He’s Just Not That Into You: A Sappy Valentine’s Treat

I expected more from the highly anticipated and star-studded flick, He’s Just Not That Into You.  After the many commercials and promotional interviews with the ensemble cast playfully discussing all that is wrong with communication between the sexes, I was disappointed to find the film was not an edgier commentary on modern romance. Instead, it was your run of the mill romantic comedy not so cleverly disguising mediocre attempts to provide an unusual ending by trying to dismantle seemingly outdated notions such as the institution of marriage.  And while actors such as Jennifer Aniston and Ginnifer Goodwin gave some memorable performances, it was not enough to bring the movie to the level of popular culture that the book it was based on was claimed to have done.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish someone would have broken it to me years ago that real life romance does not work as smoothly as in films, that there is not always a happily ever after, or not to hang by the phone hoping that guy who has no interest will call.  Perhaps if this film had come out before savvier predecessors such as Ally McBeal or Sex and the City, it would be considered fresh and relevant.  The film was dotted with occasional epiphanies on the biological differences between men and women when it comes to love and sex, along with a rather weak reference to the 80s classic Some Kind of Wonderful, but the plot lost momentum throughout the film.  Any sort of grand statement regarding marriage and infidelity the film could have made seemed to fizzle out and give in to contradictory ideas and a relatively predictable story-line.  Insignificant subplots and pointless characters, such as Mary (Drew Barrymore), only added to the plot’s general sense of inertia.

But old-fashioned romantics, do not despair.  If you’re all out of ideas and considering this one for your Valentine’s Day weekend, there were enough cheesy happy endings and every-cloud-has-a –silver-lining moments to make this the go to movie for those who love their share of corny romantic comedies.  As for the rest of us, if you really need to see what it would be like if Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck were a couple, definitely rent this one—or even better—wait for it to come on cable.

Director:  Ken Kwapis
Release Date:  February 6, 2009
Production Company:  Flower Films

Life: For the Birds

As of this week, the dynamic detective duo of Charlie Crews and Dani Reese is no more…at least temporarily. At their latest crime scene—which consists of a guy who was poisoned and impaled on a broken broom handle in his office similar to how Dirty Harry takes out the baddie at the end of The Dead Pool—Tidwell tells Reese about an opportunity to be loaned out to the FBI for a few weeks on a special assignment. Reese, still trying to climb the department ranks, accepts. So she won’t be around for a few weeks to keep Charlie on a leash. Of course the real reason for this plot development is that Sarah Shahi is pregnant. Hopefully the showrunners will handle it better than the Moonlighting team did when Cybil Shepherd got pregnant.

The dead guy is a pigeon-loving investment banker who specializes in derivatives, a financial term that no one really understands. Charlie calls Ted to ask him to explain it, but Charlie still can’t understand it…and I can’t blame him. Ted also tells him that the bottom fell out of the derivative market, so this guy should have been on skid row. Except he lived in a nice apartment and liked to plop down $6,000 a night on pricey hookers. He was clearly making his income somewhere else.

Charlie needs to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and with Reese gone, Charlie turns to a Bluetooth tech support worker in India. The problem is she won’t stay on the phone with him indefinitely, so Charlie requests his old partner Bobby to fill in for Reese. Through some good old-fashioned police work, Charlie and Bobby realize that a woman in the investment banker’s office took him out. But who was she and what was her motive?

Charlie finds out that the victim had a date set up on the night of his death with his favorite hooker, Alexa, who happened to love pigeons as much as the dead guy. But why would Alexa kill her meal ticket? That questioning gets Charlie thinking: maybe Alexa wasn’t a professional hooker that killed the investment banker but a professional hit woman! I didn’t quite get the logic leap there, but then again I’m not as creative as Charlie.

Charlie knows the pigeon thing is too much of a coincidence, so he investigates and finds out that this Alexa person was trained in pigeon breeding and caring by the premiere pigeon expert guy in L.A. So maybe she used the pigeons to get close to the victim. Charlie reasons that one of the victim’s pigeons actually belonged to Alexa, so he follows it and it leads him to a dreamy little blue house with an equally dreamy blonde on the porch. Bingo.

Charlie goes up to her and politely asks her to come down to the station with him so that they can ascertain as to whether or not she is an assassin. The woman—who calls herself Carla (maybe the Life writers were watching Burn Notice when they wrote this episode)—is surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. “Carla” can’t be identified as Alexa by witnesses at the station, but Charlie doesn’t give up. He knows she did it, even if he doesn’t know why. How he gets her and what the motive turns out to be are two more brilliant examples of how talented the writing staff is on Life.

