Game of Thrones 6x09: Battle of the Bastards

Only two plot lines in an episode of Game of Thrones? It's a miracle.

The Widow Drogo
Daenerys has returned to Meereen to find that the slave masters are laying siege to the city and half of it is on fire. Her solution is to burn everyone and everything, but Tyrion suggests a somewhat less destructive approach. They negotiate with the head masters, which involves burning one of their ships with dragon fire until their guards desert them, and slicing a couple of their throats. Afterwards, the Greyjoys arrive, and Yara suggests a sexy alliance, to which Daenerys readily agrees as long as the ironborn are willing to stop pillaging the countryside.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
The commanders of both northern armies meet to discuss a solution to their current conflict that won't result in thousands of men dying. Ramsay suggests that Sansa be returned to him and everyone else surrender, and Jon suggests a one-on-one battle for all the marbles. Neither solution seems workable, so they resolve to fight it out. After a strategy meeting, Tormund goes to get drunk, Davos takes a walk and finds the pyre where Stannis burned Shireen, and Jon goes to ask Melisandre to promise not to bring him back again. She tells him that if the Lord of Light wants him back, he's coming back.

The next morning, strategy immediately goes out the window when Ramsay releases Rickon and starts firing arrows at him as he runs away. Jon races to pick him up on his horse, but Lord Bolton is an excellent shot, and kills Rickon just as he's about to be saved. The youngest Stark dies in his brother's arms, and the battle truly begins as Davos orders the army to charge to save Jon from being wiped out by archers. As the two armies clash, Ramsay has his archers continue to fire, killing damn near everyone. Eventually, he sends in his heavy infantry to surround the remnants of Jon's army with an impenetrable shield wall that slowly advances, pushing their foes up the giant pile of corpses that has formed on the battlefield, where the remnants of the Umber contingent can mop them up. It's an excellent plan and would work, if not for the timely arrival of Littlefinger and the knights of the Vale. The addition of a couple thousand cavalry drastically shifts the balance of the fight, and the Bolton forces are annihilated. The few who remain retreat to Winterfell where they hope to wait things out, since Jon doesn't have enough soldiers for a siege. Unfortunately for them, there will be no siege. Despite being mortally wounded in the process, Wun Wun pounds his way through the gate and the remaining Boltons are slaughtered. While Jon shares a moment with his dying friend, Ramsay puts an arrow through the giant's eye, then reconsiders Jon's offer of single combat. Lord Snow beats Lord Bolton into unconsciousness with his bare hands, and only stops pounding his face when he sees his sister watching. The Bolton banners are thrown down, Stark banners go up, and Ramsay is tied to a chair in the kennel, where Sansa has a small chat with him before his hungry dogs tear him to pieces.


What I Liked
-Lyanna Mormont's death stare. The bear people are fucking hardcore.
-Wun Wun rips a guy in half. I do love some giant-based violence.
-Tormund kills Smalljon Umber by biting his neck and stabbing him with a tooth. That guy needed to die a violent, painful death.
-Tyrion chastises Theon for making the same short jokes that everyone else makes. It was a nice callback to the first season.

What I Hated
-Tyrion tells Daenerys about the wildfire under King's Landing for the sole purpose of reminding the audience that it's there. It's some of the most blatant re-exposition I've ever seen.
-The masters demand the return of the Unsullied. While that would've made sense immediately after Daenerys stole them, they're free men now, and won't just blindly follow orders anymore.
-I understand that he's just a child, but was a little zig-zagging too much for Rickon to figure out? I was literally yelling "Serpentine" at my TV.
-Sansa complains that Jon didn't ask for her input at the strategy meeting, then she doesn't have anything useful to say, anyway. I suppose it's nice to be asked, but why be such a whiner? She also neglects to tell Jon about her letter to Littlefinger. Now, she didn't know if the letter made it or if the Vale knights were coming, but considering when they arrived, there was plenty of time for Jon to send a scout.
-Davos finds the little stag he made for Shireen. Bull-fucking-shit. The pyre was a short walk from where the army was camped, which was clearly close enough to attack the Bolton forces at Winterfell. The whole reason Stannis burned his daughter was that he needed the snow to melt so he could move his army within striking distance. Based on how far Davos had to walk, that was apparently an additional 200m or so.
-The giant pile of corpses. It made for a fine visual and an interesting set piece, but its existence made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
-The gate at Winterfell breaks way too easily. Even without a giant, Jon's army would've been able to break through without much difficulty. Plus the walls of the castle must be U-shaped or something, since they seem to range in height from 5-15m.
-Yet another battle won thanks to the last-second arrival of allied forces. That's at least the third time that's happened, and it's getting a little predictable.

