Outlander: The Birds & The Bees (4x09)

Finally! Bree and Jamie have met!

Cons:

Something happens when you take these behemoth books and adapt them into a TV show, something I like to call the Les Miserables effect. See the fact that Lizzie sees Roger and Brianna leave together, then later sees that Bree has been hurt, that Bree asks Claire not to tell anyone about Bonnet, that Lizzie sees Roger and tells Jamie and Ian about it... all of these things are from the book, pretty much. But these series of coincidences are cushioned by a lot of other moments, and spread out over several hundred pages of story. But here, all of these plot points have to happen one right after the other, and it starts to seem a little bit... silly. Brianna has sex with a man for the first time, and later that same night is raped, and then finds out she's pregnant. This is some soap-opera stuff, let me tell ya. I guess this isn't a flaw with the episode, more just a consequence of the story being what it is.

I like the actress playing Lizzie just fine, but I still don't really understand why they chose to go this route with the casting. Lizzie should be a tiny little wisp of a girl, one that Bree feels protective over. The change still seems like it's not really adding or enhancing anything, even though the actress is doing a perfectly fine job.

Outlander: Wilmington (4x08)

Ultimately, I liked this episode, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't have some complaints.

Cons:

George Washington was a slave owner, y'all. Like, I get that it's fun when Claire runs in to real historical figures and geeks out over them, but this episode portrayed George Washington as a very kind, intelligent, honorable man, which... well... mileage may vary on how much emphasis you put on the "customs of the day," but the man was a plantation owner. There was an episode earlier this season focused on Claire's hatred for slavery, and yet in this episode she is just giddy and excited to meet such a famous historical figure, and doesn't even portray the slightest hint of disgust over the slavery aspect. Annoying.

Speaking of Claire's time-travel-y sensibilities, it occurs to me that Murtagh knows that Claire is from the future, and yet we have seen no evidence as of yet that Claire has told Murtagh about the revolution and what will happen. Seeing as how Murtagh is a somewhat prominent part of the Regulators, you'd think Claire would clue Murtagh in on the war to come, and perhaps caution him on how to behave. This is the first time that I've felt Murtagh's continued existence in the story didn't quite gel with the facts as we know them.

Outlander: Down the Rabbit Hole (4x07)

I'm actually quite torn... see, the problem is, I really don't like a lot of what this episode chose to focus on. But the performances and the way these scenes were written and shot were quite good, so it's like I'm looking at the best possible version of something that I disagree with at its core. Sort of. I don't know. Like I said... torn.

Cons:

Let's start with the element I'm the most clearly displeased with: Laoghaire. I don't have a problem with Bree being found by Laoghaire, and I liked the moments with her and little Joan well enough, but there are a couple of big issues here. One is that they play the "misunderstanding" and "dramatic irony" card way too heavily. Laoghaire is apparently so bitter about Jamie that she is willing to unburden herself to a random sassenach stranger. Brianna and Laoghaire discuss Jamie abandoning the family, being bewitched by another woman, all while Laoghaire doesn't know Bree is Jamie and Claire's daughter, and Bree doesn't know that she's hearing about her dad. This might have worked for a bit, but the pacing is pretty sluggish, and it takes way too long into the episode to get past this basic comprehension hurdle.

Also, Laoghaire is just... a weird character. They've never quite been able to balance her villainy with the sympathy we're clearly supposed to feel for her. I could understand Laoghaire becoming cold upon finding out that Bree is Jamie's daughter, but I thought we were going to go down a more sensible route, and have Laoghaire wordlessly usher Brianna out of her home, or even tell her the truth about Jamie and demand that she leave. That would make sense. But screaming at her, locking her up, threatening her with an accusation of witchcraft? Jeez, Laoghaire. Calm the heck down.

Supernatural: The Spear (14x09)

I mean, I'm not surprised, but it still hurts!

Cons:

It bothers me that nobody put together that Dean was vulnerable to Michael. It makes sense that Dean would push through and not share his weird shaky-vision stuff with his family, but Sam puts together that Michael's grace made Garth vulnerable to possession, so why wouldn't he then make the logical leap to Dean's vulnerability? I think this could have been fixed if Sam didn't figure out the Garth thing until maybe right before they enact their plan on Michael. It would be a domino effect, where Sam would put the pieces together but not fast enough to stop the inevitable. Instead, this feels like a huge oversight for Sam not to figure it out.

Also... did we really go to a mid-season hiatus on a Thanos snap? That had to be an intentional reference, right? Kind of annoying.

I liked seeing Dark!Kaia again, but every time she comes up as a plot point it just reminds me that Wayward Sisters didn't get picked up. I bet whatever they had planned for her would have been way cooler than what we're getting here.

Modern Family: Stuck in a Moment (10x10)

I'm still really liking Haley's pregnancy story thread. Let's jump in.

Cons:

Jay and Gloria's plot thread wasn't funny or interesting. Imagine that. A banana spider infestation sends them all running from their home, but Jay sends Manny back in to get his elbow grease for his dry elbows. That's... the whole story. At no point does Jay suggest that he might be able to buy more elbow grease instead of sending Manny into danger. At no point does the family discuss what they're going to do about their spider infestation. At no point did I laugh or even crack a smile.

There's this through-line about Cam's Christmas card never being appreciated by the family enough, and how Cam is really sensitive about it. This was a small little joke, but it didn't work for me because the punch line was just Cam getting slightly offended that his card got ruined. It felt like a lot of setup for a lackluster punchline.

Arrow: Elseworlds, Part 2 (7x09)

I have a confession to make. I refuse to watch the crossover DC events. When I was binging Arrow, I just watched the "previously on" and jumped right in. And I did the same thing here. Some day I'll get around to watching The Flash and maybe some of the other shows, but for now I'm not dipping in to these other wells. So just keep that in mind. I didn't watch part one, I won't be watching part three.

Cons:

The thing about these crossover events is that Arrow and The Flash are tonally different shows. Whenever Barry and Oliver are onscreen together, the tone bends heavily Flash-wards. That would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that things like Felicity and Oliver's relationship troubles are being resolved in the context of a much goofier episode that honestly doesn't feel like a continuation of the same story. There are moments when we get jokes about Oliver cheating on Laurel with Sarah, for example, and it felt very unlike Oliver to react with comedic indignation at the mention of one of the most traumatic elements of his life.

Because I don't watch the other shows, I'm not really connected or interested to a lot of what's going on in the other character's stories. So when Ruby Rose (Batwoman) has a conversation with Kara, I'm not connected to Kara, so she's not helping me connect with the new character. Or when there are scenes with the girl who can freeze things, whose name I never remember, I don't really care about what's going on. When Barry and Oliver confront each other's villains, I gasped out loud when Malcolm Merlyn appeared, but I don't know who that other dude is. This isn't really a fair critique. This is obviously not a crossover event designed for me, a person who stubbornly only watches one of the shows. But I'm just being honest about how I reacted to the episode.

Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (11x10)

This wasn't a bad episode, but it wasn't super great either. Kind of disappointing for a finale.

Cons:

Tim Shaw is back with a frankly confusing plan, and I wanted to care about this more than I did. Sure, it's tying back in to this Doctor's first adventure, and the way she met her companions. Obviously the stakes are very personal for Graham and Ryan, because Tim Shaw murdered Grace. That said, this was not some sort of epic personal show-down like I think the show wanted it to be. Also, while the stakes were personal for the guys, and while Tim Shaw made it personal with the Doctor by telling her it was all about revenge, Yaz once again got the short end of the stick in this adventure.

I feel like this episode had a ton of interesting ideas, and only a few of them really got explored. There were so many missed opportunities. I think the one that gets to me the most is that there's this setup where the energy of the planet is messing with people's minds and making them forget things. The Doctor and her friends all have these neural inhibitor things to help protect them from the effect. As the climax approaches, Yaz and the Doctor have to take their neural inhibitors off and give them to other people to help save the world. You would expect that this sacrifice would involve difficult challenges for Yaz and the Doctor, that they would start succumbing to the negative effects. But other than a few looks of pain, and the Doctor having a hard time coming up with a plan for a couple of seconds, nothing really happened. Their sacrifice didn't hurt them much at all, and they were able to stabilize themselves very quickly.

