Reviews and More

I’m still trying to catch up on all the Burn Notice episodes saved on my TiVo. I’ve just finished 2×12, which was called “Seek and Destroy”. This was a pretty good ep, mostly because the Odd Job of the Week was interesting and had a new twist to it. There wasn’t much progress with the burn notice at all, and character development was kept to a minimum. Usually this wouldn’t add up to a good ep, but I was happy with the result here.

Odd Job of the Week: Michael needs some money to track down Derek Poole, so Fiona sets him up with a job she heard about. It’s for an art dealer named Scott Chandler, who’s convinced that someone is trying to breach his gallery’s security in order to find info about something. Michael poses as a security expert named Miles, and goes to work finding the culprit.

Of course, since Chandler is referred to by his last name and seems like a pretty slimy guy, I got the feeling that there was more to him than met the eye. I was right, as Chandler’s receptionist turned out to be the one bugging his office and keyboard. Her name is Melanie (hey, it’s the receptionist from The Practice!), and she has a good reason for going after Chandler. He basically stole a painting from her father (who was an artist). Melanie is trying to recover the $7 million piece and bring Chandler to justice.

After verifying Melanie’s story, Mike and Sam set up a neat little double-cross that ends up getting Chandler killed by one of his own associates (there we go with Michael being indirectly responsible for murder), who in turn gets nabbed by the cops while trying to dump Chandler’s body in a river. Convenient.

Burn Notice Progress: Michael works with Seymour the arms dealer to track down Derek Poole, the bomber who tried to kill him. Seymour first finds Derek’s girlfriend Bianca, who leads them to Derek’s secluded place. From there, Michael and Fi move in, capture Derek, and force him to talk. It turns out Derek was paid $100k to rig Michael’s door, but he doesn’t know who ordered the hit. He just got the order and a wire transfer, that was it. He gives Michael the account number. Mike will now try to track down the person behind the number.

Character Development: As I said, not much went down in the way of personal stuff. Michael and Fi mostly avoided talking about sleeping together, while Sam figured out what was going on because of how strange they were acting around each other. No Sharon Gless in this ep, which sucked, but I guess there really wasn’t any way to fit her in.

Looking forward to the next ep!

Ever since I got my Seinfeld DVD box set, I’ve been spending practically every spare moment with Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. Elaine especially has always been my favorite character, and seeing all these old eps made me want to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus in something current. So, I started watching The New Adventures of Old Christine again.

I had watched 2 1/2 seasons of the show before dumping it because my viewing schedule was too full. But I’ve been catching up on the CBS website, and am now into Season 4. Even though Christine is nowhere near as funny as Elaine Benes, I still love JLD’s special brand of neurosis. Seriously, that woman could sit there on a couch rattling off diet pill reviews or reading a phone book and I would probably find it entertaining!

Anyway, I’m not sure where the whole Christine-Barb fake marriage thing is going, but I don’t really care at this point. I’m watching for Christine alone!

Nurse Jackie 1×04 — “School Nurse”: This episode was a lot better than the first three, so maybe the show will start to hit its stride soon. I don’t have all that much to complain about this time around — except that I think they’re spending too much time focusing on Jackie’s family. That part of the show is the least interesting so far. Frankly, I don’t really care what’s wrong with Jackie’s kids, nor am I interested in finding out why her oldest daughter doesn’t add the sun or any colors to her drawings. What a snooze!

– I find it kind of odd — in an interesting way — that Jackie and her husband seem to have such a good relationship. I mean, he actually seems to contribute a hell of a lot to the household. He takes care of the girls, does some cooking and cleaning, and runs a bar as well. Plus, he’s pretty nice to Jackie. So why is she cheating on him? Is it just for the drugs?

– Dr. O’Hara is growing on me. She’s so opposite to Jackie that their interactions are invariably amusing. I particularly liked the aversion to children she displayed in this ep, and had to LOL when she said that she was grossed out after having been touched by “sullied midget digits”.

– Oh, poor Zoey, losing her first patient like that. This character is still my favorite. I have to find out who this actress is. She’s awesome!

– And who would’ve thought that Coop could have such a good bedside manner. I’m a bit of a sucker for men who are kind to the elderly, so his nice interactions with that patient led to an “Awww” moment for me.

I am much more optimistic about Nurse Jackie after watching 1×04. Let’s hope the good eps continue!

