After the new year gets settled in, we're adding eight new contributors and expanding what we cover and what we talk about! And we're also going to start selling ad space on the sidebar, so if you have a geek-friendly product or business, drop us a line!
We're going to post intros sometime in January, and update the About Us page so you can get to know our writers. I'm going to start doing monthly Letters From The Editor. We're going to talk about SO MUCH MORE STUFF than I can do on my own! It's gonna be so great, you guys.
Stay tuned!
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Geeky TV commentary - Bones 11.6, Sleepy Hollow 3.6, Elementary 4.1
Bones airs at 8pm on Fox Thursday nights.
So many guest stars this season! The latest was right here in the cold open, with Impractical Jokers Murr and Sal as street sweepers who find the body by street-sweeping over it and getting their whole truck all grossed up. And then Murr tastes it, thinking it's a prank. That's a nice meta-injoke, but it's also really gross.
The body turns out to be a senator. One that Hodgins actually liked enough to stop voting side parties for. He seemed to actually be, like, the only good guy in Senate, since the mysterious monthly pay outs turned out to be to help a daughter he'd just reconnected with, no an affair like they thought. It was the wife that was having an affair. A wife that would suddenly be a Senator because of some old law that widows of Senators take over when one dies because they're likely to be similar, politically. And it was his aid (or whoever that guy who used to be on Sleepy Hollow was) who killed him.
All very tidy. Because it's not the case that matters on this show anymore.
What matters is the people, as I probably say every week.
Bones got to turn her bluntness up to 11 to take on their political suspects so that she could be rude and ask personal questions and booth could get a read on her, and she took to it gleefully. It was kind of obnoxious, but it also showed exactly why they're such a good team: she antagonizes and cuts right to the truth, and Booth reads the social cues and emotional reactions, and together they can build a clear picture of what's going on.
And when he wasn't with Bones, Booth was with Aubrey, who was sort of their lovechild this ep--savvy and agent-y, but also not taking any guff from anyone involve and being less diplomatic than Booth. It was great. Aubrey was also checking out Squintern Jessica-from-the-commune's background, and found out about some questionable protests, and some drugs and rock'n'roll in her past. He was inclined to take it seriously, but she was arguing that pasts make us who we are and she's not who she was then anymore than he's who he was when his dad was arrested. It was very well done--talking on multiple layers, feeling out what could be a new 'ship*, all sorts of meaningful eyeballs.
Aubrey came in on a bad episode so that it was crazy-obvious that he was meant to fill a hole in the cast when Sweets died**, but he's done a good job of becoming an endearing, tough, honest, individual character! And he humanizes Jessica nicely. The two of them might even be good enough together to handle a spinoff or a continuation, if the main cast decides to leave at any point. An ER-style hand-off wouldn't have worked a few years ago, but now the Squinterns are all known characters and it would be nice to see them taking over the lab and carrying on the Jeffersonian's good name if the original cast gets tired of it. Bones: The Next Generation, all trained by Bones and Booth and Angela, Hodgins, and Cam.***
And we got Caroline this week! Any week with Caroline busting chops and calling Booth pretty is a good week, and she upped the ante by flirting with Aubrey, too, and it was wonderful.
Meanwhile, Bones and Booth were arguing over whether or not to get a TV for the bedroom, because Booth wanted to watch things snuggled up in bed, and Bones didn't want to give up sex--since statistics say that a TV in the bedroom makes for less sex for couples, and she loves statistics. They eventually do get one, after agreeing that it's an experiment to see whether they fit the odds or beat them, and it's adorable.
It still feels sometimes like Bones is coasting, but if they are, they're coasting at a good clip, on a good tone, and it's still fun and charming and full of quirk, just like we all love.
Sleepy Hollow airs at 9pm on Fox Thursday nights.
Pandora's plot is finally getting somewhere...but we have no idea where, and it sort of just highlighted how bad Abbie and Crane have been about following up with anything at all this season. She sent a wasp-woman from Trinidadian folklore to make people paranoid and dead, and then she harvested all those flowers to open a door in the tree and literally just walk out on them, and it was like ??????.
