if necessary, and Rex wants an overseas posting so badly that he was happy when a coworker’s wife got leukemia, loudly announcing his identity doesn’t seem so smart.
Rex flies to London and drives to Wales from there. He’s able to find Gwen’s house by having his CIA coworkers trace the call Andy made to tell Gwen about her father. Rex goes into the house and threatens Gwen and her family. He’s going on quite a tirade when the helicopter appears again. This time, it shoots something explosive at the house. Everyone gets out of the house unscathed, but the helicopter is still a threat. Jack shows up just in time to help- he flew over to the UK on the same flight as Rex. An awesome chase ensues, with our gang in a Jeep and the helicopter chasing them. Gwen is appropriately badass, ending the chase by using a grenade launcher to bring down the helicopter. It’s clear what she really wants out of her life- she thrives off the Torchwood adrenaline.
After the threat has passed, Gwen starts happily chattering about possibly getting Torchwood back up and running, which pisses off Rhys, of course. Jack isn’t especially happy, either. He’s upset because he still has a cut on his arm. He thinks that means he’s not immortal anymore, which I think could be a great arc for his character this season. Rex is ready to return to the United States, and he’s going to do so with the Torchwood folks. He’s commandeered Andy and his group of police officers to conduct a “rendition.” Rex can’t even cite the United States Code properly (title first, then USC, then the chapter…there are numbers before and after, not just after), which irked me slightly. But I’m definitely intrigued to see what happens to Gwen and her family once they arrive on our side of the pond.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Summer TV Rewind: Robin Hood 1.04: "Parent Hood"
Sarah is back with the next installment of this summer's TV Rewind of "Robin Hood."
“I suppose these are the lives we have chosen. Always different directions.”
“And yours is the better direction?”
- Marian and Robin
We begin with Roy (one of John’s gang who is now running with Robin) being pursued through Sherwood Forest by Gisborne and his men. It’s not looking good until we spot Robin and the rest of the crew hidden amongst the trees. They’ve set a trip wire to knock the soldiers off their horses, and it words quite well. They manage to steal the horses and evade capture as Gisborne looks on rather irritably. They get a short distance away, and Roy is all excited that his plan worked. Robin even says he can keep one of the horses they took. Much isn’t too pleased (Roy was clapping everyone but him on the back). Robin is telling Much to not be so easily hurt when they hear crying. It turns out they’ve found a baby. Will picks it up and determines by how cold the boy is that he’s been long abandoned. Allan tries to make him stop crying by holding him upside down, but Robin quickly takes the baby and manages to quiet him. Robin would make a good dad. He looks good with a baby on his arm. He quiets he baby, and things seem to be going well until he realizes the horses’ hooves have been marked, and Gisborne and his men have found them. Another fight ensues, in which Robin quite handily fends off numerous soldiers still while keeping the baby safe. Unfortunately, Gisborne knocks Roy unconscious, and they ride off with him back to Nottingham.
Robin and the gang get back to tell Little John of what happened. Robin apologizes that Roy got captured. Much says in a rather deadpan voice “it’s a baby” and shows John the baby. Really, Much? Are you sure it’s not a monkey? John says they’re going to Nottingham. After all, Roy is his friend. At Nottingham Castle, Marian is voicing her concerns that the Sheriff is keeping quarantine in place in Clun because he plans to “cleanse” it later. He promptly says he has other things to do, and we find him entering the dungeons where Gisborne is being the crap out of Roy. Roy just keeps giving his name rank and serial number basically (he fights for Robin Hood and King Richard). We get a brief scene where a servant girl (Annie) is bringing Roy some food and runs into Gisborne. She acts like they know each other and asks if ‘he’ cried but Gisborne just walks away. She give Roy his food and tries to say that Gisborne has a softer side and that if she had station, he would marry her since she is the mother of his child. It clicks in Roy’s head that the baby they found was the servant girl’s baby boy (even though Gisborne told her he had arranged to take the child to a wealthy family).
Back in the forest, Robin and the gang is trying to find the best way in to the castle to rescue Roy. Will points out the new dungeon door was put in by Robert of York and Mr. York can’t make a hinge worth a damn. Will’s pretty confident he could get through the hinges. So they’ve got a making of a plan. Unfortunately for them, they don’t really get the chance to rescue Roy. The Sheriff makes him an offer of sorts; kill Robin or see his own mother killed. So they let Roy go, and all seems well with the gang until Much fears they’ve been tricked the same way as before with the horses. Turns out they weren’t, though Roy takes Robin aside and it looks like he’s reaching for the dagger the Sheriff gave him. Instead, he tells a half-truth about the baby. His name is Seth. He says he met the baby’s father in the dungeon for stealing bread and the mother left the child to die. He suggests that they (he and Robin) should go to Knighton to return the child. This is, of course, false. Gisborne no doubt left the child to die. He’s too obsessed with status to allow an illegitimate child born to a servant girl to survive.
Marian rides in to Clun to deliver food and supplies to the villagers, obviously against the Sheriff’s orders. She’s stopped by soldiers and is having trouble getting by when Roy and Robin show up. They handle the guards easily enough and are shooting food into the village on arrows. Robin thinks it’s a grand and fun way of delivering the food until he’s hit in the arm with an arrow. Time for them to scatter. Robin takes off with the baby and narrowly avoids being caught, only to be found by Roy a short time later, wielding the Sheriff’s dagger. They’re joined by Marian, and they head back into the village with the rest of the food. Marian tends to Robin’s wound, and she learns (as do we) that Robin was wounded in a Saracen attack on the King and was sent home to heal (the stitches had gotten infected). He tries to foist the baby off on Marian when Much and the others show up (the horse had ridden back without him), but she says that taking the child to its mother was Robin’s decision, not hers. She rides off back to Knighton Hall where Gisborne is waiting. They take her to Nottingham, and the Sheriff says he needs to punish her for her outspokenness. So he chops off her hair in punishment in front of a gathered crowd in the square.
Meanwhile, back in Clun, Robin is fretfully dreaming of the attack on the King that ultimately sent Robin back to England, and when he wakes, Roy is on top of him trying to stab him. Things get pretty crazy for a bit as John flips out and punches Roy, saying angrily that he was like John’s son. Robin takes enough time to calm down and asks Roy what’s going on. Roy admits in between sobs that they’ve got his mother and they’ll kill her at dawn if he doesn’t kill Robin first. He also explains about the baby’s real parents. So they head off to Nottingham to try and recue Roy’s mother as well as Seth’s mother. They get into the castle easily enough. Will manages to break the dungeon door down, and Allan goes and finds Annie.
Too bad things go horribly wrong. The gang is ambushed by Gisborne, the Sheriff and some soldiers in the dungeon. They’re led out to the square to watch Roy’s mother hang when Annie appears and holds a knife the Gisborne’s throat. She’s having a good old shouting rant about him abandoning their baby to die, and then everything just goes to hell. Lots of fighting ensues (they really do have great fight sequences and music). In the end, Roy sacrifices himself so the others (including his mother and Annie) can escape. I really wonder where Seth was at this point. Anyway, back at the camp, they’re having a little funeral for Roy, and they then go to meet Marian. She’s arranged for Annie to serve a kind woman where she and her baby will be safe. Robin notices Marian’s hair, but she brushes it off. I have to say the shorter hair makes her look a bit more mature. We end with Annie opening the gift the gang gave her; a little Saracen bow and quiver of arrows.
***
“I suppose these are the lives we have chosen. Always different directions.”
“And yours is the better direction?”
- Marian and Robin
We begin with Roy (one of John’s gang who is now running with Robin) being pursued through Sherwood Forest by Gisborne and his men. It’s not looking good until we spot Robin and the rest of the crew hidden amongst the trees. They’ve set a trip wire to knock the soldiers off their horses, and it words quite well. They manage to steal the horses and evade capture as Gisborne looks on rather irritably. They get a short distance away, and Roy is all excited that his plan worked. Robin even says he can keep one of the horses they took. Much isn’t too pleased (Roy was clapping everyone but him on the back). Robin is telling Much to not be so easily hurt when they hear crying. It turns out they’ve found a baby. Will picks it up and determines by how cold the boy is that he’s been long abandoned. Allan tries to make him stop crying by holding him upside down, but Robin quickly takes the baby and manages to quiet him. Robin would make a good dad. He looks good with a baby on his arm. He quiets he baby, and things seem to be going well until he realizes the horses’ hooves have been marked, and Gisborne and his men have found them. Another fight ensues, in which Robin quite handily fends off numerous soldiers still while keeping the baby safe. Unfortunately, Gisborne knocks Roy unconscious, and they ride off with him back to Nottingham.
Robin and the gang get back to tell Little John of what happened. Robin apologizes that Roy got captured. Much says in a rather deadpan voice “it’s a baby” and shows John the baby. Really, Much? Are you sure it’s not a monkey? John says they’re going to Nottingham. After all, Roy is his friend. At Nottingham Castle, Marian is voicing her concerns that the Sheriff is keeping quarantine in place in Clun because he plans to “cleanse” it later. He promptly says he has other things to do, and we find him entering the dungeons where Gisborne is being the crap out of Roy. Roy just keeps giving his name rank and serial number basically (he fights for Robin Hood and King Richard). We get a brief scene where a servant girl (Annie) is bringing Roy some food and runs into Gisborne. She acts like they know each other and asks if ‘he’ cried but Gisborne just walks away. She give Roy his food and tries to say that Gisborne has a softer side and that if she had station, he would marry her since she is the mother of his child. It clicks in Roy’s head that the baby they found was the servant girl’s baby boy (even though Gisborne told her he had arranged to take the child to a wealthy family).
