Doctor Who: “I am definitely a madman with a box!”

Welcome to the much-anticipated premiere of the new season of Doctor Who! After much speculation and no small amount of hand-wringing by nervous fans, the fifth season of the “new” Who debuted in the U.S. tonight.

After three full seasons and five hour-long specials starring David Tennant as the Doctor, the much-beloved Tennant is out, as is showrunner, executive producer, and head writer Russell T. Davies and much of the behind-the-scenes team that had worked on the show since the debut of the 2005 revival. In is Steven Moffat, the man behind some really excellent episodes over the last four seasons (including the Ninth Doctor two-parter “The Empty Child” & “The Doctor Dances,” and my personal favorite, “Blink”), actors Matt Smith as the Doctor and Karen Gillan as companion Amy Pond, and a whole slew of new producers. The TARDIS has been redesigned and the title sequence revamped. (By the way, for those of us who didn’t mind the bombastic musical score from the Davies era, rest assured that composer Murray Gold is still on board, though the sound mixing seems to have improved so that now we can actually hear the dialogue over the music most of the time.) Everything old is new again, and it’s an interesting behind-the-scenes story – but does it translate into good television?

Let’s find out during “The Eleventh Hour,” written by Steven Moffat and directed by Adam Smith. As always, my comments will include spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the BBC or BBC America broadcasts, you’ve been warned.

“The Eleventh Hour” (a title, by the way, that not only fits the story, but is also a nod to the fact that Matt Smith is the eleventh actor to play the Doctor since William Hartnell first played the role in 1963) begins exactly where we left off in “The End of Time, Part 2”: the TARDIS is in bad shape, the Doctor has just regenerated, and we’re careening through the sky over London with some questionable CGI. Listen, I know it can’t all be that unbelievable bullet-time shot from the season opener of CSI, but the shot of the Doctor hanging out of the TARDIS just looks like something I made in Microsoft 3-D Moviemaker in the fifth grade. (Although I did make some pretty awesome monster movies, let me tell you.) I get why they did it – it might have worked to just cold-open on little Amelia Pond asking Santa to send her a policeman, but when the TARDIS crashes into her garden shed, we wouldn’t really understand the severity of the damage to the little blue box.

Speaking of little Amelia Pond, has there been a more delightful introduction to a companion in the last five seasons? The Doctor is soaking wet – having fallen into the TARDIS swimming pool – wearing half of a torn-up suit, climbing out of a box that crash-landed in her garden, and Amelia’s only question is, “Did you come about the crack in my wall?” She’s completely unruffled by this weirdo in ratty clothes eating fish sticks and custard (ugh) in her kitchen, and the wonderful chemistry between Matt Smith and young Caitlin Blackwood (who is actually Karen Gillan’s cousin) makes the bizarre interaction between child and Time Lord not only believable, but utterly charming, even when the Doctor is being a bit impolite.

Amelia: What’s wrong with you?
The Doctor: Wrong with me? It’s not my fault. Why can’t you give me any decent food? You’re Scottish; fry something.

Anybody who knows me can tell you that I’m not fond of children, so the fact that I’m saying this tells you how much I liked it: is there anything more darling than little Amelia Pond packing her suitcase to go off adventuring with the Doctor? Or anything more heartbreaking, because the moment the Doctor tells her he’ll be back in five minutes, you know he isn’t going to make it on time.

Then little Amelia grows up into Miss Amy Pond. Introduced with a nice camera pan up her legs, and, hey, did you know the show’s run by a straight man now? The nice thing, though, is that Amy is just as great a character as Amelia. She can stand up for herself – she went through four psychiatrists because they kept insisting the Doctor wasn’t real – and demands answers from the Doctor, rather than blindly following. I’d like it a little better if Amy’s costumes didn’t seem to always include a miniskirt, which doesn’t seem particularly practical with all the running (and listen to Donna in “The Doctor’s Daughter” when she tells it like it is: “Seriously, there’s an outrageous amount of running involved”), but still, it’s nice to have an impressionable young woman who isn’t immediately fawning over the Doctor…even if she is admiring the view when he strips down.

