Stranger things have happened

One of the things I like about Walter on Fringe is that he gleefully admits that he’s not sure any of his hare-brained experiments are going to work. When Olivia questions whether his contraption might fry one of the pigeons, he says today’s subject line. When Astrid asks him if he’s sure the pigeons will find the missing magneto guy, he says “Of course not.” And the scene where he is shuffling around while Olivia and his son are conversing is priceless. It looks like another of Walter’s wacky behavior tics, so we don’t suspect anything until he shocks his son with the static charge. Now we have to play “Where’s Waldo” with the bald man, who can be seen in a very early scene in this past week’s episode.

I’m glad House and Wilson have kissed and made up. I liked the arc of the episode, from Cuddy drugging him to get him into the car with Wilson, to the revelations at the podunk police station, to the DNA swipe at the funeral. Of course there had to be a medical case attached to the theme of the things parents do to damage their children, and I found it amusing that we went from one magnetic incident to an episode of Fringe that was also based on magnetism.

We watched Baby Mama with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler last night. It was much better than I expected—less slapstick and more humor with relevance. That it also had Steve Martin and Greg Kinnear was a bonus, and Sigourney Weaver’s part was pretty funny, too. Most of the really funny parts were in the trailer, but that was okay, because the movie had better things to do than be hilarious. It’s hard to listen to Tina Fey without hearing the annoying voice of that woman from Alaska, and she’s still a better writer than an actress, but it was an okay movie.

I received my review copy of Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak yesterday. The book is due out in January, and I was interviewed for it, so I am reading with trepidation to see where I am quoted. Interviews are funny things, especially long, free-ranging ones. It’s hard to be constantly on guard about what you say, and sometimes it is the off-hand comments that get pulled out, things I barely even remember saying. So far, I’ve found one quote in the introduction. I know what I was trying to say, but absent the surrounding context I’m not sure the point is made.

So, Nick, did you watch Law & Order: SVU this week? For some reason I was under the impression that Elliot was gone from the series. This was one of the better SVUs in a while, and having Ellen Burstyn play his mom has a lot to do with that, I think.