Back in the forest, Robin and the gang is trying to find the best way in to the castle to rescue Roy. Will points out the new dungeon door was put in by Robert of York and Mr. York can’t make a hinge worth a damn. Will’s pretty confident he could get through the hinges. So they’ve got a making of a plan. Unfortunately for them, they don’t really get the chance to rescue Roy. The Sheriff makes him an offer of sorts; kill Robin or see his own mother killed. So they let Roy go, and all seems well with the gang until Much fears they’ve been tricked the same way as before with the horses. Turns out they weren’t, though Roy takes Robin aside and it looks like he’s reaching for the dagger the Sheriff gave him. Instead, he tells a half-truth about the baby. His name is Seth. He says he met the baby’s father in the dungeon for stealing bread and the mother left the child to die. He suggests that they (he and Robin) should go to Knighton to return the child. This is, of course, false. Gisborne no doubt left the child to die. He’s too obsessed with status to allow an illegitimate child born to a servant girl to survive.
Marian rides in to Clun to deliver food and supplies to the villagers, obviously against the Sheriff’s orders. She’s stopped by soldiers and is having trouble getting by when Roy and Robin show up. They handle the guards easily enough and are shooting food into the village on arrows. Robin thinks it’s a grand and fun way of delivering the food until he’s hit in the arm with an arrow. Time for them to scatter. Robin takes off with the baby and narrowly avoids being caught, only to be found by Roy a short time later, wielding the Sheriff’s dagger. They’re joined by Marian, and they head back into the village with the rest of the food. Marian tends to Robin’s wound, and she learns (as do we) that Robin was wounded in a Saracen attack on the King and was sent home to heal (the stitches had gotten infected). He tries to foist the baby off on Marian when Much and the others show up (the horse had ridden back without him), but she says that taking the child to its mother was Robin’s decision, not hers. She rides off back to Knighton Hall where Gisborne is waiting. They take her to Nottingham, and the Sheriff says he needs to punish her for her outspokenness. So he chops off her hair in punishment in front of a gathered crowd in the square.
Meanwhile, back in Clun, Robin is fretfully dreaming of the attack on the King that ultimately sent Robin back to England, and when he wakes, Roy is on top of him trying to stab him. Things get pretty crazy for a bit as John flips out and punches Roy, saying angrily that he was like John’s son. Robin takes enough time to calm down and asks Roy what’s going on. Roy admits in between sobs that they’ve got his mother and they’ll kill her at dawn if he doesn’t kill Robin first. He also explains about the baby’s real parents. So they head off to Nottingham to try and recue Roy’s mother as well as Seth’s mother. They get into the castle easily enough. Will manages to break the dungeon door down, and Allan goes and finds Annie.
Too bad things go horribly wrong. The gang is ambushed by Gisborne, the Sheriff and some soldiers in the dungeon. They’re led out to the square to watch Roy’s mother hang when Annie appears and holds a knife the Gisborne’s throat. She’s having a good old shouting rant about him abandoning their baby to die, and then everything just goes to hell. Lots of fighting ensues (they really do have great fight sequences and music). In the end, Roy sacrifices himself so the others (including his mother and Annie) can escape. I really wonder where Seth was at this point. Anyway, back at the camp, they’re having a little funeral for Roy, and they then go to meet Marian. She’s arranged for Annie to serve a kind woman where she and her baby will be safe. Robin notices Marian’s hair, but she brushes it off. I have to say the shorter hair makes her look a bit more mature. We end with Annie opening the gift the gang gave her; a little Saracen bow and quiver of arrows.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Summer DVR Dump: The Walking Dead 1.03: "Tell it to the Frogs"
“Maybe we got a second chance. Not many people get that.”
-Rick
I was liking “Tell it to the Frogs” until close to the episode’s end. There was some good character work, we got to see a little more about the survivors’ way of life, and there was some good soapy drama with the Rick/Lori/Shane triangle. And there was some gore, but not as much as the first two episodes. That was a bit of a welcome respite. Then the writing staff had to go and prove again that not only are they incapable of writing realistic women, they are incapable of putting a show on the air that isn’t horribly misogynistic. Although I might be too hard on them. I’ve never read the graphic novels on which the show is based, so it could be a problem with the source material. Never before have I seen a portrayal of women on television that made me as irrationally angry as this one. And I’m not usually one to go on feminist rants, either. I grew up with a mother who was a very good example that women can do whatever they put their minds to, and it never occurred to me that there was anything I couldn’t do because I’m female. So I never really felt the need to go all crusader about it. So you know this must have been really bad.
The episode opens with a view of Dixon, still handcuffed on the roof of the department store building in Atlanta. He’s mumbling to himself, and of course everything he’s saying is horribly offensive. And most of it, I think, is directed at T-Dog. All of a sudden he switches to pulling at the handcuffs and desperately pleading. The door to the stairwell cracks open, and zombies try to push their way through. The chain T-Dog locked on the door holds, but Dixon is really cracking. He tries to use a belt to reach a gun, although he doesn’t seem to be having much luck. On the drive back to the survivors’ camp, Morales warns Rick that Dixon has a brother who will probably be the only person at all upset that Dixon was left behind.
At the survivors’ camp, Shane is trying to be all fatherly to Carl. It’s hard to say if it’s because he wants to get in Lori’s good graces so he can keep getting into her pants, or if it’s because he genuinely likes the kid. He and Rick were best friends, so he’s certainly spent time with Carl before. I’d imagine it’s probably some of both. He wants to take Carl to catch frogs- he thinks it might be some nice variety to their diet, apparently. Although he could just be kidding. The conversation is interrupted by Glenn driving into camp in his sports car with the alarm going off. This pisses off some of the survivors who think that the sound will draw zombies, but it doesn’t seem like they’re in immediate danger. Then the construction truck pulls up. Rick is the last to step out of the truck, of course, because we’ve got to build up the suspense for the big reunion with Lori and Carl. The reunion is pretty great. Rick and Carl run to each other, and Rick picks up Carl in a big hug. Lori is extremely happy and surprised to see him. Shane’s reaction is essentially “oh shit.” The fact that he was banging his best friend’s wife is so going to catch up to him. While not quite as epic, I thought the reunion of sisters Andrea and Amy was pretty sweet, too.
That night, Rick and Lori snuggle together in a tent, and Rick tells Lori about how he knew she and Carl were alive because the photo albums were missing from their house. Lori just keeps apologizing for everything. Rick probably thinks she’s apologizing for leaving town, but we viewers know she’s apologizing for a lot more than Rick can imagine right now. Lori shows Rick the photo album, and there is so much guilty subtext on Lori’s part in this scene that the writers might as well be hitting us over the head with it. Rick thinks this is a second chance, and he takes his wedding ring back from Lori. It was on the chain that also holds her locket. I suppose it was the ring that gave Shane only momentary pause in the woods last episode. Speaking of Shane, he’s all alone and emo on watch duty while his best friend and his lover get re-acquainted. Oh poor Shane. I’m holding up a sarcasm sign right now for all of you Sheldon Coopers who need it.
The next morning, Glenn is really upset as the survivors strip the sweet sports car he loved driving so much. They need the gas to run the camp generators. Rick and Lori, meanwhile, have gone right back into their former bickering ways. Rick wants to take a group back to rescue Dixon, and Lori thinks that’s a horrible idea. Their argument is interrupted when they hear Carl scream. He’s running back to camp with a group of survivors, and he’s very scared. It turns out a zombie is munching on a dead deer just outside of camp. Rick and the other men beat the zombie to re-death while Amy and Andrea look on. Andrea looks kind of turned on by the violence, which is just creepy. It turns out Dixon’s brother Daryl had been hunting the deer, and he’s not happy that the zombie has now tainted it and made it unfit to eat. He’s even more unhappy when he finds out about his brother’s fate. He gets really belligerent, and Shane and Rick have to go into police mode to subdue him. They work perfectly in synch, and it’s obvious they’ve been partners for a long time.
Just because they work well together doesn’t mean they have to be getting along, though. Shane is extremely pissed at Rick when Rick reveals his plan to go back to Atlanta for Dixon. It’s a bit hard to tell the real reason for Shane’s unhappiness with this. It could be Lori- Rick just came back and took her away from Shane, and now Rick is leaving again. But this time, because Lori knows Rick is still alive, Shane’s not going to be spending any quality time with her. It could also be worry for the camp, which is the actual reason Shane gives. Glenn, Daryl, and T-Dog all want to go on the mission, and Shane is worried about what will happen to the camp if they lose four men. Rick comes up with a new excuse for wanting to leave (besides his guilt over leaving Dixon behind). He left his bag of guns in the street in front of the department store, and the camp could use more weapons. There’s also his walkie talkie, which he was supposed to use to get in contact with the father and son who helped him out in the pilot episode. Soon enough, the group heads for Atlanta.
Shane takes Carl frog catching like he promised, and it’s really more of a silly game in the quarry than actual frog hunting. Meanwhile, the women are sitting at the edge of the water doing laundry and bitching about having to do all the work. This is what made me really start to get fed up about the woman hating on this show. Can you have the women be any more stereotypical? The women start laughing about missing their vibrators (yes, the dialogue really is that bad), and Carol’s husband Ed gives her a hard time about how she should be working instead of laughing. Even many of the men are caricatures in this show, I guess.
Meanwhile, Lori is furious that Shane took Carl away from the main camp, and she completely cuts him off. She doesn’t want Shane to have any more contact with herself or Carl. Apparently Shane told her Rick died, so I guess I can understand why she’d be pissed at him. On the other side of the quarry, Ed is trying to get violent with Carol, and the other women are trying to protect Carol. Shane and Ed have a history (Shane chastised Ed for making too large a fire earlier in the episode), so Shane uses the situation to take out his frustrations over the Lori. Shane beats the crap out of Ed, although he stops short of actually killing him. Carol just cries and snivels and runs back to Ed as soon as Shane stops beating him. It’s really kind of sickening, and it’s not a convincing performance at all. The episode ends with quite the surprise in Atlanta. The four men reach the roof of the department store building to find that Dixon is no longer there. All that’s left are the handcuffs and Dixon’s sawed-off hand.
