dreamloom

Category: Reviews

Deeper, analytical pieces on shows and episodes.

  • Burn Notice: “Truth and Reconciliation”

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    You know why I think your father wired the car the way he did? Because I think he thought if he was the only one who could fix it that we’d always need him. Be more useful, you know. Part of the family.

    After the incredible highs of last week, we could expect this week’s episode to let up on the gas a little, but what Burn Notice does so well is mix more introspective episodes with the ones that go boom. An episode where the CotW revolves around a father seeking vengeance for his murdered daughter is a good time to step back, examine relationships, and add resonance to all the characters. In counterpoint, Madeline shows she can be self-sufficient, changing the dynamic of her relationship with Michael in interesting ways.

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  • Leverage: “The First David Job”

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    His cover’s blown. Faces of his people have been sent to every law enforcement agency in the state. We’ve taken their money, their base of operations, and now Nate Ford will never, ever, get his revenge. They will do the only smart thing to do. They’ll scatter.

    Leverage rarely plays around much with time, generally running straight through from beginning to end with only occasional detours for con explication or character asides. Tonight is a little different. We open in the present with a completely blitzed Nathan crashing a party dedicating a new museum wing to his old boss at IYS, Ian Blackpool. Offering to sell Blackpool something, we finally realize this is a con when he calls over Sophie, posing as Portia, a representative from the Vatican. We also realize Nate is not as drunk as he appears, at least not as incapacitated.

    Jumping back to two weeks earlier, we get the setup – an intervention for Nate, who wants them “not to get hung up on the alcoholic” part of him being a functioning alcoholic. But since this is a Leverage-style intervention, the team just wants to help Nate get revenge. ((Good for Nate. He didn’t have to say, “no, no, no.”))

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  • Flight of the Conchords: “Unnatural Love”

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    Saturday. We open on Murray driving the boys to a disco club. Why? Nobody’s saying. But we are all loving it. Except for Jemaine, who’d rather go watch a video, and Bret, who would prefer “a sleep,” and thus they are both crouching down in the backseat and looking horrified when Murray pulls up to the curb and drops them off with Dave. Dave isn’t so wild about it, either, especially when the Conchords crowd him on the dance floor. To wit: “You guys are dorkin’ up my vibe with all the dicks. We need to spread the dicks out a little bit, create some lady space.” Maybe the two best lines ever written, and we haven’t even wrapped up the credits yet.
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  • Battlestar Galactica: “No Exit”

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    “I think we have to accept who we are.”
    —Admiral William Adama

    “You are not a mistake. If you could just accept yourself as what you are.”
    —Ellen Tigh

    “I need to be something.”
    —Kara Thrace

    “Saul, stay with the fleet. It’s all starting to happen, it’s the miracle, right here, it’s a gift from the angels. Stay with the fleet!”
    —Samuel T. Anders

    I’ve watched this episode three times now: once as it aired, while I practically fermented in a stew of hatred; once with Ronald D. Moore as my personal guide, where for the first time I hated him, too; and once at a rate of approximately one scene per hour, during which I typed out nearly every line of dialogue spoken by Anders, Cavil, and Ellen, and it was that third time that I actually fell in love. And in addition to finding that I no longer absorb information as quickly as I once did, here’s what I think I learned. Forgive the mess of my own brain dump, and feel free to correct any of it in the comments. And may the force be with you all.
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  • Friday Night Lights: “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”

    It’s when all the scared rats start running away from a sinking market that the true entrepreneurs come in. The true visionaries.

    The Smash Williams Farewell Tour complete, it’s time for Six to take his lap around Dillon. And just like Smash, the start of his story places him on a road out of town. I don’t imagine this arc ending with an ebullient Jason Street, relishing a moment of simple pleasure with his friends before heading off on his life’s journey. Instead I imagine him quietly saying his goodbyes – to family, coach, and Lyla – before following Erin and his baby east.

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  • Burn Notice: “Bad Breaks”

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    No attacking the hosts. No leaving early. No calling the police. I see one cop, I kill three of you. I see two cops, six people die. You can do the math. Now, mess up my party by breaking one of my rules and you can expect me to overreact.

    Jason Bly, how I’ve missed you. Don’t get me wrong: Tricia Helfer has been a fun foil ((And, she’s not so bad to look at, either.)) for Michael, but I thought season one really sparked once Bly came on the scene and that they got rid of him too quickly. Alex Carter has a particular blend of sly wit and intensity that – for my money – pairs up especially well with Jeffrey Donovan’s.

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  • Leverage: “The Juror #6 Job”

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    When I was a kid, I was like eight-years old, I had a foster mom who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Used to dress me up in a suit and a bowtie, take me door to door to spread the word. Black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, didn’t matter. I would kick, I’d scream, or whatever, but she would say, “Alec, you need to learn to talk to people.” See, everything I learned about people, I learned ringing doorbells in a bowtie. Parker never had that.

    You think you know a show…you think they’re pulling out a jury show because they want to save a few bucks and do a bottle episode. And then they whip name guest stars at you with reckless abandon – a Brent Spiner here, an Armin Shimerman there, and what the hell, let’s top it off with a Lauren Holly for good measure – and dress a bunch of sets we’ve never seen before. What I’m saying is, this isn’t your usual jury episode.

    It’s a little lighter on the action – not a fireball in sight – than some other episodes, but Jonathan Frakes manages to keep the pace brisk from behind the camera. Even courtroom scenes, which are normally the bane of any action show with all their talky-talky, don’t feel like they’re slowing down the proceedings at all.

    By the way, if you didn’t catch our interview with Jonathan Frakes yesterday, be sure to go clicky-clicky right here with your mouse, touchpad, rollerball, or alternate pointy device.

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  • Battlestar Galactica: “Blood on the Scales”

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    “The truth is told by whoever’s left standing.”
    —Tom Zarek

    “I know who you are, Felix. I know who you are.”
    —Gaius Baltar

    At last a day of reckoning has come, and tyranny brings even more blood than we might have imagined, and not in the ways we might have guessed: the Quorum executed at Zarek’s command, that noble lunkhead Anders shot and possibly dying, renegade lawyer Romo Lampkin taking revenge with his omnipresent pen, and rather nastily at that. (Am I wrong or did he actually gut that marine wide open? I hate to go back and watch it again.) In the end all is resolved and yet nothing is at peace, as we see the cracks have taken hold, that the ship itself is beginning to split apart even as its people are coming back together, however tentatively. Every second of this show carries a weight these days, every lurch forward leading us toward something inevitable, and inevitably more tragic.
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  • Friday Night Lights: “Hello, Goodbye”


    Y’all think I’m going to talk about Smash, right? Or maybe Matt’s mom coming back into his life like a bad penny? Or Tami relinquishing ground like some Soviet general setting up a pincer for the German army?

    I will. I’ll get to that stuff. But first let me tell you how I know this show we love is back.

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  • Burn Notice: “Seek and Destroy”

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    Some spy gets blacklisted goes freelance, he could be standing right in front of you; you wouldn’t even know it.

    After the incredible highs of the last two weeks, we had to expect we’d eventually have a bit of a let down. Fortunately, this is Burn Notice, where even the off episodes are eminently entertaining. Plus, we can always count on Fiona and the FX guys to give us some tasty explosions.

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