Reviews and More

After a month off, Burn Notice was finally back with a new episode last night. I had actually forgotten that the show was returning, but luckily I never messed with my TiVo settings, so it automatically recorded the ep for me. Here’s what happened in episode 1×10, which was called “False Flag.” (Wait a sec…. as I was looking up the episode title, I just realized that I missed 1×09! I don’t have a recap on this blog and don’t recall watching it, so I’ll have to scour my TiVo this weekend.)

Odd Job of the Week Michael agrees to help Lucy (played by China Chow), an old friend, by taking on the case of a woman who claims her husband has kidnapped their son. Lucy is a security consultant for a major corporation and doesn’t have time to take on these types of private jobs. She figures Michael could use the money, though, so she passes it on to him. He takes the case on the condition that Lucy hooks him up with high-quality fake IDs so he can travel out of Miami.

Michael then goes to meet his new client Evelyn (Lucy Lawless). She tells him her story, saying that her husband has been abusive towards both her and her son. This gets to Michael, who of course has experience in that area. He knows right away that he’s in danger of letting the case become too personal, but he decides to work it anyway.

Later on, there’s a nice twist as Evelyn turns out to be an assassin herself. She played the part of abused wife knowing that Michael would fall for it and lead her right to her target. Once Michael realizes what happened, he quickly switches allegiances and ends up helping Doug, the guy he thought was the abusive husband.

Burn Notice Progress: The burn notice wasn’t talked about much in this episode except for two tidbits. First, Michael is getting fake IDs so he can go to Washington, D.C. to check things out for himself. Second, at the end we learn that the person who issued Michael’s burn notice is coming to Miami — which obviously could spell trouble for Michael.

Character Development: Again, not much this week. We basically learn that Michael and Fiona are having problems in their relationship (yay!) and that Madeline (Michael’s mom) considered leaving his dad, but decided to stay for the sake of the kids.

My Reaction: This episode seemed a bit uneven to me, but I’m not sure why. I found that I couldn’t really get into the OJotW as much as I have in past episodes. I did like the fact that Michael got played by Evelyn and I liked how we got to see him use his Macgyver skills again, but other than that, I wasn’t too terribly interested.

I would love to see a bit more focus on the actual burn notice, so the fact that the person who issued the order is coming to Miami gives me hope that this question will be addressed. The only way for the writers to go from here is to make the burn notice come from someone much higher up in the chain of command than the person who will be in Miami next week. There’s no way the mystery ends there. After all, we’re talking about the government, which always means layers upon layers of bureaucracy.

Anyway, Burn Notice has been a fun show to watch during the summer when my regular faves are on hiatus, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to continue with it. I have a packed viewing schedule during the fall, especially on Thursday’s with Grey’s and CSI, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with Burn Notice. I’ll probably keep recording it and just watch it whenever my other shows are airing reruns.

My son is really becoming curious about everything around him these days, so I’ve been investigating different websites that have fun and easy experiments we can try. I’ve found several good ones, including Steve Spangler Science, and am already lining up a few projects for the coming weeks.

For example, I thought it would be fun to show my son that old trick where you yank a tablecloth out from under a full dinner setting without knocking anything over. I never realized this trick demonstrates Newton’s law that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. I doubt my son will understand that concept, but I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of the experiment!

I also saw an experiment that shows how to make the toy surprise in a box of cereal rise to the top before you even open it. It turns out all you have to do is hold the box vertically and shake it up and down several times. The toy will rise due to the friction created from the shaking action. Pretty cool, huh?

I love fun science tricks like this and I could seriously do these all day long. I hope my son likes them too!

Sometimes when I finish watching a movie, I’m so excited about what I’ve just seen that I’m inspired to sit down and write out my review the moment the credits start to roll. Other times, however, I’m so underwhelmed by what I’ve seen that the complete opposite happens. I dread having to sit here and rehash the awful plot once more. As a result, I occasionally find myself writing a review for a movie that I’ve seen weeks (or even months) ago. That was the case with Where the Heart Is, a film I saw sometime early last month but couldn’t bring myself to write about until today.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens with young, pregnant Novalee Nation (played by Natalie Portman) getting ready to drive from Tennessee to California with her redneck boyfriend Willie Jack Pickens (Dylan Bruno). Never mind that the car looks like it won’t make it to the end of the driveway; let’s just take it on faith that the thing can cross the country, ok?

We then get a few scenes of Willie Jack and Novalee interacting during their drive. Willie Jack behaves like such an utter ass and treats Novalee so poorly that viewers can’t help but wonder why she would be with a guy like that in the first place. But we’ll soon see that this movie likes to deal with extremes, so Willie Jack is just par for the cliché character course here.

Anyway, they’ve made it as far as Oklahoma when they decide to stop at a Wal-Mart so Novalee can use the bathroom and buy some new shoes. After Novalee pays for her purchase, she sees that her change due is $5.55. Since she’s incredibly superstitious about the number 5, she suddenly gets the impression that something bad will happen. She dashes out to the parking lot, and sure enough, Willie Jack is nowhere to be found. He has abandoned her with no money, no place to stay, and no way to get back home.

Novalee hangs out at the Wal-Mart because she really has nothing else to do. A local woman named Sister Husband (Stockard Channing) notices Novalee and brings her some items from the Welcome Wagon. She also invites Novalee to give her a call should she need anything.

Novalee continues to sit outside the Wal-Mart and browse in the store until closing time, when she feels nauseous so runs to the bathroom. And wouldn’t you know it? The Wal-Mart is able to shut down in record time, leaving Novalee trapped inside for the night. She makes the most of it by sleeping by the camping equipment, being careful to set the alarm so she can wake up well before Wal-Mart opens.

Novalee continues like this for a while, going out to explore the town and interact with some of the locals during the day, and sneaking back into the Wal-Mart just before closing time to bed down for the night. Then her water breaks, she has the baby, and her Wal-Mart life is discovered.

Instead of landing Novalee in jail, this whole incident makes her something of a celebrity. The Wal-Mart president even sends her some money and offers her a job. Novalee decides that it might be best to take that job, stick around, and try to make a life for herself and Americus, her baby.

The rest of the film then shows how Novalee develops friendships — and more — with one quirky resident after another, and how she overcomes adversity to find love and happiness.

My Reaction: Where the Heart Is tries entirely too hard to be a sweet story driven by eccentric, quirky characters. The result is that it plays out more like an exaggerated farce of small town life than anything else, which prevented me from being able to take the film seriously.

As flimsy as the plot was, the characters were the worst thing about this viewing experience. Every single one of them had some weird quirk or another, and it was just overkill. For instance, we have the single nurse, Lexie Coop (Ashley Judd), who doesn’t know how to use birth control and has five children from several different men. Is this even remotely realistic or… funny?? Not to me.

Then we have Sister Husband, who is religious enough to say grace before every meal, but not religious enough to preclude having to ask forgiveness for “fornicating.” Huh? Shouldn’t that tidbit be saved for the confessional booth rather than blurted out before breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Again, not believable or funny.

The love story between Forney and Novalee was painful to watch because everyone could see it coming except Novalee herself. Give me a break. Here we have another standard, completely overused contrivance of the male best friend being in love with a woman without the woman knowing it. Come on! Women know when men are in love with them, even women as dense as this freakin’ Novalee character.

Overall, Where the Heart Is was a movie that had me rolling my eyes from beginning to end. There’s nothing new here, nothing interesting at all. I give the film 3.5 stars out of 10 and warn you against wasting your time with this utter nonsense.