Final Thoughts
Who the hell is even left alive in the North at this point? As far as I can tell they're down to a few hundred members of Jon's army, the wildlings who were too old or too young to fight, and whatever houses refused to participate in the battle. Damn near everyone else must be dead at this point, so I have no idea how they're going to hold the North against any kind of army, let alone an army of undead.

Littlefinger had exactly as many lines in this episode as Rickon: 0. Should've taught the kid some Maze Running skills.

While he definitely needed to be a shitlord right to the end, and killing a badly wounded enemy is certainly shitlordy, if Ramsay was able to put an arrow right through Wun Wun's eye, he could have easily shot Jon in the head, since he was right there. The remnants of the army still would have killed him, but at least he would've taken his rival down with him. But why even stick around at Winterfell when it became obvious that the battle was lost? He was still Lord of the Dreadfort, and he could've retreated there to plan and rebuild his forces over the winter.

Speaking of Wun Wun, why didn't he have armour or at least a club of some kind? A couple layers of leather and a fallen tree would've made him into an unstoppable force.

There's absolutely no doubt that Jon is protected by the Lord of Light at this point. A rain of arrows fell all around him and left a little Jon-shaped outline on the ground.

Where the hell was Ghost? I guess they spent all the cgi money on dragons this week.

I really expected someone to turn on Ramsay in the middle of the battle, particularly since he had his archers kill a substantial portion of his own men. But, I guess the North doesn't remember diddly shit.

The dragons could apparently burst out of their prison any time they wanted. I guess they stayed down there because they liked it.

The battle in Meereen ended far too quickly and easily. Even if the dragons were eventually going to sink their fleet, it's not like the masters couldn't have done serious damage to the city and maybe even killed Rhaegal and Viserion with some lucky shots. Also, from a show standpoint, it was completely unnecessary to have the battle at all. They could have just as easily had the masters accept Tyrion's deal, then completely ignored them. We didn't learn anything new about any of the characters, so it was basically an excuse to finally show the dragons doing something and to get Daenerys some more ships after her original fleet was inexplicably burned.

While the dragons torching the warship was fun, and a lot of the battle of the bastards was well-shot, this episode just had too many flaws for me to thoroughly enjoy it.

Game of Thrones 5x09: The Dance of Dragons

After a long hiatus, I have returned.

We're following five stories this week.

Stannis' Camp
Ramsay and his twenty good men manage to sneak into Stannis' camp and set fire to damn near everything, destroying tents, killing horses, and burning much of the food. Now lacking the resources to properly lay siege to Winterfell or to return to Castle Black, Stannis sends Ser Davos back to Jon Snow to ask for supplies, then reluctantly burns Shireen as an offering to the Lord of Light.

Her mom's not too happy about it.

The Wall
Jon returns from beyond the wall with what remains of the wildlings. After a brief moment of hesitation, Ser Alliser opens the gate for them, then tells Jon that his compassion will get everyone killed.

Olly's not too happy about it, either.

Dorne
Doran allows Jaime to take Myrcella back to King's Landing, so long as Trystane accompanies them so their engagement may continue and he can take a seat on the Small Council. Bronn is also set free, with one condition: Areo gets to elbow him in the face.

Bronn's not too happy about it.

Later, the Sand Snakes are freed, and Ellaria tearfully pledges her allegiance to Doran and ends the rebellion... such as it was.

Braavos
A girl is just about ready to kill the thin man, when the ship carrying Mace Tyrell and Meryn Trant arrives. So, instead of doing her duty, Arya decides to stalk Meryn to a brothel, where she witnesses him buying the services of a young prostitute.

The prostitute's not too happy about it. Neither is Meryn, for some reason.

Meereen
It's fight night! The great pit is open, and it's time for blood! Jorah fights in a small mêlée, and miraculously pulls out a win. Daenerys isn't overly happy to see him down in the pit until he picks up a spear and fires it into the chest of an assassin. Apparently the Sons of the Harpy are big fight fans, too, and after the second fight, several dozen of them pop out of the crowd and start killing everyone, including Hizdahr. Eventually, all the named characters and a handful of Unsullied are surrounded by about 100 assassins. Even though they attack one at a time, kung-fu movie style, it doesn't look good for our heroes. But, when all seems lost, Drogon flies out of nowhere and starts kicking ass.

