“The Getaway”

December 13th, 2009

When Dexter started its season, I spent a lengthy post comparing the show to 24, arguing that the show’s initial interest in Dexter as a psychological case study has been all but eradicated by seasons which have turned the show into your basic serial thriller that fails to take into account just how complex the character truly is. The show took two seasons to establish that Dexter is someone who has a code, and who kills those who deserve to be killed, and now it has taken that stock character and turned him into the blood analyst equivalent of Jack Bauer, happening to find himself wrapped up in compelling cases each and every season that speak to Dexter more than something wholly random but often do so in a superficial way. And like 24, these situations can often be quite compelling, but if you stop and think about the real potential in this character and the series you can’t help but feel that all involved could do better.

If we choose to accept that this is all Dexter is going to be, the fourth season has been quite solid, benefitting from a terrific and terrifying performance by John Lithgow as Arthur Mitchell, also known as the Trinity Killer. And much as 24’s fifth season was one of its strongest due to the amount of time spent crafting Gregory Itzin’s President Logan into a complex antagonist, the show works infinitely better when it takes the time to create a character that can give us chills, and who brings out interesting shades in Dexter’s character. So long as we ignore how convenient it is that Trinity is based in Miami, the consequences (like Jennifer Carpenter’s fine work post-shooting, like more time with Keith Carradine, etc.) are quite engaging, and viewed on their own represent some great dramatic television.

But they’re surrounded by a show that can’t help but call attention to its faults, and how those faults could have been prevented. Harry Morgan, once an integral part of the series’ mythos, has devolved to the point of serving as an exposition tool, a physical representation of Dexter’s self-conscience that the writer aren’t even willing to define as either angel or devil because they’re afraid that question would be too complex to handle. The supporting characters, like Batista and LaGuerta, are given stories that are literally just excuses for them to remain in the cast. Rita and her kids, once a beard for Dexter’s inner emptiness, have become a way for the show to investigate fidelity and suburban life, but never in a way that feels like it goes beyond melodrama.

“The Getaway” takes a lot of these elements and puts them to good use, unearthing Dexter’s bloody past in a way which feels organic and concluding the Trinity arc with the sort of momentum that the show is so very good at developing. And in its conclusion, which is in fact truly game-changing, there contains the DNA for the show to reinvent itself, to send it down a darker and more complex path that harkens back to the show’s first season.

And I’d be a hell of a lot more excited if I thought that was actually going to happen.

When I first compared the show to 24, I had no idea that Dexter would quite literally steal that show’s first season conclusion out from under it. I had never intended to make an argument for plagiarism, but certainly the “shocking” conclusion here is literally Teri’s death done again. The show’s protagonist believes that they have taken care of the problem (either Nina or Trinity), and the audience is led to believe the same, before a discovery is made which completely upends any sense of a happy ending (Teri shot in the back room, Rita dead in the bathtub), fundamentally changing the story’s trajectory. Now, as far as endings go, 24’s was pretty spectacular, so I don’t blame Dexter’s writers for taking it as their own. However, 24 didn’t exactly nail the landing with the ramifications, and Dexter has done little this season to convince me it can do differently.

I thought “The Getaway” was a really engaging finale, jettisoning the less interesting recurring elements of the season (Rita, LaGuerta/Batista) in favour of a healthy dose of Dexter’s past that has been all but irrelevant all season. For once, instead of being a backseat driver (which he actually was in part of the finale, much to my chagrin), Harry Morgan was an actual presence in Dexter’s psyche, his code emerging when it seemed most convenient for the show to discuss it. The episode was Dexter trying to convince himself (and succeeding) that he was doing good no matter what Harry said, and that people like Deb and Rita need him to a degree that Arthur Mitchell’s family could never have understood. Arthur Mitchell was an abusive husband and father, a loose cannon whose psychosis was entirely uncontrolled. Dexter had a code, and learned to live his life to protect the people who care about him and the people who enable him to live a normal life even with the Dark Passenger on board.

So when we get to that conclusion, Dexter has finally rationalized his behaviour and prepared for the future only to discover that the cycle is starting again, and another child has been “born in blood.” Considering my usual complaints, anything that unearths Dexter’s past is good in my books, and the final reveal sheds light on Trinity’s words during his death scene, which felt far more satisfying than anything Season 3 offered (Jimmy Smits’ performance aside, it’s clear that Season 3 lacked the drive of this set of episodes). Dexter tries to argue that nothing is inevitable, but fate is against him as Harry always argued it would be against him, although now he has no way to run: his wife is dead, and he is now a single father with kids to take care of. He is trapped in a life that he now wants to run away from more than ever before, and it’s the most complex position Dexter has been in since Season One.

On the whole, the episode was well-executed, as you get complex scenes like Dexter pretending to be surprised by Deb’s revelations regarding his biological mother or the Trinity skill scene with its hidden subtexts. And I’d say that the show really nailed the Trinity investigation as compared with the Skinner, as Dexter’s story and the police story were intricately linked, giving the story an almost Wire-esque feel of the investigation wrapping up officially before the work was actually done (its Wire-esque qualities stop there, just so we’re clear). And I was impressed with how in some ways Deborah has become more interesting than Dexter (at least until the final scene), as she discovers that her past was more personal than she perhaps realized, and there was even a moment where I thought she might soon begin to see Dexter as a reminder of Harry’s dark past and her own trauma.

But as much as those final scenes add a really intriguing element to next season, I can’t help but feel like the show has yet to demonstrate that it can really pull that off. There was a lot of dead weight this season, especially amongst supporting characters, and as with 24 before it I can’t help but feel we’re going to return with Dexter in a deep, dark place only for him to emerge as his usual self so the show doesn’t have to adjust its storytelling too extensively. If we find Dexter in a psych ward, the kids off with Rita’s parents, he’ll get out of that psych ward in a few episodes, perhaps to consult on a case which happens to have intense personal connections. And every time I think about these potential avenues, I think of shows like House and Monk, shows where messed up protagonists occasionally have “very special” episodes that really delve into their problems before eventually reverting back to the same behaviour, just like Jack Bauer went from grieving widow to using a hacksaw to cut off a guy’s head in just a few episodes.

This finale was really compelling, but much of the season didn’t have the same execution, and more importantly the show isn’t capable of killing a major character or having a villain quite as compelling as Trinity ever again. I’d love for Showtime to announce that the fifth season will be the last, giving them license to actually close off Dexter’s journey and giving us the suspense of where this path is actually going to lead, but instead they’re treating the show like it’s 24, like Dexter Morgan is a punching bag that will keep getting punched each and every season. And while they might argue that this only makes the character more complex, and while Michael C. Hall keeps trying to convince me that this is actually the case with his strong performance, I keep realizing that the show just isn’t complex enough to display that complexity, just as 24 rarely stops mid-storyline to delve into Jack’s past until someone he knows happens to be caught up in the middle of the conflict.

