Outlander: The Fox's Lair (2x08)

This episode was something of a transition episode, reminding us of old characters and accelerating the Jacobite plot back in Scottish territory. In all, I'm pretty happy with it.

Cons:

There was a bit of a problem with this episode, and that's that it felt slightly disjointed. The first few scenes are at Lallybroch, and then after that we jump to Lord Lovat's estate, and by the end of the episode we're off to join the uprising. A lot happened in one episode, and there didn't seem to be a seamless connection between all the different parts. One thing I generally admire about this show is its ability to keep an episode thematically tied together, even if a bunch of different things happen in it. I didn't feel much of that thematic resonance here.

Also, Laoghaire makes a reappearance in this episode, in a total departure from the books. Basically, she ends up at Lovat's estate as a maid for Colum. She apologizes sincerely to Claire, and then later Claire uses her to try and soften up Lord Lovat's son and get his support for the uprising. In the end, Jamie thanks Laoghaire for her assistance, at Claire's insistence, and we see that Laoghaire still has dreams of winning Jamie's love. Okay... I don't mind Laoghaire being weaved back into the story here. In fact, I find the actress really likable, and I get the need to see her again and reintroduce her character to the story so that viewers will remember her when she becomes important later. But this plot thread presented a rather unbalanced image of her. She seems truly repentant, but then in the end she's still scheming to win Jamie from Claire? And Claire's behavior was a little unbalanced, too. Are we meant to see Laoghaire as a scheming evil bitch who tried to have Claire killed, or a lovesick girl who didn't know what she was getting involved in, and truly feels bad? Claire's reactions to her seem to vacillate between these two very different things.

Supernatural: Alpha and Omega (11x23)

As a finale to Season Eleven, this episode kind of sucked. As a jumping-off point for Season Twelve, with a solid wiping of the slate and some new elements thrown in, it was quite good. So... I'm torn.

Cons:

It's hard to describe exactly what was so unsatisfactory about the bulk of this episode to me. Individually, I thought a lot of the moments worked really well, but when they coalesced, the final product felt thin. I knew that the stakes were high, what with the sun dying due to Amara and Chuck being "out of balance," but even with God on the verge of death and Dean preparing to sacrifice himself, the whole thing was pretty easy to shrug off. There wasn't much of an emotional journey for Dean and Sam to take here, since we all know that they will be back for Season Twelve. It makes the tension a little hard to maintain. To compensate for that, they focused on God and Amara's emotional arcs. Which is fine... but a bit odd for a season finale.

The resolution of our main plot was pretty anticlimactic. Think about all the buildup we had. Amara wanted to turn the world into nothingness. She had this weird creepy connection with Dean. In this episode, Dean and Sam collect souls from ghosts, and Billie lends an assist by getting souls from the veil. Rowena puts all these souls into Dean, and all he has to do is get close to Amara and set off the Soul Bomb, and Amara will be killed. Only... instead of doing that, Dean gives Amara a talk about the importance of family. Amara brings Chuck to her, and heals him. The two are reunited as siblings, and they decide to go away for a while, but not before Chuck removes the souls from Dean and saves him.

Outlander: Faith (2x07)

This was a big episode. The final culmination of the season's entire arc in Paris. So many major events took place. And... it was brilliant. The best episode we've seen this whole season.

Cons:

It's funny, but with this show I seem to come back to the same complaint over and over again. When you have such an intricate story with a lot of well-developed characters, a cool setting, and some truly incredible actors to bring the story to life, you don't need to spell things out so insistently. Most of this episode worked on a level of brilliant subtlety, so the few times that symbolism or meaning was shoved in my face, it really stood out to me. The biggest example I have of this is in the hospital, where Claire miscarries her child. There's a statuette of the Virgin Mary that topples to the ground and shatters. Later, the same image of the statue shattering is shown. Talk about heavy-handed. I also thought there could have been less explicit evidence of Jack Randall's rape of Fergus. I like the idea of seeing flashes of it, but honestly the less you show, I think the more horrific it becomes. This was a circumstance where Fergus' grief and trauma could have carried the story without us seeing the full truth of what happened. Maybe it's a personal preference thing, in this case, but still.

The episode begins with a flash-forward to Claire and her daughter Brianna in Boston in the 1950's. I get the idea, that we see Claire with her daughter in the future, and then we watch Claire lose her daughter in the past. But it felt a little bit too much like pandering. As cute as it was to see little Brianna, I feel like if I wasn't a book reader I'd just be more confused than anything.

Grey's Anatomy: Family Affair (12x24)

I don't even know how to respond to this episode. In a lot of ways there are things I shouldn't have liked about it. So many clichés. So many contrived ways to cram in some drama. But the thing is... that's the show. And this was a remarkably happy episode, for all that it had its sad moments as well. Let's get started on what ended up being a really solid ending to a season riddled with plot threads that I just couldn't get behind.

