So I think that the TV reviewing is a little silly. I like watching the shows, and I like feeling like I have a "reason" to watch them, but it's just stressful, tedious, and no one reads this any way. I considered shutting down the site altogether, but I do really like having a place to write about books, etc., so I think I will just stop reviewing the shows. If an episode is particularly amazing, I will mention it, but it's really getting too crazy for me to keep up with.
And now I'm off to watch three episodes of Glee, and finish The Road.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A Study In Scarlet
On the train home from college, today, I finished A Study In Scarlet, the first of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The book reads like 'one of those old books', but I loved it all the same.
The narrative is from Watson's point of view, following him home from Afghanistan, through the adventure of finding a roommate, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, learning about what sort of person he is, and then watching him solve a mystery. Part II takes on a strikingly different tone, as it is told from an omniscient third-person point of view. This is the story of victims of the Mormon community, of the murderers, turned victims themselves in London, and of the vengeful man Holmes arrests in his own apartment. After that tale, Watson's narrative resumes and the case is brought to a close.
I really liked this book. It is not necessarily a book you can analyse AP-English style, like A Brave New World was; or perhaps it is, but the reader does not feel the distinct need to do so. The part in the desert reads like a historical fan-fic, bringing in familiar characters like the Salt Lake Mormons, and, more specifically, an appearance by Brigham Young, but that does not mean it is bad. It reads not only well but beautifully, with vivid descriptions and a captivating storyline. Furthermore, as the first of the Holmes stories, the reader needs no background knowledge to understand the characters; Doyle introduces them for the first time here. This book is a wonderful read and I would highly recommend it. It's a great place to start for any aspiring Sherlock Holmes fan [like me], or for anybody looking for a fun story into which one can escape.
On a side note: I'd known that the character, House, was loosely based on Holmes, and after reading the first descriptions of him, I could definitely see it, right down to being a wonderful musician. You'll have to read it and see for yourself!
The narrative is from Watson's point of view, following him home from Afghanistan, through the adventure of finding a roommate, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, learning about what sort of person he is, and then watching him solve a mystery. Part II takes on a strikingly different tone, as it is told from an omniscient third-person point of view. This is the story of victims of the Mormon community, of the murderers, turned victims themselves in London, and of the vengeful man Holmes arrests in his own apartment. After that tale, Watson's narrative resumes and the case is brought to a close.
I really liked this book. It is not necessarily a book you can analyse AP-English style, like A Brave New World was; or perhaps it is, but the reader does not feel the distinct need to do so. The part in the desert reads like a historical fan-fic, bringing in familiar characters like the Salt Lake Mormons, and, more specifically, an appearance by Brigham Young, but that does not mean it is bad. It reads not only well but beautifully, with vivid descriptions and a captivating storyline. Furthermore, as the first of the Holmes stories, the reader needs no background knowledge to understand the characters; Doyle introduces them for the first time here. This book is a wonderful read and I would highly recommend it. It's a great place to start for any aspiring Sherlock Holmes fan [like me], or for anybody looking for a fun story into which one can escape.
On a side note: I'd known that the character, House, was loosely based on Holmes, and after reading the first descriptions of him, I could definitely see it, right down to being a wonderful musician. You'll have to read it and see for yourself!

Friday, November 20, 2009
Fringe - August
Fringe - Season 2, Episode 8: "August". Original Air Date: 19 November, 2009.
Michael Cerveris is back! He, and a bunch of other Observers have been sighted all over the place. So one of the Observers, August, who is not Michael Cerveris, kidnaps a girl to save her from a crashing plane. The other Observers are mad that he interfered, because she was supposed to die on that plane.
Meanwhile, the Team is trying to find him because, for all they know, he's kidnapped her.In the end, August realises what he has to do. The other Observers have hired an assassin to kill the girl, because she is not supposed to be alive, and they can't understand why he saved her [if you want to know, it's because he watched her grow up after her parents died, and he feels an emotional connexion to her, almost as a father figure] because she is, seemingly, unimportant. He risks his life for that girl and makes her important, by being implicated in the death of one of Them. And now she gets to live.
There was a lot of hype for this episode, and I don't really feel like it lived up to it. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun, intriguing episode... but it just wasn't that great. It wasn't very good compared to other episodes, and it didn't live up to the anticipatory advertisements and the real-life Observers planted around the country in cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. For something that was expected to be so big, it felt fairly insignificant.
If you would like to see a sample of my notes on this episode:
MICHAEL CERVERIS IS A BAMF
Olivia is the most amazing woman evar and she's scared of roller coasters *love*
Too many Michael Cerverises. They are not all Michael Cerveris.
I have to go out. I would prefer not to gag you.
WHY IS MICHAEL CERVERIS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS EPISODE?!
Michael Cerveris is back! He, and a bunch of other Observers have been sighted all over the place. So one of the Observers, August, who is not Michael Cerveris, kidnaps a girl to save her from a crashing plane. The other Observers are mad that he interfered, because she was supposed to die on that plane.
Meanwhile, the Team is trying to find him because, for all they know, he's kidnapped her.In the end, August realises what he has to do. The other Observers have hired an assassin to kill the girl, because she is not supposed to be alive, and they can't understand why he saved her [if you want to know, it's because he watched her grow up after her parents died, and he feels an emotional connexion to her, almost as a father figure] because she is, seemingly, unimportant. He risks his life for that girl and makes her important, by being implicated in the death of one of Them. And now she gets to live.
There was a lot of hype for this episode, and I don't really feel like it lived up to it. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun, intriguing episode... but it just wasn't that great. It wasn't very good compared to other episodes, and it didn't live up to the anticipatory advertisements and the real-life Observers planted around the country in cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. For something that was expected to be so big, it felt fairly insignificant.
If you would like to see a sample of my notes on this episode:
MICHAEL CERVERIS IS A BAMF
Olivia is the most amazing woman evar and she's scared of roller coasters *love*
Too many Michael Cerverises. They are not all Michael Cerveris.
I have to go out. I would prefer not to gag you.
WHY IS MICHAEL CERVERIS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS EPISODE?!

Friday, November 13, 2009
Fringe - Of Human Action
Fringe - Season 2, Episode 7: "Of Human Action". Original Air Date: 12 Nov 09.
The episode opens with cops pulling in to save a kidnap victim, but one walks himself off a roof and one shoots all the other cops and then herself. When the team arrives, Walter guesses hypnosis, but Peter says it can't be that because hypnosis won't make you do anything you wouldn't do yourself. After more thought, Walter considers mind control as a completely viable option. Studying the body of a corpse, Walter tries to figure out a way to combat the mind control, and they stage a way to get the kid back. Except it turns out the kid, Tyler, is really the kidnapper, and he kidnaps Peter! Walter has trouble letting go of Peter, and he can't work without him. Meanwhile, Peter is trying desperately to fight Tyler's control, but can't. Eventually, he brings him to a strip club. He keeps trying to dissuade Tyler, but the kid is set in his course. He tells Peter that his father has lied to him all of his life, telling him that his mother was dead when in fact she was alive and well in Maryland, and that's why he's doing this. Walter figures out another way to block the mind control, with an EMT like in The Matrix I guess, and so they use it on the kid. Peter purposefully crashes his father's car in Tyler's moments of disempowerment. They wean the kid off of the drugs he'd been on and his powers go away. In the end, Walter and Peter share a sweet scene: Walter makes Peter crêpes and talks to him about when he was little and his mother. But then, we see Nina writing an email to Mr. Bell, of all people. She says that "one of the Tylers" showed mind control ability but that it had unintended consequences, and he went looking for his "surrogate mother" and so she is discontinuing the research completely, and there's a shot of Tyler's father wheeling Tyler into a room filled with Tylers!
This episode leaves a lot more questions than answers: surrogate mother? ONE of the Tylers? WHAT?! And what IS Nina up to? What are they planning?! Aaaah! I liked it! But I was also incredibly worried when I watched this episode. The bonds the watcher has 'created' with the characters are really put to the test watching this, which is somewhat embarrassing to admit.... :D
The episode opens with cops pulling in to save a kidnap victim, but one walks himself off a roof and one shoots all the other cops and then herself. When the team arrives, Walter guesses hypnosis, but Peter says it can't be that because hypnosis won't make you do anything you wouldn't do yourself. After more thought, Walter considers mind control as a completely viable option. Studying the body of a corpse, Walter tries to figure out a way to combat the mind control, and they stage a way to get the kid back. Except it turns out the kid, Tyler, is really the kidnapper, and he kidnaps Peter! Walter has trouble letting go of Peter, and he can't work without him. Meanwhile, Peter is trying desperately to fight Tyler's control, but can't. Eventually, he brings him to a strip club. He keeps trying to dissuade Tyler, but the kid is set in his course. He tells Peter that his father has lied to him all of his life, telling him that his mother was dead when in fact she was alive and well in Maryland, and that's why he's doing this. Walter figures out another way to block the mind control, with an EMT like in The Matrix I guess, and so they use it on the kid. Peter purposefully crashes his father's car in Tyler's moments of disempowerment. They wean the kid off of the drugs he'd been on and his powers go away. In the end, Walter and Peter share a sweet scene: Walter makes Peter crêpes and talks to him about when he was little and his mother. But then, we see Nina writing an email to Mr. Bell, of all people. She says that "one of the Tylers" showed mind control ability but that it had unintended consequences, and he went looking for his "surrogate mother" and so she is discontinuing the research completely, and there's a shot of Tyler's father wheeling Tyler into a room filled with Tylers!
This episode leaves a lot more questions than answers: surrogate mother? ONE of the Tylers? WHAT?! And what IS Nina up to? What are they planning?! Aaaah! I liked it! But I was also incredibly worried when I watched this episode. The bonds the watcher has 'created' with the characters are really put to the test watching this, which is somewhat embarrassing to admit.... :D