It was great to get a monster that came from something other than Revolutionary America (though it did, actually, tie back to that needlessly), even if she did look like a Power Rangers villain and didn't have much more story to herself than, say, a streetlamp. Maybe an evil streetlamp. But it was so easy to find where she was and to put the pieces together that it just made Team Witness look like selfish idiots for not ever wondering where Pandora was hiding out, or what she was doing, or what any of what she was doing meant. And even with the pieces together--six kinds of fear to open a door--we still have no idea what she's doing. Like, at all. Or why.
Ugh.
The hope that the beginning of the season brought that it would be better is starting to wear off as Jenny is still underused (though this week, she does get to do a little A-plot usefulness, and might be getting a story of her own now), as they announce that they're "not actively pursuing Ichabbie" and yet Abbie is also being denied actively pursing or being pursued by anyone else, and these flabby treatments of the plot lines they are actively pursuing. Combined with how Fox didn't even update the character shots for the bumps between commercials and didn't even mention that this show still existed until two weeks before it came back, feels like it's been abandoned. Which feels like this will be the last season. Which then, in light of all the lameness going on around the edges, feels like everyone has given up. If you're going out and you know it, make it good, and don't put off the storylines the fans have been wanting--especially when you were talking about them as a possibility before the season aired. If you're not giving up, act like it, and get your act together.
Anyway.
Jenny and Joe had to give up on tracking down Corbin's past, because of that case that the FBI has that we've seen literally nothing of, and Joe won't let it go. He trades the Shard of Anubis for info, and his dad's old criminal buddy says a bunch of bad-sounding things about money and crime and doesn't explain any of them. But Jenny had her boy's back, and they get the Shard back--except the guy had taken the real shard out of the big rock, and it sank into Jenny's hand, and she didn't think to mention that to anyone--like, say, her partner in this mission, or her sister, or the resident eidetic king of books. It gave her nightmares and made her glow, and that could be really interesting, but at this point, who knows.
Crane goes on a date with Zoe that proves they have no chemistry despite hitting up the same webpages, which really just makes it look like Zoe is stalking him or something. She's so not weirded out by his weirdness, never has anything to say against him, finds the same how-to-date webpages out of all the pages on the web...It's suspicious. And yet, Crane goes out with her again.
And Abbie has no joy left in her life. All she does is get annoyed, make sad faces when no one is looking, and not get to have a love interest of her own. Which might be fine if she got to talk about why, or explain herself to the boss who might still like her (though he doesn't treat her very well and also is not doing anything about it himself, so who cares if he's cute), or anything, but she's not doing any of that. She's a blank wall, not letting anyone in, not letting anything out, and it looks like she doesn't even want to be there--so why is she? The first episode had her choosing Witnessing over running away, but lately, she's just chasing down monsters but not following up, not trying to piece stuff together between cases, not even hanging out with her sister.
And if Abbie isn't happy, when do we get to get a plot for her about it?
Also, why wasn't Grace Dixon the new contact in the past? She's got the journal she passed down to Abbie, she was already there so she didn't need to be created new for this season that already has new characters, she proves that Abbie is equally as tied into whatever happens then that affects here, and she has actually met Abbie--literally almost the only person from the past who can say that. Oversight? Prejudice? More fumbling? It's an annoying choice.
And it's annoying being so annoyed by a show I like and used to love, that's so much better than it was, and still making dumb choices.
Elementary airs at 10pm on CBS Thursday nights.
Elementary is back! And there was only a small jump between the end of the season and the start of this one, story-wise.
Sherlock fell off the wagon, but has gotten clean again since then, and doesn't intend to get back into a drugged out stupor. He feels appropriately bad about it. But more than that, he feels bad about how almost kicking that guy to death might have messed up Joan's life, since if he's gone from the NYPD consultancy, she is too.
He tries to get her to take the credit for the case they're working, and she refuses--all that matters to her is the partnership, because she took the job to work with him, not the cops. So if she goes down with him, he wants to cushion that, too, and tries to get them both a job working for the feds instead of the cops****. Really, his concern for her is the heart of this episode, and it's moving enough that when he finds out he's not going to jail for the beating, she hugs him and he doesn't make her stop (though he also doesn't return it). Is this the season where they'll be allowed to drift toward something non-professional? Something where they admit that they care about each other more than once a season?
