TV Recap 10/28/13 [SPOILERS]

Once Upon A Time:

Good Form:

In which we find out Hook's surprisingly uncheckered past, starting out as an upright, almost obsessively noble military man, only turning to piracy after his government's deceit and treachery results in his brother's death.  This was a surprisingly good episode, no doubt because of Hook's positioning as the only character capable of development among this motley crew.  While it seems likely he's taking a trip on the truth-y side as far as what he's been telling Emma and Pan and Co., it's hard to think that he'll stay this virtuous for long--Regina can tell him how transient good impulses tend to be.

Thoughts:

• Emma, Emma--haven't we learned by now, dealing with people's hearts outside of their bodies never ends well?
• Apparently Rumple stepped out to the Neverland Starbucks for coffee this week.
• Henry seems a little off at the end--a little perfunctory with all his Mom's, considering they ripped a kid's heart out to send him a message.
• What are the chances that Snow will leave Neverland if Charming can't?  There goes the neighborhood.

Next week:  We see that although Regina may be on the storyline's back burner right now, you can't keep Parilla down.

Agents of SHIELD:

Girl in the Flower Dress:

The mysterious Centipede organization shows its head again, as it steals a march on SHIELD and manages to not only figure out how to stabilize its super-soldier serum, but also succeeds in killing a SHIELD agent, a random dude, and blowing Skye's cover as a total mole for Rising Tide.  This was also an above-average show this week, as we once again get to see May fight (always a plus,) and not even get knocked unconscious.  It also was something of a relief to finally get what Skye's deal was, as the idea of having one more mystery dragged out over the course of the series was verging on overload.

Questions:  

• What did happen to Skye's family?  Do they have superpowers?  Does she?
• Who's the guy in jail?  Is he sharing a cell with the Clairvoyant?  Because otherwise, it seems like it'd be easier for Raina to do it herself.
• Why would you work for Centipede when they clearly have a pretty piss-poor retirement plan?
• Is Raina's superpower fashion?

Once Upon A Time in Wonderland:

 Forget-Me-Not:

So apparently the theme for this week was "rogue back-story," because this episode was a look into the origins of the Knave, or as he was known in Fairytale Land, Will Scarlett.  While the peek into Will's "tale of heartbreak" was reasonably arresting, this episode failed to stint on all the things that have made this series problematic at best:  awkward greenscreen work that doesn't even share the same filmed quality as the outdoor shots, and an annoyingly impractical heroine ("so...I know you're a little busy trying to untie the ropes so we don't get eaten, but what's the deal with Anastasia?")

Maybe my favorite failing that it shares with OUAT is the absolutely unfathomable tendency of all the characters to continue dealing with the villainous characters in good faith.  I'm sorry, but unless the Red Queen made that poor Grendel mentally deranged as well as physically deformed, there is no way he could possibly have thought anything good would come of talking with her.  And while we're at it, I get that he became all reclusive after his wife died, and I get that the Red Queen made him all twisted after he stole from her, but...where did the cannibalism come from?  Because that kind of seems like you wouldn't naturally come up with that on your own, when you clearly live within walking distance of retail establishments.

TV Recap [SPOILERS]: 10/21/13

Agents of SHIELD:

This week's installment showed us a glimpse of the sterner, harsher Coulson-that-was, when he tries to rescue/redeem an old protege that appears to have gone to the bad.  Character-wise, it was pretty much business as usual, where Skye hacks everything, Ward beats up/shoots everything, Fitz/Simmons provide slapstick and !MiracleTech, and May does some snazzy fighting but ultimately lets someone get the drop on her again. 

The best part was, of course, the robot eye enucleation, where the rogue agent administered her own retrobulbar block (not quite in the right place, but I guess if you're doing your own, you should get some leeway.)  When Fitz/Simmons are frantically dithering about as to how to disarm the eyeball (and wouldn't you think that would have come up BEFORE they were sitting there yanking something out of her skull?) they have the globe attached to wires stretching some four-five inches from the orbit.  Either the people who put that in left a lot of redundant wire coiled in the back of the orbit for emergencies, or they were yanking pretty hard on something that, in theory, was attached to her brain.  Which seems like a bad idea.

