Game of Thrones 6x10: The Winds of Winter

It's the season finale, so it's time to wrap some stuff up.

The Three-Eyed Stark
Benjen's technically dead, so the magic that sustains him won't allow him to pass through the Wall. He drops Bran and Meera off by a weirwood tree near the Wall and heads back north to do what he can to slow the Walkers. With no Hodor around to drag him, all Bran can do is visit the past. He goes back to the Tower of Joy where he was so rudely cut off before, and follows his father up the tower, where he finds Lyanna Stark bleeding out after giving birth to Jon Snow. Lyanna makes Ned promise not to tell Robert.


Mr. Sam Goes to Oldtown
Sam finally arrives at the Citadel, just as the white ravens are being released to signify the onset of winter. When he presents himself to the registrar, it turns out they haven't received any updates from Castle Black in quite some time, and their records are horribly out of date. Nevertheless, while they sort things out, Sam is allowed to access the fancy, cgi library. Gilly and Li'l Sam have to wait in the lobby.


Old Man River
With Riverrun retaken, it's party time! The Freys and the Lannisters drink to their victory. While Bronn makes time with some serving girls, Jaime sits down to have a chat with Walder. The elder Lord compares himself and his deeds favourably to Jaime, which doesn't sit well with him, since he's not actually proud of the whole Kingslayer thing. Later, after the party's over and the Lannisters have departed, Walder sits alone, eating a meat pie and grumbling to his serving girl about his sons' tardiness. The girl tells him they're already there, which is confusing, since they're nowhere to be seen. When she points to the pie, and Lord Frey discovers a toe, things become a bit more clear. She whips off her face, revealing that she was Arya all along. The last thing Walder Frey sees before he dies is a Stark smiling down on him.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Sansa apologizes for not telling Jon about Littlefinger and his army. He forgives her, but says they need to trust each other more, since they've made so many enemies. Later, Sansa sits alone in the godswood, and Littlefinger tells her that everything he does is in the service of one vision: His butt on the iron throne... also, Sansa at his side if he has the time. He goes in for the kiss, but she blocks him, still miffed about that time he sold her to a sadistic rapist.

Afterwards, the Lords gather for a meeting. Jon tries to persuade them to work together in the war to come, but they're far from united. Lady Mormont shames the Northern Lords who failed to support Jon's army, and reminds them that the North is supposed to remember things. They realize the error of their ways, and proclaim Jon the King of the North, much to Littlefinger's chagrin.


The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
It's time for the trial of the century. Every named character in King's Landing except Cersei, Tommen (who is held back by Ser Frankenmountain), Qyburn, and Pycelle assembles in the Great Sept of Baelor to see the gods mete out punishment on Loras and Cersei. Since Loras is the only one there, he goes first, and there's no need for a trial, since he admits everything and renounces his name and titles to become a brother in the Faith Militant. When they finish carving a star in his forehead, the High Sparrow dispatches a few brothers to bring Cersei to the sept.

Elsewhere, another small child leads Grand Maester Pycelle down to Qyburn's lab, where he's set upon by a gaggle of child spies who gleefully stab him to death. Back at the sept, Lancel notices a small child running down the steps and follows him down into the tunnels where he, too, gets a good shanking. He doesn't die, though, and he notices something fishy going on and begins to crawl towards a light in the distance. Up above, Margaery notices something's wrong, too, and tries to convince the High Sparrow and everyone else that Cersei must be up to no good, and they all need to get the fuck out. The Sparrow's not having it, though. The gods must be satisfied, so no one gets to leave, and they're going to try Cersei in absentia. They don't get much beyond the opening arguments, though, as Lancel reaches the light just in time to discover that it's a candle being used as a time-delay fuse to detonate the cache of wildfire Qyburn's placed under the sept. The whole place blows right the fuck up, taking Lancel, Kevan, Margaery, Loras, Mace, and pretty much the entirety of the Faith Militant with it.

Back at the Red Keep, Cersei smiles. She heads to the dungeon where she's had the ass-whooping septa chained to a table. She confesses all her sins, then turns the septa over to Ser Frankenmountain for as much torture and rape as he can dole out. Everything's coming up Cersei. Her son, however, is despondent, and throws himself off his balcony to his death. With Tommen dead, and all the Baratheons wiped out, there's no successor, and with most of the Small Council dead, there's no way to call a meeting to decide who ought to rule.

