Okay, I admit it: when I ended last week’s blog by suggesting the possibility that there might’ve been sparks between Buck and the bartender, I’d already seen Episode 2.2, so I knew full well that it was going to be kicking off with a shot of the two of them in bed together. I have to imagine that many a viewer laughed at the sight of Tara offering up a “what died in my mouth?” face, given the obvious implications, but in my case, that quickly gave way to surprise over the fact that it wasn’t Tara. It was Buck. Have we ever seen Tara wake up with an alter in control? If so, I can’t remember it. I have to presume that this is an occurrence of note, as opposed to simply being an excuse to let Buck look proud of himself. Either way, Tara quickly took over again, returning home to find Charmaine unabashedly flashing her new engagement ring.
It’s so hard to maintain excitement for Charmaine, given Tara’s history of fucking up everything in the lives of her family, but her enthusiasm is so freaking infectious. Still, the idea of Charmaine staying at Casa de Gregson is clearly going to make for some rough going particularly given that Tara can’t even remember what lies she’s spinning about her past whereabouts. Also, in Charmaine’s hesitation to believe that she’s actually found a good man who truly loves her, she offered up a comment that struck me as possibly relating to Tara’s condition: “We were raised to believe we should eat dog shit, so you get used to dog shit.” This is presumably a metaphor rather than a description of their actual childhood, but it strikes me as telling. It may, however, not have anything to do with Tara at all. It may just mean that Charmaine’s so used to expecting the worst from her relationships that she’ll end up sabotaging this one because she can’t believe she’s good enough for it…and I thought that before she started obsessing over the engagement ring to an unhealthy degree.
Every episode of “Nurse Jackie” brings a new reminder of how far a drug addict can sink, but, c’mon, Jackie, hiding your pills in the Easter eggs? Really?Wow.
You can’t say the set designers haven’t come up with a realistic looking garage for the Peyton family, and as soon as I saw the shot of the electrical outlets, I knew it was going to play into the storyline in some capacity, but I didn’t expect that it would involve the ever-paranoid Grace going around and unplugging all of the appliances in the house every night so as to avoid possible house fires. Good lord, the child has been saving her allowance to buy the safest possible smoke detector for the house…? That’s a whole new level of paranoia, so I figured it wouldn’t be long before the child entered therapy on a full-time basis, and, of course, I was right: Jackie was looking into it before the end of the episode. And speaking of that particular discussion, Akalitis’s comment about how the psychiatrist “was extremely helpful with my boy” is, unless I missed something last season, the first actual clarification as to why she was so enamored of the baby last season. She used to have a son, it seems, and the fact that there’s been no mention of him up to this point leads me to suspect that the boy in question is no longer among the living, though given Akalitis’s age, I suppose it’s equally possible that he’s now grown up and out in the world somewhere.
So Eleanor “partied like a 20-year-old last night,” scored some Ecstasy, and admits that she’s still high. I’m watching this, and I’m thinking with all due sarcasm, “Oh, no, that’s not going to come back into play. Never!” Well, at the very least, it didn’t come back into play this episode, which truly surprised me. I guess it’s just part of the overall “I miss Mummy” arc, along with Eleanor’s recurring demand that Jackie inform her daughters that they now have a godmother with a crisp British accent, but the end result was that, on second viewing, I could just sit back and enjoy Eleanor’s hysterical run / dance down the hallway (and the resulting scream from Zoe) and her unabashed flirtation with and up-and-down admiration of Sam without fear that it was all going to be tainted by Eleanor screwing up on the job while still under the influence. To be momentarily melancholy, though, I must mention one bit about Eleanor’s mourning of her mother that really hit home for me: her uncertainty about how to remove her from the list of contacts on her cell phone. Having witnessed someone have a breakdown when they accidentally stumbled upon their deceased parent’s number on their phone, I can say with 100% seriousness that this is a very valid point of concern.
And it’s official: this will be the last season of Premium Hollywood’s “24” blog.
Did you like how I made Fox’s decision to kill the show all about me?
Truth be told, I’m relieved. Ask anyone who blogs about a show and they will tell you that the single-best way to ruin a show for someone is to write about it. Even really good shows like “Lost” get exhausting after a while (biggest, mythology, ever), but “24,” frankly, has been spinning its wheels for years now, and I know that my frustration with the show reflected in my writing. I really did try to make this as entertaining as possible, but that can be difficult when all you want to do is say “Fuck this show,” and hit Publish.
Now that I know it’s over (ooh, another potential blog title), though, I plan to have as much fun watching this show as possible, even if Starbuck is the sorriest excuse for a mole in TV history. And fingers crossed that I get another interview with Annie “Crazy Jackie” Wersching before they call it a day.
Insert your own gun joke here.
I am always amused at how cavalier TV politicians are about committing high treason. (There’s a Karl Rove joke in there somewhere, but…nah.) We always knew Weiss was a weasel, but not even I thought that he would sell out Madame President like that, especially after that rousing speech she gave when the cabinet members actually entertained the idea of giving up Slumdog in order to stop the bomb. That was worthy of the piece on Presidential speeches that our own Will Harris assembled earlier this year. Say this for the lack of screen time Cherry Jones has suffered this year – when she is on screen, at least they give her good stuff…
…though in return for that good stuff, they have her assign the nation’s best field agent with the menial task of escorting Slumdog President and family out of the blast range. Of course, it turned out to be a very good thing that he was there, or they’d all be dead. Two firestorms in two weeks! Wheeeeee! Actually, I liked seeing Jack go all Call of Duty on General Brucker’s goons, picking them off in the smoke screen like fish in a barrel. (That general has a great agent though, as he has made memorable appearances in “Fringe” and “Damages” before appearing here.) I was sure that Jackie was going to get picked off though, but it’s too soon for a dramatic death scene like that. That one comes in Hour 23. Book it, Dan-O.
