Dexter - Blinded by the Light, S04E03

I continue to be pleased with this season of Dexter. I am completely intrigued by the Trinity Killer (played by John Lithgow). He has already killed two women - one in a bathtub, by cutting her femoral artery, and one by persuading her to throw herself out of a building. Now he has only one kill remaining - apparently he will bludgeon a man to death. That two of his three murders have taken place in the first 3 episodes makes me wonder when the third will happen. Will he actually commit this murder, as no one seems to be in a position at all to catch him? And if he does complete his pattern, how will they be able to find him after the fact.

I also love the excitement Dexter (Michael C. Hall) feels over the Trinity Killer's success in committing murders for so long without getting caught. In so many ways, Dexter is normal. He doesn't realize how normal he is, and that is the beauty. This episode took particular pains in his interaction with Astor (Christina Robinson) to demonstrate that, though he thinks he is alone in his inability to relate to the pre-teen, he fails in the same ways other fathers do. In some ways, he gets along better with others because he tries to behave in a way that will make them happy and him inconspicuous, rather than being selfish like everyone else. But even with these parallels drawn, when Dexter contemplates the idea of remaining undetected and yet leaving bodies for the police to find, the dark passenger inside of him gets excited.

Poor Quinn, though, has such issues with Dexter now because he can't understand him. He can't understand that someone would simply keep his mouth shut without getting something in return. And because Dexter doesn't understand that if he takes something as an agreement to stay silent, Quinn will stop annoying him about it. Of course, Quinn's going to get himself in trouble to way he does not watch his mouth in bed with that journalist. The Trinity Killer is probably going to hit the front pages. I wonder where that will take the story.

And so, we continue to watch our favourite serial killer trying to deal with the trials of life and living in suburbia. I wonder how Rita is going to deal with Dexter's decision to break the neighbour's floodlights. Are you excited for next week?

Stargate Universe - Air, part 3, S01E03

This episode just wanted to make me groan. I love the Stargate franchise, and I am so ready to offer my love to this new chapter, but boy is it making that difficult. With SG1 and Atlantis, the premieres grabbed you and delighted you and there was no going back, but with Universe, I feel like it's a ball of raw potential that has yet to be given proper direction. Like, if I stick around, it will get me where I want it to, but that that may not happen for a little while.

It's like a train, slowly getting out of the station, creaking and stopping sometimes. Once it gets going, it will be a nice smooth ride, but it's not a race car that goes from 0-100 in one second and we are off. Just put a little oil in the gears, a little attention and focus, and we'll do just fine.

In Air, part 3, Scott (Brian J. Smith), Greer (Jamil Walker Smith), Rush (Robert Carlyle), Eli (David Blue), and three others go through the gate onto a desert planet to find some calcium compound of some kind which can be used to fix the CO2 scrubbers. Not finding what they need close to the gate, they set out and eventually split up, Scott, Greer and Rush in one group, Eli with the other three.

It doesn't take long for Eli's group to decide to ignore Rush's insistence that they will find what they need on this planet. They want to check out the other nearby planets, even though there is only about 6 hours left. But apparently they are looking for a place for continued existence anyways. Greer and Rush go to stop them.

Now these two have some serious issues. It's the second time Greer pulls a gun on Rush, and he also kicks him in the back. The two then get in a fist fight and role down a bit sand dune. All I have to say is there better be one heck of a back story for their issues with each other. And this is what I mean by needing time. Right now, I feel like I'm watching two 8 year olds fighting to see who is king of the castle, but I'm betting (or blindly hoping) that later, coming back, it will be awesome and make a lot of sense.

Despite their bickering, Greer makes it to the gate in time to shoot the last of the three going through in the arm, and prevent him from taking the portable DHD with him. He listened to Rush's order on this, which makes me think, in the end, he is a soldier who does what he's told when it actually matters, or when it's not about his personal issues with a person. Maybe there is hope for him after all.

Scott is still out looking for the calcium deposits, and follows some weird sand flurries and visions of the priest who raised him and later drank himself to death when Scott impregnated a girl at 16. It's interesting to learn the back stories, and it's also neat to see more religion in Stargate and to wonder how it's going to feature in this chapter. I've always been more interested in the mythology than the science. But, again, I feel like there are other things that the writers should be establishing and we can worry about the details of our leads later on.

