My One Big Eyeball #5

Battlestar Galactica 3x06 - Torn
Episode grade: A

Seems like an 'A' grade is actually just a pretty average week for BSG at this point. It's just so very, very amazing. I just can't repeat that point enough, honestly.
So, Gaius is still chilling out on the cylon base star, only he's not so much 'chilling' as 'being constantly scared for his life', because if he doesn't prove his worth to the cylons over and over, they just might decide he's not worth keeping around after all. Right now, of the seven cylon models that actually exist, it's three votes to three, with the Sixes abstaining, on whether he should live. (Seems likely that Threes and Eights want to keep him, Dorals and Cavils want to airlock the son of a bitch. I don't know where the Simons or Leobens stand, Simon's too non-entity so far, and Leoben's too completely insane.) And also, Gaius might be one of the mysterious other five models himself, but probably not. Well, he tries to prove his worth by helping lead them to Earth, since he actually kind of knows the way, only someone's left a virus that only affects cylons in the path, and some of them think Gaius deliberately set up a trap. He doesn't help his case by totally lying about what he sees when he goes to investigate.
And, by the way, the base star set really is so totally awesome. Disco inferno!

Meanwhile, on Galactica, Gaeta uses Baltar's research to find the same path to Earth, and the humans seem to be much happier with the cylon in their midst; she's a different Sharon to Boomer, so she needs a new callsign, and everyone just makes 'chromedome' or whatever jokes, there's no "THAT FRAKKING THING SHOULD BE PUT OUT THE AIRLOCK"s at all! Anyway, Hotdog makes the only serious suggestion, so Lieutenant Valerii is now 'Athena'. Cool.
Also, Tigh and Starbuck put on their full-strength crazy and spend the episode trying to stir up a civil war between the New Caprica survivors and the guys who got away on Galactica, Pegasus and whatever other ships were with them, but Adama is just far too frakking awesome for that; he comes down and orders them both to shoot him in the head is they don't want to stop being crazy. OH YEAH. Starbuck relents, cuts her hair, and reconciles with little Kasey and her real mother. I think she'll be alright. Tigh, on the other hand, may not actually shoot Adama in the head, but he does tell him he fully intends to go even more crazy, so he'll just disappear into the fleet and do that, OK? Man, does Michael Hogan deserve so many awards.

There's a 'To be continued...' at the end, so I guess there must have been a cliffhanger? Every other week is a 'to be continued...' week, these days, I lose track. Oh right, I think Athena has the disease from the abandoned basestar, what with her being a cylon and all. We'll see!



Desperate Housewives 3x06 - Sweetheart, I Have To Confess
Episode grade: B+

Awesomely, the housewives minus Bree decide to get drunk out on the lawn! There's a lot more awesome to go round, but that alone makes up for, like, uh, mosquitos? But yeah, the drunk thing is so totally awesome.

Susan tries to avoid Ian, until she walks in on Mike and Edie totally doing it on his hospital bed, at which point she decides that maybe getting with Ian is not such a bad idea after all! And after the aforementioned drunkenness ensues, she decides to turn up at his house, forgetting about the fancy party he's hosting that he'd mentioned earlier, and procedes to throw up all noisily in his bathroom and have no actual recollection of it in the morning, but they get together afterwards, so it's all good? I guess? He's a pretty excellent match for her, really.

Tom buys a horribly decrepit restaurant without Lynette's approval and after an argument, ends up staying the night there. Crazy Nora assumes that this is the perfect time to make a move on him, but he realises that for all her lack of faith in his dreams, Lynette is way better for him than this hunk of batshit insanity, so he goes home and there's apologies and honesty all around. And then Lynette goes over to Nora's and incredibly awesomely threatens her if she ever goes near Tom again. Woo!

Carlos puts the con on Gabby, getting her to seduce him by planting info on a fake new job of his that Gabby would be missing out on a whole lot of money from if the divorce went through soon, if the job actually existed. And drunken lawn Gabby admits that actually, she still loves Carlos, so if they could go ahead and get the fighting over soon that'd be great, because it is starting to get a little tiresome.

And, in non-drunken news, Orson's crazy ex-neighbour Carolyn is prodded by her husband Harvey into giving an extremely fake apology to Bree, which she pretends to accept, then actually accepts when she realises that everyone is avoiding her at the country club because Carolyn's been telling them about Orson' psychotic tendencies. They have a pleasant meal together, in which Carolyn gives Bree a police report detailing Orson beating ex-wife Alma, and Harvey telling Orson about his affair with a girl called Monique. That'd be the Monique that somehow Mike knows THROUGH THE AMNESIA, and also Orson made weird comments to her unidentified corpse a couple of episodes back. I don't know what the hell, honestly.


