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.

Community 4x08: Herstory of Dance

To distract the student body from the fact that the CDC is confiscating Greendale's drinking fountains, the Dean decides to hold a dance. For no particular reason, he makes it a Sadie Hawkins dance, which rankles stereotypical ultra-feminist Britta to no end. As a response, she decides to throw a Sophie B. Hawkins dance in protest. Correctly deducing that she really meant Susan B. Anthony, Jeff busts Britta's lady balls and congratulates her for Brittaing things up once again.

Then he puts on his troll face.

Unwilling to admit she was wrong, Britta fully commits to the bit and so there will be duelling dances in the Greendale cafeteria on Friday.

Meanwhile, Abed's trying to grow as a character. In order to help, Annie and Shirley set him up with competing dates for the dance. Unfortunately, he sees it as a chance for some Three's Company style shenanigans, and decides to go with both girls rather than picking one. Annie's choice is Cat, a quirky girl who rides around on a kick scooter, while Shirley's is Jessica, a nice Christian girl. In typical Jack Tripper fashion, things go well at first, and Abed even gets some help from the coat check girl.

She sees what he's doing there.

With Rachel's help, he manages to make it work for a while, but eventually Annie and Shirley figure out his scheme and remind him that it's not a TV show, and he's dealing with real people with real emotions. It's then that he realizes that the girl he really wants was right in front of him the whole time. But, when he goes back to the coat check room to profess his affection, she's gone.

At the same time, it starts to become clear that Sophie B. Hawkins will not be attending the Sophie B. Hawkins dance, and that Britta is a failure. But, just as she's about to admit defeat, a saviour arrives:

I assume it's Sophie B. Hawkins... I honestly have no idea what she looks like.

Before Sophie can get on with singing her two songs that anyone's ever heard of, Abed grabs the mic and makes a public declaration of his feelings for Rachel. She accepts his apology, and they agree to go out on a date.

Elsewhere in the cafeteria, Jeff is flabbergasted. He has no idea how Britta managed to pull things off... until Pierce tells him that Hawthorne Wipes were the official moist towelettes of Lilith Fair back in the 1990s. He dresses Jeff down over the way he treats Britta, making fun of her and using her name as a synonym for screwing up, even after she helped him reconcile with his dad. Jeff apologizes via text, and everyone rocks out to 'As I Lay Me Down'.

It's a good thing they only had time for two songs in the episode, 'cause that's all she has.

What I Liked
-Troll face Jeff. If it's not a meme yet, it should be.
-Pierce calls Jeff out for being a prick. Despite all the flack he takes for being an old, out-of-touch racist, Pierce is the only one who has the strength to put him in his place.
-This week's best line: "According to Dean law, I must now give her my amulet." -Dean Pelton

What I Hated
-The Dean's Donna Reed costume. They've gone too far, now it's just insane.

Seriously, WTF?

-The title to Sophie B. Hawkins' song. When using the subjunctive tense, the proper word is always 'were', not 'was', so it should be Damn I Wish I Were Your Lover.
-Chang DJ's the dances. As an excuse to get him into the episode, it worked. As comedy, it failed.
-The end tag. Seeing the gang as crappy puppets did not encourage me to watch the next episode.

Final Thoughts
I need to start this section off by saying the title of this episode makes me want to punch the writers. That may have been the point, however. If so, kudos, Community writers.

Geez, where did they dig up Sophie B. Hawkins? She hasn't put out a hit album in more than 15 years now, and it's not like her records were mammoth hits to begin with.

They've actually made Pierce more of a well-rounded character over the last couple episodes, and it's kind of a bummer that Chevy flipped out and left the show. Not that he's going to be absent for very long.

This was better than the past few weeks, and actually managed to break double digits in laughs for the first time in a while. That still didn't make it good, though. Parodying long-standing TV tropes while repeating others at the same time is a bit weird.

Castle 5x19: The Lives of Others

Thanks to a little ill-advised hot-dogging on the slopes, Castle is sidelined with a broken kneecap. Meanwhile, there's a case to be solved. It's tax season in the US and someone just took a bat to the head of an IRS agent outside her office building. The security cameras caught it, but unfortunately whoever did the swinging was wearing a high-intensity IR light on his head and his face was completely invisible.

