This week, Rescue Me is all about second chances. For Tommy and Janet, for Damian, and all the boys of 62 Truck. We open in the aftermath of last week’s finale, which found Tommy and Janet connecting again in spite of a disastrous date after seeing an old friend of Connor’s. Tommy tries and fails to make morning-after breakfast for Janet and in his impossibly inarticulate (and highly entertaining) way, tries to express that he wants to try to repair their relationship for the umpteenth time.

Janet reluctantly agrees, with the following two caveats: this is Tommy’s very last chance—and if he blows it it will be the cruelest thing he has ever done to her—and he has to say goodbye to Sheila for good. Janet tells him that when he turned to Sheila when he was wallowing in post-9/11 and post-Jimmy grief, that it was “emotional betrayal.” I’m not sure that’s fair, because she had already given up on their marriage before he ever got involved with Sheila. But then again, who am I to keep track?

Next up: Needles and Feinberg go to HQ to try to convince them to reopen the firehouse. This was without a doubt the highlight of the episode for me. Feinberg knows the old fart head honcho who shut them down, so he goes in there and in his pathetic, bloated way tries to butter him up and convince him to reopen the firehouse. He fails miserably, mostly because he didn’t really try in the first place because he’s an obsolete pushover who doesn’t care. This is where Needles steps up to the plate and hits it out of the freakin’ galaxy.

He takes it to this geezer, chops him down and blackmails him the livelong day. He points out the little incident last week where the crew responded without gear to the burning school for deaf kids and pulled all of them out of there just in time to see the other firefighters saunter up in their cars. “I don’t know if you heard Dickie, but my boys had a bunch of saves at a school for deaf kids the other day. They responded in their own vehicles with no tools, no bunker gear, and they got every kid out safely, just as your trucks were rolling up…better late than never huh? Maybe you should have that painted on all of your vehicles.” Jab! Geezer hits back: “None of those men were authorized to report to that call.” Needles: “And none of those kids were authorized to burn to death.” Uppercut!

For the knockout blow, Needles pulls out a little homemade DVD with all of the footage on it, promising to deliver copies to all the major newspapers and, “just in case what I hear is true about print media being dead, this whole footage is getting posted on YouTube. That’s the newfangled interweb you’ve heard so much about. When you go home, have one of your grandkids type in ‘FDNY Turns Deaf Ear To Disabled Children.’” Bam! I swear, if I could have leaped into the television screen right during that scene, I would have tackled Needles and given him a big platonic, strictly non-sexual kiss on the mouth and squeeze on the ass. He more than made up for any crap he did last season with that scene. I mean that stuff was Network quality. The writing and strength of performance on this show continues to astound me.

From there, the rest of the episode centers on Damian trying to score with his new ladylove, and Sean and Mike trying to make firefighter-turned-terminal-cancer-patient Pat feel appreciated by taking him to meet up with former victims he saved, with very mixed results. We also get Tommy trying to follow Janet’s ultimatum and say goodbye to Sheila with no drama. Guess how successful he is?

Season 6, Episode 8: Cowboy (originally aired August 17, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.

The Expendables is not merely the blockbuster of the moment but also a conscious throwback to an outmoded genre, aesthetic and worldview, it must be contextualized before it can be analyzed. So, dear reader, I fear this article will be a sprawling one. I hope you’ll stay with me.

The Expendables is an attempt to round up a medley of the pioneering rock stars of the hardcore action genre and combine their many energies and talents into one zany, gritty orgy of justified violence and destruction. It is an attempt to revive the 1980s and early 1990s action aesthetics, thematics and life force and introduce them to the 21st century. In other words, the concept of The Expendables is my ultimate wet dream. And I know I’m not alone.

Most people talk with nostalgic fondness about ‘80s action movies, but they can’t really articulate what made them great. For me, I think it was this: those movies encouraged you to embrace and cheer for the heroes and yell for the villains to get their comeuppance. There were good guys and bad guys, right and wrong, black and white.

Now today, you look at something like the Bourne films (which have, inexplicably, become the pervasive benchmark for evaluating action movies now) and it is no longer PC to even have good guys and bad guys. It’s all about grays and murkiness and shifty political jabs and ambiguity.

Don’t get me wrong, I love all of that stuff a lot of the time, but it doesn’t make for joyful viewing. If you tried to cheer for something in Bourne it would be like “Come on Matty! Kick the snot out of that…corrupt CIA… assassin guy…wait is he good or bad, isn’t he just a patsy for…wait everyone in this movie is bad…wait, our whole government is bad, that sucks…but well they had good motives…but…well…never mind.” The Expendables is designed to be a wonderfully nostalgic anti-Bourne.

And what better auteur to mount this ambitious, potentially genre-saving film than the guy who defined it and shaped it like no other? I’m talking of course about Mr. Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest movie stars of all time who is also no stranger to calling the shots behind the camera and on the written page.

Now that I’ve contextualized The Expendables and its fearless leader, let me contextualize myself and explain why I think I am supremely qualified to judge the movie.

I saw Rocky Balboa thirteen times in the theater—and I have the ticket stubs to prove it. It was one of the most significant movie-going experiences of my life. I saw John Rambo almost as many times and wrote my senior college thesis on the Rambo films. I’ve written academic papers on Cop Land and Demolition Man and have seen every Stallone movie in the theaters since 1996. My shelves are full of Rocky and Rambo figures. I have a vintage metal Rambo lunchbox with the original thermos that I polish weekly and I have Rambo bubble gum, seven Rocky t-shirts, a portion of one of the original 35mm reels for the original Rocky, and an autographed copy of Stallone’s fitness book.

I’ve gone on pilgrimages to Philadelphia and Bowie, Arizona—Rambo’s hometown. I own every single one of his films—including Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! and his direct-to-dvd releases D-Tox, Avenging Angelo, and Shade. I’ve even gotten into fistfights defending the man and his movies and almost named my dog after one of his characters. So when I tell you that I’m a Sylvester Stallone fanatic, I hope you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

For me, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson have always been the action movie cream of the crop. They’ve got the goods, they sell action, they’re believable, they’re real. They are exactly what an action hero is supposed to be, and there ain’t been a single star from later generations that can hold a candle to any of them. Not Shia LaBeouf, not Tobey Maguire, not Jake Gyllenhaal (for christ’s sake), not Matt Damon. They don’t got it, what can I say? Tom Cruise has had his moments (not lately), as has Nicolas Cage, but for guys like me that were weaned on the golden age action movies of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, it has been truly sad to watch the genre get watered down and broadened out into overblown, cartoonish, comic book spectacles with wimpy stars and soulless computer effects that spoil the magic.

But then, a few years ago a righteous ray of hope opened up in the cinematic sky and guys like me started to get giddy again. And my close friend Sly was leading the charge. He bounced back with supreme force and energy after everyone—inside and outside of Hollywood—had written him off as over-the-hill and yesterday’s news. He had something to say, he had his fire and his focus again. He had found his place, and he hit it out of the park with Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, redeeming himself and his legendary characters for the rest of cinematic history. It was nothing short of beautiful and exhilarating to watch.

Then Brucey joined in and made me happier than a pig in…you know what…by doing what he spent more than a decade promising he would never do: he brought back John McClane, one of the greatest, most awesome kick-ass heroes in the world, for Live Free or Die Hard. I never thought I’d get to see a Die Hard movie in theaters even though I would have happily given my vital organs to do so. But then Len Wiseman with his obnoxious blue filters and Tom Rothman and all the other gutless hacks at Twentieth Century Fox teamed up to water the experience down for the tweens and nearly neutered the franchise and the character. Bruce Willis saved it because he’s just so fricken’ badass cool, but the movie wasn’t the second coming it should have been.

Hold on though, because Harrison Ford came to the rescue by resurrecting Indiana Jones, the scrappy everyman adventurer with a jaw of steel and an irrepressible roguish twinkle. Except Steven Spielberg and George Lucas teamed up to create a lazy bastard child sequel featuring a jaw-droppingly lame script and incredibly idiotic action sequences that damned the franchise and left everyone disheartened.

It was truly the end of an era, and since Stallone had talked about John Rambo being his final trip in front of the camera, I began to steel myself for the death of the proper action film. I knew I could do it because I’m a survivor, having watched the Western fade into the recesses of an American consciousness utterly devoid of an appreciation for history, ritual or mythology.

But damn it if Stallone didn’t get my hopes up again, and to new peaks, when he announced that he would be writing, directing and starring in a film with the conscious mandate to resurrect the thematics, aesthetics and visceral, old-school awesome set pieces of the ‘80s action classics…not to mention that he would also be assembling the ultimate action movie junkie’s wet dream cast to boot, a cast to make even The Dirty Dozen and The Magnificent Seven and The Untouchables pale in comparison.

For two years I have been drooling over The Expendables, looking forward to it like no other, surfing the web every day for pictures and set reports and behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. I bought an Expendables shirt, an Expendables watch, poster, comic book and soundtrack. I watched the trailers and tv spots at least nine thousand times, I swear I’m not exaggerating. When the movie finally arrived, I was almost catatonic going into the theater, reminding myself to breathe, pinching myself that I was about to watch the greatest action movie of the 21^st century, the one that was going to save the genre. And I remained in that catatonic state throughout the film and long after the end credits. Because the movie didn’t deliver on what it promised. Not by a long shot.

I can’t believe I’m writing this. I can’t conceive of how this whole thing happened. I wish I could erase it all from my mind. I feel let down and maybe even betrayed, and guilty that I’m not writing a glowing review of my idol’s movie. But as much as it pains me to say it, I have to stay true to the action hero ethos I grew up with and lay out the truth: Sly dropped the ball big time on this one. I can’t believe it, but it’s true. The Expendables is a total mess, wildly off-balance and uneven, filled with structural deficiencies, baffling creative choices and a cast that gels as well as a goat can tap-dance in outer space. Holy crap, what the hell happened? The ingredients were perfect but the recipe is rancid.

Actually, I think I know what happened. Stallone has said in interviews that the script went through over a hundred drafts, and entire characters were combined or eliminated altogether. Stallone may have bit off more than even he could chew with trying to assemble the greatest action cast ever. Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Brittany Murphy and 50 Cent (what the hell?) were all at one time or another slated to be in the movie. Also on the list at various other times were Kurt Russell—Stallone’s Tango & Cash co-star—and Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. I know there were rewrites on the set every day, and it shows.

The story is an utter disaster, in almost every scene, in almost every moment, in almost every way. It’s mind-boggling how half-baked and inept it is. There’s even a ridiculous twist at the end that nearly put me in a coma. Jet Li? Barely in the movie. Barely. Not even kidding. Blink and you’ll miss him entirely, that’s how little he registers. Terry Crews and Randy Couture? Same story.

Dolph Lundgren–who famously took Stallone on once before in Rocky IV–potentially had the most interesting character but is also totally underused. If you’re making an ensemble men-on-a-mission movie, you have to be all in. You can’t just bench characters with no explanation and trot them back out when it is convenient. And that’s not the worst thing. What is? The dialogue. All of it is incredibly choppy and forced. No matter how charismatic these guys may be separately (and I think Stallone is one of the most charismatic actors in movie history, I don’t care who disagrees with me), together they’re totally flat. The humorous banter isn’t humorous. It isn’t even banter.

There are also some technical problems with the movie. First of all, some CGI blood and flames look completely fake. What the hell is wrong with good old-fashioned squibs and practical flames? I don’t care if you’re setting a dude on fire, you’re telling me there is no way to do that stunt practically, without computer augmentation?

Furthermore, even though the film is supposed to evoke the aesthetics of yore, some of the action camerawork is disproportionately entrenched in shaky-cam, quick-cutting crap we have MTV, Michael Bay, and the Bourne films to thank for. It’s nowhere near as bad as it is in those films–the geography is still clear–but it’s still off-putting. Editing in action movies needs to slow the hell down. I’ll say it again: longer takes, less cuts, put the camera on sticks.  The intensity of the action should come from the energy of the performers and the choreography, not the rhythm of the editing.

And unless I was just in a bad theater, the sound mix is off at several points in the film, resulting in muddled dialogue. And maybe it was just me, but a lot of the guns didn’t sound loud enough. The sound of gunfire—especially the amount of gunfire in this movie—should knock you on your butt.

Okay, now I know what some people are going to say: action movies aren’t about story, they’re supposed to be bad, stories don’t matter, it’s all just about gunfights and explosions and car chases. Just watch the movie, don’t think about it too hard and enjoy. You know what I say to all that? B#$$S@#$. Total, utter BS.

Lethal Weapon isn’t about gunfights and explosions and car chases. It has them all, and they’re exciting and kick-ass, absolutely. But the movie is about two mismatched guys—one a tortured, hurting, nihilistic cop with a death wish who is more lost than the criminals he takes down, the other a family man confronting his age and mortality—who have to come together serve justice. It’s a movie about chemistry and evolving, fun, complex relationships. Die Hard is about characters and relationships too. So is Midnight Run, and 48 Hrs., and The Rock, and Face/Off and Hard Boiled and The Fugitive and The Last Boy Scout and First Blood and Bullitt and Dirty Harry and In The Line of Fire. All of those movies are fun and perfectly entertaining, but they’re emotionally involving too.

My litmus test for a good action movie is very simple: if you take out all the action scenes, is it still a good movie that engages with intelligent, revealing writing, crisp direction and captivating performances? Any one of those movies I mentioned, if you take out all of the action, you’re still left with a lot of emotion and absorbing scenes. I would still watch those movies without the action sequences.

But of course, the action genre is also fundamentally about constructing visceral, slam-bang stunts and acts of derring-do (yes, I really did just write “acts of derring-do”) that make you sit forward in your chair, widen your eyes, clench your hands and stop breathing. It’s about providing set-pieces at frequent intervals, and that The Expendables does. The first shots and opening credits are perfect. They set a mood and a build and a stage for expectations before overloading with action, which made me think that Stallone was nailing it. But then so much goes wrong after that. So so much. There are definitely some sweet kills and great stunts and moments, but I couldn’t fully get into them because I was so focused on how poorly the group interacted and how generic the characters all ended up being.

Which is so surprising because in all of the interviews and accounts I’ve followed where Stallone talks about the characters, he goes into so much detail about who each of the guys are, what their histories are—both separately and as a group—what their specialty is, what they believe in, and how they live. He delineates all of them so eloquently and so precisely, and it’s all so right and so fascinating. But none of that is actually in the movie.

For example, in the story synopsis featured on the official Expendables website, Sly’s character Barney Ross (awesome name for an action hero) is described as “a true cynic who describes what he does as ‘removing those hard to get at stains.” That’s a great line that speaks volumes about how the character views the world…but that line isn’t in the movie. Why the hell not? Or take Gunnar Jensen, Dolph Lundgren’s character…we’re led to believe that he’s off-balanced and juiced up on some kind of drug because he’s haunted by his combat demons…but we never have a scene showing him using nor are we given any sense of what those demons are. Sure it’s all implied if you look for it, but everything in this movie is underwritten, especially the female roles.

The back-story for all of the characters is absolutely anemic. Clearly they’re all ex-military in one way or another, but we don’t know how they ended up as mercenaries for hire, what their family situation is, etc. And the villains are total cartoons, and not even in a fun way. Eric Roberts plays Munroe, the main heavy, a task he also shared sixteen years ago in the Stallone/Sharon Stone vehicle The Specialist. Roberts can exude such a menacing, snakelike charm that’s delicious to watch…but he doesn’t have a role he can chomp into here. There’s an attempt at the very end to paint Monroe as a doppelganger for Barney but it fails because the foundation for that has not been properly laid. Same goes for his henchman Dan Paine, played by Steve Austin.

Like everything in the movie, the villains are betwixt and between. They’re not quite ridiculous enough to be fun and entertaining like the inimitable Dan Hedaya in Commando or Jack Palance in Tango & Cash or John Lithgow in Cliffhanger, and they’re not complex or evil enough to be fascinating like John Malkovich in In The Line of Fire or Gary Oldman in Air Force One, to take two examples from Wolfgang Petersen. Plus, especially coming on the heels of John Rambo, the villains don’t even seem all that evil. They’re really not even worth cheering against because what they are doing is so vague and half-baked, they barely even register.

This all applies to the tone of the movie too. It’s not ridiculous or funny enough to work as a parody of the genre like the masterful Hot Fuzz, nor is it dramatic and skillful enough to make us care. The result: it’s all just an uncomfortable mess. If you’re going to eschew dramatic weight and character development, you better have actors with genuine chemistry and a fun kill-the-baddies-while-cracking-delicious-one-liners energy a la Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The Expendables doesn’t. It’s not fun and it’s not absorbing. When I watch a movie, I want to learn as much as I can about who I’m watching, I want to have as complete a picture I can of how they came to be. I want flesh-and-blood portraits, not half-baked sketches. And that’s what is driving me nuts.

Stallone is a savvy, Oscar-nominated screenwriter who has written or co-written virtually every film in his oeuvre, and he has always succeeded at providing acute characterizations that establish a classical back-story and a character context. Besides Rocky and Rambo, go back and look at the characters he played in Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, The Specialist, Assassins, Daylight, Cop Land, and his overly-criticized remake of Get Carter. Stallone makes us care about his character in all of those films, but Barney Ross is not worthy of that pantheon. He doesn’t infuse the character with anything unique or even specific; Stallone doesn’t take ownership of him and that’s really sad to see.

He had the perfect opportunity too: the genesis for the whole movie came from a scene in Rambo: First Blood Part II where Rambo and his contact Co—a beautiful Vietnamese freedom fighter—are riding up the river and she asks Rambo why he was assigned this impossible mission. He smiles with a twinge of sadness and tells her that he is expendable. Co asks what the word “expendable” means and he tells her “It’s like…if you get invited to a party and you don’t show up…it doesn’t really matter.”

That exchange perfectly defined the tragic nature of Rambo and mercenaries in general, and has more dramatic weight than the entire film of The Expendables. Mercenaries are guys who constantly live with the knowledge that they can be replaced, and that, inevitably, they will die a violent death and will never be able to wash the blood from their hands.

The Expendables could have been an exploratory meditation on what it is like to live with that mentality, to struggle to find and hold onto a sense of purpose, a sense that you are fighting a fight worth fighting, that you killed and sacrificed in the pursuit of justice and honor. But the film does not do any of that, save for one scene with Mickey Rourke that is very well-acted and directed. In fact, it actually takes you out of the movie because it is that much better than everything else.

That scene showed the marks of the Stallone of Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, the Stallone who wants to be taken seriously as a filmmaker of thematic substance. But other scenes, especially ones featuring the villains being, well, villains, and a subplot featuring Jason Statham’s character Lee Christmas, are staged perfunctorily and contain totally wooden, flat performances. If it ain’t dramatic or fun, then you really got a problem. Sometimes it seemed like Stallone wasn’t even trying to make a good movie.

But I feel weird even saying that, because I know he busted his butt making this film. (Actually, he busted his neck filming his smackdown with Steve Austin, which ends very unsatisfactorily and doesn’t live up to the epic-ness postulated in the trailer and behind-the-scenes material). I know he wanted to make a love letter to fans like me whose cinematic bread and butter was the real, character-driven action films of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, and he totally could have if he had just not rushed the script and had locked it down before he started shooting.

To go to so much effort and personal and physical pain, to toil away and make a movie this big when the story and characters aren’t worth it is just heartbreaking. Because audiences don’t know about the insane amount of sweat and tears and lost sleep that go into making a movie like this. At the end of it, all that matters is what’s up there on that screen, and what’s up there on the screen in this case is very little at all. I know Sly is capable of much more than what he ended up giving us here.

Again, I know some people will say my expectations were too high, that the movie did exactly what it was supposed to do. But as a foaming-rabid devotee of the genre, I vehemently disagree. I guess that’s where I differ from a lot of the other action fans out there: if I don’t care about the characters I can’t get into the action. I don’t care how awesome the stunts and kills may be, if I’m not emotionally invested, I’m left cold and get completely bored and restless.

I love action movies more than anyone I’ve ever met, but for me it’s all about the emotional impact of action, not the visual. The emotional appeal can survive without the visual, but not vice versa. The thrills come not from pyrotechnics but in caring for the people in these explosive situations, and in fearing for their safety and rooting for them to survive against all odds and save the day.

In looking over those last two paragraphs again, I’m left with this thought: Stallone and I are totally on the same page. Look at his filmography. There are some great films, some good films, some mediocre films, even some terrible films. But all of them are colored by emotion. They’re about characters with heart, fighting for what they believe in, constantly seeking redemption and a chance to right past wrongs.

And throughout his entire career, Stallone has always been disrespected and pigeonholed. I think he is probably the most typecast star in film history. Whenever he tried to bust out of the constraints that audiences and critics put on him, it backfired. Even Cop Land, which is a terrific film full of terrific performances–at the top of which is Stallone’s–was a failure.

So I think what happened with The Expendables is that Stallone finally gave up. He stopped trying to create dramatic characters and just focused on the action. That’s the only explanation, because the action is sensational but the story and characters suck. I think his heart told him to make the kind of movie I wanted, the movie I’ve been talking about, a movie that combined the chemistry and sheer joy of Lethal Weapon with the explorative thematic integrity of Unforgiven and The Wild Bunch.

But in his head, he knew that critics and the majority of moviegoers and action fans don’t care about his acting and don’t even believe he’s any good at it. He knew they would scoff at any kind of earnestness or weight he tried to put into the film, and he wasn’t masochistic enough to open himself up to the same kind of vitriolic criticism he has been taking for thirty years. Most people see Stallone as an action star; I see him as an actor who makes action films.

He made The Expendables for the lowest common denominator, not for people like me who want a little pathos mixed in with their explosions. I’m sure that when I go see this movie again (and I will, out of loyalty), I’ll be able to enjoy it more, because I understand the terms and mindset of it now.

There were certainly some highpoints. There’s a scene with Stallone diving onto a moving sea plane as a whole army is on his a$$ and then he and Jason Statham blow the crap out of it (before engaging in more forced dialogue) that is one of the most kickass action moments I’ve seen in a long time. Stallone still has the goods, believe me, and he knows how to stage action, though sometimes he cuts away from stuff you want to see. He throws some cool MMA moves into the mix and does some awesome John Woo-esque twin 9mm shooting (oh my god greatest idea ever: John Woo directs an action thriller starring Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford).

Maybe if The Expendables hadn’t come on the heels of John Rambo it would have seemed a lot better. I don’t know. Some people will be content just at seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis and Stallone briefly together, and in reveling at the nostalgia the movie tries to evoke for these guys and their bygone era. But it is precisely because I know that Stallone is one of the very few guys left who understands everything about action movies and gets them on an intuitive level that I can’t view this movie as anything but a disheartening disappointment.

I will never give up on Sylvester Stallone. But I feel like he has given up on himself, at least in terms of his acting ability, and that makes me truly sad, because he has always had the chops and has never been fully appreciated. I wish he knew that there were people like me out there who believe in his dramatic abilities. I wish he would believe in himself.

I will continue to support the man and his movies, and am nothing but incredibly grateful for the immense and lasting impact he has had on my life. But The Expendables hurt me, and it’s a pain I will live with for many years to come.

Since Tommy begins this episode in the slammer for the whole baptizing-his-daughter-in-booze-at-a-Catholic-church stunt of last week, you would think that things could only go up for him. Well yes and no. On the plus side: his radical tactic worked and now even the sight of booze makes Colleen want to hurl, and he has a date set up with Janet for later that night. In the negative column: all this happens in the first five minutes, which gives Tommy the next 7/8^ths of the episode to get himself in trouble. And inevitably, that he does.

He thanks Black Shawn for going to bat for him and tries to lay the groundwork for reconciliation between him and Franco. But then they arrive at work and find that they have no work to do. Because they have no job. Because the city boarded up their house and shut them down. Wow.

After playing a lively round of the Blame Game, the gang teams up with the locals to start a good old-fashioned protest. Franco is MIA, but said protest goes swimmingly until Chief Feinberg shows up and rains on the parade, which is all he has been doing ever since he showed up in season four. He talks about going through proper channels and blah blah blah… I wish that guy would just die already. Luckily, everyone is interrupted by reports of a school burning down. Since the city shut down all the firehouses, no one is left to answer the call.

So our heroes pile into their civilian cars and rush to the scene with no suits and no gear. Franco shows up in the nick of time to contribute, and Damian—even though he is back into angsty whine mode and doesn’t want to be a firefighter anymore—cowboys up. It’s riveting to see our guys getting the job done old-school: no gear, no protection, no support, just good old-fashioned heroics.

Beyond all that, which is more than enough, we get more of Peter Gallagher’s entertaining priest, a disastrous dinner date, and in spite of all that, a very small flickering chance for a smidgen of reconciliation between Tommy and Janet. Oh yeah, and some more ghosts. And of course, we get great performances all around. Nothing but smooth sailing for this show right now.

Season 6, Episode 7: Forgiven (originally aired August 10, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.

Somewhere I read some negative comment by some ninny with too much time on his hands saying that Rescue Me was really only a series of scenes and moments in the characters’ lives. What am I missing here? Isn’t that fundamentally what all shows are? What all narratives period are? It’s called storytelling—the act of telling a story. In telling a story, you are shaping a character’s life, condensing it, managing it, showing only the parts that support the story you are trying to tell. No story in human history has ever captured every single millisecond, every single fragment of life of a character from birth to death.

And since when have we wanted that? Movies and television are supposed to exist as versions of life, versions with all of the boring and unnecessary parts taken out. And given that particular criteria, Rescue Me still gets the job done with an energy that no other show on TV does. Last night’s episode was indeed a wonderful collection of scenes and moments, scenes that were at once entertaining, revelatory and creatively cross-pollinating.

At the opening, the crew is called to a car accident involving a young drunk girl who survived unscathed and a passenger who wasn’t so lucky. Tommy tries to save her but her neck is broken. This hits Tommy hard, as losing victims always does. And to make matters worse, the victim and the whole situation reminds him big time of his daughter Colleen—the daughter he spent all of the last episode frantically trying to find after both of them blacked out after one epic night of boozing.

When Tommy gets back to the station, he finds himself paralyzed, unable to move even when another call sounds. Needles does his best to motivate Tommy, but Tommy is done. He starts talking about quitting the firefighting game and decides to go visit Peter Gallagher’s unorthodox priest. The conversation that results is a highlight of the episode, but by far the best conversation comes courtesy of Mike and Sean, who are on a roll this season, having previously provided the greatest conversation about George Clooney, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck ever. This one occurs when they are out at the ballet (yes, the ballet) with the cancer-stricken firefighter they took under their wing while they were smuggling Lou out of the hospital.  This is all about kids they would like to punch in the face, and the important list includes both Haley Joel Osment and Jonathan Lipnicki, who, courtesy of Sean, will now forever be referred to as “that little shit from Jerry Maguire.” Kudos boys, kudos.

Another big moment: Black Shawn surprisingly coming to Tommy’s defense (even though Tommy isn’t around to see it) when Franco calls him a coward. They start to fight and while others try to break it up, Lou encourages them to get it out of their systems. Black Shawn then proceeds to give Franco the beatdown he has been in sore need of this entire season. Seriously, I’m pretty close to hating Franco now.

The main crux of the episode though involves Tommy’s continuing battle to save Colleen from drinking all the booze in the continental U.S. This battle includes both the most memorable AA meeting ever and a raging baptism by booze.

Season 6, Episode 6: Sanctuary (originally aired August 3, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.

