DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES 6.12 - "You Gotta Get A Gimmick"

WRITER: Joe Keenan
DIRECTOR: David Grossman
GUEST CAST: Orson Bean, Ben Lemon, Dakin Matthews, John Rubinstein, Josh Zuckerman, Brent Biscoe, Brianne Davis & Kevin Scott Allen

[SPOILERS] You would be forgiven for thinking we were still in last week's hypothetical parallel reality given how far credibility is stretched during the reading of Karl Mayer's last will and testament at the opening of "You Gotta Get A Gimmick". Even Susan Delfino (Teri Hatcher) makes a flippant fourth-wall-teasing aside to the heavens when it is revealed that the deceased lawyer has left his ex-wife his half of a business he was co-owner of -- without anybody knowing: "At least you'll finally get some rest."

In line with his womanising ways, Karl's business is no quaint tea room in the valley but a thriving Gentleman's Club called Double D's (or "Herpes on Parade" as Susan humorously denounces it), which, exotic dancer "Destiny" (Brianne Davis) informs the stunned new co-owner, is frequented by one Mr. Mike Delfino (James Denton). Busted. Well, at least the club's pipes are; Mike informs his infuriated wife that he visits strictly for plumbing duties, which isn't enough to stop Susan from forbidding her husband from entering the premises again. Bad move.

This incredulous and weak plot-strand was all-too-neatly tied up by Susan taking to the Double D's stage herself wearing the most stereotypical stripper-esque attire possible (as you do...) to prove Mike would be outraged at men ogling her, and, thus, was wrong for being outraged at Susan's prohibiting of him working at -- and amongst -- Double D's. Always good to have a moral attached to a story which starts and ends with woman degrading themselves by dancing provocatively around poles (!) Thankfully, the rest of the episode was far more endearing and far less ridiculous.

Felicity Huffman as a worn-down and wound-up Lynette Scavo was far and away the best thing in "If...", and she follows it up with another strong turn this week. Clearly not happy that husband Tom (Doug Savant, also excellent) has successfully stepped into her shoes at Carlos's (Ricardo Chavira) firm following the loss of one of her unborn twins, it becomes apparent that she doesn't want to be a stay at home mother this time around because she is struggling with the thought of only looking after one child where there should be two. In the month that has passed (on-screen) between episodes she has been keeping these feelings bottled up, but in letting her repressed emotions out, she leaves Tom a broken man. A broken man who takes a bottle of wine up to bed... isn't it about time the Scavo's had some positive storylines? None of the Fairview folks have an easy ride, but Lynette and Tom seem to come up against a constant barrage of misery and misfortune. I also hope the writer's aren't going to recycle the alcoholic storyline they have already put Bree through in previous seasons.

With youngest daughter Celia clearly making a decent enough recovery following her near-miss in the plane crash to not even garner a mention this week, Gabrielle (Eva Longoria Parker) and Carlos Solis were back to championing Juanita (Madison De La Garza) for a place in a private school. On the cusp of success in an interview with Principal Hobson (John Rubinstein), Juanita's clueless response to her heritage ("I'm Mexican?!") leads to a lesson in ethnic pride for Gaby, who has tended to associate being Mexican with her poor upbringing, and thus downplayed her heritage to her children. A reflective look back over old photographs, and an encouraging word from her (financially successful) husband and all's well again in de casa Solis.

I find Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan) a hard character to sympathise with. He has been through hell what with his impending divorce, discovering wife Bree (Marcia Cross) was having an affair with Karl, and the plane accident which has left him wheelchair bound -- and this is only this season -- yet I cannot trust a man so crafty, devious and interchangeable. Feeling guilty over her adultery, Bree speaks with Reverend Sykes (Dakin Matthews), who suggests she atones for her sin by making it up to Orson and nursing her former love back to health. Neither Bree nor Orson really want this -- Orson would much rather stay with Karen McCluskey (Kathryn Joosten) and her man-friend Roy (Orson Bean) -- but Bree is determined to do right by God (plus she has already hired Mike to build an entrance ramp) and sly Orson spies an opportunity to take full advantage, starting with demanding a crème brulee. It's a meagre start, admittedly, but if I know Orson Hodge, this will soon escalate out of control...

