New competition: they must create the melody to a song that they have the lyrics and track for. They need someone who can write. They will be put into a vocal booth to sing their song.

They want to make Rodney proud and think his track is amazing. Rodney feels what Liz did. Omotayo struggles to get out the lyrics. He sounded a mess. Todd gets a wow. Melody (don’t like her voice but eh). Lauriana kept it simple but good. Monet gets a “yahoo” don’t know what that means. She crashed and burned.

Song Choice is predetermined, Diddy has chosen them specifically. Todd was given original. Lauriana gets If I Ain’t Got You. Omotayo gets Moving Mountains. Melody gets Just Like A Pill. Monet gets Dirty Little Secret. Liz gets Before He Cheats. Each presents a unique challenge for the different artists, which is clearly the point.

Laurieann is tough on Monet. Laurieann tells Omotayo she is fed up with the weakness of his lack of stamina. Liz gets coaching on her entrance. Lauriana starts crying and Laurieann says she can’t be babied.

Showtime:
Liz first with a southern song. So much for stepping out of their comfort zone. I feel like this is such an easy song. But she sounds really good. Rodney says killed it all day long. Tamara thinks she’s even more convinced of her skill. Laurieann says yeehaw stay focused. Lady Gaga, guest judge says she killed it. (She looks as strange as ever.)

Monet second. Weird song for her…Rodney says not her best and Tamara says she’s off her game. Laurieann says she has a great work ethic. Lady Gaga says at the end don’t throw away the end. Be good at being wrong if you’re going to be wrong.

Melody sings Just Like A Pill and I really hate her voice. But the judges enjoy. Rodney says she’s making it hard for the others. Tamara says she git chills and nice makeover. Laurieann says she rocked the crowd. Lady Gaga says she’s got a kill in her eye.

Omotayo performs Moving Mountains. Laurieann looks thrilled. But he clearly gets breathy at the end leading the others to wonder what was wrong with him. Rodney says he was uncomfortable with the line moving mountains. Not his best. Tamara agrees it was hard. Laurieann says improve but he has a gift. Gaga says he should have more fun. She certainly has fun on stage.

Todd performs his original song titled Flatline. Not my type of song, a little angsty, but he does a good job. Laurieann is on her feet screaming. Tamara is beaming. Liz backstage screams. Rodney says he’s a rockstar. Tamara says he’s a beautiful car crash. Crazy fantastic. Laurieann says excellent. Gaga says there’s that screw loose that he has. Amazing.

Finally, Lauriana sings If I Ain’t Got You. Don’t like the styling. This is tough because Alicia Keys is really good at what she does and has a really distinct voice. Laurieann looks confused. It’s almost like the background is so loud she’d competing with them. Liz says boring. Rodney says she started off shaky but she got in the zone in the end. Tamara says not her best or worst. Struggled on the low parts. Laurieann says she sounded amazing but having worked with Alicia, you need to let the audience in. Gaga agrees, she needs to decide who she is as an artist.

Monet and Omotayo are called forward. Everyone else is through. Sad, I like these two. They didn’t step it up so both of them will be leaving.

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Here is Lil Duval & Charlamagne’s Hood State of the Union Episode #8 – Hip Hop Superlatives. If you haven’t seen any of the other episodes check out LilDuvalTV for the rest as well as other funny videos.

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It’s what everyone looks forward to on a Sunday evening…

Ps. Im well aware that Im in desperate need of a hair cut!

Watch Bones season 5 episode 8 online free video stream. You can watch Bones Free Streaming Video here. For you that always been waiting for this TV show, now the newest episode of this television series has been aired on 18 Nov, 2009 (11/18). Title for newest episodes of Bones season 5 episode 8 is “The Foot in the Foreclosure”.

Episode Synopsis : When a real estate agent uncovers human remains during a property showing, Booth and Brennan are called to investigate. Meanwhile, Booth’s grandfather moves in with Booth and insists on tagging along during the investigation.

Watch Bones season 5 episode 8 online video stream here

Don’t worry if you had missed to watch this TV show at the aired date above or outside U.S and can’t watch this TV Series, you can still watch online live streaming video of  Bones episode here for free. Taken from updated and working video hosting like Hulu, Sling, Megavideo, Zshare, etc.

Don’t miss to watch Bones season 5 episode 8 Free Streaming Online Video, and also you can watch all Full Episodes of Bones  TV show and other popular TV series

Fringe: Season 2: Episode 8: “August”

The restaurant runs out of chili peppers.

There’s more than one of everything – even Observers! This episode was refreshingly easy to watch.

This episode is debunked at Popular Mechanics and Polite Dissent, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

That would have to be one of the most expensive security cameras in the world to be able to show the flight of a bullet. We can have a think about what would actually be required with a back-of-the-envelope calculation:

At the slower end, a handgun bullet might travel at 300 m s^-1 (just under the speed of sound), and the horizontal distance covered by the camera when Astrid was clicking through video frames was about a metre (based on the size of August’s arm). The bullet travelled about 60 % of the distance, or 0.6 m, in three frames and so we can conclude that each frame lasted for about 0.00067 s, which is 1500 frames per second. By way of comparison, video cameras generally capture around 30 fps.

Once again we can see some old-school communication equipment; this time a dot matrix printer. I posit (Walterism) that communication between the two worlds is only possible with equipment that existed before the event that caused them to diverge. It therefore looks like the two timelines separated in the 1980s, right when Walter was retrieving Peter.

This is bordering on the obsessive, but if Flight 821 went down two hours out of Rome then it could not have been off the Italian coast and was probably not in the Atlantic Ocean. Either it was two hours away and in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Spain or Portugal (or possibly France), or it was in the Mediterranean Sea (or even the Tyrrhenian Sea – technically these are within the Atlantic Ocean, but they are always referred to by their localised names) and closer than two hours to Rome.