Coincidentally, Jaime is back from the Riverlands. As he and Bronn ride into King's Landing, they see the smouldering remains of the sept and wonder just what the fuck happened while they were gone. Jaime arrives in the throne room just in time to see Qyburn place the crown upon his sister's head.


The Queen of Burns
With her family dead, Lady Olenna has but one thing on her mind: Vengeance. She's not the only one who's interested in seeing the Lannisters dead, so she pays a visit to Dorne. When the Sand Snakes and their mother fail to convince her that they have anything to offer, Ellaria rings a bell, and Varys walks out of the shadows to steal one of Doran's best lines.


The Widow Drogo
Preparations are nearly complete, so it's time to depart the warm, safe lands of Essos for the frozen nightmare of Westeros. But first, Daenerys has to dump Daario. She's going to need to forge an alliance or two if she wants to hold on to the throne, and that means marrying a powerful lord. Daario's willing to come along and be her side piece, but Daenerys isn't up for that, so she orders him to stay behind and keep the peace while the people elect new leaders. Afterwards, she has a short chat with Tyrion and makes him her Hand. Then it's time to go, and the assembled Targaryen-Tyrell-Dornish-Ironborn fleet sails off into season seven.


What I Liked
-Jaime plays "Have you met Bronn?" That's a great game.
-"Shut up, Barbara, adults are talking." I hope they devote a whole episode next season to Olenna just calling people fucking morons.

What I Hated
-Trial by boredom. They spend waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long getting dressed at the beginning of the episode.
-The High Sparrow bars everyone from leaving the sept. The King and Cersei aren't there. Clearly, something nefarious is afoot. Even if he doesn't want to leave, there's no reason to keep everyone else there.
-Lancel was close enough to blow out the candles before they ignited the wildfire. I can't remember if he tried or not, but he definitely could've done it.
-Murderous children. There's a hell of a leap between relaying information and murdering a dude, and it just doesn't feel earned in any way.
-Fire solves everything. While I hated the whole Faith Militant story, wrapping it up so quickly and cleanly like that seems like something a six-year-old would do: "And then everybody blew up. The end."
-Cersei is crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Everyone in King's Landing except Qyburn and Ser Frankenmountain hates her. Literally everyone. She just blew up the local church and a good chunk of the surrounding neighbourhood. The food shipments from the Tyrells that were pacifying the populace would immediately stop. The people rioted once before, and this time there would be no stopping them.
-Bran can't quite hear what Lyanna says to Ned in the past. Is he going to have to go back again and really jam his head in close? What's the point of these flashbacks if they're still not showing us everything?
-Lady Mormont's speech somehow convinces the assembled Northern Lords to not only pledge their allegiance to Jon, but to declare him King of the North. It wasn't a particularly good speech.
-Tyrion becomes Hand of the Queen. Fucking why? On screen, she barely knows the guy, and what little governing he did in her absence damn near destroyed the city.

Final Thoughts
There was no tension at all in the pre-explosion scenes. Tension can only exist if there's a chance -however slight- that a plot could go awry. But we've all known for weeks that someone was going to get blown up, so there was no way Lancel was going to blow out the candles, and there was no way Margaery was going to get out of the sept.

I'm glad that Tommen's dead. He was a terrible character. But now who will look after Ser Pounce?

While it's nice to finally get quasi-confirmation that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, I'm left wondering why exactly Bran had to go back in time to find that out. What use is that knowledge to anyone at this point?

I understand that time passes between scenes, but it sure looks like Varys borrowed Littlefinger's teleporter. Part of the problem is that the various story lines don't move at the same pace. So it could be weeks or months at King's Landing, and only a few days at Winterfell. Sam's only just made it to Oldtown, but Varys sailed from Essos to Westeros and back in the space of two episodes. Plus, no one seems to age or really change their appearance in any discernible way. The Westerosi barbers must be really good.

