Wednesday, February 27, 2013

TBBT 6x17: The Monster Isolation


Raj went on a date with Kate Micucci last week. It did not go well. They went to get coffee, and while he waited at a table, she went to the bathroom and jumped out the window. When he found out she was gone, he became despondent, locked himself in his apartment and stopped answering his phone. So, his friends go to check up on him.

He's not in good shape.
After being humiliated by yet another woman, Raj has decided to retreat into seclusion. The guys don't think he can live like that forever, but he shows them that, thanks to Amazon, he can have anything he wants delivered, including live lobsters. They try to cheer him up, but it's not happening and he shuts himself in his room. With nothing else to do, his friends go out for Surf & Turf.

Elsewhere, Penny helps Sheldon with his latest episode of 'Sheldon Cooper Presents: Fun with Flags'. She's there to demonstrate that the show isn't just for flag aficionados, but also for flag virgins. While they work, she notices that Sheldon's a bit wooden and his delivery is a tad robotic. She uses her training as an actress to show him how to open up his body and invite the audience in.

He takes her a bit too literally.
Later, via video chat from her nicotine-addicted monkey study lab, Amy tells Sheldon that he should thank Penny for all her help. Since he tries his best to conform to social mores, he goes across the hall right away and tells her. Emboldened by his praise, she invites him to a performance her acting class is giving, but that sounds terrible, so he says no. Amy explains that was rude and that he should apologize. Slightly frustrated, he goes back across the hall and says he's sorry. He still doesn't want to go, but he will if it'll make her happy. She's still a bit miffed and doesn't want him to go unless he wants to, but they get bogged down in semantics and eventually she just orders him to go.

She's not sure how or why it worked, though.
That evening, at the comic book shop, the guys are browsing the stacks when Kate walks in. Howard tells her how devastated Raj is, but all she can do is apologize and ask him to give him her number. He takes it to him, but Raj is a proud man, and he has decided to renounce all worldly pleasures and live the life of a monk. He returns the number and tells Howard to take it away so he won't be tempted to stray from his true path: The study of the universe.

Like many monks before him, he strays rather quickly.

He calls Kate and she comes to his apartment to apologize for ditching him. When he asks her why she did it, she explains that she has difficulty being around people she doesn't know. She's a broken person and she doesn't think he should be around her. He's broken too, though, so he convinces her to go out on a date with him.

What I Liked
-Sheldon did an accurate, but wildly racist portrayal of George Washington Carver that will never see the light of day. The man's always trying to keep a physicist down.
-Flags taught Sheldon to go where the wind takes him... as long as he remains firmly attached to a rigid pole. I'm not sure if that's a gay joke or not.
-Raj wins Kate over by explaining that he has diagnosable psychological problems. That works on more women than you'd think.

What I Hated
-Penny's performance in A Streetcar Named Desire. Amy, Sheldon, and Leonard all fawn over how good she is, but her acting is just awful.
Her co-star played the silent, brooding guy pretty well, though.

Final Thoughts
They're finally admitting that the guys work at CalTech rather than a random university in California. I'm not sure what prompted the change, but it's a bit odd that it's come up in consecutive episodes after being ignored for six and a half seasons.

Kate Micucci's character still doesn't have an on-screen name. They call her 'Lucy' in the credits, but until someone actually says her name out loud, I shall refer to her as Kate. If her character lasts more than a few episodes, maybe it'll become a running gag that no one ever says her name.

As for their relationship, I have no idea how Raj and Kate will work as a couple. He has to be drunk to even speak to her, and she's apparently a super-awkward person. Having them sit around and not talk to each other might work for a single episode, but after that it'll get old really fast. I think at this point Raj needs to be able to talk to women without being drunk. Of course, if they do that then he'll lose one of his major character traits. They get around it pretty well by just having him hold random beers, but there are situations where it just wouldn't make sense or would be downright silly. Perhaps Kate can be the one who gets him to come out of his shell. Otherwise it's going to be really hard for them to interact in any meaningful way.

At any rate, this was an okay episode. It was more of a set-up for the future than anything else, I think.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Community 4x03: Conventions of Space and Time


It's time for the big, annual Inspector Spacetime convention, and Troy has convinced Abed to let Britta tag along. However, when Abed hears them watching an episode in bed together, Britta has to bail out the window because he's a fragile creature and Troy hasn't told him they're sleeping together yet.