The photographs and paintings of The Observer at key points in history reminded me a little of James in 12 Monkeys (he’s shown in a WWI trench). Perhaps it’s also how J. Robert Oppenheimer got the idea for his hat.

As is fairly common knowledge, screw-on silencers (or, more correctly, suppressors) do not “silence” bullets very much at all.

The Lewis Code

We are treated to another chemistry-inspired code this week, this time to do with the Lewis structure of atoms. However, like the code in Earthling it’s pretty much impossible to decipher.

Different atoms have different numbers of electrons, and this is one of the ways we can tell different atoms apart (it’s called the atomic number). However, the Lewis bonding model is all about electrons in the outer shell of an atom (the valence electrons), which are not so unique. Each atom in a group (a vertical column in the periodic table) has the same number of valence electrons as the other atoms in the group – this is one of the reasons why those atoms have similar properties. This means that for every dot diagram that Walter noted, there would be at least four elements that it could match (and possibly six, depending on the group in question).

Walter's Lewis structure code.

Firstly, Astrid’s code-cracking program would have picked up on some of the repeated symbols – for example, “7″, “As” and “N” are the same. Secondly, the numbers in the address do not seem to correspond to the number of electrons. It seems to be (number of electrons)+2 except in the case of “2″, though how Walter would know this is beyond me (perhaps there isn’t a 2536 Hastings). Thirdly, as I mentioned above, each symbol can represent different atoms (this is illustrated in the code with “As”/”N” and “Ti”/”Ge”). Walter would have found the address with a lot of trial and error, and could easily have gone to the wrong place – for example, by taking other elements in the same groups, we could make vaguely plausible names like “Kassipsis” (K-As-Si-P-Si-S).

A less ambiguous code?

On top of all that, titanium (Ti) is a transition metal and has partially filled d-orbitals. We do not normally describe transition elements using Lewis structures, as they tend to break the rules – this is one of the reasons why the Lewis model is not used very much in modern chemistry. Titanium does have four valence electrons, but it would be unlikely to come to mind from a Lewis four-electron diagram (though perhaps Walter thinks in unconventional ways).

In order to make the code clearer, there would have to be some method of either identifying the correct period (row), or identifying the number of electron sub-shells underneath the valence shell (though of course this would also make it easier for someone else to decipher). I propose a second symbol (inside the large circle) to identify the electron shell that is being filled, and more dots to identify the correct period. Thus an empty circle would be interpreted as a number, a second circle (s-orbital) as groups I and II, a looped cross (d-orbital) as groups III-XII and a figure of eight (p-orbital) as groups XIII-XVII. The code would then look like the second diagram on the left – more complex but unambiguous.

For background information on this topic, see the primer on atomic structure.

Watch Bones season 5 episode 8 online free video stream. You can watch Bones Free Streaming Video here. For you that always been waiting for this TV show, now the newest episode of this television series has been aired on 18 Nov, 2009 (11/18). Title for newest episodes of Bones season 5 episode 8 is “The Foot in the Foreclosure”.

Episode Synopsis : When a real estate agent uncovers human remains during a property showing, Booth and Brennan are called to investigate. Meanwhile, Booth’s grandfather moves in with Booth and insists on tagging along during the investigation.

Watch Bones season 5 episode 8 online video stream here

Don’t miss to watch Bones season 5 episode 8 Free Streaming Online Video, and also you can watch all Full Episodes of Bones  TV show and other popular TV series here in our site : coffeplustv.blogspot.com

Watch NCIS Season 7 Episode 8 (S7e8) online video stream for free. You can watch NCIS Free Streaming Video here. For you that always waiting for this TV show, now the newest episode of this television series has been aired on 17 Nov (11/17), 2009 on CBS channel. Title for newest episodes of NCIS Season 7 Episode 8 is “Power Down”.

Episode summary : The team needs to use other resources when an attempted robbery leads to the death of a Lieutenant and the entire city suffers a major blackout.
Don’t worry if you had missed to watch this TV show at the aired date above or outside U.S and can’t watch this TV Series, you can  still watch online live streaming video of  NCIS episodes here for free. Taken from updated and working link at video hosting sites like Hulu, Sling, Megavideo, Zshare, etc.

Watch NCIS Season 7 Episode 8 video stream here

Don’t miss to watch NCIS  Season7 Episode8 (S07E08) Free Streaming Online Video Here, and also you can watch all Full Episodes of NCIS TV Series and other popular TV series

First and foremost, a huge apology to everyone who relied on me to get their weekly dose of the Vampire Diaries.
Life has reached a new level of hectic, one that even I haven’t seen before. The drama production took over my life, NaNo pushed me to the limit, and I’m still behind with it because of all the assignments and tests in college and the fact that I haven’t had a day off work for three weeks now. My mom is making me to call in sick this Saturday!

Ok, so onto the episodes, I won’t post descriptions this time, because I’m writing this on a short little break I’m taking from doing that HUGE economics assignment.

EPISODE 8: 162 CANDLES (wisevid)
EPISODE 8: 162 CANDLES (zshare)

EPISODE 9: HISTORY REPEATING (wisevid)
EPISODE 9: HISTORY REPEATING (zshare)

Enjoy!

“Great Expectations”

November 18th, 2009

In terms of the great comedy battle of 2009, which continues to rage amongst shows both new and old, Modern Family is at a distinct disadvantage: with Parks and Recreation delivering some legitimately great comedy and Community doing a really compelling and confident meta-storyline, the simplicity of this show is a disadvantage in terms of being flashy. There comes a point where the hype surrounding the show creates greater expectations than the storylines themselves can live up to in terms of their premise, requiring viewers to appreciate the strong execution where originality isn’t overtly present.