Looks like ARod doesn't like paying his taxes.

The victim's husband claims that someone came up to them in a restaurant, screaming about how she had ruined his life. But, since threat reports generate a lot of extra paperwork, it was an unwritten rule at the IRS that no one should actually file one, which means that Ryan and Esposito have to comb through her audit records by hand, looking for someone who matches the husband's description.

At home, Castle's suffering from a little dose of cabin fever, which is strange, seeing as how he has an awesome cable package and internet access. Fortunately, Alexis gave him binoculars as a little gag gift, so he could pretend he was Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. He's able to resist for a while, but the temptation of being able to watch his neighbours doin' it is far too difficult to overcome. In the windows across the street he sees a couple writers arguing, a maid stealing from her employer, and a sexy young couple about to get it on. Apparently, he's not a pervert, because he actually looks away just as it's about to get good. However, as he pans left, he sees that the woman's boyfriend is home early, and she has to hide her lover in the closet and quickly get redressed.

Busted!

She manages to get the guy out of the apartment with his pants on, but he's left his stupid hat behind, and the woman has a little explaining to do. Later, as he watches them cook dinner, he prepares to witness the inevitable breakup fight. Instead, he sees the guy pick up a large knife and follow his girlfriend into the bedroom, where the shades are conveniently drawn. Castle quickly calls in the fuzz, but when they arrive they find no signs of the girl, or of a murder having taken place. The boyfriend even calls her and hands the phone to Esposito so he can confirm that she's still alive.

Although he insists that he's not crazy, Beckett gets Castle to admit that he may just be playing out a Rear Window scenario in his head, and the odds of something like that actually happening are astronomical. That sinister-looking kid is not coming to kill him. Nevertheless, he gets up in the middle of the night and continues to spy with his binoculars, even falling asleep in his wheelchair.

The next day, the team continues the investigation and finds out that the guy who accosted the dead IRS agent probably wasn't the killer and that she had asked him to help her set up a new identity in exchange for making some of his tax problems go away. Of course, the titular character is not involved, and calls Beckett back to the apartment after he sees the ex-boyfriend washing some red stuff off his hands.

He was probably just making pasta sauce with his bare hands, like they do in the old country.

Beckett refuses to believe him, but Alexis has grown up with his insanity, and is far more credulous. When he calls his daughter over after seeing the guy drag a rolled-up carpet out of his apartment at 3am, she joins him with her own set of binoculars, through which she sees the guys trip down to his underwear and slap on a gas mask and rubber gloves. Something very strange is going on over there. Without a saner voice to keep him from doing something stupid, Castle convinces Alexis to keep a lookout with her binoculars while he breaks into the guy's apartment to grab some evidence. He gets inside with relative ease, but then deviates from the plan and does a more thorough search than Alexis agreed to. Inside the closet, he finds bleach, paint, and what he thinks are blood stains, but before he has time to take a sample, the guy comes home. Hindered by his injured leg, Castle can't escape, but he manages to hide under the bed and slip out while the guy's in the bathroom.

At the same time, the detectives discover that something very strange was going on with the dead IRS agent. She had over half a million dollars hidden in a secret account that not even her husband knew about, and all of it came from crime boss Tommy "The Shark" Valentino. The Shark's not the killer, though. He wanted to make sure that the feds couldn't take him down Al Capone style, so he hired the agent as a tax consultant to ensure all his paperwork was in order. Instead, he implicates the woman's husband who just recently took out a million-dollar life insurance policy on her. Beckett brings him in, but when she starts asking the tough questions, he lawyers up.

After work, Beckett returns to the Castle home where Alexis and Richard are entirely too proud of what they've done. While Kate tries to offer a reasonable explanation for what's going on, Alexis sees the ex-girlfriend's lover stop by the apartment. To help him get over it, Beckett runs down to the street to catch the guy to see if he knows what might have happened to the girl. He hasn't heard from her in days, and her parents don't know where she is, either. That's odd enough that Kate relents and lets Richard drag her over to the guy's storage unit so he can break in and show her the body. He cuts off the lock, but all they find inside is an empty rug and some garbage bags full of clothes.

