Category Archives: TV-G[eek]

The X-Files S2 E1

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“Little Green Men”

The second season of The X-Files started with a solid episode involving the mythology of the series. The X-Files has been shut down at the FBI and Mulder and Scully have been reassigned. Mulder is doing brain-numbing stake-out, listening to tapes.

Mulder is starting to doubt what he had seen. Mulder losing his faith is a theme that has happened a couple of times over the series’ run.

Mulder gets pointed to a outpost where contact has been made from space. There is a frightened Puerto Rican man, Jorge. Jorge runs out during a storm and is killed.

Scully has to try and find where Mulder is, while avoiding the people watching his apartment.

There is a tense scene where we get a glimpse at the first extraterrestrial on the series.

Mulder showed off some awesome combat driving too as he and Scully tried escaping from a military outfit arriving to get rid of the evidence at the site.

It was a cool episode but I want the X-Files at the FBI back.

Moonlighting S2 E15

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“Witness for the Execution”

I remember not being that big of a fan of this episode when it first aired back in the 1980s. It lacked all the bombastic chases scenes and comedy that I had come to expect from an episode of Moonlighting. I was much younger then and, after watching it this morning, I have a much different opinion on “Witness for the Execution.”

A ninety-year old man arrived at the Blue Moon Detective Agency to hire someone to come and witness his own murder. He told Dave and Maddie that he had set up a man to come and shut off his oxygen and he needed an observer to tell the police that it was a murder.

Dave and Maddie argued over the case, of course. Dave said he understood what the man wanted and Maddie said that the company would not take the case and if David wanted to do this, he was on his own.

When David showed up to tell the man that he had changed his mind, he discovered that the man was already dead. David tried to turn the machines back on, thus making it look as if he had been the person who had killed him.

This led to a tense meeting in the parking garage between David and Maddie where David told her that he was leaving, going underground. They shared an unexpected kiss. making the situation even more awkward.

Maddie was able to figure out the truth of the murder in the best piece of observation that she had ever had during the series.

The scene where David told Maddie about the events of what happened was some of the best acting that we have gotten out of Bruce Willis during the series’ run.

Admittedly, there were a few questions I had about the plot that had to happen in order to set this meeting up, especially why David took off in the first place. He believed that he had accidentally killed the man, but that seemed an odd thought considering the situation. However, everything with the case was really secondary and used as a trigger to get to the kiss. Moonlighting was, once again, the relationship between David and Maddie above everything else.

Picket Fences S3 E6, E7, E8, E9

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The running storyline of the season has been the struggle of race relations and the first of these three episodes is part of that, but then the next two do not include it. The last two go back to the Brian Latham case.

“Elective Conducts”

The Rome mayoral campaign dominates the episode, and Jill faces more controversy as Zack writes a report that included racial stereotypes. When Zack is confronted by a group of black students in the rest room, Zack peed on them in self-defense. It was shocking.

When it came to the mayor’s race, Carter stepped up and became a true challenger in the election. So much so that, when Jill realized that she had no chance, Jill decided to drop out and support him instead.

Ed Lawson wound up winning the election in a 12 vote difference. Ed Lawson is Donald Trump decades before Donald Trump. It is actually a bizarre correlation.

“Rebels with Causes”

This is the crossover episode with David E. Kelley’s other TV show at the time, Chicago Hope. It guest starred Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, his character from the show.

Douglas Wambaugh collapses as he prepared for the trip to the Supreme Court. Jill believed he had a heart attack, but wanted to take him to Chicago to see a specialist. She then came into major conflict with Dr. Geiger, whose manner and attitudes rubbed her the wrong way.

Turned out that Doug had M.S. and not a heart attack.

There was also a conflict between Jimmy and Kimberly because Kimberly wanted to date Kenny. Jimmy flipped out over the possibility, and, like all things with Picket Fences, there is much deeper truths behind it. Everything here dated back to Jimmy’s infidelity.

One of my favorite moments was very meta in this episode when Jill commented that more people went to the other hospital (meaning the TV show ER which was also set in Chicago).

“May it Please the Court”

Douglas Wambaugh and John Littleton go to Washington to argue the Latham case.

This was an amazing acting episode from both Fyvush Finkel and Don Cheadle. Their passion showed through the great writing of the episode.

The Supreme Court justices are portrayed wonderfully by the group of the actors cast in these roles.

