Got two weeks to get through, though… I have been a bad blogger!

Buffy Season 4: 20-22

0420 – The Yoko Factor: Spike’s secret power is that he’s smarter than everyone else – sneak-smarts, anyway. Seeing him work the Scoobies in this episode, on Adam’s behalf, is just a joy. Oh, and Angel turns up briefly, following the run in he has with Buffy in the episodes I’m… uh… about to mention in a minute.

0421 – Primeval: The fall of the Initiative, and Buffy’s first real encounter with the innate supernatural force of the Slayer line. There are some nice effects moments, and some nice character moments, but I don’t know if many people were really sorry to see the Initiative go, so the final showdown between the demons and the soldiers lacked a certain amount of audience investment.

0422 – Restless: … And the oddest of Buffy seasons, the red-headed stepchild of them really, closes on an odder note, having finished off what was arguably the season’s main arc an episode early, and instead running with a surreal episode mostly composed of pitch-perfect dream sequences, as the core gang of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles meet the malevolent spirit of the first Slayer.

It’s a really enjoyable episode, but it’s also oddly placed – though in some ways it’s the perfect finish to this season, because it’s actually a bridge between the awkward dischord of this season, and the major themes of the next. In fact, the last few episodes of season four have been building towards setting up the themes of self-discovery and identity that will dominate season five, which is a shift in structure for the show. It’s almost as if Whedon realised that the season arc was never going to end perfect, so he decided to cut his losses and use it as a springboard to the following year’s fun.

And though I’ve mentioned it before, I never realised quite how much Whedon seeded the ‘sudden’ arrival of Dawn.

Angel Season 1: 16-22

0116 – The Ring: It’s “Gladiator”! Only with demons! A fun enough wrinkle on the show’s exploration of the hero archetype, as Angel fights by not fighting. Another new Wolfram & Hart employee appears, too.

0117 – Eternity: A stupid actress does a stupid thing, and brings out Angelus temporarily. It’s big fun seeing the psycho again, but though there’s obviously a lot of effort to make us see how difficult the aging process is for her, we don’t sympathise with her.

0118 – Five By Five: This was the year that Faith went from an interesting idea that sometimes felt a little overcooked, to being a 360 degree character. After a really solid two-parter over in Buffy, in which Eliza Dushku did a great job of selling some complex characterisation as Faith got in touch with her inner self-hatred, she turns up in LA, and is taken on by Wolfram & Hart to assassinate Angel. She tortures the fuck out of Wesley, but Angel manages to find her, and when he refuses to fight her, it becomes obvious that Faith was planning a suicide-by-vamp. Dushku takes her from defiant to helpless in a few beautifully convincing and moving seconds.

0119 – Sanctuary: Angel finally manages to make some headway with Faith, and then of course Buffy turns up and is all indignant up in his face. Buffy is a pain in the arse at times like this, but Gellar acts up to the slightly different tone of this show this time out, and things unfold at quite a rate. The fight coreographers always do an awesome job when working with Faith and Buffy fights, so the action is pretty solid, by TV standards. Wesley gets to be a badass, too. All in all, these and the two over in Buffy are probably the four most solid Faith episodes they ever did.

0120 – War Zone: Heh. Gunn turns up. It’s fun enough to see some black street kids in the show, but as much as the character is sometimes pretty well written and J.August Richards does a likeable job with him, I still kind of cringe every time I hear his name – it’s obviously a quite laughable riff on “Blade” but it doesn’t work for me!

0121 – Blind Date: I didn’t really remember this episode until it got going. Not surprising, really – it’s a Lindsey episode, and it’s easy to forget his part in this series. But actually, Lindsey, and Angel’s relationship to him, are pretty important to the show. Lindsey’s journey runs from the first to last episode of “Angel”, but this is the first story where we really see how complicated and layered Lindsey really is.

And it’s interesting, because this is also the first time he tries to do something good, but it’s his actions here that lead him onto the path that will see him through to the end of the show.

0122 – To Shanshu In LA: This whole episode builds around Wolfram & Hart’s attempt to “raise” something – and the demon who is performing the mysterious ritual goes quite effectively about dismantling Angel’s team to stop him interfering. Wesley and the offices get blown up, and the bad dude does something particularly nasty to Cordelia.

It’s a strong climax to the season, with a new mission set up for Angel, and a real sense that anything can happen in the next season. And finally, we find out why the show has spent so much time dwelling on Angel’s history with Darla. One might have thought it was just to fit in with the “immortal protagonist” aspect of the show – it’s a rule in western TV drama that if you’ve got a character that lives forever, you have to have endless period flashbacks just to, y’know, press home the idea that this is a character that lives forever.

But when it turns out that the thing being raised is Darla, who Angel killed way back in the first season of Buffy, it’s clear that the real reason we’re being reminded of why Darla is important is that she’s going to be a major part of the second season.

Criminal Minds Season 4: 05-12

0405 – Catching Out: Bubbles from “The Wire” guests as a transient serial killer. Big fun, because it means that Morgan gets to have a train-top fist-fight.

0406 – The Instincts: A bluff episode – a child abduction case draws the team to Vegas, because the real motive of the episode is to get Reid near the place where he grew up and dreaming about his childhood, a thread which leads into the following episode…

0407 – Memoriam: A complicated but nicely stitched together drama, as Reid tries to piece together the truth about his childhood, and his father’s desertion.

0408 – Masterpiece: This episode starts on a movie moment – an eccentric man arrives at a lecture given by Reid and Rossi, and tells them that he has murdered several people, challenging them to find his latest victims before they expire.

It’s a bit of a “Saw” by way of “Hannibal” episode, but it’s fun, though the killer isn’t one of their more believable unsubs…

0409 – 52 Pickup: Spree killers are always fun, but the really cool thing about this episode is that JJ has her baby, and asks Reid to be the godfather.

Man, we like these characters far too much.

0410 – Brothers In Arms: Ah, well, a bit of a blah episode… these come along every now and then. Not a lot to say about it, which is rubbish, I suppose…

0411 – Normal: An awesome episode – basically, it’s like “Falling Down”, but without the cop-out ending, with some truly brutal stuntwork and motivation, and an unsub that the audience finds itself uncomfortably sympathetic toward. One of the few truly shocking episodes, too.

In this case, the middle-aged, emasculated man is played with beautiful understatement and convincing bubbling rage by cult TV favourite Mitch Pileggi.

0412 – Soul Mates: An odd episode, which seems to have been written by someone who had a cool idea for a murder story – or in this case, a serial rape/murder story, and just loosely camoflagued it as a case for this particular team of FBI investigators.

In fact, the “Criminal Minds” regulars don’t really do much in this episode, and the whole thing is carried somewhat by a charming and measured performance by Michael Boatman, the favoured suspect from before we’re even invited into the story.

The Office 0508 – Frame Toby

Heh… Michael Scott is so delightfully irrational when it comes to Toby that there are some great moments of complete bewildered rage from Carrell’s character.

Even if Michael doesn’t like him, it’s good to have Paul Lieberstein back as the permanently monotone HR guy – though it does seem like a particularly cruel twist for Michael, to have his soul mate so unceremoniously swapped out for his arch-enemy.

It’s still not entirely clear what exactly it is that Toby ever did to earn his wrath, though. Just quietly enforcing the rules, but happily caving when Michael goes too far doesn’t seem like it’d even get the ridiculous office manager’s attention.

