White Collar - All In, S01E06

Alright, so I realize that White Collar is almost finished its first season, with the finale scheduled for Tuesday, March 9th (That's this Tuesday), and I'm on episode 6, while that will be episode 14, but maybe I'm looking for a challenge. I am planning on having seen all the episode by Wednesday. And I am planning to blog about them all... You may have to wait for all of the entries to be posted here, since there are still other shows to focus on, but I intend for my finale post on www.couchcampus.com to be on time. Wish me luck.

That said, I find it hard to believe that I fell of the wagon in terms of keeping up with this show; the same could be said of Supernatural, but I have until March 25th to catch that up.

White Collar is hilarious. The chemistry between Neal Caffrey (Matthew Bomer) and Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) is undeniable. They spare and deliver their lines to one another with timing so perfect it seems natural. And Burke's relationship with his wife, Ellie (Tiffani Thiessen), is also a delight to watch on television. For once a woman realized what she was getting into before she married an FBI agent, and so is not constantly mad at him for doing his job. Far too many women on TV cause problems in their own marriages because they got married expecting him to change. *rolls eyes* But that is not the case here.

And Bomer and DeKay also work well with the many other actors brought on to the show.

In All In, while we did learn a key piece of story line information - the man who has Kate is FBI - we also got a lot of simple and fun character interaction.

Watching Mozzie (Willie Garson) and Caffrey watching the awful cult classic Chinese movie involving Dominoes was hilarious. Mozzie's nerdy obsession with bad movies clearly doesn't transfer to Neal, who has bigger concerns in his life.

Burke also showed other sides of himself - he's not much better with children than he is with crying women, but he tries. But what he is good at is getting information. I loved the scene where he pretended to be an idiotic FBI agent while recording the Chinese spoken around him for translation later. One of the best tactics out there is to play one people's assumptions and confidence in your lack of understanding to get what you want.

But I think my favourite moment of the entire episode was when Neal and Peter were in the warehouse, and Neal stated that he thought he saw the ark of the covenant. Indiana Jones references will get you everywhere. I guess there are some delightfully bad movies that Caffrey does like.

Rome - Season 1, Episodes 5-9

I continue to love this series, and though I have not even finished watching the first season, I am very hopeful that the projected movie starring Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pollo (Ray Stevenson) will be greenlighted. Follow the link for the details, but if you have not finished watching the series, don't read the last paragraph.

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2010/03/04/hbo-rome-movie/

Rome is such an intelligent series, developing the politics of the time with precision. The only thing lacking is a better sense of timing and of waiting. I suppose, with what we know, keeping the series interesting while having it take place in a timeline resembling real time would have been quite boring, and they would not have even got to Caesar (Ciaran Hinds)'s assassination before they had to cancel the show, but there are some moments where I feel like things have happened too fast.

Regardless, the show does develop other things perfectly.

James Purefoy's Mark Anthony continues to show himself as both an impatient ass and a brilliant strategist...though sometimes a little caught up in his own wishes. While it was hard to imagine the Mark Anthony in the first few episodes taking up Caesar's mantle, by the end of episode 9 the cleverness shines through with the ruthlessness, and his priorities are straightened out a little.

Titus Pollo also got to have a great deal of fun. He killed the lover of his best friend's wife, proving himself the best friend imaginable. He also showed a sensitive side in the affection he is developing for their slave girl. Too bad that he's now sunk back into a depressive bender...Still, I have hope for him.

After all, as Caesar pointed out, Pollo and Vorenus have great and powerful gods watching out for them. Not Triton, mind you, but someone able to protect them from him. It made it a whole lot more believable that they would have survived that storm to think of it that way; at first, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief about it.

But regardless of the delight I get from how complicated the politics and wars of the men are, they pale in comparison to the women. I can't help but feel bad for poor idiotic Octavia (Kerry Condon). Atia (Polly Walker) should have left her married to her husband. She would have lived a happy and uninteresting life, but instead, she's getting herself into all kinds of trouble. Being seduced by Servilia (Linsday Duncan) and then seducing her younger brother, Octavian (Max Pirkis), she's a mess. And she is really not cut out for all this intrigue like her mother.

Atia, on the other hand, handled the situation brilliantly. Despite the fact that we know she had Octavia's husband killed (which I think backfired since if Octavia was happily married, she'd be out of the way), she was utterly believable when she told Octavia it was a lie. And despite her own personal hatred and war with Servilia, I can only believe that the horribly beautiful extent to which Atia went for vengeance was not for the injuries Servilia caused to her own person, but for those she caused to her daughter.

Atia is many things, and very vicious in all of them, but the humiliation she forced Servilia to suffer is one that has mama bear written all over it. What remains to be seen is if Servilia has it in her to retaliate, but even if she does, I can't see her winning. Atia has a ruthlessness that is coupled with what she considers necessity, while Servilia's anger is based in violent, angry grief.

