Happy Valenbirthiversary!

Posts 4 days in row! Way to go me. I don’t know what’s more impressive – that, or the fact that I’m still doing recaps of V. Probably the V thing. Well luckily I also have reviews of last night’s episodes of Modern Family and Off the Map.

And stay tuned again tomorrow when I reveal my Oscar picks for this weekend. I’m hoping to get a little competition going so get your own picks ready.

You know how this works... spoilers.

Modern Family – “Regrets Only” (A-)

The theme of last night’s Modern Family was communication. Claire and Phil have a fight, only Phil has no idea what over. Cameron thinks Mitchell doesn’t listen to him, which is exacerbated by the fact that Cameron forgot to mail the invitations to Cam’s big charity benefit. And Jay doesn’t have to heart to tell Gloria he wants her to stop using the Karaoke machine he got her for her birthday (she has a particularly great rendition of Angel of the Morning).

This episode had the kind of intermingling I love to see from Modern Family. I don’t know what it is about these odd couple pairings, but this show is almost always better when they break out of the familiar family dynamics. Phil and Gloria were perfect examples. I loved their hair cutting scene, where Phil goes through all the reasons why Claire might be mad, only to end with Gloria telling him “I kill you” if he were ever to do that to her.

And who would have thought pairing Cam and Luke together would be so hilarious (I guess probably the writers). The contrast between them was played for some great laughs, and Luke’s misunderstanding of pretty much every instruction given to him really highlighted how funny Cam is when he’s in party throwing mode. The head sets were a particularly nice touch here. But my favourite exchange between these two came as Cam was freaking out over how he was going to salvage his benefit.

CAM: What are we going to do?
LUKE: I could start a fire.
CAM: No... well keep that in your back pocket.

Everything of course ended on a positive note, starting with Phil and Claire. It turns out Claire was mad at Phil because she felt like he’d never taken any of her suggestions. So to show her that he does in fact value her opinion, he brought out a photo album and went over all the ways Claire has put her stamp on his life, including getting rid of a pony tail and changing his major away from forestry (one of the most hilarious of majors).

And just like Phil with Claire, Mitchell came through for Cam with some last minute party guests.  Their joyful reunion after the fact was hilarious, especially when Cam yelled at the harp players for not scoring the moment. I also thought it was great that despite more than half the seats in the room being empty it was still double what the music society got last year for “cello submarine”.

And I have to quickly mention Manny, who was relatively quiet throughout the whole episode only to come in and steal the show in the final minutes. His ending breakdown over the karaoke machine was great, but it was his final line during the ending credits sequence that absolutely stole the entire episode.

MANNY: (after unplugging the karaoke machine Jay was singing with) You keep this up and this won’t be the last plug I pull.

Off the Map – “Es Un Milagro” (B+)

When the chopper went down at the end of the last episode, you knew this one was going to be a good one. “Es Un Milagro” may not have been as intense as I’d envisioned – that exploding chopper didn’t do it for me – but what they gave us instead was equally enjoyable. I think it may be because they managed to focus on my three favourite characters in this episode that made it so enticing.

First off, how awesome is the Charlie/Tommy bromance? These two are hilarious together. Charlie in particular had a great episode. As unrealistic as it was for Tommy and Keeton to use him in that surgery, I couldn’t help but love the scene. I also love that he’s training himself to be a surgeon. It kind of reminds me of The Cider House Rules a little, and I wouldn’t mind seeing the writers delve a little more into this storyline. Also funny was the reveal at the end that Charlie basically lives in a mansion. It was way nicer than Tommy’s place, which makes his “I need to know you’re not living in a cardboard box” comment all the more funny.

Clark’s story this week was a good one as well, revealing a few more details about her looming health problems. Her scenes with the little girl were all really sweet, and in all honesty I’m absolutely falling in love with her character. Kudos again to Rachelle Lefevre for bringing such a wonderfully upbeat character to life.

The revelation at the end of the episode that she was going into heart failure really put the heat on this storyline, and I can’t see a quick resolution to it. Perhaps they put her on restrictive duty or something. Oh! But then for some reason she has to go out into the field, and it’s all dangerous and what not. Huh? I really should be writing these things. Well whatever they do they better not kill her off. Mark my words, I will not be happy.

Mina was also involved in a pretty heavy storyline this week, as she was forced to confront a similar situation to the one that got her kicked out of her previous residency. Her quiet desperation as she worked to save her patient only made the patient’s death all the more painful. Her final breakdown was well played by Mamie Gummer and I can’t wait to see the repercussions of this storyline in next week’s episode.

And of the course the episode concluded with Brenner finding out her new boyfriend Mateo happens to be a cocaine farmer. It wasn’t exactly a shocking turn of events considering he came into the clinic with a gunshot wound a couple weeks ago, but the reveal was still done well. It should be interesting to see the fallout from that discovery. I can’t imagine Mateo’s employers being too happy about Brenner finding out about the farm.

V – “Birth Pangs” (C+)

I know I ripped into this show pretty hard last week. I haven’t changed my mind about what I said either. I’m tired of the apparent lack of planning when it comes to the writing on this show. This week’s episode did a little better on the writing front, but not anywhere close to where it needed to be. I think it may be time for V to die a quiet peaceful death.

There was some hope for this show in last week’s episode, with Erica taking over the reins as the leader of the Fifth Column. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to capitalize on that momentum this week. With Eli’s contacts not confident in her ability to lead, Erica sets out to prove herself to them – by breaking into her former doctor’s apartment... for some reason.

These are the kind of sequences V does very poorly. They set up a bunch of seemingly random obstacles for our characters to overcome in an attempt to evoke some tension, but they do their set-ups so haphazardly that it completely defeats the purpose. The audience knows if you’ve hastily thrown it together within the episode, the characters are in no real danger of getting caught or having any permanent repercussions. And that’s exactly what happened here. Why would the police have video surveillance on an apartment building? Why do they only have 15 minutes before the camera resets? It’s all completely arbitrary, which makes the sequence feel arbitrary.

And speaking of Erica and Hobbes, was it just me or were the writers trying to set the groundwork for a future romance between them? I really hope not considering Erica’s ex-husband died LAST EPISODE, and that was already an incredibly forced romance in its own right. If they really wanted us to believe that her feelings for her ex-husband were real, instead of just an artificial way to make his death meaningful (which is what it was) then you’ve got to give her character time to mourn. Don’t just throw her into another forced relationship.

You know she's serious -- she's wearing sunglasses!

The other annoying thing about this episode, like every week, was the storyline surrounding Tyler. After spending the entirety of the first two season’s trying to take him from his mother like the survival of her species depended on it, Anna gets Tyler on board her ship permanently only to decide that he’s no longer useful to her (or some crap about phosphorus). You know, pretty much a complete betrayal of everything that came before this episode. If Tyler was completely replaceable all along, there is absolutely no reason for Anna to go to the lengths she did to get him to trust her. Really stupid.

The one saving grace of this episode was Lisa, who not only stood up to her mother for the first time this week, but delivered some actually interesting information to this series for the first time. According to the information she acquired for Chad, the Vs go from planet to planet taking the best genes from every species they encounter in an effort to speed up their own evolution. Finally you can see why the Vs care so much about human emotion. For a species that absorbs all the best genes of other species, which genes work and which don’t would be incredibly important. Although all of this is based on the assumption that out of all the species they have encountered in the universe, humans are the only ones with emotions.