Trailer: Pain & Gain

I've taken a week off, but TV still won't be back for a while. So, in an effort to keep myself from getting rusty, I'm going to start reviewing movie trailers.

I'll begin with Michael Bay's latest... what's the opposite of magnum opus? Anyway, here it is:



What I Think the Movie's About
Pain & Gain appears to tell two stories. The first is an action story about how Mark Wahlberg's tired of being a personal trainer and decides to recruit one of his friends and Dwayne 'The Rock' 'The Scorpion King' Johnson to help him kidnap a rich guy and steal all his stuff.

Based on all the cops and Dwayne's face full of dye pack, I'd say it doesn't go well.

The second is a love story between Mark and Dwayne. The meet at the gym as so many couples do, and the attraction is instant. You can see the intensity of it in their eyes. It gets a little pornographic there at the end when Mark starts jacking it in front of Dwayne, but maybe that's just how their relationship is. "But," you say, "Mark's just pumping iron, he's not masturbating." Oh really? Take a look at this clip, then listen to Dwayne's lines during that scene: "That's it. That's good. It hurts, I know it does. That's it, get it!" Now, I'm no expert, but I think you could probably find some porn with similar dialogue.

It's not all hard love, though. They can still be tender.

Will I See It?
Not based on this trailer. I've watched it a few times, and I'm still not sure what kind of movie Pain & Gain is. Is it action-comedy? Is it straight action? Is it a heavy drama with a little bit of 'splosions and boobs thrown in? I honestly can't tell. There's a brief shot with Ken Jeong in it, so it's probably not a totally serious film, but maybe he's moving into more dramatic roles, or he's just there to provide a counterpoint to how sad and depressing everything else is. Only Michael Bay knows for sure.

Rating a trailer is a tricky business. I'm sure there are plenty of criteria one could use. I'm going to base my ratings on how interested in the film the trailer makes me. While I'm not terribly interested in seeing the movie at this point, I am kinda, sorta interested in finding out what it's actually about.

Fringe 5x10: Anomaly XB-6783746

With the Observer child, Michael, reclaimed, the Fringe team sets about questioning him to see what he knows about Walter's plan and if he knows who Donald is. Unfortunately, he's not very forthcoming. Walter wants to put him in a coma so they can enter his mind like they did with September, or jack him up with LSD and stick a probe into his brain like they presumably did with Olivia and John Scott (but not when William Bell's soul was trapped in Olivia's body because that was in a different timeline). However, he's just a child, and the rest of the team is against experimenting on him.

Old Walter is re-emerging... and is ticked off.

With their questions getting them nowhere, Olivia calls Nina to see if she has some way to help. It's not safe for her to talk, though, so they agree to meet up later. It's a good thing, too, since Windmark and his two newest lieutenants barge into Nina's office 20 minutes after she leaves. The Observers have discovered that the team used a sublimation device to access Bell's storage facility, and they believe someone in Nina's department provided it to them. Their suspicions are confirmed when they use some fancy future technology to read Nina's conversation off the glass in her door.

An LQ7 unit is much better than that exploding record thing Peter had in 'The Road Not Taken' back in season one.

Nina has an old Massive Dynamic lab that might have technology that can help them communicate with Michael. After the invasion, the resistance used it to experiment on captured Observers to figure out how they read minds and to see if the process could be reversed. It didn't quite work, but Nina believes they might be successful with Michael. Meanwhile, Walter slowly continues to regress, referring to the boy as if he's merely an experiment and not a human being.

Well... he's mostly human.

Back at the Ministry of Science, Windmark is slowly interrogating all the people who work in the storage facility where the team got the sublimation device while his goons try to track Nina through her comm device.

Complicating matters, Michael's brain doesn't behave in the same manner as the other Observers, so Nina's machine can't read his thoughts. However, with an adapter for a second person, they might be able to get him to read someone else's thoughts so he'll understand what they want from him. Unfortunately, the gear they need is in the exact warehouse that's currently under investigation.

Their man on the inside, Dr. Hastings, gets busted just as they arrive, so Astrid has to remotely hack the door to get them in. Luckily, the Observers are well-organized, so they find what they need fairly quickly. They also find that Hastings is getting his brain melted by Windmark.

He doesn't look good, but at least no blood vessels have burst in his eyes.