Put it proves the rule that, while men can be violent and deceitful, they have nothing on women.

The Mentalist - Red Herring, S02E15

With a title like Red Herring, I was a little disappointed with this episode. Not that it wasn't a good episode; it was solid: well written and well acted. But it was your average episode of the Mentalist where very little that is lasting occurs. Typical of a procedural, but I still think it was a waste of a good title.

What did I want from a title like that? I wanted Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) to be distracted from the truth by a red herring. I wanted Jane to have suspicions about someone that were founded, but that simply weren't actually relevant to the case. There is something about Jane always being right, always manipulating everyone into everything exactly the way he'd planned, that is simply getting boring.

Ouch. I know, that's a harsh statement, but it's true nonetheless. And when this episode was devoid of any Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and Grace (Amanda Righetti) action - by the way, are they back together and happy and simply back to pretending that nothings going on, or are they still in a fight and that's why Cho (Tim Kang) isn't allowed to mention their relationship - and devoid of more than a few brilliant comments by Cho: "I don't eat anything I can't identify," you need something interesting and new to be going on.

So there was a love affair and a pregnant wife which were red herrings, and the sous-chef was the killer instead. I hate to say that I thought it was pretty easy to figure out, as was Jane's method of bringing the killer out of the wood work. And the hints about Lisbon (Robin Tunney)'s alcoholic dad were good as forerunners for something pertinent that will happen in a future episode, I want something to be happening now.

So please, The Mentalist, give me something new to get excited about! Someone else who thwarts Jane, or let's just delve into a Red John segment. Are you craving this too?

The Good Wife - Bang, S01E15

The Good Wife is one of the best shows on television, and as such does not necessarily generate as many comments as the worst. It is far easier to pinpoint and mock shows that are abysmally bad than to intelligently express why one is such a success, but I will endeavor to do it nonetheless.

Julianna Margulies.

Does that sum it up well for you? While there can be no denying (thanks to a SAG award) that the ensemble of the Good Wife is excellent, Margulies is the focal point of that talent, and she is able to bring out the best in everyone she works with.

In Bang, when Alicia (Margulies) and Will (Josh Charles) have their brief...discussion, let's call it, about why he removed her from the case she was working, the chemistry and tension between the two was so potent and powerful that I immediately wanted to cast my chips in with the Alicia/Will shippers. But then Peter (Chris Noth) has a scene with Alicia, and I'm right back to wanting the couple to properly reconcile. Must be nice to be able to generate those kind of emotions with two such attractive men, and then go home to your real-life husband at the end of the day.

While I could go on about Margulies' portrayal of Alicia for a good longtime, there were some terrific moments for the other cast members in this episode which I cannot neglect.

First of all, Cary (Matt Czuchry) had a very small, but unforgettable moment with Santa Claus on the stand. That's right, an old man named Nick was testifying, and he was making the prosecution look good because who doesn't love a man who looks like Santa and plays him at malls. But Cary, in a brilliant delivery at the court room, managed to make Santy go from resembling Kris Kringle at the end of Miracle on 34th street to the man Kris replaced as Santa Claus in the parade. Bad on the prosecution for putting someone who couldn't take the heat up on the stand.

I also cannot neglect the appearance of a new character, Eli Gold. Portrayed by the delightful Alan Cumming, Gold immediately set the stage for the kind of character he is - efficient and not willing to put with with any bs - but pulling his pants down so that someone who was pissing him off could kiss his ass. I am very excited about his appearance because it certainly looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Finally, my favourite subplot of the night was between Diane (Christine Baranski) and the ballistics expert, Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole). The play between their two attitudes and personalities was simply wonderful. And the gifts they sent each other at the end, Going Rogue for Diane; Going Rouge for McVeigh...perfect. Absolutely perfect.

The writers are giving something solid to terrific actors who continue to hit it out of the park. Do you love it?

Republic of Doyle - Blood is Thicker than Blood, S01E04

Republic of Doyle continues to be delightful and excellent. I am quickly catching up the episodes I was behind on and enjoying every minute because of solid writing, excellent acting, and the exoticness of Newfoundland.

That's right, Newfoundland is exotic. Okay, so the episodes were clearly filmed in the summer, and I'm not sure I'd want to spend the winter there, but the East coast music and the beauty of the multicoloured houses, coupled with those accents! It makes a show that would probably be just boring in Ontario great!

Not that the plots don't keep things exciting. In Blood is Thicker than Blood, the best scene had to be when the two brothers were shooting at each other in the junk yard; you were never quite sure if their intention was to actually shoot each other or not. And the ending of the episode, sad and poignant, a reminder that amid the goofiness we are talking about murder and loss of life changing everything.