Finally, and in lighter news, Ana Solis (Maiara Walsh) -- who you would be forgiven for thinking had left Wisteria Lane given how infrequently she has featured since episode 6.3 -- sets her sights on dating Danny Bolen (Beau Mirchoff), who up until now has only had eyes for Julie Mayer (Andrea Bowen). Following a painful stand-up routine at an Open Mike Night by irritating recurring friend to the local youth, Eddie Orlofsky (Josh Zuckerman), Ana makes her move. Despite initially being cold towards the snooty teen, Danny concedes that he finds Ana cute, and the seeds of a future relationship have been planted.

22 APRIL 2010: CHANNEL 4/HD, 9PM

V, 1.8 - "We Can't Win"

WRITERS: Christine Roum & Cameron Litvack
DIRECTOR: David Barrett
GUEST CAST: Charles Mesure, Lexa Doig, Mark Hildreth, Roark Critchlow, Rekha Sharma & Lucas Wolf

[SPOILERS] I'm beginning to think reviewing V just isn't worth the effort. Since it came back from hiatus, it's improved in a few ways and there's certainly more happening every week now, but there's still a malaise hanging over everything. Elizabeth Mitchell looks utterly bored in every scene she's in; so much so I've forgotten Erica's supposed to be the lead. Joel Gretsch is also incredibly weedy as Father Jack, and Charles Mesure's tough-guy Hobbes has quickly become a cheesy beefcake with a mangled British/Aussie accent. The only saving grace is Morena Baccarin, who's so sublime as alien High Commander Anna that it's frustrating the show's just not worthy of her talent.

This week, Chad (Scott Wolf) accompanied Anna to a U.N Energy Summit in Geneva, where she intended to bring clean and renewable "blue energy" to the people, but finds unexpected opposition in the Secretary General over her plan to impart this humanitarian gift. Chad learned that the U.N are against accepting more V technology because it's already started to put so many people out of work in the energy and health care industries -- which is about the best political slant on alien first contact V's made yet.

However, after Anna uses the blue energy to help the victims of a monsoon that's making world news, in gratitude Anna's allowed to take the stage during the summit to make her pitch, and it looks likely the V's will soon make the world dependent on an energy resource they control. Looking past the cackhanded way the writers treated the U.N, it was at least good to see the V's unrolling another plan for world domination, but I'm getting impatient with Chad's character (is he really so willing to turn a blind eye, or just dumb?), and Anna's right-hand man Marcus (Christopher Shyer) is just a walking device to ask questions the audience may be asking of Anna's motivations. Shame, as the actor has an otherworldly presence that nearly equals Baccarin's glassiness, so it would be nice to see him given a storyline to use it.

Back in the US, Erica found herself working as part of the V Task Force, now the FBI have become aware there's an anti-V group calling themselves The Fifth Column, meaning she's effectively chasing herself. The investigation got underway after the FBI found a warehouse full of murdered Fifth Columnists, but realize one managed to get away and now needs to be found. Working with her own Fifth Column comrades, Erica eventually found the frightened survivor of the slaughter (a young Greg Grunberg lookalike), and they decide to use him as bait to draw out the assassin on his tail.

Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) also took Anna's empathy test for Joshua (Mark Hildreth) and failed it, blaming her mission with Tyler (Logan Huffman) because it requires she fake a human relationship. Joshua realized that Lisa's psychology is becoming more human, so decided to keep her test failure a secret and instead earn himself a favour from Lisa, who could become a valuable asset for the Fifth Column if her emotions continue to bloom. Concurrently, Lisa and Tyler had sex aboard a shuttle orbiting Earth (what a way to pop your cherry!), so it all seems obvious that Lisa's going to become sympathetic to humanity thanks to her love for a human boy and eventually join the Fifth Column outright. Hardly an unexpected arc for her character, but it's a better use of Vandervoort than occasionally showing us her bra.

In a tiny subplot, Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto) was on the run from Ryan (Morris Chestnut) because she suspects he's a criminal of some description after finding his false IDs, and heads to a V-run health clinic to have her pregnancy checked. Luckily, Ryan managed to find Valerie seconds after a V doctor noticed the nature of her hybrid foetus, then killed and disintegrating the doc with a pill, before dragging his girlfriend away to tell her the truth.

Overall, I'm actually being very kind with my ratings for V, but the gloves come off now. The writers have had enough time to make their mark and state its case for renewal, but too much of it hasn't clicked for me. Erica's a bore, the Fifth Column come across as feeble, you can't take Erica's gang seriously as a plausible threat, the V's aren't scary, the dialogue's often very stilted, and the plots wash over you. Baccarin's the unequivocal highlight every week, Chestnut's not too shabby, there's the odd good idea, but the majority of every episode just feels so predictable and slight.