Nina foolishly calls Olivia, and the Loyalists instantly have her location. Olivia tells her she's compromised, so she smashes her phone, but it's too late. A guard tells Windmark her location, and he teleports there immediately.

The Bishop family rushes back as fast as they can, but they hit a checkpoint and have to ditch their vehicle. Peter has a doctorate in hotwiring, so they have a new car relatively quickly, but it's not enough; Windmark gets to Nina long before they do.

The Loyalists search the lab for Michael, but Nina has hidden him too well. Thus, Windmark is forced to uncover his location the old fashioned way: By using advanced technology to psychically interrogate a woman with a robot arm. She won't give him anything, though. Instead, she asks him why Michael worries him so much. He tells her that Michael was a genetic anomaly (specifically, XB-6783746) who was scheduled to be destroyed, but he went missing and the Observers had no idea what happened to him until now.

Windmark continues his interrogation, but rather than giving him useful information, Nina talks smack about how the Observers' mental evolution accidentally made them more animal-like, and thus inferior to regular humans. This makes Windmark as close to angry as an Observer can get, so he has one of his Loyalist guards handcuff her to her chair so he can conduct a more thorough scan. Loyalist guards are idiots, though, and Nina gets his gun. It won't work on the Observers, but that's not what she had in mind.

You can't read a mind that's been torn to shreds by a bullet.

The team arrives shortly thereafter and discovers her body. Walter is distraught at the loss of his old colleague, and when they watch the security footage to see what happened, Olivia cannot bear to watch her surrogate mother die. As grisly as it is, they do learn one important thing from watching it: The Observers left without Michael. After a few moments of searching, Olivia spies some condensation on the inside of a stasis pod, and she finds Michael inside, hidden under the old corpse of an Observer. He, too, weeps at the loss of their ally.

Back at Harvard, they hook Walter and Michael up to the mind-reading machine. It works, and they're able to communicate. When he knows what Walter wants, Michael stands up and goes for a direct connection.

My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts.

Walter sees flashes of his life, mainly involving his family, and especially regarding how he went to the other universe to get Peter and how he managed to save him in the other timeline. It's mostly short flashes and blurs, but one thing is made perfectly clear: Donald is September.

Except with hair.

What I Liked
-Windmark smiles an evil smile when Nina points a gun at him. Seriously, look at how evil it is.

EEEEEVIL!

Most of the emotions he's displayed this season have been incredibly subtle, but he just couldn't contain his amusement this time. Michael Kopsa has really been a fantastic addition to the show.
-When they strap the mind-reading machine to Walter and Michael, it starts to arc with electricity, and it looks really goofy. A reaction like that usually means a device is malfunctioning, although I can see the Massive Dynamic scientists leaving it that way because they thought it was funny.

What I Hated
-Not that it was really a surprise to begin with, but Michael Cerveris' name in the opening credits kinda spoiled the fact that September/Donald would be in this episode. I'm not sure of the union rules or whatever, but they've done it a couple times now, most notably at the end of season four with Leonard Nimoy.

Final Thoughts
The word of the day is SENSE. I think it refers to both Michael's ability as an empath to sense emotions, as well as Nina's discussion with Windmark about how the Observers' lizard-like brains cause them to involuntarily cock their heads to the side so they can better sense peoples' thoughts.

I'm not sure if it's what the producers intended, and I haven't really been paying attention, so they may have done it before, but they left a big, fat Observer language Rosetta stone in the episode. Someone with more time and energy than me can go through and decode it now.

It's not supposed to be one-to-one, but if you look closely, it is. Click to enlarge.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but back in my review of episode six, I successfully predicted Donald's identity. It's not like it was particularly hard to guess, though. Making him a brand new character would've been a bit silly, and there aren't exactly a lot of other recurring characters to choose from. Of course, Walter knows -or at least, knew- something about what happened to September, so it's a little strange that the characters didn't guess that he and Donald were the same person.

Walter's regression to Old Walter is continuing, but I remain unconvinced that it's as bad as he fears. With Peter around, he's not going to become the bitter megalomaniac who had a plan to destroy two universes. Sure, he's a little less empathetic and he a little grumpier, but he still cared when Nina died, even though in this timeline he didn't particularly like her.

This episode made heavy use of the guest actors, and it might have suffered were they not so good in their respective roles. Blair Brown knows her character well after five seasons, and as I mentioned above, Michael Kopsa has made a truly excellent antagonist this season.

