"Desperate Housewives" - This show has some of the most clever arcs and bookends that I've seen. There is often some kind of theme that is presented in the opening narration and then revisited in the closing narration, with the action in between highlighting that particular theme.
The previous week's episode was about pests. It started with how pests of the bug and rodent kind are what drove Bob and Lee to Wisteria Lane, only to encounter a "pest" in the form of Susan. Teri Hatcher is terrific in her role of the well-meaning but poor-execution neighbor. I know, I'll save their dog - right after I hold it hostage in the garage without knowing there's open yellow paint in there. And of course, she has no idea how utterly ridiculous she sounds in explaining that she knows all about gay people because she watches a lot of cable.
And then we saw the return of Bree's former mother-in-law, who is trying to buy her way into her grandchildren's good graces while simultaneously trying to circumvent their mother. I'm not finding her antics nearly as funny as I might have a year or two ago. I lurk on a board where there's a lot of discussion about problematic relations with various family members, especially mother-in-laws, and the kinds of things that Phyllis was saying and doing were textbook of the kinds of attitudes, tricks and passive-aggressive moves that the people on that board talk about all the time, so rather than finding that kind of stuff amusing, I find myself getting irritated and mad on behalf of the people on that board, and I'm hoping that Bree can see right through it. I loved the ending, though, that while some pests can be a nuisance, others are downright dangerous, as Phyllis has just showed up at the convent where pregnant granddaughter Danielle has been stashed.
This week's episode had a lot of interesting developments and some really great moments. One of the things I really like about this show is how some of the relationships are portrayed, and how they really involve realistic situations that people deal with fairly sensibly but not always perfectly. I love the friendships that have been built among the four women (I don't think Edie counts) and how they support each other, and yet, each is (or at least was, since Lynette's secret about her cancer is out) still keeping a secret from the others for various reasons. I love the dilemma that Susan was caught in between doing what's best for her and Mike (voting for Katherine, who has vowed to get rid of Bob and Lee's art sculpture fountain, for Homeowners' Association president - and had they previously said that Wisteria Lane had an HOA, because I don't recall hearing anything about that before) or voting for her very good friend Lynette. In the end, she votes for Katherine, and Lynette gives her a hard time about it, but Susan calls her on making her choose between her friend's children and her own husband. Lynette finally realizes how unfair that actually is, but she also explains what the treehouse means to her kids, which melts our hearts along with Susan's. I also liked in previous episodes when Lynette was going to her chemo appointments and she couldn't figure out why good friend Gabrielle wouldn't go with her - until Gabrielle admits what it was like watching her father die and not being able to show any emotion about it, and how difficult it is seeing Lynette in a similar position and not knowing if she can survive not showing any emotion about that. My favorite scene of the friendships, though, was from season one, I believe, when Lynette has just had it with her unruly kids that she has no idea how to handle, and she's sitting in a field/park against a tree, crying, where Susan and Bree find her. Lynette finally admits to how hard she's finding being a mother, and when Susan and Bree tell her they felt the same way, she's so relieved because she thought they were perfect parents who didn't feel any of that. They agree that you're not supposed to say how hard it is, but that as friends, it would help so much if they did. The other relationship I really like is that between Lynette and Tom. They have the most "real" marriage on the show, I think - it's not perfect, and they've certainly had their ups and downs, with Lynette's almost/kinda affair and Tom's out-of-nowhere daughter from a previous relationship, not to mention said daughter's psycho mother, and then there was the work tension when Tom worked for Lynette at the ad agency and then when Lynette worked for Tom at the pizza place. They had scenes last week with the trepidation that Tom felt trying to make love to Lynette after she took her wig off, revealing her bald head, and Lynette's attempt at role-playing by getting a new and different wig, which got out of hand, and then the realization that Tom's place with regard to her cancer had never been addressed. These are all situations where real issues are addressed and resolved realistically, and people learn to forgive each other. Hmmm, all of these situations involve Lynette - but then, I do think she is the most grounded of all of them. Maybe that's why Felicity Huffman won her Emmy - for portraying a real woman.
It's interesting to see the change in Bree, especially with regard to her children. She was the one with the perfect home - but she was completely oblivious to the fact that her husband was having an affair and that her children had turned out to be monsters, much due to her own behaviour. It was refreshing to hear her admit that she knew she'd done a horrible job with Andrew and Danielle and that she was hoping to get a second chance by raising Danielle's baby. This week, it was fun to watch her and Orson trick Danielle into doing what they want (thanks to Andrew's advice), but at the end, when Bree softened a bit towards Phyllis and offered to perhaps let her babysit on a weekend, part of me screamed "no" inside, that she was just giving Phyllis the opportunity to wreak more havoc. Yep, I think I've been conditioned.