“Great Expectations” is a solid episode of the show, featuring a number of fun loving gags and a couple of big guest stars, but nothing stands out as particularly stunning as compared to some of the other comedies. In this instance, I think there was enough nuance to each individual story to continue to prove how strong the writers understand these characters, but it nonetheless follows similar patterns to what we’ve seen in the past. I think it’s one of their stronger episodes due to a nice role reversal, but it’s not reaching as high as some of the other comedies are right now.

For me, this episode is about the little things more than it is about the guest stars. While Elizabeth Banks (playing Cameron and Mitchell’s barhopping friend Sal) and Edward Norton (playing the bass player/backup vocalist from Spandau Ballet) are both very funny and integrated well into the episode, the storylines they’re involved in really have very little to do with them. I thought the Cameron/Mitchell story was perhaps the episode’s least interesting, if only because it was so predictable: we’re shown that they’re having trouble getting out with Lily around, they make a night out of it with a friend, and discover that their friend is jealous of Lily and devolves into a petulant child. There’s nothing wrong with the storyline, and Banks sells the child-like reaction perfectly, but the storyline had absolutely no twists or turns or nuances to it – just a couple of fun moments (Mitchell refusing to allow her to hold her, Mitchell’s “I’m going in!” Re: new boobs), and strong performances all around.

I thought the other two storylines were simply more interesting conceptually. Jay’s Night, featuring Sloppy Jays and western movies, was the sort of storyline that was charming because of how great Ed O’Neill is and more importantly how you get small little running gags like Gloria’s tone deaf singing or Luke taking everything that Jay says as a sign that he’s going to die soon. Combine with the running battle between Jay and Haley, which nicely ties into what we know of Claire’s own childhood, and the conclusion with Dylan wanting to stick around for Jay’s Night, and the storyline just had a nice flow to it. It was never overly dramatic or overly broad (Jay squirting Manny like a dog was perhaps a BIT broad), staying within a simple comic mode and delivering on its promise.

And I thought the Claire/Phil storyline was the episode’s strongest, if not comically, then certainly in terms of the characters. Phil is still a bit too much like Michael Scott (the scene listing off the things he wants could have very easily been put into Steve Carell’s mouth without much in terms of change), but as with Michael it’s always good when he gets to be the smart one. He, unlike his wife, is capable of being romantic, so the anniversary becomes about Claire’s struggles rather than Phil’s. It’s a nice change of pace, as Julie Bowen is likeable even when she’s incapable of being romantic and Ty Burrell was great in interacting with (his good friend) Edward Norton as they struggle over whether the charade (which was a pretty ingenious comic device) could be continued. Like I say, the big laughs weren’t there, but the emotional payoff was solid and it kept Phil out of his usual tomfoolery role.

Nothing complex, but a funny and enjoyable episode – no need to place it relative to anything else to enjoy that.

Cultural Observations

• Alex gets all of the best one-liners amongst the grandchildren, and here she both played into Haley’s vanity and created Luke’s trauma over her grandfather’s death. Hoping for another episode for her soon.
• I was thinking of how Edward Norton was going to do “funny” in this show’s style, and it’s clear now that I should have thought of “accent” right away. Always funny!
• Spandau Ballet, of course, is an actual band, although I didn’t entirely realize this until I heard him humming the melody of “True” and I realized I recognized it (but would never have known the band name). I did enjoy the joke the show got out of this, as the reason Izzy Lafontaine refused to continue the performance was that the song was called “True” and the story was false.
• Wait, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was also a real band? Oh, The 80s.

“Unprepared”

November 17th, 2009

The Good Wife has earned the rather ominous title of being the most unexpected critical “success” of the new season, maintaining the positive response to its pilot and growing into a confident, sophisticated mix of procedural law constructs and some intriguing serialized character dynamics. The show isn’t extraordinary, but in a year where the biggest new drama series (like ABC’s FlashForward and V) are still searching for an identity the simple elegance of The Good Wife is legitimately refreshing.

However, the show’s consistency has been its undoing in one area, as the show’s persistence in crafting connections between Alicia and the cases she tries has begun to wear thin. Last week’s episode was actually really compelling, smartly introducing a new character for Alicia to interact with (the non-lawyer) and introducing a case that had both ramifications in the law firm (being the partner’s daughter) and that involved the unique questions of orthodoxy. However, the show used the marital strife which resulted from the case in order to make Alicia an ideal lawyer not because she is particularly skilled, but rather because she knows what her clients are going through.

There’s nothing wrong with this, and perhaps some could argue it actually helps solidify her character, but as long as she is defined by her past the show feels as if it has less forward momentum than it should. An episode like “Unprepared” works because of how legitimately central Peter Florrick’s trial is to the events in the episode, but in his absence the show relies heavily on those aspects of her life. At some point, Peter Florrick is going to come home, or be sent away for a long time: at that point, what does The Good Wife become?

It’s a question that’s been bugging me, even while I’ve found The Good Wife to be consistently enjoyable.

This is going to sound very strange to the show’s target audience, who likely aren’t big fans of the cult video game series Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, but this episode played out more like one of those games than a traditional trial. The episode wasn’t building to a big trial moment so much as it was utilizing the witness preparation as an effort to give us the clues necessary to be able to figure out what was happening. Every legal show uses this to some extent, but what reminded me of this particular video games series is that there was a real light-hearted tone here: this was never a particularly dire case, rarely falling into melodrama and on a few occasions legitimately going for comedy. The episode even used a familiar Phoenix Wright trick of taking someone largely played for comedy and turning them into a far more sinister individual on the witness stand, albeit one who was simply obsessive to the point of being willing to commit arson.

The structure isn’t overly complex, as I knew something was up long before the show explicitly brought it up (the 8 minute thing tipped me off), but there was something about the case that was just simple and enjoyable. Kalinda got to play a small role figuring out that the letters were a hoax, Alicia and Carey got to have some tense (but enjoyable) interactions playing Good Cop/Bad Cop for the witnesses, and when the case was eventually solved it was tidy without being entirely without consequence. While it followed the usual procedural structure of going wrong (the weak witness, the struggles with other witnesses) before eventually ending successfully, I thought that the look into the process was a more realistic look at how Alicia would be involved in a case like this as a Junior Associate, and felt like the right storyline to stand beside a more substantial serialized development.