Elsewhere, the cosy romance of Jim and Pam almost looks like it is going to be derailed when Jim makes the ill-advised purchase of his parents’ house, but it seems like the showrunners think the terrible anxiety that we feel whenever it looks like this couple’s bliss is going to be ruined is enough for now. I’ve made myself clear on this, mind – much as I know a lack of conflict makes for boring TV, I’d be happy if these two are just left to actually have a nice, heart-warming love story, after the trauma of their near-misses and glancing hits of the first few seasons.

Let the other characters fall out and fuck around, I say!

Criminal Minds Season 2: 04-07

0204 – Psychodrama: A quartet of strong episodes begins with a fairly disturbing story in which the team are called out to deal with an armed robber who is showing signs of making the psychotic leap to becoming a spree killer.

The investigation features a lot of pretty nasty behaviour on the part of the episode’s unsub – who is apparently attempting to re-enact the story of his apparent abuse at the hands of his mother – although it’s a little confusing at times what the exact details of his crimes are, due to some uncharacteristically squeamish and euphemistic writing around the sexual elements of the story.

The episode wraps Hotch’s own failure to pay attention to his son’s childhood around the crime plot, which thematically works better than one might expect. Although I wondered whether I’d warm to Thomas Gibson’s performance – or perhaps Hotch’s stoicism – when we first started watching the show, he plays his emotional scenes with a quiet charm that now I quite enjoy.

0205 – Aftermath: Jason London guests as a creepy serial-rapist with his own, romantic agenda, in this episode, and in doing does a better acting job than I’ve ever seen him do before. The case plot is pretty horrible and cool in this episode, though at times the episode’s true driving force – that of showing how Elle’s survival of the attempt on her life at the beginning of this season has affected her – isn’t so well disguised.

The close of the episode has her performing actions that would have been quite shocking, had I not known that she was bowing out later on in the season…

0206 – The Boogeyman:… though I’d obviously failed to register, during my adventures on IMDB, that it was actually the very next episode that saw her departure.

An odd episode, this, as a series of child murders hit a small town, and the team – minus Hotch and Elle – try and fail to create a working profile. When the actual killer is revealed, it makes for a bit of a shocker, but fails to sustain any real drama, because the scenes where he pursues his latest victim end up looking a little silly. Quite aside from which, the team’s profiling skills have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the episode.

More importantly, Hotch has stayed behind to try and track down Elle, who has failed to show up for a psych evaluation. When he finally catched up to her, he gives her an ultimatum that ends up seeing her leave the show – though oddly, she seems to have been allowed to literally get away with murder. I have to admit, I’m not sorry to see her go – Elle, or Lola Glaudini’s performance of Elle, has always been one of the slightly annoying things about the show. With any luck we’ll see someone better replace her before long.

Great to see Geoffrey Lewis in this episode, as well as a solid performance from Sean Bridgers, one of my Deadwood favourites.

0207 – North Mammon: A very creepy episode that puts JJ front and center in the team, as they attempt to find three kidnapped girls in a small town obsessed with an upcoming football game. Though the team’s interactions are written perfectly, and A.J. Cook gets to do some nice character stuff with JJ, the real meat of the episode are the excellently nasty scenes featuring the three girls in captivity, where their captor has set them the terms that if they choose one of their number to die, the other two will be allowed to go free.

These scenes are excellently played, and create a lot of drama and gravity to their plight. It’s another one of those episodes where in the end, the BAU’s presence in the town actually has little to no effect on the outcome of the case, which kind of sorts itself out here, without them having much of a chance to do a proper profile!

Buffy Season 4: 12-19

Something quite peculiar has happened with Buffy – I seem to have missed talking about a whole bunch of episodes that we’ve definitely seen in the last few weeks.

Because of that, I’m a bit hazy on my most recent responses to them, so I’ll just pin it down to a couple of comments, with your indulgence.

I think the main reason I’m not remembering much about these episodes is that despite the quite cute developments between Willow and Tara, and some excellent Spike stuff that mostly happens earlier in the season, there’s not a lot that’s really memorable about the Initiative and Adam storylines that dominate the latter half of this season.

Having said that, within this bunch of episodes, there were some great highlights, including:

One of the better Faith stories, a two-parter in which Eliza Dushku pretty much justifies Joss Whedon’s faith in her after actually being a little two-note throughout most of the rest of her appearances.

The excellent “Superstar“, in which Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson opt to have one whole Jonathan dominated episode, rather than have Danny Strong play the character across a series of smaller appearances in the season the way he normally does. The episode isn’t particularly content-packed, but it is very funny, as we see all of the show’s characters responding to the universe that Jonathan made in various excellent ways.

The team discovering Giles as he plays an acoustic set at a local open-mic night – Xander’s dismay only made worse by the adoration of the female Scoobies.

The final episode in the bunch is one of my favourite Buffys of the whole run, though it’s also one of the most upsetting, as Oz returns – to reveal that he has got his lycanthropy under control. Willow has her own revelations, though, and the scenes between Alyson Hannigan and Seth Green are perfect and incredibly sad – not least because of the tragic finality there is to them. The two always give such good performances when they work together, and Green in particular just breaks my heart again and again in this episode.

And if that makes me a gigantic gaylord, than so be it.

Angel Season 1: 09-15

0109 – Hero: I suppose it was a bit silly to follow that last episode of Buffy with this episode of Angel.

Audiences didn’t respond too well to Doyle when “Angel” first aired, if I remember rightly. At the time, I wondered whether it was something to do with his accent – that sounded a little deliberate to me at the time, but was actually Glenn Quinn’s real voice – or his general “annoying sidekick” demeanor.

Actually, watching these over again, I don’t think there was anything wrong with his performance, and have to wonder whether it was just the fact that, at the beginning there, it wasn’t the shock of the new – he was the only regular character and actor who hadn’t made his way across from Buffy, for starters, and he was also the conduit through which all of the show concepts that were alien to viewers of the other show were introduced, such as Angel’s new ongoing mission, and the way in which he received each case.

However, over the first three or four episodes, he started to win me over, and I think he might have endeared himself to the viewers, too. Certainly, by the time this episode came around, he felt like a part of the family, and thinking back it’s weird to think that he was in less than half a season worth of episodes in a five season run.

Because of course, this is his final episode. And they get rid of him in quite a final way, sacrificed to stop the plot of a band of hellish fascist demons, and save the lives of a group of innocent refugees.

Despite the nastiness of his demise, Girl One didn’t quite believe that he was gone, and I think this was for a couple of reasons – for a start, she hadn’t heard anything about it in that way that one gets vaguely spoilered about shows through conversations with other people, down through the years. She also didn’t buy how out of the blue and arbitrary it was – the writers had, after all, gone to a lot of trouble to try and establish Doyle, and there seemed to be storylines that would now go nowhere.

So for her, the episode wasn’t as potent as it was for me, because she didn’t really know how final it was – I kind of remember having the same vague response to it at the time. But for me, they did a good job of giving him an emotional send-off, that allows the repercussions that Angel and Cordelia feel over the next few episodes to ring true, despite the shortness of the run till this point.

Course, it’s possible that it means a lot to me because I know that Quinn died later on, and quite young, in real life.

The rest of these episodes are fairly standard, compared to this one, so as with Buffy, I’m going to scurry through them – which seems pretty lazy, but we’re really forging forward with these shows at quite a rate!

Wesley, who never managed to distinguish himself on Buffy, joins the cast here in the very next episode after Doyle exits, and it seems a little too soon, really. It doesn’t help that it seems, for these first episodes at least, that he is only brought in as comic relief. While slapstick is always fun, his buffoonery sometimes seems a little much for a show that was supposed to be Buffy’s darker sibling.

However, he does a good job in the horrific exorcism story at episode 14 – “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” – in which we see a harder, realer side to him as we learn that he was abused by a dominating father as a child.

