fringe: s02 eo1

I got very excited a few days ago when I realized just how close this show was to returning, and I'm so glad I wasn't let down. The real review is over on Examiner (along with Bones, which is going to be tracked on the non-SF Tv Blog), so here I'll just give highly personal opinions and reactions, and we'll leave the proper synopses for next week.

- You know, for an actor who claims he sees the characters as a broken family, Joshua Jackson sure doesn't play Peter as if he sees Olivia as a sister. Brother don't cup your face in their hands so much, or look like they need to confess secrets in quite that way when they think you're about to die. And Rachel said 'she liked you, you know' and it looked like he wanted to die, too. And then he got drunk at a bar, and that's TV short hand for 'I love you'. Watch enough shows and you'll see it. I am all for them holding off so it makes sense and letting it grow naturally, but I have two issues here. 1) I don't see the point in denying something that looks pretty encouraging on screen, I never did, and if they want to avoid X-Files's pitfalls, they need to not avoid something that's there for too long, and 2) I don't see why people can't just be in love on TV-- I mean, in a family drama, maybe not, but in this show, there's plenty enough else going on, and it would be awesome to see someone fall in love and get married and just be married as part of their character. It worked for Zoe and Wash on Firefly. It almost worked for John and Aeryn on Farscape. It could work here. Just another detail like that Peter has a shady past and Olivia is probably a mutant.

- What happened to Rachel? She was in the hall when Peter went to say goodbye, and then she was never seen again.

- Broyles and Nina Sharp? I'm snot surprised, but I haven't wuite decided whether I'm totally squicked out or not yet. I think it'll depend on how that's played: if it's weird and manipulative, then I think I won't like it, or I'll root for Broyles to get rid of her or something, like you're supposed to do with a villain, but if it's sweet and mutual, then it's kind of tragic, since they seem to be on opposite sides at least part of the time. And I kind of thought she was involved with Bell? Maybe it's a polyamorous power struggle.

- Olivia can't remember anything but pieces, which I'm sure will come back in slivers that are convenient along the way, replacing her ghost boyfriend with latent memories and surfacing powers. Hm. But it goves alot of frama and urgency to the season, and that's a good way to start out: right in the thick of things.

- New agent Jessup was introduced like she was going to replace Olivia, which I thought was strange since the comercials showed us that Liv would wake up (and by the way, Fox, drama works better if your comercial doesn't give it away), so I found that strange-- until the end when Charlie's been monsterized and tossed in a furnace. That really got me. He's so normal and hard working and sturdy... and now he's replaced and out to get Olivia and probably everyone around her. Which is horrible for his loving marriage and his adoring fans, but really great for the pathos of the show. Liv's best friend in the agency has been replaced! What will happen when tehy find out! Will she have to kill him herself!? (probably)

- You know, for something 'above top secret', Jessup got ahold of the access code pretty easily off-screen, and then Peter just let her waltz in and start helping on the autopsy...

- Walter's obsessed with Peter's childhood all of a sudden, and some of those memories of Peter's early life have got to be about the other!Peter rahter than being just wrong, and if that isn't a ticking time bomb, then I don't know what is. Peter's only just starting to trust Walter again, only just starting to take charge and function as part of the team, and it'll be rough when he learns that he isn't who he thinks he is.

- Why did Liv say that Greek phrase that Peter's mom used to say? It'll probably be important later on, and it probably will have seventeen web pages devoted to it by now. And is she dead, or just extranged? If she's dead, maybe Liv can talk to ghosts as well as being able to affect things With Her Mind. Wouldn't it be a nice thickening of this plot if she's dead because of something that happened from Walter's experiments, which Peter also didn't know? And does / did she know about Peter?

- At the end there, that was awesome. Peter basically held the whole of the oversight board hostage with that one piece of broken trans-dimensional tech. I like hard-ass!Peter, and I hope we see more of him.

- Astrid is still great-- she takes everything in stride and totally knows how to handle Walter's weirdness.