A fun episode, if you don't think too hard about the overall optical logistics of everything.

Questions:

• What did Akela see in Coulson that made her so mystified?  Since Skye still has the replica magical "backscatter" glasses, can she see it too?
• What was the equation that Ward transmitted to the secret agency?  Shouldn't we be a little concerned about that?
• They have enough money for a bar and a gym in their plane, but they don't have enough for a portable commode?
• How did Coulson know Akela's handler was that guy, versus the doughy white guy that walked right in front of him?

Next week:  Someone digs up a mole.

  Once Upon A Time in Wonderland:

Second week of OUATiW, and it continues to not impress.  Alice continues to browbeat Jack into accompanying her on her mission to find Cyrus, her twue wuv; the Red Queen and Jafar continue to practice brinksmanship on each other while they jockey for position; the White Rabbit continues to labor under what I like to call the "Mad Hatter Syndrome," in which he keeps trying to believe anyone known as an Evil Queen will keep their bargains; and Cyrus does origami.

The issue that is becoming most problematic for me with this show, is that all the women in it are awful, and the men are mostly saps.  No matter how many times the Knave saves her bacon, Alice is pretty relentlessly rude and ungrateful to him.  When they land on a turtle, her method of getting it to help them is to start stabbing and threatening it.  Silvermist, the jilted fairy, is willing to kill the Knave over what was apparently an affaire de coeur gone bad.  I feel like Cyrus is supposed to be the proof for us that Alice is terrific by the way he falls in love with her the first time he claps eyes on her, but what exactly is this based on?  She's not funny, she doesn't seem nice, she clearly has father issues...I guess she's agile?  And a quick learner?  That doesn't seem like enough.

We'll continue to hang in there for the time being, but frankly Alice, you're on probation.

Once Upon A Time:

Another pretty solid episode in which our heroes continue their search for Henry in Neverland.  The bulk of this one was Rumple and Neal who finally get together for a brief moment, before Pan succeeds at playing on Neal's distrust of his Dad to separate them again.  Everyone else was in a holding pattern, after Tinker Bell points out that they have, as yet, given no consideration to an escape route once they've gotten Henry back.

Probably the most interesting point was Pan's gibe at Neal after recapturing him--when Pan reminds him that no one escapes Neverland, Neal points out that he did, as a boy.  Pan then suggests that he let him escape, presumably so that he would grow up, find Emma, impregnate her, and thereby produce Henry, the True Believer who will bring magic back to Neverland.  That is one long-reaching plan--even Rumple would have to admire someone who could screw with that many people for that long to get what they wanted.  Maybe Rumple's been going after the wrong kid--he and Pan have way more in common than he and Bael ever did.

Thoughts:

• Charming is digging himself a pre-etty big hole with Snow by not telling her he's poisoned.  That's going to be a bad scene.
• Emma is way more forgiving than I am, if she instantly knew she still loved Neal the first time she saw him, after he left her penniless, pregnant, and in jail for his crimes.
• Bael was an impressively accomplished kid, for growing up and turning into Neal, who was nothing more than a dupe for Tamara and couldn't even lean out a window without dropping his cell phone.
• Did you think Mulan was going to tell Aurora she loved her last week?  Because I totally thought she was just going to ask permission to go poach on Philip.  Either way, I'm not sure why she thought she had a chance, because that ship looked like it sailed a long time ago.

TV Recap: 10/14/13

This week introduced a new show for us to ponder over, the Once Upon A Time spin-off, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.

Spoilers a'hoy.

Wonderland:

The pilot introduces us to Alice, her various father issues, and her ill-fated and short-lived engagement to a genie, Cyrus.  Alternately rescued by the Knave of Hearts and the White Rabbit (who turns out to be an agent for the Red Queen,) she mostly seems to run around delivering vicious beat-downs and berating people who are trying to help her.  I had seen about twenty minutes of this more than once at different ABC screenings, so the only new bits revolved largely around the Red Queen and Jafar who snarled appropriately at each other before capitulating to the necessity of teamwork, and the Cyrus reveal at the end.

