Received my annual invitation to contribute to the 2012 Stephen King calendar last night. This will be my fourth year participating in this fun little project.
This morning, I made some minor revisions to the story I submitted recently and sent it back in to the editor. Somehow that ended up taking over my entire writing session.
So, we learned last night, in a throw-away line, that Ted and Zoe aren’t destined to last on How I Met Your Mother. Ted met up with some casual acquaintances in the Hong Kong airport in 2021 and told them that his relationship with Zoe ended badly. Too bad.
This was one of the strangest episodes of House I’ve ever seen. His spiraling-out-of-control lies can get him into some of the oddest predicaments. He ended up defending his actions to a couple of pre-teens, including one of the most precocious girls on TV. The patient of the week was almost lost in the camouflage. If he hadn’t literally coughed up a lung, I think I wouldn’t have noticed him at all.
Few things can top a dirty bomb when it comes to creating tension. 24 started off one season with the memorable detonation of one, though that season went quickly downhill after that, if I recall correctly. When Kate’s radiation exposure meter went off on Castle, at first I thought it was a bomb timer, but the reality was even more scary. (The scientist in me wonders, though, whether you could state with any confidence that Cobalt 60 was responsible for the residual radiation.)
The episode’s cold opening was quite effective, and the following shot of the stripped taxi looked positively apocalyptic, which was a nice piece of foreshadowing. Early on, Kate was a bit off her usual game, distracted as she was by phone calls or text messages, presumably from Dr. Motorcycle Boy. She was so off that Ryan started presenting his reports to Castle! Rick has learned quite a bit of police procedure. He was the one to crack the number code and he has become proficient with the use of the police computers, using one to track some wire payments all the way back to Afghanistan.
At the storage locker, Kate flips Rick’s fantasy switch by producing a pair of bolt cutters from her bag (“For reason too disturbing to mention, I find that hot”) and they get to spend some quality time together while in quarantine. Kate bares her soul and Rick spots a moment to capitalize on it, only to be interrupted by the worst-timed “all clear” ever. They’re thrown back together again by being kicked off the task force because of Rick’s idea to meet with the Syrian spy. His information, though, leads them straight to the bomb, and they’re locked up once again, only this time it’s in cold storage with a dead body as the van containing the bomb zooms off. Thanks to the preview for next week’s episode, we know that they live.
Nice moments with Alexis, first when he rescues her from the spa weekend with her grandmother (“for getting in touch with my inner self,” Rick’s mother says. “In your case, is that wise?” he retorts) and then again later when he reverses himself to make sure she’s out of the city, earning her most deadly adolescent glares. And, as Nathan Fillion tweeted during the episode, “Ark of the Covenant, Dr. Jones?”
