"Unarmed, but extremely attractive."
So apparently my new fall TV is... a show that ended in 2002. How did I get to this point? Some deadly combination all of the fun shows being in the summer now (Leverage, Burn Notice); steady adherence to a policy of not watching shows that seem likely to make me angry (Dollhouse, Stargate Universe); and a total lack of actual fannishness about most of the shows I am watching at this point(Castle, Sanctuary when it starts up again, CSI--which is undergoing something of a renaissance, IMO, with the addition of Laurence Fishburne). I had to give up on Eastwick 20 minutes into the pilot when I became so embarrassed for everyone involved that I couldn't stand another minute; for some reason, Michael Scott does not hit my embarrassment squick, but Eastwick did like whoa.
So these days, it looks like I'm posting about The Office, and the rest of Babylon 5 (cancelled ca. 1998), and picking up The X-Files again--because there's a clear, crisp chill in the air, and the days are getting shorter, and monsters are creepier when it's not sunny and 85 degrees outside.
* * * * *
The X-Files 1.13 - Beyond the Sea
* Don Davis!
* Unfortunately, since I've watched television before, I knew the moment he opened his mouth and no words came out that he'd just died and was on his way through. But I like the setup--the things left unspoken between her father and Scully, and his later visit, just as uncommunicative.
* That Scully calls her father Ahab and he calls her Starbuck is a really nice, telling detail about their family dynamic, and about what has driven Scully. It reinforces the scene later where Scully breaks down while asking her mother if her father was at all proud of her. How must she have felt when she told him about her latest assignment?
* I love, love, love the role reversal in this episode: Mulder skeptical of Boggs's psychic power, because he can smell a con artist; Scully hurting and willing to believe if it means she can have some more time with her father, and because the evidence seems to point that way, if she looks at it from the right angle. They're both fighting for something opposite their usual stakes: Mulder doesn't want to compromise his risky status by falling for a ploy, and Scully for once sees why people who need resolution might want to believe.
* Brad Dourif plays a manipulative serial killer. I am shocked, shocked. He's a remarkable actor, though; Boggs is shifty without being false.
* I think I lost count of the number of times Mulder called Scully "Dana" in this episode.
* Aw. In the end, Scully doesn't need a psychic to find out what her father wanted to tell her; she knew him. And she doesn't want to open that door; that's her conscious choice.
The X-Files 1.14 - "Gender Bender"
* Before the episode even starts, I am officially scared of the title, so good job, writers.
* Heh. I love the look on Scully's face when, just when she's getting completely fed up by the detective's cavalier judgmentalism over the crime scene, she finds out that they got called in because Mulder put out an alert for any case with that COD. Sort of took the wind out of her sails.
* But she has her revenge, and it is snarky. She's right--they have no description, not even a gender, and that's usually where you start when you're putting together a profile.
* The Amish Kindred did it. Isn't that always the way?
* I don't know what's more disturbing-- Scully's giant, puffy overcoat, or the fact that Brother Andrew just hit her with the pheremone whammy.
* Remind me to never let Mulder offer to guide me through the woods. Fortunately, so far, the Kindred haven't done anything more menacing than catch them, take their guns, and bring them to dinner.
* Nice touch--the Kindred are refreshingly non-patriarchal, which ties in nicely to the gender confusion.
* Er, I am very confused, because on the one hand, Brother Andrew seems to be telling the truth when he confesses he's afraid the killer is his wayward friend, Brother Martin. On the other hand, he seems to be trying to date rape Scully, which is not an action I associate with a search for justice .
* Whatever is going on in the cave under the barn, it does not involve traditional pottery, I will tell you what.
* So the Kindred take care of their own--including Brother Martin, who was also a Tok'ra on SG-1, and who I definitely could have lived without seeing in panties! And all they left behind was a big old crop circle.
The X-Files 1.15 - "Lazarus"
* I'm not a law enforcement professional, nor do I play one on TV, but I question Scully and Willis's strategy, which appears to be catching a bank robber by waiting for him to hold up the bank and then having an armed confrontation with him.
* Said bank robber was Robert Rothman on SG-1; that guy doesn't appear to have much luck.