Labels:
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Glee - Wheels
Glee - Season 1, Episode 9: "Wheels". Original Air Date: 11 November, 2009.
This one's just summary, sorry.
This episode's primary focus is Arty, which is awesome, because he has yet to have his own episode or song. The problem is, the school won't front the money to get the Glee Club a wheelchair accessible bus to sectionals, so the club needs to fundraise in order to afford it. Arty gets his own solo, and we learn that he likes Tina. When Will suggests that everybody does a bakesale, the kids are less-than-enthusiastic; disappointed with their decision, he makes them all spend three hours a day in a wheel chair, and they have to prepare a wheel chair number. At first, it's not very easy for them at all. The club really pulls together for Arty, and they raise the money necessary to get the wheelchair accessible bus, but he tells them that he'd rather the money go to installing a ramp in the auditiorium. When they go to tell the principal this, everyone is shocked to discover that Sue has already donated enough money for multiple ramps to be installed throughout the school.
At the same time, Quinn continues to press Finn for financial support. Finn is trying, but no jobs are hiring, and in the meantime, Puck keeps trying to move in on Quinn. He says that people say he's a screw-up because he doens't care for school, but he would never desert his family. We can see that the sparks between the two of them aren't completely gone, but Quinn remains adament that she doesn't need him. I feel bad for Finn, because he's doing what he can. I mean, this is a difficult situation for both of them, but I can't imagine any of my male friends from high school really being able to do so much to help, especially if no place will give him a job. And I still think that Quinn is being a total jerk in being dishonest with and using Finn. At the same time, however, I think that a teenage father should step up and do what he can to help the mother. As if things aren't hard enough for her. Rachel has an idea for Finn: she goes to a store and tells the manager he needs to hire Finn because he's disabled and not hiring him could look like discrimination.
And then there's the issue of the song to sing. They're going to do "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, one of Kurt's absolute favourites. Initially, Will won't let Kurt try out for the solo, but after Kurt complains to his father, and the father gets the principle involved, they arrange to have an audition between him and Rachel. Kurt's father receives an anonymous phone call that says, "Your son's a fag," before hanging up. This clearly bothers him, so Kurt misses the high note in the diva-off so that his father doesn't have to go through more of that than necessary.
Sue has to hold try-outs for someone to replace Quinn on the Cheerios. She picks a girl named Becky who is mentally disabled [sorry, I really don't know with what or how to call it], and Will is freaking out, trying to discover her angle. At the end of the episode, we see that Sue's big sister is like Becky. I guess, if there's anything Sue has a heart for, it's disability.
Arty and Trina go on a date in wheelchairs, and it seems like it's going very well. Trina gets up and kisses him and then admits that she's been faking her stutter since middle school. This really offends him, something, it seems, she did not take into account.
Things I liked:
I like that there are multiple male cheerleaders, and they're not portrayed as anything but male cheerleaders, none of the silly things that come along with the label.
Kids are busier than when Shu was in school. They've got "homework, football, teen pregnancy, lunch?"
Kurt's father to Kurt: "It's not about a guy, 'cuz I'm not ready to have that conversation."
Arty tells Tina the story of how he was in a car accident. "I still retain the use of my penis." Oops.
This one's just summary, sorry.
This episode's primary focus is Arty, which is awesome, because he has yet to have his own episode or song. The problem is, the school won't front the money to get the Glee Club a wheelchair accessible bus to sectionals, so the club needs to fundraise in order to afford it. Arty gets his own solo, and we learn that he likes Tina. When Will suggests that everybody does a bakesale, the kids are less-than-enthusiastic; disappointed with their decision, he makes them all spend three hours a day in a wheel chair, and they have to prepare a wheel chair number. At first, it's not very easy for them at all. The club really pulls together for Arty, and they raise the money necessary to get the wheelchair accessible bus, but he tells them that he'd rather the money go to installing a ramp in the auditiorium. When they go to tell the principal this, everyone is shocked to discover that Sue has already donated enough money for multiple ramps to be installed throughout the school.
At the same time, Quinn continues to press Finn for financial support. Finn is trying, but no jobs are hiring, and in the meantime, Puck keeps trying to move in on Quinn. He says that people say he's a screw-up because he doens't care for school, but he would never desert his family. We can see that the sparks between the two of them aren't completely gone, but Quinn remains adament that she doesn't need him. I feel bad for Finn, because he's doing what he can. I mean, this is a difficult situation for both of them, but I can't imagine any of my male friends from high school really being able to do so much to help, especially if no place will give him a job. And I still think that Quinn is being a total jerk in being dishonest with and using Finn. At the same time, however, I think that a teenage father should step up and do what he can to help the mother. As if things aren't hard enough for her. Rachel has an idea for Finn: she goes to a store and tells the manager he needs to hire Finn because he's disabled and not hiring him could look like discrimination.
And then there's the issue of the song to sing. They're going to do "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, one of Kurt's absolute favourites. Initially, Will won't let Kurt try out for the solo, but after Kurt complains to his father, and the father gets the principle involved, they arrange to have an audition between him and Rachel. Kurt's father receives an anonymous phone call that says, "Your son's a fag," before hanging up. This clearly bothers him, so Kurt misses the high note in the diva-off so that his father doesn't have to go through more of that than necessary.
Sue has to hold try-outs for someone to replace Quinn on the Cheerios. She picks a girl named Becky who is mentally disabled [sorry, I really don't know with what or how to call it], and Will is freaking out, trying to discover her angle. At the end of the episode, we see that Sue's big sister is like Becky. I guess, if there's anything Sue has a heart for, it's disability.
Arty and Trina go on a date in wheelchairs, and it seems like it's going very well. Trina gets up and kisses him and then admits that she's been faking her stutter since middle school. This really offends him, something, it seems, she did not take into account.
Things I liked:
I like that there are multiple male cheerleaders, and they're not portrayed as anything but male cheerleaders, none of the silly things that come along with the label.
Kids are busier than when Shu was in school. They've got "homework, football, teen pregnancy, lunch?"
Kurt's father to Kurt: "It's not about a guy, 'cuz I'm not ready to have that conversation."
Arty tells Tina the story of how he was in a car accident. "I still retain the use of my penis." Oops.
Labels:
con artists,
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Glee,
lies,
SpoilerAlert,
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
House - Known Unkowns
House - Season 6, Episode 6: "Known Unknowns". Original Air Date: 9 November, 2009.
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH HOUSE IS BACK FROM THE WORLD SERIES BREAK.
Thank goodness I have nicer things to say about this one than about Fringe.
A girl comes into the hospital after a night out partying. She's told her friends that she went to the band's hotel room and went skinny dipping with one of the musicians, but actually, she and her stalked their favourite sci-fi author all evening. When she decides to come clean about her actions that evening to the doctors, she can't; something in her brain [which is also making it bleed] is making her lie! Cameron and Chase try to talk to the author to see if he can give them any tips, and Cameron gets really upset with him because she's still upset with Chase and she's taking it out on the writer. And where is House during all of this? He and Wilson and Cuddy and her baby all go to a doctors' convention. Wilson is going to present a paper on euthenasia, but House doesn't want him to risk his license, so he drugs Wilson and steals his pants, and presents the paper himself under the nom de plume 'Perlmutter'. You can be sure that there were lots of lulz. House is also trying to impress Cuddy. She told him that she tracked him down in med school, and he confessed that he's basically been in love with her since he first set eyes on her, and then she leaves. And then we find out that apparently she's with that private eye from way back when. Remember him? Yeah, I didn't either, until a friend had to remind me. Oh well. Oh yeah, and the girl's okay in the end, and she did not get raped by the sci-fi writer.
In the very, very end, Chase finally comes clean with Cameron and tells her about his murder. Intenseeeee.
I think this was a very great episode. The mystery surrounding what the patient did that night was very intriguing, but even more important was the House-Wilson-Cuddy arch. Everything was there: lots of hilarity, new and old House, tearful moments, painful moments, and touching moments. It was so exciting! And the end was so intense, touching, and open-ended. Oh my gosh.
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH HOUSE IS BACK FROM THE WORLD SERIES BREAK.
Thank goodness I have nicer things to say about this one than about Fringe.
A girl comes into the hospital after a night out partying. She's told her friends that she went to the band's hotel room and went skinny dipping with one of the musicians, but actually, she and her stalked their favourite sci-fi author all evening. When she decides to come clean about her actions that evening to the doctors, she can't; something in her brain [which is also making it bleed] is making her lie! Cameron and Chase try to talk to the author to see if he can give them any tips, and Cameron gets really upset with him because she's still upset with Chase and she's taking it out on the writer. And where is House during all of this? He and Wilson and Cuddy and her baby all go to a doctors' convention. Wilson is going to present a paper on euthenasia, but House doesn't want him to risk his license, so he drugs Wilson and steals his pants, and presents the paper himself under the nom de plume 'Perlmutter'. You can be sure that there were lots of lulz. House is also trying to impress Cuddy. She told him that she tracked him down in med school, and he confessed that he's basically been in love with her since he first set eyes on her, and then she leaves. And then we find out that apparently she's with that private eye from way back when. Remember him? Yeah, I didn't either, until a friend had to remind me. Oh well. Oh yeah, and the girl's okay in the end, and she did not get raped by the sci-fi writer.
In the very, very end, Chase finally comes clean with Cameron and tells her about his murder. Intenseeeee.
I think this was a very great episode. The mystery surrounding what the patient did that night was very intriguing, but even more important was the House-Wilson-Cuddy arch. Everything was there: lots of hilarity, new and old House, tearful moments, painful moments, and touching moments. It was so exciting! And the end was so intense, touching, and open-ended. Oh my gosh.

Castle - Kill the Messenger
Castle - Season 2, Episode 8: "Kill the Messenger". Original Air Date: 9 November, 2009.
The episode begins with a bike courier; a masked man crashes a car into him and steals the package the man was set to deliver. The team tries to figure out what was in that package, so they track down the sender, an old woman, hooked up to oxygen in her own home. She says that she had no idea what was in the package she'd sent that morning, and that it was from her nephew, Brady. He had sent it to her years ago, and told her to keep it safe and to never look at it when he went to prison, and now, he wanted her to send it to whom it was addressed. That person? The captain. But when they want to talk to Brady, they find out that he's been murdered that morning in prison. Talking to others involved with Brady's case, in which he pleaded guilty to murder, they learn that he may not have been the murderer. A lot of digging around in Brady's victim's case brings them to one of the wealthiest families in the city: the Wellesleys. In the end, they discover that the Wellesleys' attendant / butler / everything man, Frank Davis, was not only responsible for the biker's death, but also Brady's [I think?] and the young woman from all those years ago. In the previous episode, Castle said, "I'm going to go with the butler," and tells Beckett it's who the mystery writers always go with when they're out of ideas. It's a cute bit of foreshadowing into the end of this episode.
The minor plot in this episode is very minor; Grams gets a 'MyFace' as she calls it, and she has to deal with multitudes of friend requests. And then she has a date!
Like last week's Fringe, I like that we got to learn about a higher-up that we don't normally get much character development. Unfortunately, I thought it was too similar to Fringe's story, with the captain having to close up an old case and all that. I do not like weird TV coincidences like those.
The plot was quite gripping, however, I did not love this episode. Maybe I just wasn't into it, who knows, and I can't really say why, but I just didn't feel myself being drawn in the same way as I normally do.
The episode begins with a bike courier; a masked man crashes a car into him and steals the package the man was set to deliver. The team tries to figure out what was in that package, so they track down the sender, an old woman, hooked up to oxygen in her own home. She says that she had no idea what was in the package she'd sent that morning, and that it was from her nephew, Brady. He had sent it to her years ago, and told her to keep it safe and to never look at it when he went to prison, and now, he wanted her to send it to whom it was addressed. That person? The captain. But when they want to talk to Brady, they find out that he's been murdered that morning in prison. Talking to others involved with Brady's case, in which he pleaded guilty to murder, they learn that he may not have been the murderer. A lot of digging around in Brady's victim's case brings them to one of the wealthiest families in the city: the Wellesleys. In the end, they discover that the Wellesleys' attendant / butler / everything man, Frank Davis, was not only responsible for the biker's death, but also Brady's [I think?] and the young woman from all those years ago. In the previous episode, Castle said, "I'm going to go with the butler," and tells Beckett it's who the mystery writers always go with when they're out of ideas. It's a cute bit of foreshadowing into the end of this episode.
The minor plot in this episode is very minor; Grams gets a 'MyFace' as she calls it, and she has to deal with multitudes of friend requests. And then she has a date!
Like last week's Fringe, I like that we got to learn about a higher-up that we don't normally get much character development. Unfortunately, I thought it was too similar to Fringe's story, with the captain having to close up an old case and all that. I do not like weird TV coincidences like those.
The plot was quite gripping, however, I did not love this episode. Maybe I just wasn't into it, who knows, and I can't really say why, but I just didn't feel myself being drawn in the same way as I normally do.

Friday, November 6, 2009
Fringe - Earthling
Fringe - Season 2, Episode 6: "Earthling". Original Air Date: 5 November, 2009.
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH FRINGE IS BACK FROM THE WORLD SERIES BREAK! Wait, hold that excitement...
This episode of Fringe was another one that has very little to do with 'the pattern'. In fact, it seemed to be just an episode, and I wasn't in love with it. Maybe because my roommate had company, and they were loud, and I didn't get the same effect, but I can't be sure. The idea was they found this 'shadow man' who stole radiation from people's bodies, unfortunately, leaving them as dust. Very dead dust. "Except for the penthouse guy; he died of bad luck." This case had been Broyles's four years before, and he thought he'd fixed it, and now it's back to haunt him. We learn a lot about the guy because of this: some of his backstory [he had a wife and kids, for instance] and some of his character development. Always a good thing. So Walter tries to figure out what's going on as the killings become more frequent. There were Russian cosmonauts, outerspace organisms, and just general fun Fringe stuff.
I'm sorry this one's something of a crummy 'review', but the episode wasn't wonderful and didn't give me much to talk about, I think. There was very little Walter, Peter, or Olivia. The most character development was with Broyles, which is definitely not a bad thing, but I would have liked to see the episode a little more far-reaching.
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH FRINGE IS BACK FROM THE WORLD SERIES BREAK! Wait, hold that excitement...
This episode of Fringe was another one that has very little to do with 'the pattern'. In fact, it seemed to be just an episode, and I wasn't in love with it. Maybe because my roommate had company, and they were loud, and I didn't get the same effect, but I can't be sure. The idea was they found this 'shadow man' who stole radiation from people's bodies, unfortunately, leaving them as dust. Very dead dust. "Except for the penthouse guy; he died of bad luck." This case had been Broyles's four years before, and he thought he'd fixed it, and now it's back to haunt him. We learn a lot about the guy because of this: some of his backstory [he had a wife and kids, for instance] and some of his character development. Always a good thing. So Walter tries to figure out what's going on as the killings become more frequent. There were Russian cosmonauts, outerspace organisms, and just general fun Fringe stuff.
I'm sorry this one's something of a crummy 'review', but the episode wasn't wonderful and didn't give me much to talk about, I think. There was very little Walter, Peter, or Olivia. The most character development was with Broyles, which is definitely not a bad thing, but I would have liked to see the episode a little more far-reaching.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Why I Hate TV Right Now
TV right now is killing me. I hate baseball and Teen Jeopardy.
Stupid baseball. Fox is 'hosting' the World Series. Baseball is what made me watch House forty-five minutes late. Now it's the reason that Fringe, House, and Glee are all post-poned until the series is over. UGH. I'm sorry, sports fans. I really am. But isn't this what we have ESPN for?
Stupid Teen Jeopardy! Oh my gosh. I get really frustrated watching them. I don't think I'm really smart enough to be on the show, but I'd like to be, and I'm the same age as the kids on the teen tournament, but I'm answering the regular questions. I wish I had watched way back when Meryl was on it. I don't even remember why I didn't. But these kids... they played a clip of a bassoon, which has a very specific timbre, and the only person to ring it said 'violin'. No one else knew. There are always plenty of stupid little things like that. As an adult, I'll probably forgive them, like how I can forgive the little middle schoolers for not answering certain very simple questions. But I am the same age as these people, so I get very upset. And the simpleness of the questions is almost insulting! If I were on that show, especially tonight's episode, I would have been genuinely insulted if the questions were as easy as they were. And tonight's final! "There's a statue of him at the Baker street subway station." Girl answered Shakespeare. SERIOUSLY?
So I'm very excited for the next few weeks of television. Teen Jeopardy will be over after another week, and my regular daily trivia show can resume; the World Series will finally end, and we can go back to what's really important, House, Fringe, and Glee!
Stupid baseball. Fox is 'hosting' the World Series. Baseball is what made me watch House forty-five minutes late. Now it's the reason that Fringe, House, and Glee are all post-poned until the series is over. UGH. I'm sorry, sports fans. I really am. But isn't this what we have ESPN for?
Stupid Teen Jeopardy! Oh my gosh. I get really frustrated watching them. I don't think I'm really smart enough to be on the show, but I'd like to be, and I'm the same age as the kids on the teen tournament, but I'm answering the regular questions. I wish I had watched way back when Meryl was on it. I don't even remember why I didn't. But these kids... they played a clip of a bassoon, which has a very specific timbre, and the only person to ring it said 'violin'. No one else knew. There are always plenty of stupid little things like that. As an adult, I'll probably forgive them, like how I can forgive the little middle schoolers for not answering certain very simple questions. But I am the same age as these people, so I get very upset. And the simpleness of the questions is almost insulting! If I were on that show, especially tonight's episode, I would have been genuinely insulted if the questions were as easy as they were. And tonight's final! "There's a statue of him at the Baker street subway station." Girl answered Shakespeare. SERIOUSLY?
So I'm very excited for the next few weeks of television. Teen Jeopardy will be over after another week, and my regular daily trivia show can resume; the World Series will finally end, and we can go back to what's really important, House, Fringe, and Glee!
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Castle - Famous Last Words
Castle - Season 2, Episode 7: "Famous Last Words". Original Air Date: 2 November, 2009.
This was a wonderful episode! It begins with Alexis, almost in tears [or very recently in tears, I guess], and she asks her father if it's true that Hayley Blue, the lead singer of her favourite band, is dead. It is. The crime scene is staged to look like a recent music video of hers, and the team follows a lead to her... most enthusiastic fan. A.K.A. stalker. He leads them to the band's guitarist, who leads them to the producers who had taken her in and paid for her rehab. Apparently she was like a daughter to them. In the end, they arrest the wife, but she is adament that it was not her. Of course, they don't believe her, but one look at the husband... Well, Castle hears her final song again, and he realises they've got the wrong guy: it was the husband. He had forced himself on her and later killed her. The episode ends with Beckett, Castle, Alexis, and Castle's mom [I really need to start remembering her name] at a Hayley Blue memorial concert, and, aw how cute, they look like a family. Or something.
I loved this episode. We see more of the relationship between Castle and Alexis, but through Beckett. She says it best when she says that she's so used to seeing Castle act like a twelve year old that it's weird [strange? refreshing?] to see him play the part of the father. And at the end, when Castle is confronting the man who raped the rock star, he's really into it, on the verge of tears, it would seem. The whole episode was really intense, with the same formula of leads and disappointments. Not much changes in the Beckett/Castle dynamic, though.
I also realised, just before watching this, that my Monday nights are all about architecture: first I watch House, then I watch Castle.
This was a wonderful episode! It begins with Alexis, almost in tears [or very recently in tears, I guess], and she asks her father if it's true that Hayley Blue, the lead singer of her favourite band, is dead. It is. The crime scene is staged to look like a recent music video of hers, and the team follows a lead to her... most enthusiastic fan. A.K.A. stalker. He leads them to the band's guitarist, who leads them to the producers who had taken her in and paid for her rehab. Apparently she was like a daughter to them. In the end, they arrest the wife, but she is adament that it was not her. Of course, they don't believe her, but one look at the husband... Well, Castle hears her final song again, and he realises they've got the wrong guy: it was the husband. He had forced himself on her and later killed her. The episode ends with Beckett, Castle, Alexis, and Castle's mom [I really need to start remembering her name] at a Hayley Blue memorial concert, and, aw how cute, they look like a family. Or something.
I loved this episode. We see more of the relationship between Castle and Alexis, but through Beckett. She says it best when she says that she's so used to seeing Castle act like a twelve year old that it's weird [strange? refreshing?] to see him play the part of the father. And at the end, when Castle is confronting the man who raped the rock star, he's really into it, on the verge of tears, it would seem. The whole episode was really intense, with the same formula of leads and disappointments. Not much changes in the Beckett/Castle dynamic, though.
I also realised, just before watching this, that my Monday nights are all about architecture: first I watch House, then I watch Castle.

