Stargate Universe: Season 1 Episode 7

Fell asleep in the middle of watching the episode, so can't really give a review of it, and don't really feel like watching it again, but what I saw, I didn't like. Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the show tries to be serious like "Battlestar Galactica" but it just doesn't come across with the required heft, and there's simply not enough likeable characters to plaster over all the flaws and keep the audience watching. If it continues in this vein, I'm not sure I'll be blogging about it any more.

Parks and Recreation: The Camel

Another strong installment. The running gag with the murals returns, and this time takes centerstage as finally the offensiveness of their contents forces TPTB to have the different departments come up with alternative suggestions to the theme of "The Spirit of Pawnee". Poor Jerry, who quite clearly came up with the best mural, fudges his speech and the rest of the folks were too busy laughing at his faux pas to notice the actual mural itself. Fun to watch Tom becoming increasingly enamoured with the abstract mural he paid an art student to concoct for him (including him tearing up during the tag!). Mark's mural was, as Ron put it, very pleasing and calm to look at, and probably would have won if they had gone with it. But Leslie's eventual decision to go with the montage of everyone's mural suggestions was in keeping with her character and tone of the show.

Best. Song. Ever

听了百万遍都不会厌的超棒歌曲! There aren't enough superlatives in the English language to describe how awesome this song is :)

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: "The Promise Made for 520 Cenz"

Excellent, excellent episode. No other show on TV matches FMA:B right now in terms of consistent excellence. Highlight was Dr. Knox's reunion with his family, pitch-perfectly done. Tender, heartfelt...his monologue especially as he poured tea brought me to tears. Ok, so admittedly I cry rather easily. Still...extremely affecting moment. Another highlight was seeing Roy and Riza's farewell. Just really nicely done here...conveying how they feel about each other without either of them saying anything direct. The animation, writing, direction and voicework here is simply superb at bringing across such nuance. And in an episode packed with events, Kimbley, the nefarious Crimson Alchemist, is now free (through no small help by Envy), and on the hunt for Scar. Which brings us to the nice twist from the last episode, that Marcoh isn't, in fact, dead. Still, Scar disfiguring him was pretty brutal, and in front of young May Chan, no less. Kimbley vs. Scar sounds like a real battle royale. Laugh-out-loud moment of the week, without a doubt, goes to Ed's drawing of Xiao Mai. Dude really doesn't like pandas :)

TV Roundup: Week of 2 November 2009

Parks and Recreation:
Superb episode this week. Ron taking centerstage is always a treat, and libraries being vilified like they've never been vilified before was hilarious. The Andy-Mark-Ann subplot inevitably suffers by comparison.

Modern Family: "En Garde"
Brilliant. Just brilliant. I thought nothing could possibly come close to "Parks and Recreation" this week, but boy, did this match it blow for comedy blow. Laugh-out-loud from start to finish, and I lost count of the number of great one-liners in this. My personal favorite was Phil proudly proclaiming his son to be the future real-estate mogul "He's gonna drink your milkshake". The whole Manny fencing plot was pure comedy gold, and also very nicely tied in to the (by now obligatory) "family is good" moment of the week, which didn't seem out of place at all and indeed rounded off the plot well. Claire and Mitchell's history as figure skaters also provided its share of the laughs, especially Mitchell's snide remarks about why their team was named "Fire and Nice". Phil and Claire's TH as they do the rundown on their kids' potential (Alex is the best at everything...she'll settle on something eventually; Ashley's good-looking...she'll find someone who's the best at something; Luke...we kinda dropped the ball on that one...yea, we kinda did) was another LOL moment. All in all, solid solid installment. The next episode can't come soon enough!

The Office: "Double Date"

The double date between Michael/Helene and Jim/Pam was painfully awkward, to say the least, but cringingly funny. A highlight was seeing Michael gradually realize that he doesn't really want to be dating a woman older than he is because he still wants to, or have the option to want to, do things like a triathlon or bungee jumping. Prior to this, it was nice to see Pam coming to terms with Michael dating her mom when she saw how sweet Michael was being to Helene on her birthday by having their table at the restaurant specially decorated and especially the very thoughtful gift of the scrapbook. Things went off the wheels, however, upon the aforementioned realization by Michael, and he proceeded to dump Helene on her birthday in front of Pam. Clever touch of showing that Pam and Michael are both sides of the same coin when it came to potentially avoiding unpleasant situations, with each trying to weasel out of it by claiming the higher ground (e.g. Pam trying to avoid going to the lunch by pretending to be tied up with work; Michael pretending that his reason for breaking up with Helene was because he didn't want to make Pam awkward). Jim refusing to let Pam off the hook in terms of going to the lunch was hilarious, and harks back to Pam similarly dragging Jim back in "The Dinner Party" when he was on the verge of escaping Michael's titular dinner party. The plot then took a turn for the slapstick with Pam's punch of Michael in the parking lot, although it does set up the laugh-out-loud moment when Toby told Pam it was ok for her to do so as long as it's outside the office premises, and then Toby proceeding to teach Pam how to punch to inflict the maximum possible damage on Michael! The subplot of Dwight and Andy trying to one-up the other in terms of being polite was fun in the initial part, but ran out of steam a little towards the end. It was probably not helped by the fact that it was built on a fairly incredulous premise of Dwight wanting the entire office to ow him favors so he could cash in those favors later to oust Jim. Even by Dwight standards, it was pretty unbelievable. Still, an enjoyable episode overall.

Stargate Universe: "Water"

Ok episode this week. Felt like a rehash of the second episode on the desert planet, when the team needed to mine resources from an inhospitable planet due to a shortage back on ship (in this case water). To be fair, the writers did admit the similarities, though, in the many references back to the earlier ep, and even the sand alien from that ep made an appearance here. Eli's holier-than-thou chastisement of everyone else for lying to Young when he was off-world about the alien situation was off-putting, and again relegates the character several notches down in my favorite character list for the show, which admittedly runs pretty thin. Though the situation with Young not leaving Scott behind after the latter fell into a crevasse was predictable, I did like the portrayal of Young being a good commander again (and that's not mentioning him entrusting the ship to TJ and telling her she'll do fine). It's pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, but the show really needs a strong moral anchor right now. The alien attacking Gorman was pretty horrifying, though I don't think the various homages to the "Alien" franchise, e.g. Greer wielding the flame thrower, the ice planet etc, worked that well as homages. Again, the show is aiming too hard for "Battlestar Galactica"-like gritty realism, reinforced by the brief scene at the end where Young had to deal with the various mundane complaints of the residents. But it just comes across so far like a kid trying to act grown-up, and it's not working so far. Would the show work better if it lightened up and adopted the approach of its SG franchise predecessors. I'm not sure, but there's only one way for the producers to tell.