20 APRIL 2010: ABC, 10/9c

Talking Point: Why do you read reviews?

It's been a slow few days (a quirk of my review schedule just now), and I was too busy to watch V last night, so that review will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm actually beavering away on reviews for Lost and La La Land's first three episodes, but because I hate total blog-silence, I thought I'd ask y'all a simple question: why do you read, watch or listen to TV/film reviews?

Some follow-up questions to get your braincells buzzing:

• Are you interested in reading other people's opinions?
• Do reviews help you understand something you didn't comprehend?
• Does a good review enhance your own experience of the subject?
• Are reviews just something fun and trivial to read, to pass time?
• Do you find the best reviews to read are ones that disagree with you?
• Is a negative review inherently more entertaining and memorable?
• Can you read reviews of things you haven't seen yourself?
• Are the best reviews usually found online or in the press?
• What annoys or delights you about reviews?
• Has a review ever actually changed your opinion on something?

Those are just a few things to stoke your thoughts. Your answers don't have to relate specifically to DMD, just reviews in general. Is it as simple as just wanting to extend the experience of a film or TV show by talking and reading about it? I prefer to think reviews offer something of true value, though.

Fox turn down Torchwood

The proposed remake/spin-off to the BBC's Torchwood has been turned down by Fox. Creator Russell T. Davies was working on the pilot script for a serialized 13-episode US version, with John Barrowman potentially reprising his role as Captain Jack Harkness, but now BBC Worldwide are shopping the series to other networks.

I'm sure Torchwood's fans are relieved, but I was rather intrigued to see what a US version would have been like. It's a shame a pilot wasn't filmed, to exist as a curio at the very least. There have been reports, or wild speculation, that Russell T. Davies was finding it a struggle to translate his vision of Torchwood for an American sensibility. Put simply: the things that made Torchwood stand out from the crowd (its sexuality, its edginess, its Britishness) are the very things a US network would either excise or dillute.

FRINGE 2.18 - "White Tulip"

WRITER: J.H Wyman & Jeff Vlamin
DIRECTOR: Jeffrey G. Hunt
GUEST CAST: Peter Weller, Richard Harmon, Andrew McIlroy, Kristen Ross & Laara Sadiq

[SPOILERS] The best episodes of Fringe splice a compelling sci-fi idea to relatable human emotions; a balance the show doesn't always succeed at. But that's why the recent "Peter" was so memorable, with its focus on Walter's (John Noble) grief and guilt over his son's origins bolstering a simplistic, pulp sci-fi storyline. It's also why so much of Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter's (Joshua Jackson) storylines never seem to ignite. Olivia hasn't had a believable connection to anyone since her fiance died in season 1 (recently she's just been taking advice from a bowling alley mystic), and Peter's main function on the show is to interpret Walter's technobabble and spew snarky rejoinders. But "White Tulip" got everything just right, with a clever and stirring hour of entertainment that ranks as one of my favourite Fringe's...

This week, Fringe Division are investigating the simultaneous deaths of a train carriage full of commuters, who appear to have just collectively died. Walter, who has spent the morning writing a letter for Peter to explain why he stole him from another dimension (yeah, that chestnut), hypothesizes that something drained everyone's biological energy -- along with all electrical appliances in the vicinity. That "something" may be a mysterious man seen alighting the train on a security camera: Dr. Alistair Peck (Peter Weller), a genius science lecturer at MIT who's wife Arlette (Kristen Ross) died in a car crash almost a year ago. That tragedy elicited such grief in Peck that he's spent every day since perfecting his theories on time-travel and has constructed a device that requires he surgically implant a "Faraday mesh" beneath his skin, that so far has allowed him to jump back in time by a few hours.

Time-travel is one of the most obvious and exciting areas of fringe science the show was still to tackle, and "White Tulip" was certainly worth the wait two year wait. I particularly enjoyed how the method of travel stayed true to the show's love of gross "body horror" (with Peck tearing his flesh to insert steel rods and bolts), and there was added geek-friendly fun in seeing RoboCop star Peter Weller once again merged with metal.

But above all, the parallels between Peck and Walter -- as men who have pushed the frontiers of science and bent the laws of nature for the love of their family -- was potent and convincing. The scene where Walter had a chance to sit down with Peck and implore him not to risk the death of innocent bystanders by leaping back in time 10-months and changing the timeline, was brilliantly played by Noble and Weller. Plus we learned that Walt's come to believe his insanity was God's way of punishing him from for tearing a whole through reality to steal someone else's son to replace his own dead child, and has been waiting for a sign of divine forgiveness in the form of the titular white tulip.

