Justified – Season 3 Episode 6 “When the Gun Comes Out”

February 22, 2012
Television
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This episode’s title reminds me of the Elmore Leonard collection of short stories, When the Women Come Out to Dance” which is where you can read “Fire in the Hole” upon which Justified’s pilot episode was based. When the Women… could have fit this episode pretty well as a title, too.

Anyway, spoilers ahead!

“She at least leave you a note?”

I’m disappointed in the developments with Winona, although I guess you can’t entirely blame her with Raylan getting shot and shooting people in a motel room so frequently… Fair points. I’m glad we did end up getting a Winona scene towards the end of the episode, so we weren’t left completely Natalie Zea-less.

Art’s extremely long pause between “Oh…” and “Well shit.” was great. The little things like that are what make me love this show. It’s great that they work in great moments that breathe despite how much story is packed into each season. I’ll get back to that.

When Ethan (forget his name on the show, and the actor’s name, hmm…) said “I was raised in a commune of sorts,” immediately I thought that sounds like the Dharma Initiative! I’m going to imagine this is an alternate timeline where Ethan left the island for a simpler life in Kentucky as a teenager.

I was also happy with the abundance of Ava scenes this week. If Raylan wasn’t such a badass, I would say I wouldn’t mind if the whole show was just about Ava. And Boyd too, I guess. For context.

Why does Limehouse have to be so likeable? That smile and friendliness he shows Boyd and Ava, if we didn’t know what he was up to I’d think, what’s anyone got against this guy?

I’m predicting that next season will be about whoever is higher up than Quarles and the “guys up in Frankfurt.” So far each season has expanded to include the next level up etc. Breaking Bad has followed that same sort of path, which means there has to be some kind of end in sight or else it might become too much. But I’d rather it ramp up season to season rather than starting with a New York mushroom cloud *cough Heroes cough*.

I’m starting to have some sympathy for Wynn Duffy, and I kind of like him now… This is also similar to how I started to like Mike and Gus over on Breaking Bad.

Timothy Olyphant’s delivery of “Moved on from swastikas and rocket launchers!” has to be my favorite part of this episode… second maybe to the awesome trailer in motion fight. This show has the remarkable ability to make me laugh and enjoy violence. Again, this is a quality shared with Breaking Bad. Raylan laying down the law with Ethan (yeah whatever his name is) was hilarious. As far as I’m concerned that violence was completely fine, and I apologize, Justified, since he’s an abusive guy.

Alright, so the Charlie stealing the money thing… It has me wondering if this season might be doing a little bit too much? I’ll have to think back on the last two seasons, it might be right on track as far as the different things going on. Maybe that whole thing is more of a seed planted for season four. It definitely takes some of the heat off of Raylan and Winona’s antics with that money, but maybe Charlie knew and will use that as some kind of leverage?

Overall, another fantastic episode. Lots of Ava and a bit of Winona is always a good thing, and fisticuffs that make me laugh is like slapping on a “Grade A” stamp. I realize the theme of this episode’s review is that a lot of the stuff I love about Breaking Bad is also present here in Justified. If you haven’t watched Breaking Bad yet and find yourself yearning for more excellent television, Then go watch it while we’re waiting for next week’s episode!

This Week in Daily Videos (February 15-21, 2012)

February 21, 2012
Comedy, Daily Videos
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Some of you may be familiar with my daily videos over on YouTube. If you’re not, basically last year on Valentine’s Day I decided I would start posting a video of some kind every day. This went pretty well for about 8 months, when I started just focusing on Marching Lessons. When I created this here blog, I thought of it as somewhat replacing the daily video idea… but Valentine’s Day rolled around again and I thought why not give this daily video thing another shot?

This time I have two new rules, no 5 second long “Hi everyone, there’s no video for today” videos, and no videos shot on my phone (until tour this summer, anyway). That means all the videos will be shot on my Nikon, or animated. Especially since I already post these videos on my tumblr each day, I thought I would consolidate them on here to once awake, so withoug further ado click through for all of this week’s videos…

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Alcatraz – Season 1 Episode 7 “Johnny McKee”

February 21, 2012
Science Fiction, Television
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I’m facing internet issues currently, so this is coming to you from my phone! Spoilers ahead…

I was a bit sad that Hauser refused to read to Lucy, but it was nice when he came around at the end of the episode, and funny that the doctor was ask, “I was joking!”

Soto’s use of the computers for Starcraft II was great, and it was interesting that they found their 63 in a different way this time. Great commentary on the internet centric society we live in.

Johnny McKee had a bit of a Walter White feel to him, a cheekiest who’s broken bad. I got to wondering, what if Walt had become a mixologist instead, and made hella tips being an amazing bartender? His family would never have been in danger, and the death count would be lower. Maybe.

This episode wasn’t as action packed as the last couple, but I think it was even more brutal. Johnny is crazy good at killing people, and he killed so many of them! He’s not great at covering his tracks, but as they pointed it, he didn’t know anyone was going after him.

Of course Hauser speaks Chinese. “He says my chow is murky.”

I was excited that part of the episode took place in the BART tunnels, although they call them “SFTA” trains. San Francisco travel Association…? That’s more a board of tourism than anything trust. Anyway, Madsen and Hauser riding on the back of that little cart was delightful!

There are a few references to dreams in this episode, and I wonder if they have anything to do with the 63s skipping time.

Finally, Johnny sure had some bald for someone who doesn’t have balls.

