Entourage – “Stunted”

C

Well, Entourage, here you are again. We’re in the seventh season now, and “Stunted” doesn’t help relieve the general feeling (over the past few seasons, at least) that we’ve been dragging on forever.

You know, I used to really like this show. Back in season two or three (it’s been so long, I can barely remember many specifics), when I first began watching, everything was fresh – the writers came up with all kinds of ways to make the show enjoyable, even if, at its core, it was simply four guys running around in Hollywood, with naked women sprinkled in every other episode.

But flash forward to season seven, and all of this same old stuff seems stale. Turtle’s still running into trouble because he sees a hot chick. Drama can’t get a job. Vince struggles with something on a movie set (a less than mediocre theme that still seems to have repeated itself over the last couple of seasons). Ari’s still an asshole. (And E, well he’s getting married, and he wasn’t in this episode much anyway).

Of course, I don’t look at Entourage in the same way I look at Mad Men (for example), but the writers seem to have gotten lazy. When I see Mrs. Ari complain for the millionth time about something school-related (usually involving the fact that Ari is not actually there, and doesn’t care), or when I see Drama get pissed off at an agent (this time, it’s Lloyd), it’s not special or entertaining anymore. Nothing pops like the way it did when the show visited Sundance, or Cannes.

It’s not a promising start to the new season, but I hope this show gets better. As breezy and light as it always is, at it’s best, it’s shown that it can be a pretty enjoyable half-hour of television.

Lost – “The Candidate”

Every time that I seem to write these reviews, I always feel like I inadvertently list all my complaints first – so, I’m going to do just that.

First off – I never thought Lost could slip that badly on dialogue, but I guess I was wrong – yeah, Sun and Jin is Sun and Jin, but maybe my bias against Sun made it so I couldn’t take the dialogue. Sayid showing his true colors by sacrificing himself to save the rest of the ship came off much better, in my opinion.

And that’s really my only qualm this week, so let’s move on to all the rest of the good stuff that happened:

Finally, we get a single clean plot line that, at least in my mind, signals the fact that we’re moving towards the end (maybe the deaths did too, though).

Through the first half of the episode, which seemingly was designed to bring us to the absolutely arresting final twenty minutes on the sub, we saw our band of candidates united under Locke, who clearly now is the main antagonist as we head towards the end (the scene where he mercilessly takes out the two guards at the place really exemplified this). Sure, the characters didn’t get much done story-wise (Sawyer-doesn’t-trust-Locke-so-he-tells-an-unconvincing-lie, etc.), but the sequences did work in terms of allowing the series to align towards its ending.

The flash-sideways worked much better than most this week too, although I would’ve liked to see more action, or at least more of the whole element of uneasiness, something-doesn’t-quite feel right notion that was lacking in earlier episodes fleshed out a little more (the scene with Bernard worked quite well, but we still aren’t getting any real answers). The ever-present undercurrent that ties the sideways plots to the main timeline also seemed to be more fleshed out this week – Jack’s inherent desire to help everyone escape the sub vs. his desire to fix Locke (and I always feel like there’s even deeper stuff that I don’t get at first glance). Yet we still aren’t getting any clear answers (again, I don’t doubt the show to leave us hanging there in the end, so I don’t mind).

But far and away the best scene this week (and I’d argue in this season) was the bomb-on-the-sub sequence (largely reminiscent of the similar Jack and Richard situation we saw earlier this year). Managing to capture literally everything that we’ve worked up to this entire season, getting all the “candidates” together to have them all killed, allowed Lost’s element of tension to be played out beautifully. Starting from Kate getting shot, to Jack’s argument over why the bomb can’t do anything (which makes complete logical sense now, more at the end), to Jin and Sun’s demise (ok, I didn’t really like the dialogue, but everything else worked perfectly), the entire last half had me on the edge of my seat for longer than any other episode of TV this year.

Thoughts:

Jack’s argument on the sub makes perfect sense – that’s what the Man in Black had to get Ben to kill Jacob, and that’s why for some reason he can’t kill any of the candidates (the “rules”, maybe? And if so, are those the same rules that Ben mentioned in his whole confrontation with Widmore?). But that bring up the question – is it possible to outsmart the smoke monster? Because he seems so far ahead of the group every single time (I mean, he engineered the entire plot of this episode to play out the way he wanted to) that they’ve got no chance against him.

