television round-up - "Heroes", "Hell's Kitchen", "Survivor" and "Law and Order"

"Heroes" - I liked this episode, with a few more bits of information revealed to us. I'm finding myself interested again in how the issues will be resolved, at least temporarily.

It was pretty much telegraphed that Matt Parkman was going to go where he ended up going with using more of his power, but I like that they did it in bits, first with him getting Molly to do what he wanted and then getting his boss to let him continue investigating. I think we were left to hope that he wasn't really going to go all the way when Angela Petrelli told him that he was becoming just like his father, but since he did get the name of the mystery woman in the end (and I keep thinking she looks an awful lot like Joanna Cassidy), he must have had to take that from Angela against her will.

I think the story of Elle is kind of interesting, but I'm not sure if they're going to be able to give her the depth that she needs. So far, she's a fairly one-dimensional character. She's pretty much been sheltered all her life, and she's been taught that people are toys or pets, which explains her behaviour towards Peter previously and in reference to Mohinder, her comment of "he's adorable - can I keep him?" They tried to give her a little more background by telling you about her life growing up, so that you do start to feel a little sympathy for her, but it's not until the end that you see something might actually be happening to change her. Guess we'll see in the next episode. However, I did think it was great when she woke up and realized she was tied up and then just tried to zap her way out of it - only to elocute herself because her feet were in a bucket of water and she'd been spritzed with water. Priceless.

When Bob was posing as a Board of Education member or whatever and talking to Claire and then calls her "Ms. Bennett" - was that really an accident? From the way he was wording it, it almost seemed like he meant to do it. He was saying things as if to let her know that he was onto her, so what better way than to call her by her real name?

Hiro's travels with his father was a bit of a diversion, but I liked the end result, that his father was taking his death calmly, that Hiro came to accept that he couldn't just save his father because he personally wanted to do it, and the closure that was arrived between father and son before the father's death. But the reveal I've been waiting for happened - Hiro looked into the face of the man who killed his father and saw that it was Adam/Kensei.

Oh, and I liked the explanation of why Adam hasn't aged, that he's regenerated so many times so he stays at that age. I wonder what the threshold is. I mean, how many times has Claire healed herself? And does it have to be completely or just parts? We know she did a lot of experiments in her original high school at least.

And the painting comes true - Mohinder kills Noah. Ummm, well, he shoots Noah at least. But then you get that funky, gross resurrection scene at the end. Hmmm, so Bob got enough blood from Claire to heal Noah *and* Nikki? Is there any left over? If Claire just becomes the sole donor to the Red Cross, everyone's good. Well, at least until that nasty virus hits next week anyway.

And now, Peter has gotten sucked into Adam's plan. Peter, who was given information by his later-ally Hiro has now thrown in with Hiro's arch-nemesis (?) to save the world. Question is, does Peter really know what he's gotten himself into? And did Adam change his ways from wanting to hurt Hiro any way he could, or is that really still the driving force behind his actions?


"Hell's Kitchen" - The episode was pretty much what the previews had promised from the week before. As the owner was talking about how she took all her money and opened this restaurant, and she couldn't figure out what was wrong, I was screaming at the TV that what was wrong was that she was opening a fine dining restaurant in POMONA. Are you kidding me? Did she just pick some random city to open the restaurant in without thinking about what city she'd picked? She can't have been from anywhere around there to think, hey, I know what Pomona needs - a fine dining restaurant!

And she was completely abdicating any responsibility for the place. I've found that interesting in a few of these cases. OK, so you're the owner - shouldn't you know what's going on in your restaurant? Shouldn't you be the one in charge? And if you don't have the guts to be in charge, why did you decide to be the boss?

I thought the test of the chef and sous chef was interesting of whether they could identify cuts of meat while they were blindfolded. I honestly can't imagine how you could mix up beef and chicken - they have completely different texture and taste, even if you cook the beef all the way through. If you've got beef that is the texture of chicken, you've got a problem, and vice versa. I probably don't have pork often enough to know whether or not you should be able to tell the difference.

And I know there are differences in fine dining but powdered mashed potatoes? And frozen everything? And what's the point of having things on the menu that you never actually have available? How can you not see that would be a problem? And again, why didn't the owner know that, and if she did, why did she allow it to continue?

When Gordon was working on the new menu with them and told them to come up with something, I cracked up when he mentioned the Pomona Salad, and how it should evoke and represent Pomona. Ummm, ewwwww. Seeing Pomona Salad on the menu isn't going to make me want to order that, no matter where I am.

I didn't think Gordon would be able to get the executive chef to come around, but it was nice that he did. Demoting him seemed to have done some good, but you get the impression that a lot more happened to make the turnaround in both the executive chef and Gordon. It was nice that Gordon was able to make a change, but apparently, it happened too late in the game since the restaurant didn't survive.