They're trying to prove that Bloom, who was horrible to them last season and killed himself right in front of Sherlock this episode, didn't kill his wife by proving that he's telling the truth about the two women he did kill and therefore telling the truth that he didn't kill the wife, too. Tracking the wife leads to another woman who disappeared, and a plot to get revenge for the death of her whole family during a failed attempt to smuggle themselves out of South America through Mexico. They find the guy responsible for that--who was also responsible for her death when she found him and confronted him about it.
And that led to the option to work outside the city, though it was half joking, and who knows if that's what they'll do.
What made this a great episode was the caring between all the characters. Gregson brought them food and came to check on Joan, and separately on Sherlock. Bell helped Joan clean up their stuff from the precinct when they officially lost their job there, and it was very sweet when he said he'd miss her. Joan was trying to get through to Mr Holmes when he said he was finally going to come talk to them in person and never showed, because she cares about Sherlock and didn't want to be treated like that for it. Sherlock tried to shield Joan and Gregson from his fallout.
And Mr Holmes finally did show up, whether that's because he cares or not still remains to be seen.
All in all, a good start to the season, with lots of feels and somehow still some humor, and a good case.
What did you think of today's shows? Comment below, or come talk to me on Twitter!
Bones
Sleepy Hollow
Elementary
**They should have introduced him a few episodes before, let him interact, been a separate person before Sweets died, but whatevs, too late now.
***This is one of my hobbyhorses. Shows don't have to end when the main characters want to leave, but so far, really, only ER has done it right--introducing people and letting viewers get used to them before the old people leave. SG1 almost did it, trading O'Niell for Cameron and Vala, who were both great but only had a few years. X-Files tried, and Doggett and Reyes were good, but they came in too late and the show was already closing shop.
****Which would be so great, because then I can pretend that he'd be able to meet other fancy assets, like Jane from Blindspot at Brian from Limitless, even though they're both on a different channel. Ooh, or they could guest star Jane and Lisbon! Or Team Scorpion! They're all government contractors on CBS!
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Geeky TV commentary - The Flash 2.5, Agents of SHIELD 3.6, Limitless 1.7
The Flash airs at 8pm on CW Tuesday nights.
The Flash has been getting a little...loose as of late. I mean, freezing a laser? But this week, things came back to the tighter, character-centered way of the show that we all know and love.
Zoom sends Dr Light to stop Barry, presumably because she's actually Linda Park, even though this Linda has no idea who Barry is, and she's not a killer, so that whole thing goes sideways when she runs from Barry and fails to kill her Earth-1 self. Which implies that Zoom knows all sorts of stuff about Barry. Like that his ex-girlfriend's face will make him pause and allow her to blind him? Since Barry doesn't seem to exist in the retro-future Earth-2 so far, how does he manage that knowledge?
Dr Light isn't thrilled about any of this either, but Zoom is holding something over her and forcing her hand. She misses when another reporter at the newspaper dies saving one of our known characters*, and doesn't keep trying, because she's a robber, not a murderer, and she's spooked. But it means that now Iris and Linda know that Linda has a double here, and Linda is now in police custody to keep her safe.
While this was going on, Blind Barry is adorable and useless as a hero, so he goes on a date with Patty, where Cisco serves as his eyes until she figures out that he can't see and they take over for themselves. It very sweet, and Barry is adorable when he can barely walk, but it makes me worry for Patty's safety, or what her story holds. And, after a first kiss, he regains his vision.
The really good part of the episode, though, was Alt!Welles. He's golden. He's fussy, kind of an ass, and he has no time for all the baggage that comes with everyone knowing the person he looks like. His exasperation with the whole story of this world's Welles is perfect, and his bluntness is refreshing through the whole episode--especially when he cuts through the dumb plot choices and calls out Cisco for not telling everyone he's got powers now. Which means that Cisco can then help them with Dr Light's location, and he can then get a superhero name**. It also means he's got more confidence and he asks out the new girl at the coffee shop, who will turn out to be Hawkgirl.*** The Welles-Cisco dynamic through this whole episode is the best thing ever, and should be more of the series as a whole.
Welles also has no patience for Jay's inability to stop Zoom, which, as it turns out, is because Zoom has his daughter--because this Welles has family, and is presumably not actually Eobard (which is what they should be calling their own Welles now, but what evs).