It's refreshing to see this. Usually it's the guy who has to go out the window.

Abed's sly to their tricks, though. He's been pretending he didn't know about the secret sexings because part of the cover-up involves Britta swinging around the outside of the building and "dropping by" with doughnuts. And Abed loves free doughnuts.

Before they leave, Abed and Jeff stop by the study room, where they find Pierce sitting alone in the dark. He's upset that they didn't invite him to the convention, but they didn't invite Shirley, either, and Jeff and Annie are going skiing instead of to the con, so he's satisfied that they're not purposely excluding him.

They're just leaving him alone in a dark room.

When they get to the InspectiCon, things immediately start going wrong. An avalanche shuts down the ski slopes; Britta expresses affection for Minerva, the crappy female inspector; Jeff bears a striking resemblance to an Inspector Spacetime super-villain; and Abed's internet friend, Toby, soaks up all his time and attention, and leaves Troy feeling left out. To top it all off, Pierce grabs Shirley, and the two of them crash the convention.

The episode then devolves into three separate stories:

Mr. and Mrs. Winger
Now that the slopes are closed, Jeff wants to bail and go home, but Annie wants to stick around and enjoy the convention, so she goes up to her room to pout, while he goes down to the bar. Since he booked their rooms under his name, when Annie picks up the phone to call for room service, the guy on the other end of the line calls her "Mrs. Winger." She's always dreamed of being happily married to a handsome lawyer, so she keeps up the charade and orders food, drink and other accoutrements for herself and her 'husband'.

Meanwhile, down in the lobby, Jeff is mistaken for Inspector Spacetime actor Nigel Cuthbertson by a tall brunette played by everyone's favourite toaster:
I liked her better as a blonde.

Jeff's happy to hang out with an attractive, relatively normal person, so he pretends to be Nigel for a while, then starts 'practicing his American accent' so he can speak normally. The two start to really hit it off, which becomes a concern for the hotel staff because Annie is upstairs and she really wants to work on their marriage. So, Jeff's ruse is exposed, and he gets two drinks thrown in his face by angry women.

When he goes upstairs to find Annie, he sees all the trouble she's gone to to make it look like they're a married couple, and he gets a little concerned. Later, he tracks her down in the lobby, and they talk about what happened. She was just bummed that he didn't want to hang out together; sure, they're not married, but they are friends, so it wouldn't be too terrible to spend some time alone. Even though he still thinks the convention's lame, he agrees and offers to hang out with her and buy her a drink.

She makes him order her an appletini.

The Focus Group
Immediately after they enter the convention, Shirley and Pierce are snatched up by a couple of suits who are running a focus group. They're trying to bring a version of Inspector Spacetime to the US, and as an old, rich, white man and a middle-aged black woman, the two elder members of the study group can speak for a lot of demographics.

After they watch the pilot, Pierce is a bit confused, and he has a lot of notes for the producers. They listen intently to what he has to say, which greatly concerns Shirley. She tries her best to suggest that they keep the focus on smart, complicated stories, but they're more interested in adding in Pierce's suggestion: a leggy blonde with a tennis racket.

The Couples
With Troy and Britta spending so much time together, Abed needed a new friend, and that friend is Inspector Spacetime uber-fan, Toby. They get along so well that they finish each other's sentences, and barely need to speak at all. When they take off in the middle of lunch, Troy starts to rationalize things by saying it's good for Abed to branch out. But, Britta cuts him off: He's not crazy. That dude really is trying to steal his boyfriend.

He tries to make nice, but Toby pretends to forget his name, and Troy is forced to have a crazy freak out. That nearly confirms the split as Britta tries to become Troy's new buddy, and Toby plans to spirit Abed away to London with him. However, yet another ruse is exposed when Abed figures out that Toby's friend who couldn't make it to the con doesn't really exist. Toby's mad, though, and he seals Abed in a phone box until Stockholm Syndrome starts to set in.

Which shouldn't take very long.

Abed's initially pretty freaked out, but he quickly realizes that he has nothing to worry about: Troy will find him. And he's right. A few minutes later, Troy leaves his girlfriend to find his true love, and frees him from his limey imprisonment. Toby is defeated, Troy and Abed get their commemorative gluon photo taken, and everyone is happy.

They're bonded for life.

With everything resolved, the gang reconvenes on the convention floor. Abed apologizes for excluding Shirley and Pierce, Britta gets into the spirit of the convention a little, and Jeff even decides to give the nerds a little thrill.

