NOTIFICATION: Pushing Daisies Season 2

Next season to start will be:

Pushing Daisies
Season 2
Initial run: 01/10/2008 - 13/06/2009

Starring:

	Lee Pace	as	"Ned" (adult)
	Anna Friel	as	Charlotte Charles
	Chi McBride	as	Emerson Cod
	Jim Dale	as	The Narrator
	Field Cate	as	"Ned" (child)
	Ellen Greene	as	Vivian Charles
with	Swoosie Kurtz	as	Lily Charles
and	Kristin Chenoweth	as	Olive Snook

Pre-season buzz (quotes):

• "The big headline for season 2 is family. We're getting into the familial relationships with the main characters and expanding into almost Twin Peaks-ian soap opera running through the episodes." - Bryan Fuller, Entertainment Weekly.
• "The second season picks up ten months after the first season. They’re kind of in the same place where Chuck and Ned we saw last season were in an emotionally difficult place and those wounds have healed and they’re moving forward, but who hasn’t healed is Olive who’s been forced to be the keeper of a great many secrets." - Bryan Fuller, Blast Magazine.
• "We discovered that Chuck and Ned really work best when it's Chuck and Ned against the world as opposed to Chuck and Ned against each other. They may not be as sexually frustrated as they were before." - Bryan Fuller, Entertainment Weekly.

Pre-season buzz (from last season's finale):

• The big cliffhanger of last season was that Lily is actually Chuck's mother. I imagine Chuck will eventually find this out, and also why it had to be kept a secret. But for now, Olive is the only one who knows, which is bound to create some tension.
• Toward the end of last season, Ned and Chuck fell out over the fact that Ned killed Chuck's father. However it all seems to have been cleared up now - I wouldn't be too surprised if it is mentioned again some point this season.
• Erm, apart from that, not much happened. The season was cut short because of the writers' strike.

Pre-season buzz (statistical):

• The season premiere is titled "Bzzzzzzz!" and is known (as above) to take place 10 months after last season's finale.
• The season finale is titled "Kerplunk!"; there are 13 episodes total in this season.
• Field Cate is now credited as a regular main cast member; he appeared in every episode of season one but was just credited as a guest star.
• Recurring characters from season 1 include The Coroner and Simone from the episode "Bitches". Unfortunately, Oscar Vibenius does not appear in this season.
• New recurring characters include Dwight Dixon, who appears for 5 episodes, and Charles Charles, who is Chuck's father and previously appeared in the series pilot.
  

[SPK] Spiders

TV Programme: Spooks
Season: 2
Episode: 3
Date I watched this episode: 31/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

This episode focussed mainly on the rather warped sense of reality held by the spooks at MI-5. The episode centred around Zoe, who was struggling with the fact that she doesn't even know who she is anymore. It was a good character-development ep for her, struggling to be a teacher which she didn't even want to do in the first place, being overwhelmed by the "real world". She also seemed to feel demeaned by Tom's approach to this whole thing, using the fact that she's female to get at Gordon.

The episode was once again cleverly put together, with several twists that I didn't see coming, like Gordon being totally innocent, "Peter Ellis" aka Noah being the mastermind behind it all, and Victor Gleeson being a figment of Noah's imagination. All these were totally unexpected and had me almost jumping in my chair when they were revealed. And what's more - there was a perfectly reasonable explanation behind all of this. This is in contrast to some other shows which throw in a massive twist but then explain it away and kind of gloss over it. Spooks not only sees the intelligence of its audience, it also rewards that intelligence with some really clever stories. Peter/Noah was always one step ahead of MI-5 and the audience, and that's the kind of character that I find really compelling.

As for the other characters aside from Zoe and Tom: well Danny also had a much bigger role this episode. He was seen being involved in multiple operations, and although it didn't do much for his character development, it's just good to see him getting some screentime. Sam had a role to play in the opening sequence but was then hardly mentioned after that. Since she has been a bit of a background character in the past couple of episodes, I hope they try to develop her character soon; she's too new to take this much of a back seat. Ruth on the other hand was somewhat expanded upon in this episode, showing her usefulness when others see her as a bit of a liability.

The relationships portrayed in this episode (Tom/Vicki and Carlo/Zoe) were once again incidental. Zoe's scene with Carlo served to further highlight the tension she feels about her life at the moment. As for Tom, well I'm shocked he decided to tell Vicki he was a spy so early in their relationship. She is a bit unstable to be honest. He's certainly surprised at her reaction, and the fact that she doesn't really react the same way Ellie did. I don't see her as a long-term partner for Tom, so once again I'm just surprised the way this went down.

The episode had an interesting end - the service taking pity on Noah, who in turn vows to strike again. It all goes back to the season one mantra "we look after our own". And despite the fact that Noah got Anthony killed, he is still classed as "one of our own". Difficult perhaps to take in but that's the way it goes.

In truth I was not quite as psyched by this episode as the previous two, but I wasn't disappointed either. Time will tell whether the standard of this season is quite up to the bar of the previous one.

[NAS] Resurrection

TV Programme: The New Adventures Of Superman
Season: 2
Episode: 17
Date I watched this episode: 30/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 14 days.

This episode was like the second part of the last. However far from being full of tragedy and misery, it served to introduce the excellent character of Dan Scardino, who we certainly haven't seen the last of. Dan was the proverbial spanner in the Lois/Clark "works" and as mentioned in the final line of the episode, Lois certainly does have some choices to make. If only Lois and Clark could be upfront about their feelings rather than sidestepping the issues all the time, they wouldn't be in this mess.

Scardino is almost like an opposite of Clark. He's the really smooth character who does everything right - like complimenting Lois on her home-baked cookies, while Clark shows himself up by looking like he's going to be sick. He is similar to Lois in her approach of just blazing into things without a care, and for that he holds some respect for her, and she for him. But ironically it's because of all this that it will never work. Lois needs someone who complements her, and Scardino will just eventually get on her nerves.

Obviously the main story of the episode was with this "Resurrection" thing and despite the fact that the word "resurrect" was in inverted commas in the synopsis I read, for some reason I just didn't cotton on to the twist that the criminals were just in suspended animation. Nevertheless, even if you did see the twist coming I think it would have been an enjoyable episode in the way it played out. There were a lot of key players and names flying around, which served to confuse the viewer, but was not gratutituous due to the nature of the story, and did help the story to naturally unravel.

I suppose my main criticism of this and recent episodes, and the programme as a whole, is that it doesn't often feel very "mythology" based. Last season we had Lex Luthor who is very closely tied in to DC mythology, but a lot of these episodes just feature the core characters of Lois, Clark, Jimmy and Perry, with very little extra connection to DC mythology or any real feeling that there even is a mythology. This is in contrast to Smallville, which definitely does push the mythology in every episode. Now, I know this is a very different show, and it's focussing more on the relationship between Lois and Clark, but sometimes I just feel that these four characters could just as easily have different names and it wouldn't make a difference.

That aside, this was a pretty fun episode to watch, and I'll look forward to seeing Dan Scardino and his catburgling techniques in future episodes.

[SPK] Nest Of Angels

TV Programme: Spooks
Season: 2
Episode: 2
Date I watched this episode: 30/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 15 days.

With the last episode having served mainly to tie up "loose ends" from the last season, this episode was the first "real" episode of the season. It was mainly a good episode in terms of the core storyline, but also tried to work with far too many "new" characters, which kind of made it feel a bit all over the place.

Let's start with the core storyline then - the Mullah Rachid. Rachid was truly a very interesting and complex villain - not that I've come to expect anything less from this show. He was really very cautious, making Khaldun go to his limits to try to get into his inner circle. This made for interesting television, as we the audience weren't quite sure where Khaldun's loyalties really lay.

I was glad that Alexander Siddig seemed to get a lot of screentime in this episode. I "know" Alex quite well from his starring role as Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and his main recurring role as Hamri Al Assad in 24 season 6. In fact, his character Khaldun in this episode was not too dissimilar from Assad. He's a great actor, and I particularly liked the scene where Khaldun is in Tom's bedroom in the dark - what a brilliantly scripted, shot and acted scene, the jewel of this episode.

I'm always honoured at how clever this show expects their audience to be. Sometimes shows like 24 and Damages really try to tell the viewer something over and over again, expecting them to be a little stupid, while other shows such as The West Wing, The Sopranos and this one, assume a certain level of intelligence from their viewers. I don't think readers of The Sun would be particularly likely to watch this show, they'd probably prefer a show like Ultimate Force. Anyway in particular this episode made the viewer think that the book Khaldun gives to Tom was actually the book Peter Pan, without any explicit reference to that, and then does almost a "double-cross" of the viewers by revealing it is actually the Koran.