Outlander: Blood of My Blood (4x06)

I AM BLESSED. THIS WAS SO MUCH MORE THAN I HAD EVER HOPED FOR.

Cons:

I've been trying to be nice about the wigs, but I really noticed Claire's wig this week. It just does not look like her real hair. It's distracting.

I understand that this is a love story between Jamie and Claire, but their sex scenes have always been pretty uninteresting to me. That's a personal preference thing, and not an actual fault with the show or the books either. I just find myself uninterested whenever things get steamy. It feels like a narrative waste of time when there are so many characters and moments I want to see.

Pros:

That said, I do like the detail of the ring that Jamie gives to Claire. Obviously they're deviating from the books, but I like that we're getting back to something important from the books, but in a different way. The ring is gorgeous!

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I'm Not The Person I Used To Be (4x08)

I'll admit it, I was skeptical that they could pull this off. And... wow. They pulled it off.

Cons:

I don't know. Honestly, this episode was pretty perfect. Maybe I would have liked to see the four core bros spend time together. We got lots of Hector, WhiJo, and Josh, but when Greg shows up he and Josh don't so much as share a hello. I get that this was an episode about Greg and Rebecca, so maybe Josh and Greg stuff will come later.

Pros:

Josh's subplot is comedic, but it's also part of his character growth and his transformation into a proper adult. He spends the episode reliving the glory days from high school, only to realize that he's missed out on so much. George breaks it down for Josh in a great song, showing him that there was other stuff going on in high school outside of the popular kids' understanding. What I love about Josh as a character is that he's honestly such a big dork. The fact that he was a jock wasn't because he didn't think magic was cool, but because he just fit the dumb jock stereotype so well. He doesn't have any judgment for the "nerds," he just didn't think about them at all. Now, he's got a chance to broaden his horizons!

The Good Place: Janet(s) (3x10)

Wow. That was brilliant. Probably the best episode of the season thus far, and that's saying something, since there haven't exactly been any duds.

Cons:

Okay. The only thing I have to say in the "cons" section might arguably not be a con, but I do want to mention it. Throughout the history of this show, there have been so many great surprises and plot twists and rule-changing reveals, and each and every one of them has kept me on my toes and surprised me in the best way. This week, the big reveal is that nobody has been sent to the Good Place in over 500 years. Honestly, I was expecting this. Or something similar. I wondered if anyone had ever been to the Good Place, or if the Good Place even existed, but I had definitely already worked out that the points system was faulty. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to figure out a plot twist ahead of time once in a while, but I just wanted to mention that this was the first and only time in this show's whole history that a new development didn't completely blow me away. I figured out the whole "this is the Bad Place" twist in Season One, sure, but I hadn't realized that the whole neighborhood was part of the trick. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with this twist, I guess. I'm sure I'm going to love whatever comes next.

Pros:

Where to even start? D'Arcy Carden was incredible. She plays Janet, but also Chidi, Eleanor, Jason, and Tahani for the bulk of this episode, and she does an amazing job. So much so that when I think of the important conversations that Chidi and Eleanor had this week, I see Chidi and Eleanor having them, not Janet dressed up in their clothes. Really good stuff.

The Big Bang Theory: The VCR Illumination (12x10)

I felt like I was supposed to be emotional about some things in this episode, but it did not work for me.

Cons:

The minute we see that Sheldon's motivational speech to himself was recorded over, I knew that something about the football game was going to inspire Sheldon. Sure enough, that's exactly what we got. Sheldon's father gives a speech to his losing team at halftime, and it makes Sheldon realize that the game isn't over. Even if he's been losing so far, he still has time to make a comeback. I imagine that this scene might have been emotionally resonant for some people if a) they cared about these characters, and/or b) they watched Young Sheldon and felt a connection to Sheldon's father. Neither of those things apply to me, and ultimately the scene felt too emotionally manipulative.

Howard and Bernadette's plot thread had some promise, but I don't think it went quite far enough. If we're going to see Bernadette be a pageant mom, then I want to see her go all out.

Supernatural: Byzantium (14x08)

Oh boy. Cas... you're such a Winchester, man.

Cons:

There were some moments, especially early on in the episode, where the pacing and the framing of events felt off. It's a bit hard to describe, but the best example I have is when Sam leaves the bunker, and Dean and Cas rush after him and find him sitting on the ground, leaning against the impala. Dean rushes out and demands to know if Sam made a deal, but Sam says no, he was just trying to build a pyre. These few minutes of screen-time hit a bunch of emotional beats right in a row, and it's pretty confusing. Sam leaves the bunker looking determined and distraught. Dean is frantic with worry that Sam may have made a deal. Sam is crushed that he couldn't even build a pyre for Jack. But why? We see him struggling to fell a tree, and then he just gives up? The whole sequence of shots gave me whiplash, and it felt like a poor way of setting up a really important fact, that being that Sam and Dean are not willing to repeat old mistakes to save Jack, no matter how much they might miss him.

Is Heaven really just people being stuck in old happy memories, a timeless loop where they don't even realize they're dead? I know we've seen and heard versions of this before, but it doesn't feel like an appropriate reward for our heroes. If Sam and Dean die at the end of this show, and go to Heaven, that will feel very strange to me, given the setup we've seen.

Modern Family: Putting Down Roots (10x09)

A good episode! I'm pleasantly surprised with how much focus we are getting on Haley's pregnancy.

Cons:

Is it just me, or do Gloria and Jay seem like they hate each other a little bit? Their whole relationship is supposed to be a subversion of the trope where a rich older man marries a sexy younger woman, because Gloria and Jay are supposed to really love and treasure each other. But in this episode, and indeed often throughout recent seasons, we see Gloria being incredibly shrewish, and Jay being completely unreasonable right back at her. The fact that Jay fakes an apology to manipulate her, and that it then works, is really icky, especially since Jay takes a totally incorrect lesson from the experience.

I'll talk in a minute about Cam and Mitchell's plot thread, which I think was over all quite strong, but I can't help but notice that this is the first we're hearing of this plan to move back to the farm. Are they setting up an endgame for the show, here? Why was this introduced out of the clear blue sky?

Pros:

I did like seeing Dede's widower, Jerry. Although Jay's plot thread was very weak, the punchline at the end where he finally breaks and admits that their relationship wasn't always perfect, felt earned. I like that Jay and Jerry have this strange bond, and Jay is willing to commiserate alongside him.

Arrow: Unmasked (7x08)

Really? Is this what we're doing?

Cons:

I knew that there would be some tension and heartache between Oliver and Felicity, given everything that's happened in the seven months they were apart. But on their anniversary, they're having talks that sound like they're considering separation? Please. The fact is, both of them were annoying me with this argument. I was ready to acknowledge that they both had some stuff to work on, but Oliver's judgmental attitude was really unwarranted, and Felicity jumping to extremes feels like a retread of every breakup or uncertainty they've been through in the past. Felicity didn't murder someone in cold blood or anything. She armed herself with a gun for self defense, and shot to slow down, not kill. It feels like Oliver is valuing Felicity for what she can do for him, in terms of being a shining beacon of purity and light, instead of loving her for the complex, fully developed person that she is. That annoys me a great deal.

We see briefly that Diggle and Lyla have Diaz locked up and they're going to ask him for help with something. Just... can we not? Diaz is a boring villain. I'm ready to close that chapter for a while.

I don't hate the flash-forwards completely, but I still find the reticence a little frustrating. The fact that we don't know several basic facts about this future is really frustrating. We keep getting allusions to some terrible thing that happened, but we don't know what that is yet. We still don't know when/if/how Oliver died, we don't know where Thea or Diggle are... it's all beyond frustrating, because I want to connect to older William and to these other new/returning characters, but I can't get my head around what happened enough to really sink in to the story. Flash-forward stuff always suffers from trying to keep the truth a secret from the audience, but the characters know what happened, so it makes things feel a little stiff and unnatural that they never just come out and say it.

