Justified Viewing

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.

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Photographs courtesy of FX and IMDbPro.

Burn Notice: Devil You Know

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.

The Mentalist: Sharp Smarts

USA TODAY recently ran an article stating that in 2009, seventeen hours of network television a week consist of procedurals. That’s a whole lot of cops and forensic people investigating dead bodies. It amounts to a whole lot of predictable and often tedious formula. I mean after all, how many different scenarios can writers come up with revolving around murder victims, cops and murder suspects?

I can’t watch any of the CSIs or Law & Orders any more, or Criminal Minds. But the procedural isn’t going away any time soon (if ever), and it can be an enjoyable and safe framework providing that the lead character(s) can rise above the inconsequentials of the disposable investigation-of-the-week. Life was the best example of this idea, but like most great shows, it was canceled to make room for America’s Next Top Gigolo. The only show now that even approaches the greatness of Life? CBS’s The Mentalist.

The show stars Simon Baker—a CBS veteran of The Guardian and the awful and short-lived Ray Liotta starrer Smith—as Patrick Jane, a freelancer with a haunted past working for the California Bureau of Investigation (no, that’s not a real agency). Throughout the first season, the show parceled out little windows into Jane’s backstory. He used to make a sleazy living pretending to be a psychic and manipulating people into throwing money at him by telling them what they wanted to hear. He had his own bogus tv show and loved the spotlight. His fatal mistake: openly mocking the serial killer Red John on his show. One night, he went home to find that Red John had viciously murdered his wife and young daughter out of spite.

As a result, he had a breakdown and had to be shipped off to a mental ward. But he got better and got out and worked some less-than-legal magic and managed to keep his breakdown off his records. His next step was to offer his skills as a mentalist to the CBI and help them solve murder investigations. He is basically employed as a private contractor, and the cops keep him around because he has a gift for reading people and setting mental traps. In other words, he may not be a cop, but he closes cases. But really, solving murders just gives him something to do. His real motive for joining the CBI? To catch Red John. And he states repeatedly when pressed that when he catches Red John, he will kill him and he will enjoy it. He cares more about catching and punishing and killing Red John more than he cares about his own life. He is obsessed. He is singularly focused on catching this guy and avenging his wife and daughter.

What makes Jane such a fascinating and fun character is that on the surface he’s all fun and games, a coolfire bad boy mischief-maker that always finds the levity in a situation and delights in playing with people. But underneath, he is driven by an intensely dark and violent mission. Baker simply exudes charisma, and CBS was wise to realize that they had a star with this guy. The Mentalist is built as a star vehicle for Baker, but Robin Tunney brings a lot of appeal as Teresa Lisbon, a senior CBI agent who is in charge of keeping Jane on a leash. Besides Jane, she oversees three other agents: Kimball Cho, Wayne Rigsby and Grace Van Pelt. She has a difficult past of her own, but in the show she manages to be the Good Cop to Jane’s bad boy while also preserving a sense of fun for her own.

The showrunners have wisely steered clear of developing any overt romantic sparks between Jane and Lisbon. Their relationship is too complex and too interesting to resort to any of that conventional crap. The rest of the cast is appealing, but it really boils down to Baker and Tunney. Yes, we have to deal with the murder-of-the-week all the time, but how Jane solves the crimes is refreshingly low-tech and fun. Here, crimes aren’t solved by forensic techno voodoo as much as by old-fashioned detective work and deductive logic. And seeing Jane always trying to piece together Red John’s clues gives the show a serial drive, as did Life. (I’m sorry I keep mentioning that show but I still haven’t gotten over it being canceled yet).

The characters keep evolving and the show keeps pushing forward. The second season, now half over, introduced Sam Bosco, an agent brought in to take charge of the Red John case and keep Jane away. Bosco provided a nice antagonistic dimension to the show. The season has progressed smoothly and evenly—no sophomore slump. In a sea of monotonous procedurals, The Mentalist stands out—quite an achievement.

Thursdays at 10/9c on CBS

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Photographs courtesy of CBS and Michael Ansell.