But I think the key theme of this episode - and probably the most well-written - was the theme of a clash of cultures between Khaldun and the rest of MI-5. This theme ran right through from the early encounters with Khaldun and was first explicitly mentioned when Khaldun's suggestion that they should "just kill" Rachid was met with a deadly silence. Rachid gave a third dimension to this by his own taunting of Tom that his intelligence service was powerless to do anything.

The clash of cultures really came to a head at the end of the episode, where Tom wants to pull Khaldun out of the operation, but Khaldun just wants to work with the boy to "save" him, both physically and spiritually. In the final moment, Khaldun defied established procedures, ignored orders, and in a beautiful gesture of heroism, sacrificed himself to (at least spiritually) save the boy.

This episode was in many places quite gritty. It didn't take any prisoners, showing the real effects that Islamic extremism can have, and didn't have a particularly "happy" ending. In fact the start to the episode was really disturbing. Tom's reaction to all this was typically cold and unmoved.

So moving back to the rather stringy parts of the episode, as previously mentioned it just tried to work with far too many characters. Carlo, Vicki and Tessa were mentioned in the "previously on" but it was hardly worth it; each of them only appearing in very minor scenes. In particular I was sorry that Tessa's re-introduction was not a really big deal. Actually I hadn't expected to see Vicki again, given that she's basically a civilian, but she's obviously poised to become Tom's next love interest. Vying for Tom's affections is Christine Dale, who appears here for the first time since the pilot, but again had a rather pointless role. Sam Buxton was hardly in the episode, appearing in a couple of incidental scenes. The new main character Ruth Evershed was introduced, but hardly got the best intro; she just seems weird and didn't contribute very much. Even Danny and Zoe went back to having minor roles; this was a very Tom-heavy episode.

I've already talked briefly of the ending to this episode but in general it was quite thrilling as that wasn't how it was supposed to go down. It almost felt like a Damages season finale, where we've been building up to something for a while and then it turns out totally differently from how we would expect.

Normally at the end of a review I talk about what this means for the rest of the season, but since there's not really any continuity in Spooks episodes I can't really do that. I'm looking forward to a less action-packed episode with more character development at this stage of the season though.

[FUT] Bender's Game

TV Programme: Futurama
Season: 5
Episode: 9-12
Date I watched this episode: 02/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 14 days.

I had quite high expectations of this episode. Okay so I saw the trailer, and I saw the Lord Of The Rings references, and thought that was pretty cool. But pop culture references aren't enough, and this just turned out to be a parody (of both LOTR and Star Wars), and not a very good one at that. The "parody" itself didn't even start until over half way through the episode, whereas the rest of the episode seemed to be devoted to incidental nonsense!

Well in general this episode was just too geeky to be able to be any good. Obviously based largely around Dungeons & Dragons, and in large part taking place within Bender's imagination, the jokes were mildly funny to begin with but just got repetitive and boring. The involvement of "Mom" and her cronies was just annoying more than anything, even in the flashback sequences which didn't seem to add anything, and even the shocking revelation that Ignus is Farnsworth's son was just cringeworthy.

The "Leela's anger collar" storyline, together with the entire Demolition Derby sequence, just felt like complete filler. Leela is well known for having a bad temper, it's just who she is, and wasn't any worse in this episode than in the past. Not much more to say on that I'm afraid, it was just pointless.

There were a couple of redeeming features. Firstly, I liked how each character had a different representation in the parody universe. Zoidberg the sidekick had to be Sam, flirtatious Amy had to be the lady of the swamps and Leela had to be a revolutionary centaur. It really did fit quite well with the actual personalities of the characters.

The other thing was the Nibbler backstory (incidentally, how on earth did Nibbler manage to get back into the Universe after leaving it during "Bender's Big Score"?) The fact that he was named by Leela doesn't make a whole lot of sense as his race are also called the Nibblonians, but seeing his peoples' history and enslavement was interesting.

I'm guessing that the method of transport demonstrated at the end was only a joke. I don't know if it will be mentioned again that we need an alternate source of fuel, but obviously they need something to power their spaceships. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be merely glossed over though.

Admittedly this episode was slightly more fun to watch than "The Beast With A Billion Backs" but not much. Certainly both of them pale in comparison next to the brilliant "Bender's Big Score". But I can sort of see what they were doing with this film, so hopefully with a better spark of an idea, the final episode of this season can be a lot better.

[NAS] Lucky Leon

TV Programme: The New Adventures Of Superman
Season: 2
Episode: 16
Date I watched this episode: 16/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 7 days.

This episode actually ended on quite a serious note, which is a rarity for this show, which is usually very light, often too light. The final scene was both tragic and absolutely awesome in terms of the angles, the ambience, the general drama. Admittedly it felt like this was the first half of a two-part episode, as Mayson's last word is "Resurrection" which is also the title of the next episode, but that's not really important.

Anyway having started at the end let's go back to the beginning of the episode and "Lucky Leon" himself. Leon was actually quite a good villain again. Not perfect, but he was an interesting character, certainly not pulled out of a mould. He's not the typical criminal, perhaps not a very believable criminal, but I can overlook that in that he was compelling to watch, and we see Intergang appearing once more (though somehow I think it'll be the last we'll see of that Intergang boss, who also appeared in "Top Copy").

The misdirection in the episode was also pretty clever for the bar set by this show. Even though we actually knew what was going to happen - Leon was going to trick Superman into stealing the nuclear weapon - the two groups in the two vans looked similar enough that it was easy to get confused as to which one was which - and that was the intention, I think. However, the wrap up of this storyline seemed a bit odd. I'm not sure whether Superman made a "mistake"? Did he really mean to set off the nuclear bomb? Either way it all turned out alright in the end.

Apart from nuclear bombs and terrorists, the main story of this episode was Lois and Clark's relationship and finally their first date (for which Lois seemingly missed a martial arts exam). After 37 episodes, those two are finally just about getting their act together, and do end up together, which is a huge relief. As usual, Clark kept it light, teasing Lois with her well-known nervousness around such things. And this showed through in the way Lois prepared for her date - but Clark's charm just managed to stop this from ruining the date. On the other hand it was really cool to see how Clark Kent gets ready for a date. I love those little moments about how he deals with everyday things. You don't get to see that as much on this show as you do on Smallville, but when it does come it's done in a quite different way.

With Jimmy away for much of the episode, Lois and Clark had to carry the episode with their own humour. And it actually worked quite well, a lot better than the spin which Jimmy usually puts on it. The main story of course was to do with the sports metaphors and the difference in the ways that men and women express their emotions. Once again Clark managed to do this brilliantly without sounding like a chauvinist.

On the actual date, we got a rare glimpse into Lois's past. This is not hugely important in terms of where she is now in her life - an independent, together woman - but it was good of the writers to throw that in there and give some backstory to a show which lacks quite a lot of backstory. I think most of all it showed Lois and Clark opening up to each other and moving towards a place where maybe one day Clark can reveal his secret.

It was surprising that Mayson eventually found out Clark's secret at the end, although in hindsight the episode had been building up to that. It all started with Lois using Mayson as usual to mess with Clark's head - not very fair but I don't think Mayson was complaining. In fact Mayson just refuses to give up in this area - causing me to feel a bit sorry for her. But she realised Clark was hiding something big from her, and finally in her last few moments of life she realised that Clark was Superman, which just made the scene all the more amazing.

Like I said, Lois and Clark ended up together but it wasn't without the usual big drama in the middle. To be honest this felt a bit forced. Lois's reaction at the end of the date was not very believable and really only served the purpose of making the reunion at the end seem heartwarming.

Altogether this episode was unique in a number of ways. It's unlikely the following episode will be able to "top it" but this episode was worth watching if only for the beautiful final scene.

[LST] Not In Portland

TV Programme: Lost
Season: 3
Episode: 7
Date I watched this episode: 15/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 month.
Centric for: Juliet

I've been on holiday and so just getting round to reviewing the other eps I watched on the weekend of 15th/16th August. This was the midseason premiere for the 2007 part of Season 3 and, like the season premiere itself, it only focussed on the Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Ben and Juliet. This was also the first centric episode for the mysterious Juliet, giving some insight into the background of this relatively new character.

