nixsight

Okay, so it looks like I watched a lot more TV this week than I actually did.

As always, your comments are welcome!

Buffy Season 4: 11

0411 – A New Man: This episode finally addresses the role that Giles has in the new order of things, when Buffy’s preoccupation with Riley and The Initiative means that she totally ignores his warnings of an approaching evil.

It turns out that the evil Giles is worried about isn’t quite what he’s expecting, as old rival Ethan Rayne – always a fun guest appearance – enters the scene. Rayne tricks Giles and transforms him into a demon which can’t make himself understood by anybody except Spike, but of course, with Buffy and The Initiative on his trail, the demon Giles needs to find a solution quickly.

This is another of the character-based episodes that dilute this whole season, but that doesn’t make it a bad one. Head plays Giles’ despondence perfectly, and there is a great uncomfortable scene when he meets, and finds an instant antipathy for, Professor Maggie Walsh.

The interaction between Giles and Spike, paired up in as unlikely a team as is possible, is great, too, and makes for the real core of this episode, despite efforts to make it about Buffy’s relationship with Giles.

The problem with this leg of the season persists, though – it continues to be more about how seperate the team is now than about the moments when they’re together. As an outsider coming into this group, Spike continues to be the best thing about the season, now that Oz is gone.

Bones Season 4: 04

0404 – The Perfect Pieces In The Purple Pond: You know, they’ve done such a good job on the characters in this show that when the plot of a particular episode is a little contrived or daft to the service of great character moments, you don’t even mind all that much.

The body and investigation in this episode is interesting enough, but it pretty much takes a backseat to the team’s reunion with Zach. To try and make Zach feel better, Hodgins leaves case files with him, which prompt him to escape from the asylum where he is being detained to return to the lab and help out.

It’s an interesting plot device, in that it is almost entirely arbitrary – the members of the team who aren’t under psychiatric observation for being the protege of a serial killer would almost certainly have been capable of solving this crime without him, and it’s an odd move to blow the quite major plot-twist of having Zach be able to return at will on such a minor story.

There’s also something a little bit worrying about the moves made in this episode to soften the impact that Zach’s actions in the season 3 finale may have on his character’s possible future – work is done here to lessen the consequences of both the damage that he deliberately did to his own hands, and his confession of guilt from that episode.

Getting rid of Zach was a brave and huge decision, and as much as I miss the character, I personally reckon that that’s one area where the status quo shouldn’t – and in fact can’t – be regained. I’m a little concerned that the negative reaction that fans seem to have had to his removal, or some ludicrous neurotic brain-fart on the part of the showrunners, might prompt exactly that outcome.

But anyway, it’s still a really fun episode, and despite the silliness of the character’s return, it’s dealt with in a characteristically funny and consistent way. The requisite musical montage sequence at the end is the episode’s only odd point – the new intern is given a reflective moment that seems out of step with the amount of importance his role has in the show at this point.

CSI Season 9: 01

0901 – For Warrick: This episode was just heartbreaking.

At the end of last season, Warrick Brown was fatally shot, and though that fact wasn’t much of a surprise, the twist that his killer was under-sheriff McKeen came a little out of the blue – especially considering that that character had always been shown as a sympathetic character before.

Still, it seemed to be setting up a major subplot for the ninth season – although of course, it was obvious that the first episode would deal primarily with Warrick’s death and the effect that it had on his colleagues and friends.

So, anyway, this episode takes up seconds after that one left us – and starts plucking at the viewer’s emotions from the start, by having Grissom get to Warrick before he has drawn his last breath. Grissom, normally so thoughtful, isn’t considering the possibility that he might disturb evidence – he is the most emotional we have ever seen him. Petersen plays it perfectly, and as the other team-members – including a returning Sarah Sidle – react to the murder, the order of the day is a level of restraint in the writing which we don’t normally see on this show.

In fact, for the most part, we don’t really see actual reactions, we just see the aftermath – Nick Stokes standing, looking on, in shock – Greg Sanders lost and looking for anything to occupy himself – and the team back in the lab responding in a number of different, convincing ways. Hodges doesn’t say anything – an out-of-character response that brings greater weight to the event – and the normally pragmatic Dr Robbins, in an underplayed and at the same time utterly right moment, simply says that he won’t be doing the autopsy, he has asked to be replaced for it.

If there’s anything that isn’t quite right about the episode, it’s that the storyline – that seemed to be leading to a longer investigation about police corruption at the highest levels this season – is brought to a conclusion – albeit a satisfying enough one – before the end of this episode.