You ever watch something on tv and think “Hey, that looks like fun. I bet I could do that. I wonder how you get into doing that stuff?” Well that’s what was going through my mind watching all of the interrogation scenes on Burn Notice, which comprised a good chunk of the episode. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I condone torturing people, but the basic concept of interrogation seems like a lot of fun.

You got a bad person chained up to a chair in a dark room, you have all the power, and your sole task is to play mind games and intimidate until you get what you want. I can’t imagine that not being a blast. Plus, Michael, Sam and Jesse (mostly Sam) have a little fridge full of beer right outside the interrogation room, so they can watch the festivities on the monitors while kicking back with a cold one. My kind of setup.

Now in case you forgot, the subject of all of this interrogation is cold-blooded killer (is that an oxymoron?) Kendra, who for convoluted reasons I’m comfortable saying I don’t understand in the least, is on Michael and Jesse’s Bad List. The problem is that this dame is bonkers up the kazoo, which she demonstrates by smashing her head repeatedly against the table to prove that she can take anything they might dish out to her. So the team has to change tactics. New plan: have Jesse play the sap that Kendra thinks she can manipulate, while Sam plays Jesse’s mean boss.

Fiona, meanwhile, brings Michael yet another case. There sure seems to have been an influx of really needy people in Miami since I lived there. This time, it’s a knock-off accessory designer named Buddy, who thinks his latest client is trying to kill him. I hate when that happens.

The job was to put a couple of pieces of onyx into a leather band for mysterious reasons. After Buddy did that, his client tried to kill him. He got his client’s phone calls triangulated via the (surprisingly) helpful phone company, so Michael and Fiona go to that location to scope things out. Except before they can enter the building, it explodes big time. Yikes.

Michael calls the fire department so that they can put out the raging inferno before all the evidence goes up in smoke. Of course, this then creates the problem of how Michael can get inside the burnt building and swipe whatever juicy evidence might be lying around. The solution? Michael poses as an arson investigator, relying on bureaucratic chain-of-command red tape issues to buy him just enough time to get in and get out.

To cut to the chase, Michael determines that the person who commissioned Buddy and then tried to permanently decommission him is trying to piece together a replica of some sword used by Alexander the Great. Michael also realizes that Alexander the Great is trying to be resurrected so that he can hunt down Oliver Stone and Colin Farrell for bastardizing his namesake in 2004. Yes, that’s a part of the episode. It’s in the subtext, trust me.

So now Michael and Fiona have to catch whatever thief it is that is trying to swap the real sword with the replica. They track down the real sword, and, posing as private security consultants, try to convince the owner that he is going to be robbed by someone in his own company. But the guy is prickly about the whole thing (aren’t they always?), so Michael and Fiona have to resort to nefarious means to flush out the thief.

A couple of remarkable explosions, some jumping and a really cool car disabling sequence ensue. Good episode, but once again, where is Maddie and where the hell is Vaughn?

Season 4, Episode 6: Entry Point (Originally aired July 15, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 9/8c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA Network and Glenn Watson.

Episode 6.3 of Rescue Me contains the greatest conversation about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and George Clooney in human history. Believe me. Nothing else comes close and nothing else ever will. And, believe it or not, said legendary conversation comes courtesy of idiot savants (minus the savants) Sean and Mike. I’m tempted to call it the highlight of the episode, but there is a lot more to choose from.

The story all centers around Tommy’s first day back on the job, and he doesn’t get a chance to ease back into it. The crew goes from call to call—35 in one tour—and Tommy has to contend with stupid civilians, Mick and Teddy making ominous threats, Janet constantly calling to talk with Franco instead of him, and his aching shoulder. But, contrary to what you might expect, Tommy doesn’t complain. In fact, he’s the only guy not complaining. “You guys are bitchin’ and whinin’ and moanin’ about being busy…why don’t you put in for a transfer to some house in Staten Island where you can sit around and…twitter and twatter and download deaf mute porn online…why don’t you run for Congress? Me? I’m happy being a firefighter again.” Enough said.

And I’ll tell you what, Tommy may have seemed out of line busting Franco’s chops in the season premiere for spending so much time at his house, but he was right. There’s something going on with Franco and Janet. They have their own little world, and Franco has his own obnoxious nickname for her. Even if nothing is going on, he’s crossing the line, the same line he beat the crap out of Tommy for crossing with Sheila in season one. Hypocrite much?

Speaking of Sheila, I think I may be sicker of her than ever. She has done nothing so far this season except come get in Tommy’s face and bitch and moan at him like a drugged out banshee to get Damian out of the firehouse. I wish she would just shut up and maybe jump out the window. Sheila, your son is 22-years-old and spent the last several of those years dealing with your crazy, mentally unbalanced Looney Tunes antics. Leave him alone, let him do his job and live his life. He shouldn’t have to keep paying for your warped psyche and abandonment issues. And neither should Tommy. As far as I’m concerned, he has done nothing to you that you didn’t deserve, and that you didn’t do tenfold to him first.

Am I the only person left who is on Tommy’s side, who has more sympathy and affection for him than anyone else on the show? I don’t know when he suddenly became an antihero in need of redemption. Let’s review: he’s not a mobster, he’s not an assassin, he’s not a serial rapist…he has spent his entire adult life in the pursuit of saving people. He lost his cousin and best friend on 9/11, his young son was run over by a drunk driver, and his eldest daughter hates him.

His wife once kidnapped his children and disappeared with them. She also had an affair with his dead cousin and his cop brother, who was subsequently gunned down. He learned that his father had a whole other secret family, and his secret brother turned out to be a pedophile who was also killed. Sheila once drugged him and tried to burn the new house down…with him in it. Then his uncle shot him twice and forced all of Tommy’s friends to watch him as he bled out. Honestly, hasn’t the guy suffered enough? The worst I could ever say about him is that he has a bit of a self-destructive streak and a drinking problem and made a bad judgment call ever getting involved with Sheila. Give. The. Guy. A. Break.

Big holy crap ender involving Lou. They better not kill him off, because honestly, they are running out of characters on this show. If they are going to kill anybody, it should be Mike, because the guy is a moron who hasn’t been remotely interesting since season two or maybe briefly in season four.

Season 6, Episode 3: Comeback (originally aired July 13, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX

Though perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates in history, Tommy Gavin is trying to change. His friends and family sure as hell aren’t making it easy though. Black Shawn and Franco are hanging out shirtless at his house for Katie and Janet’s gazing pleasure (they both blame their lack of attire on vomit incidents, one from baby Wyatt, one from Colleen). Colleen is still drinking like a salivating fish. Janet more or less wants nothing to do with Tommy, blaming him for “coating” her life in “cynicism and ash.” Teddy, Mickey and that other cousin whose name I can never remember are all still holding grudges. Sheila is still rabid about forcing Tommy to drum Damian out of the department. And the firehouse is on the brink of closure. God even I want to drink a vat of Bushmills after writing that paragraph.

This season has started out remarkably Tommy-centric, and I for one have absolutely no problem with that. I hear snippets of other people complaining that the show isn’t what it once was, that the other characters don’t have anything to do. I say poppycock (mostly because I love that word). Being that the show is winding down, it isn’t just legitimate that Tommy is the focus; it’s imperative. He still remains, by far, the most lost character on the show. He’s the guy with the most wrong with him, the guy missing the most answers, the guy missing the most peace. He needs to find all of these things, or at least get to a place where he can find all of these things, or else he’ll end the show in misery and so will I.

And of course, it doesn’t hurt that during all of this searching and through all of these attempts to repair his life and family, Tommy Gavin is still constantly hilarious to watch. Denis Leary injects such a potent sharpness to the guy. He’s trying to be nice to everyone now, even sitting down his ex-wife and daughters and telling them how much he loves them…to their constant scorn. He’s acting now like he was in season two when he was mainlining Janet’s happy pills. Damian even makes a little comment to himself after Tommy hugs him that it’s “Pills. Definitely pills.” In other words, Tommy is acting as fake as he was when he was on drugs, which begs the obvious question, is this quest he is on inherently bankrupt?

Highlights include: Damian stepping up to the plate on a call for the first time, Tommy talking to Lou about what he saw in the afterlife, Tommy taking his daughter to a bar to try to cure her of booze, and Tommy giving a parental speech to Katie that backfires horribly.

Season 6, Episode 2: Change (originally aired July 6, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX

Burn Notice is back in top-fun form with this episode that finds Michael & Co. trying to get the drop on mystery killer woman Kendra while simultaneously battling drug dealers causing trouble outside a nice little Homestead clinic. They certainly are a busy bunch.

Michael Westen is an expert at high-tech, but the opening finds him with a low-tech problem: trying to find a way to access the information on the antique tape drive he and Jesse took out of Kassar’s wall last episode after Kassar was killed by Kendra. You don’t understand, you say? Don’t worry, I don’t fully either.

But Michael goes all over town to every kind of tech/media outlet to find a way to access the tape and he strikes out. But at his last stop, he and Fiona discover that Kendra is tailing them. They enlist Sam to help turn the tables on her, but Kendra turns the tables on them. Michael and Kendra have a nice little cat-and-mouse phone conversation that makes Fiona jealous. No idea what’s on the tape, but Michael decides to let Kendra believe that he is willing to sell it to her for $50,000. However this McGuffin comes into play, Kendra is certainly the most delightful, dastardly female villain since Carla in season two.

But as usual, Michael gets distracted. Jesse calls Michael over to Maddy’s house (where Jesse has been staying for several episodes) for what Michael assumes to be a meeting about the Kendra situation. But no. Instead, Maddy has another cause for Michael that Jesse has already gotten invested in.  She wants Michael to help her friend’s boyfriend deal with the drug dealers who attacked him and keep selling heroin in front of his clinic. Michael reluctantly complies.

But the boyfriend, David, is a pain-in-the-ass client. He doesn’t want Michael & Co. to operate outside of the law, which is kind of like asking a goldfish to swim outside of the tank. The team proceeds to do what they have to do to help David or not…whether he wants them to or not. Chiefly, this involves getting to know the hierarchy of the drug dealers—led by a maladjusted fellow named Cutler—and using Michael’s drug dealer former buffoon neighbor Sugar to provide references for Michael’s supplier cover.

Highlights include a rare solo Sam brawl in a strip club, doing surveillance via an infrared camera attached to a remote control plane piloted by a twelve-year-old, lots of explosions, a knife fight between Michael and Kendra, and Michael and Fiona going nuts together with sniper rifles—probably the coolest couples’ activity in human history. Nice to see that both Fiona and Maddy have more screen time and more to do in this episode; that’s exactly how I like it.

My only concern: once again, what the hell happened to Vaughn?

Season 4, Episode 5: Neighborhood Watch (Originally aired July 1, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 9/8c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA Network and Glenn Watson.

Doug Liman is often credited with reinventing the spy/espionage/assassin genre in 2002 with his unexpected, contemporized adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, turning Matt Damon into an unexpected action star and causing Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and the MGM brass to completely reboot and remold the Bond franchise in the Bourne image (most say for the better, I say for the worse—I miss you Pierce!).

He did it again in 2005 with the mighty successful and overblown star vehicle Mr. & Mrs. Smith…which united Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in more ways than one…and Fair Game, his film about outed CIA agent Valerie Plame starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, premiered in competition at Cannes this year. Though he has directed films in other genres like Swingers and Jumper and authored shows like The O.C. (yikes), one thing is clear: this guy really digs the story possibilities of the spy world. And now he’s at it again with his new spy show that he’s producing for USA through his banner Hypnotic. It’s called Covert Affairs and it stars Piper Perabo, Christopher Gorham and Peter Gallagher.

Poptimal.com was invited to take part in a conference call with Mr. Liman set up by USA to promote the show. Though he didn’t always seem thrilled to be taking part in the proceedings (and I can’t blame him, given how inevitably there are always a few people who ramble on incoherently and ask the same obvious questions), he talked candidly about the show, his forays into the spy world, and the exciting challenges of writing and directing character-driven material. Below is a summary of the most interesting comments Mr. Liman made.

• He referred to television as “the last bastion to develop real characters” because networks don’t have the bucks to compete with the spectacle of Hollywood blockbuster comic book franchises, so they have to put their energy into creating characters that will make people tune in every week.
• He also referred to television as a “much bigger canvas than film.” Can’t say I agree with that one.
• Liman has always preferred to work from the standpoint of creating characters with actors, developing projects from the get go with specific actors in mind and then letting their thoughts and attitudes shape and change the character—a modus operandi that has often caused problems for him in Hollywood.
• Angelina Jolie was not Liman’s first choice for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Brad Pitt was supposed to be Bourne before Matt Damon.
• Fight scenes are never really safe unless at least one of the persons involved is a stunt person. After casting his lead, in terms of action, Liman says it is easier to find stuntpeople who can act rather than actors who can do stunts.
• He learned on The Bourne Identity how important it is to have a very specific point of view on action sequences and to use budget limitations to create style. In other words, when done well, action sequences don’t have to be generic; they can excite while telling the story and revealing character.
• Though he acknowledges that since The Bourne Identity became a cultural touchstone, USA will obviously promote Covert Affairs as “from the creator of The Bourne Identity,” but Liman insists that he is not repeating himself and that Piper Perabo’s Annie Walker is a completely different character than Jason Bourne. He also talked about how many properties are imitative of Bourne and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
• He referred to Green Zone as a rip-off of The Bourne Identity—basically just producing a carbon copy of Bourne and putting him into a different scenario. This makes me wonder if there is some bad blood between Liman and Universal and Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon. Greengrass directed the two Bourne sequels, which were considered superior to the original by a lot of people (myself included). It could be argued that Greengrass ultimately put a bigger stamp on Bourne than Liman did, and certainly Matt Damon always speaks about the franchise in terms of Greengrass, never Liman. Though Liman executive produced the two sequels, I’ve always wondered why he didn’t direct them. Was he just uninterested or were there creative/personnel problems that prevented him from doing so? I’ve always wondered.
• For some fight sequences on Covert Affairs, the crew use a bunch of Canon 5D Mark IIs, which allows them to get closer to the action in a way that not even the Red camera can. Honestly, does everyone have one of those 5Ds except me?

Personally, I’m a little fatigued by spy stories and I wonder how much new territory is left to mine with the genre. The market is so saturated by espionage fare…it seems there’s a new spy movie every week (e.g. Knight and Day), and I swear 95% of all scripted shows are about cops, doctors, lawyers and spies. Can Covert Affairs reinvent the wheel and feel fresh, or will it just prove to be another endless entry in the genre?

Certainly, the show fits the USA brand very well. Piper Perabo makes for a bright and likable (almost too likable, almost too plucky) star, and the pilot is fast-paced, poppy and slickly-edited. It’s not great tv by any means but it’s very enjoyable and polished.

The show opens with Perabo taking her CIA entrance lie detector test, complete with all the pulse-reading gizmos you’d expect. The administrator asks Annie a series of personal questions to “establish a control.” Since Annie has to answer these questions, within the first thirty seconds of meeting this character we get to learn all kinds of painful tidbits about her. Through flashback—as Annie narrates—we learn that she has a real ear for languages and spent a long time traveling all over the world, especially in South America, where she met some stud and fell in love. Then one morning she awoke to find he had skedaddled and left her a cryptic note.

We then see her going through various training exercises on The Farm, culminating in parachuting. Then she is mysteriously whisked away to Langley, before completing the last month of her training, apparently because her language skills are needed on some important mission. We get the sense though that there is more going on here than meets the eye, probably somehow related to the stud who left her.

From there we get the usual—aliases, a hotel shootout, a car chase, all done very well. But there are promising character touches as well. Annie is befriended by a blind CIA colleague named Auggie, and we get to see her relationship with her older sister, a married mother of two who has no idea of her CIA life.

I’m sure Alias comparisons will be made, but I’m not qualified to comment because I never really watched that show. All I will say about female spies is that no one will ever top Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight. But Covert Affairs seems poised to be yet another hit, breezy summer entertainment for USA. That’s a good thing.

For more information about the show and cast, visit:  www.usanetwork.com/series/covertaffairs/

For television reviews, click here.

Photographs courtesy of Robert Ashcroft, Steve Wilkie, and USA Network.

I know…that’s a really lame, obvious title. It’s just the kind of thing that Denis Leary’s embittered, resilient, devil-may-care firefighter protagonist Tommy Gavin would dump all over. But I honestly couldn’t think of an insightful way to express Jesus-Christ-I-Love-This-Show-More-Than-I-Love-Oxygen-How-Can-A-Group-Of-People-Create-Something-This-Consistently-Unique-and-Brilliant.

I’ve been watching Rescue Me almost since its beginning in 2004, after my cousin Sara told me that this show would become my new best friend. All I can say is that six years is not nearly enough time to spend with the boys of 62 Truck and the people who surround them. Rescue Me has a rhythm and a vitality that is unlike anything I have ever seen on television. There is no formula, no common structure…it has a lifeforce that is all its own. It is by far the best show that FX has ever aired—which is quite a compliment because FX is an amazing network—and it trumps anything that has ever been on HBO, in my not-so-humble opinion. I just can’t praise the show—and specifically Denis Leary and Peter Tolan—enough. I would happily take a bullet for either one of those guys, because they’re clearly geniuses.

Season six picks up right where the unforgettable season five finale left us: with Tommy shot twice by a vengeful Teddy and left bleeding to death in his own bar. We pick him up here in the ambulance ride, with Lou and Mickey in tow. Tommy is betwixt and between: not quite dead, and not quite alive. We watch him in these precious moments as he flatlines, fragilely walking the tightrope between life and death, and—thanks to the Catholic guilt Tommy Gavin has been fighting all his existence—between heaven and hell.

First we see him with his perished cousin Jimmy and a sea of other departed firefighters. Jimmy tried to guide Tommy toward the light, but suddenly he explodes into a flaming building. Fighting the smoke and the flames, Tommy is confronted by horrible things: Sheila being attacked, 9/11 victims he failed to save swarming him, the Twin Towers, and the family he left behind. Then he bursts back to life. And all of this happens before the opening credits.

But that’s true for Rescue Me in general: the show generates a stronger, more turbulent emotional roller coaster ride in a couple of minutes than most shows do in a whole season. I’m not kidding folks, if you haven’t checked this show out, stop whatever you’re doing and watch the pilot episode right now.

Tommy may have cheated death once again, but it’s not a bed of roses for him when he gets out of the hospital (actually, he flees from the hospital after filling his bag with morphine). The firehouse is in danger of being closed down due to the recession and all of the colorful hijinks associated with the crew, not the least of which is this whole star-firefighter-nearly-murdered-by-his-former-firefighter-uncle-in-an-illegal-firefighter-bar-thing. Furthermore, his twenty-year-old daughter Colleen is trying to drink herself to death and give him a run for his money. His ex-wife Janet didn’t come to see him once in the hospital, and Sheila is pressuring him…as only Sheila can…to get her son Damian to quit being a fireman.

It gets worse: Teddy is still unhinged and threatening to kill Tommy if he ever takes a drink again, Mickey takes his turn at trying to kill Tommy by barreling down the highway in the wrong direction, and Jimmy is resentful that Tommy came back to life instead of staying dead with him. He’s also imploring Tommy to make some changes because he clearly went to hell instead of heaven when he was dancing on the other side.

Or is all of the religion stuff/talking-with-dead-cousin thing merely symptomatic of Tommy’s unhinged psyche? These are questions the show has been flirting with since the beginning, and with only 19 more episodes to go before Rescue Me leaves the TV landscape forever (I’m trying really hard not to cry now), who knows what kind of crazy, unpredictable answers we are going to get.

I could sing Rescue Me’s praises every day for the next fifteen years. My only criticism of the premiere is not really a criticism so much as a veiled compliment: I want more. I could happily watch a show devoted wholly to every single character—we’re talking twelve spin-offs or something. I wanted to see more of Lou, of Franco, of Colleen, of Janet, of Sheila…of everybody. There just isn’t enough time in forty minutes…or six years, for that matter.

Season 6, Episode 1: Legacy (originally aired June 29, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDbPro

Last night’s Burn Notice featured the best Michael/Sam interaction so far this season, in a plot thread that found the two buddies ass-deep in a hostage situation…as the hostage takers. What? Here’s what happened: Sam has this friend Josh (Field of Dreams, Pulp Fiction, Broken Arrow and Swimming with Sharks veteran Frank Whaley) who runs a charity for families of fallen soldiers. Josh invested his money with some goon who stole all of it, so Josh went and took the guy and the guy’s partner hostage. Sam stays to help Josh and Michael stays to help Sam. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Cops and S.W.A.T. armed up the wazoo swarm the outside of the building, and Michael and Sam have to find a way to buy time until they can get the money back, diffuse the situation and, hopefully, escape and not go to the slammer. Things get more complicated when the police learn that Michael is involved.

It’s a good, meaty situation to find our heroes in, and reinforces the show’s thematic emphasis on the importance of loyalty and friendship, and the price you pay when you choose to value human relationships over tactical security. Michael and Sam each choose to entangle themselves in a hairy situation and face the very real possibility of jail time all out of loyalty to a friend. But it’s also loyalty—in the form of Fiona and Jesse—who help Sam and Michael come out on top.

Frank Whaley is a likable client-of-the-week, and he plays his character like a droopy puppy dog on speed. The highlights of the whole affair involve Michael pretending to be one of the hostages and talking to the cops and doing some amazing MacGyver voodoo in order to create a phone line and blow up a floor safe using a microwave and homemade shaped charges.

The ending of the whole hostage situation is more than a little unrealistic—even by Burn Notice standards—and allows Michael to walk away a little too easily. But oh well. I’m not complaining about that. I am, however, going to complain slightly about the B storyline, which involves Jesse and Fiona trying to track down some dead contact of Jesse’s in the Bahamas. It all felt more than a little convoluted to me.

Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but the setup for this subplot seemed to be set up by Fiona in a quick call to Michael…a call so quick and packed with so much vague information so as to not give viewers enough time to question what they were hearing. Then, back in Miami, Jesse and Fiona were tracking down more leads related to this Bahamas dead guy. Just like last week with the arms dealer contact of Jesse’s, I’m really having a hard time understanding exactly who Jesse was, and what his plan is now for finding out who burned him (not knowing that it was, inadvertently, Michael himself). In fact, I’ve already kind of fogged over what the information was that Michael had to steal that got Jesse burned in the first place.

And along those notes, where the hell is Vaughn? What’s he up to? Why was he introduced in the first two episodes of this season in such a major way only to disappear for the last two weeks, with no screen time or even screen mention? Burn Notice has always been a little convoluted—in a good way though—but they’re starting to push it. And being that USA has already renewed the show for a fifth and sixth season, I’m wondering how far up the Convoluted Scale Matt Nix & Co. are going to have to push things in order to stretch the story out for the next few years.

Season 4, Episode 4: Breach of Faith (Originally aired June 24, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 9/8c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA Network and Glenn Watson.

After two solidly entertaining episodes, the fourth season of highest-rated cable hit Burn Notice took a bit of a tumble, offering a weak and transparently-constructed storyline that focused too much on new guy Jesse and Sam and too little on Michael and Fiona. There’s no B storyline, no developments with the mysterious Vaughn, just the case-of-the-week. I’m not totally against that notion in theory, but if you’re going to focus entirely on the case-of-the-week, it better be a good one. Tonight’s was not.

We open with Jesse telling the gang about how, before he was burned (inadvertently by Michael), he was working with the defense department on a series of bombings. He traced the pattern to Miami, specifically a port where weapons were coming into Florida from Algeria. He wanted to find a guy he nicknamed “Cobra” (a nickname that Sam makes fun of Jesse for), and has now made contact with a midlevel guy. He posed as a gun smuggler on the phone and wants to now go meet the guy in person on the docks.

But before they can get any information out of any of the workers, Jesse sees a security guard getting shaken down by some mobsters and interferes. It looks like everyone has their new client. But the problem is that the timing is too convenient (or inconvenient, depending on your point of view), and I for one didn’t get a real firm grasp on why these mobsters were after the security guard.

Nevertheless, Michael & Co. agree to target the head honcho, a guy named Tony whose nickname is Mr. Clean, because no matter how many times he is indicted, he always gets away clean. Michael pretends to be an FBI agent on suspension named Ned and offers to give Tony inside information on an ongoing investigation, but this doesn’t really work. Therefore, Sam has to step up to the plate and dust off his alias Chuck Finley.

From here, Sam and Jesse more or less take center stage, and Michael and Fiona seem to have very little to do for the rest of the show. As much as I love Bruce Campbell, he can’t carry the show; he is the perfect sidekick and comic relief, but he should never be the focus. And this new guy Jesse…I think the impulse to add a new element to the team is valid after four seasons, and the dangerous connection that Michael has to him is a strong choice. But, that being said, I didn’t expect Jesse to be brought into the fold as quickly and thoroughly as he has. I’m not sure I like him as a character. I guess I see what the idea for that character could bring to Burn Notice, but the actual execution I’m not sure I’m crazy about.

Most of the action this week centers on planning a dock heist of some computers worth $5 million, the goal being to get Tony’s hand caught in the cookie jar. But none of it is terribly action-packed or compelling; we’ve seen so many heist scenarios, even on the show, and after a while it all felt like paint-by-numbers to me. I felt like this episode was essentially autopilot filler, and Burn Notice is too inventive and fun to be doing that. Maybe Matt Nix is spending too much time trying to get his new show The Good Guys to take off and isn’t focusing as much on Burn Notice. I hope that’s not the case, because after watching half of The Good Guys pilot, I’m convinced that show is a loser, and Burn Notice is certainly not that.

The only good scenes in this episode revolve around Madeline: one where she ferrets out information from Jessie about his past, the other where she confronts Michael about his hand in burning Jesse. Sharon Gless is always a welcome presence, and I’m glad her role has been beefed up a little since last season. We need more of her and much more of Michael than we got in this episode. Here’s hoping next week gets back on track.

Season 4, Episode 3: Made Men (Originally aired June 17, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 9/8c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA Network and Glenn Watson.

A crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.

1983-87 TV Show

If the above paragraph sounds familiar to you and brings a grin to your face, then you probably grew up watching The A-Team, one of the quintessential, decade-defining shows of the 1980s. Created by the inimitable hip tough-guy show creator Stephen J. Cannell, responsible for The Rockford Files, Hunter, Renegade, Wise Guy and 21 Jump Street, The A-Team was the 1980s answer to Mission: Impossible. It was ridiculous, tongue-in-cheek, cartoony fun, and it knew it too. It may not have been great television, but it was certainly seminal and will forever hold a place of honor in the canon of American pop culture.

So why has Twentieth Century Fox chosen to remake the show into a $110 million blockbuster film? Simple: because they could. The A-Team is a pre-established brand—albeit a brand nearly thirty years old that the much-coveted young male demographic is probably unaware of—and pre-established brands are easier to sell. The film is designed to tap into the current 1980s nostalgia wave going on right now—represented by the revivals of beloved franchises like Indiana Jones, Die Hard, Rambo, and Predator. For better or for worse, it comes on the heels of other tv shows-reinvented-as-movies like Mission: Impossible, Charlie’s Angels, I Spy, The Mod Squad, The Dukes of Hazzard, G.I. Joe, Starsky and Hutch, S.W.A.T. and Miami Vice. The question is, is it any good?

Well, yes and no. The story trades a Vietnam backdrop for Iraq, but otherwise remains much the same. Four larger-than-life cartoon characters named John “Hannibal” Smith, Templeton “Faceman” Peck, B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus, and H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock are united to form the A-Team, specializing in impossible military missions and covert operations. Hannibal, the leader, chomps on Cuban cigars and quips “I love it when a plan comes together.” Faceman is a smooth-talking con man and Hannibal’s right hand. B.A. is a strong man, mechanic and driver of the beloved GMC van who loves to get angry, pity fools and spout “I ain’t getting on no plane!” Murdock is a bonkers, legally insane pilot living in a VA ward.   

