Elton John no longer feels the need to make hit records. He’s had his long run, so now he can be self indulgent and do what he wants. So what happens with The Union? It’s his biggest hit in decades. It entered Billboard at #3, his highest position on that chart since Blue Moves in 1976. It’s his 17th top ten album, and Leon Russell’s third, though Russell’s most recent top ten was in 1973 and EJ’s was a compilation album a few years ago. I remember buying Blue Moves when it first came out, at a record store in Campbellton, New Brunswick. I’ve always thought someone should license “Theme from a Non-existent TV Series” as the theme for a TV series.
I posted my review of Bad Boy by Peter Robinson last night.
When Ted mentioned on How I Met Your Mother the phenomenon at the museum where a person can stand in one spot and whisper and have the sound transmitted to another person on the other side of the room, I thought it was going to work out differently. I was sure that Marshall was going to say something to diss his boss or his job and get canned as a result. Instead they waited until we had almost forgotten about it (despite Ted’s repeated juvenile pranking) to bring it up again in a way that had some oomph. I have no idea where this relationship with Zoe (Jennifer Morrison from House) is going. She’s married, after all, even if her husband (Kyle McLaughlin) is something of a pompous buffoon.
Somewhat related, Chekhov wrote about the gun shown in the first act that must be fired in the third. They did that on Castle like that this week, but it wasn’t a gun—it was a gizmo for turning off the lights in the subway. I thought that bringing that in at the end was a bit of a stretch. The murder victim, shot in Central Park, worked in the subway and the criminals happened to choose the subway as the place to keep their hostage. It would have made more sense if the light bulb replacer had been killed because he saw something in the subway while at work. Otherwise, it was all just a big coincidence.
The other question I had (and I admit my knowledge of NY geography and traditions is a little rusty): if the boy was now living with his mother in Westchester, would he still be playing on a soccer team that practiced in Central Park? Best repartee of the episode: Castle: What’s the strangest pet you’ve ever had? Beckett, without even a beat: You. I liked Castle’s trick with the cell phone camera (even if the picture was perfectly framed on one blind shot). I didn’t like the obligatory scene where the father asks where his son is and everyone pulls long faces and there’s a cut to another scene, a tired fake-out meant to make us think that something went wrong. Way overused.
“If bad ideas were an Olympic event, this would take the gold,” Glenn says on episode 2 of The Walking Dead. The idea was to cover themselves in zombie guts and walk among the “geeks” as Glenn calls them to escape their predicament in Atlanta. Though Rick admonished them to not get any on their skin, they didn’t exactly pay attention to that during the scene, with Rick digging into his pocket to get the key, for example. I really liked the scene where Rick let Glenn run the show while planning the excursion into the sewers. Glenn knew the layout, he knew the dangers, and Rick stepped back and let him take charge. Poor Laurie Holden, trapped in a supermarket in Maine while creatures in the mist try to break in and now trapped in a department store in Atlanta while zombies try to break in. I’m never going shopping with her.