A great start to the season, and it feels like it's found it's legs, which is a good season ahead of X-Files, of which it referenced twice, one of which seemed to indicate that they're sort of picking up where the X-files left off all those years ago. It did exactly what a season premier should do: get me ready to obsess over the rest of the season.

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.

the colony: episode 9

This week, John V finally gets to do something.

We're up past day 30, and the Colonists have been at this for more than a month.It's beyond real to them; they've accepted this world entirely. But food is running very low, water is very low, morale is starting to get dangerously low. They go out to collect water, maybe some fish, and while they're there, a group of religious pilgrims or missionaries comes up the opposite way and asks if they have anything to spare; they say they don't, and the missionaries are fine with that, but John V, who came in with the strongest faith of the group, feels bad just turning them away, and gives them his own personal water. Before they all go their separate ways, a lady comes back and gives him a tin of vienna sausages, and that sets off a religious revival for him.

Later, when two travelers come asking for water, the Colony almost turns them away-- Joey tries to and Mike is all up in arms (and when is he not, really)-- but John V insists, and the girls go along and John C thinks everyone is basically good, and so they give the water and the sausages.

I see where the two are claiming it's a security issue and a survival issue, but they're supposed to be rebuilding society, and I think maybe they should be letting anyone in who can contribute and won't cause more strife than they already have, and it's nice to see someone being generous and helpful for once. We're hoping they get some sort of reward for this, like maybe those two come back and bring them food or another goat or something.

Other things:

We missed an episode a while back, and apparently soap was made, and it was tested and proven good this week.

The water needed to be purified in some way that didn't require boiling, because they've used up all their propaneand boiling it on the wood stove both uses their wood too quickly and takes too damn long, so John C starts work on an ozonater that will greate ozone, pump it into a bucket of water, and turn it from a horrible gray cloudiness to a pristine clear in half an hour per bucket, and that goes swimmingly. Mike helps with the pump, and he's so much better when he has something to do-- his voice is kinder and more level, there's less shouting, he seems way less threatened by the world... if I were there and had the luxury of noticing such things, I'd say we'd just have to keep him useful and busy all the time so he doesn;t have a chance to cause more fights.

Morgan saw the demoralization going on, and decided to fix a record player, which she basically had to rebuild from scratch, and managed to get working again, and when the music started playing, it was amazing. Everyone was dancing and laughing. It was moving, to say the least.

And John C found an old reel-to-reel player and fixed the lamp, and they played old videos without knowing what was on them-- they were old family movies, people on the Santa Monica boardwalk and the beach. It got everyone talking about what they miss for the first time, and sort of bonded them all in sadness. And it was amazing for the study: they talked about it all like it was really gone, like they wouldn't be going back in just over a month. They re re-devoted to saving themselves and culture and civilization, and it revived the need to build that truck and get moving for greener pastures... and it made me worry again about how they'll be able to survive the transition back to teh normal world when they go home.

Next week, someone from John C's family shows up, and they go on another raid for supplies, and it looks like that goes badly-- because this week there was almost no fighting, so they have to make it up next time.

Oh, and there was a comercial for a show where a guy teaches you how to live through any disaster, one massive cultural collapse each episode, and as soon as that hits the Hulu, I'm all over it (though it'll likely go on the other TV blog-- hypothetical is where scifi starts, not where it plays out).

being human: e05 - e06

Oh my god, these last two episodes!

So! Mitchell has turned his back on humanity and is embrasing his vampire ways in an enlightened and helping-the-humans-evolve sort of way. Herrick has him recruiting from the hospital, turning people right before they die, and is constantly telling the other vamps stories about how great he was when he was newer. Mitchell meets an old girlfriend from the 60s and offers her the chance to live forever, and she points out that this is not evolution, it's stagnation; things have to change, people have to die and new people have to be born. It's part of what being human is.

Meanwhile, Annie is haunting Owen, trying to get him to admit what he did, and when they have their showdown, at long last, she's awesome and intimidating and powerful... and Owen isn't scared for more than a minute or two. He yells at her and overpowers her like he did when she was alive, and for a while, she loses all power over anything. She should have gone all poltergiest and scary on him, but she didn't blow a single light or anything, and it's frustrating to watch her getting beat up when that's how she died and she knows better now.

