My new essay, Reading Slush, is up at Storytellers Unplugged.
I’m really liking these scenes between Goran and the therapist played by Julia Ormond in the return of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I especially liked the call out to Nicole (Olivia d’Abo) this week and the memorable scene where he went all quid pro quo on her in the interrogation room. And one night Jeri Ryan is the perp and a couple of nights later she’s trying to catch perps on Body of Proof. Busy lady.
I thought this week was going to be the season finale of House, but it appears we have one more episode. Had a hard time watching the bathtub surgery. House became his own patient of the week, with a bonus PotW in Thirteen’s old cell mate. Liked how the two plots sort of dovetailed but didn’t quite. I see today that Lisa Edelstein claims she won’t be back next season. Negotiating technique or is she getting tired of Cuddy? Saw Hugh Laurie on Graham Norton the other night. I have a hard time accepting that his British accent is real. It doesn’t sound natural.
The Event has been canceled, but I guess we’ll get to see the final episodes of the season. President Martinez is bouncing back to his feet faster than expected. That’s one hell of an antidote. Would have liked to have seen him throttle the last breath out of acting President Jarvis, though. Smarmy bastard. Funny scene when Simon and Vicky and Sean and Blake all “met” for the first time in a standoff. Turns out they all sort of knew each other by reputation. Is Leila doomed to stay inside the plastic tent for the rest of her life, or will she turn out to be an antidote on legs? Hard to see how they can unring the bell, with all those teams en route to their respective destinations. Lots of plot to pack into next week, that’s for sure. I can’t figure out how they’re going to get an entire planet’s population into that one little spot, though.
I wonder how the ratings for The Killing are doing? For some reason, the twenty hours of the Danish version flew past when I watched it, but the AMC version, which is doing much the same story in about half the time, seems draggy. Perhaps it was the fact that I was able to watch Forbrydelsen over the course of just a few days. I suspect this is a series that will do better on DVD than live.
Nice product placement for the new Derek Storm graphic novel from Marvel on Castle last night. All series should be so lucky. A lot happened in the season finale, and they left us with a bastard of a cliffhanger to dwell over during the summer. First off, we got to meet Beckett’s father for the first time. Everyone seems to think that Rick has a lot of influence over Beckett, including her Pa and Captain Montgomery. She’s back to obsessing over her mother’s murder, especially when some fake cops break the assassin Lockwood out of prison so he can continue his mission, which is to kill everyone associated with the case.
Castle and Beckett finally have one of those almost conversations. Castle raises the subjects that they haven’t been talking about (the kiss, almost freezing to death together), but once again they don’t talk about them. Beckett calls Rick the “school’s funniest kid” and Rick says that Beckett dates men she doesn’t love as a way of hiding from happiness. His mother (who admits to being more than halfway through the movie) tells him not to waste a minute of it, after taking him to task for having trouble for coming up with the right words, especially for a man who makes his living by them. Captain Montgomery chides Beckett for wanting to get rid of Castle because “you weren’t having any fun before he came along.” His speech about the pointlessness of her quest to solve the big mystery in her life is the source of today’s subject line. “The best you can do is find some place where you can make your stand.”
And Montgomery makes his stand after Ryan and Esposito solve the mystery of the third cop. Questions: what did Montgomery mail just before he loaded his pistol, and who does it implicate, and how long will it be before we find the answer to that question? And who in their right mind takes a revolver with only six or seven bullets to fight off an assassin? Turns out he had the right number of bullets, but he might easily have run out before the end. The whole Montgomery revelation was a surprise. I speculated earlier that he might actually take retirement as he threatened to last week, but I never saw this coming.
Poor Rick sees what’s about to happen, but not in time to make a difference. Of course Kate must have been wearing a vest. But will the impact knock from her mind the words Rick says to her at the end? We have to wait until the fall to find out.