For an episode that risked becoming a fun but cheesy Groundhod Day-style adventure (the investigation of Peck was replayed after he jumped back in time to avoid capture), it actually gave us something less gimmicky and more human. The thrilling final moments, with Peck deciding to ignore Walt's warnings and jump back in time to (we assumed) rescue his wife also cleverly avoided expectations. Instead of pulling her from the car before it was hit by a struck, Peck instead just sat in the passenger seat with her, told her he loved her one last time, and accepted death alongside her. A moment that cleverly avoided Walt's concerns that letting Arlette live would change the course of history in unpredictable ways (although I guess you could argue that his own death did that instead.)

Even better was the beautiful closing moment, where Peck had sent a letter addressed to Walt, to be delivered at a set time, containing a drawing of a white tulip -- a sign from "God" that Walt will never fathom because, for him, history was changed and he's never had a conversation with anyone about his white tulip. It'll be interesting to see if Walt takes this as a sign that God's forgiven him and the need to tell Peter the truth isn't necessary.

"White Tulip" was a season and series highlight, no doubt about it. Blessed with a tender and compelling performance from Peter Weller as a widowed genius, more great scenes for John Noble, the reliable fun of time-travel as a concept, a storyline that was slickly told with neat pay-offs, and all imbued with simple human emotions of grief and obsession. Proof, if it were needed, that Fringe needs to start finding similar ways to make its sci-fi larks matter to characters on an emotional level, because episodes like this are all too rare gems.

Asides

• To be picky, it bugs me when a fictional time machine has the ancillary ability to teleport its subjects. Peck shouldn't have been jumping to trains and fields, he should have just remained wherever he stood when he activated that Faraday mesh. Everyone knows that. Of course, to get even nitpickier, any earthbound time-travel machine would actually have to be a teleporter, because the planet's constantly moving through space.
• Walter is a man who created the world's first teleporter and a portal to another dimensions decades ago, so would he really have such a hard time deciphering Peck's equations on time-travel?
• Astro. So Walter's back to mispronouncing Astrid's name again?
• Please God, give Lance Reddick something to do. Anything. Every week he basically has the role of delivering crime scene exposition, which is far beneath him. He's essentially the local Sheriff type in X Files episode, made a regular. I guess Reddick's happy and well-paid playing Broyles on network TV, but the role's such a bore.
• You may recognize the teenager at the train station as Heracles from Caprica (actor Richard Harmon), who funnily enough was an actor I spent some time trying to find the name of, and now he's appearing in everything!

20 APRIL 2010: SKY1/HD, 10PM

What I'm Watching

Obviously, all the shows in the sidebar's "On The Box" are the big TV shows I'm tuning into every week and reviewing. But on top of those I'm also still watching The Good Wife (usually a few weeks behind Channel 4 HD, dipping in when I get the chance), Damages (which I'm liking, but don't feel all that gripped by now) and FlashForward (which has gone equal parts crazy and terrible.) Yesterday I also started watching In Treatment, mainly because all 43 episodes of season 1 are available on HD through Virgin Media's VOD service..

In Treatment has a very unique format: every half-hour's a simple two-hander between therapist Paul (Gabriel Byrne) and a client, which means that every day you get a new character's psyche to explore. But, mirroring a psychiatrist's schedule, every character returns the following week for their next session. So you basically spend a week getting to know all these new faces, and in the ensuing weeks they all return and you get to have a deeper understanding of them as people and the problems/issues they have. Adding a further kink, every week Paul himself has a session with his own psychiatrist Gina (Dianne Wiest), but I haven't got that far yet.

In fact, I'm only a few episodes into the run, but considering I only really expected to watch one episode last night... that goes to show how more-ish In Treatment is. Despite the fact it's just listening to two people talk for 25-minutes in a single room, that's quite an achievement. There are no flashbacks or any other dramatic crutches you might have expected, this is more stage-like. Just actors bringing scripts to life.

Anyway, I'm not going to say anything else, because I suspect I'll be reviewing In Treatment's first season once I finish all the episodes. Like Nurse Jackie, the fact they're just half-hours make them easy to "snack" on when you have some spare time, but I'd be lying if I said the prospect of 43 episodes isn't a little daunting, because that still equals 21-hours of programming. We'll see how it goes.