-Rick
I was liking “Tell it to the Frogs” until close to the episode’s end. There was some good character work, we got to see a little more about the survivors’ way of life, and there was some good soapy drama with the Rick/Lori/Shane triangle. And there was some gore, but not as much as the first two episodes. That was a bit of a welcome respite. Then the writing staff had to go and prove again that not only are they incapable of writing realistic women, they are incapable of putting a show on the air that isn’t horribly misogynistic. Although I might be too hard on them. I’ve never read the graphic novels on which the show is based, so it could be a problem with the source material. Never before have I seen a portrayal of women on television that made me as irrationally angry as this one. And I’m not usually one to go on feminist rants, either. I grew up with a mother who was a very good example that women can do whatever they put their minds to, and it never occurred to me that there was anything I couldn’t do because I’m female. So I never really felt the need to go all crusader about it. So you know this must have been really bad.
The episode opens with a view of Dixon, still handcuffed on the roof of the department store building in Atlanta. He’s mumbling to himself, and of course everything he’s saying is horribly offensive. And most of it, I think, is directed at T-Dog. All of a sudden he switches to pulling at the handcuffs and desperately pleading. The door to the stairwell cracks open, and zombies try to push their way through. The chain T-Dog locked on the door holds, but Dixon is really cracking. He tries to use a belt to reach a gun, although he doesn’t seem to be having much luck. On the drive back to the survivors’ camp, Morales warns Rick that Dixon has a brother who will probably be the only person at all upset that Dixon was left behind.
At the survivors’ camp, Shane is trying to be all fatherly to Carl. It’s hard to say if it’s because he wants to get in Lori’s good graces so he can keep getting into her pants, or if it’s because he genuinely likes the kid. He and Rick were best friends, so he’s certainly spent time with Carl before. I’d imagine it’s probably some of both. He wants to take Carl to catch frogs- he thinks it might be some nice variety to their diet, apparently. Although he could just be kidding. The conversation is interrupted by Glenn driving into camp in his sports car with the alarm going off. This pisses off some of the survivors who think that the sound will draw zombies, but it doesn’t seem like they’re in immediate danger. Then the construction truck pulls up. Rick is the last to step out of the truck, of course, because we’ve got to build up the suspense for the big reunion with Lori and Carl. The reunion is pretty great. Rick and Carl run to each other, and Rick picks up Carl in a big hug. Lori is extremely happy and surprised to see him. Shane’s reaction is essentially “oh shit.” The fact that he was banging his best friend’s wife is so going to catch up to him. While not quite as epic, I thought the reunion of sisters Andrea and Amy was pretty sweet, too.
That night, Rick and Lori snuggle together in a tent, and Rick tells Lori about how he knew she and Carl were alive because the photo albums were missing from their house. Lori just keeps apologizing for everything. Rick probably thinks she’s apologizing for leaving town, but we viewers know she’s apologizing for a lot more than Rick can imagine right now. Lori shows Rick the photo album, and there is so much guilty subtext on Lori’s part in this scene that the writers might as well be hitting us over the head with it. Rick thinks this is a second chance, and he takes his wedding ring back from Lori. It was on the chain that also holds her locket. I suppose it was the ring that gave Shane only momentary pause in the woods last episode. Speaking of Shane, he’s all alone and emo on watch duty while his best friend and his lover get re-acquainted. Oh poor Shane. I’m holding up a sarcasm sign right now for all of you Sheldon Coopers who need it.
The next morning, Glenn is really upset as the survivors strip the sweet sports car he loved driving so much. They need the gas to run the camp generators. Rick and Lori, meanwhile, have gone right back into their former bickering ways. Rick wants to take a group back to rescue Dixon, and Lori thinks that’s a horrible idea. Their argument is interrupted when they hear Carl scream. He’s running back to camp with a group of survivors, and he’s very scared. It turns out a zombie is munching on a dead deer just outside of camp. Rick and the other men beat the zombie to re-death while Amy and Andrea look on. Andrea looks kind of turned on by the violence, which is just creepy. It turns out Dixon’s brother Daryl had been hunting the deer, and he’s not happy that the zombie has now tainted it and made it unfit to eat. He’s even more unhappy when he finds out about his brother’s fate. He gets really belligerent, and Shane and Rick have to go into police mode to subdue him. They work perfectly in synch, and it’s obvious they’ve been partners for a long time.
Just because they work well together doesn’t mean they have to be getting along, though. Shane is extremely pissed at Rick when Rick reveals his plan to go back to Atlanta for Dixon. It’s a bit hard to tell the real reason for Shane’s unhappiness with this. It could be Lori- Rick just came back and took her away from Shane, and now Rick is leaving again. But this time, because Lori knows Rick is still alive, Shane’s not going to be spending any quality time with her. It could also be worry for the camp, which is the actual reason Shane gives. Glenn, Daryl, and T-Dog all want to go on the mission, and Shane is worried about what will happen to the camp if they lose four men. Rick comes up with a new excuse for wanting to leave (besides his guilt over leaving Dixon behind). He left his bag of guns in the street in front of the department store, and the camp could use more weapons. There’s also his walkie talkie, which he was supposed to use to get in contact with the father and son who helped him out in the pilot episode. Soon enough, the group heads for Atlanta.
Shane takes Carl frog catching like he promised, and it’s really more of a silly game in the quarry than actual frog hunting. Meanwhile, the women are sitting at the edge of the water doing laundry and bitching about having to do all the work. This is what made me really start to get fed up about the woman hating on this show. Can you have the women be any more stereotypical? The women start laughing about missing their vibrators (yes, the dialogue really is that bad), and Carol’s husband Ed gives her a hard time about how she should be working instead of laughing. Even many of the men are caricatures in this show, I guess.
Meanwhile, Lori is furious that Shane took Carl away from the main camp, and she completely cuts him off. She doesn’t want Shane to have any more contact with herself or Carl. Apparently Shane told her Rick died, so I guess I can understand why she’d be pissed at him. On the other side of the quarry, Ed is trying to get violent with Carol, and the other women are trying to protect Carol. Shane and Ed have a history (Shane chastised Ed for making too large a fire earlier in the episode), so Shane uses the situation to take out his frustrations over the Lori. Shane beats the crap out of Ed, although he stops short of actually killing him. Carol just cries and snivels and runs back to Ed as soon as Shane stops beating him. It’s really kind of sickening, and it’s not a convincing performance at all. The episode ends with quite the surprise in Atlanta. The four men reach the roof of the department store building to find that Dixon is no longer there. All that’s left are the handcuffs and Dixon’s sawed-off hand.
Monday, July 4, 2011
True Blood 4.02: "You Smell Like Dinner"
“Never mind. There’s one thing I learned from us being together. Every time I found out something new about you, I wound up wishing I didn’t know it.”
-Sookie
Like I say about a lot of shows, I think the second episode of this season of “True Blood” suffered from trying to service too many plots. The structure was very disjointed, and the pace was rather frantic. The episode just kept switching between characters every scene, and it was rather distracting. The only thing it had going for it was that several of the plots started to weave together, and plausible ways for yet more plots to weave in were presented as well. There’s a lot of stuff going on this season that didn’t happen in the fourth book, but by the end of the episode, we hit a very important plot point from the book, which made me happy. Because if the Eric has amnesia plot hadn’t happened, I might have quit watching the show after this season. Of course Eric has to provoke the witches this time around (I seem to remember he wasn’t as directly evil to the witches in this book), but I’ll take what I can get.
We’ll start with Jason’s plot, since the episode opened with him. He wakes up in the middle-of-nowhere meth factory of Hotshot, chained to a bed. One of the werepanthers is licking a gash Jason sustained when another werepanther shows up at the door. It’s Crystal’s fiancé, and he’s not happy, obviously. And it seems like he’s sticking around for the long haul. At one point, Andy shows up, and it seems like Jason might be saved, but Crystal’s fiancé instructs another werepanther to bring Andy a vial of V, and that’s enough to make Andy go away. Crystal keeps Jason distracted (and gagged) this whole time so Andy doesn’t hear him. Unfortunately for Jason, it looks like Andy only came to Hotshot to get his V fix, not to save his deputy. Near the end of the episode is when this plot gets really twisted. Crystal and her fiancé enter the room where Jason is still chained up, and they tell Jason they’ve been having some infertility issues. They want Jason and Crystal to have a baby together, but in order to keep the werepanther genes going, they’re going to turn Jason into a werepanther first. This seems a bit too much like Tara’s plot with Franklin Mott last season. I think I prefer the book version better, but I’ll stop there with any details about the book to avoid spoiling.
Sam is the center of the other more minor plot in this episode. He’s got his eye on another shifter who is part of his “anger management” group named Luna. I thought that was a pretty perfect name, although it would have been even better if she had been a werewolf. They have a conversation after spending some time running as animals, but just as Sam is about to propose some sort of relationship, Luna runs off. She later visits Sam at Merlotte’s and apologizes for the quick exit, and it appears that they will now officially be an item. Tommy is in the bar while this is going down and takes a likely dangerous interest in Sam’s new girlfriend. This makes Sam pretty unhappy, naturally. Later, at a meeting of the “anger management” group, Luna reveals that she’s part Navaho, so she’s grown up hearing the legend of the Skinwalkers. Shifters have to kill a family member to become one, but once they do, they can become anything, even another person. This scene seemed to be all about the foreshadowing, which introduces the “who isn’t who they say they are and is actually a Skinwalker” question that can be so frustrating. My bet’s on Tara, and I come to this guess completely unspoiled, because this whole plot was not in the book. Oh and there’s actually one other minor plot going on- Arlene is steadily going crazier with her fear that her new baby is evil. This is not helped when a blood vessel bursts in her eye as she looks at him.
The main plot of the episode is Sookie trying to deal with Eric taking over her house and life. He claims that he is doing all this to protect Sookie, but Sookie just wants him to go away. Sookie first goes to Bill for help, and she learns two important bits of information. The first is that Bill is now King of Louisiana. We later get a helpful little flashback to tell us that Bill gained this position by killing Queen Sophie Ann on Nan Flannigan’s orders. Nan recruited him back in the 80’s in London in a scene that seemed made only because the writers thought it would be cool for Stephen Moyer to use his real accent. She was impressed at his self control (stopping his feed before killing the victim) and thought he would be a good vampire to infiltrate a monarchy and spread discord. The other important thing Sookie learns is that Bill has a new woman in his life, Katrina, who infiltrated the witch coven. Bill sort-of declines to help Sookie with her Eric problem, saying that even though he is Eric’s King, Eric has friends in high places. If he is going to do anything about Eric at all, it’s going to take time.
