My One Big Eyeball, week of 12/03/07

That's one a week assuming a frickin' powercut doesn't lose me half a recap and irritate the hell out of me, of course. Anyway.

Battlestar Galactica 3x18 - The Son Also Rises
Episode Grade: B-

Written by Michael Angeli, which is notable because he also wrote "The Woman King". (And, seriously, read that recap, it's loving hilarious. The only thing I love more than Jacob loving an episode and going crazy drawing imaginary lines between everything is Jacob completely hating everything about an episode, up to and including the chip Michael Angeli inside his head, who is a horrible person in every way that a person can be horrible. The thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck, and all that.)

So, right. 41,399 souls in the fleet, which is one less than last week, which means at least one baby has been born since Kara died, since somebody else dies before the credits. That somebody is Baltar's lawyer, which is cool because his replacement, Romo Lampkin (AKA Badger), is rather excellent. He manipulates anyone and everyone, especially Lee, and wears sunglasses inside so nobody can tell what he is thinking, even though they probably couldn't anyway, and steals random shit all the time. So now it looks like Gaius might actually have a fighting chance in this trial, somehow.

So, Romo Lampkin, plus some of the Kara death fallout (the birthday card with the moustache got to me way more than anything last week did), do a fine job of making up for the bad parts of the episode, where for the second time running, Michael Angeli turns somebody into a serial killer for no reason whatsoever, only this time it's not some doctor we've never seen before, it's Kelly, who has hung around the background all the time and never really done anything significant. And that can break a man, I guess. So he starts bombing lawyers (which is totally OK, because lawyers are soulless, right? Don't you hate pants?). Oh, Michael Angeli.

Next week is part one of the season finale, so Baltar's trial might actually finally happen! Oh, my heart is all a-flutter.


Lost 3x12 - Par Avion
Episode Grade: A

Yeah, as "Flashes Before Your Eyes" already proved; it may have jumped 100 Dharma-branded sharks already, but that doesn't mean Lost can't occasionally be totally awesome.

So, Claire flashbacks this week, which have a long-standing tradition (well, OK, there have been two prior to this) of being A-grade episodes. In these, we learn that when she was younger, Claire was a goth, and was seriously hot. Oh, and DADDY ISSUES, of course; Jack's daddy is her daddy, which they basically told us already. Yeah, OK, we still don't particularly learn anything, but Claire was HOT. And, y'know, they can still be enjoyable to watch without teaching us much of anything. Also, she crashed her car into a truck and put her mother into a coma, which is something we didn't already know, I suppose.

Now, last week, when I said that Locke, Kate & Sayid were the least annoying characters they had left, I was forgetting Claire. Which I think is understandable since she has not actually appeared in any episodes for about a year, I don't think. But, well, she's a sweet girl, there's not really much else to her, and they give her just about the right proportion of appearances to make that not boring. OK.

So, she hatches a kooky plan to get off the island by catching a bird and strapping a note to its leg. Wait, I thought we agreed that trying to get off the island makes you a bad person, DENTIST. Anyway, Jin and Sun help out, but then Desmond and Charlie deliberately sabotage it because somehow this will cause yet another Charlie Is Going To Die to come to pass. Plus Desmond knows that he'll be able to catch a bird himself later. So, Claire gets mad at them for being weird, and for sabotaging her cunning plan, but then Desmond comes clean about the whole "I am psychic, and Charlie Is Going To Die" thing, and Claire is forgiving and Claire and Charlie are somehow capable of being really sweet again, in spite of "Fire + Water"? Dude.

So! Locke, Kate, Sayid and Danielle, plus prisoner Mikhal, the Russian fella from last week, continue their search for Otherville, and come upon a perimeter of pylons. While Kate and Sayid talk about shoe shopping or whatever, Locke gets bored and shoves Mikhal into the perimeter, which totally fries his brain like the hands of blue. Sayid yells at him about this plus blowing up the cabin last week, Locke does his best to remind us of the times when we have suspected him of being an Other, and then they cut down a tree and climb over the perimeter and find Otherville. And Jack! He is running towards them, looking like he's trying to escape, but actually, he's just playing some AMERICAN FOOTBALL (rah rah rugby soccer blah blah what) with Tom! And looking way happier than Jack ever does! Totally one of the best OMGWTFBBQ endings they have yet pulled.

All in all, can't wait for Claire's season four episode! Provided the ratings don't dwindle so much that the show gets cancelled before then, of course.


Scrubs 6x13 - My Scrubs
Episode Grade: A-

Ah man, what an appropriate title! Because this totally was my Scrubs, the one I've been missing since approximately the end of last season (though, on reflection, I'd lump the last three episodes of that in with the downturn of this season). Many, many hilarious moments, and a whole lot of continuity porn, eee. Still a little bit of wildly uncomfortable Family Guy stuff with the massage parlour trip with Kelso at the start, but it quickly picked up with a lot of jokes that, I think, started out like the not-really-funny stuff that's been going on all season, but found their way to funny again by bringing them onto a further level. No finer example than the caveman thoughtful voiceover fantasy sequence within a fantasy sequence.

That plus "And so in the end, I knew that what Elliot said about the way things were had forever changed the way we all thought about them." Hee hee! Just make sure it's not a one off, you guys! Please?

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.

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.

My One Big Eyeball, week of 19/02/07

Yeah, it's back.

Battlestar Galactica 3x15 - A Day In The Life
Episode Grade: B

Man, the first half of this season was so incredible that it's pretty understandable that people are going to have violent reactions when they start putting out episodes that are just OK ("The Woman King" was straight up awful though, I agree). OK, Baltar's trial is the big endgame for the season, which means we're treading water until that happens. I want to see more of Caprica's adventures on Galactica as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but apparently we've got three more episodes of filler to sit through first, and if you don't just accept that fact and deal with them on their own merits, you're going to go crazy.

So, turns out Baltar and Caprica are not as special as they like to think, because Adama's got an ex in his head that talks to him too, but only on his wedding anniversary, and that's a little stupid, really. On the other hand, Adama/Roslin flirting goes into even more overdrive than that time when they got stoned on New Caprica, which is awesome in any language. And while they'rre doing that, they also decide that Apollo's going to be the offical Cutter Through Lawyer Bullshit for Baltar's trial, because as we know, Lee's always had a big interest in law which totally didn't come out of nowhere.

Meanwhile, Tyrol and Cally spend some quality time together in one of those nice out of nowhere life threatening situations that this show always does so well, when they're doing some routine maintenance and suddenly the ship's automatic systems go crazy and trap them in a room because there's a tiny pinprick of a hull breach in there. And there's no time or way to get them out except firing them out of the ship and catching them in Athena's Raptor, and man, you know, I love people floating out in space and being caught in spaceships, like that bit with Squall and Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII, and the Farscape season one finale. There's something intensely beautiful about that image. That plus the whole deal that Jacob pointed out with the elegant symmetry with the Collaborators airlocking make this part a really fantastic moment in an otherwise fairly average episode.

And Hotdog has an STD!


Desperate Housewives 3x15 - The Little Things You Do Together
Episode Grade: A-

It's totally the season finale, except that there's still seven or so episode to go. Huh? Oh, right, because Marcia Cross is taking time off, so they had to rush things, except it doesn't actually feel rushed, it just feels awesome. I really think they've done a fantastic job this season; I was extremely weary about it at the start, when Orson seemed to be a George rehash that couldn't possibly go anywhere good, and slowly but surely, they've completely turned that on it's head, and Orson is actually totally a good guy and absolutely perfect for Bree, and I love them for totally punking me like that. I mean, there's still the tiny matter of DELIBERATELY DRIVING A CAR INTO MIKE, and maybe they should deal with that a little, but knowing them, they probably won't, but still. Orson's crazy mother was a truly great villain, which is always good.

Meanwhile, in storylines that will have to carry the rest of the season in Bree's absence and I can't imagine how that will possibly go well, the Scavos finally open their pizzeria, which gives a perfect opportunity for the whole neighbourhood to get together, and yet there's nex to no interactions between all the housewives, which is a real shame, because everybody knows those are great. Ian rushes a proposal to Susan before Mike starts remember thaty he loves her, and while he is nearly as perfect for Susan as Orson for Bree, they're pretty boring, truth be told. And Zach also proposes to Gabby, which gets a resounding "no way in hell", naturally, and that's not particularly interesting either. I'm really not optimistic about the rest of the season. But 90% of this episode is the culmination of the Orson story, which is great, so this one's the best since "Bang".