But yes, so far I'm recommending In Treatment if you have Virgin Media's VOD or feel like splashing out on a box-set. The series airs on Sky Arts here in the UK, but I'm not sure if it's still on-air right now, or ever repeated. There have already been 3 seasons on HBO, too, so there's plenty to enjoy.

Oh, and a week or so ago I finished The Wire Season 2 box-set, so now I just need to find the time to write a full review. My schedule's a bit more manageable just now, and I have some time-off next week, so I'll hopefully be able to set some hours aside.

So anyway, that's what's turning my eyes square just lately, but what are you guys watching and what do you recommend to others?

BREAKING BAD 3.5 - "Mas"

WRITER: Moira Walley-Beckett
DIRECTOR: Johan Renck
GUEST CAST: Charles Baker, Christopher Cousins, Julie Dretzen, Mary Sue Evans, Carole Gutierrez, Steven Michael Quezada & Rodney Rush

[SPOILERS] A marvellous episode just before mid-season, "Mas" ("more") clearly marks a turning point for Breaking Bad, as so much happens to progress the White's troubled marriage, as well as Walt's (Bryan Cranston) relationship with Jesse (Aaron Paul) and Gus (Giancarlo Esposita). In a series that rarely flounders, this was a real highlight in terms of plot progression and character moments...

We began with a pre-titles flashback to the "Pilot", where it became clear that Jesse spent Walt's $7,000 on a hedonistic night at a strip club with his friends Combo and Skinny Pete, rather than purchase a RV in which to cook meth. I was a little worried we were in store for an ill-advised prequel episode, but rather this delivered some information that came in useful for the present-day storyline. Jesse used the remaining $1,400 after his wild night to "buy" Combo's mother's RV, unaware that he's actually stealing it and giving his friend the cash.

To the present, and Skyler's (Anna Gunn) enjoying the luxuries of Ted's (Christopher Cousins) heated bathroom floor, but it’s clear she's focusing on little things and isn't as happy as she's pretending. In a telling moment later in the episode, she's quick to lay a towel on the bathroom floor to stand on, signifying that her apparent bliss with Ted isn't the utopia she wants. Ted's world is warm and inviting, but she's burning her feet. Basically, Skyler still loves Walt, and this episode found her trying to find a way to forgive him. After a phone call from her sister Marie (Betsy Brandt), who's worried about Hank's (Dean Norris) mental state, it became clear that both women are married to husbands who have changed because they faced death. That, on top of mulling over Walt's excuse for cooking meth (to provide for his family), soon causes Skyler to rethink her position. And despite he fact her lawyer wants her to leave the house, or risk becoming an accessory after the fact regarding a bag of cash she finds in Walt's cupboard, it seems Skyler's perhaps willing to put the past behind her and try to rescue their marriage...

But it's too late. Walt's starting to get the message loud and clear, over uncomfortable silences at dinner, and the fact his wife's blatantly sleeping with another man. After going to see Gus about the fact he was given half of Jesse's drug money as an obvious ploy to get him cooking again, Walt's eventually persuaded to go back into business with the drug lord. Gus succeeds in convincing him to rejoin his enterprise because he senses Walt's pride in his work ("the chemistry must be respected") and appeals to his science nerdiness by showing him a secret "super-lab" under a laundry business he owns; a state-of-the-art subterranean facility that's undetectable thanks to filtered air and has a plausible reason for so many chemical purchases onsite.

It's effectively a dreamland for someone like Walt, hence the ethereal musical cue when he clapped eye on it for the first time -- a whimsical, fairytale-like ditty, not unlike the same music used to accompany a scene where Walt holds his baby daughter Holly, stressing the point that the super-lab holds equal sway with Walt's emotions. Gus' final punch was to appeal to Walt's sense of a paternal responsibility to his family, even if his wife and kids don't agree with how he goes about it ("a man provides... and he does it even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved".)

Hank's storyline continued with some interesting moments. Having given up his opportunity to leave for big things in El Paso, he's thrown himself into his investigation of Heisenberg and is busy tracking down all the RV's that match the description of the one caught on the ATM machine's camera last week. He's not having much luck yet, and wife Marie's starting to get worried about her husband's mental state. There's a great scene with Marie imploring Hank to unburden himself by talking to her, from the other side of a shower curtain as he washed himself after a hard day's work. A literal barrier between them. It's such a shame Hank's too proud to lower his defences and talk through his PTSD with Marie, or a counsellor, but his sense of masculinity just doesn't bend that far. How long until he snaps?