* I like how Mulder goes straight for the answer that fits the evidence, even if it seems completely whacked-out; he figured out pretty quickly that "Jack Willis" cut the finger off the body to get at the wedding ring, and that the two heartbeats on the EKG at the time Willis was revived means that there might have been some kind of transfer.
* Harlan! Komtraya! Or, rather, Dr. Barnes, the near-death expert, thinks there might be something to Mulder's theory. Scully doesn't at first, and while her skepticism is warranted (isn't it always?), once she has admitted to the possibility that Mulder might be right, I am annoyed by how easily she puts herself in Warren's hands.
* Wow, this is just the episode for familiar faces--baby-faced Callum Keith Rennie plays Lula's worthless brother for the thirty seconds it takes him to get shot.
* I like the way Mulder handles Willis's skeptical partner--by pointing out that they're after the same thing, by using solid investigative techniques to try to find Willis and Scully.
* Bonnie Lula set Clyde Warren up! That was a nice twist, one that I didn't see coming, though it did seem that Lula was fairly repulsed by the new body. As you might be.
* And in the end, it's ambiguous whether it was Warren or just some of his memories and enough of his personality to make a difference, though the transference of the tattoo does suggest actual possession.
The X-Files 1.16 - "Young at Heart"
* Excellent. Mulder's first case comes back to haunt him--perhaps literally, since there was definitely something hinky going on in the prison hospital where Barnett allegedly died. So Mulder dealt with the hostage situation by the book, and Barnett shot two people. Mulder was convinced he did it out of spite, and testified against him; it's personal.
* It's hard to deal with a stalker who is supposedly dead. Especially when there's a plausible alternate theory--that someone, maybe even someone in the bureau, is messing with Mulder's head.
* So long, Mulder's mentor! We hardly knew you, but suspected we weren't going to see you for long. Mulder's totally going to blame himself for this death too.
* I was going crazy trying to figure out where I'd seen Dr. "Mengele" Ridley before; he was the guy who set off the time loop in SG-1's "Window of Opportunity." Except that then he had facial lesions, rather than milky, half-blind eyes.
* So Ridley grew Barnett a new right hand--not exactly human. Aieeee! Salamander hand!
* Nice. Barnett stole Ridley's research, and the government is willing to trade with him for it, much to Mulder's disgust. I don't blame him for feeling unhappy that FBI agents are expendable.
* Showdown at the cello recital! How many times am I going to get to type that? And, okay, Mulder winking at Scully to keep her calm is ADORABLE.
* I was 100% sure that Scully was wearing a vest, but that wasn't where the drama in the denouement was located--it was in Mulder taking the shot this time, saving the hostage, going against the book. "Tells you a lot about the book, doesn't it?" he asks, as we see a government agent trying to question the dying Barnett. Yes, it does.
* * * * *
Babylon 5 5.01 - "No Compromises"
I... don't really know what to say about Sheridan's anecdote about how he he came to wash his socks every morning as a coping mechanism, other than that Delenn has her work cut out for her. ANYWAY, I'm not entirely sure how the division of power works between Sheridan and Lochley, or what the deal is with Tracy Scoggins's eyes, but I'm glad that the writers are establishing a division right away, so that it's clear that Sheridan runs the Alliance, but not the station. And I also like that what side she served on during the civil war is left an open question, since people fought for both sides for terrible reasons as well as good ones; it's a murky issue.
And some of them apparently aren't done fighting, since there's some kind of organized, violent, covert effort to assassinate Sheridan at his inauguration. Warning of the assassination is a good way for Byron's group of rebel telepaths to win a temporary shelter on the station, which is too bad, because that means we'll be seeing more of him. My instant antipathy for Byron has less to do with his role in the story than with his cheesy hair and awful acting, and once
laurashapiro described him as lipless and brow-ridgey, I couldn't see him any other way. It's going to be a tough season, y'all. On the plus side, I liked that G'Kar officiated at the inauguration, and seems to have taken on some sort of general officiating role in the Alliance.