After a nonsensically fun introductory prologue in Mexico, the film picks up the team eight years and eight missions later, now stationed in Iraq as an elite combat unit. Hannibal is contacted by CIA spook Lynch (also returning from the original show) to steal back U.S. Treasury plates from a group of Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad.

Against the advice of his commanding officer, General Morrison, Hannibal agrees to steal the plates, under the radar and without official sanction. The insane mission is successful, but when the team returns to the base, both Morrison and the shipping container carrying the money are destroyed by baddies from the private security firm Black Forest, (read: Blackwater) led by the ruthless Brock Pike (Brian Bloom). With Morrison (Gerald McRaney) the only proof that they were, in fact, acting on the U.S.’s behalf, the team is arrested, tried, dishonorably discharged and sentenced to ten years in federal prison. The rest of the film then becomes about the team busting out of prison and tracking down Pike and a mysterious Arab backer, finding who set them up and clearing their names.

So what’s good? Easy: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper and District 9 vet Sharlto Copley. Neeson oozes charisma and scenery-chewing bravado in a form of near self-parody we’ve never seen from him before. Cooper exudes devil-may-care bad boy charm, and sports a nice tan and a personal trainer-honed physique. Copley steals the show as Murdock, injecting the character with a nervy, zany lunacy that sometimes recalls Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys. The three play off each other quite well.

What’s bad? MMA star Quinton Jackson as B.A. The truth is that there is nobody that can fill Mr. T’s shoes. The dude is one-of-a-kind, and Jackson doesn’t even come close. At best he’s a second-rate impersonation. I think they would have been better off just altering and completely reinterpreting the character to put as much distance from Mr. T as they could. Also, Jessica Biel seems a little out of her league, though her role really only requires her to look pretty and act sassy, and I guess she pulls those off.

The ridiculous, PG-13 sanitized action is all there: prison escapes, flying tanks, helicopter fights, building rappelling shootouts, air strikes, double-crosses, tumbling shipping containers (that looked really fake by the way, sub par CG), you name it. Some of the humor works but a lot of it feels forced and really obvious, mostly involving B.A. None of the characters really get to break through their cartoon outlines. And call me crazy, but I’m just fatigued on over-the-top action.

You know, go back and watch Dirty Harry. Or Bullitt, or Die Hard, or Lethal Weapon, or First Blood, or Predator, or The Last Boy Scout, or Under Siege or Cliffhanger, or even later entries like Face/Off and The Long Kiss Goodnight and Heat and Ronin. Those movies don’t have seven VFX companies listed in the end credits. Those movies were done for real. Real stunts, real characters, real—not manufactured—attitude, real fun. Action movies have just gotten too big, too ridiculous, and too overblown. They need to get smaller, more believable, and back to the character-driven basics. Sure, I enjoyed The A-Team in a completely disposable way, but I don’t want to see it again, and I don’t want it to become the new standard. I was always aware that I was watching a movie because it’s a postmodern affair that says we-know-we’re-a-movie; I was disconnected.

2010 is an interesting year, because not only does the 1980s nostalgia wave continue, but it sports its own 1980s subgenre nostalgia wave: the men-on-a-mission film. In April we had The Losers, which I didn’t see but heard was pretty lame and now we have the good-but-instantly forgettable The A-Team. But I’m holding out for the end of the summer, when a little movie called The Expendables is going to explode onto theaters, kick The Losers and The A-Team’s collective asses, and remind everyone exactly what an action movie is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a nitty gritty, visceral, gut-clenching thrill ride with real stunts and real characters played by real legends. It’s about manly men doing manly things and having fun doing it.

I know that The Expendables is going to be a phenomenal ride because it’s auteur is Sylvester Stallone, who not only knows the modern action genre better than anyone else working today, but who also more or less invented it. He has assembled a cast that no one else ever could have, and he has directed them—and himself—to perfection. Watch the trailer, for it alone blows A-Team and The Losers and maybe every other action movie made in the last fifteen years right out of the water.

Don’t forget to check out Part 2 as Inisia Lewis goes deeper into The A-Team and The Losers comparison.

As time marches relentlessly forward and technology continues to make the world faster and smaller, the American frontier experience of the 19^th century recedes further and further into the past. But the ideology carved out of that period has shaped the collective American soul like arguably no other, and the mythology and legacy of the West—the untamed frontier—still pulses. There is just something inherently romantic about the self-reliant cowboy figure.

Impossibly individualistic, the true cowboy lives simply and truly and honestly, is slow to make a promise but quick to keep one, and dispenses his own justice when the laws of the town fall short. Even though the Western genre has fallen out of fashion for quite some time, the cowboy lives on as America’s most mythologized historical figure, representing the ultimate American wish fulfillment.

The reliable folks over at FX understand all of this, and they’ve teamed up with American Western/crime fiction godfather Elmore Leonard to create Justified, a modern Western series that chronicles the life of Raylan Givens, a Miami-based U.S. Marshal who is banished to the rural Kentucky hills in which he grew up…and which he has tried so eagerly to leave behind.

He finds himself having to do a job that continues to try to take his soul and his life, and even though he now has home field advantage, he doesn’t want it. All Harlan County, Kentucky, seems to hold for him are memories and people—like the ex-wife who left him and the nasty father who abused him—that he would just as soon forget.

Out of all law enforcement types, U.S. marshals hark back to the Old West the most. They rely on themselves as much as they can and they travel the back roads hunting down outlaws who have their faces plastered on wanted posters. But Raylan—played by Timothy Olyphant with the perfect mixture of amused cynicism, sure-fire cool, savvy efficiency and submerged, angry contempt—takes it to a whole other level. No matter how much people give him crap for it, he walks, talks and breathes being a cowboy. He’s got the hat, the boots, the gold star, and has no qualms about proving that he’s the quickest draw you’ll ever meet.

It isn’t just an act with him; Raylan really is a cowboy who just happened to be born in the wrong century. There’s more than a little of Josh Randall—the star-making role Steve McQueen played on Wanted: Dead or Alive for three seasons from 1958-1961—in Olyphant’s Raylan.

Of course, the whole modern Western lawman/fish-out-of-water scenario has been done before, notably in Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel’s first collaboration Coogan’s Bluff and the Dennis Weaver tv show it inspired, McCloud. But Justified does it well and puts its own stamp on the convention. Frankly, setting up a cowboy as an anachronism in a modern context is the only narrative framework that can really stand a chance to excel in a 21^st-century America so averse to history and a leisurely pace.

By placing Raylan Givens in a world that has passed him by, by making him a bit of a dinosaur choosing not to catch up with the times, he becomes more than just a character; he becomes a symbol, and audiences can warm to him through their connections to the world that surrounds him. The other characters that populate the show, who marvel at Raylan like he is some kind of antique, speak for us as an audience. Raylan gets infused with a novelty value that is charming.

The character was created by Leonard initially in his novels Pronto and Riding the Rap. He was revisited in a short story entitled “Fire in the Hole,” and it is that short story that forms the real basis of Justified. That story is all about the match-up between Givens and an old Kentucky acquaintance: Boyd Crowder, a Bible-thumpin’ neo-Nazi with a penchant for violent crimes. Crowder is Givens’ biggest thorn so far in this first season of Justified, though he’s gone up against other criminals like an ex-Mob accountant turned dentist played by Alan Ruck, a murderous widow, and a charming middle-aged prison escapee. He also played bodyguard to a really eccentric judge and helped his ex-wife’s realtor get out from under some bad dudes.

Elmore Leonard has been adapted for film and tv many times, sometimes good (3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and maybe Jackie Brown), sometimes bad (Be Cool, The Big Bounce, plenty more). Screenwriter Scott Frank is the best at doing the job, but Justified creator Graham Yost—writer of great actioners Speed and Broken Arrow, as well as cancelled-way-too-soon crime shows Boomtown and Raines—is succeeding just fine.

There’s a slow-burn pleasure to watching Justified. It’s a character piece first and foremost, and Timothy Olyphant is nailing it. I was pleasantly surprised. I know Olyphant played actual 19^th-century lawman Seth Bullock on HBO’s Deadwood, but I couldn’t get into that show, as much as I love Westerns. Maybe I should try again. But I did see Olyphant as chief villain Thomas Gabriel in Live Free or Die Hard and I thought he was terrible. Truly terrible. Laughable even. I didn’t find him threatening for a second and I thought he was one of the weakest links of that still-enjoyable John McClane outing. (Although since Olyphant wasn’t cast until after they had shot half of the movie—a truly boneheaded move—and had to take direction from Len Wiseman, I’m not sure it’s totally fair to blame him for the lameness of his performance). He began to rebound for me during his stint on season two of FX’s great legal thriller Damages (please don’t cancel it), and now I’m firmly in his corner.

I’m also a big fan of Natalie Zea’s work on Justified. She plays Raylan’s ex-wife, and she plays it well. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I initially confused her with the actress Brooke Langton, who I loved on NBC’s also unfairly-cancelled Life (they look so much alike I swear).

Since Justified has been picked up for a second season, I would recommend it thoroughly to just about anyone; it’s a satisfyingly cool blend of action, character study and wry humor.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX.

For more television reviews, click here.

Photographs courtesy of FX and IMDbPro.

There was so much packed into the two-hour season three finale of Chuck that at times I felt as if I were watching eight different programs smashed up together into one layered mess. The whole affair brings to mind that bowl thing they have now at KFC where they just take chicken and like every side dish they have and smash it into one savory, artery-clogging, three-thousand calorie hodgepodge. I imagine that eating that bowl and watching last night’s Chuck provide remarkably similar experiences: you’re exceedingly satisfied and happy while eating/watching it, but hours later you’re left with the realization that it was sloppily prepared, overstuffed and probably not good for you in the long run.

As the first part opens, Chuck is in neurotic overdrive, pestering his father Stephen (Scott Bakula) to hurry up and finish making the Governor, a high-tech device (though it looks suspiciously like a wristwatch) that will regulate Chuck’s brain and prevent the Intersect from making him cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. This whole the-Intersect-is-making-Chuck crazy thing seemed to pop out of nowhere earlier this season, with no hints or development leading up to it. But that’s often the case on this show—for one reason or another—so I’m learning to just roll with it and not question too much.

Also during this exchange, Stephen reiterates his discomfort with Chuck having become a spy, and warns his son that there may come a time when Chuck has to leave those that he loves in order to protect them—just as Stephen himself did. I can’t stress enough how much Scott Bakula adds to Chuck. He brings such warmth and sincerity to his role that does wonders to ground the show emotionally, even as it frequently plunges into the depths of utter ridiculousness.

While taking a breather with Sarah at a farmer’s market, Chuck starts having a splitting headache, hearing a voice and flashing, all in tandem. Yikes. He follows the source of all of this into the nearby subway and catches up with…Shaw! No! How the hell is that little pretty boy weasel/surprise Ring honcho still alive? Did Chuck not pump him full of lead in Paris and watch him do a Peter Pan over a bridge? Of course, then again, the same thing happened to Jon Voight at the beginning of Mission: Impossible and we all know how that turned out.

Chuck, Sarah, Casey, and a reluctant Stephen track Shaw down via subway surveillance cameras and follow him into a secret building…the same secret building where Justin is holding Ellie. Meanwhile, Beckman is at some CIA review board trying to convince higher-ups not to shitcan Operation Bartowski. Chuck runs into Justin and takes him out as Ellie watches in shock. Justin rebounds, Chuck tackles him into an auditorium…the same auditorium that Beckman is pleading to the higher-ups in. What? They’re fighting in a CIA building? Justin is really in the CIA? Then Shaw walks in and the higher-ups don’t do anything to him?

Chuck and Sarah—as confused as I was—emote to the suits that Shaw tried to kill both of them in Paris, but Shaw claims he was a double-agent who was about to shut down the Ring when Chuck shot him. It’s Shaw’s word against everyone else’s, and Shaw uses Dr. Dreyfus’ notes regarding Chuck’s deteriorating mind to discredit him.

Casey thinks that Shaw and the Ring have been massively infiltrating the CIA and are taking it over. He also thinks that the only chance they have is to run, because the bad dudes will now surely come after those they care about. Casey runs to tend to his daughter, while Sarah runs back in after Chuck.

The rest of this first half deals with Casey trying to convince his daughter that she is in fact his daughter and save him from Justin, Ellie trying to figure out what the real deal is about Chuck and the CIA via Awesome and Morgan, and Chuck on the run with his dad trying to save Casey and Sarah from the clutches of Shaw.

And remember how important I said Scott Bakula was to the show? Yeah, well (SPOILER ALERT) the writers had Shaw shoot him in the chest in cold blood. I screamed at the TV. See, Chuck was about to kung fu Shaw (oh yeah, he also now has an Intersect too) and see which Intersect would win out. Shaw said that Chuck would lose because he couldn’t work his Intersect when he was emotional. Chuck said that he was totally calm, so Shaw killed Stephen to mess Chuck up. Now I’m not saying the writers were necessarily wrong to kill Bakula; it was a shocking and emotional moment. But I still can’t say I’m happy about it.

The first half ends with Chuck—along with Sarah and Casey—trapped in Shaw’s clutches. In the wake of his father’s murder, Chuck feels defeated. There is no one left to save the three of them…no one except Morgan, Ellie and Awesome. That’s where the second half picks up.

Chuck & Co. are being transported via armored van by Shaw and his minions to some remote place where he can kill them. But Ellie is following them and relaying instructions to Morgan and Awesome. I loved seeing Ellie in unexpected steely take-charge mode, and I loved the flashback we got right after that showing Ellie and Chuck as young kids in 1991.

Shot in muted tones with a soft filter, the flashback shows young Ellie yelling at young Chuck after he broke his mother’s favorite charm bracelet. Stephen—busy at work creating the original Intersect—comes out and tells Ellie that Chuck has a knack for getting into trouble and that she will always have to be there to protect him. This scene economically shows Stephen’s patience and gentleness with his kids and sheds light as to why Ellie has always been so over-protective of her brother.

We cut back to Ellie, as determined as ever to carry out her mission of protecting Chuck. Except she lost the transport truck. But Awesome and Morgan pull up and spot it a few hundred yards away from them. Awesome whines about how they need a plan to take out armed traitor thugs. Morgan replies that not having a plan has never stopped him before. He says he sympathizes with Awesome, but there isn’t any time. It’s a funny little exchange, and I loved seeing Morgan ready to just act on gut instinct and not strategize. “What do you want me to do, open the glove box?” Morgan facetiously asks Devon. But then they both realize that, as they’re driving Casey’s car, there might very well be a weapon in the glove box.

They open it and find a gun! Awesome disgustedly hands it to Morgan, and Morgan looks at it for a second and gets serious. Now here’s where I think the writers made a big mistake: there are also two unmarked buttons in the glove box. They push one of the buttons, a giant missile fires out of the front and overturns the armored truck holding Chuck & Co. and simultaneously blows Shaw unconscious into the woods. Instead of playing this moment for laughs via a James Bond-esque gag, I think they should have played it seriously and shown Morgan ramming the car into the van in a crazy intense kamikaze move. And then gotten out and kicked some ass the old-fashioned way.

It was such an adrenaline-charged moment, the way they cut from Chuck in the van saying “Who even knows we’re here?” to Morgan and Awesome pulling up in the car. They could have had a really cool and powerful action sequence showing Morgan—the unlikeliest of heroes—acting on pure emotion, gunning to save his best friend. It could have been like that classic moment in the third act of Lethal Weapon when Danny Glover is being tortured by the bad guys, and the main bad guy tells him to give up because “there are no more heroes left.” Then Mel Gibson charges through the door and blows holes through everyone. That was an awesome moment, and Chuck had a similar opportunity but they botched it.

I get that Chuck is a comedy, but given all the serious stuff that had already happened in this episode, I really think they would have been better off building on that instead of going for an easy joke.

Then, as they’re escaping from the overturned armored truck, everyone gets into the getaway car, with Chuck bringing up the rear. Suddenly Shaw gets up and he and Chuck lock eyes. And similarly, they had a great moment here for Chuck to send everyone away in the car, act on pure animalistic rage and run back to take on Shaw barehanded. But they just had him skedaddle with everyone else. So be it.

After this, Chuck and Ellie have a big sibling talk and he tries to explain all of the CIA stuff to her. I didn’t buy this exchange though; Sarah Lancaster as Ellie did not nearly act as incredulously as she should have. She believed all of these insane revelations Chuck was telling her just a little too easily. She also demands that Chuck quit the spy business after he gets Shaw. Chuck agrees, though personally, if that were my sister, I would have told her to screw off.

So the rest of the finale is about everyone trying to take down Shaw and get back the Governor before Chuck goes nuts-o. During the climactic fight with Shaw the writers finally took the suggestion I’ve pushed all season that Chuck should have to fight once just on pure heart, with a malfunctioning Intersect no help to him. It was exciting and fun to see Shaw’s comeuppance, and the final twist involves a message that Stephen left behind for Chuck that has all sorts of implications about the history of Chuck’s family and conflicts that may be on the horizon.

It was all a little too packed and a little confusing, and there was also way too much attention spent on a pointless Buy More subplot with Big Mike, Jeff and Lester (and hilariously blatant Subway plugs). But there were some nice moments and I’ll be interested to see if Chuck can get off to a better start next season than they did this season.

Season 3, Episodes 18 and 19: Chuck vs. the Subway and Chuck vs. the Ring: Part II (originally aired May 24, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Justin Lubin.

Two things needed to happen in the Bones season five finale, both acts of violence justice: Daisy Wick needed to be hogtied and assaulted with an iron, and Booth’s son Parker needed to be socked in the jaw, chloroformed and put in extended timeout in a dank fallout shelter. If those two things had happened, Booth and Brennan wouldn’t have been torn apart and viewers (or at least this viewer) wouldn’t have shattered every glass object they could get their hands on. All throughout the episode I kept vehemently volunteering to take care of Daisy and Parker, but inexplicably I was not called upon to leap into my television set and become an agent of righteousness. Sometimes you just can’t win.

We open with a somewhat obnoxious boy jumping on his bed in his room. This is causing the plaster from his room to flake off and fall down on top of him. He excitedly exclaims that it is snowing while his mother comes in and has the fortitude of mind to pull him out of the room before the ceiling collapses. Personally, I would have left the kid there. What better way to learn the lesson about not jumping on the bed than by getting hit by a cascade of ceiling…and a rotting corpse?

Yep, it’s a corpse, so Booth and Brennan are on the scene. Brennan examines the remains and tells Booth that the victim was a male in his early 40s, a hoarder who lived in an apartment upstairs. But that’s it. Booth notices right away that his partner’s focus is not in the room. Brennan is all aglow about the recent discovery of some ancient skeletons in Indonesia. What she doesn’t say, and this ties partly into Brennan’s weariness that we discovered in last week’s excellent episode, is that she’s sick of working murders and wants to go head up this Indonesia group and get back to her anthropologist roots.

Booth, for his part, is presented with an unexpected opportunity of his own: a soldier comes up to him and presents him with a letter from the Secretary of Defense asking him to go to Afghanistan and train snipers. In the diner, he tells Brennan that he is not going to accept the offer, that he has put in his time and he already has a job right here in DC: catching murderers. He looks to her for some sense of assurance. But she doesn’t give him one.

The case really doesn’t matter, which is usually the case, but even more so here. I don’t even remember the details; I wasn’t paying attention in the first place. The main dynamic that presents itself is the question of whether or not Booth and Brennan are seriously considering taking these opportunities on opposite ends of the world because they’re running toward something or away from each other.

In Booth’s case, I think it really might be the latter. He knows that Brennan is going to go do this Indonesian thing and can’t face the idea of working cases without her after five years. Of course, he’s a patriot at heart and I’m sure still feels a sense of duty, but I think if Brennan weren’t leaving he wouldn’t have considered going back into the Army for a second. And is Brennan just exhausted from the never-ending stream of murder victims, or is she still frazzled by the events of the 100^th episode, unable to process how afraid she is of her deep feelings for Booth and looking for a way out?

Of course, none of this stuff would be affecting Booth and Brennan this much if Daisy Wick and Parker had been abducted and dragged naked through a field of burning glass by a tanker truck. Daisy keeps rubbing it in that—even though she’s one of the most obnoxious tv characters in history—she has been selected to take part in this Indonesia thing thanks largely to a letter of recommendation from Brennan (Brennan didn’t know what the letter was for when she was writing it). So of course, how could Brennan let a nitwit and utter disgrace to women everywhere take part in this huge thing and not be involved herself?

And Parker, snot-nosed little dipshit that he is, apparently doesn’t think that working for the FBI and catching murderers is a noble enough calling because Booth isn’t actually saving lives so much as he is punishing those that took life away from others. He thinks going back into the Army would be better. So of course, how can Booth, being the responsible father he is, disappoint his son?

Other stuff happens, including the reappearance of Angela’s dad, played by legendary ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, and the disintegration of Sweets’ plans to start living life to the fullest with Daisy and stop being a prepubescent gigolo. Didn’t care about any of that stuff though. The highpoints are two scenes with Booth and Brennan, one on a park bench where Brennan—thanks to learning about how to interpret human behavior via watching Booth—sees right through Booth’s efforts to pretend that he’s fine with her leaving, and the other at the airport, right before the two say goodbye to each other for at least a year and possibly forever, if Booth doesn’t come back from Afghanistan alive.

It’s great to see Cam acknowledge that while she was the boss in name, she was really always working for Brennan, and Brennan telling Hodgins that she loves him after he gives her a pamphlet listing all the poisonous plants and bugs she should watch out for in Indonesia. But damn it, if she can tell Hodgins that she loves him, why can’t she say it to Booth? Balls.

Though I thought it was weird that Catherine Bryer—Booth’s new girlfriend from the aquarium episode—bore neither appearance nor mention (I thought Rena Sofer was contracted for a multi-episode arc), overall I thought this was a solid finale. It set up major avenues of change for all of the principals and gave me hope and anticipation for the next season—things I wasn’t feeling after the atrociously-misguided fantasy finale that marked the end of season four.

Season 5, Episode 22: The Beginning in the End (originally aired May 20, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

Even though he has—somewhat surprisingly, I might add—been renewed for a fourth season on NBC, Chuck Bartowski has a lot of problems to deal with. Right at the top of the list are these kooky dreams he keeps having, the most disturbing component of them being Daniel Shaw seemingly back from the dead and up to (more) no good.

Chuck continues to hide these dreams from Sarah, even though they now both know that these dreams may be symptoms that the Intersect is poisoning Chuck’s brain. Simultaneously, Ellie is hiding her interactions with Justin—the supposed CIA agent she met under false pretenses when she and Awesome were doing Doctors Without Borders—from her husband and her brother. This guy is clearly a nefarious dude, someone after Chuck and everyone he cares about, including Sarah, Morgan, and Chuck’s father Stephen.

Ellie gets Stephen to come out from hiding and back to Burbank, which means the return of Scott Bakula! Stephen arrives at the Buy More, and a very surprised Chuck goes immediately on the defensive, trying to convince his father that he has quit the spy business and did not download the new Intersect. “Dad, you know me. You know I would never lie,” Chuck tells him. The camera holds on Sarah’s face as Chuck says this; she knows all too well that Chuck is lying and that he is doing it now with more and more frequency.

That’s what this episode is all about: secrets and lies, how sometimes they are necessary and are often motivated by good intentions, but how they always end up hurting those we love, chipping away at the foundations of trust and honesty until their structures become withered, compromised and unstable. Wow, that was kinda deep and poetic wasn’t it? Seriously though, it’s these kinds of human dialectics that make Chuck a more involving show. Yes, the show was conceived as light, frothy fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but these serious underpinnings that are now in place are really important. Like anything else, I think comedy is empty if you don’t have real emotions anchored underneath it.

Bakula, as always, is quite the welcome presence. He brings an invaluable earnestness to his character that anchors the show in some kind of reality, an effective contrast with the cartoon villains, flashy editing and pop-heavy soundtrack. Stephen Bartowski sets up multiple cliffhangers for the upcoming season finale, but it’s the family dynamic that is most enjoyable to watch.

I think Chuck has become a much better show now that Chuck and Sarah have gotten together and now that Morgan has been brought into the fold. It’s a warmer show and has more weighty dynamics to support the goofy comedy, a blend I have been pushing for since the beginning of season two. Chuck and Sarah are now facing their own mortality and the possibility that bad dudes are always out there and that their happiness, their togetherness, and their very lives will always be in some form of jeopardy. I suppose we’ll find out more next week.

Season 3, Episode 17: Chuck Versus the Living Dead (originally aired May 17, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Chris Haston.

Season finales are supposed to be big, and this sixth season ender for House took that notion to heart, literally: House and Cuddy are called to the scene of a massive crane collapse in downtown Trenton. This is a major disaster with all kinds of structural damage and collapse and dozens of victims who need help. House’s unparalleled diagnostic skills take a backseat to the sheer enormity of the situation. The accident victims aren’t dying from obscure, mysterious ailments; they’re just trapped under a sea of steel, street and suffering.

On scene, House and Cuddy are squabbling about Cuddy moving in with Lucas while simultaneously House and Foreman pull out the apologetic crane operator. The guy has a sick child at home and has been drinking coffee and taking caffeine pills to stay awake. House determines that the guy couldn’t have just fallen asleep and must have passed out due to some neurological disorder. He tries to leave with Foreman so that he can go back to the hospital and diagnose the guy away from all the chaos of the accident scene, but Cuddy orders him to stay put.

From here on out, House’s team is basically sidelined. They’re relegated to the hospital to work on the crane operator, but there isn’t a lot of urgency there; no one cares. Wilson is barely in the episode too, Chase is totally gone, and Thirteen shows up late and puts in a perfunctory appearance. There are hints of some hidden issues going on with her, but nothing is emphasized. This episode boils down only to House and Cuddy trying to deal with this massive accident and each other. Guess which task is harder?

The main thrust of the episode occurs when House hears a banging noise coming from underneath some rubble. He has the EMTs and firemen check it out, but they find nothing and don’t believe House. So he throws his cane to the wind and crawls under himself. He finds Hannah, a young woman with her leg pinned under a huge piece of a building.

After stabilizing her and giving her an IV, the general consensus seems to be that the most prudent option is to amputate Hannah’s leg and pull her out before the damaged limb poisons her system or a secondary collapse occurs. House, right on cue, does not go with the general consensus. He believes they still have some time to clear the debris and pull her out whole.

But as time continues to run out, Cuddy implores House to tell Hannah to let them amputate her leg. She thinks that House is opposing her just because he is upset that she and Lucas got engaged (gasp!). She questions his professionalism and tells him that she has moved on, that he is alone and has nothing in his life and needs to get it together. It’s a really harsh moment.

House crawls under the rubble back to Hannah as Cuddy tries to convince her to amputate. Hannah refuses adamantly, saying House told her that they didn’t have to. Then, much to Cuddy’s surprise, House tells Hannah that Cuddy is right. He then tells her about his choice to refuse having his own leg amputated, and how he wishes he had. In a stunning monologue that should win the radiant Hugh Laurie another Emmy, House tells Hannah how his leg has made him a worse person and how he has screwed up his life. Watch Lisa Edelstein during this exchange too; her reaction shots are telling and powerfully subtle.