On top of that, Hank had to deal with the fact his best friend and partner Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada) has been given his El Paso promotion instead, meaning Hank had to pull himself together at work and pretend he was happy for Gomez -- while secretly furious that he's so cowardly to have accepted the transfer himself, and, perhaps, a little upset he can't give Gomez some words of advice without opening up about his own brief experience and fears. The best he can do is give him a statue of Jesus Malverde, the patron saint of drug dealers. It'll be interesting to see if Gomez suffers the same kind of trauma as Hank did in El Paso, or will he prove himself more able to cope with the horrors there?

Finally, Jesse was outraged that half his money was given to Walt, suspecting Walt was complicit in this arrangement, so he called a meeting with Saul (Bob Odenkirk) to reach an agreement: he'll cook the meth and give Walt 10% of his takings, as a show of goodwill because he came up with the formula. Instead, to his surprise, Walt hands back the money Gus' henchman threw him at the intersection, but only because he lets it be known he's decided to join forces with Gus fulltime. So now, Walt's calling the shots and advises Jesse not to keep using his formula or face the consequences ("I'm in, you're out.") Saul's quick to jump onto Walt, accepting a measly 5% fee for laundering the $3 million he expects to make in three months (that's $150,000), and Jesse's frustration at being ousted from the setup finds him breaking Walt's windscreen with a concrete block -- the second time that's happened to Walt this year.

"Mas" certainly delivered a lot of changes to the show. It seems that Walt and Jesse's relationship has been soiled, so perhaps they'll be rivals, or Jesse will find a way to get involved with Walt or Gus? My guess is that Jesse will have bigger problems, because Hank's finally traced the RV to Combo's mother's house and, after hearing that Combo was shot dead last year, notices a photo of Jesse Pinkman in Combo's bedroom. Jesse being someone Hank's already run into before, he's starting to make some real connections. My guess is that Jesse will run into trouble with Hank and make a deal with Walt/Gus to keep quiet about what he knows in exchange for protection and work.

Perhaps the saddest thing about this episode was seeing Skyler return home from Ted's, probably ready to start repairing her marriage with Walt -- after coming to understand why he did what he did, and noticing how he is with their baby, only to find Walt's cleared out and signed her divorce papers. Walt's entire life is a series of tragic missed opportunities, bad timing and poor decisions, so it was only fitting he'd decide to end his marriage and embrace meth-cooking at the exact moment his wife wants to salvage things.

Overall, "Mas" was a fantastic instalment of this excellent series. I loved seeing the show make a hard 180-turn and there's still so much richness to explore in each character and how they're dealing with their lives. I was particularly struck by a few blossoming similarities between Hank and Jesse now; both stuck on the fringes of their professions, watching someone who was close to them take their careers to the next level and leave them behind.

Anyway, great episode, what did you think?

18 APRIL 2010: AMC, 10/9c

GLEE 1.14 - "Hell-O"

WRITER: Ian Brennan
DIRECTOR: Brad Falchuk
GUEST CAST: Jenna Ushkowitz, Jonathan Groff, Idina Menzel, Iqbal Theba, Patrick Gallagher, Naya Rivera, James Earl, Josh Sussman, Max Adler, Heather Morris, Harry Shum Jr., Dijon Talton, Ayla Rose Barreau, Ashley Fink & Hayley Holmes

[SPOILERS] Glee returns for its second half, and because the show was only guaranteed 13 episodes before it became a smash-hit, "Hell-O" finds writer Ian Brennan mostly dismantling things to an earlier state. It's a little frustrating, but then again Glee's always had a very relaxed attitude when it comes to consistency and plausible development. More importantly, this episode had conviction and laughs...

After their success at sectionals, the glee club members expect their popularity at school to soar, but they're still getting slushies thrown in their face. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Mr Schue (Matthew Morrison) reminds the group that they now have to focus on regionals, where they're up against famous rivals Vocal Adrenaline, so assigns them new homework: to come up with a brand new opening number incorporating the word "hello" in the song title. Rachel (Lea Michele) busied herself trying to find the perfect song, in-between smothering boyfriend Finn (Corey Monteith) with so much attention that he began to feel trapped.

Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) has regained her position as coach, having drugged Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) and staged a compromising situation with him in her bed, to blackmail him into letting her return to work. And now she's out for revenge against Schue –- recruiting cheerleaders Brittany (Heather Morris) and Santana (Naya Rivera) to help her ruin glee club by coming between Finn and Rachel. It works, and the heartbroken Rachel tries to distract herself by focusing on the "hello" assignment in the library, where she meets Vocal Adrenaline's star singer Jesse St James (Jonathan Groff), a boy who's equally as self-absorbed and egotistical as she is.