Cons:

The only plot thread that I just cannot endorse is the Jo and Alex story line. Jo tries to prove that she is all in with Alex by offering to have a kid with him, but Alex says no. He's tired of playing games. He's a grownup now, and wants to move forward seriously with Jo. Later, Jo gets super drunk at the bar, and DeLuca ends up taking care of her. Jo reveals, in her drunken state, that she can't marry Alex because she's already married. She left her husband, who was abusive, and now she can't divorce him because he'll find her. DeLuca helps Jo get home, but Alex walks in at the worst possible moment, seeing DeLuca struggling to put a half-naked and drunk Jo to bed. Alex attacks DeLuca, punching him over and over.

Okay... I'm sorry, but no. Jo is already married? What a cliché! And she had no good reason for not telling Alex. I wasn't expecting this twist, because I thought this show could do better than that. Also, Alex walking in and jumping to the wrong conclusions... that's the kind of lazy writing that I can't respect. In all, this plot thread was the one with the bleakest ending, and also the one with the most nonsense. I also hated the fact that Stephanie was barely present. She tried to comfort Jo in her drunken state at the bar, but of course Stephanie's boyfriend just freakin' died, and other than Jo trying incompetently to offer her comfort, there's no mention made of this. She has no real arc in this finale whatsoever, which feels like a waste.

Supernatural: We Happy Few (11x22)

I liked this episode, but I feel like maybe I should have liked it more. It was missing a few key elements that might have ramped it up to even greater heights. Still, I'm looking forward to the finale, and I think we'll probably get something more solid than we got last year.

Cons:

The plot this week was basically just getting all of our various players into place to face off against Amara, weakening her so God to take the final blow. The ramp-up to this final showdown could have offered a bit more of a nuanced understanding of how the relationships between these characters should work. For example, we didn't have any acknowledgement from Sam about Lucifer torturing him for an untold number of years in the Cage. Sam didn't seem even slightly skittish around the devil he was so afraid of earlier in the season. We got mentions of Cas, but none of our good guys checked in with him to make sure that this was what he really wanted. The relationship between Crowley and Rowena was left untouched. Dean's creepy special bond with Amara was referenced, but nobody dove in to the greater details about why this bond exists in the first place. You'd think, with God sitting right there, more questions could have been asked.

There were certain other bits of the story that seemed to get cut off at the pass with a bit too much casualness. Primarily, Donatello, our brand new prophet from last week, is already dead. Amara did him in. That was a pretty hardcore waste of a character introduction. Although maybe we'll get another prophet, and this time we can get somebody other than another white guy?

Modern Family: Double Click (7x22)

Well, to nobody's surprise, this finale was a lackluster end to a lackluster season. I don't know what happened this year, but Modern Family could not sustain itself very well. Hopefully after a break we can get a more invigorating Season Eight.

Cons:

Last week the whole gang was heading to a wedding. I sort of thought the finale might explore that, but there was no mention of it whatsoever, and everybody was just back to their regular lives. I thought a wedding episode might have been a fun way to create some sitcom hijinks. I guess not. What we got instead was a severely overcrowded episode. There were way too many different plot threads going on here, and as a result there wasn't the time to let them breathe and develop. Almost nothing hit its mark.

The Dunphy family is all having a bad day, with various things pulling them in different directions. Alex is grumpy because she just arrived home for summer vacation and nobody notices or cares that she's returned. Phil has to confront the fact that Luke might be sexually active, and might be sneaking girls into his room. Claire is anxious about firing somebody at work, because this guy just beat her score on a dance game in the warehouse, and she's afraid people will think he's getting fired because of that. Andy gets a dream job that means he'll have to move away. Andy and Haley agree to make it work, but Haley is depressed at the thought of losing her first real love.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Absolution/Ascension (3x21/22)

I didn't love this two-part finale. But I appreciated a lot of what it set up for next season, and it had a few genuinely intense and emotional moments. I'm going to try and get through all of this relatively quickly.

Cons:

The plot is pretty basic, which I would normally compliment. But in this finale, it sort of felt like a lot of the two episodes was just buildup for the final moment of predictable sacrifice. In short, S.H.I.E.L.D. captures Hive. Hive escapes. Many agents are turned in to the deformed Inhuman slaves of Hive, and our team is forced to hide out on the base. Hive gets a hold of a Quinjet that he plans on using to distribute the Inhuman changes to large parts of the world. Lincoln manages to get inside the Quinjet with Hive. He flies it up out of the atmosphere, and the triggering substance is thus disseminated harmlessly into space. Hive and Lincoln both die.

Honestly, the reason this basic plot didn't work for me is that the only thing really going on here was one giant tease about who was going to die. All through the scenes with our agents running from Hive's men and trying to figure out a way to stop his evil plan, we get fake-outs. Things look really bad for May and/or Fitz at one point. Simmons nearly gets trapped. Yo-Yo gets shot trying to protect Mack. And the damn cross necklace ends up in the hands of Yo-Yo, Mack, Fitz, Daisy, and then finally Lincoln. Part of the problem was in the promotional materials for this finale. They could not have built up this death any more. They really pulled out all the stops to make us feel the weight of this epic death...

Castle: Crossfire (8x22)

Um. What a terrible finale. Sorry... but this was just not good. I know that this was a version of the episode that they had prepared in case they got cancelled. I was expecting a fully rounded ending. Instead, we got what I assume was the originally planned cliffhanger, with an insultingly brief epilogue tagged on to the end to wrap things up with a pretty bow. I'm not happy.

