Remember Who You Are So We Can Be a Family Again!
Tonight was an extra special batch of Monday night TV because Rae (siklilgrl) came over to visit! She even brought dinner, courtesy of her sister. We watched Friends, and then I showed her this hilarious Michael-and-Dwight "SexyBack" vid, courtesy of vonnie_k. Finally, it was time for my shows!
Prison Break informed us that "Viewer Discretion Is Advised"!
WOO DR. SARA AND HER MAGICAL MOUTH. AND MAGICAL BACK. AND MAGICAL STITCHES.
Also, the best part of watching television with someone else is that there's someone around to laugh at your jokes. At the beginning of the episode, I predicted that since Michael and Lincoln and their dad were reunited, someone would say something to the extent of "We can be a family again." So half the entertainment of the episode was waiting for SOMEONE to say the line. And then we got C-Note's plot, and they had so many opportunities to say it, and they didn't! And then the dad died, and he didn't say, "At least we got to be a family again." CLICHES EXIST FOR A REASON, PEOPLE. HUMOR ME.
Michael had his big monologe about child abuse, and he said he thought he would never see the sun AGAIN, and so I got one word, but no one was saying FAMILY, which was the key word.
And then Michael talked about his dad, and he wished he could have been a part of his...SAY IT, MICHAEL! I may have leapt forward onto the coffee table in anticipation. But he didn't say the line! Rae thought they were trying to be subtle, but for fuck's sake, this is PRISON BREAK.
All the sunglasses reminded me to show Rae this hilarious David Caruso montage of cheesy pre-credits lines from C.S.I.: Miami. After two minutes, it reaches CRITICAL HILARITY and everything is ten times funnier.
Heroes was SO. AWESOME. OMG.
First of all, however, can we all collectively KICK MOHINDER IN THE FACE?! Because this has been Mohinder's character arc in nine episodes:
"All around us, we are evolving! There are special people with powers, the next generation of humanity!"
*dad dies*
"God, my dad was CUH-RAZY! He thought that all around us, we are evolving! That there are special people with powers, the next generation of humanity!"
*goes to America*
"Wow, look at all this freakyass shit that validates my father's theories! God, my dad was CUH-RAZY! I HATE HIM SO MUCH."
"Hi, my name is Peter Petrelli, brother of Nathan Petrelli, who you just this morning believed had special powers. I, too, have powers."
"WHATEVER, LIAR. NO ONE HAS POWERS. God, my dad was CUH-RAZY!"
"Hi, I'm a pixie-like love interest. Don't you think it's sort of interesting that there's a guy who can paint the future?"
"WHATEVER, LADY. People claim to paint the future all the time. The fact that all this weird shit is happening to me is TOTAL COINCIDENCE. GOD, I HATE MY DAD."
*sulks back to India*
"That's it, I'm leaving all my crazy dad's theories behind and shacking up with my old girlfriend."
"Hi, I'm a freaky little kid who can enter your dreams and show you the past. You have the answer already."
"No, I don't!"
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't!"
*sees past Mohinder express interest and belief in his father's theories*
"OH, YEAH. NOW I REMEMBER THAT I USED TO BELIEVE MY FATHER'S THEORIES BEFORE I ANNOYINGLY AND INEXPLICABLY DECIDED THEY WERE CRAP."
*goes back to America with a list of all the supers*
And while we're at it, can we KICK NATHAN IN THE FACE? After he splashed paint over Isaac's key painting, I yelled, "You suck, Nathan! You suck more than Simone! And she sucks a lot!" Except Simone did come through with the digital print, which, holy crap, was totally key, as it, you know, identified the location of The Event. And then Simone told Peter he was going to die tonight, and I said, "What, how do you know when the hell a random Odessa school's homecoming is?" Seconds after I stopped talking, Simone explained that she had in fact called Odessa schools to find this information. Well...FINE. SORRY FOR DOUBTING YOU, WRITERS.
Isaac painted a man on fire. Does this mean the Human Torch will be joining the group?