We also see Wesley and Angel dancing. This is… well… this has to be seen to be believed, really. It’s one of those moments that stuck with fans for years.

The phantom, Dennis, who lives with Cordelia, is the best thing about an episode in which Cordelia is impregnated by a demon and gets very quickly pregnant – though there are lots of great moments in the episode.

And in the final episode of this run – “The Prodigal” – there’s a nifty little moment that I still loved seeing it the other night, as Angel, uninvited, stands yelling at the open doorway to Kate’s father’s apartment, as two vampires, invited, kill the old man in plain view of him. When Kate’s father expires, Angel suddenly finds he can enter the room, but it is too late. It’s a silly thing to be so impressed by, but it’s a moment that fits so well, and garners a really solid tension from an idea that could only exist inside that particular mythology – it just works.

The I.T. Crowd Season 3: 03-04

0303 – Tramps Like Us: After my first episode fears that this series was going to be a bit lacklustre, every one since has been pretty consistently awesome.

This episode continues the theme. Jen’s job interview perfectly captures both her blagging nature and the general silliness of job interviews given by managers who don’t know what they’re doing, and it leads into a perfect exchange with the concussed Moss.

Moss, himself, is great value as always, with his uncharacteristically risky prank that goes wrong, and the aforementioned concussion. And Matt Berry as Douglas gets to have some fun with his electric sex pants.

If there’s a weak link in the episode, it’s Roy’s storyline, which starts strong with a telegraphed but great moment of public inappropriateness, but descends into an extended and whimsical montage of his two hour adventure as a homeless.

0304 – Speech: Though the second episode is still my favourite one of the series so far, this one has some of my favourite set-pieces. There’s a little more Douglas than I’d hope for (the character is great, but runs the risk of becoming a Kryten – A cool supporting character that ends up becoming the focus of a show that they can’t support), but the pay-off of all his deep-throated shenanigans in this episode is just perfect.

Perfect, too, is how Moss and Roy’s plot to humiliate Jen when she gives her employee of the month speech plays out. It’s an excellently executed prank in the first place, but how completely they have misjudged the speech’s audience, and how badly wrong it all goes, is just perfect. The central idea of the prank-puller’s overestimation of the general population’s intelligence is similar to the episode of the US Office in which Jim plays a similar trick on Dwight, but Linehan’s surreal execution, and the fact that the “Internet” is a central theme here, just makes it sing for me.

The Office Season 0412

0412 – Did I Stutter?: This is quite exciting – we’re getting to the end of the episodes that I have already seen, so after the next one, Girl One and I will both be watching the episodes fresh together.

This is a bit of a harsh one. It begins with an outburst at Michael from Stanley that at the outset is pretty short and inconsequential. But when Michael is unwilling to acknowledge or deal with the slight, the situation builds, until Michael, being Michael, decides that rather than approach the problem head on, he will hit Stanley with one of his “scenarios”.

This backfires badly, and it makes for an interesting sequence, in which Michael is severely dressed down by Stanley in front of the whole office, and then explodes himself, in an impressive and utterly suprising moment of anger.

Which of course instantly gives way to wheedling and silliness, the second everybody else is out of sight. But when Stanley still fails to apologise, Michael performs one of the few solid bits of management we’ve ever seen out of him, and Stanley ends the episode not particularly repentant, but at least back at a more appropriate level of behaviour.

It’s a sign that the showrunners know what they’re doing that they can pull off the awkward and uncomfortable scenes that play out in this episode, and still make it funny, even if this one doesn’t have as many straight-out jokes as usual. There’s also a very mean-spirited and nasty scene in which Ryan, with Toby on hand, gives Jim a completely out-of-the-blue verbal warning. It’s a moment of bad management, and John Krasinki plays it like the true slap in the face that it is. It’s interesting to see Toby gloating, obviously fuelled by his jealousy of Jim’s relationship with Pam – Toby normally endeavours to be fair, and is such a nice character, but it’s realistic to see nice people be nasty when they feel they’re in the right. In TV we more often see it the other way around – with bad guys showing touching moments of humanity – so it’s good to see Toby being a jerk.

So that’s three characters getting dressed down, running down to the end of the season – and season closers in “The Office” are normally pretty nifty.

Survivors 0104

“Survivors” continues to be entertaining, and it seems counter-productive to be too critical of British genre television when it gets most things right, as it doesn’t happen that often…

However, this most recent episode did make Girl One and I raise the same concern simultaneously as the final credits rolled:

This all seems a little bit too safe. Both the ongoing situations and the television show housing them.

I suppose this is the point where that question gets asked. The episodes so far have each had their role:

Episode 1: Set-up – in which the scenario and different central character drivers and traits are established.
Episode 2: Establish physical conflict – in which the group’s safety is physically threatened for the first time, and we see that there are, in fact, dangers out there.
Episode 3: Establish ideological conflict – in which the questions of right and wrong away from matters of moment-to-moment physical survival in this new world are addressed, as we see for the first time how exactly an attempt to return to organised civilisation on a large scale might go wrong. This is the grittiest and hardest episode so far.

So episode 4 is the stage at which lots of groundwork has been set, and now we start to see how people are dealing with it. There’s a return to the organisation of the domed sanctuary, which, following the shocking events of the previous episode, seems to have made a shift to Stepford style symbolic comformism over difficult questions asked by idealists who are objectively good people.

At the same time, we get a look at what happens when the Lord Of The Flies syndrome kicks in, and a group of teenaged boys go near-feral – although still for the most part speaking RP English – and take over a manor house, violently fending off the place’s rightful owner.

There’s a very small sub-plot wherein Anya and Greg see off some invaders at their own home base.

There is plenty of room in this episode for this to be the point where hard lessons are learnt, in at least one of these stories. We are enjoying each of the characters and would miss any of them, but there is a point where Max Beesley’s Tom could easily have ended the life of Sadiq – the drama is built to suggest it – and created a deeper conflict and more meaty secrecy in the show – just as there is a point when the teenagers could easily have reverted to primal behaviour and betrayed the trust that Abby put in them, subverted the message that all they needed, even in this terrible world, was a mother figure to come along and sort them out.

Anya and Greg, too, could have been forgiven for taking the lives of the two invaders – in fact, it would have been the smart choice, and right or wrong would have caused some emotional torment for them – but instead opted to leave them out there, and angry.

Our concern was this – if the world that these characters live in continues to be a place where most bad situations can be solved with a bit of talk, or a danger-lite escape, that world starts to loose a little of what makes it worthwhile watching. If it becomes idyllic, we’ll start to switch off.

Of course, this is only episode 4, and there’s plenty of time for these decisions to start coming back to haunt the characters. But the thing about continuity and consistency of plot in a show is that it’s a matter of faith – there’s no way to know how much attention will be paid, or how much causality there will be in a show’s run, until the run is well on it’s way. Right now, Girl One and I are hoping this doesn’t go down a mediocre road.

Prison Break Season 4: 03

You can tell that this season of “Prison Break” is a far cry from being as solid as previous ones – it’s taken us weeks to get round to watching just one more episode.

0403 – Shut Down: Still, though, this episode shows some glimmer of the series’ past brightness, though it goes to some lengths to create physical drama and tension out of nowhere, and the real strengths here are in some of the character moments.

The main focus of the episode is the fact that, with the team’s mission suddenly complicated, their handler Self struggles against his superiors to keep it active.

There is a diversion at a server farm, which puts Michael and new boy Roland in jeopardy and gives Lincoln a chance to show why his character’s impulsive and violent streak is useful. Otherwise, though, the scene is largely redundant.

