It’s very late, so forgive me if this post is a little incoherent. It was another slow Monday night, but we do have The Event and Castle for you. Enjoy.
Spoilers...
The Event – “You Bury Other Things Too” (C+)
Perhaps they should have taken their two week break after the last episode, because this week’s was not the best one to go out on. Not only was it was a transition episode to the core, but it managed to accentuate one of this show’s glaring weaknesses – their ability to develop storylines at an organic pace.
Simon’s story in this episode was the most glaring example. I really didn’t like how quickly they brought him from witnessing the deaths of his fellow NTBs to being back on the side of humanity. His escape scene was not handled well. Is it just me or does it seem like whenever the NTBs need to accomplish something for the story to move forward, the military or the Secret Service just become incredibly incompetent? The Secret Service (or whoever the suits were) just watched him drive away. So he got into a car. Isn’t there some way you could chase him? Like say, in another car?
One awkward time cut away and he’s somehow made it back to all the other NTBs. Now he’s free to disagree with Sophia’s new directive and get betrayed by his own people. As an audience member it feels like I’m getting jerked around. Like I’m not watching the storyline the writers want to tell, I’m watching them force the one they do want to tell. It cheapens the episode in my opinion. I understand the need to transition to new storylines, but you can’t cram it all into a single episode without making things feel rushed. And I really thought there was a promising storyline in the President discovering Simon’s true identity. I was looking forward to a confrontation between the two of them, but didn’t get that here. Though I have a feeling that Leila is going to help Simon escape, so who knows – he may be back on the government’s team in an episode or two.
I also have a problem with Sophia’s sudden change of heart regarding the NTBs prime directive. She has plenty of reasons to change her mind about the way she deals with humans. The President killed a lot of her people and her species is doomed to extinction if they can’t find a new planet. My problem lies in the fact that she’s seemingly doing it out of anger over Thomas’s death. Thomas killed a ton of her people too. The President’s attack on the NTBs was a direct response to his attacks. Now all of a sudden Thomas is a saint and you have to carry on his work. Come on.
That’s not to say that I’m entirely thrilled with the President at the moment. This episode was exactly what I was worried about when they started to makeover his character. I said this last week too but the problem with his character before wasn’t necessarily that he wasn’t aggressive enough, it was that he wasn’t smart. Now he’s a jerk who’s still not very smart. That’s even less likable. Maybe this is all just a planned character arc by the writers, but the shortcomings of their execution are starting to hurt the character.
His decision in this episode to test every American’s DNA was ridiculous. Logistically, that’s just plain impossible and I really don’t understand why Senator Madsen’s involved. Last time we saw her she was publically challenging him on national television and now all of a sudden she’s more than willing to run an incredibly illegal operation for him. Certainly finding out about the NTBs couldn’t be that game changing for her.
And last but not least we had Vicky and Sean, who failed to live up to their momentum from the week before. The shoot out and Vicky’s subsequent capture was fine, but I didn’t like their scenes with each other before that happened. Vicky’s this is what happens when you kill people speech was a little over the top for me and I’m not sure if I completely buy her coming back after Sean released her. I guess they haven’t entirely worked the bugs out of Sean’s storyline yet.
Castle – “Slice of Death” (B+)
Castle was Castle again this week. I feel like I say the same things every week. "This show is good, I really liked the episode." This week I'll give you a little taste of the plot and drop some themes from the episode that I really liked.
The case this week was based on a body being found in a pizza oven. A charring sight to say the least. (You see what I did there? That’s called a pun.) Anyway, the pizza joint in question is one of 4 pizza places with essentially the same name. Throughout the episode I never got them straight. There is Terrific Nick's, Authentic Nick's, Terrific Authentic Nick's, Authentic Terrific Nick's. At least I think that’s what they were called. There were some combinations like that. And none of the guys who own the places are actually named Nick. Anyway, these pizza places are "at war" with one another and this war took its first casualty.
Initially, the team looks into the other 3 pizza places, as well as the proprietor of the one where the body was found, but it doesn't add up that these guys would go from putting soap in each other's sauces to killing someone and sticking the body in an oven.
When the body is identified as a popular writer for a local paper doing a puff piece on Pizza wars, the team starts to look at other avenues. It looks like the writer, who used to do investigative journalism before a personal tragedy, found something bigger than just feuding pizza parlours. He found heroin dealers.
So the guy got whacked for finding out too much, and eventually Castle and Beckett put it together and figure out who "Cavallo" the mythical heroin dealer is. It’s a good twist. A little predictable, but solid none the less.
As far as the themes from this week go, I really liked the parallels between the dead reporter who lost his daughter and Castle’s struggle to defend his daughter against a bully at school.
In other news, for those of you who read some of my stuff at the beginning of the year on my own blog I wrote a review of why I like Castle so much and talked about the characters and actors, etc. etc. One of the things I said was that Molly Quinn (Alexis) should be cast as Clary if they ever make a movie of the Mortal Instruments series. Well the other day she tweeted something about the new Mortal Instruments that I didn't really understand. It turns out that she was cast for the series, but as the narrator of the audiobook. So they are making a movie of the series, but didn't cast her, even though she’s a fan of the books and clearly looks the part. Anyway, I care little about teen fiction for young women and their cinematographic counterparts but I was hoping to cash in on a percentage of that casting cheque. Seems like Hollywood dropped the ball on that one. How mundane of them (that is also wordplay, but none of you get it, and it’s better that way).
Well that’s all for today folks. I've got a big day tomorrow. Going to Home Depot, maybe Bed Bath and Beyond. I don't know if we’ll have enough time. Actually, I'm studying for exam 4 of 11. Peace.
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