As is fairly normal for Lost, though, we only got a small part of the story. Juliet was recruited to the island first of all as a researcher. But far from research, she now seems to be some kind of survivalist leader in Ben's group. Quite how that jump was made will I'm sure be the subject of some future episode. But as for the story told in this episode, it was intriguing to see the first real link between the island and the outside world in the form of Mr Alpert and his company "Mittelos Bioscience" which is presumably a front for the DHARMA Initiative itself.

It was good to see Zelkjo Ivanek here too, one of my favourite TV actors whom I didn't know was going to be in this episode (his performance as "Ray Fiske" in Damages is absolutely amazing). His character almost seemed as if he actually wanted to do some good in the world through Juliet's research. I couldn't quite work out whether he was conniving or genuinely looking out for Juliet's best interests.

Going back to the present, it was a bit unclear (perhaps even to the characters themselves) of the level of authority Juliet has within Ben's group, especially with Ben incapacitated. Early on in the episode, Juliet seemed to be ordering some of the men about, but then later on Tom sternly told her to "get out". It's not really clear who out of her and Tom has more authority.

Tom indeed seems to be a lot more "human" than the rest of them, preferring to settle things peacefully and not resort to violence or threats. He's kind of one extreme, while the other extreme is Danny Pickett and his group of essentially thugs. They are like a breakaway group, although that rift has been resolved now that Juliet has put a bullet in his head.

The synopsis for this episode teased that Juliet would "make a shocking decision that will endanger her standing with her people." Not quite sure where that came in; she seemed to be doing things very much by the book, following Ben's orders and not openly turning against the group. In fact, it is perhaps her loyalty that now leaves her within a stones throw of actually getting home.

Jack's bravery and fallibility shone through brilliantly in this episode as he tried so hard to help his friends escape. He's right: he's not an anaesthesiologist, he's not perfect, and the depth and dimension of this character is really compelling.

As for Kate and Sawyer, they spent a lot of their time with Alex. Strange that she claims to be Ben's daughter, when we know that Alex's father is called Robert. Perhaps Ben lied to her to stop her from trying to escape? I wouldn't put it past him, but it hasn't really worked and she seems more rebellious than ever.

We also saw Karl again, who presumably will be in a few more episodes now he's on a boat back to the main island. The sensory deception he was exposed to in Room 23 was just incredibly scary, and freaked me out more than anything I've seen on this show so far. Knowing the editing on these shows (and I'm thinking of something similar in [ALS] "The Descent") there was probably a huge amount of information in those video clips, but I could hardly bear to watch it.

There have been a few near-death experiences for Kate and Sawyer. Last episode saw them almost get shot by Danny, and they almost got shot a couple more times in this episode. It really reminds us of how high the stakes are, especially with Danny's thuggish nature. Kate and Sawyer are in a hostile environment where they are not being protected by anyone and escape by the skin of their teeth.

But not anymore - now they have escaped from the small island. It's pretty surprising to see an actual escape quite so soon, but it blows the door right open for some action-packed stories in this part of the season, especially with Jack's commandment not to come back for him, and Locke's commitment to do just the opposite (well no surprise there then). Altogether this was a gripping, interesting and intriguing episode and not only did it kick off the midseason well, it set things up well for a very exciting few episodes. I've got a smile on my face.

[SPK] Legitimate Targets

TV Programme: Spooks
Season: 2
Episode: 1
Date I watched this episode: 15/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 year, 6 months, 26 days.

Spooks is back, and it's like no time at all had passed since last season. Well quite literally it hasn't in the chronology of the show, but what I meant was that we are straight back into the action and the character interplay as though there had never been a hiatus. It's certainly good to see all those faces back. There wasn't the same dramatic introduction of a character that we often see in season premieres these days, but this was largely due to the fact that the scene was familiar - the last scene of last season's finale "Lesser Of Two Evils".

This was one of the characteristics of the episode which worked quite uniquely well; that the characters were thrust into a new scenario with no real time to react to the events which had just occurred. This was particularly difficult for Tom himself, who finally came to the end of the road with Ellie. I don't think it ever could have worked though; I can't remember a single episode where they didn't have a big argument; I don't really remember any happy times.

I'm not really sure why they are so convinced they love each other. I think the root cause of the problem comes down to the fact that she doesn't really understand concepts of duty. That's why she didn't understand when Tom couldn't make the decision right then and there because "something big [was] going down". And duty is so fundamental to everything Tom Quinn is and does, that it was just a fundamental problem that couldn't ever be overcome.

Of course this was not made any easier by the events of "Lesser Of Two Evils". The fact that the bomb actually did not detonate was a bit of a cop-out to be honest. It wasn't really in-keeping with the clever reputation this show has, and neither was the misdirection that accompanied it, nor the other misdirection which occurred later in the episode. Such misdirection-by-editing is so cliché, and has been used countless times before in programmes such as 24 and Alias so as to make it almost predictable. Nevertheless, this episode was mostly quite cleverly written - it kept me guessing, through the Serbian collaborators, right up to the endgame of the COBRA meeting attack was revealed. The ending was actually quite gritty too - throwing Gradic to the proverbial wolves - again in-keeping with the style of this show.

I should spend a moment talking about each of the main characters. I've already talked about Tom a fair bit but suffice to say that I think he's shown himself to be a very three-dimensional character - perhaps the most complex character apart from Harry himself. His straight-faced exterior hides a vulnerable persona - glimpsed at the end of this episode when he is packing up Ellie's personal belongings - he does feel sorrow, but in a different way from other people. He also showed outright anger in this episode, directed towards Gradic who I guess Tom saw as a makeshift Patrick McCann.

Harry is again often cold but also can have a tremendous amount of feeling and wants to protect his staff. We saw this countless times in season one, like with Danny and the credit card scandal, or with Zoe and the Tessa thing. His relationship with Tom is perhaps the most complicated as Harry doesn't see Tom as needing any sympathy or guidance; they operate independently in a sense. This is seen frankly in this ep when Harry tells Tom that he "couldn't care less about [his] emotional state".

Danny and Zoe are not amazingly compelling characters - though they had more of an important role in this episode than usual, which might perhaps be a sign of things to come. They are almost background characters, doing work under orders from Tom and Harry, with only fairly minor storylines of their own. They remind me of such characters as Travis Mayweather from Star Trek: Enterprise, or Tom Grace from Alias. Zoe seemed run down and fed up with life in this ep, going out of her way to avoid an old school friend when she wasn't even a threat at the time. On the other hand, sometimes she was very alert, especially with her handling of situations with Rado.

Sam is the new kid on the block and I definitely feel sorry for her after such a tough first day. She was trying to be friendly in the morning but got some pretty cold reactions from Zoe and Tom - probably not the warm welcome she was expecting. Her job seems to be quite flexible - ranging from field work, through tedious admin, to leading a team of analysts. This seemed a bit strange and I'm not sure whether the writers had clearly thought through what her role was.

As for her personality - she seems quite light and easy even in tough situations. Her winking at the camera in the film store certainly didn't impress Tom, and she has started to show signs that she doesn't quite know what's appropriate in which situation - although that's not a prerequisite for working in the service. She's seemed to take a fancy to Danny already, and the two exchanged a look for a beat early in the episode.

That pretty much wraps it up for the characters. Tessa was only briefly mentioned and Tom told Danny and Zoe to not mention her again. Perhaps this is the last we as the viewers will hear of her too, though I think it's unlikely. Strangely she did appear in the "previously on" segment. I guess peoples' heads were just too filled with the current events to think about her.

I don't know if McCann's organisation, the War For Irish Unity, will return, but I certainly hope so as it would tie up a loose end in the story. McCann definitely did seem serious when he spoke of bigger plans, and this is a ready-made premise for the writers to use in a future episode.

Well overall, not a perfect episode, but then this isn't a perfect show; doesn't even make my top 25. Still well worth watching though and I look forward to the next episode, where I think we will get a much better handle on where this is going within the current season.

[SPN] Kafelnikov

TV Programme: Sports Night
Season: 2
Episode: 5
Date I watched this episode: 09/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 6 days.

Here we have yet another mistitled episode. "Kafelnikov" was a concept which was meant to be introduced in this episode but apparently got postponed to the following episode "Shane". Nevertheless they kept the title. Very strange and perhaps indicative of the fact that, with Sorkin spending so much time on The West Wing Season 1, the organisation of this show was falling apart.