Suffice it to say that things do not end well at the accident scene, and House races home and to his secret stash of Vicodin. Alone and in despair, House contemplates falling off the wagon when Cuddy arrives. I won’t go any further, but the scene that follows between Cuddy and House is impeccably acted and one of the best scenes in the show’s six-year history. It’s a textbook example of transcendental acting.

The cliffhanger is not an oh-my-god shocking plot twist, but something more provocative entirely: an emotional one. It promises a fresh start for House that is both exhilarating and joyful…but also incredibly painful to watch, because the laws of television mean that, sooner rather than later, it all has to go down the toilet. One of the great paradoxes of the medium is that as much as we want characters to be happy and as much as it pains us to see them otherwise, we have to continually bring them down. Happy people are people without conflict, and conflict is what makes them interesting.

House—as a show and as a protagonist—will never be the same after this season finale, and what will happen in its seventh year is anyone’s guess.

Want more House?  Check out This is Not a Hallucination by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 21: Help Me (originally aired May 17, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

Dark, propulsive, surprisingly layered, brilliantly acted, ingeniously edited and tremendously satisfying. That pretty much sums up the penultimate episode of Bones season five. It’s the episode I’ve been waiting for all season, though I didn’t realize how badly I wanted it until I saw it: The Gravedigger’s trial.

The Gravedigger is the Jeffersonian’s most terrifying nemesis, more ruthless than Gormogon, more sociopathic and twisted than Howard Epps. Amongst countless other victims, the Gravedigger kidnapped and buried alive Brennan and Hodgins in season two and Booth in season four. Finally, the team won out and captured the killer: Heather Taffet, a former federal prosecutor.

Hodgins has been plagued by nightmares of his ordeal ever since it occurred, but would you believe that the seemingly impervious Dr. Temperance Brennan has been having them too? The episode’s teaser—shot like an avant-garde music video type of deal—is a dream sequence (I know, I know, dream sequences…) showing us the emotional trauma Taffet has inflicted on Brennan. Man, this crazy bitch has got to go down. The problem: even though everyone knows she did it, the case against Taffet is far from a slam dunk.

For the prosecution: the inimitable Caroline Julian. For the defense: Taffet herself. That’s right, just like all the crazies do, Taffet is representing herself. And after she succeeds in getting all of the evidence the team had against her thrown out of court, everyone has to race against time to find some more. Meanwhile, Brennan finds herself facing the same problem she faced in the great season one episode “The Girl in the Fridge”: connecting with a jury.

Max comes back (finally) and shows his ex-con true colors. Ryan O’Neal and David Boreanaz get a couple of great scenes together. Also, Brennan and Hodgins spar a little bit about their different responses to their shared Gravedigger trauma. But the real high points of the episode are watching Deirdre Lovejoy’s completely evil performance and the really slick editing, as well as gaining a surprising, emotional insight into Brennan: how weary she has grown with working murder cases. Never before in the show’s history have we seen her tangibly react to any of the grisly crime scenes and gooey dead bodies they encounter every week. But as she finds the body of a ten-year-old boy The Gravedigger buried, a look of disgust and despair crosses Emily Deschanel’s face. Finally, after five years, Temperance Brennan may have burned herself out.

Booth of course sees this change in his partner, but he tries to talk her down, convince her that she is just stressed out by the trial and that soon things will be back to normal. But I think deep down he fears that he is going to lose her. Ironically, in the 100^th episode Brennan seemed terrified of not having Booth as her partner or in her life anymore; now that fear is Booth’s. The incredibly complex emotional dynamics between Booth and Bones that the show often manages to achieve are what really set it apart from every other procedural on the air. Great episode that almost could have worked as the season finale. That makes me really excited to see what we get next week.

Season 5, Episode 21: The Boy With the Answer (originally aired May 13, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

Chuck Bartowski takes a foray into Manchurian Candidate kooky land as he finds himself suffering from vividly nightmarish dreams that may just be premonitions. If Patricia Arquette hadn’t been banished from NBC and her show shipped over to CBS, maybe she could help Chuck decipher the clues. As it is, the guy is on his own.

One second, Chuck is trying to sell Sarah on the virtues of Spies Like Us on television and lamenting that there is nothing on Monday nights (an obvious in-joke). The next second, he’s cutting Zs and dreaming of Beckman playing the cymbals outside like a monkey, and shooting the Zamibian food delivery man who happens to be Shaw. Yes, not a nice dream by any means, but nowhere near as terrifying as the recurring dream I’ve had for years where Winnie the Pooh tries to stab me with an ice skate.

Chuck is convinced that the dream is not just a dream. Rather, he thinks that the Intersect is trying to tell him that Jakaya Kuti—President of Zamibia (Zambia’s bastard cousin, no doubt)—is going to be assassinated at an upcoming concert of the L.A. Symphony. But Sarah has her doubts, Casey just flat out wants to kill Chuck for having woke him up to tell him this, and Beckman does what she does best: overreact and completely misread the situation. She sends Chuck to a CIA shrink…a CIA shrink named Dr. Dreyfus who looks suspiciously like Dr. Emmett Brown. That might be because he’s played by Christopher Lloyd. Dreyfus thinks that the Intersect has harmful side effects, the chief of which is slowly-developing insanity. Oh boy.

So basically, this episode is all about Chuck escaping the Looney Bin and getting his circle to believe in him so he can stop the bad (though remarkably amorphous) juju from going down. Morgan is the only one who believes Chuck from the get go, and he helps his buddy gain access to the L.A. Symphony. The highlight of the episode is seeing Chuck and Morgan on a mission together (“Remember, my code name is Charles Carmichael.” “Okay, mine’s Cobra.”). It reinforced how much more the show should be about Morgan and Chuck going on missions together. The plan (was there a plan?) goes awry and culminates with Chuck decking one of Kuti’s lackeys because he thinks he has a fake tooth implanted with Ring data.

More developments on the what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-Ellie-and-Nimrod-in-Africa front occur and promise a major setup for the return of Chuck’s father Stephen, played by Geek Hall of Famer Scott Bakula. Unfortunately, both The Ring and Anna Wu temporarily return, though for no seeming reason, and Christopher Lloyd is wasted.

I am, however, encouraged by the fact that Chuck and Sarah haven’t become annoying as a couple yet, and if anything, their relationship is more interesting now that they have sealed the deal. The success of all that is chiefly due to the considerable appeal of Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski.

Season 3, Episode 16: Chuck Versus the Tooth (originally aired May 10, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Jordin Althaus.

Dr. Gregory House spends very little of this episode in the ER and very much on his shrink’s couch. That’s right, Andre Braugher’s Dr. Nolan—from the season premiere—is back, and he’s our guide through a real-time therapy hour. Nolan couldn’t ask for a trickier, more complicated patient, and we couldn’t ask for a more gimmicky hour of television.

Because House is still a procedural and must satisfy the procedural requirements, we aren’t allowed to just spend an hour on the couch with someone’s personal demons a la In Treatment. Rather, we have to cut back and forth non-linear style to House’s most recent case, that of a woman who suddenly lost her identity while running really fast (Matt Damon was off-duty). The case is an uninteresting wash, but it does give the showrunners a chance to show off their snazzy editing and story structure skills.

House will be discussing diagnoses with his team and the camera will pan over to another portion of the room to reveal Nolan standing there, taking it all in as House narrates. And Vice versa: Nolan and House will be in Nolan’s office and Nolan will get up and turn on the lights and Wilson and Cuddy will be there discussing House, according to how the scene would play out in House’s mind. Then Nolan will play the scene in his mind and we’ll see how the two versions compare. Did that sound gimmicky up the ass? Because it is. This whole episode is one gigantic gimmick.

That’s not necessarily a criticism, mind you. I was impressed by how intricate the structure and editing was, and how Braugher and Hugh Laurie bridged the multiple streams of events and timelines rather seamlessly. In this little episode of television you can see the influence of all of the seminal noir, point-of-view films like Rashomon, Crossfire, Out of the Past, and of course, Memento.

The downside is that most of House’s opportunities for unleashing his trademark barbs are taken away, and at times he comes off as a little pathetic and whiny, something I never would have said about the character before. Not that the guy doesn’t have things to whine about. His best friend has kicked him out of their condo so that his ugly succubus girlfriend can move in (Damn you Wilson!), Cuddy is shacked up with Lucas, House’s leg continues to ache, he’s alone, weary, closer to the end of his life than the beginning, and the world isn’t getting any better. It’s just a lot to take in all at once.

Alvie also returns from the season premiere, which provides a nice sense of season continuity and also reinforces (in case you forgot) the fact that House was recently released from the looney bin and has spent the last year in therapy, struggling to move forward instead of crashing down.

For another opinion, read Still Searching for Happiness by Stephanie Jaar here.

Season 6, Episode 20: Baggage (originally aired May 10, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

Making a blockbuster sequel is a tremendously tricky business, a high-wire balancing act that must be performed while the whole world is watching and rooting for you to fail. With the original, you can sneak in quietly and make a big splash that leaves people surprised, satisfied and dying for more; you can be a discovery. With your second film, all eyes are already upon you and expectations are through the roof. How do you deliver on the promise of your first act? How do you give the public what they want and keep them on your side? This is the monumental challenge that Tony Stark and Iron Man 2 have to achieve and, ultimately, both are successful.

Iron Man 2 gets the job done. It’s a remarkably polished and fast-moving product with some of the coolest effects work I’ve ever seen; things actually look real! More importantly, the film takes as much time as it can (without sacrificing momentum and failing to achieve the benchmarks of the blockbuster, tent-pole experience) to explore character and make us care about the human elements of the story. All of the talented stars make us feel like they’re playing actual people and not just comic book creations.

And as ridiculous as giant, metal, missile-firing robotic suits fighting in the sky is, every effort is taken to create a real world in which it all takes place. Don’t get me wrong, none of it compares to what Christopher Nolan has done with Batman. That guy is a freakin’ genius, a god to be worshiped and adored. But Iron Man 2, like its predecessor, is wicked man fun, and director/co-star Jon Favreau should be given major credit for assembling all of the right elements.

Chief among those elements is Mr. Robert Downey Jr., who reminds us of the sheer joy that results from watching movie stars play roles they have tailored to themselves perfectly. His Tony Stark is one of the most engaging cinematic creations right now on the silver screen, a hero who is fun, exciting, root-worthy, complicated, and constantly-evolving.

Downey does something seemingly impossible: he makes narcissism lovable. He really hits it out of the park. Every scene he is in, every single scene, he makes us laugh, he makes us care, and he surprises us. His performance has a vibrancy to it, a rhythm that is never predictable. Right when you think a scene is about to end, Downey Jr. glides in one more moment that leaves you smiling. The dude is nothing short of masterful in this franchise. Good for him.

The sequel begins not long after the end of the first film. Tony Stark has broken the Superhero Alter Ego code and announced to the world that he is Iron Man. He’s at the top, enjoying the ride and sense of purpose, flying around the world and stopping crises with his awesome force. In short, he’s using his powers for good and enjoying the hell out of it. But trouble is a-brewin.’

For one thing, Stark’s palladium power source is slowly killing him by poisoning his blood. Stark knows this because he has a little monitor that tells him so. He’s slowly getting weaker and more toxic, and he knows it. For another, the Department of Defense—led by the supercilious, aptly-named Senator Stern (Garry Shandling) is up his a#$ to take control of the Iron Man suit. After being subpoenaed by the lovely Kate Mara, Stark appears at Stern’s hearing and protests that he has “successfully privatized world peace.” But the senator remains unmoved.

Stark’s most drastic threat though is Ivan Vanko, a vengeful Russian physicist with gold teeth, a gazillion tattoos and a cold sneer who blames the Stark family for ruining his father’s life, as well as his own. While Stark flirts and parties in the rich, bright limelight, Vanko works in a cold dark place to design an even better weapons suit to destroy Stark. This economical and effective setup is identical to that of Rocky III, and Mickey Rourke–inheriting the villain mantle from Jeff Bridges–makes almost as chilling and entertaining a villain as Mr. T did as Clubber Lang. Seriously, what’s amazing about Rourke is that he was handed a scenery-chewing role and yet he manages to make Vanko somewhat layered.

Sam Rockwell brings up the rear as Justin Hammer, Stark’s jealous weapons manufacturing rival. He keeps trying to recreate Stark’s Iron Man suit and fails laughably. Stark goes out of his way to remind Hammer of this, so Hammer becomes Vanko’s benefactor. It seems like a solid partnership. After all, Hammer and Vanko both want the same thing: to destroy Tony Stark. Rockwell is equally effective at making his villain entertaining and dimensional. His Hammer is a painfully insecure weasel.

The action set pieces are all there. There’s an amazing battle between Vanko—as his new supervillain alias Whiplash—and Stark on a racetrack in Monaco, a brutal prison escape sequence, a house demolition, huge explosions and pyrotechnics. My only criticism would be that the final battle between Stark/Iron Man and Vanko/Whiplash seemed a little short; I would have liked to see Downey Jr. and Rourke go toe-to-toe a little more, but maybe that’s the Rocky fanatic in me. Still, I think they should have slugged it out a little more, mano-a-mano.

What’s really compelling about Iron Man 2 are the moments in between the battles. The best action movies make you care about the characters so much that the action becomes incidental. The best action movies make the action sequences feel like breaks/connective tissue between the character interactions and not vice versa. I’m talking about movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and Midnight Run and Face/Off and First Blood and Man on Fire. The Iron Man team clearly have that mandate in mind, and in my book, they succeed.

Now I’ve read a lot of reviews for Iron Man 2 and the overarching criticism seems to be that the movie doesn’t balance all of the supporting characters evenly and that there are too many subplots; too much is packed in, a common flaw in most sequels and especially superhero sequels. But in this case, I think that criticism is actually a veiled compliment. In other words, Rourke, Sam Rockwell, Favreau himself, Don Cheadle (a big step-up from that boob Terrence Howard), Samuel L. Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson (both of which I normally hate but liked in this film) do such strong, smooth work that you wish you could see them in more scenes. But Iron Man 2 is a blockbuster and can only tell one story. The plot has to keep moving, it just goes with the territory of the genre. I for one would rather be left wanting more than wanting less. And I know nothing of the Iron Man comics, so maybe I’m blissfully unaware of some crucial character detail that wasn’t explored in the film.

I thought we were given plenty. There’s great development between Stark and his best friend, Cheadle’s Col. Rhodes/War Machine, including a really intense brawl between them; the back-and-forth, love-hate, His Girl Friday romantic tension between Downey Jr. and Paltrow is there in spades, and she has more to do in this movie than in the original; Johansson gets to kick some ass and look sexy, which is all she’s really good for; and most of all, Downey Jr. really gets a chance to show us the hidden side of Tony Stark, the really lonely, really vulnerable, incredibly self-destructive side.

Iron Man 2 goes to some refreshingly dark places (again, not like Batman but this is a different character with a different tone) and balances action and character work. I think it was absolutely worth the $200 million Marvel and Paramount spent on it, and it was absolutely worth my eight bucks. I read one derogatory review online that said that the movie was worth it if “you’re just going to see men in robot suits blow each other up while classic rock blares on the soundtrack.” Iron Man 2 is classic Saturday matinee material, that’s exactly why you should go see it! But you’ll also get a lot more if you look for it.

Kathy Reichs, who wrote the books upon which Bones is based (and who has had a producer credit throughout the show’s run) wrote this week’s episode, a first for the show. The plot is centered on witchcraft and fascinating tidbits and insights into the Salem witch trials. Actually, the plot is not centered on the murder case, which is unfortunate because the details are so fascinating.

So what is the episode centered on? Angela and Hodgins. If you love Angela and Hodgins as a couple and have been waiting in agony for them to get back together ever since they broke up, then you’ll find yourself cooing and making adolescent noises and smiling like a drunken orangutan. If you’re like me, then you’ll find yourself sighing loudly while bludgeoning yourself on the skull with an empty beer bottle, cursing, and lamenting the fact that Booth and Bones don’t get enough screen time or personal interaction. Except for at the very end, they seem to be going through the motions as placeholders.

Last week we got that great bit of them singing “Hot Blooded” and all the social contract stuff. Here we get zilch. No mention of Catherine from the aquarium, no mention of Hacker (not that I’m complaining), and no romantic tension. I know many people will disagree with me, but I love Booth and Bones so much that every time an episode comes along that doesn’t focus on them, it drives me nuts. I know that realistically it’s gotta be hard to sustain a weekly show built on the chemistry and developments between two leads, so the writers have to go off in other avenues just to keep the leads from burning themselves out. I get that, but the focus this week was just too intense on Hodgins and Angela; they didn’t get the balance right.

Okay, as for the murder, like I said, it was pretty interesting—another reason I wish there had been less focus on Angela and Hodgins. Firemen discover a skeleton wearing a white dress inside a burned down cabin. On the scene, Bones determines that the bones (no pun intended) were “already dried and de-fleshed” before the fire; the skeleton has been reassembled. Oh no, are we going back into Gormogon territory? Thankfully no.

Crows lead the team to another set of remains, this time from a much more recent victim…who happens to be wearing red shoes. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Hodgins quips. Camille determines that this victim had no smoke in her lungs, and was thus killed before the fire also. Here’s the real tamale: the skeleton wearing the wedding dress had indicators consistent with forms of torture from the Salem witch trials. Sweets just happens to be an expert on the trials (I guess he took some time off from reading fan fiction and pretending he was a rock star growing up) and inserts himself into the case.

Besides being discovered in unison in the burned down cabin, the bodies are connected in other ways. It seems that the recent victim, one Sherrie Byrd, was also the owner of the cabin, and was also heavily into witchcraft. Sweets suggests that Booth and Bones talk to the members of the local Wiccan coven, who had ousted Sherrie because Sherrie performed the evil voodoo dark arts, and for profit too. Recently, she was hired by a man to put a hex on his ex-wife, and he gave her the wedding dress. Sherrie dug up the Salem body and put the dress on it, which explains that body being in the cabin. But someone (or someones, maybe?) killed Sherrie, and our sleuths have to figure out who. All the Wiccan stuff was pretty cool, and I wish it had been explored even more.

Meanwhile, Hodgins and Angela get plenty of time (did I mention too much time?) to spend together when they end up in jail after they get pulled over for funky driving on the way back from the crime scene. It seems they both have outstanding warrants that have to be addressed. Now of course, it’s a little wonky and convenient that Hodgins and Angela would end up in prison together for something as lame as crossing the double line while playing around with their car on a deserted road. It’s also a little wonky and convenient that Booth and Camille, with the whole support of the freakin’ FBI couldn’t get them out of a jail in the Maryland boonies.

But of course, this whole situation was transparently engineered to give Hodgins and Angela time to profess their undying love and realize they made a big mistake breaking up years ago. What can I say? I like Hodgins (I liked him more when he was angrier), and I don’t hate Angela, but damn I’m tired of this romance crap between them. Okay, now that they’re back together again, can we just keep them together so that we can focus on what the show should really be about?

Very excited for next week’s episode though, that has Booth and Bones dealing with the Gravedigger’s trial. Here’s hoping that setup will provide an opportunity for some intense deranged-serial-killer-conflict like we had with Howard Epps back in season two.

Season 5, Episode 20: The Witch in the Wardrobe (originally aired May 6, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

Chuck continues its recent focus of exploring Chuck and Sarah less as individuals and more now as a burgeoning couple. What better way to do that than to compare Chuck and Sarah to another spy couple? I didn’t mean that rhetorically, I actually do have an answer…oh screw it.

We open with a credit sequence that culls from the aesthetics of all of the seminal late seventies and early eighties lighthearted secret agent and investigator shows: Remington Steele, Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, and especially, Hart to Hart. It’s like a mini-survey of tv history. Even though this is only a dream sequence playing out in Morgan’s head, it’s the most creative and entertaining part of the episode. Then Morgan wakes up, ventures to the kitchen and finds Sarah wearing a lingerie/pajama/gown deal that is so skimpy she might as well be naked.

For Morgan, this is like coming to a cool oasis after stumbling through the blistering desert all day only to find said oasis guarded by an electric fence. Or something like that. I was trying to put in some nice visual metaphor thing but I don’t think I was entirely successful. Morgan finds himself faced with the same problem that House has over on his network: his relationship with his best friend and roommate is being derailed by the constant presence of a woman who will probably be moving in permanently in the near future.

The A storyline: Beckman, because she has too much time on her hands (or because she isn’t actually a developed character and just exists to hand out exposition and stupid assignments) tells Chuck and Sarah that, if they insist on being a couple, they must learn from the CIA’s best married couple. These lovely folks are Craig and Laura Turner, and they are played by Fred Willard and Swoosie Kurtz—a couple from hell if I ever thought of one. Apparently these people have been married for thirty years and Beckman thinks they are the cat’s ass.

But these people are not all that they appear to be (are they ever?). Upon meeting Chuck and Sarah, Craig and Laura reveal themselves to be sour, bickering twits who have been divorced and remarried three times. Chuck keeps trying to impress them, which irks Sarah. It irks her even more that they all have to go on a double date/mission thing. I already forget what the purpose of their mission was, something about evil computer voodoo or something. I find it amusing that even though the writers finally got rid of The Ring people and just have standalone villains for the moment, the plots all still seem just as half-baked. But I guess that’s the spirit of the show, and I’m starting to accept that. Honestly, the only thing I really remember about the whole mission was that the stuffy party host foreign guy from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective played…well…a stuffy party host foreign guy. Although he was also evil too. And he had a pet tiger. And the Turners are more shifty than initially anticipated.

B storylines: Casey trying to train Morgan in marksmanship (you can guess how well that went) and Ellie and Nimrod in Africa doing their healer-of-the-lands thing. What the hell! I was so excited when Ellie and Nimrod left for Africa, I thought it meant we were done with them. False hope and now no hope. Thanks for nothing! Instead, we have all of these scenes devoted to Ellie whining about how hard it is in Africa (an Africa that looks quite alarmingly like a California backyard with fake foliage). And what’s really weird is how dramatic the show tries to make the whole thing, showing the plight of African natives just struggling to survive. I can’t tell you how bizarre this all felt to me, how tonally imbalanced. Chuck is a show that knows it’s trash, and I don’t mean that derogatively. It’s a show people watch because it’s goofy, mindless, zany fun (when done right). To try to add some social commentary just seems macabre and maybe even inappropriate. Plus, they can’t just leave it at that. The end sets up the notion that there might be some shady characters in Africa who might be after Ellie and Nimrod, possibly due to their connection to Chuck. Weird.

Season 3, Episode 15: Chuck vs the Role Models (originally aired May 3, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Jordin Althaus.

I got really excited at House’s introduction this week, which showed him passed out on a bed with rocket ship sheets. For a second, I thought that House and I shared a love for cool sheets (mine are Batman) that some miscreants might deem juvenile. But then I realized—before House did himself—that House was not sleeping in his room. Actually, he was sleeping in the wrong apartment, in his neighbor’s kid’s bed. Luckily, the kid still preferred to sleep with mom and dad, so House wasn’t accused of being a pedophile by the cops. They did however, grumpily deposit him back at Wilson’s. On the plus side, House did get to interrupt Wilson and Samantha getting it on. Life has its little bonuses.

The patient: Ted, who suddenly became speechless at the altar on his wedding day and passed out. House’s first act of business is to jab the guy with a needle, which makes his voice come back. Needless to say, House thinks the guy was faking it to get out of making the biggest mistake of his life…er, ah, I mean getting married. But as soon as the guy convinces his fiancée that he wasn’t faking and they leave the ER, he starts convulsing again. Uh oh.

Taub and Thirteen are charged by House with the typical duty of breaking into Ted’s house to look for toxins. While there, they are confronted by Cotter, Ted’s former roommate—and boyfriend. Someone has some explaining to do. Ted insists that he isn’t gay and had some conversion therapy to become straight.

In addition to complicating the diagnosing process, this fact opens up all kinds of parallel discussions about human nature, specifically focused on Taub. Is Ted artificially denying his biological imperative for homosexuality, and if so, is that any different than Taub denying his predilection for infidelity?

Wilson, meanwhile, has to face the fact that things are (inexplicably) going well with his ex-wife-turned-current-girlfriend and House is the third wheel. He wants House to move out, and to encourage this process, he starts paying everyone on House’s team to invite House out for social bonding activities. House very quickly becomes aware of the scheme, but after getting Wilson to cop to it—and his selfish motivation for concocting it—he goes out with his team anyway. He goes to dinner with Taub and subverts the situation to force Taub to stop cheating, he goes to a lesbian bar with Thirteen and, most entertaining of all, he goes out for drinks and karaoke with Foreman and Chase.

The episode ends by reinforcing the notion that House is trading his addiction to Vicodin for an addiction to booze. His life is full of pain, thanks to his crappy leg and to his worldview, and he needs some kind of numbing agent. Let’s hope this doesn’t send him back to the looney bin. I love this guy too much to see him go down in flames.

Best line: Ted admits to having had relations with Cotter, but it just happened. House replies: “Sodomy. One of the top ten most common household accidents.”

For another opinion of this episode of House, read Acafellas Part 2, Please! by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 19: The Choice (originally aired May 3, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

A bunch of gooey body parts spill out of an industrial washer inside a hotel laundry. Which means Booth and Bones have a new case on their hands and I have increased concerns about how clean hotel sheets are. One of the trademarks of Bones is crime scenes so grisly and gross and grotesque (how’s that for alliteration baby) that they become sickly funny. They’ve done it many times, but this one may very well take the cake. It’s pretty hard to top a shriveled testicle tumbling out of the washer. It’s hilarious to see Booth squirm as Bones and Cam talk testicles and gynecologists, as Cam is looking for one for Michelle. Oh boy.

Here’s the catch: back at the lab, after inventorying all of the body parts, the team realizes that they only found one testicle. That is, not including the prosthetic one that Hodgins discovers. Yes, a prosthetic testicle. With a serial number that makes identification easy.

The testically-challenged victim is one Richard Cole, a wealthy real estate developer and extreme sports/adventure nut who was currently enrolled in a rock n’ roll fantasy camp. Booth and Bones have to investigate the whole shebang. For Bones, it’s an anthropological survey. For Booth, it’s a chance to have a little fun while doing his job and pretend to be a rock star.

Low point: multiple scenes involving Cam talking to Michelle about sex and the importance of having a good gynecologist. Put a bullet in my head.

Highlights: Learning that Bones can play a mean electric guitar because it’s similar to some tribal influence; seeing Booth and Bones do a duet of “Hot Blooded,” a nice little reference to the great season one episode “Two Bodies in the Lab;” observing glimpses of how Booth and Bones really feel about each other dating. Oh yeah, and the presence of Michael Des Barres, who may be a lot of things to different people but will always be Murdoc from MacGyver for me.

Season 5, Episode 19: The Rocker in the Rinse Cycle (originally aired April 29, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

No, the title of the episode does not mean that Chuck and Sarah battle Ralph Kramden & Co. Really, the episode is about Sarah and Chuck fighting themselves—more specifically, fighting the new confines they have placed on their finally-consummated relationship.

Everyone can stop whining and start squealing with glee now: Chuck and Sarah are officially a couple. There are no more Bryce Larkins, no more Shaws, no more CIA- duty-is-more-important. They’re just two gushing people riding a luxurious train through Europe. For the whole teaser of the episode, they do nothing but boff each other’s brains out and order room service. You’d think no conflict could come from this, but because it’s television, it does.

