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May 24, 2012

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REVIEW: Pan Am “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”

December 5, 2011 By 2 Comments

Is Pan Am cancelled? Colette says yes. ABC says no, however it has not been picked up beyond the original 13 episode order. With terrible shows already getting full season orders and ratings in a tailspin I would say the outlook isn’t good, but for now we’ll pretend that Pan Am is leaving everyone in its dust and Keeping Up With The Kardashians is being cancelled instead.

So what happened this week? Colette (Karine Vanasse) and Dean’s (Mike Vogel) romance took a giant leap forward when convinced her to call in sick so he could take her to his parent’s farm and teach her to fly. The baguette hits the fan when his dad wants to know where Bridgette is and Colette realizes that she has been used. But not really used, only sort of used in that nice dopey “don’t know no better” guy sort of way. I’m guessing she forgave him considering they had sex in the hay loft. Rawr. Dean did look good in his jeans so who can blame her for wanting a nice romp?

The rest of the crew head off for London where Laura (Margot Robbie) has a run in with an asshole pilot who goes all Herman Cain on her in the cockpit. Ted (Michael Mosley) comes to her rescue and asks for a favor in return. Turns out he needs help with a lady problem and Laura reluctantly agrees. She winds up creating a new problem when she realizes she kind of sort of likes Ted now that he’s found a girlfriend. I don’t care how nice and funny this old friend he hooked up with is no one was hotter than Laura in that black dress. FIERCE.

Keeping with the “kiss kiss” portion of this episode Maggie (Christina Ricci) made boom boom with a congressman that stands for everything she hates. He was cute though and it helped prove to that boy she lives with that she does use her position to her advantage from time to time, even if it does result in an ill-timed fire emergency and a shoot out.

Now for the bang bang, and I’m not just talking about Colette and Dean’s hayloft romp! After the debacle with her Eastern European loverboy Nico left a very bad taste in her mouth Kate (Kelli Garner) has decided she is done with the glamorous life of a spy. Mr. Anderson has one last job for her though, and its one that could save not only Nico but also Bridgette’s life so she can come back and ruin Colette’s new found love. The mission goes well until the aforementioned fire emergency which sends her target home early and walking right into a fight with her London contact. When things get real Kate grabs a gun and fires! Bang Bang! So did she kill the guy? We’ll have to wait until January to find out.

I have to say as much as I have enjoyed Kate’s mission of the week I am anxious for her role to evolve and after her adventure in London I think it just might. The circumstances that kept her from walking away from this mission were pretty predictable but it opens the door for a lot of drama down the line. There is a lot of room to expand the world of this show and I sincerely hope that Pan Am gets a chance to grow after the winter hiatus.

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REVIEW: Desperate Housewives “Putting It All Together”

December 5, 2011 By 1 Comment

 

“Putting It All Together” brought some new blood into the writer’s room on Desperate Housewives and I think it is safe to say that the final season is NOT the time to be handing the reigns to newbies.

Creepy Cop Chuck Vance is all up in my girls business as he tries to figure out exactly how our desperate foursome is involved in the disappearance of that pedophile from Oklahoma who used to be on Ugly Betty. Without a body all he has to go on is his desire to make Bree cry for daring to break up with his crazy ass. He realizes pretty quickly that the fastest way to get Bree whipped up into a frenzy of angsty baking is to threaten her friends so he brings them all in for questioning.

Good old Susan (Teri Hatcher) can barely keep herself together and decides she and Mike (James Denton) should leave town immediately because that wouldn’t look suspicious at all. And since they are short on cash she hits up Felix Bergman (Leslie Jordan) for the money she is due for selling her confessional artwork. Felix has other ideas though and tells Susan she should move to New York so she can nurture her talent. Susan in New York? I smell a spin off! (kidding)

Gabby (Eva Longoria) is an old pro at lying and handles the questioning just fine, meaning Chuck sees right through her and soon figures out Alejandro is her stepfather. She cooks up a lie about Carlos having an affair and is faced with getting Carlos on board before Chuck questions him. This leads to a not-very-humorous adventure at the local rehab involving a gay male nurse reading The Help and a distraught family dealing with an alcoholic teen.