Doctor Who: It Takes You Away (11x09)

I liked many of the individual aspects of this episode, but felt that when taken as a whole, it got a little muddled.

Cons:

There are just so many subverted expectations in this episode, such that just as I started to understand the story, it turns out that it was about something else all along. It's about a monster in the woods? No. It's about a creepy cave world? No. It's about an alternate dimension? Yes, but also it's sentient, and this is a story about letting people go. None of these ideas are bad or uninteresting, but I got whiplash a little bit trying to figure out where the story was going. That can be a good thing on occasion, but I wish we could have picked one idea and spent more time on it.

There's a moment in the episode where the Doctor puts together the truth of this alternate world because of a story one of her grandmothers used to tell her. Later, when it came time for the Doctor to confront this sentient world, I was really hoping we would be presented with the Doctor's grandmother, or some other person from her past. Instead it was a really fake looking frog, with Grace's voice, which felt totally random and disconnected to the Doctor herself. Graham and Erik were both confronted with people they loved and missed, so why didn't this entity do the same for the Doctor? I feel like this was a real missed opportunity to add some nuance and backstory to this iteration of the Doctor.

Outlander: Savages (4x05)

I'm deceased because Murtagh.

Cons:

I get that Claire and Jamie are our protagonists, and that the Cherokee characters are obviously unfamiliar and strange to them, so in that sense it makes sense why the story frames them as "other." But this week's story features a real tragedy involving a family of German settlers crossing paths with some Cherokee people, and in the end the whole situation is lose-lose. While watching the final scene, where we see a man who has lost his children and grandchild get shot down by a distant and unseen Cherokee, it occurred to me that we're supposed to view this story as a tragedy for all involved. And, I mean, sure. But I feel like even when Claire acknowledges that the Cherokee are more in the right, we're still putting these two groups of people on equal footing, and ignoring the fact that every white person on this land, including Claire and Jamie, are thieves. I don't mean to be harsh, here, but the situations are not equal. The German settlers are more wrong than the Cherokee, even if they both do bad things.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I Will Help You (4x07)

Guess what? I liked this episode.

Cons:

There were great things about the songs this week, for sure. I liked Naomi's song, I liked the joke start to a song that Darryl and Josh had, and I liked Naomi and Elayne Boosler's camp song. All that said, though, this season has not delivered with quite as many winning songs as seasons past. In all of the first three seasons, I can only think of a handful of songs that didn't interest me enough to go back to several re-listens. This season, there are already quite a few that I thought were just... fine, but not really worth repeating. I think this is a product of the longer episode order. Maybe they only have the budget for one full production number per episode.

I've seen another reviewer complain about this in the past, and it's always bothered me a little bit too, so I thought I'd say something: everybody being on Josh's case about moving out of Hector's mom's house feels a little strange to me. Clearly their relationship is meant to be comedic and inappropriate, but whenever the rest of the gang starts telling him to move out, I always think about the money question. Nobody ever seems to put together the idea that Josh might not be able to afford a change in circumstance. That feels like an odd misstep on this show, and it highlights the degree to which money is not really examined as a moving force in people's lives. Sure, we all know Nathaniel is rich and he is judged for that because it enhances his privilege. But other than the necessity of having roommates as adults, we don't see the characters ever struggling or worrying about paying the bills. Remember when Rebecca was totally broke? Well, since then, she hasn't exactly been bringing in a steady income, and yet she seems to have no trouble staying afloat.

Supernatural: Unhuman Nature (14x07)

I kind of can't believe this was a Buckleming episode. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but I didn't have the problems with it that I usually have when those two pen an episode.

Cons:

Nick's subplot isn't the worst thing in the world, but the fact remains that I'm much less interested in him than I am in the main story. It would have been more interesting, albeit a bit obvious, if Nick had killed his own family, but now we see that he was manipulated by Lucifer into saying "yes," because demons possessed someone and slaughtered his wife and child. It looks like Lucifer's influence on him over time has poisoned his soul and made him evil? I don't know. If this is how Lucifer comes back, then it's a little lame, and it's happening too fast. I'm of two minds, because I don't want a ton of episodes about Nick, but I also don't like how the evil within him is apparently already taking hold. Kind of lame.

I love the stuff with Jack and Dean. I really do. But does it rub anyone else the wrong way that the focus is so much on their relationship? This is yet another example of how every non-Winchester character seems to form a closer bond with Dean than with Sam. Initially, Sam was the one who believed in Jack and wanted to help him. Why isn't he invited along on this father-son bonding trip? Or why don't we at least see a moment where Jack is being sentimental and thankful to Sam and Cas, too? Why just Dean? And for that matter, didn't Mary and Jack get really close when they spent all that time together in the other dimension? Did nobody think to give her a call?

Modern Family: Kids These Days (10x08)

I liked the Haley story, and I liked Phil and Mitchell's story. This still wasn't a great episode though.

Cons:

I really hate it when old people do their "hot takes" on millennial and gen-z culture, focusing on how we're all too sensitive or whatever. I hate it not because it hurts my poor millennial feelings, but because it traps me. If I want to discuss some honest problems with the portrayal of "PC culture" in this episode, then anyone reading this is going to be able to say "Gotcha! Were you triggered by this episode's wildly inaccurate use of the word 'triggered'?" And no, I wasn't triggered. I was annoyed, though. I thought the point was going to be that Cam and Jay learned not to be jerks, but instead the point was if you pander to young people, you can trick them into thinking you're actually an emotionally intelligent person, while making fun of them behind their backs. So... that's not great.

The worst example of this was that Manny is shown with a group of people who all introduce themselves and provide their pronouns. This is played entirely for laughs. Like... maybe this is a revolutionary idea to some people, but you don't have to be a jerk about things. And if saying my pronouns as a cisgendered woman helps make even one person feel more comfortable about expressing their gender, then... why shouldn't I want to do that? I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. Also, there's the moment when the school principal says that you don't get as much mileage out of being gay anymore, in terms of representation/diversity. In a better episode, this would have been a chance for Cam to acknowledge his privilege as a white cisgendered man, who faces adversity because of his sexuality but still has privilege. But no. It's just another joke.

Arrow: The Slabside Redemption (7x07)

Reunited and it feels so good!

Cons:

I really liked the choice to focus the whole story in the prison, but one consequence of that choice was that the pacing felt a little sluggish at times. Ricardo Diaz has never been one of this show's better villains. Compared to Slade, or Adrian Chase, or Damien, he just feels like a generic baddie. So an episode that relies on his charisma, that has a ton of speeches from him, is bound to feel a little bit lackluster at moments. This episode was best when Diaz wasn't onscreen, which does indicate a pretty significant problem.

Everyone has been freaking out about the Olicity reunion, and, like, same. But Diggle definitely disappeared when they did a pan out at the end. That is just straight up an error from the director or editor or someone, and it was really blatant and made me laugh.

Doctor Who: The Witchfinders (11x08)

Woah. This was pretty darn chilling. I really liked this episode.

Cons:

Not much to speak of, although I did think the climax was a little rushed. I was really enjoying all of the buildup, and then suddenly, after the Doctor survives her dunking, we're jumping from revelation to revelation and then it was all over before I really had a chance to digest a lot of this material. So maybe the final few minutes could have been paced a little better.

Pros:

King James I was hilarious and great and awesome. I loved his totally obvious and uncomfortable crush on Ryan, minus the unfortunate racism in calling him "Nubian." It was hilarious when James asked him to come be his protector, and Ryan had to awkwardly refuse. Poor kid does not realize what just went down. I imagine meeting King James would be a bit startling and overwhelming!

The Walking Dead: Evolution (9x08)

I'm experiencing an emotion, and that emotion is frustration. I'm annoyed. Yep. Just... annoyed.

Cons:

Talking Walkers would have been actually interesting! Something new, something unexpected! But nope! Of course not. It's just people wearing masks. I'm incredibly disappointed by that. What a letdown, after all that buildup.