I think that the show is going to show us what Widmore and everyone else seems to know but won’t tell us (because if they told us, they’d basically be dropping a huge bomb in the middle of some dialogue, which seems like it would be unwieldy, at least to me) either next week or the week after that. Right now, my theory on the finale is that Desmond, Jack, and whoever else is left are going to have to get rid of Smokey (something that Widmore seems to know how to do, possibly?) – but I’m already anticipating a huge twist on the show’s entire scenario, so it’s probably not close to correct.

Noel Murray from the A.V. Club already mentioned this, but giving grades to the last few episodes of Lost seems pretty pointless – there’s no doubt they’ll be incredible (simply because the are still so many bombshells to be dropped), so I could practically give them all A’s – this isn’t a show that’s going to have a disastrous last three episodes.

Chuck – “Chuck Versus The Honeymooners”

B-

“But off the record, it’s about damn time,” General Beckman astutely states at the end of “Chuck Versus the Honeymooners” (or not so astutely – I’m pretty sure the entire Chuck audience realized this about halfway into the season). Well then, it’s about damn time for Chuck, a show on the verge on cancellation (from the already-disaster that is NBC) to get good. And if this was the episode that was supposed to magically bring the ratings back, the episode that was supposed to serve as a “season opener” to the tail-6 of the third season, then it certain felt like a little bit of a letdown.

See, the thing that made Chuck such a show worth saving, last year, were those little hints in each episode, those few minutes of every other episode or so, where the audience realized how much Sarah cares for Chuck (the Christmas episode from last year comes to mind), how much she did in fact want to be with him, although she felt like she couldn’t.  But this season, the Shaw diversion was a complete misfire, which left us with the why-won’t-they-get-back-together-already feeling that simply dragged on too long.

So, after tying up every single plot string in “Chuck Versus the Other Guy”, Schwartz, Fedak, and Co. seem to have decided to take a victory lap in “Honeymooners”, which was a light (I mean, come on, Vampire Weekend), somewhat refreshing, but otherwise dull episode.

The change of scenery this week put us on a train car is Europe, with Chuck and Sarah deciding to run away from the whole spy life, a notion that we as an audience know is not going to last (although I wish they kept the whole international, spies on the run thing going on for longer, they probably couldn’t – budget cuts). The thing is, as light, cheery, and Texan-accent-y as I like my episodes, Chuck decided to just play off of somewhat stale devices this week. We got the whole Morgan-being-really-incompetent-but-useful-somehow humor (his scenes with Casey, plus his CIA mugshot were pretty funny, but not incredible), the Chuck-can’t-be-there-for-Ellie deal (and she STILL doesn’t know), and it goes.

I’m going to keep this short because I’ve got a ton of work right now (and I’m way late on this review anyway) – but hopefully you get the point – as a fresh kick-off to the next few eps, “Chuck Versus the Honeymooners” was pretty damn mediocre.

Lost – “The Last Recruit”

A

All the pieces are finally falling into place.

Throughout this entire season of Lost, I’ve had doubts about where the show could go with so many loose ends to close. And recently, another thought hit me – would the finale just end up being Locke trying to board a plane with all the “candidates”, while Widmore tries to stop him? Does anything that we’ve learned from the last five seasons matter at all?

But about halfway through this week’s episode, I realized what I had been missing all along. The end of Lost isn’t going to be about getting answers. It’s not going to be about learning how Jacob imprisoned fake-Locke on the island, discovering the history of DHARMA, or any of the mythology that, yes, I have actually liked about Lost over the past five years.

Getting back to the point though – the last (we’re down to five now, I believe?) hours of this show are going to be like what we saw on the boat in tonight’s episode. Sawyer’s set off on his little boat to go and make good on his deal with Widmore (promptly betrayed by Liz Lemon Zoe), but Jack has doubts – in a scene reminiscent of the brilliant conversation he had with Richard, he affirms his belief that they’re on the Island for a reason – perhaps to act as the corks within a cork that prevent Smokey from leaving? But he ends up jumping ship (literally), and splitting with the team once again, just like Hurley and Richard split a few back (where were they this week, anyway? Too much to cover in one episode again?), and in this, we get a glimpse of the true nature of Lost – it’s ultimately about relationships, trust, and attachment.

“The Last Recruit” was full of these reminders, from the absolutely fantastic scenes between Jack and his son (the moment right before Jack went into surgery was by far my favorite moment this week), to Kate rescuing Claire from the “dark side”, to the disconcerting almost-final scene where Locke carries Jack away from Widmore’s artillery barrage (is he willing to pretend that he’s on everybody’s side to get what he wants?). It showed up in Desmond’s Jacob-esque speech to Sayid, in the stunning sharp contrast between Jin and Sun’s reunion and the party’s immediate capture, and I could go on…

So I’m not worried about where Lost is going – of course, through the next five hours, I’d put my money heavily on us seeing another major twist, perhaps more, and much more mythological development in terms of Jacob and Smokey’s histories, but the key to the show, to put it in Lindelof and Cuse’s words, is going to be, more or less, love (and I take that to mean a broad love that extends to the ties between all the characters). Yeah that sounds so cliché, but isn’t that what keeps us watching dramas anyway?