Seinfeld 7×07 — “The Secret Code”: This is one of the few Seinfeld episodes that I’d never seen in its entirety until I bought the DVD box set. The episode wasn’t all that great, but there were a few solid moments. For instance, it’s just like George not to tell his ATM code to anyone, isn’t it? I had to laugh when he even refused to tell Susan. What a freak.

And what kind of bank ATM codes do they have in New York? My ATM code is a 4-digit number. I’ve never had the option to use a word as my code, and I’ve never heard of anybody else being able to use a word either. It’s supposed to be a number. That’s why it’s called a PIN (personal identification number), right?

The Kramer stuff was kind of dumb. He was always my least favorite character, though, so it’s not surprising that his storylines still fail to interest me. He thought he could give better directions to the fire department than the ones they’d been using? That’s pretty silly — though I guess in the days before gps systems were so common, taking shortcuts might have been a bigger issue.

I thought it was totally weird that J. Peterman would want to stick around and have dinner with Jerry and George even after Elaine, their only common bond, bailed. I would never do that if I were in the same situation. Just too awkward!

I think there are like 5 more episodes that I haven’t seen. After that, I’ll start digging into the bonus features and some of my favorites. Can’t wait!

There have been lots of great television series over the decades, but my all-time favorite is definitely Seinfeld. I can watch these episodes over and over again without getting sick of them — and now that I’ve purchased the complete box set of the series, I’ll do just that. I’m starting with episodes that I haven’t seen before (or that I’ve just seen part of), which is why I began with 3×23, “The Keys”.

I’ve never lived in an apartment building long enough to develop close relationships with my neighbors, nor did I ever feel the need to give a spare set of keys to a friend for safekeeping, so I didn’t really relate to what was happening in this ep. Yes, I could see Jerry getting fed up with Kramer barging in all the time and therefore asking for his keys back, but all the back and forth swapping between the gang was a bit out there.

But as is usual with a majority of Seinfeld eps I still found things to laugh at even though I didn’t particularly like the main plot. For instance, I loved how Jerry sometimes pretends that a crazed killer is chasing him and he has to try to open his door as quickly as possible. I swear, I’ve done that sometimes too! Also, I had to LOL at Kramer’s humongous key ring with a hundred and fifty keys on it! That looks like it would belong someone with a house in the Hamptons, Wilmington NC real estate, and other properties all over the place, not some unemployed mooch who doesn’t even have a car!

My favorite part of the ep was finding out that Elaine was writing a Murphy Brown spec script! That was awesome because it was unexpected, and yet something that Elaine would totally try to do. Brilliant!

I’m still working my way through Season 2 of Burn Notice. I’m aiming to watch at least one episode a week, but I’ve been so busy recently that this hasn’t been possible. My schedule should lighten up a bit in the near future, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track and eventually catch up with current airings! Anyway, here’s what happened in episode 2×11, called “Hot Spot”.

Odd Job of the Week: Sam’s friend is a high school football coach who notices that one of his players is in trouble. It’s Corey, a standout both on the field and off. Corey has been having problems with a local gang-banger named Felix, who lured Corey’s sister Tanya into his car and tried to attack her. Tanya escaped and told Corey, who then went after Felix with a baseball bat. That ruined Felix’s rep, so now he’s after Corey to even the score.

Fiona is absolutely livid about the situation, and tells Michael that they must take the case no matter what. So she, Mike, and Sam impersonate a rival gang of car thieves, and go to work on making Felix look stupid with his boss Tony. The three succeed, mostly by making it appear that Felix put a hit out on Tony. Felix has to leave town, and Corey and Tanya are free to resume their lives.

Burn Notice Progress: Michael spends a lot of time viewing surveillance footage from businesses near his loft because he and Fiona figure that the guy who rigged his door to explode might have been caught on tape. Michael does indeed spot a likely suspect, a guy who works at a local demolition company. Fiona poses as a beefcake calendar creator, and gets employee names and phone numbers that way. She comes up with the suspect’s name — Derrick Poole — and then decides to head to his house to see what’s what. The place was rigged to blow, and Fiona is caught in a fire trap. Michael rushes to the address, and, unable to reach Fiona on her cell phone, fears for the worst. Fortunately, she’s safe and sound back at his place. She just needs a new phone.

Character Development: I guess it was inevitable that Michael and Fiona got back together. I have to say that I didn’t like them much as a couple when the series first started, but Fiona has really grown on me, so I don’t mind seeing them together now. Oh, and I loved how we learned that she and Mike met in Dublin while he was undercover as Michael McBride. I can totally picture it!