Meanwhile, Amanda, the head of Mickey Rayborn’s security firm, tricks poor gullible Ted into letting her into Charlie’s house so she can try to find evidence proving he killed Rayborn. She takes pictures of his conspiracy wall. Not good. I have a feeling this woman is going to be a considerable fly in the ointment and monkey in the wrench for Charlie. Speaking of monkeys in the wrench, the FBI starts asking Reese all kinds of questions about Charlie, Rayborn, and her father. Is everyone out to screw Charlie over? The conspiracy continues to build.

This is a typically great episode that allows for Charlie to interact more with Tidwell, and it’s a nice change of pace to see Bobby play a bigger part in the proceedings. I’m glad the writers have kept that character around and chose not to make him part of the conspiracy, just a dim but amiable, solid cop.

Season 2, Episode 16: Hit Me Baby” (originally aired February 25, 2009)

For another view on this episode, read Betty Crocker Meets La Femme Nikita by Elma Rahman here.

For more on Life, click here.

Wednesdays at 9/8c, NBC
Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal

Lost: The Curious Case of Jeremy Bentham

I feel compelled to rant about Locke for a while. Because this started out as an amazing episode. But then it turned into an episode about Locke.

And there was a time when I looked forward to Locke-focused episodes. And, indeed, his first one was one of the show’s all-time best. But then Locke got obsessed with his no-good father, and so did the show, and I’m sorry, getting conned out of a kidney is no fun, but there are worse things in the world, you know? And for the past three seasons every Locke episode has been about how he’s obsessed with the island, and with his hatred of his father, and with the idea that he’s destined to be special, and these are not things that interest me. Locke is snarky but not funny, pathetic but not appealing, clever but not all that smart. What’s so special about that?

I don’t understand why there are people who watch this show for Locke, just like I don’t understand why there are people who watch this show for Jack. They’re my two least favorite characters, and I couldn’t care less which of them wins the battle over logic v. faith (especially now that Locke has already won it). I took Philosophy 101 freshman year and got my fill then. Lost is an adventure show, on which freaky cool stuff happens sometimes. When its characters are mysteriously good at either understanding the freaky cool stuff or making the freaky cool stuff happen (see, for example, Daniel or Ben or Desmond or Richard or Walt), that’s good. When its characters don’t care about the freaky cool stuff but are just along for the ride and trying to make the best of it, like Sawyer and Jin and, well, most of the original cast, that’s fine, because we audience folks can relate to them. But when its characters clearly don’t understand or control the freaky cool stuff and yet still act like it’s all about them, like Locke and Jack and, to a lesser degree, Juliet – that’s just boring. I don’t want to be hit over the head. This isn’t Heroes.  I’m watching Lost to have fun and to go “Whoa!” every now and then.

Speaking of going “Whoa!” the teaser this week was awesome. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The basics: Locke has landed on the island and come back to life, and he’s hanging out with last week’s debut characters, Caesar and Ilana. He’s busy trying to piece together how he got where he is, and flashing back to his experiences since he left the island. These experiences consist of going to the Oceanic Six one by one (except for Sun; he kept his promise to Jin not to contact her) and begging them to come back to the island. They all refuse. Meanwhile, Locke’s being aided by Charles Widmore, who rescues him from his traumatic move from the island to Tunisia and then provides him with a driver/executive assistant/possible vampire, the creepy Matthew Abaddon. Then Ben shows up and kills Matthew and tracks Locke down just as Locke is about to hang himself for his failure. Ben pulls his puppet strings on Locke, just like Widmore did, and as always, the super-special Locke is unable to withstand this manipulation. So then, after Ben talks Locke out of committing suicide, he strangles Locke himself.

The good:

• The teaser. The episode opens with Caesar prowling through a previously unseen room. Then Ilana comes in and talks to him for a while, and we don’t know what’s going on or where they are, and then they leave and start walking through the jungle and we see them walk right past the downed Ajira Airways plane. It doesn’t sound like much on paper, but the effect of it is to turn this show on its head in the best possible way. For once I’m hoping the mystery of who these people are and why they’re on the island doesn’t get resolved too soon.
• The scene where Locke goes to see Hurley in the mental institution is funny. Hurley, sitting outside doing a watercolor (Hurley’s mental institution looks like a fun place to be sometimes), sees Locke wheel up and immediately assumes Locke is dead and a hallucination. Then Hurley tells Locke why none of the Oceanic Six will want to go back, explaining, for example, that “Jack’s a doctor now.” Hee!
• Walt! Guess he came when I called him.  He’s now a teenager (how lucky that Malcolm David Kelley’s aging in real time matches up with the show’s timeline for once). Locke goes to see him, but doesn’t invite him back to the island, even though Walt’s been having useful-sounding prophetic dreams about Locke.