"Bow before Thoraxis!"

What I Liked
-Pierce's response when he and Shirley get grabbed by the focus group guys is pretty good. Chevy Chase seems to be able to play the befuddled old man role really well. I wonder why that is.
-Abed Wingers Toby. That's a weird sentence, but it's what happened.
-The US version of Inspector Spacetime starring Luke Perry and Jennie Garth.
A little less lens flare and I'd watch it.
-This week's best line: "You know in Ancient Greece it was considered an honour to invite a person my age to a space convention?!" -Pierce

What I Hated
-Abed and Jeff go to the study room, ostensibly to pick up Jeff's sunglasses. But, they don't actually get them. They just turn the light on, talk to Pierce, then leave. I know it was an expository scene, but they could've at least had Joel grab some sunglasses off a shelf or something.
-A bunch of nerds chase Britta around the convention with cameras and binoculars. See, it's funny because they've never seen a real woman before. Even though there are dozens of them walking around in skimpy costumes.
Like that one on the right there with the pyramid hat and no pants.

Final Thoughts
Matt Lucas was wasted a bit as Toby. I haven't seen a lot of him outside of Little Britain, but he seems to be better when he can ham it up a bit, and Toby was played just a little too straight.

I'm really not sure what they're doing with Jeff and Annie. They're not a couple, but they were going to go on a ski trip together, and Annie's room seemed entirely too large for one person. They were all smiles and giggles when they were, however, she wasn't terribly impressed or happy when he tore his shirt off. It's a very strange dynamic.

This was the funniest episode so far this season, but again it was a little disjointed. Everyone had something to do, but they weren't doing most of it together, so there wasn't a lot of room for character development.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Castle 5x15: Target


A guy empties his mag into a white van moments before it hits him so hard he flies right out of his shoes. When the cops ID him as a Saudi national and find his expensive, customized handgun, Esposito thinks he might have been a terrorist. When they search his apartment they find pricey gym equipment, state of the art surveillance gear, and a big closet full of guns.

Which, for some reason, he's had professionally lit.
The guns point to terrorism, but the surveillance gear doesn't. When they check it out, the techs find out he was using it to monitor an active bug in the apartment of a Columbia student named Sara El-Masri. Ryan gets some traffic camera footage of the van and it shows Sara jumping out and trying to flee before a guy grabs her and pulls her back in. She's been kidnapped, and the dead guy died trying to save her.

When they call in Sara's parents, they find out that her dad is a super-rich Egyptian dude who hired the dead dude to look after his daughter. He was friendly with the old regime back in Egypt and there are a few people out there who aren't terribly happy with him. Since it's a kidnapping, the Cap'n calls in the FBI and they take the lead on the case.

Through Sara's roommate, they find out she attended a "science thing" the night before. A quick search of local science things leads them to the Beaumont Hotel where the concierge recognizes Sara and remembers that she was chatting with a pretty redhead with pale skin. While that could be any number of young ladies of Irish descent, Castle checks out the guest list and it was, indeed, Alexis. He gives her a call to see if she knows anything, but he hears her ringtone coming from the Hotel's lost and found box.

That can't be good.
The FBI dude checks out the GPS on Alexis phone and finds out that it was left outside the Hotel shortly after the science thing ended, and since no one has seen or heard from her since, they're pretty sure she was taken, too. They still think the target was Sara, but since Alexis was with her at the time, it was easier to take her than to leave her.

Fortunately, they have a few leads. The FBI matches a screen grab from the traffic cam footage to a mid-level drug smuggler, Esposito and Ryan use the traffic camera network to trace the van to a neighbourhood in Queens, and Castle discovers that the kidnappers knew Sara would be at the science thing by watching Alexis' video blog.

When they find the van, the floor is covered in blood and Castle rightly freaks the hell out. Lanie performs a quick test and determines that the blood belongs to neither Alexis nor Sara. There's a blood trail leading away from the van, so Beckett thinks the girls were transferred to another vehicle; the parents are still upset, but relieved that their daughters are probably still alive.

They're fine. They were just taking a nap.

Elsewhere, Alexis and Sara awaken in a dimly-lit cell. There's an en suite bathroom filled with fresh clothes and towels, and a cot with pillows and blankets. They're going to be there for a while, but at least they're still have their clothes on, so whoever has them wants them alive and unspoiled.