Mitchell finds out what the true plan is: everyone will be recruited whether they want to or not, the whole world gone to vampires except a small numberthat will be kept for food. He finds the first round of human cattle in the basement, and when Herrick finds him there, they hold him against his will.

When George finds out, he shocks Annie out of her stupor to go save him, saying that her friends are her purpose, and if she doesn't care about that, then she really has died. Together, they bust into the funeral home where the vampire base is, and fight their way through to where Mitchell is in the silliest way possible: George hasn't ever really picked a fight before, and Annie is still terrified of everything, but they find Mitchell before the vampires can force him to kill himself, and they get out with Lauren's help. She's been struggling with the lies and the manipulation, she's seen the cattle and fed from them herself, and she can't handle being what she is. She gets them to safety and then begs Mitchell to end her. He was the one who started this, so he should be the one who ends it. After some convincing, he does, and he holds her while she turns to ash and blows away in a really touching and kind of beautiful scene.

They get back home, and with Mitchell and George behind her, Annie faces Owen again, and this time, she won't be intimidated. She just fought off a horde of vampires; he's not nearly so scary as he was. This time, it works, and when she whispers something that only the dead can know to him, he stumbles away, terrified and distraught, and turns himself into the police to protect himself. With that done, the door comes for Annie, and when she's saying goodbye, there's a knock at the door. Mitchell answers it, and Herrick stakes him. Blood's everywhere, George is telling her to just go, that he can handle it, and Annie doesn't know what to do--

And the episode ends and I die. I just keel over, and I stay dead and zombie-like until we get to watch the next episode, because I really don't do well with cliffhangers.

The next episode shows us two years before, when Mitchell and George met: the vamp-thugs were attacking George shortly after he became a vampire and ran off, simply because he was a were and they don't like weres. Mitchell chased them off, and told him to leave, and George said 'What then?' because even then, he knew it'd never end.

Cut back to now, and they've gotten the stake out of Mitchell, but checking him into the hospital was probably a bad idea; he's obviously still alive, but they can't get a pulse on him, and though he's healing way faster than expected, he's not getting better: his body can't make replacement blood for all the blood he lost, and he refuses to feed because every time he does, he loses a little more of himself.

Annie goes home, the farthest she's ever teleported, and finds that the door is gone.

George and Nina have more fights, while he's standing vigil, and he finds out that Herrick's turned the lunch lady. There's a minor throw down in the cafeteria, but George is still too human to kill him.

That night, the Vickar (who's sarcastic and witty and wonderful) is called in to minister to Mitchell because the hospital doesn't think he'll live through the night, and George tries to tell him it's not such a great idea... until Mitchell comes to long enough to tell them that the baddies are in the hospital. George's star of david and the terrified Vickar's Bible quotes are enough to chase off the thugs, but the Vickar takes the reality of their inhumanness pretty badly.

In the morning, Josie goes to see Mitchell and convinces him that she doesn't have long to live, anyway, and he should think of her blood as an organ-donation thing so he can live. He tells her no, but in the end, he does it anyway, and leaves the hospital crying, as the nurse finds Josie dead. Ane he decides that this has to end. He challaenges Herrick to a one-on-one with the understanding that George and Annie are to be left alone regardless of how it goes (because Herrick could kill George outright, and without the boys, Annie's only tie to the world is the house, which he can then burn down). Everyone is unhappy with it, but George takes the chance he's given, and when Annie flips out, Mitchell tells her that she can't understand what it's like-- that when you aren't feeding, you're tortured by everything you've done in perfect, blinding detail, and he doesn't really want to live if it's bad and he has to remember. George convinces Mitchell to let him deliver the news and the location.

Annie doesn't like it, still, and uses her anger-- and the new ability she's discovered to hear the recently head-- to fuel something she can do: she frees all the human cattle and trashes the base. And it's awesome. Really awesome. Her clothes have changed (which is apparently an indicator of her mental state, according to interviews), and she's surrounded by wind. Doors blow open, furniture topples, the vamps have nothing they can use against her, and she's like an angel to the captured.