Babylon 5 5.02 - "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari"
Oh my goodness, as much as I love Lennier and Delenn separately, I had to watch his farewell to her through my hands. Awkward. But as sad as I am to see him go, I think he's right that he needs to do something else with himself now, and it seems Delenn realizes it too. I don't find the idea of him as a Ranger so strange, after having seen him throw down in that bar fight alongside Londo and take such joy in a motorcycle ride with Garibaldi in Season 1. And his farewell with Vir was adorable; I love those two meeting in the Zocalo like Sam and Ralph, sheepdog and sheep in the Warner Brothers cartoons, after clocking off.
Another thing that fits, in retrospect: Londo's heart attack. He always kept his doubts and fears stuffed down in the darkest part of himself, but they were there. And, as in life, Vir is there in his dream or vision to point out what he's doing wrong: that he is still weighed down by the conscience he denies. I think it's wonderful that it was a crisis of health, and not an external event, that brought Londo to the point of being able to apologize to G'Kar. It was never something G'Kar expected or even wanted; it had to come from Londo. The Shadows are gone and G'Kar is still alive and their relationship has gone back to something like what it was, and Narn is free, and that was enough for G'Kar--but it wasn't enough for Londo.
Babylon 5 5.03 - "The Paragon of Animals"
Despite my antipathy for Byron, I do appreciate the way the writers are using him and his group to show an alternative to the PsyCorps. Byron's group is not constrained by the ethical rules and administrative structure of the PsyCorps, which makes it messier--each individual has to make his or her own decisions about how to use those powers. At the same time, all telepaths face the same problems: their abilities set them apart from the rest of their species, which both fears and wants to use those abilities. Garibaldi is only trying to maintain parity with other intelligence services when he enlists the help of the telepaths.
And they do help. Lyta is able to pass along what the dying Ranger couldn't tell them; Byron is able to discover that the Drazi were behind the attacks. In the end, the Alliance unites around G'Kar's rewritten Declaration of Principles, but the division between telepaths and everyone else remains.
Babylon 5 5.04 - "A View from the Gallery"
The outside POV device is a pretty old trope, and can in theory lead to some interesting episodes, but here it seems to serve mostly as a way of showing how heroic our heroes are, in a spectacularly unsubtle way, and in particular how well Lochley is fitting in now. Meh.
* * * * *
bitchinparty registration opens at 9am on Saturday, November 9th! Here's hoping the LAX Marriott's wifi doesn't let me down, since that's where I'll be.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/141556.html (
comments). Comment at either site.
So these days, it looks like I'm posting about The Office, and the rest of Babylon 5 (cancelled ca. 1998), and picking up The X-Files again--because there's a clear, crisp chill in the air, and the days are getting shorter, and monsters are creepier when it's not sunny and 85 degrees outside.
* * * * *
The X-Files 1.13 - Beyond the Sea
* Don Davis!
* Unfortunately, since I've watched television before, I knew the moment he opened his mouth and no words came out that he'd just died and was on his way through. But I like the setup--the things left unspoken between her father and Scully, and his later visit, just as uncommunicative.
* That Scully calls her father Ahab and he calls her Starbuck is a really nice, telling detail about their family dynamic, and about what has driven Scully. It reinforces the scene later where Scully breaks down while asking her mother if her father was at all proud of her. How must she have felt when she told him about her latest assignment?
* I love, love, love the role reversal in this episode: Mulder skeptical of Boggs's psychic power, because he can smell a con artist; Scully hurting and willing to believe if it means she can have some more time with her father, and because the evidence seems to point that way, if she looks at it from the right angle. They're both fighting for something opposite their usual stakes: Mulder doesn't want to compromise his risky status by falling for a ploy, and Scully for once sees why people who need resolution might want to believe.
* Brad Dourif plays a manipulative serial killer. I am shocked, shocked. He's a remarkable actor, though; Boggs is shifty without being false.
* I think I lost count of the number of times Mulder called Scully "Dana" in this episode.
* Aw. In the end, Scully doesn't need a psychic to find out what her father wanted to tell her; she knew him. And she doesn't want to open that door; that's her conscious choice.
The X-Files 1.14 - "Gender Bender"
* Before the episode even starts, I am officially scared of the title, so good job, writers.
