Category: Episode Reviews
-
Season Finale — Terriers, “Hail Mary”
I’m a little short on time, but I certainly wanted to get some thoughts about the Terriers finale out there. Even though I suggested it might be fine for Terriers to drive off into the sunset (to Mexico, apparently) after this one great season, I still approached the season finale, “Hail Mary,” with some sadness.…
-
Human Target, “Taking Ames”
Apologies for my lack of review for last week’s Human Target, but I didn’t find much to discuss and it was right before Thanksgiving. I took some time off. It happens. Tonight’s episode, “Taking Ames” is probably on the same level of “meh,” particularly because of its focus on one of the team’s new members…
-
Season Finale — Sons of Anarchy, “NS”
As Sons of Anarchy‘s third season comes to close, I found myself wondering if I could even muster up the energy to write about the finale, “NS,” and the season as a whole. I looked back to my thoughts on the freaking awesome premiere, “SO,” and also my Summer Surveillance posts on the series —…
-
Raising Hope, “Burt Rocks”
I haven’t checked in with Raising Hope since the “Happy Halloween”/”Family Secrets” double feature almost a month ago, but that’s not because I haven’t been watching. Well, that’s not true, as I missed last week’s episode due to Thanksgiving travel. In any event, Raising Hope is still damn good fun and much, much better than…
-
Glee, “Special Education”
Glee‘s competition episodes should be a big event. Of all the things the series does really well, it’s big, celebratory moments. Those moments don’t require any subtlety and instead the series can just revel in grand gestures, lots of smiles and soaring hooks. The wedding sequences last week we just wonderful, despite the angelic rendering of…
-
Dexter, “In The Beginning”
After last week’s quick detour, “In The Beginning” ramps up the crazy as we head towards the conclusion to a very solid season of Dexter. The episode features a number of great moments, makes Jordan more of an interesting character and of course, features a complicated ending that surely has all fans talking. Let’s start…
-
The Walking Dead, “Wildfire”
I’ve taken something of a hiatus from reviewing over the Thanksgiving holiday, and it is very nice to return slightly refreshed with a really tremendous episode of The Walking Dead. I know I’ve been hard on the series thus far, but I think a lot of that stems from the fact that I think the…
-
Glee, “Furt”
Marrying the conclusion of Glee‘s “bullying trilogy” with an extremely fun celebration of a wedding is one of the weirder mash-ups the series has done over its run, but despite a number of issues — doesn’t every episode of Glee have a number of issues? — “Furt” pulls things together in such a way that…
-
House, “Small Sacrifices”
Last week, I praised House for avoiding some of the melodramatic nonsense this season that made the last two sometimes excruciating to watch. So of course, this week’s episode, “Small Sacrifices” brings back the melodrama in full force! Stupid column. Anyway, “Small Sacrifices” is definitely the worst episode of the season, even if it does feature a…
-
Chuck, “Chuck Versus Phase Three”
Last week, I said that the nonsense with Rob Riggle and the sketchiness of how the Intersect wouldn’t totally be a loss if the makeshift part two of that story was effective and satisfying. Well, even though “Chuck Versus Phase Three” didn’t do a few of the things I hoped it would last night, it…
-
Dexter, “Teenage Wasteland”
The last few episodes of Dexter have been moving a fairly speedy pace for the middle of the season, but “Teenage Wasteland” brings most of that pacing to a screeching halt so it bring up a primary story from the first few episodes that was mostly dropped so that Dexter could get on with the…
-
Smallville, “Patriot”
Sorry for the delay folks, with the holidays and the end of the semester coming up, it’s going to be something of a crazy time for me. After last week’s episode solidified a number of things in the overarching plot, “Patriot” pushes that narrative forward in a very satisfying way, while still dealing with some…
-
Luther, “Episode Six”
Luther started immensely strong and then unfortunately toiled away in solid, but not tremendously so procedural fare for a few episodes before then flipping the switch on the crazy last week. In the finale to this series’ six-part first run, that sense of crazy continued a nice pace without going too far off the deep…
-
The Walking Dead, “Vatos”
From the beginning, the discussion around The Walking Dead has been about how it would balance its obvious appeals (zombies, zombie violence and more zombies) with a character focus that will help it become a successful television series. The first three episodes, despite a few solid moments in the character regard, didn’t really convince me…
-
Community, “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design”
After last week’s epic, but ultimately small-in-scale episode, Community starts to build back upward with an episode that is heavy on the pop culture references, but doesn’t explicitly reference certain texts or spend an entire episode focusing on that one genre/text/whatever. “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design” probably isn’t the technically “best” episode of the season,…
CB, PhD 