Also, burning it. See, 'cause their butts are on fire.

The vast majority of the Sons are either killed or frightened off, but the few who remain start to launch spears at Drogon, who is tough, but not invincible, so Daenerys climbs onto his back, and the two of them fly off into episode 10.

What I Liked
-Either the guards at the camp were incompetent, or in league with Ramsay, either way, Stannis wants them hanged. Tough, but fair.
-After Areo busts him in the chops, Doran offers Bronn some soup. I like a leader who has a sense of humour.
-Daario says you should always bet on the little guy. Then this happens:

Heh... now he's even littler.

-Just before the battle starts, a bug crawls across Iain Glen's upper lip. He didn't flinch or brush it away or anything, though. That's the sign of a real actor.

What I Hated
-Regardless of whether Stannis' guards were on his side or not, Ramsay apparently has supernatural fire-lighting powers. There's no one around, and fires just start popping out of nowhere.

Seriously, who lit all those fires?

-Selyse, who despised her daughter and had the utmost devotion to the Lord of Light, suddenly can't stand to see the former sacrificed to the latter. Riiiiiiight.
-Arya very obviously takes the poison out of her cart and puts it into a pouch on her waist. It's done entirely for the benefit of the viewer, in case we've forgotten that she was going to poison the crooked insurance agent, but it was just so clunky and obvious. When you're going to assassinate someone, you need to be inconspicuous. You don't wave the murder weapon around for all to see. She also quite obviously follows Meryn around, to the point that he'd have to be blind not to see her.
-They make Meryn into a creepy dude who likes underage prostitutes. There was already a perfectly good reason to kill him. Not everyone who Arya kills has to be a complete monster, it'd be fine if some of them were just kinda dickish.
-The Unsullied continue to suck. Apparently being trained from birth doesn't give you the skills to take down a bunch of pampered noblemen with short daggers and no armour. Seriously, for a renowned and feared fighting force, they're pretty worthless.

Final Thoughts
Where the hell is Arya getting all her oysters, clams, and cockles? Is the House of Black and White furnishing her with a new cartful every day?

The Sons of the Harpy must've bought those masks in bulk.

Hizdahr's dead. Does anyone care? He didn't really do much of anything, and the actor playing him wasn't exactly compelling. I'm not sure what the point of the including him was if they were just going to unceremoniously kill him off.

Ser Alliser takes his oath to the Night's Watch seriously, but he's a complete moron. If Jon hadn't gone to Hardhome, there'd be a few thousand more walking dead making their way down to the wall. Apparently, Alliser and Olly simply don't understand that. To the point that I think they both must've been kicked in the head by mules when they were younger.

Killing Shireen makes absolutely no sense. Stannis hasn't had the best luck fathering heirs, and she was his sole surviving child. Without her to succeed him, what's the point? And don't give me any of that Warrior of Light nonsense. If that's all he cared about, he could've stayed at Castle Black and waited for the White Walkers there. He wants to be King. Apparently, he wants to be King, rule for 30-40 years, then die of old age, leaving the throne to some distant cousin.

Honestly, it doesn't seem like there's anyone who's really capable of holding back the long night. Cersei's too paranoid and Tommen's too weak, Daenerys is too inept, Jon's surrounded by morons who hate him, and Stannis is too unlucky. Unless there are some drastic changes next season, season seven is liable to be the story of how the White Walkers rolled over Westeros and conquered the world. Which might be good.

As for this particular episode, it had some enjoyable moments, but those were outweighed by the moments that made me want to punch stupid characters in the face.

Castle 6x09: Disciple

What I Liked
-Castle doesn't think romantic and Hobbity need to be mutually exclusive. I'm not sure many women would agree.
-Tech lady's still on the show. Maybe one day she'll get herself into the opening credits. And maybe one day I'll learn her name.
-Hey, it's Rack Bauer. Nice to see that she's getting some work.
-Ryan gets Esposito to share his feelings. It can't be all 'Brah' all the time.

What I Hated
-Lanie and Esposito are still banging on the sly. Exactly how long can two people be friends with benefits without finding other people to legitimately date?

Final Thoughts
So, 3XK may still be alive and may have multiple people working for/with him. It's a terrible shame that Castle and Beckett didn't shoot him in the face when they had a chance. Always shoot the super-genius bad guy in the face, kids. It's the only way to be sure.

The thing where there's a thriving business somewhere one day and there's nothing there the next day has been done to death. As has the thing where they have the killer in custody, then let him/her go instead of tossing him/her into a cell for 24h like they do with every random street punk they pick up.