Heroes 1x16 - Unexpected
Episode Grade: A

Heroes is still completely freaking cool to a ridiculous, and no one can take that away from me. NO ONE! Since I last said anything about it, man, everything happened. Peter saved the cheerleader, saved the world, and also CHRIS ECCLESTONE fantastic!ally joined the cast as an invisible dude named Claude who beats Peter about the head whenever deserved, which is often. And far too much else to go into.

So, this week, Hiro teamed up with some kind of Sin City-esque misanthropist bounty hunter or something, who taught him the important lesson that other people will only let you down and it's better to work alone, man. So Hiro told Ando to go back to Japan and got on a bus (driven by Stan Lee! Man, you know, I can't wait for the next season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero?) to somewhere by himself, so I'm sure there'll be a joyous reunion in store for those two crazy kids a week or two down the line.

Also, Matt, AKA Thought Police teamed up with the other Heroes with obvious superhero names; Ted Sprague, AKA Radioactive Man, and a new one, Hana Gittelman, AKA Wireless, who can connect to the internet WITH HER BRAIN. And they are all mad at Mr. Bennet for kidnapping them and making them forget what the hell happened, so they go to his house to confront him. At the same time, Claire's mad at him too for making Mrs. Bennet forget so much that her brain is melting, and she is maybe going to team up with them.

And last week, Sylar teamed up with Mohinder to track down other Heroes and eat their brains, only Mohinder doesn't know about the second part, so he's somewhat surprised when the woman with super-hearing they catch up with turns up dead the next day. Mohinder decides that this makes their mission more important, because they have to warn these people about Sylar! But, come on, Sylar can't eat too many brains before Mohinder starts getting suspicious of the fact that every Hero they track down dies soon after. It's gonna be pretty funny while it lasts though.

Finally, Peter continues to team up with Claude in an effort to learn to control his powers and not explode New York, and then also saves Claude from being captured by Mr. Bennet and his Primatech Paper crew. Bennet gives Isaac a gun in case Peter turns up at his place and tells him to shoot the Peter, save the world, but when Peter actually does show up, he gets all invisible and telekinetic on Isaac's ass and Isaac shoots Simone by mistake. Oops!


Lost 3x09 - Stranger In A Strange Land
Episode grade: F

So, you may recall that before Lost took a giant hiatus, I was getting majorly tired of it, and stated that they had two episodes to convince me to keep watching. Well, the first of those was "Not In Portland", which was pretty much "I Do" Part 2, and sucked about as much, but it had a cool Clockwork Orange ripoff and... Man, I'm sure there was something else I liked about it, but hell if I can remember now. But then, in "Flashes Before Your Eyes", the bastards went ahead and pulled their actual best episode ever, for real, totally out of nowhere. It was kind of a wacky hybrid of The Butterfly Effect and Eternal Sunshine and all those kind of films, and I totally love that shit, plus there was a bunch of the kind of cool stuff that you used to be able to expect from this show, dude in red shoes having a house falling on him, crazy dream world (or not) version of Charlie telling people to "stay off the drugs", just awesome.

And thanks to that, I didn't give up, and I actually bothered to watch this utter crapfest. And, I mean, I hated it to like a "Random Shoes" level even before I learned that the promo monkeys advertised it as "answering three of Lost's biggest mysteries". So, what were those three mysteries? Well, #1: How did Jack get his tattoos? Yeah, that's sure been weighing heavy on my mind in those sleepless nights. #2: Uh... No, I've got nothing. But like, even if we ignore the ridiculous empty promise, and ask the simple question of what happened in this episode that served any useful purpose? I've got nothing. OH, WAIT! Karl kind of reminded me of River Tam, and that plus his association with Alex, that's a new character I can actually feel something for, which I guess had to happen eventually with how many of them Alcatraz has been spewing out. Juliet who? Sherriff wha?

Nonetheless, I'll watch again next week, because I think I've ascertained that I still like the show as much as Season 2 when they keep away from the Others' camp, which has just been an absolutely fruitless endeavour from start to finish (get Alex and the cameras the hell away from them ASAP, yo), and it seems like they're going to alternate between the two on a weekly basis for the moment. So next week might actually be somewhat tolerable.


Scrubs 6x10 - My Theraputic Month
Episode Grade: B

And, joining Lost in the "totally sucking this year" camp, Scrubs. Only, Lost had two pretty good seasons with clear signs that it was on the brink of collapsing under its own weight any time soon, wheras Scrubs had five near-perfect seasons with absolutely no signs that anything was going to change, then all of a sudden season six came along and everyone but the Janitor seemed to totally forget how to be funny OR poignant, both which they'd always been great at before. But after nine episodes, including a freakin' musical, this season is finally starting to look like Scrubs again. It's not dizzyingly hilarious, but at least I actually laughed a few times, and this one actually seemed like it would be worth watching again. Here's hoping the upwardly mobileness continues for the rest of the season.

Yeah, I can't write so much about Scrubs when it's just funny with no particular story going on, as this one was.


Veronica Mars 3x14 - Mars, Bars
Episode Grade: B+

And finally. I hadn't yet got into this show back in the old One Big Eyeballs, so let's have a little background. Veronica Mars is a college student (as of the start of this season) and also a private investigator. Once upon a time, she floated like a butterfly without a care in the world, but then someone roofied and raped her (only not really! (but then, surprise! actually it was really)) and her best friend was murdered and it turned out life kind of sucked. The first season was pretty damn perfect, especially towards the end when the big mysteries of "Who killed Lilly Kane?" and "Who raped Veronica?" were solved (well, the second on until they decided to totally rewrite history at the end of the second season, anyway), but getting the right mix of clues and red herrings to a big mystery over the course of twenty two episodes is a pretty tricky business, and doing it effectively proved beyond them second time around. And while all that was going on, not enough people were actually watching the show for it to avoid cancellation, except somehow it did anyway, but it's totally living on borrowed time and everybody knows it. So, in an attempt to make it more accessible, and also maybe to lose the problems season two had, this season doesn't have one big mystery that will play out over the course of the entire season, but three smaller mysteries, of which we're now nearing the end of the second.

And furthering the extreme likelihood of it's cancellation this season, a lot of fans are hating it and giving up, especially after this episode, because they are of the insane shipper variety who hate anything that doesn't involve lots of hot steamy sex between Logan and Veronica (nauseatingly referred to as LoVe, which is the ultimate in irritating name-smushing), and they keep NOT HAVING SEX this year, dagnabbit. And Veronica is probablyly going to get together with this new guy, Piz who seems pretty shifty to me and they have NO CHEMISTRY and WHY DO YOU HATE YOUR FANS WHEN THEY SHOW YOU NOTHING BUT LOVE, ROB THOMAS??? Also, maybe some people have valid reasons. But, come on, how anyone can think they have no chemistry after seeing this video here is completely beyond me.

So, Dean O' Dell was murdered back at the start of the current season arc, and all evidence seems to point to either Professor Landry or his wife, so I'm betting it wasn't actually either of them. But really, I haven't been particular engaged with this mystery like I was with the Lily Kane murder, or the bus crash, or the rapes or any of them, but that doesn't matter because the Mysteries of the Week have been uniformly excellent while that one's been going, so I still love this season, and I could definitely deal with the entirely standalone episodes that may well happen if season four somehow miraculously comes into being.

The MotW this week is actually the second part of a two week mystery, and it turns out the guy killed himself, which seemed pretty obvious to me as soon as they revealed his debillitating illness, so I think this is probably my least favourite episode of season 3.2. While Veronica and Keith are taking way longer than they ought to to figure that one out, Logan sheds his emo coocoon at last and goes on a Valentine's Day scavenger hunt with Mac and Parker and Bronson, and oh, the wacky, wacky hijinks. It definitely has nothing on last week's Logan subplot as far as awesome cuteness goes, I'm afraid.

And then Lamb dies the most anticlimactic main character death I have ever seen. This development has some people wailing and moaning and making up insane conspiracy stories about how Rob Thomas sold his soul at some point after season one and he just did this to futher destroy the hopes and dreams of the fans, but those of us possessing of some sanity, once our brains finally manage to process what in the hell just happened, love it.

My One Big Eyeball #6

Battlestar Galactica 3x07 - A Measure Of Salvation
Episode grade: A

Galactica sends in the marines to investigate the abandoned cylon base star that Gaius was on last week and find and bring back five living cylons, models Six, Eight, Simon, Doral and Leoben. Everybody freaks out for a while about the disease, but fortunately for them, humans are immune, of course, but also, even more fortunately (also, conveniently) Athena and Helo's baby continues it's miracle curing; as well as curing Roslin's cancer last season, it's made Athena immune to the disease too. And, turns out the disease was pretty definitely left by the 13th colony, and also probably totally by accident since it's kind of like the common cold for the humans, which is pretty cool.

