06:30 The Middleman
07:30 Kyle XY
08:30 Supernatural
12:00 That '70s Show
12:30 Two Guys And A Girl
The Middleman. Episode 2. "The Accidental Occidental Conception" This is a funny show. The dialogue is snappy and witty and guaranteed to provoke a laugh or two. A lot of the ideas are audacious, too. It's a creative show. So much so that you are inclined to think: I can't believe they are doing this. It has echoes of the best ideas of Reaper and the pace of Pushing Daisies. So, all things considered I'm pretty happy with The Middleman.
Kyle XY. Season 2, Episode 9. "Ghost In The Machine" It starts off with one of the worst ideas ever used in the series, but it quickly develops into one of the very episodes this show has offered. Lori decides that she wants to do something reckless and visit the site of a recent murder. Huh? What the frak is that about? The writers are - I think - so embarrassed by this lame idea that it happens off-screen and we first learn of it when we hear Declan and Kyle talking about it. Of course, this (nutty) quest brings all of the main characters into the woods and back to the place where Jessi committed the murder. Which, of course, is also beside Zzyzx.
Very lazy writing, guys.
Once that nonsense is out of the way, the episode that follows is one of the very best: Kyle 'time travels' back into some 'memories' he didn't know he had acquired, we get a further clue on the whole 'should Kyle trust Foss' mystery and we see that Jessi has been reprogrammed by Madacorp and is no much more focussed on Kyle. Pity. I like her.
The scenes with Kyle walking around in the past are very cool, the confrontations with Foss are great, but the revelation as to the identity of the real Bad Guy is something that was predictable at the very start of the season.
Never mind. Great episode.
Supernatural. Season 2, Episode 3. "Bloodlust" I didn't like this episode at all. This is the one where they put forward the idea that everything supernatural doesn't have to be killed and introduce some nice vampires (who live off cow blood). I watch Supernatural for a lot of reasons. But not to see rehashed ideas from other shows! It was painful to see the show deliver such a pedestrian script. I knew right from the start where this was going. Once the other hunter was introduced I figured out they would ending up fighting him, one of them (probably Dean) being late into the fight and - at the end of it all - the brothers would be a bit closer. Or something.
One of the strengths of this show is that you cannot write the final scene after watching the first ten minutes. And this week, much to my disappointment, I could.
I also strongly feel that there is no place for "nice" supernatural entities in the world of this show. We've seen that. Supernatural should be more of a bleak world-vision. I keep saying that. But only because that was the way it was during season one and I don't want the show 're-vamped'.
Plus, in another of my pet-hates, in a moment of crisis I do not want to see Sam phoning his Mommy-figure back at the bar. Sam shouldn't be telling Dean "X is bad because so-and-so tells me", he should be saying "X is bad news because my gut instinct tells me". That's cooler. And more interesting.
So, did I like anything about this episode? Yes, two things. The pre-credits sequences was supremely creepy and the idea of Dean opening up about his grief to an outsider is brilliant.
That '70s Show. Season 6, Episode 1. "The Kids Are Alright" This is more than just one of television's best ever sit-coms to me, it's a time-trip back to the early '00s when I first started sharing a house and 'forcing' my housemates to watch the TV shows that I liked. That '70s Show played night after night back then. Easy-going comedy that was guaranteed to make everyone fall about the room in hysterics. The channel airing it in my part of the world bleeped out all the swear words, but apart from that it was perfect.
It still is. The sixth season is where we kinda fell away. I used to put all the episodes I could on tape and then we'd watch them in the right order. I kept missing key episodes of season 6 when they re-ran and used to take weeks for the show to loop round again to Season 6. So it kinda fell off the viewing list in our house.
Until last week when I stumbled across an episode by accident (they still silence out the bad words, by the way!).
Season 6 starts off with Red recovering from his heart attack. Some of the best scenes are the ones with the (dysfunctional) Foreman family. Eric's rage and desire to get away are very real and very easy to relate to.
Watching the show again for the first time in years, I'd forgotten how much I love Donna and how much she reminds me of one of my girlfriends from that time years ago. One of my housemates used to tease me a lot back then because she reckoned I only watched the show night after night because the girl in it reminded me so much of that girl I used to date.
She was only partly right. I watched it cos it was funny, too.
Two Guys And A Girl. Season 3, Episode 7. "Berg's New Roommate" It was ABC's answer to Friends but, in many ways, it was better. The Sharon-Johnny romance was certainly as good as anything the NBC show every offered up. And this is one of the key episodes: Sharon lures Johnny into competing with another couple to secure the date and church they want for their wedding. In the process she lies about stuff that supposedly happened with Johnny and that leads her to confessing to Johnny that she once had feelings for Pete. Great stuff. Funny. But real, too. Real in the sense that Johnny and Sharon deal with their fight in a mature real-world kind-of-way. He's annoyed that she had feelings for someone else (who lives downstairs) but he has to suck it up and deal with it without any huge 'moment' to prove that Sharon thinks he's The One for her. That only happens on TV, you know.
Highlight? That '70s Show
Sun, Jul 6, 08 - Middleman, Kyle XY, Supernatural, That '70s Show, Two Guys And A Girl