Schue's relationship with Emma (Jayma Mays) looked to be going very well, now they're free to romance each other without feeling guilty about his wife Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig), but it was interesting to see that Schue soon went cold on Emma after she told him she's a virgin. In fact, while visiting Vocal Adrenaline's choirmaster Shelby Corcoran (Idina Menzel) about his suspicion that Jesse St. James has only started dating Rachel to spy on New Directions, it takes all of 10 seconds before Schue and Shelby are locked in a passionate embrace. He's clearly a mess of emotions (or very insensitive, you decide), and after Terri reveals to Emma that their nascent relationship has certain similarities to her own with Schue, Emma realizes that Schue's not really over Terri and decides to call off their romance.

"Hell-O" was ironically more about goodbyes, as Finn/Rachel and Schue/Emma both ended their couplings. This episode was essentially a big reboot of Glee, but it worked surprisingly well considering it spent an hour tearing things apart. I expected to be more angry that so much of the show was reset, but it actually felt refreshing to see Rachel swooning over a new boy and Schue perhaps likewise about to get involved with "the enemy". Or will Terri get her claws back into him? I also think it helped that Ian Brennan, for my money, is Glee's best writer, certainly of the three co-creators who shoulder a lot of the writing duties. Brennan just crafts funnier dialogue and gives more screentime to the glorious tracksuited monster that is Sue, so I tend to enjoy his episodes a lot more.

Overall, this was a very confident and entertaining recapitulation of the show, giving us fresh characters, a new villain in Vocal Adrenaline (the evil twin of New Directions?), great dialogue, and the songs were pretty good, too. I was a bit disappointed Schue and Emma didn't last longer as a couple, so their breakup could feel a bit more tragic, but other than that this was a very strong return. I just hope Glee can take us to some interesting new places in the lead-up to the regionals season finale, as the biggest danger Glee faces is repetition.

Asides

• Guest star Idina Menzel is a big Broadway star, and Gleeks mounted a campaign to get her involved as Rachel's mother, because they both look quite similar. So here she is in a different role as an evil choirmaster, but maybe a family connection to Rachel will be revealed further down the line?
• I had to laugh when Jesse and Rachel's impromptu rendition of Lionel Richie's "Hello" on a piano in the library somehow attracted a few violin players who just happened to be sat nearby. The world of Glee's just inches away from pure musical fantasy.
• I find it funny that the show's now referencing the fact Corey Monteith can't dance very well. I especially liked Finn's response when Brittany and Santana praised his dance moves: "But I was hardly moving my feet."
• Speaking of Brittany; she's becoming Glee's version of Ralph from The Simpsons. A character who pops up and spews a hilarious non sequitur or two. My favourite here was Brittany's "did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?"
• Check out the orgasmic delight in Kurt's face when Finn came dancing up to him.
• Wise move to get Finn more involved with basketball than football, as the latter just doesn't work that well in drama. Faces are obscured, non-Americans don't understand the rules, it always requires outside filming, etc.
• It amuses me that Sue keeps targeting Schue's hair. "You have enough product in there to season a wok." She's jealous.
• Terri's a big fan of Jerry Bruckheimer's work and has Bruckheimer Nights!

19 APRIL 2010: E4/HD, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Four

WRITERS: Robert Schenkkan & Graham Yost
DIRECTOR: Graham Yost

[SPOILERS] The best episode so far, but still one that caused me to question my commitment to The Pacific, which has so far failed to grab me on any level. It's beginning to puzzle me that the budget for this miniseries is a stratospheric $150m, as so little appears to be up on-screen. Also, if you watch a war drama you want two things: "war" and "drama". And so far there's been very little of either that's felt estimable, and certainly nothing to rival its spiritual predecessor Band Of Brothers...

This week, we went through the battle of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, which again featured a disorientating night fight against some Japanese soldiers. I know you can't rewrite history, but it's beginning to irritate me that we haven't had a truly comprehensible battle in daylight in four hours of television. The first half of Part Four earned points for a few nicely delivered scenes, at leasr: a crazy US marine throttling an injured Jap in front of his horrified comrades, and Leckie (James Badge Dale) witnessing a French soldier's suicide. Oh yes, cowardly French allies and a Japanese enemy that amounts to wary-crying shadows that just get gunned down, that's the level we're writing at.