Beckman is getting antsy because Chuck and Sarah are AWOL. Essentially, they are doing now what Sarah wanted to do at the beginning of the season: quit the business and go on the run together. Chuck declined that previous invitation out of a sense of duty and loyalty to his country. But now he seems to be thinking with something other than his brain. It’s hard to fault Chuck for this, especially since the show wastes no opportunity to show Yvonne Strahovski in skimpy undergarments…but at the same time, it’s like…if Chuck could be convinced and flip flop this easily, why didn’t he just say yes in the first place, and then we could have skipped all the drama of these last fourteen episodes.  Now yes, I know that in reality, the answer to that question is that because then there wouldn’t have been conflict and there wouldn’t have been a show. But there ought to be more substantial character reasons that justify.

The bad news about being a spy—or a mercenary or a cop or an assassin, I’d imagine—is that you can never really turn off the training. If you see someone shifty, if you see something suspect going on, it has to be really hard to ignore it. This is the dilemma that confounds Chuck and Sarah when they see armed dudes on their train that came from Bad Guys Central Casting. Both Sarah and Chuck think that the other person doesn’t want to do the spy stuff anymore, so they both pretend not to notice and not to care…and then have to invent reasons to separate so that they can go investigate. Once they realize that they share this common desire, they decide to team up for one last mission before they ride off into the sunset.

Meanwhile, Beckman dispatches the recently-reinstated Casey and, reluctantly, Morgan, to track down Chuck and Sarah and beat them with a rubber hose. No one knows that they are actually trying to help the U.S. government now, so when Casey arrives, his natural instinct is to arrest them and take them in. I love Casey. Even though these people have bent the rules to help him when he himself has gone rogue, he doesn’t care. He just acts with a wonderfully gruff disregard for social contexts and personal histories.

Of course, eventually Casey is persuaded that Chuck and Sarah are telling the truth, and the three of them—with Morgan in tow—have to team up to bail each other and stop the nebulous terrorist baddies that are up to some kind of no good. Taking a cue from The Defiant Ones, Chuck and Sarah have to engage in some martial arts mayhem while handcuffed together. Sarah also sits on Chuck’s lap as he speeds away on a motor scooter, similar to how Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh did it in Tomorrow Never Dies and how Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz seem to do it in the upcoming Knight and Day.

Other conflicts: Ellie and her nimrod boyfriend planning their going-away party for Doctors Without Borders and whining about how Chuck isn’t around, and Morgan lamenting Chuck quitting the spy business just as he was getting brought into the fold. Of course, Chuck and Sarah won’t really quit. But I am holding out hope that Ellie and Nimrod are indeed leaving…and will never come back.

Overall, the proceedings are Chuck at its best: lighthearted and obvious, kept afloat by an entertaining and appealing cast.

Season 3, Episode 14: Chuck vs the Honeymooners (originally aired April 26, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Paul Drinkwater.

That’s the lesson I learned from this week’s episode of House. Truth be told though, in my case, the showrunners were preaching to the choir. Everyone on the show is dealing with crumbling marriages or the lingering effects of failed ones. In short, everyone is miserable all because of a couple of rings and some words spoken and some cake eaten.

Teaser: A woman fools around with some stud in a nice hotel room. There’s a knock at the door: it’s the woman’s husband! Oh no! Except the wife seems less horrified than puzzled, and the other man doesn’t hide under the sheets. Then the husband comes in and introduces himself amiably. He didn’t mean to interrupt, he just showed up because their daughter needs some form signed. Ah, it seems these people have one of those fabled open marriages, what Taub refers to as a mythical unicorn. But then the woman starts gasping in pain. See, you just can’t win.

The team runs the usual battery of tests, but everyone—especially Taub—is more interested in the kooky sex arrangement. Taub takes his wife out to dinner and just ever so casually starts discussing the patient and her arrangement. He tells wifey that he only brought it up because he thought it was interesting, but she sees right through him and knows that he’s trying to broach the subject with her. Taub reveals that he hasn’t cheated on her (this time), but he does have eyes for a nurse at the hospital. Even though he hasn’t acted on the attraction, is Taub  being unfaithful to his wife by having the desire to cheat in the first place? Is cheating part of his true nature, and is he denying his true self by artificially constraining himself from dalliances? I say yes to all. Taub is a short, balding weasel. Why the hell doesn’t the wife leave him? How could she possibly love such a human dildo?

House, meanwhile has to face that he has become the third wheel on the Wilson/Sam relationship rickshaw. Wait a minute…no he doesn’t! This is House. What he has to do is engineer their breakup through petty tricks like loading the dishwasher wrong, putting the milk on the door of the fridge instead of in the core, using up all of the toilet paper and not replacing the roll. He figures that Wilson will blame these annoyances on Sam, and he figures right. These petty habits break them out of the doldrums and get them screaming at each other to the point where they are discussing why their marriage ended a decade ago and why they can’t make it work now. Whether or not House went to these lengths for himself or out of concern for Wilson is up for debate (I think it’s both), but damn if he didn’t get the job done. Or did he?

Basically, all of the dysfunctional relationships on this show are cyclical. They don’t work, they’re full of compromise and resentment, but people keep coming back to them because they don’t know how to be alone and think that somehow they’ll be happier in crappy couples than in satisfying solitude. I don’t understand it, and I don’t think they do either. I think that’s the point that House is trying to make. Solid episode, nothing spectacular. I do, however, consistently find myself still smiling at how engaged I am by Hugh Laurie.

For anther take on this episode, read The Open Marriage Fiasco by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 18: Open and Shut (originally aired April 26, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

I had a moment watching the latest Bones where it occurred to me how utterly absurd it is that a television program can make someone care so much about the intricacies of a fictitious relationship between two characters that don’t exist. It’s absurd, and rather wonderful too. In the back of my head I know that Booth and Bones are figments of imagination and shouldn’t really matter to me as much as they do, and yet I can’t stop watching them with a rabid zeal tantamount to that of a seven-year-old munching Frankenberry cereal while racing a go-kart.

This week, it’s another strong episode in a mostly strong season that finds Booth and Bones called into action when human remains are found in the body of a tiger shark. This was no act of nature though; Bones finds bite marks on the bones coming from several different species of sharks and fish that don’t live in the same natural ecosystems. The conclusion? The victim was killed in an aquarium.

Bones is helped in this identification process by Dr. Catherine Bryar (Rena Sofer), an attractive bigwig at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association who has eyes for Booth. Booth has eyes for her too, though the only reason he’s looking with them is because Bones gave him the cold shoulder. Trying to encourage Booth, Bones offers: “She’s easily as pretty as I am. I mean, using me as a standard.” Booth tells her that she is the standard.

Another incentive encouraging Booth to go out with Bryar is that Bones seems to have rather actively resumed her flirtation with Booth’s loser, weasel-looking boss Hacker. I thought we’d wrapped up that moron’s involvement with Bones earlier this season in the “Night at the Bones Museum” episode. But now he’s back and putting the moves on Bones. I cannot understand—and believe me, I’ve tried—why she would be attracted to him. She even concedes to Booth that he’s not as handsome as he is, so what does she like about Hacker, his personality? Because he’s rather lacking in that department if you ask me (or even if you don’t).

There’s a great scene where Booth and Bones are sitting in the diner and start talking about their upcoming dates, and Hacker calls Booth on the phone to talk about the case. Bones tells Booth to tell Hacker that she said hello, and then Hacker tells him to tell her that he’s really excited about their date. You can feel Booth’s frustration and annoyance jump out of the screen. “Did you two want to speak to each other or was there something you wanted to tell me?” Booth asks. In other words, keep your little giggly teenage bullshit to yourself and get out of my face or I’m going to get the biggest gun I can find and blow as many holes into you before I get hauled off to federal prison. Okay, maybe I’m projecting a little bit there.

But in all fairness, it makes sense that Bones and Booth would want to start seeing other people—although their definition of seeing other people is decidedly different—in order to put as much distance between the awkward, aborted romance between them. Booth has more to prove than Bones does in that regard, and I like his choice a lot better than I like hers. Of course, whenever the two of them try to talk to each other about the goings on in their developing dating lives, it never stops being awkward and a whole lot of subtle emotions fly back and forth. It’s at once both exciting and torturous to watch.

As for the murder case, it’s quite good too. It offers an opportunity for Bones and Hodgins to go scuba diving in the big-ass aquarium to look for more remains and particulates. “We’re going to need a bigger boat,” Hodgins cracks, but the famous Jaws reference is lost on Bones, who later on also shows her ignorance of the Rat Pack. I love it when Bones and Hodgins actually get to become physically involved in the investigation. Normally, even when Bones gets out of the lab, it’s just to back up Booth as he interrogates someone. But I love the rare instances where we get to see that she has physical skills too that are unique to her. And Emily Deschanel looks great in a scuba suit.

The victim was a self-help/motivational guru fraud who was just asking to be murdered by someone. The case is complicated by the involvement of a Russian mobster. Hacker encourages Booth to leave the mobster alone because he’s already being investigated and because of all the political bla bla bla that weasels like Hacker always cower behind. But Booth is not a believer, and he takes on this mobster after getting the help he needs from Bones and Hodgins. It’s great to see the investigative beast in Booth, his frustration at having to fight politics.

And when he interrogates the guy, Mr. Mobster acts all cavalier and devil-may-care, knowing that he is untouchable and that he is the most powerful guy in town. He keeps trying to charm Booth and shut him down, until it hits him like a ton of bricks that Booth is the proverbial diamond in the rough. Booth is the guy that can’t be intimidated, that can’t be bought. He may act affable and easygoing, but it’s really enjoyable to be reminded that if you push Booth he will push harder until he knocks your ass down.

The culprit turns out to be delightfully twisted, and the case wraps up a little early, giving us enough time to see Bones and Booth go on their separate dates…and then meet up to talk to each other about it. I loved that ending because it showed that, even when they’re going out with other people, Booth and Brennan are still the most important to each other.

Season 5, Episode 18: The Predator in the Pool (originally aired April 22, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

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.

You can like it or revile it, find it delightful or sickly horrifying, that’s for sure. But what you can’t do is argue that—in a movie-going climate saturated by superheroes and comic book film sagas—Kick-Ass is not an original piece of entertainment. From beginning to end, it’s over-the-top, gratuitous, profane, zany, and thoroughly outrageous—and it knows it. Independently financed by director Matthew Vaughn and released by Lionsgate—quickly establishing itself as the studio that will release what all other studios won’t—Kick-Ass has carte blanche and it milks that status for all that it’s worth.

Based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., Kick-Ass tells the satirical tale of high schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), an average teen who decides to become a superhero after he and his friend are mugged while a bystander watches and does nothing. Besides working as a commentary on apathy, this sequence works as the perfect setup for the story. Dave purchases a ridiculous scuba suit and goes out on the prowl, even though he has no superpowers or fighting skills of any kind. In other words, he’s doomed to fail. And he does. He gets beaten, stabbed, and hit by a car—driven by the same apathetic bystander.

The benefit of his hospitalization: nerve damage makes him more immune to pain. So Dave goes out for round two, and this time, he gets the job done. Taking on three men in a gang fight, his actions are recorded on someone’s cell phone camera. And in another enjoyable commentary on the absurdity of the digital age, Dave—as the crime-fighter Kick-Ass becomes an internet sensation. He sets up a MySpace account so that the citizenry can contact Kick-Ass and ask him for help.

With his newly-cemented superhero status, Dave is eager to help his dream girl, who has admitted to him that she is being harassed by a drug dealer. He dons his cape and cowl—er, ah, scuba suit—and investigates the situation first hand. He ends up in an evil layer full of baddies out to destroy him. In the nick of time (ain’t that always the way?), Dave gets rescued by Hit-Girl, another costumed youngling who wields a double-bladed staff.

The movie may be called Kick-Ass, but Hit-Girl—and Chloe Moretz, the young actress who plays her—is unquestionably the highlight of the movie. When Luc Besson made Leon (a.k.a. The Professional in the U.S.), in the mid-nineties, there was a fair amount of controversy surrounding Natalie Portman‘s young would-be killer Mathilda. Hit-Girl–how she talks and how she fights–makes Mathilda look like Barbie. Hit-Girl has been trained by her father, alias Big Daddy—a former cop who was framed and imprisoned and lost his pregnant wife. The culprit? Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong, who also plays villains in Sherlock Holmes and Ridley Scott’s upcoming take on Robin Hood), head honcho of a local crime syndicate.

Big Daddy is played by Nicolas Cage in an example of perfect casting. Cage, a comic nut in real life, brings his inimitable, looney personality to an inimitable, looney role. At times he seems to channel both Adam West and Elvis. Cage often receives a lot of flak from critics and moviegoers alike (a lot of it undeserved), but trust me, he’s perfect here. With this and Bad Lieutenant, this is a really strong time for him right now.

When Kick-Ass, Hit Girl and Big Daddy realize that they’re after the same guy, they team up to take him down. The other main character in the movie is D’Amico’s son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who assumes a costumed persona of his own and proceeds to gum up the works.

The action is plentiful and uniformly ridiculous. Every moment you would expect to be over-the-top absolutely is, and then some. Anyone who has seen any of Vaughn’s movies knows that he has been unmistakably influenced by postmodern, hyperstylized, showy filmmakers like Tarantino and Guy Ritchie—neither of which I particularly enjoy (I know, so stone me already). But it all worked for me here, because the premise is so ridiculous, frankly I don’t think you could have made this movie any other way than they way in which they did.

It’s a canny concoction of glossy mayhem, odd poignancy, incredible vulgarity and electric pulp. It’s exactly the kind of thing all but guaranteed to make the majority of my generation dance with glee. Kick-Ass is basically a textbook example of how to make a pop culture phenomenon. I don’t know if the movie will actually achieve that status and keep it for any real length of time, but I admired the effort. Cage and Moretz really nailed it for me. In some ways I wish the movie had only been about them. But overall it works, and Kick-Ass certainly stands to be maybe the wildest movie experience offered this year. I’m holding out for Inception and The Expendables though.

After last week’s pivotal and emotionally wrenching 100^th episode, it’s back to business as (almost) usual on Bones. Two teenage girls are exploring….each other…in a bale of hay when a raccoon feasting on a maggoty skull flies in and smacks one of them in the face. Ooh baby, that’s a freakin’ mood killer if I ever heard of one. Our favorite—though by now, somewhat dysfunctional—super-scientist/super-agent team is called into the town to investigate. A rather large coincidence: the town is where Brennan grew up and went to high school, and it happens to be the week of her high school reunion.

Brennan finds more remains and quickly determines that the victim was killed in a manner consistent with a spooky legend that dates back to when Brennan was in high school: “The Butcher of Burtonsville High.” And, like the master of social interaction she is, Brennan immediately goes about alienating the local law enforcement, specifically Deputy Conway, a woman she went to school with. Conway doesn’t immediately remember Brennan, but instead goes about putting the moves on Booth (at least somebody is). Brennan praises her for losing weight—because it’s “better for your cardiovascular system”—and points out that Conway’s weight was probably the source of the vast social “derision” she received in high school. “Oh I remember you now: the creepy girl.” Booth mostly succeeds in hiding a small smile, but you can tell he’s enjoying this a little bit. He is, after all, entitled; getting rejected by the woman you love (even though she loves you too and is just too afraid to confront that) should earn you some free bitterness.

What’s really nice about this episode though is the balance that Boreanaz finds in portraying Booth’s emotional state. I was afraid this episode would either harp too much on the events of last week or not mention them at all. But Boreanaz takes care of it perfectly. There are several moments where you see his disappointment, but Booth never comes off as sullen or trying too hard to pretend that he wasn’t affected by Brennan pouring cold water over his heart. Boreanaz is quite funny in several scenes, especially during a videoconference with Sweets in which he cavalierly (and with no small trace of annoyance) explains that staying in a hotel with Brennan won’t be an issue and that he has completely moved on and already has a date lined up.

Emily Deschanel is equally hysterical in a whole slew of scenes. Sweets recommends that Booth and Brennan will get better results if they hide their FBI status and pretend to be just a married couple attending Brennan’s high school reunion. Putting Brennan into her high school reunion sets up the ultimate venue to showcase how impossibly socially handicapped Brennan is. Seriously, could there be any other situation that Brennan is less trained for? She’s the ultimate fish out of water, and the results are pretty awesome to watch.

Booth encourages Brennan to attend the reunion because, besides the whole we-gotta-solve-the-murder-thing, this is the perfect chance for her to make up for having not been popular by showing off how beautiful and successful she became. Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain this concept to her as if he were talking to a third-grader. You’re supposed to rub your success in subtly, so that no one can accuse you of doing it deliberately. Brennan doesn’t understand this, and just ends up digging herself into deeper and deeper graves. Booth tries to help her out, but he ain’t a miracle worker. The episode isn’t mean-spirited though; Brennan is mostly unaffected by her failures to connect with her former classmates because she’s just so clueless about the nature of human interactions.

All of the highlights you’d hope would come from this scenario happen; you get to see Booth make fun of Brennan’s yearbook photo (she’s the only one not smiling), and revel in the fact that she was a complete high school misfit. “You’re Wednesday Adams…I’ll bet you had a pet rat too!” he exclaims. “No, I had a mouse, and a snake and some spiders.” “Wow and you weren’t popular? Now that’s amazing.” In fact, Brennan’s only friend in high school was the creepy janitor who used to find dead animals for her to dissect and talk about the philosophy of death with her. This janitor—who loves knives–is played by Robert Englund, the original Freddy Krueger, and all of the tongue-in-cheek references you’d expect are made. What’s most funny and oddly sweet about his character is how affectionate Brennan is toward him. Even when he’s grinning like a maniac and talking about death and holding a lethal blade, she can’t understand why Booth finds him alarming.

All of the murder stuff is satisfying, and Angela gets to do a couple of extra-nifty simulation things and shows them to Brennan via videoconference. I loves Bones episodes where Booth and Brennan are away working a case and all of their correspondence with the Jeffersonian has to be through conferences. I like having that separation between our principals and the lab. The physical gap somehow makes Booth and Bones seem like they are existing together in a more intimate, private world, and that’s how it should be.

Initially, when I realized that the B storyline was going to be Wendell finding out that Angela thought she was pregnant and didn’t tell him, I feared the worst. But surprisingly, the Angela stuff didn’t irritate me this week. The subplot was handled well, didn’t dawdle, and Michaela Conlin succeeded in making Angela appear human and not annoying at the same time—a rare feat. And of the revolving interns, Wendell has always been the one I liked the most, and I’m glad that he isn’t going to be Angela’s plaything anymore.

Even Cam came off well this week, with a couple of great lines, telling Bones that “It’s always a tad creepy when you admire the killer’s handiwork,” and realizing after watching Wendell and Hodgins bicker over who had the coolest lab discovery that she “runs a kindergarten.”

The other highlight: seeing Booth and Brennan on the dance floor. Brennan asks Booth to a slow dance and he resists, guarded after being so vulnerable last week. But when he sees how much it means to her—to get to dance at the prom she never went to—he relents. And when you can clearly see how intense Brennan’s feelings are for Booth, you almost want to slap her for being too emotionally controlled to take the risk and fight for what she wants. What she and Booth both want. But unlike some fans that are so ready to run Brennan over with a truck for warding off Booth, I understand why she did and why she is the way that she is. When your parents abandon you and disappear when you’re fifteen and you go from bad foster family to bad foster family, it’s pretty reasonable that twenty years later you’d still be dealing with serious abandonment issues.

She told Booth that she doesn’t have an open heart like he does, that he should be protected from her…but the truth is that she’s afraid that he won’t always feel the way that he does about her, and that he’ll abandon her just like her parents did. We caught a glimpse of this in the season premiere. She probably figures she has a better chance of keeping Booth in her life as his friend and partner than she would as his love.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with this season so far. There have been a couple of crappy episodes, but by and large things have been much better than they were in season four, and Booth and Brennan are seriously progressing in their relationship.

Season 5, Episode 17: The Death of the Queen Bee (originally aired April 15, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

Knowing that star Hugh Laurie was directing the show for the first time and that the guest star was David Strathairn, I was very excited to watch the new House. Unfortunately, it dawned on me rather quickly that this was a mediocre episode. Doing double duty, Hugh Laurie does a competent job (though again, I expected more), but he has a weak script to work from.

This is surprising, because the scenario laid out held a lot of promise and offered a welcome opportunity to subvert the procedural formula. House did that once earlier this season in the strong episode that focused on Cuddy, but this week was lame. The premise: a brand spankin’ new father leaves his wife and older son in the recovery room so that he can go get them some food. When he returns fifteen minutes later, his wife and son are asleep but the baby is gone. All the babies in the hospital have a tag with a microchip on them, and since no alarm has sounded, Cuddy knows the baby hasn’t left the hospital. So she locks the whole place down, trapping everyone inside until they find the missing baby. Talk about your worst nightmare.

Actually, my worst nightmare is being trapped in a room with Cameron. Which is exactly what happens to Chase, the poor bastard. Cameron showed up to make him sign divorce papers (apparently he has been taking too long to sign them on his own accord) just before the lockdown occurred. I was ecstatic when she exited the show earlier in the season, because I’ve hated her character for years. When I saw her walk through the hospital doors like a sullen demon from the boiling bogs of hell, I curled up into a fetal position and struggled mightily to hold back tears.

That’s what this episode basically is: everyone in the hospital is trapped in whatever room they happened to be in with whoever happened to be in there with them. Wilson and Thirteen are trapped in the cafeteria, Cameron and Chase are in some back room, Foreman and Taub are in file storage, and House is trapped in a room with a dying academic (Strathairn). Expecting the guy to be comatose, House snuck in to his room to watch his nice tv. But the guy is very much conscious, and House has no choice but to listen to his story.

How are the other medical folks occupying themselves? Wilson and Thirteen play Truth or Dare (yes, Truth or Dare) while Foreman and Taub raid the normally-guarded staff credential files while whacking out on confiscated painkillers. Taub was in the file room because, being the unscrupulous little weasel he is, he wanted to dig up dirt on all of his colleagues. Foreman wanted to shred his own file. But now they’re both too busy riding the freight train to Loon Town while reading the other one’s file.

The episode just cuts back and forth between these different threads, with the search for the baby serving as the connecting tissue. Here are the problems: first off, the segments with Taub/Foreman and Thirteen/Wilson become less amusing each time we cut back to them. They aren’t intricate enough to warrant coming back to them time and time again; they’re only there as placeholders. They get old fast. And the Cameron/Chase Wallowing Melodrama Show is as torturous as it sounds. When Cameron left it was clean and dramatic. Their relationship had dissolved. All of this divorce whining about did you ever love me bla bla bla is just anticlimactic and cloying. Oh yeah, and am I the only person that doesn’t think this is the most ridiculous behavioral act: hey, we just got divorced, I admitted that I never loved you and we’ll never see each other after this…let’s celebrate by having sex in a lockdown? Jesus christ.

The only one of these segments that is involving is the one with Strathairn, because the guy is such an interesting actor, I always want to see more of him. I was a huge fan of his even before he entered the public consciousness with Good Night, And Good Luck. If you were able to land this guy to be a guest star on your show, why the hell would you relegate him to a segment? Why wouldn’t you make the whole episode about him?

The other big problem: the quest for the baby oddly lacks urgency. Sure, the mother is freaking out, and the older son (actually, her stepson) gets interrogated as to whether or not he abducted his sister out of jealousy…but the hospital staff and atmosphere just didn’t seem frantic enough to me. I mean this is a security nightmare! The baby could be drowning or smothering or in the hands of a sociopath. If lost the mother would be suicidal, her family torn apart, and Cuddy’s hospital would be in the toilet. And yet, I never really bought the whole thing in the first place. And the final explanation for what happened to the baby—and the culprit—while unexpected, lacked dramatic punch.

There are a couple of amusing moments early on, and some minor character beats worth remarking upon. But given the pedigree involved with this episode, I expected a lot more. I hope Hugh Laurie gets to direct another episode—one with a better script.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out Lockdown Mode by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 16: Lockdown (originally aired April 12, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

What a landmark week this was for Bones: the one hundredth episode chronicling how Booth and Bones first met. Directed by David Boreanaz, it’s the key episode of the season, the origin story fans have been yearning for incessantly. With the potential to be more exciting than the latest superhero saga, it’s the origin story of maybe the most complex, emotionally resonant relationship currently on network television. And, except for a stupid framing device (courtesy of Sweets) and some cloying narration early on, the episode doesn’t disappoint. It’s full of crackling sparks, emotional urgency, humor, and heartbreaking vulnerability—the very qualities that made me fall in love in the first place with the show, these two characters, and the ever-evolving relationship between them.

For the first time, Booth and Bones don’t have a new murder to solve this week. Their big concern is talking to Sweets about his soon-to-be-published work that details their relationship and concludes that they are in love with each other. Booth and Bones have now read the material for the first time—even though Sweets has been touting it almost since he came into the show (for better or for worse) in season three. Never mind that the FBI would never let him publish something like this anyway, Bones is adamant about going over to Sweets’ office and pointing out the errors in his work.

Booth assumes she takes issue with Sweets’ conclusion—you know, the whole love thing. But to his surprise, that doesn’t bother her. What does bother her is that Sweets refers to the Cleo Eller case as being the first case that Booth and Bones worked together. This was of course the case in the pilot, but for those who remember the pilot (and everyone should, because it was amazing), it was very clearly stated that Booth and Bones had met and had worked a case before. They also hated each other. This is the story that finally tells us why.

Booth—much earlier in his FBI career—is still working through his gambling issues (issues I repeatedly keep wishing would be explored more throughout the series) and is having trouble closing a case. Someone murdered a beautiful and talented young singer/musician. Booth knows who did it; it’s a judge (a corrupt authority figure similar to the senator from the pilot). He just can’t prove it. So Cam—even though she’s supposed to be a coroner in New York—is on hand and encourages Booth to seek out Dr. Temperance Brennan from the Jeffersonian, because she has been making headlines lately. She is, after all, the greatest in her field in all the world (she points this out to Booth casually during their first encounter).

Booth resists because he distrusts scientists. They see the world through cold, objective eyes. They make the personal impersonal. He espouses the belief that squints don’t solve murders but cops do. Because good cops can see through the lies, they can extract the truth by looking into someone’s eyes and following their gut instinct. He carries this belief over into the pilot, but knowing that he’s at a dead end, he takes a gamble and seeks Brennan out.

She’s lecturing at American University, and as soon as he meets her, he’s hooked. He interrupts her disinterested class, and when he gets her one on one he asks her if she believes in fate. She looks at him with that bemused skepticism—somehow both condescending and charming at the same time, a combination that only Emily Deschanel could pull off—and tells him that fate is absurd. But she does agree to examine Booth’s murder victim, if for no other reason than to test her skills and to adapt her scientific model to a recent set of remains. The attraction between these two characters is palpable, and what makes it so enjoyable to watch is that we already know exactly who these people are and what they will become to each other. We know more than the characters do, and that makes us giddy. The writers know this of course; that’s why they designed this whole scenario.

The murder case is satisfactory, but in all honesty it wouldn’t have even mattered if it were terrible. This episode is all about Booth and Bones, as it should be. It’s wonderful to see aspects of the characters that have been toned down in recent seasons come back to the forefront, like Booth’s gambling and Brennan’s penchant for beating the piss out of sleazebags (and looking amazing doing it). We even get to see Hodgins’ contempt for authority manifest itself more blatantly. Eric Millegan returns as intern Zack (you know, before he became a murderous freak), but it’s disappointing not to see the return of Goodman. Seriously, what the hell happened to that guy? He went on a short sabbatical at the end of season one and has never been heard from again. And the only other thing I’ve seen that actor on since is a McDonald’s commercial.