We still don't know exactly what went down between Hilltop and Alexandria, and now we're headed into a mid-season hiatus. This is lazy storytelling, people! The characters all allude to something that happened, that we're piecing together bits here and there. Clearly Michonne's reception at Hilltop is chilly. Clearly there was a huge falling out between her and Maggie. But we still don't have answers, and it's insulting and boring. The fact that we still don't have all of the information just means that whatever it is, it's going to fail to live up to the inflated expectations.

Outlander: Common Ground (4x04)

Once again, and to my considerable shock, I found myself more gripped by the 20th century material than the 18th century material, even though there wasn't much of it.

Cons:

I don't feel equipped to speak on how the representation of the Cherokee went in this episode. Clearly a lot of research went into it, and I know they consulted people so that their portrayal would be accurate in terms of language, dress, etc. That's great. Just as an outside observer, though, I do note that our first glimpse of the Native Americans in this show is extremely... othering. They appear in a creepy, sinister fashion, with stoic faces. Jamie and Claire are clearly very scared of them. Fair enough. People are afraid of what they don't understand. But at the end of the episode, Jamie encounters a member of the tribe who speaks perfect English, as the truth of the "bear" that has been hurting people comes out. If the Cherokee were trying to warn these newcomers of danger, why not bring along the English-speaking guy to explain the situation? It comes across very strange to me, like the scene was constructed just so the natives could at first appear to be spooky and otherworldly.

Also... just... the scene from the book has Jamie wrestling with an actual bear, and here we have a guy dressed as a bear. I'm not sure which is more silly. I think the scene would have been kind of too much for TV either way. There are some things that just don't work as well in adaptation, unfortunately.

Arrow: Due Process (7x06)

My first review of Arrow! I have been binge watching this show hard over the past few months. It is the perfect mix of angst and shallowness for me. Not to say that the show is shallow, but what I mean is, I needed something "dark and gritty" that didn't feel like real life, and this hit the mark. So, what did I think of this episode?

Cons:

Oliver's attitude towards Laurel was a little bit annoying. It was somewhat understandable, sure, but I feel like the whole thing could have been avoided so easily if Felicity would just go visit Oliver and tell him the game plan. It seemed like a silly little diversion of the plot to have Oliver refuse to work with Laurel at first.

The flash-forwards are... well, I don't hate them. I really don't. I'm intrigued by older William and I'm certainly thrilled to see Roy, who has been one of my favorite characters since the moment he appeared onscreen. But this whole business of Felicity secluding herself, and now apparently she's dead, and she was trying to do a city-wide "undertaking" type thing, and she abandoned William? Like, what? I know that there's more going on here than we're being told, but the fact that I'm meant to believe any of this crap is a little insulting to my intelligence. Also, the narrative is bumping up against logic when it comes to the mysteries they are withholding. Wouldn't Roy or William ask about Rene or Curtis? Or Diggle? And where's Oliver? Where's Thea? Laurel? We're being kept in the dark as an audience about these characters, but it's a little forced.

Doctor Who: Kerblam! (11x07)

This was a great episode! Take that, Jeff Bezos!

Cons:

The Doctor has this great moment where she says that the evil isn't in technology - it's in the people who exploit the technology and the systems therein. That's what hurts people. I loved that. Very true. Unfortunately, for all that this episode was clearly poking at the inhumanity of mega-corporations like Amazon, I didn't really get a sense of what had happened to this society as a result. We're told that most of the world's jobs are automated now. But are people living in poverty? The people with jobs are grateful to have them. But if most of the world is unemployed, are we in a total poverty hellscape, or is there socialized welfare, or what? I wanted a few more glimpses as to what the outside world looked like, so I could understand the stakes.

Pros:

Honestly, though, the above complaint is really just me wanting a bit more of what we already got. This episode was golden. The take-down of capitalism is lovely, of course, but there's so much more to the episode than just that.

The Walking Dead: Stradivarius (9x07)

This episode had two scenes in it that I loved so much that if the rest of the episode had sucked, I wouldn't have noticed. Let's take a look.

Cons:

The new gang... they're fine. I'm not convinced by the long talk about how art is what separates us from the animals. Each of these characters has one or two defining traits. There's the Deaf argumentative one, the Deaf one's sarcastic sister, the one who loves music, the one who got injured who seems to be a peacekeeper, and the hard-edged leader chick. I don't hate them, but I'm having a hard time finding it in me to care much about what happens to them. We already have this big ensemble cast with lots of characters who get hardly any screen-time. Adding more to the batch isn't going to help things.

I am now reluctantly intrigued about the whole Hilltop situation, especially now that we've seen that things there are going smoothly, minus Maggie. She is with Georgie, apparently, and she took her son with her. While this is all very interesting, I find it a little bit stupid that Michonne has cut off all ties to Hilltop and the Kingdom. Clearly the people involved don't want that. You've got people from Alexandria and Hilltop sneaking off for secret picnics and sparring together, messages passing through the grapevine, and Michonne is being kept in the dark about all of this because of something we still don't know about. I want answers! Michonne's refusal to compromise seems stupid. Maybe it'll make sense once we know more.

Outlander: The False Bride (4x03)

I wasn't the biggest fan of this episode, although it's not like it was horrible or anything...

Cons:

Going in, I thought most of my complaints were going to be about Roger and Bree's side of the episode, but I was actually a little bit more interested in them than I was the Claire and Jamie stuff. This episode features the Frasers going out into the wilderness. Ian has finally convinced his uncle to let him stay in America, and very quickly Ian splits off with new character John Quincy Meyers to trade with some natives. Jamie and Claire are in the woods during a storm, they get separated, Claire has a weird experience with a ghost, and then the two decide at the episode's end that they will found Fraser's Ridge together, instead of settling in a town.

There were plenty of good things here, but Claire's ghost experience read very cheesy to me. Just the contrivance of them getting separated, and Claire getting thrown from her horse, and all of that. And they discuss their future and what will be safest and best, which I liked, but Jamie's decision at the episode's end still feels a tad rushed, for all that.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I See You (4x06)

Um guess what? This episode was very good. Shocking, I know.

Cons:

Not really, no. Maybe there's a little bit of a sense that this episode could have been plopped down anywhere in the season? Obviously there's moments of growth, but this episode doesn't really comment on Paula's son leaving, or Heather getting ready to move, or Darryl's kinda-sorta-second-breakup with White Josh. It's like this episode exists in a bubble. I'm not going to say that this is a horrible thing, by any means. Just something to point out.

Also, I miss when we had two full-blown musical numbers (at least) in every episode. I get the sense that the longer season means there's less money to produce music for each episode. We only really get one song in this episode, plus another little one right at the end. Both are great, but I want even MORE!

Grey's Anatomy: Blowin' In The Wind (15x08)

I am annnnnnoyed. But also some of this I did like.

Cons:

What is wrong with Teddy? Serious question. What is wrong with her? She drops the news that she's pregnant with Owen's baby while they are in surgery together with lots of witnesses. It's pointless and dumb and overly dramatic. I actually like the gimmick of everyone getting caught in awkward elevator groups, because it is such an iconic Grey's thing. But Amelia, Owen, and Teddy in an elevator with a patient, with that news just being dropped? It's exactly the dumb soap opera crap that I was afraid of.

I know we didn't focus on it a lot this week, but I just want to remind everyone that Catherine having a tumor is dumb. And Richard now thinks that Catherine and Koracick are having an affair, so that's nice and stupid.

The Good Place: Don't Let the Good Life Pass You By (3x09)

This is going to probably sound stupid to some people reading this, but it has only just occurred to me that we've never seen the actual Good Place. I'm intrigued as to what's in store.

Cons:

Michael is supposed to be something of an all-knowing demon, so it bothers me that he didn't point out what seems like a pretty clear logical fallacy. The reason the soul squad is doomed to the Bad Place is because they know the truth about the afterlife. Any good they might do, they're ultimately doing for selfish reasons. But doesn't that also hold true for Doug Forcett? He straight up admits that all the good he's doing, he's doing so he gets the points to make it to the Good Place. Doesn't that mean his motivations are impure? Obviously this episode is doing a lot to make us see how messed up the points system is, but even so... shouldn't Michael or Janet have noticed this fallacy?

