catching up - week 6 (mostly):

sanctuary: folding men
Sanctuary goes up against Folding Men and finds a story about minority rights and drug addiction. Who'd have thunk it? Well, having watched the previous episodes, I'd say I would, actually.

They catch a guy wanted for robbery and accessory to murder, and Wil's doing his best to get through to him as he goes through withdrawal, and they get little snippets of info off of him that lead to Folding Men parents with missing children, a crumpled up body in a washingmachine, and false leads on drug processing, not to mention that Wil proves to be very easily manipulated when he thinks he's helping people, which will hopefully be really interesting in the future. There wasn't nearly as much running and shooting as before, so I guess they're finding their groove, and it's a pretty sweet groove at that. It's a really interesting show. Even if I do sometimes get distracted by the fact that all the CGI environments kind of look too open and spacious, like no one in this weird city can afford enough furniture. Or when I take twenty minutes off in the middle of the show to see if I know the actor behind some of the prosthetics-- I do know the one who plays Jack the Ripper from the pilot, as he played both Halling and Todd the Wraith on Atlantis, but I was looking for the Bigfoot, who doesn't get a billing on IMDB or the official website yet.



supernatural: monster movie
Inexplicably, one of the episodes I missed was a perfect little horror movie aware that it was a horror movie! Meta fiction! I love it! They show up in Pennsylvania in time for Oktoberfest in a little town that looks like a European village, following a reported vampire attack-- that has all the movie monster cliches. When they're just about to write it off as a loony, a wolfman attacks a kid in lover's lane, and a mummy kills a guard at the museum. A bar wench gets kidnapped by Dracula and he insists on calling her Mina and the boys Harker and Van Helsing, and crazy ensues. Turns out it's a shapeshifter who was born like this, beaten alot, chased away alot, and went batty in such a way that he wanted to be a classy movie monster instead of a regular beat up monster.

It's all in black and white with the camara going in and out of focus at random times, with a soundtrack every bit as melodramatic as you'd think, with mist and storms and a big castle that's made of foam and fiberboard, and a nod to both Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera. Best of all, this ep has some really truly funny parts, and it's a welcome respite from the heaviness of the coming actual Apocalypse in the previous episodes. Dean gets the girl, the bad guy gets defeated, and they drive off triumphant-- but I like Jamie, and I think these boys could use a girl in their team. Keep them honest. Give them something to look after and someone to look after them. I vote that she comes back and joins up-- or, better, that she starts hunting baddies on her own and they run across her later. I mean really, could you survive that and then go back to pouring beer for a living?

On a side note, the CW viewer is crap. Clunky, full of ads, jittery, and when it runs comercials, it drops out of full screen mode and doesn't go back. Suck. Hulu is so much better.


supernatural: metamorphosis
Aw. Looks like last week never actually happened. Bummer.

So apparently monsterism runs in families, and this ordinary guy is coming into his inheritance. That he didn't know about. Because a Hunter killed his dad ages ago and he was put up for adoption. He's about to turn into a Rugeru-- something Dean keeps pointing out sounds like it's made up. Sam wants to see if he can get the guy to fight it, to appease it with alot of raw meat, and never eat human (which completes the transformation), and live like a recovering alcoholic instead. Travis, an old Hunter friend, wants them to flame it and get it before it kills. Of course, this old Hunter gets himself killed almost immediately, and it's a wonder there are any Hunters left the way they all get killed off around the Winchesters-- it's like they're Angela Fletcher or something. And the guy turns and loses everything and gets flamed, because this show seems to be mostly about fighting fate and fate getting you anyway.

So of course, this all leads to an arguement between the boys over whether or not Sam feels kinship with this guy who has evil inside him but is a good person, and whether or not Dean is a jerk and that's why Sam never told him about the demon blood or his experiments with turning the bad he's been given into something good-- and whether Heaven is jumping the gun a little on this whole issue. In the end, Sam decides to give up creepy powers, but there's the whole issue of how long and you keep from killing people when you have the ability to save them... and then, how long before the Wrath comes down again?


valentine: pilot
There's these old Gods, see, and they are about to become irrelevant in the modern world, so they have to find a new way to fit in as things change. Irrelevant Gods turn mortal and die off, and they're getting fewer and fewer clients every year, so they want to avoid the bad and stay in the good, and they take on a romance writer to tell them about modern love and get them back in the game.

Kate takes the knowledge that there are gods very well-- especially after Aphrodite gives her a screaming orgasm of pure love. Which was funny-- and jumps right in with helping a boy and a girl find eachother, when the Gods have almost messed it up.

The first episode is funny and sweet and charming, and like a little bitty rom com, which is my not-so-secret vice. And I get to watch people be in love every week! It's a hopeful, if not terribly delicate message: there's someone out there for everyone, and there are people making sure we get the chance to find them. Yay!



valentine: daddy's home
The god of war stops by to check on his family that he's usually too busy causing war to bother with. Ares is trying to take over the love business, saying that something's going down where they'll be in danger and he wants to protect them-- the only way he can, which is to get them all to help him start wars. Danny / Eros distracts him by love-shooting Kate and sending them home together, on the excuse of giving Ray / Hephaestus a chance to secure Aphrodite's heart, now that she claims to love her first husband and despise her second.

Meanwhile, a perfume chemist and a good Indian girl need to get married. The girls pose as wedding photographers as the parents plan an arranged marriage for her, and the boys try to convince the chemist to declare his love and demand her hand in marriage so the arranged one can't go through. When he finally does, the groom is as relieved as she is, and it's her mother that okays it! Yay!

All this means that Morgan and Nisha are happy and there's a great Bollywood dance scene, and that Ray's in trouble with Grace / Aphrodite for fixing Danny's gun (what was once arrows), and Ari is not at all happy with getting turned down. And right at the end, Phoebe drops some of Kate's hair in the Oracle, looking for some dirt, and gets an image of Grace literally under the axe. Spooky, and who knows what that means? Let's see what the next episode says, shall we?



valentine: act naturally
This week: celebutant trainwreck and small-time theatre owner. She's had a few flops that made her doubt her talent, and he's about to go out of business until she's forced to work with him for community service-- thanks to the Valentine crew. Add in a manager who seems to be intentionally running her into the ground, and you've got yourself a sweet little rediscovering who you really are sort of story.

On the home front, Phoebe gets Leo to work with her to steal something of Kate's to prove she's wrong, and they manage to burn down her house, which leaves her homeless, with most of her stuff gone. Danny softens up a bit and lets down his guard enough to awkwardly try to cheer her in a sweet little scene that ends with her moving into the mansion with a box of stuff and a cat. Phoebe goes through the box and finds books about Greek Gods, and takes it to mean the worst-- though she's probably just writing a story and doesn't want to embarass herself by mentioning it. And someone-- a girl-- sneaks in and poisons the Oracle, and we can't be sure if the clarification of the Grace-dead oracle is the truth or the poison, or if this is, say, Eris, Queen of Discord, or if it's whoever Ares mentioned was going against the Old Gods. Oooh, plot!

Three episodes in, there's what we know about the characters: Danny is erotic love embodied, which makes him kind of a rockstar and means he knows nothing about real love and can't see how it's different from lust (which likely means he'll fall in love himself before the season is up); Leo / Hercules stalled out somewhere around the 70s fashion-wise, but is sweet, if somewhat simple on occasion; Grace / Aphrodite is old-fashioned and somewhat over-sure of herself; Kate means well, but is either going to go bad or is going to be framed; Pheobe has trust issues and is pretty immature; and Ray / Hephaestus is jealous and swayable.