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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.
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.
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.
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 things we'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.
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.
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."
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.