Pros:

Whatever. I trust the show to know what's going on, even if Michael missed it. And the introduction of Doug Forcett, the man who we learned about in the pilot of this show, was nothing short of genius. Once again, The Good Place has decided to throw out a big chunk of its premise and refresh itself. What Doug is doing, even if it is in service of getting the most points, is pretty objectively crazy. He is causing himself such pain in order to do good in the world. Even counter-productive good, like giving his shoe to a sociopath teenager because it "makes the kid happy." That's nonsense! And Michael, despite what he wanted to believe about Doug being the ultimate blueprint to a good human life, is forced to admit fairly quickly that the system doesn't make any sense.

The Big Bang Theory: The Citation Negation (12x09)

I don't think that's how any of this research paper stuff works. But okay whatever.

Cons:

Um. You're telling me that there's a paper disproving Sheldon and Amy's big theory, and they just didn't find it? If some Russian people disproved something, there would have been multiple papers and studies about it, and Sheldon and Amy would have found the original paper cited in other papers. Plus, what is this business about "tracking down citations" in the library? Where did they get the papers in the first place? If it was on JSTOR or some other online database, the citation would have been right there. I don't have a PhD, but this did not feel true to life. Not that it has to, but whatever. It bothered me for some reason.

Also, I was a little bummed they didn't do more with Penny's video game savvy. In the past, we've seen her fall way down the rabbit hole of video gaming, so I wish we could have gotten a hint of that obsessive Penny again.

Supernatural: Optimism (14x06)

I loved this episode. It was excellent. It was also one of the few lighthearted C-plot episodes where Sam and Dean are fully separated for the whole hour, which gave each of them a chance to work off of other characters in our ensemble cast.

Cons:

We know where Mary and Bobby are, we can assume that Cas and the myriad others are off on hunts, but it still felt odd to see the bunker so entirely empty when Dean showed up. Is everyone out on a hunt at the same time? That doesn't seem like a smart way to run things, Sam. I get that this season is set up in such a way that not every episode has the budget for a larger cast, but it felt odd not to have a few random folks walking by in the background.

Pros:

Charlie and Sam's little subplot was hilarious. Most of the episode is just the two of them running surveillance in a car, but we do get to see them defeat the weird fly monster in a brief scene towards the end. I loved the absurdist comedy of the creature they were hunting. Sometimes it's nice to show that not every case turns in to a big, complicated, dangerous mystery. Sometimes it's just some boring surveillance and a quick, yet still creative, dispatch of the monster.

The Walking Dead: Who Are You Now? (9x06)

I'm conflicted. I'm not sure. I'm willing to see where this goes.

Cons:

There are a few relationships that got some focus here that I am just... not interested in. First of all, we learn that in the six years since we last saw these characters, Rosita and Gabriel have become an item. And Eugene is (still) pining over Rosita. Rosita and Gabriel? That feels almost as random and forced as Sasha and Abraham. What the heck? I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get on board with this one. Also, we see that Carol and Ezekiel got married and are ruling as king and queen. Sort of. I will admit that I liked them a bit more this week than I usually do, but even so, their chemistry just seems nonexistent to me. It doesn't help that in the two seconds we get of Daryl in this episode, I still feel a much greater chemistry and pull between him and Carol than I ever have with Ezekiel. This might be an unfixable problem, unfortunately.

Judith isn't doing it for me. The kid is cute, and it's not the most insufferable child performance I've ever seen, or anything, but it's just a little bit too much. She's a bad-ass, but she's still a kid, and she says all these insightful things that make her seem distinctly unlike an actual human child. There's also Henry, who with the time jump is now a young adult. He's just as bland as he's ever been, and using him as the emotional center of Carol's character just isn't working.

Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab (11x06)

This episode was maybe a tiny bit underwhelming in some aspects, but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Cons:

The Doctor isn't really getting a chance to stretch her wings. Jodie Whittaker is incredible, but thus far she hasn't had a lot of deep material to really dig herself into. Of all the revival Doctors, I feel I understand her the least as a person so far. I'm not giving up hope, though - she's electrifying in the role, and the second we get a story that has personal stakes for her instead of for one of the companions, I'm absolutely sure everything will snap into place.

This episode was Yaz-centric, something that we badly needed. And yet even so, we focused so much on her family that I still feel like we didn't get to see a ton about her own thoughts and feelings and her own every-day life. I liked that we got more Yaz this week, and it certainly helped. But I still need even more of her. The two male companions are just much more developed than Yaz and the Doctor at this point, and I hope that changes really soon.

Outlander: Do No Harm (4x02)

I honestly had some pretty big issues with this episode, although I also admit that this type of story is very difficult to tell, and I'm not sure I have the answers as to how to tell it better.

Cons:

Okay. Outlander needs to confront the realities of slavery to tell the story it's trying to tell. I'm not sure the best way to go about that, but I am sure that this episode falls short of that goal. First of all, this story screams "white savior" to me. There are a few moments, that I will address below, that were actually pretty good, but the overall theme here is that Claire is disgusted with slavery and she decides to brashly interfere to save a young man who was sentenced to death for attacking a white overseer. Sure, her instinct to help is totally warranted and makes sense. But Claire's overblown compassion and concern for Rufus and for the other slaves is the focus of the episode, while the actual slave characters have virtually no say in what happens to them, whether Jocasta or Claire is the one pulling the strings.

Also, Jocasta is a complicated character, sure, but the show doesn't go quite far enough in condemning her for being a slave owner. They can't be sympathetic to someone who owns 152 people, and yet here they're trying to play some sort of middle ground. Jocasta doesn't separate families! Jocasta views some of her slaves as friends! Even Claire standing up to her isn't enough to reach equilibrium, here. Jamie, for his part, feels like he's just anti-slavery because Claire is. He has some generic sort of statements about how he doesn't like it either, but mostly he's just riding on Claire's coattails here.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I'm So Happy For You (4x05)

You know another thing that's excellent about this show? It's relatable as fuck.

Cons:

I mean... I'm bummed about Heather and Valencia? I assume they're not being written out of the show, but I also assume we'll be seeing less of them, and of Hector, and that is a big dang bummer.

Pros:

Let's start with White Josh and Darryl. The two have been spending a ton of time together, taking care of the baby and binge watching TV, but they have no plans to get back together. At the park, a bunch of people from Darryl's work, including Maia, Tim, and Rebecca, all converge on them and try to convince them to get back together. The two extricate themselves and continue on their way. But Darryl then realizes that White Josh is using their friendship as an excuse not to give other potential relationships a chance, so he pushes him out the door. It looks like WhiJo does have another prospective partner, a friend of his from the gym.

Grey's Anatomy: Anybody Have a Map? (15x07)

I. Am so. Annoyed.

Cons:

This episode is aggravating for about a thousand different reasons. Let's start with this one: Catherine Avery has a very aggressive and cancerous brain tumor.

Nope. No. Okay, look, I get that this show is a soap opera, and that stuff like this is bound to happen in such a story. But seriously? Another character with a crazy, unlikely, extremely rare brain tumor? I can't take the stupidness of this anymore! And Catherine is already a character I find to be occasionally annoying. Like, I want to root for her, and for everything she represents, but I always found her treatment of Richard to be worrisome, and her relationship with April always rubbed me the wrong way, and the complaints go on and on. And now we're going to have to deal with another annoying brain tumor story. I'm tired!!!