The second storyline going on in this episode was involving Carter. Carter had made an agreement to have a surrogate give birth to his child. When the surrogate decided she could not go through with it, she wanted to abort the baby. Kelly Connell gives a serious performance from a character that is usually used as a joke.

“For Whom the Wind Blows”

The Brian Latham case comes to a close here.

Maxine, Kenny, and John start to believe that Brian Latham was actually innocent. They convinced Judge Bone that he was innocent and that the father was the killer. Bone took to the court to sentence Latham, except, instead, he threw out the conviction stating that the evidence was not enough to convict. He overturned the conviction and set Latham free.

All of this came from Maxine’s hunch that the father had gone to confession to confess that he actually killed his daughter. Father Barrett would not break the seal of confession, but Max could tell from his expression that there was more to this story. Bone went to Father Barrett and asked him whether or not, in his opinion, Brian Latham was guilty. When Father Barrett said that he thought Latham was not guilty, he was implying to Bone what he knew.

The group went after the father, pushing hard for his wife to testify against him, offering immunity.

Then the mother tells the truth on the stand… she had killed the daughter in a fit of rage and the father had just helped cover it up.

Judge Bone had to, once again, skirt the rules as he said the immunity agreement was gone because the mother had committed fraud. In the end, the police got it done, if not with questionable methods.

Jimmy during this whole time started to have doubts if he could handle the position of sheriff any longer. He saw the fire in the eyes of John, Max and Kenny and Jimmy started to believe that he was in the way.

The Brian Latham storyline came to a close here with another shocking twist that Picket Fences was known for.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters S1 E4

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“Parallels and Interiors”

The week that Godzilla Minus One was released in the theaters, what was, in my opinion, the worst episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was dropped on Apple TV.

The episode focused on the lost crew in Alaska, facing off with an ice Titan that consumes heat/fire. It had a LOST feel with flashbacks back to when Kentaro and May met. It paralleled the dangers that they were facing after May got her legs wet in Alaska as they hid from the Titan.

Some of the scenes out in the snow were laughable. When Kentaro went off in his own direction and started to hallucinate, the show just felt as if it went off the rails.

I did like how Shaw, Kentaro, May and Cate were brought to Monarch at the very end of the episode, so I am hoping that next week’s episode picks things up.

The series’ Titans do look great, as did this undefined one.

Picket Fences S3 E5

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“Cold Spell”

The final day of the November Picket Fences DailyView Rewatch arrived. I watched today’s episode early this morning before I went to school and now I am doing the final write-up of November. I will continue watching Picket Fences episodes as I am currently in the third season, but it may not necessarily be every day. For the rest of the watch, if I have a day where I have a lot of things scheduled, I will not compel myself to watch an episode. I will absolutely continue to finish up season three and then go through season four of this series. I do love Picket Fences.

This was a tough episode because it started a trend. Ginny was found in her home, dead and inside a freezer. She had been dead for three weeks, according to Carter. It was a shocking death when I first saw the episode back in the 1990s and it was a reminder of how sad it was when one of the original cast was sent off in this manner.

Paul Williams came to Rome playing Ginny’s brother, who was struggling to understand why it took the people of Rome three weeks to realize that Ginny was missing. He never got a good answer to that question but, as Jill said, “Rome does well with funerals” and Ginny’s service was fully attended. Paul Williams sang a version of his classic song, Rainbow Connection in honor of Ginny.

Ed Lawson continued campaigning for mayor as an election was coming up. Carter declared his own candidacy for mayor, to a series of giggles from the crowd. Jill had decided to run last episode to become a duly elected mayor and not just the temporary mayor that she had been.

The other main story featured a Wiccan family whose daughter painted a pentagram on the school walls to protect herself from the fear of the black kids. Littleton was front and center for this, leading the way in trying to get the young girl removed from her mother’s care.

I find it fascinating that Rome, Wisconsin has Wiccan, Christian Scientists, Jews, Mormons and many other religions floating around, but they are shaken by the African Americans coming into the school. If there was any place that should fit in, Rome seems to be it.

Picket Fences S3 E4

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“Enemy Lines”

After trying to stop the bused Green Bay kids from coming to Rome, Wisconsin, Jill Brock, as one of the co-mayors, had to face the consequences of her actions as Judge Nance, played by Paul Winfield, marched into her office and placed her under arrest for contempt of a federal order.