Other things of note: Caitlyn and Jay almost kiss but it makes them miss the attack that ends their stakeout. Apparently the shark-man from last ep is being called King Shark. Iris still doesn't know what to do about her mom. And Joe is so done with Welles that he just opens fire on sight before he finds out that this is an alternate-reality double.
It was a fun episode!
Agents of SHIELD airs at 9pm on ABC Tuesday nights.
After last week's awesome episode where Simmons got to shine, I wasn't looking forward to getting back to the Hydra storyline that has long been my least favorite part of this show, but it actually wasn't that bad, I guess?
Andrew managed to survive the explosion last time we saw them, and says it was because he had a SHIELD bodyguard who gave his life to keep him safe. But he's all busted up, and May is pissed. She blames Hunter and gets him grounded. She goes after Bobbi to make her prove that she's fine and it's fear that's been keeping her out of the field. And then the two of them go on the warpath. That part's pretty glorious, because they make an amazing team and they have all sorts of widgets and skills outside of just fighting--but May wants to fight and Bobbi wants to talk her way out, and they don't really agree on how to handle things.
Together, they manage to get to that big guy who does Ward's dirty work, who is at that moment beating up Werner von Strucker for not finishing his mission. Bobbi takes out the thug with some awesome fighting and zapping, and May finds out what she can about Ward, but the kid is done. So much for the Hydra royal family that make no sense anyway.
Meanwhile, though, Werner has called for help on one of his dad's old cronies, who seems to feel that everyone should fear him. Ward doesn't, but it's unclear so far whether he actually should or not.
I'm just over here like -_- about the whole thing. It feels like they're setting up for a Hydra spinoff with how much story time they're handing over to Ward's actions, but it still seems more of a mess than a plan to me****, and it would be nice if Hydra would go underground again for a while.
In the always-more-interesting B-plots:
Coulson is getting to know Rosalind. He's decided it's time to see her facility, and she makes a detour to her own house where there's been a suspicious break-in that just makes him more suspicious. She finally takes him to see the literal warehouse where she's been literally sealing the Inhumans into stasis crates and storing them like cargo, and he's not nearly as upset as he should be. She thinks being Inhuman is an illness and wants to cure it, which leads directly, in comics-land, to things like Mutant Registration Acts, Genosha, various genocides. If they're setting this up as part of Civil War, okay, but if it's not, it's going to drag on and be so annoying.
Daisy and Mac and Hunter witness Coulson's lack of appropriate response. They're looking for Lash, and have decided that Rosalind's second in command is most likely him (though that's got no backup other than them not liking him), and they were tracking him while Coulson was flirting. They'd just sent a drone into the facility when they see Coulson looking okay with the crates, which makes Daisy not okay with him, and that's never good. As I said on Twitter last night...
We don't need more divides inside shield. We need Shield to get functional and rejoin the rest of the MCU. #AgentsofSHIELD
— Samantha Holloway (@pirategirljack) November 4, 2015
Because we really don't. We suffered through that two-Shields BS, and the everyone-in-Shield-is-actually-Hydra BS, and this is just more of the same dumb. It bogs down the plot and distracts from them finally getting a major plot line of their own--the Inhumans.Back at the lab, Fitz has been researching Will, and his research on the portal isn't paying off, but Simmons is closer to being able to be back to work since they have a purpose now. She's helping Andrew through his injury by giving him back the words he gave her, and she's the one that finds out that their suspect is not even a little bit Inhuman. Werner tells them that it's Andrew, as he dies--he failed in his mission because Andrew wasn't just a person.
And that means that he's among them. He's been using his position to track down the people they've been trying to help and then kill them. He's been lying to the people closest to him. And he's probably been denying everyone trying to get field clearance or release papers because it's his weird job to take them out of society.
Dun dun DUUUNNNN.
That's a promisingly super-heroic storyline to end on, and hopefully it'll bring the team back together. And hopefully, Coulson will have a reason for his lack of response and will make the decision to not work with the task force if that's what they're going to be doing, because it's a terrible way to handle the Inhumans, especially when they're working so hard to keep them good and teach them how to live with their new abilities. The obvious parallels between being suddenly Inhuman and being chronically ill or disabled or foreign or some other thing that's considered out of the norm really should be handled carefully, and if the show as a whole decides that curing something that's genetic, not a choice, and not deadly, is the way to go, it'll be really disappointing. It was bad enough when Jemma was sounding all human-purist last season; we don't need to go over that ground again.