I won’t argue that this season was a waste of time or a failure in any major respect, as Lithgow’s performance was a revelation (that will be garnering an Emmy nomination) and the idea of focusing more closely on Dexter’s life elevated it over what Season Three offered in Miguel Prado. However, a shocking ending doesn’t make for a shocking season, and Dexter’s trajectory wasn’t actually surprising in the least: we knew he would kill Trinity, we knew it would teach him something about himself, and we knew the show would do something to complicate things for Dexter’s home life considering how much of a focus the season had on the story (which was great when it involved Trinity, boring when it didn’t). Each season is so self-contained that no amount of shocking cliffhangers can actually change how predictable it is, and unless you’re just “along for the ride” it’s hard not to notice how far removed that is from the first and second seasons where things felt like they could unravel at any moment.

I want desperately for the show to regain that spontaneity, but if 24 taught us anything it’s that a cliffhanger doesn’t actually change a show’s formula. The proof is in the follow-through, and right now Dexter has spent three seasons with very similar storylines that have moved it further away from what made the first season so strong. In this finale we have the potential to return to those themes and ideas in earnest, and the show could well surprise me by really taking risks moving forward.

However, I’m not holding my breath.

Cultural Observations

• I like Julie Benz, but Rita was an utterly worthless character beyond being a distraction in Dexter’s life. As soon as they started a real relationship, and she went from being melodramatic to creating melodramatic storylines (huge difference, just so we’re clear), she was a waste, and to see her leave only gives me false hope for the show moving forward.
• To continue the 24 reference, Deb’s sort of like what Kim Bauer might have been like if Elisha Cuthbert had stuck around. To be honest, around Season 2/3 I was about to write Deb off, but this just goes to show you that you can survive some rougher, weaker storylines and still become an important part of a show…although I don’t think Kim could have survived the cougar.
• Note also that Dexter actually threw out the “fake your own death, start over” plan that Jack used at the end of Season Four – I swear these comparisons were intentional, because if not I’m actively concerned about the capacity to create original work in that writers’ room.
• In all seriousness, for Season Five, I want to see Deborah Morgan as the centre of this show. Hall needs some time off, McNulty in The Wire Season 4-style, and I think it would be interesting if Dexter made a getaway to somewhere and Deb had to go to him for help on a case (which, yes, is not that dissimilar from some of the lame scenarios I discussed above, but focusing on Deb would at least make it feel different).

“Secret Santa” x 2

December 10th, 2009

It’s not often that two episodes airing back to back have the same title, so it’s a convenient excuse to blog 30 Rock and The Office together tonight.

Christmas is a holiday that has always been a highlight for The Office (“Christmas Party” is one of its finest hour-long episodes), but to be honest I’ve found that 30 Rock is kind of really bad at it. I don’t know what it is, but Christmas seems to be a holiday that just doesn’t work for the show, primarily because its wackiness doesn’t have that sense of heart that The Office taps into during this, the most magical time of the year.

So, accordingly, the best parts of both episodes entitled “Secret Santa” are those which feel like they’re bringing everyone together in celebration of the season’s message of hope and togetherness, and the worst parts of both episodes are those where that spirit is either ignored or crushed beneath a smothering of unpleasantness.

The problem with The Office’s “Secret Santa” is that it has an unfortunate pattern of things going totally wrong before things eventually become far better, which would perhaps be fine if it didn’t require Michael Scott to be a complete tool. “Phyllis’ Wedding” remains a low point for the show in terms of Michael’s behaviour, but “Scott’s Tots” has been placed on that same level of cringeworthy and I just don’t get it. Here, Michael acts like a tool out of purely discriminatory and selfish reasons, whereas his scholarship program was a fundamentally great idea that he simply couldn’t follow through on. While some have argued that ruined lives made “Scott’s Tots” less funny, I don’t want Michael being a terrible person to be funny: I want it to be as sad as it really is, not played for pure comedy as it was here (as Michael becomes first a heckling Santa, then a heckling Jesus, and eventually his normal self).

I get what they were going for, in that Michael digs into the depths of his terrible behaviour before realizing that the company needs him to be something more, and that he should help bring them together to help create the Christmas miracle of branches like Scranton being the only thing about Dunder Mifflin that works well (whereas the new buyers are clearing house at the executive level, meaning Michael and Jim are about to get new bosses). But they don’t need for Michael to become such a despicable person to sell this story, and while Steve Carell in an inside-our Santa suit heckling Secret Santa gifts as a vengeful god is a funny conclusion it’s too harsh. “Christmas Party” worked because Michael was depressed, giving us a reason to understand his need to mark one of the women to know which was his, but here Michael was just “being Michael,” and I hate that the default is the jerk we saw on display here.

The episode was salvaged by the sweetness elsewhere, as Pam, Andy and Erin are really proving to be the heart of this show right now. Sure, the other supporting characters had their moments (Kevin on Michael’s lap, Creed wondering what happens to evil people, Angela applauding Jesus, all of the Secret Santa gift exchanges), but I thought Pam’s effort to push the only two gay men she knows together was all sorts of adorable in the way that a fake pregnant Jenna Fischer sells so very, very well. I also really enjoyed the idea that Andy’s attempt at romanticism ran into problems before he could get to the good days of Christmas, and thought that the ending (with the twelve drummers drumming) was the sort of sweet touch that makes it seem like the episode was far more pleasant than it actually was. I like those kinds of moments a lot, and when even Dwight (acknowledging he’s tired) gives up his diabolical scheme I guess I wish Michael had been able to give up being a complete dick.

As for 30 Rock, as noted they’re not as good at Christmas episodes in general, and the Kenneth and the Writers story was proof of this. The story never clicked, as the made up religion (Verdukianism) was uninteresting and felt like one of those lame C-plots that just never even pretended it was interesting. I like Jack McBrayer a lot, but when you craft a storyline where Tracy Jordan is the voice of reason I don’t entirely know what you’re trying to accomplish. If the conclusion of the episode had brought all of the plots together in some sort of epic event, and suddenly Kenneth’s crisis of faith had played a substantial role, perhaps it would have been worth it, but it just never went anywhere or contributed anything to the episode.

The A-plot, with Jack reconnecting with a high school crush (Nancy Donovan, played by Julianne Moore), suffered less due to its connection with Christmas and more due to it being a Jack romance storyline not involving Edie Falco. I was admittedly surprised by how much comedy the show managed to get out of Julianne Moore remaining attractive even with the ridiculous Boston accent, but the jokes just weren’t there, and the “Har Har Old People Don’t Understand Social Networking” jokes were only enjoyable because we got our largest dose of Cirie (who always slays me) in quite some time. When she eventually returns to say goodbye, it didn’t feel meaningful enough to really matter, and while I like Moore I just didn’t feel like the show had anything to make the storyline work like they had with CiCi’s political ties. The satire just feels like it’s in a wrong place, or non-existant.