The bad:

• Between the 50s team of Ellie and Lil’ Widmore and the rest, Rousseau’s crew, the Boaties, the Desmond/Penny family, and whoever else I’m forgetting, do we really need a whole new cast of characters at this point? (Well, if Caesar et al are as cool as this episode would indicate, I suppose it can’t hurt.)
• We get one of those Jack/Locke scenes that is supposed to be really significant and at the heart of this show and symbolic of the battle between logic and fate or whatever, but that always just makes me start hitting refresh on WashingtonPost.com.
• In fact, most of the scenes with Locke and the Oceanic Six felt like filler, with lots of forced references about how all the characters think Locke is sad and pathetic. So do I, but I don’t much enjoy hearing them go on about it.
• Lots of disturbing visuals this week. First, there’s Locke undergoing an extremely painful looking medical procedure to fix his leg courtesy of some sadistic Tunisian doctors. We then get an instructional video on how to hang oneself. (I know from House that hanging is painful but it preserves the heart best for future transplant purposes; maybe Locke has a Seven Pounds-type plan in mind.) We also get a tutorial in how to clean a crime scene and make it look like a suicide. I don’t know, maybe this stuff is totally the norm if you watch a lot of CSI, but it freaks me out.

The stuff that will matter next week:

• We don’t know exactly what happened to Ajira Airways Flight 316. We see the plane sitting in the jungle, and it doesn’t look to me like it crashed too badly, and Frank the pilot was apparently okay. We do know that the Oceanic Six didn’t arrive with the rest of the passengers – they seemed to disappear during the flight. Interesting. However, Ben didn’t disappear with the Oceanic Six. He landed or crashed with the others and is being kept in their makeshift infirmary, still with that blood all over his face.
• Caesar, the glorified extra who spoke to Jack in the airport last week, seems to be the leader of a strange group that includes Ilana (Sayid’s law-enforcement escort on the flight) and a bunch of non-speaking roles who are on the island for unknown reasons. He seems really interested in the Dharma Initiative, though.
• Charles Widmore pretends to be Locke’s best friend (and maybe he really is, who knows at this point). Widmore says that back in the day, he had been a leader of the Others, but Ben tricked him into leaving the island. Now, Widmore says, Ben has done the same thing to Locke. Widmore also says there’s a war coming on the island. Oh, boy.
• I’m sure this has been discussed ad nauseam on forums I don’t read, but why is Richard not the leader of the Others? Because I think he probably actually is. And of all the power players on this show – Ben, Jacob, Widmore, Mrs. Hawking, etc – Richard is the only one I want to know more about.
• It’s unclear why exactly Ben kills Locke. It happens immediately after Locke expresses a desire to go see Eloise Hawking, but from Michael Emerson’s performance there are many ways the scene could be interpreted. He could well have walked into the room knowing he’d kill Locke eventually; maybe he just needed to get information out of him first. Or it could be more complicated than that. Ben’s motives usually don’t get explained for six episodes or so. Either way, I hardly found it shocking that the show’s protagonist, who we knew was going to wind up dead, turned out to have been killed by the show’s antagonist. But whatever. Anyway, Ben doesn’t seem too thrilled with himself for the whole murdering-Locke thing.
• Locke came back to life, and stuff. We don’t know how that happened either. He obviously doesn’t remember anything between his death and his resurrection. Looks like he really did copy Jack’s dad by coming back to life. Does this mean Locke will turn into Jacob, too?

Next week, we get: Surprising Twists, Shocking Turns, and Heart-Stopping Revelations. (Seriously, that’s what the promo said.)

Season 5, Episode 7: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham (originally aired February 25, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Can’t Keep a Good Locke Down by J.B. Perlow.

For more on Lost, click here.

Wednesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC and IMDbPro

The Closer: Taking the Cake

Ah, how nice to see this week’s episode start off with a little pre-wedded bliss as we join Brenda and Fritz standing outside in a romantic setting near their oceanside hotel.  But the helicopters flying overhead are far more enticing to Brenda who wonders if the helicopters are an indication of nearby crime.  After watching her mother and Claire bicker about how to decorate her wedding suite so that it has the proper flow, the workaholic Johnson cannot stay cooped up in her hotel suite for long and sniffs out a murder from a mile away.  She shows up unexpectedly to this week’s crime scene, a shooting and robbery at an escort agency.  Amidst the chaos on the scene, she finds her detectives in between a bevy of escorts and is annoyed with Provenza for not having called her about the new case, as he had promised to do earlier.  Inside, Johnson only counts four bullet casings, and the security video playback reveals that there is a casing missing.

Johnson does a little role playing herself when she poses as a lawyer and an IRS agent to force information from an escort and her lawyer.  It pays off when she is able to find out the escorts carried drugs used to appease clients, and links the social security of an escort that had been shot in the robbery, Kelly, to several names.  Kelly had been using different names to work at several agencies, which is a common practice for escorts.  They visit her in the hospital where she puts on the struggling wife being an escort to make ends meet routine that Johnson doesn’t buy for a second.  Her husband, Vince, also becomes a suspect when they discover that he was an Iraqi war veteran who would have access to the same type of gun used in the robbery.  After obtaining a warrant to search Kelly and Vince’s apartment, they find Kelly and Vince are far from the struggling couple after finding cocaine and a huge stash of one hundred dollar bills behind a drywall.  But after talking to Vince, Johnson is convinced that Kelly planned the robbery.  They can’t get Kelly to break until Johnson is able to create a little movie magic after learning a photo trick from her wedding photographer.