Limitless airs at 10pm on NBC Tuesday nights.
It seems like the CIA is trying to get ahold of all the FBI assets on all my shows lately.***** This week on Limitless, they do it!
Brian pulls a very accurate and funny and endearing Ferris Bueller to get a day off, and before he's done with the opening monologue, the black ops dudes taze him and take him into the woods. They have NZT and they have a signed letter saying he's supposed to help them. They want him to solve problems as they catch and interrogate some Russian dude.
So Brian keeps taking the pills. Like, five or six of them during the day. It's worrying that there wasn't much difference between a regular day, except three of them in the self-discussions, and it begs the question of whether there'll be other fallout later that he'll have to deal with? He figures out that they're not out on a regular black op--they're out on a bounty hunt, and they're going to split money they get for selling this guy they're after to people who will pay a lot for him. Brian manages to turn them against each other, and winds up being the only team member to survive the mission, and that's only because he gives the Russian guy the last pill, even though he told him he'd poisoned it with deadly nightshade.
Along the way, he managed to get a coded message to Rebecca, who figures out that he's telling them where he is. She's pissed, the whole time that he's gone, and it's beautiful. She and Boyle are pulling every string they have and throwing around the law like crazy--the CIA broke the law and even if they can't prove it, they can make a fuss that they'd have to answer to, and all of this went over their heads. Naz is also outraged, and it's good to see her picking her team over this outside meddling.
Brian uses the plot of Ferris Bueller to keep himself alive as he's coming down off the megadose of NZT in the woods at night, and manages to make enough noise that the team can find him before anything bad happens. But the way he just casually tells the story of all this death and his part in it upsets Rebecca--he was so nice and so harmless before, and she feels like it's her job that ruined that part of him, and that she should have tried harder to protect his niceness.
The vague implication, though, is that it's the drug that did it--that it makes other people matter less. He hallucinated her showing up (dressed like Sloane from the movie, no less), and she told him that he had to survive even though he'd have to kill people to do it--which is not what actual-Rebecca thought of the matter. And that's troubling. Especially since Brian seems to have missed that distinction. All the cute graphics and the fun voice overs and the cleverness are starting to look like side-effects covering up the actual damage that's being done to his personality, even with the anti-side-effects shot. Will he notice what's going on? Will she? Will they be able to do anything about it?
And he still didn't seem at all worried about all these dead people...
What did you think of tonight's shows? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!
Flash
SHIELD
Limitless
- The Flash 2.4, Agents of SHIELD 3.5, Limitless 1.6
- The Flash 2.3, Agents of SHIELD 3.4, Limitless 1.5
- Flash 2.2, SHIELD 3.3, Limitless 1.4
- Agents of SHIELD 3.1, Limitless 1.2
- Limitless 1.1
*It's seriously a bad idea working in that office. Never make friends with Iris or Linda.
**Vibe!
***Which should be fun! When does that happen, and when do all the fun characters leave for the bonkers team up that will be Legends of Tomorrow?
****He says old-Hydra was bloated and entitled, but he's acting as entitled as anyone else and recruits the son of the previous boss? What? And he says they were undisciplined thugs, but his recruiting process is literally a fight club that rewards meatheads and jerks while not admitting a single scientist or thinker. Like, what is he even doing?
*****They're doing it on Blindspot, too.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Geeky TV commentary - Supergirl 1.2, Minority Report 1.7, Blindspot 1.7
Supergirl airs at 8pm on CBS Monday nights.
This week, we got Kara not being very good at being a super hero, but also not giving up, and it was kind of the best. That plane she rescued last week? She left it in the river, and authorities still hadn't gotten it out yet. There was a boat this week, carrying crude oil and too close to a fire on the docks, so she dragged to to safety...and tore the bow off, causing an oil spill that she didn't clean up. She's not doing these things on purpose, but it's something I hope she deals with soon, because the show is already dealing with it--there was a report in the episode about how much trouble Superman has caused and how high rebuilding costs are, and how she looks worse right now. Maybe next week she'll figure out how to get that plane up and get rid of all the oil, because it makes her look less clumsy and more, like, crazy negligent.