And I totally called the next part, but it didn't make it any better when it happened.

George tells Herrick directions to his dungeon. It's the night of his change, and he locks the door so that Herrick's trapped, and Herrick goes all threatening and superior and aweful on him, and doesn't even have the decency to feel scared as he watches George change before his eyes-- at least, not until George tells him that saving human lives means he's proving his own humanity, not neglecting it.

Mitchell and Annie try to stop him about the same time that Nina discovers a letter he left for her, breaking up. She's angry enough to follow them down to the basement, and busts in to see waht's up-- and has to be forced back out. She watches George transform, and she doesn't scream or anything, and seeing her manages to calm him, stops his rages dead in their tracks. After he's torn Herrick to shreds, of course.

Afterward, George and Nina are talking, and he finally tells her the truth about what happened to him, and she still hasn't run screaming. Downstairs, Mitchell and Annie are worried that he's been changed by intentionally killing someone, but she seems to be fine. Annie wonders about the door and her purpose, and Mitchell says it's like denying the afterlife let her tap into some new power she didn't know she had. All of them wonder waht happens now, and there's an attempt at a very fragile hope that it's over and they can live in peace. But Nina got scratched in the dungeon, and Owen's been talking to people in jail, and the nameless guy he's explaining everything to calls someone else and says "we've found them"-- and that's how the series ends: uncomfortable, unfinished, and awkward, with more horror to come, but calm now.

Here's what I think can / might happen in the next series, being filmed now:

- Annie will continue to self-actualize. She'll probably have to face the door again at some point, but maybe not this next season. She'll become a really kick-ass poltergeist-- and maybe will have to fight to stay human the way the others do, absolute power and all that.

- George and Nina will have to deal with what's happened to Nina; George will undoubtedly feel guilty, because he's good at guilt. Nina... it's hard to say. She has a short temper, but she's also strong enough to face it. But the fact that he wasn't entirely turned might mean something-- she's only partially infected, or she's different than him, or it'll be like finding out whether you've got some horrible disease or something, and there will be weeks of waiting.

- I'd still love Nina's injuries to have been caused by something supernatural; and maybe that'll change her path with the scratches, too.

- Mitchell will try to go off the blood again, and will be even more set against the rest of the vamps, but they won't give up on him. Someone worse will take over, most likely. H thinks they'll recruit Owen, which would be crushing and horrible.

- Hopefully this new guy and whoever he's taking to on the phone will be a new faction entirely-- monster hunters or paranormal investigators or something.

- I want to see the Vickar again. And I still maintain that they need allies in the rest of the world, a support system they can turn to.

classic who: the deadly assassin

As if there's really any other form of assassin.

So! We finally got the next ep working, and settled in for a good old romp through the Whoniverse... except this one's weird. Sarah Jane's just gone, and he's been called back home with a vision of the President being assassinated as if he's the one doing it, and it's just the Doctor, talking to himself because he has no Companion for four episodes. And really, alot of the third episode could have been gone and it would have been the same story, to whit:

As soon as the Doctor is back on Gallifrey, he's taken prisoner, which he immediately breaks out ofand quickly gets framed-- while trying to stop the assassination, he gets caught up in it and goes wonky, and starts thinking he's in the vision (or something?), and then he's arrested again, and tortured for a bit. Turns out he was aiming for the real killer down amongst the High Council, and set up to take the fall.

Chancellor Goth (who isn't wearing nearly enough eyeliner for that name, and seems to be the only one comfortable in the roll and the clothes), starts a trial, and the Doctor calls on paperwork to get himself entered into the running for the presidency, which buys him time in the trial. He manages to convince Spandrell that he isn't the assassin, despite the evidence, and they turn up various suspiscious clues: The gun's sight was off, so there's no way he could have fired the actual death shot, the person running the camera that should have recorded it is missing, and when he's founf, he's compressed a la the master, the last reels are stollen, there's no record of the Master, and the Doctor's record has been tampered with. And then they hit on the fact that the vision the Doctor had can only be explained by being the result of the Matrix-- the shared memories of thousands of dead Gallifreyans that work together in a computer to predict the future-- rerouted to him so that he'd come play patsy and it wouldn't be recorded.

