Pages tagged “tv detail”

Last night, ABC served up two back-to-back episodes of Samantha Who? Weirdly (or perhaps normally, in the case of 30-minute sitcoms) the two episodes didn't really tie together, though that didn't stop them from moving the Owen-Sam relationship along to its final resting place. Thank the heavens.

Another deliberately structured episode this week, as Miguel and Dexter’s relationship has devolved into a nasty rivalry more quickly than anticipated. It’s a treat and a relief for the show to revert back to the mode it’s in now, a breakneck, almost giddy series of suspense cues and constricting subplots that surged through the entire episode.

In last week's Samantha Who?, our leading lady was forced to choose between her ex (Todd) and her brand new beau (Owen). And because this ain't real life and you've got to mess things up eight times sideways on television, she chose Owen. Which is good and all, it just lead us to this week's awkward encounter between the three in (where else?) the kitchen. In the morning. In their PJs. Nice.

Where the typical Starter Wife episode promises plot points in the way of public snubbings and private indisgressions, "Look Who's Stalking" is the series' most action-packed installment yet.

Amid a season that's proven the most concentrated effort yet to make Dexter about more than the kill, the last two episodes reverted back to the mode the series does best: pulp. Even as the domestic sphere continues to brew in the foreground, the focus has centered resolutely to Dexter and Miguel’s newfound game, which we now know is more evenly matched than we had thought.

The past two episodes of 30 Rock represent what happens when the show perfectly integrates a big-name guest star and also when it doesn't quite work. The show's no stranger to big names, having had Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld and Will Arnett in the past. The star wattage has never been distracting, either, and almost always advances the plot in an amusing fashion.

The fact that I hadn’t ever really seen anything like Pushing Daisies should have been my first clue it was headed toward the graveyard. In this day and age—where crime shows, hospital dramas and reality TV dominate the Nielsen’s top tier—there isn’t much room on network television for anything outside of the status quo. Pushing Daisies was just too inventive, too ingenious, and just too damn cute to survive in these turbulent TV times. So it goes.

After a three-week hiatus, Pushing Daisies returned with a buoyant new episode that further developed three of the four over-arching second-season plotlines. (Emerson's missing daughter has yet to be fleshed out.) "Oh Oh Oh... It's Magic" also guest starred Fred Willard, and for anyone who has seen his performance in this, you'd know that is a very good thing indeed. Now, onto those story lines:

While last week’s episode focused on the legacy of exes in our characters’ romantic lives, this week’s Starter Wife throws the viewer abruptly back into the present. Unfortunately, Joan (everyone’s favorite curmudgeonly but kinda sexy recovering-alcoholic best friend) really has gone on a cruise with her estranged husband. So we’re left with Molly’s new writer boyfriend, Rodney’s action-hero flame, and the crumbling of Liz’s marriage.

There he is! After last week's random omission of Samantha’s new boyfriend Owen (he was hot stuff one week, completely missing the next), episode six starts off with Sam trying to decide how she’ll tell her new beau that she still lives with Todd, her ex. Considering it's Sam, we can’t expect it to go over smoothly. But while Owen takes the news well, his reasons for being so understanding shake Sam: He gets it because he is himself best friends with his ex, Willow. In his mind, their two circumstances are similar but to Sam, the news is horrifying.

If a TV show wants to win me over as a fan, they could do no better than to sing the praises of Tom Waits for its viewers. In Life on Mars, during one of Episode 6's most memorable scenes, as Sam (Jason O'Mara) and Annie (Gretchen Mol) are held hostage in a mental ward, Annie tells Sam to think about his happiest moment to keep from going crazy. Sam sets the scene for Annie, saying that Tom Waits was playing on the jukebox and asks her if he's famous yet in 1973. She says he's never heard of him and he replies, "He's soon to become the patron saint of the sad and downtrodden New Yorker." Sam just got a lot cooler by association in my eyes—partially redeeming his attempts last week to rap lines from Vanilla Ice or this week to moonwalk.