The show moves the plot forward in a staggered fashion that I don't really like. It feels like things take forever to build up, and then they resolve everything in five minutes. This episode was the most blatant example. They spent twenty minutes setting up for the trials and having Loras confess and whatnot, and then blew everyone up. Why even bother showing Loras getting his head carved?

How the hell did Arya manage to bake the Freys into a pie? Killing them without getting caught, I could buy. But butchering them, bringing their meat into the castle, sneaking into the kitchen and baking a pie without anyone noticing seems a little ridiculous.

Cersei becomes Queen because the High Sparrow has a moment of absolute intransigence and stupidity, and everyone gets blown up. How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeenient. She's basically replaced Ramsay as the personification of evil on the show. Everything went her way, and everyone who opposed her wound end up dead, even though no one at all with any power should support her, and the hoi polloi should be rioting until her head is on a stake.

A good number of the victories on this show are completely unearned. Battles are won through the lucky arrival of reinforcements that no one knew were coming, armies are sabotaged by magic ninjas, and enemies are burned to death due to extreme stupidity. Daenerys, Jon, and Cersei aren't where they are due to any particular cunning or intelligence; Daenerys is magic, Jon is lucky, and Cersei has some kind of forcefield that turns everyone around her into a moron.

This season's been pretty disappointing, overall. I'll keep watching, since I like some of the characters, but I won't be expecting much out of it.

Despite all its flaws, this was an average episode. I gave it an extra half-star because Lady Olenna told the Sand Snakes to shut the fuck up.

Game of Thrones 5x10: Mother's Mercy

It's season finale time. Who will live? Who will die? Who will care?

Stannis
It seems that the sacrifice has worked as things have started to thaw out, but it's not all good news for the sole-surviving Baratheon. Selyse has decided that she actually did care about Shireen, and has hanged herself in the woods. Also, all the sellswords buggered off in the middle of the night and stole all the horses. Then just when he thinks it can't get any worse, Melisandre rides out of camp (apparently the sellswords stole all but one of the horses). "Well, them's the breaks," thinks Stannis, and he decides that a prophecy's a prophecy, so he'll just march his remaining men to take Winterfell without horses, siege weapons, superior numbers, or food. It doesn't go well for him.

Two minutes after they arrive, Stannis' forces are overwhelmed by the Boltons' cavalry and annihilated. Stannis himself manages to limp away to the woods, and even show a little baddassitude by killing two Bolton pursuers at the same time. Unfortunately, he's wounded, alone, and probably won't be able to drag his ass back to Dragonstone. Even more unfortunately, Podrick spotted his army coming in, and Brienne is not at all happy to see him. She's still a little miffed that Stannis killed Renly, so she tracks him to the woods and asks him if he has any last words before she whips out Oathkeeper and takes a swing at his head. All he can think to say is "Go on, do your duty."

"I've had a really bad day."

Sansa
Most of the Bolton soldiers are out slaughtering Stannis' men, so Sansa figures it's the perfect time to escape. She picks the lock on her room and heads up the ruined tower to light the candle Brienne had smuggled in to her. Unfortunately, Brienne is busy likewise engaged in Stannis-related business, so she can't come and save her. Myranda catches her out of her room, tells her of all the horrible things Ramsay has in store for her, and aims an arrow at her chest. That's all Theon can stands, he can't stands no more, so he tosses Myranda over a railing to her death, and leaps with Sansa from the wall of Winterfell into a snow bank and the freedom of season 6. Or to their deaths. Probably freedom, though.

Although, it is a reaaaaaaly long way down.

Arya
Ser Meryn doesn't just like underage prostitutes, he likes beating them. Arya's not cool with that, so she poses as a young whore, stabs his eyes out, then slits his throat. Later, she returns a borrowed face to the hall of the Many-Faced God. Jaqen catches her, and as punishment he forces her to watch him drink poison. Which is an odd punishment, to be sure. As she weeps over his body, the girl who has been taunting her all season turns into Jaqen and tells her that dead Jaqen wasn't Jaqen at all, he was no one. Arya rips faces off dead Jaqen until she reaches one that looks like her, then she goes blind because to a girl who is still someone, the faces are as good as poison. It's very confusing.

A girl has no idea what's going on.

