Bikinis And Bitches
Patty is framed for cyber-bulling and she’s disqualified from Miss Magic Jesus. This show was a review bomb and this ep was bad. Coralee has left Bob. Evil Bob has moved Dixie in. Patty whines about her bleak life. Patty fails in the reputation economy. Brick whines and can’t act. Brick is socially repulsive. Patty is calculated and consistently terrible.
This ep is not worth condemning. Fortune turns against Patty. There is no emotional depth. Magnolia is nice to Patty, briefly. Magnolia gets drugs from Christen. This was challenging. Bob is twerpish. Bob cheated on Coralee. Dixie and Patty bitchfight. Patty has grave problems and is in an unhappy position and is not an arbiter of truth.
Patty deflects all kinds of responsibility and has no existential catharsis or limitless emotional revelation. This was not gripping storytelling. Christian is like Heath Ledger in ‘10 Things I Hate About You’. Christian manipulates Patty. This was fatuous. Christen is a nogoodnik. This was not unexpectedly delightful. Bob is not largely amiable. Does this show understand its own premise? Bob ignores his son.
There are anxious discussions. Nonnie is wistful. This was mediocre. There are serious difficulties and blatant unfairness. There is no lyrical prose Evil Bob gets shirt off and sneers about Coralee. Bob manhandles Evil Bob. This inevitably fails horribly. Christine Taylor plays Christian’s mother. Brick Patty does dreadful harm. Brick has moral outrage. Magnolia has no psychological support. Evil Bob is a terrible father. Christian is an ass. Dixie framed Patty, naturally.
Magnolia is unforgiving of Brick. Dixie ruins the bikini dog wash. Brick gets some drag queens to help. Magnolia is AWFUL and irate. Dire circumstances reverse. Nonnie makes a friend wearing a vagitarian t-shirt. This is not significant. There is no emotional tension. Brick snots. There is no dynamic tension just a conventional ending.
Best Lines:
“Didn’t want to be seen in public.”
“Using me for my dong.”
“Some old slut!”
“Bikini dog wash.”
“Throw the case.”
“Face down in a puddle of chocolate.”
“Pocket sized satan.”
“How do you know I like it up there?”
“I still felt left out.”
“Ate the birthday cake out of the trash.”
~
Costs Of War
Gallo walks off being shot in this final ever ep. Dark sinister plots are afoot. Poor Ian, he fulfilled promises and expected them to be fulfilled in return. There is enforcement action and socially unacceptable goings on and unverified claims. Why don’t they burn the crashed helo? Thea causes a panic. Gallo makes it all about himself. There is bad VFX and Nora recalls she murdered a CIA agent in 1x01.
The former POW starts praying as he comes home. This is not fiercely acted. Haskins has effortless authority. Thea tries to impose her will. The gimlet eyed Gallo is uninteresting and heinous and a mirthless dullard. Wild improbable conspiracy theories are spouted. Thea is prickly and suspicious. Her boss has a capacity for malice.
Jess and her husband mine the melancholia of his return. He acts in profoundly worrying ways. Ian cares for Nora. She still hasn’t admitted to her cheating and her shagging of Gallo the embodiment of bad man ballads. Nora’s orange. Some plot threads are left dangling. Nora lies to Ian, again. They’ve an inability to properly connect. Gallo and Nora confess their lies. Why isn’t Nora prosecuted for murdering the CIA agent?
Morally wrong things are done. You can’t trust a guy named Tucker. Namely Thea’s boss who is a baddie and in a twist, his evil boss is Ian’s mother. Though nobody knows that. This ends on a note of figurative gloom. Nora, the only female pilot in Special Ops, is thrown out of the military in disgrace. The dangling plot threads forebode trouble. None of them will be resolved, sadly. The former POW sleeps on his floor and faces relentless suffering.
What about Nora’s friendly neighbourhood drug dealer? Gallo is tossed out of the military too. The new note of seriousness sees Gallo and Nora recruited for the CIA. They’ve no real choice. Their moral imperative is to recover the rest of the uranium. This was broadly likeable. Would Nora choose Ian or Gallo? We’ll never know. I enjoyed this, shame it was axed.
Best Lines:
“One Black Hawk to carry 2 helos worth of personnel.”
“None of this makes any sense.”
“Try faster.”
“Lift off speed.”
“Loading for home.”
“That’s not a long term problem.”
“Wilfully lying.”
“Dead. Lost in hostile territory.”
“Knowing is my job.”
“That is a gross understatement.”
“I’ve no idea what to feel right now.”
“Dragged down by unsavoury associations.”
“I do not do liabilities.”
~
Pilot
This pre Smartphone show asks how well you really know your friends. Tyler (Logan Marshall-Green of ’Prometheus’ and ’The Invitation’) and Jay (Matthew Bomer of ‘White Collar’, ‘Chuck’ and ‘Magic Mike’) are prime suspects in the bombing of an art museum. They do sustained shouting. Flashbacks show how just the day before 3 Yale Grad School students - Jay, Tyler and Will Traveler (Aaron Stanford of ‘Nikita’, ‘12 Monkeys’ and ‘The Hills Have Eyes’) went on a road trip. They were BFFS.
