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!"