Sunday, November 25th, 2007
06:00 Pushing Daisies
07:00 Reaper
12:00 Journeyman
01:00 The Six Million Dollar Man
02:00 Laurel & Hardy
Pushing Daisies. Episode 6. Once again viewers are drawn into a very strange world. Wonderful and colourful, always delightful, but certainly strange. When a man with four wives is murdered in the most inventive sequence I've seen on TV in quite a long while, suspicion falls upon the four women in question. In a move guaranteed to make fans jump up and down with glee, our favourite three detectives add Olive Snook to the team. Were you jumping up and down with glee? I was.
The balance between case-of-the-week and ongoing-romance has never been better. The case was completely engrossing, and superbly cast. Always great to see Jessica Lundy and how hot was Christine Adams as a foil for Emerson? I hope she returns in future episodes. Together they made for the best Emerson scenes since the pilot. Olive's scenes, however, were more heartfelt and thoughtful. The writers are cleverly using the character to give new perspective on the Ned-Chuck romance, and the case-of-the-week fed into that better than ever before.
Reaper. Episode 7. I'm not trying to come across as some growling Alpha Male here, but - honestly - at this stage Sam's running away from women who are throwing themselves at him is tedious and off-putting. He won't pursue Andi (who is virtually stalking him) and he walks away from this week's guest star who french-kisses him before introducing herself (!!). What's up with this behavior? I'm not sure what the writers are trying to say about Sam, but I'm not getting it. Anyone care to clue me in?
And what is the deal with Andi? Wouldn't any non-stalker have left him alone by now? And wasn't that whole hidden lair of hers really creepy? I thought the popcorn was drugged!!! This is it, I thought, he's going to wake up tied to a large kitchen appliance with Andi eating large clumps of his hair and I'll finally be proven right in my theory that she's just a raving psycho who can't take "No, thanks" for an answer. I've known girls like that. I had to change my phone number once.
The lead characters aside, it was a pretty strong episode. Reaper gives almost no screen-time to the Bad Guys, sometimes they are nothing but FX, but the battles are always inventive and exciting. This week's Bad Guy was played by a real person (not FX): the fabulous Mercedes McNab but she was totally wasted in the role. Her only real scene, at the very end, was brilliant but left the viewer wanting more. Curtis Armstrong was better served by the script. I hope we see him again.
Journeyman. Episode 9 is a curious mixture of things that work very well, and things that really don't work at all. This week's case-of-the-week is much better than average, Livia finally contributes something valuable to Dan's mission, Katie gets some great scenes, so do Dan's son, brother and boss. Heck, even the brother's gorgeous girlfriend is well written. Plus, the show is using it's own continuity to fantastic effect and has, by the end of this episode, established two very different recurring bad-guys. Hurrah!!
Sounds fantastic, right? Well, it is. Up to a point. As engaged as I am by all of that, I am disheartened by the show's playing fast and loose with the idea of changing history. And by Dan's seeming inability to see what effect his actions are going to take. In the pilot, I was impressed by the way he acted like a real person who was time-travelling. Sadly, in this episode, he is behaving just like every other clueless character we have seen undertaking time-travel adventures.
Dan decides to do some stuff that Livia feels is not part of his mission. She warns him of the consequences of changing history. Now, this is all happening in the same episode where, in 2007, Dan has finally convinced his brother that he is a time-traveller. It's obvious to any viewer that by the end of the episode Dan will have undone the events that convinced his brother that he was telling the truth. It should be obvious to Dan, too. In fact, had he twigged to the fact we would have had a truly unique time-travel story: should he let the bad guy kill at girl in 2001 so that his brother might arrest him in 2007? Time/God/Whatever didn't even want him to save the girl. Yet, Dan continued on his off-the-book missin. Without realising that, by saving the girl, he was undoing all the conversations he had with his brother. And, then, at episode's end when he met his brother he seeminly realised for the first time what must have happened. How stupid is Dan, anyway? Stupider than the people watching at home, that's for sure.
Even worse: the writer's cheated anyway with the so-called twist ending. The actual event that changed his brother's mind about him happened in a completely different episode. A completely different episode!! All Dan had to say to Jack at the end of this episode was: "A cappie set a cop on me after I passed a 2003 $20 in 1996!" And - Pow! - Jack would have had the same realisation that he had ten minutes into the episode. By the writers didn't do that. How stupid are the writers, anyway? Stupider than the people watching at home, that's for sure.
But despite that nonsense, the rest of the episode was awesome. Livia did loads of stuff on the mission, her every conversation was valuable and she totally kicked ass when a guy tried to get tough with Dan. Katie, meanwhile, had to deal with her son causing trouble at school and pretending to be just like his father (saving victims from bullies and disappearing from sight around the house). Even better, in a clever piece of writing, Katie's conversation with her son - trying to help him understand what his father does, and how to cope with it - went a long way towards her understand what Dan does, and how to cope with it. Brilliant.
In short, there's was lots and lots and lots to savour in this newest episode of Journeyman. But the dumb bits were really dumb and caused me to beat my head repeatedly against a brick wall. Sure, I enjoyed the show, but now I have a bad headache!
The Six Million Dollar Man. Episode 13 ends the first season with, what is basically, a clip-show. A clip-show with horses. Plagued by mishaps, Steve suspects that someone who knows he is bionic is testing him. This causes him to frequently stare off into space, for as much as five minutes at a time, remembering the good bits from earlier really-good episodes.
Steve is right. Dr. Dolenz (from one of those earlier really-good episodes) is back, and studying Mr. Austin with a view towards building robots based on his design. All of this happens while Steve is staying at a friends ranch. A ranch which has a lot of horses, and a really bad actress. Since the episode is daft and pointless, there is a certain level of pleasure to be had from watching her mangle the awful dialogue she's been given. A certain level, but not much.
Laurel & Hardy. 1929, Film 2. "Berth Marks" has five set-pieces. A funny bit of Stan and Ollie missing one another at a train-station. A clever/funny scene of them causing utter chaos on a train, which ends with everybody in the carriage fighting. A funny sequence of their attempts to get into the top berth in a sleeping compartment. A long, unfunny, slapstick routine set within the confines of the top berth. And it all ends with the funniest part of the movie: not slapstick funny, but laughs generated by the considerable chemistry of these two performers.
Highlight? Pushing Daisies.
Journeyman, Laurel And Hardy, Pushing Daisies, Reaper, The Six Million Dollar Man