And a wig for some reason.

Before they can leave, the storage facility's security guard catches them. The Cap'n's all too happy to chew them out and threatens to arrest Castle personally if he ever bothers his neighbour again. The couple goes home in defeat, and Castle apologizes to Beckett for letting his imagination run away with him and get her into trouble. She accepts, and they prepare to head out to celebrate his birthday.

They're going to celebrate even more when they get back.

Sadly, just before the car arrives to take them to dinner, Castle notices that his neighbour was taking soda out of the cupboard, rather than the fridge. He rescinds his apology and goes back to staring out the window. Despite the fact that the Cap'n spoke to the woman on the phone, Castle still thinks she's dead and the guy has her body in the refrigerator. He plants himself firmly in front of the window and says that he's not going to move until he sees what's inside. His girlfriend, however, has no time for such shenanigans. She got all dolled up and put on a nice dress, and damn it, they're going to dinner. Beckett struts across the street to bang on the guy's door and get him to open his fridge. She makes it into the apartment easily enough, but when she tries to open the refrigerator, the guy grabs her, pulls a knife, and kills the lights. Castle is understandably distressed, so he calls the guys and together they race over to the apartment and kick the door down, where they find a rather grisly scene.

Surprise parties are so terrible.

The whole scene was just a setup. Beckett knew that Castle was going crazy without any cases to solve, and when she saw that the apartment was up for rent, she decided to give him something awesome for his birthday. Everyone was in on it: The girlfriend, her lover, and the murderous boyfriend were Martha's acting students, Alexis gave him the binoculars specifically so he'd spy on the things that were happening across the street, and even The Cap'n joined in so she'd have a chance to yell at Castle.

Thinking about the ruse she had to construct to pull it all off gives Beckett an epiphany, and the next day she solves the real murder. The video they saw was a fake. The woman's husband killed her earlier in the night, and then one of the security guards at the building switched over to a different video feed while he dumped the body in the alley. She was having an affair with the husband and he wanted to avoid a messy divorce. It was really dumb.

What I Liked
-This was the 100th episode of the show, and they stuck a little note to that in the title sequence. I enjoy this show, and I'm glad that the people involved in its production are going to start seeing some of that sweet, sweet syndication money. It also means that there will be something other than a million episodes of CSI:Miami to watch on Sunday afternoons, which is nice.
-Castle lays a guilt trip on Martha because she's going to be out of town on his birthday. Women aren't the only ones who can do that. Equality!
-Alexis and Castle get some good father-daughter bonding time.

The family that spies together stays together... or something.

-The Cap'n couldn't make it to the party, which makes Castle very happy. You never want to party with your boss.

What I Hated
-When Castle first starts staring out his window with his binoculars, he sees a couple arguing over their laptops, and then says something. I had to listen to it like ten times before I figured out that it was "Must be writers." Enunciate, Fillion. Enunciate! "Oh, that better be for a sick child" was fairly easy to understand, though.
-They did the whole 'Oh, at first it looks like he hates the big surprise, but he really loves it' thing. That's been done to death.
-Beckett solved the murder thanks to a tiny bit of graffiti that conveniently showed up between the time the fake video was shot and the real murder. How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.

Final Thoughts
The pre-title segment on the show went on for more than ten minutes. That's basically unheard of in this day and age. If this were a sitcom, they would've shown half the episode before a single commercial break. It happens with some frequency on Castle, and I'm honestly not sure how they get away with it.

They used that 'IR light blinds the camera' thing on Hawaii Five-0 a little while back. I wonder if that's where the security guard got the idea.

