true blood: s02 e11

So, we meet the Queen, and... I am underwhelmed. She's interesting, but she seems too light and entirely unthreatening to hold power over anyone, and she seems to have stalled out somewhere between the twenties and the fifties. And she's kinky, but in a way that's somewhere between cute and boring, rather than in a way that would seem provocative.

And she's as messy an eater as any of the others. Really, you'd think centuries upon centuries would teach you to eat cleanly.

Anyway, this ep was wheel-spinning-tastic. Everyone's waiting for something, and nothing can happen yet because it isn't the end of the season yet, so we get the following:

- Sam, Andy and Jason are holed up in the bar, waiting to see what happens next, which leads to Andy and Jason going to get weapons from the police station, and Sam taking care of Arlene's kids, and they seem to be the only kids in town (I'd wondered what happened to them; apparently they've been hiding off-screen for three days while everything goes down). They go looking for help, and wind up at Fantasia, talking to Eric, who's lounging fabulously nonchalantly in a silver suit, with Pam, who's pissed that the maenad ruined her shoes way back at the beginning of the season, hates kids, is aggravated by Eric's interest in Sookie, and is wearing too much makeup.

ps: Eric referring to kids as miniature humans and "teacup humans" was about the best part of this episode.

Eric goes to talk to the Queen, but arrives just as Bill is finally leaving, and there's some threatening between them, and it's all very alpha-male.

- Maryanne finds out that Sam got away and is pissed, and then doesn't really do anything right away.

- Bill is in the Queen's Day Room, which is set up to look like a beach during the day, and he's champing at the bit, but she's tottering around playing Yahtzee and not sharing her information, but there's no indication of what she could do to Bill if he decided to just up and leave. Very little tention in those scenes at all. But we do meet Sookie's cousin, who was mentioned once in the first season as having disappeared, and who doesn't know that Gran's dead.

- Hoyt is pissed that Jessica bit his mom, and drags mom off, which leaves Jessical dangerously unstable, it seems. Back at mama's house, though, she's being so horrible that Hoyt doesn't know what to do with her-- she tells him his dad killed himself, that he was as bad husband, and that she always wanted to go out and just get drunk or go home with someone like anyone else can, but she was always stuck taking care of him. This does not bode well for Hoyt, and I'll be terribly distressed if he doesn't make up with Jessica. We need at least one working relationship in this town.

- Tara's a horrible manipulative bitch to her mother, preying on her god-fearing and devil-fearing, and talks her into letting her go, so Lettie Mae holds LaFayette hostage with the gun, which sets off his stress disorder, and we get the second-best scene in the episode, which was Eric wearing Lettie Mae's going-to-church outfit, bracelets and all. So Tara goes right back into Maryanne's hands on behalf of Eggs, who is an idiot.

- Sookie and LaFayette talk a little about being tricked into being bonded to Eric, which is fun, before the crap with Tara goes down, then they break away and get to Sookie's house, where Sookie is horrified at what she sees. She negotiates various house-of-horror moments, makes it up to Gran's room, and finds Tara The Horrible and Eggs The Annoying smashing up Gran's things and building a nest on the bed around an egg about the size of an ostritch egg, and who know's what's up with that.

- LaFayette, who had gone to distract Terry and Arlene with drugs comes up behind her and he's gone all blackeyed, and we get an episode ending on Sookie's scream, which we haven't had since the first few eps of the first season.

So not the best of eps, but not really all that bad-- just sort of "get on with it already!"-ish. Remember how I said the pacing is weird? It's like they didn't really have enough story to fill this episode, so we got a whole ep of people waiting around for the plot to pick back up, and it won't do that till the next episode. And the coming-together of the two storylines feels a little... sloppy. Sookie went on over to her house after promising she wouldn't, catching Tara didn't really do much, since it was like the third chapter of a Doctor Who serial up in this place and she just got captured again, Maryanne was wandering around not really doing much... So yeah. All we really learned is that she has to think she's called up the God, finally, and that it's devouring her so that she's actually killable. Did we need a whole episode for that?

So here's to hoping the new ep makes sense.

true blood: s02 e10 new world in my view

Soon, this season will be done, and I'm starting to miss it already. Also, I think they took too long to get to this point, but it's getting exciting enough that I can deal with it-- I just wish they'd split it up better between dallas and home so that this ending part had as much attention given to it as the beginning part.