Meanwhile in Cylonia, Three tortures Baltar, believing him to be behind the disease, and he goes into his head with Chip Six and she sexes him up to keep his mind off the pain and he gets some weird Christ thing going on and, mid-torture, tells Three he loves her with all his heart, and it's all incredibly weird and icky.

And, back on Galactica, there's some definitely awesome shit going down. Simon gets to be the one they interrogate, seeing as how he's had little to no screentime since his first appearance way back in The Farm, and he's rather quickly forthcoming with all sorts of information, like 'the Cylons are searching for Earth too', and 'Baltar is still alive and we have him'. And then Apollo comes up with a plan to wipe out all the cylons forever; if they get in range of a resurrection ship and then kill their prisoners, the disease will transfer to the cylon fleet, and that'll be that. You have to make a kind of big leap of logic to actually buy that this makes any sense at all, but I can cope with doing that, and if you do, it's some seriously excellent moral quandary stuff. Helo freaks out on the whole genocide idea, because he is married to pretty excellent proof that the cylons are not irredeemable. Adama pussies out of actually making a decision here and passes the buck to Roslin, who, having been down on New Caprica for four months, doesn't hesitate to give Apollo's plan the go ahead. So, in spite of the fact that even his wife, an actual member of the race, supports wiping out the cylons, Helo takes matters into his own hands and kills all the prisoners before Galactica can get into resurrection ship range. And Adama totally lets him get away with it, because he's awesome, and the passing the buck was him not wanting to admit to Roslin that he agreed with Helo.

I seriously cannot believe how much the show has improved this season, because it was already absurdly good. Anyone involved in the creation of this show and it's continued existence; thank you so much.


Desperate Housewives 3x07 - Bang
Episode grade: A+

OH MY FUCKING GOD YES. Best episode ever. It's like, not even a close run thing. Totally floored me. Just way better than I ever expected out of this show.

So, it goes down like this; Bree confronts Orson about the whole spousal abuse thing, he claims self defence. Bree, as ever, accepts Orson's explanation, and decides to get revenge on Carolyn for feeding her more "lies" about Orson by telling Carolyn about Harvey's affair. Carolyn, never the most stable of characters (and on this show, that's really saying something) decides to go shoot Harvey up in the market where he works, only he hides himself in an office, so Carolyn holds all customers hostage. These inculde Julie Mayer and her love/hate blah blah just get it on already crush Austin, Edie, Lynette and Nora.

Outside the hostage market, Gabby wins the house in the divorce, but Carlos wins every single thing in it, since he taped his little trick last week. Gabby procedes to start destroying all the stuff Carlos won, and he retaliates by starting to destroy the house that she won. It's the kind of completely ridiculous yet strangely awesome thing this show did so well in it's early days, and not quite so well more recently. But then they learn about the hostage thing, and Gabby realises she's turning into a crazy shrew like Carolyn, and she and Carlos decide they're still in love, so what the hell are they getting divorced for. Woo!

Bree, on hearing the news of the hostage situation, decides to host a party. Naturally. Of course, her insane cheeriness melts a little when she realises a) some of her friends are in there and b) it's kind of her fault for driving Carolyn to this. Mostly Carolyn's fault for being an insane bitch, but still, Bree blames herself.

Back in the hostage market, Julie's freaking out and is impressed by Austin's calm, Susan is freaking out and tries to join the hostage exchange program (hee hee!) to get Julie out, Nora decides it's the perfect opportunity to start bickering with Lynette, and in all the trying to get Nora to shut the hell up, Lynette lets slip to Carolyn that Nora tried to seduce Tom a little. So Carolyn shoots Nora, and she dies in Lynette's arms and oh man. Lynette goes crazy ranting, and just as Carolyn is about to shoot her dead too, one of the other hostages beans her with a can of soup, so the shot hits Lynette in the shoulder, Austin tackles her to the ground and another hostage grabs the gun and kills Carolyn. Wowza.

So, you've got all storylines weaving together excellently, perfect mix of dark comedy and drama, and everyone's acting firing on all cylinders. Hard to choose from all the many, many amazing moments, but I think Tom's hamburger speech wins. Man did that choke me up but good. I'm not going to question why I watch this show again for a while, that's for sure. Lost writers, ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?


Heroes 1x07 - Nothing To Hide
Episode grade: B

So, Niki is not dead, neither is ikiN. But ikiN's name is actually Jessica, apparently. I don't know when or how Niki learned that, but she did. But anyway, she's not much on the screentime this week; Matt and the Petrelli brothers get the bulk of it.

So, Matt's FBI friend thinks she's found Sylar, but, not so much. What she has found is Radioactive Man! So, with his radiation powers, he accidentally put his wife in a coma and freaked out rather. Matt uses his mind reading power to tell Radioactive Man his comatose wife's thoughts before she dies, which is a pretty nice scene. Later, he uses his mind reading power to discover that his wife has been cheating on him with one of his police buddies and clocks the guy in the face. He's totally going to hook up with the FBI chick, though, so it's all good.

At the Petrelli household, we finally meet Nathan's wife, who's wheelchair bound, and Peter does an excellent job of covering for Nathan when he's having trouble answering a reporter's questions about his time in Vegas, so Nathan gets hold of Isaac's missing painting that Simone has sold to Linderman. But then he tells Peter that Linderman wouldn't give it up. Whuh? I don't exactly know what the hell is going with that, but I do enjoy the brothers Petrelli's relationship, and Nathan's general asshattery.

And, more coincidence/fate Hero meetings; D.L. and Hiro combine their powers to save someone from a car wreck, but manage to do so without actually finding out each other's powers, I think. And Micah, being the son of two Heroes, has powers of his own, of course, his being the power of machinery-control or somesuch. His superhero name is totally Repair Man, anyway, and he uses his powers to call Jessica from a broken payphone and tell her where D.L. has taken him. Oh, and he totally knows about the Niki/Jessica thing. He's so cool.


Lost 3x06 - I Do
Episode grade: D

Flashbacks; Kate, only she's calling herself 'Monica', marries Cap'n Mal Reynolds, only he's calling himself 'Kevin'. But light up, light up, as if you have a choice, Kate can't keep up the pretense that she's not a fugitive, and drugs Mal and makes a break for it, because she's BORN TO RUN. And not even Nathan Fillion can make up for the invariable complete dullness of a Kate flashback to tell us that she is BORN TO RUN, just like every other Kate flashback.

Craphole Island; Locke and his band of merry men bury Eko right where he is, rather than having a grand ceremony back on the beach, because, per Locke, they've had too many funerals lately. That, there is actually good stuff, it's as shame this stuff was only, like, five seconds of the episode. Also, he marks Eko's grave with Eko's Jesus stick, and in doing so see something about 'looking to the north' written on it, so I'm sure we'll get right on with finding out what that and the four-toed statue are all about when we come back in February. In five second bursts each episode between the far more important Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, OFF COURSE.

Other Island; Somehow, Jack is suddenly by far the coolest character here, kind of excellently telling Benry that he's going to let him die. But then someone leads him into the surveillance room and he gets to watch Kate and Sawyer have sex in the cages they can get out of whenever they feel like it, but still don't, which is still incredibly fucking stupid. This seems to change Jack's mind, but then in the surgery, he deliberately fucks it up, tells the Others that Benry will die in an hour if he doesn't fix it and he's not doing that until Kate and Sawyer have got away. He calls them on walkie-talkie to tell Kate to run, instead of informing him of the whole Alcatraz situation of not actually being on Craphole Island, just tells him she can't leave him behind, and Picket holds a gun to Sawyer's head and threatens to shoot without actually firing for the whole enitre episode or so, and it's all very melodramatic and stupid.

Right now I just don't care, and I'm on the verge of giving up. Come February, Lost, you've got two episodes to win me back. Use them wisely.

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.

My One Big Eyeball #4

Yeah, I'm doing away with the whole "PREVIOUSLY/NOW/WHAT IT THINK OF IT ALL" nonsense and just cramming in a big block of text. OK!


Battlestar Galactica 3x05 - Collaborators
Episode grade: A-

So, this episode certainly bears extremely strong similarities to season one's Litmus, one of the two actual bad episodes of this show thus far, but fortunately it's very well done this time round.