The Rear Window portion of the episode was actually fairly entertaining and even made sense when it turned out that all of Castle's friends were putting on a show for his benefit. The other part of the episode was poorly developed and stupid, though. The killer was barely on screen, and his accomplice was seen for thirty seconds at the beginning of the episode, then only popped up again at the end. I hate when they do that, and I question the necessity of even including a real murder plot. They wanted to have that little moment at the end where Castle and Beckett talk about how they've solved 100 murder cases together, but it's not like he actually helped with this one, so I think it would've been better to merely allude to it, rather than showing a horribly undeveloped plot.

Castle 5x18: The Wild Rover

There's been a murder. But not a murder most foul, a murder most delicious. A local baker was shot in the back and then drowned in his industrial mixer. The baker's assistant mentions that he saw a '68 Charger park nearby before his boss sent him on a delivery, and it seemed to make him nervous. A search of the premises turns up $50,000 in a briefcase, and a check of the bakery's financial records shows the baker had large purchase orders for expensive equipment that wouldn't even fit in his shop.

When a records shop shows that the Charger belongs to Irish mobster Bobby S, the gang thinks that the baker was probably laundering money. Phone records show that a woman named Siobhan who runs a bar frequented by Bobby S. phoned the bakery nine times before the murder, so Beckett brings her in for questioning. In typical mob fashion, Siobhan ain't sayin' nothin'. As she's being taken to a holding cell to stew for a while, she notices Ryan and runs up and kisses him while calling him Fenton. Unfortunately, Jenny's there, delivering Kevin's forgotten lunch, and he gets five across the eyes for having a wife.

Then he gets five more for being a cop.

Kevin has some 'splainin' to do. First to his wife and then to the rest of the team. It turns out that before he joined the homicide squad he was undercover in the Irish mob for 18 months. He dated Siobhan and was good buddies with Bobby S.

After Ryan's finished spilling his story, an FBI agent arrives and tells the team that both the dead baker and Siobhan were informants, and the baker was going to deliver 'The Bible', a list of the mob's contacts and transactions just before he was killed. But now he's dead and Siobhan is screwed. The FBI guy refuses to put her in witness protection unless she delivers The Bible, so Ryan offers to go back in and help her get it. He gets a haircut, some new clothes, and Fenton O'Connell is reborn.

Praise Jesus!

His return to the bar isn't as welcoming as one would hope as Fenton is greeted with a solid right cross from a woman named Maggie who just so happens to be the wife of Bobby S's new number two. He's not off to a great start, but he manages to convince Bobby that he has a drug connection out in Chicago, and that makes everyone much happier to see him.

Back at the station, the rest of the team tries to tie Bobby S to the baker's murder. Unfortunately, it looks like he might have a solid alibi since he was at the track at the time of the murder. His car was definitely outside the bakery, though, so something fishy is going on. Esposito meets with Ryan to tell him that someone is trying to frame Bobby and he should consider walking away. However, Fenton's been invited over to Bobby's place to shoot pool, and it may be his only chance to grab The Bible, so he has to stay in.

At the pool game, Bobby's number two gets a phone call telling him that there's a rat in the organization. Fenton excuses himself to go to the bathroom and manages to grab The Bible while he's gone, but before he can get out of the house, the number two stops him and says they need to take a ride down to the docks.

There isn't a lot to do there at night.

The rat they're out there to drown isn't Fenton, though, it's Siobhan. One of Bobby's goons broke into her apartment and found out that she'd been talking to the FBI. Fenton is there to prove that he knew nothing about it by shooting her in the face. Obviously, Ryan can't just murder a woman, but he has no qualms about shooting Bobby. But when Bobby starts to chuckle with a gun pointed at him, it rapidly becomes clear that it's not loaded; it was all a test, and Fenton failed. Luckily, Ryan's a smart guy. He picked the number two's pocket, stole his cell phone, and then secretly called Esposito while they were driving. Just as he's about to get a lead salad, Ryan calls out Esposito, Beckett, and even Castle.

He forgot his vest.

They're still slightly outgunned, but backup arrives seconds later and all the bad guys drop their weapons. The Bible Ryan stole helps the feds build a case that should put Bobby S and his crew away for a long, long time, but that still leaves the little matter of the baker's murder. Bobby's number two's metro card was used by whoever was driving the Charger down by the bakery, but he has a rock solid alibi. That leaves only one possibility.