There’s a bit of rushing about, a bit of the crew being chased around by feds, and a bit of Michael saving the day, but while that’s what takes up the time in this episode, the really memorable moments are all Mahone’s, as he tries to piece together who killed his son, and behave normally among the group. There are a few great scenes between him and a former colleague, and some lovely moments as Lincoln discovers and sympathises with Mahone’s loss.

It’s obvious that the writers are more into what’s going on with the Mahone character than they are with Michael and the rest of the team, and this is a shame – the production is still there, but the cohesion in the face of chaos of the show, which was part of what was so attractive about it before, is missing right now. Still, this episode was better than the last two, so we can hope for ongoing improvement…

Fringe Season 1: 03

0103 – The Ghost Network: I’m still a little nonplussed by “Fringe”. The pilot has thus far still been the best episode. The insistence on making the second episode so utterly conspiracy-plot heavy boggles my mind, though – it’s as if Abrams learnt nothing from “The X-Files” and his own show “Alias”.

However, this episode shows a lot more promise than the last.

It’s not that they’ve totally ditched their reliance on their central conspiracy plot, although this story widens that plot enough that I can see the potential for more self-contained stories – the Pilot and first episode proper seemed to be establishing “The Pattern” as a closed network or organisation, like a Bad Science version of Prison Break’s “Company”.

Events in this episode make it look a lot more like an ideological mindset than a secret society, though, which works well – parallels can be drawn between “The Pattern” and terrorism in general now, whereas previously it seemed obvious that “Massive Dynamic” were behind a lot of what was going on.

There’s also a little bit of intrigue for Lance Reddick’s Broyles to play with, and a small amount of back-story being filled in for Joshua Jackson’s Peter.

And I still love watching Anna Torv as Olivia.

Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles: 02-09

We watched the pilot for this ages ago, and it just made too many leaps from the source material for me to really get that enthusiastic about it.

However, people seemed to like the rest of the season, so I decided to go back and give it another try. I remembered the first episode well enough that I didn’t feel the need to rewatch it – and as it happens, that was smart, because the feeling I get from the rest of the season is that the pilot was really just a bridge from “T2″ to where they wanted to start the show proper. What followed was much more accomplished action TV.

I’m not going to break down every episode, because the show is designed in such a way, and I watched them in such a rush, that the story flowed quite naturally throughout. The writing, acting and production were consistent enough that the quality of each episode doesn’t bear dissection.

Actually, the production values on this show are generally pretty damn good – and as such don’t need much dissection. The CGI and general effects are nifty considering the medium, reminding me of the miracles that the BSG people managed to pull off in the first few seasons of that show.

Narrative-wise, the whole thing pulls together pretty well, too. Lena Headey makes for a much more layered and sympathetic Sarah Connor then Linda Hamilton ever did, and Thomas Dekker does a more than adequate job on John Connor, considering he’s, you know, a young actor. Summer Glau is just a joy to watch, as well – although for her to be playing such an odd-ball and morally complex character again seems risky so soon after “Firefly”. I have to wonder what she’d be like playing someone just… ordinary.

The wonderful Garret Dillahunt is well-cast as the terminator Cromartie. I’m starting to really love this guy, after seeing him play the downbeat cowboy in both “Deadwood” and “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford”, as well as his decidedly more nuanced performance in “John From Cincinnati”.

The continuity and plot here is intriguing enough, as long as you don’t worry too much about it’s inconsistencies with the original source material. Very little of the actual action contradicts what has gone before – and in fact, the show pays homage and reflects back to the movies often, but not often enough that it gets in the way. But some of the key concepts from the movies, that must have required adjusting to fit this format, are wrenched in a new direction – the idea that there are multiple Terminators acting as sleeper agents on various missions is an interesting wrinkle, but the idea that travelling forward in time is viable in this universe seems to me to contradict the events of the movies.

Still, so far it’s been a one-time MacGuffin, and the whole time-travel aspect of the show has been handled well and inventively.

Course, the rumour is that the second season is already cancelled, so I picked a hell of a time to get into the thing, didn’t I?

Angel Season 1: 05-08/Buffy Season 4: 08
“Angel” continues to range from funny to dark to hip and not really settle on any one spot – an issue that didn’t really leave the show for most of it’s run. However, it’s still major fun to watch, and Girl One seems to be getting a kick out of it.

At this point in the series – which is around disc two of the boxset for anyone keeping count - the show hasn’t really got out from under the shadow of it’s predeccessor. The showrunners acknowledge this around the episode 7/8 mark with a story that offers a bit of closure to the poor miserable vampiric bugger.

0105 – RM w/a VU: Before we get to that fairly heavy crossover story, we get light relief. This episode is all about Cordy, and it’s probably the first really self-assured episode that the show has. We get a few insights into the team dynamic, but really, this is where the old Buffy Cordy and the new Angel Cordy are properly reconciled with each other. The transition from major bitch to sad, lost girl between the shows wasn’t as jarring as it could have been – mainly because we’d seen a softening of the character at the tail end of her time on “Buffy”.

There are some spooky moments, and a little bit of a closer look at Doyle, and one of the best “Star Wars” puns ever, that isn’t even directly referred to throughout the episode. Fun and scary and not bad at all.

0106 – Sense and Sensitivity: … And then we get an episode that should have been a bit of a misfire, focussing as it does on a character, and the titular character’s relationship with that character, that never really caught the audience’s imagination.

However, the episode works pretty well, thanks to a very funny script, and some great performances. As much as the story focusses on Kate, it’s also a bit of a gimmick or stunt episode – the premise is that a demon is hired to effectively brainwash the detective’s precinct into some very odd behaviour, but really it’s about seeing David Boreanaz playing Angel as spookily sensitive.

Episodes like this became stock in trade in later seasons of “Angel”, and “Buffy” features a perfect one in around three or four episodes.

0107 – The Bachelor Party: Doyle, apparently, was married.

Actually, this is the third episode in a row that takes one character and spins a story out of them. This is well and good, but it can knacker an action show if it persists – part of the appeal of a show like this over a soap is that it’s about the external situations that the characters get involved in, rather than the fuck-ups that they cause themselves.

I can’t remember whether “Angel” balances this out later on, but at least these first few episodes of this show are a lot of fun, as well as rounding out Doyle’s character a lot, building on the implicit tragedy of his lifestyle that was highlighted in 0105.

The humour here comes largely from an excellent guest performance by Carlos Jacott – as Doyle’s ex-wife’s new fiance, a pleasant-natured demon whose family traditions are unfortunately quite brutal. Jacott’s is a face that turns up in a few shows, and in fact he previously played a demon in the season 3 opener of “Buffy”.

Speaking of – this episode ends with Doyle having one of his painful visions. The subject? Buffy.

Buffy 0408 – Pangs: A bit of an odd episode, this, because it’s more notable for what it sets up than it’s actual content. Although there’s the obvious factor of it being the first part of a crossover, and as such setting-up the following “Angel” episode, that particular connection seems largely arbitrary.

The driving force of the crossover aspect is that Angel has had a warning that Buffy is in extreme danger, and travels to Sunnydale to keep an eye on her. This makes for a couple of nice scenes – mainly between Willow and Angel and Giles and Angel – but it never really comes to much else. The threat that Buffy and co face in this episode is just another entry-level menace, and not even one that affects more than a handful of people. There is never any real sense that Buffy wouldn’t have been able to sort it out for herself, so Doyle’s vision seems a little arbitrary, as does the rest of the crossover element of the episode.

Luckily, not much of the running time is given over to that. There’s an ancient native American revenge spirit story going on, and some excellent Giles/Willow conflict over it, but the real meat of the episode is in what foreshadowed story elements come through properly here.

