Sun, Sep 7, 08 - Middleman, Burning Zone, Supernatural, Back To You, That '70s Show, Good Morning Miami

06:30 The Middleman
07:30 The Burning Zone
08:30 Supernatural
12:00 Back To You
12:30 That '70s Show
01:00 Good Morning Miami

The Middleman. Episode 7. "The Cursed Tuba Contingency" What a surprise. Usually I watch this show for the jokes, witty dialogue, pop culture references and elaborate plots. I was totally side-swiped this week by the romance between The Middleman and Lacey. Side-swiped because I found myself totally into it. Right from the start of the episode, when they sat side-by-side in the empty cinema I was smitten with them as a couple. And that's not been the case. Up to now I've not really warmed to the character of Lacey and the crush she had on The Middleman was just a throw-away gag in every episode. Now suddenly it was the main thing in an episode and it really worked for me. Brit Morgan and Matt Keeslar had great chemistry and the storyline was really romantic. Their cinema visits were wonderful. Her staying to see the end of the movie for him, and telling him what happened later during their goodbye dance, were very sweet and romantic. Darn, but it really got to me. And, suddenly, I'm totally rooting for them as a couple. If they don't end up together in the last episode I will feel royally jipped.



The Burning Zone. Episode 2. "The Silent Tower" While there were a few things to like in the pilot, this first episode of the regular series is across-the-board awful in all respects. Michael Harris joins the cast and is the best thing about the episode. Daniel Cassian is an interesting hero, and a reason to watch every week. Edward Marcase was written like an arrogant jerk in the pilot and this time out they writers have him fall victim to the virus in the opening minutes of the story and send him wandering around a deserted tower block for the duration of the episode. Crazy. This is the frakkin' lead character. And he's completely sidelined in the second episode? That's bad television, no matter how you look at it. Writers with no idea of how to establish a hero.

Tone-wise the show is trying so hard to be The X-Files that it comes across as ridiculous. Nobody trusts anybody, and everybody is lying to everybody. For, as far as I can see, no good reason. The paranoia and distrust made sense on The X-Files, but it's just silly here. Government conspiracies built up around viruses? How can they expect us to take this seriously?

Cassian makes a pretty likable and interesting hero, it must be said. Even if most of his scenes are very badly written (the twist at the end of this episode, for instance, is beyond awful). In fact, all the scenes are badly written. And the story is nonsense. A tower block where everybody committed suicide? Because it was - it turns out - build on a secret lab belonging to a long-deceased evil scientist. Who - it is revealed at the very end - is now one of Cassian's bosses?

I'm sorry but that makes no sense. The X-Files was able to get great milage from the idea what Scully and Mulder were often sent in as sacrificial lambs by people who knew the whole story but didn't reveal it to our heroes. This show tries the same idea, but it's silly when applied to a story about something so huge. And also applied to a team that is, at this stage, incredibly inept. On The X-Files, at least, you knew why they were using Mulder: he was bloody brilliant at what he did, and they could - to a large degree - predict how he would react and deal with stuff.

Marcase and his team are, it must be said, inept idiots. Two team members have become infected in their first two cases.

It's just silly TV. Sigh.

Supernatural. Season 2, Episode 9. "Croatoan" Beyond superb. This was something special. Maybe I just have a weak spot for stories like this... who knows? For whatever reason, I loved every single second of this amazing episode. This is the sort of TV hour I would rewatch over and over if I had enough spare time. The boys arrive in a town and soon find themselves trapped with a few innocents while absolutely everyone else in town goes crazy. It's the Supernatural take on every zombie movie you have every loved and I have to marvel at the way the writers can incorporate stock ideas into the world of the show and make them work.

If you accept that Supernatural is X-Files for the 00s then you must accept that they have much more restricted pallette from which to craft their stories. I mean, the clue is in the title: all stories must involve the supernatural! So, from the get-go lots of stock sci-fi/fantasy ideas are off the table. Yet, the show finds inventive ways to bring stuff onto the show that you might never expect. In this tale, you get all the beats you'd expect to find in Zombie flicks, or tales of alien possession, or standard stories of apocalyptic plagues. But, no... it's all tied to the recurring demon/evil on the series. Now, that's clever TV.

As for the actual story itself: Wow. Intense stuff. Not just in terms of what happens to everyone in the story, but based on the character drama between the two brothers. Dean has never been cooler, or - in the same beat - more chilling and scary. Jared Padalecki does some of his best work on the show, as Sam faces his own death. He really nailed it. No over-the-top antics, he just conveyed the weight falling on Sam's shoulders as contemplated his fate and totally pulled us in to feel it too. I knew that Sam wasn't going to die (Hello!) but the point was making the audience feel his pain and marvel - yet again - at the amount of suffering this poor guy has to go through.

