Somewhere

The Week In TV 12/12/2011

Community, Season 3, Episode 10: Regional Holiday Music

If there’s one show that can pull off a parody of Glee, then it’s Community.  Not least because Community has always gazed open-mouthed in horror at the success of the entertainment behemoth, waiting quietly as the show first devoured, regurgitated and then devoured itself again.  I’m a fan of Glee, or at least I think it’s capable of greatness even during its worst episodes and increasingly bonkers storylines, but it’s ripe for deflation.  And so we have Glee Club presented as a disease, as a Will Schuster-alike recruits first Abed and then the rest of the group to sign up.  This leads to several very funny “contagion” scenes, all of them smart and funny without ever feeling snarky.  Rather than look down on Glee, the show instead injects its song-and-dance numbers with the sort of open-hearted humour and generosity towards its characters that its more successful counterpart lacks.  In short, it does Ryan Murphy’s job better than him.  Were I forced to single out a favourite moment, it would be Annie’s hilarious take on “sexy” Christmas numbers (in particular Madonna’s cover of “Santa Baby”), which takes Annie’s schoolgirl sexuality to the edge of decency, forces through it

Glee, Season 3, Episode 8: Hold Onto Sixteen

Episodes devoted to competitions are often Glee’s best, since they tend to cap off several storylines at a time and produce the show’s most memorable musical numbers.  “Hold Onto Sixteen” mostly played to this formula, but wasted a good ten minutes on bringing Chord Overstreet back to the cast.  Getting rid of Sam was one of the smarter decisions the writers made at the start of Season 3, so I’m at a loss as to why the Glee Club would find him indispensable for Sectionals, especially since his only contribution seemed to be a body roll, and that the heartfelt approval of his parents felt even lazier than the sudden appearance of Santana’s grandmother last week.  Having said that, his pursuit of Mercedes will at least give Amber Riley a storyline, and her increased involvement with the cast this season has been one of the few (but marked) improvements over Season 2.  The show was much better at Sectionals themselves, which produced two very good numbers from the Troubletones and the Unitards, One Direction’s excellent version of “ABC,” which sadly segued into two distinctly mediocre covers.  Even by going over old ground with Mike Chang, the writers found a way to involve Tina, even if she was just playing the supportive girlfriend stereotype, she also led the episode’s one bona fide wonderful musical number.  And as for Quinn?  Well, the show has come right up to the edge of addressing the mess they’ve made of this character, but it seems that all she really needed was a life lesson from Rachel.  There was some nice stuff here, particularly Quinn’s talk with Shelby about being young.  Quinn’s lack of control over her own life is mirrored in the other characters’ frenzied attempts to get into college, so to thematically link this to, say, Rachel and Kurt’s NYDA applications and Mike Chang’s difficulties with his parents made sense.  Was it all tied up a little too neatly after weeks of dancing around a season and half’s worth of effectively throwing the character to the dogs?  Undoubtedly.  But “Hold Onto Sixteen” primarily functioned to reset everything to the way it was before.  Quinn has gained some self-respect, the Troubletones have re-entered Glee Club and – for better or worse – the show has finally realised that it has a talented ensemble cast and is giving material to those characters underserved by Season 2.  I’m past the point of having hope that Glee will right itself and iron out its many inconsistencies in both character and plot, but there were a few parts of this episode that resonated, some fun group numbers (although it’s notable that this year’s competition didn’t have nearly the emotional punch that “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” or even “Loser Like Me” had previously, a Jackson 5 medley presumably being able to shift more numbers than a Barbara Streisand classic, or one of the show’s original songs), and a couple of decent jokes.  The fact that the show has also made the decision to sideline Will and – to a lesser extent – Sue this year, has also been a point in its favour.  In short, “Hold Onto Sixteen” was the usual mixture of competent, insulting, and memorable.  And it’s also bound to be a whole lot better than next week’s Christmas episode…