Cons:

This didn't feel like a finale in any measurable way. It barely felt like the end to a season, much less the end of a show that's been airing for eight seasons. I've made no secret of my distaste for the LokSat plot, and the wrap-up was no better than the buildup. In short: Castle gets kidnapped by LokSat's right hand man, and is given a truth serum that forces him to give up the identities of everybody else who knows the truth about LokSat. Beckett and Castle had just revealed the truth to Ryan, Espo, Alexis, and Martha, which means that these four are in danger along with Beckett, Vikram, and Haley. Luckily, Ryan and Espo save Castle from dying, and Beckett realizes that LokSat was actually Mason Wood, the guy Castle had met in LA, who headed the Great Detective's Society. Beckett and Castle defeat him, and all seems well. But then at the last second Caleb Brown, who they all thought was dead, shows up and shoots them both. Beckett manages to kill him, and then she and Castle seemingly succumb to their wounds, holding hands. Flash forward to seven years later, and they're both fine, and they have three kids.

Okay... where to even start with this? The big shocking reveals in this episode were utterly lackluster and nonsensical. If Mason Wood had been a character that we'd seen in more than one other episode, maybe the reveal that he was LokSat would have packed more of a punch. As it was, this reveal was even more of a disappointment than the final reveal of Red John from The Mentalist. And then the Caleb Brown fake-out... there was no attempt to explain why Caleb wanted to come after them after having faked his death. Was he supposed to be the real LokSat? And if so, why risk his life to take out Castle and Beckett, when they thought that they had already defeated LokSat? It made no sense, and it was a cheap way to cause a panic in the last two minutes.

Once Upon a Time: Only You/An Untold Story (5x22/23)

I didn't dislike this finale, but I did think it had a lot of structural weaknesses when you look at it on its own. Most of its merit seems to be in setting up the game for next season, which I'm alright with in theory... let's just take a look.

Cons:

This episode splits itself into two separate branches. One follows Hook, Snow, David, and Zelena, who accidentally get sucked in to another realm through a portal. The other follows Emma and Regina, as they follow Henry and his crush Violet to New York, where Henry is determined to find a way to destroy magic for good. Why? Well, Henry suddenly reasons that every bad thing that's ever happened to him and his family has been because of magic. Henry and Violet are also being tracked down by Rumple, who does not take kindly to his power source being threatened. At one point Henry does "destroy" magic, at least temporarily. He then learns that the rest of his family is trapped in another realm, and by destroying all the magic from Storybrooke, he has cut them off from each other. Henry then does a total 180, and makes a speech about how magic can save them all. He and his family all throw coins into a fountain, and Henry gets the other New Yorkers to throw coins in as well. Wishing to be reunited with the family seems to be enough to restore magic, and Hook, Snow, David, Zelena, and their new friend Dr. Jekyll all come through and reunite with their loved ones.

I have several problems here. First of all, Henry suddenly hating magic does not make any sense. He's a smart kid, and he has the heart of the truest believer, right? So shouldn't he be able to understand that it wasn't magic that killed Robin Hood, but rather the evils of Hades specifically? It's not magic that causes Regina such inner turmoil - it's a battle with her own inner demons. Magic is a tool that can be used for good or for evil. (This reminds me of the intrinsic argument from BBC's Merlin, actually). I can understand Henry making a rash decision born out of grief and desperation, but for him to totally turn around and hate magic all of a sudden felt totally idiotic to me.

Outlander: Best Laid Schemes... (2x06)

Okay! This episode is the one I've been waiting for. I knew this was coming, and I was excited to see how they would handle it. Obviously this was brutal... but I think it was fairly well executed.

Cons:

That being said, as I sit back and think about this episode, I realize that there were a couple of very well-executed scenes, in an episode that was a bit more middling than the rest of the season thus far. I think this is a consequence of some story lines jumping forward with all due haste, and others sort of plodding along and becoming repetitive. I think I have more complaints about this episode that I've had of any episode all season... but the highs were really high, too.

The final scene of this episode is where things really shine, but a lot of the rest of it felt like marking time. Basically, this week we have Jamie and Claire's plan to fake smallpox in order to stop the Comte St. Germain from being able to fund Charles Stuart and the Jacobites. While that is going on, Claire is continuing her volunteer work at the hospital, where she learns that King Louis is planning on executing a bunch of people connected to the "dark arts." She rushes to warn Master Raymond of the threat, and he promises to flee the city. The smallpox plan works - sort of - but now Charles and Germain want to move the wine sooner to avoid inspection. Jamie and Murtagh stage a highwayman robbery, which successfully deprives Charles of his funds. We also have Murtagh finding out about Claire, and then we finally get to the big climax.

The Vampire Diaries: Gods and Monsters (7x22)

Sigh.... there's never any peace for our dear heroes, is there? I'm not surprised that we ended the season on another angst-ridden cliffhanger that's going to cause everybody more pain to come. I am surprised that I rather enjoyed this season finale!

