My One Big Eyeball, week of 05/03/07

Battlestar Galactica 3x17 - Maelstrom
Episode Grade: B

Starbuck runs around for an hour or so going crazy and seeing imaginary vipers and talking to Leoben and her horrible dead mother, and then dies. There's all this mythological symolical stuff going down with the Eye of Jupiter and Kara Thrace And Her Special Destiny playing their greatest hits, but frankly I don't have any particular clue what is going on. It's reasonably enjoyable to watch anyway, hence the B rating. That's all.


Desperate Housewives 3x16 - My Husband, The Pig
Episode Grade: B+

Bree's suddenly off to visit her parents before her and Orson go off on their long awaited honeymoon, and we only see the back of "Bree"s head during the opening montage that explains this. Isn't that odd. Also, for no apparent reason, Rex has taken over the voiceovers from Mary Alice, and appears to think that because this is his first episode doing that, it must be the first episode of the series, and so he explains a bunch of shit we already know. So weird.

Anyway, some smug annoying old guy sets his sights on Gabby, and is really annyoning, and also this is clearly the exact same storyline as the last one they lumped Gabby with, only this guy is too old instead of too young. Sigh.

Austin writes Julie a magical, amazing letter that makes her completely forgive him for cheating on her with Danielle somehow, and naturally we don't get to see the contents of the letter, because there is nothing that letter could say that would make that happen. But, unfortunately, Austin got Danielle pregnant and, given that her parental figures right now are Bree and Orson, that's just not going to fly. So, Danielle's off to "history camp" or "english camp" or something like that and the baby will be adopted by 'an appropriate family', and Austin will just have to leave town and never come back. Oh, how sad. (I do not care for Austin.)

Ian wins some ridiculously contrived poker game that doesn't bear even a vague resemblance to logical, and the net result of this is that Mike is not allowed to tell Susan about the engagement ring he was going to give her before some Orson-shaped bastard ran him down.

And, easily taking home the best storylines of the episode award, part the first; Lynette and Tom's ninth wedding anniversary! Lynnete just wants to have a nice hot bath and early night, Tom wants to do something overblown and special, wacky crossed wires lead to Lynette waiting around in the freezing cold for hours, but in the end she realises that, disaster or no, they have to keep doing these special things and keep the romance going, because if they're just going to fall into routine, then what is the point, and oh man it's so sweet and awesome.

Best storylines of the episode part the second; Edie has a son! Edie! has a son! His name is Travers (blah) and he is eight, and his dad dumped him on Edie without warning and she totally leaves him home alone to go out and get drunk. And Carlos spots him playing in the road, on his own, quite late, and interrupts his date with some crzzy grrl from the intertrons to make sure poor Travers does not get deaded. And he is mad at Edie, of course, but in the morning she tells him about how she knows she makes a terrible parent, which is why she let Travers' dad have custody; she is a good enough parent to know that she is not a good parent. Naturally. And Carlos softens and offers to babysit if she needs it, and man, I know how this show works by now; I give it two episodes before Carlos and Edie have sex.


Heroes 1x18 - Parasite
Episode Grade: A-

Well, let's see... Claire's off on the run with The Haitian, and is being all petulant teenager about it and tries to ditch him at the airport to go running off to her uncle Peter (although she does not actually know the uncle part, they just met that one time when he was stopping Sylar from eating her brain. That kind of thing would stick with you, though, I guess.) Anyway, she reaches Peter's appartment, but he's not there to greet her, his mother is, and also The Haitian, who apparently works for her. INTRIGUING.

Meanwhile, Mr' Bennet's incredible sacrifice last week is made all the sadder by the fact that his loss of those sweet memories is all for nothing, because thanks to having let his wife in on the big secret and the fact that the Company have a shapeshifter (or possibly illusionist, since the whole screen goes all wobbly when she shifts) on staff, they catch onto his mutiny anyway. Damn, that sucks. But, dude, I did not think they'd go there that soon. Serious breakneck pace going on here.

Also, after chatting with Peter, Hiro and Niki (who has temporarily wrested control of her body back from Jessica, who is supposed to be killing him), Nathan goes in with an FBI wire to finally meet the elusive Linderman. Who is a kindly old man. Naturally. Since Jessica killed the FBI agents that were going to hear the recording, the wire plan is out, so Nathan instead pulls a gun Niki gave him, at which Linderman tells him he shan't be having any pot pie then (seriously, this happens), and also, Linderman totally knows all about the Heroes, and Nathan is not going to kill him. And he's right, of course.