Halfway through the episode, when Peter showed Ando the picture, I snapped my fingers and pointed at Rae because I had figured it out. "Did you get it?" I asked. No, she hadn't gotten it, and she wanted me to explain it to her.
"Peter's going to get all broken up, right?"
"Right."
"And he's going to rescue Claire, right?"
Lightbulb. SO. AWESOME. I don't mind predicting what's going to happen when it's awesome and makes sense.
It was Rae, though, who caught onto the fact that everyone would misidentify Jackie as The Cheerleader because she was the hero in the papers, and HOLY FUCKING GOD HOW AWESOME IS THAT? Seriously, they set this up like fifty episodes ago or whatever. I love stories like this because you've got that delicious inevitability factor, and you watch the characters plummeting toward an ineluctable fate; you see the comedy of errors that occurs solely to get the pawns in the right place. But the brilliance of this is that it's not completely contrived. Peter doesn't know any better. He comes into town and sees a blonde cheerleader who saved a guy from a fire, and of course he assumes she's the special one who needs to be saved. And he's right; it's not his fault the papers are wrong.
Sylar's a dumbass, though, and I wonder where the fuck he does his research and how he finds his victims if he goes after the wrong blonde cheerleader. But, shit, dude. He...cuts people's heads open with his TELEKINETIC FINGER KNIFE?! Poor Jackie. (Oh, God! Can I just say how much I fucking loved Claire in this episode? See, Claire, unlike fucking Mohinder, had a real fucking character arc where she's learned to embrace her inner freak. This is what happens when your freak friend pulls a Clarissa Explains It All move on you.)
So, God, like I said, the inevitability of The Event made the whole Homecoming sequence so fucking exciting. Rae and I were yelling at the TV the whole time. "No, run!" "Aah, it's time to die!" "Peter, get up! Hey, NO COMMERCIALS! PETER HAS TO GET UP!!" Man, it was a good time.
So Peter heals himself and gets arrested, and Claire has to tell her dad about her power SO THEY CAN BE A FAMILY AGAIN...
Meanwhile, HOLY SHIT EDEN IS CREEPY HOT. She's gone rogue, and dude, she brought Haitian guy with her! Personally, I thought the scene was way too ominous for Eden to be capturing Sylar on OWI's behalf. We've already seen her play spy to Mohinder; I have no problem buying that she'd doublecross Mr. Bennet. Oh man oh man oh man.
In other areas, I still love Jessica, and I love that the card identified her as "Jessica Sanders." And holy crap, she just shot at D.L.! Who's totally going to phase just in time, right? He can't die already.
Hiro is six months in the past! And the fact that he missed his five-seconds-later appointment with Ando is VERY BAD.
THIS SHOW IS SO AWESOME. I CANNOT TAKE THE AWESOME.
After Heroes, everything sucks, but holy crap, Studio 60 was GREAT! I laughed so much! I mean, this is what happens when you get Matt and Danny and Jordan in a room together.
I don't really feel like writing extensively about the episode (I spent a lot of time writing up Heroes), but I kind of loved it, I think. It was really funny and entertaining, and I didn't want to slap anyone. All the arguments were interesting and not annoying, and I liked the behind-the-scenes nature of what was getting argued about. It wasn't "Sketch comedy will save America, so let us do what we want to do." It was "This show is profitable for the network, so let us do what we want to do." I even agreed with Matt's argument about PVM: yes, obviously, there was ego involved, but since it was a bad show, it would reflect badly on S60. I never really understood, though, how the hell A) leaving Final Draft in "thirty-minute paper" caused 37 seconds to disappear from the show and B) no one noticed there were apparently pages missing the entire time. Still, the "peace in the Midwest" jokes were funny.
Harriet was displaying cleavage the whole episode, so I can't argue with that. And, hell, I even liked the bizarre philosophical debate about posing in lingerie. It was less charged than so many other Issue-Related Conflicts and was more character-focused. Hell, the "be comfortable with who you are" message was ripped straight from an hour ago on Heroes!
Go Cal!! I just loved Danny and Matt's reactions. "This is good and profitable...you know I have trouble understanding this." "Where has this been?"
