Surfing SF: Weekly Roundup, or the Voice of the People
We’re in a little bit of a transitional period here at Surfing SF, as we’ve dropped a few of our previous shows but are looking to expand to some new ones. We’re taking our mandate of giving you weekly posts on Geeky shows and expanding it beyond the SF realm. So I’m reaching out to you, our dear readers… what shows haven’t we been covering that you think we should? Nothing’s too obscure or too out-there. Make your voice heard!
In the meantime, here are some Quick Hits reviews of shows from this week…
-No Ordinary Family debated whether to give the super-stuff to a kid in a wheelchair (Stephanie: “Interfering in this kid’s life is not the solution.” Really Stephanie? Have you been watching too much Star Trek or something?) Meanwhile, JJ’s evil math teacher IS WORKING FOR Dr. King. Once again I must emphasize that this series is so oblivious that it actually named it’s main villain “Dr. King”. In the end this was probably a fairly decent episode for this show, whatever that means, even though it obviously still is having trouble deciding whether it wants to be a sitcom, a FOR SERIOUS YOU GUYS drama, or maybe a much dopier Buffy.
-V has maybe three episodes left, and it’s STILL spending all of its time on ridiculous exposition. I’d like to explain to you what happened in this episode, except that nothing happened. Except maybe that a bunch of characters found out stuff that the rest of the characters already knew. In the universe of this show, when a bunch of terrorists meet they do it in broad daylight but it’s okay because some of them are wearing sunglasses, so it is still sneaky.
-By contrast, the overarching strategy of The Vampire Diaries seems to be to rush the plot forward as quickly as possible, rules of storytelling and good sense be damned. In “The House Guest”, Katherine returned and continued to be awesome. Plus the gang fought those evil witches in such a manner that they both ended up dead, but even though they were humans I guess it’s okay because they were the bad guys? And Matt found out Caroline’s a vampire, which means pretty much everyone on this show knows about the supernatural now.
-Archer featured flashbacks to Woodhouse’s (heavily implied) tragic gay romance during World War I (how old IS Woodhouse?), his taking of fifty German scalps as revenge (“That’s a lot of scalps!”). After this came his Casablanca-esque period operating a bar in Tangiers, until the day Archer’s mom stumbled in and announced “I’ve just killed a man and my water just broke, so I could really use a drink!” Plus Archer got “the Wee Baby Seamus” addicted to alcohol and shoved an old guy off of his balcony, and we learned that when Pam sets up a Tontine she arranges it like an NCAA Tournament bracket. I love this show.
-On the original British Being Human, the gang has settled into their new home in Wales and Annie’s gotten herself out of the afterlife or something. But now she’s just making Mitchell’s life miserable and messing up his job interviews, while George and Nina try to find a stray forty-year-old vampire teenager a home with “pure-blood” snobbish vampires. This latter plot probably works better for class-conscious British people than it does elsewhere. The dialogue can be a bit ridiculous at times on this show, but at other times George brandishes a potted plant as a weapon and yells “Who wants some of my plant!”
There were several more strong candidates for our Pick of the Week than there were last week, but Fringe was just too darn spectacular this week to ignore. Thus the winner is “Subject 13”, in which we learn that Olivia has at least as much responsibility for causing the War of the Worlds as Peter does, and two kids have a transcendent moment in a field of white tulips before heading back to homes they hate. This episode shouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did, but boy does it work.
Now it’s time for your weekly viewing schedule. With the end of February sweeps, a few of our favorites (Fringe, The Vampire Diaries…) are taking some time off, but there’s still plenty of great stuff here. Remember, all times Eastern…
Monday
-Chuck and I have had a bit of a falling out as of late, but that doesn’t mean I can’t applaud naming an episode “Chuck vs. The First Bank of Evil”. Apparently there will be heist-related shenanigans at 8pm on NBC.
-”Razer” is most likely going to be the final episode of The Cape to air on NBC, though one more was made and will apparently float out in the ether for eternity. I am ensaddened. See it at 9. Next week is the two-hour return of The Event. Yay?
-Meanwhile, SyFy’s version of Being Human has chosen to name its latest episode, and I’m not making this up, “I’ve Seen Your True Colors, and That’s Why I Hate You”. To see how they can possibly live up to that, tune in at 9pm.
Tuesday
-There may be a variety of interesting developments on No Ordinary Family this week, but they all pale before the Cylon Reunion of the Century. The mysterious Mrs. X (Lucy Lawless!) recruits “the sexy and dangerous Sophie” (Tricia Helfer!) to use her mind control powers on Jim and George. That’s right, it’s Tricia Helfer with mind control powers. At 8pm on ABC.
-V may or may not be in its stretch run, but in “Uneasy Lies the Head” it seems like big doings may be afoot. At 9pm on ABC.
Thursday
-There’s another new Archer this week, “Tragical History”, which I will not spoil except to say that the synopsis I read ends with “Cyril didn’t count on sexy, bikini-clad ninjas.” On FX at 10pm.
Friday
-There’s a new Young Justice at 7pm on Cartoon Network, titled “Downtime”.
-The Evil Lex Clone (really guys?) is back on Smallville this week to kick some super-butt. At 8pm on the CW.
-At 8:30 on Cartoon Network there is a new episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
-The latest Supernatural is called “And Then There Were None” and looks positively Thing-like in its levels of paranoid crazitude. Also Mitch Pileggi is back! Again I say “yay?” At 9pm on the CW.
-SyFy has the American debut of “The Eye of the Phoenix”, an episode of Merlin, at 10pm.
-A new episode of the crowd-sourced weirdness that is Bar Karma is scheduled to appear at 10pm on Current TV.
Saturday
-On BBC America, “a smart-mouthed drunk girl has more to her than meets the eye” (don’t they always?) in this week’s episode of the original Being Human. Check it out at 9pm.
Thanks everybody! See you on the flip side of… whatever we’re flipping.
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