That being said, I'm not getting the same rush out of Fringe that I used to. It's still enjoyable, but maybe the fact that it's ending has me a little bummed.

Fringe is off until January, but when it returns for it's final three episodes, we'll finally find out how and why Peter is important.

Hawaii Five-0 3x11: Kahu

They say that in show business, you should never work with children or animals, and this episode shows us all why the first part is true. What's the Hawaiian word for annoying kid? Is there one? I'll bet the Germans have one.

Anyway, Steve takes Catherine to a romantic breakfast at the local drive-thru, and as they're sitting in his truck, some dude tries to carjack them. In broad daylight. In front of perhaps dozens of witnesses.

If you do something that stupid, you deserve an ass-whooping.

While turning in the world's dumbest carjacker at the police station, McGarrett finds the world's most annoying child. Well, maybe second most annoying after Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. The kid's name is Ethan and he's handcuffed to a desk because he broke a station window while trying to get the cops' attention. Apparently his dad didn't come home last night.

And who wouldn't want to come home to this?

Steve and Catherine take the kid to his dad's general store where Steve spies blood on the wall and kicks the door in. Of course, the kid (who he told to stay in the car) rushes out and starts yelling and whining. Now, part of the problem here is the dialogue, because the first things out of the kids' mouth are "Is that my dad's blood?" and "What happened to him?" He's supposed to be 13, not eight, so I think he'd be smart enough to realize that McGarrett's only been in the store for 12 seconds, and he can't do DNA analysis just by looking at something. Apparently not, though.

To get him to shut up, McGarrett gives the kids a shiny new Windows 8 phone with a direct line to Five-0 headquarters. Catherine takes him home to pack a bag while everyone else does kid-free detective work. They find a blood trail out the back of the store and a shotgun with a print on it that leads them to the first guy who didn't do it. His truck is full of blood, he's covered in it himself, and he's carrying a shovel. It doesn't look good for him until it turns out that he was just slow-roasting a pig that he shot without a licence.

A pig that explodes and sprays juice all over Chin.

At the kid's house, Catherine finds a suitcase filled with about $20,000, and at headquarters, Kono tracks down video of someone using the dad's car to drop a gunshot victim of at the ER. The guy didn't make it, and when doing the autopsy, Max finds antifreeze in his blood and ti leaves under his fingernails. Chin knows exactly what's up: The guy was a moonshiner. So, he and Danny head off to the woods to visit his uncle Choi.

Played by George Takei.

Chin's uncle's been moonshining since Chin was in diapers, and he knows all the tricks of the trade. But, he's a purist and won't mix with the bad crowd that cooks their stuff in a radiator. He knows where you can get it, though: Out of the back of the dad's store.

Back at headquarters, Catherine tries to get Ethan to give up any info he has on the dead moonshiner. The kid breaks down crying and I'm not sure if the acting was bad or if he was just supposed to be pretending to cry because it looked so fake. While Cat's out of the room getting the kid a juice, he empties her wallet and takes off.

The team tracks the cell phone Steve gave him, and they wind up at the home of Darrin Hodge, a local low-life. They grab the kid before he can climb the fence, then Steve and Danny go in. Hodge isn't there, but they do find the pig roasting guy. He told Hodge about some secret deliveries the dad was making to a reclusive rich guy, and he figured Hodge had something to do with the dad's disappearance, so he went over to his place to shotgun some info out of him.

Kono traces some of the cash from the suitcase to a bank robbery from five years go. They figure the reclusive dude is the bank robber and they use recent property purchases in the area to find out where he lives. Bad dude's not there, though, just the corpses of Hodge and one of his gang.

The bad guy shows up at Ethan's house where he and Catherine are playing cards. He has the dad as a hostage, but he swaps him for the kid because he's smaller and more annoying. He's looking for the money he paid the dad, but when he finds out it's gone, he gets a little upset. Catherine manages to hide and distract him by setting off the smoke alarm. Then she blind sides him and kicks his ass.

Her finishing move tosses him down the stairs and breaks his neck.

Steve and Danny bust in seconds later to save the day... except it doesn't really need saving. McGarrett offers the kid a job with Five-0 in ten years because apparently being shrill and annoying makes one an excellent cop.