As usual, Johnson and her detectives are able to use some outlandish scheme to catch their killer.  And while I would yawn and say these antics are getting a little old, apparently the show’s massive ratings tell a different story.  Needless to say, I was even more surprised when Fritz showed up in one piece to his wedding after sneaking away from the hotel himself to stakeout El Jefe’s recent drug shipment.  At the reception, Johnson’s guests express their warm wishes to the newly married couple and play a game of catch with the bouquet.  Johnson grabs a huge piece of wedding cake and weepily tells Fritz she loves him.  She goes into her room, whips out what looks like a MoonPie, slathers the moonpie with the icing from her wedding cake, and pops it into her mouth, as she stares at herself in her wedding dress.  Brenda Johnson, I may hate your interrogation tactics and find them completely questionable, but I love your taste in wedding dessert.

Season 4, Episode 15: Double Blind (originally aired February 23, 2009)

For more on The Closer, click here.

New episodes this summer on TNT

Photograph courtesy of TNT and IMDbPro

The J Factor Episode 6

Check out Episode #6 – February 27, 2009 – Jaimie and J.B. podcast straight from 2009 NY Comic Con.  Ah, let the fun and/or dorky-ness begin.

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House doesn’t do happy.

I wish I were reviewing any other season of this show.

See, I think the problem is, the House writers got burnt out somewhere around mid-season 4. Now their episode meetings are all like, “Okay, let’s find some crazy patient… like, let’s say, a suicidal guy, but he’s suicidal because he’s in pain, just like House! People will think we’re so clever. And then let’s do something freaky to him, like make his toe fall off!  And let’s send an intern to go on the Internet and find a bunch of tests they can pretend to do. And and and, let’s write some flirty House/Cuddy dialogue – whoops, sorry, we forgot how to do flirty, we’ll go with infantile, that’s close enough – and someone grab an old script from back when Chase and Cameron used to have lines in season 2 and let’s change the order of the words and give them to Taub and Kutner. Then, we can fill up the rest of the time by having Foreman and Thirteen make out for a while. Done! Now, let’s go work on that spec script for The Mentalist so we can get off this boring-ass show!”

I mean, I get that, three seasons in, they wanted to shake things up by shuffling the cast around. I’m totally on board with that, although I wish they’d just released Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer from their contracts instead of forcing the characters into the weird limbo they currently inhabit. But when they were picking their new cast members, they fired and then killed off the most promising contender. And then they took the least interesting member of the new crop and forced her to center stage before she’d ever demonstrated any semblance of personality or appeal (unless you count being pretty, which I don’t). And then some viewers didn’t like season 4, so they wrote a bunch of forced romances into season 5 to appease us, and we can see how that’s turning out.

Anyway, all that said, this week’s episode was better than I’ve come to expect from this show lately.

Our patient is a 13-year-old boy named Jackson with quite a collection of credits for such a young kid, and an intersex condition that his parents haven’t told him about yet. In a highly uncharacteristic move for this show, we first meet Jackson in a dimly-lit tinkly-music flashback to his birth, where a doctor tells Jackson’s distraught parents, “The ambiguous genitalia can be surgically repaired.”

Oh, lordy. I went into this episode hoping the ads had sensationalized this aspect of it because, you know, they’re ads on Fox. And, indeed, the episode itself wasn’t as bad as the ads had led me to fear. But, since it’s never brought up in the script, I’ll point out that the kind of surgery Jackson’s parents decided to have performed on him as an infant is in fact controversial. Maybe these issues weren’t as widely discussed thirteen years ago, I don’t know; but nowadays the Intersex Society of North America encourages parents not to have unnecessary surgeries like these done on babies. It’s considered more humane to let the kid decide when they’re older whether they want to have surgery.

Okay, enough PSA. Back to the show.

Cuddy gives Jackson’s case to House after making House promise not to tell Jackson about his intersex condition. House agrees, since he’s just going to make the minions lie in his stead. After some offensive comments about Jackson from House, Kutner, and even Taub (this show is just determined to make me hate the entire cast), Thirteen decides she knows best and tries to pressure the parents to tell Jackson the truth. After they unsuccessfully try to get her taken off the case (and not just because of the ridiculously short skirt she’s wearing to treat a 13-year-old boy), they finally give in. Jackson gets mad at his parents for lying to him for his entire life, which, well, yeah. Then, the doctors diagnose him with a fatal condition, and his parents are hopping mad at Thirteen for making Jackson hate them when he’s about to die. I’m not totally clear on how any of this is Thirteen’s fault, but it doesn’t matter because whoops! Jackson’s not dying after all. House figures out that all he had was dehydration, complicated by drinking too many energy drinks, complicated by an unnecessary test they ran at Jackson’s parents’ insistence when he was first admitted. And I guess everything is all better with the traumatized Jackson now, because his mom’s agreed to let him take dance classes.