In our haste to dig into this season’s often listless narrative arcs, we’ve ignored some well-drawn work that has edged its way in. Margo Martindale (pictured) makes what will likely be her final appearance on the show this week as Camilla, the file clerk and old family friend who helped Dexter delve into his past in the first season. We learned she was terminal last week, and even if Dexter’s quest to find her the perfect key-lime pie was a pretty transparent ruse, her final hours (and Dexter’s unlikely part in them) were an ingenious way to explore mortality without the winking black humor that has become the show’s signature. Dexter’s final moments with her at the end of the episode are some of the season’s best.

On last night's Samantha Who? we saw Sam drive for the first time. And then we saw Sam get pulled over for running a red light after freaking out that the cop next to her “knows.” Not sure what he knew, but what we found out is that Sam has a bit of a record in her past, and was swiftly ordered 100 hours of community service.

Last week, the birth of Molly's love affair with Zach prompted questions about the narrative direction of the new series: Would the 2008 version (a continuation of the mini-series) carry on the banner of emotional complexity? We were hoping that the onset of the relationship would see the kind of dilemmas we relished during Molly's post-divorce period: the insecurity of the fresh tryst, muddled second chances, pride issues, multiple lovers, etc. But this week's installment took the focus of The Starter Wife from the new to the old.

I have a theory that the weakest character on a television show is always the namesake. I call this the “Dawson Leery Hypothesis.” The title character is almost always presented as weak when compared to his/her strong supporting cast. The character grows increasingly annoying as the series continues. Meredith Grey of Grey’s Anatomy is the best current example of this hypothesis. She’s a passive central character surrounded by strong people. She’s a black hole sucking all of the fun out of the show.

30 Rock's second episode of the new season, "Believe in the Stars," was a perfect example of why it's one of the best shows on TV. If the premiere was a bit awkward and tentative, its follow-up was anything but. Its madcap humor tirelessly delivered one joke after another at a lightning fast speed, adding up to one of the funniest episodes in the series.

We’re halfway through Dexter’s third season, and if this week’s episode felt a little inorganic, it served to clean up a series of plot points that had been unfocused over the last five episodes. Miguel’s brother is ostensibly out of the picture after Deb begins to share our suspicion about his connection to the Skinner murders (it isn’t him, alas), and Miguel is officially Dexter’s after-dark partner, albeit an apparently troubled one. Now we can get to the point, assuming there is one.

Fresh off last week's first good episode of the season, hopes were high for this week’s installment. And praise be the comedy gods, it delivered.

In episode 1.05, each member of The Starter Wife's inner circle pursues a secret romance. Joan's sleeping with the lushy British actor; Rodney is jumping through hoops (actually, through windows...not to mention climbing trees) to keep his fling with the action hero under wraps. And then there's Molly, who proposes a casual sex relationship to her writing group instructor, Zach, whom we know to be engaged in more than just the one extracurricular activity.

First off, it must be said how great it is to have 30 Rock back. Fall TV has been on the air for weeks now, but NBC decided to wait until the end of October to air the premiere of the best sitcom on television (sorry, Office fans, but it's true). The show's first installment of season three, "Do-Over," was sort of like the first day of school after summer vacation: sort of awkward at times, but fast and buoyant and warmly familiar all the same.

You'd be forgiven if you missed the latest episode of Pushing Daisies, seeing how Barack Obama bought airtime on every major network besides ABC (although, inexplicably, the show's ratings increased by 14%, further proof people are t-i-r-e-d of this election.) Regardless, it was an especially enjoyable episode, one that ended on an interesting cliff-hanger involving what has proven to be the over-arching story for the season: Ned's father.

The Season 2 finale of Mad Men is set at the most imminently threatening moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The panic, rather than serving as the impetus for each brewing confrontation, invades the episode quietly, the characters behaving with a sort of eerie calm. It’s the moment before the bomb falls and they’re in search of redemption.