Kamekona gives everyone a free ride on his helicopter as a Christmas gift, and McGarrett puts on a tuxedo to take Catherine to dinner.

Case Closed.

What I Liked
-McGarrett's idea of romantic music is 1980s hair metal. I'm in full agreement with that, and anyone who disagrees is a philistine.
-Steve and Catherine are arguing when they get carjacked, so he holds a finger up to silence the guy so he can continue the discussion.
-Max gets a little testy at Danny when he's giving him the rundown on the dead guy. Masi Oka gives the perfect stone-faced expression. It's hilarious.
-Alex O'Loughlin's accent really slips in one scene. He went super-Aussie, and I burst out laughing when it happened.
-Catherine's fight at the end. Usually, when they have tiny women beat up men it's totally unrealistic. But, the guy she fought was kinda small and tweaked out, so it actually made sense that her superior fighting skills would be able to defeat him.

What I Hated
-The kid. Seriously, he was so bad that I swear he must be somebody's nephew. The writing was at least partly to blame, but he certainly wasn't elevating the material.
-Steve appears out of nowhere to grab the kid after they catch up with him. He's not in the background of the previous shot, then two seconds later he's pulling the kid off a fence. He's a SEAL, not a ninja.

Final Thoughts
I'd like to see more of George Takei's moonshining uncle character. I think every show like this could use a crazy uncle who drops by from time to time.

Whoever thought putting that kid in the episode would be a good idea should be fired. Other than him, the episode was quite serviceable, but he was so bad that he tarnished the whole thing. I don't even want to write about it anymore. The kid was bad, and you should avoid watching this episode if you value your sanity.

HIMYM 8x11 and 8x12: The Final Page

Initially, this episode was actually two separate episodes rather than one 'hour-long spectacular'. But, if the producers want to make two bags of crap into one giant sack of crap, who am I to argue?

The first half was initially called 'The Silence of the Jinx'. Marshall and Barney order the same drink at the same time, and Barney is subsequently jinxed. The gang follows slightly different jinxing rules than most people I know, so Barney can only regain the ability to speak if someone who was present at the jinxing releases him. Normally, grown-ass adults wouldn't care about such things, but the last time Barney ignored a jinx was right before he got hit by the bus at the end of season three. Now the whole gang takes jinxes far too seriously, and since Barney hasn't been jinxed in years, it's time to make him pay by letting Ted talk about Buffalo Nickels.

That's exactly my reaction whenever Ted gets to talk.

Anyway, with the GNB building's opening approaching, Ted sent an invitation to the celebration to his old freshman architecture teacher, Prof. Vinick, who said that Ted's designs sucked and that he'd never be an architect. This, of course, had a profound effect on Ted and he's been obsessed with gaining the man's approval ever since. So, when the RSVP comes back as a 'No' complete with a 'I have no idea who Ted Mosby is' note, he heads back to Wesleyan with Marshall, Lily, and Barney in tow.

They're just there to watch his mental breakdown, though.

When they get there, Ted attends one of Vinick's lectures with the intention of finding a moment to jump in and tell him off. Instead, he finds himself really enjoying the lecture, and at the end he gets his old professor to take a look at his building. Vinick says it's crap and that Ted will never be an architect.

Elsewhere on campus, Marshall and Lily bump into their old acquaintance, Daryl, who's been somewhat obsessed with them ever since they played hacky sack with him once. He's even started a business selling premium hacky sacks.

Hackmigos forever we'll be.

He takes them back to his house to show them something in his dark, windowless basement. They think he's going to murder them, but instead he offers them a cheque for $100,000 for helping him come up with the idea for his very successful business. But, seeing that people he thought were his friends were kinda dicks makes him realize that he doesn't need their validation, and he tears up the cheque.

It feels oh so sweet.

Back in New York, it's employee evaluation time at World Wide News, and Robin gets to fire Patrice. But after a brief discussion, Patrice gets her to admit that she's only firing her because she's with Barney, and that's not right. Patrice is unfired, and collectively, the gang learns that they need to look out for their own happiness and not be so concerned about other people.

On the ride home, Lily and Marshall make a pit stop, and while they're gone, Barney tricks Ted into unjinxing him by showing him an engagement ring. He then immediately jinxes Ted and explains that he's going to ask Patrice to marry him because for the first time in his life he feels settled and happy. Ted gets unjinxed with the provisos that 1) He won't try to talk Barney out of it, 2) He can't tell anybody, and 3) If he breaks either of those rules, Barney gets to hit him in the nuts three times with a wiffleball bat.