But the episode is also trying to deal with that. She knows she's not doing a very good job, and she wants to do better, so she has her sister train her. Alex points out that there are ways to make her weak as a normal person--or worse--and so she can't just count on strength and invulnerability. She's got to have skills in there, too. She also isn't very good at taking direction, but she listens and works through it, and between her, Jimmy and Win, they find a bunch of smaller crimes* she can handle to hone her skills.
There's a dude with a hinge-out jaw who looks like the vampire from Blade II, but he's just a distraction to lure Kara out for the Big Bad--her aunt Astra, freed from the prison and totally not hanging back and working behind the scenes like I would have expected. She's Kara's mom's twin, and she says they used to like confusing their parents, which, if the writers know their theory, should come back to haunt everyone at some point, because it was just a pointed one-off this episode.
Astra is hard and mean and borderline vicious, and she has plans, but she also seems to think she's saving the world, so that should be interesting. At the very least, their show down, with dueling superpowers, was cool, and it was stopped by a kryptonite knife--a kryptoknife.
Meanwhile, Kara and Jimmy have some really sweet heart to hearts, Win is more enthused and a little less desperate than ever, and Supergirl agrees to do an interview with Cat Grant to save her image, because it helps both of their careers. Alex shows Kara a hologram of her mother that they've created (retroengineered?) for her in her own little Baby's First Fortress of Solitude on base. And their boss apparently is a super hard boss because of a tragic past barely hinted at--and has glowing eyes with absolutely no context. Is he an alien too? Being controlled by one? Some other sort of superpower?
Hopefully we'll know soon!
The theme of this episode seemed to have been Family and Reasons. Alex is Kara's family more than her actual aunt. Jimmy and Win help her do her job because she doesn't want the extreme isolation her cousin works with. Cat is hard because she has to be as a woman in a man's world, but she does want Kara to do her best. Bossman has a tragic past that's apparently still haunting him. Even Astra is driven by some vague combo of family and togetherness and a reason to her extremism. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out and complicates up as the season continues.
Minority Report airs at 9pm on Fox Monday nights.
This week shook up the alliances some, and we got flashbacks to early-release Precogs! According to the flashback, they were woken up, given some physical therapy, and then dumped at the edge of town and told to never come back and make their own way. But they have almost no idea of how to live normal lives, not a lot of social skills, and definitely no idea what to do with these powers they still have. Back then, Dash was the cautious one who didn't want to get involved, and Arthur was sweet and unsure and liked a girl who got killed. I hope we get more flashbacks, because Arthur not being a jerk was a revelation, and it would be cool to see the two of them slowly switching sides as the years pass.
In the now, they miss a murder and Vega tells Dash to let it go, but that's not one of his current skills. Following it gets him captured because no one was supposed to know about the crime. He spends most of the episode tied up, waiting to be rescued, but somehow still not being a damsel in distress; he uses what he knows to get the kidnappers to fracture, to win over one of them based on what he knows of her story from his visions--which she finds and identifies in his notebook--and to keep himself alive. They do cut off one of his fingers, though, because they know he's Arthur's brother.
And Arthur was the one who stole the money they're looking for.
That means that he's the one that Vega can team up with. He wants Dash back, but he also wants to save his own skin; Vega just wants Dash to be safe. They work pretty well together, despite Arthur not wanting to and Vega being annoyed by his less than legal ways (and it's great when she punches him over them). And they manage to not only get Dash back, but also to bring down one of the biggest crime lords in the city by getting another syndicate to do it for them. Shifty, but very well played.
This was an Arthur episode, for sure. Breaking up the Dash-Vega duo showed how much Vega values Dash, and also showed how much Arthur will do for his brother, something that's always been there but also always been a lot vaguer, since he keeps not helping them when they ask him. And it was so nice seeing Arthur with a purpose. He's formidable when he's not just lining his own pockets!
But there's storms brewing on the horizon. Reed Diamond has taken an interest in Vega's career, and that will never be good since he knows who the Precogs are.
This is where we insert the constant complaint that Fox can't be trusted with good shows, since it was announced recently that they cut the episode order, which is as good as calling it canceled most of the time. This is also where we hope Syfy or something** will pick it up and give it the space and support it needs, because it's getting really good and that looming cancellation is making it really hard for people to care. I still care, though, and I'll keep watching and talking about it!
Blindspot airs at 10pm on NBC Monday nights.
And Blindspot! Still the best show of the season.