For the first time, we get to see Xander in his new job as construction man – a role which represents his first step to becoming a true adult, after seven episodes of trying to find a place. We also see his relationship with Anya finally move into a more formal phase, as well as his supernatural syphillis.

And this is also when Spike first comes to the Scoobys for help, and although he’s acted as an ally under sufferance before, this is the first time that he has been fully involved in the group, albeit as an unwelcome guest. Of course, he gets all the best lines… especially when he gives his very shrewd speech about white middle class guilt.

0108 – I Will Remember You: This episode is the only true active crossover of the three episode arc that it concludes.

Wow, sorry about that incredibly awkward sentence, but I couldn’t think of a more natural way to say it. Buffy, having discovered that Angel was in Sunnydale without her knowledge, travels to LA to berate him.

However, things get out of hand at the close of their argument, when a demon assassin enters the scene. One thing leads to another, and Angel gets infected with demon blood, which has the unusual effect of making him human. Of course, this changes the outcome of his and Buffy’s decision to stay apart – they can now finally have a chance at the normal relationship that has eluded them since they first met – but events conspire against them, and Angel has to make the sacrifice to become a vampire again to protect Buffy.

There’s a lot of melodrama in this episode, as you can imagine, and a smidge of overwriting, but ultimately it’s a potent episode – the emotion of the scenes in which the two are able to be together are convincing if a little over-the-top, but Boreanaz carries the subtle but terrible tragedy – that only Angel will ever know about – and makes it very real. And although I’m certain that it comes up again, this episode gives some emotional closure to the Angel/Buffy love affair, and allows this series to move on into it’s own territory.

True Blood Season 1: Pilot

0101 – Strange Love: We caught this pilot to the new HBO series in the week, and I have to say, it’s intriguing, well acted and of very high quality.

Based on a series of books, and created by Alan Ball, the writer of “American Beauty” and “Six Feet Under”, this show is a bit of a genre departure from those previous projects. Set in Louisiana, the series follows Sookie Stackhouse, the young psychic waitress who finds herself drawn to – and in this episode saving the life of – a charming vampire who has moved into her neighbourhood.

In this version of our world, vampires have recently outed themselves, now that they have found a way to synthesise blood. This hasn’t all gone smoothly, though – in this episode, the enigmatic Bill faces small-town anti-vampire bigotry, as well as being attacked for his blood – which has supernatural properties when consumed by humans – by a nasty redneck couple.

Thrown into this are some fairly fetishistic sexual practices, a lot of groundwork on the various colourful characters in the region, and the murder of a local goodtime girl by Sookie’s errant brother. It’s a full and involving first episode, that does a good job of making it’s bizarre physical and moral “world” seem real enough that you find your feet quickly, and can tell when characters are behaving out of synch with that world.

Instrumental in grounding the audience is Anna Paquin’s sympathetic performance as Sookie. It would have been so easy to oversell this character, or let her sink into a saccharine pool of cutesy or stereotypical characteristics, but the script and Paquin manage to find a strong and upright core to the character that allows her to take her place as the show’s anchor.

It’s also lovely to see William Sanderson in a supporting role here, though it remains to be seen if we’re going to get him at his best in this show.

But whatever, another great HBO show. I’m watching this one with great anticipation…

CSI NY Season 5: 01

So, the last season of “CSI:NY” ended with a great guest-spot by Elias Koteas – who is one of my favourite actors – and an exciting – if a little contrived – cliffhanger.

The new season opens with the second part of that story, and it’s not bad. Hang on… better do this bit:

0501 – Veritas: Season openers are a peculiar animal, in a show that deals with continuity, and that enjoys the cliffhanger. On the one hand, a season premiere is normally a good place to reassert the characters and show dynamics for any potential new viewers, and provide a fresh jumping on point. It’s also a good place to establish any new ideas that are going to run through the season, such as a theme or a long arc.

On the other hand, a really popular show will sometimes jump into a new season feet-first, assuming that the majority of it’s viewers are regulars, and that anyone else will be able to pick things up from the “previously on”.

As with the bluntly abbreviated “Prison Break” storyline, powered by the oddly paced premiere this season, “CSI NY” chose to do away with any dramatic tension built up by their tail-twisting season 4 cliffhanger, in this case removing the threat to Mac Taylor’s life even before the close of the cold-open. In “Prison Break”, this rushed opening served to utterly rearrange the format and environment of the show – in “CSI: NY” it’s done to make sure that the status quo is reasserted before the credits even roll.

It’s not a terrible episode, but it’s largely forgettable, which is a shame. All of the key players are present, though in many circumstances woefully underused – with Mac and Stella taking center stage throughout. The only real step in a new direction here was the introduction of a precocious wrong-side-of-the-tracks sister for Don Flack – and people familiar with the franchise will recognise this trope from “CSI: Regular”, and Jim Brass’s daughter.

Elias Koteas does okay, here, but there’s an attempt to build a rivalry and relationship between his character and Gary Sinise’s that is entirely in the dialogue and nowhere in the on-screen action.

Of all the “CSI” shows we’ve seen, this branch of the franchise has always been the furthest from science and the closest to science fiction, and that isn’t as unenjoyable as it might sound. But it does mean that the show relies more on it’s characters to administer the real draw for wider audiences, and this first episode lets those slide a little. I hope it gets better, but I’ll be content with it just not getting worse.

Bones Season 3: 11-15

This season of “Bones” has been an odd animal – the incongruous return of Zack after his sudden decision to go to Iraq at the tail end of season 2, coupled with the introduction of a grotesque serial-killer season arc, and the firm placement of Jack and Angela’s wedding hopes in limbo made for a sequence of episodes that lacked the overall cohesion of past seasons – when you found yourself in an episode that was part of the longer continuity, it was often a bit of a shock.

However, the show stayed consistently well written and acted throughout, and these last few episodes were solid, and didn’t seem to be adversely affected by the writer’s strike at all.

0311 – Player Under Pressure: This is pretty much a “body of the week” episode – although that body is a pretty grotesque one, having been crushed when the retracting bleachers at a University gymnasium contract. The conflict between Bones and Booth in this episode – because of course, there has to be one, it’s built into the premise of the show – is in Bones’ dismissal of sports as a pastime for the young, which shouldn’t draw the attention and prestige that it does in for it’s star athletes in this episode. Booth was a jock, so he doesn’t like this.
It’s pretty much by-the-numbers “Bones”, but there’s enough intrigue and excitement to make it worth a watch, and some very sympathetic supporting characters. This is a bit of a trademark of the show – and is probably a large part of it’s ongoing appeal – at times when other shows would come off as trite, this one instead tugs at the heartstrings in a way that doesn’t make you feel conned. Which is nice.

0312 – The Baby In The Bough: A great “stunt” episode – a fairly transparent McGuffin that lands the team with a baby to look after leads to a lot more comedy than sensible plot, but man, is the baby cute, and many of the regular cast members get at least a few moments of decent character development out of their interactions with it.
And it left Girl One and I a little too broody, if you ask me.

0313 – The Verdict In The Story: Finally, we see a conclusion to one of the show’s longer arcs, as Bones father finally sees trial for the murder of the head of the FBI.
There was clearly a possibility for this episode to end up being about the conflict inherent in the fact that Bones is a witness for the defense, and the rest of her team are working for the prosecution, and there are some remnants of that particular situation in the script. However, probably correctly, the writers realised that because of the characters involved – most specifically the super-rational Temperance Brennan – conflict wouldn’t really be appropriate, and this side of the episode instead becomes awkwardness, with one notable period of defiance by the lovely Angela Montenegro. Sigh.