Angela is also a welcome presence here, and I don’t think I’ve ever said that before in the history of the show. We get a great revelation about the origin of Booth’s Cocky belt buckle and goofy socks, and there are at least three moments designed to leave every Bones fan alive gasping (I know, I was one of them). The way the episode ends is immensely satisfying because Booth and Bones finally stop being passive, but it’s also tragic.

I’m so encouraged by this episode. I wish they had just done it as a straight flashback without having narration and Sweets, but that’s a minor complaint. I think it’s safe to say that after this episode, things between Booth and Brennan will never be the same. And that’s fantastic. That’s what I’ve been pushing for for the last two seasons. Things can only be the same for so long before it becomes monotonous and boring and even tedious to watch. But now Booth and Bones have been shaken up, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.

Season 5, Episode 16: The Parts in the Sum of the Whole (originally aired April 8, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

Pretty boy Brandon Routh wraps up his little guest star stint on Chuck, and he exited in a way that made me rather gleeful. He may have once played Superman, but here he doesn’t go up, up and away; here, his ass goes down.

Last week, it was revealed that Sarah unknowingly killed Shaw’s wife to pass her Red Test. Shaw whisked her away to a remote location and left us—and Chuck—fearing the worst. Though Beckman dilly-dallies like usual, Chuck springs into action, begging Casey to help him save Sarah. Casey gives Chuck a magic phone number, and Chuck calls in full tactical support, including guys rappelling through windows, helicopters, automatic weapons, and even a tank.

But it turns out that Shaw didn’t abduct Sarah so he could do a little vengeance killing; he just wanted to show her that she killed his wife, meaning that she was set up by the Ring and he wants to team up with her to destroy them. Though it was an unexpected twist (or counter-twist really), I was a little disappointed that Shaw didn’t turn out to be an unexpected baddie. Luckily, the writers threw me a bone in the penultimate act.

Chuck finds himself once again benched by Beckman, and, knowing that Shaw and Sarah are now going to D.C. as planned, drinks himself into a stupor. He even ties Morgan up with cables after Morgan tries to talk him down. Sarah arrives in time to see Chuck sitting, indisposed, in his underwear. What better time for a heavy, emotional, love-starved scene between the two would-be lovers? Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski do typically strong work here.

Chuck and Sarah make plans to be together, but first they have to do this last mission: bring down The Ring. Hey, we still have no idea what The Ring’s agenda is, but I’m at the point where I no longer care. From here we get the standard tv-espionage set pieces—fisticuffs, rappelling down elevator shafts, and bad guys being neutralized. All is not as it appears to be, however, and that revelation sets up the end of the episode, which involves a reverse of the typical Chuck scenario: Chuck must rescue an imperiled Sarah…with a little help from Casey and, to Beckman’s consternation, Morgan.

It’s absorbing to see Chuck racing to save Sarah, trying to control his emotions and think tactically. It’s not a side we usually see to Chuck. The finale is executed with a little ham on the side, but Levi anchors it and makes the whole thing work. Chuck is forced to do something rather extreme in order to save Sarah, but fortunately, she doesn’t give him any crap for it. After a little homage to Alan Rickman’s demise in Die Hard, Shaw exists stage left. I can’t say that he’ll be missed. Another plus: no Ellie or Awesome.

Season 3, Episode 13: Chuck Vs. The Other Guy (originally aired April 5, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Chris Haston.

Terms like jack-of-all-trades and Renaissance man weren’t coined for Kely McClung, but they might as well have been. Stemming out of necessity and an active refusal to limit himself to one role, Kely makes feature films with high production values on shoestring budgets, regularly serving as writer, producer, director, star, camera operator, fight and stunt coordinator, makeup artist, location scout, and editor. He is aided by a carefully-cultivated and loyal team of talents, and with them, Kely has co-opted the original Robert Rodriguez business model. Unlike Rodriguez, however, Kely is using it to make dramatic, character-driven crime thrillers and action sagas.

His latest film is the dark, atmospheric and exciting crime thriller Kerberos, which blends action with pathos and character study. The title refers to the monstrous, three-headed watchdog from Greek mythology that guards the entrance to Hades and reflects the film’s trisected narrative structure, which weaves together three portraits of that most versatile archetype of modern fiction, the tough guy. These three men are pulled into one another like magnets, all battling over a jackpot of stolen money and a young girl. One wants to control and abuse her, one wants to use her as a bargaining chip, and one wants to protect her.

The film is being entered in festivals all over the world and comes on the heels of Kely’s very successful action feature Blood Ties. He graciously sat down with me to discuss his work, his back-story, his artistic process, and the exciting new career he is carving out for himself. For a fascinating and candid portrait into the challenging world of DIY filmmaking, read on…

CC: Could you talk a little about your extensive stickfighting and martial arts experience, how you came to work in films in the ‘90s, and how you came back to do the work you’re doing now?

KM: I’ve pretty much trained in some form of martial arts for my entire life. I was lucky to have some of the greatest teachers of the world, Dan Inosanto, Paul Keller, Dr. Fred Wu, Shang Dong Shang, Wai Ku, the list goes on and on. My formal training was pretty equal between Japanese and Okinawan Karate and many forms of Kung Fu. I was always obsessed with the training and hungry to learn from everyone. I trained on the seminar circuit and spent time in the Philippines and Thailand working with some of their Thai boxers and trainers. Besides western boxing, and kickboxing, wrestling, and judo, I was lucky enough to win the Full Contact International Stickfighting Championship under the guidance of Tuhon Leo Gaje.

I taught my own philosophies of martial arts in a half dozen schools throughout the South East, and had clubs and followers in Thailand and Malaysia. I ended up auditioning for Mike Stone as a possible replacement for Jean-Claude Van Damme when he was tied up in contract disputes. Though that deal eventually fell through as he resolved his contracts, I ended up in South Africa for many months working on American Ninja IV, where I played a dozen roles, easy with a mask on, and doubled Michael Dudikoff and a bit for David Bradley, as well as played their main martial arts foe. Not a great movie by any means but, it served as an accelerated education in film and production—basic falls and stunt work, and how to sell techniques on camera. I had my own ideas even then, choreographed many of the fights on this first film, and started to get a feel for how to covert my fighting technique to movie technique.

I never really left once I had this first taste of how the business worked. I was playing script doctor almost immediately, started designing movie posters, and taught myself how to edit. Editing helped teach me both how to direct economically—filming only what I was actually going to use—and helped me analyze acting and how the camera interpreted it so I could start learning how to act.

As an actor, I think the action movies of the 90′s were very formulaic and that lower budget producers were trying to force people into a mold that I really didn’t fit or even want to fit. Unless you could somehow make the jump from the B and C movie realm up to A list movies—you were expected to be a watered-down clone of one of the big four; Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme and Seagal.  I was obviously not any of them. Like martial arts itself, I had my own ideas on character and style and story. My ideas were much more along the lines of Denzel Washington’s character Creasy in Man On Fire or Mel Gibson as Riggs in Lethal Weapon, instead of trying to fake being one of the others already out there.

I studied and learned more on all facets of filmmaking, and as I learned more, cameras got better, software and computers got better, and I got better. Eventually those factors converged and I ran out of excuses to not make a movie.

CC: How did you get into writing and directing and how long had you harbored the desire?

KM: My first thoughts on reading the script for the American Ninja movies and some of the other scripts floating around in their offices, was that I could write much more interesting, believable stories. I started in on a story much like Bloodsport called Stickman even before I left Africa. My first movie script, I was trying to tie in much more history and cultural reference to the surrounding story while trying to outdo the action sequences. A really watered-down version of that story was cobbled together for the movie Stickfighter. That was another lesson in the business of Hollywood filmmaking as I was forced to credit another writer who didn’t contribute a single word. The entire shooting script was written in 10 days with the production team scrambling to accommodate what I wrote on a day-by-day basis. The movie and entire production were pretty bad, but I learned so much about every part of the production process; some good and some bad and some really bad! At this stage, good or bad, I’ve completed scripts for 23 features and am now investigating the short film format.

I draw and paint, and have a natural instinct for composition, color and light. It’s nothing I really had to work at, but I did limited edition prints of pen and ink drawings, and sold art from a very young age, maybe 15 on.  I always had confidence in the fact that I could direct. Part of that is being analytical and so detail-oriented, and part of it came from teaching martial arts for years and speaking to huge groups of people on the seminar circuit. So I never doubted that I could elicit emotion and find the truth of any given scene. It’s turned out to be that way, but the first time I really felt like a director was in handling a bit of location juggling for a single sequence on Blood Ties—I think eight separate locations to make up a single scene.

My first film was the action feature Blood Ties. That was made with a partnership with my friend Robert Pralgo, who is just now starting to really get some of the recognition he deserves as an actor, both in features and now as the Mayor on CW’s Vampire Diaries. We had very little money, and I somehow convinced him to let me shoot most of it in Thailand. Just so it wouldn’t seem too easy, I added Cambodia, Washington DC, Miami, Virginia, and Atlanta to the mix. Blood Ties did really well on the festival circuit, winning everything from Film of the Year at the Action on Film Film Festival, to Best International Film in the UK at the End Of The Pier Int’l Film Festival. It’s still not out there but there is nothing in the story or look to date it except the date itself – so I think we’ll be in a good position to sell it. Blood Ties was really ambitious, and not only are the fights and locations exotic, it has a lot of story told with some unique editing and story structure devices. Mostly, it’s a lot of fun!

I know I’m too new at this to have a definitive style, but even I can see similarities in all my work and screenplays. I do try to make them dense in terms of visuals and content, so that they work on several different levels and then let people discover them. Anyone who has seen my movies more than once, and sometimes even 5 and 6 times, always discovers nuance and themes that were meant to be revealed slowly and from contemplation. Good or bad, there is nothing random in my movies. Each scene, and even each frame is crafted very deliberately.

CC: What was the most challenging sequence in Kerberos to shoot?

KM: So many were challenging for different reasons. Like the extended foot chase because I only had a crew of one to do it. I knew the shots I wanted, but it was just my cameraman and me moving the dolly and jib, setting up the shots, and then me jumping back in frame and running. That entire scene was done in a single afternoon – except for the jumps, which I had to do over and over again. For some reason I always ended up out of frame. So maybe 20 jumps to get it right from all the different angles.

The fights were tough physically of course. The main fight at the end with Grant (Jess Dillard) was pretty brutal. My only cameraman on it, Rafael Rivera was great, but didn’t get time to adjust to the speed of our movements so we ended up out of frame and had to repeat moves a lot.

The warehouse shootout has 15 speaking parts, 5 extras, action, and guns, some of which were real, some blanks, and some plastic. Since I am in that scene and actually doing about half the camerawork, that seems difficult but I never really had any trouble keeping it together. It was a very long night though, and a challenge bringing out the different levels of performance from so many people for such an extended time, many of which I had never met before that night.

Something as seemingly simple as the rain in the opening scene was a nightmare. Just my AD, Attila Alexander, and I traveled 80 miles to an amazing cemetery to film. The Southern United States had a few extended weeks of nearly non-stop rain last year, and though we checked radar and weather reports, and would drive though torrential rainstorms, every time we actually pulled through the gates into the cemetery it would stop. The one day we got rain, Attila held an umbrella until I set up the shot, then I ran to get into frame while he held the umbrella and filmed, only to have the rain stop on us after the first take. It really became a challenge to get the scene, but I was determined and we both knew it looked amazing through camera. Still, it took 5 separate trips of 8-hour days to get the one 60 second scene.

I guess the toughest scene in terms of pressure was the final car wreck and shootout. Like the warehouse shootout, I was in the scene as one of the main three actors, setting up every camera angle and shot, doing everyone’s make up including mine which was melting off as fast I put it on, and coordinating all the police cars and driving, as well as the actual shootout.

We had 6 police cars, closed off streets and intersections, had real police and real guns to deal with, the police dogs, an ambulance and the attendants that go with it. I had a fire truck but it got pulled away to deal with a fire… so I came back another day just for that. We also had a helicopter shot that I was trying to coordinate while lying on the ground, but there were 60 mph winds and it was buffeted around the sky so much there was not a single usable second for the scene. But it could’ve been worse; our executive producer Brad Fallon was in the helicopter and it ended up just a few feet away and moments from being blown into a radio tower!

Sound design became crucial, as the winds made all location sound useless. Jess Dillard is a police officer and was able to secure the permits and help coordinate the real police and I count on him to secure the real weapons. He double-checked all the firearms and pulled the firing pins from the rifles, then we took the time to go over them together. One of my closet friends was killed on a movie set a few years back, the main reason I left LA, and so I take everybody’s safety seriously. Still, it’s a bit disconcerting at first to have real rifles pointed at you, and then directing someone to pull the trigger!

CC: What job do you find harder, acting, writing, or directing?

KM: Writing comes easy to me, and I appreciate that time alone to create. I can’t say I’m a great writer yet, but I’m really good at creating the ‘hero’. At this stage of my career, I always have to be conscious of the budget, or lack thereof, and so I only allow myself to write what I think I might be able to pull off somehow. I stretch and then force myself to meet the challenges I impose. That applies to the all the roles, the acting challenges I set for myself, and of course, production values.

Acting is tougher in that actors can be really confident and yet still second guess themselves and be full of doubts and fears. Part of the director’s job is to help them confront and explore those fears, and of course I only have myself. If you are pushing, or if the role is demanding and you are seriously trying to meet it, then you’re walking on an edge that is both terrifying and exhilarating. It’s why we’re all pretty much nuts, but also why so many actors are such interesting people, and maybe why people become interested in us to begin with. It’s the embrace of our flaws and foibles, and the honesty it takes in facing the extremes in humanity.

As the actor being directed by myself, I don’t really get the feedback and encouragement to explore from anyone else. It’s such a strange balance of mental games to be genuinely invested in the moment of whatever world I’ve created, yet still controlling the camera and having to search for ways to get performance out of everyone else at the same time.

Directing is the pressure cooker that lets me bring all the flavors together. I am one of those people who seem to do best under pressure, and somehow have the energy to put in the continuous days and weeks and months to get it done. I know I’m lucky, or maybe just psychotic, to be able to have such extreme focus. I don’t know that I’ll be a great director, but all the great ones I have ever heard or read about have that, so my only consolation is in knowing that I’m not the only psycho out there saying “action”!

CC: The best action sequences manage to be exciting and reveal character—different characters move and fight in different ways. How do you approach coordinating fight sequences? What goes into your process?

KM: Designing a fight is really just an extension of acting to me. I am very good at creating violence, and the fights come from my background and physical talents as a fighter, and then genuinely putting myself into the situations I create. Just as an actor speaks and moves and reacts with a fundamental truth that an audience feels and intuits as reality even in perhaps unrealistic situations, the physical movements and reactions in my fights come from moment-by-moment recognition of the circumstances I’ve created within the story, which is maybe why people think my fights look and feel so real.

I place the camera and set the shot, and then we pretty much go for it. Then I move camera to accommodate the reverses or angles for whatever technique develops, and so on. I map out the start and end goals, and maybe the final techniques. If I am fighting with someone who is not a trained fighter, or used to a more rigid form of technique and or choreography, then I take time to understand their physical limits and abilities, and design very precise movements around that. In those cases, the fight is done the exact same way take after take. Again, I place camera based on our movements rather than design the fight to fit the camera.

The final fight with Grant in Kerberos might be a pretty good example. The actor is my good friend, Jess Dillard. In real life, Jess is a cop, a decorated Marine, and martial arts instructor in Kali and Wing Chun. I was actually Jess’ first martial arts teacher about a hundred years ago. So he’s basically a real life tough guy. Also one of the nicest people I know. Jess is a pretty stocky guy, with massive chest and shoulders, so I am sure no one expects him to move the way he does. Jess took some lumps and told me later his shins were pretty smashed up from banging into mine. The knife work was much more elaborate but I cut it down in the edit because people couldn’t follow the speed of the hand switches and lock dissolves, so it looked like we were repeating things.

We did the entire scene in about 3 hours. The cameraman had trouble keeping up with the speed of the kicks and punches so there were many repeats. Even Jess and I were surprised at how fast and high the kicks were going. I sit at an editing desk for weeks and months at a time and then jump up and yell “action”. So it starts as a very general walk through, “I think I’ll kick you here” or “maybe you can hit me here and I’ll counter with what ever makes sense”. Because most of our training is based on feel and reacting to subtle changes in energy, it’s actually quite hard for us to make ourselves repeat things exactly the same way each time. We both embraced the adrenaline of fighting and friendly competition so suddenly things are moving much faster than we’re used to and kicks you’re hoping make it to head height are going two feet over. It’s about as close to a real fight you can get without actually trying to take the other person out.

CC: How did Kerberos originate? What was the writing process like, and how does the title reflect the story?

KM: I loved the idea of exploring the various forms of tough guy all in one story. Finn, someone tough enough that he was trying hard not to be but couldn’t outrun his own brutal nature, Menacci playing the classic mad dog bully, and Armstrong as the sociopath using his charm and intelligence to lead and control. From there, it came pretty easy to realize Finn wouldn’t really have anyone in his life or let anyone in, Menacci would have those he terrorizes and maybe one partner to bolster his ego, and that Armstrong would get off on leading a group of men to do his bidding. The various characters that surround were meant to give further cross sections of the tough guy motif.

I let the Irish myths and legends of Foinn Mac Cumail help inform my character of Mike Finn. The photographic memory accessed by biting his thumb, the martial skills, and Robin Hood feel to his thievery. Ideas like the death of his daughter and the prison rape of his friend Burns played by Chris Burns (I always have a least a couple names as the real actors – my homage to Chinese movies) were done to compress the time and realty of grief and loyalty. The rape scene is only 50 seconds, but after Finn saves him, we understand Burns’ absolute loyalty as he is tortured and abused by Menacci and Harris.

Katie of course becomes the catalyst for all three men. Finn opens up to her as her age and innocence brings comfort of what his daughter may have become, Menacci wants to control and abuse her, and Armstrong’s only use for her is as a lure for Finn. There are no innocent people in the entire movie except for the little girl in the closet as by the end even Katie has been forced to cross irrevocable lines.

The title Kerberos came very easy, and reflects back on the fact that these three men, the heads of the Hellhound, are entering the Hell of their making and not getting out. For Finn, the real tragedy is he knows he’s on the precipice, but makes a conscious decision to wade in and do what he knows will condemn him. He sacrifices his only hope for redemption and the chance to see his daughter again in order to do what is ‘right’.

There are other themes that I weave in and out, i.e. the working class blue collar guy fighting against Menacci’s mid level bureaucracy and Armstrong’s federal entitlement, but I want to make a story that hits hard emotionally, and if you are just into action, delivers some real grit and visceral punches to the chest as you watch. I always want to make movies that when they finish, like Alabama asks Clarence in True Romance, make you want to go out to get a piece of pie and talk about it.

CC: What kind of sound equipment did you use?

KM: A Rode boom pole and a mid-level Sennheiser mic running straight into the camera. Our sound crew wasn’t the most experienced in terms of mic and boom technique and we didn’t have the luxury of a mixer. Headphones for basic levels and we went for it. It wasn’t that I don’t know how important sound is – all you have is light and sound to make a movie - but the half dozen experienced sound mixers I called laughed or hung up when I told them my budget.

CC: How did you acquire all of the many weapons and blanks used in the film?

KM: On Blood Ties we only had 3 or 4 cheap plastic guns, and even in a massive action scene and shootout with 24 guys, we just creatively traded back and forth. A nightmare to make it look good in post, but no one has ever caught it. On Kerberos, I tried to take things to another level, and so I bought 5 guns that fired blanks. For safety, they are the kind that the barrels are totally solid and the flashes are ejected out the sides with the cartridges. We also had another half dozen plastic guns and the shotguns mixed in. All the police had real weapons. Some of our cast in the big shootout showed up with their own guns, all real, which gave us a lot of variety but raised the stakes for safety that much more.

My friend Jess cleared and checked all guns, pulled firing pins, and kept any real bullets away from our sets. If I had to entrust my life to someone, and I did, Jess is the man. All guns, real or not, used extensive compositing to give us muzzle flashes, light up the rooms and people, and create the smoke, debris, sparks, and shell ejections. The knives we fought with were real, though we took the edge off just enough to give us a small room for error. There are only a couple people I’ve worked with that I would trust with that at full speed and Jess is one.

CC: What was your biggest expense on the film?

KM: Initially the cameras, then post sound. We bought two EX 1′s, additional memory cards, the card reader, a basic tripod, some protective filters for the lenses and camera bag. Those cameras were sold off to work on other projects so their final cost is negligible. Our post sound work in London, a fraction of what the studio normally charges, became our biggest single expense. I did pay cast and crew, and though again, only a fraction of what they really should be making, a lot of people had a lot of days on the movie, so that’s where most of the budget went.

CC: You shot on Sony’s PMW-EX1. How was your experience with that camera and do you plan to use it for future projects? What other camera equipment did you have?

KM: I love the cameras. Staging in depth along with their half-inch CMOS chips gave me the shallow depth of field to look cinematic. My rules for making low budget films look great are dust, rust, and dirt. In Kerberos, we can add blood to the mix, and the digital format translates those elements really well. They have great low-light capability. I wish I could have taken time to use the slow motion more often and though it’s only one speed at 720P is really pretty. I never had a problem or lost footage on the memory cards. Though I do very little playback and trust my instincts to get what I want, the instant review is great if needed. If we had soft focus or other picture issues it was not the fault of the monitor. It’s very good in terms of resolution and accuracy. It does need a monitor hood in bright light. The batteries last as expected, and I found the controls and menus easy to navigate.

We had two cameras but rarely someone to run them both. We had a homemade dolly running on PVC pipe, a homemade ‘skater’ dolly, and a 10-foot jib. Many times I wanted to set up and use the dolly, jib, or both, but usually we had such little time we moved on. The shots we do have on those supports were conceived in the script and so I forced the issue. Of course, remember I am the director and the producer, so usually that argument is with myself!

Cameras change so much I can’t say for sure I would use it again. I would like to be able to step up to interchangeable lenses and will investigate the EX3 pretty hard. What’s comforting about them, is that I know the work flow and can concentrate on the other million things that make a movie. And last, that I can look through camera and see not only what it will record but know what a given image can become with my post processing and grading. Right now, I am also investigating the Canon 5D mark IV.

CC: Did you write the script around locations you already knew and had free access to, or did you have to scout locations more formally and worry about location fees and permits?

KM: I only had one location in mind when I wrote the movie, and we got chased off by the police for that one! A bit hard to stay under the radar for it as I had about 80 people and 40 cars involved on that scene! A couple kegs of beer can go a long way in attracting extras!

My 1st AD Attila Alexander and I scouted for a couple of months nearly every day as we broke down and discussed the script and what I was trying to accomplish with it. We had a lot of great adventures in places where no sane people would step foot in! All downtown scenes, including the alley, were coordinated with the police Sergeant on duty, of course the final scenes were done formally through Jess. Still, a lot of our locations, I think we had 50 or 60, were stolen guerrilla style. We filmed mostly in Atlanta, but had scenes 30 miles east, 40 miles west, 80 miles north, and 90 miles south. Like everything else in Kerberos, pretty ambitious for a no- budget movie!

CC: How much time have you spent in postproduction, and what has been the biggest challenge there?

KM: I started editing and logging even as we filmed, so that’s been going on for nearly two years. My consolation there is that I know lots of studio films take much longer, and in this case the only postproduction up until the very final mix was done by me. So the edit, the effects, and the color grading. And of course rendering. Will probably be on my headstone someday – “still rendering”. I believe in my script, so the edit is mostly about pace and performance. I really try to give the actors their moments and one of the things I push for is the actual transition and thought process going on within an actor’s expression as the story unfolds around them, so I search and edit around that. Effects run from adding smoke and muzzle flashes and debris, to adding shadows and shafts of light, to touching up blemishes. All the breath in the exteriors of the first act of the movie were done in post, partly for continuity and partly to help create a feel and mood. Every individual shot and angle has had it’s own treatment and color grading. I do all my grading and effects in After Effects.

Big films or studio films have such high standards of technical excellence and resources that the audience rarely has to worry about picture and sound. They can’t all be masterpieces of cinematography or sound design and score, but their quality level is really transparent and so audiences concentrate on the story and acting. Low budget movies tend to first fall down on story, and then acting, and then of course have to worry about technical issues. In most cases the weak point is sound.

The biggest challenge and probably the most important that we conquered is our sound. We made this movie with a very limited crew, mostly inexperienced, and like a lot of no-budget films, sound suffered. Our end result is pretty good, but it took me a lot of work in re-recording voices and doing Foley for many of the scenes. Foley on Kerberos usually means me and maybe one other person holding the mic while I repeated actions, footsteps, running, jumping, etc. I would change shoes and jackets and play all the parts to get it. The exception being I could never move soft enough to recreate the girl’s parts so Amanda McCarthy stepped in and played Foley artist for those scenes. We ended up with a powerful, poignant score that was mostly done by an English Composer, Russell Scott Johnson, and then radically reworked by me to fit our mix at the last minute. We have songs from 8 bands; 4 from Australia, 3 from my home town in Atlanta, and then anchored by 7 songs from the awesome Katy J from LA.

What really brought the soundtrack together though was the final mix at Twickenham Film Studios in London. I got to work with BAFTA-winning sound engineers Rob James and Craig Irving. Rob and I became friends when Blood Ties premiered in England and won the End of the Pier Film Festival last year, and he was able to talk Twickenham into taking a look at Kerberos. Kerberos is the smallest budgeted feature they have maybe ever seen, much less worked on. Twickenham and the studio’s co-director Craig Irving have done the mix on little movies like John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love and Proof, Mikael Håfström’s Derailed and 1408, and Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth the Golden Age. They took Kerberos from sounding like a kickass desktop movie to sounding like a ‘real’ film. They taught me a lot, and I pushed them a lot as I had very specific ideas on how it should sound, especially the violence, and the interplay of my music choices. They had to use all their tricks and magic to take my original source recordings to the level it is now, and the entire experience is one of the highlights of my young directing career. I can’t wait to be there again working with them on the next one!

CC: What are your eventual distribution hopes for the film, and do you have any future projects currently lined up? Would having a more substantial budget change the kind of film you’d make and how you’d go about making it?

KM: Of course we’ll do the festival circuit. At first glance, Kerberos is an action movie, and many times those movies are overlooked by the bigger festivals. We’re really proud of Kerberos on so many levels; the acting is stellar, the look and filming, the editing, the music, and it really pushes all boundaries in terms of production values on a micro budget film. I give a lot of credit to the Action On Film Film Festival for focusing attention on Blood Ties and starting out our festival run for it in such a positive light. That in turn helped bring me the attention of my investors and partners to Kerberos. The festival Founder and Director Del Weston has some really big plans on promoting Kerberos at this year’s Action On Film Film festival. It’s really exciting to grow in stature as a film director at the same time a film festival grows and be a continuing part of it.

My Executive Producers and partners on this film, Brad Fallon and Buck Rizvi, are Internet marketing geniuses, and are sought out from around the world to share their knowledge and ideas. They make their livings not just from thinking outside the box, but helping to define it. So it will be very interesting to see what we all come up. I think some combination of traditional distribution and probably something I have no idea about yet. One of the great things that came out of working with Twickenham Film Studios, they pretty much work exclusively on A list movies, is that they were under the impression that this was being readied for a theatrical release. Almost every time Blood Ties showed somewhere on the festival circuit, people would walk out saying “wow – that looks like a ‘real’ movie”. Kerberos takes that much further, so the possibilities are really exciting.