One thing I’ve always loved about this show is that the Doctor – the ancient, fantastic alien from a lost world, the very last of his kind – travels in a spaceship that is also a time machine, the kind of technology we’ve only dreamed of, and yet he can never seem to get it to go where it ought to. TARDIS malfunctions and/or miscalculations have set the stage for most of the Doctor’s misadventures, and I’m always more surprised when it hits the place in time it was aiming for than when it misses. Five minutes for the Doctor is twelve years for Amy, and the effect that had on her childhood and adolescence is evident in Amy’s grown-up child/childlike grown-up personality. I don’t think it will be hard for her to slip back into that sense of wonder at this man with a time machine – just look at how Rose and Martha reacted to the Doctor’s world without having had childhood encounters with him that impacted their lives for the next decade. There’s a very Peter Pan-like element to the end of the episode, where the Doctor, looking exactly the same as he always does (as far as she knows, at least) shows up in Amy’s garden after another two years – “fourteen years since fish custard,” in total – and takes her away on an adventure in her nightgown, like Wendy before her. Like Peter, the Doctor is upset by suddenly-grown-up Amy (“You were a little girl five minutes ago!”), and wants her to stay a child:

Amy: I grew up.
The Doctor: Don’t worry. I’ll soon fix that.

We shouldn’t be surprised, of course: Steven Moffat loves fairytales.

What about the Doctor himself? I’ve been saying for years that Tennant’s Doctor is my Doctor; I saw a couple Tennant episodes before going back and watching Christopher Eccleston, and as a result, was always a little more in love with Ten than with Nine. I haven’t seen much of the old series; a handful of the First Doctor episodes on YouTube and clips here and there of the others, but already Matt Smith’s Doctor has a special place in my heart. Perhaps because there are heavy shades of Tennant in the early part of his performance in “The Eleventh Hour,” and perhaps because Smith is clearly a much more talented actor than any of us gave him credit for, I’m already fond of this new incarnation. He may even do the twitchy, nutty side of the Doctor better than Tennant, unbelievably. I think he’ll win over any skeptical fans within the first hour.

Quick things I liked:

• The new TARDIS will take some getting used to, but I love the faucet knobs and the typewriter on the console and the shiny new blue paint job on the outside.


• I liked the rapid-fire frame-by-frame sequence that took us through what the Doctor saw in the little village square – mostly from a technical point of view, but it was a kind of whoa moment akin to that CSI clip I linked above.


• I loved the dialogue; there are some wonderful one-liners throughout the episode (e.g. “No TARDIS, no screwdriver, two minutes to spare, WHO DA MAN?! … Oh, I’m never saying that again, fine.”)

Quick things I didn’t like:

• The revelation that Amy is getting married in the morning: saw it coming a mile away. It does raise the stakes a little because we know that 1) the TARDIS isn’t particularly reliable when you’re trying to pinpoint a date (e.g. Rose gets home six months after leaving, rather than six hours) and 2) we’ve seen what happens when the Doctor doesn’t get the timing right (e.g. Mickey is the prime suspect in Rose’s murder; Harold Saxon wins the election)


• The very Russell T. Davies-like foreshadowing of what will become the season finale plot. The Crack is the new Bad Wolf, and “Silence will fall” is going to get very old very quickly. I understand that this is the season’s story arc, and I agree that this show needs one, but I think we could have waited a week or two before getting the first glimpse of it.

So, what kind of man is the Doctor going to be this time? We get an inkling when he brings the Atraxi back to Earth just to call them out on their bullshit – incinerating the planet, guys, really? – in a “Earth is defended”-type moment. If Ten was the type of man who grimly granted no second chances, then Eleven is the kind who will force you to admit your wrongs, sort-of threaten you, tell you to run, and do it all with a smile on his face. In other words, he’s a little bit nuts.

But, really, isn’t that why we love the Doctor?

Law & Order: Criminal Intent: No nod, no wink

The deeply troubling first part of the Law & Order: Criminal Intent premiere, "Loyalty," aired on Tuesday, and I finally had the time to watch it. Spoilers ahead. You've been warned.

I approached "Loyalty, Part 1" with some trepidation, and rightly so: if any of my other favorite TV shows -- regardless of network or genre -- decided to replace over half the cast in one fell swoop like this, I would be equally nervous (see: Doctor Who's changing of the guard). With this two-part premiere, though, the swoop isn't as fell as it could be; Goren and Eames are still digging into a double homicide as we open season nine, and while Captain Danny Ross is having some unusual discussions about creating a police force in Somalia, he's still around and still in charge...for now. The episode starts out the same way any other would: meet the players, find the bodies, get the cops on the case, visit Dr. Rodgers for the autopsy results, then start digging into the victims' lives. From there, however, we get into arms dealing and East African politics and that's where I start to get a little lost. The breakdown is this: as far as I can tell, there are three things going on here: 1) the Major Case homicide investigation, 2) an FBI investigation that puts Captain Ross undercover with unscrupulous (even murderous) arms dealers, and 3) what seems to be a series of shootings to avenge a sheikh killed by the arms dealers, or to ensure the weapons make it to Africa? The motives of the sheikh's children in New York aren't all that clear yet, but one thing is certain: it is a man connected to the dead sheikh who shoots and kills Captain Danny Ross.