I can’t wait for episode eight! Thanks for reading!

Awake – ‘Pilot’

February 19, 2012
Science Fiction, Television
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I just finished watching the pilot, if you haven’t seen it yet you can watch it over on hulu, and it’s on iTunes too. I’m interested to see if the strategy of making the pilot available helps or hurts the show when it finally premieres next month. I know a few other shows have done it, and I could probably find out how it helped by doing a little bit of research… But anyway… Spoilers ahead.

I like the show. It doesn’t blow me away or anything, but it has me interested enough to keep watching. It’s another in a long line of shows where the main character is some kind of criminal investigator who uses the hook of the show to solve their crimes, or the crimes have to do with the hook of the show. The Mentalist, V, Person of Interest, Alcatraz, the list goes on and on. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if this premise could work without having to be about a detective/cop. It does make things interesting though, as there really isn’t a lot that’s more exciting than chasing down bad guys, car chases and shootouts, so I won’t hold it against any of these shows.

A short while after the first trailer for the show was released, I made the prediction that the main character is the one who actually died. My mom said, “what if all three of them died?” and I said that’s possible too, but either way we’re seeing the story from the dad’s perspective so it only really matters if he’s dead or not.

There are some logistics that I’m sure will be explored further… First, doesn’t he know the date of the reality he’s in? It would make sense that he would repeat the same date, meaning one of the realities is always experienced first (I don’t see how they could switch). This kind of sucks as far as finding murderers, since they would presumably be successful in the one reality before he can solve the case in the other. My friend Megan also brought up the point that he must be tired all the time. I think that he only sleeps for 8 hours each night, but experiences a full 16 hour day in that time… So he’s living a total 32 hour waking day back to back to back. That’s gotta be wearing him down, no wonder he’s going a bit crazy. And what happens when he takes a short nap?

I thought it was a bit over the top when he didn’t have his red bracelet on and went nuts, cutting his hand and everything. I forgot to pay attention enough, but was his hand still wounded in the other reality? The challenge of this show, for the makers and the audience, are the consistencies between the two realities, and dealing with the timing of everything. He doesn’t just flip back and forth like they do in the editing, I assume he has to live out the full day in one before living out another full day in the other. The first few minutes of the show did a really good job of establishing what’s going on, though it may have helped that the trailers explained it pretty well over the past several months.

I got the feeling that he is going to have a thing with his son’s tennis instructor at some point which will add another layer of strangeness to his situation. Whether it does happen with her, or someone else, is it cheating on his wife if it’s in an alternate reality? Let’s ask Peter Bishop.

The bummer about seeing the pilot of a show before it begins airing is that you have to wait so long for the second episode. I’ll be waiting, but for now I am more than satisfied with my weekly fixes of Fringe, Justified, Alcatraz and Person of Interest. Thanks for reading!

Fringe – Season 4 Episode 13 ‘A Better Human Being’

February 17, 2012
Science Fiction, Television
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Another fine episode! I “live” tweeted again, feel free to follow me @jkire

Spoilers ahead and…

Fringe tweets begin now!

Is this going to be a Dave style episode?(you know, the Lost episode)

OH now I remember the promo, another precognition type of episode, hmm….

For a few years I’ve been wondering if some mental illnesses could be some kind of consciousness thing like this

haha, Walter befriending the insane…

she’s having flashbacks of previous season on DVD, how else would she see it from a third person perspective? ;-P

This kid has the gift of Remote Viewing but can’t control it

Have I mentioned I love how Fringe is about all this crazy cool stuff?

They’re all dead, and they’re in the afterlife! The machine activating killed them all!

“No, NO! You’re wrong! Stop it!” -Peter

She’s just sitting there like a little kid getting a haircut… Then he asks for strands of her hair, that was kind of weird [because I said it was like she was getting a haircut]

“No, NO! You’re wrong! Stop it!” -Walter. paraphrasing of course.

ahh, sperm donor crime gang

the perfect brew! and a House style realization?

The awkward moment grunt. [when Peter and Olivia were holding hands]

Ah, that elderly gentleman is the queen bee. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Attempting some Hereos type stuff. Season 3. Or season 2. I don’t remember, it changed every other episode. [improving humans experiments]

Nina is Massively Busted!

“I am the only one with access”= “I did it” duh guys!

This should have been #BEEabetterman ;-P

The central connection has been severed, the worker bees will all die off without guidance

the title of the episode, A Better Human BEEing. Of course.

Alright, enough making out, get back to the thought provoking stuff [careful what you ask for]

Oh, this Nina doesn’t have a robot hand, does she?

OH I SEE WHAT’S GOING ON HERE. Nice.

By “Nice.” I mean, IT NEEDS TO BE NEXT FRIDAY!

[and finally] by the way, has anyone made a “Bad Lobot” logo, you know, from Star Wars? Someone should. maybe I will…

That ending has my gears going, at first I was really confused like, how did they both get their so fast? Maybe we skipped a couple hours (we must have either way) but there wasn’t any reason for Nina to be there but… OH, that’s a different Nina. The question is, is the Nina with Walter and Lincoln a shapeshifter, or the Nina from the other side? For some reason I remember there only being one Nina in the original two universes, so that might be where my initial confusion comes from. Was it the evil Nina’s (what I’ll call her for now) intention to make Olivia go alt universe crazy, or what was she thinking the fresh Cortexiphan injections would do that would benefit her?

Alright that’s all I have for now, another fine episode and like I said, it need to be next friday!

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