Throughout all of this, House is being weirdly agreeable. At first, most of the characters blow it off. But Wilson knows no one’s slipping House antidepressants, since the show already did that,  so he figures House slept with Cuddy because that’s the only thing Wilson can think of that would make House happy. Hee. Cuddy denies it, and suggests that Wilson take advantage of House’s good mood by trying to get back some of the money House owes him. Hee again.

Also, House does clinic duty and is nice to a stupid guy who thinks his legs and arm are injured because when he presses into them with his finger, it hurts. House deduces that the guy in fact has a broken finger. Hee hee hee. I admit it, I rewound and watched this scene a couple of times. The concept was already funny and the actor, some guy whose big claim to fame is having been in a commercial with Christina Aguilera, was awesome. Hugh Laurie somehow manages not to crack up throughout the scene, and when Cuddy hears that House treated the guy without killing him, she decides that something is indeed wrong with House. She immediately runs to tell Wilson about it, because these people have absolutely nothing better to do with their lives.

Then, House falls asleep and stops breathing, so Foreman rips open his shirt and twists his nipples to wake him up. None of the characters found this funny but I sure did. Wilson and Foreman both decide House must be using heroin (I thought when the Vicodin wasn’t enough House used morphine? Oh, I guess we’re supposed to have forgotten about that). Then we get another funny scene where Foreman calls Wilson while Wilson is having dinner with House and starts yelling over the phone about how House is on heroin while Wilson tries to act natural. House figures out what’s going on in three seconds, and then attempts to demonstrate that he’s not on heroin by doing a shot of bourbon, because apparently one can’t do heroin and bourbon at the same time if one is on this show. Then House pukes and Wilson screams in the middle of the street about how House is on heroin, because that’s always cool to do. House clarifies that he’s actually on prescription methadone, which apparently has a lot of side effects, and Wilson and Cuddy are sure he will die as a result of taking it. But methadone makes House’s pain go away, and I guess it also spontaneously makes his thigh muscle regrow because he now can walk just fine sans cane. And yes, the show already did this too.  Look, David Shore, believe it or not, there are plots in the world that don’t revolve around your characters’ medical conditions or tortured romances.

Cuddy forbids House from using methadone while working at her hospital. So House quits, and shaves, which I guess is significant? I cannot admit I’ve ever paid much attention to House’s facial hair; has he always had that same beard? But more interestingly, House claims he’s interviewing for another job. Now that would be a twist for this show: let’s dump the entire supporting cast and move the setting, and – and I need to stop going down this path since it was clear from the outset that the show had no intention of doing so. Instead, Cuddy lets House keep his job, but she wants to administer the methadone herself. But then House goes off the methadone, because it was the reason he made bad decisions in Jackson’s case, and because the producers already learned when they tried this storyline the first time that House is boring when he’s not limping.

Cuddy, as she always does, makes excuses for him and calls him a genius. (You know, I’m sure there really are people in the world with Cuddy’s inability to make sound judgments who are in positions of comparable power. And that thought scares me a lot.) Then we get a House/Cuddy moment in which she begs him to take the methadone because she likes him better when he’s on it, but he refuses, saying, “This is the only me you get.”

Begin rant:

Look. They had me with the House/Cuddy, and then they lost me.  This is what happens when storylines are forcibly stretched out over an entire season rather than following a more realistic path. Yes, it’s possible to successfully implement a lengthy building-up-to-romance plot. See Jim/Pam in seasons 2 and 3 of The Office for the only example I can think of wherein a believable long-term buildup worked for both the viewers and the characters. But this season of House pushed the House/Cuddy way too hard in those early episodes. And then they gave us a kiss way too early in the arc. Then, apparently, the writers realized that in order to fit with House’s character as established in the 4 seasons, they had to back off. And they backed off so far that it became painful to watch the repeated references to their non-romance in the episodes since.

Not to mention that it’s kind of ruining the show for those of us who have always respected and liked Cuddy as a character who’s emblematic of smart, successful, career-driven women who don’t put up with crap from men, whatever their genius status may be. Because now she’s reduced to groveling at House about coming or not coming or whatever to her baby-naming ceremony and playing stupid-even-for-this-show pranks.

End rant.