It’s the one thing that doesn’t ring quite true about it all. When shooting Warrick, it’s clear that McKeen is doing it to avoid Warrick continuing the investigation that will eventually lead to his capture. Up till now, the man has done a fine job of keeping himself at a distance from any trail of evidence, and in fact Warrick doesn’t even consider that he is in danger when McKeen approaches his car, so beyond suspicion is the man.

That McKeen chose to kill Warrick himself isn’t so difficult to believe – he’s in a position to get close to him, and he already has a solid plan, to frame the man that Warrick has built a case against in that last episode. His motivation is sound up till that point.

What doesn’t make sense narratively is that instead of making himself scarce – something that would be easy to do because there are no witnesses, and the location of the shoot means it will probably go undetected for a few minutes at least – he sticks around to verbally establish the frame of his patsy, rather than allowing the obviously rattled CSIs to work it out for themselves with the physical evidence that he’s planted. Effectively, he puts himself in their field of vision, for no apparent reason. And then behaves erratically enough throughout the episode that he does nothing to stop the story’s climax, which has him caught.

It’s a silly thing to have spoil an otherwise great episode. The investigation of the team is sound, and it’s easy to see how, if McKeen had to be caught this early in the season, it could have been pulled off. Instead, a man who has apparently made a long career out of corruption and getting away with murder seems to manage to dispose of the only person who might be a threat to him, and then forget everything he knew about staying out of sight.

Warrick’s funeral, though, makes you forget all that. If you’ve spent eight years watching this show, it’s probably impossible to be unmoved by the way that this episode deals with the aftermath of the murder of one of it’s founding regular cast-members. There are a couple of trite moments, but they’re nothing like what you’d expect from a show like this, and for the most part they’ve allowed the emotional aspect of the death to come from the event rather than from any awkward scripting or badly conceived musical montages.

It should be interesting to see where this season goes from here. We already know that Petersen will be replaced at some point by Laurence Fishburne, and that should spell a lot of change over the next few months.

The Unit Season 2: 04-07

It’s been a while since we watched any episodes of “The Unit”. It wasn’t for lack of enjoyment – despite it’s tendency towards jingoism, and sometimes heavy-handed moralising, it’s always entertaining. It has just the right balance of great action that is downplayed enough to almost feel authentic, and human drama back at home with the wives.

If nothing else, until “24″ is back in the new year, it’s the best dose of shootin’ and torturin’ terrorists available.

0204 – Manhunt: The team operate on US soil, tracking down a terrorist before he can carry out a potentially devastating attack. This part of the story is handled pretty well – with flesh-crawlingly mean support from the wonderful Jim Beaver as a downhome racist called Lloyd Cole.

On the home front, there’s what looks like it’s going to be a “child safety” story, that ends up being a “the ends justify the means” parable, with Kim Brown at it’s centre. Of the wives, she’s the most complicated to get my head round – I find her pretty attractive, but what I think is supposed to be her headstrong and admirable attitude often comes off as a little too impulsive and self-righteous.

However, she gets a great scene with Robert Patrick as Colonel Tom Ryan. Patrick handles this role consistently well, doing a fine job of balancing the Colonel’s humanity with his authority and military rationale.

0205 – Force Majeure: This was clearly the show’s Hurricane Katrina story. It’s set in a North Carolina hospital buffetted and flooding from an ongoing hurricane – the team’s concern here is the rescue and return to his country of a military dictator that they know is guilty of some terrible, genocidal activities.

When one of the team discovers a group of old and infirm patients left behind by the evacuating hospital staff, and the only helicopter available to rescue them has some severe weight requirements, a hard conflict between duty and morality ensues.

The show does a great job with it’s TV budget, and as viewers we didn’t feel short-changed by the external scenes of hellish conditions, or the main set used throughout the episode. The morality play as well is executed solidly, with believable but not obvious responses from the characters.

It’s an odd assignment for the team, with lots of problem-solving and not much combat potential, so resident killer Mack is back home for the “b” story, which is a bit fluffy and daft, but perfectly offsets the fraught nightmare back in the hurricane.

0206 – Old Home Week: This is another odd episode – the bulk of which is focused back on-base with another human interest story led by the wives. It’s a bit of a soap-opera, it’s core the search for the wife of a long-dead soldier whose undelivered love-letter is the lynch-pin of an effort to raise money at a charity event. The process of investigation as they look for the woman is pretty interesting, actually, which is good…

Because the other story, involving the ins and outs of an assassination of a terrorist by the team, was a little confusing. The standard narrative trick that the show uses of dumping you in mid-operation prevails, here, but where normally the mission either comes together in a way that explains the events leading up to it’s objective, or there’s some stealthy exposition, both of these things are entirely absent in this episode.