Heroic and joyful rescue last week, even tempered as it was with Kara and Tigh's losses obviously meant we had to go extremely bleak this time. Condoned by exceedingly teporary President Tom Zarek, Tigh, Tyrol, Anders and three other Resistance mentalists are carrying out "trials" and executions of Cylon collaborators. Bye, Jammer! Anders, who has remained remarkably sane, particular in comparison to the others, can't keep on with it, so they draft in Kara, who has gone remarkably insane, even in comparison to the others, to take his place. Felix Gaeta is next on their list of collaborators, and he almost dies due to awesomely refusing to try to defend himself, since that would condone their farcical trials, but is saved when Kara goes full on crazy ranting at him, leading the others to the revelation that Gaeta was their leak inside Baltar's administration, which, as Jacob has pointed out, is kind of stupid that they didn't already know, since Baltar's administration appeared to consist entirely of Felix Gaeta, but it's not hard to get past.

Speaking of Baltar, he's chilling out in a bathrobe on a Cylon Basestar, and continuing to go utterly crazy. He's maybe even beating Kara, but then, he had a two season head start.

But everything turns out OK in the end when Roslin is re-elected president (at least, I assume there was an election?) and issues a full pardon to everyone in the entire fleet (sucks to be you, Gaius!). What happened on New Caprica stays on New Caprica. And it's not like anyone will carry on prosecuting supposed offenders because there's no way they can instantly heal all the horrible shit that went on for the last year and a half, because there;s just no possible instant fix and that was kind of the point of the episode, right?


Desperate Housewives 3x05 - Nice She Ain't
Episode grade: B+

Susan tries her darnedest to get Mike to remember, but it just ain't working, so she kidnaps him from the hospital. This gets a slight glimmer of recognition when she trips over the curb, but after an awesome showdown with Edie, she's still definitely on the losing side here. Evil!

Biggest plus-point of this season so far; Andrew's return. Not only is he hilarious in and of himself, somehow he makes Bree and Orson work in spite of him being a raving psychotic. Bree, very much excellently back to her old self, puts an end to Danielle's relationship with her history teacher, despite some blackmail from Danielle, by blackmailing the guy into breaking up with her himself, or she'll get him fired. And then Danielle sticks the nail in the coffin by getting him fired anyway.

Crazy Nora's back into Lynette's storyline, and she's starting to make her inevitable moves on Tom. Tom's big dream is to open a pizza place, which Lynette is, of course, not too thrilled about. Nora seizes this opportunity to, in her obnoxious way, encourage Lynette to be harsh on Tom's plans, then telling Tom she's totally behind him and Lynette is a stupid meanie face. And tom is totally buying it, the fool. Also, Kayla acts ridiculously young for a supposed 11 year old, but considering she was raised by THAT, it's kind of understandable, no?

And finally, Carlos still believes that Gabby's totally still in love with him, really, and she has a hard time persuading him otherwise. First of all, she tries pretending to sleep with an old rival of his, but this just strengthens his conviction when he discovers she's faking the whole thing. So she tries again with a different guy, only for real this time, which seems to actually convince him that she really is over him. Just in time for her to start having doubts herself! Oh, Desperate Housewives. Oh, so very much.


Heroes 1x05 - Hiros
Episode grade: A-

"Save the cheerleader, save the world". That's Future!Hiro's message to Peter, and the general catchphrase of the show, which I still love so very much. Future!Hiro also tells Peter to go see Isaac, so he does, and manages to finish off one of Isaac's painting's for him without taking any heroin at all. Imagine that.

Speaking of the cheerleader, she wakes up in hospital, tells her creepy dad about the whole rape thing, so he rather leniently gets his creepy silent assisstant to totally erase Rapey the Quarterback's memory to the point where he doesn't even know his own name. Oooh.

In other cliffhanger resolution news, Mr. Bennett and his silent assisstant took Nathan, not Niki, but Nathan escapes them by flying away, fast enough to create a sonic boom. So. Freaking Cool. He touches down outside a restaurant where present Hiro's eating WAFFLES! alone, after parting ways with Ando following an argument. Hiro, speaking better English than it seemed like he could before, (because Future!Hiro's around, or bad writng? You decide!) tells Nathan about what he saw in his trip to the future. Nathan finds him as adorable as the rest of us, especially when he mentions seeing Nathan win the election by a landslide, so he gives him a lift back into Vegas.

Back in Vegas, Nathan runs into Niki again, and she tells him about the blackmail thing, and he awesomely uses this knowledge to get himself a raise from two to four million from Linderman. Niki goes home, discovers that her jailbird husband D.L. has flown away, then Ando shows up at her house, and she deals with him very sweetly. Ando finds his way back to Hiro and they have a nice reunion. Hiro tries once again to phone Isaac to warn him about his imminent brain removal, and this time, Peter's there, so after hearing Hiro's name, he mirrors last week's ending with a "My name is Peter Petrelli. I have a message for you." Excellent.


Lost 3x04 - Every Man For Himself
Episode grade: C-

In flashbacks that barely register on my radar screen, Sawyer's in prison, and cons some guy to earn his freedom. Because, in case you hadn't noticed, he's a conman! Oh, and he has a daughter with whatever her name was that he conned back in The Long Con's flashbacks. And he gives her his share of the money he cons to buy his freedom. Con!

On Other island, which apparently is actually another island off the coast of Craphole Island, Sawyer's in prison, and doesn't do jack. He also doesn't do Jack, which I'm sure some people are endlessly disappointed by. Well, the chick that Sun shot is back, and Jack is unable to save her. But he might be able to save Benry from CANCER! Oh, and Sawyer continues trying to escape the zoo, so Benry puts a bomb in him that will explode if he goes under 50 miles per hour. I'm barely even joking. Pickett, lowliest of the named Others, gets mad about dead Other chick, since she's his wife, so the power of contrivance compels him to beat the crap out of Sawyer unless Kate will say she loves him (Sawyer, not Pickett). WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, LOST. Oh, and the ceiling bars in the cages are spaced far enough apart that Kate can climb out, so she does, but Sawyer's worried about his pacemaker bomb, so he refuses to go with her. He manages to fit in the episode title about a billion times, but Kate's a few behind and tells him "Live Together, Die Alone" and climbs back into her fucking cage. And then Benry takes Sawyer up a mountain to a) show him that he's on a different island, b) get into an Of Mice And Men quoting contest and c) tell him he doesn't really have a bomb in him. Sawyer has every opportunity to push him off a cliff but doesn't because... I got nothing. I may have got some of that in the wrong order or something, but this episode was immensly retarded, so I don't care.

Meanwhile, back on Craphole island, Desmond can still see the future. We learn nothing whatsoever from any of these scenes.

My One Big Eyeball #3

Battlestar Galactica 3x04 - "Exodus (Part 2)"
Episode grade: A+

PREVIOUSLY: Cylons enslaved most of what was left of humanity, but Galactica's coming to the rescue.

NOW: Boom! Bang! Whee! Ooooooooooooooooh! Boom! Boom! WOAH. Kablammo! So, yeah. Apollo changes his mind, so the Pegasus joins the rescue crew at a crucial moment, and, though they take heavy losses, the human race leaves the cylons (and that esteemed weasel Gaius Baltar, and baby Hera) in the dust. Among the casualties; Ellen Tigh, Hera's surrogate mother Maya, and the Battlestar Pegasus. *sniff*. I'll miss you all! Most everyone who makes it to Galactica celebrates more than they've ever celebrate before, because why wouldn't you? Well, maybe if you were forced to, say, poison your wife and leave her dead on New Caprica. Or you've spent the last four months being completely frakked with by the creepiest cylon of all, and it turns out the daughter he gave you, who you absolutely love by this point, is actually someone else's daughter that he stole from a random New Caprican, and you have to give her back. Yeah, that'd do it.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: There is literally no way I can express that in actual words. It's not hyperbole, this episode, and this show actually really is that good. I'm serious. And not only that, it keeps on getting better. I just cannot conceive how it is possible to do that. And frankly, I think this episode could have done with being split into two again and made it a three parter, because I'm fully certain they could have made at least another episode out of all the stuff they didn't get a chance to pack into this one with everything that went on. And what the hell is going to happen next? Roslin and Zarek are totally going to hook up, and it will be awesome, for sure. Starbuck and Tigh may also hook up, and that would be incredibly frakked up, but also awesome. Gaius is with the cylons and like woah. The politics will go crazy nuts. Technically, I think Tom Zarek is president now? Or he resigned as vice president when the occupation began and it's... Felix Gaeta? I just don't know. At all. I'm just so excited to see where they take this now. Man.


Desperate Housewives 3x04 - "Like It Was"
Episode grade: B+

PREVIOUSLY: Susuan went off with Ian, so she missed Mike waking up. That's pretty much the main thing that's still important by now. Oh, and Andrew returned from his homelessness. I guess that was quite important too.