* Heh. I love the look on Scully's face when, just when she's getting completely fed up by the detective's cavalier judgmentalism over the crime scene, she finds out that they got called in because Mulder put out an alert for any case with that COD. Sort of took the wind out of her sails.
* But she has her revenge, and it is snarky. She's right--they have no description, not even a gender, and that's usually where you start when you're putting together a profile.
* The Amish Kindred did it. Isn't that always the way?
* I don't know what's more disturbing-- Scully's giant, puffy overcoat, or the fact that Brother Andrew just hit her with the pheremone whammy.
* Remind me to never let Mulder offer to guide me through the woods. Fortunately, so far, the Kindred haven't done anything more menacing than catch them, take their guns, and bring them to dinner.
* Nice touch--the Kindred are refreshingly non-patriarchal, which ties in nicely to the gender confusion.
* Er, I am very confused, because on the one hand, Brother Andrew seems to be telling the truth when he confesses he's afraid the killer is his wayward friend, Brother Martin. On the other hand, he seems to be trying to date rape Scully, which is not an action I associate with a search for justice .
* Whatever is going on in the cave under the barn, it does not involve traditional pottery, I will tell you what.
* So the Kindred take care of their own--including Brother Martin, who was also a Tok'ra on SG-1, and who I definitely could have lived without seeing in panties! And all they left behind was a big old crop circle.
The X-Files 1.15 - "Lazarus"
* I'm not a law enforcement professional, nor do I play one on TV, but I question Scully and Willis's strategy, which appears to be catching a bank robber by waiting for him to hold up the bank and then having an armed confrontation with him.
* Said bank robber was Robert Rothman on SG-1; that guy doesn't appear to have much luck.
* I like how Mulder goes straight for the answer that fits the evidence, even if it seems completely whacked-out; he figured out pretty quickly that "Jack Willis" cut the finger off the body to get at the wedding ring, and that the two heartbeats on the EKG at the time Willis was revived means that there might have been some kind of transfer.
* Harlan! Komtraya! Or, rather, Dr. Barnes, the near-death expert, thinks there might be something to Mulder's theory. Scully doesn't at first, and while her skepticism is warranted (isn't it always?), once she has admitted to the possibility that Mulder might be right, I am annoyed by how easily she puts herself in Warren's hands.
* Wow, this is just the episode for familiar faces--baby-faced Callum Keith Rennie plays Lula's worthless brother for the thirty seconds it takes him to get shot.
* I like the way Mulder handles Willis's skeptical partner--by pointing out that they're after the same thing, by using solid investigative techniques to try to find Willis and Scully.
* Bonnie Lula set Clyde Warren up! That was a nice twist, one that I didn't see coming, though it did seem that Lula was fairly repulsed by the new body. As you might be.
* And in the end, it's ambiguous whether it was Warren or just some of his memories and enough of his personality to make a difference, though the transference of the tattoo does suggest actual possession.
The X-Files 1.16 - "Young at Heart"
* Excellent. Mulder's first case comes back to haunt him--perhaps literally, since there was definitely something hinky going on in the prison hospital where Barnett allegedly died. So Mulder dealt with the hostage situation by the book, and Barnett shot two people. Mulder was convinced he did it out of spite, and testified against him; it's personal.
* It's hard to deal with a stalker who is supposedly dead. Especially when there's a plausible alternate theory--that someone, maybe even someone in the bureau, is messing with Mulder's head.
* So long, Mulder's mentor! We hardly knew you, but suspected we weren't going to see you for long. Mulder's totally going to blame himself for this death too.
* I was going crazy trying to figure out where I'd seen Dr. "Mengele" Ridley before; he was the guy who set off the time loop in SG-1's "Window of Opportunity." Except that then he had facial lesions, rather than milky, half-blind eyes.
* So Ridley grew Barnett a new right hand--not exactly human. Aieeee! Salamander hand!
* Nice. Barnett stole Ridley's research, and the government is willing to trade with him for it, much to Mulder's disgust. I don't blame him for feeling unhappy that FBI agents are expendable.