Considering that there's at least one deranged maniac out there with a grudge against Castle and Beckett, you'd think that they'd consider retirement. How many Nikki Heat books does he really need to write?

TBBT 7x09: The Thanksgiving Decoupling

What I Liked
-An animal can be both sacred and delicious. Exactly. Just because something is sacred, it doesn't mean you can't eat it.
-Sheldon would love to go to Thanksgiving dinner, but it sounds awful. That kind of honesty would make the holidays a lot more pleasant for everyone.
-Bernadette with a marshmallow in her mouth.

It's a simple gag, but a good one.

What I Hated
-Sheldon compares himself to a slave... a lot. Not cool.
-Howard's stupid enormous belt buckle.

It's like he's the featherweight boxing champion or something.

Final Thoughts
Honestly, when I first read the title, I thought Penny and Leonard were going to split up. Then, as the episode went on, it seemed more likely. But they worked it out in the end, which is good, because they've already broken up a couple times, and doing it again would be boring.

Drunk Sheldon is best Sheldon. They should really have him drink more often. Maybe turn him into an alcoholic or something. It would give his character more depth.

It was good to see Zack back on the show. He's one of the recurring characters that I actually like. Not like Lucy or whatsherface in the HR department at CalTech. And I don't just hate them because they're women; it's because they suck.

I think this is the first time we've seen what the gang gets up to on Thanksgiving. Considering how much Sheldon and Leonard loathe their families and the fact that Raj's parents are in India, it makes sense that they'd spend it with Howard's mother. But I have to say that no self-respecting overbearing Jewish mother would let gout stop her from cooking on Thanksgiving. Of all the things this show does, that was probably the least realistic.

The Crazy Ones 1x09: 16 Inch Softball

What I Liked
-Andrew had to tell his girlfriend the truth, even though it was a lie. That's the best way to do it.
-Flizz.

Andrew's right, it's time for Rice Krispies to get a new mascot. Maybe tone down the outfit a bit first, though.

-Lauren's baseball outfit.

Time for a remake of A League of Their Own.

What I Hated
-Weird softball training semi-montage thing. Nothing about it was good.

Final Thoughts
Their first recurring villain (such as he is) has finally recurred, and it's TV's Brad Garrett.

Behold, the face of evil.

The cavalier attitude with which they approached the loss of someone's livelihood was a little distressing. I realize that it's just a TV show, but it sort of makes me wonder if the writers are living in that show business bubble where they don't understand how bad the economy is. Sure, it's fun to play softball and to joust on pocket motorcycles, but afterwards, someone's getting fired.

Sydney's just as appalled about it as I am.

This episode wasn't as funny as the previous one. I suppose there's not that much comedy left to be mined from softball.

Hawaii Five-0 4x08: Akanahe

What I Liked
-Four guys show up to kill Nick Jonas. About freakin' time.
-McGarrett tells Chi he has a very angry disposition. He sure does.
-Cat can't flick things up onto the big screen. He-he.
-The photo that comes up when Steve calls Cat is still goofy.

I tried to do that for my ladyfriend, but it wouldn't work. She's not terribly upset about it.

What I Hated
-Kono explains what a bullet will do to Sato's brain. That probably seemed bad-ass on the page, but it came off REALLY lame.
-The kids are getting naked on webcam. I don't need to see that. Also, Chi McBride really shouldn't have given his daughter her laptop back so quickly.
-A guy hacks his foot off to get rid of a tracking bracelet.
-The guys actually believe a kid can control a plane with a laptop. Computers are not magic, people!

Final Thoughts
So Chi McBride's character and McGarrett now have a grudging respect for one another. I was hoping they'd just kill Chi off, but now he has allies on the team and some kind of shady backstory, so he's going to be around for a while. Not that I'm against Chi McBride in any way -I've actually quite liked some of his work- but the character is unnecessary, and it seems a bit odd for the SWAT captain to suddenly be getting a lot of play when they went three years without mentioning the previous captain.

I really despise TV shows and movies that treat computers like they're magic. It's 2013, not 1991. Everyone and their grandmother has a computer in their pocket these days. Furthermore, while it may be technically possible to screw with a plane's GPS, there's absolutely no way to disable radio communications short of physically damaging the plane's hardware. It's a radio. You can build one out of crap you find lying in the street.

None of the three Bs were represented this week. Partially because Scott Caan wasn't even in the episode, and that kinda precludes any booking or driving of the Camaro. The lack of bikini babes is inexcusable, though. The only reason this episode doesn't get a single-star rating is because of all the violence done to Nick Jonas' face.