So the Doctor goes into the Matrix to get the Master, who's all gross and buggy-eyed and somewhat like Mum-Ra now that he's come to the end of his regeneration cycle and is holding himself together and alive by force of will alone, and that's when there's a whole episode of the Doctor stuck in Vietnam. ::sigh:: It's like getting captured and escapingand getting captured again, except there's no Companion to talk it through with, and escaping is replaced with the Doctor sliding down quarry walls. Repeatedly.

Eventually, he stops the one coming after him, and it's Goth! ::dun dun DUN:: He manages to make it out of the Matrix just in time, but Goth is still tied in when the Master tries to kill the Doctor, and he gets the worst of it. The Doctor traces the Matrix connection back to the catacombs, where they find the Master dead, and Goth not there enough to answer their questions, only enough to say that he brought the Master back and couldn't stop him from taking over. And he has a doomsday plan, but he doesn't say what it is before he dies.

Back in the offices, they tell Borusa waht happened, and he tells them a better story that will keep the faith in the Time Lords whole, and orders that the bodies be altered and so on to make the story fit. But the Doctor still wants to know waht the Master had planned, and why it mattered if his patsy was President, The only thing different than being any other Time Lord is access to the symbols of office, which the Doctor realizes are old relics of the sort of power that would let the Master regenerate all over again, and destroy Gallifrey and the Time Lords in the process.

Oh, and, you know, the Master's not dead.

So there's a whole one-on-one where the Master is releasing the Eye of Harmony that's the source of all Gallifrey's power (which has apparently been forgotten by this point), and the Doctor's stopping him. It ends with half the Citadel collapsed, but the world intact, and the Master down a fissure. Spandrell and Engin see the Doctor off, and witness the Master disappearing into time without trying to stop him, and that sort of spoiled the ending for me.

So here's a picture of the Doctor looking shifty in the 'seldom worn ceremonial robes' that they always seem to be wearing:

What I take away from this story are the following details:

- From the beginning, the Doctor was considered a renegade, but Borusa (an old teacher at the Academy) probably likes him anyway.

- Time Lords are, as a whole, pretty dumb. They don't know where their power comes from, they aren't the top of the technological totem pole anymore, and they live for ages and never do anything with it. Also, they're divided into assholes and doddering old men.

- There aren't any Time Ladies at all in this story, which seems odd.

- The Citadel is something like Superman's Fortress of Solitude and something like the Tok'ra crystal bases, and something like a melted freezy-pop.

- The Doctor wears long johns.

- I miss the presence of a Companion, and I'm glad this is the only one without one.

- Goddess above and below, I'm sick of the Master.

the colony: episode 6

This week's ep was all about loss and communication.

Doctor George and Nurse Allison have been dealing with minor injuries, but they've realized that the first aid kit is getting very low and sooner or later, someone's going to need a hospital (some of them have already lost ten to twenty pounds), and so they build a nice clean little infirmary. To stock it, they go make a raid on an abandoned hospital not far from the Sanctuary. They find scads of useful things, scales and oil for the generator and bandages and basic medicines and things-- and George goes missing.

The search for him for hours, and can't find any sign of him, take all the stuff back, and then go looking again, and finally rule that he just isn't there, that he's been kidnapped or has gotten lost. There's all the stages of grief, and then they start doing something about it. Allison and Mike make a huge SOS sign and hang it like a billboard on the roof. Joey finishes the bed of the truck and they install the water tank that will allow them to bring water with them. Vlad builds fireworks to use like flares. And John C and Morgan start building a transmitter, a really old kind like they used to use on ships in the Atlantic in 1900, called a spark-gap transmitter. It shorts out the power, but they fix it and John C puts it on a battery so it won't do that again. Morgan rigs a reciever out of wire, a plastic jar, a phone reciever and an alligator clip, and that's one of the coolest things I've seen. Then she amplifies it with an old TV, and it gets cooler. And they work. The fireworks don't, but they've got the ability to transmit morse code in a way that people can pick up, and if George is out there, he can find his way home.