But what keeps me coming back is how awkward and therefore natural the relationships between the characters are. Everyone is so perfectly flawed that, while lovable, they are all so far from perfect that you can't help but want the best for them. Especially because you know they aren't going to be making the right choices on their own.

Why do you watch?

The Mentalist - Blood in, Blood out, S02E14

I was SO happy that we finally got a Cho-centric episode of The Mentalist. I so often feel like Kimball Cho (Tim Kang) is not used to full effect, but in this episode, not only did we get to enjoy his subtle and to-the-point attitude for the entire episode, we also got to see the violence that is, has been, and always will be a huge part of his personality.

We started on a happy note, finally meeting Elise (Sandrine Holt), Cho's girlfriend; what a perfect start to a revelation about the inner working of Kimball Cho. The happiness did not last, as, instead of taking the lovely woman to a restaurant where they had reservation, Cho went instead to find the corpse of a member of his former gang, a man whom he compared to a brother.

Now, it would not be The Mentalist if Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) did not start meddling. Insisting on going with Cho from the beginning, we knew that there would always be a witness to Cho's actions, preventing him from giving into his former "Iceman" days, at least, not too much.

Yet, much as I loved this episode, and loved Cho for every minute - I nearly died when Jane asked him what he did to make his former gang leader so angry, and Cho simply replied "I shot him," in his flat, straight-forward way - there were some major flaws.

In the scene where Cho and Elise were attacked, there was a fair amount of awkwardness of movement that neither showed us what was actually going on or gave us a clear picture of what we were intended to think was going on before we went into the commercial break.

And the last scene, with the big reveal and discovery of the murderer was also a little contrived. It started well, with Cho giving into his anger, but neither Jane nor Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) backed up the sentiment. When the impression was given that Cho had shot the man who refused to tell him what he wanted to know, suddenly the situation stopped escalating. The energy dropped to a point where they were all far too calm. The only thing that really redeemed this moment was when Cho punched out the murderer in the end.

Still, I want more episodes like this. More episodes where we actually get to see Cho at home. And more of Lisbon (Robin Tunney) too. Naturally, we get plenty of Jane. And with Rigsby and Grace (Amanda Righetti)'s relationship, we see a fair amount of them not fully invested in their CBI personae. But Cho and Lisbon let that mask slip far less frequently, and much as I love that part of their character, I want to know them a little better all the same.

What were your thoughts?

Caprica - There is Another Sky, S01E05

Although I was not as big a fan of this episode as I was of the last one, it address some interesting issues in our own culture through the Caprican culture. The episode did not go as far as I might want it to, but hopefully that will happen in upcoming episodes.

The holoband is similar to the internet. More and more people are using it, especially young people, and they are using more and more illegal methods because they want to experience so many things for free. Like us, their younger generation has a sense of entitlement that far exceeds the possibilities the world has to offer.

While Daniel Greystone (Eric Stoltz) may have pulled the rug out from under the illegal aspects of the program by ceasing to profit from the holoband technology, giving it to them for free certainly will not stop the entitlement issues.

We also got the usual pointed comment about being able to be someone, to accomplish something in a virtual world having no real baring on real life. Tamara (Genevieve Buechner) was quite right when she told her new friend that perhaps he would be able to be someone, to accomplish something in the real world if he were not so immersed in the virtual one. How many people have incredibly powerful WoW characters, but have nothing of value to speak of once their computers are turned off?

I also have to wonder how close any modern scientists are to creating artificial intelligence, let alone artificial sentience, given how many times we've been warned that we will end up being weaker than the creatures we create. To create sentience, artificial or otherwise, and to expect unquestioning obedience while giving no rights...well, it's no wonder that the Cylons revolted. Zoe (Alessandra Torresani)'s Avatar so closely resembled the real person, how could she accept such subservience so easily? And how must she have felt to have to tear her own arm off at her father's command? It may not have hurt physically, but Zoe clearly has enough of a mind to be affected.

And why is it that two of the most interesting characters, Zoe and Tamara, were killed within the first hour of the series?

But, while all those technological questions are thought provoking, nothing is more concerning to me that the choices that the writers of Caprica are making in regards to William Adama (Sina Najafi) and his father (Esai Morales). At some point, I am going to have to go back and discover if there was ever any sort of a reference to Bill's uncle in BSG. Hard to believe that a man like that could be easily forgotten. And what about the glorification of Joseph Adama? Does he become a better lawyer and a moral man to be proud of as the show develops?

I suppose you can dismiss it all with a "Bill Adama got hurt during the Cylon war and it changed him so much he forgot his childhood. But you'd think they would have been a little more careful with everything.

What did you think?