TV Episode Review: Fringe “Bloodline”

Fringe tonight offered much more in the way of interesting developments than exciting or memorable moments.  You already know my feelings about the Earth 2 characters—they’re well developed and fairly likable (with the exception of the Astrid-9000 Statbot) but they just don’t carry any emotional weight for me.  As a result, the episode for me knocked the emotional gearshift into neutral for a week while we watched with detached interest as the child who could change everything (maybe that whole phrase should be capitalized?) was brought into the world post haste, despite the fact that Fauxlivia is a carrier of something called VPE which is often fatal for both mother and child.  Whether she and Peter Jr. survived because of the rapid-development treatment given to her by Walternate’s creepy medical crew or just because Fauxlivia is a strong enough heroine to will death away from herself and her uterus through childbirth (all 45 seconds of it) is not really explained clearly.  What is made fairly clear is that the child itself is less important to Walternate than his blood sample, which I assume will prove useful in creating another version of the baby, which I further assume can be raised (grown?) to fulfill the fate in the doomsday machine that we thought was unique to Peter himself.  That’s speculative, but it’s the only role for the baby that at present seems uniquely fit for the offspring of Peter and Fauxlivia.

TV Episode Review: Community “Critical Film Studies”

Though I didn't really enjoy tonight’s episode very much, it will forever be the night of television which gave us Chevy Chase dressed in the bondage gear of The Gimp from “Pulp Fiction” which, really, is a greater gift than any of us has any right to ask for from a TV show.  All of the characters in costume tonight were a joy to behold, most especially Britta who—I defy you to disagree—is much hotter than Uma Thurman in the same costume.  The final slo-mo scenes of the birthday party are lovingly crafted and actually made me really, really jealous that I’m not a part of the study group.  And there are other gems hidden amidst the odd little meta-commentary about Abed’s obsession with pop culture, but (and I admit that this might have to do with the fact that I haven’t seen “My Dinner with Andre”) overall the episode came off as fairly flat and lifeless, and didn’t really offer much of interest in the way of being meta in the first place. 

TV Episode Review: Justified “Save My Love”

I still don’t like this whole money theft sub plot with Wynona.  It made for quite a bit of harrowing drama tonight, which culminated in a really sad moment where Art is clearly suspicious of Raylan’s business in the evidence room when they “bump into each other” down there just as Wynona finishes putting the money back in a new hiding spot.  Art’s over-the-shoulder look of concern as Raylan departs was painful to watch; their love-hate relationship feels as deep and firm as any of the relations on the show, so it’s kind of devastating to think that something like this could put a crack in its foundation.  It also suggests this whole mess isn’t quite over yet, which makes it even worse considering it never should have started.  I said it before I’ll say it again:  Wynona isn’t a thief.  Given this week’s developments I guess I need to add “she’s also not an idiot,” since we discovered tonight that she actually just decided to stuff the entire contents of the evidence locker into her bag.  It’s a really flawed premise to ask us to buy into, but since we have no choice I guess it’s nice that it at least results in some enjoyable moments this evening.

TV Episode Review: The Chicago Code “Black Hand and the Shotgun Man”

Tonight’s incident involving a drug lord’s kidnapped son played out fairly decently, especially with a brief little shootout scene which managed to make itself quite interesting without really involving a whole lot of gun play.  The show continues to excel at handling action sequences very well with camera movement and editing, giving even brief episodes a nice intensity and sense of fluidity.  The cleverness of Teresa and Jarek to outplay Romero’s hand of cards and “beat” the FBI without really undermining or cheating them was well played, especially since the show seems to be learning that too much cleverness on the part of these two characters is going to make them “larger than life” and spoil the show’s sense of realism.  Jarek playing little games with them by switching prisoners as a stall tactic played quite nicely, but I was worried that when he told Caleb that “we haven’t played our last card yet” we were in for an unrealistic “local hero cops outsmart the bumbling G-Men” type of outcome, which mostly play as silly and unbelievable.  So good for the writers to put a much smarter spin on it:  Teresa makes a reasonable offer which makes things a touch more difficult for the FBI, but also makes sense given that as enforcers of the law they certainly aren’t fighting to keep Romero out of prison—they just need him to play his role in taking down bigger fish. 

TV Episode Review: Fringe "Stowaways"

So given that I’m coming out with this review so late as to be almost pointless for religious Friday night “live” viewers of the show, I’ll try to be succinct with this write-up and not drift too far off onto tangents or stray observations.  I thought this episode was among the worst in memory; the story wasn’t all that intriguing (nor did it make sense on several levels) and its wrap-up failed in almost every sense of the word.  To make matters worse, Anna Torv was forced to continue doing her embarrassingly awkward Leonard Nimoy impression the entire episode which went beyond being painful within, say, the first sentence she spoke.  It’s a noble (but not quite a John Noble) effort on her part, but it just comes off as someone doing a mediocre impression and it takes so much of her effort to accomplish it that she forgets to act from time to time.  I didn’t mind the “soul magnet” concept last week since it’s not really any more or less within the realm of the conceivable than anything else this show tosses at us, just a bit less scientific in its fictional trappings.  It’s not working as a storyline though—it’s taking a great actress out of her rhythm and keeping us from what I presumed would be the real outcome of all this shenaniganery—the return of Bell himself in the phenomenal and hideous form of an aged Leonard Nimoy.  Just get to it already, Fringe.  And don’t have characters say things like “There is hope in raindrops”.  Geez, is there a writers’ strike I didn’t hear about?