Saturday, November 03, 2007 Rant Archive
Do Kryptonians dream of crystalline sheep? As illustrated by the sequence that opens this week’s installment, Kara (Laura Vandervoort) dreams of home, and her beloved father, who sent her to Earth. Unfortunately, Kara tends to fly when she sleeps and narrowly avoids getting plowed by an airliner. After the FAA files a funky report, Clark (Tom Welling) noses around and finds out from Jimmy (Aaron Ashmore) that Kara was following a lead on her missing Kryptonian crystal, and decides to dig further, which takes him to Lionel (John Glover). While they discuss the mysterious government program responsible for alien autopsies, Agent Carter (Kim Coates), the head badass, is investigating the crystal and having a pissing match with Lex (Michael Rosenbaum). Not literally, of course.
Proving that Kara’s time in the TV immersion chamber or whatever her ship had was effective, Kara heads to a bar and seduces information on the crystal out of a hapless geek. Unfortunately, Agent Carter must be psychic, because the crystal was moved before Kara arrived. Meanwhile, Chloe (Allison Mack) goes to a counseling clinic for meteor victims, and finds out that Lana (Kristin Kreuk) is running the show. This should be good, but Lana’s giving off the “I’ve got a secret” vibe. Speaking of weird vibes, Clark catches up to Kara and tries to talk to her, but Kara’s not thrilled with Clark and punches him through a wall. Whee!
Sci-fi fans rejoice! Though our grand opus,
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is still months away from returning to the small screen for its final season, the show’s creators won’t leave us dangling without a little Cylon-on-human action to wet our palettes.
A special two-hour episode of BATTLESTAR, entitled
RAZOR, will jump into theaters for a free showing the night of Nov. 12, in select cities which include New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston Dallas and Seattle. Admission will be based on internet registrations which took place last Friday and are now, unfortunately, closed.
However fear not BG fanboys! Those excluded from seeing their favorite sci-fi drama on the big screen will not go without: RAZOR will be broadcast as a Sci-fi channel special event the night of Nov. 24, and an unrated DVD featuring an additional half hour of story cut from the TV and theatrical versions will be available for sale on Dec. 4.
It’s amazing the things you learn on television. Did you know the best way to end a relationship with the woman having your baby is to tell her you will hopefully one day fall in love with her when she’s in the middle of labor? Did you know that the Janitor (Neil Flynn) and Kelso (Ken Jenkins) could be friends, but only at night? Did you also know that Australian singers pop out of wombs just for kicks? No? Then you need to catch up.
Tonight, J.D. (Zach Braff) and Kim (Elizabeth Banks) have their son, but not before ending their doomed relationship. J.D. has been avoiding the L word with Kim for weeks, and now, while she’s in labor, she tells J.D. “I love you.” What’s his answer? “That’s cool.” Way to go, man. On top of breaking her heart, J.D. forgets about the epidural. Kim, in a long tradition of TV labor scenes, has to go through the labor naturally.
Honestly, this is all for the best. Not the pain, but the couple breaking it off. I was actually cringing at the idea of dealing with Kim and J.D. being together for the rest of the season. This way, he can be a dad and still date (well, try to date at least). Far better TV, don’t you think? Maybe now they’re not together, Bill Lawrence can break his promise of keeping Elliot (Sarah Chalke) and J.D. apart.
It was definitely a surprise to see Jim’s old flame Karen (played by the ravishing Rashida Jones) make an appearance in Thursday’s episode. After the two hit a rough patch at the end of season three, she essentially disappeared for the current season with not much of an explanation as to what happened. As it turns out, she is now the regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin branch in Utica – which is to say, she holds Michael’s job at another office. And at the start of the episode, she’s offering Stanley a salesperson position for more money at her branch. He accepts and immediately informs Michael of his decision.
While it’s difficult to imagine the show releasing Stanley, his largely peripheral role means that there is at least the potential for being expendable. But any fan of the show would be wary of upsetting the balance, so I was naturally concerned that Stanley was on the chopping block. After all, the change over in the cast from last season was a bit absurd.