But over the credits, there was a voiceover where he basically said goodbye, so hopes are low now-- though he did say he's going to try everything in his power to get back. I wonder if something called him away from the show? I wonder if he knew ahead of time that he was leaving? He didn't have anything really dramatic to do, but he was a level head in a group of hotheads, and it was nice to have him around. It'll be scarier without him, though; how much can a trauma nurse do? Could she do surgery if she needed to? Maybe Amy, who was in Peace Corps will be able to do more; Allison is the Doctor now, and she'll need a Nurse if anything goes seriously wrong.

So now they're even more visible than they were, and they are getting low on resources and protein, and the stress is getting to them. The previews from next week don't tell us a great deal about anything other than that there'll be more yelling.

Here's what the offical site has to say about George:

"George grew up as an athletic, popular kid in Tampa, Florida to a family of doctors. After majoring in Marine Biology at University of Florida and considering a career as a marine mammal veterinarian, he decided to go to medical school because he liked to take care of people even more than animals. Medically trained in Tennessee and New Orleans, George is fond of traveling and has discovered a pleasant benefit to his job: he can do it anywhere. George is a thinker and doesn’t act before considering consequences of his actions because if he makes a mistake at work, someone could die. He is a strong fisherman, can start a fire and hunt. George returned to New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to provide care in makeshift medical units."

being human: s01 e04

In this picture, Mitchell looks an aweful lot like Henry, doesn't he? But henry had hair that could be splict.

Goddess, this episode did it's darnedst to kill me. Right in the face. Tore out my heart, and then killed me in the face.

Mitchell defends a kid from bullies, and they become fast friends-- the kid reminds him of his young, human self, and he wishes someone would have stuck up for him. The mom's fine with it, he needs a father figure and a friend. And then Mitchell lets him borrow a DVD, but it's the wrong one in the case-- it's the snuff film from last ep, but the mom doesn't know that, all she knows is that there's a picture of a naked guy, all aroused and grinding, and then dead, and she assumes that Mitchell is a perv. And the townsfolk turn on them.

Meanwhile, George is trying to have a relationship with Nina, and he's scared that she wants the Wolf, but she's relieved that he's not always like that. But when things go south in the neighborhood, George crawls back into his hole and won't talk to her and breaks up with her, and it's terrible, because she's trying and she can't understand waht could be so horrible about him that he'd rather she thinks he's a pedophile.

Annie's gone poltergeist, but she can't control it, and even the thought of seeing Owen again makes all the lights in the house explode. When he does come by, she subliminally affects Jenny, and creeps out Owen, which makes him show his real self. He tells the boys they have to leave at the end of next month, and Annie burns off all her old harded pictures; he's taken everything from her, but he's not taking her boys or her house.

The cops, of course, are headed up by the vampires, and they basically tell Mitchell that if he turns his back on them permanently, they'll let this get all out of hand and he'll never live it down.

The kid in question, Bernie, tries to appologise to Mitchell, and the neighbors misunderstand and start a fight, and when Bernie's running back to his mom, Mitchell isn't fast enough, and he gets hit by a car. Because the dying nurses weren't heartrending enough, now they have to kill kids. The shock sends George to Nina's house, where he tells her what happens, and she calms him down, and they come back around to the secrets; he isn't ready to tell her what his is, and she makes them even by showing him some horrible scars and saying that she won't tell him, either. Everyone has secrets.

Mitchell goes into the hospital and confesses to Bernie's mom (Fleur, even though with her accent, it sounds like Flerr) what he is, and gives her the choice: let Bernie die in a coma, or let him help them by saving Bernie. It looks like she lets him die, but then when they're at the train station, she appologises to Mitchell, and Bernie comes up behind them, pale and cold, but not dead. He tells Fleur that she needs to stay with him, keep him good, implying that she needs to keep him human, and then he leaves them. Again. Like he did with Lauren, and like he couldn't do with deadnurse, and like he promised not to do again. And then he goes back to Herrick, and rejoins the nest.