(It’s a rule that whenever I type her full name, I have to sigh afterwards. Girl One is worse, in case you were wondering…)

There are some courtroom back-and-forth’s that are just great, with able performances by Patricia Belcher and Ernie Hudson as the lawyers in the case. And the story flips backwards and forwards as you might expect – but has an appealing amorality to it that I enjoy. I love seeing how they deal with Booth’s admiration of Bones’ dad, and how he deals with the ways that that conflicts with his job.

If there’s a criticism here, it’s that the jury are kind of underestimated a lot, for an episode that plays out almost entirely in a courtroom. But this is hardly a flaw that is unique to this show.

0314 – The Wannabe In The Weeds: Another “body of the week” episode, but one that’s notable because of where it lands the main players in the show. Pretty much the whole episode works as a McGuffin for the heartbreaking shocker of an ending which has us going into the final episode of the season with the absolutely tragic potential loss of a key cast member.

It also acted as a bit of a spoiler for Girl One for “Angel”, because the recurring location throughout this episode is a karaoke bar, and it was peculiar to see David Boreanaz prickly and uncomfortable with one of those again. I had to say something!

That setting also allows for a bit of comedy, with Zack in particular getting to rule with his operatics.

0315 – The Pain In The Heart: Of course, I should be kind of pissed off, because it turns out that the potential tragedy, which is dragged out for the first five or ten minutes of this episode to the extent that we utterly believed it, is just a massive piece of misdirection. Which sucks.

However, this episode sees the climax of the Gormogon storyline, and that’s a bonus. It’s also a bit shocking.

I made the mistake just now of nipping over to IMDB and seeing what people had to say about it. This was silly, because they were outraged – of course they were. One of the show’s major characters gets written out in this episode, and of course it’s caused a bit of a kerfuffle. It’s going to be a bit difficult saying much more about the episode without hopelessly spoilering it, in fact. So I won’t.

But although the whole thing is handled in a bit of a rush, which is uncharacteristic for this show, and probably a by-product of the writer’s strike, it actually does kind of make sense. The show has been gearing the audience up to think that one of it’s characters might be more wrapped up in the Gormogon situation then they were letting on, and in this and the past couple of episodes, we’ve heard a convincing argument for more than half of the regular team being capable of murder, which has been fun for a misanthrope like me to watch – I personally believe that almost all of us are capable of murder. Although the situation that unravels in the last ten or so minutes of this episode is a bit out of left-field and mishandled, the groundwork for the revelations have all been laid, and the background information to tie it all together is right there in this episode, albeit in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stew.

I really liked this episode – it made some brave choices, and it leaves me kind of pumped for how they’ll handle the next season.

House Season 1: 02-03

“House” continues to be a peculiarity – even by episode 3, I am starting to see the rigid episode formula that a friend told me about as it is firmly established.

However, as the same friend mentioned, it doesn’t matter that the episodes are so familiarly structured that it is even noticeable among all the other shows that stick to similar weekly patterns, because the show is so well written and performed that it’s a joy to watch.

Although of course, “joy” is subjective in this case – because the stories are turbulent and often a little heartbreaking, and thus far House himself is almost unrelentingly horrid. It’s clear from this early on that he is only a misanthrope in the same manner that I am – one gets a clear sense through Laurie’s performance that this character limits his contact with other people not because he hates them unconditionally, but because he finds them almost universally unsurprising and rubbish. When given a choice between helping someone and not helping them, he almost always chooses to help, in his way.

Medicine here is treated like scientific exploration, and the presentation suits that paradigm – admittedly, the slick computer generated simulations are reminiscent of CSI, but that’s cool, because those shows always look great. As this first series progresses, the supporting characters are starting to establish their roles, but it’s still a little early to say where exactly they’re going to end up.

0102 – Paternity: The “A” story here is about a high school boy who suffers double-vision and night terrors. There’s not a lot to that part of the story, beyond the usual solution/problem/solution/problem rollercoaster that is part of the show’s formula. However, House’s continued pragmatic and superficially misogynistic approach to working with Cameron, and his use of his team as proxy starts to solidify here, and it makes for an interesting dynamic. It’s interesting because it establishes an almost “us versus him” situation, and while each individual has a different relationship with House, they also have a team response to him. At the same time, of course, they have responses to each other.

This is also where the clinic cases kick in and give the show a unique feel – even as the “A” story unfolds, it’s broken up with what are almost comedic “skits”, and these give some and incongruous relief from what is almost unrelenting tension or grimness in the main stories.

0103 – Occam’s Razor: A fairly basic episode, but it raises the – perhaps obvious – question of sexual attraction between the attractive young Chase, and the gorgeous young Cameron. I believe this is where we also first get a hint that Chase, like his colleagues, is brilliant, but tends to play the odds with House, saying what he believes House wants to hear, rather than thinking for himself, and I wonder whether this will become a plot point or character development area later on.

We also get to see a slightly softer side to House’s character, even if none of the other characters do, by episode end.

Buffy Season 4: 01-03

In some ways, Season 4 of Buffy was the difficult one – Season 2 was the first season proper, and as such was like nothing we’d seen before, and Season 3 was an amping up of the best parts of Season 2, and had two or three key focusses, all of which were carried over from it’s predecessor – such as Buffy’s inevitably doomed relationship with Angel, and the run down to the end of High School.

Season 4 doesn’t have those focal points – and if anything it’s main theme is change, which in a show which had done such a good job of establishing it’s characters and settings throughout, this is a tough step. As such, it tends to falter a little from the off, with only really Willow’s role as best friend and resident academic student staying unchanged, and if anything strengthening.

It also represents a shift in the way we do things at chez Nix and Girl One. For a start, the show really pushes the “previously on” bits at the beginning of each episode – a constant pain and a redundant feature on DVD releases, I reckon – and so I’m going to have to pay attention and fast-forward through any “previously” bits that spoiler too much of the oncoming episode. And also, at least for this first season, there are a few crossovers between this show and “Angel”, and this means making sure to watch them both in sequence with each other. Which is a pain, but we do what we can…

0101 – The Freshman: Whedon is clearly very attuned to how his characters would feel in a given circumstance, and this first episode deals with how Buffy would cope with shifting into a situation where she doesn’t know the rules, and is no longer the “big hero on campus”. I remember this episode leaving me a little unmoved at the time, but I’m enjoying Gellar and Buffy more this time round, and her discomfort seemed to make more sense, and was easier to sympathise with.

Although her alienation mirrors the way she often felt when first arriving in Sunnydale, this time round things are slightly different – in High School, Buffy at least still remembered being popular at her previous place – and she was always the cool friend next to Willow. But now Willow fits in perfectly, and is in her element. The stylists on the show have gone to town on Hannigan to reflect this – gone are the brightly coloured dungarees, and now she looks chic and sexy rather than just dorkily cute.

This episode brings the problems Buffy is having adjusting right into literal space, though, when she has her ass handed to her by a pack of vampires lead by the just ginchy pop-goth vamp Sunday, who starts to look like she might be a recurring character, right up until she doesn’t any more.

This, and the next season’s opener, are basically classic Whedon misdirection episodes – although both have some interesting information to impart, they are designed more as delivery mediums for the final scene – in both cases telling us what the season is really going to be worrying itself with.

It isn’t a bad way of starting a season, don’t get me wrong. And there are excellent moments when we find out what Xander and Giles have been up to.

0102 – Living Conditions: … and this episode continues the idea of opening this season on red-herrings, as Whedon et al remove the problem of Buffy’s roommate who doesn’t know her secret. The episode is like an extended rant on how difficult it is sharing space with incompatible people, and it allows for a couple of info blurts for Oz and Xander, but beyond that is mostly about getting Willow installed as Buffy’s roomie.

