This review contains spoilers. TV rule #37: when a background character is gifted with some lines and a personality, they’re either about to cark it or be unmasked as the baddie. For guitar-playing, Einstein-quoting romantic Jorn Lenhart, it was the former. Shockingly (though admittedly staged with restraint) his investigation into missing third girl Lena Garber led him to the wrong end of a cordless drill. No more crush on Eve....
Meanwhile, speaking of incompetent bosses, we’ve got Michael setting up a dummy at his desk, a la Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. You open the door, the hand comes down, and the dummy triggers snoring sound effects. Because, apparently, it’s better to be at work and asleep than not at work at all, if you’re Michael Scott. The first victim, Stanley, questions the logic and informs Michael that he’s gotten an offer from Utica for more money, and he’s going to take it....
1.10 The Casket Girls Despite both being aimed squarely at a female audience, neither The Originals nor The Vampire Diaries have ever dealt much with female empowerment, but that’s probably because they never had Davina as a character before. Initially just a plot device to trade for Elijah in Klaus and Marcel’s original rivalry, now she’s a contender for queen of New Orleans and the unfortunate fate of love interest Tim is only going to add fuel to her fire....
1.3 Tangled Up In Blue There’s something going on, for starters. When asking nicely fails, Klaus and Rebekah decide on igniting all out war with Marcel in order to get Elijah back. It’s essentially a heist plot, involving both the witches and the vampires, and it’s thoroughly entertaining. There’s also a costume party, and we know from The Vampire Diaries that an episode with a costume party means we’re guaranteed some slaughter and mayhem....
2.19 When The Levee Breaks That’s why I usually prefer it when The Originals uses outside forces as antagonists, rather than members of the core Mikaelson family, but when those outside forces affect the dynamics of that family, it’s the perfect balance of everything the show has to offer. Dahlia’s threat to Hope and Klaus’ distrust of Freya is what was promised way back in the pilot when we discovered Klaus would become a father, and it’s the most alive The Originals has felt in a while....
The Orville Season 1 Episode 10 The deception in this week’s episode of The Orville may not have been the most innovative gimmick in the trope closet, but if most viewers realized early on that none of what was happening to Alara was real, at least “Firestorm” did a good job of keeping everyone guessing as to how the horrific reality was manifesting and to whom. But just because the episodic nature of this series allows it to explore one-off concepts like this doesn’t mean it should....
The Simpsons: Season 27 Episode 14. Homer prefers spackle and grout. He’s never been the handiest of men in the best of days, but he actually has more of a checkered history when it comes to playing with his tools. While his bird bath might have looked like modern art, his modern art looked quite comfortable. He might not be able to put together a bicycle that can stay together more than three blocks, but he wasn’t that bad when he put together the roller derby stock car or the competitive killer robot that is spared by Professor Frink’s humane killing machine....
Though we’ve seen this strange liberal-conservative bedfellowship in relationships like James Carville and Mary Matalin, Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole) on Good Wife and Ariana Huffington now and pre-outed husband era, this is an overused cliché on The Simpsons. From the “in for a penny in for a pound” seduction by Superintendent Chalmers to the “smell you later” “I can change him” romance between Lisa and Nelson Muntz, The Simpsons explore the women are weak in romance without irony very often....
Right. Earlier epiodes utilized flashbacks to inform viewers of Setrakian’s trials and origins. This week, flashbacks were used to show viewers just where Kelly Goodweather, Eph’s estranged wife (but still a “Loved One”) has been. Turns out, dating a Sears manager was the worst thing that Kelly ever did. Stupid, stupid Matt sealed Kelly’s fate when he narced on Eph to the FBI. Now, Matt completed his transformation into a vampire (as we saw last week when Eph sliced the douche’s Sears managing head off) and attacked Kelly....
4.4 New Horizons This week’s episode of The Strain features three separate struggles that are quite gripping and continue to escalate the battle against the strigoi dystopia that has defined this final season. Two weeks back, the always brave and capable Dutch Vanders was caught trying to free one of her friends from the baby factory she was imprisoned in. In that episode, it seemed like Dutch was caught and was going to become the main course of a strigoi banquet....