This half of the episode ends with Barney jinxing Lily and Marshall, and enjoying a fart and smoke-filled return trip to Manhattan.

The reign of terror is back.

The second half was originally known as 'The Robin' although that pretty much gives away the ending to anyone who knew both the old and new titles. I was hoping I was wrong about it. I thought there was no way they could ever possibly do something so stupid. But they did. Oh, they did.

That comes at the end, though. In the beginning, as an early Christmas gift, Mickey gave Lily and Marshall 24 consecutive hours away from Marvin. In standard sitcom fashion, at first they're ecstatic, then their plans get slightly derailed, then they suffer from extreme separation issues. This despite the fact that the day before they drove to Connecticut without even giving it a second thought.

They're terrible parents.

The meat of the story, however, revolves around Ted. The GNB building is holding its opening night celebration, and since he's single, he asks Robin to come along as his date. However, he feels a bit guilty for not telling her that Barney's proposing to Patrice, so he calls Marshall down to the bar for guidance. Ted thinks Robin should have a chance to go after Barney one last time, but Marshall's Team Tedward and says that he should go after Robin instead.

Robin shows up wearing a slinky red dress, so Ted does the obvious thing and tries to convince her to go after Barney. She doesn't want to, though, and gets Ranjit to drive their limo to the GNB building. Instead, Ted tricks her and surreptitiously has Ranjit take them to the WWN building where Barney's about to propose on the roof. Robin keeps insisting that she doesn't want to go up there, but Ted just won't let up until she goes.

On the roof, she finds not Barney and Patrice, but a bunch of candles and a page from The Playbook entitled "The Robin".

There's a lot written on it, but apparently Barney used a small font so it would all fit on the bottom half of the page.

The Robin consists of sixteen simple steps that outline what Barney's actually been up to over the past six weeks. He really was in love with Robin when he helped her break up with Nick, he meant for her to reject him after they got drunk at the strip club, he enlisted Patrice's help in getting Robin back and wasn't actually dating her, and he's on the roof to propose to Robin, not Patrice.

At first, Robin reacts as any normal woman would. She's incredibly angry that he's been lying to her and manipulating her for weeks, and she's adamant that she won't ever get back together with him. Until she sees that step 16 is a proposal, which she quickly accepts.

They're perfect for each other: They're clearly both insane.

The episode ends with Ted staring out the window of the GNB building while everyone behind him enjoys the party.

What I Liked
-Sandy Rivers' rationale for firing someone is pretty good. If one of my subordinates ever gives me gonorrhea, then I'm damn sure going to fire her.
-Marshall says Daryl's basement is "gimp-storagey". That may be the only time that phrase has ever been used, and I appreciate things like that.
-Bruce Grey gets some work. It's weird how often his character has come back considering how unimportant his character is. Still, he was good on Traders, so it's nice to see him making some of that fat American sitcom money.

What I Hated
-The pit people metaphor.
-They showed more of angry biker chick Lily. They really need to stop that. It's making me sad.

The back of Seth Green's head could probably still pass for 19, though.

-Ted's song about Prof. Vinick. It was short, but stupid.
-Marshall and Lily's lullaby for Marvin. It went on forever and none of it was funny.
-Marshall and Lily kinda freak out without Marvin. They both spend every work day away from home, but for some reason, leaving for twenty seconds makes them both into idiots.
-The Robin.

Final Thoughts
Treating this all as one episode is a little unfair, since 'The Silence of the Jinx' wasn't actually all that bad. It was by no means good, but it certainly wasn't as blatantly offensive as 'The Robin'.

For the last several weeks, Barney has apparently been running a long con. But, far too much of The Robin was left up to luck, and a good portion of it was clearly written post hoc since Step Six is "Check with your doctor about possible broken ribs" after Patrice hugs him too hard in Step Five. So, it wasn't some master manipulation that Barney was running; he was basically just lying to everyone for six weeks. If Robin hadn't rejected him, it wouldn't have worked. If Robin hadn't gone nuts afterwards, it wouldn't have worked. If Ted had kept his mouth shut or Robin had put Barney's happiness ahead of her own, it wouldn't have worked. Heck, if Robin had reacted like any normal woman would have -which she initially did- it wouldn't have worked. Since the writers can make things work out for the best, they can just say 'Hey, look at what a master manipulator Barney is' but entirely too much of his plan was left to chance for it to be believable. What would have happened if Robin hadn't shown up in her underwear that one night? Would he have just played crazy eights with Patrice until 2am?