Jaime
It's time to sail back to King's Landing. Ellaria gives Myrcella an obviously poisoned kiss goodbye, Tyene gives Bronn an obviously erotic bite on the ear, then it's sailing time. Two minutes into the trip, while Jaime awkwardly tries to explain his love for his own sister, Myrcella tells her dad that she already knows and that she's glad he's her dad. Then she drops dead. Back on the dock, Ellaria wipes some blood from her nose, cleans the poison from her lips, then downs the antidote. Then, I assume she and the Sand Snakes flip the boat off, Dornish style, before they walk home.

That's two kings, a crown prince, a prince, and three princesses that Jaime's lost during his time in the Kingsguard. It may be time for a new vocation.

Daenerys
Jorah and Daario ride north to look for their queen, while Tyrion, Grey Worm, Missandei, and (surprise!) Varys stay behind to run the city. Daenerys herself is somewhere off in the mountains trying to convince Drogon to take her home. He's a sleepy dragon, though, so she goes for a walk and is quickly surrounded by a... er... whatever the hell they call a group of Dothraki. So, I guess she'll be hanging out with them again next season.

I hope she remembers how to ride a horse.

Cersei
Cersei's tired of getting smacked around, so she confesses some of her sins and is shown the Mother's mercy. Which entails getting her head shaved and then walking home naked while the townspeople wave their genitals in her direction and throw what appears to be barbecue sauce at her. When she gets back to the Red Keep, she's met by her uncle Kevan, Qyburn, and the latest member of the Kingsguard.

Ser Frankenmountain

Jon
With Aemon dead, the castle needs a new maester, so Sam asks Jon if he can take Gilly and Little Sam to Oldtown so he can train at the Citadel. Reluctantly, Jon agrees. Later, Ser Davos begs for whatever Jon can spare, but the Night's Watch is low on just about everything, so there's nothing to send. Melisandre shows up (because apparently Stannis' camp was a 20-minute horse ride from Castle Black), and looks sad while Jon and Davos ask her what happened to Stannis and Shireen, respectively. Still later, Olly bursts into the Lord Commander's office to tell him of a wildling who has news of his uncle Benjen. Instead, he finds Ser Alliser and about fifteen other brothers standing around a sign that reads "TRAITOR". Then the actual traitors pull out their daggers and one-by-one, stab Jon to death. Yes, he's really, super dead and he's not coming back. For serious.

I mean, that's not chocolate syrup beside him.

What I Liked
-Wounded, and alone, Stannis still manages to kill two dudes before he goes down. He hasn't really had the chance to whip out his sword since season two.
-Myranda's head makes a satisfying splat when it hits the ground. She was boring, and I'm glad she's gone.
-When he dies, Jon's pupils dilate. I'll assume it was a special effect and not just incredible facial acting by Kit Harington.

What I Hated
-Literally a minute after he says the sellswords left with all the horses, Stannis' commander tells him that Melisandre was seen riding out of camp. It's like the writers never went back over the script after they wrote it.
-Brienne looks away from the broken tower five seconds before Sansa lights the candle. A watched pot never boils, I guess.
-The kiss of death could not have been more obvious.

I guess they don't have Sicilians in Westeros.

-"You want a good girl, but you need a bad pussy." That's a line so bad it hurts me to read it.
-Everything with Cersei. There was nothing good about her scenes at all.
-"Shame... shame... shame... *ding*" I'm not sure what they were going for with that bit, but it really just made me laugh.

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

-The weird body-double/cgi thing they did with naked Cersei. It made her head and neck look quite odd. Also, the merkin the body double was wearing was ridiculous.

Lena Headey and Lena Headonsomeoneelsesbodyey

-The walk of shame takes forever. It takes 4 minutes 45 seconds from the time she's stripped naked until the time the door closes behind her at the Red Keep. For comparison, it only takes 5:35 for the Boltons to wipe out Stannis' army, and that includes Brienne taking a swing at Stannis' head and Ramsay executing an injured soldier on the battlefield. It would be fine if it were at all interesting, but it's boring as all hell. To me, she got her comeuppance when she was arrested.
-When she's finished walking, she looks like Bruce Willis at the end of Die Hard. Is the ground in King's Landing made of glass or something?

