weekly roundup 5 - oct 5 to 11 (part 1)

This week has been crazy, guys, so right now it's just a partial review. I haven't had the time to watch all the episodes, and so a few are missing, but here's what I've got, and I'll get back to the rest as soon as I can.

mon: sarah connor, heroes, sarah jane
More pieces falling into place, more allies made-- and more sadness dumped on poor John Connor's shoulders. Episode 5 sees John checking into military school to save someone who will become a major resistance leader, someone who has the actual training to get people organized behind future!John. Dereck manages to get a teaching gig at the same school-- way too conveniently, let me add, as it's just handed to him pretty much against his will. And there's a T-888 like the first one coming after all the Martin Bedells in LA, just like they came after all the Sarah Connors in the beginning, when Sarah became John's mother. She's determined to keep the two remaining ones safe, so she basically kidnaps a 10-ish-year-old moments before Triple8 takes him out, and John goes to military school.

While Sarah's playing mom for this kid, including a book report on John's favorite book (reliving the easier days when John wasn't a rebellious teenager much?), John and Dereck make friends and make plans with the actual Bedell. He's going to run away and get married; but the time he gets through helping to bust a T-888, he stays because he has to, gets the training he knows he'll need, and has bonded with John sufficiently to ensure loyalty later on... though, really, he should have bonded to Dereck, not John, as he's the one who made all the plans, planted all the claymores, organized the kidcruits to act like actual soldiers and finally took Triple8 down.

It was... a bit hasty, plotwise. Not really enough time to get in the depth of loyalty and friendship the episode needed, but at least they have him on their side. I wonder of Marty the younger will fight with them? Sarah promised him that if he needed help ever, she'd come from wherever she is and help him. Gave him a code word and all. And I wonder if the other kid soldiers will be more or less likely to want to go to war after being unwittingly used to stop something that's almost unstoppable?

Subplot land has Ellis investigating the power plant and seeing the damage they call caused a few weeks ago, and deducing that there were two robots who caught each other, which Ms T-1000 didn't know. And she offs the plant manager who was asking too many questions after Ellis mentioned to her that he wanted an investigation that would hold up the full automation of the plant in August 2009. I'm thinking that's the new Judegement Day.

But mostly, this ep serves to give John more info about the future, namely, when some of his friends are going to die, and how tender hearted his dad always was. Being the future leader of mankind sucks in so many ways, not the least of which is knowing that all the future-soldiers you send back are going to die, including the one who will be your dad, and that the people you ally with now are also going to die, and all in your name. I wonder waht kind of mentally messed up crazy future!John is?


Heroes has "Become Death"... only not really. Though they did kill a kid, which surprised me (because we hadn't been given a chance to care all that much). So here's the haps. Future!Claire is a sadist, I'm assuming because she went all super-emo when she couldn't feel pain anymore. Future!Peter messed up one last time by getting hissef killed before he could tell now!Peter what to do. Nathan's hooking up with Tracy who is the last of triplets (so at least we don't need to worry about her more-- she's not, like, a clone batch or something-- at least until they retconn it again). He becomes president, she's the first lady, and he gets killed by now!Peter when he takes future!Syler's abilities and therefore his hunger. So I'm seeing the two of them switch places in the coming season. Future!Syler's a dad, so that's that rumor sorted, but that's the kid that gets killed, and that's the beginning of the end cuz he goes all nuclear and blows away everything. Future!Claire apparently had everything taken from her. And neural-clone!Linderman claims to be an angel.

In subplot land, Parkman eventually marries speeDaphne and they have the hugest baby ever, and all she does in the future is cry. She doesn't survive the Syler-blast, and he witnesses it in the past while hopped up on African walkabout visionquest future-seeing drugs. Also, his totem might be a tortoise, which is far too appropriate. And he's still stuck in Africa. Meanwhile, Hiro and Ando try to escape Level Two and wind up taken to see Mama Pet, who tasks them with saving the formula because he's the only one who can, whatever that means, and he has the key... wich requires digging up a body. Mohinder's taken a turn for the worse, getting angry and violent and more scaly, not to mention slimy and sticky, and future!Mohinder has snaky sorts of sound effects.