For once, the Dana/Casey saga was not a big part of the episode. I disagree with Dana and say that they were really on a "date" at the start of the episode, but I don't think Casey and Dana will ever see eye to eye where that's concerned. Instead, the relationship side of the episode focussed on Dan, seemingly setting things up for the programme's return after the midseason hiatus (since I also watched [JER] "Vox Populi" on this day, I designated this a kind of unofficial "midseason finale day").

Dan hasn't really had a love interest so far this season (unless you count Hillary Clinton) and I think Abby Jacobs is a great character for him to be involved with. She's smart, witty and interesting. It's kind of a funny situation and the scene they have together in her office shows the chemistry the two of them have. Dan's mental state is also a storyline that's probably coming back - Abby should have left that well alone!

The main storyline of this episode was the Y2K bug (this being the last episode of Sports Night of the 20th Century). It wasn't a great storyline, but the whole atmosphere and character of this show just made it not such a bad episode after all. Natalie showed her tremendous art for calming people down and holding things together. Jeremy mostly showed a crazy, almost manic streak. Dana showed her business head coupled with strong feeling.

But the best reaction came from Isaac. He only appeared for a few lines in this ep (the real-life actor was recovering from a stroke at the time) but his hope for the new millennium was heart-warming, and the show once again showed (not unlike in "The Six Southern Gentlemen Of Tenneessee") that it tackles the race issue rather than trying to push it under the carpet.

On paper this episode wasn't amazing, but somehow it just became great due to the great acting and character development that is intrinsic to this show. It also set up the stage for a compelling "Dan" storyline after the Christmas break.

[JER] Vox Populi

TV Programme: Jericho
Season: 2
Episode: 11
Date I watched this episode: 09/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 6 days.

As the midseason finale, I had even higher expectations of this episode than normal, but Jericho never fails to disappoint. So many things happened - the election, the Roger/Emily/Jake/Heather love square, Gray's justice on Jonah, Rob's - whatever that was, and Dale's arc.

I was pretty surprised at the election result to be honest. Perhaps, like Johnston, I was just too complacent about the outcome. Johnston himself was dressed in black for Gray's speech, as if at a funeral. We all know (except perhaps Bill, who was totally dumb) that Gray's sense of justice is terrible and horrifying. As Johnston said at the end, Gray needs to realise that we live in a democracy, and he will have many people, including Johnston himself, watching him from now on - Johnston promised that.

Of course the incident that sparked all this off was when everything came to a head in Jonah's cell, following Gray's "tribunal" (starkly showing the lack of democracy in the new order). I think this showed Johnston how far things had really come. Johnston was being rather an idealist earlier in the episode when he said he was going to bring Jonah back to Jericho for a "fair trial", given the amount of hate directed towards Jonah, some of it misdirected.

Anyway this scene (with Jake and Gray) was by far the best scene of the episode and possibly the best scene of the programme so far. Jake is just so good at showing people how ridiculous they are being, much more so than the approach that would have been taken by Johnston, Gail or even Rob. And the acting here from both Skreet and Michael was absolutely brilliant.

The whole Jonah storyline had a marked effect on Dale, whose relationship with Gracie had been quite strong, although also quirky. His inheritance of the store has given him a certain amount of responsibility which he doesn't seem ready to handle. Although his killing of Mitch was not entirely unjustified, and in some sense he feels he IS doing the responsible thing and protecting the store, if/when he is found out then he will be in very big trouble. He was brave to tell Johnston about Mitch, but his bravery is not being channeled in the right direction. I suppose all of this goes to show that he definitely does need help with the store.

In terms of relationships, the main focus here was on Emily and Jake, I mean, what were they thinking? I don't think they go well together; they've grown apart, and they haven't thought all this through. Now that Roger is back, whether Emily gets back with him or not, her relationship with Jake is certainly doomed. So the big question is whether Jake and Heather can patch things up. But all this tied in quite nicely with the whole Jonah storyline. When Jonah was on the edge of death, Emily showed her true feelings for him as a father and he reciprocated by helping her see her true feelings for Jake.

The other relationship story was Stanley and Mimi - who last time I commented could never work, and this time they seem to be starting to realise this themselves, but are kind of ignoring that. But what was really beautiful in this episode was Bonnie's reaction to it all. I've never seen an argument in sign language like that before; it was brilliantly done. The emotions were conveyed through amazing body language and I'm just blown away by how cool this scene was. Later in the episode, Bonnie hooked up with Sean and we got to see her rebellious streak emerging. I think she's going to have a much bigger part in the second half of the season.

Rob's story was kind of separate from the rest of the episode here, but still as compelling as ever. We knew from the "previously on" that the traitor was going to come into it somewhere, but what does that even mean? Who is the traitor, is it someone we know? Is it Jake? This ep certainly didn't give any answers, only questions. Rob's tough decision to stay with his family was heartwarming, but we still don't know what he was choosing between, or who his employers are. We are getting closer though - and that ending was brilliant as always. The way the music built up and then just went totally silent with the single message "See you soon." - could not have asked for a better close to the midseason.

We have quite a lot built up for the second half of the season now. First off it's not just Roger who's arrived in Jericho - there's a whole load of people. Second we will have to see Dale try to cover up his mess. Thirdly Emily has some tough choices to make. And finally Johnston trying his best to stop democracy from falling apart once and for all. All in all a breathtaking episode and an amazing testament to just how good this show can and will be.

[NAS] Return Of The Prankster

TV Programme: The New Adventures Of Superman
Season: 2
Episode: 15
Date I watched this episode: 09/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 9 days.

I must admit that The Prankster is quite a cool villain. Some of the pranks he pulled, both in this episode and the earlier "The Prankster", were pretty clever and quite funny. His return was fairly greatly anticipated, but the delivery here just wasn't great. It wasn't Bronson Pinchot's acting though (which was great by the way). Instead it was a problem with the choice to restrict the pranks to be based around a single device, so that the writers limited themselves to a really quite repetitive story.

Each section of the episode involved Kyle and Victor making some modification to the device, making it slightly better, and then attempting another attack based on freezing someone. This meant the episode ran somewhat like a list, with attack after attack, and nothing to really grip you. While some of the pranks (such as the "Hi Lois" thing - with the lights) were really funny, there did seem to be just a load of filler in between them.

Probably what let it down the most though were the characters. After a few episodes of more interesting villains, Kyle's sidekick here was just the kind of ridiculous, slapstick sidekick that we've seen in the early part of the season. Victor was just so stupid and such a mess of a person to be cringeworthy. The secret service agent Kerrigan was just cheesy; he was funny at first but then was overused. And Kyle Griffin's dad was just not believable: he didn't have the same obvious motivation as the others.

As well as the obvious references to "The Prankster", this ep also had some references to "The Eyes Have It", in fact it bore several similarities to that episode, and Kyle used the technology developed there to modify his own device. This was nice to see as the episode storylines often lack continuity in this programme as a whole.

The Jimmy/Lois "side storyline" was pretty uninteresting, as with most Jimmy Olsen storylines. It was just too simple and didn't really add anything; again it was a bit of a time filler. Jimmy did warn Lois that he wouldn't be an easy person to live with, so I do feel a bit sorry for him, but as a whole this story didn't add anything to either action or character development.

As a whole this episode was painfully average, which is a shame since it could have been so great. We can pick out good moments, but mostly I did not really find this one very enjoyable.