The Good Wife, Season 3, Episode 10: Parenting Made Easy

After a slow start, The Good Wife finally seems like it’s going somewhere this season, and this was the strongest episode of the season yet.  It started with an impressive case-of-the-week, with guest star Jennifer Carpenter (underused – she’s so fantastic on Dexter, it makes me wish she had a better show to star in) playing Pamela, a university lecturer claiming unfair dismissal in a minor arbitration.  Rather wonderfully, Caitlin is forced to go up against Martha, who so clearly holds a grudge and, since Martha is now working for Canning, the stakes are higher than Alicia’s client fully realises.  And whilst it’s fun seeing Caitlin stand on her own two feet (and from the looks of things, she was the better candidate anyway), it’s what going on behind the court case that fascinates.  Canning wilily plays to Alicia’s concerns about not being there enough for her children – a worry that is prefigured in the nightmare about Grace that opens the episode – as he seduces her with a job offer that would grant her more flexibility at home.  When Alicia receives several missed calls from Grace and a school friend says that she saw her get into a car with a strange man, Alicia is already set to go into panic mode.  Whilst I was never really that convinced that the show was suddenly going to kill off one of its supporting characters, Alicia’s panic and grief were presented with such clarity, and helped again by Margulies impressive, coming-apart-at-the-seams performance, that it created one of the most tense sequences in the show’s history.  That this dovetailed nicely into Alicia and Will mutually realising that their affair can’t last, Peter’s reintegration into her life (albeit not as her partner) and Kalinda tracking down Grace and, one assumes, ultimately winning her way back into Alicia’s good books, made the episode feel thematically complete as well as emotionally exhausting.

Gossip Girl, Season 5, Episode 10: Riding in Town Cards with Boys

Gossip Girl mid-season finales are a finely-tuned art by this point.  There’s a big party, a declaration of love,the realisation that one character has loved another character all along and an accident that poses a purposeless cliff-hanger.  This week was no exception, but it was also – tellingly – the best episode of the season so far, if only for the collection sigh of relief that the show at last seems to have dropped Louis.  Realising that Chuck has genuinely changed, Blair is placed in a quandary over whether to choose him over the father of her child, a decision not helped by Dan’s apparent desperation to blurt out his feelings for her.  This, in turn, is made problematic by Serena apparently realising that she’s still in love with Dan.  And where else but on the CW would you find a character realising true love through their internet history?  Thanks in part to the show embracing both Dan and Serena’s sadness, this particular game of romantic musical chairs works well, with Dan bringing Blair to Chuck in order to make her happy, and Serena likewise not letting her true feelings slip out.  Whisked away from Charlie’s debutante ball after a Gossip Girl blast reveals their whereabouts, Chuck and Blair are involved in a car crash that doesn’t look too serious, but will doubtless be how Blair loses the baby, since there’s no way the show isn’t tying up that loose end with anything other than a storyline-killing accident.  This all ties nicely to Charlie, who sent the Gossip Girl blast in order to distract from Max’s threats to expose her.  That she reveals all of this to Rufus (who has three unlikely heart-to-hearts this week) begs belief, but hopefully this will see an end to a character that has dragged down this season like a lead balloon.

Homeland, Season 1, Episode 10: Representative Brody

With the last two episodes being largely devoted to character study, a more plot-driven episode was due, and “Representative Brody” marked the beginning of a race to the finish.  Carrie’s story was the strongest this week, as they interrogate the Saudi ambassador over his meetings with Tom Walker and connections to Abu Nazir.   That the ambassador just so happens to be gay seems awfully convenient at first, before he tells Carrie that he doesn’t care about being outed.  It’s then that Carrie, after being told by Saul to “fucking eviscerate” him, threatens his Yale-educated daughter with deportation, where she will be forced to wear a burkha, forced into an arranged marriage and grow fat.  It’s a terrific scene, all the more so because of Claire Danes’ committed performance, which is something of a marvel at this point.  When they ask the ambassador to arrange a meeting with Walker, they are instead faced with a homeless man fitting Walker’s description holding a suitcase with a bomb inside.  The realisation that something was up, and Carrie’s inability to stop it made for a tightly wound coil of a scene, culminating in the death of their only real lead to Nazir (and link to Brody).  If I had one complaint about this episode, it was the speed with which Brody has been positioned as a congressional candidate.  His manipulation of both Mike and Jessica were a fascinating insight into how he works, and I appreciated the fact that Jessica twigged exactly what her husband was up to.  The supportive wife/girlfriend is a common character in thrillers, and all too often she acts solely as a nag, reminding her husband about the importance of family, so it’s nice to see that the show is eager to flesh this character out more.  It just feels like this turn of events might have happened a little more gradually had there been more than two episodes left of the season, although Damien Lewis’ ambiguous performance is as watchable as ever.  I imagine that this will be how Season 2 pans out, with Walker marking the climax for Season 1, and Carrie eventually realising that she was right all along as Brody makes his inevitable move into politics.  But, as with everything else on this show, it never pays to second guess anything.

