My One Big Eyeball, week of 26/02/07

Battlestar Galactica 3x16 - Dirty Hands
Episode Grade: A

41,400 souls in the fleet. That's two more than last week.

More filler, of course, but it's damn good filler. The miners strike, and Chief Tyrol gradually gets persuaded to lead them in this by watching kids working in terrible conditions with no current hope of ever doing anything else with their lives. Oh, and also Gaius, who has, in his imprisonment, been busy writing Mein Kampf and/or The Communist Manifesto to forment unrest and make himself out to be some kind of hero of the people which, despite all prior evidence belying this suggestion, seems to somehow be working. And Gaius's posh "Caprican" (English) accent is apparently totally put on and really he's a poor farmer from Aerolon (Yorkshire) and Lords of Kobol, that scene between Baltar and Tyrol was CRAZY AWESOME.

Admiral Adama and President Roslin (BTW, I watched Donnie Darko again the other day, and she's Donnie's mother! How have I not noticed this before?) are not too happy about the miners' strike, and Adama breaks it off by telling Tyrol he's gonna line his wife up against the wall and have her shot (just like the Cylons did on New Caprica! Isn't that an odd coincidence.) if he doesn't call off the strike, but once again, the promise of a Cally shooting is not delivered, because Tyrol does back down, and because he does, Adama and Roslin agree to listen to his demands, I guess. They're kind of odd that way.

Two weeks until Baltar's trial, right? I wouldn't be bothered either way about it, except I really do want me some more Caprica Six, and she's the key witness. I am so very excited to see how that plays out. But first Starbuck's gonna die or something, apparently. This show is just laugh a minute, I tell you.


Heroes 1x17 - Company Man
Episode Grade: A+

Have I mentioned that I really love this show? Because I do. I know this is a giant cliché and shit, but Lost? ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? Now, normally I gloss over the plot points I consider less important, but since there were none of those, you get this gigantic essay, OK? OK.

Right, so, Mr. Bennet is the titular Company Man, and instead of darting about between many (at most, extremely loosely connected) stories, we focus solely on the goings on in his life this week, including flashbacks with a nice little nod to Lost's traditional eye close-ups. Between these flashbacks and the present day stuff, we learn... a whole heck of a lot, actually. But not Bennet's first name. Or any name at all for The Haitian, and I still hate calling him that. 15 years ago, Bennet's boss, who is probably either the mysterious Linderman or an underling of his (although this is pure speculation on my part), appointed Bennet "Head Of Primatech Paper" and assigned him to work with invisible Claude, since apparently they always assign one regular Company Man with one Heroic Company Man. And what they work together doing is tracking down Heroes to be experimented on.

Anyway, a year later, the whole shebang with Claire's biological mother went down, and Hiro's dad (who is exactly this awesome), apparently also a bigwig in the Linderman group, ordered Bennet to be Claire's surrogate father, and to hand her over to the Company the second any superpower manifested. And then, some more years later, Claude betrayed the Company by hiding a Hero from them, and Bennet was ordered to drive him out to somewhere secluded and shoot him. Bennet does so, Claude reveals that he was invisible in the office when they gave this order, but he got in the car anyway, since he thinks Bennet is a better man than the Company do, plus Bennet's blatantly going to start harbouring a Hero himself as soon as Claire's powers manifest. But Bennet shoots Claude anyway, and Claude, riddled with bulletholes, turns invisible and falls over the edge of a bridge, and I guess we'll be finding out how the hell he survived that in a later flashback episode.

In present day land, Matt and Ted (but not Hana, apparently. Coulda sworn she went with them last week, but I am wrong, wrong, wrong.) have come to Bennet's house to find out the truth about their powers/seek vengeance. Bennet continues to pretend he knows nothing, but while he can manage to keep his thoughts from revealing that he's lying, he can't do the same with Claire's. Ted gets extremely trigger-happy, and is about to shoot Sandra (Mrs. Bennet) to prove they ain't messing around, so Bennet mentally orders Matt to shoot Claire first, since she'll survive, and Bennet and Matt take Claire's apparently dead body upstairs and Bennet promises to tell her everything soon, but right now she needs to stay put so Ted thinks she's dead. Claire's understandably sceptical of his promise, but Matt tells her he's not lying. Matt and Bennet go to the Primatech Paper office, claiming to Ted that they're getting the proof he wants, though he figures this for a lie when Claire ignores Bennet's orders and tries to rescue her mom and brother. Matt and Bennet get back with the "proof", and convince Ted that they're not lying, Matt just shot clear so they wouldn't have a death on their hands, and then Possible Linderman shows up and shoots Ted and everything gets even more crazy.

So, Ted's spewing radiation all over the place and losing control, Bennet has a sedative to give him, which Claire handles, what with the regeneration and all, and Claire walking out of the rubble into the embrace of her father, skin totally blackened but rapidly recovering is a beautiful enough image for me to not question the fact that enough remnants of her cheerleader uniform mysteriously survive to cover her dignity. And then I remember Possible Linderman and the fact that all evidence points to Bennet having given Claire up to the Company.

But then, awesomely, it turns out that Bennet and The Haitian concocted a story before calling Possible Linderman in, whereby The Haitian's been keeping Claire's power secret from Bennet and turning her against him, and Bennet's only just discovered this, and takes The Haitian to the same bridge that Claude "died", only The Haitian overpowered him and shot him in the gut and escaped with Claire. So, while they're setting up this scene, Claire and Bennet share a seriously tearful goodbye, and then there's a flashback to Bennet getting his trademark horned-rim glasses and using his hereditary poor eyesight as a segue into telling Claire she's adopted, like I wasn't already crying.