Michael takes the news even harder than the viewer. His concept of the Scranton branch as a family is seriously challenged by Stanley’s proposed departure. He’s willing to do anything to keep Stanley on – except give him a raise, but you understand that his claim there’s no room in the budget are sincere. Stanley makes it abundantly clear that money is the deciding factor and Michael’s attempts to dissuade him are fruitless. So Michael turns his efforts to making the Utica branch pay for “poaching” his workers.
In the middle of tonight’s episode of GREY’S ANATOMY Christina Yang states what I believe is the central conundrum of the show. She says: “acknowledging your crap, and fixing your crap are two different things.” Oh how right she is. The show is meta enough that I took this statement as a sign from the producers that they are aware of the shows flaws and are striving to fix them. One can only hope, right?
And tonight’s episode was a decent start. After I watched last week’s episode I felt as though I had been hit by a battering ram. There were so many stories, each yearning to make us laugh, make us cry, and anger us all at the same time. I sat down to write my review emotionally exhausted. In contrast, tonight’s episode was fairly straightforward and simple. I dare say I actually enjoyed it.
I can’t totally make out what new Dr Hahn’s angle is yet. She hates Yang, believing that she likes to sleep with her attending (and why not, the proof is in the pudding.) She talks back to the Chief. She invites herself to the “gentleman’s evening” he is having with Shepard and Sloane. At this early juncture I like her balls and straight forwardness. Hahn injects some womanhood, (missing since Addison Shepard got her own series,) into a show filled with girls.
As SURVIVOR trundles along, season after season, there are a few definites that every player should have picked up by now. Don’t be lazy, don’t be the first leader of a tribe off the boat and don’t, I don’t care how tall and frosty and delicious it looks, don’t drink the alcohol that is provided at feasts. Now understand, I love beer. I even have a taste for smoky sweet bourbon so I’m no teetotaler. But something happens when these game show contestants are starved then offered booze, they just can’t say no to it. And either they embarrass themselves profoundly or they screw up their bodies or it leads to a failure in the game.
That’s what happened tonight.
Picking up the action at Fei Long after they voted out Sherea and her pixilated fanny crack, Courtney has seemingly forgotten it is a game and cannot stand to be in the presence of Jean-Robert. She had a certain power over him just a few short weeks ago but now has reverted to this bratty little whiner who stomps her bony feet when nobody votes the way she wants them to. She can’t even bring herself to appreciate the possibility that her alliance might do her some good. Of the leaders of her alliance she said, “I dislike everyone else more than I dislike Todd and Amanda. I guess they mistake that for friendship.” Yeesh. I swear, someone is going to sneeze next to her and she’ll break four ribs.
A certain animated rodent is ruling the world of
movies, and for once it’s not Mickey. Remy, the CGI rat/chef is still pulling in the cheddar, as Disney’s
RATATOUILLE remained No. 1 at the international box office for the fourth straight week, grossing $21.9 million in over thirty markets.
RATATOUILLE’S continued success is an impressive considering the film finished premiering to foreign markets some time ago. Countries where it finished first this past week included the U.K., Italy, China, Poland, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. The cumulative gross in Britain rose 3% to $36.3 million amid school holidays, pushing that the U.K. ahead of Japan for second place, behind France’s staggering $60 million bow.
In total the film has earned a whopping $346.8 million in overseas markets, (which is more than even Disney could’ve dreamt of,) brining its worldwide gross to $552 million, or as I like to call it, “a lot of cheese.” The film is paced to become the fifth film of 2007 to earn $400 million overseas, along with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3, SPIDERMAN 3,
HARRY POTTER 5 and SHREK 3. Interestingly enough, RATATOUILLE would be the only non-sequel on that list.
I’ve spent the past several weeks trying to convince you that 30 ROCK is the funniest laugh-out-loud show on television. Some of you have resisted my clarion call; I will be visiting each of you. Late at night, when you think you’re safely tucked in bed.
But those of you curious for a sample of the show’s willingness to walk (actually drag one foot) an extra mile, you almost had a shot at it. On the season’s second episode, Tracy Jordan’s (Tracy Morgan) wife Angie (Sherri Shepherd) kicks him out and brings him a box of memorabilia from his former home. Included is a god record of his one big hit single, Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.