That said, I thought that the B-Story worked well enough, as the returning Cheyenne Jackson (who meta-acknowledged his two-episode absence) got to show off his singing chops and then not show off his singing chops in order to ruin Pete Hornberger’s Christmas Vengeance. It was a simply little story, but I liked what we saw of Jenna in the story, and that it didn’t undercut her emotional story or violate Danny’s innocence (although he does finally know what sarcasm sounds like). And the runner of Liz (who valiantly kept her terrible haircut from last week, in a nice touch) and Jack getting each other presents allowed Tina Fey to have a considerably lighter workload (probably by design, considering how heavily she was featured last week) and also made for a sweet but twisted ending as Liz’s bomb threat brings Jack and Nancy together and she eventually rides off into the night with some old guy from CHiPS.

Both episodes present somewhat twisted definitions of what represents a Christmas Miracle (Michael celebrating the office’s jobs being saved while David Wallace is jobless and on speaker phone, and Kenneth celebrating his God taking vengeance on sinners), which is something that I like – not every Christmas episode should be like last night’s Modern Family, which has its big happy ending. However, I wanted them to either take these twist further, or find a more elegant way to get to that twist, and I thought both sort of stumbled overall.

Cultural Observations

• Seriously, Tina Fey gets major props for having the guts to keep that haircut.
• I’ve been watching Season 2 of 30 Rock on DVD, so I am both into the CiCi arc (which was really well done) and just finished Jenna’s fat arc (which is the best thing the show has ever done for her). It’s amazing how strong this pre-strike stretch is for the series, so “Secret Santa” might have been a really great Season 4 episode as far as I know considering my recent exposure to the show at its finest.
• Michael’s lack of intelligence can sometimes go too far, but I really enjoyed “he can heal leopards” even if Michael calling David Wallace to tell him that was the epitome of idiotic.
• I loved all of the Secret Santa exchanges on The Office (Ryan has clearly not read The Kite Runner), but without question Kelly’s excitement over an Edward poster was the best.

WOW. i absolutely loved the fall finale of glee tonight! it’s been a long week awaiting the hyped-up finale to this year’s biggest television phenomenon and it definitely delivered. now i have to wait until april (aka go crazy) before a new episode. basically, i’m a total gleek.

check out my in-depth review/recap of the episode here. comment and let me know what you thought of the finale!

below is the recorded version of my favorite glee cover yet.

“Sectionals”

December 9th, 2009

“Winning could make everything good for a while.”

I do not understand the rules of the Sectional Show Choir competition, nor do I know exactly what comes after it in New Directions’ journey. Glee is a show that despite being about what seems like a shockingly bureaucratic existence (with sponsorship disqualifications and everything) wants absolutely nothing to do with that complexity, and as such “Sectionals” boils down to the above: if they win, things will be better.

But what Glee has been doing all season is hiding inherently sombre stories beneath the shiny gloss of over-produced musical numbers. Rachel Berry soars every time she takes the stage, but beneath that surface she has no friends and feels like that’s never going to change. Quinn gets up to sing “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and yet her pregnancy is a source of constant anxiety as she knows how much Finn will be hurt when he, eventually, figures out the truth. And Will Schuester used Glee as a distraction from a marriage in tatters, dancing and mashing up songs when he should have been communicating and patching up his relationship with Terri (and, you know, touching her stomach and discovering her lie earlier).

I’ve accepted, at this point, that Glee’s delayed reaction to some of its early problems (including its somewhat mean-spirited comedy and the aforementioned fake baby storyline) is inherently part of its characters’ journeys – the show is awkward because teenagers are awkward, and it’s inconsistent because high school is inherently impulsive and volatile. And while I am far from suggesting that the show has been perfect this season, I at least feel like the journey it has taken with these characters is consistent with its investigation of what happens when the world of show choir intertwines with a collection of diverse personalities for the sake of both comedy and drama.

As such, “Sectionals” works as a finale precisely because it has no romantic notions about what “Sectionals” is: this is not a simple celebration of musical talent, nor a simple culmination of any one character’s journey. It’s a neon band-aid that makes a wound look a whole lot prettier, capable of healing those wounds but also capable of being ripped off and leaving scars that no neon band-aid will ever be able to fix. It’s an hour of television that highlights life’s futility while celebrating its transcendence, never once suggesting that one will ever cancel out the other.

And it’s a rather fantastic end to what has been a fascinating (if not quite consistently amazing) first thirteen episodes for the show they call Glee.

Very quickly, you can see that “Sectionals” is not interested in dragging out the show’s drama into some sort of cliffhanger. We know going into the episode everything that’s at stake: we learned that Sue leaked the setlists, so we know the trap that’s awaiting New Directions when they take to that stage, and we (and, as we learn, everyone but Rachel) know that Puck is the real father of Quinn’s baby. And, within the first half of the episode, both of these elements are completely out in the open, to the point where it almost seemed way too fast. The worst thing the finale could have done is made it feel as if the reveal of Puck as Quinn’s baby Daddy, in particular, is sudden or lacking in meaning. The show has done some deft (and some not so deft, see: Sonogram Ballad) work around this storyline, in particular with Dianna Agron, so it’s not like with Terri’s fake pregnancy where any ending is going to be a welcome one. They needed to hit this landing if we were going to buy into what else the episode wanted to accomplish.

And, I have to say, I think they nailed it. By the time we hit the first act break, Rachel’s pieced together enough to be willing to go to Finn with it, and things quite literally unravel. When we return from that act break not knowing if we’re going find the aftermath of the reveal or Rachel chickening out, and open with Finn punching the hell out of the camera, it’s the sort of visceral shock that defined Will and Terri’s confrontation last week. The aftermath is both physical and emotional, and as strong as the scene is as Finn tries to destroy Puck it works even better when it’s just a short series of conversations and glances between characters. The show acknowledges that Rachel was being at least somewhat selfish in her decision to tell Finn, but quickly has Quinn pull this back from becoming some sort of love square. That Quinn takes complete responsibility for what happened, suggesting that she was the one who hurt so many people with her decisions, is the sort of development I don’t think I saw the show handling well in its earlier episodes. Lea Michele, Dianna Agron, and (in Puck’s brief but rebuffed attempt to be responsible) Mark Salling all nailed just how much this would tear them apart, and more importantly Cory Monteith sold the hell out of Finn’s anger. There was a clear point where rage gave way to that sick feeling of having been lied to, and being able to see that onscreen was incredibly important (and undoubtedly his biggest performance on the show to date).

But what really sold me on how this story unfolded was that it wasn’t wrapped up in a pretty bow. Sectionals brings them together for those final moments to prove they can overcome the challenge set before them, and in their victory Glee Club remains something that is capable of uniting these personalities under one banner for the purpose of winning a competition or telling Mr. Schuester how they feel about him. However, that moment at Sectionals when Finn tells Puck that they are not okay, and when Quinn gives him that look, reminds us that not everything is okay just because people sing a song about it in the end. No, the episode doesn’t specifically end with a reminder that all the singing in the world won’t make Finn forgive Puck and Quinn for what they did to him (or himself for letting it happen), but that the victory at Sectionals was never turned into a catch-all cure for the tension that remains between the show’s characters is a huge step forward for the show.