I’m still not entirely sure where the show wants us to sit on Chris Noth’s Peter Florrick, but at this point audience reaction is irrelevant: Alicia’s independence is too tenuous (look at how she places his one suit into her closet) for him to return directly into her life, so the failure of his bail hearing was inevitable. But it’s tough to know if we’re supposed to sympathize with Peter for getting screwed over by the Assistant State’s Attorney (who he thought was his friend) when he could have easily completely dismissed the man as opposed to hearing him out. And while his kids may be continuing the investigation into his innocence, I’m not convinced the show would ever allow him to re-emerge into this family, which means that this is all more about Alicia than it is Peter.

As a result, we got our quick and dirty connection (she’s preparing witnesses and now she’s a witness) and a scene of Alicia taking some names on the witness stand as she holds Landry accountable for his badgering. It was a bit over the top (as in, I’d have put her in contempt of his questions at a point, even if he was being a complete douche), but Julianna Margulies was as strong as she always is in these bigger scenes and I thought it hit home how much she’s willing to still sacrifice for her husband and her children during the uncertainty of this appeal process.

I’ve got some believability issues with the kids investigating his innocence, and I do think the thematic connections are too on the nose, but both elements are giving the show a very clear purpose. The show has no identity crisis, and is content with telling compelling stories with strong performances and a sense of purpose (Peter’s guilt/innocence) that might not last forever but is doing just fine for the time being.

Cultural Observations

• The idea of pitting Carey and Alicia against each other (“it doesn’t get any more Darwinian”) made me worried the show would actively attempt to turn Matt Czuchry into a complete jerk, but I thought he and Alicia teaming up in order to completely destroy the Physics professor’s alibi was a good way to recognize their ability to work together when the case requires it.
• Seriously, the kids solving crimes is getting to the point of being a bit ridiculous, but I was at least convinced this week that these two kids are both a) resourceful enough and b) concerned enough for their mother to hide this from her and try to take a stab at it on their own. Plus, last week’s “Sex Line” story gave it a bit more innocent vibe that demonstrated that they’re not the next exactly the next Hardy/Drew pairing.
• Peter Riegert is the latest to join the list of New York-based actors (he was last on Damages) to take on a judge role on the show – curious to see just how far they can stretch this trope.
• Jill Flint is also making the rounds: she co-stars in Royal Pains, did a recurring spot on Nurse Jackie, and now has a brief cameo as an FBI contact of Kalinda’s here.

This might be my last post about House (well,at least until the next super idiotic thing happens)

I haven’t watched the 8th episode, Jennifer Morrison’s/Cameron’s last, Teamwork but I watched a few of the scenes, watched the heartbreaking scene between Cameron and House.

I cried today watching that scene, it ruined my day (as pathetic as that sounds).
The only time I cried at a movie/tv show was when I was little,less that 7 I think and I was watching La Piovra(an italian tv show of the 80s-early90s about the fight with the mob)and this character called Corrado Cattani ,was killed in a horrible and brutal way ,gunned down by a wall. I remember that I cried the whole night then not because he was brutally murdered but because I thought that,since he was the title character at that time, the show was over. It was in fact not over but I didn’t know squat about seasons and stuff like that. I will always remembered how I cried about that show, it was the first show that got me hooked and I watched it ,the first 5 or 6 series, a couple of times since then (now my fav character is Tano,the mobster LOL).

Back to House and Cameron’s departure now. Honestly I don’t even know what to say, I am very disappointed, it was one of the reasons I cried. The last scene was good but it marks the end of a story that never began,the end of a character that grew so much,that evolved and shared a special connection to House(even in that last scene we got a glimpse of just how well she knows House). For over 3 seasons, House/Cameron was pretty canon ,the chemistry was always ,until the end,amazing, there were subtle scenes,glances,the eye!sex as we call it,that pull ,the understanding, sexual tension and a beautiful story waiting to happen,nothing forced,something that grew from the first episode of the first season. In the end it (and we ,the fans) got nothing,it got no story,it was a lot like sex without the orgasm ,foreplay that lead to nowhere and jumped straight to the “bye bye,I’m going home”. All it got was the echo,the memory of distant promises from everyone including David Shore and Katie Jacobs, a kiss that was never discussed and that was ,probably on purpose, set in a context that allowed it to mean nothing in the end. Most of all,in the end, all it (and we) got was a farewell scene that had a lot of soul and the confession that came too late,at a point where Cameron faced the new canon House,a House who probably never cared about her,a House who didn’t experience the first 3 seasons. I wish this would have happened in season 3 when he was still the House i loved ,the House who had a connection with her and I wish it would have taken their relationship to the next level in a far less soap-opera-ish way than the Huddy, with far less accent on it, just glimpses,something,anything,even short lived.
All that is left are broken promises, no fulfillment, an empty spot where an amazing character used to be and the disappointment and anger caused by a bunch of producers,writers and executives who decided that only one small group in a fandom is to be taken into consideration even though this is a business and in a business one should take all customers into consideration.

Huddy is stupid, the whole backstory now makes no sense because the first seasons had nothing of that,it’s all forced and it takes away from what the show used to be,the ratings will drop and it will die but I don’t care,I don’t want to care anymore.

Hugh Laurie,you’ll never read this but you disappointed me too, maybe now you really only care about the money and fame or are too tired to realize what is going on in your show.

