TBBT 6x24: The Bon Voyage Reaction

Through his connection to Stephen Hawking, Howard manages to get Leonard a job on an expedition to the North Sea. For various reasons, Sheldon doesn't want him to go, and tries to talk him out of it. His comments about drowning and sharks don't work, but when he mentions that things between Leonard and Penny have never been better, he gets the response he was looking for.

Do the Germans have a word for 'anger at the fact that someone is right'?

Penny's a little bummed when Leonard tells her, but she reassures him that he's more likely to screw things up when he's around than when he's away. With his relationship status stable, Leonard books his flight, and the gang decides to throw him a 'Bon Voyage' party before he leaves.

Meanwhile, the gang is interested in meeting Lucy, and Raj tries to convince her to hang out with them. She's still not comfortable with groups, however he manages to convince her to meet them one at a time. It takes a while to figure out who should go first, but eventually they decide it should be Amy because she was an outsider once, and the group accepted her and treated her like family. Things start off relatively well, but the conversation quickly becomes too much for Lucy and she runs and hides in the bathroom.

She's a very confusing woman.

Afterwards, Raj apologizes for pushing her too hard and invites her to Leonard's going-away party. She's hesitant, but he seems to convince her that all the attention will be on Leonard, so it won't be too tough.

At the party, Sheldon makes a speech about how happy he is for Leonard, and Howard lets everyone know that space beats water. It's as fun as a seven-person party can be if everyone's still wearing pants. That is of course until Raj gets a break-up text from Lucy.

The next day, Sheldon and Penny drop Leonard off at the airport. The couple professes their love for one another while Sheldon tries to keep them from getting arrested for parking in a red zone.

The white zone is for loading and unloading. The red zone is for hot makeouts.

Later, Penny goes over to Raj's apartment to see how he's doing. He's still pretty distraught and worries that he might be unlovable. However, his heartbreak has mysteriously given him the ability to speak to women without being drunk.

Hey... wait a minute.

What I Liked
-Howard does Raj's voice when he talks for him. It is funnier with the accent.
-Sheldon tries to get Penny to talk Leonard out of going on the trip by telling her that men on long sea voyages sometimes resort to homosexuality. What happens at sea stays at sea!
-Raj is from India, so he knows how to beg. Is that racist?

What I Hated
-Lucy. The show really didn't need a character that was even more awkward than the others, and the plots with her were never very good.

Final Thoughts
I hope Lucy is gone forever. As a device to give Raj a reason to be able to talk to women, she worked well, but as a character she was terrible. It was bad enough that Raj couldn't talk to the female characters. Lucy couldn't even be in the same room as any of the others. There isn't really a whole lot you can do with someone like that.

As a finale, this was a little repetitive. Leonard went away for a summer-long scientific expedition at the end of season two when the guys went in search of magnetic monopoles. They've also had relationship-drama finales. I expect that Leonard will return with a ridiculous beard and he and Penny will have some sexytimes. Not much will be different about Raj other than that he won't have to have a drink in his hand when they want him to talk to the ladies.

I'll admit that I was wrong. I thought this season would end with someone pregnant. Maybe next year.

The Big Bang Theory finished out the season as the third-highest rated show on TV, the number one comedy, and one of the few shows that has been able to consistently grow its audience year after year. So, it doesn't need me to sing its praises. I'll give it some light background praising, though. It's consistently funny, if not consistently good or innovative, and really, that's all I ask from sitcoms: Be funny. And this season has been the funniest one yet. The show's often disposable and forgettable, so I won't be waiting in anticipation for next season's premiere, but I'll watch it. Because it's funny.

Castle 5x24: Watershed

After a night of partying, a girl hops in a shower, and does a decent impression of Drew Barrymore in the 1993 movie Doppelganger. When the building superintendent goes up to the roof to check the water tank, he finds a dead girl floating in it. The investigation is slightly delayed because Beckett is in Washington interviewing for a job with the Attorney General's office, and Castle is at home, trying to pick a cover for his upcoming novel, Deadly Heat.