This case seems unusually complicated for Criminal Intent, which often focuses more on the interplay between the suspects and police than on the nitty-gritty of the crime itself. By the end of this episode, Ross is dead, Goren, Eames, and Nichols have lost their about-to-become-cooperative suspect to the FBI, a heat-seeking missile exploded in the middle of New York (or New Jersey, maybe?) without anyone noticing, and I still wasn't entirely sure what was going on.

I was surprised by how hard it was to watch Danny Ross get shot; I've never been particularly attached to his character after being very fond of his predecessor, Captain James Deakins (Jamey Sheridan, who is about 80% of why I still watch Trauma), but it was tough to see him killed so quickly. No fanfare, no sentimentality, and unflinching. As it should be -- that's not what L&O is about. The best-worst part about Ross's death was seeing how upset Dr. Elizabeth Rodgers (Leslie Hendrix) was by it. There was a heavily-hinted-at relationship between Ross and Rodgers in seasons past, and her distress at both his death and being denied access to his body made his death hit home. Hendrix, Kathryn Erbe, and Vincent D'Onofrio were all very good in that particular scene. It was nice to see a little of the old Bobby Goren, fighting for access to his captain and the right to work the case, and it always gets me when the normally reserved Eames gets emotional. There were a few moments in this scene and the rest of the episode that didn't ring true, and there were several times when it sounded to me like D'Onofrio was just reciting lines, but I'm inclined to say the writing didn't quite get to where it needed to be -- one of the things that consistently bothers me about Criminal Intent is clunky dialogue. It's tough to get great performances when the material isn't quite at the same level as the actors.

Finally, there's been a lot said and written about the major cast shakeups going on this season, with regulars Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe (who have been on the show since season one) leaving, along with the Major Case Squad's captain for the past three seasons, Eric Bogosian, and new cast members Saffron Burrows and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio filling in around Jeff Goldblum's Detective Zack Nichols. To be perfectly honest, I was leery of Jeff "Notorious Show-Killer" Goldblum to begin with, but he won me over last season, and I'm dismayed by the fans who refuse to give him a chance. Those who scream in capslock that they refuse to watch the show anymore and will leave with D'Onofrio and Erbe just seem unreasonable to me. A revolving door of detectives has been part of the Law & Order franchise from the beginning. Goren & Eames (and Stabler & Benson on SVU, for that matter) are kind of anomalous when you look at the original series, which has seen plenty of actor turnover in the last twenty years -- just check out the chart of L&O characters from the Wikipedia article. I'm not saying I'm thrilled to see them go: I'm not. I've never been a fan of Saffron Burrows, and Kathryn Erbe's Detective Eames has been my favorite character for the last several seasons, so it's disappointing to know that it will be Burrows as Serena Stevens and not Eames that we'll see around the MCS squad room. In a perfect world, I would have liked to see Eames and Nichols partnered up; I thoroughly enjoyed watching them work together in last season's "Major Case" and "Revolution." However, we don't live in a perfect world, I'm not the Criminal Intent showrunner, and I'll have to live with the changes, just like everyone else. Dealing with writing, casting, and production decisions that make you unhappy is part of being a TV fan. You have to trust that the people in the production offices are doing what they think is going to work for the show (even if those of us on our couches have our doubts).

While waiting for the conclusion of "Loyalty" and with an eye toward the rest of season nine, I'm adopting a cautiously optimistic outlook. I'm hoping that their respective departures will be true to the Goren's and Eames's characters -- since characters are what USA Network is all about -- and that the remaining viewers and the network give Goldblum and Burrows a chance.

LOST, Season Six: The Befuddling

That familiar feeling of utter confusion can only mean one thing: LOST IS BACK!

Warning: there will be many spoilers in the text to follow.