Tara surprises Sookie as she arrives home from the grocery store one afternoon. This doesn’t sit right with me because Tara seemed determined not to return to Bon Temps in the last episode. That’s why I’m making her a candidate for Skinwalker. Anyway, as they walk inside the house, Sookie finds that Eric has left his mark. He has left several notes and flowers around, and there’s a carafe of blood in the refrigerator. He’s also had a sleeping hidey hole (or cubby, as Sookie calls it) installed in the house. And he left ice cream. This made me laugh. I know it should be creepy that Eric is being so stalkerish, but I just keep thinking of book Eric, who is really harmless when it comes to Sookie. Tara then meets up with Lafayette and Jesus and claims Sookie had to bail on their girl time. This still doesn’t feel right to me. The boys bring Tara along to a meeting of their coven.
Meanwhile, anti-Vampire protesters are going to town outside Fangtasia. This creates some trouble for Hoyt and Jessica as they try to leave the bar one night. Hoyt gets in a fight with one of the protesters, and it’s caught on someone’s video phone. Hoyt and Jessica later get into an argument when Hoyt doesn’t want Jessica to use her blood to heal his bruises from the Fangtasia fight. I find Hoyt and Jessica’s “domestic” life to be rather snoreworthy. Jessica says she’s going out to get some asprin for Hoyt, but she ends up going to Fangtasia instead. She decides to have sex with and feed from a guy in the bathroom, and Sookie catches her. Sookie was there to continue trying to sort out the Eric mess. Pam was no help, so Sookie decided she would wait for Eric himself.
Eric was not at Fangtasia because he was on a mission from Bill. Bill wanted Eric to deal with the witch coven because the coven has witches who are necromancers. Apparently necromancers can control vampires in addition to bringing back the dead, so Bill sees them as a threat. Bill seems to have good reason to be concerned, at the coven meeting, Marnie, their leader says that she wants the group to bring back a person this time around instead of just a bird. Some of the witches agree, but there are also many who are not happy about the idea, including Lafayette. Eric shows up and tries to put a stop to the happenings by threatening Marnie. The coven responds by chanting something at him. Next thing we know, Eric runs into Sookie, and he doesn’t know who he is. All he knows is that Sookie smells good. And let the Sookie/Amnesia!Eric bonding begin!
-Sookie
Like I say about a lot of shows, I think the second episode of this season of “True Blood” suffered from trying to service too many plots. The structure was very disjointed, and the pace was rather frantic. The episode just kept switching between characters every scene, and it was rather distracting. The only thing it had going for it was that several of the plots started to weave together, and plausible ways for yet more plots to weave in were presented as well. There’s a lot of stuff going on this season that didn’t happen in the fourth book, but by the end of the episode, we hit a very important plot point from the book, which made me happy. Because if the Eric has amnesia plot hadn’t happened, I might have quit watching the show after this season. Of course Eric has to provoke the witches this time around (I seem to remember he wasn’t as directly evil to the witches in this book), but I’ll take what I can get.
We’ll start with Jason’s plot, since the episode opened with him. He wakes up in the middle-of-nowhere meth factory of Hotshot, chained to a bed. One of the werepanthers is licking a gash Jason sustained when another werepanther shows up at the door. It’s Crystal’s fiancé, and he’s not happy, obviously. And it seems like he’s sticking around for the long haul. At one point, Andy shows up, and it seems like Jason might be saved, but Crystal’s fiancé instructs another werepanther to bring Andy a vial of V, and that’s enough to make Andy go away. Crystal keeps Jason distracted (and gagged) this whole time so Andy doesn’t hear him. Unfortunately for Jason, it looks like Andy only came to Hotshot to get his V fix, not to save his deputy. Near the end of the episode is when this plot gets really twisted. Crystal and her fiancé enter the room where Jason is still chained up, and they tell Jason they’ve been having some infertility issues. They want Jason and Crystal to have a baby together, but in order to keep the werepanther genes going, they’re going to turn Jason into a werepanther first. This seems a bit too much like Tara’s plot with Franklin Mott last season. I think I prefer the book version better, but I’ll stop there with any details about the book to avoid spoiling.
Sam is the center of the other more minor plot in this episode. He’s got his eye on another shifter who is part of his “anger management” group named Luna. I thought that was a pretty perfect name, although it would have been even better if she had been a werewolf. They have a conversation after spending some time running as animals, but just as Sam is about to propose some sort of relationship, Luna runs off. She later visits Sam at Merlotte’s and apologizes for the quick exit, and it appears that they will now officially be an item. Tommy is in the bar while this is going down and takes a likely dangerous interest in Sam’s new girlfriend. This makes Sam pretty unhappy, naturally. Later, at a meeting of the “anger management” group, Luna reveals that she’s part Navaho, so she’s grown up hearing the legend of the Skinwalkers. Shifters have to kill a family member to become one, but once they do, they can become anything, even another person. This scene seemed to be all about the foreshadowing, which introduces the “who isn’t who they say they are and is actually a Skinwalker” question that can be so frustrating. My bet’s on Tara, and I come to this guess completely unspoiled, because this whole plot was not in the book. Oh and there’s actually one other minor plot going on- Arlene is steadily going crazier with her fear that her new baby is evil. This is not helped when a blood vessel bursts in her eye as she looks at him.
The main plot of the episode is Sookie trying to deal with Eric taking over her house and life. He claims that he is doing all this to protect Sookie, but Sookie just wants him to go away. Sookie first goes to Bill for help, and she learns two important bits of information. The first is that Bill is now King of Louisiana. We later get a helpful little flashback to tell us that Bill gained this position by killing Queen Sophie Ann on Nan Flannigan’s orders. Nan recruited him back in the 80’s in London in a scene that seemed made only because the writers thought it would be cool for Stephen Moyer to use his real accent. She was impressed at his self control (stopping his feed before killing the victim) and thought he would be a good vampire to infiltrate a monarchy and spread discord. The other important thing Sookie learns is that Bill has a new woman in his life, Katrina, who infiltrated the witch coven. Bill sort-of declines to help Sookie with her Eric problem, saying that even though he is Eric’s King, Eric has friends in high places. If he is going to do anything about Eric at all, it’s going to take time.
Tara surprises Sookie as she arrives home from the grocery store one afternoon. This doesn’t sit right with me because Tara seemed determined not to return to Bon Temps in the last episode. That’s why I’m making her a candidate for Skinwalker. Anyway, as they walk inside the house, Sookie finds that Eric has left his mark. He has left several notes and flowers around, and there’s a carafe of blood in the refrigerator. He’s also had a sleeping hidey hole (or cubby, as Sookie calls it) installed in the house. And he left ice cream. This made me laugh. I know it should be creepy that Eric is being so stalkerish, but I just keep thinking of book Eric, who is really harmless when it comes to Sookie. Tara then meets up with Lafayette and Jesus and claims Sookie had to bail on their girl time. This still doesn’t feel right to me. The boys bring Tara along to a meeting of their coven.
Meanwhile, anti-Vampire protesters are going to town outside Fangtasia. This creates some trouble for Hoyt and Jessica as they try to leave the bar one night. Hoyt gets in a fight with one of the protesters, and it’s caught on someone’s video phone. Hoyt and Jessica later get into an argument when Hoyt doesn’t want Jessica to use her blood to heal his bruises from the Fangtasia fight. I find Hoyt and Jessica’s “domestic” life to be rather snoreworthy. Jessica says she’s going out to get some asprin for Hoyt, but she ends up going to Fangtasia instead. She decides to have sex with and feed from a guy in the bathroom, and Sookie catches her. Sookie was there to continue trying to sort out the Eric mess. Pam was no help, so Sookie decided she would wait for Eric himself.
Eric was not at Fangtasia because he was on a mission from Bill. Bill wanted Eric to deal with the witch coven because the coven has witches who are necromancers. Apparently necromancers can control vampires in addition to bringing back the dead, so Bill sees them as a threat. Bill seems to have good reason to be concerned, at the coven meeting, Marnie, their leader says that she wants the group to bring back a person this time around instead of just a bird. Some of the witches agree, but there are also many who are not happy about the idea, including Lafayette. Eric shows up and tries to put a stop to the happenings by threatening Marnie. The coven responds by chanting something at him. Next thing we know, Eric runs into Sookie, and he doesn’t know who he is. All he knows is that Sookie smells good. And let the Sookie/Amnesia!Eric bonding begin!
Friday, July 1, 2011
Summer TV Rewind: Robin Hood 1.03: "Who Shot the Sheriff?"
This week's Summer TV Rewind of "Robin Hood" courtesy of Sarah is a little later than planned because I didn't get to editing it until tonight, but here it is nonetheless. Enjoy!
“Oh come on, Robin. This is just pillow talk, isn’t it? You can be honest with me. It’s not the real reason is it? You want to know what the real reason is? Nobody loves you anymore.”
- Sheriff of Nottingham
We find ourselves in the village of Nettlestone where Robin is reassuring the miller and his wife that they will not be evicted. Robin meets the bailiff on the road and hands over money. He says that it’s enough to cover the family’s debt. It seems that the bailiff agrees to Robin’s plan (including handing it in to the sheriff in small amounts to make it credible). But when Robin goes back to observe what happens, things go south. It appears that the bailiff isn’t going to honor the deal when he tells the miller he didn’t see Robin (Robin told the bailiff to offer up the scheme as his own), but he mentions they could work something out. Before the bailiff can say more, he’s shot in the back with an arrow. Robin and his men, still hidden in the forest, look around frantically for the bowman but come up empty handed. And the people of Nettlestone believe it’s Robin who has killed the bailiff.