Of course, Sectionals was big and exciting enough to start to mend some fences, but it’s important that those connections were less about complex interpersonal relationships and more about questioning where certain characters fit within the Glee Club. Mercedes is still waiting for further development in my eyes, but pitting her and Rachel against each other before having them each rise above their sense of entitlement to compliment the other (Rachel giving Mercedes props for “And I’m Telling You (I’m Not Going)” and Mercedes suggesting Rachel take on the impromptu solo during the competition) helps to resolve that power struggle that’s sort of made New Directions frustrating to watch at times. The idea that everyone hates Rachel, having lengthy phone conversations in which she (and, to be entirely fair to them, Matt and Mike) isn’t involved and during which she’s deemed crazy (which, to be fair again, she sort of is) just doesn’t feel right, the same way having undercover cheerleaders in the club seemed like something that never clicked.

The best moments for New Directions were ones like their impromptu (and live) performance of “Ride Wit Me,” where it’s just people hanging out and having fun, and the episode was about bringing them back to that point with that final number. Although most of the time was spent on Will’s realization mid-song, that performance was perhaps the most “fun” I’ve seen this group having in a very long time. Coming together at Sectionals, everyone getting their moment without having to leapfrog over someone else to get it, was the sort of thing that could have been saccharine but instead felt like the show was finally establishing its natural order. It didn’t feel like any characters changed to fit into that mould (as Santana admitted she would kill anyone for telling people Glee is the favourite part of her day), and instead it felt like they changed the mould to accommodate the changes in their dynamic. Rather than focusing on a single character amongst the high schoolers in this finale, the development went to New Directions as a whole. There will still be drama (this is, after all, high school, and there is a teen pregnancy in the mix), but it will be drama that isn’t tearing apart the fabric of Glee club each and every week.

Of course, the other half of this episode wasn’t about New Directions at all, unless we take out the capital letters and take Will’s new direction to be his inevitable kiss with Emma in that final scene. I never thought the driving beat to Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” was that inherently romantic, but there was something about the song that really fit with Will running down that hallway after the woman that he’s had a crush on for pretty much the entire season. Jayma Mays is a fantastic actress, and does in fact make a spectacular bride, but Emma Pilsbury’s journey on this show has always been problematically tied into the monster that was Terri Schuester. That Emma was in love with Will was always clear, but for us to root for her the show had to turn Terri into a shrill harpy. And for a moment, it seemed like the show understood the leap that it had taken to get to this point, as Will crashes Emma’s cancelled wedding and she rebuffs his efforts to make some sort of connection by acknowledging that he “just” left his wife. Considering that the scene we had just seen, with Terri earnestly telling Will she is seeking help and quite accurately self-diagnosing her problems, it seemed like the show was heading towards a sad sort of conclusion where Will goes back to his wife (who promises to reform herself) and Emma is forced to sit on the sidelines once again.

However, forgiveness is a four-letter word in the Glee universe, as both Finn and Will refuse to forgive those who wronged them as Will is more than happy to run after and snog Emma. And it’s not that I dislike this development, as I’m glad to see the show willing to move onto something new, but I’m kind of surprised that they were willing to cut Will loose from Terri so easily. Is a whole 24-hours enough time for him to be able to get over what happened, and is a single anthem of twisted romantic dependence enough to convince him that Emma is the solution to all of his problems? We’ll have plenty of time to ask these questions over the next four months, but for right now the ending was everything the show wanted it to be: emotional, exciting, and just surprising enough to feel like something noteworthy. Sure, if we retroactively consider the season to be about Will and Emma finding each other, their happy ending implies that the show didn’t take more than a few missteps in constructing this pairing, but I think that the show earned a sweeping romantic conclusion considering the sort of restraint they showed throughout the episode. This is, at the end of the day, only 13 episodes out of 22, and those back nine episodes will not be so much a new season as a new chapter in the journey that reaches a stopping point with a big trophy and a kiss in the hallway.

In terms of where the show goes from here, I’m planning on writing more about this tomorrow morning, but it’s clear that the challenges that lie ahead are more external than internal. Sure, there’s drama between members, but New Directions is more united than ever. Whereas Sectionals it seemed like the goal was avoiding beating themselves (united we stand, divided we fall), at Regionals their competition is the villainous Vocal Adrenaline, and all casting points to their group being a big part of the upcoming season. And Sue Sylvester, now suspended and with a chip on her shoulder, is more hell-bent than ever to destroy Glee Club, which while perhaps becoming a bit over the top has every time been elevated and saved by the comic genius that is Jane Lynch. For the club itself, the stage appears to be set for the characters to discover what it’s like to face real competition, and there are plenty of, well, new directions for the show to investigate while maintaining those elements (like Sue’s antagonism, like relationship drama) that has defined the show to this point.

I’ll reflect more on the season as a whole tomorrow morning, but Brad Falchuk, both writing and directing the finale, made one important distinction within his script that demonstrates how far the show has come. There’s a scene late in the episode when we see the inside of the judges room as they debate the results they saw at Sectionials, and there we start to see some of the humour that turned some off the shoe early on. While we in the audience may be thinking that the deaf students’ rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin’” was somewhat painful to listen to, Candace Dystra (Fifth Runner Up in Miss Ohio) says it, and in a highly offensive fashion. And despite being one of those who feels the show has graduated beyond those types of jokes, I liked it because it demonstrated that they have learned their lesson. It’s one thing for a character we ostensibly like, or will eventually grow to like, to make a joke of that nature: it pains them in a negative light in a way that will forever mark them in the show’s universe. Dystra, meanwhile (despite being played by a familiar face in True Blood’s Anna Camp), will likely never appear again, and thus the scene works.

It seems that the creative team have finally figured out what matters and what doesn’t matter, and how its comic tone should be situated between those two elements. Some of Glee is all about one-liners, like the moment where the show implies Santana and Brittany are having sex or when Puck drops a note about being unable to take the baby for testing due to “having Fight Club tonight,” which exist primarily to create sound bytes and tweets and anything else to make the show memorable on a weekly basis. However, those can never be the “point” of this show, nor can they be used as a shiny distraction from the real meaning and drama inherent to the show. There is a lot of heart in this show, and it was on display in “Sectionals” in a way that acknowledged that as much as a musical number can bring these kids together and as much as a big trophy can change the course of the future, there will always be some element to these characters that is susceptible to that heart breaking.

Winning does make things better, but with it comes a whole host of new insecurities and a set of new directions that these characters might be ready for. “Sectionals” works because it never once presumes that these characters are more ready than they really are, and manages to have its big happy conclusion without undermining the conflict that very much remains in the show’s universe. It might not have been everything we wanted, perhaps, but I certainly think it’s something (if not, of course, everything) the show needed.

