1.5 La Tempete Maybe I’m just spoiled after so many intense episodes. The fact that the show has taken this long to come out with a middling episode is impressive, and maybe its lack of dazzle wouldn’t have been so glaring if it hadn’t created for itself a hard act to follow. The root of the problem was probably that this episode did not choose a “big issue” to attack as per past episodes....
2.7 Who’s That Cool Girl Josh Is Dating? The episode’s main plot was another one of those zany farces Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has pulled off so well so many times before. After internet-stalking Anna, Rebecca and Valencia decide to try a little real-world stalking, and end up accidentally running over Anna’s cat. Not-quite-caught-in-the-act, they drive Anna and Gravy to the vets, and attempt to use the opportunity to quiz her about Josh… only to find out Anna’s eyebrow salon has CCTV, which means they’ll have to break into the shop to wipe the tapes if they don’t want Anna to find it was actually them, not a Jack Sparrow impersonator, who nearly killed her beloved pet....
1.4 Penguin Or Cow That sort of quirky combination—occult mythology meets novelty sleepwear—is this show’s preferred kind of gag. Mixing low-key British absurdities with high-concept fantasy worked for Misfits, and it works here. We saw it in the muffin talk before Raquel and Amy took on Mercy, in the inventive child’s bedroom fight employing a plush snake as a weapon, and in the yellow canoe now permanently strapped to the roof of Jake’s car....
Dark Matter Season 2, Episode 7 Any episode where Five is the central character is almost guaranteed to please, and with the return of transfer transit — one of the coolest concepts Dark Matter has come up with — this week’s story was a recipe for success. Bringing in elements from season 1 like the pocket dimension key and weasel handler Talbor Calcheck also helped bring season 2 out of its slump while also improving upon the newer storylines from Nyx and Devin....
A decade after a deadly, laboratory-grown ‘simian flu’ has swept across the planet, humanity has fallen from its perch. As the opening credits glide by, the fate of our species is summed up in a single line: “Most of us were killed by the disease. The rest were killed in the fighting.” From the opening shot, in which apes hunt deer through lush forests, Cloverfield and Let Me In director Matt Reeves (taking over from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’ Rupert Wyatt) builds up an air of not only realism, but unusual tension....
If I can skip ahead to the big reveal, for example, are we to believe that Pottinger had the Kenya simulant created solely to win Amanda over? If that’s true, the plan was supremely flawed: his “dramatic rescue” seemed doomed from the start, and Kenya’s eventual death would hardly send Amanda into HIS arms. Maybe I’m being obtuse. Correct me if I’m wrong in the comments area below, but wasn’t the terrorist plot to bomb a maglev platform in New York last week genuine?...
3.7 The Beauty Of Our Weapons The plot, a meandering collection of character interactions, has three threads none of which involve Rahm Tak going crazy and extending his head collection. There’s the fate of Datak, after he gets black-balled by the leadership in Defiance, including Doc Yewll, disturbingly. There’s the chaos that Stahma’s arrival with the Omec creates, expectedly. And, old 90210 alumnus Ian Ziering turn up as Berlin’s love interest, charismatic weapon salesman, Conrad Von Bach....
I’m having that same sensation with Dexter, which having worked within a set of rules I understood completely now appears to be spiralling out of control. This instability worries me because, while I appreciate the value of not being able to guess what comes next, I’m very concerned that this might take the show and character off in a direction that trashes what they’ve achieved so far. Much as I find myself drawn, Dexter-like, to Jaime Murray as ex-junkie proto-sociopath Lila, she has the potential to entirely destabilise this show, and not in an entertaining way....
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency Season 2 Episode 4 Things are getting seriously weird in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but some of the strangeness leads to small moments of triumph for a few characters in “The House Within a House.” Unfortunately, viewers are still in that state of quasi-understanding that Farah, Todd, and Dirk are experiencing, which is similar to the way everyone was feeling at this point in the season last year....
Disenchantment Episode 5 The premise of “Faster, Princess! Kill! Kill!” hits the sweet spot of being a self-contained conflict and a continuation of the previous episode at the same time, playing to the strengths of both conventional sitcom plotting and Netflix’s serialized show format. It’s different from how the opening of the series felt like one long pilot, stretching one conflict out to fill two episodes. Here, King Zog banishing Bean until she proves she can be more than a layabout is a standalone concern, but it’s a nice touch that it’s the consequence of what we saw one episode ago....