Final Thoughts
Little Sam is clearly still a tiny baby, and Gilly had him in the middle of season three. Which means that everything that's happened since then has taken place over the course of about a year. It seems like an awful lot has happened in that time.

Poor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. He's still going to be on the show from time to time, but he's not going to be doing much in the way of acting if his character can't talk and you can't see his face.

They couldn't have telegraphed the fact that Olly was going to stab Jon more if they'd had him hold up a sign that said "I'm going to stab Jon". Seriously, anyone who was surprised by that wasn't paying attention. Of course, now we're left with the question of just who the hell would want to be the new Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. The last two were murdered by their own men, and by now there can't be more than 600 total brothers left to defend the wall against an army of tens of thousands of wights and walkers. The wildlings would've easily overwhelmed Castle Black without Stannis' intervention and they were no match for the army of the dead. At this point, they might as well seal all the tunnels and disband. Which would be fine by me, because if Jon really is permadead, there's no one left at Castle Black to give a crap about. Seriously, the men mutinied because Jon saved a bunch of wildlings who would've otherwise wound up as members of an enormous zombie army. Winter is coming, and the only people with any sense of what that actually means are dead. I'm rooting for the Others. At least they're not stupid.

Speaking of stupid, I'm not a Stannis the Mannis fan or whatever they're called, but I've gotta wonder how he went from greatest military general of his generation to getting completely wiped out in the space of a single season. Apparently, he went deaf as well, because half his army deserted in the middle of the night and took all the horses, and he didn't hear a thing. Which brings up something else that's sure to be ignored: There's now a substantial army of sellswords out there, riding around the North with no food and no way to get back home. They ought to begin pillaging the countryside fairly soon.

What the hell is Petyr going to do now? I know he's got the whole wheels within wheels thing going on, but Sansa's no longer at Winterfell and Stannis is no longer in any condition to capture it. Sure, he's Lord of Harrenhal and protector of the Vale, but that's not really worth too much. Even his brothel's been destroyed, so if he's got some grand plan in mind, it seems like it's probably not going that well.

Since Brienne doesn't know that Sansa escaped, when she goes back to look for the candle again, she'll see it's still lit and will break into Winterfell to try to save her. Or they'll coincidentally run into each other on the street. It's happened before.

Apparently Loras, Margaery and Tommen have gone off to live with Gendry, Osha, Rickon, Edmure Tully, the Greyjoys, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and Salladhor Saan in the land of forgotten characters.

I figure Myrcella's dead, Stannis is alive, Jon's dead but not for long, Theon and Sansa are just fine, Arya will be blind for three episodes, and Cersei will take the opportunity to grow out her bangs.

Overall, I didn't much care for this episode. Stannis, Jaime, and the brothers of the Night's Watch were stupid, Daenerys and company didn't do much of anything, and Cersei was incredibly boring. I had such high hopes for this season, but the writers didn't fare too well. When they straight up adapted the books, they did fine. But when they tried to merge plots and make up their own stuff, they failed miserably. With very little left in the (published) books for them to draw on, I'm not optimistic about what they'll do next year.

The Crazy Ones 1x10: Models Love Magic

What I Liked
-Simon wears the fantasy bra on his head. That's a problem.
-"Everybody likes pie except for terrorists and Canadians." Here, we like tarts.
-Bottom cleavage.

The third best kind.

-Zack can't pick up the models. It's so sad.
-There's a model book club. They're not illiterate, they're just models.

What I Hated
-Sydney mentions that Simon is literally distracted by shiny objects. It's not as funny if you spell it out.

Final Thoughts
Directed by Fred Savage. It's nice that he's keeping busy.

Bra security guy kinda sucks. He has one job: Watch the bra. And he doesn't even seem to really try to do it.

Do models really love magic?

Not the show's best effort. A lot of the episode seemed to revolve around having the models stand around in their underwear, and that's not all that interesting to me.