Robin spots a cloaked and masked figure making a break for it and runs after them. Robin manages to tackle them to the ground but gets his butt handed to him with a solid kick to the stomach. Back at camp, the others are teasing Robin that he can’t stand that there is someone better than him. We quickly learn it was the Night Watchman. He goes about at night delivering food and supplies to the villages. He’s somewhat of a folk hero. Robin is determined to find him and figure out why he hurt the bailiff if the Night Watchman is supposed to be so peaceful. Meanwhile, news of the bailiff’s death has reached the Council of Nobles in Nottingham. The sheriff is quite pleased with the news since it makes Robin out to be a villain. Gisborne immediately suggests reprisals against the villages, but Marian speaks up and says it wouldn’t do any good and didn’t work before. Why punish the villagers who brought the crime to the sheriff’s attention? Another of the nobles says it would be politically strong to not take action. But Gisborne wants to use force to find and stop Robin. So both plans are put into action.
The sheriff is giving something of a eulogy for the fallen bailiff when Marian spots an older soldier in the crowd. It appears he is an old friend of the family, and Marian is surprised to see him there. He says everyone has been called in, even out of retirement. He’s sick, and Marian insist that once the funeral is over, he’s going back to Knighton Hall with her and her father. Robin and his gang show up at the funeral, and Robin is not pleased to see what’s going on. Though he’s not surprised the sheriff is making him out as the bad guy. Robin sneaks off and manages to get Marian alone. He begs her to help him clear his name and catch the killer. He can’t look in the castle, but she can. She says she’ll try to help him. And in good form, she positions herself at the castle by playing Gisborne’s affections towards her. She convinces him to speak with the sheriff about letting her stay at the castle as her father thinks it safer with a killer on the loose.
Gisborne and his massive army of dogs head out to the forest, and Robin and his men are forced to split up to avoid being caught. Meanwhile, Matthew (the son of miller from Nettlestone) is serving the sheriff what is probably wine. The sheriff makes him stand on one leg to punish him for forgetting which side he likes the tray on (annoying prick). The sheriff is lording over Matthew that his father’s mill is shut when an arrow flies through the window and lands in Matthew’s back. It seems enough to convince the sheriff that it may not be Robin behind it after all, and he orders the Master at Arms (whose plan was to take no action) to get Gisborne and his men back and call off the dogs. Then, he reconsiders and says it’s possible to blame Robin for the second death but orders the Master at Arms to look for the real killer. Guess his thinking is to kill two birds with one stone.
Robin and the gang meet up at the place where their provisions were stored to find it raided. The soldiers obviously found it. But they (the gang) are still evading the dogs at least. Gisborne arrives in Nettlestone to bring Matthew’s body home and swear they will catch Robin. Back in Nottingham, the sheriff has devised a new plan. He doesn’t thinking pinning two deaths on Robin is enough. So he orders the Master at Arms to facilitate a few more. So a bunch of servant women and other peasants bite it. Marian sees the first servant hit and sees a masked person disappearing from a window. Gisborne returns and is furious about the deaths. He and the Master at Arms get into an argument which Marian manages to interrupt. She basically calls the Master of Arms out on his scheme and leaves.
Back in the forest, the dogs are still pursuing Robin and company. Robin makes a stand to fight, but he then realizes the futility and takes the gang to Nettlestone. Too bad they’re not so welcome there after everything that’s happened. He tries to tell the villagers that he didn’t kill the bailiff or Matthew or any of the others (he was really surprised to know there even were others). The villagers pretty much chase the gang out of town. They get back to a safe spot in the woods, and Robin vents a little and decides he’s going to the castle to end things. He puts Little John in charge.
Back at the castle, Marian has gone to the soldier (Sir Lacey) at his post. She ends up getting him to tell her that she could shoot an arrow from his position through the window that killed the servant girl. She seems to be suggesting that Lacey was the killer. He tells Marian it’s hard to say anything these days when you have to use double meaning. He asks if she’s trying to prove Robin innocent, and she waffles a bit.
That night, Allan helps Robin get into the castle by setting fire to some brush to distract a guard. Robin slips into the castle and into the Sheriff’s room unseen. Robin and the Sheriff have a little chat which is kind of amusing because they’re so calm and almost buddy-buddy about it. Of course they still hate each other. Robin tells the Sheriff to go to Nettlestone and draw the killer out, and then Robin and his men will stop him. The Sheriff thinks this is a ploy on Robin’s part to make the people love him again. Robin denies it, but it appears they have a deal. Robin’s nearly out of the castle when he’s noticed by two guards and, he ends up hiding in Marian’s room (under her covers). They have a heartfelt talk where Marian expresses her worry that he doesn’t seem to feel and acts as though nothing could hurt him. She says she believes the killer to be the Master at Arms. Robin thanks her with a kiss and tells her they’ll see tomorrow if she’s right. In the very early morning, Robin fills in his men and then decides as an offering of peace and good will, they’ll take the food the soldiers didn’t find and bring it to Nettlestone. The villagers aren’t entirely pleased to see them and think the food is just trying to buy them off.
A short while later, Gisborne and the sheriff are in the village talking to people to show they’re unafraid of the outlaws when one of the guards is shot. Robin sees the shooter escaping and tackles them. He discovers it is Marian who is the Night Watchman. But the real killer is Sir Lacey. Robin begs him not to kill the Sheriff, as it will do far more harm than good, but Lacey takes the shot anyway and gets shot by Marian and Robin at the same time. It turns out he’s shot the deputy, and Gisborne runs Lacey through. Back at the castle, Gisborne becomes the new Master at Arms and promptly (and literally) stabs the old one in the back. Back in Nettlestone, Robin tries to dissuade Marian from continuing her pursuits as the Night Watchman, but she says she was raised to make choices in life, and she is choosing to help the poor. Robin isn’t entirely happy with this but leaves it for another day as he and his men to reopen the mill in Nettlestone to much applause and renewed admiration.
***
“Oh come on, Robin. This is just pillow talk, isn’t it? You can be honest with me. It’s not the real reason is it? You want to know what the real reason is? Nobody loves you anymore.”
- Sheriff of Nottingham
We find ourselves in the village of Nettlestone where Robin is reassuring the miller and his wife that they will not be evicted. Robin meets the bailiff on the road and hands over money. He says that it’s enough to cover the family’s debt. It seems that the bailiff agrees to Robin’s plan (including handing it in to the sheriff in small amounts to make it credible). But when Robin goes back to observe what happens, things go south. It appears that the bailiff isn’t going to honor the deal when he tells the miller he didn’t see Robin (Robin told the bailiff to offer up the scheme as his own), but he mentions they could work something out. Before the bailiff can say more, he’s shot in the back with an arrow. Robin and his men, still hidden in the forest, look around frantically for the bowman but come up empty handed. And the people of Nettlestone believe it’s Robin who has killed the bailiff.
Robin spots a cloaked and masked figure making a break for it and runs after them. Robin manages to tackle them to the ground but gets his butt handed to him with a solid kick to the stomach. Back at camp, the others are teasing Robin that he can’t stand that there is someone better than him. We quickly learn it was the Night Watchman. He goes about at night delivering food and supplies to the villages. He’s somewhat of a folk hero. Robin is determined to find him and figure out why he hurt the bailiff if the Night Watchman is supposed to be so peaceful. Meanwhile, news of the bailiff’s death has reached the Council of Nobles in Nottingham. The sheriff is quite pleased with the news since it makes Robin out to be a villain. Gisborne immediately suggests reprisals against the villages, but Marian speaks up and says it wouldn’t do any good and didn’t work before. Why punish the villagers who brought the crime to the sheriff’s attention? Another of the nobles says it would be politically strong to not take action. But Gisborne wants to use force to find and stop Robin. So both plans are put into action.
The sheriff is giving something of a eulogy for the fallen bailiff when Marian spots an older soldier in the crowd. It appears he is an old friend of the family, and Marian is surprised to see him there. He says everyone has been called in, even out of retirement. He’s sick, and Marian insist that once the funeral is over, he’s going back to Knighton Hall with her and her father. Robin and his gang show up at the funeral, and Robin is not pleased to see what’s going on. Though he’s not surprised the sheriff is making him out as the bad guy. Robin sneaks off and manages to get Marian alone. He begs her to help him clear his name and catch the killer. He can’t look in the castle, but she can. She says she’ll try to help him. And in good form, she positions herself at the castle by playing Gisborne’s affections towards her. She convinces him to speak with the sheriff about letting her stay at the castle as her father thinks it safer with a killer on the loose.
Gisborne and his massive army of dogs head out to the forest, and Robin and his men are forced to split up to avoid being caught. Meanwhile, Matthew (the son of miller from Nettlestone) is serving the sheriff what is probably wine. The sheriff makes him stand on one leg to punish him for forgetting which side he likes the tray on (annoying prick). The sheriff is lording over Matthew that his father’s mill is shut when an arrow flies through the window and lands in Matthew’s back. It seems enough to convince the sheriff that it may not be Robin behind it after all, and he orders the Master at Arms (whose plan was to take no action) to get Gisborne and his men back and call off the dogs. Then, he reconsiders and says it’s possible to blame Robin for the second death but orders the Master at Arms to look for the real killer. Guess his thinking is to kill two birds with one stone.
Robin and the gang meet up at the place where their provisions were stored to find it raided. The soldiers obviously found it. But they (the gang) are still evading the dogs at least. Gisborne arrives in Nettlestone to bring Matthew’s body home and swear they will catch Robin. Back in Nottingham, the sheriff has devised a new plan. He doesn’t thinking pinning two deaths on Robin is enough. So he orders the Master at Arms to facilitate a few more. So a bunch of servant women and other peasants bite it. Marian sees the first servant hit and sees a masked person disappearing from a window. Gisborne returns and is furious about the deaths. He and the Master at Arms get into an argument which Marian manages to interrupt. She basically calls the Master of Arms out on his scheme and leaves.
Back in the forest, the dogs are still pursuing Robin and company. Robin makes a stand to fight, but he then realizes the futility and takes the gang to Nettlestone. Too bad they’re not so welcome there after everything that’s happened. He tries to tell the villagers that he didn’t kill the bailiff or Matthew or any of the others (he was really surprised to know there even were others). The villagers pretty much chase the gang out of town. They get back to a safe spot in the woods, and Robin vents a little and decides he’s going to the castle to end things. He puts Little John in charge.