The episode starts moments after the end of the last one; Sookie is in that cute little gingham dress, walking down the hall, though H noted that she'd taken the time to straight-iron her hair. She goes into a room, and finds Eric, covered in blood-tears, devistated by the loss of Godric, and comforts him by kissing his cheeks (in much the way a fish might), which he takes as an invitation, and then they start making out (where he's trying hard to sell it and she's sort of bumping into him with her mouth). Out come the fangs, and she touches them, then offers her neck--

--and wakes up in the car, moments from home, with Bill in a coffin in the back. And then I feel bad for Bill, because he doesn't even know what's going on, and his love scenes with her are more convincing (which I'd be willing to bet are so because she's actually dating him in real life and is uncomfortable making out with anyone else, even on screen; though I think Eric is hotter, and I wish those scenes were better).

So anyway, they're finally coming home, and they find the whole town trashed, graffittied, full of lunatics screaming about the coming god and how they have to find Sam, and they go home and find it completely transformed, which really should have pissed Sookie off more. Seriously. This is, like, four days after her grandma died and she goes away for a minute and comes back to this? Why isn't she raging mad? And the mess includes a massive man made out of meat and plants and dead things, and she's not ready to light things on fire with her mind? Maryann is there, and she tells Sookie it's her house now, and when she tries to attack Sook, our little telepath reads her mind and finds out that she's the monster that attacked her in the woods and killed all those people. Convenient, that. Not having to figure stuff out or anything. But then she gets all glowy in the hand and bran-zaps Maryann, which amuses and confuses her more than it stops her. And somewhere in here, Bill jumps and drains Maryann, but it's horrible black blood and it makes him foam at the mouth and vomit, and she actually kind of likes it. And then there's several scenes of Bill vomiting profusely as they head over to LaFayette's to help with the tied-up and posessed Tara.

Meanwhile, Sam and Andy are trying to figure out what to do when they get a call from Arlene begging for help at the bar-- and Sam's dumb enough to let his soft little heart lead him there, where he gets jumped and locks himself in the freezer. Everyone tires to get them out, but Terry realizes that he can't go anywhere, so it's mission accomplished, and sends readheaded drunk lady to call Maryann, but she gets distracted along the way. So Maryanne doesn't know that they've cornered him. I'm still tired of this mess with the orgies and the black eyes and such, but I really love that Terry gets to be strong and leader-like; he's the most reasonable of the people taken over, and that's a nice switch from him being the least reasonable of the normals.

Sookie and Bill arrive at LaFayette's and try to get Tara to come back to herself; her mother's praying helps a little, but it takes Sookie and Bill double-whammying her with glamour and telepathy to get through the wall Maryann put up, and she remembers all the crazy shit that she did, and wakes up. I'm assuming that Maryann's power works by getting people to do this stuff and not letting them remember so that they won't fight back. So Tara's back, but now they know what they're up against.

Jason arrives at the bar and quickly ruins a chainsaw, which is probably his best weapon, and uses a nailgun to hold Arlene hostage, which gets Terry to call everyone off, and he gets the boys out of the fridge... and then they all get jumped again. This time, Sam gives himself over in hopes that letting them have him will save the town (thought I doubt that), and they drag him out to tie him to a car in the parking lot and prep him for sacrifice-- or maybe sacrifice him on the spot without Maryann. He's saved when the god they're calling arrives... in the form of Jason Stackhouse in a gas mask with a police light behind him and a flare in each hand. They're all messed up enough to belive it's him, and when Sam asks them to smite him, and he obligingly goes 'I smite you!' and Sam collapses into a pile of clothes, well, that's a pretty neat way out. And it works. Everyone leaves. Which comfuses Jason and Andy, but there's no time to explain, and we get to see Sam's butt. Hee.