In fact, the only part that was completely believable was Robin's initial response to reading Barney's final play. They haven't dated in three years. They haven't slept together in over a year, and after that, she rejected him in favour of Dr. Kal Penn who, incidentally, asked her to marry him ten months ago. Then Barney gave up on her so Ted could profess his love without remorse. He was engaged to Quinn less than four months ago, and she just got out of a fairly serious relationship with Nick. I may be wrong here, but agreeing to marry a guy you haven't gone out with in years seems insane. Heck, asking a woman you haven't dated in years to marry you is insane, especially if your previous engagement just recently ended. Barney just split up with his fiancee because she didn't trust him, and now a woman he's been lying to for six weeks is going to marry him? That's nuts.

I've been wondering how they were going to go from where they were to where the flashforward said they needed to be, and now I have my answer: Magic. They just snapped their fingers and Robin and Barney were engaged. No need to go through all the rigmarole of turning them into people who should date each other and then into people who are ready to get engaged when you can just go *poof*?

After writing this review, I went through a few comments on other reviews, and apparently the ending had a lot of emotional resonance for people. Maybe it's because I'm a robot, but I felt nothing. Nothing but contempt for the writers.

I'm assuming that the first episode of the new year will have everyone talking about how insane it is for Barney and Robin to be engaged, which will add a little credibility back to the story, but they just pulled some sixth-season-of-Lost-level BS, and it's going to take a lot to dig the show out of that hole.

Fringe 5x09: Black Blotter

A noise awakens Astrid in the middle of the night. At first she thinks it's Walter, but upon further investigation she discovers that the radio they picked up in the pocket universe is receiving a signal.

Also, Walter is awake and he's tripping balls.

Astrid summons Olivia and Peter and they discuss the transmission while Walter has visions of a green fairy and his old lab assistant, Carla Warren. Peter tries to enlist Walter's help in decoding the signal, but he's enjoying a particularly good batch of black blotter acid he hid in the storeroom, and he's not going to be much help.

But, why did he drop acid in the first place? He needs Nina to remove the parts of his brain that Simon and Etta put back in because Old Walter has been slowly taking over. However, Nina won't remove the pieces until the plan is complete, and in order to remember the plan, Walter needs to expand his mind.

If it gets any bigger, they're going to have to clear some space in the lab.

While Walter's head inflates, Olivia figures that they don't actually need to decode the signal they're receiving, they just need to trace it back to its origin. To that end, they summon Anil and he brings them a device they can use to track the transmission.

Olivia and Peter follow the signal and it leads them to a forest in Connecticut. The trip allows them to spend some quality time together and talk. Peter's terribly embarrassed by his actions; he abandoned her again, which is exactly the thing he said he wouldn't do. He apologizes and tells her he's lucky to have her. To show him that everything is going to be all right between them, Olivia pulls him in and kisses her husband for the first time in 20 years.

Forgiveness is divine.

And yes, I definitively say 'husband' now. While I was on the fence before, Peter is once again wearing his ring on his hand, rather than around his neck. Olivia's not wearing hers, but I assume she wasn't carrying it when she ambered herself.

Anyway, their make out session is cut short when Olivia opens her eyes and sees the source of the transmission behind Peter. It's an old, dilapidated RV. Surrounding it are the 15-year-old corpses of two Observers and a Loyalist, and inside is the corpse of a Mr. Sam Weiss.

I guess you can't really trust a dead man.

Unfortunately, in this timeline, Walter's never heard of Sam Weiss. And, to make matters worse, Sam's RV isn't the source of the transmission, either; it's just a repeater. Peter recalibrates the tracking device to track the true source, but it's going to be a little while before they can find it.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Carla is tormenting Walter. Something is hidden somewhere, but she won't tell him what or where it is. Further, she tries to convince him that a man of his genius and vision should be using his stature to curry favour with the Observers. At first he's able to resist her -with a little help from a hallucination of young Nina- but, one should never underestimate the power of a pretty blonde woman. Even an imaginary one.

