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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
My name is Kathleen. I'm on winter holiday after my third semestre at college. Sometimes, I wonder why I'm not British. I'm currently attempting to work my way through geekdom.
Currently reading: Nothing at the moment, hoping to start something soon Currently listening to: The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert soundtracks