Cultural Observations

• Dude, Mike (aka Other Asian) actually spoke. And yet, I never wrote down what he actually said, so it’s like he never spoke at all (my evidence is only circumstantial, after all).
• The act lengths were probably the biggest problem in the episode: it was clear that they organized it so that there would be a number of short breaks leading up to a longer, uninterrupted Sectionals performance (with both “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in one medley), but it made for some tedious viewing.
• The show certainly took itself to a very sombre point when it has Will sadly helping Artie onto the wheelchair bus as everyone looks on lamenting Finn’s exit. It was perhaps the lowest the show has been, which made the eventual conclusion that much more powerful (while maintaining enough conflict to prove it doesn’t fix every problem).
• There was really no point in Jacob making the trip to Sectionals other than creating an excuse for the setlist leak and not Finn’s absence to seem like the more pressing concern, and I thought that the one or two jokes they did use the character for were kind of duds.
• Favourite visual of the episode: Emma on the phone with Will describing Artie ramming himself into the wall, and Artie ramming himself into the wall in the background. So great.
• You know, boarding the Sue Sylvester Express just sounds dirty, but I’d probably buy a ticket anyways, Destination: Horror or no. And, it’s becoming clear that attacks on Will’s hair is a great runner for Sue (and for Eve, who dropps a Jerry Curl reference).
• When does Glee return? The answer is April 13th, 2010. It’s going to be a long winter.

haven’t done one of these in a WHILE. but alas, here it is. watched one tree hill tonight (as usual) and fell in love with this song by wakey!wakey! titled, “brooklyn.” seriously, so good. i also LOVE his song, “war sweater.” check that one out here.

Entourage Season 2 Episode 13 Exodus

Alternative:

Or:

]]> http://cultural-learnings.com/2009/12/02/season-finale-sons-of-anarchy-na-triobloidi/ Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:37:09 +0000 Myles http://cultural-learnings.com/2009/12/02/season-finale-sons-of-anarchy-na-triobloidi/

“Na Triobloidi”

December 1st, 2009

In the world of motorcycle clubs, elegance is a luxury. In the complexity of running guns and internal politics, there’s no way for one to easily chart their way through life as if it was all planned out ahead of time: situations change, and people are forced to make tough decisions and follow a path that could be inherently dangerous. The same club that offers some semblance of stability is the same club that may eventually lead to your death, a cruel irony that is at the heart of Sons of Anarchy’s mythology in the form of John Teller, a man who hated what the club had become and yet was too dependent on the club to abandon it entirely. The men and women who are part of the Sons of Anarchy are trapped in a world that can turn at any moment, and where the unpredictability is a constant threat against their livelihood.

The central conflict of this second season was the fact that, for the League of American Nationalists, everything is sheer elegance in its simplicity. Ethan Zobelle is a character who challenged the sons with elegance, as everything seemed to go completely according to plan. The show set him up as a master of manipulation, and he lived up to this reputation by crafting elaborate schemes that feasted on the unorganized and divided Sons at every turn. There were times in the season where the show went too far, painting Zobelle as a mastermind more than a character, but the purpose was clear: the elegance of Zobelle was the stimulus necessary to focus on how the Sons were ill-equipped to handle a threat in their current state, and his continued action inspired the Sons to band together in order to look past their differences and see the common enemy.

The problem with “Na Triobloidi” is that it feels entirely inelegant, to the point where the escalation present in the episode feels completely out of control. The driving forces behind the action in the episode range from spiritual belief to intense grief, from bitter revenge to self-preservation, and yet none of it feels as satisfying as it should, or more problematically as satisfying as earlier episodes in the season.

I’m not suggesting that the chaos which dominates this finale isn’t exciting, nor am I suggesting that it is in any way a blight on the season. However, it’s a finale that takes one too many leaps of logic in favour of escalating tension as opposed to demonstrating character, crafting situations which will likely become compelling in the long run but here feel manufactured in a way which goes against those elements which elevated the season to new heights.

Part of the problem with the finale is that for all of the chaos which dominates the Sons, for the most part the show itself has been extremely smart with how it told its stories and the pace at which things were revealed. This may have initially felt like a show that was born to raise chaos and create conflict, but it showed this season that quiet moments of contemplation and striking scenes of targeted and isolated violence are its strong suit. The show is less entertaining when it becomes a train running off the rails not so much because Kurt Sutter and his cast/crew can’t pull it off but rather because the show’s strongest moments this season were emotional more than they were violent.

And I was missing that emotion this week, perhaps lost in the midst of the bloodshed or perhaps diluted by a sense of either predictability or contrivance. In the case of Half-Sack’s tragic death, which I called after last week’s heartwarming scene discussing whether or not he would be patching in, it’s marred by both of these elements. Not only did I predict it during last week’s episode, but it was trapped in the midst of Cameron’s grief-riddled insanity as he decides to trade a son for a son following Edmond’s death. And the problem with this story is that it felt like a circumstance that required about five leaps in logic and a domino effect that was itself highly suspect. If you go back through the story, it requires Stahl to be silly enough to stay with Edmond alone, for her to kill Edmond, for Polly to bring Edmond flowers, for Gemma to have found God, for Stahl to openly announce Gemma’s involvement matter of factly over the radio, and then for Cameron to wholeheartedly believe her and follow Half-Sack accordingly.

And the problem with all of this is that I’m not sure I buy any of it outside of Stahl, who backed into a corner sees Gemma as a way out of her own predicament and who (if we read her as truly evil) announces it over the radio to punish the Sons for having challenged her in the past by announcing Gemma’s act where Edmond could hear it. But do we really know enough about Cameron to understand his grief outside of a generic sense of parenthood taking control? And was there any logical reason why Polly would risk her life for Edmond that we were ever provided, justifying her presence beyond contriving a reason for Gemma to be in attendance? Those characters coming together at that location required spiritual enlightenment, general incompetence (allowing Stahl in there alone, blanks or no blanks and balls or no balls) and logical leaps that felt like an anti-climax; while we obviously loathed Polly for taking part in Gemma’s rape, I never felt like closure was so necessary that it required the show to go out of its way to push Gemma into a vengeful state.

The parts of the episode that worked were those which felt like the end of a long journey, like the chilling scene as A.J. Weston sends his child out to wait by himself while he accepts execution at the hands of the Sons. It’s a chilling sequence because Jax killing in cold blood is still somewhat disarming, and because that is the revenge for Gemma’s rape that we feel was earned. We knew Weston enough to know that he fully believed in what he was doing, and that while Zobelle is a monster for having unleashed him on Charming he is nonetheless worthy of this fate. While we never knew Polly beyond her role as her father’s pet of sorts, Weston is legitimately a monster, so his death felt meaningful.