I have the action thriller Black Heart in Thailand and Australia, and a disturbing allegorical thriller, Altered, I’m putting together to shoot later this year, and at least two short films, Dust To Heaven and Tears. I’m trying to figure out how to do two more, one cute and comedic, and one decidedly not cute or comedic. The shorts are meant to break the mold of what people are expecting from me. Dust to Heaven is about an older gay couple on their deathbed, and Tears deals with the worldwide apathy and ignorance of conflict deaths. I also love the idea of relinquishing control and being directed, and creating a character for someone else’s project.

I would love to have a very small, very talented, multi-hat wearing crew. I know if possible I’ll keep my gaffer extraordinaire Dan Slemons on any project; he not only works his butt off but without complaint and is a very talented. I will find a location sound genius that I can work with, and then be thrilled to work with Rob and Craig again at Twickenham. Since I’m still in front of the camera on the next couple projects, it’d be nice to have some kind of personal assistant who makes sure of things like taking my glasses off when I go from looking into the camera to being in front of it! It would be nice not to have to worry about make up and wardrobe. That was taken in consideration in Kerberos as I wrote it… so that with the compressed 36 hour timeline, we never had to change clothes. Still, not all the stories will work out that way.

Pretty sure I’ll still be the DP and doing as much actual camera work as possible on the next couple of films. I use an alias in my movie credits. It’s really hard to imagine turning over the edit, or even the color grading. I’d love to be able to direct the effects work instead of having to do them all, and of course I’d love to have assistants to help with the massive amounts of rendering and data management in post. Good luck to someone trying to keep up though. Once, I couldn’t remember the project name I had settled on and had just worked on a few days before. I did a search by date of all modified project files of that month, and it was over 700 separate files! I don’t really consider myself a composer though I’ve had to step up on 3 films now, so it will be great to keep working and finding people who have that talent I can work with.

CC: What are some of the films and who are some of the filmmakers that have influenced you?

KM: Tony Scott for all his genius in story structure. Spy Game was amazing. I loved Man on Fire and Deja Vu. He pushes a lot of creative envelopes and maybe doesn’t get the credit for the beauty of his movies. Terry Gilliam; Twelve Monkeys is one of my favorite movies. He found just the right balance for his wonderfully insane ideas and Bruce Willis should of won an Oscar for it. If you see Lost in La Mancha, you almost have to fall in love with his obsession and blindness for making films, and his talent for blending such disparate, otherworldly images.

Fabrice Du Welz is a demented genius, Calvaire and Vinyan have such control of the fear and dread they create with such small claustrophobic sets and casts, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. I love the economy and beauty of Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 and getting ready to watch the opposite in John Woo’s 5-hour epic Red Cliff.

I do love the grandeur of big, epic movies when they are done right, so Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven. I really loved the look and feel of Antoine Fuqua’s Replacement Killers. Too cool! I liked Training Day, and loved everything about his Tears of the Sun.

When I saw Peter Berg’s The Kingdom, it had really a strange effect on me. Though obviously I haven’t handled anything approaching such a big production, there were dozens of times throughout the movie when I felt I was looking at my own work. I think it’s in his shot choices, the immersion of his angles, some of the rhythms, and the compositions he uses to film dialog scenes. I’ve since gone back and watched it a half dozen times and always have the same feeling, as if it’s something I worked on. All these people, and of course many more are such inspiration, that it gives me hope that someday I’ll do something really well too.

CC: What are your thoughts on the current state of action and action-oriented films today?

Maybe it’s because I can see past some of the magic, but a lot of them don’t anything for me at all. The ones that do emphasize the human element. Dark Knight was great, Iron Man great, and both worked for me because that element was never lost in all the special effects. The movies I mentioned before were memorable to me because of the emotion and characterization the actors brought to it, and how the directors let that guide the action and stay in the forefront of the finished product. A moment like Emma Thompson has in Love Actually when she realizes her husband Alan Rickman is cheating on her - it just can’t get better than that - those stay with me. That human element is many times glossed over in action movies, and when it’s not, you get the iconic movies like Rocky, and First Blood, The Crow, and Heat, and The Professional.

It seems to me it’s when the importance of the action is somewhere down the list is when the movies with action have the chance to become not just awesome action movies but awesome movies. I only hope for myself that I can keep making the kind of movies I would want to see, and gain the skills and opportunities to live up to my own ideals.

I’d like to thank Kely for taking the time to talk with me.

The Official Website

Check out the trailer for Kerberos here:

After an interminable two-month hiatus, Bones is back with an episode that focuses on Dr. Sweets, who inadvertently encountered a hidden skeleton when an earthquake occurred and busted a water main in the subway tunnel he was passing through. Booth and Bones arrive on the scene to check on Sweets and assess the human remains. Booth tries to comfort a distraught Sweets, who watched a young guy sitting next to him die in the quake—a guy who confessed that he had finally beaten cancer after a near decade-long struggle and was going to start doing all of the things he never thought he’d be able to do. Bones does her best to console Sweets as well, but this sort of thing isn’t her expertise. She moves on to what is: dead, grisly skeletons.

In examining the remains, she quickly determines that the victim has been dead for about a week. Back in the lab, she also discovers that the victim was blind and had recently undergone a rare surgery that attempts to restore sight. This makes the identification pretty easy. The victim was a professional letter writer who worked with a married partner (that he was also apparently in love with). The duo had recently been hired by a subway station manager to pen love letters designed to woo a transit cop away from her boyfriend and to him. The transit cop was present when the body was discovered in the first place. Hmm…a woman with a gun and regular access to dark, subterranean tunnels perfect for hiding a body. Need I say more?

It wasn’t hard to figure out who done it in this particular whodunit, and the killer’s motivation seemed a little slight. But hey, people are often incomprehensible, so what do I know? The main narrative strands involve Sweets’ emotional distress in the aftermath of the freak subway accident, and Bones being interviewed incessantly about her new book by a Japanese magazine writer who cares not about the forensics but about all the steamy byplay scenes between the novel’s forensic anthropologist protagonist and her FBI agent partner. Though Bones continues to protest, the writer insists that people read her books because of the romance and human connections, not the science or murders. This whole dialectic is a not-so-thinly-veiled metaphor for the show itself. Being in the minority, I of course do watch the show also for the investigations and wish the cases were still being created with the darkly-layered and delicate care that they benefited from in seasons one and two.

As Bones begins to realize that the writer is correct, her heart heavies. You see, Angela is the one who helps Brennan with all of the romance scenes. In other words, Angela has played a bigger role in the success of Bones’ books than Bones has herself. This fact also reinforces Bones’ concealed knowledge that she fundamentally is different than everyone else and will always be, in some ways, alone. All that was a nice touch, but this subplot was hit on a little bit too much. This was also the case with all the Sweets stuff. While Sweets has his place, and I’m not against (occasionally) giving him a little more to do, he should never dominate an episode. There’s a scene involving Sweets and his obnoxiously stupid labbie assistant girlfriend Daisy that made me want to shoot myself in the throat with an arrow.

Though many will disagree with me, I continue to believe that Bones, while entertaining, has devolved into a shadow of what it began as. I see a tremendous shift between seasons one through three (especially seasons one and two really) and seasons four and five. David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel still have arguably the best male/female lead chemistry on television, but I don’t think they have the vehicle they deserve. I feel as if in the beginning, the relationship between the two of them developed organically and didn’t feel contained.

But now, the mechanics and machinations put in place to sustain and push/pull their relationship seem much more transparent, and so many scenes come across as repetitive permutations of scenes we’ve already seen multiple times. I think there need to be a few more scenes worked into the episodes that showcase Bones and Booth separately, dealing with their own personal problems and issues. They should exist and be portrayed also as independent entities, not just two halves of a relationship in constant flux. I want to see what Bones and Booth are doing when they’re not together and not working on a case. I want to see Booth reflecting more on his Army past and gambling problems. I want to see more of Brennan’s tortured family life (what the hell happened to her brother?). They did more of this in the beginning.

All that being said, it’s still a fun show and I have high hopes for the rest of the season, which consists of eight more uninterrupted weeks. Next week marks the landmark 100^th episode and will show how Booth and Bones first met. If they can’t hit that out of the park, then the show really will be in trouble.

Season 5, Episode 15: The Bones on the Blue Line (originally aired April 1, 2010)

For more on Bones, click here.

Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

There’s a lot going on this week, and most of it is pretty damn good. The principal characters are all facing major transitions, and the cliffhanger is so bold that I’m wondering how the writers have filled the remaining episodes.

Chuck heads to the nation’s capital to meet with Beckman, and discovers while in the waiting room that carrying a gun is very uncomfortable. Beckman tells Chuck more about his upcoming assignment in Rome, revealing it to be a more permanent engagement than Chuck might have anticipated. He starts getting cold feet, although nowhere near as cold as the feet in the building’s morgue. Some baddie walks in there, headshots the lab attendant, and forces yet another McGuffin out of the corpse of Agent Perry, the dude Chuck supposedly killed last week on the train tracks.

Beckman tells Chuck that he can pick his own team in Rome and gives him a week to get ready for the mission, so Chuck flies back to Burbank to try to make things right with Sarah. Morgan and now-civilian Casey—both itching to leave the Buy More and commit fully to the espionage world—jump into Chuck’s corner and encourage him to go for it. Chuck buys the old standbys—candy and flowers—finds Sarah, and makes one of those nice, sweeping TV speeches. But she gives him the complete cold shoulder, as she is convinced that he killed that Perry guy and now wants nothing to do with him.

Okay, number one: Chuck didn’t kill him. Number two: Sarah has killed and beaten the piss out of scores of people, so how exactly can she fault Chuck for killing one? When did she become all anti-violence? When did Chuck try to become Unforgiven? And three: the guy that Chuck didn’t actually kill was trying to kill him, so if he had killed him, it would have been in self-defense. The guy was a bad guy…would Sarah prefer Chuck to be the one who was killed? It’s really hard to like Sarah in this episode, especially after she tells Chuck that she is going to Washington with Shaw, permanently.

Of course, Casey could clear Chuck’s record at any time by admitting to the events of last week, but he doesn’t. Dejected, Chuck leaves to figure out how to tell Beckman that he’s packing it in…before he even began. If this happens, Morgan and Casey will be stuck at the Buy More forever. You can bet your ass that they’re more motivated than ever to save Chuck from himself and therefore, save themselves. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so they enlist the inimitable aid of Jeff and Lester. Jeff and Lester (or, more specifically, their van) are charged with tailing Shaw, while Casey, Morgan and Awesome (who also wants to get Chuck and Sarah back together hoping that will somehow encourage Ellie to do Doctors Without Borders in Africa for the next year) team up to kidnap Chuck and put him back in the playing field.

Chuck & Co. arrive at a fussy restaurant where Sarah and Shaw are having dinner. The plan is to get Shaw out of the picture long enough for Chuck to make another embattled speech and win Sarah over. Complications arise when the baddie who stole files from Perry’s corpse arrives.

Highlights include watching Morgan pretend to be a terrorist on the phone, Chuck preparing to make the ultimate sacrifice, meeting the Ring ringleader, and a doozy of a twist involving Shaw and Sarah that promises high stakes in the coming weeks. All around (except for Brandon Routh of course), the cast does a really solid job.

Season 3, Episode 12: Chuck Versus the American Hero (originally aired March 22, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Trae Patton.

Chuck continued its rebound this week with a focused and slickly-made episode that furthered the storyline and, even more importantly, the main character arcs. We open with Chuck chasing down a man through a train yard. He catches up to him and, in spite of the man’s dire protests, shoots him down. What? Can our loveable schlub really have turned into a killer? Well we don’t get the answer until the very end, because the episode then enters Non-linear Land and flashes back three days, to when more guns are being discharged and more men slain.

Except in this case, the guns are Nerf guns and the men (a.k.a. slovenly degenerates) are Jeff and Lester. They’re doing what they usually do: engaging in infantile shenanigans to counteract the fact that they work dead-end jobs and have no future. I can’t say that I blame them, but Casey is less than amused. In the aftermath of last week’s events—which left Casey fired from the NSA and given a one-way ticket into civilian life—Casey has even less patience than usual. He demonstrates this motion by banging Jeff’s and Lester’s heads together like gongs. It’s an effective course of action, but it doesn’t go unnoticed by Big Mike, who promptly calls Casey into his office for a little session of time-out/corporate counseling.

Chuck has very little to do with the Buy More this week. He has other things on his mind, like Sarah’s recent jaunt to Washington D.C. with bland nimrod Shaw (played by bland nimrod Brandon Routh). This new ill-matched duo inform Chuck that his final mission before becoming a spy has arrived. If he succeeds, he’ll be whisked off to Rome to begin a stint posing as a billionaire industrialist. Sounds like a pretty sweet gig. The catch? Sarah would not be joining him, as she will be relocating to Washington long-term to lead counter-Ring missions with Shaw. Sarah congratulates Chuck on getting everything he ever wanted. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to; his face practically lights up as a billboard flashing “Not Everything…”

The mission: follow Russian spy Anatoli Zevlovski, a courier of dirty secret information between The Ring and a CIA mole. Chuck is to use Zevlovski to flush out said mole. This is all told to him via Beckman on a portable DVD player that self-destructs in the classic Mission: Impossible tradition. This mission is quite an entertaining one that features Chuck fighting in the sauna (although not nearly as memorably as Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises) and scrambling from one hotel balcony to another in very limited clothing a la Will Smith in Enemy of the State.

The mission ends up being more complicated than Chuck initially thought, and it (seemingly) involves him making a drastic choice that may forever alter who he is and doom his chances with Sarah. Although, to be fair, it seems like everything Chuck does—whether right or wrong—somehow dooms his chances with Sarah. They sure don’t make it easy for this guy.

Also of note: this episode features the most blatant Subway homage/ridiculously blatant product promotion ever. It’s really pretty funny. I don’t know how they could have caressed the Subway franchise any more. That’s not a complaint, as I well know that Subway was instrumental in getting Chuck renewed for a third season. Whether they can pull it off another time is far less likely. But if Chuck is reaching the end, it is at least aiming to wrap up with quality.

Season 3, Episode 11: Chuck vs. The Final Exam (originally aired March 22, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Jordin Althaus.

That was House’s excuse for temporarily misdiagnosing Abby, a high school girl who started drooling and foaming some vile detritus during her class field trip to the planetarium. Moments prior, she and her boyfriend Nick were sharing some vodka to liven up the proceedings. Nick was whining about relationship drivel and professing that he wanted to stay together even after they left to attend colleges on opposite coasts. I can’t really blame Abby. In fact, I think foaming at the mouth is a downright appropriate response to having to listen to lovey-dovey woes. Maybe she was hoping that Nick would be so repulsed at the site of her spewing slime from her mouth that he would break up with her right then and there. Not a bad tactic, but, unfortunately, it failed.

The team assembles at Princeton Plainsboro to work their diagnostic magic…everyone except Taub, who is still at home having yet another inane argument wish his inane wife. She’s whining that they never do anything together anymore and bristles when Taub doesn’t jump for joy at her suggestion that they do yoga together. His explanation for being late to the whole saving lives gig is that his tire blew and he was waiting for a tow truck. Honestly Taub, do you really think House would believe such a hackneyed excuse? If you’re going to try to lie to House, you ought to think of something creative. He’ll still see through you before the words finish leaving your mouth, but he might appreciate the effort.

It’s painfully obvious to everyone except Taub that the fight really isn’t about yoga; it’s about Taub’s wife having trust issues and wondering where Taub is all the time. While this behavior is stupid, it is at least understandable, being that Taub regularly boinked anything that moved during his days as a plastic surgeon. House became my hero (even more so than he already is) when, after catching Taub texting his wife like a teenaged nitwit in an attempt to show her some pacifying attension, he seized Taub’s phone and began texting sexually obscene messages. Man, I watched that scene about three times. Mark my words; when the apocalypse hits, historians will single out texting as one of the biggest nails in the coffin of intelligent life on this planet.

Back to the case. The team runs the usual gamut of tests and begins to rule out the usual suspects like lungs and intestines. They think the heart might be the culprit, but they can’t find any evidence of parasites or fungus. They do something called a trans-esophageal echo that makes Abby seize like a banshee doing shooters. In a particularly gnarly bit of business, Thirteen has to cut Abby’s chest open and restart her heart with her bare hands.

House & Co. are now all but convinced that Abby’s problem is some kind of internal allergy. When her kidneys begin to fail, House has no choice but to begrudgingly approve a full body scan, a tactic he hates passionately. Here is where the mystery takes an especially cerebral turn: during the scan, Abby starts hallucinating, sensing a non-existent earthquake and then producing her own vivid, tripping lightshow in the sky. She imagines she is being sucked into a black hole. She also has an out-of-body type of deal where she talks with her younger self.  House believes that Abby’s subconscious is trying to tell her what is wrong with her. House wants to try using an experimental Cognitive Recognition Program that attempts to visually interpret the cognitive patterns in the brain. Foreman protests that medical science is fifty years away from being able to do anything meaningful with brain patterns, but House ignores him, as he often does. The visual portraits that result from the program are more beautiful and illuminating than the planetarium display in the opening. There was a neat recurring emphasis on celestial imagery in this episode.

When Abby is finally cured and saved, the culprit is revealed to be of human cause. How Abby got infected and who was ultimately responsible was surprisingly dark and creepy. So of course, House responded to the situation with his typically brazen disregard for decorum and appropriateness. I’d expect nothing less of him. Kudos to Fox for allowing the situation to be dealt with in the way that it was.

The other subplot of the episode involves House trying to force Wilson to buy furniture for the condo. Wilson has been avoiding doing it at all costs, and House thinks it is because Wilson is afraid. He thinks Wilson is scared of making furniture choices because women have always done it for him and he doesn’t want to face the fact that he is alone and doesn’t know himself well enough to know what kind of furniture he would want. It’s a moderately interesting and amusing subplot, but it’s not critically important. Overall, yet another solid episode.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out Bromance Overload by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 15: Black Hole (originally aired March 15, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

After finding out Sarah’s real name (Sam) earlier in the season, now we find out that Casey used to be Alexander Coburn. Via handy memory flashback, we find out that Casey left his identity behind more than twenty years ago in Honduras. After being told that he hadn’t qualified for the Army’s special operations team, he is approached by a Colonel (the always slimy and suspect Robert Patrick). The Colonel invites him to join yet another covert black ops/secret ninja voodoo squad and offers him some Tic Tacs to seal the deal. I guess Casey never learned the maxim about never taking candy from strangers.

Back in the present day, Casey talks with a mystery man. It’s Robert Patrick, who hasn’t aged much in the twenty years between the flashback and the present. He thanks Casey for taking his call—a call Casey received on a Ring phone at the end of last week’s episode. This can’t be good. He tells Casey that General Beckman (who really seems to come and go as she pleases) is planning to use Casey, Chuck and Sarah to test the L.A. CIA headquarters security system, and he wants Casey to pick up something for him during the mission. He gives Casey a fancy key. Did I mention that this can’t be good?

All of this is glimpsed by Morgan who, now knowing his best friend Chuck is a superspy, is anxious to get in on some of the action. Wearing full spy regalia—black and night goggles, recording device—he watches Casey with rabid anticipation. That is until Chuck comes up behind him and puts a stop to the shenanigans. Chuck warns Morgan that he has been kept out of the loop for a reason. Spy work is as dangerous as it gets, and I’m sure Casey and Sarah aren’t thrilled that Morgan is now in on the big tamale.

The team (minus Shaw, who is conveniently away again, not that I’m complaining) embarks on their mission, which Sarah explains is basically an exercise in spy-proofing their own security. They have to get through fifteen different levels of security, but luckily, Chuck’s Intersect seems to be working again. Electronic beepings and music in the background reinforce the notion that our spies are basically playing a real-life video game.

After surviving relatively unscathed, they reach their destination. Casey tells Sarah to watch the door as he and Chuck go inside the vault. As Chuck uses the key Beckman gave him to open a specific safety deposit box, Casey takes out his fancy key and tries to covertly open another one. Inside, he finds a pill (Where’s Laurence Fishburne when you need him?). Chuck catches him and asks if Casey is working on a side mission. Casey’s typically gruff response: he pulls a gun on Chuck and threatens to kill Chuck if he mentions any of this to anyone. Scenes like this are why Casey is my favorite.

Back at the Castle, Beckman informs the team that, though successful, they were too late. Someone broke into the vault and stole an experimental pill called Laudanol that suppresses emotions in soldiers. Basically, the pill turns soldiers into Terminators, so how fitting that Robert Patrick, the former T-1000 himself, is the dude after the pill. Chuck fantasizes about how taking the pill would make him function perfectly as a spy, with no Intersect glitches. Sarah points out—with one of her inimitable pained expressions in tow—that the side effect would be Chuck not feeling period.

Being the lovable dolt that he is, Chuck fervently comes to the realization that Casey and Beckman were testing his loyalty by having Casey steal the pill. Beckman’s face tightens (even more than it usually is) and she asks Chuck if he is certain he saw Casey steal the pill. Chuck can’t cover up in time. Sarah gives Casey the benefit of the doubt and attests to Casey’s loyalty to Beckman, but slowly grabs her gun to take control of the situation. Casey refuses to answer the allegation that he stole the pill and hands over his weapon to Sarah. Is Casey a traitor or is he being duped by someone?

That is precisely what Chuck needs to find out. Toward that end, he turns to Morgan. As this amusing twist of fate would have it, Morgan’s spy work (the term being used loosely, of course), may hold the only answers. Chuck asks Morgan if he recorded Casey’s meeting the other night.

Of course, you know that Chuck and Sarah will team up to rescue Casey. But there are several bonuses: a couple of the best fight scenes of the season, and a surprising and affecting backstory for the seemingly impervious Casey. There is also a rather drastic professional change for Casey at the end. These are pretty significant twists and shakeups that Chuck has made in the last two episodes. If they had only started doing these kinds of things sooner and had fewer filler episodes…

Season 3, Episode 10: Chuck vs. The Tic Tac (originally aired March 15, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Justin Lubin.

Rightfully or wrongfully (I say the latter), action movies are predominantly perceived as disposable entertainment and never art. Most are dismissed, and the highest praise even the most critically acclaimed films in the genre get is that they are well-crafted. When was the last time you heard someone talking about an action movie not only in terms of entertainment and aesthetics but also theme and point of view? When was the last time an action movie was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (The Fugitive, 1994)?

Whenever action movies try to express a point of view and explore serious, weighty themes underneath the set pieces and stunts, critics tend to get their knickers all bunched up, indignant. How dare a popcorn movie have something to say? The Rambo series has been dumped on since its inception, and now Green Zone is getting a lot of similar treatment. The film reunites Matt Damon with Paul Greengrass, the talented craftsman of United 93 and the last two phenomenally successful Bourne movies. Those movies also had something to say, but they were packaged much more traditionally and the commentary was more submerged and ambiguous. Green Zone, on the other hand, is a more radical piece of film-making and is prompting a more extreme response.

Much like Rambo: First Blood Part II, tried to do with Vietnam, Green Zone tries to provide a sort of fantasy victory over Iraq and the cultural and historical forces which are beyond the power of the audience to control. Matt Damon plays CWO (Chief Warrant Officer) Roy Miller, a man tasked with finding WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) believed to be stockpiled in various Iraqi locations. When he and his team keep coming up empty—a scenario familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the last ten years—Miller goes “off the reservation” (yes, they actually use that line in the movie) to find out the truth. Rambo and Green Zone are very different films featuring very different stars, but they function in similar ways. They both employ intensely archetypal characters—the Hero, the Bureaucrat, the Shapeshifter, the Mentor—and provide a cathartic crystallization of a complex and damaging war. In this movie, Damon is the hero, Greg Kinnear is the slimy bureaucrat, Amy Ryan is the Shapeshifter, and Brendan Gleeson is the mentor. It’s a great group of actors and they are cast perfectly to fulfill these archetypal functions.

In his treatise Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America., cultural historian Richard Slotkin explains that when history is translated into myth, the complexities of social and historical experiences are simplified and compressed into the action of representative heroes.  These characters embody almost the full range of ideological contradictions around which the life of the culture revolves, and their adventures suggest the range of possible resolutions that the culture desires. Slotkin is right. That’s how movies like Green Zone and Rambo should be viewed: as an ideal outcome to an ambiguous, pernicious, culturally damaging war.

And on those terms, I thought Green Zone was a fresh, smartly-made, convincing action thriller. Damon brings a commanding credibility to his role that is invaluable. Many people will be tempted to look at this movie as basically Bourne 4, and that’s not unreasonable given the involvement of Damon and Greengrass and Universal’s Bourne-esque marketing campaign. But Miller is a different character than Bourne, and Damon does mostly succeed in differentiating the two. If anything, Roy Miller is the idealist that David Webb began as when he first signed up to become the assassin Jason Bourne.

As for the aesthetics, the production design is first-rate, and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd—who shot United 93 and The Hurt Locker—brings a tactile urgency and atmosphere to the film. Of course, Paul Greengrass employs the same shaky-cam camerawork that has become his trademark. But it has been so influential and become so pervasive now that it no longer seems fresh (look at Quantum of Solace, maybe the most geographically-fractured action movie ever made). Greengrass remains the shaky-cam savant though. If anyone is going to insist on using that style, it should be him. Some people really love it, some people hate it. I don’t like it because to me, it means that action and suspense—the visceral, gut-tightening tension any great action movie must produce in the viewer—is created through the rhythm of the editing instead of the action in the frame. It’s a much more manipulative, much more hyper-stylized aesthetic choice. It’s not my thing, but for what it is, it is done well in this case.

Some people will look at this film as an ill-advised exercise in simplification that weaves fact and speculation (or even downright fiction) together too freely. But this is a film made from a standpoint of risk-taking and intelligence, and given that the entire action genre has been watered-down by studios so that they can appeal to every possible demographic and make as much money as possible, the fact that Damon and Greengrass made an adult, R-rated action thriller is nothing short of laudable. If nothing else, Green Zone is an imperfect but provocative, commanding and enjoyable two hours at the movies. Then again, what would I know? Looking at the box office estimates, it seems that movie audiences still aren’t up for dealing with Iraq, Universal will lose a good deal of money, and soon we’ll be back in Transformers Land for good.

Photos taken by Jasin Boland  -  Courtesy Universal Studios

This week’s House—the first in a month—is mostly about the secrets people try to keep. Except for the patient, that is. Her name is Frankie, and not only is she suffering from a disease, she is one too: she’s a blogger who spends her every waking moment updating the degenerate denizens of cyberspace about her every waking moment, thought, impulse, and activity. She even blogs about fights she has with her sap boyfriend Taylor and then tells him what people they’ve never met (people with way too much time on their hands) think about them. In fact, the only thing she doesn’t blog about are her bowel movements, though ironically, if she had, she could have saved the good physicians of Princeton Plainsboro a good deal of time. Frankie was such a sickening character that I kept begging she would be one of the few patients that House and his team fail to diagnose.

The case wasn’t very interesting and everyone went through the motions with perfunctory ease. As usual, the B storylines are what are worth watching. The main focus is on House and Wilson. Wilson comes across House as he lovingly puts one of his porn DVDs—complete with director’s commentary—back in the case. Concerned for his friend’s use of personal time, he invites House to go with him to a night of speed dating (please tell me these things don’t actually exist and are merely fictional fodder). House calls it a meat market, but that’s not necessarily a turn-off for him. In fact, speed dating may offer the quintessential challenge for House: size a person up in great detail within a rigidly-defined social setting and with a firm five-minute time limit. Five minutes is about four and a half minutes longer than House needs to learn everything he needs to know about a person.

