A powerful episode of Picket Fences, “Rights of Passage” featured a small band of Native Americans taking over the court house because the town of Rome decided to build a golf course that would extend over the burial grounds of their ancestors. The eventual showdown was built to exquisitely and was used, as is always the way with this show, to deal with some deep insecurities of one of its characters, in this case, Jimmy Brock, the sheriff, as Jimmy had some deep reflections on his time as the sheriff and what the job entails from him.
Jimmy really did not want to lead an attack on these Indians to reclaim the courthouse despite having the Mayor and Judge Bone making demands of him.
Seriously, Judge Henry Bone looked very much out of line through most of this episode, making demands of the police, especially Jimmy, whom he asked “What kind of sheriff are you?”
I found Henry to be really obnoxious during this episode. He seemed to be more concerned with get “his” courthouse back than dealing with the situation calmly and under control.
Chief Winnetka forced Jimmy’s hand with his demands to get rid of the golf course. It was a powerful episode with some painful moments for everybody.
The side stories included Matthew fighting a bully to protect Zach and Ginny protesting Jill’s office with other ‘little people’ because she was giving a small child HGH shots so he could grow bigger.
Either way, the standoff at the courthouse was clearly the main storyline and led to the death of the Chief. It was a sad ending.
I’m starting to believe that I did not see very many season one episodes of The X-Files as episode 16, Young at Heart, is another one that I do not remember ever seeing before.
I also would hate to be a partner, friend, associate, co-worker, mentor of Mulder or Scully because they are always doomed. As soon as FBI agent Reggie Purdue walked on the screen and started talking to Mulder about the old days, I knew immediately that this guy was not long for the world… and damn, if I wasn’t right.
This was a tale about a killer that Mulder had caught early in his career, but not before the killer, John Barnett, had killed a couple of agents. Mulder had a clean shot, but did not take it because of the Bureau’s policy, and he blamed himself for the deaths after.
Barnett was supposed to be dead, having died in prison years ago, but it turned out that he survived and had been taken as a guinea pig for an anti-aging process meant to help cure the disease called progeria, a disease that causes rapid aging in children, by the prison doctor at the time, Dr. Joe Ridley. Ridley was doing human trials with his aging procedure, and they all failed, except for Barnett.
Barnett was also the X-Files version of Dr. Curt Connors of Marvel Comics (aka The Lizard) as he had grown back an amputated hand with use of some salamander DNA. That is never a good idea.
I liked this episode with the back and forth between Mulder and Barnett. It did not have a lot of X-Files-like weirdness, but it made up for that with a very creepy and vicious villain. It was also satisfying to see Mulder shoot and kill Bartlett at the end, making up for his previous non-action.
David and Maddie are babysitting a woman who claims to be a leprechaun.
Kathleen Kilpatrick was a wee little Irish lass with bright red hair. She was being chased by a man who was trying to capture her so he could get her pot of gold. She hired Dave and Maddie to protect her. She was not hiding the fact that she was a leprechaun.
Alexandra Johnson played Kathleen Kilpatrick and she was great. She was charming, charismatic and funny. She fit very well with David and Maddie, holding her own with these two powerful actors.
The case caused conflict with Dave and Maddie, as every case would, but this one was not as much of a conflict as usual. That was because of the bubbly performance of Johnson.
There is a fun sequence with Dave, Maddie and Kathleen being chased through the airport by the man seeking her pot of gold.
The gold turned out to be stolen from a bank years before by three men, including Kathleen’s father. She discovered that he had lied to her about being a leprechaun and that he was a thief.
Kathleen leaves the gold with Dave and Maddie and heads back to Ireland.
This was a fun episode, but it was not the most standout one. Alexandra Johnson did a solid job, but she did not do much more than a handful of guest appearances after this.
In the office scene just before Kathleen arrived and during the time she was talking with Maddie and Davie, the lighting of the scene was really messed up. There were huge shadows in the room coming from Dave and Maddie as well as other objects of the room. There was one time when you could barely see David’s face because Maddie’s shadow was blocking him. It was real noticeable and distracting. There were other moments of the episode that made it feel as if it were shot differently than other episodes of the series and thus made it fell cheaper.