Now that we know that Starbuck is a terrorist, isn’t it curious how Samir is suddenly ringing her phone like it’s Booty Call Hour? Was she really not communicating with him up to this point? You have to think that he needed a thing or two from her before she killed Jimmy James, and either way, how conspicuous is she that they’re in a crisis and she’s constantly on her cell? Especially when – this just occurred to me – her phone was blasted in the EMP? She must have sent Samir a text message with the new number of the replacement phone NSA handed her. Or not; maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice. Silly, silly show runners.
Starbuck did say something interesting during one of the calls, though. It’s clear that there is no real relationship between Samir and Starbuck, and that this is a reluctant business arrangement on her part to help him. So who is it that she answers to? Who would be interested in recruiting a young, attractive female with a criminal past for a position of vast interest to national security? If they’re American, that would explain how “Dana” has been able to escape detection up to this point. God, this couldn’t be the makings of a perfect storm of sleaze, could it? Remember who’s making a late appearance before the final clock tick? Three words: Buck buck brawwwwwwwwk!
But nah, that’s too easy. There is no way an ex-President could get involved with something like that…right? Tony Almeida’s behind bars, so he couldn’t be the phantom menace, as it were…but Alan Wilson could be. His story is still unresolved; all we know is that Jackie nearly tortured him to death at the end of Day 7. Maybe his lawyers secured some kind of pardon for his troubles, and now he’s trying to secure more work for his defense contractors by executing another attack on US soil. It makes sense on paper, but that is usually the best indication that the show has other plans.
Lastly, let’s discuss poor, poor Tarin, who was forced to assume the role of the delivery driver for the bomb. This is surely a test on Samir’s part, since he has unofficially questioned Tarin’s commitment to the cause from the moment he expressed regret for getting Princess Jasmine involved. Tarin activates the ticking clock within the ticking clock, with a pained expression that said, “I am far too handsome to die like this.” Doesn’t he have 42 virgins waiting for him in the afterlife? Hey, no one wants to die, but dude, you’re a terrorist. You had to know that this moment was coming.
Which brings us to our song of the week, by my beloved Muse. Time is indeed running out for both Madame President and the show as a whole. The show’s producers seem to be excited about flipping the franchise into a feature film property, but I don’t know how that’s possible without massive commercial breaks. I remember when Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken tried that in the ’90s with “Nick of Time.” Didn’t work out too well. But on the plus side, maybe they’ll cut out all that useless stuff like Mare Winningham and her closeted terrorist son. That can only be a good thing, right?
Say what you will about the band America, but hearing the strains of their song “A Horse With No Name” kick off this week’s episode of “Breaking Bad” was a perfect way to remind us that, although Walter White may have begun his transition from Mr. Chips to Scarface, when it comes to his taste in music, he’s still got a looooooong way to go. Given everything he’s done since the beginning of this series, it’s no wonder that he’s looking more than a little twitchy when the cop pulls him over, but how typically Walt to try and use the plane crash as an excuse to get out of a ticket, then getting huffy when the cop doesn’t accept it as valid. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who groaned audibly when he got out of the car to approach the officer. Seriously, who does that? Apparently, the man who’s expressing his First Amendment rights does that, which is why he quite deservedly got pepper-sprayed for his belligerence.
Once Walt found himself being thrown into the back of the squad car, it was only inevitable that Hank would find his way into the proceedings, and so he did, though his first appearance finds him in mid-discussion about the investigation of Olive Oil and his brethren, who went up in smoke at the end of last week’s episodes. Gomez’s less-than-casual comment about Hank’s “famous blue meth” having not been seen in 29 days leads me to suspect that we won’t go much beyond 30 before there’s a change on that front. After Walt rescues Hank from his clink (kids, remember: no matter how legitimate it may sound when you’re delivering it, nothing makes an apology seem less sincere than staring at your feet the entire time you’re delivering it), the two have some approximation of a heart-to-heart talk, and I feel certain that Hank’s uncertainty about Skyler’s refusal to let Walt see the kids is going to resurface again, especially since she shut Hank down the moment he tried to bring it up at dinner.
By the way, having Hank once again underline his belief that Walt is a textbook underachiever only serves to make me anxious…and not necessarily in a good way…about how he’ll react when he inevitably finds out that his brother-in-law is Heisenberg. I’m reminded of how one of Lex Luthor’s computers took all the facts available to it and deduced that Superman’s secret identity was Clark Kent, but Luthor declared it to be an impossibility because the computer didn’t know Superman the way he did, and he couldn’t accept that Superman would ever deign to take on such a lowly persona. Mark my words: Marie’s going to be in on it before Hank is.
A ton has happened since my last of these posts and I’m sure I’m missing plenty, but here are just a few of the interesting things going on in the movie world as this rather loony week finally ends.
* Bryan Singer will be producing, not directing, the next “X-Men” prequel. He’ll be directing “Jack, the Giant Killer” instead. And another Mike Fleming story, an exclusive this time: “Paranormal Activity 2” has a director. He’s Tod Williams, best known for “The Door in the Floor.” Sounds to me like Paramount is keeping things modest, wisely.
* The very ill Dennis Hopper got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today. Amy Kaufman has video of the ceremony which included Hopper rather gently chiding the paparazzi for an incident which caused him to fall. The video itself ends with photographers yelling “Viggo!” and “Jack!”
* Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” with Russell Crowe as Robin will be opening Cannes this year. The plot description put me somewhat in mind of the angle the great director Richard Lester and writer James Goldman took on the legend in a film I’m quite partial to, “Robin and Marian,” which starred Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn.