NOTIFICATION: Spooks Season 2

Next season to start will be:

Spooks
Season 2
Initial run: 02/06/2003 - 11/08/2003

Starring:

Matthew McFadyen	as	Tom Quinn
Peter Firth	as	Harry Pearce
David Oyelowo	as	Danny Hunter
Keeley Hawes	as	Zoe Reynolds
Shauna MacDonald	as	Sam Buxton
Nicola Walker	as	Ruth Evershed

Pre-season buzz (quotes):

• "Back in June 2002, the sixth and final episode of the first series left viewers on the edge of their seats as Tom's girlfriend and her daughter were trapped inside a securely sealed house, with an explosive-packed laptop that was just about to blow. The second series is set to pick up from exactly where it left off with Tom helplessly watching from outside as the timer ticks down. Due to the huge success of the first series, this time around the BBC commissioned 10 hour-long episodes, and are set to drive the topicality of the storylines even further home. The original series was written during the September 11th atrocities, but the writers stuck to their anti-terrorism unit plots and delivered a brave series which won much critical acclaim." (mi6.co.uk)
• "The outcome [of the first season's cliffhanger] is plausible enough not to turn impressionable adolescent viewers into cynical television critics, but that it does involve a trick. A clue is that Spooks has a habit - which it repeats twice more in this opening episode - of misleading us about what we think we're seeing." (The Guardian)
• "We discovered with the first series that Spooks can tell stories no other long-running British TV drama can tell. There were times when we found our fiction blending imperceptibly with the news. Episode two, for example, was about race issues and at the time it was broadcast, the national news followed with a story about race riots. This new, longer series builds on that. Threats to national security have never been greater and our team of spies have to match the growing sophistication of an often unseen enemy. Spooks continues to demonstrate that what may seem at first unlikely can all too frequently become a reality." (Jane Featherstone, quoted in BBC Press)
• "In the first series she had this will they/won't they thing going on with Danny and nothing happened in the end. But in this series, Zoe does have a bit of romance. She meets this Italian stallion called Carlo and she does some quite unexpected things, like running off to hotel rooms in the middle of the day! I think she is a bit wary of romance. I think it's hard enough for anyone who's single to meet someone but, when you do what Tom and Zoe do for a living, then it's especially difficult; you can be called out anywhere at anytime. They don't have much of a social life really apart from with each other. The easiest way sometimes is if they date each other, which is what Zoe tells Danny when he fancies Sam." (Keeley Hawes)
  

Pre-season buzz (from last season's finale):

• Obviously the main thing was the bomb leading to the apparent death of Tom Quinn and Ellie Simm. However, given that the former is in the credits for this season, it would seem that things didn't turn out exactly as they were shown (a giant white light at the end of last season would seem to indicate that the bomb did indeed go off).
• No doubt Tom and Ellie's relationship will have taken a pretty bad turn after these events too.
• Zoe finally confessed to Harry that she knew of Tessa's involvement in the phantom agent scandal. Tessa blackmailed Harry with some information she knew about the shooting of a man back in the 1970s. Harry arrested her anyway. So presumably Tessa won't feature much in this season, but Harry is itching for a fight against her, which will presumably surface.
• The actual main story of the episode, involving Tom going over Harry's head to allow an IRA terrorist to launch an attack on the UK in exchange for information used to prevent a nuclear explosion, will probably resurface too, as it was so integral to the bomb going off.
• Danny has only recently (in the penultimate episode I think) been found out for his illegal credit rating hacking; not sure if this will come up in the new season.
  
• Not much was going on between Danny and Zoe - that storyline had kind of petered out, as confirmed by Keeley above.
  

Pre-season buzz (statistical):

• Much like season 1, the episodes of season 2 did not have official titles (in keeping with the "secretive" theme of the show), but most people go off the working titles for the episodes.
• The season premiere is titled "Legitimate Targets" and takes place immediately after last season's finale "Lesser Of Two Evils".
• This season's finale is titled "Smoke And Mirrors". There are 10 episodes total in this season.
• New main characters are Sam Buxton and Ruth Evershed, who did not appear at all in season 1.
• There are some returning recurring characters, but all had very minor roles in season 1. It's not clear if their season 2 roles will be any more significant, though it seems that at least in the case of Christine Dale, she will be a fairly major recurring character (she only previously appeared in the pilot, although she did have a fairly medium-sized role in that). Jools Siviter does not appear in this season at all.
  

[SPN] Louise Revisited

TV Programme: Sports Night
Season: 2
Episode: 4
Date I watched this episode: 03/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

This was one of the oddest episodes of Sports Night I've seen. It was an episode that was heavily edited between script and screen and it crudely shows. Since the episode was titled "Louise Revisited", I certainly expected it to be a followup to last season's "Dear Louise", which was narrated by Jeremy in the style of a letter he was writing to his sister.

The original version of the script (which, at the time of writing, can be viewed here), included an introductory narrative by Natalie (who is taking the role of the letter writer in this episode, as confirmed in the final version) and subsequent voiceovers later on. It also included an introduction including the end of the episode, with the rest told as a flashback. However in the final version, this was all cut out, leaving only small references to the letter to Louise (only about a minute of the episode in total, with no real relation to the rest of the story). I must admit I was somewhat disappointed by this, and I think this was a wrong decision by the production team. (Incidentally, another scene from the "next week on Sports Night" segment of "Cliff Gardner" was also cut, where Sam tells Casey he isn't big on team morale).

Possibly as a result of this, the other stories of the episode were kind of all over the place, and not very well connected. The opening story to the episode was about the Internet poll being conducted. While it was funny to find out that Casey had been voting for himself (and funny to rewatch the opening scene with this knowledge in mind), the whole skullduggery with Jeremy wasn't hugely funny. I think Jeremy's reaction to the whole thing was just too normal, and the whole thing was just a bit too simple to fit within Sports Night.

Sam Donovan is really getting to Dana, more so than pretty much any of the other characters. Maybe this is because she feels there is a lot of good things about him, but she just can't bring herself to actually like him. He just amazes her at every turn, she can't work him out. But then neither can Dan, but at least Dan makes the effort to include him. That speech he gave about "are you having fun Sam?" was great and quite possibly the highlight of the episode. It reminds me of a lot of comments I have got myself at work. Sam seems to have a "plan" which involves keeping his cards close to his chest and revealing them a bit at a time.

Once again we have the very strained relationship between Casey and Dana, largely due to Dana's plan. Casey is towing a risky line by not really complying but trying to talk her out of it, but this week I think he actually made a breakthrough in his "I wish it was me" speech. Also we get "She Will Have Her Way" playing at the end of the ep, making for an emotional ending.

Well there's not much more I can say. This episode could have been great if it weren't for lousy editing. (Then again, if they'd have kept the voiceover in but cut another storyline, then the voiceover wouldn't have made sense. But they could have re-recorded it). Sam is still interesting enough in his scenes to make me want to crave more, though, and things are still developing between Casey and Dana; I just hope they go somewhere with that storyline. Not a terrible episode for those reasons, but just quite disappointing.

[JER] Red Flag

TV Programme: Jericho
Season: 2
Episode: 10
Date I watched this episode: 03/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

I just KNEW right from the "Previously On" segment that this was going to be a good episode. In that previously on, we had Jake negotiating with Jonah, we had the "are they just reporting it, or are they behind it?" and we had the conversations about April and the baby. This show just keeps getting better and better.

It's still a mystery who dropped these bombs in the first place. Since this food wasn't poisoned, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that it wasn't China who dropped the bombs. However someone is obviously feeling antagonistic towards China, as the posters included state "DO NOT FIGHT. CHINA IS YOUR FRIEND" indicating that someone was obviously thinking of fighting China.

The episode began with an outing of the patrol crew, Jake's army that he's just recently started. It's not clear whether this was the first patrol, but it was certainly an early one. The area around Jericho is pretty large, and they did seem to only have a small number of people to patrol it. I'm not sure Ravenwood would be bothered enough to try to attack along a non-road, so it seems more sensible to devote the manpower to the checkpoints.

I was glad that Jonah played a fairly big part in this episode. It was the first time we really got to see the whole outside of Jonah's compound ("Quaker Freight" - whatever that means) and it's certainly big and very well protected. I'm not sure that I've seen anything like it really before; something of a cross between a mafia gang and a group of terrorists. Maybe these types of things are commonplace in rural America though; I wouldn't know.

Jonah is a very cool customer and it's crazy to think of Mitchell running things having seen him in some of this episode's scenes. He's just basically a thug whereas Jonah has a degree of dignity. Mitchell comes across as being very immature and really a bit dumb, whereas Jonah has a level of intelligence needed to hold the group together. It's fairly clear that Jonah is the best leader for the group, but they want him to be better than good: they want him to be perfect. And as a father, he has those imperfections.

Gracie showed her cold-hearted nature once again in this ep. She really had fallen very low having made a proverbial deal with the devil (Jonah) and charging high prices to extort people during a crisis. She'd bitten off more than she could chew, as shown clearly in the first scene of the episode...and the last. This was a completely unexpected and shocking ending; the preceding celebrations expertly lulled me into a false sense of security. Out of all the characters though, she's the one I'm least sad to see go.

Gray Anderson continued to show his true colours here, although people still seem to be following him. He doesn't really stand for anything except for everything Johnston doesn't. His recklessness about the food was just stupid and provocative rather than trying to help the town. The election was only briefly mentioned in this episode, although it will presumably occur in the next episode, which is titled "Vox Populi" (Latin for "Voice of The People").