Stuff to think about?

Short one this week, because I don’t have a lot of time:

So Jack recognizes Locke from a mirror in the operating room, but he doesn’t recognize Claire from shaking her hand in the conference room? Do two people have some sort of special connection that allows only them to be able to discern the split timeline (but then Faraday didn’t seem to need a person to figure out, and neither did Libby….but they’re both dead…)?

“It’s almost like someone’s trying to put us together.” – cool to see Desmond playing such a Jacob-ian role this week. Yet he’s essentially still working for Widmore, which begs the question why the party was captured this week.

Who’s the mother of Jack’s son (right now, I’m betting on Juliet)?

I thought the directing was a little weak this week, and the lines with Sun and Jin at the end…

Two weeks from now: The final stretch begins.

Lost – “Everybody Loves Hugo”

B+

I should be getting tired of this. I should be getting tired of the emotionally charged, laden-with-soaring-orchestrals scenes that seem to be popping up on Lost with ever increasing frequency. But then again, I’m not. The show does these kinds of things so well that even on its off days, it can still pull off a very above average episode.

Four weeks in a row, and we’ve had some kind of quasi-love (or even straight up love) story weave its way into Lost. I’m not saying I don’t like love stories – when put together right, they make for really, really good episodes (i.e. last week). But this week, it seemed like the writers finally went, “Oh shit! We only have six hours left! Let’s get some questions answered! Let’s get the plot moving! And let’s put the Hurley-Libby story in too!”

Starting with what I liked about this week (and what pretty much brought the episode up a little bit): the opening scene was pretty cool, even though for a second I thought the show was going to pull back and show us that, oh no, Hurley’s dead in the other universe (but instead it just set up for the Pierre Chang cameo). Maybe it was the soaring violins. But anyway, it turns out that Hurley’s got everything but love – cue Libby. I’m still a little lost on how these characters exactly figure out that they’ve got other memories (Libby sees it from watching TV, Charlie only has to see Claire, Desmond has to shake hands with Penny, but Hurley has to kiss Libby before he figures it all out?), but having Libby enter as the “crazy” but really not crazy woman worked well – although, there were a lot of just strange plot contrivances this week (I mean, she checked herself into the mental hospital, but she has no freedom to talk to Hurley? But then she can just take off for a day?).

I liked the whole Desmond-Smoke Monster plot too, but then again it seemed so strange that he just ended up actually getting played by him. Of course, I could be wrong about that – the tone that Cusick played the “What’s the point in being afraid?” line seemed to suggest more, and I just really can’t buy that Desmond played everything so cheerily and obliviously unless there’s something behind it. Having Desmond almost play God in the alt-verse was also pretty cool, and having him hit Locke with his car at the end was a nice twist.

But the main problem I had with “Everybody Loves Hugo” was, along with the fact that so many weird plot situations happened to create circumstance (I mean, Ilana’s just dead? That’s it? Weird way of showing some kind of “coincidental” Dr. Arzt-type deal.), that it simply seemed really rushed in terms of development. The scenes were all good and well, but it seems like the episode just hit with a lot of things at once – in a way, this feels like a setup for next week.

Random Thoughts

Is this entire show going to come down to a “Can the bad guy convince everyone to get on a plane so he can fly off an island?” I hope there’s more myth and mystery involved behind that (and they need to get Jin back anyway, because I’m still convinced Sun does not matter one bit).

People in the alternate world seem to either “know” or are clueless – but we still don’t know what that reaction gets triggered by. Could Sawyer potentially get clued in to something that happened in Dharma-ville, ’74 on a mission with Miles?

Desmond has to have some weird consciousness-transferring ability, because he goes to kill Locke right after getting thrown down the well. Are the alt-verse timeline and the real, Island timeline in parallel?

There’s no way Ilana can just be gone, like that – I’m guessing we’ll at least see what her history with Jacob is, at some point.

There was a lot of weird plot stuff going on this week – Hurley just believing Michael and feeling bad that “a lot of people” are going to die because he blows up the plane? Who’s going to die? Widmore’s crew? Hurley isn’t convinced by Michael at first, but then he is? Then Hurley decides to split up the group, but soon admits he just did it because he wanted people to listen to him? Then Jack just gives up? Handled pretty badly in my opinion.

