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Haven 3.1-3.2: So, uhm, Eric Balfour is, naturally, allowed to do whatever he wants to with his hair (Though I'm not sure the long hair actually suits him. It might grow on me, though.), but couldn't they have done something so that Duke didn't suddenly have radically different hair in the same scene that we left off with last season?
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Person of Interest 2.1: I was very happy thinking the season was kicking off with The Machine trolling Reese.
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Revolution 1.2: Yes, yes, it's kind of terrible but it has lots of fun stuff at levels where I do not care. (If it took itself a bit less seriously, it'd be a shinier version of a campy 90s TV show.) And as glad as I am that the show realizes its own worldbuilding makes no sense (save that's it's worldbuilding really is "WTF THAT"S NOT PHYSICS!") I hope we don't have Aaron ranting about it every episode. Also, please keep the hot and competent woman of color who likes swords and blowing things up.
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Sinbad 1.8-1.12: Err, did we change writers? Because they seemed to forget everything from the first seven episodes except "Jamil died in the pilot, Taryn is evil" and...had a completely different feel, and not for the better. Still, entertaining enough that I'll watch the second series, if there is one.
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The main draw, really, is Miranda Richardson as the Mother Superior who is smarter than everyone else but constrained by annoying rules. Though I'm a bit weirded out by her fixation to get Caris to be a nun, even though I get her perspective in that.
*In the first episode, I thought that Ralph was hotheaded and had some anger issues made worse at the time because he had to serve the man who killed his father and took his lands, but thought he was a character I'd end up liking. HOW WRONG I WAS ON ALL COUNTS. It saddens me to think that he probably carries Richard and Aliena's DNA.
The Elementary pilot was slightly different from the leaked version, though mostly just the music. (For the better.) This isn't the first time I've watched the actual airing of a pilot a few weeks after watching a leaked version, but it's the first time it's been a show that has each episode be largely self-contained instead of metaplot driven, and so instead of looking for things I may have missed before I spent a lot of time goin "I wish I was watching the second episode..." I still haven't watched Downton Abbey, and Scandal's return snuck up on me. I haven't decided if I want to watch Last Resort yet. Dichen Lachman is my main interest.
Continuum 1.10: Pretty good finale, lots of reveals and twists, but largely ones most of us guessed. I largely liked them? The most interesting stuff in the episode was probably Sonya's stuff. Between the developments and the improved wardrobe, hopefully Lexa Doig will have a larger role next season. Which has been confirmed for 13 episodes, so YAY.
Covert Affairs 3.5-3.6: I think these were probably my favorite episodes so far this season, because they focused on the parto f the show that's one of the main draws for me: that Annie isn't a good spy because she can fight or does dangerous things, but because she has good instincts and is good at reading people and finding the right kind of communication for individuals. I don't have any deep thoughts, though I'm glad we have a woman of color around now (no idea how long she'll be there) and am always happy when Oded Fehr shows up (which I wish would be more often).
Political Animals 1.4-1.6: Uhm...given the ending and the fact that the finale's recap referred to "the season" as opposed to "the series," I am going to assume that a second season is in the works. This series got its fair share of things wrong, but I love it deeply for what it wanted and tried to be.
( spoilers )OK USA, if nothing else, you should renew just because Ciaran Hinds clearly adores hamming it up here. And, you know, for a lot of other reasons too. I need AU!Hillary Clinton/Murphy Brown dramatized fanfic in my life!
Sinbad 1.5-1.7: Did anyone else spend most of ep 7 thinking it was the season finale, and then...it wasn't?
( spoilers )(And there's a new episode tonight, but I forgot to post this esrlier this week when I watched everything.)
White Collar 4.5-4.6:
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I also watched season 4 of Leverage. Surrising no one, my favorite epiosde was The Girls Night Out Job, but it was pretty closely followed by the episode with Sterling (because Evil Nate is always fun, and I'm a sucker for his motivations in that one) and the season finale, for the guest stars (Though I wish there had been more girls. But I guess Tara was probably out because she might be known as one of their associates, and The Italian probably isn't quite trusted enough. Or at all. And there's the muscle lady from Chaos's old team, but that would be doubling up and I think Chaos is actually the only one who could fill that particular slot. I can still be sad, though.)