Monday, November 2, 2009
Castle - Vampire Weekend
Castle - Season 2, Episode 6: "Vampire Weekend". Original Air Date: 26 October, 2009.
America's current vampire obsession has invaded... my half of the world...
It's Halloween, and Castle is preparing for a big party. He keeps mentioning it to Beckett, reminding her that costumes are mandatory, and hinting that he'd love to see her in something sexy. But even more important is the case: a vampire was murdered by a stake through the heart, in a cemetary. Yeah. Apparently this boy, Crow, belonged to a small geek community of vampires [I say geek meaning a person who is fascinated by one specific thing or culture and strives to live as close to the object of his emulation as possible, no negative connotations intended]. He was a young artist, who, together with his friend Damon, also found murdered, was creating a graphic novel about a real life NYC vampire named Morlock. The team finds Morloch and takes him into custody. He's a case, because he has a condition, I forget what it's called but its nick-name is the Vampires' Disease, and he is very sensitive to sunlight, to the point where his skin burns and blisters up with contact. With that condition come hallucinations and other craziness, so it's no wonder he actually believes he's a vampire. In the end, it was his insane babble and crazy talk that solved the case. Crow's step-mother had killed his mother so she could marry the father, and now, many years later, Crow figures this out and so she kills him too, trying to frame his group of vampire friends because of his father's disdain for them, in an effort to keep her husband close to her. In the meantime, Alexis is going to her first 'real' high school party with her friend and co-parent [for a health class baby egg project], and her dad knows she won't get into any trouble, but he tells her to call him if she feels uncomfortable or compromised in any way because he will come get her, no questions asked, no punishment. She thinks she won't have to, but she does because the punch was spiked and her friend was really wasted. Castle picks them up and does the right thing in calling the girl's parents, despite Alexis's protests that she would get in a lot of trouble. In the end, the friend was so mad that she broke the egg baby.
The episode was good, and very Halloweeny. Castle began the episode by saying how much he loved Halloween, but Beckett says it's the worst as far as weird crimes. I think the show did a decent job, too, and not making fun of the geeks. Of course, individual characters mocked the vampire Covent a little, but the way they were portrayed in the show was as a little weird, definitely different from the 'norm', but not dangerous or bad or stupid. And, I know I say this a lot, but I really love the relationship between Alexis and her father. There are so few 'like me' teenagers on television, whether it be adult programming on basic channels, like this, or on pre-teen shows on Disney. This girl is well-adjusted, has a few issues, but nothing she can't handle, and she's not angsty or slutty or deceitful like so many TV teens are. In this episode, she had to learn a bit of a lesson between choosing the right thing and the easy thing, but she followed her father's orders, and doing differently in that situation could have ended really badly.
America's current vampire obsession has invaded... my half of the world...
It's Halloween, and Castle is preparing for a big party. He keeps mentioning it to Beckett, reminding her that costumes are mandatory, and hinting that he'd love to see her in something sexy. But even more important is the case: a vampire was murdered by a stake through the heart, in a cemetary. Yeah. Apparently this boy, Crow, belonged to a small geek community of vampires [I say geek meaning a person who is fascinated by one specific thing or culture and strives to live as close to the object of his emulation as possible, no negative connotations intended]. He was a young artist, who, together with his friend Damon, also found murdered, was creating a graphic novel about a real life NYC vampire named Morlock. The team finds Morloch and takes him into custody. He's a case, because he has a condition, I forget what it's called but its nick-name is the Vampires' Disease, and he is very sensitive to sunlight, to the point where his skin burns and blisters up with contact. With that condition come hallucinations and other craziness, so it's no wonder he actually believes he's a vampire. In the end, it was his insane babble and crazy talk that solved the case. Crow's step-mother had killed his mother so she could marry the father, and now, many years later, Crow figures this out and so she kills him too, trying to frame his group of vampire friends because of his father's disdain for them, in an effort to keep her husband close to her. In the meantime, Alexis is going to her first 'real' high school party with her friend and co-parent [for a health class baby egg project], and her dad knows she won't get into any trouble, but he tells her to call him if she feels uncomfortable or compromised in any way because he will come get her, no questions asked, no punishment. She thinks she won't have to, but she does because the punch was spiked and her friend was really wasted. Castle picks them up and does the right thing in calling the girl's parents, despite Alexis's protests that she would get in a lot of trouble. In the end, the friend was so mad that she broke the egg baby.
The episode was good, and very Halloweeny. Castle began the episode by saying how much he loved Halloween, but Beckett says it's the worst as far as weird crimes. I think the show did a decent job, too, and not making fun of the geeks. Of course, individual characters mocked the vampire Covent a little, but the way they were portrayed in the show was as a little weird, definitely different from the 'norm', but not dangerous or bad or stupid. And, I know I say this a lot, but I really love the relationship between Alexis and her father. There are so few 'like me' teenagers on television, whether it be adult programming on basic channels, like this, or on pre-teen shows on Disney. This girl is well-adjusted, has a few issues, but nothing she can't handle, and she's not angsty or slutty or deceitful like so many TV teens are. In this episode, she had to learn a bit of a lesson between choosing the right thing and the easy thing, but she followed her father's orders, and doing differently in that situation could have ended really badly.

Brave New World
I absolutely loved Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and I'm SO glad I read it. This book was not in the AP English curriculum, but my other friends read it, and when I helped them do a video project about it, I was intrigued. I'm so glad I got the chance to enjoy the book, even though it took me a while to read [I'm slow, I had school, I just don't like reading the last chapters because then the book is over, etc.].
The first part of the book is all exposition, and that's good. It really paints a picture of this Utopian futuristic society in which the action will take place. And it was very well written, with quick, sometimes disorienting scene changes, and sometimes vague dialogue, all of which seemed to further illustrate the collectively low attention span of the population. This is also when we're introduced to a myriad of characters; at first we are uncertain as to which characters the story will start to focus around, but after a while, Lenina and Bernard emerge as fully developed, complex characters. Allusions to Shakespeare in this section are almost meaningless because the characters do not know about him.
Which brings us into part two, where the action starts. Bernard feels a little differently about society than everyone else; we can relate to him the most because he, miraculously, holds onto some of our ideas of happiness and success, and we empathise with him because no one in the book can. He takes the seemingly simple-minded Lenina to a Native American reservation in the USA, and everything changes. The contrast between the reservation and the UK is so drastic, and we look at it with wide-eyed curiosity and wonder because it is nothing like anything we've been reading about up to this point, but it's also very different from the world we live in today [or is it?]. In this chaos, we meet John, the "Savage", but not an Indian and unable to fit in in either world. Bernard decides to bring him and his British mother back to England, as if he is a saviour or benefactor.
The last section of this book is ultimately depressing. All the fine thinking that Bernard had been doing, all the epiphanies he might have come to are destroyed, replaced, instead, by thoughts of self-importance and worth. The fame he achieves from bringing John to England has gone right to his head, and consequently, to his penis. John, too, is facing changes. He has a very hard time adjusting to this new way of life, he can't agree with the methods of the Brits because they are so contrary to everything he's learned on the reservation, and he feels himself falling in love with Lenina, but he can't do anything about it because the only way, according to his own beliefs, to have a woman, is to have only that woman, through marriage, for the rest of their lives. In the end, this is what kills him. It drives him to a life in the 'wilderness' in England, but when even that becomes nothing more than a spectacle for the curious Brits, he kills himself. The change was too great, the society was too devolved that it ultimately killed him.
The allusions to Shakespeare throughout the book were an important and helpful tool in the telling of the story. Shakespeare was the only ally John ever really had, and he could quote the plays almost entirely, even before he knew what they meant. The book is especially full of allusions to The Tempest [fitting, because I started it shortly after I had seen the play over the summer, and my school just put it on this past weekend], a mystical story about savages and Europeans, love, and freedom. Of course, from the colonialist point of view that the director took with the college's production, we see the same sort of interaction when the 'civilised' Lenina and Bernard step into the dirty reservation, and when they take John and his mother back, as if they were their saving grace. The title itself, Brave New World, is an allusion to The Tempest. Miranda speaks it when she sees humans other than her father and herself for the first time. It carries many meanings in the context of this novel, the most obvious of which is John's transportation to England from the reservation in America. But it also serves as a nod to the social context of the story: the England portrayed in this novel is drastically different from that of 2009 or of the 1930s, and is, therefore, a brave new world. But, as Miranda was, herself, human, and so the apparitions before her were not truly 'new', the chilling part of a dystopian novel such as this is that this could be us, and is it really all that new to us? Is it really so different from what we have now?
Just some little things~
1: Every once in a while, a section or statement would ring so true and so possible that I would go back to the title page and check the publication date. This book could easily have been written last year, and it is as true now as it was in the 30s.
2: Even though it was written in the 30s, I still imagined 1970s-style clothing, especially whenever Huxley described Lenina's fashion.
The first part of the book is all exposition, and that's good. It really paints a picture of this Utopian futuristic society in which the action will take place. And it was very well written, with quick, sometimes disorienting scene changes, and sometimes vague dialogue, all of which seemed to further illustrate the collectively low attention span of the population. This is also when we're introduced to a myriad of characters; at first we are uncertain as to which characters the story will start to focus around, but after a while, Lenina and Bernard emerge as fully developed, complex characters. Allusions to Shakespeare in this section are almost meaningless because the characters do not know about him.
Which brings us into part two, where the action starts. Bernard feels a little differently about society than everyone else; we can relate to him the most because he, miraculously, holds onto some of our ideas of happiness and success, and we empathise with him because no one in the book can. He takes the seemingly simple-minded Lenina to a Native American reservation in the USA, and everything changes. The contrast between the reservation and the UK is so drastic, and we look at it with wide-eyed curiosity and wonder because it is nothing like anything we've been reading about up to this point, but it's also very different from the world we live in today [or is it?]. In this chaos, we meet John, the "Savage", but not an Indian and unable to fit in in either world. Bernard decides to bring him and his British mother back to England, as if he is a saviour or benefactor.
The last section of this book is ultimately depressing. All the fine thinking that Bernard had been doing, all the epiphanies he might have come to are destroyed, replaced, instead, by thoughts of self-importance and worth. The fame he achieves from bringing John to England has gone right to his head, and consequently, to his penis. John, too, is facing changes. He has a very hard time adjusting to this new way of life, he can't agree with the methods of the Brits because they are so contrary to everything he's learned on the reservation, and he feels himself falling in love with Lenina, but he can't do anything about it because the only way, according to his own beliefs, to have a woman, is to have only that woman, through marriage, for the rest of their lives. In the end, this is what kills him. It drives him to a life in the 'wilderness' in England, but when even that becomes nothing more than a spectacle for the curious Brits, he kills himself. The change was too great, the society was too devolved that it ultimately killed him.
The allusions to Shakespeare throughout the book were an important and helpful tool in the telling of the story. Shakespeare was the only ally John ever really had, and he could quote the plays almost entirely, even before he knew what they meant. The book is especially full of allusions to The Tempest [fitting, because I started it shortly after I had seen the play over the summer, and my school just put it on this past weekend], a mystical story about savages and Europeans, love, and freedom. Of course, from the colonialist point of view that the director took with the college's production, we see the same sort of interaction when the 'civilised' Lenina and Bernard step into the dirty reservation, and when they take John and his mother back, as if they were their saving grace. The title itself, Brave New World, is an allusion to The Tempest. Miranda speaks it when she sees humans other than her father and herself for the first time. It carries many meanings in the context of this novel, the most obvious of which is John's transportation to England from the reservation in America. But it also serves as a nod to the social context of the story: the England portrayed in this novel is drastically different from that of 2009 or of the 1930s, and is, therefore, a brave new world. But, as Miranda was, herself, human, and so the apparitions before her were not truly 'new', the chilling part of a dystopian novel such as this is that this could be us, and is it really all that new to us? Is it really so different from what we have now?
Just some little things~
1: Every once in a while, a section or statement would ring so true and so possible that I would go back to the title page and check the publication date. This book could easily have been written last year, and it is as true now as it was in the 30s.
2: Even though it was written in the 30s, I still imagined 1970s-style clothing, especially whenever Huxley described Lenina's fashion.