The problem I have with this first episode is that the protagonist just isn't that sympathetic to me.  When we first see her as an adult in Wonderland, she's kidnapping someone for her own reasons and threatening to destroy someone's home.  Is she a heroine or a terrorist?  I appreciate the attempt to make her a strong grrrl power character, but unlike the women of Once Upon A Time, Alice hasn't shown us the charming qualities that would make us overlook the aggressively self-absorbed ones currently on display.

The other complaint I have is the roughness of the CGI--some parts looked pretty good, some looked as though the people were lit slightly differently than the background, and the last shot, when they were walking away down the road, looked as cartoon-y as the lifesavers commercials Pixar used to do.

Conclusion:  Some interesting characters and premise, but we'll hope for a better relationship with the characters next week.

Once Upon A Time:

This week we met Tinker Bell, who interacts with Regina once, and immediately goes from a fresh-faced fairy, to something unmagical who vaguely resembles the crazy ladies pushing carts around supermarkets.  The interesting part of this episode, was the almost-unevil manner Regina adopted to try to get Tinker Bell to help them get Henry back.  Frankly, if I were Tinker Bell, I would have just kept Regina's heart and made her magic me back some wings, but since the only fairies we've really seen besides Blue (who was duped by Geppetto ,) and Amy Acker, I'm beginning to think fairies may not be all that bright.

The big downer was that we once again got to revisit the painfully pathetic ball of unrequited love that is Mulan, and see her hopes get shot down by the the newly expectant Aurora.  Dude, it's time to let him go.

Questions:

1.  Do we really think the shadow isn't going to come back for Robin Hood's kid?
2. Do we really think Robin Hood won't follow him to Neverland, where he'll conveniently bump into his True Love?
3. Do we really think this will turn out well for him, considering the last time Regina had a boyfriend, she ripped out his heart and made him into her love-slave?
4. Is Rumple still off playing with his little doll?

Agents of Shield:

After the disappointment that was last week, I felt this one was an upturn, although not meeting the level of the pilot episode.  This one gave us a little more insight into Skye and Wade, and May decided she didn't like staying back on the plane, even though it saved her from her usual trip to unconsciousness.

There were some strange elements (and not just Gravitonium)  however, like why Coulson would think a three-piece suit was a reasonable thing to wear for a violent rescue operation, and particularly his resolution to the exploding device crisis.  In the first place, he's told that he needs a catalyst to stop the reaction and the subsequent explosion.  Does this seem wrong?  My impression was that catalysts initiate or accelerate a reaction--shutting one down would be more something like a neutralizing agent...but maybe that's just semantics.  The more important aspect is that it could literally be anything, since no one but Hall knows what the whole deal with the machine and the made-up-oniium is about.  Given the complete uncertainty of the whole situation, Coulson shoots out the window and lets Hall fall in and get absorbed.  What would make him think that was going to happen?  Was he just hoping everything loose in the lab would fall in there and something would work?  The human body is a pretty closed system--it doesn't seem like a natural first choice as something that would interact with...something and stop it reacting to...something.  Kind of a Coulson ex machina.

Even stranger is his subsequent actions, in which he carefully takes the whole thing home and wraps it up like some odd snowglobe souvenir, storing it in the basement with no tags or records of it, saying "do not open."  Because I'm sure THAT's not going to come back and bite him in the butt eventually.

TV Recap: 10/7/2013

New Fall season!  Although my live TV watching hours dropped precipitously the last few years after I discovered how much more efficient it is to watch serial TV on DVD, this year is the first that has more than one show of sufficient interest to me to watch real-time.  This prompted me to two different discoveries:

1. Hey, I could actually discuss programming while it was still fresh, instead of a year later when it hits Netflix!
2. What's up with commercials?

With this in mind, here's my take on my TV hours of last week.  Warning:  Spoilers a'plenty.