Heroes 1x06 - Better Halves
Episode grade: B+

As the title suggested, it's Niki/ikiN focused, of course. But first! We see, I think, our first glimpse of adorkable present day Hiro's transition to totally badass future Hiro when he and Ando hide in the bathroom at a 'friendly' poker game while everyone else gets slaughtered, instead of using his super powers to save them. But Ando actually makes himself useful for once, telling Hiro that maybe when he gets better control of his powers, he can come back in time and save those guys? Excellent. It's a shame you're pretty likely to die and be the major catalyst in Hiro's character growth, Ando.

Meanwhile, Mohinder's friend (apparently named Eden though they've never mentioned that in the show, I don't think), who is so totally in league with Claire's creepy dad turns out to be in league with Claire's creepy dad. Surprise! Mohinder is heading back to India, no really, he totally means it this time, so Eden makes out with him as an incentive to stay. But he still goes! Mr. Bennet tells her to get him back. Ooooh.

Mr. Bennet also says "That's cool" upon learning of Hiro's spacetime-twisting power, which is pretty excellent. And he arranges a meeting with Claire's biological parents too, except they're actually just more henchmen of his. He sure does have a lot of henchmen. Claire seems to fall for the ruse, but then idiot Mrs. Bennet gives the game away, the fool. Also, I like that there seems to be no sexy feelings, unrequited or otherwise, between Claire and her friend Zack and I hope they keep that up, because it's kind of refreshing to have a TV show suggest that maybe a teenage boy and a teenage girl can be friends without either one of them have naughty thoughts about the other. And check out their Myspace pages! Cute.

Anyway, onto Niki. So, her jailbreak husband D.L. is back! And he's also a Hero! His power: walking through walls, or just generally passing through things. Wicked. He's certain that if he can just figure out who framed him (somehow he knows it's a woman, so, like, duh) he and Niki and Micah can be a happy family again! Only, unfortunately, ikiN is not down with that and, after taking a quick detour to slaughter everyone at Hiro's poker game, she tells Niki to take the money and run, take the money and run, take the money. But D.L. spots her trying to make a getaway, so we get our first bona-fide superhero fight! AWE. SOME. ikiN takes the reins, of course, but she's no match for D.L.'s ability to SITCK HIS HANDS INTO HER CHEST AND MAYBE FUCK AROUND WITH HER ORGANS OR SOMETHING? I dunno. Whatever, it ends with ikiN lying on the floor, maybe dead! But probably not.


Lost 3x05 - The Cost Of Living
Episode grade: B-

So, flashbacks do a pretty good job of fleshing out the transition from drug baron Eko in The 23rd Psalm and holy man Eko in ?. It's nothing we couldn't have pretty much guessed for ourselves from those two, but it's pretty interesting to watch anyway, what with the extremely Quentin Tarantino shot of Eko in full priestly attire walking out of the church clutching a blood-dripping sword and all. That stuff was fine.

And that's pretty much where the positive marks come in, because what goes down in present-day land? That shit is WACK, yo. And not in a good way. Is that allowed? Can I use that phrase not in a good way? ...Can I use that phrase in a good way? Anyhoo. It ends up with Eko dead, and man did I love Eko, yet somehow I just didn't care at all, and I've been puzzling out why that is? Well, basically, it was all a pretty massive cop out. So, Eko decided to say a big 'fuck you' to life, the universe and everything and not try to repent for all his past misdeeds and, I mean, "I ask for no forgiveness, for I have not sinned" was really bad-ass and all, but WHAT THE HELL, LOST. It took me a while to notice, since we haven't actually seen Eko in any state other than unconcious sine he completely failed to grasp the concept of 'blast doors' in last years finale, but WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? So, despite the fact that repentance has pretty much been his major driving force since we've known him, he has a crisis of faith for some reason and slowly comes to the realisation that he doesn't want to waste his life feeling sorry for himself or something? SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO SEE THAT ON SCREEN AT ANY POINT AT ALL IN, I DON'T KNOW, THE PREVIOUS FOUR EPISODES WHERE HE MADE NO APPEARANCE? LOST?

Oh, and also, Locke leads a bunch of merry men down to the Pearl station, and unlike Jack, he let's anyone come who wants to. Which is the perfect opportunity for Paulo and Nikki to come along, because you know how they've been itching to go on these treks ever since they crashed on the island, it's all they ever talk about, right? BECAUSE THEY'VE SURE BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME. *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*. And they see a pirate on T.V. Well, a guy with an eyepatch. Do you think he has four toes? I think he has four toes.

And there's some stuff on Other Island with Jack and Juliet which, shockingly, is actually pretty cool; Juliet tells Jack he's just gotta save Benry from cancer, only unbeknowest to the security camera, the film she's silently showing him isn't To Kill A Mockingbird, it's Juliet Does The Bob Dylan Flashcard Thing And Tells Jack To Deliberately Fuck Up The Surgery So Cancer Kills Benry. Does she really want Benry to die, or is it just another mind game? I just don't know. I don't really care all that much, but still. I don't know.

Seriously though, unless next week's 'mini season finale' totally kicks my head in, which is looking increasingly unlikely, the long wait to February just won't seem that long.