"Survivor" - I wasn't really expecting an episode of the show since it was Thanksgiving, so the fact that they showed a recap show wasn't a big thing, and we didn't really learn anything significant that we didn't already know. Looking forward to seeing what the big twist is on this week's show.


"Law and Order: SVU"

two weeks ago - This was the episode about the crazy woman who was killing to impress her serial killer "boyfriend" who was in prison for life for multiple murders. It's always been a point of discussion to figure out why some people (mostly women) are so fascinated and fixated with men in prison, particularly those who have committed heinous crimes, and who even go to the point of falling in love with them. It was great seeing the disgust on Casey's face when she realized that she would have to work with the serial killer to convict the woman doing the copycat killing. At least they came up with a fairly understandable reason why this woman fell for him as she did - the ones where there is no explanation are the freakier ones.

OK, are the detectives just not paying attention or have I been watching too many of these episodes. As soon as they said there was a pizza delivery for Olivia and she said she didn't order it, I knew there was a problem. But they just all accepted it until it went kablooey. Ummm, ok, asleep at the wheel much?

But then Olivia got great payback. How unlucky do you have to be to choose to attack a police officer in her own home, while she's on the phone with her office so she can immediately call for backup, and then beats you to a bloody pulp with a really thick, heavy book before finally realizing to pull back before she beats you to death with it?

But Casey won it all. I loved that when the serial killer changed his testimony on the witness stand, she managed to play to his ego and have him critique the copycat killing. But her best play was even yet to come. Mr. Serial Killer dude was all smirky because she had made a deal to transfer him to a different prison. But he didn't know that she could keep her deal with him *and* arrange for him to be transferred to a prison with tighter security and more restrictions so that he would be even more isolated and cut off from the world for the remainder of his life sentences.


last week's episode - This was a stellar episode, turning an issue on its head, as they're so famous for. They find out that a man has committed rapes on several young girls, only to discover when they finally catch him that he's been off his psych drugs and committed the crimes while off the drugs, and there are at least extenuating circumstances for what caused him to commit the crimes. However, usually, the argument is that he shouldn't be sent to prison because he wasn't responsible for those crimes since he wasn't on the drugs. In this case, though, when the rapist is on his drugs and lucid, he is absolutely horrified by what he's done, and he's not only ready to face his punishment, but he'd rather be extradicted to a different state that has the death penalty as a consequence of the crimes he has committed. You don't feel sorry for him or feel empathy for him really, but it's the first time you actually feel *their* sorrow and actual remorse. He can't live with himself, so you at least respect that in his medicated form, he is not a monster, but you realize along with him that he can't be trusted to stay that way and that he still needs to pay for what he did.

One of the issues this episode does bring up is that of the death penalty. It's a very short scene, but several of them do go through the pros and cons of having a state that employs the death penalty. And you discover that a cop and a prosecutor are perhaps not surprisingly on opposite sides of that discussion. I didn't much care for the ending though. Casey tries to convince the guy that he needs to forgive himself. But I think he's right. In the light of day and under his meds, he knows how horrible his actions were, how those girls that he hurt are going to be scarred for life, and even if there were extenuating circumstances and he wasn't on meds, he still knows he did it. How can you *ever* forgive yourself for that? How *do* you live with that?

But the best part of the episode was the appearance of Sam Waterston. I had seen his name in the credits earlier, so I knew he'd be in it, but I'd forgotten about Jack McCoy's promotion. Or maybe I just didn't think it had gone through yet. Casey has to defend her very unorthodox and unapproved actions to her new boss, the new District Attorney, Jack McCoy. When the old DA stepped down, Jack was promoted. I've been wondering how that's going to play out on "Law and Order" since he's really my favorite part of that show, and with him being DA, he might not be in it as much, unless they change the format a bit. But it was great seeing him here, dressing down Casey. Welcome back, Jack. Looking forward to seeing more of him on new episodes of "Law and Order" in January.


this week's episode - I didn't think this episode was as good as the last two. You kind of got a little of everything - a little bit about a father's taking justice and revenge in his own hands, little bits about race issues, and quite a bit about the foster kids, but I think they've done better stories about the foster kids. The story of the two brothers was a little too easy, a little too formulaic, and then of course, you had to throw in that the newbie in the squad room was also a foster kid. And the resolution to the murder case itself was fairly convoluted so that the whole story just seemed manufactured to tell the foster children story. Like I said, they've done that story much better before.


"The Big Bang Theory" and "Back to You" - Both of these shows are in reruns early. The writers' strike has hit the comedies early, since they don't tape as far ahead, and they require more on-set rewrites than do dramas. There won't be any new episodes of these shows, if at all, until probably a few weeks after the strike is finally over. Since this is the first season for both shows, that could put them in jeopardy. I hope the strike doesn't tank either one of those shows.