3.5 The Reckoning I’ve spent the last couple of weeks aimlessly contemplating the slowing pace of The Vampire Diaries, a show that used to put all others to shame with a plot that never meandered and a death toll to rival the bloodiest of cable shows. Well, someone must have heard me, because The Reckoning not only brings the show back up to its best standard, but it could be one of the strongest hours we’ve been given since it started....
The Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 15 Honestly, if it weren’t for the episode’s opening and how that scene plays out at the end of Melissa McBride’s smoking gun, I would’ve given “East” a lower score. This is the cookie-cutter penultimate episode of a Walking Dead season, right? Not too much going on, lots of talking about stuff that won’t even begin to get resolved until the season finale (if we’re lucky), and moving the pieces accordingly so that the bad guys can swoop in and murder someone we like (at least the writer’s hope so)....
Part of me wishes it had been Seth McFarlane for his opening monologue during tonight’s Academy Awards. It’s just bad when a host is upstaged by William Shatner and sock puppets. This week on TWD, Herschel decided he’s tired of fucking around with Rick and his koo-koo nuts. Hell, even Carl is tired of it and Carl had to cap his own mom in the head. You don’t see Carl running off to spend quality time with ghost Lori in the swamp, do you?...
2.1 What Lies Ahead For Rick Grimes and the rest of his rag-tag band of survivors, there’s not a whole lot of hope on the horizon. Atlanta is dead: time to get out of the zombie-infested capital of the south and head towards Fort Benning, Georgia, the serious armament there, and possibly, the safety of many armed men. However, there’s a problem. Even after the apocalypse, Atlanta’s traffic is terrible, so that means it’s slow going, even before the Dale’s RV breaks down on the highway....
The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 3 The Walking Dead‘s war storyline isn’t working. While I liked “Monsters” just a tad more than last week’s boring “The Damned,” the episode still falls into many of the same traps. What is this episode saying that we haven’t heard before on this show? Watching Morgan lose his shit isn’t anything new. In fact, the lengths to which the writers have gone to make this dude relapse are pretty ridiculous....
Young widower, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), is sent to ickily-named Eel Marsh House to process the paperwork of the recently deceased Alice Drablow. But as he arrives in the nearby village, no one seems terribly pleased to see him and when he travels out to the isolated house, cut off by the tide for hours every day, things only get worse. The story is told in an unhurried way that never feels slow, but offers an exercise that is well-judged and tension-building....
On August 8, 1986, The Transformers: The Movie — the first big screen adaptation of Hasbro’s insanely popular toy line — hit theaters. Due to factors ranging from bad word of mouth spawned by the surprising death of Optimus Prime in the flick (I would have put a spoiler alert here, but c’mon son, the film was released three decades ago) to it being lost in an already-crowded summer lineup that also included Short Circuit, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Labyrinth, Big Trouble in Little China, The Karate Kid: Part II, Aliens, Howard the Duck, Stand By Me, Flight of the Navigator, and The Fly, Transformers underperformed at the box office and actually wound up losing money....
True Detective Season 1 Episode 5 You’d think that after last week’s climactic what-the-fuck race through the underworld ending that True Detective would start its dénouement. But no, these true detectives have jumped out of the fire and into a quicksand that just might pull them down to hell itself. The drive-through one-camera shooting of Rust Cohle’s undercover robbery was only a pit stop on the way to the big shootout in the woods....
I’m not one for irritable reaching after fact and reason when it comes to TV drama. How does so-and-so afford a flat like that on a part-time superhero salary? I don’t much care. How did thingamabob drive all the way up there to launch that nuke without once stopping for petrol? Couldn’t give a fig. It’s bad news for Trust Me then, that I’m finding it hard to quell an inner monologue repeatedly asking niggling questions....
On to Chester’s Mill and one town over from where Barbie was captured last week after warning Julia not to jump in the warp zone that serves as an exit from under the dome. The show is wheel spinning a little bit on the exact nature of Barbie’s gazillionaire daddy; did he build the dome, why does he want the egg? These plot threads are going to wear thin a bit if not answered soon....