Community 4x09: Intro to Felt Surrogacy

Thing don't seem to be going well for the Greendale Seven... well, Greendale Six, since Chevy's not there (and I mean Chevy, not Pierce). They're all sitting around the study room table in awkward silence. Apparently they've been doing it for days and Dean Pelton will not condean that behaviour. So, in an effort to get them to talk about what's wrong, he busts out a box of puppets for therapy purposes.

It's worked wonders with Chang.

Abed gets the ball rolling and tells the story of how they got to where they are, which we get to see in puppet flashback form.

They've been friends for four years now and spent so much time together that he and Troy were able to create study group bingo cards with lists of all the phrases the gang says. After a minute of watching them play, Jeff suggests that they're in a rut and they should get away from Greendale. Annie agrees and says that they need to go on an adventure. The group then sings a horrible, shit-awful song about adventure, which leads to them taking a balloon ride.

Because hot air balloons are adventurous.

Unfortunately, due to Pierce and Troy's fiddling, they take off without the balloon guide. Pierce's further meddling takes them high in the air and far off course. If you can really have a course in a hot air balloon. Eventually, they land in the woods where they meet a kindly mountain man played by Jason Alexander.

His hair looks at least as real as it did in Pretty Woman.

Jason used to be a student at Greendale, but after he graduate, he moved out to the woods to be his own man. He sings a terrible, shit-awful song about how awesome and stress-free it is to live in the woods, then gives them psychotropic berries, and they all trip balls.

Then Shirley takes over the story, and she tells the Dean how they sat around a camp fire and she revealed that she once forgot her kids at the grocery store because she was spying on a man she thought was Andre. Back in the present day, the rest of the group stares at her in disbelief. But, not because they think she's a horrible person, but rather because they were so tripped out on berries that they couldn't remember that she told them that before. As it turns out, they've all been avoiding speaking to each other because they thought they'd revealed some terrible secret about themselves, but, even though they all did, no one remembers. Since they've all forgotten everything, they're in the clear... except that Shirley has just told them her terrible secret.

Which kinda bums her out.

To make things even, Jeff gets the group to re-reveal everything, which we see through a shit-awful puppet song. He met the perfect girl, but couldn't handle the fact that she had a son, so he abandoned them just like his dad did. Annie was struggling in history, so she let Prof. Cornwallis rub her feet in exchange for the answers to a test. Britta is an activist, but she's never voted. Troy accidentally started the great Greendale fire of '03. Pierce never slept with Eartha Kitt; they just dry-humped in her tour bus. Abed didn't have a secret. He just saw that everyone was being awkward around each other and mimicked their behaviour.

It's kinda his thing.

With the situation resolved, they all go for yard margs at Skeepers. Because that running joke doesn't suck at all.

What I Liked
-Even though the lyrics suck, a few of the cast are actually pretty good singers. Yvette Nicole Brown was by far the best.
-They mention that Duncan hasn't been around for a while. Strange how the absence of John Oliver correlates with the decline in quality of the show.
-This moose.

Awesome.

-This week's best line: "Dean, what happened is between us and Jesus. And Jesus don't snitch." -Shirley

What I Hated
-The Dean is dressed up as Pinocchio for some unknown reason. It literally has nothing to do with the episode at all, and is essentially a pointless 'Hey look at the Dean's funny costume! Isn't he wacky?!' thing.
-When they weren't singing, the puppet audio was often really bad. I'm not sure of the technical terms for it, but it sounded compressed, and I was certainly very aware that it was pre-recorded audio. Even the low-quality pre-release version of the Digital Estate Planning audio was better.
-Bad green screen work. I know they don't have a huge effects budget, but come on!
-The puppet voices don't match up with their mouth movements. That's Puppetry 101, and they screwed it up.
-The Dean's creepy obsession with Jeff. It started off relatively harmless, but now it's progressed to ridiculous levels.

This creepy Jeff puppet is a figment of the Dean's imagination.

Final Thoughts
The songs were atrocious. There's literally no other way to describe them, except with other words that are synonymous with atrocious. They didn't follow any kind of established meter, and half of the lyrics were basically regular spoken lines that they decided to sing for some reason. Plus, they were a huge time suck; they spent more time singing about going on an adventure than they actually did on the adventure itself.

The puppetry also wasn't particularly good. They weren't doing very many complex movements or anything like that, so all they really had to do was get the lip sync right, and they failed miserably at that.