Available Sept. 13 in book stores that still exist.

They both arrive a little bit tardy, but it doesn't much matter, since the girl is still dead. The building's a low-rent flop house, and the residents say she was a prostitute, who moved in ten days earlier. Except that when the cops run her prints, it turns out that she was an honours student at Harvard. Her parents thought that she was backpacking through Europe with her friends, and personally dropped her off at the airport the day she moved into the building. Lanie's post-mortem doesn't turn up any evidence that she was hooking, either. The residents all swear she was entertaining clients, though, and a search of her room finds out why.

Unfortunately, this CD is not available in stores.

One of the girl's neighbours was adamant that she wasn't a hooker, and when Beckett questions him, he tells her there's a hole in the wall that let him see into her room. She wasn't getting it on, she was just sitting at her laptop all night. A laptop that was not found when the cops searched the place.

A conversation with one of dead girl's friends from Harvard reveals that she was computer science major, so Castle and Beckett figure she must have been doing a little hacking on the side, and that whoever she hacked had her killed. But surprisingly, she was killed by blunt force trauma and not hacked to death.

Meanwhile, Beckett's having a bit of a crisis. Her interview went really well, and the Cap'n gave her a glowing recommendation, so she goes to see Lanie for some sassy black woman advice.

Mmm-hmm, child, etc.

The apparently recurring tech lady checks out the internet logs of the dead girl's building's wifi network, and after excluding all the porn sites, she narrows things down to a fancy law firm. Some further investigation reveals that dead girl made a couple phone calls to a former attorney at the firm. But when the team goes to see him, he's not talking.

He's hanging from the rafters by an extension cord.

Lanie rules out suicide, and a check of the guy's instant messages shows that someone posed as him and set up a meeting with the dead girl after he died. Seeking a common thread, Ryan discovers that the dead girl's best friend worked as an intern at the law firm the previous summer and was killed in a car crash on the way home from a company party.

Ryan and Esposito finally get around to searching for the missing laptop, and they find it hidden in the building's laundry room. While at Beckett's apartment, Kate and Richard are making dinner when he discovers a boarding pass in her jacket pocket. She tells him that she went to DC for an interview and didn't tell him about it. He's not happy.

Pictured: Richard Castle's not happy face.

They have a fight, he storms out, and doesn't come in to the precinct the next day. Which is unfortunate, because the guys and the tech girl discover that the dead lawyer got a phone call from a young member of a major political family a few minutes after the dead girl's friend died. When Beckett interviews him, his mouth says he didn't know the girl, but his face his 'oh crap', and his attorney says "This meeting is over."

Meanwhile, Martha counsels Castle, and Beckett gets the job and disappears, leaving Ryan and Esposito alone to do the actual police work. They arrest the illegitimate black sheep of the family, and then manage to call Beckett back in to get him to roll on his half brother. Then she calls Castle and gets him to meet her at the playground, where he tells her that he thinks they both deserve more than what their relationship is giving them. It looks like they're going to break up, but the show pulls the most obvious swerve in the history of television, and he proposes instead.

To find out her answer, tune in next time...

On the home front, Alexis wants to take a trip to Costa Rica to study the rainforest, but her dad's a little hesitant to write the cheque. He's been a tad overprotective ever since she was kidnapped and taken to Paris. Also, toucans are extremely aggressive this time of year. Eventually, though, he realizes that she needs to spread her wings and fly, and he gives her the money.

The smile of a young woman who's just received a big, fat cheque.

What I Liked
-Esposito busts Castle's balls over his new book. Only one novel a year? What's up with that?
-Castle makes a too soon joke about their investigation being dead in the water, just like the girl. Hee-hee.

What I Hated
-Bad green screen work at the beginning.