Back at the precinct, the techs discover that the van was heavily modified to turn it from a slow, lumbering delivery vehicle to a high-performance getaway car. They search their database and find a suspect with the appropriate MO and blood type, and it just so happens that his sister is a nurse who called in sick for her shift.

Pausing just long enough to get a warrant, the team barges through the door and finds the guy wounded, but patched up, on the sister's bed. Beckett interrogates him, but he's not talking. Even the threat of going down for everything and spending upwards of a century in prison isn't enough to loosen his tongue. So, Castle goes in for a little quality time.
And he's not as patient as Kate.

After some persuasion, the driver tells them that the girls were transferred to another vehicle and taken to a farm upstate. Much like everyone's childhood pets. The FBI are on the scene with a tactical team before Castle and Beckett even get back to the precinct. When they break down the door of the farmhouse, they find the girls' jackets, the tortured corpse of the other kidnapper, and a wireless webcam with an untraceable IP address. Now they're out of leads and they have no idea what to do.

Luckily, Alexis had a bit of an unorthodox upbringing and her father taught her to pick locks when she was ten. It takes her a while, but with the help of Sara's hairpins, she manages to get the door open. They escape into what looks like an empty office building and split up to double their chances. Alexis quickly finds an unattended cell phone and tries to call 911, but it doesn't go through, so she tries the next best thing.

This escape attempt is brought to you by Microsoft. That's right, they own Skype.

She gets through to her dad and the FBI guys in his apartment start tracing the call. They use their fancy TV tracing equipment, which is actually less effective than real tracing software, so the kidnappers notice Alexis is gone and she has to bail before the good guys know where she is, but she has the presence of mind to leave the phone on so they can keep tracing. She runs up an emergency staircase, then freaks out when she sees the view from the roof.

How about a little fire, Scarecrow?

Before she recovers enough to scream for help, one of the kidnappers grabs her from behind, and we'll see you next week, thankyougoodnight!

What I Liked
-After the dude gets squashed flat at the beginning of the episode, the show cuts immediately to a shot of pancakes. Not very subtle, but still funny.
-Castle re-enacts the end scene from Se7en when they find the van full of blood. I smell a remake!
-When the guy shoves their food through the door, it makes a loud sound that surprises the girls, so Alexis uses Sara as a human shield. It's what I would do.
I'd probably duck a bit more, though.
-Nathan Fillion makes the best face when Castle resigns himself to the fact that he's going to have to torture the getaway driver. Seriously, aside from what I like to call 'Nathan Fillion's sex face', the man has the best expressions.

What I Hated
-Magic traffic cameras. Apparently they're all over the city, and you can get the video from them instantaneously.
-The getaway driver's sister says she hasn't seen her brother in weeks after the cops barge through her door. He was in the spare bedroom, did she think they wouldn't look there or something? Some criminals are stupid, but they're not that stupid.

Final Thoughts
It's nice that Alexis finally got to go to Paris. She had mono a few episodes back and her mom had to go by herself. However, I question the ability to transport someone across the Atlantic without them knowing it or anyone else finding out. It's not like they let you put college girls in your carry-on. The way I see it, they had to drive to a small airport in northern New York state, fly the girls to a small airport outside Paris, drive to Paris, then unload the girls on what appeared to be a relatively busy street, all without anyone seeing. Seems like a bit much. They probably should've just kept them in the van and driven to Mexico.

Even though the kidnappers were speaking Arabic, I wonder if Alexis was the real target and not Sara. Sure, Castle doesn't have $300 million, but he's still a pretty rich guy, and he has some enemies, too. It's also a good way to get her a major part on the show. It was kinda weird for her to keep coming back to the Castle house for no real reason.

I really liked this episode. Nathan Fillion goes to a pretty dark place, and we get to meet the real Richard Castle. He's shown hints of it in the past by shooting people who threatened his friends and dive-tackling a guy and just pounding his face in once, but this is the first time he's actually been malicious. He tortured an injured man to help save his daughter. He's not just a goofy writer.

It was also nice to see them get away from just investigating murders. Sure, a guy got killed, but they wrapped that up pretty quickly. Maybe after they get Alexis back they'll do a robbery. That'd be neat.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Hawaii Five-0 3x17: Paʻani


A guy at a tactical ops fantasy camp takes a real bullet to the brain. Obviously, that wasn't in the brochure, so it's up to the Five-0 team to figure out if the guy deserves a refund.