Chase tags along and House, wanting to prove that women are just as shallow as men, makes him a bet. He tells Chase not to tell the speed dates that he is a doctor and to act like a complete moron while he and Wilson tell the truth and act as genuine as possible. House believes that Chase’s looks will get more offers than his and Wilson’s personalities. The sequence is given the flash montage treatment, and in actuality, the whole affair is rather stupid. The one highlight is seeing House lay the smackdown on a woman pretending to be a fascinating, beguiling police detective.

There’s a minor revelation involving House’s biological father, but far more amusing is House’s discovery that in college, Mr. Clean-cut Wilson acted in a film production of…questionable merit. As you can imagine, he has a field day and makes up his own multimedia, cross-platform marketing campaign to ensure that everyone at the hospital discovers Wilson’s little-known gem. All in all, it’s a forgettable episode though.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out To Blog or Not To Blog by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 14: Private Lives (originally aired March 8, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

Tonight’s Chuck was by far the best of the season, though that’s not saying much. It was funny and earnest and actually had something resembling a plot. All of that may be due in no small part to the fact that Zachary Levi himself directed the episode, a first for him. I always thought that Levi was probably a very smart and talented guy who was at the mercy of sub-par writing and journeymen tv directors. I always thought that if he could have a little more creative power on the show, things would be better. Now I know I was right.

Levi may be in control of the episode, but as it begins, Chuck is certainly not. Sarah and Shaw are concerned that he has not been flashing for weeks. It seems that the Intersect is on the fritz, and consequently, Chuck gets benched from active duty. This especially stings when he has to watch Sarah and Shaw embark on a mission together, posing as newlyweds. Chuck has to stay at the Buy More while they go to some posh Burbank resort. Their goal is to intercept some Ring baddies who are there to turn a good agent into one of their bad ones. The catch: the agent they plan to turn is Captain Awesome (a.k.a. Ellie’s nimrod squeeze)! I guess they think Awesome is a spy due to the mission he had to team up with Chuck on earlier in the season. He and Ellie are at the resort as well, trying to rekindle…whatever the hell it is they want to rekindle.

The mission gets complicated though (doesn’t it always) when Sarah, Shaw and Casey realize that the Ring sent them on a wild goose chase so that they could find Chuck (a.k.a. Agent Charles Carmichael) and the secret base underneath the Buy More and the yogurt shop. Now Chuck is alone and he must protect the Buy More from the bad Ring agents posing as staff efficiency expert dudes. Lester, Jeff and the rest of the Buy More gang think that their jobs are at stake…but they don’t realize that their very lives are as well. Hey, that almost sounded like a tagline!

I was so happy to see no residual Hannah mess. She was briefly mentioned, but she’s out of the picture. Then, I couldn’t believe what I was watching: the show did what I have been saying it should do all season long. This episode was nothing short of a game changer. It let Joshua Gomez have the spotlight and brought Morgan into the fold in a major way. The fabric of the show has been changed irrevocably, and I can only hope that it will be for the better. This is the kind of risk the show should have been taking a long time ago.

Bonuses: watching Lester bastardize CCR’s “Fortunate Son,” a tantalizing cliffhanger involving Casey, and, best of all, a shout out for that NES classic Duck Hunt. Here’s hoping Zachary Levi gets to direct a lot more in the future.

Season 3, Episode 9: Chuck vs. The Beard (originally aired March 8, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Justin Lubin.

Creator Matt Nix wrote and directed last night’s third season finale of Burn Notice. He did an excellent job on the latter duty, especially since he has only directed one other episode in the show’s run. The writing was mostly solid too, but more than a couple of things left me scratching my head rather vigorously (at least until my scalp got sore, then I stopped).

The episode picks up right after last week’s. Gilroy, after hoodwinking Michael and succeeding in diverting the plane with the mysterious prisoner, was double-crossed and killed by the aforementioned mysterious prisoner. How a prisoner on a maximum security transport plane managed to get a gun and shoot a devious black ops psycho like Gilroy and then attach a bomb to him is one of my head-scratchers. Maybe we’re not meant to know. Maybe the point is that all we need to know is that this mysterious prisoner—who we learned is named Simon—is even more formidable than Gilroy. Simon is played by Garret Dillahunt, who I swear to God has played a villain in just about every show and movie released in the last couple of years, including Life, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Road, Damages, White Collar, CSI, and Lie To Me…I’m almost sick of him.

Michael dodges the explosion that eviscerates Gilroy and takes off on foot, the cops hot on his trail. He gets away on a jet ski…and yet, immediately after, Feds show up at Michael’s loft and at Maddie’s house, demanding that she deliver Michael to them. How do they know who Michael is if they didn’t catch him? Cops just saw some random white guy running away. I mean granted, the people who burned Michael did withdraw their protection of him at the end of season two, and a local cop named Paxson was after him at the beginning of this season, so it’s likely that Michael is on some local law enforcement lists…but it still seemed a little flimsy to me. Head-scratcher #2.

Michael regroups with Sam and Fiona at their “emergency emergency spot.” Michael thinks that Simon (whoever he is) must have had some local explosives expert in Miami help him set up the bomb that took out Gilroy (though again, how a guy stuck in a deep prison in Poland could set all this stuff up in Miami is hard to believe). Fiona volunteers to use her many connections to help track the bombmaker down in hopes that if they find him, they can find Simon.

Except Michael doesn’t have to find Simon, because Simon finds him. He lures Michael to a local tv store by blowing up an adjacent food stand and then displaying Michael’s mug on all the tv screens in the front display of the store. Michael walks in and sees even more tv screens. These screens have images of past operations that, Simon explains, he was responsible for. The catch: apparently, the people who burned Michael transferred all of the incidents from Simon’s file to Michael’s. They determined Simon was a loose cannon and locked him up, and gave his reputation to Michael so that they could burn Michael in hopes of recruiting him to come work for their nefarious organization.

I think. I think that’s what the deal is. But I gotta tell you, it’s driving me crazy at this point that we have no idea who these burnmasters (yes, I’ve decided that is a word) really are and what they are grooming Michael for. I hope Matt Nix and his team give us some answers sooner rather than later and don’t emulate the ridiculously amorphous and underdeveloped dastardly organizations that are an unfortunate hallmark of NBC’s Chuck.

At any rate, Michael understandably wants to slam Simon back in…well, the slammer. The problem is that Simon has set up another bomb, this one in a hotel. If Michael doesn’t follow his instructions, he’ll detonate and kill a whole bunch of innocent souls. Simon wants Michael to get “Management,” the people who burned the both of them, back into Miami to have a little chat. “Management,” is once again represented by Frasier’s dad…er, ah, I mean John Mahoney. So once again, Michael has to play ball with a lunatic. I have to say, though, that Gilroy was a much more charismatic baddie than Simon. Maybe it was the accent. Dillahunt was better on Life.

There was a rooftop escape that involved a way too convenient garbage chute, but plenty of highlights make up for it. Some of them include: Sam and Fiona driving their car through the bombmaker’s house, defusing the hotel bomb, Michael swimming for his life and breaking into his own loft, flipping cars, a helicopter explosion, and finally, an inventive, brutal, and surprisingly bloody fight scene between Michael and Simon that showcases Jeffrey Donovan’s considerable choreography skills. Fiona doesn’t have a great deal to do, but Sharon Gless has some of her most intense scenes yet, and she nails them.

The cliffhanger is the darkest and perhaps most puzzling season ender yet. Part of me is happily impressed and intrigued by it, while another part is pissed that I have to wait another three months to see what happened.

Season 3, Episode 16: Devil You Know (Originally aired March 4, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson.

If any one of the people who read my last Chuck review and dreamed of roasting me on a spit, save yourself the aggravation and stop reading now. Because the show hasn’t gotten any better and, consequently, I don’t have many nice things to say.

We open with a gratuitous shot of Ellie’s nimrod Significant Other Devon/Captain Awesome doing hanging sit ups while shirtless. They are having a conversation about why Chuck hasn’t told Ellie about Hannah. Okay, fine. But why do we have to gaze upon this shirtless monkey at the same time? Are we supposed to worship his abs? Are shirtless scenes written into this actor’s contract? Later on in the episode, we get to see Superman reject Brandon Routh shirtless and shower-steamy. Why? I guess because little Brandon is hunky and that’s why he was hired! Personally, I still think he looks like he’s about twelve years old.

Ellie goes to confront Chuck at his apartment. She lets herself in (I guess she still has a key since it used to be her apartment). She hears the shower running, so what does she do? She starts talking about Sarah and how she’s glad Chuck is moving on and all this intimate, personal stuff. Obviously, you know that Chuck isn’t really in the shower. So out steps Hannah. Cue the awkward conversation and meet-and-greet!

Honestly, if you have to talk about personal things with someone, who is going to just blurt it all out while that person is supposedly in the shower? No one would do that. A real person would wait until the other person got out of the shower, or leave and come back later. And, for the sake of argument, let’s just say I’m wrong. Let’s say someone would feel comfortable bringing up those things outside a shower door…Ellie, a grown woman, is going to talk to her grown brother about his love life while he is in the shower? Creepy. If my sister tried to talk to me about anything while I was in the shower, I’d turn the water off, get dressed, and punch her in the face.

This scene encapsulates my huge problem with this show. This scene only exists to develop the plot. It exists only so that Chuck can become aware that Ellie knows about Hannah and to set up more conflict. Ellie, as a character, acts the way she does in this scene to facilitate the plot. That’s not how it is supposed to work. Character should dictate plot, not vice versa.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Shaw are having lunch. She tells him that she doesn’t want to see him outside of work because she needs to break the pattern of getting involved with her spy coworkers. Okay, not a bad idea…but then why did she ever lead Shaw on in the first place? Again, to create conflict for the plot. Shaw takes it rather well, but lunch doesn’t end there, because the two of them are actually on a mission. They abduct a sniper assassin baddie named Rafe Gruber (a Die Hard shout out?).

Rafe was recently wired $1 million by The Ring to do some nefarious deed, and they want to figure out what it is. Because guys like Rafe stay out of the limelight, not many people know who he is. So they decide that the best way to figure out who Rafe’s target is is for someone to take his place. The perfect guy for the job is Casey (he even says so). But because Chuck is the lead character, he gets the gig.

Zachary Levi provides one of the only laughs through his imitation of Rafe’s gruff, tough guy voice. With his impression down pat and his hair slicked back, Chuck assumes Rafe’s identity and answers Rafe’s Ring phone. He gets instructions to go meet these hammy mob wiseguys, and they will tell him who his target is. Okay, if The Ring is this super-secret, super-powerful rogue’s gallery, why are they relying on middle-aged mafiosos? Why don’t they just tell Rafe over the phone who his target is? They’ve already paid him, so why…ugh. Never mind. It’s not worth it.

Even though the mob scene where Chuck has to convince that he’s Rafe isn’t logically justified, it is entertaining. Chuck brings Casey along as his associate, but one of the guys recognizes him as a sniper he served in the military with named Alexander Coburn (one of Casey’s previous aliases no doubt). Served with…this wiseguy has to have twenty years on Casey, when would they have served together? At any rate, Chuck has to pretend to beat up and torture Casey as the imposter that he is in order to save the two of them. It’s like the great opening scene of In the Line of Fire.

It’s interesting to see Chuck put into this precarious position, where he has to hurt someone he cares about in order to save him. It worsens the dilemma he is already having with Sarah. Sarah has been worried all season about seeing Chuck become a spy like she is. She doesn’t want to see someone so sweet and innocuous learn how to make a living lying to himself and the ones that he loves. That’s why she tried to get him to run away with her.

Pointless B storylines include the Buy More employees (minus Morgan, who is conveniently away for no reason) cooking gumbo in the store and Chuck inviting Ellie and her nimrod over for dinner with him and Hannah. The climax of the episode is affecting enough and reveals the secret of Sarah’s real name. Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski do fine work. Casey saves the day in the nick of time in a cool way that reveals something exciting about his character…and then he verbally explains what the reveal is after the fact. Just in case it was too subtle for viewers to understand. More cringe-worthy relationship woes follow. Color me disinterested.

Season 3, Episode 8: Chuck vs The Fake Name (originally aired March 1, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal.

Both Michael and Fiona get in over their heads in this intricate and tightly-ratcheted penultimate episode of the season. The stakes are a little higher, the action is a little more frantic, and the explosions are a little bit bigger. It’s just about a perfect hour of television, effortlessly fun and entertaining, with the production values of a big-budget feature and rock solid performances.

Michael meets in an isolated location with Gilroy but brings Sam along for a little sniper backup. Unfortunately, Sam can’t be much help when Michael gets in Gilroy’s car and goes for a jaunt with him. I guess sometimes you have no choice but to go cruising with a psychopath. They go to a nice friendly spot: a white supremacist militia training compound/weapons cache. Gilroy wants Michael to buy a .50 caliber machine gun from them and gives him a metal case full of money. The case comes in handy when the baddies try to jump Michael and take his money. After some close-quartered combat goodness, Michael makes his getaway and learns that Gilroy set Michael up to be a distraction while he stole the actual gun. Jackass. The goons unload on them as they speed away, but fortunately Gilroy’s vehicle of choice is armor plated. I gotta get me one of those.

Michael returns to his loft but before he can even enjoy a nice yogurt, Sam gets on his back for getting in the car with Gilroy and Fiona follows suit because Michael didn’t return her recent calls (he was a little busy). Because Fiona is scarier, Michael pays a bit more attention to her. She wanted Michael to aid her in a job involving a “harmless weasel” named Coleman (played by Jonathan LaPaglia, younger brother to Anthony and the former star of an awesome time traveling show called Seven Days). He agrees to pay Fiona well, but wants her to commit to the job before he tells her what it is. Yeah, call me crazy, but that seems awfully sketchy.

Coleman gives her an envelope containing a cool $10,000 and takes her to meet his boss, Gabriel. Having bugged her phone prior to the meeting, Sam listens to all of this with apprehension. He now has two friends getting involved in ways they shouldn’t with psychopaths they don’t know enough about. “I gotta get some new friends,” he laments to himself.

Gabriel is a very serious fellow that immediately starts putting Fiona through tests to see if she is on the level. In tests like these, you either pass or get dead. The most enjoyable of these tests involves watching Fiona strip a Beretta and put it back together in under a minute while inflicting pain on a goon trying to stop her. She passes with flying colors, but she’s still in over her head. On more than one occasion, Sam and Michael have to scramble to save her life, and Gabriel has dug into her past more than she would have liked. He knows all about her IRA days and strikes a nerve when he brings up her murdered sister. Gabrielle Anwar is very good in these scene, which is especially powerful because we almost never see anyone have an edge over Fiona.

We eventually learn that Gabriel is after a computer chip company called Apex that moved into his town in Argentina and dumped toxic waste into the water that killed Gabriel’s young daughter. He kidnapped one of their lead scientists and is holding him for ransom…holding him with no intention of ever returning him, even though the scientist also has a young daughter. He also plans to kidnap Apex’s lawyer/negotiator head honcho. Fiona has to earn Gabriel’s trust so that she can stop him.

Michael, meanwhile, still has his hands full with Gilroy. He knows the plane with the mysterious prisoner is soon coming from Argentina, but he has to figure out how Gilroy fits in, what he plans to do with the .50 caliber, and how to stop him. There’s a fairly dramatic twist involving Gilroy at the very end of the episode that comes after a series of awesome infernos and explosions. Sharon Gless is only in a couple of scenes, but she certainly makes her presence welcome by providing solid comic relief. The upcoming finale promises to be a wildly exciting end to a near-perfect season.

Season 3, Episode 15: Good Intentions (Originally aired February 25, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

It’s exceedingly hard not to like Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez. During the Chuck teleconference I participated in with them, I learned that they are as charming and affable in real life as they are on the screen. They answered a host of questions with warmth and enthusiasm, although the NBC brass severely censored them on what they could and couldn’t say about the second half of the third season, which begins next week.

They were able to confirm that Scott Bakula will return for the final episodes of the season, and a surprise visit will be made by Geek Hall of Fame godfather Christopher Lloyd. People asked about how involved they were with the Twittering (or is it Tweeting?) and online games/fan campaigns for the show. They said not really, which I found refreshing. TV shooting schedules are brutal, and I can certainly understand that any modicum of free time Zachary Levi has he would prefer to spend not in the Chuck universe. Both Levi and Gomez did however voice considerable appreciation and reverence for the rabid fanbase (some of which I have angrily prodded in my recent reviews of the show) that has kept the show going until now.

I wanted to ask how the budget cuts they were forced to make in filming the third season has affected their work, but alas it was not to be. One caller brought up a potential continuity error in the show that dealt with how Chuck responds to the new Intersect. One of the main throughlines of the season thus far has been Sarah telling Chuck that, now that he is a full-fledged spy, he has to learn to control his emotions in order to his job. It seems that mostly, the Intersect only works when Chuck is calm and in control. But there was an episode that had Chuck and Sarah held captive in separate rooms by baddies, and Chuck got the Intersect to work (and then deployed some awesome martial arts badassery) by frantically worrying about what would happen to Sarah if he didn’t save her. So in that instance, Chuck got the Intersect to work precisely by not controlling his emotions.

It was quite enjoyable and revealing to hear Levi attempt to answer the question. He basically said that it wasn’t something that he could answer—though he acknowledged the validity of the question—because, as an actor, there are certain parts of the show that he is not involved with. He may be the star, but like any tv actor, how his character develops and how the show proceeds is strictly in the hands of the showrunners. I sensed a certain devil-may-care attitude about his answer, as if he were saying that yeah, the Intersect inconsistency was a stupid mistake but that’s how things on this show just go sometimes. I think the guy is very smart and deserves higher-caliber writing to work with than he has received lately.

Several questions were asked about how Morgan and Chuck’s relationship was going to change and evolve given the whole Hannah romance triangle debacle. Both actors insisted that Chuck and Morgan would not break up and that they would eventually become closer than ever. Hmm. Levi also promised that, though he has not yet read the series finale, he knows that the episode will wrap up the series satisfactorily should it not be renewed for a fourth season. I think that possibility is more than likely at this point.

Also of note: Levi directed an upcoming episode, his directorial debut on the show. He is very proud of it and it looks to be a key game-changing event when it airs in a couple of weeks. At any rate, I wish Levi and Gomez well and I am cautiously optimistic that the latter half of the season will bring the show to a satisfying conclusion.

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Chris Haston, and IMDbPro.

My second conference call—this time with Burn Notice stars Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar—was an improvement over my first. I actually got to ask a question, though this was after the AT&T automatons mispronounced my last name. And then they cut me off while I was starting to ask the follow-up question that I was promised and that everyone else on the line seemed to get. Happenstance? I think not. Nefarious conspiracy masterminded by an evil society of soulless, corporate, degenerate energy vampires determined to destroy me at all costs? I think yes. I swear to god, it would not surprise me to find that the AT&T forces on the other end of the line were stroking white cats while wearing gray tunics and laughing maniacally as they screwed me.

It was pretty surreal standing in the gray Boston drizzle talking to two stars I’ve watched and enjoyed for years. I mean I talked to Jeffrey Donovan, so brilliant in Touching Evil, and who worked for my idol Clint Eastwood on Changeling! I talked to Gabrielle Anwar, who danced the tango with Al frickin’ Pacino in Scent of a Woman! If I flunk out of Hollywood in the coming years and end up selling rum-filled coconuts to tourists in the tropics, I can always think “Hey, I once talked to two tv stars on the phone and tried not to sound like an imbecile!”

What did I ask? I asked if, after having three seasons under their belts, were they finding it easier or harder to play their characters, and were they facing any challenges now that they weren’t when the show started? Donovan said it was harder to do the stunts now that he’s getting older. That, of course, is a standard, self-effacing answer from the Star Playbook. He wasn’t serious; the guy has martial arts training up the wazoo, he’s barely over forty and he looks to be in great shape. Anwar mentioned something about worrying about not becoming boring onscreen. She’s in no danger of that, I tried to assure her.

I wish they had delved a little deeper into the question, and had they had the time, I’m sure they would have. I would think that in some ways, playing Michael Westen and Fiona Glenanne would be easier now because they know their characters and have spent a good chunk of time playing them. But I also think it would be harder to stay invested in the roles and continue to find layers to peel back and explore. I wanted to discuss less about the physical logistics of making the show and more about the psychology of creating and shaping a recurring character over an extended time period. But alas, it was not to be.

Neither was my follow-up question (did I mention that the robotic telephonic ghouls molested me?). Donovan is credited as a producer on nine Burn Notice episodes, and I wanted to ask what that job specifically entailed for him and what he got out of it. There’s a perception that when stars are credited as producers, it’s just a contract thing or a bone that the powers that be throw at them to make them feel more important. But I imagine that Donovan earns the credit and is heavily involved in putting the show together and shaping its direction.

Most of the questions asked were reasonable. People asked about plot points in upcoming episodes, and the stars dutifully explained that they weren’t at liberty to say. There was one guy who asked this fairly ridiculous, convoluted question that involved the actors using their characters’ skills at tactical analysis to analyze the characters themselves. Did that make any sense? If it didn’t, don’t worry. It didn’t make much sense to Donovan or Anwar. Donovan was a good sport and tried to produce an answer, while Anwar more or less refused to answer the question. It was pretty funny because she was honest, but from a professional standpoint, she could definitely learn a couple of things from Donovan about PR.

Someone asked who their dream guest star on the show would be. Anwar said Steve McQueen, which made her cool point quotient skyrocket in my book. Donovan explained to her that Steve was dead, and she replied that she didn’t know that the potential dream guest star had to be alive. Donovan said Angelina Jolie. Not as cool of a choice, but certainly understandable. I think he should get his Touching Evil co-star Vera Farmiga to come aboard. I’d also love to see Tom Selleck.

And speaking of Tom Selleck, Donovan at one point talked about Magnum P.I., recounting a specific episode and saying that he was a fan of the show. That made me giddy, because I have always loved Magnum P.I. and always saw Burn Notice as a descendant of it. He also talked about Moonlighting, in response to someone’s query about the nature of Michael and Fiona’s relationship on the show. The only time Moonlighting is ever really talked about now is in the context of a case study of how to ruin a tv show. The theory is that Moonlighting was doomed as soon as Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd got together (which I don’t think is true), and therefore, any show that is built on the romantic tension between two characters can never have them get together or else no one will have any reason to watch the show anymore. Trisha Huntsman wrote about this ongoing dilemma in her February 17^th article on Bones, a show completely built on the romantic chemistry of its two leads. The writers are doing everything they can to keep Booth and Brennan apart, which in my opinion is making the show stale and causing maybe more harm than if they got them together.

But Donovan made an interesting point, referring to Moonlighting as the typical tv romantic relationship, but describing Michael and Fiona’s relationship as atypical. Matt Nix said a similar thing last week. Their relationship is atypical, and therefore, more realistic. Michael and Fiona have consummated their romantic tension, they’ve loved each other, hated each other, pushed and pulled and fought and made up. They can never be together in a normal sense, but they seem to forever be drawn to each other. That makes for a much healthier dynamic and a much healthier show. Burn Notice always feels balanced. You’re not always waiting for some missing element to come into play.

The point is, is that Donovan knows his tv, and that’s refreshing. The other highlight? Someone asked if Donovan and Anwar would like to see Michael and Fiona action figures come to fruition and pointed out that plenty of other shows like Lost and Dexter have action figures. Donovan was hilariously shocked to learn that Dexter has an action figure. “He’s a serial killer! What, does he have a knife in his hand?” The guy asking the question assured him that it wasn’t a figure lining the shelves at Toys “R” Us but was for older, adult collectors. I’d make a crack here about guys over the age of twelve who collect action figures if I didn’t have eight or nine of them ceremoniously posed and displayed on top of the microwave in my apartment.

One final thing I would have liked to have asked Donovan: “Could you go beat the powers that be at USA network with a golf club until they apologize profusely for canceling Touching Evil in 2004 and get them to release the damn DVDs?”

On my next conference call, I’m going to use a fake name they can’t mispronounce like “Frank Lewis.”

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Glenn Watson, and IMDbPro.

Some guys take women to the beach, some take them to the movies, others take them to a farmers’ market…but Michael Westen takes Fiona to an ugly Polish military intelligence building. Fiona articulates that much to him, unhappily. They are there trying to scope out some more information on what Gilroy is after. As of last week, all Michael knows is that he is very interested in a flight starting from Chile, passing through Miami and ending up in Poland. Michael needs to figure out what the mysterious cargo is so he can intercept Gilroy from intercepting it. It’s a tough gig, this spy business.

Michael spots a guy named Conrad coming out of the business and figures him for an easy mark that he can turn to his advantage. He presents himself as a Russian businessman needing information about the flight (Conrad is half Russian), thinking he can appeal to Conrad as a fellow countryman. He figured wrong. It turns out that Conrad is a patriot who would never think of selling out Poland. He’s about to shoot Michael in the head when Fiona appears all ninja-like and smacks the bejesus out of him with her bluntly sexy shotgun. Michael is a lucky man.

Fiona agrees to help Michael find a new tactic for turning Conrad and getting the information he needs. Michael gratefully accepts, and all Fiona wants in return is a little mad money. To get this mad money, Michael gives in and offers to help Sam on a gig Sam has been trying to get Michael to take for some time. The job involves helping a pretty fashion mogul named Isabella find out who is stealing from her company. She offers to pay Sam and Michael $30,000. For Michael, the motivation is the money. For Sam, it’s all about having access to fashion models. One of the fun things about Burn Notice is how consistent the characters are.

Isabella believes that the culprit is her vice president Tim. Michael and Sam initially operate under this assumption, but when Isabella is murdered and Tim framed for the crime, they realize that they shouldn’t have listened to her. That Sam and Michael failed their beautiful client is indicative of some of the darker currents Matt Nix has been introducing into the third season. Of course, given the slickly fun format of the show, there is really never any danger that Michael will become an unlikable character. But I appreciate that Nix is at least trying to subvert Michael in safe but effective ways so as to keep him from becoming too predictable and unidirectional.

Sam and Michael quickly determine that the real killer is Isabella’s other business partner Damon, who gives a very devious and insincere eulogy at her funeral. Michael thinks on the fly and convinces Damon that he is yet another business partner of Isabella’s, one she didn’t talk about and for good reason: he and Isabella were starching heroin into her fabrics and shipping them all over, making $4 million a week. This same concept was revealed to be the baddies’ secret evil agenda in the terrible attempted Steven Seagal comeback vehicle Exit Wounds. This scheme appeals to Damon’s greed and lays the groundwork for Michael to find ways to incriminate Damon and his accomplice Ric in the murder. They also have to hide Tim from the cops until they can clear his name.

Fiona, meanwhile, poses as a CIA agent and goes to Conrad under the pretext that her agency is trying to take down the fictional Russian traitor that Michael played in the beginning. She continues to work on Conrad, telling him that there is a mole in his office and that he has to steal the flight cargo information for her so that she can keep it from the other baddies. You can tell that Fiona isn’t wholly comfortable deceiving an honest man, but it is for the greater good and she complies.

The episode features some standard surveillance work, a nifty Michael-jumping-onto-a-moving-truck escape scene, and some sniper rifle badassery. The real highlight though is seeing Bruce Campbell do a first-rate impression of David Caruso on CSI: Miami by playing a CSI forensic scientist with a penchant for saying sternly intense one-liners and whipping on his designer sunglasses. Campbell was better at being David Caruso than David Caruso is.

Season 3, Episode 14: Partners in Crime (Originally aired February 18, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson