Reviews and More

Burn Notice 3×12 — “Noble Causes”: This episode wasn’t all that interesting for me. I thought the Odd Job of the Week was boring, and I was reminded of Sarah Palin’s rant against Rahm Emmanuel every time Lynch used the word “retard”. What timing for the show, huh? Also, I was under the impression that the stuff with Gilroy would be more rogue-ish than stealing some documents from a foreign embassy. That was kind of a dull use of Michael’s time as well. And why wouldn’t Michael want that little plan to succeed? They were just after documents, right? Maybe he was worried because his temporary teammate said he would take out any security guards that saw him.

The best parts of this ep for me were the ones that didn’t involve either main plotline. The stuff between Maddie and Michael was good, and I laughed when Sam said he just signed the nomination papers that Maddie had already filled out. Looks like Maddie had a bit of an epiphany about the kind of work Michael does. Hopefully they’ll be able to move their relationship forward from here.

House 6×13 — “Moving the Chains”: I liked some parts of this episode, but hated others. On the good side was the stuff about Foreman and his brother. I have come to hate Foreman because he’s such a humorless stiff, but when he has a decent storyline, he can be a compelling character. Loved the brother too, and hope he can pop in from time to time.

What I did not like about this ep was whole Lucas subplot. WTF was he doing pulling those “pranks”? Those went way beyond pranks, IMO. For instance, loosening the handrail in the bathtub was extremely dangerous. Hell, I saw a CSI episode where a husband murdered his wife (and tried to make it look like an accident) by doing just that. Also, the sprinkler stunt probably caused significant damage to the house. Your stuff doesn’t just dry out, ya know. What a jackass. House and Wilson better get some revenge.

POTW was kind of boring. We didn’t really see enough of him to care one way or the other. I will say, however, that it’s b.s. to think his pro career is over just because he didn’t get to play in the Senior Bowl. That’s an exhibition game and not everyone who makes it to the NFL gets invited to that thing.

Lost 6×01-6×02 — “LA X”: I have absolutely given up trying to figure out wtf is going on anymore. From reading some message boards, I learned that some of the temple people had been introduced in the past, but I didn’t recognize or remember any of them. The whole temple thing was just weird — and kind boring to me. I much preferred the LAX parts and seeing what would have happened if the plane hadn’t gone down the first time. Actually, I thought that kind of slow-mo montage of everyone getting off the plane would have been a nice way to end the series. They had all those adventures and experiences together on the island, but because of a time jump or whatever, they just go on their merry way as though nothing ever happened.

Criminal Minds 5×14 — “Parasite”: This case was kind of boring. I didn’t buy Brady as an FBI agent, so he annoyed me right from the start. The killer and his motives/victims were dull. I just wasn’t feeling this ep at all. Blah. Let’s hope it returns to form next week.

Argh, I guess I have to write a little bit more so that the title card lines up with the text properly. Thing is, I don’t really have anything else to say. It seemed that the team was hardly involved in the case. They showed more of the unsub and his victims/family than of the investigation — which is probably one of the reasons it felt so off!

Friends is one of my favorite sitcoms of all time. I remember it was part of that amazing NBC “Must-See TV” lineup on Thursday nights back in the day, along with Seinfeld and ER, two of my other favorites. My boyfriend and I used to get takeout and just plop down in front of the television for two solid hours of these great programs.

Friends particularly resonated with us because we were about the same age as Monica, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, and Ross, so we could kind of understand what they were going through. Sure, we didn’t have upscale apartments in New York City, but other aspects of our lives were sort of similar.

Though I’ve watched and re-watched every Friends episode countless times, I do not own the DVD box set. That’s something I want to change by purchasing the Friends — Complete Series DVD collection. This is a massive box set that comes with 40 discs containing every episode aired during the 10-year run. Plus, there are TONS of bonus features, like interviews, behind-the-scenes stuff, interactive trivia games, and more.

The Friends — Complete Series DVD box set usually retails for more than $230, but is on sale at Buy.com right now for $160.51, with free shipping. This would ordinarily be too expensive for my budget, but I just have to make an exception for Friends. How can my collection of favorite TV shows be complete without it?

24 8×06 — 9pm – 10pm: Not much happened in this episode, and it seems like we haven’t had any kind of early payoff yet this season. Sure, there have been a couple of great scenes (Renee cutting off the guy’s monitor bracelet comes to mind) but no exciting reveals or big twists thus far. What’s going on? This “day” seems to be developing a lot more slowly than in past seasons.

As usual, I am completely uninterested in anything and everything that has to do with President Taylor, the White House staff, or the foreign president. That stuff is soooo boring, and serves to just take up time rather than really move the main storyline along. The Dana Walsh/white trash boyfriend subplot is becoming tiresome as well. Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell Freddie Prinze, Jr. about her past rather than risk jail and further blackmail by giving into Mr. White Trash? (As you can see, I don’t even know these characters’ names yet.) That whole scenario with the $120,000 in drug money cannot end well. Either White Trash will get caught and reveal who let him in, or he’ll blow through the money and demand more scores like that with help from Dana. Any idiot can see he won’t simply leave her alone!

The only interesting part of these eps is the Renee/Jack storyline. I like their undercover mission. Oh, and of course I knew Jack would have snipers trained on those men before transferring the money. He’s Jack Freakin’ Bauer! I’m getting a bit tired of mopey, just-kill-me-now Renee though. Why all the gloom-and-doom? If she’s that messed up, then Jack is right and she shouldn’t be involved in this operation. And sleeping with that guy just to keep things going?? Pretty hardcore. Glad she went dark for that one.

HIMYM 5×14 — “Perfect Week”: This episode was total filler and as a result, was pretty boring. There were a few chuckles along the way, but overall, I wouldn’t rate this as one of the better efforts of the season. And I have to say that although I loved Barney when he was secretly longing for Robin, I cannot stand him when he’s in all-out womanizer mode like in this ep. He is increasingly becoming the focus of these episodes, which I think is a big mistake.

The other stuff was not very interesting either. Lily and Marshall sharing a toothbrush was absolutely disgusting. Come on, no couples really do that (do they?)!! And I find it highly unlikely that Ted and Robin unwittingly got in on the action. Um, didn’t anyone bother to change the damn brush? After that, you’d think they’d notice and wonder what was going on.

The Cook Pu (or however it’s supposed to be spelled) thing was kind of funny. Why wouldn’t Ted just apologize to the girl though? She seemed so meek and embarrassed after he made fun of her name. Surely he would have noticed and apologize, right???

Burn Notice 3×11 — “Friendly Fire”: I really enjoyed this episode, and am warming up quite nicely to the second half of Season 3. Though I didn’t particularly care for how Michael looked in that black suit with red shirt, tie, and pocket square, I thought that El Diablo persona was hilarious! I loved how things blew up whenever he snapped his fingers, which led to one of the funniest moments of the episode where he merely held up his hand as though to snap, stopping Omar’s gangsters in their tracks even though they all had guns. Ha!

I don’t know where this Gilroy thing will lead, but I don’t like the looks of it (for Michael’s sake). I have a feeling that before all is said and done Michael will have to make some tough choices about following through with his bad-guy cover to stay on Gilroy’s good side. In other words, he’s probably going to be faced with pulling the trigger on someone who doesn’t deserve it. Knowing Michael, he’ll probably make the right decision, but still… Gilroy is bad news.

After pretty much hating Fiona for all of Season 1, I now totally ’ship her and Michael. I loved that they got together at the end — but did they have to look so damn uncomfortable doing so? Those two have more chemistry when they’re bickering than when they’re kissing. Dave and Maddie redux? I hope not!

I’m not much of a fan of comic book franchises that are turned into movies or television series, but my husband is. I liked Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire well enough, but didn’t really get into other recent films — not even The Dark Knight. Now my husband is anxiously awaiting the release of The Flash, which is supposed to hit the big screen sometime in 2011, reportedly with Ryan Reynolds in the title role.

To help make the wait more enjoyable, I’m thinking of getting The Flash — Complete Series on DVD. These DVDs are for the television show that lasted for just one season beginning in 1990. It stars John Wesley Shipp (perhaps better known to my generation as Dawson Leery’s dad) as the titular crime fighter whose superpowers allow him to run very fast. I’ve never seen any episodes of the show, but I’m assuming this speed would come in handy during chases and stuff!

As I said, the show was only around for one season, meaning there are just 21 episodes in all. They’re collected on six DVDs in this set, which is currently on sale at Buy.com for just $11.99. That price seems reasonable for a one-season show, so I was surprised to see that the original price is $59.98!! I would never pay that much for a single season of anything. Thank goodness for sales, I guess!

House 6×12 — “Remorse”: This episode wasn’t as good as the last one, but it was still interesting. I actually liked the POTW stuff more than the personal stuff going on with House and his old school buddy, which was a change. Usually House himself is the biggest draw for me, but I wasn’t interested in yet another example of how he’s changing — only not enough to fess up about his feelings for Cuddy. Is this going to come up in every single ep?