“The Adhesive Duck Deficiency”

November 16th, 2009

I’ve not been remiss in noticing that the Sheldon/Penny shipping community has taken an interest in these reviews, and I want to make sure they know that I always appreciate the comments. And, because I’ve been following along with the group, alarm bells went off when this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory separated Sheldon and Penny from the rest of the group. In some ways, the episode’s opening scenes actually played out like fan fiction, and we were reminded that, as usual, this sort of pairing is when the show is at its best (even if I feel as if the show will never, ever, take this relationship to anything beyond a tenuous mutual tolerance).

However, unfortunately for this episode, something about the storyline never quite lived up to its full potential, and more problematically the other half of the episode was the epitome of half-baked (yeah, I went there). While the Sheldon and Penny storyline was enjoyable in the way that Sheldon stories always are, and Jim Parsons is as hilarious as ever, it lacked (until the end) the heart of their more enjoyable plots. And since the show’s two most interesting characters in terms of creating different dynamics were on their own, this left the rest of the guys to fend for themselves.

And while Sheldon and Penny might be a good combination for the show’s comic potential, nothing can give me back the time spent on the other half of this episode.

By the time Sheldon and Penny got to the end of their storyline, the heart was there: “Soft Kitty” tends to bring out the best in these two to begin with, and playing into the legacy of their past interactions (like when Sheldon was sick and the “Soft Kitty” story was first originated) is a good way to tie everything together, and the scene was legitimately very funny. However, the storyline as a whole felt like a number of scenes that either went too broad (like Sheldon touching her in an inappropriate place while she was naked) or felt laboured (I don’t see why Sheldon wouldn’t have been able to call a taxi considering they had all of the time to wait for it while she was slowly getting dressed, making it just an excuse to put Sheldon behind the wheel). While there’s a lot of comic potential in this pairing, the show didn’t really stretch its boundaries at all when it came to their interactions. I thought the scene in the Hospital waiting room had some fun lines, but to be honest there was something disturbing about Sheldon being so quick to diagnose Penny with various disorders considering the eccentricity of his own behaviour.

There’s a point where Sheldon’s lack of social awareness is fun and clever, like when he writes the cause of the fall as “a lack of adhesive ducks.” There are other moments, though, where he’s legitimately offensive and mean to her, and while I understand that this is part of the character (judging Penny as overly emotional pretty much at all times) I don’t find it particularly humorous. I’m not suggesting that the two need to get along like gangbusters, but there’s something somewhat artificial about the fact that they can only tolerate one another when one of them is deathly ill or hopped up on painkillers. It’s like the running gag with Raj being unable to speak without alcohol: it was a funny gag once, but over time it becomes a hindrance to telling any new stories, as all interactions default to the same basic mode when certain characters are involved. If this was the first time we had seen a Penny/Sheldon story like this, I would have probably enjoyed it more, but it fell into a pattern that sort of took me out of it.

It was still leagues better than the subplot, however, which has is Leonard, Raj and Howard all getting high in the desert waiting for the Leonid Meteor Shower to start (it’s actually starting tonight, hence the storyline). The problem with this storyline is that these three characters together have no actual context of interaction: this was literally just Leonard, Raj and Howard getting stoned, with no underlying character theme or even some sort of hidden motivation. With other characters, these three can on occasion be quite funny, but individually and without anything to work with they’re pretty lifeless. I thought Raj’s bunny empire was moderately clever at points, but the incent storyline from Howard was downright bizarre, especially when they chose it as the main joke of the coda – I wasn’t aware that sleeping with your cousin was laugh out loud hilarious.

I thought that Galecki, Nayyar and Hedberg all did an admirable job with absolutely no material (all had some fun performance beats even if the lines were terrible), but the problem was that it never bothered to actually do anything with the fact that they were high. None of the characters had to interact with someone in a tense situation, no one had to operate some kind of machinery, and as a result there was no comic tension. It was literally like an improv skit about people being high in the desert, first beginning with some light hallucinations before extending into some deep thinking before eventually reverting to the munchies. While I complain about Sheldon and Penny’s storyline being rote in the sense that the show has tread on the same solid ground before, this was the show using the same gags that have been omnipresent in any depiction of being stoned on the face of the planet, and for the show to rely on them almost exclusively with characters who brought very little original to the table was a zero sum game.

It doesn’t help that I just watched “Chokin and Tokin’,” the episode of Freaks and Geeks which most directly deals with what marijuana can do to you. In that case, the character chooses to take marijuana, and is forced to babysit while under the influence and thus creating some sense of tension within her life. The fact that this was done with cookies makes it a terrible TV trope to begin with, but the fact that all of them got high, leaving no one to react to the fact that they were in fact tripping, made this a fundamental failure of a storyline.

I know that I usually argue that Sheldon and Penny should be paired more option, but this (like “The Vegas Renormalization” before it) suffers as an episode overall because of what’s left behind when those two characters separate from the pack.

Cultural Observations

• Jim Parsons again did get to knock one scene out of the park: his comforting of Penny was honestly terrifying to watch, to the point where I don’t know if I can even go watch it again with cringe-laughing myself to death. Just really creepy and wonderful, and I just wish he’d get an episode full of those moments to submit for the Emmys.
• I thought I was over the “Knock Knock Knock Penny” bit, but I will admit that Penny’s interruption of his attempt to perform the ritual at her bathroom door was quite fun.
• I usually complain about scenes where the rest of the group celebrates Sheldon being absent, so I was a little bit frustrated to see the writers have Sheldon justify such behaviour by admitting that he wants nothing to do with human companionship either. It simplifies their relationship to a dangerous point for me, but it was at least funny so that’s something at least.
• I think Sheldon’s lowest moment in this episode was his racist comments to the Sian Palace, and in fact the whole conversation was problematic: Sheldon’s smart enough to do his own math, and while asking for a quarter of an appetizer selection is anal asking for half of two orders of something is downright ignorant and totally inconsistent.
• I hope Penny’s reading of Wall-E was just the drugs talking, because Wall-E was about 500% more personable than Sheldon from the moment we met him in that movie.