Okay. I liked some of the stuff that Richard dealt with in this episode. I liked his rage, and seeing how being without his sponsor has effected him. But the whole plot about the pregnant nurse who died felt completely unnecessary. Grey's Anatomy has a large ensemble cast, and we never spend any time at all with the nurses or any of the hospital staff other than the surgeons. This character is brand new, and they tried to shoehorn in this long history and friendship between her and Richard. It felt forced, in a big way. She's just the most witty, delightful, perfect nurse ever, and of course she and Richard are BFFs. And then she dies. Here's the thing: the end of this episode shows Richard freaking out, doing a great amount of property damage to a bar that was letting people turn in AA chips in exchange for shots. This moment is built out of his frustration and anger. His grief. And it all would have been so much more effective if it had just been about losing his sponsor, and the way he's been struggling lately. Instead, we introduce a random nurse, kill her, and make her be the emotional trigger for Richard. That's not earned. That's not effective.

The Good Place: The Worst Possible Use of Free Will (3x08)

Yay! Chidi and Eleanor!

Cons:

Uhhhhhh.... Hm. Nope.

Pros:

Okay. Let's start by briefly mentioning the end of this episode, where it appears that our villains have found a way to get to earth. It looks like the respite for our core group of characters might be coming to an end. I particularly loved the bit about Vicky coming out of the cocoon, having missed soooo much since she was put in there. I can't wait to see where this is going!

This episode focused entirely around Michael and Eleanor, as Michael reveals Eleanor's past memories to her to show her how she and Chidi fell in love. Eleanor is at first excited to discover that she has the capacity to love, but then gets caught up in a staunch belief in determinism. She becomes convinced that she was manipulated by external forces to fall in love with Chidi, and that free will is a lie. Michael has to convince her that she was constantly screwing up his plans, and that proves that she has free will. Her denying of it now is just a coping mechanism, because she's afraid of being vulnerable.

The Big Bang Theory: The Consummation Deviation (12x08)

I chuckled a few times, so that's a good sign.

Cons:

Jokes about Penny and Leonard's sex life are just not all that funny. They're just playing in to all the basic stereotypes about sitcom marriages, where a long suffering hot girl ends up with a doof.

Pros:

I really like Raj and Anu. This has been the biggest surprise for me of the season. Raj has always been really annoying to me when it came to his relationships to women, but seeing him try to build something real out of his foundation with Anu has been really compelling. I liked the brief callback to the earlier seasons, when Raj couldn't talk around women unless he had a drink. It was a stark reminder of one of the show's early iconic elements, but it didn't go on too long. He and Anu had a real talk about things, and spent all night just sharing and getting to know one another. Then... morning shower sex, so it looks like things are working out pretty good for the two of them.

Supernatural: Nightmare Logic (14x05)

I'm really liking this whole Sam-as-leader thing they've got going on this season.

Cons:

Bobby having a son feels a little... sloppy? Lazy? Unearned? I don't know. I appreciate the impulse to differentiate this Bobby from the one we've known before, and giving him a son is certainly one way to do that. But it's hard to connect with this guy. He doesn't have the relationship with Sam and Dean that drew us to his character in the first place, and his romance with Mary is a little bit lackluster as well. It's not painfully bad or anything... it's just kind of boring.

The djinn are really cool in Supernatural's lore, but this example didn't have the cool psychological insights that we usually get with them. We didn't confront Sam or Dean's deep fears or wants. Bobby's son was really the only new insight that we got, and that wasn't all that interesting.

Pros:

But this was a really good episode. I'm in love with how hard Sam is working, and how good he's doing as a leader. He has all of these cool systems in place. He teaches classes, has hunters going out with cameras to record their hunts, has regular check-ins and training protocols, and it's all just super adorable. Of course, the guy is getting next to no sleep, which isn't great, but he's still doing so well. This show is going to last as long as Jared and Jensen want it to, essentially, but I really think we've finally found the thing that builds to Sam's endgame. He's an amazing hunter, but he's also a brilliant strategist and he's deeply entrenched in the research and organizational side of things. He's taking what Bobby used to do and pushing it so much further, and I love it.

Modern Family: Did the Chicken Cross the Road? (10x07)

I liked this episode for the most part, although one plot thread was kind of insufferable.

Cons:

Unfortunately, it's starting to become a regular thing with Modern Family, but once again I did not like Jay and Gloria's plot thread. It was just the two of them bickering at Joe's soccer game, and then Joe tricking them into eating his vegetables. I feel like one idea didn't lead naturally to the other, and along the way there wasn't anything particularly funny or meaningful. Sometimes the material with Jay and Gloria makes me question their marriage in a way I don't think I'm meant to.

Pros:

Mitchell and Cam's plot thread was some more harmless fun. Cam worries he's lost his country roots, so he decides to get a chicken. Turns out, he hates the chicken, and Mitchell loves it, but neither can admit it because they were both so firm on their positions. Cam gets rid of the chicken and tries to blame it on a raccoon. Eventually, the truth comes out, and the husbands decide to find an activity that will satisfy the hints of country in Mitchell, and the hints of urban in Cam. See, this was just... cute. Nothing serious, lots of good slapstick, a nice little punchline. Nothing to write home about, but I had a good time.

Doctor Who: The Tsuranga Conundrum (11x05)

Yeah, this was another good one!

Cons:

I wanted more from the android character who was loyal to the captain pilot lady. He could have been cut from the episode without much effect, and I felt like he was slightly out of place. In the end, they basically say that he is going to be shut down because his charge is dead. That's... dark? Does this dude have feelings? It seems like it! I feel like this concept needed its own episode, instead of just being a small part of this larger plot.

I really admire all of the character work they're doing with Graham and Ryan, but I still feel like Yaz is getting the short end. I don't know much about her, and I really want to! This could have been an opportunity to have her be involved in the subplot, but instead once again it was about the two fellas. On a larger note, I will say that I like having a group of people in the TARDIS, that's quite fun, but I sort of miss the special bond between Doctor and companion, where it's just the two of them against the world. I want to see the Doctor form that indescribable bond with someone. Maybe it could be Yaz. Maybe these adventures help Ryan and Graham to come together as a family, but Yaz is the one who connects the strongest with the Doctor? I'd be down for that! But we actually need to get started if we want that to be the result!

The Walking Dead: What Comes After (9x05)

Oh boy. That happened.

Cons:

I'm not necessarily complaining about the content of Rick's hallucinations. Obviously it was sweet to see him talk with Shane, Hershel, Sasha... that's all great. But there are two problems. One, why those people? Was it just about who they could get to come and film in the episode? Why Shane, and not Lori? Why Sasha, and not Glenn? Why no Carl? It just felt odd that we'd get these little moments, and they weren't necessarily the the ones that you would think would be Rick's most meaningful relationships. The second problem is... it's predictable. We all knew this was Rick's last episode, and while I'm pleased with the twist they did on that, we still fall back on the predictable aspect of having Rick remember his past and slowly come to terms with his demise. Like I said last week, it would be nice if we could have something shocking every once in a while.

Specifically, I question the moment with Sasha. I don't really recall Sasha and Rick being all that close? It felt odd that she'd pop up to be his... spirit guide? Or whatever? Of all the little hallucination moments, that one just didn't feel appropriate or earned to me.

Outlander: America the Beautiful (4x01)

We're back! I'm getting ready to do a re-read of the Outlander books pretty soon, so I was excited to warm myself up for that by watching the show again. Drums of Autumn begins the Frasers' time in America. This is the stuff I love from the books. I like the first three novels a lot, don't get me wrong, but the stuff leading up to and through the revolution is what I live for!

Cons:

The final scene of this episode is a horrific attack, which takes place silently, while "America the Beautiful" plays over it. It was... a little bit too on-the-nose for my taste. I know they've employed similar stylistic choices in the past, playing an anachronistic song over a scene in the eighteenth century, but for whatever reason, this time it really took me out of the moment. Thankfully, the acting and blocking of the scene was still able to get the intensity through, despite the misstep with the music.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I'm Making Up for Lost Time (4x04)

This is probably the weakest installment of the season so far, but with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, even the lesser episodes are still miles ahead of most of what you see on network TV. Let's dive in!

Cons:

I found Nathaniel's attempts to get Rebecca back to be kind of lackluster and stupid. He steals Rebecca's diary and makes a grand speech that he steals from it, and Rebecca is understandably unimpressed. I think one of the things this season is going to focus on, when it comes to Nathaniel, is that he has some personal growth he needs to take care of as well. I get that, and yet at the same time I'm feeling myself less than interested in watching him mess stuff up so badly. I guess I'm just wishing for more with him. I want him and Rebecca to be together, selfishly, but more than that, I just want them both to be okay, as separate human beings.