Lynette (Felicity Huffman) handles Chuck the best of them all but then has to race to catch Tom (Doug Savant) before he leaves on vacation with his new lady friend (Andrea Parker). Seems she is worried about being incarcerated and leaving the kids with nowhere to go. Tom agrees but is not happy about it.

Finally we have Bree (Marcia Cross) who is fast becoming a train wreck of woe and self pity. Left with nothing to comfort her but a bottle of Chardonnay she roams Fairview looking for friends in low places and finally winds up checking into a seedy motel with a pistol where she waxes poetic with the ghost of Mary Alice Young. We are left wondering if Bree will follow in her friend’s footsteps…until the previews for next week show us that she does not. Bad move ABC.

Renee (Vanessa Williams) finds herself once again discarded like an old sock and is reduced to rummaging through the gutters and drain pipes along Wisteria Lane searching for a worth storyline to get her through the holidays. What she finds is more insecurity about Ben that leads to a very uncomfortable conversation with Mrs. McKlesky about threesomes. When is someone going to tell her about all the drama she is missing out on? At least it would give her something to do.

This week rounds out with Ben getting run over in the street just as he is about to open an official investigation into Alejandro’s disappearance and from the looks of the previews the new mystery of the week will be who was behind the wheel? Was it Carlos who wants to save himself and his wife from jail? Was it off-the-wagon Bree who wants her friends back and was seen leaving her house late that evening? My money is on Chuck’s crazy ex-wife and her impeccable timing.

A couple of things bothered me about this latest episode of Desperate Housewives, not the least of which is that fact that they expect me to believe that Gabby Solis uses a six year-old cell phone. Mary Cherry teased us that this final season would take the show full circle and focus on the Mary Alice story. Besides the note left in Bree’s mailbox that hasn’t really happened. But the season is barely half over so there is still time for some redemption.

Desperate Housewives is on winter hiatus until January 8th.

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REVIEW: The Walking Dead “Pretty Much Dead Already”

November 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

The Walking Dead took its midseason bow this week with some strong ratings and heartbreaking reveal. Sadly this season has devolved into hours and hours of banality that left me shuffling and drooling like one of the zombies. There have been a few moments of pure brilliance which is what keeps me watching.

Most of “Pretty Much Dead Already” was spent with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) jumping between trying to convince Herschel to let them stay on the farm and trying to convince Shane (Jon Bernthal) that they SHOULD stay on the farm. Rick goes so far as to help Herschel round up two wayward droolers stuck in the mud to show that he respects the fact that they are guests on his farm. When Shane sees this he loses a gasket and goes postal on them, forcing Herschel to face facts. He opens the barn doors and they slaughter the walkers inside. And then one last walker appears and stops them dead.

I’d like to lie and say that I knew Sophia was in the barn with the other walkers, but while I suspected a few episodes ago that she would turn up shuffling and drooling the idea that she was one of the barn walkers didn’t occur to me until the first few minutes of this episode when Shane started hollering about taking care of the situation in there. It didn’t make the reveal any less heartbreaking though, but I was surprised that Shane hesitated at all to kill her after his “fuck this” and “fuck that” speech. I suppose it had to be Rick to do it since he had spent the earlier part of the hour trying to convince Herschel that walkers were not people. It also served as a reminder to Shane that Rick can make the hard decisions when he needs to.

Maggie (Lauren Cohan) made peace with Glenn after he owned up to why he wouldn’t keep her secret and it looks like it’s all roses and rainbows for them…for a little while at least. She certainly doesn’t seem too keen on keeping her affection for “that Asian boy” a secret any longer. Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) seemed to finally let go of Andrea this week as well which leaves the group a little divided. I’m left wondering if the end of season two will result in the Atlanta survivors splitting up.