100% Satisfaction Guaranteed, or your funeral's on us!
Duke finds a 9mm handgun ditched in some nearby bushes, but since every single person at the camp was firing a weapon, testing for GSR is useless. Fortunately, everyone was wearing a head-mounted camera, so they have video of everything. When they play it back, they spot an extra guy running around.

The first suspect is one of the guy's co-workers who decided to skip the morning's team-building exercise and who left an angry message on his voicemail the night before. But, the CEO shows up and tells McGarrett that the guy didn't have the balls to kill someone, plus he has an alibi, so they cut him loose.

Max's examination shows that the guy was given a heavy dose of a prescription sedative 12 hours before he died. The co-worker says they were at a bar together the night before, so Steve and Danny go there to check it out. When they get there, they run into Steve's old buddy, Nicky "The Kid" DiMarco.

He opened for Sinatra once. Then hung out with a guy with an awesome moustache for seven years.
The Kid recognizes the dead guy and mentions that he was hanging out with a blonde woman named Holly who's good friends with the bouncer. When McGarrett takes a look at him, the guy bolts and Nicky has to bust him in the chops to stop him. The bouncer's been skimming from the cover charge and helping Holly find rich guys to scam, but he doesn't even know her real name and didn't turn her on to the dead guy because he was buying drinks with his credit card instead of cash.

Kono tracks Holly to the Marriott, but she ran out an hour earlier and left her phone behind. The creepy security guard shows Kono video of an altercation between Holly and an unknown man that ends when he tries to rough her up and Arian Foster of the Houston Texans decks him.

He's dreamy.

Adrian's a good football player, but not the best witness in the world. He doesn't have much info for the guys, but he was wearing a big fat ring on the hand he used to punch the guy, so Steve and Danny borrow it so they can check it for DNA. It comes back as a former army special forces guy who fits the height and build of their unknown suspect. They pick him up pretty quickly and he makes the mistake of telling them he knew who the guy was. He's a corporate espionage guy and he hired Holly to get some data off the future dead guy's hard drive, but she freaked out when she heard the guy was dead and bolted before he could get it from her.

However, when the HPD searched the guy's room, they didn't find a computer. Somebody broke into his room and stole it. Danny and Steve bust down Holly's door and interrogate her sister. Holly found another buyer for the data and she's off making the deal right now. As it turns out, the new chip the dead guy's company was working on was worthless and if the market found out, their stock would tank. Everything now points to the CEO as the killer, which is good because he's the guy who did it. Danny and Steve track him down right before he gets a chance to kill Holly.

It's also Pro Bowl weekend, and Steve and Danny have tickets one row from the AFC sideline, but the NFL hooked Catherine's unit up with some freebies, so she also has tickets to the game, and she wanted Steve to go with her. He makes the mistake of saying he wants to go with his friend rather than his girlfriend because the seats are better. Unfortunately, Danny and Steve wind up missing the game when McGarrett separates his shoulder when he drop kicks the CEO. Catherine picks up a signed ball for Danno, though.

Which is nice.

What I Liked
-Kamekona gets the tickets for Danny and throws in a third one for himself as a convenience fee. It's still probably cheaper than going through TicketMaster.
-McGarrett throws a pass to Danny after separating his shoulder.

What I Hated
-Adrian Foster's acting. He's no OJ. That whole scene was just painful to watch, especially Danny grilling him about how he fumbled the ball in week 11. He's got a decent look, though. Maybe with a few acting classes he could do some light comedy work.
-The CEO did his own killing. That's just stupid. They have guys for that.

Final Thoughts
I'm not sure if CBS had the Pro Bowl this year, but they certainly played up how awesome it is. It might have been a good idea to air this episode before the game, though.

I hate episodes like this because it's so hard for me to say anything about them. I can't say much about what I liked or hated because it didn't evoke any strong feelings in me at all. I guess I can say that this was an okay episode. They did that thing where the killer is a dude who showed up at the beginning and then wasn't seen again until they figured out he was the bad guy, but at least they gave him a decent motive. There wasn't a whole heck of a lot else to the episode, though. No car chases, no real gunfights, and not even that many bikini girls. Maybe if I were a football fan it would've been more exciting for me, but I'm not, so it wasn't.

HIMYM 8x17: The Ashtray


Ted gets a message from The Captain, which leads to he, Robin, and Lily telling the story of what happened the last time they met him, like a crappy sitcom version of Rashomon.