NOW: Well, of course Mike has amnesia. DUH. So, he totally can't remember anything that's happened, pretty much since the show started. It's probably for the best. Well, except Edie gets to him first and totally poisons his mind against Susan, because she's mean like that. Ian's cabin gets little to no mobile signal, so it takes a while for the news to get to Susan, but when it does it's all a little heartbreaking. Meanwhile, in other storylines, crazy Nora takes a break after last week's overload, so Lynette bribes everybody to make Parker love baseball, or hate baseball, I can't even tell any more. Carlos thinks the divorce is all fun and games until Gabby tells him about her affair with John (her new affair, I mean. He knew about the other one, of course.) Bree finds out about just what Andrew got up to while he was away, and Bree and Andrew and Orson are all kind of lovely together, while Danielle is sleeping with her history teacher. Ho hum.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: I'm definitely getting more into this season now, and most particularly Bree and Orson. Andrew's return most definitely helped their whole storyline to not seem like a terrible rehash of George. Susan's story is so, so much better this year, and I'm really not entirely sure why. Gabby and Carlos were excellent fun this week too. But, while I appreciate the need for a break from crazy Nora in Lynette's story, this wasn't the way to go with that, and let the side down a little. Still, three out of four is NOT BAD.


Heroes 1x04 - "Collision"
Episode grade: A

PREVIOUSLY: Claire answered the question "How do you wake up dead?". Hiro and his buddy Ando followed the comic's instructions and went to Vegas. Nathan was a bitch to Peter, Simone was a bitch to Isaac.

NOW: Claire wakes up on the autopsy table, says "Oh my god" this time because they can't censor by cutting out halfway through the word, sneaks out while the coroner is on the phone and, after meeting one of his previous victims, gets revenge on Rapey the Quarterback by crashing his car into a wall at top speed. With him in the passenger seat. Awesome. Matt also wakes up on a table, this one with arm and leg straps so he can't sneak out, and Claire's creepy dad being all creepy at him, along with a bald black guy (maybe Sylar) who can apparently block powers, because his mind-reading is pretty much a no-show. Ando encourages Hiro to use his powers to cheat at the casino, which wins them big money, but then gets them beaten up. Also in Vegas, Niki seduces Nathan in order to repay her debt to the mob guy, but backs out at the last second. However, the elevators have reflective surfaces, so ikiN takes over and, after beating up a thug, seals the deal. Claire's creepy dad and his power-blocking lackey visit their post-coital huddle, but are only taking one of them, though which will have to wait for next week. Peter goes to see Mohinder, who is starting to be sceptical about it all, but is unable to demonstrate his power due to a) Nathan being in Vegas, b) Isaac being too busy painting Claire to let them in, and c) Peter not knowing any other Heroes. On the subway ride home, time stops for everyone but Peter, because post-apocalyptic non-dorky future Hiro, rocking a samurai sword and speaking perfect English, has a message for him.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Oh man. How much do I love this show. A lot. A lot is how much. Now that everyone's actually starting to meet, there's less disparate strands of storyline to keep track of, and the less interesting Heroes don't have to rely solely on their own ability to keep me interested. And, interestingly, it's all the less interesting ones who do the most colliding; Claire's still very much on her own, and despite being in the same place as a couple of them, Hiro & Ando don't run into the others. Claire's calculated murder, however much of an irredeemable bitch the guy was, is like woah darkness, which you KNOW I love. Also love all of the following; actually seeing ikiN this time, instead of blacking out on her along with Niki, and her being every bit the badass she seemed. Isaac's painting effects and especially the time stopping effects are so very cool to watch. And of course, that ending. Future Hiro gave such a perfect sense of world weariness. I can't wait until, like, season seven or whenever when we actually get to see the time that Future Hiro came from, and this show damn well better last long enough to get to that.


Lost 3x03 - "Further Instructions"
Episode grade: A

PREVIOUSLY: Locke had a crisis of faith or two, but Desmond and his hatch restored his faith by shining a light, then exploding and turning the sky purple.

NOW: So, turns out my guesses on the three lostaways we'd catch up on this week were wrong. For a start, more than three; we see our whole non-kidnapped or sailing crew, so vastly diminished that some redshirts have to turn into actul characters. Hi, Nikki! Hi, Paolo! Nice to meet you. I assume we'll be finding more about you in one of the next couple of episodes. But most all of the screentime goes to Locke, Charlie, and slightly less so, Hurley. So Locke wakes up from the exploded but actually apparently IMploded hatch with no voice and has to play charades to Charlie because apparently nobody else is the least bit interested in where he's been for the day that's passed since hatch implosion. Locke has a little crazy awesome vision quest where dead Boone tells him to go rescue Eko, so he does so. Charlie follows, and is as annoying as possible, as is his wont, and on the way they run into Hurley, who's back with his message from the Others. But in the end, they rescue Eko from the polar bear, Hurley finds a naked Desmond, who's even more crazy than before and can apparently SEE THE FUTURE, and Locke takes up Jack's torch and becomes the unelected leader of the lostaway tribe, and gives an Adama-style "I'M GETTING MY MEN" speech.
Meanwhile, in flashback land, Locke joined a hippy commune. Fun!

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Man, why was this not the season opener? I know you'd get the annoying fans all WHAT ABOUT KATE AND SAWYER/JACK, but fuck them. This should have been the season opener. Vision quest was way freaky and cool, as they should be. Desmond was also way freaky and cool, as he should be. Charlie being annoying to Locke was much less annoying to me than usual, somehow, and woah, character continuity paid a visit to Craphole Island, loved that Charlie is still bitter about the only good part of "Fire + Water"; Locke punching him in his stupid hobbit face. Flashback was totally not what I'd expect from a Locke flashback, pretty interesting. It seemed to get less screentime than flashback usually do, which I'm totally in favour of, less is more, I think. It might actually have had the same screentime as usual, and it just seemed shorter because I enjoyed it. I don't know. Anyway, all in all, it's been a pretty fucking awesome week in TV, that's for sure.

My One Big Eyeball #2

Battlestar Galactica 3x03 - "Exodus (Part 1)"
Episode Grade: A

PREVIOUSLY: The previous episode ended with 200 people lined up, about to be shot; Cally escaped and ran, and heard gunfire. To Be Continued. Much more previously Helo and Sharon (who is not actually Boomer... It's hard to keep track when you have a bunch of characters who are entirely identical and yet also not) had a cybrid baby, Hera, and Roslin stole her away and convinced them she died in childbirth. There will be hell to pay if and when Sharon finds out about this.

NOW: So, two part episodes on this show are a game of gravitational dart ninjas. First part; throw all your darts in the air. Second part; that shit is going to HURT when it comes down. What the dart tossing actually involved (There is a LOT); Last week's cliffhanger is resolved in a pretty stupid way; ONE HOUR EARLIER, Chief Tyrol and his men snuck up on the toasters, so it was really THEM firing the shots. Except not, because Cally was running right in the way, so Tyrol ran to her and got her down to the floor, then they fired, which totally doesn't make sense because Cally heard the shots with no sign of Tyrol, that was the cliffhanger. Whatever, the episode recovers excellently; Adama and Lee have a teary goodbye as Adama prepares to begin the rescue mission, and gets in one of his most excellent trademark inspirational speeches to the Galactica crew at the end. Sharon touches down on New Caprica to co-ordinate the rescue op and, being a frakkin' toaster herself, has much less difficulty infiltrating the cylon base than the rest of the resistance. Tigh's one eye gets crazy intense when he discovers that his wife totally betrayed him and the entire resistance. Roslin's whole entire face gets crazy intense telling anyone and everyone to protect Hera with their lives. D'Anna Biers (cylon model #3) joins 6 and 8 in the growing list of cylons who are totally losing it, and goes to see a weird drugged up gypsy who tells her that Hera is actually still alive, and she will hold her and she will find love for the first time. She confronts Sharon with this news in the cylon base, but after much intenseness, Sharon totally shoots her in the kneecaps; "Adama wouldn't lie to me." There is seriously going to be so much hell to pay when Sharon finds out, which she so obviously is going to next week. I'm scared.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Well hey, I kind of shoved that into to the NOW. Oopsie. So yeah; cliffhanger resolution was way stupid, and all the ONE HOUR EARLIER crap just drew it out longer and made the stupid more obvious. You could have just taken five seconds to show Tyrol take out the cylons, then got down to the awesome of the rest of the episode. I wouldn't have minded. But anyway, it means Roslin and Zarek survived, so hurrah for that.
Now, rest of the episode. One thing in particular that struck me; this show has a huge, huge cast of actual major characters. And they are all actual characters, because the cast is way awesome (used to have a weak link in Grace Park as Sharon/Boomer/any other #8s, but she's definitely improved a lot over the last two seasons) and like, so many of them had something to do here. It's really very impressive. And man do I love the way more cylon presence we're getting what with the occupation and all, though why is it the female models all have these crises of faith while the males get to remain terrifyingly remorseless psychos? I do love those remorseless psychos though, particularly Brother Cavill. Dean stockwell is so damn awesome. Other things I love; Cavill's human equivalent, Doc. Cottle, and the fact that makes no distinction between human and cylon in his work on New Caprica; Tigh's "The last thing your child needs is Ellen and me for parents."; this whole entire show, so very much.