But while that scene (and much of the season) was meaningful for reasons that were given time to develop and unfold (like Donna’s death, or Gemma’s rape), the finale felt like it was starting from scratch in a way that hampered its sense of character. While I understand that every finale is effectively serving two purposes, both closing off one season and starting the next, this one felt like it was telling the story of the former while only really doing the latter. And it seemed as if there was so much going on that Sutter and company wanted to set in motion (Gemma on the lam with Unser after a double-homicide, the Abel kidnapping) that the two purposes never really met in a logical fashion. You can technically chart your way back from the final montage set to “Gimme Shelter” to the start of the season, but there’s enough asterisks and questionable character actions in there to sink a ship.

And yet, if we accept this finale as a launching pad for a third season, I think it’s got plenty of potential. Gemma on the run with Unser continues a dynamic that saw a lot of great play this season, and Abel’s kidnapping is far enough outside the show’s normal jurisdiction that I’m intrigued to see how they’re able to handle it (especially since the Irish, after all, have a thing for stealing the children of the Sons and raising them on their own). This has done nothing to convince me that Kurt Sutter is any less capable of delivering a great season of television, as there is nothing that can erase the greatness of an episode like “Balm.” However, there’s also nothing that can erase those expectations, expectations based on episodes which managed complex ethical dilemmas and emotional responses and delivered a stunning piece of dramatic television.

For the most part, ethical dilemmas were inherently absent here, contemplation replaced with a devil may care approach to life in the realm of SAMCRO. The moments that worked in the episode were those that used the madness of it all to create small moments like Clay without hesitation abandoning Zobelle at the Deli Mart in order to save his grandson or Hale comforting Tara as they await news of Abel’s fate. But, in the end, those moments came only towards the end of the episode, and the rest of the episode felt like a far less emotional sort of chaos. And while it’s perhaps my residual anger over the death of Half-Sack (which, despite having seen coming, saddened me), I felt as if this sort of attitude is one that is never going to be the show’s strongsuit. This is perhaps a show which performs better in the wake of chaos as opposed to in its midst, and perhaps then this is a necessary step: it’s not pretty, and it’s certainly not elegant, but it creates the situations that will eventually result in the show’s strongest work.

I wish I had more comprehensive thoughts to add to the finale, but to be honest with you I don’t think I really have much else to say: there were no other characters who felt like they got a substantial amount of development here, and everything else should be covered by the bullet points below. The fact of the matter is that this isn’t a Wire finale, which operated as a denouement for the season, or a Mad Men finale which feels like a conclusion and an introduction at the same time. Rather, this was like a strategic avalanche: while the mountain has avalanches on its own accord that result in chaos and complication, here the charges were set by the people in charge in order to push things in a particular direction. The visual sight is the same, and the same chaos is apparent, but there’s still that sense that this was something which didn’t come naturally.

And while I look forward to seeing what the mountain looks like in its wake, watching it go down the hill was ultimately a slight disappointment.

Cultural Observations

• I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Zobelle’s escape. On the one hand, it clears the way for him to return, and created a strong consequence to Clay abandoning him in order to save his grandson. However, on the other hand, I felt like Zobelle slipping away contributes to this sense that he’s some sort of omniscient supervillain, and while Polly’s death helped ground him somewhat I felt as if he’ll slink back as if that never happened should be return to the show. Adam Arkin did some intriguing work with the role, but I never quite bought the character independent of his unique influence on SAMCRO.
• I was also not entirely clear about what happened with Otto in prison: did he use the information about Zobelle being a rat to convince the White Power folks to hand over the guy who killed him? Not seeing that scene makes sense, as Otto’s revenge was simply an “eye for an eye” scenario that provided both retribution and a thematic foreshadowing to Cameron’s later kidnapping, but the dynamics there weren’t entirely clear.
• I’m now headed off to read Sepinwall’s interview with Sutter where he discusses the finale, but also stay tuned to Sutter’s twitter account: he was responding to some reviews earlier, and I’d be really curious to see if he responds to more as the day goes on.

Desperate Housewives Season 4 Episode 13 Hello, Little Girl

Part 1

Part 2

Alternative:

]]> http://weakinteractions.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/the-science-of-breaking-bad-abq/ Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:59:16 +0000 John http://weakinteractions.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/the-science-of-breaking-bad-abq/

Breaking Bad : Season 2 : Episode 13 : “ABQ”

Walt pulls Jesse out of his retreat.

The season ends with both Walt’s and Jesse’s hopes for the future falling down around their ears, like aeroplanes out of the sky. Events have conspired to keep Walt out of the lab and classroom, so this episode contains nothing of note. Check back soon!

You can read more about this episode at AMC, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Elements in the credits

I’m not sure why Michael Slovis wasn’t assigned iodine (I), carbon (C), hydrogen (H), sulfur (S), oxygen (O) or vanadium (V).

Desperate Housewives Season 3 Episode 13 Come Play Wiz Me

Alternative:

]]> http://cultural-learnings.com/2009/11/20/inanity-intrigue-and-inigo-montoya-a-cultural-learnings-reality-roundup/ Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:14:41 +0000 Myles http://cultural-learnings.com/2009/11/20/inanity-intrigue-and-inigo-montoya-a-cultural-learnings-reality-roundup/

Inanity, Intrigue and Inigo Montoya

November 20th, 2009

In the promos for the season finale of Season Six of Project Runway, Lifetime uses dramatic music and a deep-voiced announcer to try to build suspense for the big reveal. However, in their language, they have something wrong: they create anticipation for the reveal of who is “the next big name in fashion,” and my immediate response is “who cares?”

See, what works about Project Runway is that it transfers the aesthetics of the fashion industry into terms that are unrelated to the fashion industry. I know nothing about fashion, but I know a lot about what Nina Garcia likes to see in fashion, or what the series values in terms of creativity. It’s created an audience that, even if they have no knowledge of the fashion industry, have gained knowledge of what Project Runway considers fashion. As such, rather than caring about what these young designers do in the context of the fashion industry, we care about how they situate themselves within the show’s cast of characters from seasons past. For a viewer like me, Bryant Park is the setting of the finale of Project Runway, not a global fashion event, which is why Lifetime language is demonstrative of the season’s failures: I don’t care if they’re a big name in fashion, I want them to be a big name for Project Runway.

And I can confirm that Irina, Althea and Carol Hannah will not be names to remember, a fact which has more to do with the way the show treated them than it does with their individual personalities and talent. And while we’ll never know if this season would have been more interesting if it were in New York, and if the production company hadn’t changed, what we do know is that Season Six failed to provide both the next big name in fashion and a single memorable name for this franchise.

[A few more thoughts on Project Runway, and then some thoughts on both Top Chef and Survivor, with spoilers after the jump...]

I won’t spend any more time identifying what went wrong this season, as Linda Holmes at NPR has pretty much done that for me, but I want to say that Irina is about the perfect winner for the season. She had the most sense of character and the most interesting point of view, but was still ultimately uninteresting and lacking in identity, fitting the season perfectly. I didn’t think her collection was actually that interesting, but compared to Carol Hannah’s (which lacked cohesion) and Althea’s (which lacked clarity – there’s a difference) it was about as close to a winning collection the season could get.