Still, the climax of the mission is carried out entertainingly enough, and there are enough nice elements introduced here, such as the debate between Tiffy and a peace protester, and a revelation of one of the Unit’s deepest secrets, to make it a perfectly good episode.

0207 – Off The Meter: This is one of the most nerve-wracking episodes we’ve seen so far – which is odd when you consider that the story it deals with is much more personal than the freedom-threatening big-scale stories the cast normally have to deal with.

Jonas and Bob are asked to do a personal favour for a friend – a simple enough rescue of a girl from a cult leader. The job goes south, though, when they get tied up in a murder, and what with it being an unsanctioned mission, and one on the ground in a US town, their training and military status is no use to them.

At the same time, a more domestic but just as worrying plot is brewing, as Tiffy takes responsibility for a minor traffic incident to help out a debilitated friend, but finds the situation getting quickly more complicated when the police take her in for questioning in relation to a much more serious crime. Questions of loyalty and duty abound, and before long the mess has put her husband Mac in a difficult position with Colonel Ryan.

It’s a strong episode, despite the lack of a military assignment – in fact, probably because of that. In most “The Unit” stories, the question isn’t whether or not the characters can get out of a situation – we already know that they have the skill, the firepower, and the suction to get through almost anything – it’s about how they’ll decide to get out of it. But there are a couple of points in this one where the guys in the field seem to have over-extended themselves, and the situation at home is still unresolved and looming by the end of the running time.

Leverage: Pilot Episode

Warren Ellis mentioned this new show by a guy that he worked with on the enjoyable but abortive “Global Frequency” pilot, so I thought I’d have a look.

The premise of the show runs thus: Timothy Hutton is Nate Ford, an insurance investigator on the outs with his former employer, who finds himself emotionally blackmailed into helping an aerospace executive retrieve some apparently stolen designs from a rival. The payback for Ford is that his old employer is the rival’s insurer, and will end up paying out on the loss.

Ford is the “one honest man” that the exec needs to keep his team of thieves in line – and he is already familiar with all of them. They successfully steal the plans…

… Only to find that they are actually on the receiving end of a double-cross, and the exec plans to repay the team’s services with a fiery death.

It’s probably pretty predictable and linear stuff – and obviously this episode is all intended to set the scene for an ongoing series, so there’s a very definite endpoint that the story has to reach, which you can sometimes see telegraphed a little. It’s also got a lot stylistically and conceptually in common with the UK show “Hustle”.

But none of that really matters, because it’s quite a fun piece of TV. The cast, thrust together and not entirely trusting of one another, held together with the unrepentantly cynical and unsatisfied Ford, do a great job, and the script cracks along well enough that you don’t always notice if things get a little clunky.

It’s good to see Christian Kane in a show that makes good use of his flexible look and confident delivery, and I’ve enjoyed watching Hutton in pretty much anything since the lovely and underrated “Beautiful Girls”. Aldis Hodge is a fun face that’s new to me, and Gina Bellman surprised me – mainly because I really didn’t enjoy most “Coupling” episodes I saw.

And, uh, I kind of fell for Beth Riesgraf a little, so I can’t really talk objectively about her performance, beyond that it was a Whedonesque mixture of homicidal, kooky and sweet.

Production-wise, the episode was slick, with a couple of lovely visual motifs, and some only-slightly familiar bits of physical action in the heist/scam segments. But the real strength here is in the way that the characters riff off each other.

What might be tough is sustaining that throughout a series. There’s a lot of stuff in the backstorys of these characters, and plenty of potential jobs for them to pull, with each player having a very definite role to take in any future stories. But with the lack of any real risk – because each member of the team is, at this stage, oh-so-good at what they do, and the tone of the show is pretty light and tongue in cheek – any drama or tension really comes from the bristling mistrust and hostility between the members of the group.

As I said before, by episode’s end Ford still holds a little animosity toward his team – after all, he is the “honest man” that chased thieves like them for years – but he is still de facto leader of the group. And the other members are already showing a grudging admiration for him, and each other, when the final credits roll.

So it remains to be seen what legs that aspect of the show might have, and tension may need to be introduced somewhere else. Still, it was a nice slick ride, and I had to have a giggle at the way that the final scene, with it’s strong taste of “A Team”/”The Equalizer” mash-up, played out.