Okay, so what are we dealing with? Parallel universes? Divergent paths that split at the moment 815 started to break up, meaning that we have one reality in which events progressed the way they have over the course of the series and one in which the plane makes it to LAX and things pan out the way we saw them in the premiere? Tough to tell right away. Unlike the flashback/forward device the show has used for the last five years, it's not immediately clear what's going on, and the possibility of there being multiple realities within the context of the show makes my head hurt a little bit. But that's exactly what's going on, according to executive producers and Lost gurus Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. They're calling the device a flash-sideways, since it presents two different universes that appear to be linked in some way. Darlton are, of course, being vague about what the relationship between these worlds actually is, but that's to be expected. If we knew what was going on, it wouldn't be Lost.

A couple thoughts on “LAX, Parts 1 & 2”:

First off, I was Not Pleased that Juliet didn't survive the first hour. As my friend J can tell you, I've been insistent that she and Sawyer get together since way before we, the audience, were ever supposed to consider it. For me, they were meant for each other from the moment she first Tased him. I understand that Elizabeth Mitchell is on V now, but really, Juliet Burke is a much more interesting and compelling character than Erica Evans, and I'd much rather watch the former than the latter. I'm sure there's a show out there that can showcase Mitchell's talent to its fullest, but I just don't think V is that show. Josh Holloway gets some quality brooding, grimacing, and Sawyerly growling out of Juliet's death, but I feel like taking her out of the equation sets him back significantly in terms of character development. He's back to being the bristling, uncouth loner who hoarded all the supplies in camp, had a contentious relationship/rivalry with Jack, and thought he was in love with Kate (because he hadn't met Juliet yet) – and if there's one thing I will not tolerate in this final season, it is the will-they-won't-they Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle. As far as I'm concerned, Sawyer is Juliet's man forever, and Jack and Kate deserve each other. The two of them can lame off into the sunset together.

One theory that has been posited relates to the message Miles conveyed from Juliet to Sawyer: “It worked.” Referring, presumably, to the detonation of the Jughead bomb and the other timeline, in which Oceanic 815 never crashed. The theory is that Juliet's seemingly nonsensical dying words (“Let's have coffee sometime...Dutch treat”) indicate some kind of connection to the other world, in which Juliet and Sawyer have never met. As she dies on the island, does she have some sort of psychic connection to another, parallel existence in which she and Sawyer meet under different circumstances? It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Ben gets a lesson in turnabout being fair play; after manipulating, controlling, and using the people around him for so long, Ben gets played by Jacob's mysterious nemesis (who confirms that he is, indeed, the smoke monster). Ben is horrified, terrified, and kind of helpless against the unreal power of this entity that looks and sounds like John Locke, but is obviously something else altogether. It's interesting to see Ben put in a very submissive role after so long as the Others' leader and one of the most dangerous characters on the show. Ben has been very cool and in control for much of his tenure on the show, and it's fun to see him freaked out by the “Man in Black.” I really enjoy watching Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn together, especially now that they've presented O'Quinn with the opportunity to be really, truly creepy and deliver slightly cryptic monologues that make him even more sinister. He played Locke fairly benign (you know, for a knife-toting, boar-hunting believer in the powers of a mystical island), and it's startling to see him be violent and malevolent – startling, but entertaining.

There were some frustrating moments in the two-hour premiere, but ultimately, it looks like it will be a great final season. Former regulars now returning – Claire! – and all the on-island characters finally in the same year – Jin and Sun! – and a parade of dead minor characters brought back to life by the parallel-storyline device (worth it just for Greg Grunberg's voiceover as Captain Seth Norris on the plane – Viva Grunny!) give us the potential for some great mind-boggling TV. Bring it on!

Cast from the Past: Battlestar Galactica

From time to time, a show comes along with a cast so stacked with talent that it actually hurts a little to think about. Deadwood was one (Ian McShane is the heavyweight scenery-chewing champion of the world), as was The West Wing. More recently, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica was excellent and entirely underappreciated. What made BSG all the more impressive was that it came from the SciFi network (back when the name made sense), the people responsible for SciFi Movies of the Week, which (in my experience, at least) are patently terrible.