Once Upon A Time:  

Lost Girl:  

 The second episode of the season finds our heroes still romping around Neverland, searching for Henry and his Truest Believer Heart.  This had the advantage of not having the check-list character trait introductions of the premiere episode, but still felt like we were catching people up to speed through the Snow/Charming flash backs.  The main thread of this story was finding out/accepting who you really are, and we witness Snow White, Emma, and Gold all struggling with this.  While I actually really like revisiting Fairy Tale Land, my issue is that it seems like we've seen Snow go back and forth so often on matters of strength and weakness, good and evil, effectiveness and mercy, that this dilemma of hers no longer feels new.  I also thought it was kind of bizarre that none of the villagers were going to support her against the Queen, when the last time we saw this type of showdown, the whole town was willing to get slaughtered to protect her.  On the other hand, I'm not sure which of these two incidences came first, so maybe this town learned by example.

Emma ends up coming to grips with the fact that she still considers herself an orphan which I initially thought she had already worked through in the space of the last two seasons. If you look at the passage of time that's supposed to have happened for the characters, however, we're probably still only looking at a matter of months since Henry first showed up on her doorstep, so I'm willing to give her a pass on it.  What seems less explicable is how no one takes Regina to task for clearly not doing much to fight off any of the Lost Boys except the ones that were directly attacking her.  Since her magical powers have been so built up over the years, it really seems like she should have been able to hold off a gaggle of boys on her own.

On the whole, I liked this episode better than the last one, although none of the scenes worked as well for me as the previous Rumple scenes. 

Questions:  

1. Is Hook honestly Mr. Reasonable now?  Because that would make him the most evolved character on the show.
2. Was Belle a vision?  A dream?  A psychotic hallucination?
3. Was Rumple's make up a little light this episode?
4. How is it that !ShepardCharming was good enough with a bow to help Snow aim?
5. Whatever happened to that poor mermaid they turned into wood?  Do we think she'll turn out to be Ariel's Mom?  Are they going to turn her back alive?  Or just mount her to the hull as a figurehead like they did with Ariel in New Fantasyland?

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

 0-8-4:

 Have to admit, this episode was a little bit of a step down for me, after what I thought was an outstanding Pilot episode.  The object of the mission was such a Macguffin we never even gave it a name or figured out exactly what the deal was with it, before shooting it into space.  The whole shaky premise was really just an excuse for an elaborate team-building exercise--did anyone not call Reyes and her team as the bad guys?  Then, I must not have been paying sufficient attention, because I thought Fitz (or Simmons?) had said the device was old enough to pre-date the ruins, but then we were told that it was built with tech from the 1940's Captain America era, but then Reyes said something about her government commissioning this weapon decades ago?  It seems as though not all those things could be true.

What I thought was particularly weak this episode was the usually very strong Whedon Grrlpower motif.  In the first place, Reyes comes off as a pretty unconvincing seductress, switching immediately to mustache-twirling when Coulson is as unimpressed as we are.  Secondly, we're shown on security cam that one of Reyes' guys has a scalpel to Fitz's neck, with Simmons cringing behind him.  Behind him.  With him looking away from her for a long period of time.  In a lab where there must be any number of things she could use to hit him or inject him or shoot him or anything.

Finally there's the issue of Agent May, or as we now know her, "The Calvary."  I like her, I like the way her fight scenes are choreographed, and I like her general portrayal.  The problem however, is that despite the fact that we're told she's the best rescue-combat person ever, in two episodes, we've seen someone get the jump on her two times.  At some point, we need to see her being a little more proactive about not getting knocked unconscious if she's going to keep her standing.

One aspect of the show I thought was hilarious was when they tie the whole team up and stick them in the cargo bay together, totally unsupervised.  Coulson already told you they were the best team evah, and that was the best way you could imprison them?  Why not lock them in a toolshed with a makeshift cannon and a zamboni?  Have we learned nothing from "The A-Team?"

Thoughts:

• The mysterious backstories of May and Coulson are intriguing, but man, I hope they don't string them along for too long.  If this thing gets cancelled after the first year, I don't want to have to go to the movies to see them lying dead, doing a Shepard Book, and going "I guess we'll never know now."
• When they actually find out Skye's a mole, it will be a damn shame if Ward doesn't actually say "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"