The first five minutes was just about as disturbing of a five minute scene television has ever seen. It was also very tough to watch as a character that we have come to like, Tate, played expertly by Evan Peters, is shown to have gone into his school as an active shooter, killing a whole bunch of people along the way (many of whom we had seen in the Halloween episode as the group chasing Tate).
However, Tate’s origin and backstory was not the only shocking and horrifying moment of this packed episode.
Here piggy, piggy, pig.
Eric Stonestreet had a guest appearance as Derek, one of Ben’s patients who was afraid of urban legends, especially the one about the Pigman. Derek could not look in the mirror in fear of saying the words, “Here piggy piggy pig” which, much like the story of Candyman, is supposed to summon the Pigman. The explanation of the story by Derek to Ben was absolutely the creepiest, scariest thing I had seen on TV in a long time.
Derek’s absolute fear was palpable and his attempt to overcome this fear in the Harmon’s bathroom in Murder House was frightening and just not a good idea. The irony of how the story ended up was amazing writing, if not tragic.
Tragedy was all over this episode as Tate saved the life of Violet, who had taken a handful of pills in a suicidal wave. Tate dragging Violet’s body into the bathroom and forcing her to vomit the pills while running the shower over her was heart-wrenching.
Watching Constance eating some of the disgusting things that Constance brought her ‘for the baby’ was stomach-churning.
Speaking of Constance, her ‘talk’ with Adelaide through a medium, Billie Dean, was another tragic moment of this episode, providing Jessica Lange with some wonderful material to play. Billie Dean was the first appearance of the brilliant Sarah Paulson in the series. Sarah Paulson becomes a fixture in American Horror Story and other projects by Ryan Murphy.
And we hear from the ultrasound technician who had fainted when giving Vivien’s ultrasound. She claimed that she had seen the beast in Vivien’s womb, hooves and all. She had left her job and had taken up residency in a church where she was praying. Between this and the raw brains and pancreas Vivien has been consuming, this baby is going to be something else.
“Piggy Piggy” is one of the best episodes of the season. It is disturbing and keeps the audience constantly on guard, uneasy about where the show is taking us. It is full of some great acting, from Jessica Lange to Eric Stonestreet to Evan Peters.
Picket Fences has the most well developed ensemble cast of characters of any TV show I can remember. I do believe this show is the precursor to shows like LOST or The Walking Dead where even the secondary characters are deeply developed and have real feelings and emotions. Picket Fences was truly ahead of its time as a show.
Tis episode focused on Carter Pike, played as always wonderfully by Kelly Connell. We have seen Carter through other episodes in little bits, but this time we really dive into the doubts and mind of Carter, and, because he is a morose and melancholy individual, with terrible feelings of insecurity.
They take Carter and rip everything away from him, his reputation, his job, his self-confidence.
When a missing man shows up dead with radiation burns in garbage outside the Brock house, questions about the possibility of UFOs take over Rome. A traveling group led by a woman named Wendy of UFO believers arrive and gain Carter’s support. When Carter announced to the press that he was listing exposure to radiation from a UFO as a possible cause of death of the man (after seeing something in the sky the night before), things went terribly wrong. Jimmy and Mayor Pugen fired Carter from his post as Medical Examiner because his credibility had been damaged beyond repair.
Turned out that Wendy was using Carter for publicity and her people had used a hologram projector to make Carter think he saw a UFO.
The UFO story was countered in the episode by the fact that the man they found in the garbage was a Jewish man and Carter would not release the body for burial. So the episode has some serious scenes dealing with the Jewish faith and the beliefs of Judaism. Douglas Wambaugh had some amazing scenes dealing with his own issues in connection to his religious beliefs. There was one with Doug and Miriam, his wife, in bed that again showed a deep understanding of Wambaugh and who this character was.
I really did feel for poor Carter by the end of the episode and, once again, Picket Fences showed why this show won as many Emmys as it did.
Interestingly enough, this is yet another first season X-Files episode that I do not remember seeing at all. It is also another one that felt somewhat lacking.