Bill figures out what Maryann is and what she's doing because of that book he was reading in the twenties (which is why that scene was there), but he doesn't know what to do to stop her. He might know someone who can, though, and he goes to find that someone, leaving Sookie with Tara and making her promise to stay clear of her house. Which I'm sure she'll totally keep. In the next scene, Bill's at a placial estate, which was apparently not that far from Bon Temps, and he gets in to see the Queen, and all we see is a bare foot with blood dripping down. She's probably just eating messily or something, but it'd be awesome if someone offed her and the vampire politics are worse than we thought. Probably not, though, as the casting is already known, and it's not a nobody. ::sigh::

Oh! And meanwhile, Hoyt and Jessica have been trying to contain Hoyt's mom, and she's as messed up as the rest of the town, with her hair all big and spewing all kinds of viscious hate, which makes Jessica more and more mad-- until she attacks Mama Fortenberry. Which will be interesting for Hoyt next episode, I'm sure.

But see what I mean? This all happens back to back to back, practically all at once, and it would have been nice if they'd come home a few episodes earlier and this could be spread out some. We could have done without some of Stan's posturing, and without as much Lorena, and we didn't really need all those flashbacks, now did we? And soon the season will be over, and I'll have to wait until next year to see more Eric, and so see how that gets resovled, because I like Bill and I want the resolution to be fair to all three of them. Also: How are they going to defeat a god? And how are they going to beat that next season?

true blood: s02 e08 i will rise up

The episode opens right when Bill is telling Lorena to bug off, and Luke is about to hit the trigger-- and goes immediately into the explosion, then it's aftermath without even a little lingering on the blowing up, which seems out of character with the show's love of lingering carnage. Maybe there just wasn't space.

So Bill busts in and finds that Sookie's mostly fine because Eric jumped in front of her and then fell on top of her, and goes to beat up the Soldiers who are lingering outside long enough to go 'oh shit' and then flee-- and he sends them back with the message to remember that the vamps could have killed them all and instead let them live. Meanwhile, Eric's dying, and he has Sookie suck the bullets out, and Sookie's dumb enough to do it. It's like a scene from some hentai: "Oh, my shoulder! Oh, there's one in my chest!" I totally expected "Oh, there's one a little lower...". Maybe Bill just came back before that point. And pointed out that Eric was a liar, and now Sookie's swallowed some of his blood, and now Bill's sharing space in her head with Eric, who is taller and older and stronger, and not nearly as much as a poor divided sap. Poor poor Bill. Where did all your spark go? Did you leave it at home when you went to Dallas?

Sookie has the decency to be grossed out, and Bill carefully explains that she'll always be tied to him, he'll always be able to feel her (which she realizes means he'll always know where she is and what she's doing), and that she shouldn't be surprised if she starts feeling attracted to Eric, because that's one of the side effects. They didn't make that leap, but his face sort of looked like he didn't want to tell her that part, which I'm assuming was because it was Eric, but I'm going to say it's because he knows that the implication is that she fell in love with him because she'd had his blood, and he knew that Eric's blood was stronger.

Then Sookie has really realistic sex dreams where she's laying in bed with Eric, and he's holding her hand trying to convince her she'd make a great vamp, and they're both naked and his hair is tousseled and he's smiling and she doesn't think he's scary at all. And Lorena keeps interupting and pointing out that she's already forgotten about Bill. She wakes up and goes to where Jason's staying, and they have a much-needed talk where they agree to grow up and be good to eachother because they're all they have left.

While all this is going on, Godric's getting everyone back to the hotel, to safety, and getting in trouble with Nan Flanders, who is a raging bitch with slicked-back hair and black clothes when she's not on TV. Godric feels responsible for everything that happened, and when Nan makes him not!Sheriff, he steps down gracefully and appoints Isabelle as his replacement. Which Eric doesn't like at all, and he demands that Godric fight back, as does Isabelle, and he won't-- he has ammends to make.

Sookie tells Bill she has to go see what's up, and won't let him go with her because it's almost dawn, and I'm going to assume she has some idea of what Godric's got planned. Bill's back in that stupid bathrobe, and lets her go, but his dallas-wimpiness is almost mitigated by the look of amazed love on his face as he realizes that she feels obligated because she has a good heart. So she's up on the roof just in time to see Eric begging Godric to go back inside, and then demanding, and then saying he'll Meet the Sun with him, and Godric saying that 2000 years is enough and he won't go back inside and Eric doesn't have the ability to make him, but he does have the ability to be sure Eric won't stay. Which he does, lovingly and tenderly, while Eric is on his knees, crying, and it's all pretty intense. His voice goes all squeeky and he stops speaking in English, and he begs, and-- wow. I'm sure he's going to be extra tough from now on, to make up for being seen crying and for losing his maker. Which happens right after Eric leaves. Sookie stays, and is afraid for Godric, and stays with him the whole time so he doesn't have to be alone. And he evaporates. Much faster than Bill did, so maybe there's a drying out that happens with age, if not a purification.