It was Maggie! Dun dun dunnnnnnnn.

After he sends Siobhan on her way, Ryan goes home to talk to Jenny. She's still upset that he went undercover, but he assures her that he's done with all that. Which is good, because she's pregnant. Dun dun dunnnnnnnn!

Meanwhile, Castle has been saying the name 'Jordan' in his sleep, and he refuses to tell Beckett who it is. After some cajoling, he tells her that he paid someone to write a paper for him on the Jordan Motor Company, and he still feels guilty about it. It's sort of silly.

What I Liked
-Castle refuses to fist bump Esposito after he makes a 'playing doctor' joke at Lanie's expense. Never joke about how a woman lets you see her naked... in front of her.
-Esposito can't pronounce 'Siobhan'. While it's a little far-fetched for an NYPD detective to be unfamiliar with that name, I empathize with his plight. I was actually having a discussion with someone a couple weeks back about how neither of us knew how to pronounce it at first, either.

Seriously, where does the V sound come from?

What I Hated
-Ryan has to have a dangerous meeting at a diner with Esposito so they can exchange information. It's 2013, not 1925: He could have just sent him an email.

Final Thoughts
While I was typing this, I mistyped Bobby as Booby about ten times. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Throughout the entire episode I thought "Man, they're gonna kill Ryan. His wife's gonna be pregnant, and when the kid is born, she'll name it after him." Especially since Seamus and Juliana are married in real life, and it would seem fitting to have her around for moral support on his last days at work. But Kevin survived, and now the Ryan baby won't have to grow up without a father.

I can't really remember an episode where the main focus was on Ryan. It's usually the Castle and Beckett show, so it was nice to get a little back story on him. There wasn't really anything exciting or memorable about the episode, though.

Hawaii Five-0 3x19: Hoa Pili

It's a full moon, and sea-based shenanigans are afoot. A man boards a yacht three miles off the coast of O'ahu and draws a fairly large handgun; he's clearly intent on putting a big hole in someone. Who that someone is becomes quite clear when he walks into the bedroom and finds his best friend putting something in his wife's big hole.

Or the little one, I'm not 100% sure.

Buddy boy is about to get a bullet in the brain when another yacht explodes off in the distance. That seems to be enough to stop the man from his murderous quest because in the morning he's wearing a set of HPD handcuffs and the Five-0 team is investigating the explosion.

As it turns out, the boat belonged to a company that takes people out to swim with the sharks and its the third one they've lost in the past month. The owner's surprised that it was out at sea since it was supposed to be docked all night. It also looks like his brother's missing, so he gets the team to head out on the water to see if they can find him. Danny spots some sharks circling where the boat's shark cage was supposed to be, and when they haul it up, they find the brother's body inside.

He doesn't look so good.

The team asks around and they find out that the dead brother was recently involved in an altercation on the high seas with a member of the Kapu Surf Club. Danny and Steve head over to talk to the Kapu Capo, but when they get there his house is engulfed in flames.

Which are pretty much the worst things you can be engulfed in.

Danny thinks the fire might have been in retaliation for one of the Kapu guys beating up up the dead brother, so the head Kapu asks his boys what happened. One of them cops to the beating, but says he was on a different island at the time of the murder. The guys believe him, and take him in on the assault charge, promising to let him go if his alibi checks out.

Back at Five-0 headquarters, the guys question the living brother after his fingerprints turn up on a discarded gas can near the fire. He and the Kapu don't like each other, but their alibis all checked out, so they didn't kill his brother. Also, someone drops by to say hi to Chin:

I knew I smelled a prison romance.

Leilani's there to see why Chin never asked her out. He tells her that he'd like to take her out, but he's still not over Malia's death. She leaves him her number and tells her to call her when he's ready. Then he gets called to the lab where Kono and Fong have a demonstration for him.

Charlie's been over the crime scene photos and he's figured out how the arsonists have been causing the fires on the boats. An automatic pet food dispenser dumped chlorine tablets into a dish full of brake fluid. The timer goes off, the tablets hit the fluid, and poof: Green Screen Explosion!