Dammit.

Every interpretation along the way was the wrong one, every choice was for the worse. I don't know if I can handle it if it keeps going like that.

But it did have the best line: "I'm not suggesting we wear chastity rings like American kids, and don't shag because we're mental, just that we take it slow."

I'm liking Annie the poltergiest, but I hope she doesn't turn bad, and I hope resolving her anger doesn't set her free; the show would have to find a new ghost. I'm not liking Mitchell giving up on humanity and leaving another offspring behind; it's so nihilistic, and he was the one who wanted to regain his humanity so badly. I'm loving George making it work with Nina, even if every single thing he says is the wrong thing, and his awkwardness knows no bounds-- and I still think that if anyone can handle what they are, it's Nina. Maybe her scars even came from something supernatural that she hasn't faced yet (which would be flippin' awesome, and would really tie the room together-- I mean, the plot together). And telling her would go miles toward building some trust in George, since he lost everything and doesn't even trust himself. There can't be many episodes left; this is getting really tough.

being human: s01 e03

Yay for this show! It's intersting right off the bat and stays that way. Good for us.

This week, Mitchel decides that Anie needs to 'meet someone with the same condition' after he finds her tearing up the house and tells them that they're only days away from when she was supposed to get married, and introduces her to Gilbert, who died the same year she was born and is stuck forever with Unfortunate 80s Hair. He takes her to see her grave, and imparts what knowledge he feels she should know, trying to convince her that she can go anywhere and do anything now, but what she gets out of it is that she needs to resolve whatever issues are keeping her on this plain. At first, she thinks that it's because she never got to be a wife, and she starts haunting Owen's house, picking up after him, ironing his shirts, finding his keys, cooking for him. Which doesn't work, and I'm glad of that because it's so unfeminist. But when she's following him around, he comes to fix the pipes in the house, which have been acting up since the first episode and are worse now, she witnesses him pulling a lacy thong out of the drain, and remembers that they'd had a fight-- that he pushed her down the stairs and killed her-- and that doesn't free her either. But it's Gilbert who's there to comfort her, and somewhere along the line, he fell for her, which was his resolution, and she watches him passing on (which is reminiscent of Dead Like Me a little, especially since Nina looks a little like Ellen Muth). I was starting to like Gilbert, and it would have been nice to keep him around and expand their circle of people on their side / explore his story that ended with him being dead so he could be the right age twenty two years later to fall for a fellow ghost, but, hey. Can't win them all.

So now she knows that the love of her life killed her, and she still hasn't passed on. Mitchel seems to be caring about her more than he thinks he does, and the house seems to be a part of her, the pipes acting as her subconscious, and as that point was stated explicitly in the show, I hope it gets explored more, because she's not really a person anymore, and she could be the house as well as herself.

Meanwhile, Mitchel has also set up George with Nina the Nurse, and George cooks dinner for her, and things progress up to the bedroom... where he starts scratching at her back and biting on her and spooks himself. It's very close to the full moon, and he can't control his animalistics, and since he can't explain what's actually wrong, he basically tells her he has a dysfunction (thought I think if anyone could handle it, it'd be her). This leads to her talking to him very seriously about all the things they could do other than have actual sex, and that gets him all riled up, as he's on his way to the Change when she waylays him, and he boinks her good and then leaves her grinning and flees to the woods, which he can't explain to her and which we haven't seen him have to face yet. I think it'd be awesome if he could manage to make it work; he's trying the hardest to be a normal person, after all. And it would be helpful to have someone in the medical profession on their side.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Lauren has come to the hospital to tell Mitchel that the video from last ep was forced-- the Big Bads made her seduce that dude with the tramp stamp and film her killing him, hoping that she could be bait to lure Mitchel back into their vampire politics. He convinces her to try to go clean, but she doesn't do very well, and when he gives in and lets her have some of his blood, that only makes her a junkie. Bloodbank doesen't help either, and she takes it that he isn't helping her enough, which drives her, half-crazy with hunger, out into the street, where Creepyface from the first episode is waiting for her, and she goes off with him before Mitchel can find her. Bummer. But she's weak and I don't like her much, at least not yet.