And that's the close.

Then, there's the story back in Bon Temps where Jessica and Hoyt are talking about what they'll do now that she's forever virginal, and they decide to deal with it. She's sure there must be something that can be done, because she can't have been the only virgin turned, and he says he'll go along with whatever she thinks is right. He won't let anything get in their way, and he wants her to meet his mom. But it's almost Dawn, and she has to sleep, and since he can't go with her, he sings to her so she knows he's still there.

I love these two.

Later, he tells his mom that he wants her to meet Jessica, and if she's not nice to her, he'll leave and never come back-- but being scared only makes his mom worse, and he confronts her with all the horrible things she's said and done and asks why she's so full of hate. She doesn't have a decent answer. But she does go to dinner with them, even though everything Jessica says gets a glare, and eventually they get into a fight where she points out that Jessica can't ever give him babies-- and Jessica runs out and Hoyt says he's never coming back, which leads his mother to drinking.

Meanwhile, in the other half of the story that I'm more than done with, Tara and Eggs wake up all bruised and again can't remember anything. Tara's getting really freaked and tired of blacking out, and Maryanne gets pissed that she won't just accept the gift of letting go and merging with diety.

Everyone's been getting arrested and thrown in jail for weird little misdemeanors, and they're all getting stranger and more wild the more they throw in that cell, but they've kept Sam separate, and when Maryanne comes looking for him, he becomes a fly and buggers off. This makes Maryanne even more pissed, and she goes to the bar looking for him, bringing the wind and the god!voice with her, and demand to know where Sam is, but no one knows. So she goes home and plays tequila-strip-poker with Tara and Eggs. Until LaFayette and Lettie Mae show up, trying to stage an intervention (earlier, LaFayette saw her bruises and assumed (rightly, but in the wrong context) that Eggs was to blame and they had a big ol' fight), and things go downhill. Maryanne tries to tempt Lettie Mae with vodka, while drunk!Tara is a bitch, but Lettie holds out and LaFayette takes over, and then there's fighting ::sigh:: But eventually, LaFayette just picks up Tara, creepy black eyes and all, and throws her in the car, and they make a getaway.

I'm so ready for this crap to be over.

But this part did have a very sweet scene where Terry's not looking at Arlene, and she starts crying and asks him to not be mad at her, and he says he isn't, and is happy at the idea that they had sex because it's been so long he doesn't remember the last time he did. And then they're both happy, even though neither remembers what happened, and they're about to kiss when some crazy woman demands her food and ruins it. The townsfolk are awful right now, and I can't wait until everyone gets back in one story and it gets sorted out. But I'm glad Terry gets to smile and be sweet. Even if this is like a different, suckier show without Sookie and Bill involved.

There's only a few more episodes, and it's looking pretty intense!

true blood: s01

Don't know what you've done to me, but before this night is through... I'm gonna do bad things to you...

Man, no kidding. I watched the first few episodes as they came out until I couldn't get ahold of them any more, and recently, with the return for season two, H got all of them and I devoured them in slightly less than a day. And all together like that, it really sucks up your brain. And so much happened in those twelve little episodes.

Here's the basic impression: goofy at the beginning mixed with alot of pornyness and some sweet will-they-won't-they while punctuated with alot of blood. Alot of blood, all the time, in good and bad places (vampires are really messy eaters here, and even messier die-ers), and alot of sudden violence. I mean, Sookie's beaten almost to death right off the bat. Then it gets sexier and tenser, and weirder and even more violent and involved, and it ends really crazy.

I love Sam and feel horrible for him, since he can't seem to win, and I want to know what's up with Maryanne (who I knew was trouble as soon as Ensign Ro walked on screen-- it's like seeing John Delancy show up: nothing but trouble), and his past! How horrible.