It probably doesn't work in real life, so don't bother trying it at home, kids.

The setup is similar to one that was used in a fire started at a construction site two years ago. The HPD had a suspect, but couldn't link him to the fire. The detectives haven't questioned him about the shark boat fires, so Chin tracks him down for a little chat. Unwisely, the guy bolts; as Chris Rock once so astutely stated: If the Five-0 have to come and get you, they're bringin' an ass-kicking with 'em.

If your day involves flying over the hood of a car into a rack of roasted ducks, you did something wrong.

When Chin and Kono finally slap the cuffs on the guy, a van pulls up and a couple dudes with guns hop out. After a brief standoff, one dude pulls out a badge and tells them that they're FBI agents and the guy's working for them as an informant. They know he burned the first two boats, but they let him walk free so they could keep using him. The team takes him in anyway, because if he burned the third one, he's a murderer and that's more important to them than the FBI's RICO case. Unfortunately, the guy's alibi checks out, so they have to cut him loose.

Meanwhile, Max summons Danny and Steve to his office, where he has a nice big mako shark on his table. Normally, he doesn't deal in fish, but when the fishermen who caught it were gutting it, they found an arm in its stomach. DNA from the arm matches it to some blood spatter found on the third boat. No one's been into any of the local ERs with a missing arm lately, though, so that particular suspect is probably dead. However, a one-armed man wouldn't have been able to toss the dead brother into the shark cage, so there's still another killer out there. A quick search brings up a list of known associates, but when they bust into a house looking for answers, all they find are more questions.

Oh, and a dead guy. They found a dead guy, too.

A more thorough search of the house turns up an oyster sauce barrel that used to contain a large quantity of MDMA. Some Taiwanese drug smugglers were caught flying into O'ahu a few days prior, but when the DEA searched their plane, it was empty. McGarrett figures the killers saw them ditch their cargo in the ocean and killed the dead brother when they went to retrieve it. He also guesses that the third guy they're looking for killed his partners so he could get away with 100% of the profit.

The team catches the guy just as he's about to make the deal, but then they get caught by the drugs' original owners. The head smuggler is about to lock Chin, Danny, and Steve in a shipping container and send them on a slow boat to China, and gut he killer for his insolence when Kono uses a crane to drop another container on his head.

It's a shame she had to do that. He was wearing a very nice suit.

A thrilling fight scene ensues where all the smugglers are beaten or killed and McGarrett takes out the killer with a stack of water barrels. When they get him back to headquarters, the get him to admit to killing his friends and the brother, and, in a cruel twist, they tell him it was all for nothing because the drugs were tainted during production and were worthless.

Kono and Steve help the surviving brother make repairs to his damaged boat, Danny and Chin help the Kapu rebuild their house, and Kamekona gets his helicopter pilot's licence. The big guy takes Max, Danny, and Steve up on his inaugural flight and shows them the sights.

Case Closed.

What I Liked
-Danny gives Steve crap about helping Kamekona get his helicopter pilot's licence. They haven't had enough in-car banter on this show lately.
-Chin says the brake fluid-chlorine explosion probably voids the pet food dispenser's warranty.

Kono liked that one, too.

-Steve and Kono both know more about the Sub-Mariner than Danny does. I never thought I'd see the day when a TV show would make a Namor reference.
-The show ends with the guys in the helicopter singing the Magnum P.I. theme song.

Did you see the sunrise this morning?

What I Hated
-The brother commits arson without being seen, but leaves his gas can behind. Criminals are extra stupid on TV.
-The previews for the episode relied heavily on the line "We're looking for a one-armed perp." They actually discount that theory about three seconds after McGarrett broaches it. I hate misleading previews so very, very much.
-Steve has Kono book the bad guy. No. Just no.
-Twist at the end with the drugs being worthless. It's weird when shows feel like it's not enough to bust a guy for murder, and they also need him to be really depressed about what he's done.