Greer goes after Scott, and together the two of them drag the bag back to the gate...but they are not going to make it. Rush tells Eli to put his arm through the gate, positing that the gate will not close and the ship will not take off due to some kind of emergency fail safe. He turns out to be right, and Eli brave enough to follow his advice, and so Scott and Greer make it and the air filters begin to function.

On the ship, Young (Justin Louis) and Chloe (Elyse Levesque) went to Earth using the ancient communication devices. Young gets advice from O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) who basically tells him to suck it up, make the best of what he has, and that no one is ready for what is required of them when they go through the stargate. Chloe tells her mom of her father's death, and if you thought she was annoying, well her mom is a lot worse. She even threatens to expose the Stargate program if her daughter doesn't get returned to her safely. I wanted to punch her in the head.

And while they were on Earth, Col. Telford (Lou Diamond Phillips) is on the ship, being a prick. Eventually, TJ (Alaina Huffman), the medic, had to sedate him so that he would not do damage to Col. Young's body. Why are so many of these characters so easy to dislike?

The best part was the make up. Everyone who was roasting on the desert planet came back with some beautiful red sunburns.

The worst part? All the questions.

1. What happened to the two left behind, or do we even care?

2. What was with the shuttle taking off from the Destiny at the end of the episode?

3. What possible problems will they face next week, other than the fact that a lot of the crew are jerks?

Also, there are so many characters, it gets distracting. In SG1 and Atlantis, there were 5. Same with Atlantis at first. Then the doctors became more important in both. Here, we are starting with way more characters than that, and we aren't given enough.

So, once the train is out of the station, I know it's going to be great. All I can hope is that it picks up steam quickly.

Dollhouse - Belle Chose, S02E03

What an incredible episode! Hopefully the slight increase in viewership from last week will at least remain constant if not continue to grow considering how fantastic this episode was. (Again, the quality is SO great, if it gets cancelled, it won't be from lack of fulfilled potential and talent).

The show began in a basement or factory, with a man adjusting mannequins. At least, at first I thought they were mannequins. It turns out they were women injected with powerful paralyzing drugs, manipulated by an insane man. When one tried to escape, he ended up killing her, and then, on the street, when he was attempting to replace the doll he called Aunt Sheila, he was hit by a car.

Next, we discover he is in a coma at the Dollhouse, and Adelle (Olivia Williams) wants Topher (Fran Kranz) to revive him for his uncle (portrayed by BSG's Michael Hogan). Uncle Brad has invested a lot of money in the Dollhouse, and Adelle is keen to give him what he wants until Topher reads his brain scan. They discover the nephew, Terry, has the brain of a serial killer - with underdeveloped empathy and the like. Suddenly, Topher (that's right, as Boyd (Harry Lennix) pointed out, Topher) as an ethical problem with reviving him, and so does Adelle.

Brad reveals that he suspects Terry has some women hidden somewhere, and he wants to wake Terry to find them. They do a brain dump, and put all of Terry straight into Victor. I'd say that Enver Gjokaj, who portrays Victor, stole the show, except that the writing is so balance and the rest of the cast so strong that, instead, he should be mentioned for a terrific performance.

Meanwhile, Paul (Tahmoh Penikett) is getting Echo (Eliza Dushku) ready for an assignment as a nubile college student who is to be seduced by her Chaucer professor. Paul is disturbed by Echo's transformation into Kiki, so much so that he is thrilled when Boyd replaces him so that he can confront Victor/Terry the serial killer. ("A serial killer? Thank God.")

Penikett and Gjokaj worked so well together during their interview. The calm and poise that Terry/Victor projected, along with the super creepy vibes, were chilling. And Paul's manipulations would have made me tell him all about the doll-like women in my basement...even though I don't actually have any.

Things get worse of course. Brad, believing Paul and Adelle's plan was not going to work, breaks Terry/Victor out of the Dollhouse. Terry makes him crash his car, and escapes on foot. And it turns out that Victor is not equipped with a GPS device. It was removed when he had his face reconstructed. (Here, we also got an acknowledgement of the existence of Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker), who is still missing). So the Dollhouse allowed an untraceable serial killer out into the world. Oops.

Echo/Kiki continues to have a much more pleasant time, now dancing with her professor.