Tara's life keeps falling apart by degrees, and I'm waiting for the other show to fall now that she's mixed up with whatever's going on with the afore-mentioned Maryanne. I was hoping she'd get to figure something out with sam and get some sort of human interaction going, but maybe that'll come after that other shoe... or maybe not at all, since they just introduced Eggs (though it annoys me that he's black-- why do the black characters have to wind up with other black characters? I liked her with Sam partly because inter-racial relationships that work are still not that common).

Bill's got a psychopathic little vamp-baby to deal with just as vampire-marriage becomes legal, and that aught to make things interesting. And she's fun, wild in every way that he isn't. Poor Bill, he's kind of a stick in the mud when it comes to being a vampire. And her existence is a thorn in his side, since he Made her against his will as a punishment he doesn't think he should have had... That had better continue.

LaFayette. Oh poor, poor, crazy, entirely amoral LaFayette. Looks like you're donefore. Apparently in the books, he wasn't even a character, just a body in a car, so maybe that's why he wound up like that. But we'll see, won't we?

And Jason never got any smarter, though it looked for a minute like he might, and now he's going to an extremist church, which will probably be more annoying than him boinking everyone in sight. But I was glad to see how happy he was to see Sookie after all the Crazy at the end. Speaking of, I was scared it was going to be Jesse, since they keep making him so strange in between all the sweetness, and I'm glad it wasn't him-- though I'm sad it was Renee.

So what does the new series hold? I can't wait to find out.

Weekly Roundup 4 - Sept 28 to Oct 4

sun: true blood
Okay, so one thing true blood has going for it is weirdness. Jason's accused of murder for the second time in four episodes, and when he's in cuffs in the back of the cop car, he downs that v-juice he got last ep. Tara gets him out by lying directly to the cops saying she's Jason's alliby, which complicates things because she was with Sam that night. And all the v-juice goes right to J's little man, and he gets a case of 'accute priapism' which is both funny and gross. We never get to see it, but with the looks on everyone's faces, including the doctor, I think it's better that way-- imagination is way stronger than reality sometimes. Meanwhile, Gram asks Sookie to listen in on people's brains, and everyone just wants to see her brother hang and knows nothing-- except Hoit, who's probably the sweetest one on the show-- so she decides to go check out this vampire bar both the dead girls were known to visit.

Now, this bar-- Fangtasia, which is so cheesy it's great-- is something like the way puritanical churchies think goth clubs are, except the vamps are real. And it was less scary then I thought it should be the way everyone's going on about it. Kinda like the vamp-gang from last ep. There's a fine line between stupid and cool when you're being a vamp, and most of those we've seen are like people playing dressup. Bill's got that Angel I-feel-bad-for-killing-people thing, and then there's Eric, who sits like a king and has the Curse of Eternal Coolness. Watch him walk through that door and see if he isn't neat. Though, it's better if he doesn't talk.
Anyway, the bar scene was a letdown, but it's made up for with Bill freaking out a county sheriff that pulls him and Sookie over on the way back. Finally a little vampire mojo! Though I do feel a little bad for the guy.

And then, just in case the weirdness wasn't at a high enough level, Sam breaks into deadgirl's house and starts sniffing all over the bed where she was found, rolling around in the smell of her-- just like a dog. Yup, I'm sure there's something going on with that boy now.
I don't think this episodes was as enthralling as the previous three, but this is the point when a show has to actually get itself into a plot, so that's okay. Story happened. Let's see what happens next week.



mon: sarah connor, heroes
Cameron's acting really weird now, reverting to previous versions of herself and apparently confusing herself for the real human she was based on. It makes cam really really creepy as well as more unstable than before, and it makes her history more convoluted-- she was 'chosen' by John in the future, probably because she already knew him in his past. We already sort of knew that he chose her to reprogram because he already knew her-- but if he already knew T-Cam, and then chose Real!Cam for whatever reason, and then remade T-Cam because of that... Time travel implications mess with my head. There's alot going on with Cameron and John, in the current time and in the future, and if there's romantic feelings on one side or the other, and if John remembers all this stuff already...

It must really suck to be the one who has to organize all the time-travel that will result in the life you already have.