Back at the castle, Marian has gone to the soldier (Sir Lacey) at his post. She ends up getting him to tell her that she could shoot an arrow from his position through the window that killed the servant girl. She seems to be suggesting that Lacey was the killer. He tells Marian it’s hard to say anything these days when you have to use double meaning. He asks if she’s trying to prove Robin innocent, and she waffles a bit.
That night, Allan helps Robin get into the castle by setting fire to some brush to distract a guard. Robin slips into the castle and into the Sheriff’s room unseen. Robin and the Sheriff have a little chat which is kind of amusing because they’re so calm and almost buddy-buddy about it. Of course they still hate each other. Robin tells the Sheriff to go to Nettlestone and draw the killer out, and then Robin and his men will stop him. The Sheriff thinks this is a ploy on Robin’s part to make the people love him again. Robin denies it, but it appears they have a deal. Robin’s nearly out of the castle when he’s noticed by two guards and, he ends up hiding in Marian’s room (under her covers). They have a heartfelt talk where Marian expresses her worry that he doesn’t seem to feel and acts as though nothing could hurt him. She says she believes the killer to be the Master at Arms. Robin thanks her with a kiss and tells her they’ll see tomorrow if she’s right. In the very early morning, Robin fills in his men and then decides as an offering of peace and good will, they’ll take the food the soldiers didn’t find and bring it to Nettlestone. The villagers aren’t entirely pleased to see them and think the food is just trying to buy them off.
A short while later, Gisborne and the sheriff are in the village talking to people to show they’re unafraid of the outlaws when one of the guards is shot. Robin sees the shooter escaping and tackles them. He discovers it is Marian who is the Night Watchman. But the real killer is Sir Lacey. Robin begs him not to kill the Sheriff, as it will do far more harm than good, but Lacey takes the shot anyway and gets shot by Marian and Robin at the same time. It turns out he’s shot the deputy, and Gisborne runs Lacey through. Back at the castle, Gisborne becomes the new Master at Arms and promptly (and literally) stabs the old one in the back. Back in Nettlestone, Robin tries to dissuade Marian from continuing her pursuits as the Night Watchman, but she says she was raised to make choices in life, and she is choosing to help the poor. Robin isn’t entirely happy with this but leaves it for another day as he and his men to reopen the mill in Nettlestone to much applause and renewed admiration.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Summer DVR Dump: The Walking Dead 1.02: "Guts"
“All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son. Anybody gets in the way of that is going to lose. I’ll give you a moment to think about that.”
-Rick
Like the series pilot, “Guts” featured plenty of zombies and gore. I’m guessing from what I saw in this episode that the series has a structure more like “Game of Thrones” than a broadcast network show, where each episode is like a chapter in an overall narrative arc. This episode mostly dealt with Rick getting out of Atlanta. What makes it interesting is that he meets a few of the big group of survivors who have their camp outside the city. These new characters were sort of cliché at first, and their dialogue was a bit painful, but by the end of the episode, they seemed to be a bit more fully realized. I thought the fate of one of the new characters was especially bold, but I’ll talk about that more when we get to it. One thing I will say overall about this episode is that it made me very glad that nobody has invented televisions with smell-o-vision. This would have been one darn unpleasant episode on that front.
While, like I said, the episode mostly focuses on Rick and his new friends getting out of Atlanta, we begin in the more rural survivors’ camp. Lori goes out hunting for mushrooms, and she keeps hearing rustling in the woods. It’s shot in fairly typical horror movie style, so I was expecting something bad to happen to her, but not too horrible because she still has to reunite with Rick and deal with the fact that she’s seeing his best friend and partner. Speaking of Shane, he’s the source of the noise. The hunting for mushrooms thing was all a rouse so they could have some forest floor sex. They’re so hot for each other that they only pause briefly when Shane notices the locket Lori is wearing. Presumably it contains a photo of Rick. Lori and Shane really gross me out. And boy is Rick in for some interesting times when he finds out what’s going on.
The action in Atlanta picks up right where the last episode left off. Rick is still in the tank with the dead body, and someone is talking to him over the tank’s radio. The voice says that he should make a run for it while many of the zombies are still distracted by feasting on Rick’s horse. It’s still dangerous, but it may be the only chance he has to escape. Rick grabs and gun and a grenade, and when the voice asks about weapons, he only tells him about the gun. The grenade appears to be a Chekhov’s gun (if you see it in Act 1, it better go off in Act 3), but unfortunately, we don’t get to see the payoff in this episode. Outside, Rick meets the source of the voice, a young Asian man named Glenn. He’s part of the survivor’s camp, and he and a small band of fellow survivors have traveled into Atlanta to get supplies for the camp. Glenn hurries Rick inside a department store (they just barely escape a few stray zombies on the way), where he meets the rest of the survivors who have joined Glenn on the supply run. A woman named Andrea points a gun at Rick, saying that because of him, they’re all going to die. Apparently the gun shots Rick fired to get from the tank to Glenn attracted a whole mess of zombies, who are now pounding on the department store door like there’s no tomorrow.
The group hears gun shots coming from the roof, and the rush up to investigate. The source of the gun shots is an older rough looking redneck named Dixon. He’s part of the group of survivors, too. A survivor named T-Dog chides Dixon for making so much noise and drawing more zombies to them, and the two men get in a huge fight, escalated by Dixon’s use of racial epithets. Dixon beats the crap out of T-Dog, and he tells the group that he’s taking over leadership. The rest of the group starts to cower, but Rick sneaks up from behind and handcuffs Dixon. This makes Dixon even more unhappy, naturally, but at least he’s no longer an immediate threat. The group realizes that the only way out of the city is through the sewers. Glenn and Morales are going to test out a potential route, while Rick and Andrea try to keep the zombies from breaking through the department store door. Jaqui, who is on the city planning commission and was able to tell the gang where to find the building’s sewer entrance, is going to yell down to Glenn and Morales if there are any problems above ground.
Meanwhile, up on the roof, Dixon is trying to convince T-Dog (who is too injured to really help with the escape plan) to let him out of the handcuffs. Which is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Why would you ever let the guy who just beat you senseless out of handcuffs? Even if he promises gobs of money. Thankfully, T-Dog doesn’t give into Dixon’s demands. Down in the sewers, Glenn and Morales run into a dead end- a metal gate-like barrier, to be more precise. On the other side of the gate is a zombie, who is eating a rat, of course. Got to have our quota of gore for the episode. By the doors to the apartment store, Rick and Andrea look at a mermaid necklace that Andrea has been eyeing. She mentions that her sister loves mermaids, and she kind of wants to take the necklace for her sister. Rick thinks she should go for it, even though he’s a cop, telling Andrea that he doesn’t think the old rules apply anymore. Right after Andrea pockets the necklace, the zombies break through the first set of doors, and Glenn and Morales pop up to say that the sewer plan isn’t going to work.
The new plan for getting out of Atlanta is going to involve driving a construction vehicle. Getting the construction vehicle is a bit complicated, though, because the area around the department store is still zombie central. They come up with a rather disgusting solution to the problem. Rick gets a dead zombie and starts chopping it up. Morales helps with the chopping, too. The idea is to get enough gore for Rick and Glenn to smear all over their jackets. They can look like zombies by walking slouchy, but they needed the gore to smell like zombies. Overall, they want to blend in with the locals on their way to the construction vehicle. Rick and Glenn shuffling through the streets towards the construction vehicle is really more comical than suspenseful. The zombies don’t suspect a thing.
Up on the roof, T-Dog finally gets through to the base camp on his radio and lets the rest of the survivors know that the supply group is trapped. At base camp, Shane doesn’t want to do anything to mount a rescue, and Andrea’s sister Amy is understandably pissed about that. I presume Amy is the person for whom Andrea stole the necklace. At the most inopportune time, it starts to rain. The supply group watches from the roof as the rain washes the zombie smell off of Rick and Glenn, and the zombies start to take notice of them. This seemed a bit unrealistic to me. Gore like they were smearing on themselves is powerful stuff. I’ve watched enough “Dirty Jobs” and “Mythbusters” to know that it takes professionals to get rid of those kinds of smells, and sometimes even that’s not good enough. I guess then we wouldn’t have any action at the end of the episode, though. Rick has to start cutting through the zombies with the fire axe he brought along.
Rick and Glenn make it to the construction vehicle, but in order to safely get the rest of the group out of the department store and into the vehicle, they’re going to need a distraction. Glenn provides that distraction by driving a sports car with the car alarm going off. Rick, meanwhile, drives the construction vehicle to the department store’s loading dock. T-Dog has a moral quandary as everybody is rushing off the roof and down to the loading doc. To leave the racist redneck behind or not? T-Dog, against his better judgment, decides to unlock Dixon, but just as he’s about to do so, he accidentally drops the key. T-Dog has no choice but to leave Dixon on the roof, cursing to high heaven. Rick picks everyone up just as the zombies are breaking into the store, and Glenn has quite a good time driving out of Atlanta in his new sports car.
-Rick
Like the series pilot, “Guts” featured plenty of zombies and gore. I’m guessing from what I saw in this episode that the series has a structure more like “Game of Thrones” than a broadcast network show, where each episode is like a chapter in an overall narrative arc. This episode mostly dealt with Rick getting out of Atlanta. What makes it interesting is that he meets a few of the big group of survivors who have their camp outside the city. These new characters were sort of cliché at first, and their dialogue was a bit painful, but by the end of the episode, they seemed to be a bit more fully realized. I thought the fate of one of the new characters was especially bold, but I’ll talk about that more when we get to it. One thing I will say overall about this episode is that it made me very glad that nobody has invented televisions with smell-o-vision. This would have been one darn unpleasant episode on that front.