“The Playbook”

November 16th, 2009

Last week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother proved enormously divisive, despite the fact that for the most part most critics read the episode itself in much the same way. For example, Todd VanDerWerff and I both liked elements of the episode, but our overall impressions of the episode were fundamentally different. He chose to believe that the writers still have more in store for Robin and Barney, the episode representing just a bump in the road, whereas I chose to assume the worst and believe that the writers had truly bungled the conclusion of this relationship that still had a lot of mileage in it.

In the end, Todd convinced me that I was perhaps being too hasty to judge where the show was going, but forgive me if “The Playbook” doesn’t somewhat prove my point. If the writers dumped Robin and Barney’s relationship so quickly because they were that desperate to be able to tell stories where Barney gets to be his usual, philandering self, then it feels like the sort of regressive move that I thought the show was above. This episode could have worked within the context of their relationship had the show been willing to do so (I’ll explain how after the jump), but the end of the episode confirms that Barney has reverted to a one-dimensional caricature and Robin is already moving on.

And while the show is certainly more clever than your average sitcom, that sort of character regression is the sort of thing that I call out other shows for – as such, this is another disappointing episode for me.

If Robin and Barney had stayed together, this episode would still have been possible. The episode could have been about Robin finding out about the Playbook and seeking to have it destroyed to further cement their relationship, and the various scenes acting out the Playbook could have still remained as vestiges of Barney’s past as opposed to present behaviour. The episode’s storytelling narrative could have even been maintained, except that Lily could have told a pre-Barnman & Robin story about Barney intercepting one of Ted’s dates as opposed to that story happening in the context of the episode. My point is that there was an opportunity here for these types of stories to still be told in the context of Robin and Barney’s relationship, and that in fact it would have resulted in a far more interesting story than this one.

On a surface level, there’s a lot to like in this one, as Lily and Barney are always a fun pairing to throw into the ring together and anything which plays into the mythos of Barney Stinson is always fun. But the episode really didn’t have anything else going for it beyond those simple constructs, and it showed: while some of the plays from the Playbook were clever, none of them were a new pinnacle for the show, and the constant winking to the audience made them feel more gimmicky than they needed to be. Some of them, like “My Penis Grants Wishes,” were legitimately unfunny, while others like The Mrs. Stinsfire were derivative even while remaining enjoyable for Neil Patrick Harris’ performance.

My objection to Barney reverting back to this sort of character is not just that I felt he and Robin had more of a relationship to investigate, and that the storyline had a lot more comedy to wring out over time. I also have to admit that I’m growing a bit tired of this more one-dimensional Barney: he may be quippy, and there might be a lot of google hits that get to this post by my use of MILSWANCAS (That’s Mothers I’d Like to Sweep With and Never Call Again), but I don’t think that’s enough to sustain an episode of comedy. What worked with Barney and Robin’s relationship was the idea that this character would be legitimately challenged, not so much eliminated as tested in a way that could have made an episode like this really interesting from a character standpoint. Instead, the episode teased such a character moment at the end of the episode (Barney noting that this was all his way of dealing with his breakup from Robin) only to rip it away and reveal that it was all part of some grand scheme.

Barney is an engaging character, but personally I don’t enjoy episodes that centre on Barney’s character but are entirely devoid of any sort of emotional core. Barney is a fantastic supporting character, played with bravado by NPH, but when thrust into a lead role (as he no doubt was here) the character becomes one-dimensional in a way that actually strips the show of some of its charm. Individual jokes might work as well as they did in the past, and Barney’s one-liners are likely going to be in fine form, but when there’s no heart I can’t engage with this character. His relationship with Robin created the sort of purpose that his character has been missing, and was something that could have created new scenarios where things like the Playbook could operate on a different comic plane. Here, however, it was just like The Bro Code or any other gimmick the character has introduced in the past, and none of the jokes were so strong for my character development-loving side not to feel pretty substantially disappointed.

The side of the story with the rest of the gang was a bit stronger, if only because there were some fun exchanges between the various characters. I don’t quite understand why a new character had to be introduced to justify the story method (Chloe, outside of harmonizing on “Hell No,” was a non-entity), but I enjoyed Marshall and Ted delivering a “Lawyering of Nature” to Robin about her desire to not be in a relationship, and Lily and Barney’s duelling “Youuuu sonofabitch” battle was the sort of thing that both Hannigan and NPH always play extremely well.

It just seemed like this episode, after the season thus far, shouldn’t be happening this way. The ingredients might all be part of HIMYM’s comic signature, with Barney’s elaborate schemes to bag women and the somewhat convoluted narrative structure, but when the episode hinged entirely on a one-dimensional image of Barney and never felt like it really justified that structure I’m left scratching my head, still, about last week’s decision to break up this couple. The show occasionally mentioned, through Robin, how awkward this all was, but to have Barney dismiss the sentiment entirely and to have Robin meet someone new feels like the show rushing on to keep us from asking whether we actually want any of this to happen.

And, well, I don’t.

Cultural Observations

• I quite enjoyed the moment where Lily was pointing out to Shelly that all of Lorenzo Von Matterhorn’s accolades were lies, but then temporarily takes it back when she hears about the laser tag tournament…until Shelly notes that it was at the Vatican.
• The episode was filled with a lot of really clumsy writing to be honest: Barney blaming Al Qaeda, and making the rather lame “girl with a really nice…phone” joke, seemed really off from the show’s usual comic charm for me.
• I think it says a lot about Ted that, rather than be mad that Barney uses his tragedy as a way to hook up with chicks, he instead uses the strategy himself.
• In better news, Neil Patrick Harris is now on Twitter.