Anyway, the episode was neat, no explosions, but lots of new pieces of the puzzle, with John doing things on his own and Dereck nowhere to be seen. In subplot-land, Ellis takes the job with Terminator!CEO, who has a daughter (huh? can Terminators have babies now? Is she also based on a real person? Is the daughter a clone or something?), and a crash that left her without a husband and with a driving need to find the stuff that will be Skynet. (More questions: Does she not know that she's the same as the robots, even though she obviously has full control of shape-shifting? Was her husband another posing terminator, and it's his arm that was in those pictures, or is she doing the play-human bit to get to whoever that husband was? Was she the 'mechanical error'? Is Ellis to blame for Skynet happening anyway, now that previous blame-ees have been stopped? Why's it always gotta be a black man? I'm sure there's a paper in there somewhere...) And Casey went into false labor and had some bonding time with Sarah, which is interesting because she's really the first mother Sarah's had any real interaction with that we've seen, and she's so very very normal. But I still think there must be something special about that baby they keep making up stories for.



This week's Heroes still has too much going on, but it might be okay if they can pull it all together... though their track record on that is not so great. Anyway, Parkman may not be a useless lump after all, Tracy is apparently part of a Samantha Mulder-esque clone batch (so I guess she can die hundreds of times and not leave the show) and Micah took her appearance remarkably well, future!Peter is trying to clean up his messes, Mama Pet is kinda creepy and acting like an incestuous cougar, Syler's having little crises of the existential variety while using his new job to nomnom more powers, HRG is plotting and planning, Hiro is still fumbling stuff and Ando is 'tired of being your sidekick' which doesn't bode well in light of the flash-forward, Claire is going all freelance and we know how that turns out... so yeah. Alot going on. But at least we didn't have to waste time on Mohinder-Fly and Now-Wimpy-Maya. I don't know. Always when I'm watching this show, I feel like it's making sense and being entertaining, but then when I talk about it later, it really doesn't and kind of isn't, but it feels like they're actually trying to make it work. I think they need to stop introducing new characters, though, because, I mean, the German was not so great, and Jesse is now nom-ed, and Baldy McFlame-On is back in jail with Knox the Angry, and that's four of the twelve down, and we haven't even met the other eight yet. Introduce and toss away. We've already got more than we can follow, guys.



tues: fringe
Fringe was on fire tonight. The plot was tight and made sense, the characters were true to themselves, there was a good mystery, and there were good questions raised. Peter has reached a believeable point where he isn't going to go off the handle and leave, and there's a new player in this game: the Observer... who almost seems like he isn't quite human. We get to hear a little more about this weird medical history of Peter's-- a terrible accident when he was a kid, which doesn't rule out weirder things, and, in fact, gives an opportunity for them. And there's a weird connection between Walter and the observer that I hope they get back to.
See, this is what the show promised it could be when I watched the pilot. Tight, sharp, strange. Good characters with lots of issues they have to work through. Lots of back story we don't know and have to explore. Show mythos that feels right, rather than tacked on and nonsensical. I can see how that same mythos can drown it-- it happened to X-Files, and it's happening to Lost-- but at this point, four eps in, I can also see how it can expand and enrich the show and make it like this all the time. Episodes 2 and 3 were good, but this one was great. And this is how I want it to always be.



wed: daisies
Pushing Daisies is back! And what a fun weird episode. Chuck gets a job! Olive moves away to a nunnery! Chuck moves into Olive's house! The aunts go outside of their own accord and without thinking about it!

It starts off months after the previous season left off, which makes me hate the strike even more, because it feels like I was cheated of watching fun stories that happened in the meantime. There was a bee-related death, which means only Chuck has the experience needed to go undercover. The design of the Betty Bee company makes me want to live in a bee hive and / or hire everyone who does the set design for this show to build a house for me. Missy Pyle was fun and weird, and delivered those introductory speeches just amazingly, and French Stewart was silly in a way just disturbing enough to be a villain. But it wasn't really the story that was great so much as everyone's interactions, and now that Olive's gone, I wonder if we'll get a new kooky waitress? I wonder if Chuck will keep her honey-soaked new job? And I hope the Aunts have more to do with the lovely saturated-color world they all live in.



thurs: supernatural, knightrider
Oh my, how the Winchester boys manage to get in trouble. Castiel sends Dean back in time to the moment when the curse happened-- and found out his family was not the way he thought it was, and there was no way to change it. He still has no mom, the Demon still kills everyone, but he gets to meet his grandpa Asistant Director Skinner, which is where his grumpy skeptic strak comes from. You know, this is a very fatalistic show-- they all fave a destiny, and even angels can't change it.