For a woman who's been dead for 50 years, she looks surprisingly good.

With some direction from Carla, Walter discovers a notebook hidden under the floor. A green fairy tries to stop him from opening it, but he swats her away. Inside the book are all his old crazy ideas from before he had Belly cut out parts of his brain, including his universe portal and an engine that runs on potatoes. He immediately hops in a cab and heads to the Observer headquarters in Manhattan. The old Walter has briefly taken over, but a moment of discussion with Carla makes him realize his mistake and he tries to figure out a way to escape without being seen. But, it's too late: An Observer approaches the taxi and opens the door.

This could be the end!

It's not an Observer, though. It's not even a cab. Walter hallucinated the whole thing. He's really at a marina with Astrid, Olivia, and Peter. They've tracked the signal to an island, and they need to rent a boat. Just as they're about to board, a patrol boat full of Loyalists drives up and asks for their papers. A brief firefight ensues, which ends with five dead Loyalists.

On the island, they find a house that's occupied by a very angry man with a gun... and his wife... and the Observer child. The man's willing to give up the boy, but when Donald left him there, he told them that whoever came to claim the kid would know the password. Walter knows what it is, but first he needs to take a Python-inspired trip into his subconscious to dig it out.

I understand the frog, the seahorse and the cow, but what's up with the dog?

The password recovered, the team heads inside to hear just how the boy came to live with angry man and his wife. They were early members of the resistance, and eight months after the invasion, Donald came to them and dropped the kid off, along with the transmitter that's been broadcasting the signal. They've been turning it on every five days for twenty years, and during that time, the child hasn't aged a day. His temporary parents say their goodbyes and the boy they call Michael becomes the latest member of Team Fringe.

Back at the lab, Olivia gets maternal and gives Michael some cocoa. He remembers her, even though this version of Olivia has never actually met him.

Elsewhere, Walter relives the events that led to him creating the first wormhole between universes. He remembers who he was then, and all the damage he caused to his family and to the world, and he resolves to do what he can to keep from becoming that man again. To that end, he takes the notebook, douses it with lighter fluid and sets it aflame. But as the fire burns, Carla appears and reveals to him the truth: There is no notebook. And, even if there were, it wouldn't matter. Now that Walter remembers all the things he's capable of, there's almost nothing that can stop the old Walter from returning.

Grumpy old man.

What I Liked
-Peter tells Olivia that he doesn't deserve her, and she gives him a little 'Oh, stop' swat in the chest. It's cute.

What I Hated
-The shootout with the Loyalists. It seemed sort of arbitrary and tacked on, as if they wanted to include an action scene for some reason. Perhaps they wanted to show that the world is still a dangerous place and the team could be captured at any moment. But, the bad guys go down so fast that it's hardly indicative of any kind of danger. The entire firefight lasts a grand total of 30 seconds; they don't even take the time to pitch the dead bodies into the water. Also, I haven't been paying really close attention to the actors and stunt guys playing the Loyalists, but I swear they've killed a few of these guys before. Although, I have to say that Walter's cry of "Why are these mice shooting at us?" made me chuckle.

Final Thoughts
The word of the day is GUILT. Most of it comes from Walter. He feels guilty for all the things he did to get Peter back, for what happened to Carla, and for being unable to mourn her loss at the time. But Peter has a little guilt floating around in his head as well. However, unlike his father, he actually has the opportunity to apologize to the people he's wronged; everyone Walter needs to apologize to is dead, including two Peters.

This episode was mainly about Walter's drug trip and consequent introspection, and his fight to keep himself from becoming old Walter again. I don't really buy Carla's assertion that he was the evil Walter longer than he was the good Walter, though. He developed the technology to move between universes in the early 1980s, then was committed around 1990. But, before that he spent most of the 1960s and 70s expanding his mind with Belly. The Walter who wore a purple tuxedo to his wedding and woke up in bed with Yoko has far more in common with the Walter of today than the one who tore the universe a new a-hole for taking away his son does. Peter's head is in the right place now, so he should be able to keep his father from turning completely evil.

I'm not convinced that he should, though. They're in a fight to save the world from invaders from the future; a man who can open portals to other universes and transport matter through time and space is a powerful ally. Nina may or may not recognize that, but I would expect pushback from Astrid at the very least if Peter and Olivia decide to unleash the monster.