What happens if everyone on the Island dies? The reveal the Michael’s stuck in Island purgatory was pretty cool, but then what about people like Libby, who died innocently and are just living life happily in the other world with a few (full) memories of “other” life? If say, Desmond, is killed by the Smoke Monster, would he just transfer back to the alt-world and be with Penny there without any consequences? Or if fake-Locke escapes the Island, can he ruin every timeline in history?

Lost – “Happily Ever After”

A

“Do you believe in love at first sight, Mr. Hume?”

Wow. I don’t even know where to start with this one.

Desmond episodes have always been some of my favorites, and tonight’s was no exception. So many incredibly awesome callbacks to previous events, past characters coming back in big ways (Faraday! Or should I say Daniel Widmore), and a focused plot that told one sole story while bringing in some major game changers that are likely to affect the rest of the season.

Like the A-deserving “Ab Aeterno”, “Happily Ever After” took place mostly off the Island, in the alterna-verse created by the Jughead detonation. And as we’ve seen in the alterna-verse, most people seem to be inexplicably happier. Locke’s found peace in disability, Jack’s become a better father, etc.

But when we first see Desmond in this episode, Penny is nowhere to be found. Instead he’s become Charles Widmore’s right hand man. “You’ve got the life son, no family, no commitments,” Widmore tells him. But there’s no Penny.

Desmond is then tasked with a mission – bail out a famous rockstar, and babysit him so he can play at some charity event with Widmore’s son (I didn’t catch this at first, but of course it’s Faraday, who’s playing music now instead of studying physics). Doesn’t seem all that difficult. But this is Lost, so that famous rockstar is Charlie Pace (one of the many great returning cast members this episode), and getting him to the party isn’t easy. Then comes the whole barrage of plot advancement and mythology that made the last ten minutes of this episode truly sublime.

What makes “Happily Ever After” so good (other than the fact that it features Desmond, one of my all-time favorites and star of “The Constant”, arguably one of the best episodes of television ever) is the part-plot, part-emotional storytelling that Lost has always done so well. Part of the problem with season six has been that it seems like there’s simply not enough room in each episode for each storyline to be fleshed out, which has left some of the lesser episodes feeling half-baked. But like “Ab Aeterno”, featuring Richard (who knows what to do), “Happily Ever After” (featuring the man who presumably can make things happen to aid Richard and Widmore’s parties) ignored everything but the main storyline for most of the episode, tossing in Island action only as a plot related teaser.

On the emotional side, well, we had the Penny-Desmond story that’s always been my favorite (again, The Constant), played out beautifully (the stadium where he meets Jack, the jogging, etc.) by the Lost writers. But this week we also had what I thought were the best “guest”-returning-deceased-or-Island-related stars yet (full list in the Thoughts section right under), who threw in some of my other favorite moments during the episode.

Pondering:

The mythology was complicated this week, to say the least, so here’s my shortlist of questions/stuff that was raised:

More on “the rules” (“It is, in fact, a violation.”) – why is Eloise Hawking (Widmore) so opposed to Desmond finding Penny (as his constant? Maybe?)? I’ve got a feeling that this heavily plays into the Smokey-Jacob game we saw back in “Ab Aeterno” – by finding Penny, Desmond realizes what he can “show” the survivors (presumably again to get their consciousnesses to the other universe? I’m clueless here as well), and ultimately helps the Charles Widmore Island Team. But if he’s helping Mr. Widmore, then why is Eloise trying to stop him? Like forcing Faraday to drop music, does she believe in some kind of fate for Desmond? Does she want him to avoid his fate, and the Island “not being done” with him yet? Mr. and Mrs. Widmore definitely know way more than they’re letting on, and I think they’ll begin to tell in episodes to come.

I believe that the Island being sunk in the alt-verse means, I guess, victory over the Smoke Monster, as all the people that the characters care about are still there. What this means, and if it even matters at all in the long run is a little confusing.

Desmond has to be playing Sayid. But how does he know Sayid’s gone evil?

Is Desmond’s consciousness still drifting at the end of the episode? Because he flashes back to alterna-time in the last scene.

More stuff that I can’t think of now – I’ll update later if I think of anything interesting

Cool Moments:

Desmond’s circa-2004 Blackberry.

Desmond knows it’s a boy.

I was also a big, big fan of all the references to past relationships, etc. – Charlie and Claire were always meant to be together in some way in the flashsideways world, and when Charlie saw her, I think he figured it out.