Cons:

This episode wrapped up a lot of the season's plot threads, and while I actually thought a lot of the scenes were emotionally poignant and felt real, I can't ignore the fact that the plot threads being wrapped up were not exactly stellar. This season has been a real mess at times, and the finale was definitely not good enough to completely cover up the rough patches.

In plot news, things are streamlined and simple - Bonnie has the Huntress's urge to kill all her friends. Damon and the others manage to get into the Armory using the twins to syphon Bonnie's magic away from the door. Damon goes in, kills the Everlasting, and Bonnie is freed from the Huntress curse. Just as everybody is ready to celebrate, Damon is lured by the mysterious evil thing in the Armory, and is turned evil. Enzo tries to follow him, and is turned also. The two disappear, leaving everybody else anxiously trying to find them.

The Big Bang Theory: The Convergence Convergence (9x24)

Well... that certainly didn't feel like a finale. I'm disappointed... although should I really be surprised at this point?

Cons:

I know I sound like a broken record, but The Big Bang Theory has this huge problem with wasted opportunities. Maybe we'll get to see Penny and Leonard's wedding ceremony in the Season Ten premiere, but this episode was nothing but the buildup to it. The plot is basically that Leonard's father shows up and argues with his mother a lot, and that Sheldon invited his mother to the wedding as well. Leonard's father and Sheldon's mom hit it off, to the consternation of their sons. That's the whole main plot. Penny's family doesn't even make an appearance to spice things up.

Another thing about this main plot is that it doesn't really give me a lot of Penny/Leonard relationship feelings. You would think maybe we'd get some insight into their love and their marriage, but no. Other than one quick toast, the focus is all on the parental drama. It doesn't even seem like Penny and Leonard care about this ceremony at all. Penny pretty much admits she's only doing this to try and foster a better relationship for Leonard and his mother.

Grey's Anatomy: At Last (12x23)

This episode is so strange to me, because by all rights I should hate it, based on the things that actually happen in it. Several plot threads seemed to skip straight past a lot of buildup to a conclusion that needed a lot more time to develop. Some things that have been dragged out too long suddenly fizzled into awkward conclusion. Yet somehow, the pacing and the character work pulled through, and this ended up being a very solid installment.

Cons:

...With some exceptions, of course. In this episode, Meredith is undergoing what you might call a grief relapse, as she watches Owen sell Derek's old trailer, and then watches as Amelia and Owen start talking about a future where they get married and have babies. She gets more and more agitated at the fact that Amelia is living this normal and happy life. She gives Amelia this super hurtful speech wherein she says that Amelia has basically stolen Derek's life and happiness, and needs to get her own. I don't hate the idea of Meredith being upset and bothered over Amelia and Owen moving so fast. That's fine. It makes sense, even. But honestly, Meredith's words to Amelia were completely uncalled for in every way. How can Meredith say such things to Amelia about Derek, when she knows how hard Amelia took the death of her brother? They should be sharing in this grief, not coming to blows over it. Meredith and Amelia have been at odds in a sort of ill-defined manner all season, and they've only just gotten back on track. For Meredith to be so cruel to her now seems like a departure from the character arc we've seen for her all season.

And then on Amelia's side of things... her and Owen feel happy and good about their relationship, and as a consequence, they start moving way too fast. By the end of the episode, Amelia is proposing to Owen, and he's accepting. I get the idea that Amelia is moving too fast and we're supposed to see that... but the problem for me is that Owen and Amelia are so clearly not even close to ready for something like this that it stretches my suspension of disbelief to think that Owen would go along with it. He is, by necessity, a pretty level-headed guy. He's serious about his relationships and commitments. I'm not saying he doesn't love Amelia, but this is a lot too much, a lot too fast. It doesn't help that I personally don't care much for their romance in the first place. It just hasn't grabbed me.

Modern Family: Crazy Train (7x21)

This season has been underwhelming to say the least, but every once in a while we get an episode that reminds me of the glory days. This episode, while perhaps not a stunning work of art or anything, did get a lot of laughs out of me.

Cons:

Luke and Manny's plot thread was the weak link in the chain, as often seems to be the case with these two lately. The whole family is taking the train to Portland for Jay's ex-wife's wedding to her new husband. Manny and Luke decide to use the time to pick up girls, since, as Luke puts it, trains make girls crazy. The vibrations do something to girls, plus they're trapped, so that's nice. Ew. Manny thinks that Alex has a crush on him, which is just disturbing, and Luke flirts with an older woman and thinks she wants to sleep with him, when it turns out she just wants to give him a geography lesson. Both of these plot threads were lacking in laughs, and in Luke's case I just felt highly uncomfortable about the whole thing. Have we seen a single plot thread with these two that didn't involve hooking up with girls? Any amount of lovable idiocy that Luke had going for him has been replaced by utter bro-ish douche-baggery.

Supernatural: All in the Family (11x21)

Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner are the bane of some Supernatural fans' existences. These are the people who brought us "Route 666" and "Man's Best Friend With Benefits," among other weak installments. They're also the writers who killed off Charlie, and a lot of people haven't been able to forgive that, myself included. As such, whenever I see that an episode is going to be penned by this writing team, I brace myself to be pissed off. However, this wasn't one of those episodes that's going to reinforce their reputations as bringers of evil. It was a decent installment, all in all.