While, like I said, the episode mostly focuses on Rick and his new friends getting out of Atlanta, we begin in the more rural survivors’ camp. Lori goes out hunting for mushrooms, and she keeps hearing rustling in the woods. It’s shot in fairly typical horror movie style, so I was expecting something bad to happen to her, but not too horrible because she still has to reunite with Rick and deal with the fact that she’s seeing his best friend and partner. Speaking of Shane, he’s the source of the noise. The hunting for mushrooms thing was all a rouse so they could have some forest floor sex. They’re so hot for each other that they only pause briefly when Shane notices the locket Lori is wearing. Presumably it contains a photo of Rick. Lori and Shane really gross me out. And boy is Rick in for some interesting times when he finds out what’s going on.
The action in Atlanta picks up right where the last episode left off. Rick is still in the tank with the dead body, and someone is talking to him over the tank’s radio. The voice says that he should make a run for it while many of the zombies are still distracted by feasting on Rick’s horse. It’s still dangerous, but it may be the only chance he has to escape. Rick grabs and gun and a grenade, and when the voice asks about weapons, he only tells him about the gun. The grenade appears to be a Chekhov’s gun (if you see it in Act 1, it better go off in Act 3), but unfortunately, we don’t get to see the payoff in this episode. Outside, Rick meets the source of the voice, a young Asian man named Glenn. He’s part of the survivor’s camp, and he and a small band of fellow survivors have traveled into Atlanta to get supplies for the camp. Glenn hurries Rick inside a department store (they just barely escape a few stray zombies on the way), where he meets the rest of the survivors who have joined Glenn on the supply run. A woman named Andrea points a gun at Rick, saying that because of him, they’re all going to die. Apparently the gun shots Rick fired to get from the tank to Glenn attracted a whole mess of zombies, who are now pounding on the department store door like there’s no tomorrow.
The group hears gun shots coming from the roof, and the rush up to investigate. The source of the gun shots is an older rough looking redneck named Dixon. He’s part of the group of survivors, too. A survivor named T-Dog chides Dixon for making so much noise and drawing more zombies to them, and the two men get in a huge fight, escalated by Dixon’s use of racial epithets. Dixon beats the crap out of T-Dog, and he tells the group that he’s taking over leadership. The rest of the group starts to cower, but Rick sneaks up from behind and handcuffs Dixon. This makes Dixon even more unhappy, naturally, but at least he’s no longer an immediate threat. The group realizes that the only way out of the city is through the sewers. Glenn and Morales are going to test out a potential route, while Rick and Andrea try to keep the zombies from breaking through the department store door. Jaqui, who is on the city planning commission and was able to tell the gang where to find the building’s sewer entrance, is going to yell down to Glenn and Morales if there are any problems above ground.
Meanwhile, up on the roof, Dixon is trying to convince T-Dog (who is too injured to really help with the escape plan) to let him out of the handcuffs. Which is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Why would you ever let the guy who just beat you senseless out of handcuffs? Even if he promises gobs of money. Thankfully, T-Dog doesn’t give into Dixon’s demands. Down in the sewers, Glenn and Morales run into a dead end- a metal gate-like barrier, to be more precise. On the other side of the gate is a zombie, who is eating a rat, of course. Got to have our quota of gore for the episode. By the doors to the apartment store, Rick and Andrea look at a mermaid necklace that Andrea has been eyeing. She mentions that her sister loves mermaids, and she kind of wants to take the necklace for her sister. Rick thinks she should go for it, even though he’s a cop, telling Andrea that he doesn’t think the old rules apply anymore. Right after Andrea pockets the necklace, the zombies break through the first set of doors, and Glenn and Morales pop up to say that the sewer plan isn’t going to work.
The new plan for getting out of Atlanta is going to involve driving a construction vehicle. Getting the construction vehicle is a bit complicated, though, because the area around the department store is still zombie central. They come up with a rather disgusting solution to the problem. Rick gets a dead zombie and starts chopping it up. Morales helps with the chopping, too. The idea is to get enough gore for Rick and Glenn to smear all over their jackets. They can look like zombies by walking slouchy, but they needed the gore to smell like zombies. Overall, they want to blend in with the locals on their way to the construction vehicle. Rick and Glenn shuffling through the streets towards the construction vehicle is really more comical than suspenseful. The zombies don’t suspect a thing.
Up on the roof, T-Dog finally gets through to the base camp on his radio and lets the rest of the survivors know that the supply group is trapped. At base camp, Shane doesn’t want to do anything to mount a rescue, and Andrea’s sister Amy is understandably pissed about that. I presume Amy is the person for whom Andrea stole the necklace. At the most inopportune time, it starts to rain. The supply group watches from the roof as the rain washes the zombie smell off of Rick and Glenn, and the zombies start to take notice of them. This seemed a bit unrealistic to me. Gore like they were smearing on themselves is powerful stuff. I’ve watched enough “Dirty Jobs” and “Mythbusters” to know that it takes professionals to get rid of those kinds of smells, and sometimes even that’s not good enough. I guess then we wouldn’t have any action at the end of the episode, though. Rick has to start cutting through the zombies with the fire axe he brought along.
Rick and Glenn make it to the construction vehicle, but in order to safely get the rest of the group out of the department store and into the vehicle, they’re going to need a distraction. Glenn provides that distraction by driving a sports car with the car alarm going off. Rick, meanwhile, drives the construction vehicle to the department store’s loading dock. T-Dog has a moral quandary as everybody is rushing off the roof and down to the loading doc. To leave the racist redneck behind or not? T-Dog, against his better judgment, decides to unlock Dixon, but just as he’s about to do so, he accidentally drops the key. T-Dog has no choice but to leave Dixon on the roof, cursing to high heaven. Rick picks everyone up just as the zombies are breaking into the store, and Glenn has quite a good time driving out of Atlanta in his new sports car.
Monday, June 27, 2011
True Blood 4.01: "She's Not There"
“Apparently I have to go. But understand this. Everyone who claims to love you, your friends, your brother, even Bill Compton, they all gave up on you. I never did.”
-Eric
So last night the fourth season of “True Blood” premiered on HBO. The fourth book in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse mysteries is my favorite of the bunch, so I’m kind of worried about going into this season with major expectations based on my love for the book. Especially considering the show’s creator, Alan Ball, has never felt the need to be especially faithful to the source material. I’m going to do my best here and try not to be like the “Song of Ice and Fire” fans whose book enthusiasm got on my nerves while watching “Game of Thrones,” but I think it’s going to be difficult. Oh, and George R.R. Martin fans, before you get on my case about that last comment, I just started reading “A Game of Thrones” the other day (I wanted to wait until after the TV season), and so far I think it’s excellent. I just really didn’t want to be spoiled in my TV watching. Anyway, the problems I have with this episode are the problems I’ve had with the show ever since I read the books. Basically that Alan Ball has completely opposite perceptions of Bill and Eric from my own. Bill in the books is nowhere near as noble as TV Bill, and Eric in the books is nowhere as near blatantly evil as TV Eric.
We begin the episode with Claudine, Sookie’s faerie godmother, essentially bringing Sookie to faerie land. It’s a rather idyllic-looking place at first. Sookie sees her friend Barry the Bellboy there, which makes sense, considering they’re both telepaths. An even bigger surprise is that Sookie also sees her grandfather, Earl, played by the always entertaining Gary Cole. The faeries are being really aggressive about encouraging the people gathered to eat light fruits (they look like what they sound like), which makes Sookie very wary. Because she’s not being lulled into complacency by the fruit, she sees a flash of faerieland looking really ugly. That makes her think that the whole thing is a trap, and she warns her grandfather about it. This brings Sookie to the attention of Mab, faerie queen. Map thinks there are too many humans with faerie genes still living on our plane of existence, and she wants to seal off faerieland. She tries to force Sookie to eat a light fruit, but she uses her power to reveal faerieland for the ugly place it actually is. Claudine’s brother Claude helps Sookie and her grandfather escape, but to truly escape that plane of existence, they have to jump off a cliff.
Bill and Eric both of course notice immediately as soon as Sookie is back among us. Sookie and her grandfather have landed in the cemetery where Sookie’s family members are buried, and her grandfather is going to join them soon. He can’t survive on the human plane anymore because he ate a light fruit. Sookie takes him to see her grandmother’s (his wife’s) grave, and he gives Sookie a fancy pocket watch to give to Jason before he dies. Devastated, Sookie makes the long walk up to her house. She sees contractors working on it, and one of the construction workers says she can’t go in. Sookie disregards him and goes inside the house anyway. Everything has been covered up. Jason stops by, presumably at the request of the contractor, to check on the house. He’s a full blown deputy sheriff now, or at least he’s wearing the uniform. He tells Sookie she has been gone for a little over a year, and in that time, he sold her house to a random real estate company. Sookie is furious, but she gives him their grandfather’s pocket watch anyway.
Once it’s dark, Sookie starts having to deal with her parade of suitors again. I do like that this is one aspect of the books that seems to have been captured in the show, because it’s damn funny whenever something bad happens to Sookie and all her boys come running to beg and plead for the chance to help her out. Bill is the first to arrive, and Eric isn’t far behind them. They engage in some silly bickering. A fang measuring contest, I suppose you would call it. Whatever it is, it’s very entertaining. Stephen Moyer and Alex Skarsgard seem to play off each other well in these scenes. I noticed similar comedic chemistry when I watched the last few episodes of season 3 recently, where they’re pretending to fight each other so Russell Eddington won’t suspect they’re plotting against him. Eric makes the very good point that he is the only person in Sookie’s life who didn’t give up on looking for her, and then Bill asks him to leave. For some reason, Eric complies.
Andy, now full Sheriff since Bud quit his job last season, arrives on the scene and throws quite the fit. He’s upset about the resources that were used looking for Sookie and how not solving her disappearance made him look really bad in the law enforcement community. Jason suspects that Andy is using V, and those suspicions are confirmed when Jason finds a vial of the stuff in Andy’s squad car. Later in the episode, Andy tries harassing Lafayette into supplying him with some more V, but Lafayette gave his entire stash to the werepanthers out in Hotshot. Jason has to put a stop to Andy’s verbal abuse of Lafayette. It’s interesting to see Jason actually be a functional human being in this episode. He’s been taking care of the folks in Hotshot since Crystal had to leave, but the werepanthers don’t seem to appreciate it. Near the end of the episode, they lock him in an ice box.