Apology
I have something of an apology to make. I've been calling this a 'review-style blog' but I don't do much reviewing. It's all synopsis and plot summary and a little bit of personal opinion splashed in at the end. Obviously, plot summary is easy, and actual thinking is... a little less easy. I will still summarise plots to put my comments into context, but I'm going to try to bring more review and less retelling into future posts.

Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Tempest
The Tempest by William Shakespeare, as performed by the students of Connecticut College on Sunday, 25 October, 2009.
This is a blatant copy and paste of an assignment I did for my acting class, which has also been copied and pasted to 4:12.
The Tempest was great. The effects were striking, the acting was fantastic, serious parts were serious, funny parts were funny, and everything ran smoothly and added up to create a great performance. And the set was beautiful, functional, and fitting for the play. One or two little pieces of clear green fabric created an entirely new setting. Everything was so intricate and well made, and created stunning levels for the actors to physically be on. The lights were good, too, especially the lightning. The sound was the only thing I didn’t love. In some scenes, the drumming drowned out the voices (and I was only in the second row!) so I think a better, or at least a quieter, approach might have been taken. But I liked the effect of the drumming, rain sticks, flutes, and singing. As far as the adaptation, I think it was wonderful, but personally, I’m a huge fan of the magic.
I think all the performers were successful. I especially liked the scenes with Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo. They all knew exactly what they were fighting for (to kill Prospero, to drunkenly become Queen of the island, to get through this alive) and stuck to those goals; they were not only believable, but they made strong choices, like quivering in fear under a broken umbrella, and not being afraid to find themselves in actions or positions that, outside the theatre, might seem very odd. The three connected very well, too, which is what drew me to them the most. They were always with each other and never seemed to break focus, always listening and reacting, almost like they were hearing and saying the words for the first time.

Photo from production ©ConnColl 2009
This is a blatant copy and paste of an assignment I did for my acting class, which has also been copied and pasted to 4:12.
The Tempest was great. The effects were striking, the acting was fantastic, serious parts were serious, funny parts were funny, and everything ran smoothly and added up to create a great performance. And the set was beautiful, functional, and fitting for the play. One or two little pieces of clear green fabric created an entirely new setting. Everything was so intricate and well made, and created stunning levels for the actors to physically be on. The lights were good, too, especially the lightning. The sound was the only thing I didn’t love. In some scenes, the drumming drowned out the voices (and I was only in the second row!) so I think a better, or at least a quieter, approach might have been taken. But I liked the effect of the drumming, rain sticks, flutes, and singing. As far as the adaptation, I think it was wonderful, but personally, I’m a huge fan of the magic.
I think all the performers were successful. I especially liked the scenes with Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo. They all knew exactly what they were fighting for (to kill Prospero, to drunkenly become Queen of the island, to get through this alive) and stuck to those goals; they were not only believable, but they made strong choices, like quivering in fear under a broken umbrella, and not being afraid to find themselves in actions or positions that, outside the theatre, might seem very odd. The three connected very well, too, which is what drew me to them the most. They were always with each other and never seemed to break focus, always listening and reacting, almost like they were hearing and saying the words for the first time.

Photo from production ©ConnColl 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Heroes - Strange Attractors
Heroes - Season 4, Episode 6: "Strange Attractors". Original Air Date: 26 Oct 09.
This was a fun, sad, and scary episode. It starts with sex - Sylar and Mrs. Parkman? Oh wait. That's Matt. Or.... What? Apparently Sylar has been taking over Matt's body little by little and it's driving Matt insane. His storyline quickly heats up, and eventually, he realises that the only way to protect his family from Sylar's control is to leave, and he tries to explain this to Janice. She insists that he stays in the house and she'll go. After she leaves, Matt starts drinking and he realises it's making Sylar hurt. He drinks and drinks until Sylar disappears, but then he blacks out. Janice comes back with the policeman who'd been helping Matt through therapy, and they wait until he wakes up. But now it's Sylar in control of the body and Matt is just the premonition; he has no control whatsoever. Scary!
There's also a Claire and Gretchen storyline. They get kidnapped and taken to some faraway location, which turns out to be a slaughterhouse, to do some initiation thing for the sorority. During the scavenger hunt there, Invisibitch tries to kill Gretchen twice; eventually there's a fight, and Claire ends up slightly impaled. Of course, that's no problem for her or Gretchen, but for the other two pledges, well let's just say they were more than a little freaked out. And this might mean uprooting Claire all over again. Sad!
And then there's Jeremy. He's being kept in the town jail and Noah can't get him out. He calls in a favour with Tracy Strauss, and he forges some paper work that makes her Jeremy's 'aunt' so that she can sign him out of jail. A brief meeting between Tracy and Samuel leaves Tracy wondering whether she should bring Jeremy to the carnival where he'll be at "home" or give him a new life where he can be invisible. When they finally get him out, half the town is lined up outside in protestation, and one man breaks through the police line and starts threatening him. Jeremy uses his power and kills the man and walks back into the jail. That night, a few cops decide to take the law into their own hands; they chain him to a pick-up truck and they drive away, leaving him dead. Noah is, of course, very upset, knowing that he failed him, and Tracy is equally as upset. Then Samuel comes in and destroys the police station with his brainnn.
And some little comments: I don't like the way they shoot Matt in close-ups, and Gretchen has the same IKEA comforter as I have at home! ♥ A fun quote from Gretchen: "Sounds like some crazy-ass conspiracy theory. Which... pretty much describes your entire life."
It was a good episode. It was gripping, to use the traditional review language. I wanted to keep watching, and I was genuinely upset when it was over because I wanted to keep watching. I'm a little tired and way behind on watching, so that's about all the opinion you'll get. Have fun watching this one!
This was a fun, sad, and scary episode. It starts with sex - Sylar and Mrs. Parkman? Oh wait. That's Matt. Or.... What? Apparently Sylar has been taking over Matt's body little by little and it's driving Matt insane. His storyline quickly heats up, and eventually, he realises that the only way to protect his family from Sylar's control is to leave, and he tries to explain this to Janice. She insists that he stays in the house and she'll go. After she leaves, Matt starts drinking and he realises it's making Sylar hurt. He drinks and drinks until Sylar disappears, but then he blacks out. Janice comes back with the policeman who'd been helping Matt through therapy, and they wait until he wakes up. But now it's Sylar in control of the body and Matt is just the premonition; he has no control whatsoever. Scary!
There's also a Claire and Gretchen storyline. They get kidnapped and taken to some faraway location, which turns out to be a slaughterhouse, to do some initiation thing for the sorority. During the scavenger hunt there, Invisibitch tries to kill Gretchen twice; eventually there's a fight, and Claire ends up slightly impaled. Of course, that's no problem for her or Gretchen, but for the other two pledges, well let's just say they were more than a little freaked out. And this might mean uprooting Claire all over again. Sad!
And then there's Jeremy. He's being kept in the town jail and Noah can't get him out. He calls in a favour with Tracy Strauss, and he forges some paper work that makes her Jeremy's 'aunt' so that she can sign him out of jail. A brief meeting between Tracy and Samuel leaves Tracy wondering whether she should bring Jeremy to the carnival where he'll be at "home" or give him a new life where he can be invisible. When they finally get him out, half the town is lined up outside in protestation, and one man breaks through the police line and starts threatening him. Jeremy uses his power and kills the man and walks back into the jail. That night, a few cops decide to take the law into their own hands; they chain him to a pick-up truck and they drive away, leaving him dead. Noah is, of course, very upset, knowing that he failed him, and Tracy is equally as upset. Then Samuel comes in and destroys the police station with his brainnn.
And some little comments: I don't like the way they shoot Matt in close-ups, and Gretchen has the same IKEA comforter as I have at home! ♥ A fun quote from Gretchen: "Sounds like some crazy-ass conspiracy theory. Which... pretty much describes your entire life."
It was a good episode. It was gripping, to use the traditional review language. I wanted to keep watching, and I was genuinely upset when it was over because I wanted to keep watching. I'm a little tired and way behind on watching, so that's about all the opinion you'll get. Have fun watching this one!

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Flash Forward News
So I have some exciting news about this new show. Sure, it looked good, but I've been busy [lol] and hadn't watched it. I've heard good things about it, too.
But now for the exciting part. Mum called me the other day, and she said that... DOMINIC MONAGHAN WILL BE JOINING THE CAST OF FLASH FORWARD!!!
Told you it was exciting. A quick trip to IMDb validates Mum's story. We also notice that, besides the X-Men movie, he hasn't done anything since last year's Chuck episode. So I'm excited. It's a new show, perhaps I can catch up, or I could always watch the season during the off-season.
But now for the exciting part. Mum called me the other day, and she said that... DOMINIC MONAGHAN WILL BE JOINING THE CAST OF FLASH FORWARD!!!
Told you it was exciting. A quick trip to IMDb validates Mum's story. We also notice that, besides the X-Men movie, he hasn't done anything since last year's Chuck episode. So I'm excited. It's a new show, perhaps I can catch up, or I could always watch the season during the off-season.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Glee - Mash-Up
Glee - Season 1, Episode 8: "Mash-Up". Original Air Date: 21 October, 2009.
The great slushy war has begun!
Apparently, Finn and Quinn have dropped down to the bottom of the high school 'food chain' when news of their baby went public.
Emma and Ken decided they need to have their first dance, but the problem is, Emma wants My Fair Lady's "I Could Have Danced All Night" but Ken wants "The Thong Song". Yeah. So they approach will and ask him if he'd be able to work on some sort of mash-up for the two... and for dance lessons. So later, Emma shows up in Will's classroom after school for her first lesson, and they dance, but then he trips and pulls her down on top of him. It's awkward. And Ken sees.
In another story arch, Quinn and Finn visit Emma for advice on how to be cool. She says 'sunglasses' but then quickly changes her answer to something along the lines of 'the most important part is being yourselves'. In the next scene, Finn and Quinn don sunglasses and they think it's working for them, until the entire football team surrounds them and bombards them with slushies.
Apparently Noah is hot for Rachel. He had a dream that he was with her, and so they hooked up once. "Rachel was a hot Jew, and the Good Lord wanted me to get into her pants." The next day, he sings a song for Rachel - "Sweet Caroline", and it was great - but Quinn seems to think it's for her. Heh. Eventually, they start dating. It's pretty weird, really. But because of this, someone slushies him, and Rachel is stuck cleaning him up. He shows her a sensitive side that the audience didn't really know existed.
Finn's getting hate from all sides. A fight breaks out on the football field when other players openly question his leadership ability, and his masculinity. Because of what Glee Club seems to be doing to the team, Ken adds a mandatory practise at the same time as Glee rehearsal, and the boys who do both will have to make a choice. Will goes to talk to Ken about the practises, but Ken says he's sick of being 'settled for'. Ken knows that Emma is only settling for him, but he loves her enough that he doesn't care. But when it comes to football, he says they'll just have to see who's being settled for.
Noah tells Rachel he's going to choose football practise over Glee "I feel like such a bad Jew." When it came to that dreaded rehearsal, the two football players that aren't Noah and Finn showed up. And then Noah did too! But Finn never showed up, so everyone was sort of mad at him. Oh, the thingswe'll they'll do for masculinity. *Sigh*
Will goes to talk to him, and he tells him that he's making the wrong choice, and he plays the 'you remind me of how I used to be' card. Good play. It worked. So Finn goes to Ken and after a little persuading, Ken cancels the mandatory practises so they four can do both.
Another dance rehearsal takes place in a bridal shop. Emma needs to make sure she can dance in her dress, so Will pops in the Karaoke version of "I Could Have Danced All Night" and tells her to sing along. Do you know how excited I got when he said that?!
A cool thing in this episode is that Sue gets a storyline, and it's really something. A man at the news station asked her out on a date, and she thinks she's in love. She even gets Will to teach her to swing dance to impress him. But just days later, she catches him making out with another woman. The jerk says, "You didn't think that we were... exclusive... did you?" So now happy-Sue is back to mean-Sue. She yells at Quinn, calling her a disgrace and forcing her off the squad. So no, that part wasn't cool.
Will goes to talk to Emma: he can't get the songs to go together, no matter how he tries. She knows. It's symbolic, obviously.
And Finn comes back! Of course. He buys everyone slushies. Quinn's in normal clothes. Wow. She says she'll have to start every day with a slushie facial, and Will says that's okay because she's got eleven friends to wash it off for her. Then they all slushie Mr. Shu.
So some other stuff!
- I feel so bad for Emma! *cry* And for Ken, too, but to a certain extent, he's getting... a little bit of what he wanted...
- Will performs "Bust A Move", and wow, can he dance!! That was really impressive. I didn't like when he made Kurt stand up and he started singing to him about some girl, but I did like how Kurt rolled his eyes and mouthed 'Oh my God' and walked away. Good for you.
- BUT! I'm pretty sick of Will singing these pop songs. They're offensive songs, and I get that it's funny for plot, but... ugh.
- GLEE WORK ON YORU LIP SYNC ITS NOT BELIEVABLE
- By the way, Sue thinks you should marry your dog.
- JAYMA MAYS HAS AN INCREDIBLE VOICE ♥♥♥ I figured she wouldn't, since she's portraying a non-Glee Club role, but... wow. :D
- Will, stop falling in love with Emma. It will make everything awkward.
- Oh the things we do for masculinity. Sigh.
- Oh the seven-11 product placement.
- KURT! He took one [a slushie] for the team. It's a good thing he's in love with Finn.
Overall, a very good show, but they need to play down the heteronormativity and the offensive pop songs, as usual.