Chuck vs. The Ring

It’s the end of the second season-and probably the end period-for Chuck, which was touted as the next breakout hit by NBC during its inception and quickly developed a loyal fan following, though it never crossed over into mainstream success. I was a fan of the first season, but to be honest, I found most of this season to be a disappointment. Principal stars Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin have remained consistently likable and engaging, but I often felt that the writers pushed the show into a too ridiculous and goofy direction. Major plot points were usually telegraphed and the show really didn’t have a unified trajectory. I know it seems a little asinine to criticize a scripted series as being episodic, but that’s how most of the Chuck episodes felt to me. They didn’t all connect to each other, they didn’t push the show forward toward a goal. There was too much filler, whereas Life-NBC’s other show that looks to not be coming back-always moved toward Charlie Crews solving the conspiracy against him.  Damages also had that unified drive.

The first season of Chuck, while still being lighthearted, never seemed utterly preposterous to me. It never seemed that the writers didn’t care at all about establishing a sense of reality or plausibility for Chuck and his world. This whole second season, the Buy More jokes got stale and too much time was wasted there, and the Fulcrum villains were cardboard cartoons and we still have no clue who they really are or what they’re really about. They’re just evil baddies who wear black. Instead of just having an endless progression of disposable Fulcrum baddies, I think the show would have worked better if we had been given one nemesis at the top of the organization that Chuck & Co. were after.

Mel Gibson has that great line in Payback where he’s trying to penetrate the top of this crime syndicate he’s after and he says, “you go high enough, it always comes down to one man.” The closest thing we got was Chevy Chase in these last few episodes, who I have to say really grew on me. He’s pretty hilarious this week. Why wasn’t he the bad guy the whole time? I’m sure Chase could use the money, it ain’t like he’s doing anything else these days. We should have seen that one man (or woman) who was in charge of Fulcrum, so that it wasn’t just forgettable villains each week.

The strength of Chuck, at least when it started, was that it was a fun popcorn show that took archetypal characters like Nerd, Spy Babe, and No-nonsense Curmudgeon Agent and used the charm of its cast to flesh them out into real people. The will they/won’t they dynamic between Chuck and Sarah really worked for the first season, but recently it just felt that the writers were throwing too many artificially-constructed obstacles at them to keep them apart for the sake of conflict. Obviously they have to stay apart to preserve that tension (Bones writers take note and don’t ruin your show…it’s not too late!), I just wish the writers had found less transparent and more subtle, organic ways to accomplish that.

The shame of it is, thanks largely to the presence of Sam Beckett…er, ah, I mean Scott Bakula, Chuck just started to get decent again. This finale revolves mainly around Ellie’s wedding to her nimrod boyfriend. Chuck of course has just gotten the Intersect removed from his brain, and it looks like he and Sarah might finally get together for good. Chuck follows Morgan’s lead from last week and quits the Buy More. He even gets a juicy check from the government for services rendered (yeah, sure). It looks like Chuck is finally going to get a chance to lead the life he wants.

Except then we learn that Sarah is being assigned to work on the new Intersect with none other than ex-flame Bryce Larkin. And then Ted Roark shows up to crash Ellie’s wedding. He tells Chuck that if he doesn’t bring him the Intersect within the hour, he will kill Ellie at her wedding. So Chuck tells Morgan to stall the wedding-with Jeff and Lester in tow-while he scrambles to go get the Intersect and bring it back. The new Intersect has already been shipped out, but Bryce offers to give himself up to Roark, as Fulcrum still thinks that he has the Intersect in his head.

Sarah scrambles-in a pink bridesmaid dress no less-to find something she can use as a weapon in the wedding presents (she gets some decent cutlery). Sort of like the scene in Under Siege 2 where Steven Seagal-before he ballooned into the elephant man and entered direct-to-DVD hell mind you-tells Morris Chestnut’s porter to look in the luggage for weapons on the train. And from there, we get some pretty solid action. Shootouts, knife throwing, double crosses, agents crashing through skylights. Of course Ellie’s wedding is ruined and she throws a little whiny hissy fit, telling her brother “you ruined the most important day of my life!” Boo hoo. I really wanted to punch her in the face. Who cares about some ostentatious ceremony celebrating an antiquated ritual? She’s alive, isn’t that enough?

Beyond that, there’s some solid pathos courtesy of Scott Bakula and we get satisfying closure to the Bryce Larkin character. We also get a revelation stating rather definitively that it was no accident that Chuck became the Intersect in the beginning of the show, and that Sarah found him. And it turns out that “Fulcrum is only part of the puzzle.” Good, so now the already nondescript, convoluted villains become even more convoluted. The show ends with a cliffhanger involving Chuck not being rid of the Intersect (“Just when I think I’m out…”), and he even has some snazzy upgrades. The show ends optimistically with a “To be continued,” but I think that’s probably just wishful thinking from the creative team.