I feel a little cheated in the song department, because little Tucker is the only one who gets a song. The second "song" of the episode is a reprise of "One Indescribable Instant," which is well performed, again by Tucker, but not a fun new number to bop along with. Hopefully there are two full numbers in next week's installment!

Grey's Anatomy: Flowers Grow Out of My Grave (15x06)

Aww. Crappy CGI notwithstanding, it was fun to see some of the dead characters from the show's past make an appearance.

Cons:

So, we did get further progress on the Schmidt and Nico situation, but it felt familiar to me. In a bad way. Basically, they kiss, and then Nico finds out that Schmidt has never been with a man before, and he says that he can't teach Schmidt how to do this. Isn't this exactly how Callie and Arizona started? Can we not just have a normal romance between these two? That was a little disappointing, although the elevator kiss was pretty adorable.

Say it with me, kids: the love triangle sucks. This week was focused on Betty, who has gone missing, but we still had to spend an annoying amount of time focusing on Teddy deciding whether or not to tell Owen she's pregnant. And as the episode ends, Teddy decides not to tell, because he just seems so happy with baby Leo and his new family. Ugh. Please. Again? How long are we going to drag this out?

The Good Place: A Fractured Inheritance (3x07)

This show!!!! I cannot!!!

Cons:

I literally cannot think of anything to complain about. I was going to say that I miss seeing stuff in the afterlife, but to be honest, I think it's great that we're not seeing that. It makes perfect sense to create some distance from that part of the story, at least for the time being.

Pros:

I like how thematic this episode was - after last week with Jason's dad, this week we see the two ladies both exploring very contentious familial relationships. This connects the two plot threads, while also giving different character combinations a chance to work off of one another. Eleanor and Michael spend the episode together, Tahani and Chidi do as well, and Jason and Janet provide good subplot humor.

The Big Bang Theory: The Grant Allocation Derivation (12x07)

This was a cute idea for an episode, actually. I don't have much bad to say about either plot thread.

Cons:

I like that Howard knew that Bernadette was in the playhouse the whole time, but I didn't like the one-off joke about life insurance. It would have been sweeter if he didn't have an excuse like that. Just a small thing, but I think it would have made the moment stronger.

Pros:

I love Bernadette taking time for herself, and then Penny and Amy getting roped in. Particularly funny was Amy's sense for when she's being left out. She's so thrilled to be part of the secret club, and her excitement was kind of infectious. The easy-bake quesadilla was hilarious. I also liked what Amy said about Sheldon being like a dog. He doesn't really think about her when she's not around, but he's always so happy when she shows up! Ha!

Supernatural: Mint Condition (14x04)

A simple C-plot episode with lots of great brotherly moments. I'm pretty pleased.

Cons:

Just some of the same complaints I often have about this show and its horrible exposition. There's a moment when Sam comes in to Dean's room, and Dean rattles off a summary of the main plots - Cas is off showing Jack the ropes, they have no leads on Michael, the weapon is gone with Dark!Kaia. It's a blatant info-dump and it's clumsy.

I saw the entire internet complaining about one other thing, and while I wanted to be unique, I have to admit that it bothered me too. Throughout the whole episode, Sam expresses his dislike for Halloween. In the end, Dean finally gets him to fess up the reason: when he was in the 6th grade, he threw up on his crush at a Halloween party. Okay... no. Do you remember the Season Three Christmas episode, where Dean gets on Sam about hating Christmas? Turns out, Sam's dislike for the holiday is tied up in unhappy childhood memories, and on ruminating that it's going to be Dean's last Christmas before getting dragged to Hell. That was a meaningful answer to the question, one that elevated the themes of the season and added insight to the characters. Here, it's a one-note joke answer, after a whole episode of buildup. And you know what? There were several better answers just ready for the taking! Sam could have expanded a bit more on how their lives are constantly scary, and how he maybe resents the care-free attitudes of those who don't know the truth. Or, even better, the dude could have brought up Jessica, who Sam saw alive for the last time on Halloween, right before Dean whisked him away to look for John in the pilot! Two answers, either of which would have added something to the story. Instead, it's just a weird one-off? This seemed really out of place to me.

Modern Family: On the Same Paige (10x06)

This episode had a few really lackluster moments, but it did have some good stuff to balance that out!

Cons:

Cam and Mitchell are the masters of physical comedy in this show, but sometimes my brain doesn't accept the ridiculousness, and this story was an example of that. Cam points out that Mitchell is afraid to live his life out loud, and Mitchell realizes that Cam is right, so he decides to put on a bee costume and join in with the charity performance at Lily's school that all the other dads are putting on. This all leads to Mitchell flying across the stage and accidentally knocking over a memorial picture of a recently deceased lunch lady. It was campy, and it added nothing to my understanding of these characters. That would be fine, but it also didn't really make me laugh, so that seems like a bit of a problem.

Similarly, Gloria and Jay's story didn't really ever take off for me. Jay has been talking with a mom at Joe's school, and Mitchell and Cam get him paranoid that he has been accidentally flirting with her. Gloria shows up at the school to monitor Joe, who keeps taking off the eye-patch that he's wearing to correct a lazy eye. Jay thinks Gloria is mistrustful of him. This all culminates as Joe and Jay both confess their misdeeds. Gloria thinks nothing of Jay's friendship, and is relieved that Joe is weak like his father and confesses his wrongdoings instead of lying with no sense of remorse like Gloria's side of the family.

Doctor Who: Arachnids in the UK (11x04)

This was a fun and standard episode. After last week's incredible outing, there was no way that any followup could maintain that level of quality. This episode didn't, but it was still pretty fun.

Cons:

This would have been a great opportunity to get to know Yaz a little better, and while it was nice to meet her family, I still feel like she's underdeveloped compared to Ryan and Graham. The emotional beats of this episode were still focused on Ryan and Graham, even though it was Yaz's family that was getting pulled in to the adventure. I hope we get a chance to dig in deeper with her and her family.

The villain, Robertson, is a little too on-the-nose for me. Sure, the environmental message of the episode is all well and good, but when the villain is cartoonish, and they even go so far as to have him running for president against Trump, the whole thing gets a little bit too sledge-hammer-y for my taste. Doctor Who has never been known for being subtle, but even so... come on. The part where he talked about how normal humans pick up guns and shoot things? Yeah, we get it. America is the worst.

The Walking Dead: The Obliged (9x04)

Last week's episode added real tension and explored the complexities of various political and moral arguments. This week's episode was... a little bit disappointing.

Cons:

We're back to the unnecessary speechifying. Everybody talks for way too long and sounds way too sage and... scripted. Negan and Michonne especially. I wish that the conversations on this show would flow more naturally, but for whatever reason, it seems like the writers are too eager to try their hand at purple prose.

Also, last week made it seem like Maggie and Daryl were off to murder Negan immediately, but instead we have yet another example of The Walking Dead pulling back on its promises and doing something less exciting. If we're doing this thing, let's just do this thing, then. Instead it's Rick and Daryl talking about it while stuck in a hole, it's Michonne and Negan having long talks back at Alexandria, it's more waiting around.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I'm On My Own Path (4x03)

Once again, great. I feel like there's no way I can think of new things to say about this show at this point. It's just all so good.

Cons:

Not specifically about this episode, no. But I suppose I'm impatient for more screen time from certain characters. I'm glad Heather and Hector get so much focus, and I love Josh's story-line, but we haven't even seen Paula's husband and kids this season yet, and White Josh was absent once more! I'm just being a nag. I know we'll get to see everyone soon enough.