And while some eliminations this season have been impossible to predict thanks to the confusing mismatch of judges, this one was really easy to see coming based on the judges’ deliberation. You could sense the judges were struggling to come up with something to say about each designer: these final critiques are always more positive than negative, and yet you could sense that the positives were all more dull than you could imagine. You could sense the judges trying to pretend as if there was ever a sense of consistency in the design aesthetics: my favourite was Heidi describing Carol Hannah, which I’ll now quote for you.

“You do see Carol Hannah, you see her point of view, and she loves dresses, and she’s impeccable in her tailoring…I mean that’s…what has…made her get this far, because she’s always been very good at that.”

So her point of view is dresses and impeccable tailoring, and the reason she got this far is because she was very good at it. Right there, with all the stammering pauses intact, you have the problem: she had no point of view except making acceptable clothes decently. Michael Kors had a similarly laughable moment when he described Althea as “very plugged into the street,” which made me guffaw. None of these designers could possibly be street-smart, and it was as if they were so desperate to distinguish these designers from one another that they needed to pigeonhole them into one idea. It made for a really hilarious sequence as you could sense things unraveling, and yet they could do nothing but plug on through and pretend that this really was the most dramatic finale of all time.

What’s interesting about Survivor (yep, this is a segueway) this season is that, for a show that often creates drama where there is none in an effort to make the final tribal council interesting, the producers have been able to sit back and watch people self-destruct over the past three weeks. Never before has a merge created quite this much chaos, and I’m sure Mark Burnett is giddy about the whole thing: I’m not sure I can remember the last time I’ve sat through the last quarter of this many episodes in a row. I fell into a pattern a while ago that I would effectively stop watching the show in its entirety after the immunity challenge, knowing that (because of how common pecking orders are, and because of how rarely the immunity idol was in play) the result was inevitable, and there were only a few occasions where something surprising happened during my fastforwarding that would result in me going back to see how it went down.

But after the merge, the self-destruction within the Galu tribe (who were dominant early on) has been a joy to watch – as Erik, sitting on the jury after being the victim of the first set of bizarre circumstances, said last night, “Man, this is some good shit.” After last week saw the Galu tribe fail to listen to Monica and plan some sort of contingency in case Russell managed to find the hidden immunity idol (which he did), resulting in Kelly leaving the game, this week was all about the Galu tribe running around like chickens with their heads cut off. When things finally get to tribal council, the sides are tied at 5, and when John eventually switches sides in order to avoid the drawing of rocks (which could send himself or anyone else home) it’s yet another moment where Galu realizes that they are not, in fact, a tribe anymore. What’s interesting about John is that he is really part of the problem here: I think that Galu would have simply picked off a Foa Foa member in that first week if he hadn’t first suggested taking off Monica, which was the information Erik got burned on as a messenger, so he’s sort of the one who set this all in motion. As such, it’s fitting he puts the final nail in the coffin in what was a really engaging final tribal council. The first merge episode had the frantic switchover that got rid of Eric, last week had Russell’s cagey Idol play, and this week saw John kill Galu for good – a very eventful, and very strong, period for Survivor.

Top Chef, meanwhile, sort of had an off week. This isn’t to suggest that I didn’t like the end result, which has the always likely Final Four come together after Jennifer manages to throw off her demons to win the Quickfire and place respectably in the Elimination Challenge in earning a spot in the Napa Valley finale, which sees Eli sent home. The episode was about the camaraderie of the chefs, as they seemed to all get along and there was a whole lot of emotion to be found in the final sequence was Eli basically admits that he’s okay going home at this stage considering the people who are going on instead (which was especially sad after Eli had turned himself into an Inigo Montoya figure for his mentor Richard Blais earlier in the episode). I didn’t particularly like Eli, but the rest of the chefs did and as a result I found his departure interesting.

However, I think that (to bring this all full circle) the actual challenge suffered because I really had no idea what this supposed “Culinary Olympics” was really about, and more problematically the show couldn’t actually judge based on that sort of criteria considering the amount of time given to the chefs. I understand that they wanted to try to capture the spirit of the event, but while Project Runway has turned Bryant Park into a life long goal that everyone aspires to this competition came out of nowhere and had too little meaning for me to be all that excited about. It also created a strange scenario where the judging was supposed to be based on who best captured the spirit of the event, and yet because nobody really went wild with zucchini baskets or anything similar it ended up coming down to whose food tasted the best, which is why Kevin was ultimately named the winner even when many judges felt Bryan had the most potential within the context of this type of competition. I don’t doubt Kevin deserved to win based on some criteria, but considering the nature of this competition he himself admitted he didn’t show enough technique, so the judges seemed to ignore that aspect of the challenge in favour of simply feeling Kevin best-executed “food” and thus wins the $30,000.

It just goes to show you that there’s only so much you can do in an hour of reality television: sometimes you try to make an exciting season sound interesting, sometimes you have everything go perfectly and barely need to touch a thing, and in another instance you have a big idea that just never translates well into the competition (unless my lack of knowledge of Thomas Keller in some way destroyed my ability to see the challenge as a really big deal).

Cultural Observations

• My favourite thing about the Runway finale was that we had the prior knowledge of the fact that, since this was taped during the period of legal limbo for the show, nobody knew who the designers were and thus they couldn’t actually be seen by the crowd and the media. What this means is that any time you saw any of the contestants watching the show, or saw the families, or saw the designers on the runway, that was all staged either before or after the fact (note how no one but the other designers comment on any contestant by name). What I loved is how, even if I hadn’t known that, the awkwardness of the introductions would have tipped me off: they were clearly uncomfortable with the charade.
• Does anyone have any verdict on Models of the Runway? I stopped watching after about two weeks, and I found that the models were total non-entities for me as a result – I can’t imagine watching another 30-minutes of this terrible season every week, but I did miss not caring about Irina’s model in any capacity when she won.
• My one complaint with Survivor is that they “gamed” the game too much in terms of trying to turn the “Immunity Idol” scavenger hunt that Russell invented into an actual part of the gameplay setup. It was way too easy to find when they were given a visual clue, and while it resulted in the “chase through the woods sequence” and got a good moment out of Dave being oh-so-close to finding it, I thought that it was a bit cheap and sort of took the spontaneity out of Russell’s genius.
• I’ve had no issues with Kevin’s beard on Top Chef this season, as I believed it to be awesome, but then this week we saw what happens when he doesn’t spike his hair at all. It totally makes the beard look about 5x mangier, and the longish greasy hair he had in the preview for next week made it look even more ridiculous. The different hair at Napa (Padma had bangs, Jennifer’s was curly) totally took me out of the show, which really does say something about me, doesn’t it?

Here is Episode 13.  Omg, last couple of weeks! >.<  And since this drama is coming to an end, who wouldn’t mind watching this again?  And I mean SUBBED of course!  Here is a convenient link to a youtube channel that is dedicated to subbing this wonderful drama in English.  Excited~!?  Well after you watch episode 13, watch and understand part 1 of last week’s episode 12 subbed at the end of this post~!

