Weekly Roundup 7 - Oct 20 to 25

mon: sarah connor, heroes
The crew go out to find another person on the list that was left in their garage, and find a child psychologist who is suddenly in demand. Sarah, John and Cameron go in as patients and try to seem like normal people. Ms Weaver learns that terminators aren't good parents and wants to know how to get her daughter to love her again-- though it's pretty much said that she replaced the real Ms Weaver, and that's why she has no concept of how to handle a little girl. And Savannah knows her mom isn't right. Meanwhile a new terminator who's smaller then Cameron is sent back and goes after the doctor, and winds up all twisted up by Cam, so I'm assuming she's a contortionist in real life-- what a sweet gig.

Over in subplot land, Dereck is out for a run-- which he seems to be doing alot lately-- and comes across an old flame from the future named Jessie. They fall into bed and she destracts him so she can hide surveilance photos she has of the team. So either her I'm-AWOL-and-I-want-to-be-with-you-when-the-world-ends thing is BS, and she's either a replacement or a double agent with unknown and probably not nice missions, or she was sent back and stopped doing what she was supposed to do so she could rekindle old flames. Or, like, something else entirely that we can't possibly guess from this little snippet of a story.

It's nice that Dereck gets laid because I'm sure he needs it, but it's nicer that he basically tells her to shove off because she's stopped fighting and has given up hope. That's the soldier we all know and love, and the fact that he still cares about her will make things interesting when she has to die. There's a way that shows are set up, a way that fiction works, and when I was watching them being all lovey, all I could think was that she's gonna be offed. Probably in a way that traumatizes him more then anything else, and he's already constantly having flashbacks, and, as we learned this ep, at least one attempt at suicide.

We also learn that Sarah's dad was a soldier with post-traumatic stress syndrome who never had a way to deal with it, which probably softens her to the idea of going to the psychologist as a patient. We learn that John's scared and paranoid and thinks that's okay, and that to the outside world, that looks like PTSS, too. And Cameron looks like Asperger's. She keeps watching and noting things, taking significant notice of suicide facts and broken chips and such, but we aren't getting much of her the last few eps, and it feels like she's being underused. John's even gone all prickly toward her, and I think she gets more airtime when he's thinking of being in love with her and defending her from others. Anyway, she plot is thickening and these reaction articles are getting longer, and I like that alot.



So, what's been going on in the world of everyone's lamest heroes? Let's see. Syler seems to actually want to get better and stop eating brains. Maybe it's the cholesterol. Parkman made it back from Africa with his tutle totem and met Daphne just as she was meeting him on her recruitment mission, and managed to freak her out. And tries to get her to go AWOL and help him form the anti-Pinehearst. Hiro is not a murderer, but the baddies think he is, and he goes after the Painter in Africa, who teaches him a lesson about relying too much on his powers. And then say that they need to take him to where they were going to take him anyway. Papa Pet is alive and well thanks to stealing some cute English life force-- and by some I mean all, because all that's left is dust. Peter goes around busting shit up again, and gets into a fight with Syler that ends with Syler sedated-- after he's the one who freed Peter. That seems to happen alot this season. Claire commits suicide to get the blonde squad free from the Puppeteer, and Noah tries to recruit Meredyth to help him, now that he's decided to off Syler. Mohinder is more and more a mad scientist, which makes him more interesting-- and the fact that he considers himself misunderstood makes it all the better. Daphne knows he's gone monstery, and he's captured Tracy and Nathan to use for his experiments. And Pinehearst wants him.

Still alot going on. They're really working the idea of villains, with the good guys turning bad and the bad guys turning good and everyone walking around in this gray area that never ends or makes all that much sense. I'm stuck in gray, too. I still enjoy this show when I'm actually watching it, but I didn't really want to catch up on it beforehand, and I don't really want to do so afterward... It's so... joyless. Very few of them have any concept of how cool it is to have powers, and the plot doesn't do much to make us care or enjoy it. Doom itself doesn't necessarrily make a show dark; Buffy managed to laugh at Doom for seven years. Nine? Almost a decade, anyway. That's what Heroes is missing.



tues: fringe
An illness that makes heads explode. Or, more specifically, an illegal experimental treatment for an illness that when modified by something involving hyacynths, causes the head asplody. The team is called in after a girl manages to nuke everyone in a diner after being dumped out of a moving van by two thugs in hasmat suits. The trail leads them to another victim, a nervous husband, a suicidal doctor who's been giving illegal test treatments on the side of actual treatments, and to the head of a major pharmaceutical firm who considers himself untouchable.

This was a good one, guys. The pacing was right, the medical weirdness stayed in the middle of the story instead of getting pushed off by too many ideas to make sense, and the ticking clock of the missing woman gave it an edge that otherwise would have left them all without any reason to act rashly. And there was much rashness. Liv went undercover without permission or orders to scope out the baddie, then busted him very publicly and involved the press on info that Peter got from Ms Sharp over at Massive Dynamics. Walter solved a problem he hadn't worked on previously two decades before and the fictioned science made sense within the context of the show.

And there was character development. Liv has a stepdad that she almost killed as a kid who's been torturing her mentally on her birthday for twenty years, who looks like he'llbe coming into the picture soon. She made the decision to go with her gut and her emotions, and that's gotten her some kind of punishment that we don't know about yet, other then the factoid that someone informed on her when she went off record and now Broyles is not happy with her, and presumably, whoever he works for is similarly unhappy. Meanwhile, Walter almost remembered Astrid's name-- called her Astrix, which amuses me-- and was weird without being too crazy, which is where he works best. And Peter sold his soul to the interests of Massive Dynamics in the name of his already life-endangering lurve of Liv. There was much eye contact and speaking into eachother's personal space, and in tv code, that means they lurve eachother.

Incidentally, watching these shows on Hulu is making me really want the HP Touchsmart.



weds: pushing daisies
This week brings us Emerson Cod's inexplicably white mom, who also happens to be his only friend and his mentor who taught him all he knows of detective work. She doesn't know that he has a kid, or that she was kidnapped as a baby.

And the case at hand is a man killed by some sharp object, who happened to have been a professional friend-- a sort of escort for friends, rather than hookers. He was leaving the job so he could marry the receptionist, overly-perky Barb, because fraternization was strictly against policy, and he was killed because the boss couldn't handle the idea that his friends were just employees, even though he started the business to allow his employees to be friends to everyone.

Along the way, we meet David Arquette being another in a long line of strange people: a lonely little guy who's hobby happens to be taxidermy... and then posing said taxidermy creations in little dioramas. With Olive and Chuck spending so much time together and being best friends, Ned wants a friend of his own, and he gets a little freaked when he finds out what that hobby is, and does what everyone does, which is to be creeped out. But as this is a fairytale world full of weird people, Ned sees the error of his ways and apologises, and they get all the clients who hired friends together to meet eachother and make real friends. Olive and Chuck face eachother's lies and secrets and have a fight, which makes Chuck want to move back in with Ned, and he decides he needs to learn to be alone and stop being so codependent and clingy, which means Chuck and Olive have to really try to be room mates, and it's a relief, because it was getting a bit much for me, everyone being unhappy all the time. Plus, Emerson's mom learns to be a mom instead of a pal and gives him tips on his book so he can accomplish his goal of finding his daughter.

Hopefully, we'll see Taxidermy Boy again, because David Arquette is always fun. And with Olive actively facing the fact that Ned loves Chuck, maybe the sweet salesman will come back, and she can be happy with him.


thurs, friday and saturday still to come! At least I'm consistently behind, right?