It’s well scripted as ever, but the supernatural threat never feels like much of a real threat in this episode, which gives it a kind of vague feel.

0103 – The Harsh Light Of Day: This is where the season really starts to kick into gear for me. For a start, there are a bunch of returns – First Harmony, who is somewhat changed, and then Spike, who is pretty much the same. Then Anya shows up and makes a play for Xander, and that just makes my day. In fact, the scenes that the two have together, wherein they are so adorably Whedon awkward, are just pitch perfect.

The emotional center for this episode is Buffy’s first proper encounter with a man since Angel. Of course, the fact that Parker is a real live human guy doesn’t actually make for a smoother relationship – once Buffy has sex with him, it becomes apparent that he wasn’t after an actual relationship, and Buffy, raw from her past experiences with men, is heartbroken. Temporarily, of course, because that’s roughly when Spike comes in, and takes over the episode.

Although Gellar does well with the scenes, I didn’t find the emotional weight of this episode particularly heavy – for my part, it was good to see the whole team once again sitting around, trying to sort out a supernatural problem, as both the first and second episodes of this season worked out ways to leave Buffy facing the monsters on her own.

This episode constitutes the first real crossover with “Angel”, by the way, with Oz leaving for LA at close of play to take the gem that Spike was after to Angel for safekeeping.

0104 – Fear, Itself: … and this is the first episode of the season that stands up as being truly horrifying and pushing the characters forward a little, despite being a little flawed at the end.

Buffy, Xander, Willow and Oz attend a “haunted house” party, but find once there that the house has really been possessed by a fear demon. This makes for some truly gruesome visuals, and some heart-wrenching scenes as the team’s fears are played upon and they seperate. The boys get the worst of this, I reckon – Xander’s embodied fear is that he’ll become invisible to his friends, and Oz becomes almost catatonic when he starts changing into a werewolf and can’t control it, because he is scared of hurting Willow.

Eventually Giles and the ever amusing Anya manage to rescue the others, and this is probably where the episode fails – the revelation of the demon is given over to a sight gag, and though it is very funny and unexpected, it robs the episode of a lot of it’s emotional currency.

However, there is little bad one can really say about seeing Anthony Head in a sombrero.

Angel Season 1: 01-03

When “Angel” first aired, I had very low expectations – at that point, I really hadn’t been fond of the character when he appeared on “Buffy” – young and impetuous as I was, I felt that time when he was on screen was time that could have been better spent on Willow, Oz or Xander.

However, within a single episode, I found that Boreanaz was already managing to bring a little more depth to the character, and that the character needed.

Watching it now, I realise that a big part of what I enjoyed about this show was the shift towards actually having their superhuman protagonist move and behave in super ways – from the first episode on, there is already lots of running across and jumping off of rooftops, playing chicken in fast cars, and general zipping around, being cool.

There’s also a lot of heart to the show – and a chunk of that is down to the genius decision to include Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia on this show, as well as Glenn Quinn as the very snappy Doyle.

Cordelia was no longer relevant in “Buffy” once that show shifted away from the High School setting, but in “Angel” she gets to move from being the loftiest bitch in school to being the lowliest wannabe actress in town, and the change is more poignant than you’d expect. And if you’d told 1999 me that I’d be extolling the merits of Doyle now, he’d have hit you with a brick. Maybe not a brick. But something heavy. I didn’t like him back then, but now I find his accent lilting rather than annoying, and his character endearingly pathetic instead of witless.

The show wasn’t without it’s issues. For example, at least in these first few episodes, it takes it’s “lost souls in a city that doesn’t care” remit as meaning “hot blonde women dealing with mean oppressive men”. I seem to recall this changing later on, and maybe it was a way of subverting the Buffy/Angel dynamic, and stating categorically that this show was different, but it really stood out to me.

Also, there’s a real effort to create some kind of spark -not necessarily romantic, but definitely emotional – between Angel and Kate Lockley, and it just isn’t ever there.

And another thing that bugs me ever so slightly – but not to the extent that it ruins my enjoyment of the show – is how fast and loose it plays with the whole “only direct sunlight can hurt vampires” rule established in the Whedon-verse. Admittedly, the creators were kind of pinned down by the Los Angeles locations, but it is a little infuriating that, due to the way TV shows are filmed and lit, Angel often appears to be in a fully sunlit setting, but then goes to great pains to avoid a particular ray of light.

0101 – City Of…: A decent pilot, that I suppose unavoidably has to refer back to “Buffy” in it’s opener, but doesn’t find itself crippled by the fact. Doyle felt like a pain in the ass first time round, but I warmed to him much quicker watching it with Girl One.

And as I’ve said before, Cordelia is a great addition to this series. She’s already grown up a lot since her role on “Buffy”… although of course, Charisma Carpenter was always a tiny bit unbelievable as a high school student anyway.

This episode sets the tone for the rest of the series, too – because Angel doesn’t manage to save the innocent in this story, and has to make do with avenging her death. It gives you the clear impression that not everyone here gets out alive, which seems fitting, considering.

0102 – Lonely Hearts: It’s a shame that this episode was so overwritten, because it’s an imaginative second episode, and introduces Kate Lockley, a character who could have been so great. An episode about loneliness, this one drives the message home a little too forcefully for my liking, with too much of the dialogue going over many of the character’s desire to “make a connection”.

0103 – In The Dark: … Oz turns up, here, following on from the corresponding episode of “Buffy”. And Spike follows him.

These were the best two characters to lead off with, as crossovers into this show. Oz’s arrival instantly shows a contrast in the way that the two shows are filmed, and his laconic delivery matches up better with the more gritty approach that this show has. The episode opens with a hilarious Spike scene, that you remember for a long time afterwards, as he delivers a voice-over to a standard Angel rescue scenario.

And the first truly vile villain of the series shows up, in the vampire that Spike employs to torture Angel, although the darkness of the character is a bit of a throwaway thing. Kind of like – you can tell this show is more mature because there’s a child-molester monster.

0104 – I Fall To Pieces:This episode was a lot creepier then I remember it. The premise is more X-Files than Whedon-verse, with a stalker who can break himself down into composite parts, which float around and are very gross indeed.

Still, there’s something that bugs me about the idea that a pair of hands with no body or even arms to push themselves off against can throttle an average adult, let alone Angel. There is, after all, the question of leverage.

Still, not a bad first disc to start a new show off with, and Girl One seemed to enjoy it enough to continue watching.

Robot Chicken Season 1

It’s possible that I idolise Seth Green a little too much.

But then, last week I watched Robot Chicken, the show what he made, and it’s possible that I don’t idolise him enough.

Of all the shows that I’m watching at the moment, this is the one that is most likely to be an acquired taste – I can’t think of a single person I know who would enjoy this show even nearly as much as I do. (This is a lie… I can think of at least two people who might – but I can’t promise nothing…)

It’s basic premise is simple enough – basically, the show-makers have a load of toys, and thought it would be funny to animate them. Each episode consists of a large number of small sketches, and a couple of longer ones, and the whole thing has an irreverence that you almost wouldn’t expect from American writers – if you hadn’t watched any TV in the last ten years.

This is not polite comedy, and it isn’t particularly easy to watch, either – quite aside from the crude stop-motion animation, there’s the fast cuts and the harsh, often grotesque voice-acting.

But it’s compulsive. It takes the smart route with the sketch-show formula – cram enough quick gags in and it won’t matter if half of them don’t appeal to a viewer, because a few seconds later a proper laugh will come along!