The Walking Dead returns in February and I’m thankful for the break. These first eight moved at a snails pace and I’m glad that the major problem keeping everyone from moving on has been resolved. It looked like the incident at the barn nearly broke Herschel so it will be interesting to see how he deals with it. And what will happen when the truth about poor Otis comes out.

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REVIEW: American Horror Story “Open House”

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday let’s review what the cast of American Horror Story has to be thankful for. Viv should be thankful she gets to have hot fantasy sex with a hunky black man AND that slippery rubber suit guy. When Dylan McDermott is your last choice for hot sweet love then things are looking up. Violet should be thankful that sweet adorable tortured Tate loves her so much he’d go all Edward Cullen on her freshly cut wrists. Ben should be thankful no one has shot his douche ass yet and Constance should be thankful she gets all the good dialogue. This week on House Hunters: Demonic Possession Edition the Harmons finally have some potential buyers showing up to tour their little slice of suburban heaven. Marci the realtor isn’t too happy about Vivien’s tactic of full-disclosure concerning the house’s checkered past but Moira has a few ideas about how to secure an offer on the place much to the delight of Armenian playboy Joe Eskandarian (Amir Arison) who wants to tear the place down. I guess she figures a shot in the mouth is a small price to pay for being released from the prison she’s in. I think Moira is on to something here. If more open houses offered blowjobs then the housing crisis would solve itself. Larry the Burn Guy (Denis O’Hare) is also interested in the house but slutty Moira (Alexandra Breckenridge) isn’t as interested in “securing his business”. Larry doesn’t want to tear the place down though. He’s more interested in being close to Constance (Jessica Lange) whom he had an affair with once upon a midnight clear. This affair allowed Constance to talk Larry into killing her son Beau and inspired Larry’s somewhat homely wife to barbecue herself and their kids in the upstairs nursery. Beau suffered from the same ailment that Eric Stoltz did in The Mask and is the mysterious owner of the red ball we see rolling around periodically. He was in danger of being sent away when Constance is brought up on charges of child endangerment and a proper southern lady can’t have a scandal like that tainting her dance card. And what is going on in her uterus exactly? So Larry lied about killing his family in order to scare Ben away. This was not his finest moment but crazy people cannot always be counted on to make sound decisions. We also learn that Constance doesn’t hold the same fond memories for him that Larry holds for her. Still he is willing to do whatever she wants and proves it by smothering poor Mr. Eskandarian while Moira gnaws his Armenian dick off in the basement. What a way to go. That’s what he gets for building his “temples to the gods of travertine”. Vivien (Connie Britton) changes doctors and finds out that not only is her baby healthy (WTF?) there are two of them brewing in her tummy. Is the nurse in on this joke or have the little devil twins developed into normal looking demonic infants with 666 birthmarks? I suspect that’s something they are saving for the finale. She seems in better spirits though and with Ben away she has plenty of time to masturbate. Meanwhile Violet (Taissa Farmiga) is upstairs in the attic being emo with Tate (Evan Peters). She’s not handling her new found ability to see every ghost in her house and has taken to cutting herself again. At least Viv and Ben are starting to realize she is depressed and they try to inspire happiness with a pot roast but it doesn’t go so well. Later in the attic Tate shows her a box of old photos he found that belonged to Charles and Norah Montgomery as well as some leftover gay porn that they both find to be quite hot. These flashbacks to the Montgomery’s lead me to believe that they are the source of the issues in the house. Maybe some deal with the devil is what allowed Dr Montgomery to bring their dismembered baby Thaddeus back to life using the beating heart of one of their girls. This results in a hissing monster child that takes a bite out of Norah’s breasticle. Norah is not at all pleased with these developments and resolves the issue by putting a pistol in her husband’s temple and then into her mouth leaving Frankenbaby to fend for itself upstairs. Later when Violet shows Viv a pic of the happy couple Viv realizes that she’s been seeing ghosts for the first time. American Horror Story is back on Thanksgiving Eve and Ryan and Brad are promising to reveal the identity of the man in the rubber suit. I have my theories but honestly it could be anyone, even someone we haven’t met yet…although I doubt that.