Pros:

Okay. Let's start with the main story - Rebecca goes back to work, but then has a bit of a crisis and decides instead to work at a pretzel shop in the lobby of the building, owned by another former Whitefeather employee - Jim. This is all kinds of silliness, and we follow Rebecca as she wrestles between being a lawyer, something she's trained for and knows she's good at, but doesn't enjoy, and being an employee at a pretzel stand. In the end, she lands somewhere slightly different. She'll open her own pretzel stand, and do her own thing. It's silly, but it's poignant, and it feels right for Rebecca in this moment.

The Good Place: The Ballad of Donkey Doug (3x06)

This. Show. You. Guys.

Cons:

Okay. This isn't a big complaint, but I will say that Jason's brand of comedy is perfect in small doses. A full episode of him and his stupid friend and stupid father was... maybe a little much? It wasn't enough to actually annoy me or turn me off of this episode, but I feel like if there were a second episode focused on Jason in the near future, I'd be over it pretty quickly.

Also, this episode didn't have enough Janet comedy. And if that's the last we see of Simone, I'll be crushed. She is such a fun character.

Pros:

I don't want to sound too critical of Jason's story, though, because there were still a ton of laughs. Donkey Doug, a character Jason has told tons of stories about throughout the show, is apparently his father. The reveal of this information is hilarious, and the laughs don't stop there. I love all of the dumb humor, and the culmination in the oddly sweet moment when Jason's father helps him escape from the police. The interesting thing is, as stupid as Jason is, he actually comes across a little bit more grounded and reasonable when placed next to Pillboi and Donkey Doug. The moment when Donkey Doug says that one day, Jason will perform this same sacrifice for his son, Jason has the awareness to say "I hope not..." And his instincts are ultimately benevolent. He wants to save Pillboi's soul.

Grey's Anatomy: Everyday Angel (15x05)

Ehhhh this episode really annoyed meeee.

Cons:

Meredith and Teddy spend the episode talking about the whole pregnancy situation. Meredith takes the day off of work to talk to Teddy about this stupid love triangle business. Spending a whole plot thread in Meredith's house while she bakes for Zola's bake sale just made me realize all the more how much I don't care about the Amelia/Teddy/Owen thing. I just super don't care. Ugh. Teddy is a cool character, one that I used to like back in the day. Now she spends all her time griping about her undying love for Owen, and I just feel totally uninterested.

We see Amelia and Owen being all happy and parent-like, monitoring Betty at school because they're worried about her, playing with baby Leo in the car. Honestly, if you took these scenes in isolation, they weren't bad at all. In fact, I was actually kind of warming up to this weird little family unit. Or, I would be, if not for the looming disaster of Teddy's pregnancy. All of this time trying to get me invested in Amelia and Owen as a couple is just wasted because I know we're about to undergo some really annoying drama.

The Big Bang Theory: The Imitation Perturbation (12x06)

I liked this episode for the most part, but it could have done more!

Cons:

I really like that Bernadette and Sheldon have a heart to heart about the bullying they experienced growing up. But this whole thing started when Howard participated in a mean-spirited joke at Sheldon's expense, so it feels odd that we didn't get a moment where Howard and Sheldon hashed it out.

Also, are we ever going to do anything more substantial with Penny and Leonard's stagnant relationship? That's not really a complaint about this episode, I guess, more just the show as a whole.

Pros:

I like that Howard dressing up as Sheldon hurt his feelings, and I like the way things escalated from there. It provided a good amount of comedy while also addressing some real human emotions underpinning that humor. That's what a decent sitcom would be able to achieve every single week. The best moment was definitely the conversation between Bernadette and Sheldon at the end, but I also liked Bernadette and Amy discussing what had gone on between their husbands, and how both of them had to learn to let Sheldon take care of himself instead of relying on Amy to do it.

Supernatural: The Scar (14x03)

I'm having feelings.

Cons:

I'm sad that Wayward Sisters isn't going forward. It would have made a great show. But I'm happy that we get to keep the characters around and make them a part of the world in some way. All that said, I wasn't happy with Kaia dying last season, and while I love that Claire/Kaia as a romantic pairing was confirmed, the whole thing is icky when you consider the fact that Kaia died, making this yet another woman, another queer character, another person of color, that Supernatural has decided to kill off. However, I'm withholding my anger a little bit, because there is a version of Kaia still in the story, and I could definitely see a story coming out of this where maybe she and Claire find their way to each other... maybe there could be something there.

I'm still annoyed that Michael!Dean lasted for so short a time. I wish we could have stretched it out a bit longer, honestly. Oh well.

Modern Family: Good Grief (10x05)

Modern Family has always been at its best in fun holiday episodes, but this one took a surprising turn as we learn that Mitchell and Claire's mother, DeDe, has passed away. How did the episode do at exploring this death?

Cons:

Well, I've got to admit that from a marketing standpoint, it's a little bit stupid that they pushed so hard on this "major death" that we would be getting this season. Sure, DeDe was a fun guest character, but it's not like Jay dropped dead or anything. That's not a critique about the episode itself, I'm just saying it was odd to push on this in the buildup to the season so heavily.

There's a really unsettling joke about Haley starving herself in this episode. Basically, in her grief over her grandmother, she starts eating a ton of food, and suddenly she seems to get smarter. Alex hypothesizes that her brain is working for the first time because she's not starving herself. That's... not a funny or cool joke to make.

Doctor Who: Rosa (11x03)

This episode terrified me. I mean, before I watched it. There were about a million things that could go so, so, wrong in tackling this story. And? I... think they pulled it off, actually!

Cons:

The character of Krasko was a little undefined. He's the dude from the future who has come back to mess with Rosa Parks and change history. We know he's a criminal in the future, and it's sort of implied that he's just a lone crazy person, not part of some bigger conspiracy... but in any case, I think I needed some firmer answers about who he was and if he was just a lone racist monster, or if he represented an attitude that still prevailed in the distant future. I could have done with less of him, or... more. As it was, he was just kind of there as an excuse for plot to happen.

Pros:

Okay. I'm going to try to not make this review really, really, long, but I think I need to talk about the good things about this episode point by point, because I had so many fears going in that they were going to screw this up. I want to list some of the things that this episode did right that I really, really worried it would get wrong, and then we can turn to the other good stuff, too.

The Walking Dead: Warning Signs (9x03)

I'm NOT cool with this, Maggie and Daryl. What the HECK.

Cons:

It seems weird to me that we've looped back around to Maggie and Daryl being mutineers like this. It was a stupid idea in the beginning, then they tempered it, now they've ramped it back up. I just... ugh. I know that Daryl has tried to talk to Rick about it a little bit, but I still feel like Daryl and Maggie would need to be really, really pushed to turn their backs on Rick like this, and I just don't know if I feel it.

These Savior characters are very one-note, and it makes it hard to sympathize with them. Obviously it's not cool to just execute people, no matter what they've done. I'm on Rick and Michonne's side. But it would work better for the story if we had some built up positive investment in some of the Saviors before they died.

Gabriel and Anne/Jadis. Still boring. Still dumb. I'm curious about what Jadis is up to, but I don't feel invested in that romance at ALL.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I Am Ashamed (4x02)

Another great episode. I am a broken record!

Cons:

Okay, so this isn't really like a big complaint or problem or anything, but I found it a bit odd that Rebecca had this cathartic moment in the graveyard at the end, and then after that moment, Patton Oswalt pops out of nowhere and a large group number about "shame" happens. It was a great song, but usually the musical numbers help us to understand a bit about why the characters are feeling the way they're feeling, and in this case, we had all of the emotional work, and then the song felt almost like an afterthought. I may be nitpicking just a little bit.

Pros:

Let's start with Darryl and White Josh's story. Last week I got really freaked out when I didn't see White Josh, so I was glad he made an appearance here. Darryl is scared that he won't be able to give his new daughter, Hebecca, all of the advantages she would have if she had a mother, too. He's especially worried about breast milk, and ends up going online to buy some. This leads him to driving all over town and leaving a reluctant WhiJo in charge of the baby. Josh comes over and the two Joshes dress the baby up in a cute Halloween costume and actually have an okay time. As the episode ends, Darryl's ex-wife, and his older daughter, both reassure Darryl that he's a great father and that the baby will be just fine in his care.