My Reaction: I liked this episode. There was a lot of forward progress in all areas, and that’s always a good thing. The OJotW was interesting (how cool was that tidbit about the phone books??) , particularly because of Fiona’s reaction to it. The way she got so angry, it made me think that perhaps there’s a similar sexual assault incident in her own background. I would love for the writers to explore that angle. It’s cool that Fiona’s all tough or whatever, but I want to see a more vulnerable side, too. And not just when it comes to Mike.

I was determined to give the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie a chance this summer, but after the third ho-hum episode in a row, I’m not so sure about this anymore. Ep 1×03 was called “Chicken Soup”, and while it continued with the character development that was begun in the pilot, I just don’t see where this is going.

I guess the biggest problem for me so far is that the episodes don’t really have a point. It’s like reading a stream-of-consciousness novel or something. Jackie just flits from one scene to the next, without anything connecting the action.

Zoey continues to be the highlight of the show for me, but only because she reminds me of a girl I work with. I’m sure that her newbie antics will get old after a while, though, so unless she gets something more to do than tremble at every nurse or doctor higher up on the org chart than herself, she’ll end up being a waste of space as well.

I think I read that there are 12 episodes in this first season. I’m going to watch the first six and then decide whether or not to bail. So far, I’m leaning towards giving it up.

Moonlighting 4×03 — “Take a Left at the Altar”: I’m finally into Season 4 of Moonlighting. It has been fairly slow going because I have a bunch of other stuff to watch and because Season 4 wasn’t exactly filled with stellar episodes. But at the same time, I haven’t actually seen a lot of these eps, so I do want to see how the show winds down. Thus far, it ain’t pretty.

I think the real decline in quality eps can be traced back to 4×03. This is when Maddie and David are separated just for the sake of being separated, with no real justification given. Yes, Cybill was pregnant and needed to scale back her hours, but the writers really dropped the ball in explaining why Maddie was hiding out in Chicago. She needed to think things over? Come on!

The only truly notable things about this episode (for me) were the guest stars. There were two fairly famous ones, and I recognized both of them not by their faces, but by their voices. The first was Terry O’Quinn, who I knew only as John Locke from Lost. I don’t recall ever seeing/noticing him in anything else, so I just recognize him as an older, completely bald man. Since he was pretty young in this Moonlighting ep and had a full head of hair, I didn’t register who he was until he spoke.

The second guest star that I recognized was Amanda Plummer. Again, it wasn’t her face that did it, but her voice. As soon as she spoke, I heard not this character from Moonlighting, but Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction.

Other than the two guest stars, this ep was completely forgettable. God, I forgot how totally annoying Bert Viola is. No wonder I quit watching the show when he and Agnes DiPesto more or less took over!

Episode 1×02 of Nurse Jackie was called “Sweet ‘n All”, and served to give some more background information about the main characters in the series. Nothing from this episode really stood out as spectacular, but I’m still going to stick with the show. I know it often takes a while for a series to hit its stride, and I’m hoping that will eventually happen here.

– I like the Zoey character more and more each time I see her. She totally reminds me (in a good way) of a girl I work with, and I think her bubbly personality is a great balance for Jackie’s cynism.

– I don’t understand why Jackie had to spend all that time and effort putting her drugs in the Sweet ‘n All packets. Surely she could slip something into her own drink without anyone noticing, right??? The packet thing just seemed like a contrivance to get Mrs. Akalitus high as a kite.

– Despite the contrivance, however, I have to say it was pretty funny how Mrs. Akalitus was acting after getting her hands on Jackie’s stash! But — wouldn’t she have noticed that the coffee didn’t taste sweetened? Most medicine is bitter and nasty… surely she would have figured out that something was wrong.

– Still not liking Jackie’s home life at all. The family just seems off somehow. I think it’s a casting thing.

– I can’t believe Jackie took a punch (or was it a slap?) to the face — and then just turned around and helped the patient out anyway! I would have been livid! She’s definitely hard to figure out.

– I’m starting to like Coop. He’s annoying for sure, but sort of in a good way. At least he has some redeeming qualities (he was right about the aneurysm) and isn’t just some caricature.

– I like Jackie’s friendship with that female doctor (forgot her name). They’re both snarky together, which is fabulous!

With not much else going on during the summer season, I decided to give the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie a try. This black comedy stars Edie Falco as the title character, a completely unconventional NY nurse who pretty much bends and breaks the rules as she sees fit. She acts more or less like Robin Hood, looking out for the people who “deserve” it, while taking away from the people that don’t. All according to her standards, of course.

