iZombie Season 3, Episode 7 iZombie’s “Dirt Nap Time” isn’t quite able to capitalize on the momentum the show has had in recent episodes surrounding reveals around the zombie cure, instead slowing down the story in some awkward ways. On a more general level, iZombie had a lot of dangling plot thread to continue weaving. The plot thickens in some intriguing ways in “Dirt Nap Time.” Here’s everything that went down…...
As we don’t get another one till March, it gave off the distinct aura of a show treading water, when I really wanted it to get up a head of steam! Another issue I have with No Brainer, is that the basic premise was so fantastical and full of logic holes that I had real difficultly suspending my disbelief. The usual weirdness of the beginning is a young man whose computer is infected by a virus, one that ultimately melts his brain....
We have to handle Keeping Up With The Joneses carefully, because it’s something of an antique. Except for a couple of jokes about waterboarding and Siri, we’re convinced that the script must have been hanging around since at least 1986. This film looks as if someone walked into an office at Fox and pitched ‘The Burbs meets The In-Laws‘ a long time ago and they literally never looked back. At the start of the film, Jeff Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis) and his wife Karen (Isla Fisher) fretfully send their two kids off to summer camp....
Cakewalk It’s a shame that Lights Out hasn’t met with enthusiasm in these early stages, and it’s hard to pinpoint why it might be the case. It’s certainly not due a lack of marketing on FX’s part, and the show’s timeslot in the US is a pretty good one. Perhaps there just isn’t a market for sporting television dramas. One of the very best television shows of the past decade, American football drama, Friday Night Lights, continues to be watched by almost nobody in its home country, and didn’t even make it past the first series when shown on British channel ITV2 (although regularly programming it against The Apprentice and Champions League football probably didn’t help)....
In the third act of the new Netflix comedy-drama Like Father, workaholic executive Rachel (Kristen Bell) and her estranged father Harry (Kelsey Grammer) enjoy some quiet time together while kayaking. “Maybe Owen wasn’t such a fucker after all,” she says of her ex-fiancé who left her at the altar, forcing her to take their intended honeymoon cruise with Dad. “This was his idea.” “I think maybe I’m an asshole,” Rachel tells a sunglasses-clad Harry aboard their kayak....
The connection between both of this series’ investigations arrived with a horrid thud this week: “That’s Carly Kirk” said DC Fleming watching footage of a swanky police reception on the day of the teenager’s disappearance. Incriminatingly present at the same do was DCC Mike Dryden, filmed fraternising with crooked vice officer Prasad (Sacha Dhawan), who, along with the man we now know to be Georgia Trotman’s killer, has just bundled DI Denton into the boot of his car....
For my money, Meet The Fockers, the massively successful sequel to Meet The Parents, did exactly the same thing. Once again you had Robert De Niro as the retired CIA operative Jack Byrnes, who once again found some fairly forced reason to distrust the love of his daughter’s life, Greg ‘Gaylord’ Focker, played by Ben Stiller. It was cynical recycling, that struck gold at the box office, and became a massive hit....
Lucifer Season 3 Episode 15 “I would do anything for you.” Obsessed with his failure to solve the Pierce problem, Lucifer’s creative block perfectly aligns with the dead novelist at the center of tonight’s episode. What’s interesting, however, is the dream Lucifer recounts to Dr. Linda in the opening scene. On the surface, it’s a fairly standard tale of an inability to open up to someone you love. And that’s just it....
Lucifer Season 3 Episode 4 “I’m your substitute counselor and resident bad influence.” The murder of a counselor at an elite reform program for young criminal offenders forms the basis of this week’s procedural as the Firehawk Ranch provides a “place of transformation” for those seeking to rebuild their lives. Arriving at the crime scene, Lucifer immediately espouses his belief that individuals don’t change; they are who they are. Of course, that’s Lucifer’s problem – he refuses to admit that he has changed and insists on reliving his former torturous hits....
It’s here at the top I should confess that I have never seen the original MacGyver series, which enjoyed a respectful run from 1985 – 1992. However, like most people, I’m familiar with its cultural touchstones and still found a way to feel indignant about the reboot’s shabby handling of the beloved hero. Going into the 2016 reboot, we all know that MacGyver is a non-violent secret agent who uses his genius and near superhuman resourcefulness to get him out of sticky situations....