“Road Kill”

November 15th, 2009

I spent part of last week finishing up the fifth season of Six Feet Under, which has long been half finished after a lengthy marathon session of the entire series just proved dire last summer, resulting in “Depressive Melodrama Burnout” (DMB, for short). Returning to that show was a reminder of just how amazing Michael C. Hall can be, and how in some ways I wish that Dexter could feel as…progressive as Six Feet Under often did. Say what you will about Alan Ball’s incessant refusal to allow his characters to be happy, but the sense of growth in David as a character (and, not to spoil anything, a late series regression) helped to provide a sense that the collective weight of the show was actually having an impact on his psyche.

Dexter, as a series, is like a masochistic, homicidal version of “Will it float?” where the writers throw various circumstances at Dexter to see whether it will mix with his existing psychotic personality. The argument the fourth season has been making thus far is that Dexter is not aware of how much his personality has actually changed, and the Trinity Killer is a sign that perhaps there is some secret switch that will help reconcile his new life in the suburbs with his murderous impulses (and actions). And, now into the show’s fourth season, the psychological experiment at the centre of the show is downright uninteresting to the point where last week’s violation of Harry’s code is about a season and a half behind the times: we’ve been waiting for Dexter to realize that the code is flawed, and develop his own, since the start of the third season, but the show is formulaic to the point where that would disrupt the flow of the story.

“Road Kill” works as an episode because it completely sidelines Dexter’s predictable responses in favour of the unpredictability of the Trinity Killer. To do so, of course, the show has to admit that the actual impact of killing a mostly innocent man is entirely counterproductive to the show’s intentions, instead heading to Tampa in order to delve into the psyche of a character that, in being new and interesting, the writers actually seem interested by. The rest of the episode isn’t nearly as interesting, but letting Hall and Lithgow go on a road trip together is a recipe for success, if limited by the show’s current focus.

I want to be clear that this episode didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know about Trinity, factually speaking. What it did was explain why his sister’s death, his mother’s suicide and his father’s eventual end are tied up in his own past. As Dexter points out, they are both born in blood, Dexter as an innocent toddler (scarring him to the point of corrupting his world view) and Trinity as an innocent pre-teen (who inadvertently causes his sister’s death, and who kills his father after he holds him accountable for his mother’s suicide). It’s the sort of connection that’s hokey if the storyline is actually about Dexter, but since I’m largely uninterested in what the show does with his character I thought it was a nice touch in terms of contextualizing Trinity.

The entire Tampa trip had this really interesting sense that Dexter, despite attempting to complete an ill-advised road kill (the only one we’ve seen, I think, outside of Lyla), wasn’t in control. It made for some really intriguing scenes where John Lithgow got to play Arthur as legitimately crazy, someone who we as the audience feel could go off the rails at any moment. We know that Dexter intends to kill Trinity, but we also know that Trinity could just as easily make a move to kill Dexter, as both are vulnerable in this situation. When we eventually learn that Arthur is far too messed up to be orchestrating a murder, having been driven to madness by both his return to his childhood environment and his sense that Dexter and his hunting accident offers a crutch of sorts, it creates that sort of uncertainty that used to be present on the show with Dexter, but has now become drowned out by his internal monologue and reserved for those orbiting our anti-hero.

The show looks like it could be heading in an exciting direction when we discover that Trinity is about to jump off a building to his death in his state of remorse, but of course that’s expecting too much. The episode played out almost like a short story of sorts, like an undercover cop spending time with a known serial killer and unknowingly appealing to the side of him that creates this sort of crazy adventure. Because of how good Lithgow is, and because Hall plays this role so well in this sort of supporting capacity, this storyline works as a standalone unit. However, because it does nothing to course correct a season that has me far more invested in a character who is doomed not to last the season, it’s not getting me any more excited about it being dragged out a bit longer.

As for the rest of the episode, I fast forwarded through all of the Batista/LaGuerta and Rita/Neighbour stuff – I presume that the two of them broke the table rekindling their forbidden romance, and that the latter flirted enough over wine to indicate that Rita has an escape strategy for her marriage with Dexter, but forgive me if I don’t care about any of it. I have similar feelings about Quinn’s reporter girlfriend, although I thought the Deb stuff was interesting in that it actually advanced the plot by informing us that Trinity did not, in fact, kill Lundy and Deb. This leaves a couple of theories circling around, which include Trinity’s son and Anton, theories which are about the only thing unpredictable about the season to this point. I think the show would be far more interesting, though, if it limited its number of terrible storylines and stuck to a combination of larger Dexter stories and linear secondary stories that could provide a sense of consistent achievement to make it feel as if they’re not just wasting time until something interesting happens.

Cultural Observations

• Dexter is currently at the point where I’m only watching episodes in their entirety when my Twitter followers indicate that it’s worth watching: I can’t take the boring placeholder episodes of the show right now, and if not for Lithgow/Hall I’m not sure I’d be watching at all. So, if I don’t review an episode here and there, don’t be shocked.
• Enjoyed the over-scientific explanation of the Meteorological Conference that got Dexter the excuse to go – Hall played the two scenes well, and I thought they had a nice levity to them.
• And I really don’t have anything left to say about this one.

Have You Seen Heroes: Season 4 Episode 8 – Chapter Seven 'Once Upon a Time in Texas'?

Episode Synopsis:

When Hiro travels three years into the past, he has a second chance to save Charlie from the hands of Sylar. However, Samuel’s presence serves to complicate Hiro’s mission even further. Elsewhere, H.R.G.’s past with his Primatech partner is revealed.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Heroes: Season 3 Episode 8 – Villains?

Episode Synopsis:

Under the guidance of Usutu, Hiro has a vision back in time one year ago to determine what forced Arthur Petrelli to fake his death and create Pinehearst. In the past, Hiro also watches the early days of the Company and how Mr. Petrelli and Mr. Linderman founded it, and their falling out with Angela who saw them as a threat to both Nathan and Peter. Also in the past, Meredith Gordon’s origins are shown of how she was captured by Thompson to work for the Company, and of life of crime with her half-brother, whom is the blue-flame fire-starter Flint. Also, Sylar makes a discovery about his powers when he meets Elle for the first time and how she inspired him to kill in order to steal others powers.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Heroes: Season 2 Episode 8 – Chapter Eight 'Four Months Ago…'?