Admittedly, I didn't start watching until the series was already over, in part because I knew how agonized my friend and roommate, hereafter known as J, was when she had to wait for new episodes. I wasn't going to put myself through that torture voluntarily. I still haven't seen Battlestar Galactica: The Plan because 1) I don't get SyFy (oy) anymore and 2) Blockbuster is kind of far away, man, get off my back. Once I did start getting the DVDs from my public library, I was immediately hooked. Not only was the series way better than anything on SciFi had a right to be, but the entire cast was, in a word, perfect. Of course Edward James Olmos is the world-weary, trustworthy commander -- what else could he be (apart from a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, of course)? Jamie Bamber played his son, Lee Adama, with the perfect self-righteous, whiny, holier-than-thou tone and, eventually, a passable American accent. You'd never know that Katee Sackhoff is a girly-girl in real life after watching her the reckless, hard-drinking, cigar-smoking, completely unstable pilot, Starbuck. It's interesting to take a look at what the actors have been doing since hanging up their guns and (spoiler alert) sending their ships into the sun.

A few of the higher-profile actors from the series have landed on different TV series on a long-term basis. Tahmoh Penikett (Karl "Helo" Agathon) is an FBI agent on Fox's Dollhouse, which just got the axe. Much as I loved Helo, his mere presence wasn't enough to pull me in. The only episode I've watched was the one with Jamie Bamber (AKA Prissy Lee Adama), which I watched because Helo and Apollo were going to share the screen, however briefly. Grace Park (Sharon "Boomer" Valerii/Sharon "Athena" Agathon, Number Eight, etc.) was first on The Cleaner and now on the Canadian series The Border. The aforementioned Jamie Bamber is busy playing the Detective Mike Logan (Chris Noth circa 1990) equivalent on Law & Order: UK over in Britain (which is fantastic, from what I've seen). Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol) stars as a union leader in a Canadian series, The Bridge, debuting in 2010, while Katee Sackhoff (Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, of course) will be on 24.

As for guest appearances, the last few weeks have been unusually busy for ex-BSGers. The second episode of ABC's V featured President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell)'s onetime assistant, Tory (Rekha Sharma), wandering through as an FBI agent (unfortunately, because of Tory's arc on BSG, I'm already suspicious of her FBI character being a secret underground alien -- but there's always hope that they won't typecast). Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy) was on FlashForward, playing a shady SOB (again, sigh, CKR) involved with the mysterious Blue Hand group. The always enjoyable Mark Sheppard (unscrupulous attorney Romo Lampkin as well as Firefly's Badger) was a Russian lit professor/pimp on the concluding episode of the much-hyped CSI "Trilogy" crossover, though his Russian accent -- by way of London -- left a little something to be desired. It's always nice to see them pop up on shows that have nothing to do with space or robots or aliens -- not because I don't enjoy sci-fi, but because it's always a little jarring to see them out of what I think of as their natural environment (but is really just the only setting in which I have seen them).

We haven't heard much from some of the major players: the Admiral himself, Edward James Olmos, hasn't been around much (his last major non-BSG credit is...Beverly Hills Chihuahua? That...that can't be right), while Michael Hogan (Col. Saul Tigh) has popped up on Dollhouse and Warehouse 13, apparently (and using both his eyes, I assume). Madam President Mary McDonnell is on The Closer, I guess? I don't watch it. Crazy Ellen Tigh, Kate Vernon, is due to turn up on Heroes, according to Greg Grunberg's Twitter, where she will undoubtedly pwn everyone in sight. So...could Michael, Mary, or Kate please coax Olmos out of whatever semi-retirement he's pretending to have so we can see Adama strolling across the small screen (or the big screen!) again? (Or better yet, kicking ass and taking names.)

Monday TV: Bits & Pieces

I've been remiss in my blogging duties, due in large part to having a lot of projects to juggle and not having learned to juggle, um, ever. I'll try harder from here on out...I think.

Highlights from Monday night's primetime lineups:

How I Met Your Mother followed up the Barney/Robin breakup with the rather lackluster "The Playbook," which saw Robin throwing herself into work and Barney throwing himself into women with renewed determination. Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan were fantastic, as they always are when they're paired up in an episode, but I wasn't bowled over by the episode as a whole. It feels like the Barney/Robin relationship was cut short, and that they're not taking advantage of the mileage it still had in it. Hopefully they'll go back to it in the future.

The Big Bang Theory had a great storyline and a useless one. While Leonard, Koothrappali, and Wolowitz went camping to watch the Leonid meteor shower, Penny falls in the shower, dislocates her shoulder, and has to rely on Sheldon for help. Sheldon 1) feels Penny up, 2) drives a car, 3) takes a gander at the Chinese character tattooed on Penny's butt (it means "soup," apparently), and 4) sings "Soft Kitty" in a round with her. It was five kinds of hysterical, while the boys on their camping trip got high and were only mildly entertaining.