Meanwhile, over in doramaland, I watched episode 3 of Arang and the Magistrate today. This one had a lot of angst, and while technically it was good angst, I think there might have been too abrupt a transition between the humor and the angstfest? Still a pretty fun episode.
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Continuum 1.9: This show has now thoroughly confused me by actually being pretty good instead of just fun for two episodes in a row.
( spoilers )Covert Affairs 3.4:
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Political Animals 1.3: Why can't this show be ongoing instead of a miniseries? I want to keep it in my life a bit longer.
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Sinbad 1.4:
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White Collar 4.4:
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I'm also watching 2 airing jdramas that I keep meaning to post on but forgetting to. Naniwa Shounen Tanteidan is a comedy/mystery series about a 6th grade teacher who solvs crimes with the aid of 4 of her students and, sometimes, 2 police officers (one of whom inevitably has a crush on her, and is essentially a human teddy bear) who might be the only jdrama police officers allowed to be good cops without the series actuslly being about police officers. It's adorably and giddy and fluffy depsite having a plot that repeatedly exposes 12 year olds to dangerous criminals, dead bodies, and random other trauma. (Admittedly, most of it ends up not being as bad as initially believed.) It's delightful to watch but doesn't look to really do anything revolutionary. Rich Man Poor Woman, OTOH, is utterly addictive and reminds me of a lot of the jdramas from around the late 90s-2005, which I watched at about the rate of a drama a week for months when I started watched doramas in I think early 2006 (it was shortly after the first Hana Yori Dango and before the second was announced.) RMPW is half romantic comedy and half office drama, about Hyuga Tohru, an eccentric and abrassive near-genius who runs and IT firm and has a medical condition that prevents him from remembering most nams a faces, and Sawaki Chihiro, a college student with near-perfect memorization skills who has difficulty with social andp rofessional situations. She also happens to share a name with Hyuga's mother. There's lots of Drama and Shock Reveals that alternately make you go "...what...?" and "THIS DRAMA!" and they regularly consult shoujo manga (there's literally a scene where Sawaki is drunk and sees Hyuga in a cloud of sparkles) and I'm pretty sire they polled Oguri Shun fans to see what they wanted him to do if he was ever the lead in a romance drama. There's also a female romantic rival who seems to think "romantic rival" means "future BFF who thinks you're absolutely adorable" based on their interactions so far. It's utterly addictive. I should warn, though, that whoever does the women's hair in this should never be allowed near hair again. There are times when I think they're actively trying to make very attractive women look plain by bad hair alone.
NST has 5 episodes out, but only 4 have subs, and RMPW has 4 episodes currently out, all with subs.
Continuum 1.8:
( spoilers )Political Animals 1.2: I didn't like this as much as the pilot for one specific reason, but I still liked it a lot.
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Sinbad 1.3:
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White Collar and Covert Affairs were both entertaining this week but didn't inspire much in the way of deep thinking. White Collar might actually manage to have a metaplot for the season that works for once, and Covert Affairs was better than other Auggie-centric eps have been. (Which is to say, my eyes didn't glaze over with boredom and wait for the next scene with Annie and/or Joan, as has been the case with previous Auggie-centric episodes.) That said, I think I have to unfollow the official twitter feed for CA because its mildly annoying in general but about 80% of the time it's more like an obnoxious Auggie fanclub that is making me actively dislike Auggie.
Continuum 1.5-1.7: This show is really kind of not good at all, but whatever, I love it despite it's tendenc to be kinda of faily at anything but women with agency shooting things.