So we learned that Owen isn't all that great a guy, that Annie is possibly tied into the house now and that she's as scared to move on as she is to stay forever, Mitchel is getting used to her being around, George is capable of controlling himself enough to not eat someone he's having sex with, and young vampires are weak. The scenes for next week showed them getting found out-- or, at least that's what the comercials make it look like, but that's not the last episode, so something else has to happen. Like Annie finally coming into her power as a ghost! Excellent!

I'm getting a bit tired of vampires always being embroiled in politics-- especially while watching True Blood at the same time-- and that's one of the reasons I liked Blood Ties so much; Henry couldn't care less about other vamps most of the time, and they're pathologically solitary, something alot of these other shows could use. But this show doesn't worry about that too much, and it's a third or fourth-string plotline at best, which keeps it bearable. I do like, however, when Mitchel's trying his best to be human, which always seems to be outside in the cold, smoking a cigarrette, like last ep when he was on the stoop with Annie, talking to George and laughing, and this ep when he was being charming and evasive with Nina.

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?

being human: s01 e01-e02

She's never really ephemeral like this.

Anyway. We'd heard of this show, of course, through our various fandoms: vampire shows, BBC imports, Dr Who actors. Didn't know much about it, though. So when we got the fancy cable, and we found it on the On Demand, and when the latest episode of Doctor Whos Day (The Deadly Assasin) failed to work, we decided to see what it was all about.

And we liked it. All three of us.

Here's the deal: A fairly new werewolf lives with a hundred-year-old vampire, and the house they've moved into is inhabited by a ghost-- of the landlord's fiancee, who died fairly recently, and hasn't been visible to anyone until they move in. In the first episode, she's learning how to interact with the world again, and can sometimes be visible to normal people (if they're expecting to see someone there, like when she accepts the pizza order and stuff), and she can pick things up and move them around and so on. Meanwhile, the vampire has accidentally turned someone they worlked with (at the hospital), and is trying to go off the blood, feeling guilty about killing someone in true brooding vampire fashion, and the werewolf is about to turn, but his usual safe house is being renovated and he has to be locked inside his own house, where he trashes everything.

In the second episode, Marshal the Vamp has to deal with Lauren, the babyvamp that he made, who wants everything to be chaotic and wants him to take responsibility for what he did to her, while also having to deal with the mysterious plans of the rest of the vampires, who seem to be everywhere and look like they're getting tired of hiding in plain view. He decided to choose people over his own kind, and that means he's also decided to get to know the neighbors, to act more like a normal human-- and to go out on a date with a nurse, which ends badly for several reasons. Meanwhile again, George the Were has met a man named Tully (the same who was Shakespeare on Doctor Who, if you're keeping track), who promises to teach him how to handle being a were, how to outsmart his own animalistic self, how to embrace the strength and the raw power of it in his human life as well as his wolf life-- and turns out to be the one who turned him to begin with, wanting to get George on his side to build a pack to replace the life he lost. He starts out by charming everyone, and ends up by damn near molesting Annie the Ghost and entirely alienating George.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

It's got an interesting set up. George is a fairly standard Were, but he's such a sweet, awkward, timid guy that it's entirely alien to him. Marshal is a strange sort of vamp who seems to be free of alot of the curse part-- he can eat normal food, he can go out in the sun for at least short times-- but he's sort of addicted to the blood, and he doesn't age or die, so it's a constant struggle to not attack people. Even though he wants to. And Annie's tied to the house more by fear of the world and what's in it than by any metaphysical bonds, and can go through walls and disappear, but in general is trying to act like she's still alive, even though she can't eat or sleep or change her clothes or anything, and I'm willing to bet her death wasn't as accidental and innocent as we're led to believe. I'd like to see her embrace her ghostliness and poltergeist out, even if it's just once, though; it'd be awesome if she could blow out the windows or posess someone.