It also is horribly dangerous to be a former friend or loved one of either Mulder or Scully as life expectancies seem to plummet.
On the other hand, Scully did shoot someone, and that doesn’t happen often.
With the spirit of the dead bad guy taking over the body of the dead FBI agent/friend of Scully, this had too much of the negative Freaky Friday vibe going on. The doctors worked on reviving the FBI guy for 13 minutes? Do they do that? Scully wanted more. I found that whole situation to be iffy.
Then, as the body of the dead bad guy was being shocked when they shocked FBI guy, this looked funny.
The relationships in the episode were weak. I had no connection with the FBI guy and there was nothing with him and Scully. The two bad guys did not work together well either and the twist that she betrayed him to the FBI did not make sense.
Then, apparently FBI guy had some kind of obsession with main bad guy and we never see any of this. We only hear it mentioned. I did not believe any of that either.
This one was quite disappointing. Second consecutive weak episode after the excellent Beyond the Sea.
Dana Delaney guest starred on Moonlighting as a former flame of David’s who had left him without a word three years before.
Sadly, this was Moonlighting and when she came back into David’s life, it was not the happy reunion that it seemed.
Jillian (Dana Delaney) came to Blue Moon to hire Maddie to find a necklace that had been stolen from her hotel room. When David came in, they were both surprised to see each other.
Jillian was having marriage problems and it was not too long before David and Jillian were back together. Jillian set up David to be the witness to her shooting her husband. Of course, she made it look like she was being attacked by her husband so that David could testify that it was self-defense.
The episode ended with one of the better chase scenes we have had. Maddie and David chased Jillian in the hearse and the funeral procession followed behind.
There was quite a bit of a tonal shift in the episode from most of the show until that chase scene. I did enjoy the chase scene much more than I enjoyed the first part of the show.
One of the great things about Picket Fences when they went into the court room, I was never sure what the outcome would be. In particular, any of the controversial topics of the day could have gone in any direction and with Judge Henry Bone sitting on the bench, it often did.
The controversy of this episode was the use of stem cells from aborted fetuses being used to treat Parkinson Disease.
On Picket Fences, the major argument against the use of stem cells falls into the idea that it becomes an umbrella issue under abortion and that it was argued that this type of experimental procedure would only encourage abortions to be done. Obviously, this wound up involving the church as well as the community.
The other major storyline was the specialist Jill called into the case was her former fiancée before Jimmy. The attraction between the two doctors remained strong and Jill ended up kissing him.
The show used this plot point to investigate the deep ceded resentments by Jill and her choice to come to the small town to be the town doctor instead of becoming a top-line surgeon. This then was used as a conflict within the marriage of Jill and Jimmy. As always, this show uses their stories to inform their characters at a different level than most shows.
Honestly, this is a perfectly enjoyable episode of Picket Fences, but it did not stand out. It was fine. Of course, this hour was probably better than most series like this.
Maxine, who in the early stages of the season, killed the criminal the Green Bay Chopper, thinks she found another one.
After taking out a personal ad in the newspaper, Maxine gets a response that she believes is from a serial killer named Cupid. At the same time, Jimmy gets shot in the butt with an arrow. Maxine was sure that this was Cupid because he was known to taunt the police.
She set up a sting operation in an attempt to lure the serial killer to her.
What happens next is a beautiful set up that lands Maxine in the line of fire.
When I watched this episode originally, I remember the shock and the disbelief about the ending. It was one of the best twists of the show, and the performance of Kurtwood Smith as fired FBI agent Barry Jenkins, who was obsessed with Cupid who killed his wife was spectacular. When he turned back to Maxine revealing himself as Cupid, the look on his face was complete psychosis.
The way the show first made us think that Jenkins was Cupid, only to see the other guy, Ben Sasha (Stephen Tobolowsky) to grab the undercover Maxine was awesome. What a great twist to make us think that we had it all backwards and that Jenkins was not Cupid after all, only to reveal that Jenkins and Sasha were both Cupid.
When I watched back in the 1993, I truly thought that there was no way that Maxine was getting out of this. It was a stunning ending.