Other shows may have let matters rest there, but the folks at 30 Rock put together a brief snippet of the song’s video in a kind of Michael Jackson parody. It was just six seconds long, but a) it was funny and b) it showed a creative team backed by a business team willing to spend a little cash to make a show special.
Those six seconds, of course, soon found their way on to the web, where presumably thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – viewed them. Until NBC, in its infinite wisdom, ordered the Werewolf Bar Mitzvah video taken down from YouTube. Which sounds like something the fictional top network exec Jack Donaghy (Alex Baldwin) would do, but is something that happened in the real world.
Sure, why would you want extra exposure for a great but ratings-starved show? NBC guys: Do you think I can do this all by myself? No, I can’t. I would appreciate a little help.
You have no idea how upset I am with you people. And if I’m upset, can you imagine how Tina Fey feels? She goes through all the sturm und drang of creating the consistently funniest show on TV – and I can’t imagine that working with Alec Baldwin is a piece of cake – and what do you do? Does SURVIVOR CHINA sound familiar? UGLY BETTY?
I’ll bet you are the same people who passed on early episodes of SEINFELD and ROSEANNE. Clearly you wouldn’t know funny if you stepped in it. Okay, perhaps that’s a tad harsh. But surely you understand my position. I shall not be ignored.
Consider The Collection. Jack Donaghy (Alex Baldwin) knows he’s being vetted for the top job at GE so he hires private eye – to investigate himself. He wants to find the skeletons in his closet before the company does. He meets the dick (Steve Buscemi), who asks for back ground information. Yes, Donaghy says, he was arrested, during the 1976 Democratic convention in Chicago. But it’s okay – he was beating up hippies at the time.
As for the rest of his family, he has a cousin who fixes NBA games and a mother who is “an Olympic-level racist.” But fortunately the rest of his family drinks too much to do anything weird.
Being that tonight is Halloween, I was more interested in seeing kids dressed up as their favorite super-heroes than as gold miners, but that’s what I get for getting addicted to the trials and travails of a bunch of children from across the country. Be that as it may, I did get to see a spooky gold mine treasure chest search, as well as some frightful behavior, so I guess I can’t complain too much. What surprised me the most – although knowing human behavior it really shouldn’t have – was the fact that capitalism is alive and well in Bonanza City. It appears funds are running low for some inhabitants of our favorite ghost town, which has led to some of the kids deciding to sell products on the street.
Personally, I think it’s rather ingenious – If not a little disconcerting - of these little tycoons to come up with the idea. However, I’m not for bribery, which is what a few of the towns folk are accusing one of their compatriots of. It seems as if there are those who feel as if bribery is being used to gain support to get a gold star. Wow, this episode does not shed a good light on the power of money and what it does to people who lust after it. Remember, that gold star is worth $20,000. That’s enough for at least one semester at a good college. Ok, maybe that would cover a year of tuition and books, but there is always that pesky need we have for food and shelter to contend with, which jacks up the cost quit a bit. Needless to say, every kid there could use a little extra spending money, so the competition for the gold is getting pretty serious.
PUSHING DAISIES does Halloween and while it feels like a Scooby-Doo script written by a tripping beat poet, I am continuing to recommend this show. Ned (Lee Pace), the pie maker with the gift to reawaken the dead, hates Halloween. Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), the waitress at The Pie-Hole, says the holiday makes him, “Moodier than a pumpkin with PMS.” When Ned was a boy, shipped off to boarding school after his mother died, he eventually went searching for Dad on Halloween. He found him, with a new wife and two new sons and Ned as a distant memory. This is what Ned thinks of on Halloween. He would also, as the narrator (Jim Dale) tells us, “Come back to haunt the house where good times were had…and the house that at one time had Dad.”