He placed Jill in a jail cell and made noise that she was going to be the one that he made an example out of.

Nance took the time to come and see Jill and the pair of them spent most of the episode engaging verbally with each other. Both gave some great performances in the small jail cell. We learned about the motive of Nance, who had clearly had something driving him to be as desperate as he had been.

Meanwhile, John was struggling with the new normal of Rome, a town that suddenly felt less welcoming than it had before for the D.A. He even tried to get taken off the case heading to the Supreme Court, but Judge Bone would not recuse him.

Kimberly and one of the new black girls from Green Bay got into it as well. I remember these two becoming friends, but their start was extremely shaky. Kimberly was nervous and the other girl, named Aisha, picked up on it immediately, which led to a fight between them.

This was a decent episode, but honestly, some of the discussion between Nance and Jill felt forced. It was the typical Picket Fences fight that had its origins in other traumas. Here it turned out that Nance was dying of liver cancer and he was trying to fix race relations before he died. I’m also not certain that the inclusion of the story about his son made sense when they were including it. Winfield delivered it well, but I’m not sure it worked.

Moonlighting S2 E14

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“Every Daughter’s Father is a Virgin”

We get to meet Maddie’s parents in this episode, but the episode is not the happy reunion on might expect.

Turns out that Maddie’s father, Alexander Hayes, has been having an affair. Maddie’s mother, Virginia, confided in Maddie that she suspected the affair. Maddie was upset and decided that she would follow her father and prove that he was not cheating. However, David talked her out of it by offering to do the job instead.

We had a whole sequence set to “Poppa was a Rolling Stone” by The Temptations where David followed Mr. Hayes around Los Angeles, ending up at a hotel where Hayes had a room where his mistress was.

Finding out the truth, David told Maddie, who immediately wanted to tell her mother. David and Maddie once again engaged in a verbal joust about lying.

In the end, Maddie did not tell her mother, but confronted her father in a rageful manner.

Cybill Shepherd was excellent in this episode. She was given a pretty meaty role in this episode and she excelled at it. Bruce Willis really showed David’s concern for his partner and that he was actually good at following a mark.

Robert Webber and Eva Marie Saint played Maddie’s parents and hit every note pitch perfectly. That is why you cast this quality of actors in these roles.

The tone of this episode was much more serious than many of the Moonlighting episodes, though it was bookended by silliness, kicking off the episode with David and Maddie addressing the audience once again (with David wearing a McMahon headband???). They read letters from viewers all wondering when they were going to kiss.

The end of the episode included a major 4th wall breaking as David spoke directly to the camera.

This was an episode that showed that Moonlighting could go in a different direction than what they had done prior.

Picket Fences S3 E3

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“The Bus Stops Here”

Racial tensions take over Rome as a federal order came down that 400 black students from Green Bay would be bussed into Rome schools.

The parents of Rome got together, fully recognizing their prejudice, but trying to find a way to stop the kids from being brought in.

Paul Winfield played Federal court judge Harold Nance, who made the order. There were some epic scenes between him and Judge Henry Bone. Winfield and Ray Walston bring similar massive personas that take up the whole room.

I have to say that one of the things I really love about this show is how they use all of their secondary and tertiary characters are characters we have seen in previous episodes. Ed from the jury episode was back. So was a couple of the teachers from previous stories. It felt like a real little town with faces that we are familiar with. Cool.

The ending scene with the National Guard coming in to confront the Rome police department who was deployed to prevent the students from getting off the bus. The moment was tense, but Jimmy ordered his deputies to back down and the black kids walked into the school.

In a side story, the murder trial appeal winds up heading to the Supreme Court. Seeing Wambaugh and Littleton hugging in celebration was a hoot.

Bonus Action Vol. 1 E7

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“The Z Knights vs. The B Team”

The big battle over the Arcfire did not go very well at all.

In an epic encounter, our party battled through the combat doing what they could. The main antagonist was challenging and targeting Victor took our young hero down.

It felt tough for others in the group. Bric tried something desperate at the end that could have backfired, but Rory came up HUGE with a major Nat. 20 roll when he needed it.

I am avoiding too many details, because you should really watch the episode yourselves.