Desperate Housewives 3x03 - "Weekend In The Country"
Episode Grade: A-

PREVIOUSLY: Bree left her son Andrew by the roadside because he was an evil little shit, then married ANOTHER psycho, Susan met the husband of a coma patient while attending to her own coma'd SO, and he totally has the hots for her, crazy Nora drove Lynette insane over and over, Gabby had an affair with gardener John long before Carlos had the affair of his own that caused their impending divorce.

NOW: Bree and Orson are about to head off on a honeymoon when she sees a news report about homeless kids interviewing Andrew, which totally destroys her ability to live with her decision, so she cancels the honeymoon to try to bring him back home which, after an interesting talk with Orson, he consents to. Susan heads off for a "totally platonic" weekend alone with coma-husband Ian. After he offends her by making a massive thing out of the fact that she's slept with 11 other men while he's never been with anyone but his wife, and then offends her again for the same reason a few more times, she brings his count up to two. Yeah, I know, but it's Susan. And Lynette and Gabby head off for a relaxing spa weekend of their own, but Lynette's is cut short due to Tom, who's taken the kids on a camping trip, having back problems, forcing her to go along and rescue him. Crazy Nora worms her way into the rescue mission, and they have a massively entertaining eight hour road trip. Gabby, left alone at the spa, meets gardener John who's all grown up into businessman John, and they have a night of passion after which he informs her he's engaged and she is forced to leave the room quick sharp by hiding in a suitcase. Oh, and Mike wakes up from his coma. Knew that had to happen soon.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: So, that was more like it. Bree's inevitable reunion with Andrew was every bit as totally heart-rending for her as I expected, and Orson's talk with Andrew makes me slightly less annoyed about the whole ridiculous rushed wedding thing, though I'm still not much on board with it. Oh, and Danielle got some lines! But still no actual mentioning of how she feels about the whole wedding, which is still annoying. Gabby and John was fun, fun, fun. Usual enjoyable Desperate Housewives fare that's been a little lacking the past couple of weeks. Lynette and Nora forced to occupy one very small car together was an excellent idea that really got the sparks flying as I'd hoped for since they introduced her, and also they are totally starting to bond a tiny, tiny little bit, which I am hoping will very gradually work its way in over the season and lead to good stuff further down the line. Susan and Ian were a little repetitive this time, but Susan did get some pretty great snarky lines in on him, so not too bad. Keep up the good work, guys.


Heroes 1x03 - "One Giant Leap"
Episode Grade: B

PREVIOUSLY: A bunch of emos around the world discovered they have "what can only be described as 'special' abilities."

NOW: Hiro still has the comic book that reveals his destiny from his brief foray into the future, and uses this and his ability to stop time and save a schoolgirl to convince his pal Ando to join him in a trip to New York to save the world. Peter tries to fly again, but can't because Nathan is nowhere near and his superpower is quite clearly actualllly borrowing other people's powers. Nathan is a horrible bitch and, in order to gain sympathy points in his election campaign, claims Peter's roof jump was a suicide attempt, which Peter is not best pleased with. He drowns his sorrows... in Simone's throat! Which Isaac wakes up from a heroin induced future-painting binge to find he has painted, and is not best pleased either. Niki's husband was some sort of evil gangster or summat, I'm sure we'll meet him and find out more soon. Matt clears his charges by proving that he can read thoughts, and uses said power to discover that his wife is totally leaving him. Also, mysterious-evil-guy-who-still-may-or-may-not-be-the-same-mysterious-evil-guy-as-Claire's-dad, Sylar attacks the police station trying to take the girl Matt rescued last week, and gets a few of Matt's bullets in his face for his trouble. But that is not enough to keep him down, so he lives to skulk around in the shadows so we still can't figure out who he is another day. And a football player gets a little rapey with Claire, ends up impaling her head on a sharp... something, which apparently does result in Claire's death, at least until it's removed, so she's not entirely invicible. Anyway, she wakes up in a morgue with HER CHEST ALL CUT OPEN AND SHIT. In her words, "Holy sh-". Quite.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Hiro is still just the greatest character ever created ever, and his moment of actual Heroism was way, way awesome. Claire's ability to twice now get herself would-be-killed-if-she-wasn't-invincible is pretty goddamn ridiculous. But that's mostly a complaint about last week, when her whole head-twisting round neck breakage was entirely unnecessary. I still also really enjoy Matt who, aside from Hiro, is totally the least emo about it all, and him holding off Sylar was totally tense and excellent.
Less good; Niki's plot really didn't go anywhere much this week. Though it still went further than Mohinder's which... There's a reason I made no actual mention of it in the "NOW" section; NOTHING HAPPENED. And Peter, Nathan and most especially Simone just aren't that interesting as of yet. Good enough, but something more would be nice.
Next episode is called "Come Together", which can surely only mean good things.


Lost 3x02 - "The Glass Ballerina"
Episode Grade: B+

PREVIOUSLY: Jack, Kate & Sawyer were kidnapped by the Others, having been lead into a trap by Michael "WAAAAAAAAAAAAALT!!!" Dawson, despite the fact that they totally KNEW he was leading them into a trap. Though they only knew this because Sayid is the only lostaway with any intelligence at all and actually picked up on Michael's exceedingly sketchy behaviour. Sayid took Desmond's boat along the shore, for which he needed the aid of sailors Jin and Sun, as part of Jack's "plan" or something. It's been a while. There's a whole bunch of other lostaways, but it seems we're only catching up on three per episode. Next week; the adventures of Rose, whichever of Scott and Steve is not dead and "you there!"?

NOW: Flashbacks concern Sun and Jin who, aside from Jack, of course, are surprisingly the first to reach 5 on the flashback count. I was totally expecting Kate and probably Locke to get there first. Anyway, Sun actualy did cheat on Jin, so her pregnancy is not such a miracle. Her evil mob boss daddy found out, and sent Jin to kill Jae, the guy she was cheating with, for "stealing from him". Jin beats the crap out of the guy but can't actually go through with it (maybe he would if he actually knew why he was doing it), but Jae finishes the work for him by leaping (or being pushed) out the window and landing on Jin's car.
On island; Kate and Swayer are forced at gunpoint by an angry "NO TOUCHING!" Other to break rocks, which Sawyer interrupts to start making out with Kate, but really he's doing this to start a fight and test their strength which is apparently pretty lacking, in most cases.
Sayid turns out to be as dumb as the rest of them, because his plan amounts to; light a fire to draw the Others' attention then me and Jin will hardcore Rambo style ambush them while Sun hides in the boat because women can't possibly be useful in a fight. Unfortunately, the others come by sea and steal the boat, but only after Sun is startled into shooting one of them in the chest, Michael style. Atta girl. Oh, and Benry Gale reveals to Jack that the Others totally know what's going on in the outside world.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Unlike Jack's six identical flashbacks, Jin and Sun have now managed five with four shedding at least some interesting new light on the characters (particularly "...In Translation" which remains by far the greatest use of the flashback format on the show thus far) and the other one being entertaining if unnecessary, so that alone brings this episode way up from the previous. But the on island stuff was also mostly an improvement because; minimal Jack, and when he was there, it was mostly to listen to Benry being creepy in an awesome way, which was the awesome ending that was one of the many things the first episode was entirely missing. Sawyer was as great as he's ever been throughout, and the "You taste like strawberries" "...You taste like fish biscuits" exchange was so damn cute. And I will always love scenes of Jin and Sun trying to make the best of their situation and Jin's general insecurities and anger management issues on the island. Sayid's plan was way out of characterly dumb though. Oh, and all of the Sawyer teeling Kate that Juliette would totally have killed Kate in a second in the world is not going to convince me that she is anything but dull and pointless, y'all. And what is up with the episode titles this season; last time it bore no apparent relevance at all, this week, the titular ballerina appeared for a random five second flashback of Sun breaking it and lying to her father about it afterwards at the start of the episode and was never brought up again. I'm sure there's deep spiritual relevance to it all, but, what?

