TB is one of those shows that's difficult to assess mid-season - they keep so many balls in the air at once that it feels premature to comment on any one specific storyline until they conclude. However, two delightful things of note about this episode: Jessica working at Merlotte's and Jason becoming a faux-police officer.
Degrassi: The Heat is On
Simultaneously a solid kick-off to the new summer format and great unofficial sign-off for the remaining members of the show's original cast. Spinner and Emma's sudden Niagara Falls wedding shouldn't have worked nearly as well as it did, but Shane Kippel and Miriam McDonald sold it with an easy chemistry and I think both characters had been sufficiently established over the past decade as a bit impulsive and as serial monogamists in love with love. Also, a new Great Moment in Music Supervision: the choice of Ke$ha's "Your Love is My Drug" as the soundtrack to Fiona's drunken meltdown, like the tacky cherry on the drama sundae of her creepy relationship with her brother.
Degrassi: The Boiling Point
So far, the show seems to be benefitting from the switch to a more serialized format. It makes the ensemble feel more cohesive. After a few years of awkward transition from the original cast, they've finally started to recapture the ethos of Degrassi at its best.
Covert Affairs
So Anne Dudek's character has to turn out evil, right? Like Francie on Alias? They can't just waste such an awesome actress on only being the protagonist's sibling who nags her about balancing her priorities, right? RIGHT?
So You Think You Can Dance
I think when this season concludes, dancer injuries will make it impossible to objectively assess the success or failure of the All-Star format. It remains to be seen in the coming weeks a) whether everyone can stay healthy and b) whether anyone can derail the Kent Boyd Express. It probably says a lot about this season that I'm more interested to see what they do for the remaining "Meet the All-Stars" segments, since no two dancers yet to be profiled have a routine in common. It seems unlikely that they'd bring back Ivan, Sabra, Melissa and Legacy to dance with their former partners, but a fan can dream, right?
Top Chef
It's a little heavy-handed and obviously works best with the whole DC setting, but it's kind of surprising that more reality shows don't use the Cold War as a thematic construct for competitions. Isn't creating paranoia out of thin air what reality contestants are all about?
Friday Night Lights
For never having been a regular cast member, Brad Leland is really an MVP for FNL. Though Buddy sometimes comes across as a buffoon, you could feel the emotion underscoring his conversation with the coach about taking his Panthers ring off. Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria and Jurnee Smollett have admirably served the show's new settings, but it's those moments that acknowledge FNL's path over the past few years where it really shines.
Ongoing:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
- Finished the final season of Buffy and the penultimate season of Angel. I liked Buffy's focus on the Slayer mythology, though its feminism was a bit self-conscious where in the past it felt more effortless. I had some misgivings about the show returning to Sunnydale High, but ultimately it served as an apt setting for the final battle. Angel's fourth season was appealingly dark compared with its predecessor, but I could've done with less cult-y mind control in the run-up to the finale. You know intellectually that the show's not going to end with "And then everyone in the world was in thrall to the villain! The End!" Stories like that just turn into a waiting game.
- Series finales always make me cry. It's probably one of the lamer things about me. Dollhouse being the first Whedon property I watched meant that it was impossible to read any Internet discussion of the show without getting spoiled on practically every major character death for every other show. In this case, though, knowing what to expect didn't really make too much of a difference.
- It seems like Buffy's network switch from the WB to UPN limited the potential for crossovers between the two shows, but I feel like there should be more communication between the two groups of evil-fighters. ("We're totally dealing with an apocalypse here!" "OMG, us too!") This came out glaringly in Faith's exclusion from the Buffy narrative until relatively late in the game. (I'm glad, at least, that Faith points out at the beginning of "Dirty Girls" that being in prison made her less "secure" and more "a sitting duck.") An evil power is trying to wipe out the entire line of Slayers and Watchers - wouldn't the semi-retired Slayer and her ex-Watcher, now with 75% more badassedness, be first on the list to alert about that?
- We seem to be getting to the point where Whedon starts doing a little repertory-building, casting Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres as villains in multi-episode late-season arcs on Buffy and Angel respectively, which must've happened fairly shortly after the cancellation of Firefly.
- I'll probably stick a toe in apiece on the Season Eight comics and the existing academic scholarship on Buffy. (There's a whole online journal! Called Slayage! How could I possibly resist?)
Rewatching:
Freaks and Geeks - "Tricks and Treats"
I flipped to IFC's re-aired episode of Freaks and Geeks after True Blood ended on Sunday. It's a bit odd - they're airing the episodes as they are on the DVDs, so even though it's on TV the act breaks don't lead to commercials. "Tricks and Treats" is probably sort of in the middle of the pack for me if I ranked the episodes of F&G, but I think that even when I'm seventy years old, I will still find Martin Starr in drag as the Bionic Woman hilarious.
Mad Men
Started with "The Fog" and went up through the season finale.
- It's interesting to watch Mad Men again after a season of seeing Alison Brie on Community. Obviously, the styling helps, but Brie also pitches her voice lower and carries herself differently on Mad Men. I love Trudy - she's so clearly determined to make the best of her marriage with Pete, no matter how much of a doofus (or sexual-assaulter-of-neighbors'-au-pairs) he is. He's going to live up to his potential if it kills her.
- Some characters grow on me upon rewatching - I'm genuinely interested to learn more about Henry Francis and Lane's cranky wife - but Suzanne is simply not one of them. The whole "Look at me!/Don't look at me!/How dare you look at me with your lustful thoughts!/Take me, I'm yours!" deal got really tiresome really fast.
- So, Kristoffer Polaha's on Life Unexpected, Anne Dudek's on Covert Affairs, and Betty is presumably moving to Casa Francis, which I assume is somewhere around Albany. Have we seen the end of Francine and Carlton?
- Two all-time favorite moments: Roger's mother calling Jane "Margaret" in "The Color Blue" and Joan breaking the vase over Greg's head in "The Gypsy and the Hobo"
- The "The Gypsy and the Hobo" - "The Grown-ups" - "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." triptych may be my favorite sequence of episodes of the show's entire run. It's much easier to see the plots and characters moving towards the major developments of these episodes when you watch the season back all in one go, but they still feel exciting and revelatory. Perhaps most important, they make you feel like the show's writers have much more to share with its viewers. Starting tonight!
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