Meanwhile, the rest of the usual Bon Temps cast of characters all have their own drama to deal with that is only mildly interconnected. Jesus takes Lafayette to a cover, where a witch is channeling the spirit of Eddie, the vampire Lafayette used to visit back in season 1. That freaks Lafayette out, and he leaves the meeting. At a later meeting, the same witch asks the coven to say prayers for her recently dead familiar, a bird. The group goes along with it until it turns into a spell to bring the bird back from the dead. Arlene’s still freaking out over her Rene-spawn, who has spontaneously decided to pull the heads off a bunch of his half-sister’s dolls. Tara’s living in New Orleans and shacking up with a fellow MMA fighter. When Lafayette texts her to say Sookie’s back, Tara just tells her new girlfriend that her grandfather died, but she won’t be going home for the funeral. Hoyt and Jessica are trying to get used to living together, which isn’t made any easier by the fact that Summer and Hoyt’s mother (who is now providing a home to Sam’s degenerate younger brother Tommy for some reason) continue to team up to try and get Hoyt to leave Jessica. Tommy, by the way, only suffered a leg injury when Sam shot him, and Sam’s paying for his physical therapy. Sam has also formed an anger management group of sorts with fellow shifters.
The real heart of this episode, though, is Sookie, Bill, and Eric. Bill and Eric are both spending heir days, when not pining over Sookie, trying to help the vampire PR cause post Russell Eddington killing that news anchor on TV. Bill presides at an old-fashioned ribbon cutting ceremony, and Eric does a TV commercial. It’s interesting that even though Eric is older, he’s been more able to adjust to modern times. When he has to step in for Pam, because Pam can’t give heartfelt answers, it’s absolutely hilarious. Sookie, meanwhile, is just trying to get her life back together. She goes to Merlottes, and even though Sam is really upset that she’s been gone for so long, Sam gives Sookie her waitress job back on a part time basis. Sookie also has to meet with Portia, Andy’s sister, about to sale of her home. Portia, an attorney, has been investigating AIK, the company that bought Sookie’s house, but she’s come up empty.
A lot has changed while Sookie has been away, and not just her house being sold. Bill is now sitting regally at his desk and having people call him “your majesty.” That was definitely a huge surprise. Then Eric shows up at Sookie’s house while she’s getting changed. He says he’s the one who now owns that house, and that makes Sookie “his.” Sookie looks furious, and I don’t blame her. Book Eric never would have pulled a stunt like that, although given what’s in the fourth book, I’m predicting Eric gives Sookie the house back to repay a debt by the end of this season. If they don’t, I will seriously consider removing “True Blood” from my television line-up. It’s just evil what’s been done with Eric, usually. Eric was definitely not this malicious at this point in his character arc in the books, and I definitely prefer the really dangerous but gentle around Sookie version from the books.
-Eric
So last night the fourth season of “True Blood” premiered on HBO. The fourth book in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse mysteries is my favorite of the bunch, so I’m kind of worried about going into this season with major expectations based on my love for the book. Especially considering the show’s creator, Alan Ball, has never felt the need to be especially faithful to the source material. I’m going to do my best here and try not to be like the “Song of Ice and Fire” fans whose book enthusiasm got on my nerves while watching “Game of Thrones,” but I think it’s going to be difficult. Oh, and George R.R. Martin fans, before you get on my case about that last comment, I just started reading “A Game of Thrones” the other day (I wanted to wait until after the TV season), and so far I think it’s excellent. I just really didn’t want to be spoiled in my TV watching. Anyway, the problems I have with this episode are the problems I’ve had with the show ever since I read the books. Basically that Alan Ball has completely opposite perceptions of Bill and Eric from my own. Bill in the books is nowhere near as noble as TV Bill, and Eric in the books is nowhere as near blatantly evil as TV Eric.
We begin the episode with Claudine, Sookie’s faerie godmother, essentially bringing Sookie to faerie land. It’s a rather idyllic-looking place at first. Sookie sees her friend Barry the Bellboy there, which makes sense, considering they’re both telepaths. An even bigger surprise is that Sookie also sees her grandfather, Earl, played by the always entertaining Gary Cole. The faeries are being really aggressive about encouraging the people gathered to eat light fruits (they look like what they sound like), which makes Sookie very wary. Because she’s not being lulled into complacency by the fruit, she sees a flash of faerieland looking really ugly. That makes her think that the whole thing is a trap, and she warns her grandfather about it. This brings Sookie to the attention of Mab, faerie queen. Map thinks there are too many humans with faerie genes still living on our plane of existence, and she wants to seal off faerieland. She tries to force Sookie to eat a light fruit, but she uses her power to reveal faerieland for the ugly place it actually is. Claudine’s brother Claude helps Sookie and her grandfather escape, but to truly escape that plane of existence, they have to jump off a cliff.
Bill and Eric both of course notice immediately as soon as Sookie is back among us. Sookie and her grandfather have landed in the cemetery where Sookie’s family members are buried, and her grandfather is going to join them soon. He can’t survive on the human plane anymore because he ate a light fruit. Sookie takes him to see her grandmother’s (his wife’s) grave, and he gives Sookie a fancy pocket watch to give to Jason before he dies. Devastated, Sookie makes the long walk up to her house. She sees contractors working on it, and one of the construction workers says she can’t go in. Sookie disregards him and goes inside the house anyway. Everything has been covered up. Jason stops by, presumably at the request of the contractor, to check on the house. He’s a full blown deputy sheriff now, or at least he’s wearing the uniform. He tells Sookie she has been gone for a little over a year, and in that time, he sold her house to a random real estate company. Sookie is furious, but she gives him their grandfather’s pocket watch anyway.
Once it’s dark, Sookie starts having to deal with her parade of suitors again. I do like that this is one aspect of the books that seems to have been captured in the show, because it’s damn funny whenever something bad happens to Sookie and all her boys come running to beg and plead for the chance to help her out. Bill is the first to arrive, and Eric isn’t far behind them. They engage in some silly bickering. A fang measuring contest, I suppose you would call it. Whatever it is, it’s very entertaining. Stephen Moyer and Alex Skarsgard seem to play off each other well in these scenes. I noticed similar comedic chemistry when I watched the last few episodes of season 3 recently, where they’re pretending to fight each other so Russell Eddington won’t suspect they’re plotting against him. Eric makes the very good point that he is the only person in Sookie’s life who didn’t give up on looking for her, and then Bill asks him to leave. For some reason, Eric complies.
Andy, now full Sheriff since Bud quit his job last season, arrives on the scene and throws quite the fit. He’s upset about the resources that were used looking for Sookie and how not solving her disappearance made him look really bad in the law enforcement community. Jason suspects that Andy is using V, and those suspicions are confirmed when Jason finds a vial of the stuff in Andy’s squad car. Later in the episode, Andy tries harassing Lafayette into supplying him with some more V, but Lafayette gave his entire stash to the werepanthers out in Hotshot. Jason has to put a stop to Andy’s verbal abuse of Lafayette. It’s interesting to see Jason actually be a functional human being in this episode. He’s been taking care of the folks in Hotshot since Crystal had to leave, but the werepanthers don’t seem to appreciate it. Near the end of the episode, they lock him in an ice box.
Meanwhile, the rest of the usual Bon Temps cast of characters all have their own drama to deal with that is only mildly interconnected. Jesus takes Lafayette to a cover, where a witch is channeling the spirit of Eddie, the vampire Lafayette used to visit back in season 1. That freaks Lafayette out, and he leaves the meeting. At a later meeting, the same witch asks the coven to say prayers for her recently dead familiar, a bird. The group goes along with it until it turns into a spell to bring the bird back from the dead. Arlene’s still freaking out over her Rene-spawn, who has spontaneously decided to pull the heads off a bunch of his half-sister’s dolls. Tara’s living in New Orleans and shacking up with a fellow MMA fighter. When Lafayette texts her to say Sookie’s back, Tara just tells her new girlfriend that her grandfather died, but she won’t be going home for the funeral. Hoyt and Jessica are trying to get used to living together, which isn’t made any easier by the fact that Summer and Hoyt’s mother (who is now providing a home to Sam’s degenerate younger brother Tommy for some reason) continue to team up to try and get Hoyt to leave Jessica. Tommy, by the way, only suffered a leg injury when Sam shot him, and Sam’s paying for his physical therapy. Sam has also formed an anger management group of sorts with fellow shifters.
The real heart of this episode, though, is Sookie, Bill, and Eric. Bill and Eric are both spending heir days, when not pining over Sookie, trying to help the vampire PR cause post Russell Eddington killing that news anchor on TV. Bill presides at an old-fashioned ribbon cutting ceremony, and Eric does a TV commercial. It’s interesting that even though Eric is older, he’s been more able to adjust to modern times. When he has to step in for Pam, because Pam can’t give heartfelt answers, it’s absolutely hilarious. Sookie, meanwhile, is just trying to get her life back together. She goes to Merlottes, and even though Sam is really upset that she’s been gone for so long, Sam gives Sookie her waitress job back on a part time basis. Sookie also has to meet with Portia, Andy’s sister, about to sale of her home. Portia, an attorney, has been investigating AIK, the company that bought Sookie’s house, but she’s come up empty.
A lot has changed while Sookie has been away, and not just her house being sold. Bill is now sitting regally at his desk and having people call him “your majesty.” That was definitely a huge surprise. Then Eric shows up at Sookie’s house while she’s getting changed. He says he’s the one who now owns that house, and that makes Sookie “his.” Sookie looks furious, and I don’t blame her. Book Eric never would have pulled a stunt like that, although given what’s in the fourth book, I’m predicting Eric gives Sookie the house back to repay a debt by the end of this season. If they don’t, I will seriously consider removing “True Blood” from my television line-up. It’s just evil what’s been done with Eric, usually. Eric was definitely not this malicious at this point in his character arc in the books, and I definitely prefer the really dangerous but gentle around Sookie version from the books.
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