Final Thoughts
Why didn't the surviving brother end up in prison? He admitted to committing arson at the home of someone who had nothing to do with the murder of his brother. For that matter, why did the FBI let the guy who burned the brothers' boats walk around burning more stuff? It looks like arsonists get to walk free in Hawaii.

That whole FBI informant plot both came out of and went nowhere. I do hope it comes up again later in the season, otherwise it was just really weird.

It's been 25 years since it ended, so maybe it's time to remake Magnum P.I., too. Television producers are almost completely bereft of ideas at this point, so if they're going to bring back every popular hour-long drama (Hawaii Five-0, 90210, Dallas, etc.) then they might as well bring back another one that has a dude hanging out with chicks in bikinis and driving a cool car.

This episode was a tad convoluted to say the least, but it still had some fun bits and it very nearly had the three Bs, so I have to give it some points for that.

HIMYM 8x20: The Time Travelers

At long last, Future Ted is finally creeping up on the point in the story where he actually meets his kids' mother. But there's one thing standing in the way of their meeting: Robots vs. Wrestlers!

Which I suppose may technically be two things.

Barney drops by the bar with two tickets to Robots vs. Wrestlers: Legends and he wants Ted to be his +1. Unfortunately, Ted has a big lecture to give in the morning and he's not sure he should go out. So, in order to convince him, Barney calls upon the most convoluted narrative device in the history of television.

In order to get Ted to go out, he needs to prove that RvW:L will be a life-changing event. Unfortunately, there's no way to see into the future, so Present Barney can't make a good case. However, he can summon 20 Years from Now Barney to tell Ted just how legendary the night was. Future Barney's not wholly convincing, either, so he summons 20 Years from Now Ted to make the pitch to his past self.

We know Future Ted is a phony because he doesn't sound like Bob Saget.

20 Years from Now Ted says that going to RvW:L will make this night the single greatest night of his life, and that's enough for Present Ted. All four of them are about to head out when they're stopped by someone they didn't expect: 20 Hours from Now Ted.

The Ted of Tomorrow admits that Robots vs. Wrestlers is awesome, but while he was there he drank way too much, dove into the ring and sprained his wrist, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Also, he hurled like the time his mom bought beef at the Price Club. Upon hearing that his night was pretty awesome Present Ted is prepared to go just as long as he doesn't drink too much. The other Teds and the Barneys agree that you don't need alcohol to have a good time, but if you're going to Robots vs. Wrestlers, you still kinda need to get wasted. That seems to be enough to convince Present Ted because when they come back to this plot a bit later, he has inexplicably decided to go. They all get up to leave when they're stopped by yet another unexpected guest: 20 Minutes from Now Barney.

He's awfully smug for a guy with a big spaghetti stain on his shirt.

Present Barney laughs at this new Barney for spilling food on himself, then digs into the plate of spaghetti that Carl brings him. Nineteen minutes later, Present Barney has a big spaghetti stain, 20 Minutes from Now Barney has acid reflux from eating Italian food in an Irish pub, and the reason he came back to stop them walks through the door.

It's the coat check girl from Season 1, Episode 5: Okay Awesome. Remember her?

Ted consults with the group, and they all agree he should go talk to her, but before he can approach her, he's pulled into a booth by two people: Two separate versions of 20 Months from Now Coat Check Girl. They convince him that no matter what happens, either he'll get sick of her, or she'll get sick of him, because that's what always happens in his relationships.

Meanwhile, Marshall has invented a drink that he calls the 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' however, Robin's been ordering it so often that Carl has placed it on the MacLaren's menu and named it after her.

Now she has a play and a drink named after her.

Marshall is understandably upset that his creation got the Flaming Moe treatment, so he challenges Robin to a dance-off. They're about to hit the floor when Lily stops him because his dancer's hip has been acting up lately and their doctor wants him to lay off for a while.

With dance-based vengeance impossible, Marshall does the next best thing and writes Robin's phone number on the men's room wall. It doesn't work out terribly well for him since women can enter the men's room with impunity, but men can't go in the ladies' room. After scratching her name off the wall, Robin heads into the women's bathroom to do some writing of her own. Marshall sucks it up and busts through the door to see what it was, and it's not at all what he thought it would be.