Also, this episode has some cutesy Foreman/Thirteen stuff. They’re being super-careful about hiding their relationship because they know House will pick up on the slightest sign. And they also have to keep their relationship a secret from everyone else on the show, because they’re both such unlikeable characters that there is not a single person they can trust not to sell their secret to House. You’d think that might make them realize that there’s something very wrong with their lives, but nah. Kutner and Taub figure out that Thirteen and Foreman are still together based on how Foreman smells, though, and make fun of them for it (and also Kutner makes some more offensive bisexual jokes, which, fun!). But by the end of the episode it’s unclear whether House knows they’re together.

This is stupid. At least it didn’t take up half the show this time.

Meanwhile, Chase, no doubt pissed about having been unjustly sacrificed from Top Chef to save Stefan’s unworthy hide, doesn’t deign to show up in the episode. Neither does Cameron. This makes twice in three episodes that they haven’t appeared, which is a problem for me, because I love Chase and I like Cameron and I neither like nor love any of the other characters on this show anymore (although it’s possible that Cuddy and/or Taub could re-enter my good graces after a well-written episode or two).

Next week – I don’t know what will happen, because this time I managed to stop my DVR before it showed me the promo. But I predict: more longing House/Cuddy glances; more forced Foreman/Thirteen intrigue; three lines of dialogue for Chase and five for Cameron; and more eye-rolling for me.

Season 5, Episode 16: The Softer Side (originally aired February 23, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out A Brand New House by Cameron Cubbison.

For more on House, click here.

House, Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of FOX Broadcasting Company and IMDbPro

A Brand New House

House’s case this week involves a young teenager named Jackson who was born with both male and female DNA. His parents have concealed this information and raised him as a boy, giving him regular doses of testosterone shots and discouraging him from pursuing activities like dancing. The real conflict in this episode isn’t the case however, but rather House’s lack of conflict. That’s right folks: House is in a good mood.

House asks Wilson before he steals his food, he follows instructions from Cuddy without dispute, and he even humors Jackson’s parents’ request to run a medical test he knows is pointless. What gives? This is precisely the question that Cuddy and Wilson and House’s team are rabid for an answer for. They suspect that House is on drugs…and no, not the Vicodin, but heroin. They’re wrong of course, but not by much. House is on methadone, which has eliminated the pain in his leg and is thus responsible for his good mood. It’s kind of like when House got rid of his leg pain a couple of seasons back, though I forget what the exact circumstances were in that instance.

It also becomes apparent that Kutner and Taub are wise to Foreman and Thirteen’s pretend breakup. They start playing with them, trying to get them to admit it. When Foreman and Thirteen realize that Kutner and Taub know their secret, they figure House has to know. After all, nothing gets past House. Except wait…it has, because House is too busy enjoying being out of pain.

As for the case, it’s nothing we haven’t seen dozens of times before on House. The team runs tests. They assign a diagnosis only to have it disproven moments later. They run more tests. The parents whine. Thirteen also gets heavy into the mix when she starts fighting the parents over their decision to withhold Jackson’s particular DNA condition from him, afraid that Jackson is suicidal because he feels that he’s different but doesn’t know why.

When Cuddy finds out that House is sprinkling methadone into his raisin bran, she tells him to lay off or find another job. House pretends to choose the latter, and goes out for a new job. He even-gasp-dare I say it, finally gets acquainted with a razor! Cuddy of course woos him back because his skills are unmatched.

All said and done, not much of any consequence happens during this episode. It’s entertaining and competently produced, but obviously everyone knows that something is going to come up that will stop House from taking the methadone because House can’t be happy. He needs his misery to be the medical maverick that he is; it’s what keeps his skills sharp. Hugh Laurie and Lisa Edelstein do excellent work here, and the show is still going strong (though I wish the writers would stop jamming Foreman/Thirteen relationships down viewers’ throats). I wonder what’s in store for next week, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Season 5, Episode 16: The Softer Side (originally aired February 23, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out House doesn’t do happy. by Robin Reed.

For more on House, click here.

House, Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of FOX Broadcasting Company and IMDbPro

Chuck vs. The Best Friend

Wait, when did Morgan and Anna break up? Wait, why do I care? Come to think of it, I know the answer to both questions. The answer to the first one is that the writers needed conflict for an episode. The answer to the second one is I actually don’t.

Chuck as a show has run out of ideas so completely that they have now resorted to perhaps the most contrived setup yet: Morgan suspects Anna is seeing someone else. Why their relationship soured we don’t know, probably because the writers don’t either. But Morgan, being the kind of guy that he is, decides to spy on Anna. Accompanied by Lester, Jeff, and a reluctant Chuck, Morgan tracks down his replacement to find he’s a handsome rich guy with a whole bunch of classic cars.

But it’s not enough that he is out of Morgan’s league…he also has to be a criminal! That’s right: Chuck flashes on the new boyfriend immediately and finds out he is a nefarious dude involved with some nefarious people. So apparently, in the world of Chuck, everyone alive is a national security threat. Seriously folks, are we really meant to believe that even minor character Anna’s new boyfriend is somehow Intersect flash-worthy? There is suspension of disbelief and then there is…stuff like this. Yikes yikes yikes.