If you're going to do a gimmick episode, and this episode is the very definition of one, it needs to be good, otherwise it's just pointless filler. The only time Community has had a really good gimmick episode was three years ago with Modern Warfare(some argument could perhaps be made for Digital Estate Planning, but I won't be the one to make it). That one had a purpose, advanced the show's plot, and even fit in with the style to some extent. This was basically the producers sitting around saying "You know what we haven't done yet? A puppet episode." Maybe that's why it turned out so poorly. It didn't have any passion or reason behind it; it was just another check box they needed to tick off.

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.

Castle 5x09: Secret Santa

Click the image to get the episode.

A man dressed as Santa falls out of the sky and nearly lands on a family making snow angels. Needless to say, that's a little bit odd, so the NYPD is brought in to investigate. Despite having ID with the name Kris Kringle, Santa's real name is Edmund, and he's a professional Santa.

One of many.

The murder and its rationale are a bit complicated, so I'll just explain it. Five years ago, Edmund was a shady dude who forged a bunch of mortgage contracts and cost 43 families their homes. He couldn't live with himself, so he walked out on his life and became a Santa. Then to make even further restitution, he moved in next to one of the families he screwed over and decided to help them with their lawsuit against his former company... which no longer exists.

However, some of the documents they need -along with a really expensive clock that the family put up as collateral- were stored at his former partner's new business. Edmund took a Santa gig at the place and with help from the family's son, he broke into their records room. But, someone made him and he had to high-tail it up to the roof where another Santa was waiting for him with a red helicopter. They get away, but that someone opens fire and Santa Edmund is hit. The helicopter banks, and his body falls to the ground.

Now, who was that someone? His ex-wife, of course. He went to her the night before the heist to apologize for what he was about to do. The lawsuit would've taken all the assets she was left with, and she just couldn't allow that.

Meanwhile, Esposito and Ryan usually spend Christmas Eve getting bro drunk and playing Madden, but Jenny wants to start trying to have a baby, so that's out. Ryan's not sure he's ready for kids because working as a homicide detective shows him how crappy the world can be, but Javier convinces him to go for it. When Lanie turns him down for a Christmas booty call, that leaves him all alone until he decides to return the family's clock and they invite him in for dinner.

The man loves free food.

On the home front, Castle's really big on Christmas traditions, but Alexis wants to spend Christmas Eve with her new boyfriend and Martha wants to do some drunken carolling. Castle's pretty bummed, but he figures he'll be fine as long as he has Beckett. Unfortunately, Beckett's tradition is to work the Christmas Eve shift to make sure everyone else is safe, so Richard's going to be alone on Christmas. However, everyone sees how upset he is, so Alexis and Martha cancel their plans and in a whole Gift of the Magi thing, Beckett sells her hair to buy him a comb... or she gets someone else to cover her shift and comes over. One or the other.

Dang, that's a big tree.

What I Liked
-They Christmased-up the title sequence. They make it really dark and grim when they do a serious business episode.
-Esposito's dance when he discovers the sexy Santa lingerie Ryan bought for Jenny.

Ho ho ho, indeed.

-Castle suggests a Christmas Eve sex marathon to Beckett. I'm with him: drinking egg nog in front of the fire's for suckers.
-The best theory Castle can come up with for why Edmund took the clock is that there's a secret society of Santas who are the guardians of time. I have to say, I'd watch that if it were a movie, but I wouldn't read the book. It seems like it would be a little too Da Vinci Code-ish.
-When Esposito and Ryan go to arrest the accomplice Santa, he kicks Espo's ass with a giant candy cane and a sack full of toys. That's the best fight scene they've ever had on this show.

What I Hated
-Beckett does that thing where she tells Castle not to get him anything, then gets upset when he doesn't get her anything. I swear, that only happens on TV, and it happens way too often.

Final Thoughts
This was a nice episode. It wasn't overly grand or flashy or exciting, but it was a Christmas episode, so grand, flashy, and exciting wouldn't have felt right. Of course, without anything to make it really stand out, this probably won't be counted amongst the show's best episodes. But, you know what? That's all right.

In a television world where everyone's lives are constantly going to hell, Castle shows a happy, functional family that actually enjoys spending time together around the holidays. Sure, they killed Santa, but it wasn't the real Santa and his death was not in vain. No one got raped or molested or tortured or had a miscarriage or found out they had AIDS, and everyone got to have a merry Christmas. Ryan even got lucky.

So, this wasn't a great episode, but it was a nice episode, and that's pretty good.