Is the show finally settling into a comfortably hilarious groove? I hope so, because for the first time, I think, I'm actually looking forward to a whole season of this.
Prison Break informed us that "Viewer Discretion Is Advised"!
WOO DR. SARA AND HER MAGICAL MOUTH. AND MAGICAL BACK. AND MAGICAL STITCHES.
Also, the best part of watching television with someone else is that there's someone around to laugh at your jokes. At the beginning of the episode, I predicted that since Michael and Lincoln and their dad were reunited, someone would say something to the extent of "We can be a family again." So half the entertainment of the episode was waiting for SOMEONE to say the line. And then we got C-Note's plot, and they had so many opportunities to say it, and they didn't! And then the dad died, and he didn't say, "At least we got to be a family again." CLICHES EXIST FOR A REASON, PEOPLE. HUMOR ME.
Michael had his big monologe about child abuse, and he said he thought he would never see the sun AGAIN, and so I got one word, but no one was saying FAMILY, which was the key word.
And then Michael talked about his dad, and he wished he could have been a part of his...SAY IT, MICHAEL! I may have leapt forward onto the coffee table in anticipation. But he didn't say the line! Rae thought they were trying to be subtle, but for fuck's sake, this is PRISON BREAK.
All the sunglasses reminded me to show Rae this hilarious David Caruso montage of cheesy pre-credits lines from C.S.I.: Miami. After two minutes, it reaches CRITICAL HILARITY and everything is ten times funnier.
Heroes was SO. AWESOME. OMG.
First of all, however, can we all collectively KICK MOHINDER IN THE FACE?! Because this has been Mohinder's character arc in nine episodes:
"All around us, we are evolving! There are special people with powers, the next generation of humanity!"
*dad dies*
"God, my dad was CUH-RAZY! He thought that all around us, we are evolving! That there are special people with powers, the next generation of humanity!"
*goes to America*
"Wow, look at all this freakyass shit that validates my father's theories! God, my dad was CUH-RAZY! I HATE HIM SO MUCH."
"Hi, my name is Peter Petrelli, brother of Nathan Petrelli, who you just this morning believed had special powers. I, too, have powers."
"WHATEVER, LIAR. NO ONE HAS POWERS. God, my dad was CUH-RAZY!"
"Hi, I'm a pixie-like love interest. Don't you think it's sort of interesting that there's a guy who can paint the future?"
"WHATEVER, LADY. People claim to paint the future all the time. The fact that all this weird shit is happening to me is TOTAL COINCIDENCE. GOD, I HATE MY DAD."
*sulks back to India*
"That's it, I'm leaving all my crazy dad's theories behind and shacking up with my old girlfriend."
"Hi, I'm a freaky little kid who can enter your dreams and show you the past. You have the answer already."
"No, I don't!"
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't!"
*sees past Mohinder express interest and belief in his father's theories*
"OH, YEAH. NOW I REMEMBER THAT I USED TO BELIEVE MY FATHER'S THEORIES BEFORE I ANNOYINGLY AND INEXPLICABLY DECIDED THEY WERE CRAP."
*goes back to America with a list of all the supers*
And while we're at it, can we KICK NATHAN IN THE FACE? After he splashed paint over Isaac's key painting, I yelled, "You suck, Nathan! You suck more than Simone! And she sucks a lot!" Except Simone did come through with the digital print, which, holy crap, was totally key, as it, you know, identified the location of The Event. And then Simone told Peter he was going to die tonight, and I said, "What, how do you know when the hell a random Odessa school's homecoming is?" Seconds after I stopped talking, Simone explained that she had in fact called Odessa schools to find this information. Well...FINE. SORRY FOR DOUBTING YOU, WRITERS.
Isaac painted a man on fire. Does this mean the Human Torch will be joining the group?
Halfway through the episode, when Peter showed Ando the picture, I snapped my fingers and pointed at Rae because I had figured it out. "Did you get it?" I asked. No, she hadn't gotten it, and she wanted me to explain it to her.