Castle had a solid episode full of ex-cons and call girls. There was a convicted felon-slash-wordsmith who wanted to go to locksmith school, ex-Law & Order: SVU ADA Kim Grayleck as a hooker, and a star prosecutor who turned out to be a pimp. There are some great twists in this episode, and enough comedy to balance out the few eye-rolling moments (courtesy of Scarlett, the call girl). Meanwhile, Castle is concerned because his daughter is keeping a secret from him--but she's willing to talk to Detective Beckett about it. I've said before that I don't generally like characters' teenage offspring (for the latest example, see Erica Evans' son on V), but Alexis Castle and Emily Lightman on Lie to Me are the exceptions: both are intelligent young women who are, more often than not, more sensible and mature than their fathers, and the grounding influences for men who could get big heads while being lauded as brilliant in their respective fields (crime novels and deception). If only all teenagers could be like these girls.

Dancing With the Stars did some sob stories about the semifinalists' lives pre-DWTS (Donny Osmond wasn't taken seriously as an ARTIST, Joanna Krupa's mother brought her to America for a better life, Mya's family didn't even know she could sing until she was 14 and then her parents got divorced, MTV and reality television got Kelly Osbourne addicted to drugs) and there was a lot of glitter and sequins and Bruno Tonioli being outrageous and Len Goodman being chagrined and Carrie-Anne Inaba being critical for no good reason. Then, Samantha Harris was irrelevant. So, really, it was like any other week.

Lie to Me saw Foster and Lightman colluding to do something behind their FBI liaison's back, which I always enjoy, and Loker trying to work his way back into a paying position at the Lightman Group. Torres was annoying, and there was a lot of teenage angst from Emily Lightman and Max, a sixteen-year-old fan of Cal's book who was convinced his parents had kidnapped him as an infant.

I hear House kicked Cameron to the curb, but I gave up on that show halfway through last season, so all I can say is that it's a shame, because I think they wasted Jennifer Morrison for most of seasons four and five.

Trauma was better than last week, which completely underwhelmed me, plus Rabbit not only delivered a baby (in the helicopter!) that came out feet first, but the kid's Hungarian parents named the kid after him. As in, they named the kid "Rabbit," not "Reuben." Marisa threw a hissy fit and then sulked. Tyler and Boone pulled a double and guzzled energy drinks, Nancy had lunch with her father (Christian Shephard of Lost) and brother (Sully of Harper's Island) and then commiserated about "the family business" with Dad. Probie Glenn and Intern Diana discovered they're both from Pennsylvania and they're so happy and giggly and nauseatingly adorable that I sincerely hope they end up together at the end of the tragically-short series.

Heroes finally answered the question that's been bothering many viewers: "Where's Mohinder?" Well, he's in a mental institution (thanks to Hiro), but it's better than where he was before, which was nowhere, because he was dead. Aptly named "Brother's Keeper," this week's episode featured a lot of brothers. The Sullivans (Joseph, deceased in the regular timeline, and Samuel, of whom we've seen a lot this season), in a flashback, frustrate Suresh and then kill him, except not, because Hiro went back in time and put a Kevlar vest on him? Yeah, it was that kind of episode. The Petrellis, meanwhile, find Nathan's dead body in a storage unit, find and save Matt Parkman/Sylar, and may or may not have reunited Sylar's brain with his body. Look, all I know is that Zachary Quinto and his hair have looked even more amazing than usual lately, so I'm all for him sticking around. There was some stuff with Claire and Tracy trying to control Tracy's freezing, but it was so boring that I can't justify wasting space on it.


I'll try out this around-the-dial approach for busy TV nights; comments, queries, suggestions, and criticism should be directed to the comment link below!

Criminal Minds: “What's a BFF?”

Full disclosure: I do, on occasion, refer to Criminal Minds' Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid (Ph.D., not M.D.) as “My Future Husband, Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid.” Last night's episode, “The Performer,” did absolutely nothing to temper my love for the good doctor, but rather made me giggle and clap like a kid at the circus. But more on that later.