TBBT 7x10: The Discovery Dissipation

What I Liked
-Penny's jealous of Sheldon for being tall, thin, and famous. It's what all actresses aspire to be. Funnily enough, Jim Parsons is those things in real life, too.
-Sheldon gives Wil crap for his tweets, and Amy gives him crap for his web series about board games. That's what you get for quitting TNG.
-Kripke's superhero name for Sheldon: The Retractor. Not the best superpower in the world, but still better than Aquaman.

What I Hated
-Sheldon's yodelling. Why? Just why?

Final Thoughts
This is the second time they've had Ira Flatow on the show. I still don't know who he is.

It's rare for this show to reference something from a previous episode. Earlier this season, Amy went to work at CalTech, and they haven't spoken of it since. But I suppose something that could've potentially earned Sheldon a Nobel prize is worth revisiting.

Castle 6x10: The Good, The Bad & The Baby

What I Liked
-When Beckett says she wants to find out where the baby came from, Castle starts explaining where babies come from. Hee-hee.
-Alexis points out that if Castle and Beckett have kids, they could conceivably be around the same age as any kids she has. I just hope Pi's not the father.

What I Hated
-Ryan says he hears a quick-pick calling his name, but then chooses numbers from a piece of paper in his pocket.
-Beckett's not a baby person. Strangely enough a whole heck of a lot of people on TV aren't.

Final Thoughts
We haven't seen Pi in a while. I hope it's because his planet needs him.

This episode teaches us one thing: Greed is bad. Not that The Pardoner's Tale didn't teach us that already, of course. Anyway, had the thieves been willing to part with some cash, I'm sure they could've paid off the ball-choosing lady and no one would've ever found out. But their lust for gold was too great and it became their undoing. The same thing happened to Yukon Cornelius.

Castle is obviously supposed to be about the same age as Nathan Fillion, but I wonder if Beckett is the same age as Stana Katic. The characters are talking about having babies, and they're not even married yet, so the clock is ticking no matter how old Beckett is. But it's ticking faster if she's 38 than it would be if she were 32.

I'm not a big fan of baby-centric TV episodes. They've been completely mined out for content. There's the guy who loves the baby and the guy who doesn't like babies and the guy who thinks he's the master of babies who gets puked on. Sometimes those guys are all the same guy. The women -at least the ones who have more than a few lines- tend to be career-oriented and have no interest in the baby. That's probably a by-product of the fact that most women on TV have time-consuming jobs. Beckett sort of broke away from that mould, but not really.

Community 4x10: Intro to Knots

It's been eight weeks since Halloween, so that means it's time for a Christmas party. Despite being Jewish, Annie's really excited for the party and she arrives a bit early to help Jeff make his apartment a little bit more habitable. He's a bit concerned that she might want to start playing house on a permanent basis, but she quickly dismisses the idea.

The gang (minus Chevy, but plus Chang as Kevin) arrives shortly thereafter, and all of them have gifts even though they said 'no gifts'. When they're all settled in, Annie sits them down and explains that she heard through backroom channels that they failed their big history paper. Since Jeff needs to pass the class to graduate, he's really ticked off. Fortunately, Annie has invited Prof. Cornwallis to the party so they can schmooze him a bit and try to get him to change their grade.

And it's going to be tough because he's not a happy dude.

The professor doesn't respond much to Winger's charms, but he's very interested in both scotch and boobs, so Jeff tries to get Britta to go over to him and jiggle her bits at him. She's not interested, though, because she thinks Cornwallis hates her. However, Jeff needs all the help he can get, since he blew off his section of the paper so he could go to a secret Tom Waits concert, and that's why they failed. Britta agrees to try, but she shows her disapproval with her judgy face.

It looks more constipated than judgy to me.

Jeff goes back in to continue schmoozing, but Cornwallis sees right through him, and says nothing he does will get their grade raised from the C- he gave them. Elated, Jeff grabs Annie to tell her that they didn't actually fail. She already knows. The grade wouldn't keep them from passing the course, but a C- would cause her to fail to become valedictorian. Jeff doesn't care, though, and he says that the only reason he agreed to kiss Cornwallis' pasty British ass is because he thought they failed. Unfortunately, he's forgotten that human beings have ears, so Cornwallis hears the whole thing and decides to change their grade to an F after all.