The Douchebag's Story
Ted recalls that at the time of the meeting, he had recently taken back up with Robin's co-host on "Come On, Get Up New York!", Becky.

If this scene isn't a gif already, I'll be very surprised.
Lily had invited Ted and Robin to an art gallery opening, and who should they run into, but The Captain himself. Ted recalls that The Captain was incredibly rude to them in the gallery, but invited them all up to his apartment to show off a new painting he had just acquired. While they're up there, The Captain calls a picture of something in a frame on his desk his "one true love", and then pulls a harpoon gun on Ted when he wants to clear the air about Zoey. Ted talks him down, and in truth, The Captain is in love with someone else, so all is forgiven. But, Ted wonders who that someone else might be, so when everyone else is out of the room, he snatches the frame from the desk to see who's in the picture: It's a magazine cover, featuring Becky!
The girl really loves boats.
Ted thinks that The Captain wants to kill him for stealing yet another woman from him. However, when he calls Ted again, all he wants is Robin's phone number. The guys debate giving it to him for a moment, but then decide that she won't mind, and it might help Marshall get a ride on his boat. Robin minds.

The Anchor's Story
Things were much the way Ted described them, except Ted had smoked a fat sandwich with Becky before the art gallery opening and was making an ass of himself. Rather than being angry and rude to Ted, The Captain was merely trying to help him finish his sentences as the sandwich smoke had turned his brain to pudding. In actuality, The Captain was hitting on Robin the whole time they were together. The harpoon gun was really the remote control for his DVR, and his "one true love" wasn't Becky... It was Robin!

Hey, Sailor!
Robin told him that since he was on the rebound, he should take some time to get his head together and give her a call in 18 months. Which would be right about now. However, when she calls him back, she finds that she had their names confused, and he really wanted to talk to Lily. The gang debates whether or not they should give him her number, but Marshall thinks she won't mind, and it might get him four million dollars in a kind of Indecent Proposal thing. She minds.

The Wife's Story
The story went more or less the way Robin told it, except she was drunk off her ass, and she was hitting on The Captain, not the other way around. Also, his "one true love" was the yacht on the cover of the magazine, not Becky, who was actually in a small, inset photo. And, while he was showing Lily his new painting, he insulted her by saying she was just a kindergarten teacher and no one cares what she thinks about art. So, later, she stole an expensive crystal ashtray while Robin was passed out on top of him.
You do something bad, she takes away one of your toys.

Climax
Marshall and Lily fight about returning the ashtray. He hopes The Captain will take it back without pressing charges, but she's really upset and doesn't want to do it. What he said to her really cut deeply: She is just a kindergarten teacher, and even though she has a degree in art history, she never got around to doing anything with it, and now it's probably too late. Marshall tries to reassure her that she still has time and her best days are ahead of her, but she doesn't believe him.

When she returns the ashtray the next day, she finds out that it wasn't what The Captain wanted to talk to her about because he didn't even realize it was gone. Instead, he takes her to his room to show her something. After she, Robin, and Ted left that night, he slipped back down to the art gallery to buy a painting she said she liked. In the year and a half since then, the artist has become a major phenom in the art world, and no one saw it coming, except Lily. The Captain is selling the painting for $4 million, and he wants to get back into the art game, so he offers her a job as his new art consultant. She accepts.

Also, there was a thing about how Barney wanted to be a part of the wacky story because that's his thing, and if he doesn't make their lives crazy, then he doesn't know who he is. It wasn't important, though.

Although, it did give us this image of Barney playing the guitar with some bikini girls.

What I Liked
-Single-barrelled, no-scope harpoon gun. I'm pretty sure that's a kill type in one of the Modern Warfare games.
-Marshall's happy that Boats Boats Boats girl and The Captain got together, but he thinks Ted sucks for stealing her from him. Yeah, Ted does suck.
-In Barney's mind, "Nothing happened" means hand stuff. If I were the kind of guy who messed around on my lady friends, I would totally use that in the future. If I were that kind of guy. IF.

What I Hated
-Lily is upset that she's just a kindergarten teacher. Back in the season two episode 'Aldrin Justice' (which was the episode where Lily stole something from Ted's boss to punish him for being mean), she realized that being a teacher was her true calling. It was a whole big thing.
-The Royal Archduke of Grand Fenwick. I thought and hoped we had seen the last of The Playbook.
I was wrong.