The great slushy war has begun!
Apparently, Finn and Quinn have dropped down to the bottom of the high school 'food chain' when news of their baby went public.
Emma and Ken decided they need to have their first dance, but the problem is, Emma wants My Fair Lady's "I Could Have Danced All Night" but Ken wants "The Thong Song". Yeah. So they approach will and ask him if he'd be able to work on some sort of mash-up for the two... and for dance lessons. So later, Emma shows up in Will's classroom after school for her first lesson, and they dance, but then he trips and pulls her down on top of him. It's awkward. And Ken sees.
In another story arch, Quinn and Finn visit Emma for advice on how to be cool. She says 'sunglasses' but then quickly changes her answer to something along the lines of 'the most important part is being yourselves'. In the next scene, Finn and Quinn don sunglasses and they think it's working for them, until the entire football team surrounds them and bombards them with slushies.
Apparently Noah is hot for Rachel. He had a dream that he was with her, and so they hooked up once. "Rachel was a hot Jew, and the Good Lord wanted me to get into her pants." The next day, he sings a song for Rachel - "Sweet Caroline", and it was great - but Quinn seems to think it's for her. Heh. Eventually, they start dating. It's pretty weird, really. But because of this, someone slushies him, and Rachel is stuck cleaning him up. He shows her a sensitive side that the audience didn't really know existed.
Finn's getting hate from all sides. A fight breaks out on the football field when other players openly question his leadership ability, and his masculinity. Because of what Glee Club seems to be doing to the team, Ken adds a mandatory practise at the same time as Glee rehearsal, and the boys who do both will have to make a choice. Will goes to talk to Ken about the practises, but Ken says he's sick of being 'settled for'. Ken knows that Emma is only settling for him, but he loves her enough that he doesn't care. But when it comes to football, he says they'll just have to see who's being settled for.
Noah tells Rachel he's going to choose football practise over Glee "I feel like such a bad Jew." When it came to that dreaded rehearsal, the two football players that aren't Noah and Finn showed up. And then Noah did too! But Finn never showed up, so everyone was sort of mad at him. Oh, the things
Will goes to talk to him, and he tells him that he's making the wrong choice, and he plays the 'you remind me of how I used to be' card. Good play. It worked. So Finn goes to Ken and after a little persuading, Ken cancels the mandatory practises so they four can do both.
Another dance rehearsal takes place in a bridal shop. Emma needs to make sure she can dance in her dress, so Will pops in the Karaoke version of "I Could Have Danced All Night" and tells her to sing along. Do you know how excited I got when he said that?!
A cool thing in this episode is that Sue gets a storyline, and it's really something. A man at the news station asked her out on a date, and she thinks she's in love. She even gets Will to teach her to swing dance to impress him. But just days later, she catches him making out with another woman. The jerk says, "You didn't think that we were... exclusive... did you?" So now happy-Sue is back to mean-Sue. She yells at Quinn, calling her a disgrace and forcing her off the squad. So no, that part wasn't cool.
Will goes to talk to Emma: he can't get the songs to go together, no matter how he tries. She knows. It's symbolic, obviously.
And Finn comes back! Of course. He buys everyone slushies. Quinn's in normal clothes. Wow. She says she'll have to start every day with a slushie facial, and Will says that's okay because she's got eleven friends to wash it off for her. Then they all slushie Mr. Shu.
So some other stuff!
- I feel so bad for Emma! *cry* And for Ken, too, but to a certain extent, he's getting... a little bit of what he wanted...
- Will performs "Bust A Move", and wow, can he dance!! That was really impressive. I didn't like when he made Kurt stand up and he started singing to him about some girl, but I did like how Kurt rolled his eyes and mouthed 'Oh my God' and walked away. Good for you.
- BUT! I'm pretty sick of Will singing these pop songs. They're offensive songs, and I get that it's funny for plot, but... ugh.
- GLEE WORK ON YORU LIP SYNC ITS NOT BELIEVABLE
- By the way, Sue thinks you should marry your dog.
- JAYMA MAYS HAS AN INCREDIBLE VOICE ♥♥♥ I figured she wouldn't, since she's portraying a non-Glee Club role, but... wow. :D
- Will, stop falling in love with Emma. It will make everything awkward.
- Oh the things we do for masculinity. Sigh.
- Oh the seven-11 product placement.
- KURT! He took one [a slushie] for the team. It's a good thing he's in love with Finn.
Overall, a very good show, but they need to play down the heteronormativity and the offensive pop songs, as usual.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009
Castle - When the Bough Breaks
I'm skipping Castle this week. I watched it, and it was good, but my roommate came in and talked to me for like fifteen minutes and I was very distracted. I'd like to watch it again, but that seems like an even bigger waste of my time than the way I already waste my time, and I'm just a little too stressed out for that. So I will simply post the notes I took while watching, typos and all, and leave it at that.
Castle - Season 2, Episode 5: "When the Bough Breaks". Original Air Date: 19 Oct 09
He's late so they tease him.
He's pretty distracted thinking about his upcoming launch party.
Candy wrapper.
"Mmm, kinda tastes like soap. I like it."
postcards in home
Alexis is excited to go.
Certain British spy. WHOO? I've probably never heard of him.
My roommate came in and distracted me for ten-ish minutes. Oops. Something about the kid she babysat or something.
They arrest a Czech man, the victim's ex-husband, but he thinks they were chasing him as immigration cops.
There's a woman that they didn't get to interview on their first go-around, and she says that the night of the victim's murder, she recalls seeing the victim arguing with a man; the artists' rendering looks an awful lot like someone they already know.
So they talk to this doctor - he's the husband of the woman they interviewed, the father of the kid the victim was giving candy to. Apparently, they were having an affair. But what else?
Launch party! Did you read the dedication? "To the extraordinary KB and all my friends at the 12th."
"You are extraordinary."
"can I close the deal, already?"
"What if the wife got onto the affair?"
They fight. British secret agent or new Nicky Heat novel? Hmmm...
WHAT AN AMAZING PLOT TWIST
not enough alexis in this ep.
"That was Esposito. There's been a murder. Are you coming or not?"

Oh, yeah, and guess what?? Some good news about the show!
Tomorrow? Last night's Glee. And Fringe is taking a break until 5 Nov. Yay -.-
Castle - Season 2, Episode 5: "When the Bough Breaks". Original Air Date: 19 Oct 09
He's late so they tease him.
He's pretty distracted thinking about his upcoming launch party.
Candy wrapper.
"Mmm, kinda tastes like soap. I like it."
postcards in home
Alexis is excited to go.
Certain British spy. WHOO? I've probably never heard of him.
My roommate came in and distracted me for ten-ish minutes. Oops. Something about the kid she babysat or something.
They arrest a Czech man, the victim's ex-husband, but he thinks they were chasing him as immigration cops.
There's a woman that they didn't get to interview on their first go-around, and she says that the night of the victim's murder, she recalls seeing the victim arguing with a man; the artists' rendering looks an awful lot like someone they already know.
So they talk to this doctor - he's the husband of the woman they interviewed, the father of the kid the victim was giving candy to. Apparently, they were having an affair. But what else?
Launch party! Did you read the dedication? "To the extraordinary KB and all my friends at the 12th."
"You are extraordinary."
"can I close the deal, already?"
"What if the wife got onto the affair?"
They fight. British secret agent or new Nicky Heat novel? Hmmm...
WHAT AN AMAZING PLOT TWIST
not enough alexis in this ep.
"That was Esposito. There's been a murder. Are you coming or not?"

Oh, yeah, and guess what?? Some good news about the show!
Tomorrow? Last night's Glee. And Fringe is taking a break until 5 Nov. Yay -.-
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Heroes - Tabula Rasa
House - Season 4, Episode 5: "Tabula Rasa". Original Air Date: 19 Oct 09.
This episode was called "Tabula Rasa" - because every show out there needs an episode called "Tabula Rasa". If you don't know, it means "Clean Slate", so it's symbolic.
So we left off with Hiro and Peter: Hiro appears in Peter's apartment and passes out. In the beginning of this installment, we see Hiro lying in a hospital bed with Peter at his side. Hiro thinks he's there to save Peter, but Peter thinks it's up to him to save Hiro. Oh you boys and your silly Jesus complexes... Peter takes Hiro's ability and uses it to go save Hiro's life, but not before telling Emma [the deaf woman] to talk to Hiro about her ability. She does, but all she wants is an 'off switch', even though Hiro's all for the embracing yourself as you are point of view.
Okay, now it's time for my interjection: HIRO IS SO CUTE!! ♥ :3 Yup.
Hiro's trying to prove to Emma that her powers are good, and he does a magic show for some hospital patients and staff, including making Emma 'disappear'. I think it worked :D
After the show, Hiro's back in bed and Emma tells him he needs to stay there. He tells her about his friend, Charlie, and how you have to stay strong and happy in the face of death. But then he realised he left Charlie off of his list [of wrongs to right and people to save]!!
By the end of the episode, Hiro spontaneously disappears again, which freaks Emma and Peter out, a lot.
So Peter ends up in Noah's bathroom because he hasn't teleported in a while. He explains his predicament to HRG, and Claire says that she should just give Hiro some of her blood; Noah negates this solution, saying that a brain tumour is living tissue, and Claire's regenerative power would only make the tumour grow. But he does remember a boy they 'bagged and tagged' a few years ago, named Jeremy, who had healing power [like Linderman!], so he and Peter go to pay him a visit.
They find the house that Jeremy lives in, but all the plants in the yard and the bird on the porch are dead, and the place reeks of death. When they go inside, they find the parents, dead, in their armchairs [it's pretty disturbing, lol]. Noah explains that the kid possesses not only the power to give life, but also to take it away. A very frightened Jeremy starts shooting at them with a shotgun: he wants to scare them away. When Noah finally gets close enough to talk to him, Jeremy makes a terribly conffesion: "Everything I touch... dies."
As Noah tries to convince Jeremy that this can't be true, Peter appears beside them and Jeremy shoots him from an extremely close range! NOOOO PETER WTF NOOOOO!!! Noah pleads with Jeremy to save Peter's life, and after much convincing, he finally does. Yay! :D
In the end, Peter absorbs Jeremy's power so he can bring it back to heal Hiro. Noah is very sweet with Jeremy because he feels he let him down way back when, so he fixes the house to make it look like the parents died of Carbon Monoxide poisoning.
But, when Peter gets back, Hiro's already vanished!
While all of this is happening, Nathlar is still in the hands of the carnies. Samuel Sullivan, the guy I've been calling King Carnie [at least to myself, lol], calls Nathlar 'Sylar', but he doesn't respond. He says that according to the police, his name is Gabriel. When Samuel asks him to take a deep breath and tell him the first name that comes to mind, Nathlar says, "Call me Nathan." Samuel is confused. But, for all his niceness, Samuel obviously has plans for Nathlar, and he's using Lydia to pull him in to the community.
But here's a question: if we really do get the 'real' Sylar back, won't the whole carnival be screwed?
Samuel Sullivan wants Sylar's memories to come back to him; memories are coming back to Nathlar, but they're not his. They're Nathan's. He remembers flying planes, shaking a lot of hands, and things like that. So a carnie named Damien takes Nathlar into the house of mirrors to 'show him who he really is' or something. Tripppyyyyy. I love mirror house scenes [in anything] because they're so... weird.. haha. Well, Damien's eyes do that Isaac Mendez painting thing and he passes it on to Nathlar... And now, all his horrible memories are being played out before him in the mirrors. He sort of flips out. I would too. I mean, can you imagine? Watching yourself kill your mother and then several other innocent people? So Nathlar's still flipping out, and we get to remember all the worst, and it's not fun. Charlie is the last one we see before he runs out of the house and vomits in a trash can - foreshadowing for the Hiro story arch?
So Samuel is a jerk: he invited the cop who was chasing Nathlar to the carnival with a pair of free tickets, and when he talks to the cop, he says no he's never seen that man before. But then he finds Nathlar and tells him that something must be done. So Nathlar goes back in to the house of mirrors to 'take care of' the cop; the cop pulls his gun on him, but Nathlar doesn't want to hurt him, he just can't control his Sith Lightning! He zaps him, but he wasn't going to kill him [didn't look like it, any way; he might have], so Edgar, the knives guy, comes in and ...saves the day? Well he kills the cop, anyway. That night, everyone welcomes Nathlar into the carnie family with hugs and dinner.
For the last bit, we see Hiro, in his hospital robe, peering into the diner window at Charlie! [I was a big fan of that character, and now I'm super excited!]
I liked how we understand the relationship between Edgar and Lydia. They are frequently in the same shot, and sometimes Edgar's face frames a shot of Lydia flirting with Sylar.
I did not like Samuel's line "Boys will be boys". UGH. Nathlar and Edgar spar, and Lydia asks Samuel if he's going to stop this, and that's his reply. And it's a stupid, sexist reply. Sorry. But it is.