Supernatural's ace-in-the-hole is the ability is tell strong stand-alone stories and use each one to examine (and lay bare) the characters of the men at the centre of it all. Thirty episodes in and the show has delivered two of TV's best ever heroes. Very real people in the middle of un-real stories.

Back To You. Episode 16. "Chuck and Kelly, Doin' It Again" Oh dear. Another dismal post-revamp episode. Although it is set in the workplace, this is - once again - driven by Chuck and Kelly's daughter. And, guess what? The little tyke has managed to suck the funny out, once again.

There are laughs, yes. Fred Willard and (the great) Ty Burrell have a funny plot about swapping ties, but most of the episode has Chuck and Kelly dealing with an ad campaign with strong sexual undertones. On the same day they have decided to tell the world about their daughter. There's not a lot of milage in that idea. And the point of the episode seems to be to engineer problems so Chuck and Kelly can make a grand gesture at the very end and tell everybody live on air.

It's undoubtedly meant to be warm and fuzzy.

But it's false as frak! The sort of crap that only happens on TV. It might work on an emotional level if we - the audience - cared about this daughter. But we don't and I resent having yet another episode devoted to her.

I'd suck it up if there were laughs, but there's aren't. End of review.

That '70s Show. Season 6, Episode 6. "We're Not Gonna Take It" Average episode. Nothing special. Three plots: Eric and Kelso compete for a waiter job, Red tries to get Fez and Laurie divorced, Donna and Jackie try to help Bob with his post-break-up depression. Each plot generates a few laughs, but nothing special happens.



Good Morning Miami. Episode 8. "Penny Wise, Jake Foolish" While it does have flaws (the subplots are weak) this is the first superb episode of GMM. This is where they started to hit it out of the ballpark. And there are no gimmicks or nonsense to drive the story. Just good gags and great character work.

Penny, Dylan and Jake dominate the episode and this is the one where the writers (skillfully and with great subtlety) tell us that Penny has a crush on Jake in the same way that Jake has a crush on Dylan. Genius. It makes the show suddenly more interesting. Certainly for me, because Penny was always my favourite character (and I'm mad about Constance Zimmer).

I've seen this episode many, many times and I always admire the way the writers tell their story. It's Jake's birthday and he tells Claire that he wants a watch. We see Penny hearing this. Claire points out that a watch is a romantic gift. And that's the end of that. We get one more reminder during the episode (from guest star: the great Kenneth Mars) that watches are romantic gifts. Then, at the very end, we see that Penny has bought Jake a watch for his birthday. Which, in the closing seconds, she doesn't give him. Awww.

Broke my heart the first time I saw it. Still breaks my heart, to be honest.

Apart from that, all the Penny-Dylan-Jake stuff is great. Very funny. Penny delivers several really great one-liners and there's a great playfulness to all the scenes between the three of them. The writers pull a great double-bluff by making us think that Dylan has the wrong idea that Penny likes Jake. Clever writing all round, then.

Except in the sub-plots (Gavin addicted to gum, Frank stealing from a corpse). Never mind. I love this episode anyway.

Highlight? Good Morning Miami (Penny likes Jake, aw...)
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Sun, Aug 24, 08 - The Middleman, The Burning Zone, Supernatural, Flying Blind, Good Morning Miami

06:30 The Middleman
07:30 The Burning Zone
08:30 Supernatural
01:30 Flying Blind
02:00 Good Morning Miami



The Middleman. Episode 5. "The Flying Fish Zombification" Since I don't like Wendy's roommate very much, I was a tad bored by her storyline in this one. Will her mom show up at her Art Crawl or not? Gee, who cares? Much better was the case-of-the-week: flying fish that turn people into trout-eating zombies. Lots of very funny scenes. My fave? The bit where The Middleman was on the phone (being told about the flying fish for the first time) and we could see Wendy way in the background having a fight to the death with one of the dastardly creatures. That was hilarious in itself but it got funnier as the phone conversation ended and The Middleman was saying how important it was to capture one of the creatures alive while we could see Wendy bashing it to death in the background. Great slapstick comedy in a show where most of the laughs come from the witty dialogue. And Mary Pat Gleason, of course.



The Burning Zone. Episode 1. "The Burning Zone" Some pretty nifty ideas here but, in general, this is a pretty poor pilot. The cast is a mixed bag: Jeffrey Dean Morgan is great as the lead scientist, and Paul Guilfoyle is a fantastic bad guy in this first story. But Tamlyn Tomita is as bland and forgettable here as she was on Babylon 5 and while James Black was great in the series that followed he fails to impress in this opener.

The characters are all pretty dreadful. The writers give the lead hero guy several key scenes to make us think that he is a cool and dangerous rule-breaker. But he comes across as a jerk. We meet him speeding along a highway being chased by local cops and "not having time" to stop and explain himself. Instead he leads them on a merry chase before his security team bails him out. Later he meet his female partner for the first time and sparks fly because he was previously responsible for the death of her fiance. A fact that he has totally forgotten!!