Topher is never one to be defeated. He decides, at Adelle's insistence, to perform a remote wipe. Yes, that might leave a vulnerable Victor who knows where, but that's better than a serial killer. The wipe occurs, and the entire system at the Dollhouse goes off line. They don't know if it worked.

Turns out, it just switched Terry and Kiki. So suddenly you have Victor/Kiki, who hasn't realized she's a man, being peppy and dancing at a night club, trying to seduce all the boys, and Echo/Terry, stabbing her would-be-seducer in the neck.

Again, Gjokaj was brilliant her. I believed he was a woman. And he had so much fun dancing and shaking his ass. It was great. It got better when one of the men he had focused his attentions on got homophobic when Kiki tried to pick him up, and punched him. Well, he missed, and Victor/Kiki punched him first, very angry that the guy would punch a girl. Paul showed up, and Victor/Kiki threw himself into his arms, sobbing "Paul, Paul, why did you ever leave me?" It was beautiful! And then Paul told off everyone staring, "What are you looking at."

So Victor was fine, and Echo's GPS chip was still working, so they were able to find her and save the three women who were still imprisoned there.

I'm still not sure the exact implication of the comparison between our Dolls, Echo , Victor, etc, and the women Terry captured and used as dolls, but it was a powerful and disturbing image.

What did you think?

Fringe - Momentum Deferred, S02E04

Considering that this was the best episode of Fringe so far this season, and hopefully the beginning of an upward trend, the fact that it is still in the 6am slot on the second day of my Thursday night show reviews shows how hard up it is against its competition. Frankly, I think Fox should move it back to Tuesday nights, where it consistently had higher ratings than it is getting now.

We finally got to find out what Olivia had seen when she was in the other dimension in Season 1's finale. About time. They probably should have brought at least some of this in earlier. I'm interested in what's going on now, and feel like there has indeed been a change in the structure from last season, I feel like we are going somewhere. Leonard Nimoy* as William Bell continues to be a little hilarious for me. I mean, you should not have such a famous actor appear with the first lines being "Who are you?" "I'm William Bell." No you aren't, you're Leonard Nimoy.

But we now know a whole lot more. The other universe, for some unknown reason, wants to destroy our universe. If the two universes become open to one another, they will collide and only one will remain. It might not be ours. So they are sending over the shape shifting first wave to find the guy who can open the door for them.

We had the exit of Kirk Acevedo (though there is always the possibility of seeing him in the other universe). I was glad that he got a pretty cool exit, where he outsmarted Olivia, got the info he needed and passed it on to his comrades before she succeeded in killing him. It still doesn't really make up for Charlie's lame death, but seeing Olivia so distraught by the fact that she had to shoot a man wearing her friend's face was worth it. I will miss Charlie Francis though. Cry!

So Fringe, bring on episodes like this! What did you think?

Supernatural - Fallen Idol, S05E05

I love how a show that has a serious plot line going on, like...um...the apocalypse, can still have stand alone episodes where our heroes, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), get to fight a god who has taken on the form of Paris Hilton*.

And the episode finished with the promise that we would continue to get these kinds of episodes, which are my favourites.

The episode started with the problem, a guy and his friend, Jim, (played by SGA's Paul McGillion*) are going to go for a ride in James Dean's car. Jim goes to get the video camera, and when he returns, his buddy died in what seemed to be a car accident, though the car was parked the entire time.

Next, Abraham Lincoln appears and shoots a civil war historian in the head. And Ghandi, though in life he was a fruitarian, tries to take a bite out of Sam's neck. Luckily Dean burns Ghandi's spectacles, and the ghost disappears. He thinks the case is closed, and wants to move on. Sam is not so sure.

Turns out, Sam was right. A girl has gone missing, apparently taken by Paris Hilton. Since Paris Hilton is not dead, the boys realize it can't be a ghost. It turns out to be a god.

Have to give Paris Hilton some credit for taking on a role in which we delight because she beat up Dean, and we get to mock him for it, and Sam chops her head off. Sort of like how some people saw Repo the Rock Opera just to see her face fall off.

We also got a reference to House of Wax, in which she starred with Padalecki. I recall they also mentioned Gilmour Girls once, but I have no recollection of mentions of shows that Ackles was in, such as Dark Angel. Maybe I just never noticed.