The General thus orders Chuck to ingratiate himself with Anna’s new boyfriend to gain intelligence about him. Chuck is torn though because naturally, he doesn’t want to betray his friend. But Casey threatens violence like he always does so effectively, and Chuck accepts his mission. Chuck suggests that he and Anna go on a double date with their respective partners.

Anna invites Chuck and Sarah to some shindig her guy is throwing. Chuck accepts. Little did he know…Morgan has spying plans of his own! And Morgan’s spying plans conflict with Chuck’s spying plans when Morgan spots Chuck and makes him out as Judas. Chuck has to save Morgan before the nondescript bad guys break his spine. But in so doing, Chuck has to humiliate Morgan and Morgan threatens the end of their friendship. I sure hope they can patch things up in forty-three minutes!

True to form, Chuck also features a grating, inane B subplot, this time involving Ellie and her nimrod fiancé’s wedding preparations. She charges the nimrod with finding the band to play at their wedding, and Jeff and Lester answer the call…whether they are wanted or not. That’s the basic setup for the whole thing, and it’s all rather flat and pedestrian. I will say that there is a very cool, very inventive fight sequence between Sarah and a Triad assassin that takes place entirely in the back seat of a car. There is also a nice relationship scene between Chuck and Sarah, where Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski get to show that they’re better than the material they are given.

Chuck has truly gone downhill. The show wastes the charm and talent of its cast by sticking them in unbelievable, contrived situations. The strength of Chuck was this charm and the character relationships and encounters. They have gotten away from that, giving Morgan nothing to do, spending too much time at the Buy More, and wasting time on pointless characters like Ellie and have I mentioned her nimrod boyfriend?

Season 2, Episode 14: Chuck vs. The Best Friend (originally aired February 23, 2009)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC and IMDbPro

Grey’s Anatomy: What if God Was One of Us?

There’s an old joke: what’s the difference between God and a doctor? Answer: God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.  The oft-mentioned “God complex” was in full effect in this episode of Grey’s Anatomy, where Derek can’t seem to admit it’s time to put down the scalpel. Following up on last week’s episode where a pregnant woman needed brain surgery to treat an aneurysm, the writers continued with the cast of Private Practice, or at least Addison.  She and Derek clashed over the woman’s care, with Addison trying to be prudent about the patient’s unborn baby, and Derek struggling fruitlessly to keep a promise he made to her husband to save her life.  When it becomes clear that he will not be able to save the woman, Addison tries to go to work on the fetus, but Derek will not allow it, still believing he can somehow save his patient and even resorting to removing portions of her brain, rendering her a shell of her former self.  Eventually the Chief has to be summoned to persuade Derek to step aside and let Addison deliver the baby.  The most powerful scene of the episode was when Derek had to tell the woman’s husband that he was unable to save her.  The man essentially calls Derek a murderer, and weeps for his wife shamelessly and honestly.  It was a painful thing to watch, but I know that there is a correlation between my tears and the quality of the episode, so the writers get another thumbs up.

With Derek out of sorts and blaming himself for his patient’s death, he lashes out at Mark after Mark confesses that he’s been boffing Little Lexie.  I wanted Mark to kick Dererk’s ass. Shame on Derek for picking a fist fight with him.  We know that Derek is a brilliant surgeon who genuinely cares about his patients, but some of his emotional breakdown in this case can be attributed to ego.  For once, the great Doctor Shepherd couldn’t save the day.

A severe reprimand is in order, but we’ll see what the Chief does next week.  We’ll see if tough discipline is only doled out to interns who run amok or if the Chief is really serious about improving the hospital’s standing. Derek isn’t the only one feeling God-like.  Faye Dunaway makes a guest appearance as a legendary surgeon who still operates periodically, despite the fact that her surgical skills have eroded significantly.  The Chief has to force her resignation, as she’s essentially become a butcher, botching surgeries left and right.  Cristina is the only one with the stones to call her out about it.  Meanwhile, Izzie is dealing with a medical scare as a result of Sadie’s incompetence.  She apparently mislabeled some blood, and there is a possibility that Izzie has skin cancer.

Although this episode was hyped as a conclusion to last week’s thrilling installment, I didn’t see any connection to last week’s principal storyline: Addison’s ailing brother.  The old bait and switch by the show’s producers maybe? Perhaps I had to watch Private Practice to get the scoop. Nice try ABC, but I think I’ll stick with Seattle Grace.

Season 5, Episode 16: An Honest Mistake (originally aired February 19, 2009)

For another view of this episode, check out Mistake Maverick by Inisia Lewis.

For more Grey’s Anatomy reviews, click here.