I think the cast is really talented, and I’ll be sad for them if the show gets cancelled, but to sum up my feelings about Chuck, I view it as the adorable puppy I was so excited to bring home. I fell in love with it and it sure was cute, but it kept crapping on the carpet again and again and again and struggled to redeem itself.

Season 2, Episode 22: Chuck vs. The Ring (originally aired April 27, 2009)

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Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal

The End of ‘Life’

I kept trying to make the last 43 minutes of Life go slower but I couldn’t. I’m sure Charlie Crews would have some Zen aphorism to say about that…that’s if he wasn’t occupied trying to save his partner Dani Reese from the clutches of psychotic Russian crime boss Roman Nevikov. We learn through documentary footage-a nice revival of the show’s first season motif of intercutting the narrative with faux documentary footage about Charlie and the people around him-that Nevikov took Reese hostage by orchestrating the whole phony FBI task force she’s been on for several weeks.

Roman is supposed to be in prison where Charlie sent him, but he has someone serving his time for him. I’m not sure how that works, but I guess when you’re as powerful and feared as Nevikov, you can get pretty much anything you want. I sure hope to be like that some day. Meanwhile, Charlie and Tidwell are going bananas trying to save Reese. I really like how the relationship between those two guys has developed in the last few episodes. They’re not friends and Tidwell doesn’t quite approve of Charlie, but there’s a mutual respect between them and neither is afraid to bend the rules a little bit to get the results they want and need.

So what does Roman want? Simple: He wants Charlie to exchange Mickey Rayborn for Reese. But isn’t Rayborn dead? After all, a whole crapload of his blood was found on his yacht. Yeah, blood…but no body. I’ve suspected for weeks that he wasn’t dead, and it appears I was right. Charlie has to find Rayborn, but the LAPD wants to lock him in a room and interrogate him about Roman and Rayborn. Tidwell and Seever help Charlie get out of the station so he can go do what he does and get Reese.

His first step is to go back to the FBI task force that gave him and Tidwell the cold shoulder when they asked about Reese last week. Tidwell asks him how he expects to get anything out of them after they got nothing before. Charlie gives him that Steve McQueen-esque, badass stare that Damian Lewis is so good at and explains that last time he talked to them like a cop, and this time he won’t. Hell yeah! Except that before he can get there, one of the FBI “agents” kills everyone else there. I guess Roman is cleaning house, and if he’s cleaning house, his next target is probably Agent Bodner.

Charlie thinks the same thing and drives his car through Bodner’s garage just seconds before the bad fed shoots him in the head. Awesome stuff. Bodner questions why Charlie saved him, and Charlie explains that he knows that he’s not working for Roman anymore since Roman had someone sent to kill him. If Roman hadn’t sent someone to kill Bodner, I’m sure Charlie would have taken him down. So now they team up to track down Rayborn. This is an awesome dynamic and further testament to the show’s extraordinarily talented writers: two former foes now coming together as allies. Almost as cool as when former nemeses Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed team up to whoop Mr. T’s ass in Rocky III.

This is an amazing episode that typifies everything that’s phenomenal about Life, particularly the wonderfully idiosyncratic rhythm that alternates between intense character work and surrealist humor. There’s a hilarious commentary on minivans, and it’s nice to see everyone pressed into action, working as one: Charlie, Ted and Amanda, Tidwell, Seever, and Bobby Stark.  Charlie even gets an automatic weapon at one point! It’s just a kickass show, plain and simple.

I don’t want to ruin all of the developments for anyone who has yet to see it, but suffice it to say that this episode is so satisfying, it even goes back to the very roots of the show and the conspiracy involving Charlie’s frame up for murdering his friend Tom Seybolt and his family. It would have been nice to see Rachel in this episode, because she really disappeared midway through the season, but that’s a mild complaint. Charlie solves more of the conspiracy but by no means is it wrapped up. There are still things I don’t understand (and Charlie doesn’t understand), he hasn’t found everyone involved. There’s a satisfying cliffhanger involving Ted going off after Olivia, but we don’t get any scene between Ted and Charlie and that’s a shame. But to make up for it, Charlie pulls an awesome awesome awesome move against Roman that’s reminiscent of how Bruce Willis dispatches a thug in the third act of the underrated The Last Boy Scout.