Episode Synopsis:

In flashbacks, we learn what happened to the heroes in the four months after the events at Kirby Plaza. Maja learns of her deadly powers at her brother Alejandro’s wedding. Niki starts a Company-sponsored drug program but stops taking the medication only to realize that another hidden personality has emerged. Imprisoned by the Company, Peter Petrelli meets the now familiar Adam Monroe and we learn how he ended up in the shipping container destined for Ireland.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Heroes: Season 1 Episode 8 – Chapter Eight 'Seven Minutes to Midnight'?

Episode Synopsis:

Back in India Mohinder has weird dreams about his parents. Audrey and Matt talk to Ted.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

While I take a couple of days to digest episode 8 “Rules of the Game” of Flash Forward, I leave you with an explanation of what QED is. While sniping back and forth during their poker game, Lloyd and Simon threw this acronym at each other.

QED

Q.E.D. is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum, which literally means “which was to be demonstrated”. The phrase is written in its abbreviated form at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument to signify that the last statement deduced was the one to be demonstrated; the abbreviation thus signals the completion of the proof.

Etymology and early use

The phrase is a translation into Latin from Greek ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι (hoper edei deixai; abbreviated as ΟΕΔ), a phrase used by many early mathematicians, including Euclid and Archimedes. These mathematicians, in particular Euclid, are credited with founding axiomatic mathematics with its emphasis on establishing truths by logical deduction (rather than experimentation or assertion); their use of this phrase symbolizes this emphasis, as well as marking this important step in the development of mathematical philosophy.

Modern philosophy

In the European Renaissance, scholars often wrote in Latin, and phrases such as Q.E.D. were often used to conclude proofs.

Perhaps the most famous use of Q.E.D. in a philosophical argument is found in the Ethics of Baruch Spinoza, published posthumously in 1677. Written in Latin, it is considered by many to be Spinoza’s magnum opus. The style and system of the book is, as Spinoza says, “demonstrated in geometrical order”, with axioms and definitions followed by propositions. For Spinoza, this is a considerable improvement over René Descartes’s writing style in the Meditations, which follows the form of a diary.

Q.E.F.

There is another Latin phrase with a slightly different meaning, and less common in usage. Quod erat faciendum is translated as “which was to have been done”. This is usually shortened to Q.E.F. The expression quod erat faciendum is a translation of the Greek geometers’ closing ὅπερ ἔδει ποιῆσαι (hoper edei poiēsai). Euclid used this phrase to close propositions which were not proofs of theorems, but constructions. For example, Euclid’s first proposition shows how to construct an equilateral triangle given one side.

Equivalents in other languages

Q.E.D. has acquired many translations in various foreign languages. In French, German, Italian and Russian (with English, the main languages of modern Western mathematics) it is respectively C.Q.F.D., for ce qu’il fallait démontrer (or sometimes ce qui finit la démonstration), W.Z.B.W. for was zu beweisen war, C.V.D. for come volevasi dimostrare, and ч.т.д., for что и требовалось доказать. In Spanish and Portuguese it is Q.E.D. for Quedo esto demostrado. There does not appear to be a common formal English equivalent, though the end of a proof may be announced with a simple statement such as “this completes the proof” or a similar locution. Most modern math textbooks in English end proofs with a symbol, often square. (See below.) In modern Greek texts sometimes the initials ο.ε.δ. (for ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι) are used at the end of a mathematical proof.

Electronic forms

When typesetting was done by a compositor with letterpress printing, complex typography such as mathematics and foreign languages were called “penalty copy” (the author paid a “penalty” to have them typeset, as it was harder than plain text). With the advent of systems such as LaTeX, mathematicians found their options more open, so there are several symbolic alternatives in use, either in the input, the output, or both. When creating TeX, Knuth provided the symbol ■ (solid black square), also called by mathematicians tombstone or Halmos symbol (after Paul Halmos, who pioneered its use). The tombstone is sometimes open: □ (hollow black square). Unicode explicitly provides the “End of Proof” character U+220E (∎), but also offers ▮ (U+25AE, black vertical rectangle) and ‣ (U+2023, triangular bullet) as alternatives. Some authors have adopted variants of this notation with other symbols, such as two forward slashes (//), or simply some vertical white space.

In popular culture

The 1982 US television series Q.E.D. starred Sam Waterston as Professor Quentin Everett Deverill, an American detective in Edwardian England who uses a style of logical deduction similar to that of Sherlock Holmes. Hence, the show’s title derives both from the protagonist’s initials (by which he is primarily known), as well as the logical proofs he presents.

Douglas Adams‘ franchise, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, famously uses Q.E.D. to conclude its Babel fish proof, which determines that God no longer exists because the Babel fish is too improbable to have evolved by pure chance; therefore the Babel fish was a proof for God, and as Faith involves no proof, there was no God, QED (using humorous fallacy to mock teleology and intelligent design principles).

Source: Wikipedia

Have You Seen Smallville: Season 9 Episode 8 – Idol?

Episode Synopsis:

Superhero twins Zan and Jayna show up in Metropolis to help The Blur fight crime but end up botching several rescues, landing Clark in hot water with the District Attorney’s office. Clark decides to come forward as The Blur to clear his name.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Have You Seen Smallville: Season 8 Episode 8 – Bloodline?

Episode Synopsis:

Clark receives a crystal that sends him and a visiting Lois to the Phantom Zone where they run into Kara. Kara tries to open a portal for Lois before it’s too late but Zod’s wife, Faora, manages to escape in Lois’s body and proceeds to go on a rampage through the streets of Metropolis.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.