Thursdays 9/8c on ABC
Photographs courtesy of ABC

The Office: A Lesson in Failure

The Office has had its fair share of clunkers this season – 5 year fatigue? – and Thursday’s two-part episode conclusion was yet another. After a satisfactory build-up in “Lecture Circuit: Part I,” I was hoping that we’d figure out some dirt on Kelly, Jim and Dwight would continue to delight in their failed party planning, and that the delightful Holly would return. On all counts I was as disappointed as the audiences of Michael’s lectures. “Lecture Circuit: Part II” was nothing less than a lesson in failure.

Failure 1: On the party-planning front, Jim and Dwight were still trying to throw a belated birthday party for Kelly. In the midst of planning it, Dwight had discovered that Kelly had spent time in Juvie as a teenager. I was hoping this was a misunderstanding, and that we’d finally find out what I’d long suspected: Kelly is crazy. Well, good news and bad news: Kelly is crazy and she also spent time in Juvie (that’s probably all bad news for Kelly). Anyway, she went to jail for stealing her ex-boyfriend’s dad’s boat in a misguided attempt to win him back. Is it me or is that just sad as well as a complete misuse of our legal system?

Well, Jim continued to try to throw a party for crazy, sad Kelly, but failed (just like this episode) and couldn’t even spell her name correctly. Then Jim decided that the theme of Kelly’s party was that she could choose between taking a nap or watching a half hour of TV while at work. (Huh? Is that a theme?) Mysteriously, Kelly was really excited about this, chose a nap, and slept under the conference table while I continued to wonder if I was missing something. Like the joke maybe?

Conclusion of plotline one: FAIL.

Failure 2: Elsewhere in The Office other potentially-funny-but-somehow-not plotlines were happening around the fact that Angela bought a $7,000 cat with the money she got from selling Andy’s engagement ring. How many things can you find wrong with that sentence? To watch her new expensive kitty, Angela set up a nanny cam. But the kitties were not behaving themselves and an undersexed kitty (hey it is Angela’s) got a little too excited over the new princess. Kevin, Oscar, and Meredith found the violation of Angela’s new prize kitty hilarious, but Angela rushed off to deal with her misbehaving babies.

However, Angela forgot to turn off the kitty-cam and the Scranton office watched as she proceeded to actually lick her cats. I’m sorry, what? This was not only gross, but also not even remotely funny. It was just weird, weird, weird. She then returned to the office and coughed up a hairball. And this episode was officially worse than Catwoman.

Plotline two: FAIL.

Failures 3, 4, 5: But what about the Holly and Michael reunion you may ask. Surely that’s going to be good. Well, think again. There was no reunion. Holly was absent from the episode. This was especially unfortunate because all of Michael’s plotlines since Holly’s departure have been horribly weak, and the weakness continued.

Pam and Michael arrived in Nashua to discover that Holly was on an HR retreat, but maybe her boyfriend AJ could help them reach her. Boyfriend? Ouch. Predictably Michael had a breakdown in the middle of his lecture to the Nashua office and began interrogating an unsuspecting AJ about his relationship with Holly. Then he proceeded to crawl, yes crawl, out of the conference room. This was way over the top – is Michael really that incapable of human interaction? – but what followed was even worse.

Pam took Michael’s spot and continued his lecture, using his notes and horrific movie quote bastardizations to deliver it. Not only was it completely unfunny to watch Pam awkwardly deliver Michael’s speech, but it wasn’t believable either. Why would Pam do that? Why wouldn’t she just improvise her own presentation? Last I checked Pam has worked in Scranton for a number of years and has been doing the majority of Michael’s job for the greater part of it. Was she really incapable of ad-libbing her own lecture? I thought it was time for Pam to show off her smarts, instead I was just disappointed.

Disappointed Michael meanwhile investigated Holly’s PC (nice product placement HP) and found a letter on her computer titled “Letter to Michael”. He proceeded to take out a memory stick and upload the file. Is it just me or is this too smart for Michael? You know, the same guy that just crawled out of a conference room like a petulant toddler and cut a sleeve off the sweater on the back of Holly’s chair as a memento?

Well, after the failed presentation, Michael confessed to Pam that he stole the letter off Holly’s computer. Pam was initially affronted by his invasion of Holly’s privacy, but curiosity got the better of her. So Pam read the letter instead and then deleted it. She told Michael that it wasn’t over between him and Holly, but divulged nothing more. Does that mean I can hope for a Holly return in a future episode?

Tally for this plotline:

Holly’s return: FAIL.

Pam’s squandered potential: FAIL

Ability to believe Michael as a human being: FAIL

After its “Lecture” series, it’s The Office that deserves a strong talking to.

Next up for The Office: “Blood Drive”. Let’s hope a little blood-letting cures The Office of its ailments.

Season 5, Episode 15: Lecture Circuit: Part 2 (originally aired February 12, 2009)

For more on The Office, click here.

Thursdays, 9/8C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC

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