It's like this episode was directed by George Lucas or something.

-Beckett's speech to the killer. It was interminable and self-important. They might has well just have had her give a Stallone-esque 'I AM THE LAW' speech. It would've been more believable.

Final Thoughts
It was nice to see both Alexis and Martha in an episode. They haven't been around that much lately.

The rest of the episode was kinda cruddy, though. They did that thing where the killer showed up for thirty seconds at the beginning, then disappeared... again. I suppose it's somewhat realistic for the murderer to occasionally be J. Random Guy, Esq. but doing things that way over and over and over doesn't make for particularly compelling television.

Beyond that, the Castle-Beckett relationship stuff seemed a little bit forced. They've been suggesting turmoil between the two of them for more than half the season, but usually in short two-minute bursts at the end of an episode that seemed to be ignored when the next one rolled around. Nevertheless, I could've bought it if they broke up. That was never going to happen, though, as this show is far too popular to do anything to create major conflict between the main characters.

What I want to know is how they're going to deal with the two of them being engaged next season, since even though the Cap'n knows they're in a relationship, they're still not allowed to be partners if it's out in the open. Well, I guess I'll find out in the fall. Lacklustre finale or not, this season had enough good episodes to keep me watching.

Hawaii Five-0 3x24: Aloha, Malama Pono

After last week's revelation, Kono is now on the lam in the back of a silver Camaro with McGarrett at the wheel and Danno riding shotgun, as it should be. The HPD are in hot pursuit, but Steve manages to lose them long enough to give Kono a burner cell and let her out. Then they tear off again until they run into a blockade Duke has set up. The Sarge knows what's up and is in no mood for any of Danny and Steve's shenanigans.

I am in no mood. NO MOOD!

Kono's obviously no longer in the car, but she's wanted in connection with a murder, and Duke knows that the guys know where she is. He's willing to cut them a little slack because they're friends, however the prosecutor's office wants her and he doesn't know how much time he can buy them.

Meanwhile, a small plane full of dead people has just landed in a remote airfield. There's no registry and no record of the tail number and half the dead guys are wearing black suits and have empty holsters, so Steve thinks it was a rendition flight. The CIA gets in touch when Catherine starts asking questions about a flight that doesn't exist, and the chief black suit guy tells the team that the plane was carrying Rafael Salgado, a high-ranking member of a Latin American terrorist group. They think he knows about an attack that's going to go down on US soil, so they need him fast and they need him alive.

So they can take him to Cuba and torture him.

One of the dead agents' cell phone called a house twice just after the plane landed, so the guys go to bust down the door. When they get there, Salgado's nowhere to be found, but the woman inside knew him as Pedro back when she was a college student and he's the father of her son... who is now missing. The guy's have no idea where to start looking, so Steve goes to see someone who might.

He ain't pretty no more.

Wo Fat doesn't want to help, but he relents when Steve threatens to cut off his pain medication and points him towards a man who deals in forged documents. On the way out, the guard makes note of the fact that Steve is the second McGarrett to come through in the last few days as Doris recently paid a visit to Wo Fat as well. The documents guy gives up Salgado pretty quickly, however Mrs. McGarrett doesn't break quite so easily. Steve has to berate her until she's practically in tears before she's ready to spill her guts. Unfortunately, Catherine picks up Salgado's car on satellite surveillance, and Danny pulls him away before he can get the answers he wants.

He's so mean to his poor mother.

The guys catch Salgado without much trouble, but the kid isn't in the car. He says he didn't come to Hawaii to kidnap his son; he came to save him from the wrath of his terrorist organization. But he was too late. The terrorists took his son as collateral so he wouldn't talk. The CIA doesn't care if the boy lives or dies, so the head black suit guy tells the Five-0 team to stand down. Danny has a soft spot for kids, though, and he and Steve convince Salgado to help them out in exchange for saving his son's life. When they get to the meeting site, the terrorists double-cross Salgado and threaten to kill his son in front of him. Before they can, the Five-0 guys jump out of nowhere and ambush them. All the terrorists go down, but Salgado takes a bullet in the back while acting as a human shield for his son. They rush him to the hospital, where he gives up the location of the terrorist attack just before he dies.