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REVIEW: Glee “Mash-off”

November 16, 2011 By 2 Comments

Fall means many things. It means rain in Atlanta, Christmas trees are going up at Wal-Mart and Glee is smushing perfectly good songs together into weird and ill-placed mash ups. Season Three has been no picnic. Tonally it is all over the place and Sue sylvester is wearing on my nerves. And while I am in favor of any storyline that involves Puck (Mark Salling) being sexy I don’t see where this Bermuda Triangle of fail concerning Puck, Shelby and Quinn with poor Baby Beth stuck in the middle is headed. Won’t someone think of the children?

“Mash-off” pits the rival glee clubs against one another in a friendly sing-off that Schue (Matthew Morrison) and Shelby (Idina Menzel) hope will restore the peace. But this little project is anything but friendly. The contest hasn’t even begun before Santana (Naya Rivera) starts hurling insults at Finn (Cory Monteith). Her motives are not entirely clear here and frankly she’s acting like a crazy person. I think the intent was to trash talk New Directions until they ran away whimpering but hurling fat jokes at someone who is neither fat nor has any body issues to begin with is just stupid. Even the other Troubletones thought it was lame. Who are those other girls anyway? Do they have names? Finn reacts as you would expect and hurls a few lame insults back at her that fall pretty flat. Santana is quick to remind us that her childhood was an experiment in neglect and terror and his insults can’t harm her. His next idea is even more confusing. Dodge ball? Really? Violence is always the answer when singing doesn’t work right?

The dodge ball match was a slaughter with the TroubleTones coming out on top, and ending in an all out assault on poor Rory (Damian McGinty) who ends up bloodied and whimpering on the gym floor. Imagine the stories he will tell his friends back home after his time in America is over. It is a horrible activity for school that I had blocked from my memory because I was never very good at it. When you are over six foot tall in the 9th grade you end up with a lot of exposed skin for the red ball to connect with but this isn’t about me. The spectacle gives Kurt (Chris Colfer) and idea for a worthy cause to base his campaign for senior class president on so I guess some good came out of it.

This race for president is perplexing to me. Shouldn’t this issue have been resolved like the first month of school and not a week before the holiday break? And who is that weird guy with the epic mullet? He gives me nightmares and I hope he vanishes into the sea of letter-jacket wearing extras soon. Rachel (Lea Michele) surprised no one but Kurt by dropping out of the race after she has a moment of clarity while discussing college with Shelby and thus begins the transition from bitchy Rachel to adorable Rachel for the second half of the season. Kurt has this president thing in the bag.

Let’s not forget the race for Congress between Sue (Jane Lynch) and Burt Hummel (Mike O’Malley) that serves no purpose other than providing a nice clean exit strategy for Burt and Carol at the end of this season. I realize Glee doesn’t exactly operate on any realm of reality but this subplot isn’t worthy of Saved By The Bell much less a flashy network show like Glee. Let’s hope it is resolved before the Christmas break. I don’t want to spend 2012 watching Sue and Burt debate anything. Mr. Belding for Congress!

Back to the angry lesbian. Teenagers are evil spiteful basement dwellers so when Finn called Santana out publicly for not coming out I wasn’t surprised. That doesn’t mean I agree with it. Outing someone is never cool and I hope that they make that point clearly and not send the message that it is a valid weapon in the war we call high school. Finn certainly seemed clueless about the impact of his statement and I can’t really hate on Santana for slapping him. I can’t really hate on Finn either because he doesn’t have a spiteful bone in his body. It was a mistake and one that will have repercussions. Kudos for Mr Schue, Burt and Sue coming to her aid when the mysterious other candidate uses the info against Sue in a campaign ad. Compassionate Sue always comes out of left field and surprises me. I wish she’d hang around more.