So, the lead scientist hero is an arrogant jerk and his team are also pretty crap. The pretty scientist girl is one of those annoying TV characters who doubts everything the hero says and keeps getting proved wrong every step of the way. They are clearly supposed to be Mulder and Scully, but they are clearly... not!

The tough guy assigned to protect the two scientists proves sadly inept in this first story when he is quickly overcome by a bad guy and possessed by the very intelligent virus the team are trying to stop. I mean he is instantly beaten in a fight and becomes one of the bad guys. In, like, his third scene. In the frakkin' pilot!! How is any of that supposed to make us think he is cool or interesting?

Finally, there is the boss guy that they all work for. He seems to think they are all highly expendable and activates a self-destruct device to blow the compound up when the lead bad guy escapes. I mean, seriously? There's one dangerous bad guy running around and the solution is: blow the place up and kill the two scientists who might save the entire world. Yeah, that makes sense...

So, with all this crap going on, is there anything worthwhile in the pilot? The answer is: Yes. It's a great story. A sentient virus has returned after 14,000 years in hibernation. The virus explains that man's natural place in the scheme of things is as a host for the virus. That's some pretty cool stuff. And there's a mysterious van driver, too. Who appears to be glowing with the light of God. Or something. And it's all very intriguing.

So, a good story and a dynamic leading man (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) made me want to tune in for episode two. Which is when Michael Harris joins the cast, thank goodness!



Supernatural. Season 2, Episode 7. "The Usual Suspects" A great episode and an instant addition to my list of Best Ever Supernatural Episodes. It deviates from formula, has a very strong story, a non-supernatural foe and two of my most favourite actors (Keegan Connor Tracy and Jason Gedrick). Add Linda Blair to the mix and you have a major win for the Supernatural team. I've not seen much of Blair but she's the one carrying this episode (it's from her point of view and she's pretty much in every scene) and she is fantastic.

Yes, it was easy to see who the bad guy would turn out to be (in the big twist ending) but, hey, you can't have everything. They made references to X-Files, CHiPs and Jim Rockford... I'm more than happy!



Flying Blind. Episode 5. "The Week of Living Dangerously" Neil and Alicia have moved on to having sex at her place and things are going great. Until she gets a "I never thought I'd hear from you again" phone call. Her ex-boyfriend - a Latin American guerrilla - threatens Neil's life. Neil, being the man he is, cowers in fear for most of the episode and the laughs flow freely. The dialogue on this show is amazing. "Does he wear a retainer, because I really know how to use that to my advantage?" More than just being funny, there is the fact that this is the first time that Neil has felt like fighting for a woman. Cool stuff.



Good Morning Miami. Episode 6. "Kiss of the Spiderman" A perfect episode. The dynamics between all of the characters are now in place and the romantic "event-in-this-episode" between Jake and Dylan is accidental (so he's not a jerk for trying to break her relationship up).

Jake is secretly in love with Dylan and only two characters know it. His grandmother (who we see in his home life) is in favour of him chasing Dylan and Penny (who he works with) thinks he has to back off and leave Dylan with Gavin. It's an interesting dynamic and it really makes the show come alive. It brings Jake's inner turmoil out into the open and allows it to be discussed out loud. Plus, Jake is now written as being uncertain about what to do next, and this allows the writers to make his grandmother and Penny more extreme. They are pushing him in different directions and this gives the show the conflict in needs to make it fun to watch. And it's got lots of good gags, too, so it's also funny to watch. A perfect mixture, in fact.

The main storyline shows us what happens when Jake and Gavin wear identical costumes at Halloween and Dylan kisses the wrong one. In the sub-plot we learn for the first time that Frank may be gay. Pretty much every scene is laugh out loud funny and the romantic tension at the end comes across as genuine and sweet. Penny, my absolute favourite character, gets some of the best lines and - what I love most - she drops her sarcastic guard on two occasions and is very nice to Jake and his situation.

This makes her more likable, yes, but it is also vital to the success of the show. These moments help validate Jake's position. And, as I found myself on this particular re-watching of the show, Jake's position in the early episodes is not very easy to defend. He could come across as a bit of jerk trying to end (what appears to be) a pretty okay relationship. But, by episode 6, we see that he's not trying to do anything to anyone and he is - in fact - completely trapped by his desperate love for this girl he barely knows. Penny's interaction with him in these scenes serves two functions: it helps makes the whole thing funny (as opposed to sad and lonely) and - when it really counts - it helps us to like Jake. We can see that, for all her teasing, Penny kinda likes him and feels for him. And, at this stage in the series, that is where the audience is, also.

Highlight? Good Morning Miami (Poor Jake)
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