This week, they get sent into the woods to see what's up with a treasure map, that leads them to another map and a cache of weapons just enough for the team to each have one, and leads to the capture of an informant who is also known for killing a whole bunch of people and is the second most wanted man in the US. They drag him along as they follow the clues, and he takes every opportunity to poke holes in their functional reality. He points out how crazy it is to be chasing tattoos. He sees how Jane and Weller are acting together. He makes them all doubt everything. And it's great, because they really do live in a crazy idea of a world right now.
But Weller is still working on that idea that he needs to be objective, and when they have to split up in the woods, the takes Zapata instead of Jane, which does two things. It gives Zapata a chance to talk to her boss alone that she hasn't had since Jane showed up, and point out that there's a difference between knowing you're protecting someone, and not knowing that's what you're doing. And it gives Jane and Reade a chance to work together, which makes him have to invest a little faith in her, since they never know what she's going to be able to do in each situation. That one was the best part of this episode: Reade being snarky and flippant, but also competent and believing in Jane when he wouldn't have only a few episodes before. Including when they found a helicopter, it was their only way out, and he had to trust all of their lives in the idea that if wouldn't be there if she didn't know how to use it.
Meanwhile, Jane discovered that she's really bad at flying in planes--the turbulence about gave her a rolling heart attack--but she's fine with being in control of a chopper leaving a gun battle. It's about control, she says. And Weller held her hands and looked at her like she was the cutest thing he'd ever seen. Didn't even hide it from the team that time. She says while they were separated, all she thought about was him (and herself and Taylor Shaw), and she decided that they're all in this together.
I've been wanting the two of them to decide that the advice to stay objective is bad advice and to just run with this personal connection, and maybe that was it--a quiet and unspoken version of "no thanks, we've got this". Because the team, and especially Weller, are literally all Jane has in the world, and keeping separate from her like that is hurtful to her and upsetting to the rest of them. They're stronger when they all care about each other and act like it.
Meanwhile, Weller confronts Mayfair about Daylight and why she's not telling them things they need to know for their cases, and she starts to make him the fourth person in the world who knows about it before it cuts to black. The teaser for next week makes it seem like it's not going to go well, but it's great that she's letting him in, because it really has been getting in the way. And it means she's choosing her team.
Also meanwhile, Patterson and her boyfriend*** chase down a new lead that takes them to a gorgeous old library in one of the old parts of town, and a book that's being used as a message-passing cipher. Before they can figure out what the messages passed back and forth mean, Mayfair tracks them down. Patterson is very nearly fired. David is very nearly arrested. And to answer the question about whether they'll move in together or not--Patterson chooses her job that she loves over a boyfriend she has commitment issues with. If he turns out to be shifty, she'll be glad of that choice.
Finally, the guy with the tree tattoo, who Jane dreamed about sleeping with last week and who was spying on her at her house, is shown digging in the foundation of a building somewhere, but not why.
The whole main plot was super-convenient, and now they're all thinking that whoever did this to Jane is trying to help them--but if so, why be so circuitous about it? Why not just go snitch and turn in all the info they have normally? Not to mention that the early tatts were apparently uncovering corruption, and at least one of them was not specifically for them, and it's a lot of questions. And why, now, would they switch from uncovering stuff to setting up a scavenger hunt? Plots on plots on plots!
What did you guys think of this week's episodes?
Minority Report
Blindspot
Supergirl
- Supergirl 1.1 and Scorpion 2.6
- Gotham 2.5, Minority Report 1.5, Blindspot 1.5
- Gotham 2.4, Minority Report 1.4, Blindspot 1.4
- Gotham 2.2, Minority Report 1.2, Blindspot 1.2
- Gotham 2.1, Minority Report 1.1, Blindspot 1.1
*On their lunch break, it seems, since it's the middle of the day and they all have jobs.
**USA could make it a little grittier and more realistic and really delve into the world, too, I think, with their new focus on awesomely well-done shows. Syfy is in a shakeup, but if they caught it when they settled, they could let it get really into it's scifi roots and awesome. They saved SG1 back in the day; I never understood why they aren't saving these other shows that keep popping up and fizzling out on channels that don't undetstand the needs of speculative fiction shows.
***Who is suspicious because of how into these tattoos he's not supposed to know about.
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