Also getting called out this week was Quinn (Dianna Agron) who is only slightly less evil and vindictive than Santana. I’m glad Puck came clean to Shelby about their plot to take back Baby Beth even if his motives were a bit creepy. This is another subplot that needs to be wrapped up post haste. Glee seems to be on a mission to make us hate all the girls at once this year. The only one not being horrible is Brittany (Heather Morris) but I’m sure I can find some reason to get mad at her if I think about it long enough.

The music was actually pretty good this week which is a nice change. I wasn’t nuts about Puck’s Van Halen tribute “Hot For Teacher” and I didn’t like Schue and Shelby’s “You and I” mash up until the second listen. As a child of the 80s I was really diggin the Pat Benatar/Blondie “Hit Me With Your Best Shot/One Way Or Another” and Hall and Oates “I Can’t Go For That/Dreams“. Who doesn’t love Hall & Oates? And who doesn’t love Puck, Finn, Artie and Rory with pornstache? The double dose of Adele at the end with “Rumor Has It/Someone Like You” was well done and expected given that you can’t turn around these days without Adele providing the soundtrack. I did think the transition from Santana running from Sue’s office in tears immediately to the stage to sing was a bit weird. Someone needs to have a chat with the editor. And would someone PLEASE give Blaine some pants that fit! I am tired of looking at his ankles.

Glee is on break for Turkey Day and won’t be back for two weeks. But when it does return we have a fine, fresh fierce Katy Perry cover to look forward to, and you’ll like it.

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REVIEW: The Walking Dead “Chupacabra”

November 16, 2011 By 2 Comments

Is it just me or is The Walking Dead shuffling along at a drooling, brain-munching pace this season? After a great start the show seems to have stalled on I-20 with the rest of those cars and now they are too busy arguing and being pregnant and sexing it up to care about silly things like excitement and tension. And imagine my disappointment when the episode titled “Chupacabra” contained no chupacabra at ALL! Talk about a bait and switch!

Last week the only plot development of note was that Glenn (Steven Yeun) got some hot farmer’s daughter action while fetching supplies in town and Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) found out she is great-with-child and I can only assume that she’s not 100% certain whether Shane (Jon Bernthal) or Rick (Andrew Lincoln) is the father. This week started out with an awesome flashback including some kickass shots of downtown Atlanta being napalmed into oblivion but ended up being all about Daryl (Norman Reedus) and his misadventures while searching for the still missing but most certainly still alive Sophia. After spotting her doll in the creek he takes a tumble and ends up with an arrow through his spleen which leads to a hallucinatory conversation with his brother Merle during which he gets told how things are gonna be. When he does finally climb back up the cliff and stumble back to the farm he is mistaken for a walker and almost gets his head blown off by Andrea (Laurie Holden) who suddenly thinks she’s Red Sonja or something.

Daryl is turning out to be one of the more interesting characters on the show. His inner conflict between the man he was and the man he wants to be bubbled to the surface a bit this week and I think Carol was the one who helped him resolve it, for the time being. Shane also revealed a bit more of the asshole he really is which I understand is more in line with his character from the graphic novels. I still wonder why Lori asked him to stay.

The situation on the farm hasn’t changed much. Carol suggests to Lori that they cook dinner for their kind host family which doesn’t sit well with Herschel who just wants them all gone. At first I thought he was trying to protect their little slice of heaven from outlanders but when Glenn heads to the barn for some more farm girl nookie and finds a herd of groaning walkers trapped inside I suspect there is more going on that we know about. I hope so because this Little Zombie on the Prairie business is getting boring quick.

The Walking Dead returns after Thanksgiving and then shuffles off into the Georgia woods until 2012.

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REVIEW: Desperate Housewives “Suspicion Song”

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Despite some mostly predictably plot developments “Suspicion Song” was a solid hour of drama on Desperate Housewives. Again I must apologize for skipping a week with these reviews. I had my own desperate drama to deal with in the form of way too much crap going on at work.