There is a moment late in the second act of Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi that is the definition of grim. While it is hard to describe the fairly light and often mercurial touch Johnson brought to the galaxy far, far away as “dark”—it is in fact quite a bit softer in tone than, say, The Empire Strikes Back—there is likely not a gloomier image than a ragged and haggard Luke Skywalker staring up at his rejected apprentice, Rey....
At first, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is an Amy Pond-centric take on the series four episode, Turn Left. But what The Girl Who Waited actually turns out to be is something just a bit different. It certainly puts the spotlight heavily on Amy, and it’s giving nothing away to say that the title of the episode refers to her. But Tom MacRae’s story keeps its cast list short, and focuses in on the three main faces we’ve been watching zip around time and space for the past year and a half....
I used to have a theory, until Harrison Ford came and sullied things slightly. And it was this: there’s no such thing as a bad film set on a submarine. Even Down Periscope, the Kelsey Grammer-headlined spoof of sorts, worked better than it felt it should have done. I never got far enough past Harrison Ford’s Russian accent in K-19: The Widowmaker to call it either way though. Following the divisive The Rings Of Akhaten, then, this week’s Doctor Who heads underwater....
Dragon Ball Super Episode 76 “This is the new me!” Periods of filler where a series’ narrative engine slows down can become moments of frustration, but sometimes slowing down a little can allow characters to evolve in ways that wouldn’t be possible if they were perpetually bogged down with battles and high stakes decisions. It’s during this cool down period where Dragon Ball Super can reframe itself for its next big arc and allow a number of characters the necessary focus to learn some lessons and “redeem” themselves, so to speak....
Dynasty Episode 20 Review Dynasty goes all in on some of its best elements, but gets thoroughly bogged down in others. Cristal and Fallon teaming up to take someone down and the father-son dynamic between Anders and Sam were definitely in the win column, while Alexis continues to be a vacant cypher and the Colbys wander back onto the scene. Anders trying to help Sam plan a multicultural gay wedding and then talking him off the ledge when he thinks Steven is cheating is a natural extension of their relationship, and one that’s fun to watch....
That sounds like a backhanded compliment of the highest order, but I promise you it’s not. At one point during this fast-paced and well-executed hour I actually shouted “STOP BEING SO RIDICULOUSLY TALENTED, JONNY LEE MILLER” in earnest at my screen, and I meant every word of it. It’s commonplace today to find gifted film actors taking on television roles, and Miller is no exception. But it is rare to find gifted actors taking on roles like this one, one that has such mass appeal while remaining layered, complex, and — when the occasion calls for it — funny as hell....
5.2 Cartouche When Ronald Beavis (Iain Stuart Robertson) is found dead by his landlady, the circumstances don’t initially suggest foul play. The deceased’s heart and liver were in poor shape, as DeBryn finds out when he performs the autopsy; either of those could have been the end of the retired policeman, but something doesn’t seem quite right. Morse discovers a ticket stub for the Roxy Cinema in the dead man’s belongings, and heads there to investigate....
Prisoner Of WarI’ve been wondering just why the aliens would use their entrapment devices on teenage kids, versus full-grown adults, and I believe I may have come up with some reasons. Okay, the third one isn’t something I came up with, it’s something they overtly showed in the latest episode of Falling Skies, but you have to wonder why aliens came to earth to start a recycling program. Seems to me like teenagers would be the ideal recruitment force, as they’re ready to work now, but still have a long life of slave labor ahead of them....
Suddenly, a game being developed by FPS addicts had been absorbed by a multinational conglomerate, and it would have been very easy for Far Cry 2 to have been lost in the shuffle – canned after a long and difficult development, or emerge as a deeply mediocre title that bore no resemblance to its groundbreaking predecessor. Plenty has changed from the original – the tropical island setting has gone, replaced by an African republic hewn apart by civil war....
2.14 Wrath & 2.15 North It’s not that Fear The Walking Dead doesn’t have some great moments, because it does. It also has great characters, at least part of the time, and a much better cast of actors than the parent show began with. There are a lot of positives, like Nick and Strand, and then, there are a lot of negatives, specifically Travis and Maddie as characters. Once again, the Manwana-Clark family is spreading disaster and ruining paradise, without any real repercussions on a personal level, and their inability to accept the consequences of their actions is starting to become grating....