Pan Am, Season 1, Episode 9: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

With rumours circulating about imminent cancellation, Pan Am was under pressure to really delivery before it went on hiatus.  Did it manage to do so?  Not really. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” isn’t a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, it’s rather promising.  But the show still doesn’t seem to have found its feet yet which, for an entertaining piece of nostalgia-fluff, doesn’t bode well.  Some intriguing character beats made up for a lot, but the plotting didn’t really come together.  The most successful plot strand involved Dean taking Colette back to meet his parents who, as it turns out, knew nothing of Bridget’s disappearance, and when his father throws in the fact that Dean was all set to propose to her, Colette is understandably unhappy.  Whilst Dean’s rationale in pursuing Collette over Bridget (because she’s “real” apparently) is rather flimsy, the sexual tension of the will they/won’t they is much more engaging than that between Ted and Laura.  Simmering along uninterestingly for weeks, she finally realises that he’s not such a bad guy after all.  And at the very moment he hooks up with an old flame!  Why this particular storyline had to rope in a replacement pilot intent on feeling Laura up is anyone’s guess.  At least the episode tried to push into new territory with Maggie and Kate, the latter of which makes the move from courier after “one last job” to actual spy, shooting an assailant in a jewellery shop in London, which marked the requisite mid-season cliff-hanger.  Meanwhile, the show finally tried to get to grips with Maggie, whose politics have been underserved by Christina Ricci’s peppy performance and a storyline that thought throwing in a beatnik roommate was enough to stand in for the character’s left-leaning attitude.  Here she starts a heated debate with a congressmen, arguing against nuclear disarmament and then starting a fire in his hotel room.  It’s the most consistent thing she’s had to do since her flashback episode a few weeks back, and much needed.  So, finally, there isn’t really enough to make the show worth saving, but even if it’s only making small steps forwards, at least it’s not regressing.

Revenge, Season 1, Episode 10: Loyalty

One of the things that has made Emily so interesting a character on Revenge,rather than just a blank cipher, is her relationship with Nolan.  Not only does he provide a solid connection to her past and her father, but he also acts as Emily’s right-hand man, helping her out in a tight spot and, alternately, acting as her conscience.  The moments when we’ve been most shocked by Emily’s behaviour have all been when she’s coldly told Nolan that she doesn’t care about the inevitable collateral damage she might be causing.  But this week Nolan cut his ties with Emily after she uses the sex tape he made of him and Tyler to have Conrad try to fire his young protégé, thereby bringing to light Tyler’s own knowledge of Conrad’s involvement in David’s sentencing.  It’s a tricky chain of events, and for once Emily manages to pull it off seamlessly.  What cripples her this week are her emotional attachments, with Jack growing closer to the real Emily, Satoshi abandoning her because she has developed feelings for Daniel, and Nolan giving her a justified dressing-down for betraying the one true ally she really has.  And so, whilst Revenge’s midseason finale seemed to be all steak and no sizzle, it places its protagonist in a completely isolated position, one from which it’s going to be hard for her to recover from.

1. sportsmemorabiliablog reblogged this from stripyhorse23
2. stripyhorse23 posted this