Hiro The Magnificent!
This episode was called "Tabula Rasa" - because every show out there needs an episode called "Tabula Rasa". If you don't know, it means "Clean Slate", so it's symbolic.
So we left off with Hiro and Peter: Hiro appears in Peter's apartment and passes out. In the beginning of this installment, we see Hiro lying in a hospital bed with Peter at his side. Hiro thinks he's there to save Peter, but Peter thinks it's up to him to save Hiro. Oh you boys and your silly Jesus complexes... Peter takes Hiro's ability and uses it to go save Hiro's life, but not before telling Emma [the deaf woman] to talk to Hiro about her ability. She does, but all she wants is an 'off switch', even though Hiro's all for the embracing yourself as you are point of view.
Okay, now it's time for my interjection: HIRO IS SO CUTE!! ♥ :3 Yup.
Hiro's trying to prove to Emma that her powers are good, and he does a magic show for some hospital patients and staff, including making Emma 'disappear'. I think it worked :D
After the show, Hiro's back in bed and Emma tells him he needs to stay there. He tells her about his friend, Charlie, and how you have to stay strong and happy in the face of death. But then he realised he left Charlie off of his list [of wrongs to right and people to save]!!
By the end of the episode, Hiro spontaneously disappears again, which freaks Emma and Peter out, a lot.
So Peter ends up in Noah's bathroom because he hasn't teleported in a while. He explains his predicament to HRG, and Claire says that she should just give Hiro some of her blood; Noah negates this solution, saying that a brain tumour is living tissue, and Claire's regenerative power would only make the tumour grow. But he does remember a boy they 'bagged and tagged' a few years ago, named Jeremy, who had healing power [like Linderman!], so he and Peter go to pay him a visit.
They find the house that Jeremy lives in, but all the plants in the yard and the bird on the porch are dead, and the place reeks of death. When they go inside, they find the parents, dead, in their armchairs [it's pretty disturbing, lol]. Noah explains that the kid possesses not only the power to give life, but also to take it away. A very frightened Jeremy starts shooting at them with a shotgun: he wants to scare them away. When Noah finally gets close enough to talk to him, Jeremy makes a terribly conffesion: "Everything I touch... dies."
As Noah tries to convince Jeremy that this can't be true, Peter appears beside them and Jeremy shoots him from an extremely close range! NOOOO PETER WTF NOOOOO!!! Noah pleads with Jeremy to save Peter's life, and after much convincing, he finally does. Yay! :D
In the end, Peter absorbs Jeremy's power so he can bring it back to heal Hiro. Noah is very sweet with Jeremy because he feels he let him down way back when, so he fixes the house to make it look like the parents died of Carbon Monoxide poisoning.
But, when Peter gets back, Hiro's already vanished!
While all of this is happening, Nathlar is still in the hands of the carnies. Samuel Sullivan, the guy I've been calling King Carnie [at least to myself, lol], calls Nathlar 'Sylar', but he doesn't respond. He says that according to the police, his name is Gabriel. When Samuel asks him to take a deep breath and tell him the first name that comes to mind, Nathlar says, "Call me Nathan." Samuel is confused. But, for all his niceness, Samuel obviously has plans for Nathlar, and he's using Lydia to pull him in to the community.
But here's a question: if we really do get the 'real' Sylar back, won't the whole carnival be screwed?
Samuel Sullivan wants Sylar's memories to come back to him; memories are coming back to Nathlar, but they're not his. They're Nathan's. He remembers flying planes, shaking a lot of hands, and things like that. So a carnie named Damien takes Nathlar into the house of mirrors to 'show him who he really is' or something. Tripppyyyyy. I love mirror house scenes [in anything] because they're so... weird.. haha. Well, Damien's eyes do that Isaac Mendez painting thing and he passes it on to Nathlar... And now, all his horrible memories are being played out before him in the mirrors. He sort of flips out. I would too. I mean, can you imagine? Watching yourself kill your mother and then several other innocent people? So Nathlar's still flipping out, and we get to remember all the worst, and it's not fun. Charlie is the last one we see before he runs out of the house and vomits in a trash can - foreshadowing for the Hiro story arch?
So Samuel is a jerk: he invited the cop who was chasing Nathlar to the carnival with a pair of free tickets, and when he talks to the cop, he says no he's never seen that man before. But then he finds Nathlar and tells him that something must be done. So Nathlar goes back in to the house of mirrors to 'take care of' the cop; the cop pulls his gun on him, but Nathlar doesn't want to hurt him, he just can't control his Sith Lightning! He zaps him, but he wasn't going to kill him [didn't look like it, any way; he might have], so Edgar, the knives guy, comes in and ...saves the day? Well he kills the cop, anyway. That night, everyone welcomes Nathlar into the carnie family with hugs and dinner.
For the last bit, we see Hiro, in his hospital robe, peering into the diner window at Charlie! [I was a big fan of that character, and now I'm super excited!]
I liked how we understand the relationship between Edgar and Lydia. They are frequently in the same shot, and sometimes Edgar's face frames a shot of Lydia flirting with Sylar.
I did not like Samuel's line "Boys will be boys". UGH. Nathlar and Edgar spar, and Lydia asks Samuel if he's going to stop this, and that's his reply. And it's a stupid, sexist reply. Sorry. But it is.

Hiro The Magnificent!
House - Brave Heart
House - Season 6, Episode 6: "Brave Heart". Original Air Date: 19 Oct 09.
This episode was intense. The intro was crazy, with a police chase, some parkour, and some guy jumping off a roof. Turns out, that guy is convinced that he's going to die, since he's just turned forty and all his ancestors died of heart complications shortly after they reached that milestone. House is convinced there's nothing to find, and they look at the heart in every light possible, yet still find nothing, even when examining his son for genetic problems. So, House lets him go with some placebos.
Hours later, there's a knocking on Wilson and House's door: it's Foreman. Apparently, their guy collapsed, dead, hours after his discharge.
So they bring the body to Princeton Plainsboro's morgue and prepare to do an autopsy. In a cute, ironic twist, House picks up a saw and prepares to cut into the man's chest, but Foreman says, "You can't perform an autopsy without a license," and takes the saw. He does it himself, and they notice the way blood is coming out of the gash in the chest - it looks like the man is bleeding. But that would mean..... AND THEN THE MAN OPENS HIS EYES AND STARTS SCREAMING IN PAIN!!!
Yeah, crazy.
So the pressure's on to find out what's wrong with him. They put him on steroids for a genetic auto-immune [and lots of painkiller, btw], but nothing works. His new pain in his jaw is only getting worse, so bad that he pulls his own tooth out.
Meanwhile, Chase is struggling so hard with his decision regarding James Earl Jones. It's really hard to watch him, because he's a mess [naturally] and has no one to really turn to. At least when we see House like that, we know, oh, he's just a crazy dummie, he's always like that. It's different for Chase. You can also see how this plays itself out in his marriage. Which is crappy. And the priest at confession doesn't help.
House thinks he's going crazy again. He thinks he's hearing voices when he sleeps in Wilson's study [which used to be the bedroom]. He's not; it's really Wilson whispering to Amber at night. It's pretty sad, really. Like, boo hoo sad, not pathetic.
Finally, House figures it all out. The man has something of an aneurysm in his brain somewhere that's been growing and it causes pain and his heart to stop. They remove it and the one in the kid's head, and that story line is resolved, too.
All in all, a fun episode. It was shocking, which made it really fun to watch.
Sorry, my House stories are always smaller because I watch them live in the common room with a group of people; I watch the other shows either live on my own tv or on my computer the day after, so I take better notes.
This episode was intense. The intro was crazy, with a police chase, some parkour, and some guy jumping off a roof. Turns out, that guy is convinced that he's going to die, since he's just turned forty and all his ancestors died of heart complications shortly after they reached that milestone. House is convinced there's nothing to find, and they look at the heart in every light possible, yet still find nothing, even when examining his son for genetic problems. So, House lets him go with some placebos.
Hours later, there's a knocking on Wilson and House's door: it's Foreman. Apparently, their guy collapsed, dead, hours after his discharge.
So they bring the body to Princeton Plainsboro's morgue and prepare to do an autopsy. In a cute, ironic twist, House picks up a saw and prepares to cut into the man's chest, but Foreman says, "You can't perform an autopsy without a license," and takes the saw. He does it himself, and they notice the way blood is coming out of the gash in the chest - it looks like the man is bleeding. But that would mean..... AND THEN THE MAN OPENS HIS EYES AND STARTS SCREAMING IN PAIN!!!
Yeah, crazy.
So the pressure's on to find out what's wrong with him. They put him on steroids for a genetic auto-immune [and lots of painkiller, btw], but nothing works. His new pain in his jaw is only getting worse, so bad that he pulls his own tooth out.
Meanwhile, Chase is struggling so hard with his decision regarding James Earl Jones. It's really hard to watch him, because he's a mess [naturally] and has no one to really turn to. At least when we see House like that, we know, oh, he's just a crazy dummie, he's always like that. It's different for Chase. You can also see how this plays itself out in his marriage. Which is crappy. And the priest at confession doesn't help.
House thinks he's going crazy again. He thinks he's hearing voices when he sleeps in Wilson's study [which used to be the bedroom]. He's not; it's really Wilson whispering to Amber at night. It's pretty sad, really. Like, boo hoo sad, not pathetic.
Finally, House figures it all out. The man has something of an aneurysm in his brain somewhere that's been growing and it causes pain and his heart to stop. They remove it and the one in the kid's head, and that story line is resolved, too.
All in all, a fun episode. It was shocking, which made it really fun to watch.
Sorry, my House stories are always smaller because I watch them live in the common room with a group of people; I watch the other shows either live on my own tv or on my computer the day after, so I take better notes.