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Covert Affairs 3.1-3.2:
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The Hollow Crown: BBC miniseries (clocking in at around hours total) adapting Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. I've read plays but recall little about them, so I can't really comment on how faithful they are or aren't. It took me about 40 minutes in part 1 to stop just going "oooooooooooooo" over the costumes and settings, and I think I mostly enjoyed it (well, the first 3 parts, I haven't watched Henry V yet as it just aired in the UK todays) for the performances and visuals. I'd be interested in seeing what others those more familiar with the plays think. I think there will be more adaptations of Shakespeare plays airing on BBC 2 over the next couple months, but am not certain which.
Also, I first saw Michelle Dockery and Tom Hiddleston in Return to Cranford (and mostly associate him with that, despite being prone to refer to him as "Loki," though I associate Dockery more with Downton Abbey) where they were basically BFF who grew up like siblings and she got her jollies through trolling him and was trying to marry him off to Jodie Whittaker, so their being enemies here was just odd.
Political Animals 1.1: (I think this is actually a miniseries, but we can hold out hope for it being popular enough to get a sequel.) PA is basically an AU version of Hilary Clinton that may have actually started life as a Hillary Clinton/Murphy Brown fanfic. Sigourney Weaver stars as Elaine Barrish, the secretary of state (working for the president she lsot to in the primaries)and ex-wife of a former philandering president, and Carla Gugino stars as Susan Berg, a journalist who has been critical of Elaine in the past (to the point where she got banned from the White House for several years) but who has developed a certain appreciation for Elaine and is suppressing a scandal of the parrish family's in exchange for an exclusive week with Elaine. There are a bunch of other charcters floating around (Perhaps most notably Ciaran Hinds as Elaine's ex-husband and Ellen Burstyn as her mother, who appears to have a very adventurous sexual past. Sebastian Stan is also hanging around as one of Elaine's sons. I know he's popular in these parts.) but the main focus in the pilot was on Elaine and Susan's professional lives and balancing them with personal drama. It's a bit soapy but not detrimentally so, and it's amusingly devoted to making sure we realize that it intends to be a feminist show. Not that it isn't, but I kind of wanted to pat the writers on the head every time Elaine or Susan had a "we will now call society on it's sexism and/or double standards now" oneliner. (I mean, it actually does this well, but fairly obviously.) I have a few issues with the portrayal of homosexuality (or rather, with the plotline they seem to be going with with the one canon gay character, realistic as it may be) and how the POC characters seem to be heading (and I wonder if Adrian Pasdar being of Iranian descent had any affect on one plotline), but both of those could end up being done well by the end of the season.
Sinbad 1.1-1.2: A very fun show in which a Sinbad adaptation actually has a cast with more POC than not. (Kind of sad that the latter part is surprising.) In this version, 20-ish Sinbad messes up on an amazing enough level that not only is the Emir's brother (Sayid from Lost) sending every soldier in the country looking for him, but his own grandmother curses him so that a golden collar will strangle him if he spends more than a day and night on land (though, it seems you could get around some of that if you could manage to keep a small boat anchored just off shore...). But basically, you know you messed up if your granny who clearly loves you very much puts a deadly curse on you. (His granny is kinda really badass.) There are a lot mor female characters than I was expecting. Granny, of course, but also a fabulous evil sorceress, a thief, an African lady with A Mysterious Secret, possibly Sinbad's mother, a pirate cannibal queen with the potential to be a recurring character, and i think I've spotted what looks to be a female hunter in a promotional image or two. Sinbad's crew also includes an amusingly (for now, I can see it getting old) naive doctor, a drill sergeant for a cook, andthe show's token white dude, who has the potential to be fairly interesting. It's hard not to compare it to the 90s show (Which it clearly does better than in some areas, but also lacks the giddy cheese and crack of the 90s show. And, well, this Sinbad just isn't as blithely coky. Though he is a very pretty boy, and well cast.) but it's exceptionally fun and I hope it remains so.
White Collar 4.1-4.2: Oh look, after being in every episode for 3 seasons, Jones finally got moved from the guest stars list to the regulars list.