Quite a few relationship stories here. Obviously the main one was the April-Eric-Mary love triangle. When I see Eric and Mary together, it still seems like a blossoming romance, in the early stages, and doesn't really feel like a strong, sturdy relationship which will last. But what can Eric do now - what does Gail expect him to do now? April wasn't even going to tell Eric about the baby until she knew it wouldn't make a difference, and so she's never going to let him back into her life to be a father to their child. She's partly to blame too - this could have been her fault if she'd have used the divorce papers. So that's all coming up, also we'll see if Johnston is really in the dog house for telling Eric about the baby.

Eric's not the only one in a dangerous situation - Jake is also treading on dangerous waters. Emily has pretty much assured herself that she still has feelings for Jake, and seemed to be flirting with him toward the end of this episode, with her body language at least. Emily showed tremendous bravery in this episode, but Jake couldn't recognise that - he couldn't tell her "good job" because he cares about her too much - perhaps too much - given that he is starting a relationship with her maid of honour. On the other hand, Jake and Heather haven't really talked since Jake got back from Rogue River, so not really sure what's going on there.

As for Mr Rob Hawkins, I felt sorry for him here with his missing out on thanksgiving for the umpteenth time. I don't know whether I should, as I don't know much about him, so this makes me feel a bit awkward, but I do feel sorry for him. It was great to see some redemption for him at the end of the episode with those truly magical lights.

Stanley and Mimi are a pair who've been looking like they might get it together, well, since they met. They're a bit of an odd couple though to be honest I think; he is a famer and she hates farms, wants to go out on the town with her glamorous friends; he doesn't really look after his appearance, makes bad decisions, is never really that nice to her, doesn't know where to draw the line. It seems like a recipe for disaster to be honest but maybe I will be proved dead wrong.

That's a lot to happen in an episode both on the action and the character-development sides. Needless to say this was one of my favourite episodes so far, not necessarily because of the relationships but the mission to retrieve the generator, politics and so on. Next episode is the midseason finale, so expect another action packed episode, while the first episode after the midseason hiatus reveals key details about Jake and Rob's respective pasts. The sky's the limit for this show.

[FUT] The Lost Adventure

TV Programme: Futurama
Season: 5
Episode: (Special)
Date I watched this episode: 02/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

The story behind this "episode" is a bit of a strange one. It was originally written by J Stewart Burns, who had previously written several episodes during seasons 1-3. The voices were done by the original cast. But the animation was largely done by a third party company. The episode was cut down into segments and used as cutscenes for a video game titled only "Futurama" and released toward the end of the 4th season (actually the 5th broadcast season: if you're confused then read my pre-season notification). Now the actual gameplay got pretty much panned by the crtics, but they still liked the actual episode which made up the story of the game. Thus the episode was re-composited together (apparently they had lost the original footage) and all references to in-game elements were removed. Spliced in certain places were gameplay footage to keep the continuity (although game user interface elements were still in place - these should have been removed in my opinion). The "episode" (now given an intro and titled "The Lost Adventure") was released on the DVD for "The Beast With A Billion Backs". Therefore it's hard to say whether this episode should be classed as being in season 4 or 5, though it really doesn't matter.

The episode contained another time paradox situation. However here, unlike Bender's Big Score, time seemed to cycle round and round. This gave the writers the situation where they were able to drop hints and then fully explain them later. For example, pretty near the start, Fry says "That's odd, mighty odd" as he gets some time-travel dejà-vu which isn't really explained until the end. The ship appears to be destroyed at the beginning and this is also explained by events which happened while time-travelling.

The re-animator was actually quite a funny element. There was certainly the opportunity for this kind of thing to fall flat on its face because it would have only made sense in the context of the game. However enough people "died" enough during the cutscenes to make it serve a purpose even within this format.

A couple of other cool things: first "Spaceship Earth", which was comical in terms of its execution and the entire concept, and perhaps even cooler and one of the best bits of the episode was the Sun City. This was a good idea to do, and is pretty much what I think of when I think about the episode. Even the "Sun God" (who was short-lived, as much of the actual action would have taken place in gameplay) was actually quite a cool character.

I think the best sequence though was the meeting with Adoy (a play on "Yoda") and Zoidberg's appearance. Done right, I think Zoidberg is the best character on this show, and he certainly held the show here. Also funny was the fact that this planet was stuck "in the corner of the universe" and Zoidberg is now seemingly stuck there.

Given the constraints they were working in for this, "The Lost Adventure" was a good episode. It's great how the story transitioned well from game to episode - I've seen a similar cut of 24: The Game (admittedly fan-made and rather crude) which didn't work quite so well, as many of the story elements relied too heavily on gameplay. But in the case of Futurama, it's great that people who couldn't be bothered to play the game, now get a chance to watch the episode contained therein anyway.

[SPN] Cliff Gardner

TV Programme: Sports Night
Season: 2
Episode: 3
Date I watched this episode: 02/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

This episode was really about showing the character of Sam Donovan. We didn't get to see much of Sam in the previous episode, but we saw enough to know he was going to cause some problems. This third episode was set 8 days after the second, and the "stiffness" is really showing through. It's just an adjustment period though, and this episode turned out to really be a turning point for the relationship between Sam and the crew.

The opening sequence showed quite obviously that Sam was able to get his way pretty much 100% of the time. Sports Night is not really renowned for its misdirection, but this was a real example of that: I really had no idea that Sam was not just showing weakness by bowing out of the studio; his plan just so smoothly and cooly got him the result that he wanted. I think that if the crew didn't HATE him so much, they'd actually admire him for that. He's a very clever, intellectual guy, much like the typical person working at the show.

Dana really has lost it here. She's considering leaving, throwing herself into near-suicidal situations where she is bound to get fired, being deliberately obnoxious with the executives. It's amazing how quickly things can come crashing down when things don't go to plan - ever since the events of last season's "The Six Southern Gentlemen Of Tennessee" things have gone from bad to worse. Dan and Dana have butted heads throughout this - Dan thinking that more of a stand should be made while Dana defers to Isaac's judgment. Things reached a head in this episode, with Dan saying that Dana was now a mere secretary, but what was really heartwarming was that he jumped to her defense in the meeting with JJ.

Isaac is also one playing a dangerous game; making a stand against JJ in his office, making JJ seriously consider replacing him. Everyone there knows it would be a bad idea, completely wrong, to "dumb down" the show and make it just another sports show, but JJ and his buddies really don't understand how this all works. When the job is offered to Sam (and they lament that Isaac was perhaps never able to do the job), Isaac is wonderfully moral about it and tells Sam to follow his heart and take the job if he wants it. However you have to wonder whether inside, Isaac has a hidden agenda, as surely he wouldn't want his team left in the hands of Sam.

The most revealing part of the episode though was the final sequence, starting from Dana's 5-minute break. The story which Sam told was about Philo Farnsworth, is something Sorkin is clearly quite interested in, because he wrote a play about it titled "The Farnsworth Invention" which was on Broadway early last year (some 10 years after the broadcast of this episode). Anyway this sequence really showed up what kind of person Sam was, shocking Dana into saying "Woah" as the episode closed.

The fact is that Sam has a single goal in mind - to boost the ratings of the show. He will take whatever means necessary to do that, and will knock down anything that stands in his way. That includes Dana, but it also includes JJ. Sam is the archetypal Cliff Gardner; he knows how to do something and he does it well. But he can only do it well when he's working with someone like Isaac who does his part well too. The fact is that Sam is what the show needs, not a bunch of notes from executives. He puts JJ and the boys in their place because they were in his way, hindering him from what he needs to do. All he needs now is a little trust from Dana and her crew.

It's also notable the way Sam chooses to do things. Isaac observes "you should have said it in front of them", to which Sam responds "it's not what I do". Sam has an odd way of expressing himself, he doesn't go for obvious displays of drama and self-promoting, he just wants to get the job done. Which means that he may well be doing a lot more good than people know about.

Again we briefly had mention of the Casey-Dana situation, but only in one scene. Dana clarifies by saying that while she wants Casey to date other women, she doesn't want him to enjoy it. This kind of puts to bed Dan's plan of getting Casey to date the women and make Dana jealous. But it does arguably make things easier for Casey. It's a bit strange that Dana still hasn't seen how crazy all this is after 8 days.