These new revelations require a confab, so the group gathers in Jeff's bedroom to discuss what they're going to do. While they're in there, the hear sounds of a struggle, and when they come out, Cornwallis is tied to a chair and Chang wants to know if they want him to kill him.

I think the answer is probably 'no'. Probably.

Annie wants to immediately untie the professor, but Jeff thinks that they now have leverage, and they can talk about their grade. Cornwallis threatens to report them to the police, but Jeff and Annie lawyer him into submission. So a sociological experiment begins: The professor offers to give an A to whoever unties him and flunk everyone else. The group manages to hold together, but Annie is sorely tempted when Cornwallis points out that Shirley is also on track to be valedictorian. But, when that still doesn't work, he reveals that the reason the group originally got a C- is because Jeff tanked his section. Annie punches him, and they all start arguing, which attracts the attention of Jeff's neighbour, The Dean. Craig knocks on the door, then barges in when he sees what's happening.

They're having a party, and they didn't invite him.

The professor has inexplicably been untied, and is roaming around the apartment, drinking more scotch. He's not going to leave, though, because things are finally getting interesting. Winger gives one of his standard speeches about how they're all flawed and he forgives whoever screwed him over, which is, of course, exactly what the betrayer would say. So, to prove his loyalty, Jeff grabs Cornwallis and they tie him up again. Then it's on to the gift-giving. The bows on Kevin's gifts show that he doesn't know how to tie a knot, which means he couldn't have tied up the professor, and he must have done it to himself. He admits to doing it because he was bored, and as compensation for the mental anguish he's caused, he agrees to change their grade to a C+. Chang excuses himself to the bathroom to make a call to his boss, then The Dean comes over with a basket of kittens to say he forgives them for not inviting him to the party.

Kittens make any party more awesome. It's science!

What I Liked
-After Annie smashes a ceramic thing, Abed takes off his shoes.

I really wish they'd done Die Hard, too.

-This week's best line: "I'm pretty sure it's anus."-Troy

What I Hated
-Shirley was on track to be valedictorian. Come on, no one believes that. She took a class that she thought was Phys Ed. Someone who could've been top of her class wouldn't take a class she thought she'd do poorly in.
-Cornwallis managed to slip out of the chair without anyone noticing. Malcolm McDowell is wily, but he's not a magician.

Final Thoughts
After two viewings, I still don't know what Abed's gifts to the group were. They looked like plastic bags full of chickpeas or something.

The final tag with the evil universe was silly.

I've changed my mind about who I think Chang's employer is. There's no reason for the City College Dean to try to get the study group expelled, so I figure it must be someone else, like Garrett or Fat Neil or Rob Corddry.

This was a better episode than last week's, although it would've been pretty hard for it to be worse. That doesn't mean it was any damn good, though. It was basically on par with last year's stupid musical Christmas, and not quite as good as the claymation Christmas in season two. They've had bad luck with Christmas episodes on this show.

You know what would've been really good? If they did Die Hard in a restaurant like Abed wanted. That could've been awesome. Yes, it would've been really gimmicky, but Community does a lot of gimmicky episodes, and Joel McHale did a really good John McClane in Modern Warfare. Oh well, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas.

Castle 5x10: Significant Others

A high-powered divorce attorney who only represents women takes an icepick to the neck... but that's just a framing device for the real story in this episode. The real story is that Alexis has mono and is convalescing at home during a week when Beckett's staying over because her apartment is being fumigated. That would easily be enough for wacky hijinks to ensue, but wait... Who's that at the door?

*Woooooooo!* It's TV's Darby Stanchfield!

Castle's ex-wife (and Alexis' mother) Meredith is bummed that she and her daughter have to miss their vacation to Paris, so she's here to take care of her baby... and she brought a lot of luggage.

Foolishly, Castle allows his ex to move in so she can look after Alexis. Beckett's not cool with that. Not cool at all! She even gave him a look.

Lanie helped give him one, too.

He tries to fix it, but Meredith is a difficult woman to say 'no' to. She's been a bit of an absentee mother, and now she's incredibly thankful that he's willing to let her be there for Alexis in her hour of need.