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Covert Affairs 3.1-3.2:
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The Hollow Crown: BBC miniseries (clocking in at around hours total) adapting Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. I've read plays but recall little about them, so I can't really comment on how faithful they are or aren't. It took me about 40 minutes in part 1 to stop just going "oooooooooooooo" over the costumes and settings, and I think I mostly enjoyed it (well, the first 3 parts, I haven't watched Henry V yet as it just aired in the UK todays) for the performances and visuals. I'd be interested in seeing what others those more familiar with the plays think. I think there will be more adaptations of Shakespeare plays airing on BBC 2 over the next couple months, but am not certain which.
Also, I first saw Michelle Dockery and Tom Hiddleston in Return to Cranford (and mostly associate him with that, despite being prone to refer to him as "Loki," though I associate Dockery more with Downton Abbey) where they were basically BFF who grew up like siblings and she got her jollies through trolling him and was trying to marry him off to Jodie Whittaker, so their being enemies here was just odd.
Political Animals 1.1: (I think this is actually a miniseries, but we can hold out hope for it being popular enough to get a sequel.) PA is basically an AU version of Hilary Clinton that may have actually started life as a Hillary Clinton/Murphy Brown fanfic. Sigourney Weaver stars as Elaine Barrish, the secretary of state (working for the president she lsot to in the primaries)and ex-wife of a former philandering president, and Carla Gugino stars as Susan Berg, a journalist who has been critical of Elaine in the past (to the point where she got banned from the White House for several years) but who has developed a certain appreciation for Elaine and is suppressing a scandal of the parrish family's in exchange for an exclusive week with Elaine. There are a bunch of other charcters floating around (Perhaps most notably Ciaran Hinds as Elaine's ex-husband and Ellen Burstyn as her mother, who appears to have a very adventurous sexual past. Sebastian Stan is also hanging around as one of Elaine's sons. I know he's popular in these parts.) but the main focus in the pilot was on Elaine and Susan's professional lives and balancing them with personal drama. It's a bit soapy but not detrimentally so, and it's amusingly devoted to making sure we realize that it intends to be a feminist show. Not that it isn't, but I kind of wanted to pat the writers on the head every time Elaine or Susan had a "we will now call society on it's sexism and/or double standards now" oneliner. (I mean, it actually does this well, but fairly obviously.) I have a few issues with the portrayal of homosexuality (or rather, with the plotline they seem to be going with with the one canon gay character, realistic as it may be) and how the POC characters seem to be heading (and I wonder if Adrian Pasdar being of Iranian descent had any affect on one plotline), but both of those could end up being done well by the end of the season.
Sinbad 1.1-1.2: A very fun show in which a Sinbad adaptation actually has a cast with more POC than not. (Kind of sad that the latter part is surprising.) In this version, 20-ish Sinbad messes up on an amazing enough level that not only is the Emir's brother (Sayid from Lost) sending every soldier in the country looking for him, but his own grandmother curses him so that a golden collar will strangle him if he spends more than a day and night on land (though, it seems you could get around some of that if you could manage to keep a small boat anchored just off shore...). But basically, you know you messed up if your granny who clearly loves you very much puts a deadly curse on you. (His granny is kinda really badass.) There are a lot mor female characters than I was expecting. Granny, of course, but also a fabulous evil sorceress, a thief, an African lady with A Mysterious Secret, possibly Sinbad's mother, a pirate cannibal queen with the potential to be a recurring character, and i think I've spotted what looks to be a female hunter in a promotional image or two. Sinbad's crew also includes an amusingly (for now, I can see it getting old) naive doctor, a drill sergeant for a cook, andthe show's token white dude, who has the potential to be fairly interesting. It's hard not to compare it to the 90s show (Which it clearly does better than in some areas, but also lacks the giddy cheese and crack of the 90s show. And, well, this Sinbad just isn't as blithely coky. Though he is a very pretty boy, and well cast.) but it's exceptionally fun and I hope it remains so.
White Collar 4.1-4.2: Oh look, after being in every episode for 3 seasons, Jones finally got moved from the guest stars list to the regulars list.
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