Anyway, the whole point was to show him exactly how it happened so that he can stop whatever the End Game is-- whatever Sam is off with demons doing. And if Dean can't stop it, Heaven will. While it might be interesting to see someone Struck Down, there's still most of a season to go, and leaving only one brother will really change the dynamic.

Of course, this is a two parter, which means I have no idea what happens and I have to scratch at my eyeballs for a week waiting for the conclusion, but it's the sort of captivating that means I will tune in again, so I guess they accomplished their goal. I wonder if anyone will point out that Dean being there is what introduced his mom to the family demon-- before his foreknowledge of events in the early seventies, the Campbell hunter clan wouldn't have gone to see Liddy, and so wouldn't have met Azazael (who was in Hex on the Beeb, wasn't he?), and the family wouldn't have been cursed. But, also, if fate is decided and nothing can be changed, he was already there anyway, and the loop in his timeline is unchangable, and his being there was because that's where he was meant to be, not because he was sent there. Ah, temporal paradox. If I ever write that paper on the subject, I have more fodder.



Before I tell you about Knight Rider, let me just say: Coolest. Interface. Evar. I want my computer to be as cool as the ones they use. And if I can flick a screen from a handheld to the hood of a car, all the better. Also, Kitt has a built in printer AND a matter replicator??? Why do I not have a car like this?

Anyway, it was bound to happen: a show about cars decides to do racing for pinks. And there's the prerequisite bony hot chick. See, I'm a girl, and I'm not all that into cars, but I am into computers, and things that go fast are always an easy way to bypass the ovaries, so this was fun. Exciting. There's racing, there's explosions, there's grand theft auto! It's great that badguys are lousy shots, too, because they would have trashed that cherry ride Sarah has gone through all the trouble to jack.

More racing! And the inevitable betrayal of someone we've never seen before who's introduced as a most-trusted old friend. It's not every day you see a girl get pistol-whipped, but what pisses me off is that she stopped fighting after that-- until it was time to kick someone to stop them from burrying her in the desert up to her neck. The one Chang Brother kept getting punched in the face, and the other kept being coldly angry, and that's about all they had. Oh, and they were selling classified tech to the Chinese or something. Blah blah blah explosions!

And in subplot news, Michael's tattoo somehow was read by Kitt's hood-screen and made a bunch of files pop up that they didn't have time to read before the baddies came. What happened in those Captain-Jack-esque missing years?


fri: sanctuary
Sanctuary is cool. A little slow and talky, but it makes up for it with the action. Even knowing that all the backgrounds are CGI and greenscreen, it's gorgeous, and the story moves at a nice pace. Helen Magnus is way different than Sam Carter, and that helps get past that issue, and as Helen, she gets to be all soft and pretty in a way Carter never really could be. Will Zimmerman is only passingly like Daniel Jackson. And the Sanctuary itself is full of fun and freaky monsters and mythical people. I especially liked the design of the mermaid, with her scaly body and sea-weed hair. It's one part zoo, one part embassy, and one part Torchwood Hub, all of which is fine by me.

But the best is that there's a lot of room for the show to grow. It's set up as a monster of the week show, with the twist that they're saving the monsters to better understand them and help them survive in a modern world. That pretty much allows them to do whatever they like along the way. And Helen is a big ball of mysteries that I think will only get more tangled as the show progresses. The pilot only barely touched on her past and how the Sanctuary happened-- apparently by the 1880s, she was already special and knew enough about her specialness that she was helping strange people, and I'm assuming that that was the start of the Sanctuary. And there's hints that the baddie of the week isn't the only one, and that she may actually be one of them.

All in all, a good start. Atmospheric, fun, full of action and distinct, fun characters as well as really cool weird people, and enough mystery already to keep me interested, even if it was a bit talky and the 'sets' were a bit... cold? That's kind of the fallback of anything fully CGI, though, so I can get over that. Here's to hoping it only gets better.