You’ll hear examples of it in pubs and clubs, on football terraces and building sites, in the backs of forgotten truckers’ cafes and motorway service stations – any of the places where proper, pie-eating men congregate in significant numbers. Mad Dogs, Sky’s starry new four-part drama, opens with copious helpings of man cackle. Its cast of familiar British faces – John Simm, Max Beesley, Marc Warren and Philip Glenister – play a group of men in their middle years, whose trip to visit their friend on the sunny island of Majorca allows them to reengage with the inner lad they’d probably abandoned in their late-20s....
6.8 The Crash Enter the pharmaceutical get-out clause, a temporary crisis that lets Draper escape his closed off personality and allows us to see something of what’s underneath. It’s the plot device that forces Draper to become uncharacteristically voluble and turn to face the camera for once. The Crash used a workplace amphetamine shot, but past glimpses into Draper’s mind have been provided by flu hallucinations, dental nitrous oxide, and that old Mad Men favourite, the drinking binge ‘n’ blackout....
6.13 In Care Of From season one, episode one, Mad Men’s opening credits have told us we’re watching the descent of man, or more properly, of one man. Following the structure of classical tragedy, we met Draper when he had it all – job, wife, kids, mistress, cool hat – and have watched as piece by piece, it’s fallen away. In the beginning, Don was Jay Gatsby; he came from nothing, achieved everything, but remained dissatisfied....
Last week’s episode, The Good News, would have been unremittingly bleak had it not been for amusing moments such as Don and Lane’s drunken visit to the cinema (where they watched Gamera, and not Godzilla, as I originally thought – thanks to reader HardluckHotel for pointing that out). Even so, episode three was a stark, unhappy one, charting Don Draper’s continued descent into alcoholism as he contemplated the imminent death of his most intimate friend, Anna....
Last week, we concluded that Marchlands was a show that was settled, slowly cranking through the gears, and confidently moving its pieces into place. And with this being the penultimate episode, we were looking for some kind of payoff to it all to start creeping in. In fact, what the episode actually did was to pare down the ghost story backdrop a little, and to focus on the relationship dramas that have been bubbling up....
In Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, Short exercises his talent for embodying wildly different characters by taking on three roles: first, Mr Frankenstein, the gentle father of science prodigy hero Victor; second, Mr Burgermeister, the grumpy Mayor and Victor’s next door neighbour; and third, Nassor, Victor’s young nemesis. Did you relish the chance to work with Tim Burton again on Frankenweenie? Oh, I adored it. I mean, when you get to work with an artist, you’re just very happy....
4.14 The Man Behind The Shield Well, Agents Of SHIELD and AIDA 2.0 pulled a nice bait-and-switch on us this week as Ivanov was revealed to be a patsy for AIDA’s Battlestar Galactica long game, and all of a sudden, a rather low stakes and plodding episode of Agents Of SHIELD turned into an explosive shocker. Things begin this week as Director Mace is taken prisoner by the Superior. Coulson and his team spend the first quarter of the episode trying to track Ivanov in order to save Mace and May....
The episode begins with Merlin and Arthur out on a hard day’s hunt when they come across a peasant’s tavern. And, despite Merlin’s annoyingly prescient protestations, Arthur, obnoxious fool that he is, unwisely ignores the boy wizard for the millionth time. When will that nobleman learn that Merlin is consistently on the button about bad things about to happen? Merlin sneakily uses magic to keep the thugs at bay (and nobody notices the telekinetic stools and jugs lifting themselves up and sailing through the air!...
5.4: Another’s Sorrow Having captured King Rodor and his daughter, Princess Mithian, Odin and Morgana have teamed up together and plan to take the throne of Camelot and get revenge upon King Arthur. They plan to use Princess Mithian, forced to lie to Arthur about her ‘escape’, to wheedle their way into the kingdom before luring Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table into a trap. As Arthur and Guinevere listen to Mithian’s tale of escape, they are convinced of her story and seek to rescue her father from the clutches of Odin, barely batting an eyelid when Merlin speaks of his reservations and completely oblivious to the fact that Morgana is disguised as the old maid, Hilda....
Joe Jackson once sang “Pretty women walking with gorillas down my street” in his hit song Is She Really Going Out With Him?. But little did he know how prescient that sentence would be 32 years after its release. Before his head was remodelled into a lump of bloody meat, he copped an eyeful of athletic daddy’s girl Jessica. Instantly linking the two events, he tries to warn the lovestruck Simon away from her, which leads to tension between them....