Elsewhere, Kono is on the run. Fortunately, she has a rich boyfriend whose family owns a secret mansion through a holding company. She tells Adam that the HPD is after her because of his brother and he reveals that he knows she's been spying on him, and despite all appearances, he still claims that he's trying to legitimize the family business. However, his brother is fighting him for control and if his allies see him as weak, he's a dead man.

Together, they go to a warehouse that Adam's father's associates use as a supply depot and they look for evidence that his brother was involved in the murder. They find some bloody gloves, but before they can get away, Michael comes by. While Kono gets out of sight, Adam pretends that he needs a gun because the cops are after him. The ruse works and they both manage to escape without being seen. They take the gloves to Fong in hopes that he can match the dirt and blood on them to the body. Charlie's a bit hesitant, but he agrees to do it because Kono's his chum. The DNA on the outside of the gloves is a match to the dead guy, while the DNA on the inside is a match to Michael. It looks like they've got him dead to rights, but before Charlie can get the gloves to McGarrett, Michael drops by to pay him a visit.

And he is not happy.

After stabbing Charlie, Michael goes to the Noshimuri safe house to confront Kono and Adam. He tells his brother that everything he did was to protect him, but now that's over. He's going to kill Kono, take over the family business, and then Adam is on his own. Adam's not cool with that, so he jumps his brother and in the ensuing struggle, Michael gets shot in the torso.

Unlike when Kono got shot in the previous episode, the bullet does not miss his vital organs.

With their main source of income now dead, Michael's associates are going to want payback. Doris books passage for Adam on a freighter to Shanghai and Kono decides to go with him. Danny and Steve tell her she's crazy, but her cousin tells her to follow her heart and lets her go. Everyone says their tearful goodbyes, and the couple ships out, with Mama McGarrett tagging along to help them get settled.

Later, at Five-0 headquarters, it's been a year since Malia died, and Chin decides he's tired of being alone, so he finally calls Leilani. Also, Gabby comes back because Last Resort was a terrible idea for a show.

Navy officers hijack their own submarine and gain control of nuclear weapons? Who the hell would believe that?

With Doris gone, there's only one person McGarrett can turn to for answers. Coincidentally, Wo Fat asks to see him at the same time he decides to come in on his own. He's fully willing to cooperate and tell Steve everything he wants to know, but first he needs to save him from the men who are coming to kill him. There's an explosion outside the door and sounds of gunfire, followed by someone slowly cutting through the door.

Ah, crap.

What I Liked
-Duke has no time for Steve's BS. Too many people go along with his nonsense, and it's good to see someone who's willing to put him in his place.

What I Hated
-The whole ticking clock terrorist rendition thing. Plots like this make the public okay with sending people to secret prisons so they can be tortured without oversight. Jack Bauer may have tortured people, but at least he always did it on US soil.
-Wo Fat is in a top secret facility with a giant steel door and a dozen armed guards outside. The man has half a face and one working arm; why the hell do they need that much security?
-They do that thing where two people struggle for a gun and it goes off and they don't immediately show who got shot. Is it ever the good guy? Ever?
-Apparently Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are there to kill Wo Fat because whoever's on the other side of the door manages to cut through a good 35cm of steel in mere seconds. That's 35cm thick.

I guess Wo Fat works for the Trade Federation.

Final Thoughts
Why in the hell did they bother bringing Gabby back? She hasn't been on the show in over a year and it would've been just fine to completely ignore the character and pretend she never existed or have Danny give a throwaway line about how they broke up. Instead, they somewhat randomly decided that everyone needed to find love in the season finale. Steve has Catherine, Kono has Adam, Danny has Gabby, and even Chin has Leilani. Everybody's happy.

