True Blood, 4.9: "Let's Get Out of Here" and 4.10: "Burning Down the House"
- It's made for kind of a whackadoo mix of storylines, but I love how the various spiritual possessions, skinwalking ventures and V-induced dreams have broadened the range of material that TB's ensemble has to play with.
- I'm sort of of two minds about this season. On the one hand, I think this season has done the best job of any so far of drawing upon the books; the books take place from Sookie's point of view, so she sort of darts in and out of the situations concerning different characters, and the show has established a broad enough cast of regulars that each of those stories has someone we know in it, which I think makes the audience more invested in everything that's going on than we've been in past seasons. On the other hand - like I said above, the mix has tended to be more crazy than cohesive.
Pretty Little Liars, 2.11: "I Must Confess"
- Oh, Dr. Sullivan. As soon as she told Emily that she knew, I was all, "Tell her over the phone, you're obviously going to get murdered!" Between the therapist's disappearance and Emily's Tragic Massage of Epic Creepiness, A's really starting to transgress some serious boundaries.
- Speaking of A, I loved the little "Update on Major Suspects" sweep through the audience for the doctor's hilariously unsubtle speech on text bullying, especially since Noel, Lucas and Mona had no lines or other scenes in the episode. I love when a show grinds the gears into place for a finale.
- Mr. Hastings, making a late-in-the-game play for Creepiest Weirdo in Rosewood! (Amid stiff competition!)
Pretty Little Liars, 2.12: "Over My Dead Body"
- PLL is approaching Lost-esque levels of obliqueness with their persistent refusal to offer concrete answers to their ongoing mysteries (I believe Garrett and Jenna were behind most, if not all, of the machinations of this episode, but enough of the notes related to that business were unsigned that I don't think they're necessarily A), but they do totally out-there creepiness better than just about any other show on television. Those dolls were truly something else.
- The idea of doing a one-off flashback Halloween episode is genius. More cable shows should have holiday episodes independent of their seasonal arcs. A Sons of Anarchy Christmas! Valentine's Day at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!
Doctor Who, 6.8: "Let's Kill Hitler" and 6.9: "Night Terrors"
- I've tended to like the episodes focused on the quartet of the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River, but more and more it seems like the actors are landing the big emotional moments while having to spackle over some increasingly gaping plot holes. Like, as an immediate reaction, I would say that I liked this episode a lot, but if I think about it for more than about five minutes, my head swarms with unanswered questions and a creeping desire to try to pick apart the timeline. (see also: Point #5 in the io9 article linked below) Still, a delightfully energetic performance from Alex Kingston and great banter from Steven Moffat. Obviously, I'm torn. Strike this one down to revisit when the arc picks up again.
- "Night Terrors" is a solid episode, with a legitimately scary conceit in the dollhouse of horrors, done a serious disservice by airing out of production order. Declining to tie the episode's themes of the importance of family love and embracing an unconventional child to the broader arc of the story of the Williams-Ponds makes the characters seem flaky at best (and callous at worst: Rory's joke about letting the monsters get the boy feels...inappropriate given that, you know, his baby got kidnapped by nefarious aliens) and makes the writers seem like they're not paying attention to what's going on. If they absolutely had to move things around, it might've been better to switch this one with, say, "Curse of the Black Spot."
- This post is about to get totally linktastic. First! An interesting piece from io9 about things Doctor Who could do differently.
- AND: Steven Moffat is seemingly everywhere giving interviews about the second half of this series
- Alan Sepinwall at HitFix Interview
- Mo Ryan at AOLTV Interview
Miscellaneous Other Links:
- Not terribly detailed, but with awesome, military-uniform-including cast photo: On the second series of Downton Abbey (Aside: Dear PBS, If the BBC can work it out so Brits and Americans can all watch the same new episode of Doctor Who on the same calendar date, can we please work on the timing of the Masterpiece selections' trip across the pond? I feel antsy just thinking about having to wait extra months for DA and Sherlock. Affectionately, Liz)
- Between Comic-Con, the TCA and the upcoming Emmys and start to the fall season, there's a veritable smorgasbord of showrunner interviews popping up all over the place online. The Daily Beast interview with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss is kind of delightful; they're clearly really jazzed to have the opportunity to dive further into George R.R. Martin's sprawling cast of characters.
- A.V. Club interviews with two of my very favorite TV people: Victor Garber and Martin Starr
- I'm fascinated by the ongoing discussions around AMC, their evolving brand identity, and what seems to be a growing suspicion among commentators that within the next few years their whole original programming enterprise could collapse like a house of cards. I started in on a post a few weeks ago, following the whole rigamarole around Kurt Sutter leaving Twitter - various outlets tried to frame it as some sort of showrunner smacktalk showdown, but I think that at the heart of what Sutter was saying about AMC, Mad Men and The Walking Dead was a criticism of the network for not managing its properties in a balanced way - but it sort of got lost in the shuffle (as too many posts do.)
Anyway: a fairly comprehensive timeline of this year's developments for the network from the New York Times and an excellent Vulture piece from this week. Potentially more thoughts on this in the future, maybe with the end of this season of Breaking Bad (a show I like, and certainly I can recognize why people love it, but I've had a few Sundays this summer where I've missed watching programs that night, and Breaking Bad is never the show I'm really burning to catch up on, you know?), especially if there are any more announcements that give off that "throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" vibe.
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