Fringe - Dream Logic
Fringe - Season 2, Episode 5: "Dream Logic". Original Air Date: 15 Oct 09.
This is a long summary lol.
The episode starts with Olivia visiting Sam Weiss in the bowling alley and saying "Thank you". It's obvious that she's still very sad about Charlie. I remember a line that Peter said in the first season, and it's true: Olivia doesn't let anyone help her :(
But Sam says he wants to help her: "Hope you like red."
In Seattle, a man is heading to work, but he's freaking out because he sees everybody as zombies! Or something equally as scary. He gets to a meeting room [which reminds me of a meeting room in the first season, with the killer butterflies] to talk to his boss, who is apparently really angry. His eyes are moving super fast after he beats his boss's head in with his briefcase: REM.
Peter and Walter finally move into their own place, and Walter starts setting up his bed in the middle of the living room, which Peter thinks is weird. "Don't worry son, I know what you're thinking. I promise to wear my shorts to bed so that if you bring any young ladies home there won't be any embarrassing moments." LOL! Astrid comes over with some food for Walter, and also a case file for Peter. "Pack a bag, Walter, we're going to Seattle."
The team gets to the hospital where they're keeping the guy, Greg Leder, and the man who met them there informs them that they've "only just managed to wake him up," and that he's been sleeping heavily for several hours, "as if he was drugged." Walter informs Peter that he doesn't want to go in there. Olivia starts to question Greg: apparently he doesn't remember anything between parking his car after lunch and being restrained by coworkers on the meeting room floor. But he did think the office was infiltrated with demons. Suddenly, he starts seizing, or, what looks like seizing, and his heart rate is going through the roof; his hair starts turning silver, but he doesn't look old, and then he dies. What?
Walter starts to examine the body, but he notices that it's still warm - it should be considerably cooler by now. Walter tells a doctor that it appears the man died of acute exhaustion, which pretty much makes no sense, because, as far as we're aware, human beings can't die of that ["But it has been documented in rats," says Walter]. He fears that they've left the oven on at home, which Peter says is nonsense because they never even turned it on in the first place. Apparently this weird behaviour's been happening all day. The hospital and the city remind Walter of St. Clair's, so he wants to go home ASAP. Peter arranges it for him.
"No, at any given time there's a good chance that there's about a half a dozen psychotrophic drugs in his system, so drinking? It's not a good idea."
As they're sending Walter off, Olivia asks the doctor for a business card, which isn't weird, but she also asked a cab driver for one, too.
"The turbulence over Ohio was like being in the belly of a seizing whale. I screamed like a little girl!"
Back in the lab in Boston, it's nearly midnight, but Walter wants to get to work right away. Apparently they had no trouble bringing the body bag home, but their luggage was detained. Walter discovers nine surgical stitches on the back of the neck, right by the brain stem, which there should really be no reason for. "That's okay. In fact, you can assist us in removing his scalp!"
Olivia questions the wife of the dead man, and aside from being a little more tired than usual, nothing unusual was going on. But Peter thinks differently: he found a bunch of books about sleep in their living room, and the wife admits that Greg used to sleep walk, sometimes he even cooked entire meals in his sleep, but he was never violent, and he had been cured, having not had an episode in at least six months. Peter asks to see his sleep journal.
Peter brings the sleep journal over to Olivia's hotel room. Apparently the dead man had been averaging eight to ten hours of sleep [so how did he die of exhaustion?]. At least once a week, he dreamed of demons, but a couple of months ago, they stopped. At this point, we learn a little more of Peter's backstory, that he used to suffer from terrible nightmares as a child and that it was one of the only times Walter's presence was ever positive, but then Olivia gets a text, and apparently there's been another incident.
A woman died driving home, on the phone with her husband to let him know she'd be home soon, but she had said that she saw a monster! Walter's looking through Greg's brain and he finds what looks like a computer chip in the thalamus, and calls Peter, who finds the same sort of stitches on the woman's neck!
Nina Sharpe at Massive Dynamic sheds some light on the subject: it's a bio-chip, a BCI, a brain-computer interface, which works a lot like a pace-maker, regulating sleep cycles. Apparently a researcher back in Seattle has been working on similar projects, and he's a 'genius' named Laxmeesh Nayak.
Peter's hypothesis is that someone would want to target Nayak's work for purposes of mind control. Of course, we knew that from the beginning of the episode, and have been waiting patiently for the team to figure it out on their own. Walter says that it's possible, but modifying the chips would take a lot of trial and error - if only he had a live specimen, but he promised Peter no students... oh if only you could have seen the way he eyed that federal agent... As the federal agent is heading out, and Walter gets him to sniff something, and then he passes out. Heh.
Walter doesn't implant the chip into the agent's head, but he's figured out a different way to try the mind control process. He hooks himself up to the agent and starts making silly noises [*ahem*], and says "Either green unicorns just raced across the lab, or I accidentally took some LSD." But then he concludes it's not drugs, it's something else entirely.
Olivia finds Dr. Nayak and tells him about the two dead people. He confirms that they were patients of his and that they were implanted with these chips as part of a clinical trial, along with eighty other people. They head to his office for the names, only to find it ransacked. The main computer server is gone, and that's got all the data on it. Olivia takes his business card, too, by the way.
Nayak could only remember twenty-six patients, and he's going to remove all of their chips, but that still leaves fifty plus people still at risk.
Olivia's still upset about Charlie's death. Peter tells her that it's okay, not her fault, but she gets really upset and starts crying [and then runs away before she can be vulnerable in front of Peter].
We see a guy at a computer, and he looks a lot like Nayak's research assistant. He's working with another person - we don't see this one, but he's sitting in a chair, apparently drugged, and connected to machines. A woman in a restaurant starts hallucinating that a fellow cook is roasting severed limbs. She wields a knife and approaches him, but that is all we see.
Back at the clinic, Nayak is removing chips from many patients' brains, and Olivia gets a call from Sam Weiss. He's the one who asked her to collect business cards of everyone she saw wearing red. He has her circle one letter in every name [first and last], and then write down all those letters on a piece of paper, and unscramble them.
Broyles calls and he says the back-up server's been wiped, but it doesn't look like a hack. It would appear to be someone in the clinic.... hmm... But Nayak is sure that none of his employees would do something like that.
Apparently, there's been another attack: it's the woman in the restaurant. Peter and Olivia decide it's time to put in a public service announcement. That's when Nayak mentions that Zack Miller, the lab assistant, skipped work today and hasn't been answering his phone. The duo goes to his home and finds Zack, dead and seated inside a television cabinet. Dr. Nayak finds a letter at his work that says stop talking to the feds, or the same thing's going to happen to him as to Zack.
Nayak gives the note to Peter and Olivia, and they say they'll set him up with a protective detail. But after they leave, he dials a mysterious phone number and says "I told them" and asks to just be left alone.
Walter thinks the chips aren't mind control, they're transmitting data. They're "stealing dreams" - they're being sent before they can processed by the brain, which explains why the first victim stopped having dreams altogether, and then the brain never gets an opportunity to recharge. And these chips can also turn on a dream-like state in the wearer. But why? Well apparently it's quite the rush, so they must be dealing with an addict, or slave, or just general dream junkie.
Olivia's step-father was a drunk and she remembered there were two different personalities within him, like Jekyl & Hyde. She thinks that Nayak is both characters in this case. And it sort of looks like she'd be right. His druggie personality is what's causing all this trouble, and his sober personality seems to be innocent. We seem him lock into a pilot's consciousness at take-off, and the pilot starts freaking out, and prepares to fly them into a boat. The feds show up at Nayak's home, and Peter tries to shut down the programme, but to no avail. Finally, Olivia shoots the computer, and the pilot wakes up, saving the small plane and all its passengers. But when they look at Nayak, he's dead.
Peter thinks Nayak's final move here was his own way of putting a stop to things, because perhaps he wasn't aware of what his 'evil' self was doing, until now.
Olivia visits Charlie's grave and leaves flowers, and then gets back to her little word puzzle. It spells out "You're gonna be fine," the first thing Charlie ever told her. Spooky~
Peter has a dream: he's little, he sees his father and says, "Dad, what's wrong?" and then screams, but wakes up. There was a poster in his room that said "Challenger Mission 11 / June 28, 1984". Enjoy figuring that one out ;D [Hint: alternate universe Peter.]
Why do ALL Indian characters have to have Indian accents? >>;;
This episode had very little to do with the plot of the rest of the show, concering the ZFT and the soldiers and stuff. It was sort of refreshing, and very fun.
And the glyphs spell out: BETRAY
This is a long summary lol.
The episode starts with Olivia visiting Sam Weiss in the bowling alley and saying "Thank you". It's obvious that she's still very sad about Charlie. I remember a line that Peter said in the first season, and it's true: Olivia doesn't let anyone help her :(
But Sam says he wants to help her: "Hope you like red."
In Seattle, a man is heading to work, but he's freaking out because he sees everybody as zombies! Or something equally as scary. He gets to a meeting room [which reminds me of a meeting room in the first season, with the killer butterflies] to talk to his boss, who is apparently really angry. His eyes are moving super fast after he beats his boss's head in with his briefcase: REM.
Peter and Walter finally move into their own place, and Walter starts setting up his bed in the middle of the living room, which Peter thinks is weird. "Don't worry son, I know what you're thinking. I promise to wear my shorts to bed so that if you bring any young ladies home there won't be any embarrassing moments." LOL! Astrid comes over with some food for Walter, and also a case file for Peter. "Pack a bag, Walter, we're going to Seattle."
The team gets to the hospital where they're keeping the guy, Greg Leder, and the man who met them there informs them that they've "only just managed to wake him up," and that he's been sleeping heavily for several hours, "as if he was drugged." Walter informs Peter that he doesn't want to go in there. Olivia starts to question Greg: apparently he doesn't remember anything between parking his car after lunch and being restrained by coworkers on the meeting room floor. But he did think the office was infiltrated with demons. Suddenly, he starts seizing, or, what looks like seizing, and his heart rate is going through the roof; his hair starts turning silver, but he doesn't look old, and then he dies. What?
Walter starts to examine the body, but he notices that it's still warm - it should be considerably cooler by now. Walter tells a doctor that it appears the man died of acute exhaustion, which pretty much makes no sense, because, as far as we're aware, human beings can't die of that ["But it has been documented in rats," says Walter]. He fears that they've left the oven on at home, which Peter says is nonsense because they never even turned it on in the first place. Apparently this weird behaviour's been happening all day. The hospital and the city remind Walter of St. Clair's, so he wants to go home ASAP. Peter arranges it for him.
"No, at any given time there's a good chance that there's about a half a dozen psychotrophic drugs in his system, so drinking? It's not a good idea."
As they're sending Walter off, Olivia asks the doctor for a business card, which isn't weird, but she also asked a cab driver for one, too.
"The turbulence over Ohio was like being in the belly of a seizing whale. I screamed like a little girl!"
Back in the lab in Boston, it's nearly midnight, but Walter wants to get to work right away. Apparently they had no trouble bringing the body bag home, but their luggage was detained. Walter discovers nine surgical stitches on the back of the neck, right by the brain stem, which there should really be no reason for. "That's okay. In fact, you can assist us in removing his scalp!"
Olivia questions the wife of the dead man, and aside from being a little more tired than usual, nothing unusual was going on. But Peter thinks differently: he found a bunch of books about sleep in their living room, and the wife admits that Greg used to sleep walk, sometimes he even cooked entire meals in his sleep, but he was never violent, and he had been cured, having not had an episode in at least six months. Peter asks to see his sleep journal.
Peter brings the sleep journal over to Olivia's hotel room. Apparently the dead man had been averaging eight to ten hours of sleep [so how did he die of exhaustion?]. At least once a week, he dreamed of demons, but a couple of months ago, they stopped. At this point, we learn a little more of Peter's backstory, that he used to suffer from terrible nightmares as a child and that it was one of the only times Walter's presence was ever positive, but then Olivia gets a text, and apparently there's been another incident.
A woman died driving home, on the phone with her husband to let him know she'd be home soon, but she had said that she saw a monster! Walter's looking through Greg's brain and he finds what looks like a computer chip in the thalamus, and calls Peter, who finds the same sort of stitches on the woman's neck!
Nina Sharpe at Massive Dynamic sheds some light on the subject: it's a bio-chip, a BCI, a brain-computer interface, which works a lot like a pace-maker, regulating sleep cycles. Apparently a researcher back in Seattle has been working on similar projects, and he's a 'genius' named Laxmeesh Nayak.
Peter's hypothesis is that someone would want to target Nayak's work for purposes of mind control. Of course, we knew that from the beginning of the episode, and have been waiting patiently for the team to figure it out on their own. Walter says that it's possible, but modifying the chips would take a lot of trial and error - if only he had a live specimen, but he promised Peter no students... oh if only you could have seen the way he eyed that federal agent... As the federal agent is heading out, and Walter gets him to sniff something, and then he passes out. Heh.
Walter doesn't implant the chip into the agent's head, but he's figured out a different way to try the mind control process. He hooks himself up to the agent and starts making silly noises [*ahem*], and says "Either green unicorns just raced across the lab, or I accidentally took some LSD." But then he concludes it's not drugs, it's something else entirely.
Olivia finds Dr. Nayak and tells him about the two dead people. He confirms that they were patients of his and that they were implanted with these chips as part of a clinical trial, along with eighty other people. They head to his office for the names, only to find it ransacked. The main computer server is gone, and that's got all the data on it. Olivia takes his business card, too, by the way.
Nayak could only remember twenty-six patients, and he's going to remove all of their chips, but that still leaves fifty plus people still at risk.
Olivia's still upset about Charlie's death. Peter tells her that it's okay, not her fault, but she gets really upset and starts crying [and then runs away before she can be vulnerable in front of Peter].
We see a guy at a computer, and he looks a lot like Nayak's research assistant. He's working with another person - we don't see this one, but he's sitting in a chair, apparently drugged, and connected to machines. A woman in a restaurant starts hallucinating that a fellow cook is roasting severed limbs. She wields a knife and approaches him, but that is all we see.
Back at the clinic, Nayak is removing chips from many patients' brains, and Olivia gets a call from Sam Weiss. He's the one who asked her to collect business cards of everyone she saw wearing red. He has her circle one letter in every name [first and last], and then write down all those letters on a piece of paper, and unscramble them.
Broyles calls and he says the back-up server's been wiped, but it doesn't look like a hack. It would appear to be someone in the clinic.... hmm... But Nayak is sure that none of his employees would do something like that.
Apparently, there's been another attack: it's the woman in the restaurant. Peter and Olivia decide it's time to put in a public service announcement. That's when Nayak mentions that Zack Miller, the lab assistant, skipped work today and hasn't been answering his phone. The duo goes to his home and finds Zack, dead and seated inside a television cabinet. Dr. Nayak finds a letter at his work that says stop talking to the feds, or the same thing's going to happen to him as to Zack.
Nayak gives the note to Peter and Olivia, and they say they'll set him up with a protective detail. But after they leave, he dials a mysterious phone number and says "I told them" and asks to just be left alone.
Walter thinks the chips aren't mind control, they're transmitting data. They're "stealing dreams" - they're being sent before they can processed by the brain, which explains why the first victim stopped having dreams altogether, and then the brain never gets an opportunity to recharge. And these chips can also turn on a dream-like state in the wearer. But why? Well apparently it's quite the rush, so they must be dealing with an addict, or slave, or just general dream junkie.
Olivia's step-father was a drunk and she remembered there were two different personalities within him, like Jekyl & Hyde. She thinks that Nayak is both characters in this case. And it sort of looks like she'd be right. His druggie personality is what's causing all this trouble, and his sober personality seems to be innocent. We seem him lock into a pilot's consciousness at take-off, and the pilot starts freaking out, and prepares to fly them into a boat. The feds show up at Nayak's home, and Peter tries to shut down the programme, but to no avail. Finally, Olivia shoots the computer, and the pilot wakes up, saving the small plane and all its passengers. But when they look at Nayak, he's dead.
Peter thinks Nayak's final move here was his own way of putting a stop to things, because perhaps he wasn't aware of what his 'evil' self was doing, until now.
Olivia visits Charlie's grave and leaves flowers, and then gets back to her little word puzzle. It spells out "You're gonna be fine," the first thing Charlie ever told her. Spooky~
Peter has a dream: he's little, he sees his father and says, "Dad, what's wrong?" and then screams, but wakes up. There was a poster in his room that said "Challenger Mission 11 / June 28, 1984". Enjoy figuring that one out ;D [Hint: alternate universe Peter.]
Why do ALL Indian characters have to have Indian accents? >>;;
This episode had very little to do with the plot of the rest of the show, concering the ZFT and the soldiers and stuff. It was sort of refreshing, and very fun.
And the glyphs spell out: BETRAY

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Glee - Throwdown
Glee - Season 1, Episode 7: "Throwdown". Original air date: 14 Oct 09.
In this episode, Sue is still on a war path to destroy Glee Club from the inside out. She separates the group and takes all the minorities under her wing, leaving Shu with the well-adjusted white kids. They're at war. Sue gives her group an R&B song, and, oh yay, Mercedes has a song! She never gets to sing, but she has a great voice.
For retribution, Will flunks Sue's Cheerios. He says that "Most of your Cheerios are functionally illiterate!" [To which she replies "So what?!"]. With them failing Spanish, they can't be on the cheer team. Uh-ohh... Sue's going mad, but the principal shuts her down. He says that he doesn't care about her bribe and that she's being crazy and it's time to stop.
Meanwhile, at home, Teri's baby is *gasp* still not there. Except one little problem: Quinn's baby is a girl, but Teri promised Will a boy. Furthermore, Will really wants to go to Teri's next doctor appointment; he wants to be involved in his kid's life from the start, so he schedules an appointment. What will Teri do? Well, she bribes the doctor to fake an ultrasound and say that he made a mistake in the initial reading, and that the kid is a girl. That scene in the office was funny, and at the end, it was very touching, when Will started crying with joy.
The dorky boy who runs a gossip blog is threatening to run a story about Quinn, Finn, and Rachel, unless Rachel gives him a pair of her panties. To save herself and them, she complies. But, thanks to Sue, he runs it any way. The end was really touching, though. There was a scene in which Rachel told Quinn that, even though they're 'enemies' she's there for her. Then, there was a group number, and it was very sweet.
Gripe? They shouldn't use auto-tune on songs that are supposed to be "live". It makes the lip-sync even more unconvincing. And a cappella and glee groups are supposed to be about the natural, fresh sound. And I hate the way that in a show about high school, if you're a cheerleader, you wear your uniform 24/7. Seriously?
Some fun quotes:
"This meeting doesn't end until I see bodies touching."
"Let me break it down for youuu: NOBODY CARES!"
"...but that's no excuse for treating you like some half-priced hooker in Amsterdam's red light district."
Oh, and hey! You might notice that this doesn't have the "I should be Studying" tag! That's because I actually finished all my homework before dinner and have absolutely nothing to do, yay!
Coming Soon: Two episodes of Fringe, House, Castle, and Heroes!
In this episode, Sue is still on a war path to destroy Glee Club from the inside out. She separates the group and takes all the minorities under her wing, leaving Shu with the well-adjusted white kids. They're at war. Sue gives her group an R&B song, and, oh yay, Mercedes has a song! She never gets to sing, but she has a great voice.
For retribution, Will flunks Sue's Cheerios. He says that "Most of your Cheerios are functionally illiterate!" [To which she replies "So what?!"]. With them failing Spanish, they can't be on the cheer team. Uh-ohh... Sue's going mad, but the principal shuts her down. He says that he doesn't care about her bribe and that she's being crazy and it's time to stop.
Meanwhile, at home, Teri's baby is *gasp* still not there. Except one little problem: Quinn's baby is a girl, but Teri promised Will a boy. Furthermore, Will really wants to go to Teri's next doctor appointment; he wants to be involved in his kid's life from the start, so he schedules an appointment. What will Teri do? Well, she bribes the doctor to fake an ultrasound and say that he made a mistake in the initial reading, and that the kid is a girl. That scene in the office was funny, and at the end, it was very touching, when Will started crying with joy.
The dorky boy who runs a gossip blog is threatening to run a story about Quinn, Finn, and Rachel, unless Rachel gives him a pair of her panties. To save herself and them, she complies. But, thanks to Sue, he runs it any way. The end was really touching, though. There was a scene in which Rachel told Quinn that, even though they're 'enemies' she's there for her. Then, there was a group number, and it was very sweet.
Gripe? They shouldn't use auto-tune on songs that are supposed to be "live". It makes the lip-sync even more unconvincing. And a cappella and glee groups are supposed to be about the natural, fresh sound. And I hate the way that in a show about high school, if you're a cheerleader, you wear your uniform 24/7. Seriously?
Some fun quotes:
"This meeting doesn't end until I see bodies touching."
"Let me break it down for youuu: NOBODY CARES!"
"...but that's no excuse for treating you like some half-priced hooker in Amsterdam's red light district."
Oh, and hey! You might notice that this doesn't have the "I should be Studying" tag! That's because I actually finished all my homework before dinner and have absolutely nothing to do, yay!
Coming Soon: Two episodes of Fringe, House, Castle, and Heroes!