Meanwhile, Beckett goes downstairs to talk to Lanie about the case and she gets an earful about how she needs to protect her territory. Castle and his ex hook up whenever she comes to town, and now that Beckett is encroaching on her man booty, Meredith's fighting back.

The case continues with a raucous visit to the lawyer's final client who lost big in her divorce. She and her ex-husband destroy every vase they can get their hands on until Beckett has them both arrested.

Back at the precinct, Ryan and Esposito notice that something's up when Beckett makes a snide remark about Castle's ex and he doesn't say anything. He lets them know what's up, and they tell him that he's on the edge of a very steep cliff and he's about to go over.

Castle's love life is a metaphor for the US economy.

Castle uses his considerable clout and finances to book the Ambassador Suite at the Four Seasons, complete with strawberries and champagne. Beckett's not going to let Meredith chase her away, though, so she heads back to Castle's loft and is up with the sun to make him coffee. But, Meredith's an early riser, too, and she doesn't have to go to work, so she doesn't need to put on pants.

She also makes better coffee than Kate... in her underwear.

Beckett and Castle visit a golf pro who they believe killed his wife and then killed the lawyer when she found proof. He seems ticked off about the whole thing and he's not much help. When they return to the station, Kate gets a phone call from Meredith asking her to dinner. His world's are colliding, and Ryan and Espo tell him that can only mean one thing:

"Boom."

At home, Martha tries to get her son to relax and have a glass of wine, but all he can do is pace. His ex-wife is out with his girlfriend, and there's no way that can go well for him. They actually have a good time together, though, and when they get home, they break Castle's brain.

The next day, the case is solved and Beckett's apartment is habitable again, so she clears out of Castle's place. He tries to get her to stay, though, because he might need to fumigate, too.

His apartment is infested with redheads.

Fortunately, Martha and Alexis have had enough Meredith for one week, and they convince her to go to Paris to finish her vacation. While Castle goes upstairs to grab her bag, she and Kate get to have a little confab. Beckett asks Meredith why it didn't work out between she and Rick. As it turns out, it was a communication thing. She told him everything about herself, but whenever she'd ask him about something meaningful or painful, he'd make a joke and change the subject. The episode ends with Beckett slowly realizing that despite the fact that she's known him for more than four years, she really doesn't know that much about the man who she loves.

That can't be good.

What I Liked
-Castle realizes a second too late that he shouldn't be discussing the manner in which his daughter got 'the kissing disease' with her. The trials and tribulations of a single dad.
-Nathan Fillion plays the confused man whose home is overrun with ladies really well. Just look at that face:

This is the face of a man who has no idea what's going on.

-Dr. Parish goes full gal pal. Lanie's normally very reserved, but when someone tries to steal her friend's man she's ready to throw down.
-TV's Darby Stanchfield in her underwear. I'm a guy. I like it when tall redheads walk around without any pants.
-Ryan and Esposito track down a lawyer who paid a guy who might have been the killer, and he actually acts like a real lawyer. He eats a hot dog and tells them to go screw themselves. None of that 'That's privileged information... I wish I could help you' crap.

What I Hated
-The murder plot was really complicated. During the lawyer's investigation of her client's husband, she discovered that he was a close friend of one of her old clients who was missing and had been presumed murdered by her husband. Further investigation found that the living client's husband's boat had been in close proximity with the dead woman's husband's boat on the night of her disappearance, and furthermore, money had been bouncing around which proved that the dead woman wasn't actually dead. The not-dead woman killed the lawyer after she threatened to expose her because she couldn't live with the injustice.
-Castle and Beckett are pretty blatant about their relationship. Long gone are the days when they were destroying video tape that showed them sharing loving glances. Now he's yelling stuff across the room at her. They should probably deal with the Cap'n at some point; by now, everybody must know they're together.

Final Thoughts
It's been so long since we've seen Meredith that I completely forgot about her. Darby Stanchfield hasn't been on the show since the sixth episode. She was an excellent casting choice back in the day, and I can still totally see how she and Nathan Fillion could have a kid that looks like Molly Quinn.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable episode, even though, or perhaps because the murder case was secondary to what was going on at the Casa de Castle. I also appreciated the fact that they tied the home stuff into the work stuff by having the murder victim be a divorce lawyer.

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.