Jackie seems like a complex character, which is good for a series like this. She is addicted to painkillers, but, like Greg House, can still function no matter how much stuff she takes. She’s also having an affair with the pharmacist, while her husband and two daughters wait patiently at home for her night after night.

In the pilot, there’s plenty of exposition, as you’d expect. After all, the writers have to introduce all the new characters and establish their relationships to each other. I don’t remember them all, but there’s fellow nurse Mohammed, who is a good friend of Jackie’s. There’s Cooper, a youngish doctor who’s always more interested in his cell phone than what’s happening with patients. There’s Zoey, fresh out of nursing school, who’s supposed to be learning from Jackie. And there’s Mrs. Akalitus the hospital administrator who’s supposed to be keeping everyone in check.

I thought this episode was decent. Pilots are hardly ever mind-blowing (not even Seinfeld, Friends, or The X-Files had good pilots), so I wasn’t expecting too much out of this one. I’m definitely open to tuning back in for a couple more eps to see how things move along!

I don’t have nearly as many educational titles in my DVD collection as I should. Okay, the truth is, I don’t have anything at all that would be considered the least bit instructional, unless you include Barney or Sesame Street! But I really want to improve on this point, and I think The Universe series from The History Channel is a great place to start.

I’ve always harbored an interest for the mysteries of outer space, which makes The Universe: Complete Season 2 sound like a terrific fit for me. This show explores different questions, ideas, and theories about what’s out there in the final frontier, and puts everything in terms that non-scientists can understand. In reading the product description, I see that topics for the Season 2 episodes include dark matter, white holes, exoplanets, alien moons, supernovas, and more. That sounds like a fantastic range of shows for one season!

This DVD set contains all 18 episodes from Season 2 on five discs. There’s even a bonus feature called “Backyard Astronomers”, which, guessing from the title, might help me learn where to point my telescope for a better chance of seeing something cool out there.

The Universe: The Complete Season 2 usually retails for $44.95, but is on sale now for about half that at Buy.com. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind paying the $44.95 for a series like this, so to be able to get it for just $21.99 with free shipping is a major bonus. I’m going to place my order as soon as I get paid on the 10th!

I stopped watching Burn Notice when it was airing during the fall season against other primetime series such as Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, and Bones. Although I thought BN was terrific summer viewing, it didn’t really stack up to the other series, all of which I watch regularly. But since I actually do like the show, I continued to TiVo it, and am now catching up from where I left off, which is episode 2×10, called “Do No Harm”.

Odd Job of the Week: Michael recognizes that a man is about to commit suicide, so he pulls him out of the way of an oncoming bus just in time. It turns out the man, named Kenny, desperately needs money to get his sick son Jack into an experimental program in Arizona. Kenny was scammed out of $250,000 by people who approached him at a clinic with a “miracle drug”, and now he has no money left for anymore treatments for Jack. He thought that if he died in what looked like a traffic accident, Jack would at least get his life insurance money.

Michael, against Sam’s advice, decides to help Kenny recover the money. This involves Fiona and Mike posing as rival scammers encroaching on the other scammers’ territory. They kidnap Todd and Philip, a couple of low-level operators, who in turn reveal the name of the organization’s ringleader: Rachel. Mike and Fiona then go to work on nabbing Rachel, and of course succeed in recovering Kenny’s money (and then some) and putting Rachel behind bars.

Burn Notice Progress: In episode 2×09, someone rigged Michael’s front door to explode. He barely escaped, and was on the warpath this entire episode, convinced that Carla was the one behind the bomb. But she flat-out denies responsibility, meaning that there’s a third party in play that neither one of them knows about. Now Michael has even more work to do if he’s going to find out who burned him.

Character development: Sam and Michael got into a fistfight! This is the first time they’ve seriously been at each other’s throats, and I have to say that I agreed with Sam here. Michael should not be so eager to deal with Carla any more than he has to. Also, Fiona and Campbell broke up, which I think is paving the way for her to get back with Michael, which, meh…. Oh, and Michael used to blow up/destroy all his toys as a kid!

My Reaction: As much as I liked the OJotW, I thought it was rather strange that Michael would take it on with so much else to worry about. But I guess helping people like that is some kind of therapy for him. It must ease his conscience or something.

I have to say that the main burn notice arc is starting to get a bit too complicated for my tastes. Now there’s another entity involved, which means that there are many more layers involved than Michael initially suspected. This is starting to feel like Prison Break or The X-Files or something, where as soon as the characters get close to the answer, they find out that the person they thought was in charge was actually just taking orders. Sigh.