* Showdown at the cello recital! How many times am I going to get to type that? And, okay, Mulder winking at Scully to keep her calm is ADORABLE.
* I was 100% sure that Scully was wearing a vest, but that wasn't where the drama in the denouement was located--it was in Mulder taking the shot this time, saving the hostage, going against the book. "Tells you a lot about the book, doesn't it?" he asks, as we see a government agent trying to question the dying Barnett. Yes, it does.
* * * * *
Babylon 5 5.01 - "No Compromises"
I... don't really know what to say about Sheridan's anecdote about how he he came to wash his socks every morning as a coping mechanism, other than that Delenn has her work cut out for her. ANYWAY, I'm not entirely sure how the division of power works between Sheridan and Lochley, or what the deal is with Tracy Scoggins's eyes, but I'm glad that the writers are establishing a division right away, so that it's clear that Sheridan runs the Alliance, but not the station. And I also like that what side she served on during the civil war is left an open question, since people fought for both sides for terrible reasons as well as good ones; it's a murky issue.
And some of them apparently aren't done fighting, since there's some kind of organized, violent, covert effort to assassinate Sheridan at his inauguration. Warning of the assassination is a good way for Byron's group of rebel telepaths to win a temporary shelter on the station, which is too bad, because that means we'll be seeing more of him. My instant antipathy for Byron has less to do with his role in the story than with his cheesy hair and awful acting, and once
laurashapiro described him as lipless and brow-ridgey, I couldn't see him any other way. It's going to be a tough season, y'all. On the plus side, I liked that G'Kar officiated at the inauguration, and seems to have taken on some sort of general officiating role in the Alliance.
Babylon 5 5.02 - "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari"
Oh my goodness, as much as I love Lennier and Delenn separately, I had to watch his farewell to her through my hands. Awkward. But as sad as I am to see him go, I think he's right that he needs to do something else with himself now, and it seems Delenn realizes it too. I don't find the idea of him as a Ranger so strange, after having seen him throw down in that bar fight alongside Londo and take such joy in a motorcycle ride with Garibaldi in Season 1. And his farewell with Vir was adorable; I love those two meeting in the Zocalo like Sam and Ralph, sheepdog and sheep in the Warner Brothers cartoons, after clocking off.
Another thing that fits, in retrospect: Londo's heart attack. He always kept his doubts and fears stuffed down in the darkest part of himself, but they were there. And, as in life, Vir is there in his dream or vision to point out what he's doing wrong: that he is still weighed down by the conscience he denies. I think it's wonderful that it was a crisis of health, and not an external event, that brought Londo to the point of being able to apologize to G'Kar. It was never something G'Kar expected or even wanted; it had to come from Londo. The Shadows are gone and G'Kar is still alive and their relationship has gone back to something like what it was, and Narn is free, and that was enough for G'Kar--but it wasn't enough for Londo.
Babylon 5 5.03 - "The Paragon of Animals"
Despite my antipathy for Byron, I do appreciate the way the writers are using him and his group to show an alternative to the PsyCorps. Byron's group is not constrained by the ethical rules and administrative structure of the PsyCorps, which makes it messier--each individual has to make his or her own decisions about how to use those powers. At the same time, all telepaths face the same problems: their abilities set them apart from the rest of their species, which both fears and wants to use those abilities. Garibaldi is only trying to maintain parity with other intelligence services when he enlists the help of the telepaths.
And they do help. Lyta is able to pass along what the dying Ranger couldn't tell them; Byron is able to discover that the Drazi were behind the attacks. In the end, the Alliance unites around G'Kar's rewritten Declaration of Principles, but the division between telepaths and everyone else remains.
Babylon 5 5.04 - "A View from the Gallery"
The outside POV device is a pretty old trope, and can in theory lead to some interesting episodes, but here it seems to serve mostly as a way of showing how heroic our heroes are, in a spectacularly unsubtle way, and in particular how well Lochley is fitting in now. Meh.
* * * * *
bitchinparty registration opens at 9am on Saturday, November 9th! Here's hoping the LAX Marriott's wifi doesn't let me down, since that's where I'll be.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/141556.html (
comments). Comment at either site.