Again another superb episode, really fleshing out the character of Sam Donovan and showing how much potential he has as a character in this season. I'm sure we haven't seen the end of this arc, and he has a long way to go before he is accepted, but I certainly can put my trust in Mr Sorkin to give us a cool ride along the way.

[JER] Crossroads

TV Programme: Jericho
Season: 2
Episode: 9
Date I watched this episode: 02/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

Well, Ravenwood didn't waste their time; they were on Jericho's doorstep within 12 hours, and this episode followed their attempted invasion; the first real threat to the town Jericho we have seen so far. While keeping in track with the plan to protect the town, the episode mainly focussed on the politics around this, with Eric and Johnston arguing against Gray, Jake and Rob.

When Eric came back with direct orders from the Mayor to stand down, no one seemed to care. Certainly Jake didn't care and it's likely that Gray also took no notice. This is a dangerous situation to be in where no one really knows who is in charge, and perhaps an election is not a bad idea to give a re-inforced mandate to whoever wins. Johnston's return has a profound effect on all involved, and he gives the big speech like the one he gave in "Federal Response", which has the effect of raising peoples' morale and putting them on the same page ("[if] we destroy this bridge we've already lost") while Gray is intent on breaking it down again.

Rob and Jake seem to be getting along; Rob seems clearly impressed by Jake - you can tell from the look on his face when Jake clearly states his purpose: "Everything I do, I do to protect [my family]". Jake is single-minded, driven and is not afraid to cut a few corners; a man not too dissimilar from Rob himself. He's also someone who's trying his best to repair a broken family.

One person who clearly wasn't impressed though was Jonah. After Jake's final stand at the end of the episode, which was pretty much saved by Jonah (who seems to be styling himself more and more as a force for good), Jonah pretty much inspired Jake to start the army which he proposed to his Dad that night. Quite ironic: not that it isn't necessary though. It was clear from the scene with the stray shot that these guys just aren't cut out to fight, and in the new world, they need to be.

I wonder if Jake remembers that blowing up the bridge was his idea in the first place? He wasn't being used by Gray as Johnston claims he was. He's not the only son in the doghouse too - Gail just can't forgive Eric for what he's done. Gail needs to realise just how hard it was for Eric to do the things he did, and that love doesn't just happen, and she doesn't know about April's divorce papers. Granted, though, Eric doesn't know about April's pregnancy, and he's going to have to find out sooner or later; you can't just hide something like that!

A couple of side stories in the episode. Emily is dreaming of Roger. She is having so many doubts but I just thing that's her emotions running off the chart. If she falls in love with Jake again then that will be very very awkward. Seeing her thoughts was reasonably interesting although I still think they need to work the Jonah/Emily relationship in order to make anything out of this character. The other sort of side story was Stanley's refusal to come to the town. This was actually pretty weak, with a back and forth, going and not going; I just got fed up and it felt like a time filler.

However overall this was a great episode, really showing how the characters, especially the men, react in this situation and how politics might be the town's downfall unless handled correctly. So another piece of brilliance and so glad I discovered this show.

[SPN] When Something Wicked This Way Comes

TV Programme: Sports Night
Season: 2
Episode: 2
Date I watched this episode: 01/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 day.

It's no coincidence that Sports Night brings in a ratings expert the same time as the rating of the real life programme are faltering. Aaron Sorkin wrote the show this way deliberately. This episode then served the single purpose of introducing the ratings expert, played by Felicity Huffman's real-life husband William H Macy.

The way this was done built up a lot of mystery and tension, especially between Isaac and Dana, prior to actually seeing Macy's character Sam Donovan at the end of the episode. At the rumour stage, Dana clearly didn't believe there was even a remote possibility that it could be true. Well Isaac is not very popular with the crew now. I can see why he did it - he has to look like he is trying to do his job to keep the network away, even if the ratings didn't need pushing up. The key question posed by Dana though is "Who do I answer to, you or him?" Isaac kind of dodged this question, and I'm sure that this will be a dilemma which will appear again in this show. Sam Donovan himself was only seen briefly, but is completely impolite and abrasive. He's certainly going to cause rifts. Maybe that's why he's so successful though.

The other big story was with Dana's "epiphany". I can imagine Casey's problem - Dana is so passionate that he doesn't quite know how to deal with her. There is no real logical comeback here - her logic does make sense but she has just taken all the emotion out of the situation. I think Dan's idea is good though - just do what she tells you and then see whether she likes it in the cold light of day. (But then it might all turn sour, like Lucas and Brooke in [OTH] "A Multitude Of Casualties").

The smallest story in this ep was Dan and Hillary Clinton. Well this wasn't all that great but it was necessary because it gave Casey and Dan some witty banter. It's one of those little stories which reminds me of a lot of the episodes early on in season one. Natalie and Jeremy, having hogged the screentime in the last episode, hardly appeared at all in this one.

Overall this was a well-constructed episode, funny in the right places, lots of character stories, and opened up a whole new can of worms to be explored in the rest of the season.

[FUT] The Beast With A Billion Backs

TV Programme: Futurama
Season: 5
Episode: 5-8
Date I watched this episode: 01/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 15 days.

From what I've heard, each of these "films" has a set theme. The last one focussed on time travel paradoxes, which are just inherently funny, or at least lend themselves to humour. This ep was based on dating and relationships though, which just doesn't really leave the way open for a lot of jokes. I think there were a lot of jokes here where, while I could see the humour in them, just weren't all that funny. But this episode is apparently considered by many to be the worst in this fifth season, so hopefully the last two will be better.

I think the only redeeming feature of this episode was that it contained lots of "cool" stuff. I watch Futurama about 70% for the laughs and 30% for the "coolness factor" so I wasn't completely disappointed. To give a few examples: the apartment building which slides down into the ground to let people move in and out, the encasing of the entire planet in glass (or diamondillium), Fry's church, Stephen Hawking's rocket, and the fact that the crew actually visited Heaven (complete with idyllic locations, angels and clouds). Oh and the black-and-white cartoon at the beginning, if that counts; so original. However, definitely the best sequence of the movie was "Deathball"; quite an original idea and looks fun to play, I want one!

As for the love theme, it focussed on several aspects such as being used for "mating" only (for which the episode is named - "The Beast With Two Backs" is an old-fashioned term for sex), breakup and makeup, dating, and most importantly monogamy. All this was slightly humorous as it was on the scale of entire universes dating each other. Bender goes through a bit of an arc, feeling rejected by the human race, finding the worthless League Of Robots, trying to take over the universe, and then finally rescuing the human race from Yivo. Again, this followed a general theme of monogamy and jealousy.

The most obvious example though was with Fry and Colleen's relationship. They did admittedly make a good couple and so it was a shame when it became clear it was never going to work. She got her way in the end though by being with Yivo who is I guess a combination of all the men she's ever had in her life. I suppose I never expected Brittany Murphy to join the regular cast of Futurama though so it was probably never going to last.

I didn't think too much of the Kif/Amy storyline in this episode. The wedding was just pretty boring, non-exciting and seemed to think it was a lot funnier than it was. Admittedly I did think that Kif was really dead, but even that was a pointless waste of time. It's caused some tension due to Amy's affair with Zapp, but I just find myself not caring all that much.

So this episode did have a few recurring themes with love and that's what held it together, but there just wasn't enough compelling story or humour to keep me interested. But it wasn't so terrible to leave me in despair about the other two episodes.

[JER] Rogue River

TV Programme: Jericho
Season: 2
Episode: 8
Date I watched this episode: 01/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 7 days.

The feeling of emptiness gave this episode a bit of an eerie feel to it (I am reminded to some extent of [ALS] "Before The Flood"). We still don't really know what is going on here, although clearly there are still some people alive, albeit government mercenaries and deranged doctors! I guess about the first half of the episode was empty though and was dominated by this eerie feeling. It stuck Jake and Eric into a very small space (reminiscient of [TWW] "No Exit", [OTH] "Every Night Is Another Story", and to a lesser extent [PRB] "Subdivision") where they were forced to confront the issues which are so fundamental at the moment. It also had them disagreeing right from the start - in fact the opening line of the episode was Jake and Eric disagreeing about whether to stop and help a truck which had crashed. Jake seemed to be the one making the final decisions, with the rationale of "this is the world we live in now", and Eric did not really fight his stubbornness. Admittedly, he was mostly right.