Synopsis:

Tae Kyung and On Yu are in search of a new member for their idol group, A.N.JELL. However, Mi Nam suffers an injury at the last moment. So Mi Nyu, his twin sister, is asked to step in for her brother. The rest of the drama follows the behind-the-scenes life of an idol group.

A.N.JELL :

Jang Geun Suk as Hwang Tae Kyung
Park Shin Hye as Go Mi Nam (Male) / Go Mi Nyu (Female)
Lee HongKi as Kang On Yu / Jeremy
Jung Yong Hwa as Kang Shin Woo
Extended cast :

UEE as Yoo He Yi
Bae Geu Rin as Sa Yu Ri (Fan club president)
Kim In Kwon as Ma Hoon Yi (Mi Nam’s manager)
Choi Ran as Choi Mi Ja (Mi Nam & Mi Nyu’s aunt)
Kim Sung Ryung as Mo Hwa Ran
Jung Chan as President Ahn
Choi Soo Eun as Wang Kko Di
Tae Hwang as staff

Cr: Dramawiki

Vid Cr:  jinnienomuyeppo02 @ youtube

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chinese fans have come together to show their support for the You’re Beautiful cast and crew by supplying the 100-plus staffers with a buffet meal, candy, and coffee, which was delivered to the set of A.N.JELL’s fictional management company on November 15.

Korean fan-club members had supplied a buffet lunch earlier this month; this gesture was organized by Jang Geun-seok’s official Chinese fan club (http://www.keunsukchina.com/). It was attended by Chinese students studying in Korea, as well as some fans who flew to Korea to participate specifically in the event. Jang hasn’t been active in promoting his career in China, but has amassed fans there with his television roles from Nonstop 4, Hwang Jini, and Hong Gil Dong.

Cr:  dramabeans/javabeans

Isn’t that just sweet?  Fans overseas in Asia are probably the most passionate, which I think is a great thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many of you might have discovered this youtube channel already, but I held back from posting the subbed videos because they, understandably, weren’t released on the same day that the actual drama aired in Korea which I think is an important element in my timing.

Vid Cr:  Pyrite5ive

They have a main channel as well, for all you FT Island fanatics.

**Who remembers the Mnet Scandal featuring FT Island leader, Choi Jonghun??  They have it subbed in full…just FYI ^^~!

Watch Gossip Girl Season 02 Episode 13: O Brother, Where Bart Thou?

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Have You Seen Heroes: Season 3 Episode 13 – Chapter Thirteen 'Dual'?

Episode Synopsis:

Noah, Claire, Angela, and Meredith find themselves trapped at the Primatech by Sylar who locks them in the building and subjects them all to various mind games. Meanwhile, Matt, Daphne, and Ando seek refuge at the Mendez loft where Daphne plans to steal a sample of the power-giving formula to give to Ando who wants to rescue the powerless Hiro still trapped 16 years in the past, who continues to struggle to find his true origins with his younger self. Back in the present, Peter faces off against Nathan, Tracy and the security detail at Pinehurst to stop Mohinder from reproducing the formula, and finds allies in the form of Knox as well as Flint who also want to stop the production of the formula, leading to a fiery showdown for all.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Heroes: Season 1 Episode 13 – Chapter Thirteen 'The Fix'?

Episode Synopsis:

Peter Petrelli learns the man in his dream is one of them and has the power to stay invisible. Niki Sanders is given a shot to sedate her. Hiro is determined to find the Samurai Sword. Nathan Petrelli goes to Mohinder Suresh to see if he can help Peter control his power. Zach goes to help Claire Bennet hack her father’s computer in order to learn about her real mom and dad, but he and Claire are forced to lie about why he is there when Mr. Bennet comes home from work early. When Hiro Nakamura and Ando go to pick up the car, they are taken hostage. A psychiatrist visits Niki in prison to get her to confront her “multiple personality disorder”. D.L. tells his son, Micah, that he is having money problems. The Haitian tells Claire that, according to Mr. Bennet, her biological mother died in an explosion. Zach shows Claire the paper about hers and her mom’s apparent death. The kidnappers tell Hiro they want Ando and him to go back to Japan and stop their mission immediately. The Invisible Man comes to help Peter hide from Nathan and Mohinder when they come to his apartment. D.L. sneaks into the prison and tries to convince Niki to escape. Micah uses his power to withdraw $10,000 from an ATM. Claire calls someone she thinks to be her dead mother’s sister, but is surprised to find out it is her real mom. Mr. Bennet goes to the secret lab to get Sylar’s dead body ready for shipping but finds the doctor dead and Sylar standing waiting for him.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Smallville: Season 8 Episode 13 – Power?

Episode Synopsis:

Clark and Chloe search for Lana, who has it in her head that things will be better between her and Clark if they were on “a more-even keel,” and goes off on her own in search of a suit developed by Luthor, Corp. that will make her invincible.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Smallville: Season 7 Episode 13 – Hero?

Episode Synopsis:

Pete Ross returns to Smallville and finds a number of surprising changes since his departure four years earlier. Besides resolving his feelings toward Clark since he learned of his friend’s secret, Pete has to deal with the acquisition of a superpower of his own: that of his ability to ’stretch’ his body courtesy of kryptonite-laced gum he’s been chewing and consuming for nearly a year. Meanwhile, Lex continues to sow seeds of anxiety into the amnesiac and powerless Kara over Clark as well as wanting to know about her past, as does Jimmy Olsen.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Smallville: Season 6 Episode 13 – Crimson?

Episode Synopsis:

Clark once again becomes “under the influence” of red kryptonite, and will say his true feelings on such things as Lionel and Martha’s relationship, and Lana’s pregnancy, but there may be someone else that will get affected by the red k.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Smallville: Season 5 Episode 13 – Vengeance?

Episode Synopsis:

Clark Kent drops out the rest of the semester from Metropolis University to help Martha on the farm. He misses Jonathan and has not superseded the loss of his foster father. Martha offers Jonathan’s watch to Clark, but he refuses. Martha goes to Metropolis to donate Jonathan’s belongings to a mission, and she is assaulted by two lowlife criminals. However, she is rescued by a masked and powerful vigilante, but one of the punks steals the watch. Clark feels guilty about the watch and visits Chloe, trying to track the muggers. They decide to find the ‘Angel of Vengeance,’ and when they meet her, she discloses her identity of Chloe’s klutzy colleague Andrea Rojas and tells that she became powerful six months ago after a heart transplantation of a donate that was hit by the meteor shower. Her mother and she were attacked by a mugger who killed her mother while Andrea survived, thirsty of revenge against the killer of her mother. Clark joins Andrea, but with a different viewpoint of justice since Andrea believes in killing criminals who have gotten away with murder through legal technicalities, whereas Clark still believes in the court system despite it not working most of the time. Meanwhile, Lionel tries to take the LuthorCorp from Lex, but he is blackmailed and gives up his intention.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.