My One Big Eyeball #1

So, here I go again with the new weekly featuring. Yes, I'm aware there was already supposed to be a weekly feature today (or, yesterday as of a few hours ago, natch). Most weeks, I'm planning for this one to go up on Saturdays, but this Saturday I was too busy playing drinking games with the Powerpuff Girls to do that. Sunday Shuffle will be a Monday again this time, but I'll try to do better in future, I promise. Promise to try, you may notice, which might as well not be a promise at all, obviously. Y'know.
Anyway, point is, I watch some TV other than the shows I've been writing a whole lot about, but I don't have time to go into such great detail on everything I watch, and TWoP has these ones all covered. So, every Staurday (approx.) I'll post short little small rants/reviews on whatever I've been watching the past week. Also, the week before in a couple of cases here (you might think I mean ALL BUT ONE cases, but BSG showed two episodes in one week, so HA.), since I'd be starting on the second episode of a season, which would just be STUPID.


Battlestar Galactica 3x01 - "Occupation"
Episode grade: B

PREVIOUSLY: The cylons, robots who, in some cases, look exactly like smokin' hot blonde chicks, destroyed most of humanity. The remnants escaped on the titular Battlestar, and a gaggle of civilian ships and did there best to make a living with frakkin' toasters constantly on their asses. Dr. Gauis Baltar is secretly guilty of leaking vital defense information to the smokin' hot blonde chick he was sleeping with, causing the attack that destroyed most of his species, and not so secretly totally batshit insane. After continuous poking and prodding by the smokin' hot blonde chick in his head, he ended up as president, and made everyone settle down on a crappy little planet he named "New Caprica". The cylons fucked off for a year and humanity pretended "if we can't see them, they can't see us", though we didn't get to see that part because in the final act of the season two finale we suddenly jumped ahead a year. At which point the cylons came back to enslave humanity. With love. Though an even smaller contingent than the first time escaped on the Galactica, led by the awesomest leader anyone could possibly hope for; Admiral Bill Adama. Oh, and the other Battlestar, Pegasus, led by his rather less awesome son, Commander Lee "Apollo" Adama.

NOW: Apparently "one year later" wasn't enough of a mindfrak, because we've jumped ahead a further four months. This episode is mostly just here to establish what's going on with everyone these days, and is thusly a) not massively impressive, and b) really, really grim. I mean, they're all in concentration camps. So, Colonel Tigh, who's always been a mean drunk, is joined by Chief Tyrol, who used to be a pretty chilled-out all around cool guy, but is now an incredibly angry all around cool guy, to lead the resistance against the cylons. Tigh organises suicide bombings, which Tyrol is not exactly thrilled with the idea of. But anyway, it happens, and their first target is the inaugration ceremony of the cylons' human police force.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Jacob said it best. (FYI, Jacob is either the bestest, most poetic, hardworking, and all around awesome recapper that TWoP has (I agree), or a horribly pretentious and dull bastard. I saw him described somewhere as "The Pitchfork of television", which is pretty hilarious.)
So yeah, this show is quite astoundingly bleak and depressing, always and forever. Well, not quite, because there are occaisional moments of light, which are so very much sweeter because they're so incredibly rare. It's quite clearly the best thing on television these days, unless you were a fan of the original, apparently, in which case it's horribly sacreligious and shit. As well as being way bleaker than, like, anything, ever, it's quite clearly not afraid to wear it's political commentary on it's sleeve, moreso than ever, and also, I really don't know if I should be rooting for the humans or the cylons or what these days. You could cut the tension with a knife, always. In fact, it's that tense that you could probably cut it with a SPONGE. If that makes any sense at all. I'm not really sure.

Battlestar Galactica 3x02 - "Precipice"
Episode grade: A+

PREVIOUSLY: What I just said, right up there.

NOW: So, like, woah. Despite objections from his smokin' hot blonde chick girlfriend (Cylon model #6 of 12), the cylons force puppet president Baltar to sign an order to execute 200 civilians, including; Chief Tyrol's wife, Cally; former president Laura Roslin; and Tom Zarek, former terrorist, and former vice president under Baltar. Roslin and Zarek, former bitter enemies, share an amazingly sweet and sad conversation on the way to their execution. Cally has an old friend in the police though, so she gets to escape while the other 199 are led to their death.
Meanwhile, Captain Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, is having her mind totally frakked with by Leoben (Cylon model, number unknown), who presents her with a little girl who's apparently he and Kara's daughter, created from the ovary the cylons stole from her during her brief stay in one of their horrifying breeding farms back at the start of the second season.
Meanmeanwhile, Adama is bringing the Galactica back to New Caprica to rescue its opressed peoples, Apollo is having none of this because the survival of humanity is their number one priority, and that's too risky, so the Galactica and the Pegasus part ways. Oh, also, Adama re-comissions Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (Cylon model #8) as an officer. Oh, and she's now Sharon Agathon, so apparently she and Carl "Helo" Agathon got married somewhere in the interim. Yes, they know she's a cylon.
Meanmeanmeanwhile, Osama Bin Tigh organises more suicide bombings, purely to distract the cylons from the Galactica's impending arrival. Tyrol gets all angry and angsty about a) this, and b) the fact that his wife was arrested for no actual reason.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: I... just... like, WOAH. DOUBLE YOU. OH. AY. AITCH. And, by the by, this isn't even the best episode this show's ever produced. Like I said, best thing on television. If Roslin and Zarek are actually dead, I'm going to hit something. Any other show, I'd pretty much take it as a given that they survived, or at least one of them did, but... this show manages that "no one is safe" vibe way, way better than anything, ever, as well as all the other stuff it does way better than anything, ever. Well, except the end of Serenity, because I fully expected Joss Whedon to slaughter, like, the entire cast for the hell of it after, well, you know. Watch how I soar.


Desperate Housewives 3x01 - "Listen To The Rain On The Roof"
Episode grade: B-

PREVIOUSLY: Susan was a bumbling fool, but won the love of plumber with a shady past Mike, anyway. And then Mike got run over by psychotic dentist Orson. Who, being a psycho, naturally got together with Bree, whose relationship history is actually more tragic than even Battlestar Galactica. Lynette found out that her husband Tom has a secret illegitemate daughter from way back before they were married, and the kid, Kayla and her crazy, irritating mother Nora came down to live in Fairview, which Lynette is not massively pleased by. Aaaaand, those crazy kids Gabby and Carlos still can't work it out. She had an affair with the gardener, they eventually got past that hump, but then he had an affair with their maid and surrogate mother Xaoi Mei, which Gabby didn't take too well. So, yeah, unlike the others, I pretty much stuck to the event of the previous season's finale, because this show pays no attention to things that happened more than a couple of episodes ago, generally.

NOW: Apparently Marc Cherry likes Battlestar Galactica too, because hey presto! It's six months later. So, Orson is as much of a neat freak as Bree, and after only seeing her for six months, proposes. Bree hesitates, but despite this having turned out really, really badly when it happened last year, eventually accepts. Oh, Bree. Also, he gives Bree her apparent first ever orgasm, which hilariously sends her rushing to hospital assuming she's had a stroke. Oh, Bree. Also, all evidence points to Orson having killed his previous wife. Mike's still in a coma from his run-in with psycho-dentist, and Susan's been watching over him for six months and is way more affecting than Susan has ever been before. And she's been slowly building up a friendship with a British fellow, name of Ian, who also has a coma'd SO, though his has been going on longer. Ian wants to be more than friends with Susan. Dodgy. Nora's spent the last six months straining and straining Lynette and Tom's marriage, and continues to do so, and apparently will in future episodes too. It's much more interesting to watch than Lynette's stories tended to be last year though. Lastly, Gabby is mean enough to Xaoi Mei to make her run away for a while, and it's really kind of stupid.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: So, wow, this may be the first time ever that Susan is the best of the four housewives in an episode, but seriously. Gabby's storyline was pretty much just awful this week, Lynette's was kind of fun but nothing special, and Bree. Oh, Bree. First of all, what the hell has happened to Danielle? You know, her daughter? Who might be somewhat interested to know she's marrying another psycho? Seriously, WHAT. And, also, Bree got totally crapped on over and over for the entirety of the previous season. I think she deserves a break from marrying psychos. And the big seasonal mystery around Orson looks to be even less interesting than last year's Applewhite thing. I'd just give up on bothering with those, frankly.
But still, Susan's heartfelt speech to comatose Mike was really great.