Faraday sees Charlotte walking out of Pierre Chang museum eating a chocolate bar. Also, he plays music like he always wanted to.

“I just fainted in front of you – I’d say we’re even.”

Charlie’s reappearance and whole story were quite cool – plus, we got the Through the Looking Glass déjà-vu scene.

Chuck – “Chuck Versus the Other Guy”

Lost – “The Package”

B

Well, well, well. After Lost gave us the incredible “Ab Aeterno” last week, we got a quasi-love Sun and Jin episode in “The Package”.

Now I’m not going to lie – I’ve never really liked Sun. I’ve always thought of her as a somewhat insignificant character that lets her emotions get in the way of the other characters’ objectives (her whole vendetta against Ben, for example). Maybe it’s the sense of dramatic irony I have as a viewer that bothers me, or that simply that I’ve never found the whole Sun/Jin love story particularly interesting, so I found “The Package” a little disappointing.

Starting with the flashsideways – this week, we got a meager connect-the-dots story leading us from Jin getting detained at the airport to his rescue from Keamy and Co. (Kevin Durand, once again brilliant) One of my main problems with these mini what-would-have-been episodes has been the fact that they seem to have little significance to the main plot (but knowing Lost, I’m assuming this will all change very, very soon).

Yeah, in the flashsideways Sun and Jin aren’t married, but they’re still sleeping together. Sun wants to run away, but guess what? Keamy shows up to collect the $25,000 Jin lost at the airport. Mikhail shows up, takes Sun (who naïvely thinks her father didn’t discover her supposedly secret bank account) to the bank to cover the lost cash goes to withdraw, Keamy takes Jin to the restaurant, enter Sayid, and we’re back to where we were at the end of “Sundown”.

We get one more revelation at the end of the alterna-episode, with Sun getting shot in the stomach in the Mikhail-Jin fight (Mikhail gets shot through the eye, how fitting), and revealing that, surprise surprise, she’s pregnant.

Are we going to see what happens to the future Ji Yeon? With eight hours left in the show, it’s unlikely, so unless there’s some point to all these mini-stories (Again, I do trust Lindelof and Cuse to reveal something soon), I don’t see the point.

Back to the Island – the better half of this week’s ep, which was divided into two stories, each concerning the two camps. Although the Sun and Jin story did exist (with mostly Sun complaining about how she “doesn’t want to hear” about candidacy and the like), it was overshadowed by the much more compelling Widmore-MIB show.

Seeing Jin is planning to flee Not-Locke’s camp, Widmore’s team captures him and takes him to the DHARMA brainwashing room on Hydra Island, where we learn that Widmore is truly on the “good” (Jacob’s?) side (which makes me wonder why he and Ben have been enemies – I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that Ben may have never been working for Jacob or towards Jacob’s cause), and wants to keep the Man in Black trapped on the island. These scenes were put together quite well, advancing the plot (since Jin is presumably going to work with Widmore to get rid of the smoke monster, and the Jack/Richard group has a similar objective, will they ever meet up? Will Sun and Jin meet up before the end of the series?) and giving us a great emotional scene in Widmore’s camera.

Overarching the Jin story, however, was the Widmore-Smokey confrontation on Hydra Island (“Everything else I know is a combination of myth, ghost stories, and jungle noises in the night.”), which seemed to serve as a declaration of war between the two parties. What’s going to be interesting here is how Not-Locke wages his war – if he uses his own “pawns”, like in the way he sent Sayid to do recon on “the package”, this could provide for some interesting confrontations (Clarie also has carte blanche to do whatever she wants to Kate, if his plan works correctly).

Finally, we’ve got the beach camp story, where Sun, depressed at not being able to find Jin, lashes out at Jack, and later the whole party (she says she’s important, but with Jin checking in as Jin Kwon this week in alterna-world, maybe she means nothing?). Locke comes to try to recruit her to his own team, but Sun’s obviously torn – she can’t trust the man (thing?) who killed at the people in the temple, but she doesn’t want deal with supposed “candidacy”. So she runs away, hits her head on a tree, and loses her ability to speak English (what a convenient plot device!).

The plot then seems to progress virtually nowhere – Sun initially resists going with Jack, at the end Jack convinces her to go, so the only significance I can see would be possible parallels to the alterna-verse (Sun can’t speak English, Jin’s got a head injury too?). And again, I’m really personally sick of Sun holding up the party because she wants to find Jin (but then again, maybe I’ve just never gotten their whole love saga the way I’ve enjoyed Desmond and Penny’s).

Next week: Desmond returns!