Glee: What Would Madonna Do?

“Somewhere in the English countryside in a stately manor home, Madonna is weeping!”

Au contraire, Sue Sylvester. Madonna should be damn proud of what these Gleeks have been able to come up with for this much-talked about episode.

Believe it or not, the entire Madonna theme is contrived by Sue who has always viewed the Material Girl as her inspiration. She wants the Cheerios to perform an epic Madonna routine so they can blow their competition out of the water.

Since this week is all about Madonna, it’s also about women empowerment. The guys from Glee have been none-too-kind to their leading ladies; Rachel is especially upset because her new boyfriend, Jesse, is pressuring her to have sex. Schuester overhears their conversations and believes it’s time to show the girls a little appreciation. He snags Sue’s idea and uses Madonna to inspire the Gleeks. After all, Madonna is known for being “strong, independent, and confident no matter what your sex.” Or, if your name happens to be Puck, she’s just mainly known for being a “Hall of Fame MILF.”

Hearing the ladies’ intimate conversations reminds Schue of his own relationship with Emma. Last week, Emma revealed herself to be a virgin and being a counselor, this proves a little awkward when students come to her for sex advice. But boy did I love her rant about the “role models” girls have today! “Lindsay Lohan looks like something from Lord of the Rings.” Preach it, Emma!

We also learn more of the backstory to last week’s epic Vogue debut. It’s no secret Sue loves to insult Schuester’s mop of curls, but apparently she can’t handle any Florence Henderson look-a-like jokes! Revealing her softer side again, Sue reveals to Mercedes and Kurt that her hair was badly damaged after she and her disabled sister tried to bleach it similarly to Madonna’s mop of hair. Ever since then, she’s had to keep her hair short. Mercedes and Kurt join forces with Sue and give her the ultimate makeover – the result: VOGUE!

The smarmy Jesse St. James is still around toying with Rachel’s heart. He apologizes for pressuring her and then to prove how much he loves her, Jesse transfers to McKinley High and joins New Directions. This will absolutely not end well! His ulterior motive of destroying Glee club is so obvious, is Rachel seriously that blinded by “love?”

Another highlight of the episode included the “Like a Virgin” montage between Finn & Santana, Emma & Will, and Rachel & Jesse. Really well done, I thought!

Kurt and Mercedes are also getting a bit more of the limelight. After collaborating with Sue on Vogue, they join the Cheerios as vocalists to add an extra layer to Sue’s elaborate cheerleading routines. They perform “4 Minutes” during half-time for the basketball game and tear up the floor!

So was the Power of Madonna way over-hyped or did it live up to your expectations, fellow Gleeks?

I thought all the songs were really well incorporated in to the story. I loved seeing more of Sue, and I also applaud the show for keeping some of Madonna’s original songs in the episode and not having the Glee cast cover all of them. But I also think this episode deserves a second viewing. There were too many great quotes for my fingers to keep up with while typing!

For another take on this week’s episode, check out The Material Girl Takes Over McKinley High by Allison Toner.

Season 1, Episode 15: The Power of Madonna (originally aired April 20, 2010)

For more on Glee, click here.

Tuesdays at 9pm on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

House: A Knight’s Tale

I’m convinced that this week’s episode was nothing more than a ploy to get House out of the hospital and into some ridiculous costume. Yes ladies and gents, we’re going through a time warp all the way back to the medieval ages!

Firstly, Sir William is a knight. A knight in his medieval community, I should clarify, not knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Anyway, as part of a hardcore reenactment troop, Sir William partakes in an intense sword fight to impress the Queen. But after defeating his opponent, Sir William’s eyes begin filling up with blood. Off to modern day America with ye!

House is more than convinced that William’s problem is related to his environment. He sends Foreman and Thirteen to check out the medieval hide out and see what they can find. They discover that William had been showing symptoms since before his hospital admittance – and that he eats really, really gross things. There’s a lovely pile of vomit in one of the haystacks where he “lives” that reveals William ate a cow eye some days back. Here’s a barf bag for you, too.

Aside from his medical woes, William is love sick. The object of his affection is Shannon, the “Queen” of his medieval community. But Shannon is engaged to Miles (“the King”) and Miles is William’s best friend. A good knight does not steal another knight’s boyfriend! At least men back then had some decency…

As was foreshadowed in last week’s episode, Wilson begins seeing his ex-wife Sam again. Everyone on the team seems to think this is a bad idea, for once it’s not just House! Cuddy refuses to become involved, however, since nothing good ever comes from messing with others’ love lives.