There’s a fondness to the parody here, as well – even when it’s horrid or profane, very few of the jokes are out-and-out hateful, and this would seem to be borne out by the huge number of guest voices they have over the course of this first season.

The closest this show ever gets to any other is the very slight similarity it has to Adam and Joe’s old toy versions of movies, and if you liked those, or any of the other Adult Swim shows, you’d probably get a kick out of Robot Chicken.

Buffy Season 3: 12-18

Season 3 continues to remind me why I was so insistent that, despite her desires to the contrary, Girl One should watch this show.

All the elements are pretty much there and ticking along together – it’s the show at it’s strongest. It’s just a shame that knowing that Angel starts at the end of this season/beginning of the next provides something of a generalised spoiler for this season.

0312 – Helpless: One of those times when your heart breaks, as Buffy and Giles end up on the outs, and that wonderful Gellar/Head chemistry comes into play. Also notable because it’s when Giles loses support from the council. It seems like it will only be a temporary thing, and I can’t honestly remember how that thread plays out, but it ends up having repercussions throughout the rest of his and Buffy’s relationship…

Also, I’ve a sneaking feeling that one of the bit parts in this episode ended up as a prominent character in Enterprise, which doesn’t quite beat out the appearance of Michael from Prison Break in the credits every week (after his appearance in Go Fish), but it’s still quite cool.

0313 – The Zeppo: A brilliant Xander episode. Without giving too much away, a great character episode in which Xander gets to explore his purpose – or lack of one – in the group. Notable because the world is threatened, once again, and lots of self-aware melodrama indicates that it’s the worst apocalypse ever. And it all happens off-camera, as Xander’s own, more down to earth adventure happens around it.

It isn’t often enough that Xander gets to be the hero, so this episode is a pretty cute and funny one, and a novelty, n’all.

0314 – Bad Girls: Buffy and Faith get hyped up on being slayers, until tragedy strikes. This is notable because up till now, Faith has been an interesting mirror for Buffy in a very controlled, restrained way, narrative wise.

Now, Faith is a true cautionary tale for Buffy – what she might be, but for the grace of Giles and co.

This episode is also notable for being the one where Wesley, the new watcher, turns up. Although he was never really a major character in this show, we get to see some devastating fuck-ups on his part, which work to highlight how useful Giles actually is, despite getting knocked unconscious in almost every episode.

0315 – Consequences: Perhaps unsurprisingly, this episode is about what happens in the wake of Faith’s transgression in the previous episode. This is a pretty important installment of the season’s arc, but even so I tend to forget it. The most striking thing about the episode, apart from Willow’s uncharacteristic outburst, is the continuing need on Wesley’s part to make dickhead decisions that end in carnage.

When the show was first aired, at this point in the run, I recall thinking that Wesley was never intended as anything more than a cypher. I’m not sure about that now, but it’s clear on watching the episodes now that they were really going to lengths to turn the audience against him, and it works.

0316- Doppelgangland: A bit of a Willow episode, this, and it’s wonderful. The anti-Willow from the alternate universe created by Cordelia and Anya in “The Wish” gets pulled across into the “real” universe.

Of course, there’s some predictable mistaken-identity comedy – and tragedy – as the Scooby gang encounter the evil Willow doppelganger, and jump to the wrong conclusions. And yes, of course, we’ve seen this sort of thing before – it’s a staple of genre and even non-genre series that always comes up at some point.

What makes this episode work is Alyson Hannigan’s performance as first Willow, then anti-Willow, and a few different variations in-between. There are also a couple of beats in the script that suggest that Whedon already had a long term plan for Willow’s arc, and later changes weren’t completely out of the blue, but in the context of this episode, they’re just perfect comedy moments.

This is also the first return appearance of Anya, who I’m quite fond of, and there are some nice interactions between various characters, such as Oz and Angel, that are refreshing because they don’t happen very often. Although the monster fighting in Buffy was a relatively new thing at the time, it really is how the writers and actors handle the character beats, especially in those quiet two-person scenes, that makes the show something different entirely.

0317 – Enemies: Another episode that I forget about, normally. Which in this case is actually quite nice, because it’s a twisty and turny episode, in which Faith’s loyalties and true feelings are handled deftly, as she starts to find herself drawn to Angel.

The Mayor continues to be an utterly absorbing and entertaining villain, and actually I’m starting to realise that, in terms of the seasonal “big bad”, it never really got any better than Harry Groener’s performance as Mayor Richard Wilkins.

The relationship between Buffy and Angel continues to get more complicated, and it’s clear at this point that Whedon et al are preparing for the latter’s departure for his own series at the end of this season. What’s interesting watching through them again is that at the time I didn’t notice quite how consistently they wove that departure into the ongoing narrative of the season. It’s obvious in situations like this one that the decision to branch out into spin-off territory is primarily going to be business and finance led, but in this case, the way that the character and his place in Buffy’s life was developed over this whole season makes the whole thing seem more organic, and make more sense, than it might have otherwise.

0818 – Earshot: Earshot is one of those interesting episodes that plays out almost like a spec script that was written for another show, but that was adapted for use in this one. The central premise of this episode’s plot requires that one of the main cast, in this case Buffy, be psychic, for at least long enough to overhear somebody’s potentially devastating thought in the school cafeteria.

The meat of the episode that follows almost doesn’t even require Buffy to be present, as the rest of the team take on the task of attempting to work out who had the thought – that the next day everybody present, student and staff, would be dead – and stop them. That overheard threat, rather than Buffy’s struggle with her new and eventually debilitating but ultimately temporary power, the show’s particular version of the supernatural, or any of the other usual elements of the show, is what this episode’s story is about. The result is more Hitchcockian then Whedonesque, and more reflective of films like “The Dead Zone” or “The Mothman Prophecies”, then of Buffy.

This actually makes it a much more dramatic and nerve-wracking episode than others, and the key thing, that ultimately the threat here is a very human one, sets this one apart. I believe this is the episode that got shown in the UK before the US, because of the school-as-shooting-gallery themes – which actually lead to some very touching scenes in which we finally get properly introduced to Jonathan as an actual proper supporting character.

Oh, also, this is where Buffy finds out that her mother and Giles had sex. Twice. On the hood of a car.

The Office Season 2: 16

0216 – Valentine’s Day: We’re treating The Office poorly at the moment.

I’ve already seen them, and recently, so we’re watching them through every now and then for Girl One’s benefit. But Buffy is the more demanding show “oh fuck, what’s going to happen next” drama wise, so that’s staying in the DVD player on fairly solid rotation.

Add to that that the Girl has already seen some of the most recent season’s episodes of The Office, which removes the urgency of knowing what is going to happen to the characters, and we basically only watch it when there’s a half hour before bed, and we don’t have the energy to watch another full ep of something else.

This is a shame, because as I have always maintained, and as Girl One finally seems to be getting into the swing of, it really is a bloody good show.

This episode represents the second time a peculiar phenomena showed itself – that is, the fact that Jan, one of the most perfectly realised and subtly but catastrophically flawed characters of all time, who treats Michael Scott terribly badly and as such is the only character who makes us feel truly sorry for him, at the same time has a humanising effect on him.

At this point in the show’s continuity, we’ve really only seen Michael surprise us with genuine, unalloyed unselfishness twice, without him spoiling it seconds later, and both times it was when Jan has been in need of his support. Jan, on the other hand, even this early on, is belittling and controlling of Michael throughout, and we don’t even really see this go through to it’s natural conclusion until a couple of seasons on, but even now her bipolarity between cold calculation and impulsive self-destructive behaviour is very confusing for her subordinate.

It’s quite smart, that the least human character in the show, is the one who makes Michael almost normal.