The second half of the episode was mostly action-packed, dealing with the fight against Ravenwood. It was pretty bad odds; Jake was pretty much the only skilled guy on his side, apart from Payton who was badly injured. On the other side were 6 trained mercenaries. Still, I can overlook this as many of my programmes (24, Farscape, Prison Break) have these kinds of crazy odds. I'll also overlook the fact that Ravenwood came back at the exact time that Jake and Eric were there. Payton himself was a really good character, someone who decided to take a lone stand against the seemingly psychopathic murderous tendencies of the Ravenwood group.

Back at the town, we had a couple of nice scenes in the Green household. Heather was all of a state because she was so worried about Jake - she really does like him. Still, as April confirmed, she may very well have saved Jake's dad's life, something which will surely bring the two even closer together before she gets hit with the revelations about Jake's past.

The rest of the scenes were devoted to Rob Hawkins' family, and were not really that interesting. I knew right from the start that we wouldn't find out anything significant here; it's too early in the season for that. Still, the outcome puts Gray in a strong position yet again, which can't be good for Johnston Green. Most other Jericho characters were absent from this ep, notably Gracie, Skylar, Dale, Mimi, Stanley and Bonnie.

We did supposedly discover though that Rob works for the FBI. This is unlikely. It looks like Rob got Allison to plant the badge (which she did more willingly than ever, claiming she knows he is one of the good guys). His story about the monitoring of activity in the area is not consistent with his message "The rally point is no longer secure" sent a few episodes ago - if Jericho truly is a rally point, then they wouldn't have chosen it as such if it were a terrorist haven.

Another thing we "supposedly" found out in the episode was that Jake was a truck driver in Iraq. It's a story which I'm glad doesn't seem to want to die, because I'm intrigued myself as to what Jake was doing for those 5 years (Eric won't stop asking). Again, it's unlikely he was just a truck driver. That's the thing about this show though - sometimes it gives you answers but you don't know yourself if they are real or not.

Anyway now Ravenwood know about Jericho it's only a matter of time before they invade. I don't think they'll relay this back to the government but it might be difficult for the Jericho residents. There's certainly a lot they could do with this and all the other storylines; I'm excited as always for the next episode to come.

[NAS] Top Copy

TV Programme: The New Adventures Of Superman
Season: 2
Episode: 14
Date I watched this episode: 31/07/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 6 days.

The story of a journalist who finds out Clark's secret and threatens to expose it is not a new one. For example, Roger Nixon from Smallville, and I'm sure this has happened in the comics a few times. But this was different - she was also an undercover operative for Intergang, and things turned out in a rather unexpected way. It's good to see Intergang back again, with their rather cool networking technology. They previously appeared in "Church Of Metropolis" earlier this season, and I'm sure this won't be the last time we see them. The main thing though was that it gave us some really good villains, rather than the typical stupid scientists we saw mainly in the first third of the season. (Rolf was however a bit of a stupid character).

The incident caused several problems, which were resolved in unusual and rather unbelievable ways. First of all, Clark was poisoned by Diana. This was resolved by Clark walking into a nuclear reactor. Kind of silly - with real radiotherapy, they direct the radiation to specific cells in the body, and it's unlikely that Earth radiation could irradicate Kryptonite. The other thing was clearly Diana's revelation on television that Clark Kent is Superman. In truth this makes things a bit difficult for Clark as there will always be people who have conspiracy theories about this whole thing. But it was sorted out through this press conference - which was again a bit unbelievable. That Clark's mother could make a laser hologram so realistic and the sound directed so perfectly is a bit unlikely, especially as this programme is supposed to be set around the present day. But the whole idea of the press conference was original: usually with these sorts of things, the reporter in question happens to die before they can release the tape.

It was great to see that the "date" thing carried over into this episode. In fact, the storyline with this had a definite ring of the Clark/Lana relationship in Smallville. The relationship is strained because of Clark having to do things as Superman that he can't tell Lois about. I guess for this reason it can never really work; certainly it doesn't in the films or in the comics, before he tells her that is. Lois is typically sassy about the whole thing, I really like it when she says "A for effort, F for Fat Chance".

Clark is never going to call Mayson Drake and it's a bit unethical of him to lead her on like that. But obviously even worse was Lois's tactics of stealing Mayson's bleeper - and it was great how Clark and Lois realised this, realise they "stepped over a line" and apologised. This programme has a certain moral standard that's heartwarming (though sometimes a little bit unbelievable).

The interplay between Lois and Mayson was also interesting. In the end, Lois saved Mayson's life, and so I think they will become closer in future. But they had admitted they didn't like each other, and this scene was quite funny, as they both didn't want to admit that they had feelings for Clark.

Well once again this episode pleasantly surprised me by being quite good - it posed a serious threat to Clark, it had some actually good villains, and it had some storyline continuity. So maybe this season isn't going to turn out so bad after all.

[SPN] Special Powers

TV Programme: Sports Night
Season: 2
Episode: 1
Date I watched this episode: 31/07/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 year, 6 months, 11 days.

Watching this episode reminded me of just how much I've missed this programme. The little chats between Dan and Casey, the verboseness of Jeremy, the feisty Natalie, the "smoky" Dana... just in general the characters of this show are what do it for me. While the script is often brilliant anyway, Sports Night is just a relaxing, uplifting show to watch, mainly due to the fact that the characters exude these qualities too.

They work so well together (both in the ficitional "work" sense and in the sense of the overall story), and are so strongly on each others' wavelength in terms of humour and work ethic, that even when things go wrong they don't lose it. For example, the little bit of fun Dana has when she realises they're not on the air, and goes in to interrupt the supposed "broadcast". Everyone is a bit shocked and she laughs at their faces; they eventually come around to see the funny side.

After the compelling opening sequence showing what happened "in between" the seasons with Casey and Dana (as most of the episode took place 3 months after the season 1 finale), we were launched straight back into the action, with that speed of making changes right up to the last minute which is inevitable for this kind of television. Stuck in there were a couple of hints for later in the episode (such as the thing about the network feed being turned off because of lumber sports - blink and you'll miss it) but the pace was kept up so we come to realise straight from the off that Sports Night hasn't lost anything in skill over the hiatus (not that I doubted that, as Sorkin would go on to write The West Wing, which kept getting better and better - so was Studio 60).

So three main story threads to this episode. First and foremost, the resolution of the thing with Casey and Dana. I'm sure most people tuning into this episode would have been most interested to know what was going on with that. Well, after a few "missed opportunities" (as Dan called them) he was left faced with a waiting Dana, completely paralysed by fear, and almost transformed into an adolescent again. It's tough for him because he's been waiting so long for this moment and now it was staring him in the face. Of course, they both knew why Gordon and Dana had split up, and that it seemed logical for them to get together, but because it was so obvious it almost made it harder. The change in Casey and Dana's moods at the end was uplifting, despite the fact that Casey's mood change was just a little too exaggerated. Dana's was very believable though.

The second story thread - and the one to which this episode lends its name - was Natalie and Jeremy. Here we were kind of thrown in at the deep end with not much idea what had gone on (very similar to in the pilot of Studio 60, with Matt and Harriet). We gradually found out, although there were multiple facets to the argument, like the fact Jeremy would have had to move and "work on a ranch", the fact that Jeremy is annoyed at the reasons why they wanted to hire Natalie, and the fact that Jeremy was annoyed they had offered the job to her and not to him. The chemistry between these two is beautiful, and they finally resolves things because Jeremy "acts like a man" and Natalie is visibly moved by all this.

The other thread was about Isaac and the effects of his stroke. It does look likely that the reason he came back was because of some pressure from the network. He gives completely different messages to Dana and to Dan (acting to Dana like he doesn't even care, and acting to Dan like Dan should be giving him hell). The reasons behind this aren't that clear, but maybe I'm reading too much into it, and it's just to do with the different relationships between the characters.

Through all of this though I had particularly forgotten the great music of this show. WG Snuffy Walden, who also scored The West Wing and Studio 60, knows exactly how to capture the essence of a moment, and give you a certain very strong emotion at just the right time. The show's use of non-original music was good as well - Neil Finn's track at the beginning is one which apparently is going to recur throughout the season.

The shorter running time of this show (20 minutes) compared to other similar drama shows (including Sorkin's later shows) gives it a rather unique ability to focus on a very small cog in a big machine per episode. This episode, let's face it not a lot happened. Casey thought about asking Dana out for ages and then eventually did. Natalie and Jeremy made up from an argument. But it still felt compact, pacey and brilliant. I'm sorry that this is the last season that was ever made, but looking forward to the other 21 episodes of this season.