Sam wants to get to know House since he is, after all, Wilson’s closest friend. House obliges and brings a tranny to dinner, with his ulterior motive to shock and embarrass Sam. Too bad the plan backfires! The tranny is a huge hit with Sam and Wilson – it turns out she’s from the same hometown as Sam! This would only happen to you, House.

Later on, House pretends to have reformed and wants to start new with Sam. So he cooks the couple and himself a fabulous meal and everyone’s having a great time. That is, until Wilson leaves the room and the claws come out! “You’re a coldhearted bitch,” House tells Sam and they come to the mutual agreement to be enemies.

At the hospital, William’s condition continues to worsen until House takes it upon himself to go visit the medieval hang out. Taking Thirteen along with him (no doubt because she looks good in a corset), they scrounge around for whatever they might’ve missed the first time. And wouldn’t you know: they find out that someone sold hemlock to King Miles just a few days before William’s hospitalization. Hemlock very closely resembles a carrot, but it’s actually a poisonous plant. Uh oh, is this going to become a medieval murder mystery?

In the end, though, no matter what William says about “honor, courage, and loyalty,” he’s a fraud of a Knight. His disease is traced back to anabolic steroid abuse, but the hemlock played a huge role in speeding up the disease.

Maybe I missed this, but was it ever clarified how William came by the hemlock? If not from Miles, then where? Inquiring minds want to know! In the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn’t matter, but I like my stories to have conclusive endings with all the loose ends tied up. Especially for a patient we will never see again. It’s not the first time House has left things up in the air when it comes to a patient’s final medical diagnosis and I can’t help but wonder if that’s on purpose or just lazy storytelling.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out “Is That The Statutory Period For Soul-sucking?” by Cameron Cubbison.

Season 6, Episode 17: Knight Fall (originally aired April 19, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

House: “Is That The Statutory Period For Soul-sucking?”

That’s the question that House asks Samantha in response to her defensive statement that it has been ten years since she broke Wilson’s heart. Samantha is one of Wilson’s fabled ex-wives, and now, thanks to the bastard…er, ah, I mean magic…that is social networking sites online, the two have reconnected and are dating again. House is determined to stop this train- wreck-waiting-to-happen before it derails. This is his main concern this week, and he fishes deep into his bag of tricks.

His other concern is a patient named William who, along with a group of people with far too much time on their hands, spends his weekends pretending to be a knight. Basically, this group’s whole life is a Renaissance Fair. William is in love with the king’s maiden Shannon, and after fighting a dude in black armor for her honor, he took a tumble and his eyes turned demon red. Uh oh. William won’t make a play for Shannon because he claims to follow the knight’s chivalric code and won’t betray the king. But she sits by his hospital bedside nonstop, and the king never shows. There’s clearly a mutual thing between these two, though William won’t do anything about it. Plus now he’s too busy dying anyway. The highlight of the case is seeing House and Thirteen don Elizabethan garb and investigate the fairgrounds for environmental toxins. House also plays with a sword.

As for the thing with Samantha, House does everything in his power to get her out of the picture. When invited by Wilson to go to dinner with him and Samantha, House brings a date: a transvestite hooker. In his own perverse way, House is being selfless here; he’s sticking up for his friend in the only way he knows how. He means well, even if his efforts are misguided. But I think he may be right about Samantha. She’s played by Cynthia Watros, who plays Libby on Lost. She’s creepy on that show, and I don’t trust her here either.

The best scene in the episode is when House cooks dinner for Wilson and Samantha, purporting the effort to be an olive branch. But as soon as Wilson leaves to go to the bathroom, he turns on a dime and throws down the gauntlet. He tells Samantha that he will outlast her, and basically threatens to kick her ass if she steps out of line. Laurie nails it—House’s almost pathological, devious mind, his unrivaled ability to manipulate and turn on a dime.

That’s about it. None of the other characters do anything of note. It’s an entertaining but more or less unremarkable episode.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out A Knight’s Tale by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 17: Knight Fall (originally aired April 19, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

Lost: Everybody Loves Hugo

Last week’s episode of Lost had me going awwww as the Hugo centric episode took viewers for an emotional ride. An episode filled with death, destruction, answers, and love, “Everybody Loves Hugo” has easily become one of my favorite episodes in the series.