Cons:

The less infuriating yet still undeniably problematic element of Buckner and Leming's episodes is that they try and cram too much information into one hour of television. Despite the amount of stuff that actually happens, the dialogue can often be choppy and repetitive, as the same information is repeated in different ways throughout the episode, and sometimes small things get too much focus and big things get sidelined. It makes for a bit of an unbalanced final product, although it's not anything substantive that I can put my finger on.

In this episode, Sam and Dean team up with Chuck, Metatron, and a new prophet named Donatello. They decide to save Lucifer, in order to get him on board the Anti-Amara team. In order for this to work, Dean distracts Amara by meeting with her in private, while the others rescue Lucifer. All I can say is... the Dean/Amara thing is really unsettling. Now, I do understand that it's meant to be unsettling, but it's not working for me in the world of the story. I don't understand why Amara, God's sister and our primary antagonist for the season, needs to have a romantic connection with one of our leads. I can think of so many more interesting ways to approach Amara's character. Maybe they could keep the part about Amara and Dean being connected, but instead of Amara disturbingly commenting on the "sensations" that Dean makes her feel, she could be annoyed by the connection. She could be frustrated, wanting to kill Dean and be done with him in the same way that Dean wants to kill her. I don't know... every time we get one of these Dean/Amara scenes where they stand a great distance apart and speak in measured sentences to each other, I just get more and more frustrated and grossed out.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Emancipation (3x20)

This was a great episode, but it did have some small problems. Let's dive in.

Cons:

This week was the Captain America: Civil War tie-in. In a lot of ways, it worked really well. The idea of the Sokovia Accords impacting the Inhuman characters that we know is a great way to tie things together. But whenever we're reminded about the connection between this show and the larger cinematic universe, I start to get a little twitchy about the plot holes. They're making it sound like Hive could usher in an Armageddon situation, and yet nobody even once considers asking the Avengers to step in. Also, we get hints that Coulson would be Team Cap (duh) and Talbot would be team Iron Man, since he is in support of government control. But it feels a little simplistic, and I might have wanted a bit more complexity with such an interesting issue.

Along the same note of complexity, there were a few characters here that feel just a little bit one-note. Talbot was here to learn about S.H.I.E.L.D., be horrified by the disaster going on, and make a bunch of snarky comments disparaging Coulson's ability to do his job. Over on Hive's side of thing you've got James, who is decently funny on occasion but doesn't have a lot of character, and then Dr. Radcliffe, who has a few really funny lines but nothing substantive to back him up.

Castle: Hell to Pay (8x21)

It's hard for me to review this episode knowing that next week may be the last of this show ever, and even if we do get a Season Nine, it will be sans Beckett. This entire season of Castle has felt pretty joyless to me, which is a shame because this show used to really brighten my day. Let's take a look.

Cons:

I felt like the humor in this episode was in very poor taste a lot of the time. For the most part, this show can toe the line between offensive and funny, and it avoids making too many jokes at the expense of dead people and their loved ones. This week, we had this weird sort of thing where Alexis and Hayley were set upon by a scary dude with an axe, and then Castle got freaked out that somebody wanted to kill him... and Beckett kept pulling pranks on everyone. She got Castle and then later she got Alexis and Hayley with Castle's assistance. It felt a little cruel for Beckett to take such obvious pleasure in scaring people. I get that it was supposed to be a prank, but let's think about this for a second. People are dead. Even though Beckett obviously doesn't believe in the supernatural explanation that Castle has come up with, it doesn't change the fact that people have died and other people's lives might be in real danger. That doesn't seem like something you should joke about.

Once Upon a Time: Last Rites (5x21)

Honestly I don't know how to react to this episode, because it satisfyingly wrapped up some plot threads, while leaving others oddly twisted. I'm really pissed about some things, and really happy about others. Let's just start talking about it, I guess.

Cons:

So... Robin Hood is dead. That's the big thing to complain about. This is one of those situations where the execution of the plot twist was quite good, but the premise itself is weak. This season, more than any other on this show, has been the Emma and Hook show, and as a Captain Swan shipper I don't have a problem with making their relationship the focus for a while. That's fine. But Regina's story has been all about getting to a happy ending. This season, Robin has been totally pushed to the side, with pretty much nothing to do. And now, he's gone. I guess the idea is to bring Regina and Zelena closer together, and solidify their sisterly bond? And I guess that's... nice, or whatever. But there's this moment at Robin's funeral where Zelena talks about how they should name the baby "Robin" after her father. That sounds sweet, but the minute Zelena said it, I remembered that Zelena was essentially Robin's rapist. She impersonated his wife and tricked him into impregnating her, which is just all sorts of disgusting. I feel weird about Zelena honoring Robin now, when he was her victim. I'll talk about this plot more in a second, because the way that Robin died actually worked quite well to the story's advantage.

Elementary: A Difference in Kind (4x24)

This episode didn't really feel like a finale. It was a little underwhelming when you think about some of the stuff that's happened in other finales of Elementary. But I didn't dislike it, either.