There are still little bits of character development in the series even in the episodes that are story driven like this one. There was a continuing detail to Carter, showing how lonely and sad he actually feels, which shows why he is always so desperate to be deputized, to make it appear as if he is not as impotent as he feels.
Something that I wanted to mention about Picket Fences that I really love is how they bring back specifics from previous episodes. This episode, they referred to the Green Bay Chopper several times. They have been known to bring up previous characters or storylines in conversation, just like real people would. This is not just a TV series where each episode is stand alone. There is a continuity to Picket Fences and I love that.
As of this moment, Be My Valentine is my favorite episode of the show. We’ll see if it can hold that spot. I am currently five episodes from the end of season 1 and ten days officially into the Picket Fences DailyView Rewatch.
I am not sure what I can say about that finale episode of Loki, which was nearly an hour in length and was an absolute heart-wrencher. I felt very much like this after the astounding episode four of this season, a … it’s hard to explain. My gut has a hallow feeling, but not in a bad way. This is an amazing finale that really takes the show into a position that I never thought I would see.
With Loki mastering the time slipping last week, and showing up right behind OB as Victor Timely was heading down to get spaghettified, I think everyone believed that Loki was going to do some fancy time travel tricks and save the day. When they did not work, it felt as if the show was going to do what I really did not want it to. When Loki used his time slipping power to return to the site where Sylvie killed He Who Remains, I thought it was clear what was going to happen.
Then it didn’t.
It really felt like Loki was going to end up killing Sylvie. How many times did she say that in order to stop her, Loki would have to kill her? A dozen? More?
But Loki didn’t.
Loki even verbally jousted with He Who Remains. The moment Loki showed He Who Remains that he was more than just a puppet was a cheer out loud moment.
I know there have been some people speculating that Loki would end up as He Who Remains, and, while that is close to the end, I do not think that anyone would have suggested that Loki would end up being Yggdrasil.
Yggdrasil was a sacred tree in Norse mythology that was at the center of everything, with the Nine Worlds existed.
Loki striding out into the temporal time stream, grabbing branches along the way, and connecting them all to him, within a tree of life was a stunningly beautiful and devastating way to end the series. Loki, who was going through everything in this series in an attempt to not lose his friends and end up alone, wound up alone at the center of everything.
The TVA is nicely set up as an anti-Kang organization as the TVA mentioned that they were keeping an eye on the variants of He Who Remains for the potential upcoming war. The TVA has been rumored to be involved in other future MCU projects and this would be so awesome.
Tom Hiddleston was amazing, completely wrapping his two season character arc for the God of Mischief. I am not sure if this means that Loki has transformed into the God of Stories or if this is a whole new thing, but either way, Hiddleston was spectacular.
Owen Wilson’s Mobius’s arc came to an end too with his visit to his sacred timeline self (not sure if the sacred timeline is still a thing). His final interaction with Sylvie was very bitter sweet.
Ke Huy Quan was a perfect fit for this character of OB. He had so much energy in the show. I saw a video message of him on Twitter (X, whatever) promoting the finale and he was so excited about it. You could tell how proud he was being a part of the show and it was so awesome that he was finally able to put out a video to express how he felt (since the actor’s strike is now over).
Loki season two absolutely felt like a conclusion to the first season. I have seen the director claim that season two was like a bookend to season one, and that is exactly how it felt. We revisited a ton of moments from season one with a time slipping Loki and it was wonderful.
I truly found this to be a brilliant end to the series and I felt very blown away by emotions and a spectacular looking show. I really loved WandaVision, but Loki is pretty dang close.
The first episode of season one and the final episode of season two have the same title, “Glorious Purpose.”
EDIT: I just saw a tweet that expressed my feelings perfectly so I wanted to add it here. The season finale made me feel sadness, yet at the same time, made me feel hopeful.
Yes, that is it. Thanks to Aaron S Bailey for the tweet.
As much as I love #Loki it doesn't need another season, @MrEricMartin is spot on. This "book" was told perfectly and ended on a note that leaves you sad but hopeful. Can't believe we've reached the end though.. what a ride! pic.twitter.com/aE5AcjYuZw
The next episode of Picket Fences brought a couple of major controversial topics to the front of the story.