In the flashsideways this week viewers get a look into the successful life of Hugo Reyes as he accepts an award for “Man of the Year.” His mother, sick and tired of going to award shows with him, sets him up on a blind date so Hugo could find himself a woman. On the blind date Hugo is stood up, but encounters Libby who asks him if he remembers who she is. Sadly Hugo doesn’t. Hugo, confused, rushes after her only to see that she is being boarded onto a bus back to the mental hospital.

Depressed and alone Hugo starts to down a bucket of chicken when Desmond arrives to give him a push to go see Libby. At the psych hospital Hugo ends up writing a donation check so he can visit the lost love of his life. Libby tells how she remembers her life on the island with Hugo after she saw him on TV. She believed she was losing her mind and checked herself in voluntarily to be checked out.

Hugo decides to take Libby to the beach for a picnic. He remembers the blankets! For those that don’t recall, Hugo forgot the blankets, which lead to Libby’s death when she went to go retrieve them. It’s an adorable moment for Lost fans. Libby kisses Hugo causing memories of the island to flash in his mind. Yay total nerd moment, but Hugo and Libby being together again makes me super happy!

On the island Michael visits Hugo as a ghost to inform him that following Richard and Ilana’s plan to blow up the plane on Hydra Island will lead to many people dying. Hugo pushes for the group to find another way to deal with Locke, but Ilana disagrees. As she drops the bag holding dynamite an explosion is set off sending chunks of Ilana everywhere. The beach group heads to the Black Rock where Hugo blows up the entire ship with the remaining dynamite so no one would kill themselves like Ilana.

Richard easily becomes upset at Hugo’s actions and asks him what they plan on doing. Hugo says they should go talk to Locke. Richard disagrees and parts way saying he will find another way along with Ben and Miles. Jack, Sun, and Frank follow Hugo into the woods as they travel looking for Locke’s location. As darkness falls we finally get a return to the whispers. Hugo runs off to find the source and finds Michael. We finally learn that whispers are trapped souls on the island that can’t move on from what they did. Purgatory much? Michael apologizes for everything he’s done and points Hugo on his way to Locke’s camp.

Locke’s side of the island casts Sawyer, Kate, and Jin as extras yet again as those three have not done anything significant in weeks. I’m pretty sure Libby has had more lines in this episode than Kate has in the last few episodes. Sayid brings Locke into the jungle where a tied up Desmond awaits. Desmond for some odd reason is nearly as creepy as Sayid. If Sayid is to Locke then Desmond would be to Jacob if that makes sense to you Lost fans. This crazy eerie infection thing isn’t sitting well with me.  Locke asks Desmond if he knows who he is, to which Desmond replies, “You’re John Locke.” Asked why he was brought to the island Desmond informs Locke that he was kidnapped by Widmore and has no clue. I have a feeling Desmond is lying here.

Desmond and Locke go for a walk where they encounter the little boy Locke keeps on seeing. Locke tells Desmond to ignore him and they continue. Locke brings Desmond to a well that’s randomly on the island. It turns out people in the past dug the wells looking for answers. The places where the well was caused compass needles to spin, causing the explorers to dig for answers. They never found the answers. Locke tells Desmond that Widmore wants power on the island, not answers like everyone else. Locke then asks why Desmond isn’t afraid to be out in the middle of nowhere with him. Desmond replies, “What’s the point in being afraid?” Locke’s expression seemed to be the first one of shock I’ve seen come from him all season. Locke grabs Desmond and tosses him into the well. Desmond better not be dead or I will have to find someone to yell at.

The episode comes to a close pretty dramatically. Hugo arrives to camp asking for a truce between the two groups so they can talk. Jack and Locke have an intense stare down, which sent chills down my spine. The episode then jumps to the flashsideways where we see Desmond watching Locke from his car. Dr. Ben Linus knocks on the window asking him why he was sitting in his car watching the school. Desmond replies he was looking for a school for his son Charlie. This clearly means that Desmond fully remembers his life on and off the island. As Locke, in a wheelchair, strolls onto the road, Desmond speeds off and crashes his car into Locke, sending him flying. Ben rushes over to Locke who is still alive, but in need of medical attention.

Another great episode of Lost comes to a close. I can’t wait to see the repercussions of Desmond’s actions.

What do you all think? Leave comments below.

For another opinion on this episode, read Crazy Heart by Liz Cooper.

Season 6, Episode 12: Everybody Loves Hugo (Originally Aired April 13, 2010)

For more on Lost, click here.

Tuesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC and Mario Perez.

LOST: Crazy Heart

Desmond has apparently set his psychic plan into motion, with Hurley being his first target.