And also, Hiro finally, finally gets his sword, and reunites with Ando, and then skips ahead to the future, where the bomb has destroyed New York already. Shit. And Mohinder is not as stupid as we all thought, because he's cottoned onto Sylar already, but, what with the telekinesis and all, his efforts to stop Sylar rank among the more futile things the world has ever seen. With his mad power absorption skillz, Peter, who comes along to visit Mohinder, should have more of a chance, although Sylar has the element of surprise, which he uses to start opening up Peter's head and in the process destroying his emo haircut, and that is the cliffhanger on which we leave for six fuckin' weeks, dagnabbit. It was OK when Lost went away for ages, but this show is far too awesome for me to wait that long! And, dude, only three shows not on hiatus, in two of which I have succumbed to the terrible disease of It Were Better In The Olden Days? Next week is going to be so sparse!


Lost 3x11 - Enter 77
Episode Grade: B+

Let's get the lame out of the way first; flashbacks do the usual recycling of flashback plotlines and teach us nothing new about Sayid, and man, they really ought to do away with the flashbacks entirely now. Apart from "Flashes Before Your Eyes", which didn't use the traditional structure at all, I don't think there's been a single flashback yet this season that has served any purpose whatsoever.

In other recycled plotline news, Sawyer is pissed that everybody has felt free to take from his stash in his absence, just like he was last season! And after another five minute trek into the jungle, Hurley finds yet more shit that no one else has discovered, nonsensically; a ping pong table, plus bats. So, Sawyer challenges the rest of the lostaways to a game of table tennis to win back his stuff, Hurley takes up the challenge and wins, and now he is not allowed to use nicknames for a week. Except that he's apparently still allowed to call Hugo 'Hurley'.

But those, particularly the table tennis, take up a thankfully small percentage of the episode, which is otherwise pretty cool; Sayid, Locke, Kate and Danielle, who are undoubtedly among the least annoying characters we have left (provided that Kate is nowhere near Jack or Sawyer), are off on a trek to rescue Jack (or Alex, in Danielle's case), and I think and hope this might be a multi-episode trek where we'll get many scenes of just these four. In this one, they find a Russian guy with a house, who claims to be a Dharma scientist, but is really an Other, and Sayid figures it out because he's smart/trusts no one, ever. The house is another Dharma station, used to contact the outside world, but to do so, one must win a game of chess against the computer. Naturally.

Well, Locke can't resist a good button pushing/symbolism excersize, to the point where he totally ignores the prisoner he's supposed to be watching in order to play chess. He wins the game, and Dr Something Related To Candles appears on the screen, telling him to press various number combinations in order to attempt various methods of communication, none of which work. And then he's told that, if the station has been compromised by "the hostiles", he should enter 77 (hence the title), and so he does, and, once everyone is safely outside, the house explodes and Locke has destroyed yet another source of food and shelter for the lostaways. They've got to be getting tired of that.


Scrubs 6x12 - My Fishbowl
Episode Grade: B-

OK, the Janitor and his fishbowl was so very awesome, but otherwise, this felt way more like a Family Guy episode than Scrubs, with all the approx. 50% of jokes falling completely flat and characters being ludicrously outside of the way any human being would actually act. Now, I don't hate Family Guy, by any means, but it's not what I was expecting to watch, you know?

Also, WHY IS DOCTOR COX NOT BALD?! Seriously though, it's pretty obvious that last week's "episode" was shown out of order, hence the magical disappearing/appearing hair, but, you know, I remember a continuity issue last season with episodes shown out of order that involved... JD shaving his head. So, do they just happen to pick the head shaving episodes to shuffle around, or is it just that I only notice the episodes are in the wrong order when people shave their heads? ANSWERS ON A POSTCARD.

I really do not have much to say about this show beyond BETTER IN OLDEN DAYS plus HAIRLOSS, do I? Writing about sitcoms is invariably harder than serious shit, y'know. But, like, this show used to mix the two, and still tries to; it just totally fails these days. This week, long standing patient Private Dancer is discharged, but finds that his injuries leave him unfit to return to the army and so thinks he has nothing to live for, and apparently the hospital are perfectly willing to let this obviously suicidal young man go out into the world without any kind of psychiatric assessment or anything? Now, I won't claim to know... anything about hospitals that I have not learned by watching Scrubs, actually, but I'm pretty sure that strains the barriers of suspension of disbelief.