This is the second straight finale where something has happened that makes it look like Kono won't be back next season. Of course, she will be and everything will be resolved by the end of the third episode, just like it was this season... or last season for that matter. Remember when Rachel was pregnant with Danny's baby and McGarrett was a suspect in the Governor's murder?

As for this episode, it had one of the three Bs, but Danno hasn't booked anyone in quite a while, and there haven't really been that many bikini babes lately, either. The show's been moving away from what makes it good and trying to become more serious and dramatic. There are plenty of serious cop shows on TV, and Hawaii Five-0 can't really compete with them in that arena. However, there aren't any other banter-based cop shows set in Hawaii out there, and if they stuck to that niche instead of trying to branch out, I think it would be a much better show.

Beyond that, it was an adequate finale. It had a little bit of action, some drama, some romance, and a ridiculous cliffhanger that came out of nowhere and made no sense. So, I'll watch the show next season, but if it starts to decline in quality, I might skip a few episodes.

HIMYM 8x24: Something New

Marshall has apparently neglected to tell his mother that he, Lily, and Marvin are moving to Rome for a year. So, when Judy calls and Lily accidentally spills the beans, Marshall and Marvin fly out to Minnesota for a week to calm her down.

With her two favourite guys away, Lily has time to get blotto down at the bar with Ted. However, Ted's heading up to Westchester to put the finishing touches on that house he's been remodelling for three years. Lily's really excited to see the place, but when they get there, she quickly finds out that Ted's selling it.

Using the cheapest sign he could find.

When she asks him why he's giving the house up so soon after finishing it, Ted tells her that he's giving up on New York and moving to Chicago. Marshall and Lily are going to Rome, Robin and Barney are getting married, and after eight years of looking, he hasn't been able to find a woman he can love in New York; he's leaving right after the wedding. Lily wonders why he's in such a rush, and quickly realizes that it's because he thinks the love of his life is about to marry his best friend. Ted tells the story of the end of last week's episode and how he spent hours digging up Central Park, looking for the locket, just for the chance to see Robin smile. That's kind of a douchey way to feel about your best friend's fiancee. Unfortunately, Lily knows exactly where the locket is.

Four seasons ago when Ted was engaged to Stella, Robin got super drunk and dragged Lily out to Central Park in the middle of the night to dig up the locket... and rebury the box it was in, apparently. Afterwards, they went back to the apartment where Robin tried to get Lily to help her conceal the locket in her butt. Instead, they put it in a race car pencil box(which, incidentally is visible behind the son in 2030).

Then Robin asked her to help hide the pencil box in her butt.

After that, Lily thinks she took the pencil box to Japan. However, Ted knows that it's actually been on his desk for the past five years. Lily warns him to be careful, but he's elated and thinks that the locket will be the best wedding present ever.

In Minnesota, Judy is jokingly threatening to either stop them from going to Rome altogether or to tag along. That's not the biggest threat to their trip, though. Marshall gets a call from the New York Judiciary Committee, and they want him to be a judge.

Meanwhile, Robin and Barney go to dinner, where they meet a pretentious, bitchy couple while they're waiting at the bar.

Hi!

After having an annoying disagreement with the couple over the sight and smell of a couple cigars they plan to smoke after dinner, Barney and Robin decide that they've just met their arch-nemeses, and must destroy them. This becomes doubly urgent when the couple steals their favourite table. Some astute observation shows that the guy's not quite as into the relationship as the girl, so Robin sticks her engagement ring in some Champagne and has it delivered to them, mirroring what happened to her and Ted back in season two. Only this time the woman's way into, and they man tries to back out.

And their enemies are vanquished.

In the end, things actually work out for the annoying couple and they realize they really do want to get married.