Picket Fences S3 E1 & E2

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E1: “Survival of the Fittest”

E2: “Systematic Abuse”

I kicked off the third season of Picket Fences with the first two episodes. They start it off with a murder case over a sixteen year old girl named Susan. A drifter named Brian Latham had tried to pick up the girl and is arrested for the crime.

When they could not find the girl, Kenny, who had found a cross among Brian’s things, went in to see Brian and asked him to help direct the police to a place where the body might be. Kenny asked him to help, Catholic to Catholic. Brian told Kenny that he could check a pond.

Susan was in the pond, wrapped in a tarp. Wambaugh tried to get the body thrown out as fruits of a poison tree, but Judge Bone, in a surprise ruling, decided to allow the evidence anyway.

Episode two focused on the trial itself, with Littleton and Wambaugh battling in court. The show does a great job of showing the trial, with all of the testimony.

It felt clear that Brian Latham was the guilty party. There was nothing that led us to doubt that. Until the final scene that is. When Brian had been found guilty, he spoke to Kenny and told him, Catholic to Catholic, that he did not kill Susan.

What a cliffhanger. There was no question that he was the guilty party. The show went to great lengths to show that. The glances that Brian made when Wambaugh was coaching him on his testimony seemed obvious that he was understanding what he had to do.

And then… like a bomb… everything we knew about the case was flipped on its side. There was some top line writing involved here.

There was one laughable moment. The trial was being broadcast over local TV and they showed a group of boys in what looked like a locker room including Matthew watching the trial. They were arguing about what they thought of the case. This was silly. No group of 5ht graders (I think that was what Matthew was) are going to have a TV tuned in to a trial in the locker room. That scene pulled me out of the story.

Otherwise, this was a great couple of episodes that kicked off a major story for the third season.

The X-Files S1 E23, E24

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“Roland”

Roland is a decent episode that feels like several of the other episodes of season one.

This is yet another episode from this first season that I have not seen before. I am not sure why there were so many episodes in this first season that I missed. I am also curious when I start into season two if there will be fewer episodes that I have not seen already.

The most standout aspect of this episode was the performance by Željko Ivanek as Roland. His performance as the intellectually disable janitor Roland, who was separated from his identical twin when he was young. His brother was in an accident and died, though they were keeping his brain alive. This was a way that he was able to control Roland and get him to finish his work and kill his enemies.

Interesting, and okay.

“The Erlenmeyer Flask”

And then there was this one.

Whoa, this was so much better than Roland.

The X-Files mythology went into high gear as we see the death of Deep Throat. The way the mysterious governmental agents systematically destroy the evidence and manipulate the situation can become very frustrating. You see Mulder and Scully come so close and yet everything is pulled away.

The whole episode is centered around the use of extraterrestrial bacteria, bacteria that does not exist anywhere in nature. This episode gave a lot to Scully, who normally does not get to see the evidence outside of Mulder’s testimony. When she pulled out the original source of the bacteria, it makes it more difficult to believe that she could still be a skeptic.

At the end of the episode Mulder tells Scully that Skinner had told him that the X-Files was being shut down and they were being reassigned. Mulder dedicated himself to keep searching for the truth.

The season one episodes were a little more inconsistent than I remember about the rest of the series. It may have been a season to see how to make this series, what worked and what did not. There were some outstanding episodes here too.

Picket Fences S2 E20, E21, E22

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“My Left Shoe”

Father Barrett is revealed to have a shoe fetish and, when Howard Buss went on the local station and revealed it to all of Rome, the questions about Father Barrett’s worthiness are raised by the whole town.

It also opened up the whole town to wonder about masturbation. Especially Matthew, who worried that it was actually a sin. Matthew’s discussions with Jill, Jimmy and even, eventually, Wambaugh were hilarious and oh so real.

There was a lot of hypocrisy in this episode, since it was just a few episodes ago that Barrett was one of the leading voices rallying against Rachel Harris, a fact that was brought up a couple of different times.

The ending when the city of Rome stood in his parish in support of him was an emotional moment.

“Frosted Flakes”

A sad and tragic story about a young boy who has leukemia and has been given just 6 months to live. His parents wanted to explore the possibility of the experimental procedure of cryogenics in order to freeze the boy until a cure could be found.

Of course, this topic divided the Rome community, including Jimmy and Jill. Everyone in the community wanted to have their say about the idea of cryogenically freezing a nine-year old boy. Sadly, a lot of the arguments overshadowed the tragic story the show was presenting to us.