It's not bawdy and it's really long.

Robin has left him a message about how sorry she is that she stole his drink and how it all goes back to her childhood and how her father treated her like a cat, but it's all a ruse. The last sentence exposes the whole thing as a lie she made up so Marshall would spend a long time in the bathroom and then have to hide in a stall when a woman comes in. And hide he does.

He waits until he thinks the coast is clear to emerge, but really there are somehow like seven girls in the bathroom. They all flee in terror, and Carl chastises Marshall for being creepy and even uses his name as shorthand for a dude creeping in the bathroom. While Marshall's glad that something is finally named after him, he's also kinda upset at the presumption that he was being creepy, so he resolves to call the next person he sees making a prejudicial assumption a 'Real Carl...' Unfortunately, he doesn't know Carl's last name, and even though he offers to name every drink in the bar after him if he can think of it, Marshall still has no idea what it could be.

Not pictured: Mr. Carl S. Jr.

Defeated, Marshall slinks back to the table. His wife has his back, though, and puts his jam on the jukebox so he can throw caution to the wind and dance it out with Ms. Sparkles.

While the dance-off is going down, Ted finally decides that he's not going to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers, and instead he's just going to go home. He expects Present Barney to try to change his mind, but instead he tells him that the whole 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' thing happened five years ago and everything else was just in his imagination. He's been alone the whole time, trying to decide if he should go by himself.

*Bwaaaaaaaaammmmmm*

Future Ted tells his kids that if he could go back to that night, he wouldn't go to Robots vs. Wrestlers. Instead, he'd go home and look at all his old stuff, visit Marshall and Lily and play with baby Marvin, and visit Robin and Barney and help settle whatever argument they were having. But first he'd run over to their mother's apartment and tell her that he loves her.

And get punched in the face by her boyfriend, Lou Ferrigno Jr.

What I Liked
-Future Ted trolls Present Ted by pretending that he's still not married. In the future he's still a douche, but he's a funnier douche.
-All the Teds and Barneys sing 'For the Longest Time' together. I wasn't a big fan of the multiples as a narrative device, but I recognize how tough it must have been to sync up their singing.

Plus, I kinda like that song.

What I Hated
-Marshall takes forever to read the message on the wall. It may have looked like a lot, but it was literally 185 words long, and should've taken him all of twenty seconds to read.
-The continuity is all messed up. Supposedly the 'Minnesota Tidal Wave' thing happened five years ago, but the gang didn't know about Marshall's dancer's hip until The Possimpible, which was only four years ago. Lily's hair is red in the episode, but five years ago it was brown. And most importantly, at the end of the season five episode 'Robots vs. Wrestlers' Future Ted says the following:

Kids, I'd love to tell you that over the years we didn't all drift apart a little at one time or another. You don't mean for it to happen, but it does. But no matter what, to this day, come hell or high water, we still all get together every year for Robots vs. Wrestlers.

What the hell is the point of having continuity if you're just going to ignore it or screw it up? Up until this season, this show's been very, very good at referencing things that happened in earlier episodes, but this year they've been screwing it up royally. Sure, they brought back Jayma Mays and Joe Manganiello, but the actors are probably the least important part of continuity.

Final Thoughts
This has to be the most confusing story in the history of the world at this point. Not only is Future Ted telling his kids the story of the eight years in his life before he met their mother, he's also telling them about things his friends did, things he doesn't know about, stories he told other people, and now things that he imagined. Future teenagers must have a lot more patience than today's teens.

I won't call it a complete waste of an episode, because things did happen on the show. However, from the point of view of the story it was a complete waste. It was literally an episode about how Ted went to the bar alone and drank one beer. We've had a firm date for when he finally meets the mother for a while now, and now the writers have to kill time until then. No progress or even fake progress can occur because we all know that it won't matter.

The characters aren't driving the plot anymore because Ted has resolved to stop dating, and the narrative's not driving the plot anymore because it already has an ending, so we just have to wait and watch the show spin its wheels until it gets there.