So now that Cameron is gone, I guess it’s up to Thirteen to become the meddling, moralistic preacher of the team. WTF? That was totally out of line how she tried to tell the husband that the wife was cheating on him. No real doctor would ever get involved in a one-time patient’s life like that. It’s not as though Thirteen was this guy’s longtime family physician, right? She’s just part of their lives for a few days. And what’s with Thirteen and Foreman playing nice at the end of the ep? Please tell me that’s just so they can work together without tension. The last thing I want is for their “relationship” to resume!

Castle 2×14 — “The Third Man”: After a so-so ep last week, Castle was back with a vengeance this time around! I have to say that The Third Man is probably my favorite of the series thus far! It was great! The case itself was interesting, and all the stuff between Castle and Beckett was simply perfect. From Beckett’s initial reaction to the newspaper article to her realization that she needs a date to the way their dates played out in the same restaurant to how Beckett and Castle ended up walking out arm in arm for burgers… perfection!! They are officially my favorite couple-to-be on television! I love this show !

Bones 5×13 — “The Dentist in the Ditch”: This was a decent episode. I actually thought the mystery was interesting for once — despite the writer’s attempts to make sure we all know that even big, strong, manly men can be homosexuals. These guys were football players, Marines, firemen, etc. Yes, of course anyone can be a homosexual. Did we really need to be told that so explicitly?

Back to the ep. At first I thought the ex-boyfriend might have done it to cash in on the cheap term life insurance policy they’d been paying off, but then Booth pointed out that no, the guy wouldn’t have been entitled to those benefits anyway. I then thought it might have been the husband of the dental hygienist, going off in a jealous rage or something. But since we never met the guy that theory was out the window. I didn’t pick the contractor — but I guess the explanation made sense.

I hated the personal stuff because Booth’s brother bothers me. Who cares about him anymore?? They probably just needed him there so Bones could see how she’s having a negative affect on Booth and then make her “I know what love is” speech. Barf.

I’m still watching 24, even though I kind of got tired of the repetitiveness after Season 5. I don’t know why, but every January I decide to tune in to the 2-hour premiere and end up getting sucked into the whole season.

Thus far, Day 8 is playing out more or less as expected in the 24-verse. Some fictional Middle Eastern country’s president is on U.S. soil for historic peace talks with President Taylor, and there’s an assassination plot. Jack Bauer gets involved, then CTU gets involved (this time they’re in New York instead of Los Angeles), and even though Jack’s supposed to be out for good, he’s soon drawn back in because the president asks for his help, blah, blah, blah.

After CTU foils the assassination attempt, they learn that that was just one facet of the evil plan. The bigger picture involves nuclear weapons and who knows what else. Since Russian mobsters are believed to be selling the weapons-grade uranium to the faux Middle Eastern country, ex-FBI agent Renee Walker gets brought back in as well. Apparently, she spent several years undercover and conveniently happens to be close to the mobsters involved.

Back at CTU, there’s the usual personnel drama, with yet another employee somehow managing to pass an extensive background screening despite being a convicted felon living under a fake name. How many times does this make? It seems that there’s always someone shady working at that place!

Despite the familiarity — or maybe even because of it — Day 8 has been rather entertaining so far. I don’t know if I can sustain my interest for the remaining 19 episodes, but I’m in for the immediate future.

One of the TV shows that I’ve been meaning to get into is The Mentalist. It’s about a man named Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker) who has exceptional observational skills, which he uses to review crime scenes and pick up clues that police might have missed. Of course, there’s a personal reason for Patrick Jane’s vocational choice: his own family was murdered by a serial killer — and he’ll stop at nothing to track down Red John and bring the man to justice. The show is a hit with critics and fans alike, so I want to drop one of the other series I currently watch in favor of this one.

A great way to get caught up on my viewing is to purchase The Mentalist — Complete First Season DVDs. I believe the show is only in its second season now, so if I had the DVDs, it wouldn’t take me more than a couple of weeks to catch up. This first season set contains all 23 full-length episodes, as well as some bonus features like abehind-the-scenes look at the cast and crew and a mini-documentary about the differences between a mentalist and a psychic. Sounds cool!

The Mentalist — Complete First Season is on sale at Buy.com for just $24 right now, a price that includes free shipping. That’s about the best deal I’ve seen for the complete first season (new, not used), so I might have to jump on this fairly quickly since I certainly don’t want to end up paying the suggested retail price of $59.98!