Cons:

The culminating plot of this season focused on Moriarty's network, but no Moriarty. I get that the realities of Natalie Dormer's schedule don't allow for her to appear right now. That's unavoidable. But the buildup surrounding the idea of Moriarty was so intense that the lack of a follow-through was guaranteed to be a letdown, no matter how brilliant a plot they threw at us. And the plot itself was... meh. Basically, it comes down to this: Moriarty's network is still without a definitive leader, and the attempt on Morland's life the year before was actually an attempt to take him out of the running, because some people thought he'd make a good leader. In the end, Vikner is taken out by his competitors, and Morland takes on the network of Moriarty's organization, planning to dismantle it from within.

Essentially, the biggest complaint I have here is that there's no follow-through. Moriarty doesn't make an appearance. This season had a lot of buildup centered around Sherlock's recovery process, and we haven't talked about that for a while. There was no follow-through on Joan's morally grey behavior either. That might have been fun to explore. And within the episode itself, there was no real follow-through on the tension centered on Sherlock and Joan's safety. The bomb in the Brownstone that formed the cliffhanger last week was dismantled in the first thirty seconds by Sherlock, no sweat.

Outlander: Untimely Resurrection (2x05)

I'm so pumped about this show. Honestly. Every episode is such a treat. Love it, love it, love it.

Cons:

Uhh.... nothing? I don't know. Not enough Fergus, I guess? But that's not a real complaint, that's a personal preference thing. Maybe the Comte St. Germain is still too on the nose with his evilness? But actually he was better this week too. Okay why am I trying to force complaints? This episode rocked!

Pros:

The continuing political plot takes a few steps forward this week. Turns out that the Duke of Sandringham is now convinced that Charles Stuart is a total idiot, and doesn't want to back his plans. Good news for Jamie and Claire, right? Well, unfortunately Sandringham has been replaced by a new investor for the Jacobite cause: the Comte St. Germain. Prince Charles has arranged to loan the Comte some funds for a big shipment of wine. With Jamie's help selling the wine, they will make a lot of money. Jamie and Claire decide to stop the shipment from being sold, so that this new revenue stream will dry up.

The Vampire Diaries: Requiem for a Dream (7x21)

Pretty solid installment, honestly. Let's jump in.

Cons:

Matt got integrated into the story a little better this week, as he decides to help Bonnie by not letting her kill her friends, despite what she thinks she wants in this moment. That's fine, I guess, but the whole Matt and Penny storyline is still such a weird detour in the season, and any reminder of that plot line is just distracting.

Caroline and Ric still gross me out. I have more to say about Caroline later on in the "pros" section, but honestly... yikes. When Ric says "I love you" to Caroline and she says "yeah, I know" and doesn't say it back, I felt so freakin' awkward about the whole situation. I also hate the fact that Caroline, so newly reintroduced to the main plot, is again on the run at the fringes of the plot. I want her to stick around in the center of things for once!

Grey's Anatomy: Mama Tried (12x22)

This is so frustrating. How do you judge an episode that's based around a premise so flimsy that it collapses under the smallest amount of critical thinking? If I could only erase from my mind how contrived this whole damn custody trial is, then maybe I could judge this a little more kindly. But I can't. And I'm annoyed.

Cons:

The whole premise. Like I just said, this whole premise is just weak as hell. Through all the drama, and all the arguments about which parent is better, and which one spends more time with Sofia, all I'm thinking is that this entire idea is based on exactly zero critical thought. Callie and Arizona are supposed to be smart. How on earth did they let something like this happen? On top of that, this show spends so little time focusing on the kids that it sort of comes out of nowhere when everybody starts talking about how motherhood is their defining state of being. If we knew these kids better, and understood these women better in their roles as mothers, that would be a different story.

The majority of the plot was just going through the custody case. But there was a subplot that tied in to the main story, and that subplot focused on Jenny, the fourteen-year-old pregnant girl that we met a few weeks back. Her baby is in distress, and Alex has to call Arizona away from court to come and help, because Dr. Russo, another pediatric surgeon, is apparently some sort of evil monster and refuses to listen to any reasonable plan to keep the baby inside the womb so it has a better chance. This was a pretty contrived way to get Arizona to walk away from the court case. It's another example of contrived circumstances playing out in a well-constructed way. I'll talk in a minute about the result of Arizona leaving court so abruptly, but the reasoning for it was pretty darn weak.

The Big Bang Theory: The Line Substitution Solution (9x23)

Okay! Let's rapid-fire this one.

Cons:

This was a surprisingly solid and engaging episode, which makes the one insensitive joke all the more aggravating. Sheldon and the other guys are waiting in line to see a special screening of The Avengers, and Sheldon gets mad that somebody cuts in line. He talks about the injustice of it, and then makes a reference to Rosa Parks and how she wouldn't stand for being pushed to the back of the line. Everybody is horrified and embarrassed, but then Leonard turns to Raj and says "you may need to pretend to be black to get us out of this." I'm sorry, but... Sheldon not understanding racism is a really tired joke that was never really funny to begin with. And none of his friends really tried to correct him or tell him he was out of line. And then Leonard's comment to Raj was just... gross. 