Watching Life has been a true television highlight for me, and I’m really sad to see it go. I’ve lost a lot of shows over the years, but this one is right at the top of the list. I’m so in love with this character and Damian Lewis as a star and a great actor. The writing has been consistently exceptional and progressive….Life has revolutionized a genre that even I would agree has become rather stale, and I love cop shows and movies. I gotta hand it to NBC for giving the show a full second season. I don’t blame them, I blame America. I haven’t heard anything saying Life is coming back, so I assume it’s cancelled. But it’s really disheartening and I will always have a special place in my heart for the show and the creative team behind it. It has indeed been a wonderful Life.

Season 2, Episode 21: One (originally aired April 8, 2009)

For more on Life, click here.

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Trae Patton

Life: In Life as in life

There’s no rest for the wicked, as they say, so Charlie Crews and his temporary partner Jane Seever are working another murder case this week. They’re called to the scene by Howard, a hotshot campaign manager who came home early from a business trip in Vegas to find his wife missing. She’s not missing for long though, because Crews follows the wife’s cat until it leads him to her body, which is lying in a hot tub with four holes in it. And because of the hot temperature of the water, it’s almost impossible to determine when she was killed.

But the detectives’ first order of business is to clear the husband, because you always look at the husband first when the wife gets killed, even if the husband called the police himself because, well, love hurts. Going on the timetable of when she went missing, they clear the grieving husband. So now they have to ask who wanted the victim dead? As it turns out, a lot of people: the victim was running for senator and the major piece of legislation she was passionate about pushing through was Initiative 38, a complete California ban on handguns. So that’s it! Those lunatics at the NRA did it! Okay, maybe not the NRA, but definitely PNK, a big California gun company where all the employees like to be armed to the teeth as they stroll around the office.

Except the head honcho at PNK shows Charlie and Seever that they were beating Initiative 38 four votes to one. So if the bill wasn’t a threat, then there was no reason to kill the victim was there? The detectives are at a standstill in the investigation so they go back to visit Howard and try to get some more information. Then Howard drops a bomb…literally. Yeah, they show up at his house and find Howard standing in his empty house holding a ticking bomb that’s nicely presented in a box of tasteful flowers. If you hold the wires in the box just right, the bomb doesn’t tick. But Howard is numb from holding it there for who knows how long (just like poor Danny Glover in the classic toilet bomb scene from Lethal Weapon 2). Seever takes his place and Charlie keeps her calm until the bomb squad arrives and does their thing. The upside is that there was a clue with the bomb, a card that reads “Who’s the little one now?

Charlie and Seever go to the victim’s office and speak to her red-haired manager Ella, who quickly tells them that “little one” was the nickname of the victim’s younger sister. Turns out they had a ‘falling out’ as they say a little over a year ago and hadn’t spoken since because the younger sister was a raving degenerate fruitcake who did more drugs than Tony Montana and became a park ranger. Maybe she’s a colleague of Smokey the Bear! At any rate, she sounds like a likely suspect (maybe too likely a suspect, if you get my drift). The detectives drive out to the countryside to see her and are met by a reception of rifle fire. They manage to subdue the park ranger, who claims that someone came on the radio and told her that the person who killed her sister was coming to kill her. Yes, there are characters like that in Life and in life.

But even though she may be a little nutty, Charlie doesn’t buy it. He can tell that Little One clearly loved her sister and he suspects that the falling out was engineered. Suffice it to say that Charlie’s investigation takes him full circle, and I’ll leave you with the caveat that you should never trust a redhead because they’re all nuttier than a Snickers bar.

The B storyline consists of Charlie coming to Tidwell with his concerns about his partner Dani Reese being in trouble and not being with the real FBI. Charlie and Tidwell don’t have an easy relationship. Tidwell knows Charlie has off-the-books investigations and while he doesn’t stop him, Tidwell doesn’t condone what he’s doing. But they both clearly care about Reese and will stop at nothing to find her. They go to the FBI (or is it the “FBI?”), who won’t give them anything. So Charlie commissions Ted to hire Amanda from Rayborn’s private security firm to find Reese, who hasn’t been answering her phone. She and Ted track the phone down but find it abandoned in a field, along with Reese’s gun. This looks really bad, and Charlie immediately suspects Roman Nevikov. But we’ll have to tune in next week to get the answers.