One, a local dentist is fired because he would not reveal to his patients that he was HIV positive.
Two, a doctor refuses to allow his wife to be disconnected from life support despite the fact that she had been declared dead. The reason? She was pregnant and he wanted to keep her alive so she could give birth to the baby.
The first case was very much of the typical prejudicial situation that the show specialized in. The second case was a whole pro life, pro choice debate that has still be a major issue in the world.
Of course, the cases lead to a fight between Jimmy and Jill as they wound up on separate sides of the debates. Tom Skerritt and Kathy Baker are at the top of their game in these knock down verbal fights.
This was also a great episode for Douglas Wambaugh and Judge Henry Bone. Wambaugh was extremely effective in both of the cases, including a strong cross-examination of Jill. Henry Bone, once again, showed what a well-meaning judge he is. You can see the heavy toll that each decision he makes takes on himself.
Religious freedom comes front and center on Picket Fences as there are a couple of stories involving strange uses of the concept.
First, a church that uses ducks and goats as sacrifices? It is funny seeing Maxine flip out while sneaking into a funeral and arresting the entire church full of people. Judge Bone kicked that case very quickly.
The other story was the main one as one of Kimberly’s friends turns out pregnant, but Kim was confused. She had never even mentioned a boyfriend before. However, Kimberly saw her in a romantic kiss with her father and suddenly everything was hitting the fan.
Except, it turned out that it was not incest and instead was polygamy. Kimberly’s friend was not the daughter of the man, but one of his wives. They were Mormon.
There was another story happening as separated-at-birth twins reunited in Rome through a series of coincidences… including one sleeping with Kenny and the other having the orgasm, in her car in another part of the town. Both twins ended up as Kenny’s girlfriend in the weirdest part of the weirdo episode.
All around the limbo clock, hey let’s do the Limbo Rock!“
An absolute classic of an episode for Moonlighting as Maddie catches David leading a limbo celebration in the office and makes a bet with him that he can not act like a mature adult for a week. If she wins, David has to fire two of their most expendable employees. If David won the bet, he would make Maddie limbo.
As Miss DiPesto stated, Maddie had ‘de-Dave`d’ him.
Meanwhile there was a case involving a pseudo-kidnapping and a wealthy woman whose step son was kidnapped and she wanted Dave and Maddie to negotiate down the cost of the ransom.
Another great episode that saw Maddie come to an understanding with who her business partner is and how she missed him when he was acting too much like a boss.
I remember this one clearly when the show was first on the air and this might have been the first episode that I really fell in love with the show. The ridiculousness of the court case being argued by Douglas Wambaugh, and yet winning, only to discover that Alice Freeman, who had runover her husband with a steam roller (that image stuck with me), had made up everything as a way to get rid of her husband without a divorce. The last scene of the episode with Carter spying Alice with the doctor who testified against her together in her house was shocking.
Then, as I was watching, the B-story of the episode was fairly shocking in its own right. It was Matthew who was having dreams about sex and having his ‘penis explode.’ That topic has been done before, but what was wild was how the show had Matthew’s dream being Maxine coming to him in a bra and panties (holding chocolate cake and a baseball card). It made me wonder if they shot this regularly or if there was some kind of movie magic involved because it felt a little creepy having Lauren Holly, the actress, approach teenager Justin Shenkarow, barely dressed and, in another moment, undid her top.
The fourth episode of Bonus Action was an unexpected one, but it was truly one of the best.
The episode saw the group passing through the Sea of Dreams and they all had individual dreams, all of which had to deal with their back stories.
This was an amazing way to give us more information on these characters and their lives without simply telling us.
DM David was the star of this episode as he provided some of the best D & D descriptions I have heard. He weaved every dream from meetings he had with the players off screen and he provided some different variations of the dream concept. There were some dreams that were really scary, some of the dreams dropped hints or possible story beats, making the PCs unsure about what they were doing.
My thought as I watched this was… when I played D & D years ago, I would have loved this but my groups were never into character development or deep backgrounds. I always tried to add what I could, but the D & D format was never my strength.
Loved how these six players seem to believe that the character parts are every bit as important as the fighting.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 