Sunday, December 20th, 2009
05.00 The Big Bang Theory
05.30 Defying Gravity
06.30 Legend Of The Seeker
07.30 Supernatural
11.00 Parks And Recreation
11.30 Scrubs
The Big Bang Theory. Season 3, Episode 11. "The Maternal Congruence" Leonard's Mother.
Not a Christmas Classic, but great. And very funny.
Christine Baranski rocks. And works the studio audience like the pro she is. Pairing her with Kaley Cuoco pays huge comic dividends.
Defying Gravity. Episode 13. "Kiss" Venus.
A great end to a great series. Well, a great season-ender, but not an actual ending to the series/story. Damn it!
Most of the episode is just Zoe's walk on Venus and everyone watching and waiting for her to die. And it's gripping stuff. And, as the characters begin to ask deep questions as to what it's all about, and what the 'objects' want, so do the viewers. At least I did.
This is thought-provoking entertainment, akin to Lost. Yes, it's that good. A pity nobody watched.
Legend Of The Seeker. Episode 22. "Reckoning" 58 years in the future...
Brave choice. Ending the season, and - indeed - the story arc, with an time travel episode that is largely set in a parallel universe (where Kahlan must marry Darken Rahl and raise their son). But it pays off.
This is a superb episode. Epic stuff. Kahlan comes across as more heroic than ever and (thanks to the sublime Craig Parker) Rahl is at his manipulative best/worst. It really is a joy to watch it all unfold.
Richard, meanwhile, has some great scenes with Cara (Tabrett Bethell) and the two have a surprisingly strong chemistry. She's great (but I prefer Denna/Jessica Marais).
The final minutes are too rushed, but it's a good ending to the story.
Supernatural. Season 5, Episode 9. "The Real Ghostbusters" The guys attend a Supernatural convention. Yes, a Supernatural convention.
Wow. This show continues to toy with the rules of television storytelling. This is not the best episode where they have done this, but it's almost unfair now to compare a SN episode with other SN episodes. Particularly ones that were mind-blowing. Fairer, in this case, to compare this with other TV fare and say that it is some of the finest television being produced right now.
The case-of-the-week is good. It's a 'plain jane' type of SN story and - as such - would have been a good one to tell in season one. The boys visit a haunted hotel and solve the problem. Except... they have misjudged the situation and... made things worse. It could have played out in season one and been good.
But, here, in season five, it's a very different story. The hotel is full of Sam and Dean fans/wannabes and duo end up have to work with (and rely on) two fans to get the job done. Even better, the script pauses to allow Dean to learn something valuable from his 'fans'. A moment that could have been awful and, instead, is spine-tingling and inspiring. Damian and Barnes (Devin Ratray & Ernie Grunwald) are two of the best characters the show has ever had.
Even better, Becky (who is tad more one-note and boring) is able to tell Sam some vital information that only a fan of the show would know.
That's just crazy. Breaking the rules of storytelling like that. AND I LOVE IT.
Parks And Recreation. Season 2, Episode 12. "Christmas Scandal"
In this episode, they showed us that Leslie does a huge amount of work and nobody could replace her. This accomplished two things: it made me love her more than ever, and it serves to take this show even further away from it's origins as an Office clone, where Leslie is a female Michael Scott that nobody likes/respects. Those days are gone now.
Scrubs. Season 9, Episode 3. "Our Role Models"
JD was the weak link here. He was mean and selfish for most of the episode. Shouldn't he be over all of that, by now? It's really hard to sympathise with him here, whereas Lucy, Drew and all the others are much more likable and interesting at this stage.
Seeing Turk and Cox having a beer together only served to highlight the fact that JD hasn't evolved. The show would have been wiser to play things with JD as being a drinking buddy, too, and only make a sly reference to his days of craving Cox's approval. Instead they used it to drive the whole episode and kinda lost me.
Highlight? Defying Gravity (gripping)
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The Big Bang Theory, Defying Gravity, Legend Of The Seeker, Supernatural, Parks And Recreation, Scrubs
