I received my contributor copy of The Crane House from Cemetery Dance last night and finally got a chance to read the story. My contribution is Chapter 5, so there was a lot that happened after I passed it on to Brian Freeman. I really admired the way Ray Garton wrapped it up at the end. He went back to elements from Brian Keene’s opening chapter and used them in unexpected and smart ways.
My full review of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County went up on FEARnet last night.
A fascinating episode of House this week. There have been many episodes of the show that grappled with the possibility that a god is involved in the healing process. This time the show was about a Hmong boy who was suffering from night terrors. His grandfather believed that it was because an evil spirit was after him. In the end, either the grandfather was right or the billion-to-one shot treatment paid off, and there was no way to tell which was true. As they wind the series down, dramatic things happen. House’s green-card wife leaves him and Wilson has cancer. Next week looks like a parallel of the episode where House tried to go cold turkey, but this time it’s Wilson trying an experimental treatment.
A very strange episode of Mad Men. There was a common moment at the beginning where three storylines diverged and the show went back to that point (and a few other touchpoints along the way) to show what happened with the various characters. Drugs were a part of two of them (Peggy and Roger) and the threat of relationship rifts was a part of them all. The LSD story was fascinating. The voice coming out of the liquor bottle was hilarious—reminded me of those old “butter” / “Parkay” commercials with the talking margarine tub. Don almost blew it big time but it seems like by the end all is forgiven. And Cooper took him to task for his lackadaisical performance of late.
I’m still hanging on to The Killing, more out of curiosity than for any other reason. I have to know how they’re going to wrap up the murder case.
Dragons everywhere. First of all in The Wind Through the Keyhole, which involves a dragon or two and is out today. Then there was a decent CGI dragon on last night’s Eureka. It did all manner of things, like flying between and around trees, climbing trees, etc. I’ve seen worse CGI in big-budget films. I’m glad, too, that they aren’t sticking with the dream-world version of reality. It’s fun to see the characters bounce back and forth between the “real” versions and the ones in the group consciousness construct. I’ve probably said this before—in fact I’m sure I have—but I think that Colin Ferguson is a seriously under-rated physical actor. Carter gets into so much trouble, and is often shot at, pummeled, attacked by robots or zapped, and Ferguson goes all out.
