His Dark Materials: Betrayal (1x08)

Dafne Keen is going places. She's phenomenal. This show... just... wow.

Cons:

I liked the way the daemons were integrated into this episode; they definitely got better about that as the season went on. But now I have to register a related, yet slightly different complaint...Pan is always in the same damn form. I mean, not always, but enough that it's distracting. I think in the book that was definitely his preferred form, but since it's a very important plot point that Lyra's daemon hasn't "settled" yet, I think some more variety would have been nice, just to emphasize that. Is this a nitpick? Yes.

Also... I missed Lee. A lot. I wish we could have seen more of him, although I understand why time constraints would limit his role towards the end of the season.

Pros:

While I'm not sure I'd ever recommend this show to someone on the basis of its effects/action sequences, I will admit that the final battle scene was pretty cool, with all the moving pieces of the bears, the Magesterium, etc. coming together in one bombastic final confrontation. Bodies are flying around, lights and noise and chaos... and Lyra, running through it all, just trying to get to Roger. I really felt the tension and urgency here.

His Dark Materials: The Fight to the Death (1x07)

Lyra Silvertongue! Oh man, this was a good, good episode.

Cons:

My main and really my only complaint is something that I think the budget is responsible for. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I remember the fight between Iorek and Iofur being outdoors, in this big arena with all the other bears watching. I've been mostly very impressed with the CGI in this show, and the bears in particular look great - the fight is truly impressive. But it doesn't have the grandness of scale I was maybe hoping for, in my ideal universe.

I'll just lodge my regular complaint that daemons need to be more ubiquitous. The man in the prison cell with Lyra didn't have any significant interactions with his daemon, for example. I don't mean to nitpick, but come on.

Pros:

This is the best episode of the show thus far, though. I really, really liked it. I think I'll start with Will, before we get in to the main story of the week. Boreal is getting impatient, and tries to talk his way into the Parry household. He tells Elaine that John might still be alive. She freaks out and runs to Will, and it looks like Will is ready to believe that there's something more going on here, besides his mother's paranoia. He takes her to a trusted neighbor and then hides out in the dark in his own house, awaiting Boreal's men. They break in, looking for his father's belongings and notes, and Will pushes one of them over the banister, killing him, and then runs off.

Supernatural: Our Father, Who Aren't in Heaven (15x08)

I'm screaming.

Cons:

Buckleming episodes usually piss me off, but this one was actually really great. It was still plagued with the same pacing problems I always see in their episodes, though. A lot of great stuff happened here, but it didn't necessarily have a ton of room to breathe. Some of it did - the Cas and Dean stuff, the Michael and Adam stuff. And maybe that's the most important. But it might have been nice to have a longer beat with Rowena, or a bit more buildup with Eileen and the case. For an episode written by these two chuckle-fucks, though, I'm honestly really, really impressed.

Donatello is an okay-ish character, but his presence here felt mostly unnecessary. Didn't we have enough to juggle, without introducing him into the mix? Eileen, Cas, Rowena, Chuck, Michael, Adam... there's a lot going on here. It probably could have been done without him.

Pros:

I really don't know where to start, so let's start with Eileen. Just the fact that she's in this episode warms me from head to toe. She's... actually in the show. She's here, in the mid-season finale, where important Plot Stuff is happening. She's a real player in events, and after she came back from the dead, she stuck around in the bunker. Like she's... really in the show, you guys. Three episodes in a row!

Modern Family: The Last Christmas (11x09)

Yeah, this was a pretty decent installment, even if one or two things still had me rolling my eyes.

Cons:

Manny is so annoying. I actually liked the idea of Luke having genuine feelings for Sherry, and how that might affect the whole family. There was this idea of Manny's parents and Luke's parents defending their sons, and Luke developing emotionally, and Manny having to learn to be more mature as well, and get over his heartbreak in an adult way... but no. We get some setup and promise in that direction, and then it all blows up immediately. I'm just so exhausted by Manny as a character.

I like it when Modern Family does big ensemble stories like this, because it means even if every plot thread doesn't it the mark, there's enough going on that it doesn't matter. That said, I didn't care about Jay trying to get Claire to work with him in his dog bed company. It was just entirely shrug-worthy for me.

Pros:

Haley was actually my favorite part of this episode, even though she didn't really have a story-line of her own. Essentially, she is done breastfeeding and so she's drinking wine and meddling in other people's drama. She had the two best jokes. One, when she compared Joe to a "sad ham" and then apologized because she's drunk and upset. Her line delivery really cracked me up. The second is when she talks to Mitchell about Cam's family being poor because they "eat plants and animals they find in their backyard." Ha!

His Dark Materials: The Daemon-Cages (1x06)

Dang, a ton of stuff happens in this one episode!

Cons:

In theory, I'm glad we've got a fast pace. There's a lot to cover in just eight episodes. There was plenty of great material in this episode, and for the most part the resonant moments really landed. But I have some complaints.

So, first of all, the fast pace felt kind of awkward when we had these really brief cut-aways from what was happening with Lyra. We've got a scene of the Gyptians on their travels, and a scene of Will watching a video of his father. These scenes cut through the main action and were pretty awkward and unnecessary.

I know I've said this before, but it's really annoying that the daemons are not more ubiquitous in this world. In this episode, we are meant to understand the visceral, painful horror of children being separated from their daemons. So then why are daemons so much an afterthought in the filming and atmosphere? Why can I remember the girl that helped Lyra hide from Mrs. Coulter, but not the presence of her daemon? Why don't we see the children snuggling and petting their daemons in the cafeteria scenes? Where's Pan when Lyra falls out of the balloon at the end? It bothers the heck out of me that the daemons aren't a bigger part of the visual storytelling.