Final Thoughts
This was a really lazy episode. How I Met Your Mother likes to do episodes where they retell part of the story from a different perspective. While that sort of thing *can* be done well, I don't think HIMYM has ever done it. Not that the execution would matter anyway, because it plain doesn't make sense narratively. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but it comes up a lot: The conceit of the show is that Future Ted is telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, hence the name of the show. Now, it's been established that Ted is the worst, most meandering storyteller in the world, but even he shouldn't be telling the story of how he and two of his friends told three different versions of the story of how they went to an art show one time and ran into The Captain. It's a structural nightmare.

As for the aforementioned laziness, multiple perspectives can be good, but the variations in this episode were pretty minor and were based on drug and alcohol jokes, which can be funny, but are often incredibly lazy. In this case, weed made Ted slow and turned Robin into the female equivalent of a horndog. That seems pretty lazy to me.

Which is weird, because they often work hard in a few other areas. They brought back The Captain, and even got Laura Bell Bundy for like 30 seconds of screen time, despite the fact that neither of them has been on the show in two years. And they at least partially stuck to the established continuity vis-a-vis Lily taking things away when people misbehave, which hasn't come up in more than six years. Maybe all of that other stuff burns them out and they don't have the energy for writing. I can understand that.

Ultimately, this episode wasn't terribly funny, but nor was it offensively awful, and it had some good bits.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Castle 5x14: Reality Star Struck


No in-depth recap this week. I fell behind and the plot to this one was kinda complicated.

What I Liked
-Castle stays up watching Wives of Wall Street so long he can't feel his butt.
Alexis thought it was pretty funny, too.
What I Hated
-Castle's gift for Beckett is a pair of expensive earrings, while her gift for him is a drawer in her apartment. Sure, it's sort of romantic, but that's the biggest cop out you can pull.
-Bad boy billionaire Mark Chilean. Come on. Put a little more effort into naming your parody characters.
-Three's Company-esque shenanigans when Castle puts the earrings in the Cap'n's pocket by mistake. His inability to remember what he wrote on the card was very conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.
-The killer breaks down and confesses because she has trouble finding her keys. They've had some stupid murderers on this show in the past, but this one was by far the stupidest.

Final Thoughts
A lot of the acting in this episode was really terrible. Some of it was by design, but I'm not sure all of it was.

I'm a bit fuzzy on how Lanie and Esposito can date openly, but Castle and Beckett can't. Just because she's the ME, it doesn't mean that they don't work together in semi-dangerous situations on a regular basis. Plus, are cops any less likely to do something stupid to save their partner than they would be to save their girl/boyfriend? These days, Castle and Beckett probably only need to get a waiver from HR or something like that, so the whole 'secret romance' plot contrivance is silly.

Overall, I really didn't like this one. The plot had a lot of unnecessary twists, and the killer was one of characters who showed up at the beginning and then wasn't really seen again until the end. I really wish they'd stop doing that.

Monday, February 18, 2013

TBBT 6x16: The Tangible Affection Proof


Valentine's Day is approaching, and there are four couples on the show who need to show their love for each other. The first is Penny and Leonard. Penny's not terribly enthusiastic about V-Day because she's never had one go well. Leonard, on the other hand, is incredibly gung-ho about it. He promises her that it'll be a night to remember.
He's a romance ninja.
The second couple is Howard and Bernadette. Things have been a bit rough between them lately since she's been working really long hours, and he's been playing Assassin's Creed all day. Howard's actually a pretty romantic guy once you get past the creepiness, and he uses an atomic force microscope to make Bernie the world's smallest Valentine. Unfortunately, he's a bit clumsy and he drops it, so he and Bernadette just go to dinner with Leonard and Penny.

Dinner doesn't go smoothly. Bernadette has hidden Howard's Xbox because he's been lazy around the house and didn't do the laundry like she asked him to, and now she has no clean undies. Despite their friends' ongoing argument, Leonard and Penny try to have a romantic evening... until Penny notices that her ex-boyfriend is at the restaurant with her friend Gretchen, who he cheated on her with.

And he proposes.
The romance ninja tries to salvage things, but Penny's not into it. She's obsessed with what's going on at the other table, and she and Leonard get into a fight. Upon seeing how bad things are for their friends, Bernadette and Howard realize that their little squabble is no big deal. They agree to skip out on dessert so they can go home early and he can do the laundry.