“The Performer,” written by Holly Harold, centers around a series of murders in which the victims are exsanguinated via a pair of puncture wounds on the neck. Oh, that's right, folks, it's a VAMPIRE episode! You know, when I added a “cashing in on vampires” tag to this blog, I never expected to use it this frequently. That being said, I don't think CM is necessarily trying to cash in on vamps, since I can't imagine a way to make money off a single episode of a TV series that isn't available on iTunes or Amazon (yet). I don't think the show has dealt with vampirism before this, and it's an interesting psychological facet for the killer.

The titular performer is “Dante” a sort of HIM-like vampire rock star, played by – hey, that's Gavin Rossdale! Hi, Gavin Rossdale! Does Gwen know you're out in that makeup? He sings a cover of Joy Division's “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and then, because he's a real rock star, drinks straight from the bottle and smashes things backstage. Meanwhile, a concertgoer with really unfortunate hair gets murdered and dumped on a freeway exit ramp. Clip below:



Our intrepid team of BAU agents spends some time with a detective we last met, I believe, when Reid was getting up close and personal with a comely starlet being threatened by a stalker. Matthew Gray Gubler gets opening-quote honors this week, with a bit of Montague Summers (whose book on werewolves is sitting on my desk right now, actually). Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid is full of fun information about vampirism and cannibalism that makes me glad I don't have to visit crime scenes for a living. There's also the interesting tidbit that the sort of obsession with blood and vampires that characterizes this weeks "unsub" (suspect) is referred to as "Renfield syndrome," after the character in Bram Stoker's Dracula. During the course of the investigation, we get other vampire references, including one to that vampire megafranchise that's getting its second installment next week – the victim's computer password is “Cullen” – and, in my favorite moment of the episode, we find out that Reid doesn't know what Twilight is. Reid has never heard of Twilight and I love him a little more with each passing moment.

The Good: Gavin Rossdale does a decent job as the drug-addicted (I assume) rock star and murder suspect who hates his vampire persona. I thought he was much more watchable here than in Constantine. Of course, that may be because Constantine was kind of terrible (in a fun way!). He looks terrible in the vampire makeup, but I'm sure the same could be said of anyone in that getup. The writing was better than it is for most well-hyped celebrity cameos, and Rossdale does a surprisingly good job of delivering it convincingly. The team banters a little bit, talking about their favorite albums and musicians at the end of the episode, which goes a long way toward relieving the heavy violence and drama that is the trademark of a show about serial killers. Also, Reid's complete cluelessness when it comes to pop culture is always good comic relief.

The Bad: J.J. ignores warning bells (e.g. the kind of muttering only crazy people do) and walks into a situation with no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. Her lack of perceptiveness seems odd for an FBI agent, especially one who, while not a profiler herself, has worked with the Behavioral Analysis Unit for over five years now – what, she hasn't learned anything from either her training or from working with the other BAU agents? Besides, in addition to being an FBI agent, she's also a new mother, and while J.J. has never been afraid to put herself at risk when it's her job, she's always backed down when the others told her to consider her baby. You would think walking into a house that looks that crazy with someone who's acting that crazy might give her pause, even if she's not expecting trouble.

Verdict: Very entertaining and definitely worth a rewatch. Too bad it's not on CBS.com or iTunes or Amazon or Hulu. I'll be watching for this one during rerun season.

Movie Kitsch: Dracula, 1992

Flash from the past time.

I was seven years old when Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula came out, so I was barely aware that it even existed until a few years ago, when Gary Oldman had just been cast as Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and someone mentioned that included in his pantheon of Crazy Villainous Characters was Count Dracula.

The full feature film is available on Hulu (although you have to register and be over 17 to watch it), so I figured, why not?

Okay.

First of all, I'm not sure I've ever seen a Coppola movie before, but I was under the impression that he's regarded as a great, talented director. Did he lose a bet with Scorsese or something? Because this was...not what I'd expected. On paper, it sounds like an amazing movie: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Gary Oldman (GARY OLDMAN!) with Anthony Hopkins (SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS!), Richard E. Grant, and the woefully underrated Cary Elwes (AKA Wesley, the Dread Pirate Roberts), back when he was still young and dreamy. Then you throw in Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder and everything goes to hell.