So apparently everyone who can afford it or steal it gets powers in the future, and somehow, that leads to the world getting shattered. But President Nathan wants to start an army of mutants, so maybe that's what does it... Yeah, as if this wasn't tangled up enough. I think that web of connections made of yarn is the plot tracker the writers use to keep all this straight. Also, the future's almost as blue as the present is white. Lighting is weird on this show. I'm not even going to guess where this show is going; we're four eps in, and it's already crazy as hell, so I have no idea. But it's fun trying to remember where Peter got all his powers-- shouldn't he be unkillable, too, because he already took Claire's ability, or is this like a secondary mutation that wasn't active at that point?-- and now that Syler and Peter are kind of the same person, that'll be fun to follow.



Sarah Jane, who has faced down the likes of Sontarans and traveled the galaxy is afraid of clowns. Silly.

Anyway, Luke misses Maria, but insists that he doesn't fancy her, even though he's moping and sighing all over the place. They've left it open so that she can come back after she's done with her real-life test scores and can act again, so that's fun. Clyde was trying to be cool about it and act like he doesn't miss her, and when they meet Rani, he was immediately thunderstruck and went about being cool until she wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him. Luke, however, is weird and she likes weird-- she wants to be a reporter, and she is what is sometimes called 'nosy', meaning that the early decision to keep fresh new girl Rani out of the weirdness across the street from her house immediately went out the window.

Kids are disappearing from all around town, and when Clyde and Rani start seeing clowns, of course no one believes them but Sarah Jane, and certainly not Rani's dad, who happens to be the new Headmaster at the school. I'm inclined to think that headmasters are always bad news-- if Dr Who and Buffy have anything to say on the matter-- but he just seems to be tough. Anyway, as a first parter, this is all leading up to getting them in trouble, in the form of a Circus Museum that happens to be run by the Pied Piper who wants to steal all the children, and has already started by stealing the ones with the free tickets that were previously passed out. Sarah Jane is terrified, and so I'm assuming the kids will have to chip in to save themselves so she can face her fear, but that'll have to wait till next week.


tues: fringe
Fringe brings us more weirdness, and a little sinister edge to the dealings. It starts with a bald man who puts all sorts of weird hot things into a sandwich and waits around for a disaster to happen-- which comes right as he's finishing his meal. He goes to investigate and calls it in, unsurprised, as if he knew what it was before it happened.

So the team is called in to investigate this weird stretched-egg thing, and Walter knows what it is without thinking he knows anything about it. With some help from an old firend of Olivia's who was there when the last one happened, they decide it's a torpedo that goes through land instead of the sea. Someone's out to get it and Walter hides it, but Peter is taken hostage to find out where it is-- and gives it away without knowing the answer, because of some creepy wires up his nose.

Blah blah blah chasey chasey, and they wind up where Walter, who's acting very stange, hid the thing, and manage to keep it from falling into enemy hands, byt not from exploding / escaping-- there was a very deep hole, so I can't say what that was supposed to be.

The upshot is that Peter, who had been ready to leave, to the point of calling in favors and having a new life set up for him, is not dedicated to figuring out exactly what happened and says he won't leave anymore, and there's a new player on the scene-- this bald guy, who seems to appear just in time to observe all these patter-related incidents, no matter where they are, and he always looks exactly the same. Weirder still, he was there when Walter ran off an icy road years ago and he saved both Walter and Peter, which may have something to do with Peter's hinted-at medical history, and it forged some sort of link between Water and the Observer, allowing him to have memories he never formed himself.

Will this link matter more later? Is Walter in with the Powers that Pattern? The Observer can get inside people's heads, and I'm sure that'll come back. And Walter lost Astrid the Labtech's trust by drugging her so he could steal the thing, so it'll be fun to see how they sort that out... and hopefully she isn't just being written out.

Not as great an episode as the last one, but it's fast-paced and adds lots more for the wiki-makers to sort out, and it's thickening up nicely.


weds: pushing daisies
Another cute episode, but perhaps a bit sadder. I really liked how in love Ned and Chuck were before, and now with her moving out, even if I entirely understand why, it's got a different dynamic-- more mopey and sad, less cute and shiny. I do like the Aunts getting more out and about, thought, and it's always fun to see them in the Pie Hole and the lengths Chuck goes to not to be seen. And without Olive, I'm super-curious to see what kind of kook they get to work there-- maybe two, if everyone's going to be leaving to solve crimes all the time. Although, the crime solving seems to have dropped out of focus a little... I hate to say it, and maybe it's just the fact that I'm resistant to new things, but it feels ever so slightly off, like they misplaced a bit of the vision when everyone went on hiatus, and that makes me sad. It's still cute and sweet, but it doesn't feel as sublime as it did before.