Let’s deal with bizarro world first:

In Universe X, Hurley is the CEO of Mr. Clucks because, ya know, he loves chicken. Am I going crazy or did he say that he won the lottery on the plane? Whatever, so he is super loaded and getting an award at a museum. Whose museum you ask? Glad you did, because it is Dr. Pierre Chang’s. So I have no idea what he is doing there because I definitely assumed he was a goner when Juliet detonated the hydrogen bomb and the island ended up at the bottom of the ocean? Oh well, my theories are shot at this point so let’s just roll with this.

The episode is called (as a mirror to the season one Hurley episode) “Everybody Loves Hugo,” except women his ma so kindly points out. So Hurley is set up on a blind date while fate would have Libby there on a fajita field trip from the loony bin at the same time. Libby sits down with Hurley because she knows she knows him, and wants to see if he remembers her too. He doesn’t, but how is Libby crazy with psychic connections? She asks if Hurley believes two people are connected like soul mates, but before they can have any more of a heart to heart, Hurley’s doctor from Universe 815 carts her off to the Santa Rosa mental hospital van, leaving Hurley rejected by a blind date and confused about this crazy person that he kind of likes. Desperation makes us all do weird things…

Depressed, Hurley goes for comfort food and who shows up at Mr. Cluck’s but Des. This is clearly post-seeing-the-light Des because he has a big ol cut on his head (I should really be a detective), and Desmond listens to Hurley’s troubles. He asks Hurley if he believed the crazy chick when she said she knew him, and H-bomb says, yeah, he kind of did. Des recommends Hurley goes with his gut, so Hurley pays a visit to Santa Rosa. The doctor says that Libby has issues with reality, and it will confuse her to see Hurley. Luckily, Hurley has a ton of money now, and can buy himself this lady visit. Hurley meets up with Libster, and she tries to explain her crazy, that she saw a commercial with Hurley in it and it was like memories came washing back from another life. She said she had a memory of Hurley being in the mental hospital too in this bizarro alternate universe, which is weird because we never saw them interacting in Hurley’s mental days at the ward, but then again maybe crazy Libby with dark hair wasn’t just staring longingly (read:creepily) at him all day. Who knows, because I sure feel like the writers just made up a bunch of stuff this time around.

Moving on: Libby and Hurley go on the date they never got to have because Michael is a terrible person and shot her when she went to get blankets for their picnic date. Hurley self-deprecatingly says that Libby only likes him because she is delusional. Oh dear. But then Libster kisses him, and a life he never knew he had comes flooding back to Hurley too. Ok, so what exactly are the qualifications for a window into the other universe? I was willing to buy Charlie and Des seeing flashes before their eyes because they both had effing near death experiences, but a peck on the beach and catching a commercial while channel surfing? Really? I love Libby and Hurley as much as the next person, but their love didn’t exactly seem like an earth shaker. But maybe it could have been if Michael hadn’t been such an ahole. Well at least Libby knows she isn’t crazy, or at least crazy alone, but she does have something in her teeth in that otherwise touching scene, unfortunately. Desmond sees his work is done for those passengers (do Libby and Hurley know they were both on Oceanic 815? Feel like that should have been something to chat about if Libster said she remembered a plane crash), he is on the move once again with some questionable sunglasses. Last stop on this leg of Desmond’s tour of destiny was Dr. Linus’s and Mr. Locke’s school. Looking like a creeper and claiming to have just moved to the neighborhood, Desmond says he is just checking things out for his son Charlie (memory? made it up?) and then drives off…into the wheelchair-bound Locke. Was this just revenge because he was pissed about the well (see below) or was he trying to make Johnny see something? TBD.

Island Time:

Michael, get out. I stopped liking you after you killed Libby and went off the deep end and you just piss me off. Michael appeared to Hurley to tell him that he has to stop the others from blowing up the plane or else everyone was going to die. Ok. So Hurley goes to the beach to lobby the group about not playing with dynamite. Ilana is confident in her decision and says that she has been training her whole life to protect them and that they need to blow up the plane so that that thing can’t leave the island because it is evil and if it does ever leave —