A few days later it's the Friday before the wedding. Robin and Barney hop in Ranjeev's limo, Ted and Lily drive a wood-panelled station wagon for some reason, Marshall and the baby grab a flight back from Minnesota, a woman carrying a guitar and a yellow umbrella takes the train to Farhampton.

But the producers dick us around and don't show her face.

Oh wait, never mind.

Finally. Meet Cristin Milioti, the girl with the yellow umbrella, and presumably the mother.

What I Liked
-Barney and Robin saw two bums making love over a sandwich. Why pay for theatre tickets when you can watch that kind of show for free?
-Marshall's older brother Marcus has returned from Carnalism II to make puns about hitting his baby brother in the balls.

"Do you like crushed nuts?"

"Do you want me to grab your bag?"

-Drunk Robin keeps asking Lily to help her put things in her butt. Sometimes the simplest jokes are the best jokes.
-They actually showed the mother's face. Now, I'm going to assume that the girl with the umbrella is actually the mother. The credits listed her as 'the girl with the yellow umbrella' but I don't think the producers would be dumb enough to pull a fake out like that. It's not like they need the money, but their careers would take a pretty serious hit after the massive public backlash that would ensue. So, credit goes to them for not making us wait until next season.

What I Hated
-The annoying couple. Congratulations, HIMYM writers, you managed to create someone even worse than Ted. Casey Wilson and Keegan-Michael Key were listed as 'Special Guest Stars', which is weird because their resumes aren't that impressive.

Final Thoughts
Despite a complete lack of carpentry skills and the fact that he hasn't actually spoken about it in three years, Ted somehow managed to fix up the house. Then he immediately decided to put it on the market. Why did they even bother with that? We know that he can't sell the place because it's the house where Future Ted is telling the story of how he met his kids' mother. Heck, they mentioned that in this very episode. It's just another example of the writers trying to build drama, but failing miserably because we already know what happens.

Speaking of which, apparently the faux drama at the end of last week's episode ended five seconds later when Ted buggered off.

I'm not going to watch this show next season. We know who the mother is, and that's all I needed. It's not nearly good enough anymore to justify watching it. The plots are illogical, the lead character is a douche, and at least a few episodes next season will be spent just on Barney and Robin's wedding, which we first found out about in the first episode of season seven. Two years is a long-ass time to tease something that, quite frankly, isn't that interesting or important in the context of the show. Of course, the producers of HIMYM are masters at drawing things out, having taken eight seasons and 184 episodes to show the mother, who Ted hasn't even actually met yet.

There's one thing that would've made me keep watching, and quite frankly, I would've followed the producers to the ends of the Earth if it were true. If they had actually cast Cristin Milioti several seasons ago and used her for all the brief glimpses of the mother we've seen over the years, I would sing this show's praises until the day I died. They didn't, though. I don't even think they used the same actress in the season premiere.

As for this episode specifically, it wasn't insultingly awful, but it was a bit disconnected and Robin and Barney's plot was both aggravating and completely superfluous. It also had one really stupid and annoying plot point regarding the locket. So, Robin was so drunk that she forgot she dug it up; I can believe that. What I cannot believe is that there was a strange locket in a box on Ted's desk, and he didn't ask Robin or Lily about it for five years. It's not like it was hidden in a back storage room somewhere or in the bottom of a file cabinet, it was on his desk, holding pencils that he presumably uses every day for work. But apparently he didn't open it for half a decade because when Robin told him about the locket in the park, he didn't immediately say "Oh, it's in a box on my desk. It has been for years." The whole thing makes absolutely no sense and is just more "My, aren't we clever" masturbatory writing. No, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, you're not all that clever. It would be clever if the locket actually had been in that box for the previous five years, but until a week ago, the locket didn't even exist. On the show, Robin got drunk five years ago and put the locket in a box on Ted's desk. In reality, the writers came up with that idea like two months ago. It's not clever, it's just dumb. Which is an apt description of the show as a whole these days.