Oldman gnaws on the scenery with everything he's got, Sadie Frost makes her topless film debut, the women do lots of moaning and writhing and exposing of breasts, Keanu sounds like the Britishest dude in Malibu, and Tom Waits hangs out a window, screaming for his master. Then we get this moment of weirdness:



Maybe I'm just coming to this from the wrong generational viewpoint -- most of the reviews on Hulu are from people who saw the movie when it came out and are surprisingly laudatory, with criticism only for Ryder & Reeves -- but I only found Dracula entertaining because it was so terrible. I'm so used to Gary Oldman in his recent, subtler performances (and less evil, e.g. Potter's Sirius Black and Jim Gordon of the Batman movies) that this hissing, writhing, amped-up monster of a villain just seems silly. Speaking of silly, Keanu's accent is too God-awful to take seriously, much like the attempt to give him gray hair after his harrowing foursome with Dracula's three vampire wives. Keanu, darling, you're adorable, but perhaps you ought to stick to silent films or modeling. Winona's in a little better, but whenever she opens her mouth, I just hear Veronica's diary entries from Heathers ("Dear Diary...").

I did catch the line "You are my life now," which landed itself in Twilight a decade later, and managed to sound even creepier coming from Edward Cullen, and the whole long-lost One True Love thing turned up in The Vampire Diaries, I believe, which just goes to show you how little there really is to draw from when it comes to vampire lore. We're going to run out of innovative ways to make them compelling before too long (although I will love True Blood until its dying day) -- remember the zombie craze of a couple years ago? What happened to that? It's only a matter of time before the girls who started their adolescences in the Age of Twilight figure out that there are other (living, better-written) fish in the sea. As for the post-vampire heyday fantasy world, there have been some interesting theories put forward as to what the next craze might be.

In any case, I don't know where this movie went wrong, but it's a shame that something with such promise fails to deliver, and that after winning three Oscars (costume design, sound editing, & makeup), it isn't nearly as impressive seventeen years later. Sorry, Dracula, but I'm not a fan.



P.S. I just realized that Bill Campbell, the actor playing the poor, doomed American, Quincey Morris, is actually Billy Campbell, the dad from Once and Again and the unlikely abusive husband from that Jennifer Lopez movie, Enough. Huh. The things you learn from the internet.

Thank you, Community

NBC’s Community is one of my favorite new shows this season. On Thursday night, it got even better:



WHY HELLO THERE, JOEL MCHALE.

And thank you, Community, for that bit of naked man torso.

V: Return of the HBIC

Having missed the premiere of V on Tuesday, I had to wait until it showed up online this morning to watch it. A mere five minutes after watching, what sticks with me is this: what's with all the wacky camera angles? Behold:



It's like watching that student film I made my sophomore year of college. That, or a pale imitation of Bergman. Here's a hint for aspiring filmmakers: no one looks good when the camera's going up their nostrils. True story.

Apart from the weirdo camera work, it was a pretty solid pilot: good writing, interesting plot, and the effects were, for the most part, well-done as well. What drew me to the show was the handful of alumni from some of my other favorite shows. Elizabeth Mitchell, otherwise known as HBIC (Head Bitch in Charge) and Sawyer's One True Love Juliet Burke from Lost, is FBI agent Erica Evans, while Morena Baccarin (Inara Serra of Firefly) is the alien Visitors' leader, Anna. Another surprise Firefly alum was Alan Tudyk, playing Erica's FBI partner who...was not actually all that he seemed, alas. But can we please get this man a regular job on another TV show? We all (still) miss Wash. (In other news, ABC gets props for employing Captain Mal, Inara, Zoe--on FlashForward--and Wash.)

I wasn't thrilled with the subplot involving Erica's teenaged son, Tyler, and his obsession with the Vs. For one, how does he expect his little crush on one of the alien Visitors to pan out? Is he hoping to sex up a reptile here? I'm not sure how I feel about the interspecies love. Then again, I'm not usually fond of characters' teenaged children on any show, so this may be just my particular aversion to angst.

I'll keep tuning in, if only to see how they plan to stretch this out to more than one season. If I recall correctly, V is based on a miniseries (which I have not seen), which would seem to be a better format for this kind of not-what-they-seem-alien-invasion story. Then again, I'm perplexed by FlashForward as a regular, rather than mini-, series as well, so we'll see how both turn out.

Verdict: Gold star, V.

Kudos: NCIS

I'm not a huge NCIS fan, but my family watches during dinner on Tuesday nights (which is why I missed the V premiere), so I caught last night's episode, "Outlaws and In-Laws," written by Jesse Stern. I've never heard of Jesse Stern before, nor am I familiar with anything he's written, but the writing on this particular episode was fantastic. Snappy dialogue, sight gags, very funny moments, and good use of all the regular characters and the guest actors, as well. Kudos, sir, for a very entertaining hour of television!