Desperate Housewives 3x02 - "It Takes Two"
Episode grade: B-

PREVIOUSLY: Again, just told you.

NOW: This show gets even more hyperactive with its plotlines than usual, so, things happening even more too soon than George's death; Carlos and Gabby's baby is born, only, there was a mix up with the embryos, so Xaoi Mei was actually carrying someone else's baby, which is fairly noticable since it comes out black. Also, Bree and Orson get married already, which is the major event of the episode. Then, still in their wedding clothes, they go to a morgue to identify the body of a woman who's had all her teeth pulled out. Orson is a dentist, remember. And totally killed his wife. But anyway, this is not her, Orson says, which is surprisingly confirmed by his dramatic entrancey ex-naighbour Carolyn. Susan goes on an inappropriate date with, but, uh oh! The parents of his coma wife show up, so he out-Susans Susan by telling them she's a brain specialist. She drinks a whole lot of wine trying to bluff her way through this ridiculous lie, and eventually fakes a phonecall from the hospital; "His brain shut off? I'll be there right away! Stat!", chugging a whole glass of wine on her way out. Susan breaks it off with Ian, but then he inappropriately shows up at the wedding, despite never having met the bride or groom, and they have a conversation inappropriately disguised as toasts to the totally-happy-and-not-at-all-worried-about-the-murdered-ex-wife couple, which mystifyingly wins Susan back. Lynette finds that crazy Nora is a little less annoying when she has a boyfriend to distract her, but he unfortunately breaks up with her, so Lynette brings her to the wedding to set her up with someone, anyone, and inappropriately settles on Carlos, who goes along with it to get back at Gabby, who's shamelessly flirting with waiters to spite him.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Danielle apparently appeared in, like, two frames in the background at the wedding, which may in fact be even worse than not appearing at all. DOUBLE YOU. TEE. EFF. And, I still hate Bree marrying a psycho AGAIN. It's so, so stupid. Grr. Also, that's, what, a hundred babies that Gabby and Carlos have lost now? Does the plotline recycling know no bounds? Lynette dealing with crazy Nora continues to be sort of OK. And Susan and Ian is wildly inappropriate, but in all honestly, Dr. Susan was extremely hilarious, so I'll let them get away with that. Which means, again, Susan was the best of the four. We have actually entered bizarro world here. I'm really not impressed with this season so far.


Heroes 1x01 - "Genesis"
Episode grade: B+

PREVIOUSLY: Nothing. It's the first episode.

NOW: We meet a bunch of 'ordinary people with extraordinary powers', or as the Star Wars style opening text scroll puts it 'abilities that can only be described as "special".' I'm not kidding. It's the air quotes that really kill me, y'know. Anyway, said Heroes are, in no particular order: Peter Petrelli, who believes he can fly. His brother Nathan, a skeevy politician who can ACTUALLY fly. Hiro Nakamura, a nerdy Japanese office worker who can bend the space time continuum to the effect of teleporting into the girls' bathroom. And later, New York. Isaac Mendez, a junkie who paints the future. Simone Devere, his doormat girlfriend who as of yet has no powers. Claire Bennet, an indestructible cheerleader, who's possibly suicidal and certainly depressed about her power. Mohinder Suresh, an Indian professor whose only power thus far is delivering heaping bowls of exposition. Niki Sanders, webcam stripper extraordinairre whose reflection can, like, take over her body and kill the mob goons she owes money to leaving her with no memory of it? Or something? It's deliberately confusing, so far. Also, she has a son called Micah, who's a super-genius or something. And there's a creepy guy with glasses that's following them around and such and also Claire's adoptive father. Yeah, there was a lot happened, is what I'm saying.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Well, despite some major cheese to a fair proportion of the dialogue (though nothing else as bad as 'abilities that can only be described as "special".'), it gets by on the following basises (bases? basi?): a) Super-Hiro is quite astoundingly adorable. Unlike all these other emo bitches, he totally embraces and loves his powers, and it's really fun to watch. b) Claire, possibly the emoest of them all, is intriguingly depressed by the whole thing, but still saves a guy's life from a flaming trainwreck like it's nothing. Also, watching her mangled hand reform to totally fine is really freaking cool. c) Niki herself and her cliché single mother storyline are not interesting, but her mysterious psycho reflection power is really freaking cool. d) The other guys are quite interesting too, I guess. e) Super powers, in general, are really freaking cool. And the big reveals at the end; Bad Glasses Man is claire's dad, NATHAN is the actual flying one, were both well handled, and I only saw one of them coming at all, which is pretty good going.

Heroes 1x02 - "Don't Look Back"
Episode Grade: A-

PREVIOUSLY: I! Just! Told! You! GOD.

NOW: We meet another Hero; Matt Parkman, a rather dim cop who can read people's thoughts, and gets into a little "whoops, I'm a suspected double gruesome murder-with-brains-cut-out-of-skulls-er" mishap as a result. After Nathan didn't do a perfect job of catching him when he fell last week, Peter wakes up in hospital and can't remember what happened. Nathan seemingly lies to him about it for a while, but it turns out he's telling the truth that Peter can fly too. Or at least hover a little. Niki's Psychotic Reflection leads Niki on a fun little treasure hunt to bury the bodies of the thugs she killed last week. Claire lets a different cheerleader take the credit for the fire save last week, and her dad is all creepy with her. Mohinder is being followed by more of the evil government types that killed his father, since he's seeking to continue his fathers work. AAAAND Hiro finds out he teleported through time AND space, so he's in New York about a month later than he left, where he finds Isaac with his brain cut out. So, after being accused of Isaac's murder, he teleports back to Tokyo a month ago just as the apocalypse happens. So, looks like our guys have got a month to band together and defeat the evil of some guy called "Sylar" and Claire's evil daddy who may or may not be one and the same.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: First, I love that the guy who announces the previouslies is that one deep-voiced guy who does the adverts for ever single movie ever. You know the one.

Otherwise? Pretty much the same as what I said about the first one, since they're really parts 1 & 2 of the same, I think. The new guy, Matt, I like him. I like his not-smart-ness, it makes him another fun one, though he's certainly higher on the emo scale than Hiro. And the ending was majorly freaking awesome. Adds a great sense of urgency to it all. And also, it means that Hiro doesn't have as great control of his power as it seemed, which is probably a good thing, because he'd be really over-powerful if he did. Also, people being frozen solid/brain removed/pinned halfway up a wall with knives? YOWZA.


Lost 3x01 - "A Tale Of Two Cities"
Episode grade: C

PREVIOUSLY: Uh, bunch of people crashed on a island under MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES, a few of them died under MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES (or, because the actresses got done for drink driving), some of them kicked heroin habits and hunted boar and other such merry things. Under MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES, of course. Also, Jack was incredibly dull, Locke was incredibly cool for the first season, then a little less so for the second season because Eko took over that one. Then Jack, Kate and Sawyer, who JUST HAPPEN to have a love triangle thing going on got captured by The Others, the ostensible villains of the piece. They could have captured Hurley too, but he's just not cool enough for them.

NOW: Sawyer apparently takes longer than bears did to figure out The Others' button pushing system to get himself some food in his rat cage. Kate is forced to shower, then wear a dress that is SO NOT HER, MAN, and have creepy breakfast with the creepy leader of The Others; The Artist Formerly Known As Henry Gale, whose real name is apparently Ben. So, Benry Gale will obviously be his future moniker. Most of the episode is spent on Jack hanging out in an aquarium that's been drained of water and Dharma branded sharks with an Other named Juliet, who is not great at the prison guard job, and having flashJacks that, as in all but the first of the previous FIVE FUCKING SETS of flashJacks we've had to endure, give us no new insight into his character whatsoever.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: NO MORE FUCKING FLASHJACKS. EVER. PLEASE. I really do not care. His dad's a drunk! He's stubborn and obsessive! His wife left him! Because HE MUST. FIX. ALL THINGS. What exciting new information.
Shocking reveal that the opening wasn't a regular character flashback, but actually on the island? Yeah, that would have been great if they didn't already do that with Desmond in last year's opener. And that Juliet chick is thus far a) boring and b) the exact same person as Sarah. and Penny.
On the plus side; Kate's stuff was pretty creepy all the way through, especially her breakfast with Benry Gale, and the Saywer zoo was fun. But the episode was like, 90% Jack, and that will never, ever be a good thing.
Next week, let's have at least a cameo appearance by a lostaway that I actually care much about, hmm?



So, that's that. It'll be shorter next week when a) only one episode per show, and b) I won't attempt to summarise the entire run of every show. See you tomorrow for some shufflin' fun, OK?