Thursday, October 11th, 2007
07:30 Back To You
08:00 Damages
09:00 My Boys
09:30 The Closer
10:30 House
11:30 NCIS
12:30 Cavemen
Back To You. Episode 4. A simple idea, a very funny idea. Chuck is worried about playing second fiddle to Kelly on the Evening News. So he steals what looks like it could be the lead story from her. But - in the run up to broadcast - events change in both stories, over and over, and a tug of war develops. After a so-so episode last week, the show delivers a very funny outing this week. My favourite cast member was missing, though.
Damages. Episode 5. The web of deceit gets more complicated as Tom Shayes tries to go it alone. Nearly every scene is a conversation between two people where we (the viewers at home) know for a fact that one of the people is lying. Skillfully. Lying, or simply concealing something that they know. And it makes for rivetting television. David & Katie are still my favourite characters this week.
My Boys. Episode 19. A very clever, but not very funny, episode where PJ is visited by four girls who are exact copies of the girls from Sex And The City. It's a great idea. And the casting/execution is flawless. But it's not all that funny. Jennifer Baxter does a flawless Kim Cattrall. Stealing the episode for me. Yes, even with Ryan Reynolds doing a cameo.
The Closer. Season 3, Episode 13. Rivetting stuff, continued from Ep12, in which Brenda's suspect has an iron-clad alibi. It's a good case, but the real fireworks come from Brenda's personal life. Seeing her have a nasty fight with her fiancé is not nice at all. Great drama, though.
House. Season 4, Episode 3. This series continues to deliver perfection on a weekly basis. Three cases this week, two of them ending in needless deaths. And the doctor who managed to save the third patient... was fired for breaking the rules. That (obvious) twist was not representative of the incredible twists and turns in this episode. The show has a whole new slew of characters, a new dynamic, and the same old bleak tone. House goes to extreme measures to disprove the existance of Heaven. For no reason, really. Other than to be cruel to the dying, maybe? Meanwhile, Anne Dudek is stealing all the acting honours as conniving Amber. She's so my favourite new cast member right now. And considering the people they have brought onto the show, that is quite a compliment.
NCIS. Season 4, Episode 4. Gibbs' old partner fakes 15 year old evidence to get revenge on a bad-guy that got away. This is meant to be the twist at the end, but it's very clear that that's what is going on. Much cleverer is the eventual location of a missing bullet. The victim threw up in an alley after being shot. And the bullet exited the body, with his lunch, and was nowhere nearby when he expired.
Cavemen. Episode 2. There were some laugh-out-loud moments in this outing (which had our two contrasting best-friends working together in the same place) but no more than last week. How many is that? Not enough. Some of the commentary on racism was very very clever. But generated no laughs. I admire the writers for pusing their agenda up-front from the start, but they may wish they had soft-peddled it for a while and found a few more laughs in the scripts. Much as I love this show, I fear that it's days are numbered.
Best TV? House.
Back To You, Cavemen, Damages, House, My Boys, NCIS, The Closer
