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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!
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?!
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
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.
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.