Sunday, October 18, 2009
Castle - "Fool Me Once".
Castle - Season 2, Episode 4: "Fool Me Once". Original air date: 12 Oct 09.
The episode starts with a bang, as usual, when a man on his way to the North Pole broadcasting to a class of children is murdered on camera. Turns out the man was running his "North Pole expedition" from his apartment in NYC, after conning a few private schools out of a lot of money.
Beckett is pushing Castle's buttons, and he says he won't let it get to him... but oh it gets to him. She says she has 'plans,' which Castle assumes to mean 'date,' but we see her hop into a relaxing looking bubble bath with a glass of wine and Castle's new book. Next day in the office, she's playing games with him.
Alexis has a hot, new violin teacher, who has her father quite nervous, but his mother is perfectly okay with it. Always the voice of reason, that woman. Well, Castle starts freaking out about Dillon, which leads him to an epiphany about the victim's fiancée's father, which leads them down that investigative path.
But when they approach the father, he reveals that he knew all about Fletcher's con business because he'd hired a P.I. to follow him for a week or so. The team goes to the P.I. to see the photos, and they find one with the elementary school teacher from the beginning of the episode, so they go back to him. The teacher says Fletcher has a partner and he points her out in the photo, and it's Elise, Fletcher's fiancée who was quite insistent that her betrothed was not a con artist. So now we've come full circle, and Castle asks, with good grammar, "Who's conning whom?"
Well apparently Elise thinks that Fletcher was a CIA agent. But - is her lead legit or is it just another lie he told her? Castle knows a guy, and they check out this lead - he was not in the CIA.
Meanwhile, Alexis is freaking out because of her father freaking out. She yells at him for checking up on Dillon - it's always interesting to see how his cases take shape in his family life - and she tells him that she's a good girl and she's in high school, which is "the Wild West of hormones." Well played, Alexis.
They go back to Elise, to tell her that her fiancé was not in the CIA, but she has even more shocking news for them: Fletcher's alive.
"But if Fletcher's alive, who's the dead guy in our morgue?"
"I hate this case!" "I know, isn't it great?"
They find the engagement albums for Elise and Steve, and they figure out that Susan was Fletcher's con partner, naming her as suspect because she stood to lose a lot of money if Fletcher really was changing his ways. They shout, "The con is still on!" and rush to stop Susan.
They apprehend Susan, and all is well. Except for Elise, because her fiancé is really still dead.
Beckett turns to secrecy to read Castle's book, hiding in the bathroom, but he surprises her in there [hahaha], and he resolves things with his daughter.
Some quotes I enjoyed:
"That man could sell sand to a camel."
"Oh now who's the sucker .... [awkward silence]... Sir."
"Shut the front door."
The episode starts with a bang, as usual, when a man on his way to the North Pole broadcasting to a class of children is murdered on camera. Turns out the man was running his "North Pole expedition" from his apartment in NYC, after conning a few private schools out of a lot of money.
Beckett is pushing Castle's buttons, and he says he won't let it get to him... but oh it gets to him. She says she has 'plans,' which Castle assumes to mean 'date,' but we see her hop into a relaxing looking bubble bath with a glass of wine and Castle's new book. Next day in the office, she's playing games with him.
Alexis has a hot, new violin teacher, who has her father quite nervous, but his mother is perfectly okay with it. Always the voice of reason, that woman. Well, Castle starts freaking out about Dillon, which leads him to an epiphany about the victim's fiancée's father, which leads them down that investigative path.
But when they approach the father, he reveals that he knew all about Fletcher's con business because he'd hired a P.I. to follow him for a week or so. The team goes to the P.I. to see the photos, and they find one with the elementary school teacher from the beginning of the episode, so they go back to him. The teacher says Fletcher has a partner and he points her out in the photo, and it's Elise, Fletcher's fiancée who was quite insistent that her betrothed was not a con artist. So now we've come full circle, and Castle asks, with good grammar, "Who's conning whom?"
Well apparently Elise thinks that Fletcher was a CIA agent. But - is her lead legit or is it just another lie he told her? Castle knows a guy, and they check out this lead - he was not in the CIA.
Meanwhile, Alexis is freaking out because of her father freaking out. She yells at him for checking up on Dillon - it's always interesting to see how his cases take shape in his family life - and she tells him that she's a good girl and she's in high school, which is "the Wild West of hormones." Well played, Alexis.
They go back to Elise, to tell her that her fiancé was not in the CIA, but she has even more shocking news for them: Fletcher's alive.
"But if Fletcher's alive, who's the dead guy in our morgue?"
"I hate this case!" "I know, isn't it great?"
They find the engagement albums for Elise and Steve, and they figure out that Susan was Fletcher's con partner, naming her as suspect because she stood to lose a lot of money if Fletcher really was changing his ways. They shout, "The con is still on!" and rush to stop Susan.
They apprehend Susan, and all is well. Except for Elise, because her fiancé is really still dead.
Beckett turns to secrecy to read Castle's book, hiding in the bathroom, but he surprises her in there [hahaha], and he resolves things with his daughter.
Some quotes I enjoyed:
"That man could sell sand to a camel."
"Oh now who's the sucker .... [awkward silence]... Sir."
"Shut the front door."

Saturday, October 17, 2009
Heroes - "Hysterical Blindness".
Heroes - Season 4, Episode 4: "Hysterical Blindness". Original air date: 12 Oct 09.
The focus of this episode is mostly on Claire, Peter, the carnies, and Sylar.
Sylar can't remember anything at all, and he was picked up by the police. Eventually, he was ID'd as a murderer and he has to escape, which is when he discovers his powers. Claire has to deal with a stalkerish roommate, but Invisibitch, as Vigg calls sorority girl Rebecca, is making it seem a lot worse than it really is. Gretchen, on the other hand, isn't trying to kill any one who gets close to Claire, she's just crushing real hard. Turns out Rebecca is with the carnies, and she's trying to 'push' Claire to join them, but Sylar gets there first.
And then there's Peter and his deaf friend who sees music. Poor Peter: he's been feeling so estranged from everybody lately, and he's finally acting on some advice to reconnect with his family, but all his mother can think about is Nathlar [makes sense, since he's been missing and all, but still, poor Peter :( ]. He saves the deaf woman from being hit by a bus and absorbs her power, and that's when he can start to forge a connexion with her. I liked that story-line. It's cute, and I feel bad for the deaf woman, and I can't wait to see where that goes. The episode ends with Hiro showing up and then passing out in Peter's apartment! ><;; Claire said, "I have been chasing normal life forever" lol something tells me it won't be so normal for long [and by the end of the episode, I'm pretty much proven right].
I'm really excited for the Sylar story arch, and, well, all of them. I can't wait to see what happens to everybody, to meet new characters, and to see Invisibitch get hers [something tells me that will take a while]. This is the season we've been waiting for. No joke. Start watching.
**I'm naming the episode numbers by the "Chapter __" in the beginning of each episode. That two-hour season premiere screws it all up.
The focus of this episode is mostly on Claire, Peter, the carnies, and Sylar.
Sylar can't remember anything at all, and he was picked up by the police. Eventually, he was ID'd as a murderer and he has to escape, which is when he discovers his powers. Claire has to deal with a stalkerish roommate, but Invisibitch, as Vigg calls sorority girl Rebecca, is making it seem a lot worse than it really is. Gretchen, on the other hand, isn't trying to kill any one who gets close to Claire, she's just crushing real hard. Turns out Rebecca is with the carnies, and she's trying to 'push' Claire to join them, but Sylar gets there first.
And then there's Peter and his deaf friend who sees music. Poor Peter: he's been feeling so estranged from everybody lately, and he's finally acting on some advice to reconnect with his family, but all his mother can think about is Nathlar [makes sense, since he's been missing and all, but still, poor Peter :( ]. He saves the deaf woman from being hit by a bus and absorbs her power, and that's when he can start to forge a connexion with her. I liked that story-line. It's cute, and I feel bad for the deaf woman, and I can't wait to see where that goes. The episode ends with Hiro showing up and then passing out in Peter's apartment! ><;; Claire said, "I have been chasing normal life forever" lol something tells me it won't be so normal for long [and by the end of the episode, I'm pretty much proven right].
I'm really excited for the Sylar story arch, and, well, all of them. I can't wait to see what happens to everybody, to meet new characters, and to see Invisibitch get hers [something tells me that will take a while]. This is the season we've been waiting for. No joke. Start watching.
**I'm naming the episode numbers by the "Chapter __" in the beginning of each episode. That two-hour season premiere screws it all up.

House - "Instant Karma".
House - Season 6, Episode 4: "Instant Karma". Original air date: 12 Oct 09.
In this episode, Foreman and Chase have to own up to the death of James Earl Jones in the previous episode, while treating a young boy who seems to have no hope. The father of the boy is distraught, fearing that his financial success has lead to his son's immenent death: karma. In one fell swish of the pen, he signs away his entire life, every dollar, and then House miraculously has his trademark epiphany [while making a Grinch reference!], and the day is saved.
There was a scene with Thirteen in the cab, and the cabbie gets upset with her for not trusting him. I liked that part. It's true: you never know who the other person is, and sometimes, maybe you should give them the benefit of the doubt. It really sucks how Chase has to keep lying to Cameron [I say Cameron because it really bothered me in the previous episode how he kept calling her his 'wife'. Okay, sure, they're married, but really, everyone knows who 'Cameron' is, so you don't need to say 'wife']. It was also funny when she called him Robert.
House is still the same old biting character, but not as biting, which is mildly annoying... But he has good depth and he's still as interesting as ever... if that makes sense.
Watching Chase trying to own up to his crime was so sad!
Something I've noticed: WHY DO THEY ALL HAVE FIRST NAMES FOR LAST NAMES? It's not like I'm just figuring this out now, but, Chase, Cameron, Wilson, okay, that's really it, but it's still very annoying. It makes hearing their first names even more awkward.
All in all, a nice episode, but I wasn't as connected as I was last week.
In this episode, Foreman and Chase have to own up to the death of James Earl Jones in the previous episode, while treating a young boy who seems to have no hope. The father of the boy is distraught, fearing that his financial success has lead to his son's immenent death: karma. In one fell swish of the pen, he signs away his entire life, every dollar, and then House miraculously has his trademark epiphany [while making a Grinch reference!], and the day is saved.
There was a scene with Thirteen in the cab, and the cabbie gets upset with her for not trusting him. I liked that part. It's true: you never know who the other person is, and sometimes, maybe you should give them the benefit of the doubt. It really sucks how Chase has to keep lying to Cameron [I say Cameron because it really bothered me in the previous episode how he kept calling her his 'wife'. Okay, sure, they're married, but really, everyone knows who 'Cameron' is, so you don't need to say 'wife']. It was also funny when she called him Robert.
House is still the same old biting character, but not as biting, which is mildly annoying... But he has good depth and he's still as interesting as ever... if that makes sense.
Watching Chase trying to own up to his crime was so sad!
Something I've noticed: WHY DO THEY ALL HAVE FIRST NAMES FOR LAST NAMES? It's not like I'm just figuring this out now, but, Chase, Cameron, Wilson, okay, that's really it, but it's still very annoying. It makes hearing their first names even more awkward.
All in all, a nice episode, but I wasn't as connected as I was last week.

First Post, FTW?
I've been doing a lot of review-style entries on the other blog, and I figured that people wouldn't necessarily want to read about them. Plus trying to keep up with them and post about... well... life?... would be hard, and would include multiple posts a day. For that reason, any 'review' [I am in no way a critic, nor should I really be listened to, this is all opinion] -style posts will be here.
I've only posted two TV review posts on four-12 so far. The first one can be found here and the second, here.
From now on, you can expect individual posts per show, and posts about books, movies, CDs, and other things of that sort. Yay! I'm excited [heh -.-"].
Coming soon: House, Heroes, Castle, Glee, Fringe, Brave New World, and Forget And Not Slow Down.
Even though I should be studying.
I've only posted two TV review posts on four-12 so far. The first one can be found here and the second, here.
From now on, you can expect individual posts per show, and posts about books, movies, CDs, and other things of that sort. Yay! I'm excited [heh -.-"].
Coming soon: House, Heroes, Castle, Glee, Fringe, Brave New World, and Forget And Not Slow Down.
Even though I should be studying.
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