In all probability only two episodes of Life remain and I’m going to try to enjoy them as best I can and not get depressed that America would rather watch some impossibly inane reality show with Ozzie Osbourne than a brilliantly inventive, fun show that elevates and subverts its genre.

Season 2, Episode 20: Initiative 38 (originally aired April 1, 2009)

For more on Life, click here.

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

Life: 5 Quarts

What happens when the guy whose job is to figure out what happened to dead guys becomes a dead guy? That’s what Charlie Crews and his temporary partner Jane Seever have to contend with this week when an L.A. coroner is found killed in the morgue. There’s a whole buffet line of suspects: the other coroners who all disliked him-one of whom filed multiple complaints against him-as well as a group of first-time offenders doing community service right outside the building. To compound the problem, all the cases the coroner was working are now in limbo until the murder is solved, putting extra pressure on Captain Tidwell (and therefore Charlie and everyone else who works for him).

Charlie and Seever decide that maybe that’s a clue. Maybe someone killed the coroner because they wanted to kill his investigations. But the only notable murder the coroner was investigating was that of a celebrity chef who was found dead in his kitchen. It appears that the chef was shot in the back of the head but no bullet was found. And because there was no exit wound, it would mean that somebody would have had to have dug the bullet out of the chef’s skull. Yikes. The chef doesn’t seem to have had any enemies, but he was associated with the county’s biggest bookie. The bookie would seem to be a likely suspect, but in actuality he is so distraught over the chef’s death that he’s practically suicidal. That guy must have really been a good cook.

Charlie finds a discrepancy between the front page photo of the dead chef and the crime scene photos: in the front page photo there is a clear puddle under his hand, but in the crime scene photos there is only blood. No puddle. So Charlie and Seever question the photographer, Kathy. Kathy claims she used her winning smile to charm the cops into letting her get that close to the dead chef’s body. I could buy that if Emily Deschanel were saying it, but I don’t buy it for this Kathy person…and neither does Charlie. But without giving away the details, Charlie learns that the chef actually wasn’t murdered, so Kathy goes off the suspect radar for a while.

From there, the investigation goes in typically unpredictable, wonderfully bizarre directions, including after-hours goth morgue shindigs and pregnancy hormones. This is what Life does like no other show on tv: take a familiar genre and somehow manage to consistently put a fresh, fun, entertaining spin on it.

Meanwhile, Ted has another meeting with his daughter that leads to two hilarious and heartfelt scenes that made me laugh out loud. And the rising suspicion that has been building separately between Charlie and Reese is resolved in a really satisfying way, demonstrating the power of trust between partners, something we all should aspire to. But Charlie finds out from former enemy now tentative ally Agent Bodner that Reese’s little FBI detail is not what it appears to be, and the end of the episode gives reason to believe that Reese might be heading for some serious trouble.

The one thing I miss in Life lately is Rachel. It seems like she has been gone for a long time now and I have no idea where she is or what she’s up to. I can’t believe it has been almost a full season for Life. I’m not ready for it to end, and I’m hoping against hope that it miraculously gets a third season. Seriously, it’s such a brilliant show, I can’t understand why nobody watches it. Please please watch the last remaining episodes of the season so we can try to spike ratings. If you get nothing out of them, I will give you my firstborn child.

Season 2, Episode 19: 5 Quarts (originally aired March 25, 2009)

For more on Life, click here.

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

Chuck vs. The Predator

This latest episode of Chuck is exactly like every other episode; they’re indistinguishable. You know you’re going to have a couple of scenes where Chuck and Sarah dance around their feelings for each other. You know there are going to be some Fulcrum baddies or other nefarious types and Chuck is going to have an Intersect moment, and we’ll see all kinds of images flashing in his brain, a motif that goes back at least until Alan Pakula’s 70’s classic The Parallax View.

I guess I shouldn’t begrudge a show for having a formula, as that’s what the whole cornerstone of network tv is. Even Life, which I rave about, has a formula (although it’s a much more creative, innovative formula). But somehow Chuck just annoys me. I think the writing has really gotten lazy, or they’ve just run out of ideas. The charm of the cast can’t cover up how lame the storylines are anymore.