The passage of time is also still a problem for me. We're given month and year legends on-screen, thankfully, but little sense that weeks are actually passing. You sometimes wonder why everyone's so dispirited by a few days of rain, when I guess weeks and perhaps months have passed living in those conditions, but there's just no sense of time to how the stories unfold. Did the battle of Cape Gloucester last three days, three weeks, or three months? I have no idea. And was it really much of a battle? A few skirmishes in the night was all I saw.

Moving on to the island of Pavuvu, Leckie disintegrates mentally, not helped by the fact he's suffering from enuresis (an inability to control his bladder) and is constantly wetting himself. This social embarrassment, the bad weather and near-constant state of alerteness takes its toll and Leckie is sent for medical treatment in a military "funny farm". There he trades quips with a mild-mannered shrink and meets Gibson (Tom Budge), a comrade who's been deemed insane after trying to kill himself while on duty. Gibson's the crazy marine Leckie saw strangling that Japanese soldier on New Britain, but I only realized that in conversation with a friend afterwards, such highlights the problem trying to remember faces and names on a show like this.

Part Four was definitely better than its preceding hours because there were more layers to its story, but I still find that nothing's hitting me emotionally. Battles are being fought that I don't have any investment in (indeed, I'm often surprised they're considered important enough to have names!), no characters beyond Leckie have been developed to any significant degree, the passing of time isn't being felt dramatically (would it hurt to put a few "X Days Later" legends up?), and I haven't been all that impressed by any of the action sequences. That said, hyphenate Graham Yost (Speed, Justified) has done the best job of any of his peers so far.

Overall, maybe I'm being too hard on The Pacific, or my expectations need lowering, but I don’t think the creators have approached the material the right way. The Pacific campaign is undeniably more fractured and less accessible to a traditional narrative than the European theatre was, but even allowing for that these episodes have been thin on characterisation and lack exciting plots. There are a modicum of interesting moments and amusing dialogue in every hour, with perhaps a few minutes of diverting battle if you're lucky, but not much else. The buzz was huge for this show, and I've read some very positive reviews, but I'm just not feeling it.

Asides

• Leckie's writing very strange, depressing letters to Vera, isn’t he? A sign of his madness, or is he just too honest for his own good? Incidentally, I wish we cared about Vera, but I forget if we've ever even met her now. It would have been better if he was writing to the Greek girl he fell in love with last week, don't you think? At least we can picture her face.
• It's been many years since I saw Band Of Brothers, but were the German soldiers just faceless bullet-fodder as The Pacific's Japanese are?
• I'm thinking of fast-forwarding through the opening documentary featurettes now, because each one just spoils the gist of what the drama's going to tackle. And it's crazy that it takes 7 minutes for the episode to actually start, after the featurette and protracted opening titles.
• I was led to believe this miniseries would focus on Leckie, Basilone and Sledge, but with Basilone sent home and Sledge still in training, was that a wise creative decision? It's given the show a very disorderly feel, as I'm sure there are people who don't even realize Sledge and Basilone are so important. After four hours, Leckie's benefitted the most from the attention, but I wish more of his fellow marines had been developed. What's so wrong with just focusing on, say, five characters in Leckie's platoon, and following them through various battles?

19 APRIL 2010: SKY MOVIES PREMIERE, 9PM

TV Ratings: The Prisoner (ITV1) & Doctor Who (BBC1)

The Prisoner remake got off to a disappointing start on Saturday for ITV1, despite a lead-in from the premiere of Britain's Got Talent. Airing at 9.30pm, the AMC/ITV co-production attracted just 3.209 million viewers, losing 7 million of BGT's peak audience. This is perhaps understandable, as the majority of BGT's fanbase aren't going to be interested in a sci-fi remake of a '60s cult classic, and it's debatable that the average ITV viewer would find The Prisoner appealing. I guess the 3m who did watch were strictly sci-fi/Prisoner fans? It'll be interesting to see how many of the 3m tune in for episode 2.

Earlier that same evening over on BBC1, Doctor Who's "Victory Of The Daleks" attracted 6.227 million viewers, although that overnight figure's likely to rise when HD, PVR, VOD, and iPlayer stats are taken into account. For example, last week's "The Beast Below" had 7.93m BBC1 viewers, but the total figure was adjusted by BARB to 8.42m when they factored in other viewing methods throughout the week.

Also, if you're interested in comparing Steven Moffat's era to Russell T. Davies', the overnight figures for series 4's third episode, "Planet Of The Ood", were 7.5m. David Tennant's third ever episode, "School Reunion", attracted 8.3m viewers back in 2006.