I'm finding myself not that interested in the whole Gabrielle and Carlos thing or even the Gabrielle and Victor thing. And I'm not really sure the point of bringing back John this week - maybe just to show Carlos the parallels? But I still don't understand why John is trapped. Yeah, there's a baby on the way, so he would still need to do what he needs to do about that, but why stay with a shrew of a wife who thinks she did you a favor by letting you "marry up"?
However, I *loved* last week's bit at Bree's baby shower when the server brought a tray of food around and offered it to various people. We watched along with Edie as the waiter offered crab cakes to Carlos, then Gabrielle, then Victor - and Edie made the connection that the familiar smell she couldn't identify on Victor was the smell of the genital crab medication that she herself had to use, and the travelling crab cakes showed her exactly how Victor had gotten the same affliction. Bravo for that bit of writing. This week, Carlos tells Gabrielle he's going to break it off with Edie, but I thought he was stuck because of the off-shore account. I guess we'll see if that accountant he hired can actually do anything.
And I'll say it again - I am absolutely loving Dana Delaney on the show. As much as I love Alfre Woodard, I never felt her character went anywhere, whereas Dana's Katherine has hit the ground running. She provided a great foil to Bree in the Homemaker of the Year running, especially with the pie competition. This week, she was a great adversary to Lynnette in the HOA presidential election. And she's got that smile down pat - that smile that both says everything's fine and I'm trying not to scream or kill you. We've been learning little by little about her, but I'm dying to know what happened in that room involving Dillon's father and what Katherine's aunt's part was in it. Not to mention why Dillion doesn't remember anything about being on Wisteria Lane. And then there's the whole matter of Chicago. I loved when Bob and Lee said they knew all about it and basically used it as a blackmailing point. I'm still interested enough in the suspense not to mind it, but I'm hoping they reveal bits and pieces at a time, because I need some kind of payoff, even little ones.
Oh, and I loved the comments from one of the older neighbors about Bob and Lee, so that not everyone on Wisteria Lane was 100% accepting of the gay couple that had moved into the neighborhood. But seriously, that art thing was awful. It didn't fit in at all. Ugly, out-of-place and obnoxiously loud to boot.
"Heroes" - I loved season one, and I'd been liking season two, but this past week is the first time I've been kind of bored and consciously waiting for the episode to be over. I hope they're not falling into the same trap that "Lost" fell into in their second season. Season one of this show culminated in bringing them all together, but season two has seemingly scattered them to the four winds. Hiro has been banished not just to another place but another time, and he's now with completely different people - the gaijin hero Takezo and Yaeko, the woman they're both fighting for. I've enjoyed the Cyrano story to some degree, but I also hate that since Hiro's father died, Ando is reduced to doing nothing but reading restored scrolls. Meanwhile, Peter is in the same time, but on a different continent and unaware of who he is, also now with completely different people, including his new Irish girlfriend. Claire and her father are also in a totally different place, with totally different people, including Claire's new I-can-fly boyfriend and cheerleader group at school. Mohinder is now undercover at the company, but with the problem with Molly, you're sometimes not sure where he stands. There's the new head of the company. There's the twins with the power of life and death. There's the girl in New Orleans who immediately learns everything she sees. (Oh, by the way, when she and cousin Micah revealed to each other that they had powers and wondered where they came from, especially since Micah said his mother and father both had powers, I was yelling that they needed to ask Uhura what the heck was going on, cause you gotta figure that she knows.) There's newbie I'm-made-of-electricity girl who works for the company who is tracking down Peter. Horned-rim-guy, Claire's dad, is traipsing off to other parts of the world with the Haitian trying to track down the lost/missing paintings. There's Matt's dad, who is not the Daddy-dearest he initially posited himself to be. There's the picture of the original group of "superheroes". And there's that mysterious sign. And we have been given zero hint as to what happened to Peter and Nathan and Sylar from the end of last season and how Peter and Sylar ended up who and how they are at the beginning of this season.
One of the biggest mistakes that the "Lost" people did was bringing on the Tailies and completely abandoning the original cast in the process. "Heroes" isn't quite doing that, but it keeps adding more and more players and opening more and more questions, and unlike last year, they so far have provided zero answers. Having continuous smaller payoffs worked really well. Here's hoping they haven't forgotten how to do that.