As we begin this week, Chuck is still trying to find this Orion character that has the ability to potentially get the Intersect out of his head, meaning Chuck could go back to his normal life. My question is why would he want it? The guy’s a loser. He’s so madly in love with Sarah, why wouldn’t he want to stay around her? If he loses the Intersect, he loses her. He lives with his sister, he works at an electronics store…is he really missing that much? I think dodging bullets is a small price to pay, but that’s me. Chuck does however suspect general Beckman of not really pursuing finding Orion, and rightfully so. As we learn later on, she is not exactly a beacon of light and justice.

Chuck continues to conduct his own investigation, using some internet voodoo he has cooked up. And he succeeds somehow. Orion contacts him through his computer from Hong Kong, though their conversation is interrupted by Fulcrum agents. These baddies are everywhere! This time around, the head honcho is played by Arnold Vosloo, who always plays a villain. His best roles were in Hard Target and Blood Diamond. Here he’s just slumming it.

Orion contacts Chuck again at the Buy More and tells him that he is sending a next generation, super-potent computer to Chuck there. Except, because we’re at the Buy More, you know some ridiculous shenanigans are going to ensue. This time, Lester somehow intercepts the computer and mistakes it for some new video game deal that Buy More is supposed to be getting. The fact that Buy More is getting this computer irks a rival Buy More, so the B storyline involves the two Buy Mores waging covert wars on each other, with different teams trying to break in and do damage. Tony Hale continues to be a waste on this show. His character isn’t funny, no matter how hard the writers try to make him be that way.

This is an especially weak episode, the only strong point being that Sarah realizes that Beckman isn’t a saint and doesn’t have Chuck’s interests at heart. She starts to question her orders and considers fighting back against the general. That could possibly build to some interesting tension in the last remaining episodes, which the show could desperately use. I keep hearing how the writers have all this wild, “game-changing” stuff planned for the remaining Chuck episodes. All I can say is, I”ll believe it when I see it.

Season 2, Episode 17: Chuck vs. The Predator (originally aired March 23, 2009)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Adam Taylor

Dollhouse: Man On The Street

This latest episode of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse is by far the best yet, boasting plot twists and great action in spades. Ballard takes center stage, making considerable progress in his investigation into the Dollhouse. He discovers a charity that he thinks is a front for Dollhouse payments. People he suspects of being clients all continue to put money into that charity, and the Dollhouse appropriates the funds for their own use and profit. He’s particularly interested in a video game designer named Joel Mynor who makes payments to the charity on the same day every year, so he goes to pay him a visit.

Imagine his surprise when, after going to all the trouble of breaking into the guy’s house and getting past his security guards…because rich video game designers have their own security teams I guess…he discovers that there is an Active there on an engagement with Mynor! And it’s not just any Active…it’s Echo, or as Ballard knows her, Caroline. Ballard has been looking to save Caroline from the Dollhouse since the beginning, and now he has his chance. He is so shocked to see her that he lets his guard down. More security guards come and attack him. Ballard eventually takes them all out in the episode’s first fantastic fight sequence, but in the chaos, Langton arrives and whisks her away, back to the Dollhouse.

That leaves Ballard alone with the Mynor. Ballard tries to get everything he can out of him, using threats and intimidation, but they both know he has nothing to arrest him on. Mynor explains why he hires an Active on the same day every year. He recounts the sad story of how his wife supported him for years while he was struggling to design games, and when he finally hit it big, he bought a house to surprise her, but on her way over, she was sideswiped by a garbage truck. So now he hires an Active on that day every year and pretends it is his wife so he can surprise her with the house. This guy is the first Dollhouse client yet that you can feel any sympathy for, though he’s still a little sick.

Mynor compares his obsession to Ballard’s obsession for finding Caroline, saying that he doesn’t just want to bring down the Dollhouse but that he specifically wants to save her-a hero complex. You get the sense that Ballard secretly questions whether this guy is right or not. Is he in love with Caroline/Echo? To distract himself from answering that question, Ballard goes home and sleeps with his neighbor Millie, who has been after him for weeks. And he starts telling her details of his case, which I’m pretty sure FBI guys aren’t supposed to do.