The action kicked off immediately this week with Bree (Marcia Cross) waking up to the sounds of an intruder in her house. Bree is a smart girl though and immediately calls the cops, gives the wrong address (4355 instead of 4354) and rushes downstairs with a firearm where she finds Chuck (Jonathan Cake) lurking around her foyer. The creepy cop claimed he responded to her 911 call but I’m not convinced it wasn’t him snooping for clues now that he is hot on the trail of Gabby’s missing stepfather.

Lynette gets a surprise when flowers arrive from Tom (Doug Savant) for their anniversary and everyone but her realizes they were sent because of a standing order at the florist and not because Tom wants to reconcile. After a conversation when a potential design client she decides to perm her hair, put on a slinky dress, steal a key to his apartment and head over there. Of course she ends up catching Tom and Dana pre-coitus and of course ends up embarrassing herself and her reaction was heartbreaking. You could see the slow transition in her face as she accepted her marriage was over. Well played Felicity Huffman!

I have to say Susan (Teri Hatcher) surprised me this week. After weeks of trying to get Andre Zeller’s approval in art class she has finally had enough, so when he brings in a prestigious and short gallery owner Felix Bergman (Leslie Jordan) she is less than impressed. That is until he heaps praise on her work and insists it be shown in his gallery.

Felix – “You’re like a sexy suburban Georgia O’Keeffe without all those pesky vaginas.”

Felix’s other memorable quote “I smell fear and mediocrity” was an obvious nod to his character on Will & Grace and that’s okay. I love Leslie Jordan to pieces. If you haven’t seen his one man show My Trip Down the Pink Carpet or the movie Sordid Lives rent them both immediately.

Given that Susan’s artistic expressions involve detailed images of the crime she and her friends committed they obviously cannot be displayed so naturally they end up on the wall in the gallery thanks to an intervention from Zeller who thinks it high time Susan had “greatest thrust upon her”. I think this may be the first time that the hurricane of fail that surrounds Susan wasn’t directly Susan’s fault. Granted, she did paint the darn things which are as Bree puts it “an artistic confession” but she did forbid Zeller to display then. And it was Zeller who gave them to Bergman without Susan’s approval, which is something Susan would have done if the roles were reversed actually, so maybe this was Susan’s fault after all.

 

The snobbish art community of Fairview goes nuts for the paintings of course but no one is as impressed as Chuck who is about 14 seconds away from putting all the pieces of this puzzle together. I loved when Bree got all up in his face and told him to charge her with a crime or “get the hell off her street!” Bree is so badass. And am I the only one who would love to have that painting of the four girls burying the body hanging in their living room?

Down at Casa Du Solis (4349 Wisteria Lane) Carlos is still drunk and rocking a bad fro and it is starting to affect his job. Gabby (Eva Longoria) convinces him to take a week off and heads to the office to take care of payroll where she unwittingly gives a very cute but backstabbing contractor named Geoffrey the means to sabotage Carlos by stealing his biggest client. When the news of the real reason Carlos is missing work gets out the client demands to speak with him. Turns out he was an alcoholic too and he convinces Carlos to go to rehab. It wasn’t shown but I’m guessing Geoffrey ends up getting fired. He’ll be okay though. The pretty boys always are.

With no body to prove the crime it is unlikely that Chuck will ever come up with enough evidence to charge any of the girls with anything at all unless someone confesses or someone on Ben’s construction staff fesses up to finding the body. Bree is at her breaking point though as we saw when she took that drink of wine at the end of the hour, so she may end up shooting Chuck and burying him in the woods too! Okay maybe not. He is a cop after all, but I don’t see this ending well for him. As for the girls I think it’s going to take something big to bring them together again. What else could this final season have in store for us?

Desperate Housewives is taking a break for the holidays and won’t be back until December 4.

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