This episode was pure fun and had a happy ending for most (not for Paris Hilton - after the god disappeared, the local police put out an APB to find the supposed kidnapper). Did you enjoy it?

The Mentalist - Red Badge, S01E03

The Mentalist really delivered a fabulous piece of creativity this week, and Robin Tunney's performance easily deserves an Emmy.

Though it started with the standard cop show premise that one of our officers is accused of murdering a criminal, the new interpretation was fresh and unexpected. You see, when Theresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and her team found the body of a child molester she had previously sent to jail, and her fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, she could not remember whether or not she was guilty.

She mentioned in her therapy sessions that sometimes her father had blackouts caused by drinking, and we later learn that she has no memory of what she did the previous Tuesday night. (We did have an amusing moment when she claimed she watched a cooking show...the one with the man...the angry man). You don't really believe that she could have killed him, but she has doubts. After all, he was a child molester, a very bad man...and cops have killed criminals before.

After failing a polygraph test, she asks Jane (Simon Baker) to hypnotize her, and while we learn that she thinks the mail guy is hot and Van Pelt will make a great officer if she manages not to sleep with Rigsby, the hypnosis does not clear her memory.

Distressed by her inability to know the truth, she starts going over the edge. A very different Lisbon than the person we are used to, she yells at everyone in the building and eventually throws a chair through a window. Completely out of control, we find her at home with scotch and a bunch of pills, dancing and imbalanced. When her therapist arrives, brought by the concern of her boss and Jane, Lisbon pulls out her gun, not being at all careful with it. Her therapist tells her it was okay for her to kill the bad bad molester. She saved people and he deserved to die.

As he reveals to her what she ought to remember, Jane appears - the entire thing was a ploy. Jane figured out that the therapist was drugging her so that she would forget. He is arrested for the murder.

Now, why did he commit it? Another brilliant change. Lisbon would soon testify against a man, and he, wanting to discredit her, orchestrated a murder that he had no personal reason to want to commit.

Gotta love when the hit them out of the park.

Bones - The Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, S05E04

This episode of Bones was just goofy. Not necessarily in a bad way, but overwhelmingly so.

There are three lines of development: 1. Parker (or Baby Booth) (Ty Panitz) wants to find his dad a girlfriend. 2. Arastoo Vaziri (Pej Vahdat), the Muslim intern, does not in fact have an accent. and 3. A suburbanite was murdered and his body was burnt in a luau pit with a roasting pig.

I'll discuss them in that order.

So Parker wants Daddy Booth (David Boreanaz) to have a girlfriend. Apparently Booth needs a girlfriend very badly "to sex up." Yes, those were the lad's exact words. Booth, of course, does not know how to deal with the entire situation, asks Sweets (John Frances Daley) how to deal with it, and never discusses it with Parker. At the end of the episode, Booth convinces Bones (Emily Deschanel) to come hang out with him and his son so that Parker will see that his dad does have good relationships with women, and she asks Parker why it is so important for his dad to find a girlfriend. The reason? So that he will move into a house where there is a pool and Parker can go swimming. So yes, fathers, ask your sons what they are thinking because when they are that little, their logic hasn't been pushed off track by any sexual distractions.

I would like to note that there has yet to be any mention of whether or not Booth is still feeling more affection than before for Brennan. Apparently a crime show which is all about character development can neglect to tell us the gossip we really want to hear. Sigh.

The plot point of Vaziri and his fake accent was just bizarre to me. Perhaps there have been complaints about him sounding stereotypical or discriminatory or something. I can't imagine that when they originally created this devout character they intended to have him lose the accent later. I don't know. It was entertaining, but I was as surprised as the characters were when suddenly he spoke perfect English. Wouldn't his application forms for the internship have revealed that he hadn't just arrived in America? There must be some reason for it, but I don't know.

So finally we get to murder...It was a goofy murder, perpetrated by three people together who lost their tempers because they hated a guy's wind turbine. Makes me not want to move to the suburbs.

While there was nothing particularly awful about the episode, and I realize that it can't be easy coming up with interesting murders week after week, if this had been one of the first episodes of the series, they would have lost viewers. In fact, it is apparently one of the shows that has been losing dedicated viewers because it's just not hitting our standards.

Pull up your socks, Bones, because I know you can be great and this episode missed the mark.