This show has a problem with followthrough. The idea of waiting in line to see a special movie screening is fine, but there's no payoff to the buildup, because we don't get to see these characters experience the thing they were waiting for. Similarly, Stuart had a funny subplot but then just kind of shrugged his way out of the story without ceremony.

Modern Family: Promposal (7x20)

I really wish I could say that this was a great episode, but sadly it was mediocre at best. I miss the good ol' days, when this show knew how to produce a solid and creative product week after week. There were a few fun moments in this episode, but they were buried under a lot of stuff that I just don't care about.

Cons:

The episode's title comes from Luke and Manny both asking girls to prom in creative ways. It's actually the strongest plot thread of the night, and I'll get to that in a minute. There was, however, this one little related subplot that was just painful. Alex's high school boyfriend guy whose name I can't even be bothered to remember keeps turning up to ask her to prom. She says no again and again, but winds up going with him anyway. First of all... didn't Alex get back together with Sanjay? Did they break up again and I missed it? Second of all, this show clearly has no idea what to do with Alex. She needs more college-based plot threads, and fast.

Claire's plot of the night involves her getting paranoid and thinking that there's a mole in her company leaking corporate secrets. She actually does identify the mole, but he wasn't going to the competition: he was spying on her and reporting back to Jay. Jay and Claire go out to dinner, and Claire confronts her dad about this. Jay admits that he's bored with retirement and wants to come back to work part time. This is a situation where the setup had some potential, but the payoff was very weak. I always want to see more of Claire at work, because I feel that they've squandered that part of the story for a long time now. But bringing Jay back from retirement is pretty pathetic. I feel like we barely had a chance to explore his boredom and dissatisfaction with retired life. A couple of quick episodes about his boredom isn't enough for me to buy this decision. There was also this weak attempt at humor as Jay teaches baby Joe how to do "manly" things like make a martini and fix a car. Joe is certainly adorable, but wow. This plot went nowhere and added nothing.

Supernatural: Don't Call Me Shurley (11x20)

This episode was pretty darn awesome. It wasn't what I expected, but it was exactly what this show needed. Let's jump right in.

Cons:

This episode had very little for me to complain about, but I do have a couple of little things. The stuff with Metatron and Chuck/God, while amazing for 99% of the time, may have been a little exposition-heavy up top. It's a small thing, and maybe it's only a problem for those of us in the fandom who already knew that Chuck was God, but I got a little bored with the explaining stuff that went on in the first few scenes with these two characters.

Okay, so this is a weird one: Sam and Dean's plot was really basic, and focused on them encountering a town falling victim to a fog that infected people just like the infections from the start of the season, only worse. As the fog rolls through the town, Sam gets infected. My complaint is that there was something weird going on with the sound editing or something, because Sam was talking to Dean and I could barely make out what he was saying over the screams of the other infected people and the ambient noise. From what I can gather, Sam says to Dean: "You're going to choose Amara over me. Over everyone." And then he apologizes, saying "sorry, I didn't mean that." These are really important and significant lines, because we know that this infection causes people to feel the full impact of their bleakest, blackest thoughts. It might have been nice to hear what Sam was saying a little more clearly, and also to dwell more on the words themselves. Sam fearing that Dean is going to leave him, whether by his own choice or no, is a really interesting idea. It feeds in to Sam's earlier insecurities about Dean not trusting him, and seeking companionship from Cas and Benny instead of him. It's a small thing, but it did feel like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Failed Experiments (3x19)

I feel a little frustrated with this episode. I liked a lot of the stuff that happened, but I wasn't left with an over-all amazing impression when it was over. Let's just dive in.

Cons:

A lot of stuff happened in this episode, but I felt like the pacing dragged. There was a lot of great action towards the end, but both before and after the climactic moments, we had a lot of standing around and talking. That would be fine in theory, but it was the sort of standing around and talking that doesn't add much. Fitz and Simmons are looking for a cure to the mind control. Radcliffe is trying to help Hive with his plan to turn everybody Inhuman, but there's problem. Former Hydra agents are going to become Hive's test subjects. Hell, we even get Hive's backstory of how he was found by the Kree and experimented on, making him one of the first generation of Inhumans. This wasn't really a back story I needed to see. It could have been a quick line of dialogue while doing something else. There were lots of issues like this, where I felt like we all had to stand around and listen to them talking about the stuff that they were going to be doing later. Just get to it!

So, the main plot is pretty straightforward. Hive, along with Daisy, Alicia, James, and their new friend Dr. Radcliffe are trying to turn humans into Inhumans, but they need live Kree blood to do it, so Hive summons some Kree Reapers so they can extract blood. Meanwhile, Coulson and the team are on a mission to take out Hive. It all ends up with Mack destroying an incapacitated Kree to prevent Hive from going through with his plan. Daisy, furious, beats up Mack and comes to the point of killing him. May shoots Daisy, and she and the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team escape, leaving Daisy and Hive behind without a viable living Kree to use for their mission.