Supernatural: Last Call (15x07)

My heart is so full, y'all. Damn.

Cons:

Will you just let Eileen and Sam kiss, though? The slow-burn is charming to a point, but we're running out of episodes, here. Let's get this show on the road. They are so freakin' cute.

I love Christian Kane so much and I loved his performance. I do think it's a little silly to shoe-horn this awesome friend into Dean's past like this. I get it - this was someone he used to hunt with on occasion when he was younger. That part I'm fine with. But they talked like John was a father-figure in this guy's life, that he took them both out on hunts together, played them music, etc. That's not the kind of friend I thought Dean had in his life. It feels like too much of a retcon, in some ways, to introduce that idea now.

Also... this is a small thing, but it was hilarious to me how easy it was for Dean to break out of his bonds when Lee had him trapped. Come on, guys. The Winchesters are always getting in to trouble, and it's always dumb luck or mistakes from the bad guys that let them escape with their lives. Isn't Lee supposed to be a former hunter?

Modern Family: Tree's A Crowd (11x08)

This episode sure does... exist. It's not strictly speaking terrible, for any specific reason... but it slipped out of my brain pretty much the second I watched it. Just... bland.

Cons:

The blandest and yet somehow still the most annoying plot thread goes to... Jay, Gloria, and Manny. Big shocker there. Apparently Manny has been dumped by Sherry Shaker, and Gloria wants Luke to go to Sherry and talk Manny up so she'll take him back. Instead, Luke is charmed by her improv comedy skills and ends up kissing her. This is paired with a plot where Gloria accuses Jay of being unfeeling, so Jay tries to find Manny a new girlfriend. The climax of this thread comes when Jay tells Luke to get out, that he's disappointed in him, because Luke kissed Sherry. This is supposed to prove that Jay does have empathy.

First of all, I made myself bored just writing out that plot thread. Second of all, Manny is truly insufferable as a character. I mean it. Whenever he's onscreen I'm just prepared to cringe. I also hate it when they take something stupid and try to make it poignant. I think we were supposed to feel genuine emotion about Luke betraying Manny and Jay standing up for him, but it just did not work for me. If I thought they were going to spend some real time on it, explore Luke and Manny's relationship from this point forward, I'd be more on board. But it's not going to happen. Any amount of connection I felt to Manny's character died long ago.

Arrow: Purgatory (8x07)

Arrow has decided to lean firmly into the nostalgia camp for this final season, and I for one am all for it!

Cons:

I'm going to say this one more time, just because I want to have it on the record. I'm not letting the CW pull me in to their fun crossover shenanigans. I like Arrow just fine, but I don't have the time or the bandwidth to watch all of the other shows in this extended universe. It's a good marketing technique, sure, but I am not going to be watching all of the crossover episodes. This means that I will next check in with Oliver in January, and be super confused as I'll be coming in to part... 4? 5? of the Crisis on Infinite Earths story. This isn't really a "con" of this episode in particular, but I just wanted to make my stance on this crystal clear. If you're in to all the other shows, cool. But I can't be fussed. And it annoys me slightly that this final season of Arrow, with only three episodes remaining, is using one of those episodes to tell a story that's not really about Oliver and his gang, but is instead about all of these other shows and their characters as well. After that, the penultimate episode is the backdoor pilot one, and then the finale... it really feels like a lot of real estate is being used for things that are tangential to Oliver's journey, but not central to it. And that's a bummer, even if the other content is good.

I was happy that we got some explanation about Lyla last week, but I have to admit the relationship between her and Diggle is kind of baffling. Why did Lyla have to be so circumspect about everything? She kidnapped William, Mia, Connor, Oliver, John, and Laurel. She straight up kidnapped them. She seemed perfectly able to convince Dinah, Rene, and Roy to come under their own power, so what is with the drugging? They've justified it somewhat by saying that it's all part of the effort to make Oliver understand his role in the coming Crisis. But even that doesn't quite do it for me, especially now that Lyla has been taken over and has become "the Harbinger," whatever the hell that is. It's just a little too wonky for my taste.

His Dark Materials: The Lost Boy (1x05)

Will?! What the heck! Let's discuss.

Cons:

I am not at all unhappy with the introduction for Will and his mother. I think both actors did a good job, and the story is intriguing and feels natural here. It makes perfect sense that Will would be introduced so early, given that they've already revealed the existence of multiple worlds, and Lord Boreal is already hanging out in Will's world, looking for info about John Parry (aka Grumman). All that said... I do have some worries. Is introducing Will here going to diminish some of the most powerful parts of the story, that don't come up until much later in the books? Well... inevitably. I still think this could work alright. I'm not willing to say they've made some big huge mistake by making such a big change. It makes sense to expand the world and add in these details, but there is definitely something lost by doing so.

I've brought this up before, but is bears repeating here in this episode specifically. The daemons need to be ubiquitous. They need to be there always, a part of the environment, always around. There are so many moments when we see a human without their daemon clearly visible. It's not breaking the rules - their daemon could be something small, hiding in their clothing. That's fine. But the problem is, we get moments like when Ma Costa runs up to Billy and immediately starts asking where his daemon is. She clearly noticed the daemon was missing immediately. Can people sense that? It just doesn't work unless the absence of a daemon is immediately apparent to a viewer, not just the characters.