This week’s big reveal—that Miguel Prado suspected Dexter was more than a one-time vigilante—obviously should have come a few episodes ago. The Prado arc has frustrated fans and has never struck me as particularly viable to the series’ overall development, but now Miguel has an inextricable part in Dexter’s fate. The new subplot provides a much-needed foil to the developing domestic aspect of the series: for the first time, Dexter has someone who knows what he does, and that presents new possibilities as well as a potential threat.

While my fingers were still crossed for a good episode, who should appear on my screen in the first five minutes of this week's Samantha Who? Why, Tony Hale, of course! Who better to help this fledgling comedy than the star of one of the greatest laugh-fests of all time?

"The Star Witness" saw the Darlings all split off into different storylines, at times seeming as if the writers were incapable of creating content for more than two people per scene. It was the soapiest episode of the season thus far and also one of the weakest. The introduction of Nick’s estranged mother should have been the core storyline, however, it played second fiddle to the completely absurd romantic entanglements of the Darling children.

"Frescorts" pulled off a miraculous feat: it kept the momentum from "Bad Habits," one of the best episodes in the entire Pushing Daisies series. There's a melancholic undercurrent running through each episode: every character is lonely, desperately searching for a way to fill the empty spaces in their hearts. Some are more successful at it than others.

In "Remains of the Snow Day," we experience Molly's most pointed movie-montage daydream. She's faking drug addiction at a ritzy rehab center when an every-Disney-movie fantasy produces her profusely apologetic ex-husband, the dubious-but-dreamy writing group instructor in a gold cape (above), and her garland-crowned seven-year-old, proclaiming "Kids are resilient! Divorce builds character."

So, uh, Dexter and Rita are engaged. Weird. The entire episode this week—as Dexter tried to convince her to accept his awkward, whim-induced proposals—felt out of line with the subtle shades that have developed their relationship over the last few seasons. She had a tentative place in the show early on, as if she could have easily left the cast, and it’s hard not to get the sense that she’s going to need to get a little more wind of Dexter’s nighttime activities for this to work. We’ll see.

It didn't take long for the show's title to make sense. In the premiere of My Own Worst Enemy, regular guy Henry is just beginning to come to terms with the the existence of his alter ego Edward, or more specifically, that he himself is Edward's alter ego. But the split personalities have to keep peace between themselves to survive. This precarious truce comes unraveled by the end of the second episode.

In the sixth episode, Heroes Season Three slowly, finally comes into focus. It's all about the villain, Arthur Petrelli, back from the grave. Not that there are enough other bad guys to spread around. The creepiest is the puppetmaster, Eric Doyle, one of the escapees from Level 5. He's found his love, Claire's mother Meredith and going all psychopath on her and the rest of the family. Meanwhile, Dr. Suresh's little lair is growing more crowded with... prisoners? snacks?

Well, I feel silly. I've been pretty explicit in expressing my indignation over some of the story lines set up in the second season of Pushing Daisies, but I stand corrected. Last night's episode, "Bad Habits," miraculously wove all the separate plot lines together in a profound and transcendentally touching way. It was not only one of the best episodes of the entire series, but one of the best episodes of any show on television in recent memory. Period.

Very much a transitional episode, this week’s Dexter spent more time progressing the season’s central plot than it did staking out new ground. The exception is that Dexter decides to stay with Rita and raise their child when it’s born, but who does that really surprise? Dexter’s father—who has been dead since before the show started—continues to show up in dreary flashbacks even now that we know about his past, so the show will inevitably find plenty of material in the idea of Dexter as a father.

When The Starter Wife ran as a six-episode miniseries last year, it garnered 10 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Miniseries, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries (Debra Messing) and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries (the delightfully wry Judy Davis). The original ran on the USA network, the home of Friday night's two-hour premiere episode of the new regular-series adaptation.

Samantha Who? was one of the breakout shows of 2007, the highest rated new sitcom of the fall season and earned Jean Smart an Emmy for Supporting Actress in a Comedy. Not too shabby for a show that had to endure a huge writer’s strike in it’s first season. Although it left the air in December, the show returned in April to finish out a shortened 15-episode run but was eventually picked up for the fall 08-09’ season.