Category: TV Dramas (Page 99 of 235)

Lost 5.8 – LaFleur

After last week’s good but not great Locke-centric show, it probably wasn’t the best idea to air another character-heavy episode so soon. That hasn’t stopped the powers that be from doing just that, however, and though it probably won’t go down as one of the season’s stronger stories, it was still a solid, more traditional hour of “Lost” that finally gave Sawyer his day in the sun. Fortunately, he’s also currently one of the best characters on the show thanks to his recent pairing with fellow island dumpee, Juliet.

The two of them have quickly assumed leadership of the B-Team since, well, Jin still can’t talk very much English, Miles is a total slacker, and Faraday is mourning the death of Charlotte. With Locke gone and no sign of the well even having been built yet (though did anyone notice the four-toed statue being erected in the background?), the island is moved one final time before, as expected, it stops for good. From here, the episode shuffled back and forth in time from their newest location to three years into the future, where they currently exist when the Oceanic 6 return to the island.

Lost 5.8

Over those three years, the B-Team somehow managed to warm their way into the hearts of the Dharma Initiative and become full-fledged members. Granted, we never actually find out how that happened (which was probably why I felt so lukewarm about the episode when it ended), but we do know that they’re stuck sometime in the 1970s and that Sawyer in particular (now going by the name Jim LaFleur) has become somewhat of a leader in the camp. He’s not the leader, mind you, but after saving the life of a woman named Amy (played by Reiko Aylesworth, who will now be referred to as Michelle Dessler) and smoothing out a broken truce between Dharma and the Others, Sawyer wins his place among them.

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ABC cancels “Life On Mars”

Another good show bites the dust.

Granted, I wouldn’t put “Life On Mars” on the same level as last season’s time-traveling seriees, “Journeyman,” but “Life On Mars” has (had) a stellar cast — Harvey Keitel, Jason O’Mara, Gretchen Mol, Michael Imperioli — and a great premise. It debuted to strong ratings (8.2) but in recent weeks, ratings fell to the 3.0-3.7 range, which simply aren’t good enough to justify the expensive cast and production. (Coincidentally, “Journeyman” had similar ratings at the end of its run.)

The show will complete its 17-episode freshman-season order with an episode written as a series finale, wrapping the loose story ends, explaining how Tyler was transported back in time and perhaps bringing him back to his own time.

The show was a remake of a popular U.K. series that ran just 16 episodes (as planned). U.S. networks tend to try to bleed a hit for all its worth instead of getting in and getting out. Sometimes it works (“The Office”) and in the case of “Life On Mars,” sometimes it doesn’t. It turns out that the U.S. version will run one more episode than the U.K. version, so let’s hope that the creators have ample time to wrap things up. It looks like they do.

Season Pass Deleted: “Dollhouse”

I’m sorry. I can’t take it anymore.

I watched three full episodes of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” and decided somewhere in the middle of the third episode that I couldn’t continue to watch the show. It didn’t help that the third episode had the dreaded troubled-pop-star-deals-with-stalker storyline, which has been done so many times before that it has become one of my biggest pet peeves. Bad stage production, bad singing, bad crowds…ugh.

The show has a solid premise — a business that rents out “dolls” which are programmed to suit the clients’ needs — and a pretty compelling macro storyline — a renegade doll on the loose and, separately, an FBI agent (Tahmoh Penikett) trying to find the dollhouse — but the week-to-week episodes just aren’t all that interesting. One week, the main character, Echo (Eliza Dushku) is an unconvincing kidnapping expert, the next she’s bait for a psychopath who likes to hunt humans. And last week she was a sassy backup singer who said things like, “You’re not okay…okay?”

Mind you, this is coming from a fan of Whedon’s work with “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel” and “Firefly.” I was really rooting for this show to work, but for whatever reason — suspect acting, sketchy writing, poor continuity — it just doesn’t.

Heroes 3.18 – When Harriet Tubman Met Def Leppard

I’m not saying this was the best episode of the season, but it was definitely filled with some of the best dialogue of the season.

I can’t tell you the exact moment that I decided I liked every character on “Heroes,” but at least I can identify it for Claire’s new boy, Alex (though I like to think of him as Aqualad). It was when he looked at her and said, “You’re not Harriet Tubman, Claire, all right? And this isn’t the Underground Railroad. You’re just a high school girl, and you’re in over your head.” He’s probably a narc, but what can I tell you? You just don’t get many Harriet Tubman references nowadays; you’ve gotta respect them when they come along. Also, I actually laughed out loud when Alex wouldn’t even cop to having sex with Claire to save his own skin.

You know, I almost hate to admit it, but I actually kind of liked Hayden Panettiere’s performance this episode…probably because she actually played some semblance of a typical teenage girl for much of the time, particularly during the discussion with her mom about whether or not a divorce from HRG was forthcoming. Her mom had quite a few good lines during the course of the episode, too, including her observation about the van that’d been sitting outside their house for way too long (“No-one’s pool is that dirty”), but nothing topped the lustful shout-out to the glory of Def Leppard’s Rick Savage. Having the agent come in and almost but not quite find Alex wasn’t nearly as suspenseful as I think it was probably intended to be, though, nor was Claire and Alex’s great escape. And the underwater kiss…?

Okay, fine, it was actually kind of sweet. Happy?

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Battlestar Galactica: Someone to Watch Over Me

When this episode started, and Kara got into a conversation with some random dude in the bar, I was thinking — why are they introducing a new character at this point in the series?

My “twist-dar” went off when they failed to show her dad’s face in her flashbacks, and it really went off when he lit up a cigarette (after she reminisced about the “smell of tobacco” earlier in the episode). Then the meaning of Hera’s drawing was revealed and suddenly Kara and her “dad” were playing the “Battlestar Galactica” version of “All Along the Watchtower.”

Kara’s trip plodded along, but it was still quite intense, because the nature of her existence is still one of the big questions yet to be answered. This mellowness provided a nice balance to what was going on elsewhere on the ship, as the Chief made a bad, bad decision by trusting Boomer again. Roslin’s demeanor towards Tyrol was unnecessarily harsh, and she bears some responsibility for his actions. Boomer is (mostly) evil, a fact confirmed by her sexual encounter with Helo right in front of Athena. That has to be a tough pill for the Chief to swallow — he breaks her out of the brig and the first guy she screws is Helo? Ouch.

The scene where Boomer made her escape was one of the most nail-biting of the entire series. It was clear that the Chief didn’t know Hera was in the trunk because Boomer had to tell him to “be careful” with it. Still, he’s a dope for falling for her act again. Way to go, Chief.

So now Galactica has a hole in the side of the ship, and after weeks of intimating that the old girl was on her last legs, the ship is truly falling apart. Cavil has (or will have) Hera, and there are only three episodes left. We still need to find out the truth about Kara and the fleet needs to find some sort of home. They wouldn’t end the series with the fleet just drifting aimlessly in space…would they?

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