Castle: Much Ado About Murder (8x20)

Ugh Castle and Beckett got to see Hamilton on Broadway? How did they snag those tickets? So jealous. But anyway, this was pretty much your standard-issue Castle episode. Nothing to write home about, but nothing bad either. Let's dive in.

Cons:

Jewel Staite should, by all rights, go in the "pros" section, but I have to admit that seeing Fillion's Firefly co-star in this episode made the reveal of the murderer super obvious. It was one of those obnoxious "twist" endings where after dealing with fierce mob bosses and drug dealers and all this stuff, the murderer was actually the woman we saw for just a minute at the beginning of the episode. We never talk to her or build up the reveal in any way, and yet I still knew she was the killer because you don't bring Jewel Staite in to play such a small part unless she gets to have the confession speech at the end. It was just disappointing to waste her on such a nothing part without a lot of meat to it. She and Nathan Fillion hardly interacted at all!

Another point along the same line - Martha showed up in the secret hotel room of the murder victim, and it turns out she was giving him acting lessons. The only problem is that from that point on, she had almost nothing to do in the story. If you want to do something focused on Martha, then great! But don't dangle her character in front of us for just a second and then not have it lead to anything!

Elementary: The Invisible Hand (4x23)

Okay, so to be honest I was really distracted when watching this episode, and a lot of the finer plot details escape me as I now try to recount it. This was a good-ish episode, but a bit of a letdown after the last two weeks. Let's hope the finale next week can pick up the slack. Also, I actually mean it this time when I say I'm going to be brief.

Cons:

The plot, as I mentioned, is a little hard for me to pin down because I suck and I wasn't paying much attention. But the basic fact is that Morland is not being targeted by Moriarty herself. She passed on her organization to a sinister Russian dude named Joshua Vikner, who has a henchman named Krasnov kill some of Morland's workers and set off a bomb blowing up his work building. Morland escapes, and Joan and Sherlock continue to investigate and try to pin down the reasons Morland is being targeted. Is all of this coming from Moriarty in some twisted way? As the episode ends, Joan and Sherlock enter the Brownstone to find a bomb waiting for them inside.

So... honestly. Why do the cliffhanger thing with the big "it's Moriarty" statement at the end of last week's episode if you're not going to follow through with Ms. Natalie Dormer? From the promotional materials, it doesn't look like she'll be turning up in the finale next week either, unless they're keeping it seriously under wraps. In comparison to Moriarty herself, any villain that they bring out to challenge our heroes is going to feel second-rate. Joshua Vikner was a pretty generically sinister figure. The most interesting things about him, really, were the things that connect him with Moriarty. Apparently this is the guy who fathered Jamie Moriarty's child. I wanted to know more about that, but instead we got a lot of creepy mustache-twirling and sinister one-liners.

Once Upon a Time: Firebird (5x20)

Wellllll... I am feeling some frustration about some things, because I feel like we've done enough with the fake-outs at this point. At the same time, I greatly enjoyed the vast majority of this episode. Let's take a closer look.

Cons:

While most of the episode focused on the plan to get out of the Underworld, we did also focus on Rumple and Pan a bit. It was a weird detour, to say the least. Basically, Rumple and Pan blackmail Hades by taking Zelena captive, forcing Hades to tear up the contract for Belle's baby. With that done, Pan thinks that his son is going to help him out of the Underworld by stealing a heart for him, and indeed we see Rumple take Robin's heart. However, Rumple later secretly gives Robin back his heart and instead puts a container of water from the river of lost souls inside of Pan instead, disguised as a heart. He wanted to make sure his father never found his happy ending. Pan dissolves into the river, and Rumple takes the still unconscious Belle back with him through the portal to Storybrooke.

I guess I'm just annoyed that all the buildup for Pan was wasted. Instead of becoming some sort of twisted ally for our heroes, we barely got any screen time with him, and then Rumple defeated him, and that was that. The kid playing Pan is such an amazing actor. I really wish he could have had more of a chance to chew the scenery. Roping Robin into the plot line was weak and super random as well. He barely got any screen time, again, and every time he shows up for an insignificant bit of story, it just serves to emphasize how little he's had to do this season. Also, after a stressful few weeks trying to work out what to do with this whole "Hades owns the baby" thing, it feels a little anticlimactic to have the problem solved so easily. I mean, I know Belle wouldn't approve of Rumple's methods, but all he did was briefly kidnap Zelena, and then let her go free once he got what he wanted. In the grand scheme of things, and in comparison to stuff Rumple has done in the past, this seems downright tame.

Outlander: La Dame Blanche (2x04)

This season is just so awesome. This show is just incredible and I love it SO MUCH.

Cons:

I don't really have anything big. In some ways I still think things are being spelled out a little too clearly, which means some subtlety is being lost. Mostly, this comes into play with the Comte St. Germain. He's just so obviously evil that it doesn't do much for me.

Also, there's another rape in this episode. This time poor Mary Hawkins is the victim. I don't have a problem with using rape as part of a story, but as with the books, I think it's relied on a little too heavily. It seems every named character is sexually assaulted at some point, and it can be a little exhausting and unpleasant, to say the least.