Love means never having to say "I'm sorry I hid your Xbox in the washing machine."
When they get home, Leonard asks Penny what the deal is? He tried to give them a great evening, and she ruined it. She tells him that things have been going too well between them lately, and she's really happy. He keeps asking her to marry him, and eventually she's going to say yes, then they'll settle down and get married, and it all just freaks her out. To assuage her fears, he says that he'll never ask her again. If she ever wants to get married, she's just going to have to propose to him herself. Surprisingly, that makes her incredibly happy.

The Romance Ninja strikes again.
The third couple is Sheldon and Amy. Sheldon's not a big romance guy, but Amy is his girlfriend, and convention dictates that he get her some kind of gift. Fortunately, he has an assistant to handle all the little details like buying presents for his lady. He gives Alex two thousand dollars and tells her he thinks Amy likes monkeys.

Alex is a sane person, so he knows it's probably not a good idea to give someone a monkey for Valentine's Day. Instead, she comes up with three options. The first is a harp-shaped music box that plays one of Amy's favourite songs. Sheldon shoots that down because Amy already has a real harp, and it can play any song she wants. The second choice is a illustration of the course the characters took in The Cantebury Tales, one of Amy's favourite texts. Sheldon pooh-poohs that one because Amy has a smart phone equipped with Google Maps, and she can see any map she wants at any time. The final selection is an autographed print of a drawing by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience. It's absolutely perfect. So much so that Sheldon decides to keep it for himself.
To be fair, he did pay for it, and it's not technically a gift until he gives it to her.
When Amy arrives at the apartment that evening, she's not dressed for dinner. As her gift to Sheldon, she's cancelled all their plans. She knows he hates romance and gift-giving, so instead of going out for a traditional Valentine's Day, they're going to sit at home, order a pizza, and watch a sci-fi movie. She also tells him that he can return whatever gift he got for her. But, he's so touched by all the things she didn't do for him, that he decides he wants her to have it, anyway. He pulls a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket and hands it to her. It's his employee information form from the university; he's made her his emergency contact. She's so touched that she forgets herself and grabs him in a big hug.

Valentine's Day is ruined.
The last couple is Raj and Stuart. Neither of them has a girlfriend, so they're planning to spend the evening moping around and trying not to kill themselves. That is, until Raj gets an idea: They'll throw a party at the comic book store for all the lonely people who can't get dates. The party's kind of a downer because everyone there is sad and hates themselves, but Raj gives a speech about how they have each other, so they're never truly alone. Then he calls everyone losers and ditches the party to go have coffee with Kate Micucci.
It'll be the most awkward date ever.

What I Liked
-Sheldon tries to avoid talking about Valentine's Day with Amy by proving that the rectum has a sense of taste. That's a good dodge, but I disagree. Otherwise I'd be tasting crap all day.
-Raj's perfect Valentine's Day involve pile driving a female version of Stuart. You only pile drive the ones you love.
-The phony expression Sheldon's been working on so he can pretend to enjoy Valentine's Day.
It's just the right combination of fake and sincere.

What I Hated
-It may have been an incredibly subtle way of saying he was playing more than one, but Howard says he's been playing Assassin's Creeds. Either it was a dumb way of phrasing what he meant to say, or the writers/producers/actors screwed up. I assume it's the latter, which is why you can tell this show isn't made by actual, serious nerds. I'm not a huge gaming guy, and even I know he should've said either Assassin's Creed or -more likely because it's new- Assassin's Creed III.

Final Thoughts
It looks like Kevin Sussman is out of the opening credits. That's a shame. I thought his character had a lot of growth potential. They seemed to want to keep him as the sad sack loser, though, and if they're doing that, having him in too many episodes would just be depressing.

Kate Micucci's character was named 'Lucy' in the credits, even though it was never mentioned in the episodes. That leads me to believe that she might become a recurring guest. Also, I've heard of her, and that's always a good indication of that sort of thing. If she winds up as Raj's girlfriend, they might finally reach a point where he can talk to women without having to be drunk first. They've gotten around it a lot in the past by just sticking a drink in his hand, so it's kind of a pointless concept at this point, anyway.

There were four stories this week, so there wasn't really enough time to develop any of them. However, the little romantic vignettes did a pretty good job of showing off the different kinds of love people can have, from Bernie and Howie's married love to the love the nerdy comic book friends have for each other. So, it wasn't a well-developed or memorable episode, but it was a nice episode, and, sometimes, that's good enough.