"Law and Order: SVU" - The episode about the doctor who created/instituted "benign" torture methods for prisoners was ok, but it was one of those that was entirely too political for my taste. It did touch on the hippocratic oath aspect of the story, but I thought there was entirely too much about the war. I have my own opinions about the use of torture for certain purposes, which I won't go into too much here. Basically, I don't object to torture when it's used in the right situations. The dilemma comes in knowing when the right situations are.
"Survivor"
last week's episode - I liked Sherea sometimes, but she got too cocky. Her farewell speech was a bit weird. Delusional much?
I'm really surprised that in the immunity challenge, the thousand-year-old egg was considered worse than the balut, at least based on that it came after. The chicken hearts would have been easy to eat because I love them anyway, but I'm not sure I could have eaten them fast enough. I might have been able to eat the small turtles - depends on the texture of the first one I tried to eat. I didn't realize they were that small until one of them was popping them in her mouth. With how terrified I am of snakes, I don't think I could have picked up, let alone eaten, the eel, especially since their heads were still on them. I would have absolutely refused to even attempt to eat the balut. (I couldn't even watch most of that segment.) I didn't think they usually came with actual feathers. And I love thousand-year-old egg. I think it's usually made from a duck egg. I love it in porridge.
this week's episode - It took almost a year for the payoff since when Yao-Man created the fake idol last time, no one found it and tried to use it, but this time, it was too funny watching Jamie present the piece of wood as an immunity idol to Jeff. It was great watching Todd and James trying to control their laughter. And how funny was it that Jeff threw it into the fire! You know that when Jamie said on camera that she wasn't as dumb as they think she is, that she was doomed. I loved that the immunity challenge was done at the camp itself, with Jeff coming to them. I don't think they've ever done that before. Maybe they figured that they'd all be too drunk from the wine to go anywhere. And since the challenge was just about answering questions anyway, it wasn't a problem doing it there.
I was laughing really hard when Todd was calling Courtney a bitch. Yep, both she and Jean-Robert need to go soon. They can spend all kinds of time together when they're sequestered on the jury.
"The Big Bang Theory"
last week's episode - I can't tell you how much the episode made me laugh. Some of the writing on the show is absolutely brilliant. Clever and quick. However, I was completely distracted by the fact that when we visited where Penny works, that is so *not* The Cheesecake Factory. I could swear the show was supposed to be set in Los Angeles, and then they also talked about Bob's Big Boy. The Cheesecake Factory is so not a little sandwich place. That seriously bothered me, and it changed my perception of Penny a little since The Cheesecake Factory is a much more upscale place, so her working there is different than where we saw her working. Why didn't they just come up with a random fake restaurant name? But there were so many great moments: Leslie's line of "come for the breasts, stay for the brains" in response to Penny's comment about her being a woman in that field, Mr. Spock beatboxing, Leslie's comments to Leonard about her real reason for staying after to practice, Leonard completely fumbling with his instrument, what Penny and Sheldon overhear Leslie saying from behind the closed door (BTW, why did Leonard still have his shirt on the next morning?), the flash-frozen banana that Leslie makes to break and put in her cereal (but seriously, she can't possible eat that - the banana bits would still be rock hard), Sheldon's line about Souplantation - "you can't grow soup". But my absolutely favorite bit is when Leonard is questioning what Penny meant by he and Leslie making a cute couple, and Sheldon's retort is about Leonard and Leslie manufacturing a couple - "Mr. and Mrs. Goldfarb - aren't they adorable?" We laughed so hard at that line that we had to rewind, partly so we could hear it again and partly because we missed what came after.
The stairs bug me though. I think I've figured out that they live on the fourth floor, and I get that the broken elevator is really a device so they can have a conversation as they're climbing the stairs, but watching them walk in the same redressed set as their conversation continues is just bugging me.
Oh, and we figured out that the end card blog is a two-card thing. "Two and a Half Men" has new cards as well.
this week's episode - I didn't find this one nearly as funny as last week's but it was still fun to watch. How many shows get to work in the Doppler Effect as an integral part of their storyline? I loved the bit about them all dressed as The Flash. Sheldon's comments about a costume parade and contest were just too funny. And Leonard's interaction and intellectual put-down's of Penny's ex-boyfriend were just a riot. Poor Leonard, though. Penny kisses him, but he has to be the good guy and tell her that she's probably doing it because she's mad at her ex and because she's been drinking. She tells him how smart he is. "Yeah, I'm a frickin' genius," he sarcastically replies. You feel for him, wanting to take advantage of her, but he just can't do it. It's funny that Sheldon is the overly-geeky one, but Leonard is almost in denial about his geekiness some of the time, especially when it comes to Penny.
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