Judge Bone always does a great job of summarizing the situation though and wrapping things back up.

“Howard’s End”

Howard Buss’s Alzheimer’s Disease was getting worse. It was so bad that he was in the mayor’s office, in a diaper, with a bow and arrow, thinking that he was Bill Pugen.

His son Kevin, who we saw earlier this season needing a heart transplant, found his father suffering and he took a gun from the desk drawer and shot Howard in the head.

After talking with Howard’s daughter, Jill decided against the surgery that could have saved Howard’s life. This choice made Jill feel very guilty for the rest of the episode.

Kevin stood trial for the murder of his father, and nobody really wanted to see him convicted. Littleton even voiced this to Maxine, wondering if he should cross examine Kevin. He chose to do so to honor the adversarial process.

However, when Jimmy got on the stand, he testified that Kevin was unable to distinguish between right and wrong. This was a switch for Jimmy, helping to open up the insanity defense for Kevin. The perfect image of Jimmy was tarnished, but many were thankful for it.

The funeral for Howard was remarkably emotional, with Judge Bone getting up to prevent Wambaugh from speaking. The whole picture of the town of Rome walking past the coffin, tapping on it because Howard had asked Judge Bone to do it saying that ‘he’ll hear it,’ was extremely emotional and nearly broke me. It was a beautiful end to a character that had been important since the first season.

This brought the second season of Picket Fences to a close. There were some of the best episodes of the series in this season. Overall, it may be considered the best season of the show’s time on the air.

The X-Files S1 E22

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“Born Again”

Once again, I have never seen “Born Again” before today. There have been several episodes of this first season of The X-Files that I do not remember at all. It has been a benefit of this rewatch.

This episode deals with the reincarnation of a police officer who was involved in a theft and killed. The reincarnation was in the body of a little girl and involved some kind of telekinesis.

There are some strange bits in this episode and, honestly, the little girl did not seem to be the best actress. This felt as if it were just a run of the mill episode of the X-Files.

There was a weird use of technology in the episode including a way to see last images seen.

It felt like just some lazy writing.

Honestly, this is not my favorite episode.

Moonlighting S2 E13

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“In God We Strongly Suspect”

Another great Moonlighting episode that gives us some solid characterization of our two main leads.

An escape artist/magician dies in an attempt to escape from a container full of water. His wife comes to Dave and Maddie to have them watch the body of her husband until it was time for the cremation. Why? She claimed that her husband said that he would return from the dead and kill his wife.

The body disappears from the casket and the wife winds up dead.

This was a fun plot, and it was helped along with the fact that we learned some intriguing tidbits of Dave and Maddie. Specifically, that Maddie did not believe in God, which horrified David.

If I had guessed, I would have flipped the pair around in their religious beliefs. If you said one of the pair of them was an atheist, I absolutely would have guessed David.

We also discovered that Maddie is not in to celebrating her birthday. So when David and the staff pulled a surprise party for her, Maddie responded in a fairly cold manner.

There was a really charming scene where Maddie went to a magician named Abbie Cadabra to ask him some questions. Abbie was played by Eddie Quillan.

There was a fun beginning tag on the episode where David and Maddie talked to the audience about the episode, claiming that it was supposed to be in 3D, but they did not finish it. Maddie also broke the fourth wall in this episode with a line about “Flying fig”.

American Horror Story: Murder House S1 E8

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“Rubber Man”

Episode 8 had a lot of things happening, and many of them dealt with a suit of black latex.

We discovered that it was not Ben who put on the rubber suit and had sex with Vivien. We discovered that it was Tate, which makes more sense on why Vivien’s babies might, I don’t know, have hooves, as the nurse seemed to believe.

We learned more about the gay couple, Chad and Patrick, who were previous owners of the house involved in the murder/suicide, which was not actually a murder/suicide. They were killed by Tate as well. Tate killed them when they stopped looking to adopt a child. Tate was trying to get a child for Nora.

Tate and Violet had sex and he worried that Vivien was going to take her away because she was leaving the house. Vivien accidentally shoots Ben when she is afraid of the spirits in the house. Hayden is manipulating the situation, trying to torment and drive Vivien crazy. Ben seems to be buying it, not believing what Vivien is seeing.

This is really the step of the series where Tate becomes less of a romantic and tragic figure and shown more as a sociopathic killer.