Olive is the client this week as her past comes back to haunt her. Lucas Shoemaker, a farrier and former horse jockey is trampled by a ghostly horse and rider. The specter is the spirit of John Joseph Jacobs, a jockey himself who was trampled in the course of a race- The Jock-Off 2000. C’mon…that’s funny. Olive, it turns out, was a jockey and one of the riders that accidentally trampled John Joseph Jacobs. When Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) goes with Olive to investigate John Joseph Jacobs’ tomb, they find the skeleton of a horse with no legs instead of human remains.
What a let down.
After four suspenseful episodes driven by an extremely well written script, FIVE DAYS concludes with a disappointing resolution.
The show is about the disappearance of Leanne Wellings (Christine Tremarco), the investigation that follows and how it affects everyone involved.
Part of the problem is that the show’s conceit -- what made it so irresistibly enticing – ultimately worked against it. That is, the Five DAYS of the title covered in the show were five days of an investigation that lasted well over two months. But the early episodes were much more closely spaced. Not much happened between days one and three and 28 and 33. But this concluding episode takes place more than six weeks since we last were there. And this is one instance where absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. So much has changed during the intervening 46 days, my first thought was that I’d missed an entire episode. Catching up is handled awkwardly, disturbingly so for a series that seemed so graceful.
Duque rum will never be the same. Literally.
This week the Cuban clan held their annual rum blenders convention, where tasters and critics gathered to sample rum made by the most acclaimed master blenders from around the world. Actually, fast forward: this week’s episode started a day into the future, with Alex asking a repudiated Cuban gangster for help, while a mysterious man lay in a hospital bed, beat to a pulp.
As told in flashback we learned that, before the convention began, Pancho and Amalia met with Pancho’s doctor to discuss cancer treatment. Upon hearing he would lose taste and smell from chemotherapy, Pancho refused treatment. (Some rum just tastes that good I guess.) At the convention Pancho sampled one rum after another, hating them all, until he came to the table of a young, beautiful Australian girl. Upon tasting her rum, Pancho demanded to know whom the blender was—surprise, surprise, it was the young hottie herself who knew how to work magic at the stills. In her, Pancho was sure he’d found his successor.
I spent this last hour of TELL ME YOU LOVE ME looking for someone I could love. Anyone. Because the more I’ve gotten to know the whiney, self-pitying, childish characters, the more I’ve come to dislike them. Frankly, that’s not a good sign.
The best I could come up with is Carolyn (Sonya Walger); it wasn’t so much that I liked her but I started to feel sorry for her. She finally got pregnant and pretty much no one she tells is happy for her. Her sister just gives her a blank stare, her boss tells her bad timing and her husband, Palek (Adam Scott), tells her he’s still not interested in having kids and is now even less interested in having sex. That leads to dialogue such as:
“I’m pregnant. Okay? I don’t need you to bullshit me. I just need you to find a way to be in this with me.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You can.” Pause. “You can.”
Understandably after that exchange, Palek goes to see therapist May Foster (Jane Alexander) without his wife. There he reveals that he has daddy issues. His father abandoned him and mom when he was about three years old. Daddy didn’t want a child, either. Dr. Foster urges Palek to come back for additional counseling with Carolyn.
Last week THE UNIT did its best impersonation of HOUSE, this week it was all about AMERICAN IDOL. Someone tap me when THE UNIT gets back to being THE UNIT.
Jonas, Grey and Mack, were on assignment as M.P.’s (military police) in Iraq, acting as personal guards for a spoiled country pop diva (cutey Mikalah Gordon of AMERICAN IDOL season 4) brought over to “entertain” the troops. Of course Jonas wasn’t one to stomach the antics and tantrums of some teenaged celebutard and planned to straighten the girl out—that is until the diva hopped in a hummer and sped off for the combat zone.
Back home Bob was on assignment as an M.P. of a different sort: escorting a condemned Islamic terrorist to an airport where he would be flown home to face execution. Partnered with him was a more seasoned M.P., whose humane tactics were a little too soft for by-the-book-Bob. The Unit wives club, meanwhile, schemed to set loner Henry up with Tiffy’s friend from work, Annie. Henry and Annie hit it off, despite the Unit wives’ warning to Annie that she would have to be in it for the long haul if she wanted to join their tight circle.