Will is always filming them with his video camera. But for what? It’s never said. None of them have social media. Will dislikes Jay’s boring galpal Kim. Jay has $80,000 in student loans and likes to workout shirtless. Will suggested pulling a prank in the Drexler art museum which is obviously a famous NY art museum with a fake name.
Wouldn’t Jay be clerking or interning during the summer if he wanted a job at a major law firm? Jay and Tyler roller blade around the Drexler. The network did this show no favours as they cut the ep number from 13 to 8 and didn’t promote it. Which is a shame as it is excellent. The show didn’t get a DVD release and isn’t on Netflix. The prank is precipitous as there is a betrayal no one saw coming. Jay rings Will after the prank. The question is: why did Will answer? Then the Drexler blows up via a bad VX bomb.
Did Will do it? The personal art collection of POTUS Shears on display was targeted. Jay and Tyler are shocked that all Will’s belongings are missing from their hotel room. This was excellent and exhilarating. Will, Tyler and Jay have been friends for 2 years. But did they ever really know him? FBI agents including Steven Culp and Viola Davis hunt Jay and Tyler. Will is an intense presence in flashbacks. Jay and Tyler try to convince people it’s a dreadful mistake, but it’s an impossible challenge. No one listens or believes.
Will is described as 5 foot 10. He is not. This ep was astoundingly successful. It’s a shame the show got low ratings when it aired. Tyler’s rich father (William Sadler) tries to help them. Or does he? Is Will dastardly? The museum’s security footage was destroyed in the bombing so there is no footage of Will. Tyler’s dad is assertive. Why did Will have no fealty to his friends? Jay and Tyler are universally reviled on TV.
Tyler’s dad was disgraced in the past. It’s a stark atmosphere. Was Will a causative factor to the bombing? Jay and Tyler run ineptly. Jay’s father was disgraced in the past too. Jay wants to find Will to back up their unproven claims. Tyler and Jay face existential dread and a universally hostile reception. The hotel porter helps them for unclear reasons. This is grim material.
The Drexler prank was premised on faith in Will. It takes a while but Jay loses all faith in Will, Tyler lost his pretty quick. Jay is 26. For a graduate of Yale Law, Jay is not that bright. There’s no corroborating evidence that Will even exists. Jay recalls how he, Tyler and Will met and realises Will was playing them from Day 1. Were there only 3 of them in that huge student house?
Will stole Tyler’s car. Why does Tyler’s dad have an off the grid estate? Do they have cash or just the clothes they are standing up in? What is Tyler’s dad up to? Will set them up from Day 1, but why? Tyler and Jay don’t really like each other. Tyler’s dad was convicted in Iran-Contra and poor Jay is sad when his faith in Will is shattered. Oddly no cops are tracking Jay’s boring galpal Kim. Jay looks through Kim’s photo albums (she has no social media either) for a photo of Will. Not one of her photos has a shot of Will’s face. Not one. Will was very careful for 2 years. How long has this been planned?
Jay and Tyler are learning the deadly consequences of misplaced trust. This was utterly delightful. Boring Kim annoys. Jay broods over his cracked faith in Will. The FBI looks into the napalm bomb and find a body. Jay fears being sent to Gitmo. Why didn’t Will want Jay and Kim to date? Tyler is hit by a car driven by FBI agents. He walks it off. The hotel porter has secrets. Jay makes things worse. He and Tyler walk off being in a van wreck. The duo think Will is dead as they run. Who was the hotel porter? This was excellent.
Best Lines:
“Streaked this place back in 47 as a screw you to New York establishment.”
“Someone wants us to take the blame for this.”
“If we run, we look guilty.”
“It’s a little too late for that.”
“The east wing of New York’s oldest art museum is still burning.”
“You think Will framed us for this?”
“Slumming in grad housing.”
“Think law school grads could build this?”
“Will is a part of this.”
“What if everything he did and said was a lie?”
“I need to figure out who Will Traveler really is.”
“What the hell did I just see on TV?”
“If you’re on TV, it isn’t an accident.”
“Knew that something was going to happen today.”
~
The Enterprise Incident
Kirk seems to have a fractured psych. McCoy is acerbic. Kirk has no steely cool as they enter the Romulan Neutral Zone. Spock thinks the Romulans have a cloaking device. Cloaking devices were mentioned in ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and the Romulans showed off their cloak in ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’. So why is the cloak a surprise to people? Kirk and Spock encounter the unnamed female Romulan Commander. She inspired much fanfic and appeared in a number of novels.
The Romulan Commander is fascinated by Spock. Kirk rages. Spock kills Kirk with the Vulcan Death Grip. McCoy sees this. Oddly ‘Amok Time’ is not brought up. Nurse Chapel gets hysterical. But in a 'twist' Kirk and Spock were playing spy games. When Kirk is on the Romulan ship, is he speaking Romulan? When he and McCoy were on trial in ‘Undiscovered Country’, they need translators. This was all exuberant irrationality.
Kirk is surgically altered to look Romulan and steals the cloaking device. This was all bitter absurdity. Kirk uses the term body-readings not life signs. This bored. What became of the 3 Romulans the Enterprise had in the brig?
Best Lines:
“Our forbearers had the same roots.”
“A truth here that remains unspoken.”
“Alien contraption.”