We will never know because Ilana pulled a Dr. Arzt. I totally called her early exit given the way she was manhandling that dynamite. In the aftermath, the beach folks gather their bearings, and Hurley finds the bag o Jacob and some Russian book. He takes the bag, leaves the book. Richard is still really into blowing up the plane, and that they have to do it or else Ilana died for nothing (what is her death going to mean for the show? Where did she come from in the first place? Why was Jman like a father to her?). So the A-Team goes to get some more dynamite, but while they are making their way to the Black Rock, Hurley tricked them and got there first (somehow) and blew up the ship and all the dynamite. Oops. Hurley tries to tell Miles that Michael told him to stop the plane from getting blown to bits (was he just manipulating him on Flocke’s behalf?) and that now Jacob says they should go talk to Locke. Richard is skeptical because Jacob never tells them what to do, and asks Hurley to ask Jacob what the island is (should have been in Latin for good measure). Hurley tells Ricardo he doesn’t have to prove anything to him, and so the team breaks into groups B and C. Richard is committing to stopping Flocke, and Miles and Ben go with him to Dharmaville to get some explosives. Richard tells the three people (danger) that Flocke needs (and Lapidus) to not get in their way and peaces out.

Speaking of that train of thought in my stream of consciousness, Flocke tells Sawyer and Kate that they need to wait. He tells them that they were able to come back to the island because they all did it together, so he needs Sun, Jack, and Hurley all now before he can leave the island. At this point in time, crazy amoral Sayid shows up and says he needs Flocke. He brings him to Desmond tied to a tree. Where are Widmore’s people? Where is Jin? Why aren’t they looking for him?

Let’s have our questions about Des segment of the program:

Does Flocke know Desmond is special? Is Des playing Flocke, saying he has nowhere to run and that he believes him to be John Locke? I don’t think he had that debriefing about how Locke is dead and this is a smoke monster? Why did he tell Flocke he was blasted with electromagnetism? Has he forgotten Widmore told him he had something important to do? Is this what he thinks it is? Who is that brown haired boy that shows up on Des and Flocke’s romp in the woods? Why isn’t this one talking like the creepy blond kid? Is the well that Flocke brings Des to the same as the Orchid Station? Are there several wells? Are people really that curious about compasses to dig to the center of the earth? When Desmond joked about Flocke reading his mind wondering how deep the well was, was that really a joke? Can Flocke read minds? Does Flocke actually think Widmore is bad the same way Ben used to? Did Flocke want Des to be afraid? Why put Des in a well with electromagnetism? How long is our mutual friend going to be stuck down there? Did he anticipate that move?

THIS IS SO LONG. Ok, back to the screwed candidates and Lapidus. Jack tells Hurley that he knows he was lying, but wants to trust him. He tells H-bomb that it is hard for him to sit back and listen to someone else tell him what to do, but maybe that is the point of all this. Jack needs to stop wanting to fix everything because now he is on a guilt trip about Juliet and wants to fix getting her killed, tomorrow he will be back to wanting to fix Jin and Sun’s separation and then he will want to fix the fact that water is wet. Then for one of the most annoying parts in all of Lost: THE WHISPERS.

I am so disappointed. On the way to Flocke’s camp, our team hears the whispers, which every fan knows and has been dying to figure out. I thought they were an intricate communication system used by the others that somehow lapsed time and space. But Hurley conveniently knows what they are, and stupid Michael is there to confirm his totally unimaginative theory. The Whispers are the people stuck on the island, the undead dead. Michael says that he, and the others who can’t move on because of what they did, are the Whispers. LET DOWN.

After that terrible reveal, I didn’t care about the end of this island episode. Hurley gets to Flocke, wants to chat without anyone getting hurt. He gets Flocke’s word (for the little it’s worth) that he won’t do anything, and Flocke gives it to him alone with his knife (the weird one?) and then the rest of the crew come into the light. So now Flocke has everything he needs. Thanks, Michael. Flocke and Jack had some intense eye contact at the end and I didn’t know if it was shock or…?

For another opinion about this episode, read Bilal Mian’s review here.

Season 6, Episode 12: Everybody Loves Hugo (Originally Aired April 13, 2010)

For more on Lost, click here.

Tuesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC and Mario Perez.

SUNDAY, 18th (Week of April 18 – 24)

ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS: Move over Taylor Swift. It’s all about Lady Antebellum now! (8pm/CBS)

MONDAY, 19th

ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED: Alyssa Milano’s painful attempt at a television comeback. The show’s nothing we haven’t seen before. (9:30pm/ABC)

TUESDAY, 20th

GLEE: I don’t usually do the same show two times in a week but this is MADONNA we’re talking about! (9pm/FOX)

WEDNESDAY, 21st

AMERICAN IDOL: IDOL GIVES BACK: I wish Idol would give me back all those hours I spent watching this horrible season. (8pm/FOX)

THURSDAY, 22nd

OCEANS: I remember a time when nobody used to celebrate Earth Day…  (In theatres)

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