Back at the Dollhouse, Sierra is acting weird and screams when Victor touches her shoulder. The doctor examines her and sees that she has had sex since her last engagement, so naturally, everyone suspects Victor. Everyone except Langton, who sets up a sting to catch the real molester/rapist scum bag. Ms. Dewitt then sets up a plan to reprogram Echo to come face to face with Ballard again, but this time she will be designed to kill him. Brace yourself for another truly excellent fight scene. You can tell they put a lot of effort into shooting that baby.

There are two big twists in the episode, one of which suggests rather strongly that there may be an inside man in the Dollhouse organization who can help Ballard. But it’s still very murky, and I don’t want to ruin any of the fun surprises the episode has in store for those who haven’t seen it yet. The episode also takes a play from the Life playback and intercuts various interviews with people on the street talking about whether they think the Dollhouse is real or not and what the implications are.

Dollhouse took a big leap forward this time around, and for the first time I am truly looking forward to seeing how it develops from here.

Season 1, Episode 6: Man On The Street (originally aired March 20, 2009)

For more on Dollhouse, click here.

Fridays at 9/8C on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro

Life: Just Got Better

Just when I thought Life couldn’t get any better, the show runners have raised the bar yet again. In the first minute of the episode, we get a funny conversation between Charlie and Ted and a kickass freight elevator fight sequence between Charlie and a perp. Charlie and Ted are talking over what Charlie should do now that he knows that his partner Reese was on Mickey Rayborn’s yacht three days before his blood was spilled all over it. Charlie says that he has to go to work, and today, work involves getting into it with an ex-con trying to flee a murder scene.

The ex-con thinks he can take Charlie because he survived prison. Little does he know that Charlie did too. Charlie wins the fight and puts a knife to his throat. Not standard police protocol, but Charlie isn’t a standard cop. At the end of his eventful elevator ride, Charlie meets his interim partner, an attractive detective named Jane Seever (Gabrielle Union). As she tells Charlie, Seever used to be a lawyer and now she’s a cop—two of the steps in her fifteen-year plan to become mayor.

The victim’s name is Sally, and she was beaten to death with a golf club and her apartment was trashed. At the station, Charlie and Seever interrogate her suspected killer John. John insists that even though Sally’s blood was on his boots and he was trying to flee the scene of the crime, Sally was dead before he got there. So why was he there? Well John tells Charlie that Sally wrote to him while he was in prison and they were dating. Charlie gets Jane out of the room so he can go one-on-one with this guy. They’re both ex-cons, Charlie can get in this guy’s head in a way that someone who hasn’t served time can’t. He asks if John wrote to anyone else while he was in prison, though he already knows the answer is yes.

John says he wrote to another woman in prison but stopped when he got out. Jane starts proving her worth by tracking down who this other woman is. Woman #2 is Amy, one of those religious fruities who take it upon themselves to save poor unfortunate souls. Amy was initially angry that John gave her the cold shoulder for another woman, but she decided she wanted him to be happy and let him be. Charlie notes though that she would have done anything for John, and John didn’t call her when he was arrested. So who would he have chosen to call over Amy?

The answer is Nina, woman #3. Nina is a playwright who also wrote to John every day while he was in prison, but she claims she didn’t hear from him either after he got out. When he called her, she hung up on him in six seconds. But now Charlie tells her that she has to be careful, because John was transferred and is now free. Charlie tells her that if he calls her, she has to keep him on the phone this time.

Meanwhile, Jane finds out that John was in prison for a diamond heist he committed with a partner. She goes with Crews to meet the partner, who is also in prison and is expecting a conjugal visit when he runs into them. The detectives ask if he knows where the diamonds are, but the guy says that both he and John thought the other one had them. They do find out though that Sally wrote to John’s partner too. As it turns out, Sally was the court reporter during John and his partner’s trial. So maybe Sally found out where the stolen diamonds were hidden. If Amy wanted to save John and Sally wanted his diamonds, what did Nina want? The answer to that question is the key to solving the case.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Reese both begin to get suspicious of each other. Each knows the other one met with Rayborn shortly before he died but they don’t know the other one knows they know. This is a bold, interesting dynamic to introduce into their partnership after they have been through so much together. The conspiracy keeps building and I’m more curious and invested in these characters than ever. I can’t believe the second season is winding down. Gabrielle Union is a nice addition to the show, and the cases are as intricate and offbeat as ever. I truly truly truly hope Life somehow miraculously gets a third season.

Season 2, Episode 18: 3 Women (originally aired March 18, 2009)

For more on Life, click here.

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

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