"Peter's going to get all broken up, right?"
"Right."
"And he's going to rescue Claire, right?"
Lightbulb. SO. AWESOME. I don't mind predicting what's going to happen when it's awesome and makes sense.
It was Rae, though, who caught onto the fact that everyone would misidentify Jackie as The Cheerleader because she was the hero in the papers, and HOLY FUCKING GOD HOW AWESOME IS THAT? Seriously, they set this up like fifty episodes ago or whatever. I love stories like this because you've got that delicious inevitability factor, and you watch the characters plummeting toward an ineluctable fate; you see the comedy of errors that occurs solely to get the pawns in the right place. But the brilliance of this is that it's not completely contrived. Peter doesn't know any better. He comes into town and sees a blonde cheerleader who saved a guy from a fire, and of course he assumes she's the special one who needs to be saved. And he's right; it's not his fault the papers are wrong.
Sylar's a dumbass, though, and I wonder where the fuck he does his research and how he finds his victims if he goes after the wrong blonde cheerleader. But, shit, dude. He...cuts people's heads open with his TELEKINETIC FINGER KNIFE?! Poor Jackie. (Oh, God! Can I just say how much I fucking loved Claire in this episode? See, Claire, unlike fucking Mohinder, had a real fucking character arc where she's learned to embrace her inner freak. This is what happens when your freak friend pulls a Clarissa Explains It All move on you.)
So, God, like I said, the inevitability of The Event made the whole Homecoming sequence so fucking exciting. Rae and I were yelling at the TV the whole time. "No, run!" "Aah, it's time to die!" "Peter, get up! Hey, NO COMMERCIALS! PETER HAS TO GET UP!!" Man, it was a good time.
So Peter heals himself and gets arrested, and Claire has to tell her dad about her power SO THEY CAN BE A FAMILY AGAIN...
Meanwhile, HOLY SHIT EDEN IS CREEPY HOT. She's gone rogue, and dude, she brought Haitian guy with her! Personally, I thought the scene was way too ominous for Eden to be capturing Sylar on OWI's behalf. We've already seen her play spy to Mohinder; I have no problem buying that she'd doublecross Mr. Bennet. Oh man oh man oh man.
In other areas, I still love Jessica, and I love that the card identified her as "Jessica Sanders." And holy crap, she just shot at D.L.! Who's totally going to phase just in time, right? He can't die already.
Hiro is six months in the past! And the fact that he missed his five-seconds-later appointment with Ando is VERY BAD.
THIS SHOW IS SO AWESOME. I CANNOT TAKE THE AWESOME.
After Heroes, everything sucks, but holy crap, Studio 60 was GREAT! I laughed so much! I mean, this is what happens when you get Matt and Danny and Jordan in a room together.
I don't really feel like writing extensively about the episode (I spent a lot of time writing up Heroes), but I kind of loved it, I think. It was really funny and entertaining, and I didn't want to slap anyone. All the arguments were interesting and not annoying, and I liked the behind-the-scenes nature of what was getting argued about. It wasn't "Sketch comedy will save America, so let us do what we want to do." It was "This show is profitable for the network, so let us do what we want to do." I even agreed with Matt's argument about PVM: yes, obviously, there was ego involved, but since it was a bad show, it would reflect badly on S60. I never really understood, though, how the hell A) leaving Final Draft in "thirty-minute paper" caused 37 seconds to disappear from the show and B) no one noticed there were apparently pages missing the entire time. Still, the "peace in the Midwest" jokes were funny.
Harriet was displaying cleavage the whole episode, so I can't argue with that. And, hell, I even liked the bizarre philosophical debate about posing in lingerie. It was less charged than so many other Issue-Related Conflicts and was more character-focused. Hell, the "be comfortable with who you are" message was ripped straight from an hour ago on Heroes!
Go Cal!! I just loved Danny and Matt's reactions. "This is good and profitable...you know I have trouble understanding this." "Where has this been?"
Is the show finally settling into a comfortably hilarious groove? I hope so, because for the first time, I think, I'm actually looking forward to a whole season of this.