This is a hard one to rate. It didn't feature any particularly powerful or complex acting, and since it was a drug episode, it was sort of weird by design. That being said, it was by no means bad or offensive, and it had some memorable bits.

TBBT 6x11: The Santa Simulation

It's Christmas, and as such, Leonard has decided it's time for a Christmas-themed Dungeons & Dragons game. Men only. For some reason, this annoys the ladies, so they put on sexy outfits and head out drinking with Raj, who was killed when a cannon blew his face off.

If the ladies were single, the words 'blew', 'face', and 'off' would also come up in the course of their evening.

With Raj and the ladies gone, the game continues. Santa's been kidnapped by ogres and the guys are on a quest to save Christmas. Sheldon's not terribly enthused because he hates Christmas. However, he comes from a family of devout Christians, so he knows all the Christmas songs and traditions and is thus able to defeat Leonard's array of Christmas-themed traps.

Including using jingle bells to open a drawbridge.

Unfortunately, when they finally reach the ogres' dungeon, Sheldon paralyzes Stuart and Howard before they can save Santa. It seems that when he was five, Sheldon visited Santa at the mall and asked him to bring his grandfather -the only person who encouraged him to study science- back to life. Instead, he got Lincoln logs. Now, he has a deep hatred for jolly old St. Nick. He gives him a good, swift kick in the gut and then leaves him behind to be devoured by ogres.

Later, Santa kills him with a cannon.

Out at the bar, Raj buys the girls champagne, and in return they try to get him laid. When you buy a girl a drink at a bar, usually she's the one who sleeps with you, but I've been away from the bar scene for a while, so perhaps the game has changed.

At any rate, the woman the girls pick for him gives him a fake email address, so a defeated Raj laments his predilection for chasing women who are unavailable to him; as with his crushes on Penny and Bernadette. Amy didn't know about that, and when Raj says he never had the same feelings about her, she gets a little bummed.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww.

However, Raj is empathetic. When he was a young man, none of the ladies wanted him, either. They exchange stories of their loneliness, which includes a lady version of 'The Stranger'. He tells Amy that she's lovely and wonderful, and that's enough for her, so they go home.

What I Liked
-Raj wants to shoot his magic all over a monster's ass. It may be low-brow, but I'm a big fan of double entendre jokes like that.

I wonder if he wants Stuart to watch.

-Amy wants someone to get some action at the bar. She doesn't care if its her, the other girls, or Raj. That's my kind of lady.
-Howard motorboats the large chest. If you play D&D with a bunch of pervs, I assume something like that happens fairly regularly.
-The key to disabling one of Leonard's traps is to sing Good King Wenceslas, so Sheldon sings all five verses. If you're going to make the solution to a puzzle annoying, you need to be prepared for it to backfire.

What I Hated
-Leonard kills Raj two minutes into the adventure. I'm not a D&D guy, but what little I know about the game leads me to believe that if you're killing off the players before they've even had the chance to roll some dice, then you probably shouldn't be the Dungeon Master.
-Sheldon screws up the words to Good King Wenceslas. They only had Jim Parsons sing one and a half verses. They could've at least given him the correct lyrics.
-The girls give up on getting Raj a lady really easily. He got turned down once and they just bailed. They didn't even stick around until last call to try to pick up a straggler.

Final Thoughts
This episode gave us a bit of insight into why Sheldon is the way he is. He lost his only source of encouragement when he was five years old, and he was betrayed by Santa at the same time. Most people might be able to get over that, but since he has an eidetic memory, Sheldon can never forget that betrayal. Leaving Santa to be eaten by ogres was still a bit harsh, though.

We got a little insight into Amy as well. She just wants to be loved and to have hot, sweaty sex in a bathroom stall. That doesn't seem terribly unreasonable.

I have a bit of a problem with the way the girls were written this week. Women don't have to be crazy, and they don't have to define themselves by their relationships with their husbands/boyfriends. They got dressed all sexily and went out to a bar in order to spite their men for not spending every possible minute with them. At least part of the episode was written by a woman, so maybe she could've spoken up and said something like 'Hey guys, maybe we can make the girls a little less crazy. Maybe.'

Nevertheless, this episode had some fun bits, and Stuart was delightfully melancholy.