And then The Haitian does his thing to, I guess, wipe any memory from Bennet's mind that this story is anything but the truth. And, not that it makes it any less heartbreaking that he'll forget his daughter's love, but I'm sure it is safer for him to not know, especially since his new Heroic partner is a mind-reader. Ted, having proven himself to be seriously dangerous, probably won't be receiving quite the same cushy treatment as Matt.

And that's that. Seriously, just so damn good. I can't think of maybe four episodes of anything, ever, that I'd say were better than this one, and as I think should be pretty clear by now, I watch quite a lot of TV.


Lost 3x10 - Tricia Tanaka Is Dead
Episode Grade: B-

Total filler, but vaguely entertainingly so. And no Jack and t'Others. That's about the best we can hope for any more. And yet I just can't stop watching, unlike thousands of Americans. ("Shake the Bunny" is, of course, the Lost version of "Jump the Shark", named for Benry's shaking of a bunny back in "Every Man For Himself", although personally, I think it was a different moment in that same episode where I really lost my faith; Kate can escape the Others' cage, but CHOOSES NOT TO FOR SOME STUPID REASON. That was just too much.)

So, in flashbacks, Asian reporter Tricia Tanaka is killed while reporting on Hurley's lottery win (and honestly, how much airtime can one local network fill with the story of "Area Man Wins Lottery"?) by Hurley's Curse Which Only Shows Up When Hurley Is Having Flashbacks, hence the title. But actually, Hurley's Curse probably killed Libby, I guess, and may well be responsible for Charlie's Gonna Die, Oh Yeah, so it's actually been getting a reasonable degree of play "lately". I say "lately" because it's actually been, what, two years since we spent any amount of time whatsoever with any of the original cast bar the Kate/Jack/Sawyer triangular black hole. Anyway, it's pretty much the exact same flashback as Hurley's first one, but with Daddy Issues shoehorned in, because everybody's gotta have Daddy Issues. I'm sure Joss Whedon approves.

On the island, Kate and Sawyer return to the main Lostaway camp, Charlie mopes because Desmond told him he's gonna die, Sun will no longer speak to Jin in Korean because that way he'll learn English faster. Hurley finds a rusted up ol' Hippy Wagon about five minutes walk away from the beach, beggaring belief once again that nobody has found this before. Hurley decides that this van needs to be fixed to make food taste good again, and enlists the help of Charlie, Sawyer and Jin to get it going again. Hurley and Charlie take the van down on a suicide run into some rocks on the illogical basis that it'll either kill them or break their respective curses, and, hey presto, it... well, doesn't kill them, anyway.

Also, Kate goes looking for Danielle (YAY!) to go help her rescue Jack, because hey there's this teenage girl called Alex who is probably your estranged daughter, and I guess you'd like to reunite, huh, Danielle? (YAY!!) Plus, Sayid and Locke tag along (YAY!!!).

So, it's all very fillery, and there's the requisite Lost total lack of anything resembling logic, but there some cute stuff like Sawyer's anger at the scotch stolen from him by Charlie, Des and Hurley being totally defused by Hurley's unrestrained joy at seeing him alive to make it bearable fluff. Aw.


Scrubs 6x11 - My Night To Remember
Episode Grade: F

Hey, let's take a bunch of clips of old episodes and string them together in a way that takes them out of any context in which they might be funny and/or poignant! And be sure to throw in a reference to "cheesy clip shows in sitcoms that have run out of ideas", because acknowledging that we're peddling excrement makes it perfectly OK to do so, right?

And, it's not like I need any more than "cheesy clip show" to accuse this of being a waste of an episode, but as few as 13 episodes ago, Scrubs did basically another clip show, albiet with a somewhat fresh take on it, and they used the "analgesic" joke in that one, too. So they're recycling their own recycling. So lame.

Also, Dr. Cox is now bald for some reason. What?


Veronica Mars 3x15 - Papa's Cabin
Episode Grade: B-

Paradigm shift! It gives me a really weird feeling throughout. See, because Sherriff Lamb died last week, and Keith has, temporarily at least, taken over as Sherriff, which majorly changes the dynamics, and then Veronica spends most of the episode working with Landry's T.A., Tim, in an effort to prove Landry's innocence in the O' Dell murder case, which throws out increasingly blatant flashing neon signs saying "TIM IS THE REAL KILLER" until we reach the point where Landry is charged for the murder and Tim takes over his Criminology class and spends the first class basically explaining in detail exactly how he killed Dean O' Dell and framed Landry for it. As far as motivation goes, we get a reasonable explanation for his framing Landry in a recording of a phone conversation where Landry tells a potential employer calling for a reference that Tim is pretty useless, really, but there's no explanation for his willingness to kill Dean O' Dell to affect that outcome beyond a throwaway "Everyone hated Dean O'Dell" from Tim, which frankly is not exactly a detailed enough motivation for a seven episode arc, as far as I'm concerned.

So, while I appreciate the change from "Veronica gets herself in mortal peril and Keith/Logan/Parker bails her out" for a resolution to a major arc, this was still kind of a let down for what is, apparently, the last multi-episode mystery we're going to get, even if the show does somehow manage to cling to life for another season.

In other news, Parker and Logan are totally hot for each other, but are worried they'll be breaking the friend code with Veronica if they act on, so Logan asks for her permission to ask Parker out, and Veronica gives the OK without any apparent angst whatsoever, although she was rather distracted by murder-solvin' at the time. Still, it's looking increasingly likely that if we don't get a fourth season, the show's going to end with Logan and Veronica apart and not crying into their pillows about this fact at all, which would be hilariously awesome as far as I'm concerned.